Lifeline

Remembering the difficulty he had had before, Sandovaal decided to take a short nap and then begin trying to direct the radio dish toward Orbitech 1. The sail-creature mosaic had passed through the side lobe for inter-Lagrange point communications and could not pick up anything from Clavius Base, but he would try anyway.

Eight years before, when he first had arrived on the new Aguinaldo, full of enthusiasm, things had been much brighter.

As he had disembarked from the first shuttle-tug, Sandovaal still couldn’t feel his own weight. The shuttle had docked at the Aguinaldo’s zero-G core, and after six days of transit, he was getting tired of floating around. He wanted to move to the rim and feel the artificial gravity pull on his legs, even if it was only a seventh of Earth normal. He wanted to feel solid again.

He drifted with the other new arrivals down the passageway, bumping into walls. Coming into the gleaming Aguinaldo at its axis, he saw the ten-kilometer length unfold before him—a gargantuan cylinder broken only by the lightaxis running straight down the center. The dizzying edges rolled up, encircling his view. Other new colonists milled around him, gasping and muttering to each other.

He had not envisioned the colony quite like this—nothing of such … magnitude. Sandovaal felt embarrassed at his awe and tried to hide it. It was only engineering, after all—on a large scale, yes, but still just pieces of metal welded together.

He let his eyes rest on all the broad open space. As he had feared, he saw distressingly little green. How did they expect to make themselves independent from Earth without devoting most of their effort to intensive agriculture?

Someone prodded him from behind. A bored American attendant standing off to the side seemed more interested in his nails than in helping anybody. “Hurry it up, ladies and gentlemen. Other colonists are waiting to disembark.”

A slidewalk covered with stickum held Sandovaal’s feet to the floor as the crowd moved along. He could feel himself growing heavier as they traveled along the sloping end toward the cylinder’s edge. Looking back over his shoulder, he felt dizzy from the sight: back at the zero-G core, the slidewalk moved almost straight up to the axis; toward the rim, the moving belt sloped until it was tangent to the ground.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if I may have your attention, please.”

The crowd quieted as the attendant moved from his position and perched on one of the slidewalk rails. “When we get to the rim, chasers will direct you to your housing units. We have to process five thousand people in the next week, so please be patient with us. The housing units have all been certified, but something could have slipped past us. Please remember that the transition staff is extremely overloaded and we’re doing our best to make sure everything runs smoothly. Any questions?”

The speech came out rapidly, without inflections, as though the attendant had said it dozens of times. Sandovaal wrestled with the American colloquialisms.

The slidewalk came to a stop at the rim. The new colonists swarmed to the lines. Attendants yelled over the din. “A through D, this line—if your last name starts with A through D, please wait in this line!”

Sandovaal drew in a breath and tried to control his impatience. He made his way to the “Q thru T” line and deposited his bags in front of two young women. He fidgeted and clenched his jaw as he waited, slowly moving toward the head of the queue. It reminded him of a crowded registration line at the university in Manila.

“Your last name?” The dark-haired woman didn’t look up from her table.

“Sandovaal.”

A moment passed. “To the left and down three kilometers; Luzon block.” The woman pointed without looking up. Her hair was offensively stylish.

Sandovaal stood his ground. “Tell me, where are the biogenetic laboratories?”

The woman looked up, puzzled. “Move on to your apartment, please. A map of the Aguinaldo is posted in your quarters.”

She paused. Sandovaal kept his temper in check. “The biogenetic labs—where are they?”

“Sir, I told you—”

“You did not answer my question.” Sandovaal pulled himself up and glared into the woman’s face. “Young lady, I am Dr. Luis Sandovaal, the Aguinaldo’s chief scientist. Now, you will show me the biogenetic laboratories or you will not find your name on the seating list for any shuttle back to Earth. Do you understand?”

The woman tapped a stylus on her desk, looking around for someone to rescue her. Finally, she summoned a steward to direct him. Sandovaal ducked behind the barricade; he heard other people in the line grumbling at him.

The steward eased Sandovaal away from the crowds, leading him to an electric cart. He refused to let the steward help him stuff his bags into the cart’s cargo bin.