Lifeline

The air stank of escaped chemicals from burners and polymer melts. His eyes stung at first, but he got used to it. The other polymer chemists worked on their own projects, and Ramis knew how dangerous it would be to interrupt them.

He could drift in the zero-G labs, float from cubicle boundary to cubicle boundary, though he could not Jump here. They didn’t have the wide-open spaces. He thought of the Aguinaldo’s core.

Here, only the wraith-like spider plant, sealed vials of chemicals, and empty spheres from drinks bobbled and drifted in the air currents. The zero gravity offered them freedom, so they caged everything.

After a burst of static, the “attention” tones sounded from the PA holotank column in the center of the lab cubicles. Karen sat up with a start and turned to look, focusing back in on her situation. The neutral gray of the holotank resolved into colored speckles that congealed into a three-dimensional representation of the face of Curtis Brahms.

“May I have your attention, please?” His voice warbled and his face moved, as if he was working the controls himself and didn’t quite know what he was doing.

“May I have your attention, please?” The voice became stronger, firmer. “I must make an announcement of the greatest importance to all on Orbitech 1.”

The other workers in the lab complex snapped to attention. “Another RIF already? My God!” someone said. Ramis drifted closer to the curved face of the holotank.

“You all know the desperate plight the War has brought us to. You all know how hard you’re working to help save us from starvation, to rescue us by using our technical excellence to make up for the few resources we have on hand.”

Brahms lifted his chin and swallowed, as if opting not to continue his morale-building speech. His face had a haunted look. Ramis noticed he was not wearing his eyeglasses, and he appeared too young for the burden he bore, too boyish.

“I am sorry to say that two among us have been traitors to that mission. They have tried to sabotage our survival by lying and cheating, to improve their own situation at the expense of the rest of our people. This man—”

The scene dissolved, and a camera swiveled to show a man being hauled along by two of the watchers. His lip looked wounded, and his eyes were sunken and dark with bruises.

“—is Daniel Aiken. He altered research results to make his work seem more important, to make us seem closer to survival than we are. His lie has stolen a valid hope from all of us. He sidetracked and wasted valuable resources.”

“Look, they’ve beaten him up!” one of the polymer chemists cried. “Brahms beat him up!”

“Linda Arnando is also part of this,” Brahms continued. “She worked with Aiken. She was our chief assessor—one of my division leaders. But instead of reporting Aiken’s falsified data, she used it to blackmail him. She also used her administrative position to steal our rations—to take more than her share.”

Arnando looked broken. The view pulled back to show her and Aiken inside the empty shuttle bay. Several of the researchers muttered; someone in the background began to sob.

The armed watchers let go of their charges and then pushed toward the spoke-shaft elevator, sealing it behind them. Aiken stood looking battered and stunned, but Linda Arnando gathered herself and bounced for the sealed doors.

The camera flicked back to Brahms again. “These two do not deny what they have done. They are guilty of cheating us, of hurting our chances for survival. I hope to God these are the only two in our midst.

“Director Ombalal did not try to hide his reduction in force from you, and you killed him for it. But these two are not innocents, and I will not hide this. Their guilt is cut and dried, and clear. Linda Arnando and Daniel Aiken have forfeited their right to live on Orbitech 1 while others have sacrificed themselves.

“Therefore, these two will add their numbers to those who have already gone to reduce our population.”

The camera showed a full view of the shuttle bay now. Ramis could see where he had come in, drifting with the carcass of Sarat, the colored lines painted on the floor where a shuttle would land—a shuttle like the Miranda, which Duncan McLaris had stolen.

Aiken floated upside down, cross-legged, above the bull’s-eye with his head in his hands. Linda Arnando bounced off the walls, shouting something, but the picture carried no sound. A magenta warning light flashed by the outer airlock doors, but Ramis could hear no klaxon.

The other people in the lab complex were quiet, terrified. “This is going to backfire on him,” Karen whispered out loud, but she seemed to be talking to herself. “The first RIF was for survival—this one is for revenge.”

The camera pivoted down the length of Brahms’s arm to where his hand rested on a red button on the control panel. He had already removed the interlocks.

As the camera focused on his hand, he pushed the button.