Lifeline

“Well, I don’t know if your assessors have been keeping you up-to-date on my work.”

Brahms flicked his eyes to the console screen on his desk surface. He brushed his fingers over a few keys and stared at the words scrolling up. “Ah, yes, your weavewire. But that was years ago, and in New Mexico yet. There haven’t been any new developments that I can see, unless you count those garments you’ve made.”

Karen wet her lips. “Let me explain, Mr. Brahms—put this in perspective. The weavewire is only one molecule thick and held together by an unusual type of potential. It won’t mean anything to you, but it’s called a one-and-a-half-dimensional material. It’s so thin you can’t see it, but it won’t break except under conditions so extreme we can’t even create them in the laboratory. And since it’s only one molecule thick, it requires very little raw material and weighs almost nothing, in addition to being extremely flexible.”

“And?” Brahms tapped one finger on the desktop with the first signs of impatience. “I’m sure that’s all summarized here.”

“Well, up until lately, I’ve only been able to draw out a couple hundred kilometers a day under stringently controlled laboratory conditions. As I draw it out I have to electromagnetically braid the fiber into a macroscopic weave so it will not be dangerous. Being one molecule thick, it can slice through anything—steel, people, the colony.

“Anyway, I’ve perfected a new process to draw out tens of thousands of kilometers a day without being under those stringent conditions. That is, I can make the weavewire on demand, anywhere and any time. Since the weavewire doesn’t even exist until it’s drawn out, we don’t have to store it—we can use it as an indestructible cable. When Ramis goes, he can trail a double wire behind him. If he reaches the Kibalchich, our two colonies will then be connected by a very thin and very strong cable—a lifeline, like they used to have between rescue ships. We can use it as a ferry to haul things back and forth, like a big pulley.”

Brahms watched her. “I thought you just said the wire would slice through any material—”

“Any material except itself! We could construct a harness made of weavewire that rides along the length of the line, use that to haul supplies back from the Kibalchich.”

Brahms got a far-off look in his eyes. “Yessss.” He stood up and nodded to them with his decision. “Ramis, as soon as Dr. Langelier has everything ready for you, I want you to go to the Kibalchich. I will announce the project and have a competition to design the best method for getting you there. That would certainly raise the colony’s morale.”

He pointed toward the door in an obvious gesture of dismissal. Ramis felt so uncomfortable at being near the director, he lost no time getting up from his seat.

“I can’t tell you how much of a pleasure it is to be able to make this kind of announcement instead of something much more unpleasant,” Brahms continued. “Good luck, and Godspeed.”

Relieved, and trying not to run, Ramis fled the acting director’s office.

Chapter 28

CLAVIUS BASE—Day 39

Leaning back on his bunk, Duncan McLaris stared at the gray-brown rock of the textured wall. Some of the rooms were finished with white ceramic tiles; others had been sealed and left au naturel. McLaris preferred the latter.

He tilted his gaze up to the narrow strip of thick glass that formed a window for him to look out at the lunar surface and the stars beyond.

With the new catacombs and the extra quarters dug in them, Cliff Clancy’s engineers had spread out. Many of the other Clavius Base personnel had moved into newer and more spacious quarters. Since he was now base manager, McLaris himself laid claim to one of the biggest new rooms—one close enough to the surface to have the lip of a window.

From where he lay on the cot, he noticed smudged fingerprints on the clear plastic from the many times he had pulled himself up to see better.

The window was important to him. His wife Diane had always insisted on being where she could stare outside. In their quarters on Orbitech 1 she had grown a small pine seedling in a pot under a UV lamp. McLaris had left the seedling behind, with so many other things, when he had escaped from the station.

He had left those others behind to die, a hundred and fifty of them, in Brahms’s RIF.

But the satisfaction and pride of what he was now achieving for Clavius Base did much to chip away the leaden weight of his conscience. McLaris could honestly say he was doing his best work now. He saw some results quite plainly. He was getting things done—things that Tomkins had long put off out of disinterest.

Now that Tomkins had absorbed himself in his Arecibo II telescope project, he had come back to life; he was dynamic and enthusiastic again. He should never have become an administrator in the first place.