2312

“Not yet.”

“Drink something?”

“Not yet.”

They floated in black space, weightless and warm. They were like little moons of Venus; or like little planets of their own, orbiting the sun. People sometimes talked about this situation as the return to the womb, the amniotic high. Take some entheogenic drugs, become a star child. And in fact it was not as dreadful a sight as it probably should have been. For a few moments Swan even fell asleep. When she opened her eyes again, it seemed to her that Venus was perhaps a little bigger. It made sense; when they left the ship, they must have been going at quite a significant speed.

“You still there?”

“Still here.”

Well, Swan thought. Here they were. Nothing to be done, except to wait. Waiting was never her preferred mode. Typically there was more to do than she had time for, so that she was always in a rush. Now it seemed long for a rescue from an evacuation. As they had been bailing out, there had been talk of ships in the area. Maybe Wahram had been knocked off in a strange direction; Swan had followed without any sense of that. Possibly they were leaving the plane of the ecliptic, thus the path of any ships coming to the rescue. Maybe the poor destroyed yacht was the only one in their area, and they would have to wait until all the other evacuees had been mopped up. The destruction of the little yacht was likely to be one of the chief sources of casualties in the whole affair, so surely that would attract attention. They would know they hadn’t collected everybody; they would keep looking; these suits had powerful transponders in them. Being out of the ecliptic thus probably best explained the delay. Or maybe picking everyone up was just taking a while. The last acceleration of the ETH Mobile might have meant it was going at a speed higher than most spaceships could reach when the last people left it, in which case the people were too. If everything was as it was supposed to be, then all the suits would support their occupants for ten days, and they had only been out there only, what-she had to ask Pauline-twenty hours. It seemed longer, shorter-she couldn’t tell. Venus was definitely a little bigger. Swan recalled stories of castaways, adrift unfound, frozen for the eons. How many had gone that way in the history of the world? Scores, hundreds, thousands? She heard in her head the chorus of the old Martian song:

I floated thinking of Peter Sure I would be saved But the stories lie I’m left to die Black space will be my grave

No doubt many of those unfortunates had drifted expecting till the end they would be saved. Hope drained away more slowly than the air and food in their suits; they would recall the story of Peter circling Mars, or some other marooned person who got rescued, and believe a little spaceship would presently appear and hover before them like a UFO, like redemption, like life itself. But for many it had never come, and at some last point they had had to admit that the story was false, or not true for them. True for others, but not for them; the others elect, they the preterite, the lost ones. The forgotten ones. Thus the stark Martian song.

Maybe this time they would join the forgotten ones. Swan stirred herself, checked the common band, a host of voices; went to the emergency band and croaked out a report, an inquiry. Half an hour later a reply came: they were on the radar, they were getting a rescue ship out to them; they were indeed out of the plane, and all responders were busy. But they were on the charts and help would be on its way eventually.

So… look around. Tell Wahram about it, reassure him. Try to relax.

She was not relaxed. A helpless dread seized her like a boiling of the blood. Pauline would therefore know of it; she might at this very moment be infusing her with antianxiety drugs out of the suit’s pharmacy. Swan hoped so. Nothing to do but wait. Keep breathing. Wait and see. It had been a luxury in her life always to be able to do something, never to have to wait. Now reality kicked in. Sometimes you had to wait for it.

Well, so be it. A wait wasn’t so bad. It was better than the blackliner. Venus was looking a little bit closer, and was maybe a little bit brighter-maybe the sunshield had been torn a little, at the edge nearest the explosion. She could see dark clouds swirling around a darker patch, possibly Ishtar’s highland. There were brighter and darker patches down there under the swirling clouds, but she had no sense of whether they represented frozen ocean or frozen land. There were no blues or browns or greens, just gray clouds over gray lands, dark and darker.

I feel better,” Wahram announced uncertainly, as if testing the assertion.

“Oh good,” Swan said. “Try drinking something. You’re probably dehydrated.”

“I am thirsty.”