Between the Strokes of Night

Wherry skipped to views of the other arcologies. The most distant, Amanda, blinked in as a grainy and indistinct image. It was now almost three million miles away from Earth, spiralling slowly outward in the plane of the ecliptic. In eight years, unless some new trajectory were adopted, the colony ship would have wound its way out to the orbit of Mars. Already the scientists on board were talking about the possibility of a small manned station on Phobos, and consulting with Salter Station on the available resources for the project. Salter Wherry flicked off the viewing screen and sat motionless for many minutes. At last he keyed in another sequence. The face of Hans Gibbs, hair tousled, appeared.

“Hans, do you have the schedule for shipping the Neurological Institute staff there with you?”

“Not in front of me. Hold on a minute and I’ll get it.”

“No need for that. I’ll tell you what I want you to do. The schedule calls for everything to be up here seventy-seven days from now.”

“Right. Judith Niles grumbled at that, but we’re on time so far.” “Hans, it won’t do. I don’t think we have that long. It’s going to hell, and it’s skidding fast. I understand international politics pretty well, but today I couldn’t even guess which country will go crazy first. They’re all candidates. I want you to work up a revised schedule that will have everything from the Institute — people, animals, and equipment — here inside thirty days. Tell Muncie I want him to do the same thing for anything we need to finish Eleanora, in the same timetable.”

Hans Gibbs suddenly looked much more awake. “Thirty days! No way, the permits alone will take us that long.”

“Don’t worry about permits. Let me take care of those. You start working the shipping arrangements. Fast. Cost is irrelevant. You hear me?” Salter Wherry smiled. “Irrelevant. Now, Hans, when have you ever heard me say that about the cost of anything? Thirty days. You have thirty days.”

Hans Gibbs shrugged. “I’ll try. But apart from permits, we have to worry about launch availability. If that goes sour — “

He paused, and swore. The connection was gone. Hans was talking to a blank screen.

CHAPTER NINE

Wolfgang Gibbs closed his eyes and leaned his head forward to touch the cool metal of the console. His face was white, and shone with sweat. After a few seconds he swallowed hard, sat upright, took a deep breath, and made another try. He hit the key sequence for a coded message, waiting until the unit in front of him signalled acceptance.

“Well, Charlene” — he had to clear his throat again — “I promised you a report as soon as I could get round to it. I’ve just screwed up the transmission sequence three times in a row, so if this one doesn’t work I’ll call it a day. I originally thought I’d be sending to you right after I got here — shows what an optimist I am! Still, here we go, one more time. If you hear puking noises in the middle of the recording, don’t worry. That’s just me, losing my liver and lungs again.”

He coughed harshly. “Hans says that only one person in fifty has as bad a reaction to freefall as I do, so with luck you’ll be all right. And they say even I should feel better in a couple more days. I can’t wait. Anyway, that’s enough moaning, let me get to work.

“Most of the trip up was a breeze. We had everything tied down tight, so nothing could shake loose, and Cameron had all the animals souped up to their eyebrows with sedatives. Pity he couldn’t do the same for me. When we hit freefall everything was all right at first, though my stomach felt as if it had moved about a foot upward. But I was coping with it, not too bad. Then we began moving the animals into their permanent quarters here. They didn’t like it, and they showed their annoyance the only way they could. I’m telling you, we’d better not move again in a hurry. They don’t pay enough for me to wallow along through a cloud of free-floating animal puke and animal crap every day of the week. Wall-to-wall yucky. It was about then that I started to feel I was going to lose my breakfast. And then I did lose it — then the previous day’s lunch and dinner, and I still feel as though I’ll never eat again.

“Okay. I guess that’s not what you want to hear. Let me get back to the real stuff. I’ll dress it up properly for the lab reports, but here’s where we stand.”

Wolfgang paused for a moment as another wave of nausea swept over him. He had made his way to the outermost corridor of Spindletop, where the effective gravity was highest, and a quarter gee was almost enough to bring his stomach in line; but if he allowed himself to look down, he was gazing out at infinity, standing on a rotating sea of stars that swirled beneath his feet. And that was enough to start him off again.