Lifeline

McLaris glanced up and saw three faces at the observation windows of the docking bay control room. The figures gestured wildly at the Miranda. Soon they gave up and pounded on the glass window.

McLaris smiled to himself. He had already disconnected all the wires from the appropriate control panels. He had done no damage, nothing that couldn’t be fixed—but it would take them hours to get it working again. By then it would be too late. The Miranda—McLaris, Jessie, and Stephanie Garland—would be long gone.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this!” Garland said. Her voice had taken on a panicked high pitch. “It’s only been an hour. What if it’s a false alarm? What if things aren’t as bad as we think?”

“Don’t kid yourself.”

“News reports always get exaggerated in a crisis. What if—”

McLaris glared at her. “Do you have a weapon on board?”

“Yes.”

“Then tell them I took it, held you hostage, and forced you to fly out. There, your ass is covered. Happy now?”

McLaris flicked the external intercom, and suddenly klaxon sounds filled the cockpit of the Miranda. The computer voice blared from the intercom again.

“The airlock will open in twenty seconds. You have fifteen seconds to evacuate. Emergency. Evacuate immediately.”

McLaris strapped himself into the copilot’s chair and reached behind him, extending his fingers toward Jessie, but the straps kept him from touching her. He waved instead. “It’s okay, baby. Just be brave.”

“I am, Diddy.”

“I’m going to lift us up,” Stephanie Garland said. She looked beaten and very frightened. “When those doors crack, we’ll be blasted out of here with the rest of the air.”

McLaris nodded. “The sooner we get away from here, the better.”

Garland moved one of the joysticks. The craft hesitated, then jerked free of its moorings. McLaris could hear the attitude jets. The hissing sound cut off, but the Miranda continued to drift slowly upward, without gravity to pull it back down.

“Five seconds …”

McLaris swallowed, but his throat felt raw. It should be just about—

The giant docking bay doors slid open, and the crack widened like a yawning mouth. The blackness of space spun under them. As the air rushed out, McLaris could imagine he heard the howling wind.

The Miranda lunged forward, buffeted from side to side. Like a roller coaster ride, the shuttle-tug burst through the opening doors.

The air froze into a silvery mist of ice crystals that floated around the shuttle. McLaris gripped the arms of his seat, but the acceleration wasn’t great enough to cause discomfort.

Garland slapped at her control panel, igniting the thrusters that pushed them away from the colony.

McLaris looked down at Orbitech 1—the majestic Lagrange colony he had called home for nearly a year—as it dropped away behind them. The colony looked like two spoked wheels fastened to each end of a thick axle: two giant counter rotating toruses, each half a mile in radius, connected through the center by a mile-long cylinder that did not rotate. The central cylinder provided a large zero-G environment for labs and manufacturing areas.

Floating above the entire colony shone the broad but delicately thin mirror, discontinuous to reflect sunlight to the louvered mirrors on the rims of both toruses. McLaris turned his head away from the colony and looked instead for the Moon. Their survival lay there.

Garland flicked on the radio, and a hubbub of angry chatter burst at them. Disconnected shouting, dismayed and astonished questions: “Miranda, where are you going?” “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

McLaris had taken them by surprise. He allowed a satisfied smile to creep onto his face. Relief filled him like ice water, and he felt ready to melt. They were going to make it—they had passed the major challenge. The shuttle was free of Orbitech 1.

One sharp voice cut though the babble on the radio. The other voices fell silent. McLaris felt his heart pause with animal fear as he recognized the voice of Curtis Brahms.

“Damn you, McLaris!” He could not possibly have measured the amount of anger and betrayal in the associate director’s voice. “Damn you!”

McLaris desperately reached forward and switched the radio off.

Behind him, Jessie cried.

Chapter 5

ORBITECH 1—Day 2

Curtis Brahms unsealed the desk and withdrew his bronze-rimmed eyeglasses. He slid them on, careful not to disturb his precise blond hair. The lenses in the glasses were blanks, for show only, but they made him look older. At twenty-nine, the youngest associate director ever, Brahms felt too self-conscious of his wunderkind status. And right now he needed to command respect. He insisted on holding the meeting in his own office chamber.