Lifeline

Karen relaxed, letting a weight of responsibility drop from her shoulders. She couldn’t shoulder so much blame. Everyone did the best they could, in whatever way they found possible. She had done a damned fine job herself, she thought.

Behind her came a small animal cry. Anna Tripolk began to wake up, shivering.

The emotion of the last three months welled inside Karen. Everything seemed to cascade back: her separation from Ray, the War, surviving the RIF, Ramis arriving and becoming her friend, the journey here to the Kibalchich.…

Karen drifted to Anna Tripolk and grasped her shoulders. Anna looked devastated and helpless. Karen held her close and stroked the woman’s hair. Tears came quickly. She didn’t know what to say, but she said it anyway.

“You poor dear. It’s all right now. Everything will be all right.”

Chapter 66

ORBITECH 1—Day 72

The crowd watched the Phoenix in the holotank above the shuttle bay doors. The five minutes it took to bring the craft into the shuttle bay seemed an eternity.

Brahms felt surrounded by dissipating anger as Orbitech 1 prepared to receive visitors. Terachyk simply didn’t have the charisma to keep the mutineers whipped into a frenzy—not when Brahms used all his abilities to sidetrack them.

Terachyk had no doubt planned his revolt to occur at a time of greatest tension, but he had not counted on the spark of hope even the mutineers would feel. The arrival of the Phoenix and the simultaneous appearance of the sail-creatures carried a kind of majestic awe. In their minds, they would give Brahms credit for this, no matter what Terachyk had told them. Their attitudes reminded Brahms of the euphoria that had filled the station when Ramis Barrera had first brought them the wall-kelp.

On the holotank overhead, the recovery team, outfitted in the red-and-silver space suits bearing the Orbitechnologies logo, grappled with the hulk of what had been the Miranda. Brahms saw a hodgepodge of retro-rockets, vacuum-welded fixtures, and the airtight living area—pieces attached at random over what had once been the shuttlecraft.

Brahms had a flash of a memory, recalling how the Miranda had docked there shortly before the War, with its pilot requesting to stay a few days and relax before returning to Earth orbit for another run.

McLaris was on board that vessel now. Coming back.

The look of the Phoenix bespoke desperate acts, the Clavius people piecing together whatever they had available. Desperate acts—like McLaris stealing the shuttle in the first place, or Brahms proposing the RIF. Or now Terachyk and his revolt.

Desperate times called for such desperate acts. Sometimes they succeeded, and sometimes they failed.

He turned to look at Terachyk, and the other man glared back at him.

On the three-dimensional view, the recovery team positioned themselves around the Phoenix, avoiding the weavewire linkage. The radio crackled over the open band; ConComm refrained from adding irrelevant voice-overs.

“Start pulling them in again! Caterpiller speed—don’t jerk ’em too much!”

“Reeling in. Doppler has them constant at twenty feet a second.”

The image jittered as the Phoenix moved and the holo-cameras tried to maintain their focus.

“Don’t increase speed. Coming along just fine.”

“Holding steady.”

“We’ve got five MMUs on this side of it. A few good blasts should slow this baby right down to a stop.”

Brahms was struck by the irony that no one else on Orbitech 1 even seemed aware of Terachyk’s mutiny, but instead remained intent on the yo-yo situation. He realized that this meant Terachyk’s revolt must be relatively tight-knit and small. He had probably brought every one of his supporters with him.

Now if Brahms’s watchers got together and burst in here.… He swallowed, afraid of the thought and praying they wouldn’t try anything after all. He had no doubt that if the crowd grew any bigger, he would never survive.

His thoughts were interrupted by the blast of the PA.

“Clear the shuttle bay—I say again, clear the shuttle bay. Prepare to bring Phoenix on board. Airlock opening in two minutes. Clear the shuttle bay.”

The wall of people still surrounded Brahms. He felt someone grab his arm, but he did not resist. Terachyk turned to him, wearing a thin smile. “Well, will you join us, Curtis? Or do you prefer to remain here when the airlock doors open?”

Someone snickered. Brahms ignored the sea of faces that turned to stare at him. He wondered if Terachyk would really seal him in the shuttle bay with the doors about to open. He answered quietly, “I’ll follow you, Allen.”

But Terachyk persisted. “You would have sent me out the airlock if I hadn’t measured up to your damned Efficiency Study. You did it to Tim Drury!”

Brahms felt very tired of all this. He met the stares of the crowd. “If we don’t get out of here soon, we’ll all go out the airlock just because you talk too much. Everyone knows what I did, and everyone knows you helped me.”