Lifeline

“I didn’t have anything to do with the RIF—”

Brahms spoke sharply but quietly, to keep his voice from projecting. “Later, Allen. Complacency has never been a valid excuse under the law. If you want, and if they want—” He swept his free hand around. “I’ll release the results of the study, right now, and let everyone see how they were ranked. We’ll tell them what criteria you used as chief assessor to rank them. The numbers on that list are more your doing than mine. Let’s show them all. Then there’ll be plenty of time to discuss this—even for a trial, if that’s what you want.”

Terachyk looked angry and frightened. The people nearest him frowned; one looked Terachyk up and down and seemed to move away from him.

“One minute to airlock doors. Clear the shuttle bay. Final warning.”

“Right now the Phoenix is coming,” Brahms said. “Let’s get out of the way so the crew can come aboard.” He waited a moment and then, in disgust, clapped his hands and shouted, “Everybody, clear the shuttle bay. Now!”

People moved to obey. Terachyk grew red and started to retort at the director’s audacity, but then seemed to think better of it. Instead, he snapped, “Let’s move out. Keep hold of the director.”

A few people grumbled, but the dissident crowd kicked off from the wall toward the series of airlock doors to storage rooms and the observation areas. Two large men roughly tugged Brahms along with them. He wondered where Winkowski and the other watchers had gone. He couldn’t quite believe they would desert him so easily.

The two escorts shoved him through an opening to the observation deck, but they never allowed him to be alone. No one spoke. Within seconds they had sealed themselves behind sheltering doors, watching as the magenta warning lights flashed, reflecting light off the airlock doors.

A murmur rippled through the crowd, a rising excitement. A loud “clunk” came from just outside the colony. The PA sound reverberated throughout the observation deck.

“Prepare to open shuttle bay doors. The Phoenix has arrived. Everybody give the crew a welcoming hand.”

The airlock doors yawned open and spread wide to show the vessel drifting in, flanked by five people in space suits, pushing it along with the force of their combined MMUs and nudging it into place.

The ConComm announcer on the PA broadcast cheers from random sections on Orbitech 1. Clavius Base sent up congratulations. In the observation deck the mutineers’ eyes were wide. A man next to Brahms began crying openly, his tears coming off his cheeks and floating in front of his face as tiny spinning water globules. A woman moved among the others, pounding people on the back.

The change felt instantaneous to Brahms—the anger and righteous dissatisfaction among the mutineers was defused; despair was diluted with a new burst of hope.

“Full pressure in the shuttle bay: seven point five PSI and ready for visitors. We should be seeing the reception committee from Director Brahms any minute now.”

Terachyk stiffened, and Brahms turned to him. “Well, Allen, should we go greet them? Maybe you’d like to shake hands with McLaris for the cameras?”

Terachyk gestured toward the door, but said nothing. He wore a stormy expression. The airlock doors opened, allowing them all to spill out into the cold shuttle bay. Their breath steamed into the chill air.

Brahms noted that it was the first time since the War that people passed him by without acknowledging his presence. Only one of the big men held onto his arm.

Through the main front window port of the altered Miranda, Brahms could see two men inside, working at the hatch. One of them would be McLaris.

When Terachyk reached the metal hulk of the Phoenix, the mass of people in the weightless bay moved Brahms up alongside him. Someone called, “Stand back, they’re coming out!”

The Phoenix’s airlock door crept open. The metal moved, a gap opened. Brahms saw a hand.

The crowd began to cheer. The reaction was so unlike anything Brahms had heard in a long, long time, it overwhelmed him.

Clifford Clancy pushed out from the airlock and floated into the middle of the shuttle bay. He grinned, holding his helmet in his hand, and gave a thumbs-up signal. People spilled toward him. Some of them collided with each other, but no one seemed to notice.

Brahms caught Allen Terachyk’s eye. A voice from inside the Phoenix barely made it over the other sounds. “Hello, Curtis.”

Brahms turned his head to see Duncan McLaris floating just inside the yo-yo. He pulled himself out into the light.

Then the spoke-shaft elevator doors slid open, and this time dozens of green-clad watchers emerged. Nancy Winkowski led the cadre. They all carried clubs—long rods and pieces of pipe. Winkowski pushed into the crowd and started clubbing people, swinging her instrument as she flew through the bay. One woman let out a scream as a pipe struck her in the leg.