Lifeline

The Miranda had crashed! Memories flooded into his head. He caught glimpses of Stephanie Garland fighting the controls, the lunar surface careening toward them. Stephanie Garland … shredded by the shrapnel of the cockpit. And Jessie—oh no, Jessie! He saw a vision of a faceless space suit with a cracked helmet, air hissing out into the vacuum. Jessie!

The figure lurching into view was a narrow-shouldered Asian woman. Her hair had been smoothed to perfection, like a black silk cap; she wore a white coat and the trappings of a doctor. She narrowed her almond eyes at him.

“You were the only survivor, Mr. McLaris. I thought you’d like to know.” Her dark eyes were like cold lava glass.

McLaris worked his mouth, but no words came out. He saw flashbacks of the ruined Miranda—Jessie’s faceplate smashed … unconsciousness … pain. Then the rover vehicle, and the space-suited man pulling him out of the wreckage. He had been wearing an Orbitech 2 suit. Clancy—that was his name.

The doctor busied herself rearranging the gleaming medical instruments in a tray. Finally, she removed a hypodermic needle. “I hope you’re satisfied.”

McLaris looked at the needle, uneasy, but decided not to ask any questions. He found himself floating, unable to comprehend the doctor’s anger, or to respond as intelligently as he wanted to. He felt his body filled with a haze of pain, but it was a distant ache, not sharp and distracting—only enough to tell him that his bloodstream had been pumped with enough painkillers to blunt his awareness.

The doctor maintained her silence. She seemed to be seething inside but not letting much of it show. By the time she turned to leave, McLaris already felt the fuzzy effects of the tranquilizer seep into his head. He noticed a hollow emptiness, horror growing inside his stomach at what the doctor had said.

Jessie was dead. Jessie … dead.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and tears started to flow, just as unwilling sleep took him.

DAY 9

The sounds around him seemed hushed, snickering in the darkness. McLaris had been awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, or closing his eyes and counting how many times his chest rose and fell. He was alive. He had survived. Was this worth the effort? Now they had a scapegoat to blame everything on.

McLaris winced and felt the sweat itch beneath him on the infirmary bed. As the sheets went from being too hot to too cold, he cast them away from his body or pulled them up to his chin. The pain from his injuries—relatively minor, all of them—had subsided into quiet throbbing. Within a day the doctor, Kim Berenger, had taken him off the painkillers, and now McLaris felt his mind sharpening again, his full capabilities returning.

He liked it better when everything wasn’t so harsh and clear. The low lunar gravity showed no mitigating effect on the weight of his conscience.

Nobody had taught how to deal with this in management training classes. I didn’t do it for me—I did it for her, he thought. But he couldn’t explain that to Jessie now. What was it for, after all? His own excuses were pathetic.

You’re a survivor, Duncan McLaris! Isn’t it great to be alive?

During the day, some people in Clavius Base uniforms had come to stare at him. When the nurses brought him medication or rationed food, they acted cold to him. And Dr. Berenger’s frigid bedside manner would have been better suited for a morgue.

“You don’t know what Brahms is like,” he croaked once in a hoarse whisper. “I know what he’s going to do. You’ll see. Everything I did will be justified.”

Berenger just stared at him.

McLaris could blame nobody but himself. He had made a terrible mistake, the wrong choice, acted without thinking. He lay pondering how he could take it and turn it into something he could live with.

He closed his eyes and thought about breathing again. Inhale. Exhale. Deeper, and deeper. He felt the air go in and out of his lungs. He sensed the blood flow through his veins and arteries, detected the faint vibrations of his heartbeat … and the spinning wheels in his brain.

Diane was gone, either killed in the War or forever separated from McLaris anyway. He could never get back to Earth.

And Jessie was dead. I am being brave, Diddy! He was supposed to take care of her. He had promised Diane.

McLaris tried not to think about it.

Day 10

He got out of bed for the first time, stretching his aching muscles, standing—with only a seventh of Earth-normal weight—on trembling legs. McLaris’s body felt like a massive bruise, but the hurt seemed refreshing after the painkiller limbo.