Lifeline

Brahms closed his eyes. He locked his feet around the chair stem and softly pounded the side of the control panel with his fist. “Damn, damn, damn!” he whispered, over and over again.

According to the reports Brahms had received, only three people had declined his invitation and needed to be “escorted” by the guard team. They were the last to arrive on the elevators. Brahms did not give them a chance to worry the other workers when they emerged from the spoke-shaft doors, upset and indignant.

“Would you like us to come up as well?” the spoke-shaft attendant said, interrupting Brahms.

“No!” he said, faster than he could stifle the alarm in his voice.

“Okay. Everyone’s up, then.”

Arnando acknowledged for him. Brahms nodded to her briskly.

Arnando worked another set of controls. The four spoke-shaft doors pneumatically sealed into their jambs. With a muffled thump, heavy dead bolts shot into place, making the doors impenetrable.

Terachyk glared at her. Arnando turned away from him, aloof.

The people quieted, looking at each other and staring up at the observation windows from the control bay. Some floated up to Brahms’s eye level, waiting. Brahms wanted it all to be over with. He wanted them to stop staring at him.

He had sent out a special invitation to all one hundred and fifty of them. It had been printed on formal, official stationery and marked “In Strict Confidence.” Brahms had signed Ombalal’s name to each one himself: Come to the docking bay for a special announcement at precisely noon on the indicated date.

But Drury knew!—and still he took his fate bravely. Brahms felt sick to his stomach. He had had to put one of his friends on the list, to make the effort sincere. Brahms had taken the lowest 10 percent of the population—those with the worst scores on the Efficiency Study, the least satisfactory performance. Tim Drury had missed that list—many others had done a poorer job than he had—but Brahms had needed to show his impartiality, his honest desire to remove the deadwood wherever he found it.

Besides, Drury was obese. He didn’t necessarily eat any more than his share of food or move any slower than the others, but a fat man looked bad on a starving colony. All the factors had worked against him.

And if he had not needed Ombalal to pull this off, Brahms would have included his name as well.

He switched on the PA system and started playing the tape that would be heard throughout the station. Roha Ombalal’s wooden voice boomed over the speakers. The people stared up at Brahms standing behind the plate glass observation windows. He saw all their faces. Many were expectant; some were skeptical. Only a few seemed angry or afraid. Two men hung only inches away from him in the weightless bay.

“Orbitechnology employees—could I have your attention please?” Ombalal’s tape said. “You all know that Orbitech 1 is not self-sufficient. We were not intended to be self-sufficient. We are a commercial venture in space. Long ago, during the planning stages, Orbitechnologies determined that providing the amount of area required to produce enough food to sustain us was not cost-effective.

“And so, the area that could have been dedicated to agriculture has instead been used for material production. You can figure out their philosophy—food can be grown on Earth, but the things we make here can only be made here. We have merely a token capability to provide for ourselves. Orbitechnologies assumed the exchange would be profitable. Understand, I am not condemning their motives—commercial profit is the reason we’re up here in the first place.”

The mingled faces in the crowd mesmerized Brahms, and his eyes felt gummy. He would never forget them. Linda Arnando handed him a plastic bag of water. He took a sip and swallowed, coating his throat, as Ombalal continued.

“That leaves us in a desperate situation. We have fifteen hundred people aboard Orbitech 1. With regular supply shuttles, this number can be sustained. But we no longer have those shuttles, as you well know. Because of the War, we are limited to our supplies on hand and to the small amounts of food we can grow ourselves. We cannot expect assistance from the other colonies. As you know from the regular ConComm broadcasts, they are in the same straits.

“It will take too much time to significantly increase our own food production. We don’t have the resources, or the tools, or the experience. It boils down to this—we cannot possibly support the number of people we have. Given our current situation, our current population, we have less than four months left to live, even with strict rationing.”

The people muttered at that. Some started crying. Brahms could see it all from the window. Hadn’t they thought of this before? Were they still looking for the cavalry to come rescue them?