Lifeline

Clancy put his hands on his hips. McLaris watched his expression change from annoyance to resignation, and then to grudging pleasure at the directness of the question.

“You’re right—I don’t like to beat around the bush. The fact is, McLaris, that I have a highly trained team of construction engineers here. If we weren’t the very best at what we do, we would never have gotten the contract for Orbitech 2.

“We dug out these tunnels because Dr. Tomkins told us to. Whenever we send him a progress report, he just tells us to keep at it. He doesn’t have any idea how much we’ve done. I wanted to show him all the room we’ve got already. Granted, we needed better quarters for my people to live in, since we’re now permanent inhabitants of the base. And we needed a lot of extra space for that kelp that came from the Aguinaldo.

“But we’ve gone far past the point where it’s useful anymore. We all know this is just more pointless busy work. That’s worse than just sitting around.”

Clancy met his eyes, and McLaris saw a depth of emotions in them—genuine concern and insight—that he had not expected. He learned from that glance not to underestimate Clifford Clancy.

“Things are going to start getting very restless around here,” Clancy continued. “I don’t want that. We’ve got enough problems just living from day to day. I thought I should let you know while it’s still fixable.”

McLaris knew Clancy was right. Once the initial problem of short-term survival was addressed, the futility began to become more and more apparent. He nodded. “And what would you like to do about it?”

“I don’t know.” Clancy seemed alarmed; he scowled. “You’re the manager type—we just build things.”

McLaris scratched his chin. His beard hardly itched at all anymore, though it still looked patchy and thin in the mirror. “Come on. Let’s go talk to Tomkins.”

McLaris went through the antechamber into the chief administrator’s office. Clifford Clancy followed a step behind him, but an invisible balance had shifted.

McLaris was in charge now.

Around his office Tomkins had pasted up photographs, spectral strip charts, and false-color radio telescope images—so many that McLaris had no idea which were for decoration and which were part of his ongoing work. Coming to Clavius Base should have been an astronomer’s dream, but Tomkins had been frustrated by the amount of time he had to spend bean counting and paper pushing.

Now that McLaris was taking care of most of the tasks, Tomkins buried himself in research again. McLaris wondered if it was just a defense mechanism to keep him from thinking about their situation.

They disturbed Tomkins running a computer simulation and comparing his results to the actual spectra of Wolf-Rayet stars. He frowned and barely looked up when they entered.

“I think I’ve come up with something peculiar—either a flaw in our existing theory of these things or a new way of interpreting the data.”

“Dr. Tomkins, we need to speak with you. Mr. Clancy is here with me.”

“Ah, Mr. Clancy.”

“That’s Dr. Clancy. My degree’s from MIT and every bit as good as yours.”

Tomkins changed one of the parameters in his study. He stood up, a full head taller than either of them. He looked somewhat perturbed at the interruption.

McLaris spoke quickly to defuse any anger from the head engineer. “Dr. Clancy and his crew have been digging new tunnels for the past week—”

Tomkins held up a dark brown hand and spread his fingers. “I know that, Duncan. I instructed them to do it.” His normally gentle voice carried an edge of strain. “You may think I’ve lost touch with everything, but I still keep tabs. Those tunnels are vital to our survival and our ability to expand here.”

McLaris met the chief administrator’s eyes. He knew Tomkins had been working for hours at his computer problem, frustrated, hunched with a stiff neck in front of the holotank and jabbing his fingers at the keypad. This was not a good time to broach the subject, but they couldn’t turn around and walk out again.

“My people are going to stop digging those tunnels, Tomkins,” Clancy said. “Enough is enough. If you’d bother to check, you could see that we already have more than enough room to last us for a century or so.”

The tall black man blinked his eyes, surprised and then angry. “Mr. Clancy, I think you are forgetting which of us is the chief administrator of this base.”

“If my people keep digging those stupid tunnels, they’re going to go crazy. They’re engineers, not ditch diggers! If you want to turn this base into an ant farm, your personnel can drill those tunnels as well as my crew can.”

McLaris tried to interrupt as their voices rose higher, but Tomkins blanked his holoscreen in cool anger and turned to stare at the head engineer.

“Clavius Base was built as a research station, and will continue to function as one. I will not force research physicists, geologists, and astronomers to dig holes, Mr. Clancy.”

“Dr. Clancy!”