Exile-and Glory

by Jerry Pournelle

  She looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded. "All right."

  Kevin braced himself for the jump. No danger, not really. If he missed, she could pull him back. He crouched, got a hand-hold on the edge of the capsule hatch so he could get strain in his legs, and jumped.

  He tumbled. Stars whirled above him, then Earth, the base station, Ellen, then more stars. He must have pushed harder with one leg than the other. He twisted to get a look at where he was going. The capsule he'd jumped for was a lot closer, moving up fast. He twisted again, instinctively spreading his arms and legs as wide as possible to slow his rotation.

  His hand just brushed the capsule. He grabbed frantically and got hold of something. It almost yanked his arm off.

  Have to remember that, he told himself: jump as hard as you can and you'll hit with the same force. "Okay, I'm aboard," he said. He clipped the other safety line to the protruding ring on the capsule. "Unsnap my other line and hang on—I'll pull you over."

  "Right," she said. "Okay, I'm ready."

  Kevin pulled gently. The temptation was to keep on pulling, but that wouldn't do: she'd just build up speed until she was moving too fast, maybe fast enough to get hurt. He let the line wind back onto its reel.

  She turned just before she reached him and landed exactly feet first. She seemed pleased with herself. "Daddy made me study gymnastics," she said. "Always hated it, but now I'm glad I practiced."

  "Yeah." Kevin pointed to another capsule, this one only twenty-five meters from their present position. "That one's a piece of cake. Here I go." He jumped, this time on center, and checked himself against his new perch.

  It took time, but they were able to continue the process until they were only five hundred meters or so from the base. Then they ran out of capsules. Kevin prepared himself mentally for that final leap, one that he knew all too well would probably send him past the station, falling forever . . . . Better do it now—or he might not be able to do it at all. But wait—the station seemed enormous now; it had been farther away than he'd thought. He remembered that suit radios were deliberately underpowered so they wouldn't carry too far; otherwise all of space would be filled with chatter. But the emergency frequency? And they were a lot closer than the last time he'd tried. "Hell, it's worth a try. Mayday. Mayday, dammit!"

  "Hello Mayday, identify yourself."

  "By God!" he shouted. "We made it. Hello. We were passengers aboard capsule nine-eight-four. Air supply is going fast. We're on the leading side of the station, among the cargo capsules. Don't know which one. We abandoned the personnel pod and started hopping from cargo-pod to cargo-pod, trying to get to the base. I'd say we're about half a kilometer out."

  "Nine-eight-four, can you make a light?" the voice asked. "I'll have a scooter out there in a moment. If you can show a light it will be easier to find you."

  Kevin waved his flash. Down below he could see the sunset line stretching across East Africa. "Better hurry," he said. "We have about ten minutes of air left."

  "No sweat. Be with you shortly."

  "But how did it happen?" Kevin demanded.

  The crewman shrugged. "I really don't know. There must have been a monumental foul-up down at ground control. Never happened before. Anyway, no harm done. Here you are in the station."

  Foul-up at ground control. Sure, he thought. But why wasn't the capsule radio working? Or the emergency disconnect? Or even the manual pressure-bleed? It seemed like a lot of coincidences. It seemed like somebody was trying to kill him.

  But that, he was sure, was silly. He couldn't think of anyone else who'd give a damn if he lived or died—and the Garvey Street Crips gang sure as hell couldn't reach out into space.

  "I would appreciate it if you'd look into it," Ellen said. She seemed very calm. A lot calmer than Kevin was.

  "Sure," the crewman said. "Luckily, no harm done. We've just time to send someone out for your gear and get you aboard the scooter for Wayfarer. Come this way, please."

  "But—"

  "Kevin," Ellen said. "If we raise a fuss they'll have to investigate. We'll have to stay here. And Wayfarer won't wait. I didn't spend ten thousand francs for a ticket just to miss the ship."

  "All right." He let the crewman lead him through the base. They were both being damned nonchalant about something that had almost killed them. Maybe this was the way it's done in space, he thought. It doesn't take much to kill you out here so nobody's impressed with close calls.

  The crewman stayed to the outer rim. The station rotated to give artificial gravity, about forty percent of Earth's. Kevin was surprised to find that it was hard to tell just how much gravity he felt. After that time in no-weight, any gravity felt good.

  The deck curved up in front and behind them, but it always felt level. It was a strange experience to be walking on a curve. The walls of the station seemed to be made of some kind of rubberized cloth with a metallic thread in it. They didn't feel hard to the touch, not like steel.

  They went through several airlocks and came finally to one that led outside. The crewman un-snapped four new air bottles from a rack. Kevin started to put his two into his backpack.

  "Suggestion," the crewman said.

  "Yes?"

  He pointed to an air gauge on the rack of bottles. "It's a good idea always to check and see if they're full." He reached into his own belt pouch and came up with a gauge. "Me, I don't even trust the airmaster's gauge. Use my own."

  Kevin found one in his tool kit. Just for luck he checked one bottle with all three gauges, his own, the airmaster's and the crewman's. He got the same reading each time. Ellen followed his example.

  "Now you're thinking. Okay, close up helmets and into the airlock."

  The "scooter" was no more than an open framework with a long line of saddles and a rudimentary control system at its front. The passengers sat astride fuel tanks, and baggage was strapped underneath. The other passengers for Wayfarer were already aboard. Somebody waved at Kevin, and he recognized Bill Dykes. Ellen and Kevin got the last seats aft, the only two left. They strapped in, and about then a smaller scooter came up with the baggage from their capsule. It was lashed aboard, and the pilot hit the throttles.

  The motion was very gentle, hardly any acceleration at all. The view was marvelous. There was Earth below, night with brilliant points and squares of city lights. Everywhere else were stars, countless stars, endless stars, an endless fall of stars in the Milky way, brilliant stars, with bright colors.

  They moved through a clutter of space-launch capsules and crewmen with lights unloading them. Kevin looked at his watch. Ellen, behind him, noticed the gesture. By now they would have both been dead. She nodded at him then pointed to a channel on her radio. Kevin switched to it and turned on his set.

  "I've never been up before," she said. "It's beautiful, isn't it?"

  "Yes." They were coming to the daylight line on Earth below. It ran through the Pacific. Behind them were the bright spots that were cities crowded with their millions of people. Ahead and below was blue water, fleecy clouds and a distant line that might have been more clouds, or maybe California. To the north was a tight spiral of clouds.

  "Typhoon," Ellen said. She stared frankly at it. She seemed on edge, but the way a tourist is excited at seeing new and wondrous sights, not afraid. If she can do it, so can I, Kevin thought. He was more shaken than he cared to admit.

  Then there was more industrial activity around them. They were moving into full daylight, and Kevin was surprised to see how far they'd come from the base station in such a short time. Up ahead was a mirror larger than a football field. It just hung there in space. It focused sunlight onto a rock somewhat larger than a house. Other big rocks nearby anchored what looked like big flat metal plates. Something—he supposed metal—boiled off the target rock and condensed onto the plates.

  After that they saw a cage that looked as if it were made of ordinary chicken wire. It was big, half a kilometer in diameter, and it was filled with launching pods, tanks of
all sizes, rocks, spare scooters, what looked like big garbage cans, plastic bags—anything that wasn't in use at the moment. It kept things from drifting away.

  They went past other marvels, and eventually Wayfarer came into sight. The scooter pilot pointed it out to them. "Your home for a while," he said.

  Their first impression was of a bundle of huge cigars. Those were the big fuel tanks almost a hundred meters long. They were so large that they dwarfed the rest of the ship, and ran the entire length of midsection. Behind the "cigars" was a solid ring that held three rocket motors. Then at the end of a spine as long as the main body of the ship was the nuclear reactor and another rocket motor.

  This was the real drive. The three chemical rockets were only for steering and close maneuvering. Wayfarer's power came from her atomic pile. The cigar-shaped tanks held hydrogen, which was pumped back to the reactor where it was heated up and spewed out through the rear nozzle. A ring of heavy shielding just forward of the reactor kept the pile's radiation from getting to the crew compartment. The rest of the pile wasn't shielded at all.

  Despite the large size of the ship, the crew and cargo sections seemed quite small. There were some structures reaching back from the forward ring where the control room was. Two of those were passenger quarters. The other was another nuclear power unit to make electricity to run the environmental control equipment, furnish light for the plants, power to reprocess air, and all the other things the ship and passengers and crew would need. There was a big telescope and a number of radar antennae on the forward section.

  The scooter pilot was careful not to get near the reactor in the ship's "stinger." He brought them in to the bow. The outer door of an airlock stood invitingly open. A crewman brought a cable over and attached it to the scooter, and then hauled the scooter in close. Then the passengers began the trip from their saddles into the airlock, crawling across the cable like so many spiders.

  When it came his turn Kevin judged the distance and decided to jump. He had just crouched when the pilot grabbed him. "Hey, no!" the pilot shouted. "Not your first time in space!"

  Kevin shrugged and grinned into his helmet. Probably he'd have to take extra-vehicular-activity training while on Wayfarer. As if he hadn't learned the hard way how to jump around in free fall . . .

  He crawled across the cable behind the others.

  Home at last, he thought. For nine months, A long time.

  Chapter Seven

  The ship had been designed for sixty passengers. She carried twice that number plus eight crew. Most of the passengers were already aboard; Wayfarer was crowded. No more than half the passengers had ever been into space before, and everyone drifted through the ship in total confusion.

  The internal space was constructed in a series of circular decks. Each deck had an eight-foot hole in its center, so that from the forward end, just aft of the separately enclosed control cabin, Kevin could look all the way aft to the stern bulkhead. Although there was a long and rather flimsy-appearing steel ladder stretching from aft to forward bulkhead, no one used it. Passengers and crew dived from deck to deck in the null-gravity conditions of orbit. Most of the passengers weren't very good at it yet.

  A harried crewman in red coveralls punched Kevin's name into a console. "F-12," he said.

  "If that's supposed to mean something, it doesn't," Kevin said.

  "F deck," the crewman said "A deck is the bridge. B is the wardroom. C, D, and E are the three aft of that. E happens to be the recreation and environmental control. Yours is the one beyond that. They're marked." Someone else had come up and the crewman turned away. "You'll find it," he said over his shoulder.

  Kevin shrugged. It was a mistake, because it caused him to drift away from his handhold. He grabbed frantically at a protruding handle—the ship had plenty of those—and when he was stable, launched himself down through the central well. He got past C and D decks before he had to catch something and try again. Since he was carrying his bulky Fiberglas travel case with all his luggage, he felt he had a right to be proud of his first efforts.

  Finally he reached F deck, which he found to be sectioned into slice-of-pie compartments arranged in a ring around the central well, fifteen of them in all. He found the one marked "12" and went in.

  His "stateroom" was partitioned off with a flexible, bright blue material that Kevin thought was probably nylon. The door was of the same stuff and tied off with strings. It didn't provide much privacy.

  Inside the cramped quarters were facilities for two people. There were no bunks, but two blanket rolls strapped against the bulkhead indicated the sleeping arrangements. It made sense, Kevin thought. You didn't need soft mattresses in space. "Sleeping on a cloud" was literally true here. You needed straps to keep you from drifting away, but that was all.

  One viewscreen with control console, a small worktable, and two lockers about the size of large briefcases completed the furnishings. The cabin wasn't an encouraging sight. Kevin wondered what he should do with his gear. His Fiberglas travel case was stuffed with things he'd been told he'd probably need for the trip; another larger case had been stowed somewhere by the crew and was inaccessible. He wandered out into the central area of F deck and found that in other staterooms people were lashing their travel cases to the bulkheads. Kevin went back and did the same.

  He wondered who his cabinmate would be. No one had asked him if he had any preferences. The only person he knew aboard Wayfarer was Ellen, and she wasn't likely to accept an offer to share quarters. While he was trying to convince himself that it couldn't hurt to ask, a middle-aged bearded man, quite heavyset, came in carrying two large travel cases. He looked up at Kevin apologetically.

  "They told me to bunk here," he said. He blinked rapidly and looked around the small room. "It isn't very large, is it? I'm Jacob Norsedal." His voice wasn't very deep to begin with, and the low air pressure in the ship made it sound squeaky.

  Kevin introduced himself. He tried to shake hands with Norsedal, but again got separated from his handhold and drifted across the cabin. Norsedal looked thoughtful, then, holding a wire conduit that ran through their stateroom, reached out and very gently pushed against Kevin. Kevin drifted to the bulkhead where he got himself back into control. Norsedal looked pleased.

  The incident reminded Kevin that he was in free fall, and his stomach didn't like it much. He gulped hard. "I'll be glad when we're under way," he said. "It won't last long, but it will be nice to have some weight again. Even for a day or so."

  Norsedal frowned and rolled his eyes upward for a moment. "Not that long, I'm afraid," he said. "Let's see, total velocity change of about five kilometers a second, at a tenth of gravity acceleration—five thousand seconds." He took a pocket computer off his belt and punched numbers. "An hour and a half. Then we're back in zero-gravity." He restored the computer to its pouch. It was secured to it with a short elastic thong, as was everything else Norsedal carried.

  Kevin was fascinated with the man. He went about everything methodically. First he strapped down his travel cases. Then he opened one. A geyser of clothing, papers, pencils, another and far more elaborate computer than the one he wore on his belt, chewing gum, bulbs of soft drinks, more clothing, a dozen magnetic-strip programs for his computer, and other small objects floated up into the room. They dispersed in the compartment.

  "Oh, my," Norsedal said. He looked thoughtful. His hand snared the computer as it drifted by. Then he reached into the travel case again and got a shirt. "If you'll help me with this—"

  Together they used the shirt like a seine to net all the gear. Norsedal produced a laundry bag to hold everything. Then he fished around in the travel case, more carefully this time, until he had a pleased expression. He came up with a small nylon-covered package that contained several rolls of Velcro, a pair of scissors, and a squeeze-tube of quick-drying glue. He began gluing Velcro hooks into his travel case and his locker. "I should have done this back on Earth," he said. His voice was almost perpetually apologetic. "But
it wasn't certain I'd be coming, and they didn't give me the cases until just before I left."

  Kevin watched interestedly. When the lockers were entirely lined with glued-on Velcro hooks, Norsedal carefully began work with the fuzzy Velcro, attaching strips to all his personal gear. Calculator, pencil case, notebook, tape recorder—

  "That's a great idea," Kevin said.

  "Want some? I brought plenty."

  "Thanks, yes." Mostly Kevin was interested in the other man. He didn't seem like anyone Kevin would have thought would go to space. Norsedal was clearly overweight, very visibly so. He sniffed as if suffering from a sinus condition, and one of the objects Kevin had caught for him was a kit containing a hypodermic needle and bottles of what must have been room-temperature insulin. Although it was obvious that Norsedal had thought a lot about life in zero-gravity conditions and tried to make preparations, it was also obvious that he'd never been in space before. He had trouble keeping himself anchored while he worked.