“While the reactor is at cruising power?” Too late, Mariska realized that she had spoken without permission. This time Beep was more forgiving.
“I’ve damped it down.” He nodded at the energy rack. “Besides, how else am I going to sort ice from ore?” His grin was bleak. “But thanks for your concern, young Volochkova. I do realize that radiation isn’t my friend.”
Didit laughed nervously. The others glared at Mariska as if she were trying to kill them: They were fine with letting Beep risk the exposure. After all, he was senior monkey.
“So, FiveFord and Glint, get Apple and Cherry started for the porch. Didit, lower the air pressure in the airlock to four-tenths of a bar.” He pushed off and floated over them. “Young Volochkova, you come with me to Service and help prep the suit. That way you can wash all those worries about my safety.”
On their way downspine, Beep caught himself at the hatch to Wardroom A. “I need my coolwear.” He waved her on. “Power my suit up and start the checklist. I’ll be down in two kicks.”
There were a dozen spacesuits bungeed to the walls of Service. Most of them hadn’t been touched in years. As part of their cargo chores, however, Glint and Richard had powered five of them up regularly during the run to make sure they still worked. They were all low pressure, which meant Beep needed to prebreathe oxygen before the spacewalk to keep from getting the bends. Since Beep had been aboard the Shining Legend for more than a decade, he had a custom-fitted suit. Mariska opened it, plugged its battery cord into the fastcharge outlet and started its power on self-test. She was moving through the rest of the checklist when Beep flew in.
He had the hood of his coolwear pulled back, but otherwise it covered his entire body. The white of the fabric made the deep flush on Beep’s face stand out. When Richard exerted himself, he just turned red. Beep was practically purple and was sucking in huge gulps of air
Mariska could see beads of sweat at his hairline. “Beep,” she said, “tell me you’re not high.”
“Borrowing some courage is all.” He landed in front of the oxygen bar. “And don’t be warming my ears about it.” He clapped the mask over his face, and glared at her.
Back in Command, she had suspected that something was wrong with him. Now she was certain of it. But there was nothing she could do, so she went back to the checklist. After fifteen minutes, he pulled the mask away and thrust the override card at her. “Hold this while I suit up.”
She took it and he raised his arms. Mariska grasped his waist. She could feel the pulse of the coolant in his coolwear, which was designed to keep the spacesuit from overheating. She raised him over her head and jiggled him through the suit’s opening
He fit his arms into the sleeves but then paused. “How many oxygen bottles do I have?”
“Two,” she said. “Checklist calls for two, primary and backup.” She didn’t understand why he was asking. Two four-thousand-cubic-centimeter bottles had been the standard design spec since before she was born.
“How many are left?”
She shrugged.
“Go look.”
Mystified, she opened the locker, counted thirty-seven filled and fourteen empty bottles. She reported this.
“Worth knowing.” He finished sealing himself into the suit. “Worth remembering. So, let’s dance.”
She handed him his helmet to carry, unbungeed him from the wall and tugged on the suit’s tether. He bobbed behind her like a man-sized balloon as she pulled him downspine to Storage D.
The air was already thinning in the airlock and it felt colder than it actually was. Beep turned on his boot magnets, enabling him to stand upright in front of her. She was expecting him to fit the helmet onto the suit’s collar so she could lock it down. He surprised her.
“Not yet, young Volochkova. Time for a quick chat. You have the override?”
She offered it to him. He shook his head.
“I’m leaving it with you for now. That means you’re in charge in case anything spills. I am thinking that you can make the hard decisions. At least, Natalya could.”
Mariska wasn’t her mother; for some reason Beep still wouldn’t accept that. “But Richard is senior to me. And Glint…”
He snorted. “FiveFord could drown in a glass of water. He should go back to Earth and dig holes with all those muscles. Only he’d probably fall in. And Glint… poor Glint is broken.” He pointed at the override. “You show them the override and tell them I said.”
“What is this, Beep?” She tucked it into the pocket of her coverall.
“This?” He smirked. “Just a little walk. La-la-la. But before I go… Remember the fakes I showed you? Ah, I thought you might. So that was just a little joke. The fakes never existed, or at least, you saw all there was of them. All that I made.”
“You?”
“I like to stir the soup, Natalya.” His laugh had a chemical edge. “The runs are so damn long, too damn boring. Hard to stay interested. So we play tricks. It’s tradition, how bucket monkeys keep from going crazy.”
Mariska felt suddenly dizzy in the thin air, afraid to say what she was thinking. “Why tell me this now?”
“I’d say it was conscience, if I had one.” His mouth tightened. He raised the helmet over his head and stared into it. “Time to go.”
“Wait.” She caught at the front of his suit. “That was a lie about the raw ice, wasn’t it? And the leftover salt—that can’t possibly work. And you—you’re going to get a crazy dose of radiation….”
“One less mouth to breathe.” Beep stuck his chin out at her. “You’ll know what to do when the time comes.” He lowered the helmet onto his head. She wanted to hammer on it, get him to stop, make all of this go away. Instead she locked it to his suit.
By the time she got back to Command, Beep had already turned Banana downspine and was accelerating toward the buckets. The others watched the screen that showed the crawler’s camera, but Mariska was fixed on the overview that the Eye saw.
“He’s going kind of fast.” Richard was beginning to suspect what Mariska already knew.
“Then tell him to slow down,” said Didit.
Beep must have turned his boot magnets off. On the Eye, she saw that they had come off the racing crawler and his only contact was the joystick which he grasped with both hands. His legs swung upward relative to the surface of the ship until he was upside down. He looked like a gymnast doing a handstand as the crawler hurtled toward the buckets.
“Call him,” said Richard. “Glint?”
“Doesn’t work.”
“It’s dead. He must have disabled it.”
Glint’s hand trembled as she pointed at the Eye’s screen. Didit was sobbing.
“Override it.”
“With what?”
“Stop him.”
At the exact moment the crawler crashed into the bucket, Beep released his hold. His momentum flung him clear of the Shining Legend, tumbling helmet over boot.
They watched as he applied gas thrusters to correct his wild rotation.
They watched him spread his arms to embrace the darkness as he shot away from the ship.
They watched in shock as he faded to a speck of space debris and was gone.
“Still, you could have stopped him,” said Richard.
“How?” Mariska was tired of their accusations. The weight of what she had done—and not done—was crushing her.
“You could have.”
Glint was no help. She had kicked her slippers free of the deck burrs and was floating aimlessly around Command. She seemed not to notice when she bumped into things.
“But we still have ice,” said Didit. “Who’s going to fetch the ice?”
“Nobody.” Glint’s head lolled backwards. “It’s just like Mariska said. A fairy tale.”
“What does she know?” Didit’s hands curled into fists; she was ready to punch someone. “Maybe she made Beep do it.”
“He gave her the override.”
The four of th
em considered this fact in silence. Richard ran a finger down the edge of the cargo rack. It came away with a smudge of ugly blue. “The crud is back,” he said to no one in particular
“It’s her first run,” said Didit. “Why her?”
Glint cackled. “Because he hated her?”
“We should contact Sweetspot. Tell them what’s happening here.” Richard nodded at the override hanging around Mariska’s neck. “Maybe we should enable comm now?”
Mariska brought up the comm cluster and flashed the override at the nav rack. Then she paused, considering. “Close communication,” she said. “Time?”
“Sure,” said Glint. “Let’s check the doomsday clock.”
Didit turned on her and shouted. “Shut the fuck up, Glint.”
The screen still flashed red. It was 08:14:56 on 17 July 2163. The mission was in its three hundred and eleventh standard day. They were eight days, twenty-two hours, and six minutes into deceleration. Acquisition of the approach signal for Sweetspot station would occur in one hundred days, twenty-three hours, and fifty-one minutes.
“There,” said Mariska. “See?”
The ship’s reaction mass reserves of hydrogen would permit braking for eighty-nine more days. The ice inventory would supply be sufficient for seventy-three days of oxygen renewal.
“See what?” said Richard.
“We gained twenty-six days.” Mariska felt as if she were rising out of herself and looking down at them from the Eye. “Beep gave us twenty-six more days.”
“So what?” Now Glint shouted. “Seventy-three from one hundred. A month of no air.”
“Right,” said Mariska. “But if we decrease demand again, we buy even more time.”
“Decrease demand?” Fear filled Richard’s voice.
“And the rescue ship—they don’t have to wait until we get all the way to Sweetspot. They can come out to meet us…”
“Someone else sacrifices?” said Didit. “That’s your plan?”
“Nobody has to sacrifice.” She pushed herself over to the environment rack. “Somebody just has to stop breathing.”
“Oh, great,” said Glint.
“Who?” said Richard.
Mariska’s mind was racing as she brought up the crew’s med files. It could work. It had to work.
It was just above freezing in the mod; Mariska was pleased. The inner shell of the Shining Legend was fitted with heating strips to keep the bitter cold of space from penetrating crew areas. But Mariska had disabled the shell heaters in Service as part of her plan. She faced Richard as he gripped her waist in his strong hands and lifted her. The Jingchu sisters stood together to one side, wisps of their breath curling into the chill. They were holding hands, which was a good sign. Mariska was worried about Glint’s mood swings. Sometimes it seemed as if she resented getting this chance to survive. She just wanted to have the dying over with. But Didit kept pulling her back from despair.
Richard was concentrating so hard on lowering Mariska into the suit that she couldn’t help herself. She touched his neck. He glanced up, about to apologize, but she winked at him. “Permission to nap?” She tugged the lanyard of the override around his neck. “Sir?”
He grinned. “Permission granted.”
She shivered as he sealed her into the suit. Was this the last time anyone would ever touch her? Bad thought. No bad thoughts. “Ninety-six days,” she said. “We can do this, right?”
Richard and Didit answered, “Right.” Glint just glared; she still thought that Mariska was abandoning them.
“No chores, understand? Let the crud run wild. And sleep as much as you can.”
“We will,” said Didit.
“Just remember to wake up when it’s time to swap my bottles.”
Richard handed her the helmet. “Don’t worry.”
She tried to think of what else she could say to keep from saying goodbye. “This is it, then.” Mariska could feel her throat closing; she didn’t want them to see how scared she was. “Okay monkeys, out of here before you freeze to death.” She lowered the helmet to the collar and Richard locked it to the spacesuit. She felt a tear pool at the corner of her eye, but the helmet’s tinted faceplate hid it nicely.
So, how was she going to do this? She didn’t really know how to trigger the hibernation response. The one time she had done it had been five years ago. That had been the first time she had tried to escape from her mother, by running away three years into the future. She had been furious at Natalya Volochkova then. Had that had anything to do with it? She was still mad at her, but not as much as she had been. She tried working up some hate for Beep but all she could think about were his two bottles of oxygen. Six hours, and then? Maybe she should get mad at herself for signing on to crew on the Shining Legend. Bucket monkey—the worst job in space. And now she might die a bucket monkey. Bad thought. No bad thoughts.
She did the math again while she waited for something to happen. She had thirty-seven bottles. Each could provide three hours of oxygen, plus or minus ninety seconds. Altogether, a hundred and eleven hours. Sweetspot claimed the soonest the rescue ship could rendezvous was ninety-five days, plus or minus maybe half a day. Altogether, two thousand, two hundred, and eighty hours. Plus or minus. But if she hibernated she might reduce her oxygen intake to as low as four percent of normal. Four percent of two thousand, two hundred, and eighty hours was ninety-one hours. That meant she only needed ninety-one hours of oxygen and had a hundred and eleven hours bottled. Plus or minus. Was four percent possible? She didn’t know. The first and only time she had hibernated it hadn’t been in a hibernation pod with the proper euthermic arousal protocols. She had induced it by sheer willpower in her bed on Haworth. And at room temperature. They said afterward that she was crazy to try it, lucky to survive. But this time she had the cold on her side. Four percent. Ninety-one hours.
And if five percent was the best she could do? Bad thought. No bad thoughts.
Mariska wasn’t as big as Beep, and subtracting her consumption from the load on the electrolytic cells only gained the crew another twenty-four days. But twenty-four and seventy-two would stretch the oxygen resupply reserve to ninety-six days. Which was exactly when they would rendezvous with the rescue ship from Mars.
Plus or minus.
Mariska felt good. Cold, but good. The numbers added up. They could do this. All she had to do was close her eyes and stop breathing so much.
Mariska’s blood was pounding. Her fingers throbbed and it felt as if someone kept clapping hands over her ears. She thought her heart might explode. Time to open her eyes.
Storage. She knew this was Storage. But where was Storage? Someplace full of floating bottles. And Richard. His name was FiveFord and he could drown in a glass of water. She could see that he wasn’t very smart, sleeping in Storage when he was supposed to be doing something. Something. She was gasping and her throat was sandpaper. She thought she should go back to sleep. Or die. But then there were other people in Storage. People in spacesuits. One of them pushed Richard aside and he crashed into a wall. Mariska wished he would wake up. She blinked because her eyes were filling with smoke. Then Spacesuit Person was in front of her. Shaking her. This must be the rescue. Yay! She couldn’t tell who it was at first because the helmet had a mirror face. Then she saw the name. Black letters below the collar. Volochkova. That was her name. Mariska giggled. Was she rescuing herself? Why didn’t Richard FiveFord get up? This was what they had been waiting for.
Xu Jingchu didn’t look much like Didit or Glint to Mariska. She was old and her life had tugged at her. She was Earthborn, a head taller than Mariska, and her loose muscles and spindly posture made her look as if she were suffering from some wasting sickness.
And she was grieving.
“When Glint said that she wanted to make one more run, I swear I fought her,” said Xu Jingchu.“I wanted her to learn the business, not qualify as senior crew.” The old woman had Mariska’s hand in hers. “I’d already arranged for her to work at Swee
tspot, move on to the materials processing division. But she insisted on one more chance at cargo. Why?” She kept rubbing her finger across Mariska’s palm. “I don’t even shop for myself anymore, so why should she be fetching ice and loading ore into buckets?”
Mariska was exhausted and just wanted Xu Jingchu to go away. The old woman was no longer talking to her—she had been arguing with her dead daughter for the last few minutes. Mariska let her head fall back on the pillow of the hospital bed, hoping that her mother would pick up on the signal.
“She was proud,” said Natalya Volochkova. “She wanted to do her best.”
“Proud.” Jingchu’s expression was bitter. “Of dying for nothing?”
“Glint and Didit were very brave.” Natalya Volochkova stood up. “They fought right to the end. They just ran out of time.”
“Yes.” Xu Jingchu squeezed Mariska’s hand and let go. “Yes, they were good girls.” She stood too. “I appreciate everything you did, Dr. Volochkova. I know you took extraordinary measures to save them.”
“I couldn’t have done anything without you.”
She bowed in acknowledgement. “As you say, time ran out. Thank you, Mariska, for seeing me. I hope we can meet again under more pleasant circumstances.” She gathered herself to leave.
“Excuse me,” said Mariska. “But did Glint ever visit Earth?”
Xu Jingchu looked puzzled. “No, not really. Of course the clinic was in Chicago so they were born there. But they were tweaked for space. Staying in Earth gravity would’ve been agony.” Her expression darkened. “Why?”
“I just wondered if she had ever seen the sky.”
“The sky?”
“Mariska is still not herself.” Her mother rested a hand on Xu Jingchu’s arm. “We came close to losing her too.”
She nodded and a wisp of white hair fell across her forehead. “Of course.” She let herself be led away.
Natalya Volochkova had been right. It had been a mistake to see Xu Jingchu so soon. And now her mother had rescued her from the sad old woman. Mariska was still getting used to the idea that Natalya Volochkova might not be the enemy. Had she come back into the room then, Mariska would have tried to thank her. But her mother was still trying not to push herself on Mariska.
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 5 Page 29
