Outward Bound, page 10
Suddenly, Linc felt very weary—the debilitating, exhausting weariness that comes with the realization that one's best isn't enough. His weight seemed to compress him down into the chair. "So what was all that stuff Grober told me up front?" he said, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "He said we were supposed to have a choice in all this. What happened to that?"
"The choice was to come with us or go back," Mr. Summer replied. "And it still stands. But one of the things implied in choosing us is agreeing to accept orders from those judged qualified to give them. As you'll find out for yourself—I hope you'll stick around to find out—it's the only way things can function out there. For a long time yet, at least."
This time there was a celebration to mark the completion of the phase: A party and a dance were announced for the second-to-last night. The main hall was spruced up and decorated for the occasion. The best caterers that the course had produced excelled themselves in finding appropriate dishes and delicacies. A brown-skinned kid called Muddy (he was presumably from Mississippi) did a creditable job as deejay, and others who fancied their talents took turns at rendering live vocals. All in all, things moved and swung pretty well. In one of those unspoken understandings that can telegraph itself through groups without pinpointable origins, the fraternization ban was sensed as effectively inoperative. A major part of the hard work was finally complete, and easing up was in order. The coaches were looking the other way.
Linc's feelings toward the affair were mixed. He was glad for these past three months, yet disappointed; excited and at the same time mildly apprehensive about the future. Although the center of the group that usually clustered around him, he was unable to lose himself to the spirit of things. He grinned approvingly at Patch's and Johnny's antics on the dance floor with their partners, but didn't join in. He winked as Rocky was about to slip away hand in hand with Liz but declined to respond to the hints being sent, sometimes none too subtly, in his direction by some of the other girls. Finally, holding a can of the "frail-ale" nonalcoholic brew that had been brought in to impart atmosphere, he sauntered outside on his own to the pool area to get some relief from the noise. There were others scattered around who seemed to have had the same idea, he saw as he came out into the cool of the night. Okay than, not quite on his own; but at least he would have a few minutes of uncrowded space.
Marlene appeared beside him before he had savored a first lungful of the air. Linc wasn't sure if she had followed him or been out there already. She looked fresh and feminine out of uniform, in one of the dresses that had appeared from somewhere—a yellow one. Linc eyed her mutely, not volunteering conversation. She had sought him out; let her start it.
"Not partying then, Linc?" she said.
"Oh . . . just taking a break from it, I guess."
"It gets kind of close in there, doesn't it?"
"That's what I figured."
"Yeah. Me too." Marlene gave that funny kind of laugh that said isn't it strange: We both thought the same thing. "So did you come out looking for some company?" Linc sighed inwardly, anticipating a proposition again and already searching in his mind for the right way to steer her off. He really wasn't in the mood. But then he saw that she was looking around and not especially listening for his reply. Even before he could frame one, she went on, "I'd like to oblige, but I'm already . . . You know how it is."
So that was it. She just had to let him know.
As if on cue, Arvin appeared through the same door that Linc had come out of. Arvin stiffened for a moment when he saw them, then came over and took Marlene's arm firmly, with a defiant look, as if claiming a possession. Linc looked back neutrally, asserting or conceding nothing, not involved and not wanting to be. Marlene shot a haughty look back at him as they walked away in the shadows by the building, turning away as Arvin pulled her after him. "What the hell are you doing around him?" Linc heard Arvin mutter. It would end in a fight, he could sense. He turned his back on them and moved toward the pool.
The water was calm, reflecting the Moon and stars in a cloudless sky. Linc raised his head to stare up at them. Restlessness came over him again. Always, it seemed, he was turning his back on one phase of life, waiting impatiently to move on to another. He wondered if he would ever belong in any of them.
Chapter Twenty
"IT seemed that the Outzoners made a business out of taking over assets that Earth-based interests had judged unprofitable by their own measures of worth, and abandoned. Camp Coulie had once trained units of military—now being scaled down and reformed to merge into a global police force with the move toward an eventual world government. Seville Trace, intended as a hotel, had been obsoleted by other technologies in the ceaseless pursuit of trying to get more for less. Meyer Flat, in Colorado, it turned out, had previously been a small community college, since closed down because of funding cutbacks.
Grayling Station, named after somebody otherwise forgotten to most, who had been involved with its conception, had been built as a collection port for payloads of moon rock catapulted electromagnetically into orbit from mining operations on the lunar surface. From there, according to the original plan, the ores and other materials would be distributed by transporter vessels to various construction enterprises planned to take shape across the nearby regions of space. When the ventures ran into unanticipated obstacles and complications, however, the major investors had pulled out, redirecting their funds into areas of proven safer returns, presumably more highly valued by Earth society, such as cosmetic gene therapy and mood-sensitive entertainments. These days the Outzoners used Grayling Station as a first-step training base for their recruits before sending them on to the reaches of deeper space. The governments who supplied many of the recruits showed the calculated savings as income on their balance sheets, paid a portion of it as risk-free return to the original investors, and that way everyone was happy.
The station hung in the L2 libration point, three hundred thousand miles away from Earth, directly in line on the far side of the Moon—a choice reflecting its originally intended function. This, Linc had learned during a five-day familiarization course at a technical center near the launch facility on Yucatan, was one of five points in the Earth-Moon vicinity where the effects of both gravities and the centrifugal orbiting force cancel out, enabling a body to remain in the same relative position. (It was one of three unstable points of the five, meaning that an object placed there would tend to drift. Jets were therefore fired periodically to nudge the station back into position.)
His first view of the structure, not counting the models and diagrams he had studied as part of the preparation, was on the cabin wall-screen in a transfer shuttle closing in on the station two days after liftoff and separation from the booster that had carried it to Low Earth Orbit. Its general form was that of a pair of crossed barbells. The "bars" consisted of tube-and-latticework booms several hundred feet long projecting from a roughly cylindrical central assembly that included docking facilities at one end and a nuclear generating plant at the other, forming an oversize "axle." Cylinders at the ends of the bars, made up of various living, working, and functional areas stacked like disks, formed the "weights" at the ends of the bars. Slow rotation of the whole produced a simulated gravity effect perpendicular to the floors inside the peripheral cylinders. A web of ties, lines, and assorted structural additions had grown between the booms, and a gaggle of outstations serving various purposes moved with the main structure in a loose formation spread through a volume of space fifty or more miles across. One of the larger of these, called Jade, had a transparent outer skin filled with water as its radiation and thermal shield, and making it also the emergency water reserve for the whole complex of stations. Algae cultured in the shield for hydroponics processing and biological experiments gave a green tint through which starlight diffused, causing it to shine eerily like a gem-stone in the heavens. One of the speakers who came to address Linc's group at Yucatan—they were officially recruits now, not inmates or guests—offered the thought that one indication of intelligent life spreading across distant galaxies might be the greening of light from their constituent stars.
Life had become less programmed and structured. There was no formally defined Phase Three for everyone to move on to as had been the case with the transition from Phase One. Different groups and individuals went different ways to prepare for the different futures that ability, preference, need, and an inevitable element of chance had concocted for them.
Probably because overt military training was not considered a wise thing to flaunt on Earth, Linc had been part of an advance group sent to Yucatan for immediate transfer up to Grayling. Included as well in the same group of early birds were Arvin, also earmarked as natural for the military; Flash, now Linc's solid ally and buddy, with ambitions to develop his technical abilities in a military direction; and Rocky, who had volunteered because of lack of inspiration for anything else. Mace was one of those selected for training as space-construction riggers, who were going up early to get preliminary experience at Grayling. Also included was Liz, who had shown little inclination toward anything beyond routine office chores but somehow wangled things to be near Rocky.
Linc had come to accept Patch as the strongest friend he had known since Angelo, and in their conversations had opened up to him in a way that was rare. He had hoped that Patch would be singled out for something that would involve early shipment too and keep them together, but circumstances didn't work out that way. A couple of the Seville Trace coaches talked to Patch at length about his mountaineering experiences and general interest in remote regions, and he was spirited away a day or two later. He and Linc reaffirmed their promise that they would go climbing together again on Earth one day.
Another face that Linc had gotten used to but which went a separate way, was "Piano Man" Johnny. His outspoken politics, which would have branded him as a subversive and gotten him locked up in most other places, were evidently viewed differently here. He'd been told he was being sent on a crash college course somewhere. One person Linc didn't miss was Welsh, his antagonist from the machining tool store, who exercised his right to opt out and left the scene permanently. So once again, Arvin was left without a willing sidekick to report happenings and run errands.
Unlike previously, the people that Linc and the others found themselves among at Yucatan were not all of younger age groups, and from their talk and manner it quickly became apparent that they came from all kinds of backgrounds. There were loners looking for a new start; family groups ready to leave all in search of what they saw as freedom; professionals seeking recognition that eluded them in the exploitive jungles that Earth had become. Linc met two engineers from places in Siberia that he'd never heard of, going out to work in the plants that processed materials out of asteroids. There was a Chinese kid his own age whose whole family had been lost in the civil war going on there. A schoolteacher and her husband from Iraq—wherever that was—who were getting away to start a family. Although there was no particular reason why not, it had never before crossed Linc's mind that the operation might extend beyond the U.S. borders. The Outzone was obviously eager for all that Earth had to offer.
This was no longer a reorientation and redirection program for salvaged delinquents. For those who had come via the same route as Linc, the ban on talking about past lives was lifted. The past was of little significance now. Also, they were free at last to use their full names. The common visions all of them would be sharing from here onward were to the future.
Chapter Twenty-One
THE main function of Grayling Station was to provide a first taste of living and working in space. Nobody wanted to be whisked out to somewhere like the moon of Jupiter before realizing they weren't suited to it (or responsible for getting them back again!). Apart: from the instructors and regular crew who ran the place, its population consisted of a temporary association of transients who would be going on to other things.
The central axle like structure was known, understandably, as the Axle. The cylinders at the ends of the booms were called towers and designated North, East, South, West, the normal convention applying to the structure when viewed such that it rotated clockwise. South Tower contained the command and communications center, or Bridge, along with the armory and garrison space for the military contingent. The military presence comprised both the station's permanent force and new recruits undergoing familiarization training, and occupied a set of decks and compartments located "below" (i.e., outward from) the Bridge, known collectively as the Turret.
Here was where Linc and his companions found themselves, once again picking bunks and unpacking belongings, in the quarters set aside for cadet troops. Their uniforms now were pale gray—military-style, like those of the former instructors. It was a very different environment from the previous ones, however—of cramped space and metal walls, where the floor throbbed to the hum of invisible machinery and the air smelled of hot oil. The company they found themselves among was different too from what they had become used to. Besides the wider range of ages, there was a watchfulness about the new faces around them that reminded Linc of the first days at Coulie—the silent assessment by people accustomed to possibly threatening situations, not yet sure of what to expect. Many of them had prior military backgrounds, he sensed—possibly from anywhere the world over. This could be a whole new chapter of learning experience.
And there was one face—one for the time being at least—that was familiar. When Linc, after stowing his kit in his new quarters, went to check out the general messroom in the hour of free time they had been given to get their bearings, a voice called out at him when he had barely entered the room. "Hey, don't tell me . . . . Yes, it is! Linc! Why am I not totally surprised to see you here?"
It was Little Mac from Coulie, turning away from a serving hatch in one wall. He was holding a plate of sausage, fries, and beans, and a mug of something hot, and looked as if he was about to join three other cadets at the end of one of the room's two long tables.
"Mackerel!" Linc shook his head. "I don't believe this! How long have you been here? . . . Where'd you come here from?"
"Since two days ago. Grab yourself some tea or something and sit down . . . . Guys, this is Linc, a buddy who was on the prep course I went through. Linc, these are Arch, Gus, and Willie. Hey, why not move along there and make a little room? . . ."
Linc took a tea and joined them at the end of the bench seat running along the wall. Arch and Gus had arrived with Mackerel from what sounded like another Phase Two that the other half from Coulie had been routed to—held somewhere near Boston. They both wore the blue mountain-peak shoulder patch that signified having gone through Phase One at Meyer Flat in Colorado, and they knew Rocky and the others when Linc mentioned them. Willie had come via an independent route not connected with the program. He said he'd joined the military-training scheme because it offered space-pilot training, and he was going to join an uncle who was in the Outzone already. The news on others Linc had known was that Big Mac had an academic flair that surprised everyone, and was hoping to go into engineering; someone in the Boston course had pulled a knife on Vie, but come out the worse for it and been RPO'd—Vie was okay; Kew had dropped out, apparently preferring an option that had to do with family connections. And, yes, in answer to Linc's question, Rick, who had bunked next to him at Coulie, had been at Boston too . . . . Mackerel wasn't sure what was happening with him.
Linc responded with high points of the news from Texas. Flash from Coulie had also opted for a technical line in the military and had come up with Linc. Mace was here too, or very soon would be, fixing to become a rigger. The big item that Mackerel might be interested in was that Arvin was not only in the cadet school as well, but had also been on the same shuttle. "In fact, he was sorting out his stuff on the billet deck downstairs when I left," Linc concluded. "He'll probably show up here in a few minutes."
"Jeez . . . . That's all we need," Mackerel said. He looked stunned.
"Who's Arvin?" Willie asked. He was mild mannered, with dark hair and a nervous smile. The obvious familiarity between the others was probably a little intimidating for him.
Mackerel waved a hand in the air. "Oh, big guy with a pretty blond wavy head, built like a truck. You'll know him when you see him."
"Is he the one on the climbing trip you were telling us about, Mac?" Gus asked. The one who . . ." He broke off and looked at Linc with sudden realization on his face. "Linc! You're the guy who had the standoff with the hard case and his two buddies . . . "
"That's right. Vie was one of them," Arch interrupted.
Gus had dark coloring, a snub nose and wrinkly features permanently set in a thick-lipped frown as if experiencing a bad odor. "That Vie can be real mean when he wants." He nodded. "Yep. You've gotta be a natural for the army, Linc. Welcome aboard, man."
