Outward Bound, page 14
"Oh, a little here, a little there. You know how they move you around."
"Right. Always hectic. Say, you remember Julie?"
"Julie with the eyes? Who wouldn't?"
"She's here too—in fact, with some friends just a little way back there. Do you want to stop by?"
Angelo showed his palms. "I'd love to, but I'm boarding in a few minutes. Shipping back out with the Constellation. You say hi to her for me, you hear? Tell her we'll all meet up again in the Zone sometime. And that's a promise."
"Oh, too bad. So you'll actually be on your way out there tomorrow? . . ." Linc's brow creased. Did Angelo just say shipping back out? He stared again at Angelo's clothes, the unvoiced question written across his face. Angelo had evaded saying exactly what he'd done after Coulie. Certainly, nothing about going on to a Phase Two anywhere. Angelo returned an easy grin and waited, letting Linc figure out the implication for himself.
And then it hit him. "You were right," Linc breathed, staring incredulously. "That first time we met, when I was digging that ditch after Royal whined out. There were plants in Coulie. You were one of them!"
Angelo looked apologetic but kept smiling. "Hey, it was the only way, you know. We had to be aware of what was happening among you guys. Somebody had to be in there to start breaking down all that distrust and anger, and begin turning it around. And, I mean, getting dragged up rock faces and having to help you deal with situations like Arvin . . . "
"He's a cadet here too," Linc said, still in a dazed voice.
"There are easier ways of making a living, you know, man. No hard feelings, eh?"
It was true. Angelo had been the first person to treat Linc with anything like decency, that day. It was Angelo who had insisted on their going back to the counter to compliment the kitchen girl's efforts. Angelo had been the first to stand next to Linc when he'd faced Arvin and the other two alone . . . .
"It's okay," Linc said, although he hadn't fully absorbed it. "Back then I might have gotten mad. But now I've seen too much."
Angelo seemed relieved and genuinely pleased. "You'll do okay now. Believe me. I've seen a lot. One of the reasons they picked me is that I'm older than you probably think."
"So you're actually going back . . . ." Angelo's nod told Linc there was no need to complete the question. "Is it really everything they say out there?" Linc asked instead.
"More than they say. It's not so much the luxuries—forget all that. But being among people who are alive, who haven't had the spirit drained out of them. You'll see it for yourself. Another ship's due out next month—the Neil Armstrong. I'll lay a dollar to a cent you'll be on it."
"You really think so?"
"We need everyone we can get . . . " Angelo glanced at his watch. "Well . . ."
"I'll run into you again out there, maybe."
"You bet. I'll make a point of tracking you down."
"Then, take care, okay . . . . And thanks, really—for everything."
"Just doing my job." Angelo began moving away.
"I never even told you who I am," Linc called after him.
Angelo looked back from among other figures going the same way. "It's okay, I know. Linc Marani, right?"
Linc stood watching him recede, until suddenly the rest dawned on him. "I don't know yours," he shouted out.
"Hilvarez," Angelo's voice carried back.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
THE mothballing of the program to build space constructions using lunar material had left substantial quantities of orbiting moon rock that had never been used. The Outzoners had consolidated much of this into a single mass they christened Sisyphus—essentially an artificial subsatellite of the Moon, equipped for deploying tether lines out into space that could be extended for several hundreds of miles. The object was to use Sisyphus as an orbital fly-wheel to store temporarily the excess momentum shed by vessels slowing down on arrival from the outer solar system. It could then be transferred back when they departed.
Instead of expending enormous amounts of energy to brake itself down to the velocity of the Earth-moon system about the Sun, the Constellation had attached to a tether from Sisyphus and performed a complex, end-about-end maneuver around the Moon, from which it emerged on a rendezvous orbit that could easily be matched to Grayling's, while Sisyphus was boosted to a higher lunar orbit. When the time came for the Constellation to be launched back out, the process would be reversed, leaving Sisyphus back as it started (or close, anyway—some thrust would be needed to make good the inevitable losses). An enthusiastic orbital-dynamics engineer had come into one of the classrooms to describe the operation to the cadets, but Linc didn't really get the hang of it until Willie explained it again later. It sounded like a cool idea. Sisyphus took its name from a king in Greek mythology who was condemned to spend eternity rolling a heavy rock to the top of a mountain, upon which it always rolled down again.
In the final hours before launch, Grayling Station grew quiet after the noise and bustle that had become normal over the previous few days, its population down to half or less of its normal complement. There would be cleaning and general tidying to do in preparation for the new arrivals after the Constellation departed, but in the meantime the cadets who were staying were put on light duties. Linc found himself with a group that included Rocky, Flash, and Willie in the garrison messroom inside the Turret, where operations around the Constellation were being shown on the large screen at one end of the room. Most of the regular troops had moved out as well as the senior cadets, and the mess was also unusually quiet and missing faces that had become familiar.
The view coming in at present was from a support craft standing several miles off from the ship. Constellation had a mass of the order of that of a large naval carrier but was larger, being of much lighter construction. The clutter of supplies and equipment that had floated about it had gradually been absorbed inside over the last days. Now the last ferries had detached and the service vessels pulled back to leave it hanging alone against the background of stars, an immense, white-and-gray elongation of hull forms, superstructures, and holding tanks, held together by frameworks and structural booms. From the cluster of spheres housing the passenger quarters and command deck in the nose, to the final stages of the drive system behind radiation shielding at the stern, it measured just over a mile.
Linc had mixed feelings as he stared at it. On the one hand he was awed, on the other, puzzled. If humans could produce something as stunning as this and solve all the problems it symbolized, why couldn't they get their act together to create a world that worked? Would the Outzoners finally achieve it in their attempt to discard the old values and start anew? Or would that experiment too, eventually, end up the same way as all the others seemed to have done?
"Eight minutes and thirty seconds to burn, and counting." The voice of one of the controllers in Grayling's Bridge came over the audio. "The hook is deployed and on target." This meant that Sisyphus was coming around the Moon in its higher orbit, swinging down its line like a three-hundred-mile grapnel. Linc thought about Mace and Rick out there at this very moment; Kamila, the Iraqi teacher, and her husband; all the others, how they must be feeling. Angelo was there too, but this wasn't his first time. Linc thought back to those who had quit or been sent back, and felt glad, more than ever before, that he was not among them. He wanted to be looking forward to a future now. The thought of having to go back to everything that had been the past would have been unbearable.
"Seven minutes."
"All systems green-go at seven-zero," another voice cut in. The view on the screen changed to a telescopic shot from somewhere showing the five-cluster of the Constellation's massive drive nozzles in close-up. Their very quiescence now seemed somehow to emphasize the stupendous power dormant within, waiting to be unleashed. The ship would lift itself up to a matching trajectory before attaching to the tether for the extra boost that would slingshot it out and away. Afterward, it would continue under powered acceleration for an additional thirty hours, achieving a velocity at the end of that time that would carry it to the vicinity of Jupiter in just under a month. Six months ago Linc hadn't even been aware of such concepts. Now he devoured them and couldn't wait to be a part of what it all pointed to. The others around him seemed to be affected the same way. Rocky, stretched out and tilting back his chair to get as close to his favorite horizontal position as he could without tipping over, hadn't said a word for over ten minutes.
The view switched to another angle on the Constellation, this time showing a slender line, bright against the blackness, curving outward into space from a point somewhere close to amidships. The Moon was showing full to one side in the background. "That's the grab line that'll catch the tether," Willie said, gesturing. "It keeps the action away from the ship—in case there's a screwup."
"How thick are those lines?" Flash asked curiously.
"Under a centimeter of Carbosyn-20. Diamond fiber. Isn't it amazing how it catches the sunlight! The convexity acts as a magnifier."
Willie knew all the details, of course. Linc liked having him around, but there were times when he could have done without the commentaries.
"Man, what would you give to be sitting out there with those guys now, waiting for it to fire," one of the other cadets drawled from somewhere behind.
"If Sulliman's there and I'm not, I'm happy to wait for the next one," another voice answered.
"Right on," somebody agreed.
"With our luck, the next one will have Schultz."
"No way. He'll be getting ready for the next batch of fresh fish here."
"Who do you figure will pick up the Clerical Two slot?" Rocky asked, coming out of his trance. An easy, laid-back job that Rocky couldn't miss being interested in.
"My money says Ilkes," someone offered.
"Just so long as it's not Arvin . . . . Where is Arvin? Anyone know?"
"I think he got stuck with janks," Willie said—cadet slang for janitorial duties around the Turret.
"Five minutes and counting," the controller's voice announced. "At the five-zero checkpoint we have plasma and fields within spec, go-green on all, and the hook is in the window. Confirmation to proceed has been issued." The numeric superposed at the top of the screen was already showing 04:53.
Linc wondered if Julie had managed to get time to watch the launch from the North Tower—she was working that day. Very likely, she would. It wasn't the kind of thing anyone would want to miss, and supervisors were generally cooperative. As a nursing student she could have taken a slot to go with the Constellation like Mace and Rick, but had opted to stay back and take a specialist class on dislocations and fractures in order to fly on the same ship as Linc later. They spent practically all their off-duty time together. The idea of one leaving for the Outzone without the other would have been unthinkable to either of them.
Flash regarded the image of the Moon for a while, obscuring the Earth beyond, his head cocked to one side in thought. "Do you know, it just occurred to me," he said, looking around. "Do you think the Zoners picked this spot deliberately—here, behind the Moon—to make it harder for Earth to follow the kinds of things they're up to? I mean, that ship looks pretty snazzy to me, compared to anything much else that I can remember seeing. Maybe they don't want people on Earth watching everything that's been going on. I bet a lot more's happening here at Grayling than most of them realize."
"From some of the things my uncle's said, there could be a lot more happening out in the Zone too," Willie said. "It might turn out that you ain't seen nothin' yet." Somebody whistled.
"Three minutes, and counting . . . "
The screen switched to an internal view of the Grayling Bridge from where the operation was being coordinated, just three levels below the garrison. The crew stations and monitor panels were all manned, with the station director, Kelsoe, at the supervisory panel, looking tense, flanked by his executive officer and the chief engineering officer. Kelsoe was something of a godlike figure who led a remote existence somehow despite the confines of the place, and whom few of the cadets had actually seen in the flesh. Linc didn't envy the responsibilities he carried just at this moment. Once again, here was a whole area of human affairs that six months ago Linc would have had no concept of.
"I heard it from Ross that there's a permanent laser-communications link from the Zone right into there," Flash said, keeping his eyes on the screen. "The stuff on it's not for general distribution."
"Encrypted against Earth intercepts," Willie said.
"Something like that."
"Do you think they really could have deployed X-ray laser cannon, Camarel?" somebody asked.
Willie pursed his lips. "It's possible," he answered non-committally.
"How would you fancy having to take on one of those from a thousand miles off?" Flash said to Linc.
"I'd rather be out there in the Zone, sitting behind it," Linc told him.
The screen showed the view relayed from the tether winch installation on Sisyphus—the terminal pylon anchored on massive steel legs splaying out into the rock, the line arcing away and out of sight to lose itself somewhere in the direction of the Moon. Showing to one side beyond the Moon was a part of Earth.
"Diamond fiber, eh?" somebody murmured. "Just imagine, hundreds of miles of it."
"It wouldn't do you any good," Willie said. "In the Zone it has purely engineering value only."
Maybe Rick would end up as some kind of jeweler, Linc thought to himself. Wooden rings and necklaces. Now wouldn't that be something different.
"Two minutes . . . "
"How's Liz doing?" Flash asked Rocky. He didn't really care just at that moment. It was a way of voicing out the tension rising in all of them.
"Okay. The office girls are having a postlaunch elbow-room party—to celebrate being able to breathe again. Eighteen hundred hours today in the rec deck."
"Great!"
"You gonna bring Julie, Linc? We need her there, man. One of the best dancers."
"I don't know yet. I need to check."
"What makes you think you'd get a turn anyway, Derkin? You know what those two are like."
"Aw, Linc's okay. Anyhow, gotta take a breather sometime. Right, Linc?"
"Hey, that depends on her and your own natural charm. We're not talking a property-rights thing here. Know what I mean?"
"Will that friend of Liz's be there?" Flash asked Rocky. "You know, the little blond one."
"You mean Pam? Oh, sure, she'll be there."
"That's it, then. I'm telling ya, I'm going for that one this time."
"No chance," one of the voices at the back opined.
"Watch me."
"You wouldn't enjoy her, even if you did try for her, Flash," another said.
"Oh, really? And how would you know?"
"I didn't."
"Get outta here, turkey. When were you ever closer than making eyes?"
"One minute to burn. Deployment is good. Sequence set to slave on auto." The views on the screen changed to show in rapid succession an external shot of Grayling, the inside of the Bridge again, and then back to the Constellation. Other voices came onto the circuit:
"Plasma primaries are at heat, and go."
"Injection fields are go."
"Attitude and profile check positive function."
A cut back to the Bridge, with Kelsoe nodding to the CEO.
"We have go at zero minus forty seconds. Drive initialization syncing now."
Conversation around the messroom had ceased. The figures lounging in the chairs and propped at the table became still. For some reason Linc had imagined these final seconds would tick by with an almost painful slowness, as if the world had gone into some kind of slow motion; but before he had even realized it, they were inside the last ten. The readout showed:
00:03 . . . 00:02 . . . 00:01 . . .
A pillar of light several times the length of the ship lanced out across space—blue at the head, turning through white and then yellow toward the tip.
"Injection . . . . Plasma ignition . . . . Acceleration registering . . . We have lift out!"
Almost imperceptibly at first, the Constellation began moving against the background. Probably due to some trick of perspective as the angle changed, its nose seemed to lift, as if already straining to throw off the last restraints of gravity and find freedom in its natural element among the stars. The column of star fire extended. Already the ship was moving smoothly, now visibly foreshortening as its speed and distance increased. Linc's mind went out to those inside: engineers, clerks, teachers, soldiers, families with children, lonesome adventurers; some he had known, others he would maybe one day meet—all leaving everything they had known or might have been to seek some new, unknown destiny somewhere that most of them could never imagine. In a way he had never pictured before, he saw them as forerunners of the whole human race, bursting out from the mottled blue egg that had spawned it. And, goddamn it, he felt his eyes getting moist, and he couldn't control it. A tear welled out and ran down his cheek. He brushed it away hurriedly.
