Inside the airlock, he removed the clear protective cap on the exit optics of his glove laser. He squeezed his thumb against the switch alongside his index finger. The low-wattage sighting beam threw a red dot on the wall opposite him. It wavered nervously.
The hatch sealed by itself and the airlock cycled. A light shone green. Baker steadied his hand and pointed it at the opening hatch.
All right. Let’s see what sort of greeting you people planned to give visitors.
The hatch swung silently open. A cold mist poured across the floor, chilling Baker’s ankles. He saw nothing. His arm ached from the tension of suspense.
The Späflex contracted against his skin, compensating for his sudden chill. The suit, manufactured to function in the perfect insulation of a vacuum, could not protect him from the cold atmosphere. Heaters throbbed into life someplace, struggling to replace a half century of slow heat loss.
He noticed more instructions on the wall. He pressed the button labeled AMERIC and switched on his outer microphone.
“Welcome to Pastime,” a woman’s pleasant voice said. The still-frigid loudspeakers distorted some of the lower frequency sounds. “Please be very careful when in the main chamber, as cryonic liquids are present and could cause damage if allowed to escape. All units are arranged alphabetically, but please realize that some people may have used assumed names.”
Baker switched on the outside speakers of his suit. “Are you a computer or just a recording?” he asked.
No answer. He strode down the black, indirectly lit corridor until he saw a sign reading MAIN CHAMBER in a number of alphabets. He worked the lock according to printed instructions and stood back. Another blast of cold hit him. Shuddering, he waited for the heaters to warm the enclosure.
Come on, come on. Why’d this suit have to conduct heat so efficiently? I can see them in there, unprotected but for their glasteel coffins. Not even a robot guard.
“You are entering the Pastime main chamber. Please do not touch any controls until instructed. All five hundred seventeen occupants of Pastime are civilians possessing no military secrets.”
Here comes the spiel, Baker thought.
“Pastime was built,” the recording continued as Baker walked quickly to the “T” section, “to house a group of people opposed to the Earth-Belt war of Twenty-One Fifteen. We await the opening of a sealed memory in the banks of the Star Consolidated Auditing Firm, notifying independent rescue agencies of our location. This will take place on Twenty-One June, Twenty-One Forty-Five. If you are from any of the following rescue agencies…” the recording ran through a list of fifteen companies. Baker shook his head in pity and looked around for Delia’s unit. The main chamber took up a lot of space. Unlike the cold holds on habitat ships, this place did not have to keep its mass or energy usage low. The cryonic units were efficient, well built, and large.
Baker located the gold-anodized aluminum plate marked “TRINE, Delia Diana,” listing her birth date and the address of her next of kin. The computer finished its list and said, “…then you are welcomed and we hope the war has ended. If you are a wayfarer who stumbled upon us, we welcome you and ask that you not disturb us if the war is still in progress. If you have come here from a military expedition, we assume there is some reason you did not merely destroy us from orbit.
“Please remember that we are civilians posing no military threat. We are to be considered Non-Combatant Escapees in accordance with New Geneva Convention Section Twelve, Sub-Sections Beta through Gamma. Thank you for your cooperation.”
There was no wake up call. They’ll be here forever.
He ran his hands over the three-meter-long capsule. Delia lay inside somewhere, floating in liquid helium and wrapped in thousands of layers of insulation per centimeter of the cylinder shell’s half-meter thickness.
The plaque explained resuscitation instructions. He read through them, then pounded the side of the capsule.
“I can’t stay here two days! Dee-how do I get you out?” No time! If Lee’s launched a Valli attack from Trans-Pluto, it’ll be here in a few more hours. I can’t carry the whole damn capsule back to the boat. And the deep-thrust battleship is nearly here! Good God.
He ran past the rows of capsules to the opposite end of the chamber. A small console extended from the shiny black wall to his right. Anxiety and the biting cold made his stomach muscles ache. He ignored the pain and leaned over the board.
Where’s the damn’ curator robot?
He punched the button with a question mark on it and typed in:
ARE CRYONIC UNITS REMOVABLE?
YES, blinked the reply.
How to get it out, though? How’d they get out if the rescue people didn’t show? There’s got to be an emergency contingency-
LOCATION OF LIFEBOATS?
PLEASE CLARIFY
ESCAPE SPACECRAFT?
SECTIONS 3, 6, 9 amp; 12-PERIMETER 4.
HEAVY LOAD LIFTING EQUIPMENT?
NONE.
What? How do they-
HOW TO MOVE CRYONIC UNIT FROM MAIN CHAMBER TO ESCAPE SPACECRAFT?
MAGNEPLANE GUIDEWAY-ORANGE LINES
Baker released a breath of pent agitation and fear. The console waited a few seconds, then shut off. He ran back to Delia’s capsule. The exertion warmed him.
An hour. A whole damn’ hour. Circus could be slag by now. And I’m not even loaded.
The cryonic unit slid down the corridor, floating several millimeters above the orange line painted along the center of the magnetized floor. Baker sat atop the capsule, watching the lackluster scenery pass.
Following Baker’s directions, the cryo-capsule, its massive tangle of peripheral equipment, and the superconducting sheet upon which it rested, moved quickly along the guideway on Meisner-effect fields. It slowed and turned, then regained speed.
A double set of doors slid open and the cryonic unit levitated into the shipping dock. Jumping off, Baker ran to the escape ship and looked inside. He took less than a second to decide that the fates were against him. He sat down against the bulk of the cryonic unit.
No cargo space. Just acceleration couches and two engines. What else could go wrong?
A telltale ticked frantically in his ear. His shoulders drooped.
Impurity overload in the rebreather accumulators. Now I’m going to suffocate. Circus’s probably gone from orbit again, one way or another, and the psychfighters are after me. I might as well take one of those engines and use it to defrost Dee, for all the good it’d do either of us.
He looked at the twin engine pods on the twenty-meter long wedge-shaped ship and breathed the thick recycled air. I’m sorry, Dee. I got you this far and now I’ve got to put you back before your batteries run out. I should’ve died back there…
His hands slipped from his thighs to the magneplate. The twin engine pods in his field of vision twisted and blurred.
Something hiccoughed in his breathing tube.
I didn’t get you back, did I Delia? Sorry. Sorry. I should have loved you more when I had the chance.
The pods came back into focus. His forehead burned.
A chance.
A buzzer sounded far away in his earpiece, then grew louder, closer, until it shook him to awareness.
Twenty minutes!
He scrambled to leap off the cargo carrier. The emergency oxygen bottle that cut in to revive him would probably not even last that long.
The port engine pod rattled open under the force of his frantic efforts. He ripped at loose cables and unscrewed fuel fittings. Why do I keep using these chances to live?
He climbed into the cockpit of the ship and actuated the systems dump. A light flashed the words “Emergency Engine Jettison.” A warning siren wailed noiselessly in the vacuum, and with a floor-shaking thump, the port engine dropped from its housing.