McLaris fought against it. Jessie! He had to find Jessie. But movement was much more difficult than opening his eyes. He clenched his hand, feeling the fingers move, touching the fabric on the inside of the glove. He breathed, but it felt as if he had inhaled needles that tore at his lungs with each gasp.
He needed to turn only a little to see Jessie behind him. With each slight motion of his head, the nauseating shadows filled his mind again. He was going to faint soon …. for a long time. He didn’t know if he would ever wake up. But McLaris couldn’t fall into unconsciousness again … not without seeing Jessie one last time.
He wrenched his head too quickly. Blackness reared, but he did get a chance to locate her, strapped into the passenger seat.
Then he saw the jagged crack down the center of her faceplate.
Darkness filled his head again. He had to save her. He refused to consider that he might be too late, that the decompression and loss of air would be almost instantaneous. His ears began to ring loudly. He couldn’t think, couldn’t concentrate. The only thing he could feel was horror—and then a baffled, nightmarish thought: why couldn’t he see her face? The space suit looked hauntingly empty, vacant, as if her body had vanished entirely.
But then he faded into the off-kilter sea of blackness again.
McLaris woke when they moved him. He blinked back a nightmare of a dwarf sitting on his back, stabbing into his spine over and over again with a sharp little dagger. Jessie … Jessie … Jessie!
His eyes focused again, rolling up to reveal a suited man hauling him from the wreckage of the Miranda. He couldn’t see the man’s face or his expression; his polarized faceplate was turned into harsh shadow. But McLaris stared at the name patch on his suit, glowing orange.
CLANCY.
He memorized the name, as if it was something sacred and important. Clancy. He couldn’t understand why Clancy was wearing the suit of an Orbitech 2 construction engineer—weren’t they supposed to be at L-4?
McLaris tried to call for his daughter, but only a hoarse sound came from his throat—like the sound of air escaping from a cracked faceplate.
Clancy could not understand him, but seemed to recognize that McLaris had returned to consciousness. His words came clearly into McLaris’s suit radio, filled with a mixture of anger and dismay.
“You idiot!” Not too gently, Clancy set him inside a rover vehicle. “Do you think we’re any better off here?”
Chapter 7
AGUINALDO—Day 8
Pliant green strands, gelatinous and damp.…
Luis Sandovaal ran his fingers through the fresh wall-kelp, allowing himself a broad grin since no one else was around. The solarium alcove looked like a lush, primeval forest. Thick fronds dripped from the walls and window plates.
A month ago, ten days ago, his kelp had been nothing more than animal feed. Now the Aguinaldo’s survival depended on it. President Magsaysay had told him to find a way to get wall-kelp to Orbitech 1 and to Clavius Base as well, perhaps even to the Soviet Kibalchich station at L-5. It was just like Magsaysay to worry about other people in trouble before he got himself out of the same mess.
The odor of sewage filled the air. Hidden vats circulated the Aguinaldo’s untreated wastes for absorption by the kelp nexus. Harsh light from the viewing ports glared into the chamber, washing over the wall-kelp appendages.
Under these ideal conditions, with all the nutrients and sunlight it could handle, the genetically enhanced kelp grew fast enough to be harvested daily. It was food—unappealing to the colonists, perhaps, but it would see them through. They could treat it, remove all taste, then add their own cayenne and soy and other chemical seasonings. If you were starving, who cared about seasonings anyway?
The other colonies were in much worse shape than the Aguinaldo, which the Filipinos had always intended to make into a viable home. The international Clavius Base, the American Orbitech 1, and the Soviet Kibalchich—they had been caught with their pants down. They had no contingency plans for disasters. Oh, certainly they had backup launch systems on Earth, agreements with other countries, reciprocal treaties with non-spacefaring nations, and even scores of shuttles—but none of that mattered now that Earth’s industrial capability had been removed. Even if some industry still functioned, the survivors would use it to rebuild things they desperately needed—not to send supplies to stranded space colonies.
American and Soviet technologies far outstripped what the Filipinos had available to them. With all that skill and knowledge at hand, the superpowers had more than enough ability to survive—but, Sandovaal thought, they seemed to have the wrong mind-set.
The superpowers relied too heavily on high technology—machines—when the key was biotechnology, genetic engineering. Living organisms were more sophisticated and adaptable than anything humans would ever build. The success of Sandovaal’s wall-kelp would put the Filipinos in the forefront of all future genetic research. He knew it. Especially now.
But how to get kelp nodules to the other colonies? The Aguinaldo didn’t have the capability for powered spaceflight, or a facility, or resources to create fuel. All of the stations were effectively stranded on desert islands—like living on the Philippine Islands before the age of boats. Sandovaal was the Aguinaldo’s chief scientist. He was supposed to come up with ideas.
He flared his nostrils, wondering how much responsibility one person could shoulder. It seemed the more he did, the more they expected of him.
But then he thought of the others the Council could turn to. Dobo Daeng? Sandovaal snorted. Dobo was a good assistant, a crackerjack technician, but he had no initiative to head up a research team. Dobo followed orders and did things right, but he had no imagination. Tough times demanded a special type of person—someone who could do what needed to be done. Someone like Luis Sandovaal.
He stood in the alcove for some minutes, lovingly rolling the meter-long strands of wall-kelp with his fingertips. He thought he could sense the wall-kelp growing, hear it moving like bamboo, but a thousand times faster.
Sandovaal brought the strand close to his lips and took a nibble. This substance would etch his name in Filipino history forever, right alongside General Aguinaldo, General MacArthur, and the first President Magsaysay.
Sandovaal winced at the taste.
He dropped the strand and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Conceptually, he realized the raw kelp material was edible, but his mouth rebelled at the acrid, unprocessed taste.
Even he admitted that things would have to be very grim before people worshiped that as manna from heaven.
Trial and error.
For months their research had followed a dogged routine. Sandovaal’s team, including Ramis’s parents, Agpalo and Panay Barrera, and Dobo Daeng, clustered in the laboratory units. Using chlorella algae as a genetic base material, combined with two different species of kelp, Sandovaal tried to enhance the salient features of a good food substitute—that it be fast growing, high in protein, and tailored for the Aguinaldo’s environment. Sandovaal insisted that the plant be self-sufficient, not tied to the soil by any root system.
After running a series of converging molecular-dynamic calculations, and dozens of trials, the transgenetic algae/kelp survived and increased its mass. Dobo, in a rush of accidental inspiration, suggested they could grow the plant over the Aguinaldo’s walls. The idea excited Sandovaal. He grabbed the other man’s round face and patted him like a puppy.