Lighted screens and input pads covered the curved walls without any regard for standardizing the direction of up or down. Mounted chairs jutted out from beneath the control panels at odd angles to each other to maximize the working arrangement, though Ramis thought it must be disorienting. The chairs had Velcro straps to keep the workers from recoiling across the room every time they punched a keypad.
Ramis kicked off the wall and drifted in, looking at the buttons and readouts, everything in indecipherable Cyrillic characters. The individual panels were unfamiliar to him. The station seemed to be functioning still, but he couldn’t figure out how to control anything.
He searched for the radio, but the controls made no sense at all. He had taken a tour of Orbitech 1’s communications center to familiarize himself with the general layout of what the Soviets might have, but this place seemed totally alien.
He flipped on his suit radio. “Orbitech 1, are you there?” He turned off the radio at the static; the signals could not propagate out of the metal-covered hull.
He decided to try the computer, hoping that it was voice-activated. There was nothing around to indicate where the computer was, so he spoke as loudly as he could. “Computer, transmit on ninety-four point one megacycles: Orbitech 1, do you read me?”
The pounding silence around him made him feel uneasy and vulnerable. He didn’t like being where he was. When the voice of the American communications officer burst back at him, he jumped, startled enough that he had to catch himself on the corner of the chair before he drifted out to the center of the room.
“This is Orbitech 1. We are receiving you—”
Brahms’s voice broke in. “Did you get in all right, Ramis? What did you find? Have you seen anyone?”
Ramis cleared his throat. “I am inside at this moment. I have found a man. He is dead. It appears he was alone in the command center. I do not know how he died. I must inspect the rest of the colony. I will communicate with you when I have further information.” He hesitated. “Computer, end transmission.”
He did not feel like speaking with Brahms at the moment.
He saw four prominently marked pneumatic doors at perpendicular points, each with bright red frames. These must be the Kibalchich’s spoke-shafts—conduits from the outer ring of living quarters up toward the central hub.
The other Soviets must be somewhere out in the main torus. He stared at the curved wall and pushed over to the nearest airlock. “One spoke should be as good as another,” he said to himself.
The spoke-shaft door was much larger than the small emergency hatch he had used to enter the station. He played with the mechanism for a few moments, then waited, wondering if it was broken. Each set of buttons seemed different; he thought he had pushed the right ones, but it was hard to tell. Then the indicator light changed from red to amber. Some sort of elevator was making its way up the shaft from the torus to the center. The light changed to green, blinked twice, and the door slid aside with a hiss of hydraulics.
A vertical platform stood in front of him, perpendicular to his orientation. Ramis realized that if he rotated himself and stood on it while the platform traveled toward the rim, he would definitely feel that he was heading down, and the platform beneath his feet would become the floor.
He stared at the lift platform for a few moments, feeling the jitters again. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to see what had happened to the other Soviets.
In his bulky suit he felt sluggish and clumsy, unable to react in an emergency. He paused, weighing the decision. Taking care to complete each step properly, he removed his helmet, unfastened the connections at his waist, lifted off his MMU pack and spare air bottles. Over the course of fifteen minutes, he managed to pull himself out of the suit.
Ramis stood, breathing comfortably again. He flopped his arms back and forth, loosening the muscles. He felt small now, agile, ready to face challenges. Staring at the enormity of the empty suit, he was amazed that he had been able to move while wearing it.
The Kibalchich felt cold and empty. He had dressed lightly inside the suit, wearing the old tan barong he’d brought on his long journey from the Aguinaldo. He had laundered it and taken great care to mend everything. One of the production designers on Orbitech 1 had offered him a silky weavewire shirt, but it just didn’t feel the same to him.
He took a deep breath of the stale air, then buckled his equipment around a chair support to keep the pieces from drifting about while he was gone.
Bending over, Ramis slipped off his booties and socks and pressed his bare toes against the smooth, cool metal of the lift platform. He felt adrenaline pumping, bringing him to a new pitch of awareness. Without all the padding and external protection, he could be part of his situation, not sheltered from it.
He held onto a side rail to keep his balance, then pushed the activation panel. He was growing confident of his knack for these machines.
The lift platform plunged downward. Ramis held onto the rail to keep from drifting away. But as he dropped toward the outer torus, he grew heavier and heavier against the floor.
At the bottom of the shaft, the lift platform stopped, then a set of doors opened in front of him. He stepped out onto the textured metal floor of the Kibalchich’s main body.
He took a few steps forward. The floor felt icy against his feet. The lights were dim, reduced to emergency illumination only. Someone had shut down the systems on the entire station—mothballed it, as if in preparation for a long, long wait.
In the dim glow, Ramis could see faint wisps of his breath—the station was that cold. He shivered and ran his palms up and down his wiry brown arms. He was not used to chill like this. Looking straight ahead, he walked faster.
He shouted hello, but his voice came back explosively loud, like a thunderclap. The echoes shattered up and down the hall like accusing screams. He shrank back against the wall.
He decided not to call out again.
Above him, on the curved band of the ceiling, a strip of louvered windows let in some reflected sunlight from the inner ring of secondary mirrors. But the louvers were half closed, and the giant mirror overhead did not direct the sunlight in. The stars themselves looked distorted and haloed with diffraction from the slanted glass.
Ramis walked along the curving main corridor, which was wide enough for several people to walk abreast. Dark scuffs on the floor showed tracks from where little three-wheeled carts had moved along the thoroughfare. A faint tracing of mildew stood in patches against the wall, across one of the window plates.
To his right and left, vertical walls blocked off sections of private rooms, looking odd against the smooth arcs of the torus. He tried several doors; most were unlocked. Ramis poked his head in but found no one, only darkened spaces that seemed to be administrative offices, meeting rooms. Some looked to be rather plush living quarters all clustered in a row—probably for the high-ranking Soviets.
Inside one room he saw the soft, greenish-yellow glow of an aquarium module. The aerator bubbled in the silence, humming with insolent noise. Half a dozen fish floated belly-up in the tank.
Ramis kept walking. The constant tension was starting to wear on him. He jumped at little noises.
The walls ahead of him ended abruptly on either side, opening into a large section of the torus. Long tables were lined up—a mess hall for the two hundred men and women aboard the station. It was clean, yet something about it conveyed a sense of disarray.