Tomkins laughed. “And I’ll miss you. I’ve gotten more research done in the past few weeks than in the first three years I’ve been up here. You’ve got a gift for administration, Duncan.”
“Some skills are more useful than others, but not all the time.” McLaris pressed his lips together, letting the uneasiness show again.
Tomkins squeezed his shoulder and stepped back. “The yo-yo will work just fine, if our Mr. Clancy says so—Dr. Clancy, I mean.” He laughed. “You’ll be safe.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” McLaris mumbled.
“I know.” McLaris had his own ghosts to chase, and until he confronted them, Tomkins knew that no words would put the man at ease.
Standing a full head taller than most of the people in the prep room, Tomkins searched the crowd with ease. Clancy stood trapped in a corner, surrounded by eight members of his construction crew, all of whom insisted on checking his suit seals to make sure he would be safe. Glued to his side was his deputy, Wiay Shen.
Shen had done fine emergency work hauling him back to the base after his fall. Clancy seemed almost disappointed that he had sustained no greater injury than a minor concussion, which was what had knocked him unconscious. Shen still took every opportunity to mother him. Since the accident, everyone else on Clavius Base had noticed how inseparable the two were.
Tomkins made his way to them, flexing his arms in the tight suit. Few of the standard-issue garments fit his tall frame, and he was unaccustomed to the restricted movements. He held his helmet in his hands, ready to seal it into its collar.
Shen and Clancy turned away from the rest of the crowd. Clancy flailed his arms to get the crew away from him. “All right, already! I know how to put on my own blasted suit!”
Shen added her own admonishment. “Didn’t you guys ever hear the one about too many cooks spoiling the microwave dinner? Or whatever it was …” Regardless, she took a moment to check all of Clancy’s connections herself.
“You take care of yourself,” Clancy told her in a quiet voice.
“Look who’s talking, hotshot.” Shen ran a hand up and down his side. Her glove made a crinkling sound against his suit. “You sure you’re going to be up to this trip? There’s no one to get you out of a jam if something happens.”
“Besides bruising my leg, all I got was a bump on the head. Dr. Berenger gave me her blessing. This’ll be just like riding an elevator—a heck of a lot safer than riding in a six-pack with you.”
“Knowing you, you’ll find a way to get in trouble.”
Tomkins cleared his throat to interrupt their private discussion. “Dr. Clancy?”
“Dr. Tomkins?” Clancy swung around and shook Tomkins’s gloved hand. He moved with a slight limp, but seemed no worse than before the accident.
“I can’t think of two better people to make the first trip on your yo-yo. Good luck, Clifford. I’d like to stay, but I need to get out to Clavius-C if I’m going to watch your ascent.”
“That’s all right,” Clancy said. “Duncan and I need to be ready for the weavewire when it arrives. We should move out the same time as you do.”
Shen interrupted. “Orbitech 1 plans to start reeling in the weavewire less than an hour after it arrives—whether you’re hooked up or not. That doesn’t give you much time.”
Tomkins smiled. “Very well. Have a good trip and all that. Best of luck, and I expect to see you back in one piece. The radio telescope project will certainly need your guidance when you return.”
Clancy nodded to Shen beside him. “Wiay can manage the crew while I’m gone. In fact, she might kick a few more butts than I do. Now that they’ve got this fire lit under them for the project, you’d better take advantage of their willingness to work.” He grinned and looked at his crew jostling around in the prep room. “If I get back—”
“When you get back,” Shen chided.
“Okay, when I get back, and if this yo-yo method of getting to the Lagrange colonies turns out to be feasible, the whole crew is going to be antsy to get off here. They want to work in space, you know—not with rocks between their toes.”
Tomkins nodded. “You’re right, of course.” He turned to Shen and bowed, bending down to her height. “And my apologies if I doubted your competence, Ms. Shen.”
“You couldn’t offend me if you tried.”
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say.” Tomkins rubbed his big brown hands together. “Would you like to accompany me to Clavius-C, Ms. Shen? We’ll have the best live view you can get of the ascent. Or would you rather see the official broadcast that goes out to all the colonies?”
“I can watch the recording any time I feel like it. I’d rather have a front-row seat.”
McLaris stepped up to join them. “Clifford?”
“Let’s do it.”
Tomkins stood back as the two started for the airlock. McLaris turned for one more wave, then pulled his helmet over his head, sealing it down around his collar.
Clancy grinned at his crew as Shen held his helmet for him. She reached over with one hand, pulled his head down to hers, and kissed him. He blinked and put on his polarized helmet quickly, as if to cover up a blush. Two other people from Clancy’s crew followed them into the airlock, ready to escort them out to the yo-yo capsule, which they had dubbed the Phoenix, where they would help attach the harness falling down from the American colony.
The big airlock door swung shut and began its cycle. Shen stood watching it with a fixed expression.
“Ready?” Tomkins asked. “Uh? Oh, yeah. Just a minute.” Shen blew her nose.
“The six-packs over in area two should be ready to go.”
“After you, then.” They waited for the airlock to cycle.
Shen insisted on driving the six-pack and seemed to make a point of not using the inertial guidance system. Tomkins sat in silence, occasionally acknowledging Shen’s conversation, other times just listening to the hollow echo of his own breathing. They rode out, leaving tracks in the lunar surface, swinging past the Phoenix.
Spotters were staggered across the plain of Clavius, some up on the rise of the crater wall. Nearly every holo-transmitter on Clavius Base scanned the sky overhead, searching for the harness preceding the weavewire. On the open channel, one of the other base scientists, bored with his regular duties, took a turn giving the commentary for the event. Tomkins decided he would listen to it all later.
Out here, on the sterile lunar surface, he pictured the vast radio telescope, the shining accomplishment that showed how human beings could still construct their own wonders, even when everything else had been taken away from them. Arecibo II. He knew it was pretentious to include it among the grand monuments of mankind—the pyramids, the great bridges, the tall buildings, the giant dams—but perhaps Arecibo II would last longer than all of those. The project would show how people continued to strive, even when they had lost so much. The Earth might have fallen silent, but the universe would not be able to hide its secrets much longer.
Their six-pack rolled over the lunar dust. Tomkins craned his neck to look up into the starry blackness, but only ended up straining it inside the helmet.
“You’ve got to bend your whole body backward,” Shen said, seeing what he was trying to do. “Like this.” She leaned back in an exaggerated curve. “Otherwise, you’ll just see the inside of your helmet.”
“I hope we can spot the harness before it lands,” he said.
“Visually, not much chance of that.” Shen stared straight ahead at the unbroken crater floor. “But Orbitech 1 coated it with radar-reflecting paint. That should make its cross section a hundred times bigger on radar than it actually is.”