We went through it three times together. The third was the best; by then almost everyone had it down. It was the kind of tune that’s easy to learn quickly; even to ears raised on different musical convenience, it was hummable. Kirra held the final note, then let her voice tumble slowly down to the bottom of her range and die out. There was no applause. There was not a sound. Not a cough. Still bodies.
“Let’s do it, then,” Kirra said, and the stasis was ended. We went off to school together calmly, joyfully, quietly, as one.
Chapter Eight
Reb and Sulke were both waiting for us in Solarium Two. (For the rest of this week they would be teaching us together, twice a day; after that they’d teach separately again.) Although they knew us all by name and by sight, they marked us off on an actual checklist as we came through the open airlock chamber, and sealed both hatches carefully when we were all mustered. Reb was especially saintly, radiating calm and compassion, and Sulke was especially sour, nervous as a cat.
“If you haven’t checked your air, do so now,” she called. “We’ve got fresh tanks if you need them.” We were all in our p-suits, and I would have bet all of us had been smart enough to check our air supply. I certainly had—six times. But little Yumiko had to come forward, shamefaced, to accept a pair of tanks and a withering glare from Sulke. “Check your thruster charges too. You’re not gonna get much use out of them today, but start the habit of keeping them topped up.” Three people had to disgrace themselves this time, coming forward to have their wristlets or anklets recharged. Ben was one of them.
“You’ve heard it a million times,” Sulke told us in parade-ground voice. “I’ll tell you one more time. Space does not forgive. If you take your mind off it for five seconds, it will kill you.”
She took a breath to say more, and Reb gently cut her off. “Be mindful, as we have learned together, and all will be well.”
She exhaled, and nodded slowly. “That’s right. Okay, earthworms—” She caught herself again. “Sorry, I can’t call you that anymore, you’ve graduated.” She grinned. “Okay, spaceworms, attach your umbilicals. Make damn sure they’re hooked tight.”
The term was outdated: they weren’t real umbilicals like the pioneers used, carrying air from the mothership; they were only simple tethers. But they did fasten at the navel so that imagery was apt. Each of us found a ring to anchor ours to on the wall behind us. I checked carefully to make sure the snaplock had latched snugly shut. The umbilical was about the same diameter as spaghetti, guaranteed unbreakable, and was a phosphorescent white so it would not be lost in the darkness.
“Radios on Channel Four,” Sulke said. “Seal your hood and hold on to your anchor. Is there anyone whose hood is not sealed? Okay, here we go.”
There was a dysharmonic whining sound as high-volume pumps went into operation, draining the air from the Solarium. As the air left, the noise diminished. The cubic was large, it took awhile. We spent the time staring out the vast window.
Two was the only true solarium, the one that always faced the Sun. Its window worked like modern sunglasses: you could stare directly at the Sun, without everything else out there turning dark as well. The p-suit hood added another layer of polarization. The Sun looked like an old 60-watt bulb head-on, but by its light you could see Top Step’s own mirror farm a few miles away, a miniature model of the three immense ones that circle the globe, beaming down gigawatts for the groundhogs to squabble over. It looked like God’s chandelier. I could also just make out two distant Stardancers, their Symbiotes spun out into crimson discs, a little One-ish of the mirror farm. (That’s the side away from Earth in Top Step parlance.) They looked like they were just basking in the sun, rippling slightly like jellyfish, but for all I knew they could have been directing construction out in the Asteroid Belt. Who knows what a Stardancer is thinking? All other Stardancers, that’s who, and nobody else. There were no p-suited Third-Monthers visible at the moment, though there were surely some out there, too far to see or in other quadrants of space.
The sound of the pumps was gone now. The outside world is miked in a p-suit, but the mike only functions in atmosphere. There was no longer any air to support sound outside our suits, so we heard none.
“Hard vacuum,” Sulke announced in my ear. “Maintain radio silence unless you have an emergency. And don’t have an emergency. Here we go.”
A crack appeared at the bottom of the great window. In eerie utter silence, it slid upward until it was gone. A great gaping hole opened out on empty space. Radio silence or no, there was a soft susurrant murmur. For a moment my mind tried to tell me that the Sun and empty space were below me, that the huge opening was a bomb bay and I was about to fall out. But I suppressed the fear easily. Reb had trained me well.
“All right,” Sulke said, “starting over at this end, one at a time, move out when I tell you. Don’t move until the person before you has reached the end of their leash, I don’t want any tangles today. Try to fan out, so we end up making a big shaving brush. Rostropovitch, you’re first.”
Reb arranged himself like a skydiver, feet toward us, and gave a short blast on his ankle thrusters. “Follow me, Dmitri,” he said softly, and jaunted slowly out into emptiness. Dmitri followed him, and then Yumiko, and the exodus began. When my turn came I was ready. A one-second blast, and I was in motion. As I passed through the open window there was a sensation as if I had pierced some invisible membrane…and then I was in free space, tether unreeling slightly behind me, concentrating on my aim.
The umbilical placed enough drag on me that I had to blast again halfway out. I did it for a hair too long, and reached the end of my rope with a jerk that put me into a slow-motion tumble. I stabilized it easily, and could have come to a stop—Sulke had trained me well, too—but I didn’t. Like someone standing on a mountaintop and turning in circles, I rotated slowly. Now that I was no longer busy, I let myself take it all in.
And like my mates, I was dumbstruck.
It’s like the psychedelic experience. It cannot be described, and only a fool will try. I know that even my clearest memories of the event are pale shadows.
In free space you seem to see better, in more detail than usual. Everything has an uncanny “realer than real” look, because there is no air to scatter the light that reaches your eyes. You see about 20 percent more stars than can be seen on the clearest night on Earth, just a little brighter and clearer than even the best simulation, and none of them twinkle. Venus, Mars and Jupiter are all visible, and visibly different from the other celestial objects.