Cardenas was still in bed, unable to make a decision about how to spend her day. The phone jingled.
Startled, she said to herself, It can’t be Manny! “Answer,” she called out.
Yolanda Negroponte’s face appeared on the tiny screen of the bedside phone console. Cardenas clutched the sheet to her.
“Oh,” said Negroponte. “I’m sorry to wake you, Dr. Cardenas.”
“I’m … I was … ,” Cardenas stuttered. Then, “It’s all right. I was already awake.”
“I wonder if I can pick your brain,” Negroponte said. “I have a problem and I need your help.”
Go away and don’t bother me, Cardenas wanted to snap. Instead she said to the image in the phone screen, “I can meet you at the cafeteria in half an hour. Will that be all right?”
Negroponte appeared to think it over for a few moments. “Could you come to the biology lab, instead? I’ll pick up breakfast and we can eat in the lab. Will that be all right?”
Suddenly Cardenas was grateful for something to do, some excuse for getting out of bed, some reason to at least try to stop worrying about Manny.
“That will be fine,” she said. “The bio lab in half an hour.”
Pancho stood before the control board of the transfer craft, scanning all the panels with a practiced eye.
Standing beside her, Wanamaker said, “Everything’s in the green except the airlock.”
“I left it open,” Pancho replied, “so’s Manny can tromp in without having to cycle it.”
Wanamaker nodded. He watched as Pancho’s hands played over the control panels as deftly as a concert pianist’s. She’s in her element, he thought. She’s good at this and happy to be in a ship.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” he asked.
Pancho looked at him. “Yep, guess so.”
“You’re a flygirl by nature.”
“Beats sittin’ on my butt wondering how to spend my money.”
Wanamaker laughed. “I suppose it does.”
“The decon nanos are aboard?”
“In their container in the airlock. I’ll help Manny apply them once he’s outside.”
Pancho nodded. “Just be careful—”
Fritz’s crisp, slightly annoyed voice came through the speaker, “Our intrepid hero is ready to board your ship.”
Pancho tapped the communications keyboard. “Copy Gaeta boarding.”
Wanamaker said, “I’d better get down to the cargo bay and see that he gets in okay.”
Pancho replied, “Stay out of his way, though. He’s like a three-hundred-kilo gorilla in that suit.”
Beneath his icy exterior, Fritz von Helmholtz was quivering with apprehension. We should have taken more time to prepare for this mission. Ten days isn’t enough. We should have taken a month for simulations and tests. Six weeks, even. I’ve allowed Urbain to rush us too quickly.
And Manuel is carrying nanomachines with him. Nanomachines! What if something goes wrong with them? What if they attack his suit? This mission is far more dangerous than Manuel is willing to admit.
Von Helmholtz squared his narrow shoulders and studied the displays his technicians were working with. It’s up to me to keep Manny safe, he told himself. At the slightest sign of danger, the slightest deviation from our mission plan, I’ll pull him out of there. Whether he likes it or not.
Inside the cumbersome suit Manny Gaeta felt like a giant, a titan of old, far more powerful than any mere mortal. With a clench of his fingers he could crush metal. With the servomotors that reacted to his arms’ movements he could lift tons of dead weight.
Yeah, and with an eyeblink’s worth of carelessness you can get yourself killed, suit or no suit, he warned himself. Remember that.
“Closin’ airlock hatch,” Pancho’s voice sounded in his helmet earphones.
Gaeta could see Wanamaker standing by the cargo bay hatch in his flight coveralls. The ex-admiral looked wary, on guard, as his eyes flicked from Gaeta to the airlock hatch behind the massive suit.
“Airlock hatch closed,” he said in a flat, noncommittal voice.
“Ready to separate,” Pancho said.
A heartbeat of hesitation, than Fritz’s voice replied, “You are go for separation.”
“Separating,” said Pancho.
Gaeta felt the slightest of tremors. The transfer ship was no longer connected to the mammoth habitat. The sense of weight dwindled to nothing.
“We’re off for Titan,” Pancho sang out.
“And we are off to the mission control center,” came Fritz’s frosty voice, “where Dr. Urbain has graciously permitted us to use one of the consoles.” His accent on one dripped with acid.
28 May 2096: Titan orbit
“Circularization complete.” Pancho’s voice jarred in Gaeta’s helmet earphones. She hollered as if she were shouting to someone on the other side of a canyon.
It had taken them six hours to fly from habitat Goddard to Titan on a high-thrust burn and establish the transfer craft in a circular orbit above the dirty orange smog-ridden moon.
Gaeta had stood inside the big armored excursion suit all that time; there was no room in the cargo bay to get out and walk around. Being in zero g helped: his heart could pump weightless blood much more efficiently. He flexed his legs as much as he could, pulled his arms out of the sleeves and munched on a meager breakfast of muffins and lukewarm coffee. Fritz’ll bitch about the crumbs, he thought, almost giggling. Give him something to complain about when I get back.
Now the work begins.
In the mission control center, von Helmholtz scowled at the single console he had at his disposal. All the other consoles were manned by Urbain’s people; the chief scientist himself had left the center and gone back to his own office.
Von Helmholtz’s half-dozen technicians crowded behind Fritz as he sat down and powered up the console. This will be the primary link with Manuel, Fritz told himself. The rest of them are connected to satellite sensors and to Alpha itself. I am connected to Manuel. His safety depends on me.
Wanamaker pushed through the hatch that connected to the transfer vessel’s bridge.
“Are you okay? Need anything?”
“I’m fine, Jake,” Gaeta said, careful to keep the volume of his suit’s speakers down to a moderate level. “Ready to go out and get started.”
“Okay. I’ll join you as soon as the lock cycles and I can pull on my suit.”
Gaeta nodded inside his helmet. Wanamaker went back to the bridge.
“You’re clear for EVA,” Pancho sang out.
Dialing the volume control even lower, Gaeta slid his arms back into the suit’s sleeves and replied, “Entering airlock.”
He stepped ponderously into the tight metal womb of the airlock and sealed its inner hatch. Once he was outside the ship, he knew, Wanamaker would come into the cargo bay, worm himself into a nanosuit, then come outside to help him decontaminate the suit with Kris’s nanoscrubbers. Then he had to climb into the aeroshell and thruster package.
The telltales on the airlock bulkhead cycled from green, through amber and finally to red. Gaeta barely felt the pumps’ vibration through the thick soles of his boots.
“’Lock’s in the red,” Pancho called.
“Copy red,” said Gaeta. “Opening outer hatch.”
He leaned a gloved hand on the control stud and the outer airlock hatch swung slowly open. At first all Gaeta could see was the infinite black of space. Then the filtering of his visor adjusted and pinpoints of stars stared back at him. Off to his right he could see the curve of Titan’s orange clouds, looking somehow sickly, almost a sallow yellow. Like a bad day in L.A., he said to himself.