“I don’t see how we could do that.”
“You’re a respected man of God,” Raven told him. “Maybe you could contact the organization that links all the settlements we’ve made through the solar system…”
“The Interplanetary Council?”
“Yes. Ask them to convene a meeting to find a way to stop the sale of Rust.”
Umber shook his head. “But Haven doesn’t belong to the IC. We’ve never applied to join.”
Raven smiled at him. “Then we should.”
IMPLEMENTATION
“I can’t contact the Interplanetary Council,” Umber objected. “Evan has my phones tapped, I’m sure. He wouldn’t let me put through a call to Earth.”
Raven understood where he was heading. “You think I could? As your representative?”
With a shake of his head, Umber replied, “I would think Evan monitors all our communications with Earth and the other settlements throughout the solar system.”
“You mean he wouldn’t allow you to talk to anyone who might…”
“Who might be connected to the Interplanetary Council,” Umber finished for her.
The two of them sat in her living room, silently staring at each other. In her mind, Raven pictured how the habitat’s phone links to Earth and the other human settlements throughout the solar system worked.
You’ve studied this, she told herself. You’ve read about the system linking Haven to Earth and the rest of the solar system.
Communications satellites, she remembered. We put through a call to Earth. The call goes from the habitat to one of the commsats in orbit around Uranus. From that satellite to another one in orbit around Earth, and then down to the phone you’re trying to reach.
She murmured, “If I could make a direct contact to one of the commsats outside this habitat…”
Umber’s face brightened. “Without using a phone here in Haven.”
“No one in Haven would know about it,” she continued. “We could reach the IC without Evan finding out.”
“Yes,” said Umber. But then his expression clouded over once again. “But how could you do that?”
A smile lifted Raven’s lips. “I think I know a way.”
“Go outside?” Quincy O’Donnell’s beefy face frowned down at Raven.
They were having lunch together at one of Haven’s crowded, noisy restaurants. The more noise the better, Raven thought. Makes it harder to snoop on what we’re talking about.
“Outside, like you do,” she said to him. “I’d love to see the work you’re doing.”
He shook his head slowly, ponderously, from side to side. “That’s not allowed, Raven. Safety regulations.”
“But it would only be this one time,” she coaxed. “And just for a quick visit. Couldn’t you bend the rules a little? For me?”
O’Donnell was still shaking his head. But he said, “I could lose my job. If anything happened…” His voice trailed off.
Raven decided to play her trump card. “I’d be ever so grateful to you, Quincy. Really grateful.”
His head shaking stopped. From across their narrow table he stared down at her. In a tone that was almost pleading, he insisted, “The regulations are for your own safety, Raven.”
“But you’d be there to protect me.”
“Yes… but…”
“Afterward we could have dinner together. In my quarters.”
He swallowed visibly. “Dinner.”
“Just the two of us.”
“The two of us.”
“I’d really be grateful, Quincy.”
She could see the wheels turning behind his deep blue eyes. “Well,” he muttered, “you are the assistant to Mr. Waxman, after all.”
“That’s right,” she agreed. “I could write up a work assignment or something, so your responsibility would be covered.”
“That you could,” O’Donnell agreed.
For the first time in her life, Raven felt like a conspirator. Hell, she told herself, I am a conspirator. Quincy O’Donnell looked uneasy when, two days later, he took her down to the station where the suits for extravehicular activity were stored. They walked slowly, carefully, past the rows of empty suits hanging in storage, seeking one small enough to fit Raven properly.
O’Donnell insisted on having her walk through all the safety procedures with a pair of technicians who trained people for work outside the habitat’s sheltering walls. Then she went through a standard test in one of the habitat’s docking centers, working in the suit carefully, slowly, inside an exercise chamber pumped down to vacuum.
She had to do her training exercises on her own time, during lunch hours or after full days of working with Waxman. She didn’t want Evan to know what she was up to, of course. He seemed to have no inkling. Waxman worked with Raven as usual, and spent his nights rotating through his harem.
Good, thought Raven. Keep yourself busy, Evan. Still, she did her best to keep him happy on the nights when he crooked his finger at her.
EVA
Raven stood nervously by the airlock hatch, decked in a nanofabric space suit and glassteel helmet. Quincy O’Donnell loomed next to her, dwarfing her diminutive figure. Like her, O’Donnell was enclosed in a semitransparent nanofabric EVA outfit. Somehow it made him look even bigger and lumpier than normal.
It was well past the dinner hour. The exit chamber was otherwise empty except for a pair of technicians, one male and one female, sitting at the control consoles on the balcony that ran high above the metal-walled chamber.
“Ready for extravehicular activity?” sounded in Raven’s helmet earphones.
She heard O’Donnell reply, “Ready.”
The hatch before them swung open ponderously. Beyond it was the airlock chamber, bathed in lurid red light, looking dark and dangerous.
O’Donnell’s voice croaked, “Raven, switch to freak two.”
She lifted her left arm and pressed the button for frequency two. Now she and Quincy could speak to one another without anyone else hearing them.
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Quincy’s voice sounded worried in her helmet earphones.
With a courage she did not truly feel, Raven nodded inside her helmet and answered, “I’m ready.”
“All right then.” He gestured toward the open airlock chamber. “Ladies first.”
Her insides fluttering, Raven stepped carefully over the hatch’s coaming and into the airlock’s interior. O’Donnell clumped in behind her and the heavy hatch swung slowly closed.
The airlock was surprisingly large, big enough to handle a half-dozen people in space suits or even sizable pieces of equipment.
“Alone at last,” O’Donnell quipped. Raven smiled at him, then realized he couldn’t see it through her helmet’s visor in the chamber’s dim lighting.
“Ready for depressurization?” she heard the female monitoring technician ask.
“Ready,” said O’Donnell.
A clattering sound penetrated the insulation of Raven’s helmet. She saw a trio of lights on the chamber wall next to the outer hatch: green, amber and red. The green light winked out and the amber turned on. The clattering noise seemed to dwindle, grow fainter.
After several moments, Raven couldn’t hear the sound at all, although she still felt its vibration through the thick soles of the boots she was wearing.
Her mouth felt dry. She remembered from her training sessions that there was a water nipple just beneath her helmet’s visor, but she couldn’t locate it without her hands to search for it.