at the approaching rangers.
At the rangers, and at the pale but determined figure of Agent Cummings as he limped along, leaning his weight on Hix’s arm.
Forste followed his gaze, and his jaw dropped. “That’s right,” Bob said with a nod. “One of the problems is a medpack countdown display that isn’t worth a damn.”
The terrorists had been locked up, Drexler and Cummings had made their report, and the rangers had gradually drifted back to duties or meals or bed. And once again, Ranger Bob sat at his desk with his recorder in hand.
“Eighteenth April, 2230,” he said. “Evening report.” He took a deep breath. “Well,” he began. “Space Fort Jefferson won its first battle today…”
REDUNDANCY
by Alan Dean Foster
Alan Dean Foster was born in New York City and raised in Los Angeles. He has a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a Master of Fine Arts in Cinema from UCLA.
He has traveled extensively around the world, from Australia to Papua New Guinea. He has also written fiction in just about every genre, and is known for his excellent movie novelizations. Currently, he lives in Prescott, Arizona, with his wife, assorted dogs, cats, fish, javelina and other animals, where he is working on several new novels and media projects.
AMY was only ten, and she didn’t want to die.
Not that she really understood death. Her only experience with it had come when they’d buried Gramma Marie. Now the funeral was a wisp of a dream that hung like cobweb in the corners of her memory, something she didn’t think of at all unless it bumped into her consciousness accidentally. Then it was no more than vaguely uncomfortable without being really hurtful.
She didn’t recall a whole lot about the ceremony itself. Black-clad grown-ups speaking more softly than she had ever heard them talk, her mother crying quietly into the fancy lace hankerchief she never wore anywhere, strange people bending low to tell her how very, very sorry they were: everything more like a movie than real life.
Mostly she remembered the skin of Gramma Marie’s face, so fine and smooth as she lay on her back in the big shiny box. The fleshy sheen mirrored the silken bright blue of the coffin’s upholstery. It was a waste of pretty fabric, she remembered thinking. Better to have made skirts and party dresses out of it than to bury it deep, deep in the ground. She liked that idea. She thought Gramma Marie would have liked it, too, but she couldn’t ask her about it now because Gramma Marie was dead, and people couldn’t talk to you anymore once they were dead. Not ever again. That was the thing she disliked most about death; not being able to talk to your friends anymore.
Thinking about it made her shiver slightly. She knew she was in big trouble, and she didn’t want to end up looking like Gramma Marie.
The potato vines and the carrots and the lettuce had not yet begun to die, though the leaves on the fruit trees were already starting to droop. Some had been killed by the explosion, torn to bits or ripped up and hurled violently against once another. One of the big pear trees had been blown to splinters. Smashed pears lay scattered across the floor like escapees from a Vermeer still life. Amy knew that the others would start dying soon, now that the hydroponic fluid that nourished their growth had stopped circulating and the special lights used to simulate the sun had gone out. The heaters were off, too, though some residual heat still emanated from their internal ceramic elements. The temperature was falling steadily, soaked up by the thirsty atmosphere of the rapidly cooling station module.
What really frightened her, though, wasn’t the darkness or the gathering cold. It was the persistent, angry hiss that came from the base of the wall at the far end of the module.
She couldn’t see the leak, but she could hear it. She tried putting some empty sacks over the hiss and then piling furniture on them. It muted the noise, but didn’t stop it. So she backed as far away from it as she could, all the way back across the module, as if retreating from a dangerous snake. There were four safety doors in the big module, designed to divide it into airtight quarters in the event of a leak. Not one of them had closed. She didn’t know why, but she guessed that the explosion had broken something inside them, too.
She wondered if she would know it when the air finally ran out. She would have asked Mr. Reuschel about it, but he was already dead. He didn’t look at all like Gramma Marie had. His mouth hung open and instead of lying neat and straight on his back he was all bent and twisted on the floor where the explosion had thrown him. She didn’t know for certain he was dead, but she was pretty sure. He didn’t reply to any of her questions and he didn’t move at all, not even when she touched his eye. When she put her palm up to his mouth the way she’d been taught to in school, she couldn’t feel anything moving against her skin.
He’d been the gardener on duty when everything had exploded. Daddy called him a hydroponics engineer, but Amy just thought of him as the gardener. Ms. Anwalt was the other gardener. Like everyone else on the station, she probably knew about the explosion by now and would want to check on the garden, but she couldn’t. No one could because the access door didn’t work anymore. The explosion had broken it just like it had broken Mr. Reuschel.
The door led to the lock, which led to the service corridor, which connected the hydroponics module to the rest of the station. Amy knew it was still connected because her feet weren’t floating off the floor. If the module had broken away from the rest of the station, then it wouldn’t be swinging around the central core, and if it wasn’t rotating around the central core, then she would be floating in zero-gee right now.
She wondered if Jimmy Sanchez was worried about her. She hoped so. Jimmy was twelve, the only other kid on the station. His parents were photovoltechs who spent their days drifting like butterflies around the huge solar panels which powered and heated the facility. Jimmy was pretty nice, for a boy. She liked him more than he liked her, but maybe, just maybe, he was thinking about her.
She knew Mum and Dad must be worrying about her, but she tried not to think about that because it made her sad. She thought of all the bad things she’d done as a little girl and wished now she hadn’t done them.
It was getting cold and she knew she should keep moving. She walked over to the rectangular port behind the tomato vines. Since all the overheads had gone out, the only light in the module came from the ports. Pressing her nose to the transparency enabled her to see the big blue sphere of the Earth outside, rotating slowly around the port.
Doing geography helped keep her mind off the chill. She located Britain, and Spain, and the boot of Italy. There was no cloud cover over the Alps and she saw the snow on the mountain-tops clearly. But the oceans were easiest to identify. They made her think of beaches, and the stinky-sweet smell of salt water, and the warm summer sun.
She was able to see her breath by the light of the Earth. Mr. Reuschel still hadn’t moved.
He didn’t protest as she struggled to get his jacket off. He was a grown-up and heavy and hard to move and it made her stomach feel queasy to try, but she kept pushing and shoving. His jacket was bulky-warm and covered her down to her knees.
Water dripped from a broken pipe, a comforting tinkling in the darkness. She drank and then did her best to wash the dirt off her face, the dirt from where she’d landed. She understood enough to be thankful for it. If the compost pile hadn’t been there to catch her and break her fall, she might be as twisted up as Mr. Reuschel.
After a moment’s thought she decided to sit down by the door. All of its internal LEDs had gone out, so she knew it still wasn’t working. The big manual lever was bent and twisted and wouldn’t move even when she put all her weight on it.
It was very dark next to the door and away from the ports, but somehow she felt better sitting there. Pouring through the ports, Earthlight made shadowy silhouettes of the trees and bushes. The cabin in Residential Module Six with her stuffed animals and seashells and snug second-tier bunk seemed very far away. It would’ve been easier if Jimmy, or anybody, had been there with her. But they weren’t. There was only poor Mr. Reuschel, and he was
