The Aftermath

collecting ores from the miners and selling them to the big corporations at Ceres. She raised her daughter and her son, content to make the tiny world of the ore carrier Syracuse her island of home, her whole universe.

When the occasional violence in the Belt flared into the Second Asteroid War, Victor told her, “Not to worry. We don’t belong to either corporation. Nobody’s going to attack the independents; that would stop the flow of resources from the Belt and neither Humphries nor Astro wants that.”

She believed her husband. Until that moment when their ship was nearly destroyed by an anonymous attacker.

Now she tried to sleep, alone in her bed, desperately afraid that she would never see Victor again, almost frantic with the fear that she kept stifled all day, each day, every waking moment. She couldn’t let her children see her fear. But alone in the dark, it threatened to overwhelm her.

ORE SHIP SYRACUSE: GALLEY

Theo eyed the steaming roast on his plate.

“Eat up,” his mother urged. “This is the last feast we’re going to have for a long time. Tomorrow we start rationing our provisions. We’ve got to make them last.”

Theo was too tired to eat. For the past six days he had spent virtually every waking moment trying to repair the ship, directing the tiny-brained maintenance., robots to weld patches where the wheel and the tunnels had been punctured, worming his way into the narrow access tubes to reconnect wiring, digging through the logistics storage bays to find the spare parts that he needed for the repairs. Most of his evenings he spent in the backup command pod, bringing systems back on line. He saw through eyes bleary with fatigue that one by one the red lights on the display panels were turning to green or at least amber. Mostly amber, but that was the best he could accomplish.

The fuel supply for the fusion reactor worried him most. Without the reactor the ship’s electrical power systems would go down. When that happened, the lights, the air and water recyclers, the food refrigerators and microwave cookers would go down too.

The navigation program told him that they were coasting deeper into the Belt, away from help, away from the rest of the human race. He knew the ship didn’t have enough fuel to change their course significantly. For a while he hoped that they might drift outward far enough to reach the research station orbiting Jupiter, but the navigation program showed that would be impossible unless they added a major jolt of thrust to their velocity vector, and there wasn’t enough hydrogen left in the tanks for anything like that.

They were going to die aboard Syracuse, Theo realized: probably of asphyxiation, certainly of starvation. All his brave thoughts and hard work could not change that.

“Theo,” his mother said gently. “I know you’re tired. But you’ve got to eat to keep up your strength.”

He focused on her face smiling encouragingly from across the narrow galley table.

“Right, Mom,” he mumbled, digging a fork into his dinner.

Angie’s appetite seemed normal, even better than normal, he thought. His sister was chewing on a slab of roast pseudomeat: artificial protein created by cellular biologists and marketed to the rock rats and other spacefarers as Faux Beef (or pork, or veal, or even pheasant).

“So our food stores are okay,” he muttered, pushing the meat around his plate listlessly.

“Enough for years, if we’re careful,” his mother said guardedly as she got up and went to the galley’s stainless steel sink.

Theo glanced at Angie, munching away. Dieting will do her good, he thought. But he didn’t say it. Instead, he told his mother, “We’re going to need enough for years.”

Angie looked up at him, startled. “For years?”

“Looks that way.”

“But you said the fusion engine was okay, didn’t you?”

He gave his sister a bleak look. “The engine’s fine, Angie. But when that freaking illegitimate slagged our antennas he ripped up the fuel tanks as well. They’re just about dry. Only two cells out of twenty have any hydrogen left in them.”

He saw his mother’s hands clench on the sink’s edge; her knuckles went white.

“I’ve shut down the engine until I can figure out some way to get us turned around and headed back to civilization. We’re coasting now.”

Pauline made a brittle little smile. “Then I suppose we’ll just have to coast for a while.”

“For how long?” Angie asked, looking suspicious, as if this was some kind of trick Theo was playing on her.

He pursed his lips, then replied, “Right now we’re on a trajectory that takes us halfway to Jupiter before we curve back and start toward the inner Belt again.”

“How long?” Angie repeated.

He had memorized the numbers. “Three thousand, one hundred and thirty-seven days,” Theo said.

“Three thousand—”

“That’s eight years, seven months and four days.”

“Eight years? I’ll be twenty-six years old!”

“That’s to get us back to Ceres,” Theo explained, “where we were when we were attacked, more or less.”

Pauline went to her daughter and laid a calming hand on Angie’s shoulder. “We have enough food to last that long,” she said. “If we’re careful. And we recycle our water and air, so life support shouldn’t be an issue.”

If all the equipment keeps on working, Theo countered silently.

“Can’t you do something, Thee?” Angie asked, her face agonized. “I mean, eight years!”

“I’m working on it,” he said. “Maybe we can use what little fuel we have left to cut the time down. But I’ve got to be real careful. I don’t want to make things worse than they are now.”

“How could they get worse?” Angie grumbled.

“Is there any chance of repairing the antennas?” Pauline asked. “Then we could call for help.”

Theo nodded. “That’s my next priority. There must be some ships in this region of the Belt. Miners, other rock rats.”

“Sure!” said Angie, brightening a little.

“Trouble is,” Theo went on, “we’ve been busting along at a pretty high delta vee. Dad goosed the main engines before he split.”

“So we’re accelerating too much for another ore ship or a miner to reach us?” Pauline asked.

“I’ve shut down the main engine,” Theo repeated. “We’re not accelerating anymore, just coasting. But still, we’re spitting along damn fast. I don’t know if one of the rock rats could catch up to us, even if they wanted to.”

His mother didn’t flinch at his minor vulgarity. She’s just as scared as Angie, Theo thought, but she hides it better.

“Eight years,” Angie repeated, in a whisper.

Theo nodded. He knew their hydrogen fuel wouldn’t last anywhere near that long. The reactor would shut down and the ship would lose all its electrical power well before then. They’d freeze and choke to death when the heaters and air recyclers shut down.

“Well then,” their mother said, as brightly as she could manage, “once the antennas are working again we can call for assistance. With Chrysalis gone, there must be a lot of rock rats stranded out here in the Belt calling back toward Earth for help.”

“Guess so,” Theo said.

“So fixing the antennas is our first priority,” Pauline continued. “Thee, what can we do to help you?”

He glanced at Angie and thought, Keep out of my way. But to his mother he said, “I don’t know yet. I’ve got some studying to do.”