fold-out shelters the shuttle carried would have been more than big enough for the pitiful handful of “survivors” of this simulated crash, they dutifully laid out two, side by side in the faked wreckage, and pulled pins to let their struts inflate, forming roomy, angular domes. The shelters were bright orange, like their pressure suits, and were made of tough Kevlar surrounding an airtight inner hull. The shelters were soon hooked up to power units, air scrubbers and water recyclers, all retrieved from the crash and checked over for damage.
Mel decreed that pitons needed to be driven into the stony ground and guy ropes attached against the threat of wind, but the mocked-up radiation and ultraviolet readings his sensors supplied indicated they didn’t need any more in the way of radiation shielding, such as a layer of dirt over the fabric hulls. And he decided that for the sake of morale the shelters would be physically joined, with single-thickness zip-up panels leading to a connecting airlock between them.
With the crash site safed and the shelters secured, the crew clambered inside, crawling in with parcels of food and spare clothing. Don joined them, strictly breaking the rules of the sim. The two couples, Mel and Holle, Don and Kelly, took Alpha, as Mel had called his dome. Meanwhile Zane, Venus, Susan and Matt took Beta. Because of Zane’s fake leg break he had to be manhandled through the airlock into the shelter.
Holle and Mel crawled around their shelter gleefully, soon losing track of Kelly and Don. The interior was big, roomy, a masterpiece of fold-out architecture, with inflatable panels dividing the shelter up into wedge-shaped sectors, and a central pillar where they could set up a shower room and galley and do some science, investigating the planetary environment within which they were going to have to spend their lives.
But all that could wait. Almost at random Holle and Mel settled on a wedge sector to serve as their own. The sloping roof was just high enough, at the center, to stand. The light came from thick double-paned windows, and a wall panel that glowed brightly.
They threw their bundles of blankets and clothing on the floor and faced each other. With a rasp of Velcro Mel pushed back his hood, pulled his goggles away from his eyes, leaving red panda rims, and pulled his mask away from his mouth; it came off his skin with a sucking sound. He ran his hand over his close-shaved scalp. “Thank Christ for that.”
“You stink.”
“And you do a great slow strip out of an envo-suit.”
“You pervert.” She grabbed his chest panel and pulled; it came away easily, and then she pushed up his vest.
He went to work on her, unzipping zips and opening buckles and clasps and ripping Velcro seals. They were trained to get out of their suits fast, if need be, and were naked in seconds. He was already hard when he reached for her, and she squealed and jumped up at him. It took one lunge for him to be inside her, and then she had her arms around his neck, his strong hands under her thighs, and he walked, flexing his feet, letting gravity draw them together. Then, their lips locked, they fell together to the floor.
As with so many other aspects of their lives, they had practiced their lovemaking assiduously, and they were proficient.
Though she had known Mel since they had both been thirteen, when he and Matt Weiss had been foisted on the Candidate group by Gordo Alonzo, it was only recently, the last few months, that they had hooked up together. Holle still wasn’t sure why it was Mel who had emerged as her partner, out of the swirl of brief, intense relationships that had swept through the Candidate group like a firestorm when they were fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Their relationship had never been obvious, the way Thomas and Elle had been obvious since they were kids, or Mike Wetherbee and Miriam Brownlee, thrown together through their work. And Holle wasn’t a voracious sampler like Cora Robles who, starting with poor, hapless, loyal Joe Antoniadi, had worked her way through most of the unattached men in the cadre. Holle had even had a brief experimental fling with Kelly Kenzie, when they found themselves isolated together on one desert-training exercise on the Uncompahgre Plateau-they’d both enjoyed it, but decided once was enough. Maybe it was because Mel had come from outside, having spent his first dozen years with his air force family in an environment quite unlike the one in which Holle had grown up since the age of six. Maybe something in her longed to be grounded-ironic for a woman who was likely to spend most of her life drifting among the stars.
They lay together under a heap of blankets, and drank a little fruit juice.
And then they began again. This time Holle worked her way on top. She’d discovered a variant of the on- all-fours back-flexing yoga exercise called “cat” that drove him crazy.
Then they pulled on fresh AxysCorp coveralls, grabbed some food packets, and went to find the others.
As Holle had expected Kelly and Don were waiting for them at the transparent airlock, the narrow neck that connected the two shelters. Zane and Venus were there in Beta on the far side, easily visible through the lock’s faintly misty transparent panels. Zane was on a low fold-out chair with his “injured” leg thrust out before him; he was sharing a pack of hot food with Venus. There was no sign of Matt or Susan.
It was obvious that Kelly and Don had been making good of their opportunity just as had Holle and Mel. They sat huddled together, wrapped in blankets, sharing sips from a plastic flask. Kelly raised the flask to Holle. “Malt whiskey. Smuggled it in inside my suit.” Her blond hair was loose, and falling down her neck. Her eyes were sleepy, a half-smile on her lips, and the curve of her bare back showed where the blanket had fallen forward.
Holle smiled at her. “That’s what I call your just-fucked look.”
“Well, you should know.”
Zane and Venus worked doggedly at their food, their eyes lowered, and Holle regretted her remark.
Whenever sex came up among the Candidates, Zane and Venus and Matt always held back, or got out of the way altogether. None of them had been known to have a relationship with anybody in the Academy. Holle had had a whispered conversation about this with Kelly one night. Zane and Venus were both close to Harry Smith. Maybe Matt too. Kelly said bluntly that she thought Harry was running some kind of harem, of both men and women. Holle suspected she might be right. But none of the “harem” were talking. It was up to them to fight their own battles.
Mel asked, “So where’s Matt and Susan?”
“Matt’s off by himself,” Venus said. “Working, I think.”
Kelly frowned. “He spends too much time alone. He’ll be marked down for that.” On the crowded Ark, it mightn’t be possible to go off in isolation; you were supposed to socialize.
“And Susan’s gone out,” Zane said bluntly, around a mouthful of food.
“Out where? Oh, shit,” Don said. “Not to meet Pablo?” Pablo was a kid, a bit younger than Susan, from one of the big IDP camps near Denver. “She should keep away from eye-dees like him.”
Kelly reached out of her blanket and slapped his beefy arm. “Stop using that disgusting word.”
“Well, President Peery uses it,” said Venus, her eyes on Don, provocative. “All your DPD buddies use it-don’t they, Don?”
“What if they do? Just a word.”
“You still hanging around with those Covenanters?”
Don snapped, “That’s my business.”
The Covenanters were a quasi-religious network with a philosophy that justified personal survival. This had come out of the circles of the superrich, safe in their fortress-like gated communities and their vast oceangoing craft. In contrast to his predecessor President Peery endorsed their creed, and was plugging it in his speeches, as a justification for his regime’s treatment of refugees. Holle’s father said that he believed people were reaching for theological justifications for the cruelty they were forced to inflict by circumstance, and that was what Peery was providing. It might be a comfort for somebody like Don.
But Venus said, “Everything the Covenanters say disgusts me.”
Don took a slug of the liquor, unperturbed. “Everything you’ve heard, maybe. You want to come along on a patrol some time?”
“Can it,” Zane said sharply. “We’re going to be too busy to squabble. We just got sent an exercise for tomorrow.” He had a laptop at his feet. “I’ll send the details to your machines.”
Mel groaned. “What exercise?”
“They’re making us go through a root-and-branch review of the launch system, the Orion stage. The engineering decisions made so far. We have to come back with a retrospective report on everything: the use of
