Falling Free

nothing goes wrong biologically, she thought, and had the last-minute wit not to say aloud.

Patty still looked unhappy. “Yes, but birth is only the beginning. Working for GalacTech kept us busy, but we’ve been working three times as hard since this escape-thing came up. And you’d have to be a dim bulb not to see it’s going to get harder later. There’s no end in sight. How are we going to handle it all and babies too? I’m not sure I think much of this freedom-stuff. Leo talks it up, but freedom for who? Not me. I had more free time working for the company.”

“You want to go report to Dr. Curry?” suggested Emma.

Patty shrugged uncomfortably. “No…”

“I don’t think by freedom he means free time,” said Claire thoughtfully. “More like survival. Like—like not having to work for people who have a right to shoot us if they want.” A twinge of harsh memory edged her voice, and she softened it self-consciously. “We’ll still have to work, but it will be for ourselves. And our children.”

“Mostly our children,” said Patty glumly. “That’s not all bad,” remarked Emma. Claire thought she caught a glimpse of the source of Patty’s pessimism. “And next time—if you want a next time— you can choose who will father your baby. There won’t be anybody around to tell you.” Patty brightened visibly. “That’s true…” Claire’s reassurances seemed effective; the talk drifted to less threatening channels for a while. Much later, the airseal doors parted, and Pramod stuck his head in.

“We got Silver’s signal,” he said simply. Claire sang out in joy; Patty and Emma hugged each other, whirling in air.

Pramod held out a cautionary hand. “Things haven’t started yet. You’ve got to stay in here a while longer.”

“No, why?” Emma cried.

“We’re waiting for a special supply shuttle from downside. When it docks is the new signal for things to start happening.”

Claire’s heart thumped. “Tony—did they get Tony aboard?”

Pramod shook his head, his dark eyes sharing her pain. “No, fuel rods. Leo’s really anxious about them. He’s afraid that without them we might not have enough power to boost the Habitat all the way out to the wormhole.”

“Oh—yes, of course.” Claire folded back into herself.

“Stay in here, hang on, and ignore any emergency klaxons you may hear,” said Pramod. His lower hands clenched together in a gesture of encouragement, and he withdrew.

Claire settled back to wait. She could have wept with the tension of it, but Patty and Emma didn’t need the bad example.

Bruce Van Atta pressed a finger to one side of his nose, squeezing the nostril shut, and sniffed mightily, then switched sides and repeated the procedure. Damn free fall and its lack of proper sinus drainage, among its other discomforts. He could hardly wait to get back to Earth. Even dismal Rodeo would be an improvement. He wondered idly if he could whip up some excuse—go inspect the quaddie barracks being readied, perhaps. That could be stretched out to about five days, if he worked it right.

He drifted over and shored himself across one corner of Dr. Yei’s pie-wedge-shaped office, sighting over her desk, his back to a flat inner wall and his feet braced where her magnet-board curved, thick with stuck-on papers and flimsies. Yei’s lips tightened with annoyance, as she swivelled to face him. He hitched his feet to a comfortably crossed position, deliberately letting them muss her papers, out-psyching the psycher. She glanced back to her holovid display, declining to rise to the bait, and he mussed a few more. Female wimp, he thought. A relief, that they had only a few weeks left to work together, and he didn’t have to jolly her up any more.

“So,” he prodded, “how far along are we?”

“Well, I don’t know how you’re doing—in fact,” she added rather venomously, “I don’t even know what you’re doing—”

Van Atta grinned in appreciation. So the worm could wriggle after all. Some administrators might have taken offense at the implied insubordination; he congratulated himself upon his sense of humor.

“– but so far I’ve finished orienting about half the staff to their new assignments.”

“Anybody give you a hard time? I’ll play bad guy, if necessary,” he offered nobly, “and go lean on the non- cooperative.”

“Everybody is naturally rather shocked,” she replied, “however, I don’t think your… direct intervention will be required.” “Good,” he said jovially.

“I do think it would have been better to tell them all at once. This business of releasing the information in bits and dribbles invites just the sort of rumor-mongering that is least desirable.”

“Yeah, well, it’s too late now—”

His words were cut short by the startling hoot of an alarm klaxon, shrilling out over the intercom. Yei’s holovid was abruptly overridden by the Central Systems emergency channel.

A hoarse male voice, a strained face—good God, it was Leo Graf—sprang from the display.

“Emergency, emergency,” Graf called—where was he calling from?—”we are having a depressurization emergency. This is not a drill. All Habitat downsider staff should proceed at once to the designated safe area and remain there until the all-clear sounds—”

On the holovid, a computer-generated map sketched itself showing the shortest route from this terminal to the designated safe modules—module, Van Atta saw. Holy shit, the pressurization drop must be Habitat-wide. What the hell was going on?

“Emergency, emergency, this is not a drill,” Graf repeated.

Yei too was staring bug-eyed at the map, looking more like a frog than ever. “How can that be? The sealing system is supposed to isolate the problem area from the rest—”

“I bet I know,” spat Van Atta. “Graf’s been messing with the Habitat’s structure, preparatory to salvage— I’ll bet he, or his quaddies, just screwed something up royally. Unless it was that idiot Wyzak did something—come on!”

“Emergency, emergency,” Graf’s voice droned on, “this is not a drill. All Habitat downsider staff should proceed at once—son-of-a-bitch !” His head snapped around, winked out, leaving only the urgently pulsing map on the display.

Van Atta beat Yei, whose eye was still caught by the map, out the door to her office and through the airseal doors at the end of the module that should have been sealed and weren’t. The doors seemed to sag half- opened, controls dead, useless, as Van Atta and Yei joined a babbling stream of staffers speeding toward safety. Van Atta swallowed, cursing his sinuses, as one ear popped and the other, throbbing, failed to. Adrenalin-spurred anxiety shivered in his stomach.

Lecture Module C was already mobbed when they arrived, with downsiders in every state of dress and undress. One of the Nutrition staff had a case of frozen food clutched under her arm—Van Atta rejected the notion that she had inside information about the duration of the emergency and decided she must have simply had it in her hands when the alarm sounded and not thought to drop it before she fled.

“Close the door!” howled a chorus of voices as his and Yei’s group entered. A distinct breeze sighed past them, rising to a whistle cut to silence as the doors sealed.

Chaos and babble ruled in the crowded lecture module.

“What’s going on?”

“Ask Wyzak.”

“He’s out there, surely, dealing with it.”

“If not, he’d better get the hell out there—”

“Is everybody here?”

“Where are the quaddies? What about the quaddies?”

“They have their own safe area, this isn’t big enough.”

“Their gym, probably.”

“I didn’t catch any directions for them on the holovid, to the gym or anywhere else—”

“Try the comm.”