“Don’t think, Marten. Do.”
He wondered if Nadia would keep her appointment. He hoped so. Then the stim kicked in and he increased the pace.
17.
Marten staggered, caught himself and leaned against the wall as he wheezed. He shivered and wondered if he was sick.
“Marten?”
He willed himself upright. Nadia looked better than he remembered. Her hair was combed, her face clean and not disheveled. She seemed worried for him. He liked that, and smiled.
“You look awful,” she said.
He used his sleeve to wipe his forehead.
“And you’re shivering,” she said.
He felt cold, that’s true.
“Are you sure you can do this?” she asked.
“How have you been?”
“You’re kidding, right? I’m hunted. I’ve lost my job. If I get caught I’m dead. Oh, I’ve been fine. You?”
“Did you bring water?”
She stared at him before handing him a flask.
He drained it despite the queasiness in his stomach. He needed fluids. “Do you have any more?”
“You’re a camel,” she asked, handing him a second flask.
He drained that one too, although he almost threw up. The sweat on his face started to dry. He shivered, feeling colder than before.
“I don’t think you can do this,” she said.
“I’m not dead.”
“Is that supposed to be funny?”
“When I’m dead I’ll quit. Until then it’s simply mind over matter.”
“Oh, you’re one of those. You can think things into existence. Like bullets in the belly wouldn’t stop you, not if you will-powered them away.”
He grinned. “It’s good to see you, Nadia.” He opened the duffel bag, pulled out the vacc suit and started donning it. She already wore hers.
“Do you really think we can do this?” she asked.
“Did you bring the line and the magnetic anchor?”
“It was all where you said it should be. How did you get it? That’s what I kept wondering.”
“It was stashed several years ago,” he said.
Interest flickered on her face. “Who put it there?”
“Me.”
“You lived here before the war?” she asked in surprise.
“My parents were Unionists. PHC got them both.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
He shrugged. “That was several years ago.”
She stepped closer and touched his face. “You were a Nonconformist?”
“The square peg,” he said bitterly.
“When you say that, your eyes…” She nodded. “Maybe we
“Ready?” he asked, with the vacc helmet in his hands.
“Do you have stims?” she asked.
“If I take another one, my heart will explode. But I still have a lot of will power.”
She shook her head. “If you can joke about it, it can’t be that bad.”
“Right,” he said, putting on the helmet and snapping the seals. He still felt nauseous and shivered, but this was the time to do it. He hefted the magnetic anchor, a long flexible coil-line and the tool kit she’d brought that his mother had once made. All this was backup equipment from a time he would rather forget. He sighed. He’d better remember if he wanted off the Sun Works.
A valve hissed and oxygen flooded his vacc suit. Nadia was ready, so he moved to the hatch.
A few minutes later, they exited the airlock and switched on their boots. With a metallic clang, clang, clang they walked outside the Sun Works, the magnetic attraction keeping them on the shadowy side of the station. The Plexiglas dome was to their right, but now they were looking into the hab, not out. From their subjective sense, Mercury loomed above, while all around in the distance moved a myriad of lights that indicated repair pods, shuttles and various spacecraft, hundreds, maybe thousands of them in an ever moving, shifting pattern.
Marten pointed. Nadia nodded. They didn’t have radios or comlinks. This was going to be done with hand signals. She came beside him. He couldn’t see into her helmet. Like his, the visor was polarized against sun-glare. She grabbed his free hand. He smiled, but all he saw was her dark visor.
Hand-in-hand they moved one hundred meters. He checked his bearings, stopped and pointed at the dead pod floating above, the small engine with a dome built around a pilot’s seat and that had three arms, a clamping arm, a laser-welder arm and an arm that riveted. The pod had the same velocity-spin as the habitat and therefore stayed at exactly the same relative position. It was nearly a hundred meters out of reach.
Marten attached the anchor to the Sun Works and snapped the line to it. The other end of the line he snapped to his belt. He switched off his magnetic boots, judged the distance and leaped at the dead pod. He floated from Nadia. He looked back and waved. She waved back. Then he watched the nearing pod. Closer, closer, he stretched and tried to claw it. Then he relaxed and sighed as he floated past the pod by several arms-lengths. He started reeling himself back to the magnetic anchor, looping the line as he went. Nadia reeled him from her end. In time, he was back on the Sun Works. He studied the pod, gauged his earlier failure and remembered that both the satellite and the pod moved as he sailed through space. He leaped again, floated toward it, closer, closer—his fingertips brushed across the pod’s skin, sliding, sliding. Then his fingers curled around a float rail. He hung on. His momentum pulled him and his forearm strained. He used his other hand and pulled himself to the pod, and switched on his boots.
Marten whooped with delight, the sound loud in his helmet, and he no longer shivered. He began to explore.
The pod wasn’t locked, which was a big break. He wedged himself into the tiny cabin. The controls looked fine. He tried turning it on. Dead. Nothing. Okay, he hadn’t expected it to work. He used tools from the kit and pulled out a panel. A blown fuse box. He hoped that was all that was wrong with the pod.
He moved outside, attached the line and hand over hand hauled himself to Nadia. Together, very gently, they tugged the pod toward them. Its mass was several tons, so they didn’t want to build up momentum. Instead, they waited fifteen minutes until it arrived. Then they used gentle pressure to stop it and they dragged it with them and secured it near the airlock. That was all they could do for now, so they entered the airlock, waited for it to pressurize and soon stepped into the observation pit.
He took off his helmet.
“You did it,” she said, hugging him.
They laughed. He peered into her eyes and that was a mistake. She was beautiful and he kissed her.
She arched her head, staring at him in surprise.
A mixture of impulses surged through him. He ignored the ones that said slow down, this might not be wise. He put his hand behind her head and kissed her again. She responded, and then both his arms were around her.
“Marten,” she whispered.
He pulled back, blinking, finally thinking about what he was doing. “I have to go,” he said.
“Not now.”
