says that in a month or two I’ll enjoy it there, but now just thinking about it makes me sick. I’ll say one thing for the crews here, they know how to build. All the tanks and the supporting equipment we asked for were ready and in place — and it all worked. A couple of hours ago I gave Jinx the treatment, and I have him stabilized now in Mode Two hibernation pattern. You’ll get the detailed logs with the official transmission, and all the video, too. But I thought you’d like to see something at once, so I’m going to run a clip for you right in with this. Here, see what you think of Jinx.”
Wolfgang took a long, deep breath and pressed the calling sequence. He did it slowly and painfully, with the fragile and exaggerated care of an old, old man. His fingers stumbled several times, but at last he had a correct pattern entered. He leaned back and massaged his midriff as a copy of the recorded video was displayed before him and simultaneously sent down as a signal to Earth. Jinx was shown at center screen. The bear was sitting upright on a bed of soft shavings, sniffing curiously at a massive chunk of fish protein held in his front paws. His long black tongue came out and licked tentatively at the flaky surface. The bear’s movements were a little jerky, but well- controlled and accurate. Wolfgang watched with approval as Jinx took a neat bite, chewed thoughtfully, then placed the rest of the protein block down on the shavings. When the mouthful was swallowed Jinx yawned and scratched peacefully at a fur-free patch on his left side. The implanted sensors there lay close to the surface of the skin, and it was still a little sensitive. After a few seconds more he picked up the fishy slab and the monstrous jaws began to nibble around it contentedly.
“Looks good, eh?” said Wolfgang. “You’ll see more when you get the full coverage later, but let me give you the bottom line now. We saw the first signs of this in those last experiments in Christchurch, and what JN had been predicting all along seems to hold up exactly. We hit the correct drug protocols right away this time. Jinx’s body temperature was seven degrees above freezing in that segment of video. His heart rate was one beat per minute — and still is. I estimate that his metabolic rate is down by a factor of about eighty. He’s slow, but he’s sure as hell not hibernating — look at him chew on that slab. What you’re seeing is speeded up, by a factor of sixty-eight over real time. The trickiest piece so far was finding something that Jinx is willing to eat. You know how picky he is. Seems like things feel different to him now, and he doesn’t like it. We got the consistency right after about twenty tries, and he seems to be feeding normally.”
Wolfgang rubbed ruefully at his midsection. “Lucky old Jinx. That’s more than I can say for myself. Best of all, his condition seems to be completely stable. I checked all the indicators a few minutes ago. I think we could hold him there for a month if we had to, maybe more.”
He cut back from the picture of the bear to real-time transmission. “That’s the report from this end, Charlene. Now I can relax. But I can’t wait for you and the others to get up here. I don’t know how biased the news coverage is that comes here to Salter Station, but we hear of trouble everywhere back on Earth. Cold wars, hot wars, and mouthing off in all directions. Did you know it hit sixty-two Celsius yesterday in Baluchistan — that’s nearly a hundred and forty-four Fahrenheit. They must be dying in droves. And did you get the reports from the U.N. Security Council? There’s talk of closing all national air space, and Hans is having real problems scheduling flights up — not just the usual red tape, either. He’s meeting blank walls. He’s been told there will be an indefinite suspension of all flights, from all spaceports, until the Earth situation normalizes again. And who knows when that will be? Wherry’s experts say the changes are here to stay — we’ve caused them ourselves with the fossil fuel programs.”
His hand moved toward the key that would end transmission, then paused. He looked uncertainly at the screen. “Hey, Hans told me one other thing I really didn’t want to hear. Dammit, I wish I knew just how secure this line is, but I’ll say it anyway. If it’s not common knowledge down at the Institute, Charlene, please keep it to yourself. It’s about JN. Did you know that she’s been taking a whole battery of neurological tests over at Christchurch Central? CAT scans, radioisotope tracers, air bubble tracers, the works. They’ve been probing her brain sixteen different ways. I hope she didn’t do something crazy back there, like using herself as a test subject for Institute experiments. Maybe you can check it out? I’d like to be sure she’s all right. Don’t ask me how Hans knew all this — the information they have up here about Earthside doings amazes me. I guess that’s all for now.”
Wolfgang pressed the key carefully and leaned back. Transmission terminated, and the circuit was broken.
He closed his eyes. That hadn’t been as bad as he expected. It definitely helped to have something good to concentrate on, to take your thoughts away from feeling nauseated. Think of something good. A sudden and startling memory of Charlene came to his mind, her long limbs and willowy body bending above him, and her dark hair falling loosely about her forehead. He grunted. Christ! If he could have thoughts like that, he must definitely be on the mend. Next thing you know he’d be able to face food again.
Maybe it was time for another test.
Wolfgang slowly steeled himself, then turned his head and looked out of the port. Now Spindletop was pointing down toward Earth, and he was facing an endless drop to the sunlit hemisphere beneath. Salter Station was flying over the brown wedge of the Indian subcontinent, with the greener oval of Sri Lanka just visible at its foot.
He gasped. As he watched the scene seemed to spin and warp beneath him, twisting through a strange and surrealistic mapping. He gritted his teeth and held on tight to the console edge. After thirty unpleasant seconds he could force himself to a different perspective. It was earth’s blue-and-white surface, mottled with brown-green markings, that was airy and insubstantial; Salter Station was real, tangible, solid. That was it. Cling to that thought. He was slowly able to relax his grip on the table in front of him.
It would be all right. Everything was relative. If Jinx could adapt to his new life, comfortable with a body temperature down near freezing, surely Wolfgang could become at ease with the much smaller changes produced by the move to Salter Station. Better forget self-pity, and get back to work.
Ignoring the twinges from his long-suffering stomach, Wolfgang forced himself to look out again as the station swept toward the Atlantic and the majestic curve of the day-night terminator.
Three more days, then the Institute staff would be on their way here. And if the news reports were correct, it would be just in time. In their fury and endless feuding, the governments of earth seemed all set to block the road to space itself.
CHAPTER TEN
Hans Gibbs had sent his cousin the briefest, uninformative message from the main control room. “Get your ass over here. On the double, or you’ll miss something you’ll never see again.”
Wolfgang and Charlene were in the middle of first inventory when that message came over the intercom. He looked at her and signed off the terminal at once. “Come on.”
“What, right now?” Charlene shook her head protestingly. “We’re just getting started. I promised Cameron we’d have this place organized and ready to go to work when they got here. We only have a few more hours.”
“I know. But I know Hans, too. He always understates. It must be something special. Let’s go, we’ll finish this later.”
He took her hand and began to pull her along, showing off his hard-won experience with low gee. Charlene had been on Salter Station less than twenty-four hours, the second person to make full transfer from the Institute. It seemed grossly unfair to Wolfgang that she hadn’t suffered even one moment of freefall sickness. But at least she didn’t have his facility yet for easy movement. He tugged her and spun her, adjusting linear and angular momentum. After a few moments Charlene realized that she should move as little as possible, and let him drag her along as a fixed-geometry dead weight. They glided rapidly along the helical corridor that led to the central control area. Hans was waiting for them when they arrived, his attention on a display screen showing Earth at screen center. The image was being provided from a geostationary observing satellite, 22,000 miles up, so the whole globe showed as a ball that filled most of the screen.
“You won’t see anything ship-sized from this distance,” Hans said. “So we have to fake it. If we want to see spacecraft, the computer generates the graphics for them and merges it all into the display. Watch, now. I’m taking us into that mode. The action will start in a couple of minutes.”
Charlene and Wolfgang stood behind him as Hans casually keyed in a short command sequence, then leaned
