The Aftermath

* * *

In Syracuse’s backup command pod, Theo felt like screaming or pounding his gloved fists against the control board. He had carefully switched on the pod’s electrical power, then booted up the control instruments and sensors one at a time, to make certain he didn’t overload the system and trip any circuits.

Now he stared at the red lights glaring at him from one end of the panel to the other. Propulsion fuel tanks. Air reserve tanks. Structural integrity. All in the red. The fusion reactor and main engine were undamaged, apparently, but the level of hydrogen fuel left in the battered tanks was dangerously, critically low. The fusion reactor generated the ship’s electrical energy and powered the main engine. At the rate the engine was roaring along now, the tanks would be totally dry in hours.

Theo shut down the main engine. We’re going to need that aitch-two for electrical power, he thought. We can coast for the time being: Dad had us going like a bat out of Hades to get away from that murdering son of a female dog.

He began to use the cameras on the ship’s tiny maintenance robots to assess the damage to the ship’s structure.

“God, she’s falling apart,” he whispered to himself. When the attacker slagged the antennas his laser beams sliced through the hull of that section of the wheel, gutting their main propulsion fuel tanks. Penetrated to the tunnels, too, Theo saw. That’s how we lost the air in there.

Sitting in the command chair, Theo realized that Syracuse was badly damaged and heading deeper into the Belt, away from Ceres, away from any chance of help. The antennas are gone, our fuel is down to a couple of days’ worth, we’re going to lose electrical power and die.

For the first time since he’d been a baby Theo wanted to cry. He wanted to curl up into a fetal ball and let his fate overtake him. But that would mean Mom and Angie would die too.

He lifted his chin a notch. It’s up to me, he told himself. I’ve got to repair this damage. Angie can’t do it, not by herself anyways. I’ve got to get this ship back in operating condition and heading toward civilization. I’ve got to keep Mom and Angie alive.

He thought that his father would know what to do and how to do it. But Dad’s gone. There’s nobody here but me.

“It’s up to me now,” he said aloud.

ORE SHIP SYRACUSE: LAVATORY

Angela stepped out of the shower stall vigorously rubbing a towel over her body. As she tucked it around her and wrapped a second towel over her wet hair she muttered something.

Pauline was at the sink brushing her teeth. The mirror was fogging from the steam of her daughter’s shower. She rubbed a clear spot with a hand towel as Angela finished drying herself.

“It’s not fair,” Angela muttered again.

Pauline rinsed her mouth, then asked, “What’s not fair?”

“Theo’s got a lav all to himself while we’re bumping into each other in here.”

“Theo shared the other lav with your father when he was here,” Pauline said.

“Still, it’s not fair. He ought to—”

Pauline silenced her daughter with a stern glance. “Angela, you’ve got to stop fighting with your brother.”

“Me?” She seemed genuinely shocked. “He’s the one who’s always calling me names, yelling that I boss him around. I’m the older one, he ought to be taking orders from me.”

“Young lady,” Pauline said, the way she always did when she was about to tell her daughter something Angela didn’t want to hear, “I will say this only once more. I want you to stop arguing with Theo. He’s had an enormous burden of responsibility dumped on his shoulders.”

“Me too!”

“Yes, I know, but Theo’s a male and he automatically assumes he’s got to take charge.”

“That’s dumb.”

“Maybe it is, but you and I will have to deal with it. Thee would welcome help from you if only you’d be pleasant about it and stop calling him names.”

“I don’t—”

“Angela, you’re the older sibling. It’s up to you to set the tone between you and your brother. I will not have you two bickering over every little thing that comes up. We’re in enough danger here, we all need to work together if we’re going to survive.”

Angela sagged back onto the edge of the sink. “Are we really in that much trouble?”

“Yes, we are.”

She stared down at her bare toes for several moments. Then, in a low voice, “Do you think Dad really ran away?”

“Not for a picosecond,” Pauline said firmly. “He lured that attacker away from us. He saved our lives.”

“Do you think he’s… he got killed?”

Pauline had to pull in a breath before she could reply, “No.”

“Really, Ma? Really and truly?”

“Really and truly, my little angel. He’s not dead. I know it in my bones. He’s out there somewhere trying to find us, trying to save us.”

Angela threw her arms around her mother’s neck. “I’ll be good, Ma, I promise,” she said tearfully. “I’ll treat Theo better, you’ll see.”

“I know,” Pauline said, holding her daughter in her arms. “I know.”

That night, as she slipped into her oversized bed alone, Pauline thought that she should have a talk with Theo, as well. It takes two to make a fight; Angela’s not the only one who needs to improve her behavior.

She turned out the lights and lay back on her pillow. The bed seemed empty, lonely without Victor beside her. He’s not dead, Pauline told herself. He left us to decoy that attacker away from us, to save us from being destroyed. He got away, I know he did. I’d know if he were dead. I’d feel it, somehow.

Pauline Osgood Zacharias was made of strong fiber. Born in Selene while her astronomer parents were teaching at the university there, she had grown up in the sunless corridors and confined living quarters of that underground city. To Pauline, the “outdoors” meant strolling along the winding pathways of Selene’s Grand Plaza, beneath its arching concrete dome, admiring the miniature trees and shrubbery that the lunar citizens so lovingly tended.

She was fifteen before her parents allowed her to go without them out onto the surface of the giant crater Alphonsus. Selene was dug into the crater’s ringwall mountains, and the area out on the flat was dotted with solar-cell farms, factories that took advantage of the Moon’s airlessness, and the Armstrong Spaceport, where ships took off for Earth or other worlds deeper in the solar system.

She studied astronomy, just as her parents had. But by the time she was ready to graduate, a family crisis arose. Her parents were preparing to return to Earth. Despite the greenhouse floods and the devastation of so many cities—or perhaps because of that—her parents felt they had to go back to the homeworld, back to their roots in Colorado. Pauline desperately wanted to stay on the Moon. She was working as a teaching assistant at the new astronomy complex being built at Farside. She had met Victor Zacharias and fallen in love with him.

Her parents left for Earth, with Pauline’s promise that she and Victor would come to visit them as soon as they could. But by the time Pauline and her newly married husband reached Denver it was too late: both her parents had been killed in a food riot.

She clung to Victor then, returned to the Moon, bore him two children, and went with him when he decided to become a rock rat, to live aboard a rattletrap ship he had managed to lease, to ply through the Asteroid Belt