You’ll get home. To Nick’s home. That’s what you care about.
The explorer shuddered. A sudden intense cold burned Margot’s shin. A red warning light flashed on her visor screen.
No!
A black gash cut across her gleaming yellow suit. The joints at knee and ankle sealed off automatically. Margot fumbled for the roll of sealant tape on her belt. As she did, the explorer began to slide backward, away from the comet, toward the Forty-Niner to the limit of the tether. The movement dragged her back against her straps. Her glove gripped the tape reel. Pain bit deep.
Hang on, hang on. Lose the tape and you’re gone. You’re all gone. The stranger’ll have you if you lose the tape.
The tug grew stronger. Margot felt her body shoved backward to the limits of its straps. A weight pressed hard against her ribs, her throat, her heart. After years of zero g, the acceleration gripped her hard and squeezed until her breath came fast and shallow.
Ahead of her, the Forty-Niner began to swing. A slow, sinuous movement that transmitted itself along the tether. It pulled the explorer to starboard, tilting her personal world, confusing her further, adding to the pain that screamed through every nerve.
Slowly, slowly she pulled the roll of tape from her belt. She grasped it in both clumsy, gloved hands. The explorer shimmied. Her body bounced up, then down, hard enough to jar her. The tape slipped. Margot screamed involuntarily and clung to it so hard she felt the flimsy reel crumple.
“Margot?” Jean’s stranger. “Margot? What’s happening?”
“Don’t unstrap!” came back Nick’s stranger. “Jean, stay where you are.”
Right, right. Why risk anything for me? I’m not a stranger.
She leaned forward as if leaning into a gale wind. Black spots danced in front of her vision. She saw red through the gash, as if her leg glowed with its pain. She jounced and shuddered. More hits. The explorer was taking more hits from cometary debris. She couldn’t steady her hands enough to lay down the tape.
Margot bit her lip until she tasted blood. She pressed the tape reel against the black gash, pushed the release button down and pulled, hard. A strip of clean white tape covered the black scoring.
The red light on her suit display turned green and the joints unsealed. Her suit was whole again.
Margot let herself fall backward, gasping for air, gasping for calm against the pain. Her left leg from ankle to knee would be one gigantic blood blister. But she was alive. The stranger hadn’t got her yet. She hugged the tape to her chest. The Forty-Niner started swinging slowly back to port. Gravity leaned hard against her. Her heart labored, as if trying to pump sideways. Her stomach heaved. Her whole body strained against the straps.
She closed her eyes and tried to reach outward with every nerve, trying to feel the clamps and catches as she could her fingers and toes, wishing she could hear something, anything, a straining, a snapping. All there was was silence and the unbearable pressure driving her ribs into her lungs.
“Forty-Niner to Explorer One.” Nick’s stranger. What did he want? To find out if her stranger had swallowed her yet?
Not yet, Sir. Not yet.
“Margot? Margot, it looks like you’re venting something. Report.”
Venting? Margot’s gaze jerked down to the monitor between her flight sticks. Red lights flashed. She didn’t need to read the message. The diagram showed everything. The methane tank had been hit and all her fuel was streaming out into the void, leaving nothing at all for her to use to guide the explorer back to Forty-Niner.
She was stuck. She would hang out here.until her air ran out. She was dead all over again.
All at once, the vibrations ceased. She was flying smooth and free, gliding like a bird on a sea wind with only the most gentle roll to perturb her flight.
“We have tether release!” cried Jean’s stranger.
Margot looked up. A silver line lashed through the clean, sparkling white of the coma.
Tether release. They’d done it. It had worked. The strangers were all on their way home. She looked again at her her own fountain of crystals streaming out behind her, a comet’s tail in miniature.
That roll’ll get worse. They’ll have to correct for it. They’ll have to fire the rockets and catch me in the blast and tell Jordan and mission control how sorry they were.
Nick’s stranger spoke to her again. “Margot, we gotta get you in here. If your fuel’s gone, can you haul on the tether? Margot?”
“She’s not receiving, Nick. The headset must be out. I gotta get down there.”
All gone. Nothing to do. Pain throbbed in her head, crowding out her thoughts.
“Margot, pull!”
She couldn’t move. Pain, bright and sharp, burned through her. All she could do was watch the crystal stream of her fuel drift away into the vacuum.
Margot Rusch is dead.
“Margot! Answer me! Pull, Margot!”
She’s been dead for weeks.
“Come on, Margot. I got a green on your headset. Now answer me, damnit!”
The stranger wins. She got Margot Rusch after all.
“She didn’t even get a chance to say good-by to Jordan. That’s the bad part,” she murmured.
“Margot?” came back the voice of Nick’s stranger. “Margot, this is Nick. We’re receiving you. Acknowledge.”
Why are they still calling her Margot? They must know the stranger had her by now. She would have liked to know the stranger’s name. Maybe she wouldn’t mind burning to ash when they fire the correction burst. Margot Rusch certainly wouldn’t mind. Margot Rusch was dead.
The explorer jerked. Mildly curious, Margot looked toward the Forty-Niner A figure in a bright yellow hard-suit leaned out of the ship’s airlock. Its hands hauled on the tethers, as if they were hauling on curtain cords. The Forty-Niner drew minutely closer and the pair of ships began to spin ever so gently around their common center. Margot felt herself leaning the straps.
“Margot Rusch!” Nick’s voice. Nick’s stranger? A quick burst fired from the Forty-Niner’s port nozzle. The spin slowed.
“Margot Rusch, wake up, you stupid fly-jock and pull!” Jean now. Jean’s stranger? Jean’s stranger trying to save Margot Rusch’s stranger?
Jean trying to save her? But she was dead, as dead as Ed and Paul and Tracy and Tom.
No, not Tom. Tom’s still alive.
What if I’m still alive?
Cold and pain inched up her leg and emptied into her knee, her thigh. Her head spun. Readings flashed in the corner of her helmet. The suit had sealed itself. Blood pressure was elevated, respiration fast, shallow, pulse elevated. Recommend termination of EVA.
“Margot Rusch, help her get your butt back in here!” shouted Nick.
Margot leaned as far forward as the straps would let her. Her gloved fingers grappled with the tether and snared some of the slack. Margot pulled. The Forty-Niner came a little closer. The suited figure became a little clearer.
“I knew you were still with us!” cried Jean, jubilantly. “Come on, Margot. Pull!”
Margot pulled. Her arms strained, her joints ached. Her suit flashed red warnings. The Forty-Niner moved closer. The spin tried to start, but another burst from the engines stalled it out again. Margot’s breath grew harsh and echoing in the con- . fining helmet. Her lungs burned. The cold pain reached her hip and started a new path down her fingers. The Forty-Niner filled her world now, its white skin, its instrumentation, its black stenciled letters and registry numbers.
And Jean. She could see Jean now, hauling on the tether as if it was her life depending on it. She could even see her eyes. Her eyes and herself, her soul, looking out through them. Margot knew if she looked at Nick she would see him too. Not strangers, not anymore. Maybe not ever.
They had done what they had done. Maybe Nick had faked that message, maybe they’d had help from unknown friends. They’d sort it all out when they got home. What mattered now was that they would get home, all of them, as they were. Not
strangers, just themselves.
Margot grabbed up another length of tether and pulled.
THE GOOD RAT
Allen Steele
Allen Steele’s (born 1958) fiction often addresses the influence of science fiction on science and technology. (Gregory Benford is a minor character in his new novel, Chronospace [2001].) He came on the scene as a hard SF writer with his first novel in 1989, Orbital Decay. It was followed by Clarke County, Space (1990) and Lunar Descent (1991), which are also set between Earth and the Moon and belong in the same future history, which Steele calls the NearSpace series.
His short fiction is collected in three volumes, Rude Astronauts (1993), All-American Alien Boy (1996), and Sex and Violence in Zero G (1999), which collects the short fiction in the Near Space series and provides a list of the series, “all arranged in chronological order,” he says on his Web site. “And for the first time I’m actually putting in the timeline, so somebody can flip to the appendix and look and see when these stories all occur. It’s sort of my answer to Niven’s Tales of Known Space, or even Heinlein’s Past through Tomorrow.” The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says that although Steele “tends to export unchanged into space, decades hence, the tastes and habits of 1970s humanity, he manages to convey a verisimilitudinous sense of the daily round of those men and women who will be patching together the ferries, ships and space habitats necessary for the next steps into space.” He has gone on to become one of the leading young hard SF writers of the 1990s, with a talent for realism and a penchant for portraying the daily, gritty problems of living and working in space in the future. His background is professional newspaper journalism and his fiction has been called “working class hard SF,” because of his regular choice of ordinary people as characters (see also, earlier Brin note), and because of his generally left-leaning politics. In an essay, “Hard Again” (The New York Review of Science Fiction, 1992), he said:
I find it fascinating to work in this environment. This is one of the reasons I continue to write short fiction: I feel like I’m writing for Astounding in the forties under Campbell! We’re right in the middle of a second Golden Age. In twenty years or so, there are going to be historians and fans looking back at the 1990s and saying, “My god, there were giants walking the earth then! Take a look at what was going on in Asimov’s! Jesus, there were classic stories in every issue! That’s when all these great new writers were out there!”
“The Good Rat” is hard SF from Analog (though Steele most often published in Asimov’s in the 1990s). It is an interesting contrast to Greg Bear’s “Sisters.” In the future there will be no more experimental animal subjects, only human volunteers. It’s a living.
Get home from spending two weeks in Thailand and Nepal. Nice tan from lying on the beach at Koh Samui, duffle bag full of stuff picked up cheap on the street in Kathmandu. Good vacation, but broke now. Money from mortgaging kidneys almost gone, mailbox full of bills and disconnect notices. Time to find work again.
Call agent, leave a message on her machine. She calls back that afternoon. We talk about the trip a little bit; tell her that I’m sending her a wooden mask. Likes that, but says she’s busy trying to broker another couple of rats for experiments at Procter & Gamble. Asks why I’m calling.
Tell her I’m busted. Need work soon. Got bills to pay. She says, I’ll work on it, get back to you soon, ciao, then hangs up on me. Figure I’ll send her the ugliest mask in my bag.
Jet-lagged from spending last twenty-four hours on airplanes. Sleep a lot next two days, watch a lot of TV in between. Mom calls on Tuesday, asks me where I’ve been for last month. Says she’s been trying to find me. Don’t tell her about Koh Samui and Kathmandu. Tell her I’m in night school at local college. Remedial English and basic computer programming. Learning how to do stuff with computers and how to read. She likes that. Asks if I got a job yet. About to lie some more when phone clicks. Got another call coming in, I say. Gotta go, bye. Just as well. Hate lying to Mom.
Agent on the phone. Asks if my legs are in good shape. Hell yeah, I say. Just spent ten days hiking through the Annapurna region, you bet my legs are in good shape. What’s the scoop?
She say, private test facility in Boston needs a rat for Phase One experiments. Some company developing over-the-counter ointment for foot blisters. Need someone in good physical condition to do treadmill stuff. Two week gig. Think you can handle it?
Dunno, I say. Got a few bruises on thighs from falling down on rocks a lot. How much they pay? A hundred bucks a day, she says, minus her fifteen percent commission. Not bad. Not great, but not bad either. Ask if they’re buying the airplane ticket. She say, yeah, tourist class on Continental. I say, gee, I dunno, those bruises really hurt. First class on TWA would make them feel better. Says she’ll get back to me, ciao, and hangs up.
Turn on TV, channel surf until I find some toons. Dumb coyote just fell off cliff again when agent calls back. She say, business class on TWA okay? Think about trying to score box-seat ticket for a Red Sox game, but decide not to push my luck. Bruises feel much better, I say. When do they want me?
She say two days, I say okay. Tickets coming by American Express tomorrow, she says, but don’t tell them about bruises, all right? Got no bruises, I say. Just wanted to get decent seat on the plane.
Calls me a name and hangs up again. Doesn’t even say ciao this time. Decide not to send her a mask at all. Let her go to Kathmandu and buy one herself.
Two days later. Get off plane at airport in Beantown. Been here before two years ago, when some other lab hired me to drink pink stuff for three days so scientists could look at what I pissed and puked. Like Boston. Nice city. Never figured out why they call it Beantown, though.
Skinny college kid at gate, holding cardboard sign with some word on it and my name below it. Walk up to him, ask if he’s looking for me. Gives me funny look. He say, is this your name on the sign? I say, no, I’m Elmer Fudd, is he from the test facility?
Gets pissed. Asks for I.D. Show him my Sam’s Club card. Got my picture on it, but he’s still being a turd about it. Asks if I got a driver’s license. Drop my duffel bag on his shoes, tell him I’m a busy man, let’s go.
Takes me to garage where his Volvo is parked. No limo service this time. Must be cheap lab. Got limo service last time I did a job in Boston. Kid looks mad, though, so don’t make Supreme Court case out of it.
Get stuck in tunnel traffic after leaving airport. Want to grab a nap in back seat, but the kid decides to make small talk. Asks me how it feels to be a rat.
Know what he’s getting at. Heard it before. Say hey, dude, they pay me to get stuck with needles fifteen times a day, walk on treadmills, eat this, drink that, crap in a kidney tray and whizz in a bottle. It’s a living, y’know?
Smiles. Thinks he’s superior. Got a college degree that says so. He say, y’know, they used to do the same thing to dogs, monkeys, and rabbits before it got outlawed. How does it feel to be treated like an animal?
No problem, I say. You gotta a dog at home you really like? Maybe a cat? Then bring him over to your lab, make him do the stuff I do, and half as well. Then you tell me.
Then he goes and starts telling me about Nazi concentration camp experiments. Heard that before too, usually from guys who march and wave signs in front of labs. Same guys who got upset about dogs, monkeys and rabbits being used in experiments are now angry that people are being used instead. Sort of makes me wonder why he’s working for a company that does human experiments if he thinks they’re wrong. Maybe a college education isn’t such a great thing after all, if you have to do something you don’t believe in.
Hey, the Nazis didn’t ask for volunteers, I say, and they didn’t pay them either. There’s a difference. Just got back from spending two weeks in Nepal, hiking the lower Himalayas. Where’d you spend your last vacation?
Gets bent out of shape over that. Tells me how much he makes each year, before taxes. Tell him how much I make each year, after taxes. Free medical care a
nd all the vacation time I want, too.
That shuts him up. Make the rest of the trip in peace.
Kid drives me to big old brick building overlooking the Charles River. Looks like it might have once been a factory. Usual bunch of demonstrators hanging out in the parking lot. Raining now, so they look cold and wet. Courts say they have to stay fifty feet away from the entrance. Can’t read their signs. Wouldn’t mean diddly to me even if I could. That’s my job they’re protesting, so if they catch the flu, they better not come crying to me, because I’m probably the guy who tested the medicine they’ll have to take.
Stop at front desk to present I.D., get name badge. Leave my bags with security guard. Ride up elevator to sixth floor. Place looks better on the inside. Plaster walls, tile floors, glass doors, everything painted white and grey. Offices have carpets, new furniture, hanging plants, computers on every desk.
First stop is the clinic. Woman doctor tests my reflexes, looks in my ears, checks my eyes, takes a blood sample, gives me a little bottle and points to the bathroom. Give her a full bottle a few minutes later, smile, ask what she’s doing two weeks from now. Doesn’t smile back. Thanks me for my urine.
Kid takes me down the hall to another office. Chief scientist waiting for me. Skinny guy with glasses, bald head and long bushy beard. Stands up and sticks out his hand, tells me his name. Can’t remember it five minutes later. Think of him as Dr. Bighead. Just another guy in a white coat. Doesn’t matter what his name is, so long as he writes it at the bottom of my paycheck.
Dr. Bighead offers me coffee. Ask for water instead. Kid goes to get me a glass of water, and Dr. Bighead starts telling me about the experiment.
Don’t understand half the shit he says. It’s scientific. Goes right over my head. Listen politely and nod my head at the right times, like a good rat.
The Hard SF Renaissance Page 149