A small, muscular man, nearly bald, and wearing only a jockstrap and a jangling toolbelt, floated up behind her and peered in. "Is he alive?"
"Of course I am alive," said Korolev in slightly accented
English.
The man called Andy sailed in over her head. "You okay, Jack?" His right bicep was tattooed with a geodesic balloon above crossed lightning bolts and bore the legend SUNSPARK 15, UTAH. "We weren't expecting anybody."
"Neither was I," said Korolev, blinking.
"We've come to live here," said the woman, drifting closer.
"We're from the balloons. Squatters, I guess you could say. Heard the place was empty. You know the orbit's decaying on this thing?" The man executed a clumsy midair somersault, the tools clattering on his belt. "This free fall's outrageous."
"God," said the woman, "I just can't get used to it! It's wonderful. It's like skydiving, but there's no wind."
Korolev stared at the man, who had the blundering, careless look of someone drunk on freedom since birth. "But you don't even have a launchpad," he said.
"Launchpad?" the man said, laughing. "What-we do, we haul these surplus booster engines up the cables to the balloons, drop 'em, and fire 'em in midair."
"That's insane," Korolev said.
"Got us here, didn't it?"
Korolev nodded. If this was all a dream, it was a very peculiar one. "I am Colonel Yuri Vasilevich Korolev."
"Mars!" The woman clapped her hands. "Wait'll the kids hear that." She plucked the little Lunokhod moon rover model from the bulkhead and began to wind it.
"Hey," the man said, "I gotta work. We got a bunch of boosters outside. We gotta lift this thing before it starts burning."
Something clanged against the hull. Kosmograd rang with the impact. "That'll be 'ILlsa," Andy said, consulting a wristwatch. "Right on time."
"But why?" Korolev shook his head, deeply confused. "Why have you come?"
"We told you. To live here. We can enlarge this thing, maybe build more. They said we'd never make it living in the balloons, but we were the only ones who could make them work. It was our one chance to get out here on our own. Who'd want to live out here for the sake of some government, some army brass, a bunch of pen pushers? You have to want a frontier-want it in your bones, right?"
Korolev smiled. Andy grinned back. "We grabbed those power cables and just pulled ourselves straight up. And when you get to the top, well, man, you either make that big jump or else you rot there." His voice rose. "And you don't look back, no sir! We've made that jump, and we're here to stay!"
The woman placed the model's Velcro wheels against the curved wall and released it. It went scooting along above their heads, whirring merrily. "Isn't that cute? The kids are just going to love it."
Korolev stared into Andy's eyes. Kosmograd rang again, jarring the little Lunokhod model onto a new course.
"East Los Angeles," the woman said. "That's the one with the kids in it." She took off her goggles, and Korolev saw her eyes brimming over with a wonderful lunacy.
"Well," said Andy, rattling his toolbelt, "You feel like showing us around?"
FB2 document info
Document ID: 1b3eabca-6c07-1014-a8bc-80631f3cdb98
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 02.06.2008
Created using: Text2FB2 software
Document authors :
traum
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)
Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/
Red Star, Winter Orbit Page 3