Saturday, February 22 Earth hovered, almost at full phase, breathtakingly magnificent. Distance concealed the works- and blights-of man, and the globe seemed pristine. Its oceans sparkled. Its cloud tops and ice caps glistened. And it was huge : the natural moon, had it been visible, would have appeared only about one- hundredth as wide. Earth seemed close enough to touch through the exercise room's tinted dome, but Gabriel Campbell held firmly to the handles of the stationary bicycle. Not that he relied on the strength of his grip: he wore a seat belt, too, and straps bound his feet to the pedals. This world had too little gravity to notice.
His eyes alternated between the vista overhead and the image of Jillian, his fiancée, which he had taped to the bike's digital readout. Strawberry blond hair cascaded down her neck and shoulders. Freckles lay scattered across that most adorable, pert little nose. Her clear green eyes- and more so, her smile- all but outshone the Earth. He was here, on Phoebe, to make a future for both: the Earth and the love of his life. In just one more month, he would go home. Then he and Jillian would marry and they would never be apart again. Basking in earthlight, his legs pumping furiously on the bike, Gabe was pleasantly tired, professionally fulfilled, emotionally satisfied- Unaware that before two hours had passed, he would be dead.
* * * Phoebe completed an orbit around the Earth in just less than six hours, and as Gabe pedaled darkness crept across the face of the world. The changing phase of the Earth told him he had been working out for almost two hours. Sweat soaked his Minnesota Twins T-shirt, and still ahead of him was a stint on the not- quite weight machine: the resistive exercise device. Without exercise, muscles atrophied and bones lost mass in Phoebe's miniscule gravity. Four hours of daily workout were mandated, but he would have worked out anyway. He patted Jillian's picture. "I'll be plenty fi t for you when I come home." Fit, and horny as the devil.
And with no way up here to spend a dime, he would have banked six months' salary with which to build their future. The pay was damned good, too, much higher than anything he could get on the ground. He tried not to think of the premium as hazardous- duty pay. The bike whirred. A damper rattled in the ventilation system. Voices, indistinct, blended with dueling music players. And then, from the comm unit clipped to his sleeve, soft chimes. Gabe tapped the unit.
"Campbell." "We've got a bot in trouble," Tina Lundgren said, her voice throaty. She was deputy station chief of Phoebe base and in command on the night shift. Not that day or night had any meaning here. The station followed Eastern time for the convenience of folks on the ground. "In sector twelve." "And it's my turn to go outside." Hell, Gabe was happy to go out.
Only a handful of geologists had ever left Earth, and he was one of them. Had there been any way to get Jillian up here, he would want to stay forever. "What's the problem?" "Stupid bot tangled itself up in a rock jumble. Otherwise, it's healthy." Likely a thirty- second task, after an hour or so to suit up and trek halfway across the moonlet. Good deal. Tina contacting him meant that he was in charge of the excursion. But no one went outside alone-too many things could go wrong.
Gabe asked, "Who else is on call tonight?" "Thaddeus and Bryce. Shall I give one of them a holler for you?" "I'll take Thad. Newbie could use the practice." Gabe eased off his pedaling. "And no, don't call. I'm in the gym. I need to cool off first." Outside was not the place to get stiff and inflexible.
After winding down for a few minutes, Gabe unstrapped his slippers from the pedals, unbelted, and, carefully dismounting, firmly planted a slipper on one of the deck's Velcro strips. Trailing damp footprints he crossed the exercise room, the Velcro pads on the soles of his slippers zip- zipping with each step. At the hatchway he took hold of the handrail that ran along the corridor ceiling. The Tarzan swing was the quickest way through the station. Many of his crewmates would be asleep, and he kept a Tarzan yell to himself. Thaddeus Stankiewicz was not in his quarters, the tiny common room, or the even tinier sanitary facilities. When Gabe tried the machine shop, the hatch squeaked on its hinges. Thad was new to Phoebe and micro gee; his surprised twitch launched him from his stool and scattered whatever he was working on.
Gabe saw cordless soldering pistols, metal tubes, metal rods, wire coils-and, writhing free at the end of its oxygen and acetylene hoses, a cutting torch tipped with blue flame. Gabe leapt, catching the torch by a hose and with his other hand giving Thad a firm shove clear. The push- equal and opposite reactions-brought Gabe to a near halt at mid-room, above the deck. About a foot: call it thirty seconds hang time. That was plenty long to give Thad a tongue-lashing for his carelessness. Newbie looked so flustered that Gabe relented. He killed the torch and merely glared as Thad, who by then had grabbed a bench edge, began gathering parts (of what?) and cramming them into his pockets. Stankiewicz was short, broad shouldered, and intense.
His thick black eyebrows and deep-set eyes made him seem perpetually brooding. He wore a standard station jumpsuit, the royal-blue version, with its integral Velcro slippers. Finally touching down, Gabe slid his foot until it engaged a Velcro strip. "What are you working on?" Thad shrugged, looking uneasy. Embarrassed? "Personal project." The station offered precious little privacy, so Gabe let it go. "A surface rover got stuck. You and I are up to extract it.
" "Okay." Thad kept grabbing and stowing the scattered pieces of his project. "Almost done." "Leave that, Newbie. We have a job to do." They made their way to the main air lock. The closer they got, the more dark streaks and splotches marked the gray metal panels that lined the corridor. You couldn't help but track Phoebe's dust and grime into the station, and once inside the stuff found its way everywhere.
The crew vacuumed endlessly, but it was a losing battle. Their spacesuits were filthier than the interior halls and no longer permitted in most of the station. Once you couldn't change in a closet-sized cabin, bracing yourself between opposing walls, the best place to suit up was inside the air lock. In the air lock, back to back and studiously ignoring each other, the two men stripped. Even more studiously they ignored jostling and brushing into each other. The body suits fit snugly against bare skin. Donning a very elastic body suit in the all- but- nonexistent gravity was like squirming into a sausage casing-underwater. Every nudge and bump sent them careening off bulkheads and decks and each other.
Still, these mechanical counterpressure suits beat the hell out of bulky, pressurized spacesuits. Gabe had tried an old- style suit once in training. It was easier to get into, but way more massive. Inertia varied with mass, not weight, and fighting that much inertia was exhausting. Gabe finally wriggled into his suit and helped Thad finish getting into his own. "Check me out," Gabe said. He launched himself, with a bit of practiced footwork, into a slow, midair pirouette. "You look fine," Thad said.
The answer had come too quickly. Anywhere that the suit failed to settle securely into place, fluid would pool beneath. Gaping was the major issue with the skin suits, with the crotch area especially problematical. It wasn't as if Gabe wanted another guy checking out his crotch, but he wanted even less to have blisters down there from an ill- fitting suit. "Check it again," he snapped. Done properly, spacesuit checkout took time. Eventually, though, their suits were wrinkle- free and without sags or pouching. They mounted and sealed the compression neck rings to which their helmets would attach.
They slipped on their backpacks and checked readouts for everything: oxygen, heating, sensors, radio, batteries. Their helmets and air hoses were locked into place. They stowed their indoor clothes, Thad's pockets clanking, in lockers near the air lock, buckled on tool belts and tether reels, stuck emergency maneuvering guns in their holsters, and pulled on gloves and boots. Ready at last, Gabe configured the air- lock controls for surface access. "Oscar, end-to-end system check," Gabe said. Status messages, the text all green, scrolled down the inside of his helmet visor. He had named the voice-activated user interface Oscar as a nod to the suit in Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, a book he had loved as a child-and because, crammed into this suit, he knew how a sardine must feel. "Comm check, Thad," Gabe radioed on the public channel.
"Back at you," Stankiewicz said. Gabe called, "Tina? Two robot wranglers set to go outside." "Happy trails," Tina answered, yawning. "Stay in touch." "Roger that." Gabe tapped the air- lock control panel. Pump noises faded as air was sucked into holding tanks. He felt the first stirrings of warmth from the heating elements in the therma.