Instead, he walked with her as she headed for her office. “What’s this all about, Kris? Why do they want to lock you out of your own lab?”
“It’s a long story and I’d rather not go into it right now, Charley. Please, I just need a few minutes in my office.”
He looked unhappy, almost wounded. “If there’s anything I can do to help…”
Cardenas smiled and felt tears welling in her eyes. “That’s very kind of you, Charley. Thanks.”
“I mean, I wouldn’t be able to walk if it weren’t for you.”
She nodded and added silently, And now that you can walk you’ll never be allowed to return to Earth.
“Well…” he shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. “If there’s anything you need, anything at all, just let me know.”
“Thanks, Charley. I’ll do that.”
He stood there for another awkward moment while Cardenas wondered how long it would take Security to send someone to apprehend her. Finally he headed reluctantly back to his own cubicle. She walked slowly toward her office.
Once Charley stepped into his cubicle, though, Cardenas swiftly turned down a side passageway toward the rear of the laboratory complex. She passed a sign that proclaimed in red letters AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT. This was the area where newly developed nanomachines were tested. The passageway here was lined with sealed, airtight chambers, rather than the cubicles out front. The door to each chamber was locked. The passageway itself was lined with ultraviolet lamps along its ceiling. Each nanomachine type was designed to stop functioning when exposed to high-intensity ultraviolet light: a safety precaution.
Cardenas passed three doors, stopped at the fourth. She tapped out its entry code and the steel door opened inward a crack. She slipped into the darkened chamber and leaned her weight against the heavy door, closing it. With a long, shuddering sigh, she reset the entry code from the panel on the wall, effectively locking the door to anyone who might try to get in. They’ll have to break the door down, she told herself, and that will take them some time.
By the time the get the door open I’ll be dead.
Dan dreamed of Earth: a confused, troubled dream. He was sailing a racing yacht, running before the wind neck-and-neck with many other boats. Warm tropical sunlight beat down on his shoulders and back as he gripped the tiller with one hand while the boat’s computer adjusted the sails for every change in the breeze.
The boat knifed through the water, but suddenly it was a car that Dan was driving at breakneck speed through murderously heavy traffic. Dan didn’t know where he was; some city freeway, a dozen lanes clogged with cars and buses and enormous semi rigs chuffing smoke and fumes into the dirty gray, sullen sky. Something was wrong with the car’s air conditioning; it was getting uncomfortably hot in the driver’s seat. Dan started to open his window but realized that the windows had to stay shut. There’s no air to breath out there, he said to himself, knowing it was ridiculous because he wasn’t in space, he was on Earth and he was suffocating, choking, coughing.
He woke up coughing with Pancho’s voice blaring in his ears, “Recharge your backpack, boss! You’re runnin’ low on air.”
Blackness. He couldn’t see a thing. For a moment he felt panic surging through him, then it fell into place. Buried in the asteroid. Time to refill his backpack’s air tank. In the dark. By touch.
“Lemme help you,” Pancho said.
Dan sensed her beside him. The gravelly dirt shifted, crunched. Something bumped into his side.
“Oops. ‘Scuse me.”
Dan pushed one hand through the gritty stuff, remembering where he’d put the cylinders.
“I’ve got the hose,” he said.
“Okay, good. That’s what I was lookin’ for.”
“Groping for, you mean.”
“Whatever. Hand it to me now.”
Dan felt her hand pushing against his side. “I can do it,” he said.
“Better let me,” said Pancho. “YOU’re tired and fatigue makes you sloppy, causes mistakes.”
“I’m all right.”
‘Sure. But just lemme do it, huh? Tired astronauts don’t live long.”
“And rain makes applesauce,” he mumbled, pushing the end of the hose into her waiting hand.