“When was that?”
“A few years back. Lots of it is a blur, for one reason or another.”
“How did you end up here?”
“I eventually went to work for a company large enough and established enough to have a high-powered set of lawyers of their own. The board voted to join Trikon NA. So here I am, property of Trikon.”
They tossed several rounds of darts in silence. Ramsanjawi chattered happily as he chased Oyamo’s king across the board and eventually proclaimed checkmate. Oyamo sulked and asked for another game.
Dan mulled over what O’Donnell had told him. The scientist seemed candid about career and women, the two most important aspects of a young man’s life. But something was missing. Dan felt it in the vagueness of the dates and the blur O’Donnell said his life once had been.
“Tell me something,” O’Donnell said.
“What?”
O’Donnell aimed and fired another bull’s-eye. “The orientation manual says you grow taller in microgravity; your spine unbends when you’re weightless.”
“That’s right,” said Tighe. “That’s why they make your flight suits extra long for your size.”
“But I don’t seem to be any taller, really.”
Tighe chuckled. “If you had a full-length mirror you’d see why.”
O’Donnell hiked his eyebrows questioningly.
“Well, look at me,” Tighe said. Standing in the foot restraints, he knew he was bent over in the semi-question-mark posture known as the microgravity crouch.
“Am I doing that?” O’Donnell asked.
“Sure. Straighten yourself up. Go on, try it.”
O’Donnell strained for a moment. His back straightened, his shoulders squared. But with a puff of held-back breath he quickly relaxed and went back to the more comfortable crouch.
“In micro-gee,” Dan explained, “the spine does unbend. But the muscles tend to pull you into a sort of fetal crouch.”
“O’Donnell the ape-man.” Hugh grinned at himself and scratched under his armpit.
Tighe laughed. He was starting to like O’Donnell. Then he caught himself with the memory of who he was and what his responsibilities were.
“Play you for a drink,” he said.
“There’s liquor on board?” O’Donnell looked startled.
“No, but the loser can pay Earthside.”
“Let’s play for a soda,” said O’Donnell.
Tighe nodded. Inwardly, he realized that he had expected just such a response from Hugh O’Donnell.
Freddy Aviles moved silently through Hab 1. Most of the sleep compartments were darkened. A few leaked pinpricks of light through the seals of their accordion doors. As Freddy drifted toward the rear of the module, he became aware of a dull, rhythmic vibration. The sound strengthened and finally resolved into music as Freddy steadied himself outside Stu Roberts’s compartment. Freddy recognized the exquisitely clear electric guitar riffs that seemed to curl in arabesques against a heavy Latin backbeat. He had heard this music on boom boxes all over the South Bronx. Carlos Santana. Still a rock icon after thirty years.
Freddy slipped into the Whit, which abutted Roberts’s compartment. He removed a tiny sound amplifier from a sleeve pouch and pressed its suction end against the wall. The music was so loud that Carlos Santana seemed to be picking guitar strings inside the convolutions of Freddy’s brain. Freddy adjusted the amplifier to mute as much of the music as possible.
“This doesn’t look like the same stuff.”
“It is.”
“But it looks jagged.”
“The man downstairs didn’t put any gelatin capsules in the last shipment. That’s why it looks like a rock.”
“It’s yellower, too.”
“Hey, take your business elsewhere if you don’t like it.”
“Sorry. It’s all right. It’s just that—”
“Goddammit, it’s the same stuff. Take my word for it. Do you want the shit, or not?”
“Yeah, I want it.”
Someone turned the music louder and drowned out the voices. Freddy coiled his amplifier into a tiny bundle and slipped out of Hab 1. Better run that relay test quickly, he thought. Otherwise, Lance might become suspicious.
27 AUGUST 1998
TRIKON STATION
Trikon Station has been equipped with state-of-the-art extravehicular mobility units (EMUs) designed through the combined efforts of NASA, ESA, and Trikon International’s own aerospace division. These space suits are sleeker than the suits you may remember from photos of the Apollo lunar program or more recent American space shuttle flights.