“Dave, there’s no problem.”
“No problem? Six fucking months of work stolen and you say no problem?”
“If you’ll let me explain…”
“Explain what? The computer’s already explained everything. Somebody slipped in here at two this morning and downloaded all the genetic files!”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” said Roberts.
“Nothing to worry about!” Nutt shouted. “I’m not talking about a glitch in an experiment! I’m talking about a career at stake. My career!”
Nutt unlooped his feet and pushed away from the computer and its terrible string of messages so hard that he sailed across the width of the lab and banged his head against a cabinet on the opposite wall. The pain stunned him momentarily. He tumbled slowly, running his fingers through his hair and checking for blood. Roberts grabbed his arm to steady his movement, but the touch only angered him.
“I’ve got to tell Tighe.” Nutt yanked away from Roberts’s grip, spinning himself halfway toward the hatch.
“Dave, don’t!”
But Nutt swam away toward the hatch, his shouted curses fading to echoes.
“Well, if you want to make an asshole of yourself, be my guest,” said Roberts to the empty lab. He patted the hip pocket of his coveralls.
Mission control for Trikon Station was at Houston. Many of the consortium’s European members had objected, but it made more sense to lease time and equipment from NASA’s existing Manned Space Center than to build an entirely new complex somewhere else.
So it was at 0753 hours central daylight time that Commander Dan Tighe closed the light-blue plastic accordion-fold door of the cramped cubbyhole that served as his office. It was no larger than a telephone booth wedged into a forward corner of the command module.
His regular morning call to Mission Control was scheduled for 0800, as usual. And after that he was supposed to see the station doctor for his weekly exam. Like most fliers, Dan Tighe did not trust doctors, not even attractive female doctors. He rummaged through the small cabinet built into the corner of his office where the curving shell of the module met the forward bulkhead. His face, red and chafed, was set in a grim scowl of determination.
It was a face built of contradictions: finely sculpted cheekbones and a hawk’s nose that had been broken long ago when he had crash-landed a crippled jet fighter. Strong stubborn jaw with a mouth that seemed almost too small for it, lips as thin and sensitive as a poet’s. He kept his dark brown hair short enough to meet the old military regulations, but combed it forward to conceal his receding hairline. The gray at his temples bothered him, even though women called it distinguished.
And the eyes: electric blue, vital, brilliant. The eyes of an eagle, a flier, probing incessantly, never still, never satisfied. But now they were wary, guarded, the eyes of a man who had been defeated and banished. The eyes of a man who wanted to be alone in the cockpit of a nimble supersonic jet, but found himself smothered in the responsibilities of commanding a glorified schoolhouse that plodded along a fixed and calculated orbit—and in danger of losing even that.
A small bonsai bush trimmed into the shape of a bird floated at the end of a tether attached to the wall of his cramped office. Tighe whispered to it, “Sorry, no time for you this morning,” and gently pushed it out of his way as he searched through the Velcro-lined shelves of the narrow cabinet.
At last he found what he was looking for: the blood-pressure cuff. With a grunt of satisfaction he rolled up the left sleeve of his coveralls and wrapped the plastic around his biceps. Taking a deep breath that was supposed to calm him, he inflated the cuff and then read off the glowing digital numbers on its tiny electronic display: 163 over 101. The readout was adjusted for the effects of microgravity. Not bad, he thought. But not good enough.
The command module was the smallest of all the sections that made up the Trikon space station, and the most densely packed. While the laboratory and habitat modules were each fifteen meters long, the command module’s cylinder was half that length. It was jammed with computer systems that tracked everything and everyone aboard the station, communications gear that kept Tighe and his crew in constant touch with Earth, and a command and control center that maintained the station’s life-support systems and external equipment. Dan’s office and the infirmary were wedged into opposite ends of the cramped module. Next to the cubbyhole infirmary was the sick bay: three sleep restraints fastened against the only bare spot on any of the walls. As if to compensate for the crowding, it was the only module with a view: a trio of small flused-silica viewing ports were built into the bulkhead at the command and control station.