Jack McDevitt - Coming Home

“It’s a passenger vessel, so they have a connecting tube that will allow them to cross directly into another ship. We’re getting a break there. The last thing we’d want is to be opening and closing an airlock every few minutes. What scares me is the possibility that the Capella will fade out in the middle of the operation. If that happens, we could lose a couple of hundred people. It’s a nightmare.”

“So what are they going to do? You said something before about a backup.”

“I was talking about lifeboats.”

“Lifeboats?”

She stared down at her plate of strawberries and potato salad. “Yeah.” She scooped up some of the salad and bit into it. “They might work. There’s a downside, though. We’d be using the ship’s appearance this time to set things up. We won’t really be able to get many people off until it comes back.”

“In five years.”

“Right.”

“Well, that’s better than the hundred years some people are talking about. What are the lifeboats?”

“They’ve been under construction for a while. Some of us, including John, wanted a way to avoid stretching this thing out indefinitely. The boats should work. They’re self-inflatable. Each lifeboat can support sixty-four people for twenty-two hours, which should be plenty of time for the rescue vehicles to reach them. I’ve been inside one. It’s like the interior of a small shuttle. Sixteen rows of four seats divided by a center aisle. With washrooms. They have transmitters, lights, and a pair of jets to take them away from the Capella .

“The plan is that when they get here, they open their cargo bay and we stack forty-four boats inside. Or as many as we can. That’s the mission. If we can get a few people off at the same time, so much the better.”

“You’re going to be able to fit forty-four of these things into the cargo bay?”

“Yes. They’re small packages and, as I said, they self-inflate. We’re hoping the space isn’t taken up by too much cargo. There’s no way to check that. We’ve talked with Orion, and they think we’ll probably be able to make it work. They’ve got three decks, and they should be able to inflate three vehicles per deck. So they inflate nine of the boats at a crack, and get their people on board. Meanwhile, for us, four and a half years go by.” She shook her head. “Then they’re back. We’re waiting for them. They open up, launch nine boats, and close the doors. We pick up the people in the boats. Then repeat the process. It should take about forty minutes to set up a second launch. That means if we get any kind of break we should be able to get everyone off in about three hours.” She lifted a strawberry on the tip of her fork and took a bite. “Did I tell you that Wainscot Pictures is threatening us?”

“Who’s us ?”

“The SRF.”

“What?” I almost spilled my iced tea. “About what?”

“You know Guy Bentley is on the Capella ?”

“The comedian? Yes, I remember hearing that.”

“The studio wants him back. They want us to arrange things so he’s one of the first people off the ship.”

“They’re crazy.”

“Bentley’s one of the most popular people in the Confederacy.”

“So what? They can’t sue you, can they?”

“No. But they’re suggesting that they’ll target John Kraus and a few of the other people at the top of the organization. Make them laughingstocks.”

I tried my tuna sandwich. And put it back down. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said.

“Why not?”

“The SRF will take some heat if they can’t get everyone off this time around. But if they can manage five years down the line, they’ll all be heroes. And Kraus especially will be untouchable.”

“Maybe,” she said. “We’re getting a lot of requests. People asking us, pleading with us, to get relatives and friends off, and do it now . Some are offering money. We got a call from a woman yesterday who couldn’t stop crying.” She took a deep breath. “I feel sorry for them. But there are limits to what we can do.” She glared past me at nothing in particular. “The strawberries are good.”

Two guys and a young woman were sitting at an adjoining table, behind Shara. They exchanged whispered comments. Then one of the guys got up, walked over to us, and waited until he’d caught Shara’s attention. “Pardon me,” he said. “I couldn’t help overhearing.” He was average size, mid-thirties, with black hair. He looked unhappy. “I’m Ron Aquilar. My fiancée, Leslie Cameron, is on the Capella . I understand what you’re saying, but I’d do anything to get her off. Is there really no way it can be done?”

Shara looked lost. “Ron,” she said, “we won’t have any control over which passengers get off first. We can’t even contact the ship until it shows up. So there’s no time to make special arrangements. I’m sorry.”

“No, no,” he said. “I understand that. I’m not asking you to move her to the head of the line.” He glanced in my direction, then his eyes locked on Shara. “She was twenty-two when she got on that damned thing. I was twenty-seven. If you guys have it right, her age hasn’t changed. I’m thirty-eight now. She probably won’t make it off this time. Which means that the next time around, I’ll be forty-three. She won’t have changed. Doctor—?” He groaned. “I’m sorry. I don’t know your name.”

“Michaels,” she said.

“Dr. Michaels?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Michaels, she isn’t likely to be very interested in marrying somebody twice her age. This is probably my last chance with her. What I need you to do is to let me go on the Capella .”

“Ron,” she said, “I can’t do that. The time we’ll have available is too short. Putting you on board will only take a few seconds. But the loss of those seconds will prevent someone else from getting off. Probably more than one person, in fact, because you’ll be bucking traffic. Look, I’m sorry. But putting more people on the ship just makes the problem bigger.”

He stared down at one of the empty chairs, hoping she’d ask him to sit. She didn’t. He looked my way again. And I remember thinking how this was a situation to stay out of if there’d ever been one. But I didn’t. “Ron,” I said, “there’s a chance if you went on board that, in the confusion, she’d get off.”

“Okay,” he said. It wasn’t clear any longer which of us he was talking to. He touched his link. “Thank you both. Dr. Michaels, you have my code, in case you change your mind. Please think about it.”

“Alex,” Marissa said, “I feel the same way you do. I’d love to know why Grandpop never said anything.” We were at her house, which was an exquisite manor with Greek columns and circular windows looking out across the ocean. “There must be a way to find out.”

“Unfortunately,” said Alex, “as things stand now, we don’t even know where to begin. I’ve been looking at everything I can find about him. But I still don’t have a handle on what happened. We just don’t really have much to work with.”

She was sitting in a sofa, looking weary. “I hate to give up that easily.”

“We’re not giving up. Maybe someone who knew him will remember something that will help us. You and your folks should continue to think about who else there might be.”