Charles Sheffield - Between the Strokes of Night

He cut back from the picture of the bear to real-time transmission. “That’s the report from this end, Charlene. Now I can relax. But I can’t wait for you and the others to get up here. I don’t know how biased the news coverage is that comes here to Salter Station, but we hear of trouble everywhere back on Earth. Cold wars, hot wars, and mouthing off in all directions. Did you know it hit sixty-two Celsius yesterday in Baluchistan — that’s nearly a hundred and forty-four Fahrenheit. They must be dying in droves. And did you get the reports from the U.N. Security Council? There’s talk of closing all national air space, and Hans is having real problems scheduling flights up — not just the usual red tape, either. He’s meeting blank walls. He’s been told there will be an indefinite suspension of all flights, from all spaceports, until the Earth situation normalizes again. And who knows when that will be? Wherry’s experts say the changes are here to stay — we’ve caused them ourselves with the fossil fuel programs.”

His hand moved toward the key that would end transmission, then paused. He looked uncertainly at the screen. “Hey, Hans told me one other thing I really didn’t want to hear. Dammit, I wish I knew just how secure this line is, but I’ll say it anyway. If it’s not common knowledge down at the Institute, Charlene, please keep it to yourself. It’s about JN. Did you know that she’s been taking a whole battery of neurological tests over at Christchurch Central? CAT scans, radioisotope tracers, air bubble tracers, the works. They’ve been probing her brain sixteen different ways. I hope she didn’t do something crazy back there, like using herself as a test subject for Institute experiments. Maybe you can check it out? I’d like to be sure she’s all right. Don’t ask me how Hans knew all this — the information they have up here about Earthside doings amazes me. I guess that’s all for now.”

Wolfgang pressed the key carefully and leaned back. Transmission terminated, and the circuit was broken.

He closed his eyes. That hadn’t been as bad as he expected. It definitely helped to have something good to concentrate on, to take your thoughts away from feeling nauseated. Think of something good. A sudden and startling memory of Charlene came to his mind, her long limbs and willowy body bending above him, and her dark hair falling loosely about her forehead. He grunted. Christ! If he could have thoughts like that, he must definitely be on the mend. Next thing you know he’d be able to face food again.

Maybe it was time for another test.

Wolfgang slowly steeled himself, then turned his head and looked out of the port. Now Spindletop was pointing down toward Earth, and he was facing an endless drop to the sunlit hemisphere beneath. Salter Station was flying over the brown wedge of the Indian subcontinent, with the greener oval of Sri Lanka just visible at its foot.

He gasped. As he watched the scene seemed to spin and warp beneath him, twisting through a strange and surrealistic mapping. He gritted his teeth and held on tight to the console edge. After thirty unpleasant seconds he could force himself to a different perspective. It was earth’s blue-and-white surface, mottled with brown-green markings, that was airy and insubstantial; Salter Station was real, tangible, solid. That was it. Cling to that thought. He was slowly able to relax his grip on the table in front of him.

It would be all right. Everything was relative. If Jinx could adapt to his new life, comfortable with a body temperature down near freezing, surely Wolfgang could become at ease with the much smaller changes produced by the move to Salter Station. Better forget self-pity, and get back to work.

Ignoring the twinges from his long-suffering stomach, Wolfgang forced himself to look out again as the station swept toward the Atlantic and the majestic curve of the day-night terminator.

Three more days, then the Institute staff would be on their way here. And if the news reports were correct, it would be just in time. In their fury and endless feuding, the governments of earth seemed all set to block the road to space itself.

Hans Gibbs had sent his cousin the briefest, uninformative message from the main control room. “Get your ass over here. On the double, or you’ll miss something you’ll never see again.”

Wolfgang and Charlene were in the middle of first inventory when that message came over the intercom. He looked at her and signed off the terminal at once. “Come on.”

“What, right now?” Charlene shook her head protestingly. “We’re just getting started. I promised Cameron we’d have this place organized and ready to go to work when they got here. We only have a few more hours.”

“I know. But I know Hans, too. He always understates. It must be something special. Let’s go, we’ll finish this later.”

He took her hand and began to pull her along, showing off his hard-won experience with low gee. Charlene had been on Salter Station less than twenty-four hours, the second person to make full transfer from the Institute. It seemed grossly unfair to Wolfgang that she hadn’t suffered even one moment of freefall sickness. But at least she didn’t have his facility yet for easy movement. He tugged her and spun her, adjusting linear and angular momentum. After a few moments Charlene realized that she should move as little as possible, and let him drag her along as a fixed-geometry dead weight. They glided rapidly along the helical corridor that led to the central control area. Hans was waiting for them when they arrived, his attention on a display screen showing Earth at screen center. The image was being provided from a geostationary observing satellite, 22,000 miles up, so the whole globe showed as a ball that filled most of the screen.

“You won’t see anything ship-sized from this distance,” Hans said. “So we have to fake it. If we want to see spacecraft, the computer generates the graphics for them and merges it all into the display. Watch, now. I’m taking us into that mode. The action will start in a couple of minutes.”

Charlene and Wolfgang stood behind him as Hans casually keyed in a short command sequence, then leaned back in his chair. The display screen remained quiet, showing Europe, Asia and Africa as a half-lit disk under medium cloud cover. The seconds stretched on, for what seemed like forever.

“Well?” said Wolfgang at last. “We’re here. Where’s the action?”

He leaned forward. As he did so, the display changed. Suddenly, from different points on the hemisphere, tiny sparks of red light appeared. First it was half a dozen of them, easy to track. But within a few minutes there were more, rising like fireflies out of the hazy globe beneath. Each one began the slow tilt to the east that showed they were heading for orbit. Soon they were almost too numerous to count.

“See the one on the left?” said Hans. “That’s from Aussieport. Most of your staff will be on that; Judith, and de Vries, and Cannon. They’ll be here in an hour and a half.”

“Holy hell.” Charlene was frowning, shaking her head. “Those can’t be ships. There aren’t that many in the whole world.”

She was too absorbed by the scene in front of her to catch Hans Gibbs’ familiar reference to the Institute director, but Wolfgang had given his cousin a quick and knowing look.

“Charlene’s right,” Hans said. He looked satisfied at her startled reaction. “If you only consider the Shuttles and other reuseables, there aren’t that many ships. But I ran out of time. Salter Wherry told me to get everything up here, people and supplies, and to hell with the cost. He’s the boss, and it was his money. The way things have been going, if I’d waited any longer we’d never have been allowed to bring up what we need. What you’re seeing now is the biggest outflow of people and equipment you’ll ever see. I took launch options on every expendable launch vehicle I could find, anywhere in the world. Watch now. There’s more to come.”