[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
antimatter sphere as it shrank. It otherwise didn't look any different, a ball of blue sparkles,
but it did grow smaller and smaller. Finally, it blinked out.
Acceleration stopped and the automatic zerogee cables unreeled, with a soft regular chiming,
loud enough to wake most of the people. We could hear a few louder bells from some residences.
We'd done zerogee drill five times, twice unannounced, so it was not a big deal, yet. People
floated out of their homes in various states of undress and started monkey-climbing to the common
floor's assembly area.
Eloi Casi, the sculptor, was fully dressed, with a work apron covered with wood shavings.
"Damned silly time to pull a drill, Mandella. I'm trying to work."
"Wish it was a drill, Eloi." We drifted past him.
"What?"
"No power. No antimatter. No choices."
Those six words were about all we could tell the company assembled, with the ship adding
numbers and times. "We might as well zip up in the escape ships and get the hell out of here,"
Marygay said. "Every second we delay, it's another twenty-four thousand kilometers we have to make
up."
"We're going eight percent of the speed of light," I said. "The escape ships have a slow
steady thrust of 7.6 centimeters per second, squared. It will take us ten years to slow down to
zero, and another fourteen to get back to MF"
"Why do we have to rush it?" Alysa Bertram said. "That antimatter might come back as
mysteriously as it disappeared."
file:///D|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Ha...0Forever%20War%2002%20-%20Forever%20Free.txt (66 of 114) [7/12/2004 12:54:35 PM]
file:///D|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Haldeman,%20Joe%20-%20Forever%20War%2002%20-%20Forever%20Free.txt
"Yeah, suppose it does?" Stephen Funk said, coming to my elbow. "Do you want to rely on it
then? What if it went fine for another couple of months and then disappeared for good? You want to
risk ten thousand years in suspended animation?"
Antres 906 had entered, and was floating just inside the door. I looked its way and it bobbed
its head: Who knows? "I agree with Steve," I said. "Show of hands? How many want to zip up and
leave?"
Slightly more than half the hands went up. "Wait a minute here," Teresa Larson said. "I
haven't had my goddamned coffee yet, and you want me to decide whether to give all this up and go
flinging into space?"
Nobody had put more work into revitalizing the ship. "I'm sorry, Teresa. But I watched the
stuff disappear, and I don't see any alternative."
"Maybe it's our faith being tested, William. Though you wouldn't know anything about that."
"No, I wouldn't. But I don't think the antimatter's going to come back just because we really,
sincerely want it to."
"Those escape ships are death traps," Eloy Macabee whined. "How many people die in SA, one out
of three? Four?"
"Suspended animation has a survival rate of over eighty percent," I said. "The survival rate
here aboard ship is going to be zero."
Diana had come up to float beside me. "The less time we spend in SA, the more likely we are to
survive. Teresa, you have your cup of coffee. But then come down and get in line. I'm going to
prep people as quickly as possible."
"We aren't accelerating anymore," Ami Larson said. "We can afford to wait and think things
over."
"Okay--you hang around and think," Diana said heatedly. "I want out of here before something
else happens. Like the air disappearing, next--you want to think that one over, Ami? You want to
tell me it couldn't happen?"
"If people do want to stay till the last minute," I said, "you can't expect Diana to wait
along with you."
"They can prep themselves, without a doctor or nurse," she said. "But if anything goes wrong,
they just die."
"In their sleep," Teresa said.
"I don't know. Maybe you wake up long enough to strangle. Nobody's ever come back to report."
Marygay stepped into the moment of hostile silence. She had a clipboard. "I want names of
people willing to leave on the first and second ships. That's sixty people. You can take at most
three kilograms of personal items. First group, show up at ten o'clock."
To Diana: "How long does it take to prepare?"
"The purging part is like lightning. You want to be sitting on a toilet when you take the
medicine." Some people laughed nervously. "Seriously. Then it takes maybe five minutes to hook up
the orthotics. Those of us who did high-gee combat used to do it in under a minute. But we're out
of practice."
"And a little older now. So figure the second group at noon?"
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]