The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Of The Year Part 27

"No." He smiled at no one in particular as he adjusted the arms of the machine. "I'd rather be here with you." He set the resistance to four kilograms for curls.

"Richard."

He laughed. "Beep told me to take a break. He's watching her but she hasn't messed up since Dragon Dragon. Ninety-seven days and counting. She's so good now that she's boring."

Mariska had logged just three kilometers and had seven more to go. At least a half-hour before she finished her workout and could escape him. She pulled her towel from its clip and wiped her face. Sweat was another thing she hated about s.p.a.ce. She missed swimming.

How was she supposed to act around Richard anyway? She couldn't help but wonder what was going on behind those wide brown eyes when he looked at her. Probably imagining new kinks. But with more than a hundred days left in the run, she couldn't afford to confront him. Feuds in s.p.a.ce tended to take up a lot of room. On a s.h.i.+p the size of the s.h.i.+ning Legend, s.h.i.+ning Legend, that would be trouble. But she wasn't about to pretend that she was comfortable being alone with him. that would be trouble. But she wasn't about to pretend that she was comfortable being alone with him.

After he finished the curls, he did shoulder squats. The weight machine clanked and wheezed and its gyros hummed. The more reps he did, the more the veins stood out at his temples. Richard was proud of his foolish muscles and worked hard to keep them. Now he was grunting from the effort. It was kind of disgusting. He told her once when they were high on wizard that he'd be like some kind of superhero if he ever visited the Moon. She'd tried not to laugh at his ignorance. There was hardly any crime at Haworth. The Moon had no need of another Lord Danger.

"You haven't been very nice to me lately." He was smiling, his cheeks flushed from his workout. "What did I do wrong?"

"Nothing." She wasn't going to think feathers and golden chains.

"Somehow you make nothing sound an awful lot like something." He waited for her to answer; she let him wait. "Okay." He reconfigured the weight machine for squat thrusts. "One. Two Two." The count exploded out of him when he kicked his legs back. "Three. Four Four. Five Five." He was so strong that he overpowered the gyro. When the apparatus banged against the wall, she could feel the entire mod shake. It was a point of pride with Richard that he could do this. "Thirteen. Fourteen Fourteen. Fifteen Fifteen." No one else aboard could. Sometimes she could feel him working out as far away as Galley.

Richard stopped at twenty, sucking air in huge gulps. Mariska felt a familiar tingle; since he was out of breath and couldn't speak, he was offering her his feed.

"No thanks," she said. She woke up the screen in front of them, picked a 3D channel at random. It was old sci-fi from the previous century: a s.p.a.ce captain in a ridiculously tight uniform was sitting on a s.h.i.+ny chair on the bridge of some fairy-tale s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p. The camera pulled back. Everyone on the screen was sitting on chairs.

There were no chairs on the s.h.i.+ning Legend s.h.i.+ning Legend.

"Artificial gravity." Richard climbed on the stationary bike and started peddling. "I could use some of that just now."

Mariska ignored him and pretended interest in the 3D.

Now the people on the bridge were staring at a viewscreen showing another silly s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p. In an external shot, one s.h.i.+p veered sharply away from the other, narrowly avoiding a collision. Back on the bridge, the crew were all leaning to their left.

"Sorry," said Richard, "but they'd all be puddles of jelly on the wall." He shook his head. "People on Earth still watch this stuff."

The counter on the treadmill clicked over to tenkilometers. "Really?" Mariska slowed her pace to a walk. Her legs felt pleasantly heavy.

"People on Earth are stupid. They don't know anything about living about s.p.a.ce. That's why I left."

"There are stupid people everywhere." She unbungeed herself. "The trick is not to let them do anything stupid to you."

Richard shot her a quizzical look. "Meaning?

"Meaning have a nice workout, Richard." She said, and kicked out of Rec.

Mariska had never had a feed from her mother before. At first she wasn't sure that she should accept it. Natalya Volochkova was a fossil like Beep. Her generation used feeds only for the most intimate sort of contact, which was the last thing Mariska wanted. But this feed had been the only message from her mother for several days now. Mariska was curious to know why she had stopped.

=Moya radost, you know this isn't what I wanted for us you know this isn't what I wanted for us.= Natalya Volochkova was seated in a plastic chair in a spare room that was clearly not at their home in Haworth. The focus was tight, the light harsh. Mariska tried to zoom out but the feed refused her command. There was a stale papery smell to the room that made Mariska think that she might be looking at a museum or a library. Some kind of storage area. =You think you are doing what is right. Maybe, but where you are now is not where you will be when you grow up =You think you are doing what is right. Maybe, but where you are now is not where you will be when you grow up.= "I am grown up!" Of course, her mother couldn't hear her.

=I know you have been suffering, but things will get better.= There was a weight to her voice that Mariska had never heard before. =I promise.= "Just stop your interfering, b.i.t.c.h."

=I'm on Mars just now, but I won't be staying. I don't know if you've heard but we're commissioning a new stars.h.i.+p, the Natividad.= Mariska felt her throat tightening.

=It's been more than a year since I've heard anything from you. I write, you are silent. At least I know that you are safe. I'm sorry if you're unhappy.= She was shocked to see her mother's eyes s.h.i.+ne with tears. =I wish I knew what you're thinking just now. But if you really want me out of your life, then I must accept that. I've been offered a place on the Natividad. I had hoped to bring you with me but....= "Go then." Mariska closed her mind. The bare room and her sad mother disappeared. "Leave." She deleted the feed.

Mariska tried to relax into the delicate embrace of her closet's sleep net but her thoughts kept tumbling over one another. Mariska wondered at how little she understood herself. After all, this was exactly what she wanted. Natalya Volochkova was finally leaving her alone.

So why did she feel betrayed?

Glint's scream shook the walls of Galley fifteen meters away. Mariska choked on a mouthful of b.u.t.terscotch pudding. When she poked her head out of the hatch Beep almost tore it off as he shot upspine toward Command. She followed at a distance. Ahead she saw Richard desperately trying to pull Glint downspine. Glint flailed at him like a drowning swimmer.

"What?" Beep shouted over her shrieking.

"Seda...tive," said Richard. Glint spun in his grasp and they crashed against the deck of the spine. "Ooof. Glint, no."

"What?" said Beep. said Beep.

"Something about the ice."

It was a measure of Glint's panic that she gave musclebound Richard all he could handle. But when he finally yanked her arms behind her back,she slumped forward. Her screams melted into sobs.

"You." Beep pushed Mariska at them. "Help." He flew into Command.

They wrangled her downspine to Health and strapped her to an examining table. Richard tried to comfort her while Mariska tapped at the med rack and charged a face mask with somapal. When Richard pressed it to Glint's nose and mouth, she groaned and went limp.

They stared at each other across the table. Richard was breathing hard enough for three people.

"What about the ice?" said Mariska.

"Don't know." He shook his head. "There wasn't time."

"Let's find out." He followed her out.

"Where?" Beep muttered to himself as his fingers danced over screens on the cargo rack. "Where, where, where?" He was barefoot and held himself still by curling his toes into the deck burrs. His hair was mussed. He looked like he had just woken up; she thought he might be twisted. "d.a.m.n it, where?" Mariska had never noticed how long Beep's toes were. There was fine black hair on the joints.

He stabbed at the rack. The screens that had been showing crawlerbot Banana's view switched to Eye flying next to the s.h.i.+ning Legend s.h.i.+ning Legend. He panned up and down the s.h.i.+p. Mariska gasped when Eye looked past the porch on Storage D, where their reserves of treated ice were supposed to be.

It was empty. Behind her, Richard made a strangled noise.

"Come on. Where?" Now Beep turned the eye away from the s.h.i.+p to scan the nearby s.p.a.ce.

Mariska tore herself away from cargo to access the nav rack. "Time cl.u.s.ter," she said.

It was 04:33:04 on 15 July 2163. The mission was in its three hundred and nineteenth standard day. The s.h.i.+p had completed its mid-course switchover from acceleration and was now seven days, two hours, and eleven minutes into deceleration toward home. Acquisition of the approach signal for Sweetspot Sweetspot station would occur in one hundred and five days, eighteen hours, and twenty-one minutes. station would occur in one hundred and five days, eighteen hours, and twenty-one minutes.

"There."

The s.h.i.+p's reaction ma.s.s reserves of hydrogen would permit braking for just sixty-eight more days. The inventory of ice finished updating. It would be sufficient for forty-seven days of oxygen renewal. The screen began to flash red.

Eyes wide with terror, Mariska glanced across Command at Eye's view. Two blue-white blocks the size of lunar rovers were tumbling sedately away from them toward the blaze of stars.

"The problem isn't fuel," said Mariska. "If they start a s.h.i.+p soon enough, it can match trajectories with us. Then we offload some replacement ice and finish our deceleration."

"Except there won't be any we we." Glint looked hollow. "We'll suffocate by then."

"Not necessarily." Richard was trying to convince himself. "Not at all."

"We've got tons of ice back in the buckets," said Didit. "Asteroid ice. Tons."

The four of them had gathered in Wardroom C while Beep was in Command talking to experts at Sweetspot Sweetspot station. No one wanted to be alone, but being together and seeing how scared they all were made waiting for Beep an agony. There were long silences, punctuated either by hopeful declarations or sniffles. They all cried some, Glint the most. Mariska was surprised at how little she cried. She was sure she was going to die. station. No one wanted to be alone, but being together and seeing how scared they all were made waiting for Beep an agony. There were long silences, punctuated either by hopeful declarations or sniffles. They all cried some, Glint the most. Mariska was surprised at how little she cried. She was sure she was going to die.

"Such an idiot." Glint rubbed the heels of her hands against her temples. "The stupidest d.a.m.n stupidhead in all of s.p.a.ce."

Didit poked her listlessly. "Shut up, Glint."

"It's my fault too," said Richard, not for the first time. "Should've been watching you. That's what backup is for. More eyes, no surprise."

Twenty hours before, while retrieving a block of treated ice, Glint had b.u.mped the Cherry crawler against the side of the open airlock. The s.h.i.+p's computers had interpreted this as a potential failure and had triggered lockdown protocol. Glint hadn't wanted yet another screwup on her record, so she had gunned Cherry into the airlock just before the doors slid shut. Once it was safely inside, she had cancelled the lockdown. It was, after all, a false alarm. The s.h.i.+pbrain would still record the incident, but an anomaly without consequences wouldn't get Glint in any trouble.

Only now the consequences were dire. Normally, Glint would have instructed Cherry just to drop the ice and leave the airlock. Then, after checking that the primary ice restraints on the storage porch had re-engaged, it would have resumed its automated search for micrometeorite damage. But the crawler was on the wrong side of the doors and its restraint routine had been interrupted by the lockdown. This wouldn't have been a problem had not the secondary restraint, a sheet of nanofabric that covered the ice reserves, failed. The two remaining blocks had somehow nudged out from underneath and taken off. Simulations showed that some kind of vibration could have set the ice in motion. On a s.h.i.+p as old as the s.h.i.+ning Legend, s.h.i.+ning Legend, shakes and rattles were to be expected. shakes and rattles were to be expected.

Mariska guessed that the ice had come loose when Richard banged the weight machine against the wall of Rec. From the way he avoided her gaze, she guessed he thought so too. Was that why he kept apologizing for leaving Glint to fetch the ice?

What everyone was wondering, although no one dared say it aloud yet, was how Beep could have let Glint trash the safety protocols so totally. He'd told Richard that he'd watch her. Had he had his nose in a sniffer?

"Here it is," said Mariska. "That data feed I was looking for."

=Untreated water is a poor conductor of electricity, impeding the reaction in electrolytic cells so that the dissociation of hydrogen and oxygen occurs very slowly. Typically the addition of salt electrolytes will increase the conductivity of water as much as a millionfold. Using water treated for enhanced conductivity enables SinoStar's advanced electrolytic cells to achieve efficiencies of between 50% and 70%= "So salt." Didit brightened. "We get ice from the buckets and just add salt."

"We don't have that kind of salt," Glint said wearily. "And we sure as h.e.l.l don't have enough of it."

"Hey, all the feed said was that the cells would be slow." Didit wasn't giving up. "Slow is better than nothing." She looked to Mariska for confirmation.

"Plus raw asteroid ice is full of dust and c.r.a.p. It'll just clog the cells." Glint's chin quivered but she held the tears back. "Face it, we're slagged."

"Shut up, Glint."

"There's a way," said Richard. "There has got to be a way."

n.o.body bothered to agree or disagree. The silence stretched.

"Buck up, monkeys." Beep appeared at the hatchway. "We haven't fallen out of our tree yet. Everyone up to Command and I'll tell you the plan."

The word plan plan seemed to lift the four teenagers. Didit reached over and gave Glint's hair a sisterly pull. "Told you." As they followed him upspine, Mariska caught herself grinning with relief. The brains at seemed to lift the four teenagers. Didit reached over and gave Glint's hair a sisterly pull. "Told you." As they followed him upspine, Mariska caught herself grinning with relief. The brains at Sweetspot Sweetspot must have seen something she hadn't. must have seen something she hadn't.

Beep waited until they had settled themselves around the cargo rack. One of the screens showed Banana crawler parked in front of Storage D. "So we use the crawlers to fetch raw ice from the buckets. We chip off chunks and boil all the impurities out."

Mariska knew that couldn't be right. "How do we do that?" said Mariska. "We have no way to capture...."

"Volochkova, did I ask you to speak?"

"No."

"No, what?" what?" His voice was cutting. His voice was cutting.

"No, sir." She noticed that the skin of his face seemed stretched too tight.

"Leave your ignorance in your pockets. All of you." He let rebuke hang in the air for a long moment. "Next we start collecting leftover salts from the electrolytic cells and stop dumping the stuff into s.p.a.ce. We add it to the purified water we're going to make. They're telling me that using fresh water slows down the electrolytic cells. It's like watching toenails grow."

"We know that," said Didit. "Mariska found a feed."

"We've got enough treated ice..." He glanced over at the nav rack. "...for forty-seven days. Let's see how much salt we can save by then. Okay, monkeys? Trouble is knocking but we're not letting it in. I'll suit up and ride Banana back to the buckets.

"While the reactor is at cruising power?" Too late, Mariska realized that she had spoken without permission. This time Beep was more forgiving.

"I've damped it down." He nodded at the energy rack. "Besides, how else am I going to sort ice from ore?" His grin was bleak. "But thanks for your concern, young Volochkova. I do realize that radiation isn't my friend."

Didit laughed nervously. The others glared at Mariska as if she were trying to kill them: They were fine with letting Beep risk the exposure. After all, he was senior monkey.

"So, FiveFord and Glint, get Apple and Cherry started for the porch. Didit, lower the air pressure in the airlock to four-tenths of a bar." He pushed off and floated over them. "Young Volochkova, you come with me to Service and help prep the suit. That way you can wash all those worries about my safety."

On their way downspine, Beep caught himself at the hatch to Wardroom A. "I need my coolwear." He waved her on. "Power my suit up and start the checklist. I'll be down in two kicks."

There were a dozen s.p.a.cesuits bungeed to the walls of Service. Most of them hadn't been touched in years. As part of their cargo ch.o.r.es, however, Glint and Richard had powered five of them up regularly during the run to make sure they still worked. They were all low pressure, which meant Beep needed to prebreathe oxygen before the s.p.a.cewalk to keep from getting the bends. Since Beep had been aboard the s.h.i.+ning Legend s.h.i.+ning Legend for more than a decade, he had a custom-fitted suit. Mariska opened it, plugged its battery cord into the fastcharge outlet and started its power on self-test. She was moving through the rest of the checklist when Beep flew in. for more than a decade, he had a custom-fitted suit. Mariska opened it, plugged its battery cord into the fastcharge outlet and started its power on self-test. She was moving through the rest of the checklist when Beep flew in.

He had the hood of his coolwear pulled back, but otherwise it covered his entire body. The white of the fabric made the deep flush on Beep's face stand out. When Richard exerted himself, he just turned red. Beep was practically purple and was sucking in huge gulps of air Mariska could see beads of sweat at his hairline. "Beep," she said, "tell me you're not high."

"Borrowing some courage is all." He landed in front of the oxygen bar. "And don't be warming my ears about it." He clapped the mask over his face, and glared at her.

Back in Command, she had suspected that something was wrong with him. Now she was certain of it. But there was nothing she could do, so she went back to the checklist. After fifteen minutes, he pulled the mask away and thrust the override card at her. "Hold this while I suit up."

She took it and he raised his arms. Mariska grasped his waist. She could feel the pulse of the coolant in his coolwear, which was designed to keep the s.p.a.cesuit from overheating. She raised him over her head and jiggled him through the suit's opening He fit his arms into the sleeves but then paused. "How many oxygen bottles do I have?"

"Two," she said. "Checklist calls for two, primary and backup." She didn't understand why he was asking. Two four-thousand-cubic-centimeter bottles had been the standard design spec since before she was born.

"How many are left?"

She shrugged.

"Go look."

Mystified, she opened the locker, counted thirty-seven filled and fourteen empty bottles. She reported this.

"Worth knowing." He finished sealing himself into the suit. "Worth remembering. So, let's dance."