Manifold 1 - Time by Stephen Baxter

Author:Stephen Baxter [Baxter, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: sf
Published: 2011-04-08T21:05:59+00:00

PART THREE

Cruithne

Darest thou now O soul,

Walk out with me toward the unknown region

Where neither ground is nor any path to follow?

— WALT WHITMAN

Emma Stoney:

Rockets, it turned out, were unsubtle.

The launch was a roaring vibration. She’d been expecting acceleration. But when each booster stage cut out, the engine thrust just died — suddenly, with no tail-off — so that the reluctant astronauts were thrown forward against their restraints and given a couple of seconds of tense breathing and anticipation; then the next stage cut in and they were jammed back once more. After a couple of minutes of this Emma felt bruises on her back, neck, and thighs.

But the thrust of the last booster stage was gentle, just a push at her chest and legs. Then, finally, the thrust died for good.

And she was drifting up, slowly, out of her seat, as far as her restraints would let her. She felt sweat that had pooled in the small of her back, spreading out over her skin.

The rocket noise was gone. There was silence in the cabin, save for the whirr of fans and pumps, the soft ticking of instruments, Malenfant’s quiet voice as he worked through his shutdown checklist.

And she heard a gentle whimpering, oddly high-pitched, like a cat. It must be Michael. But he was too far away for her to reach.

Now there was a series of clattering bangs, hard and metallic, right under her back, as if someone were slamming on the hull with great steel fists.

“There goes the last stage,” Malenfant called. “Now we coast all the way to Cruithne.” He grinned through his open faceplate. “Welcome to the Gerard K O ‘Neill. Don’t move yet; we aren’t quite done.”

This cabin was called the Earth-return capsule. The four of them sat side by side, their orange pressure suits crumpled in their metal-frame couches. Emma was at the left-hand end of the row, jammed between Malenfant and the wall, which was just a bulkhead, metallic and unfinished. She was looking up into a tight cone, like a metal tepee. She was facing an instrument panel, a dashboard that spanned the capsule, crusted with switches, dials, and softscreen readouts. On the other side of the panel she could see clusters of wires and optical fibers and cables, crudely taped together and looped through brackets. This was not the space shuttle, rebuilt and quality-certified after every flight; there was a home-workshop, improvised feel to the whole shebang.

Obscurely, however, she found that comforting.

The light, greenish gray, came from a series of small fluorescent floods set around the walls of the capsule; the shadows were long and sharp, making this little box of a spaceship seem much bigger than it was. But there were no windows. She felt deprived, disoriented; she no longer knew which way up she was, how fast she was traveling.

Malenfant reached up and took off his helmet. He shook his head, and little spherical balls of sweat drifted away from his forehead, swimming in straight lines through the air. “All my life I dreamed of this.

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