Through the heptad’s structure, a programmed series of whirrs and clunks resonated as it docked with a port on the long truss projecting to the side of the Caboose: the heart of the Shipyard, rich in airlocks and anchoring points. Docked at the next port along was a glinting, angular framework: the skeleton of Red Hope, awaiting its final components. It sported four large propellant tanks clustered around a knot of pumps, valves, actuators, and sensors that fed a rocket engine centered below.
“Madam President?” Ravi asked. “I’m afraid the time is now. Unless you want to go to Mars. Which you would be welcome to do.”
Julia snapped to attention. She had been checking herself in the mirror of her compact. Hardly glamorous, but by Cloud Ark standards, her appearance would do.
“It is tempting,” Julia said, “but I have responsibilities here, I’m afraid.” She snapped the compact shut and glanced over, verifying that Camila was ready to shoot video on her phone. She was, but she still had that rattled look on her face. What had come over her? They’d have to have a heart-to-heart later.
“Very well,” Ravi said, with a note of regret that sounded only a little forced. “Perhaps you’ll be wanting this.”
He held out a sheet of paper. Taking it from him, Julia recognized it as the presidential seal, much the worse for wear. Ravi had carefully peeled it from the wall, bringing most of its rectangle of blue tape with it. Julia smoothed it out and tucked it under one arm.
Slowly drifting away from her, Ravi snapped out a salute.
Julia returned it. “Godspeed, Ravi. I look forward to hearing your first transmission from the surface of Mars.”
“And I look forward to sending it, Madam President.”
“We shall meet again, I feel. Somehow the intrepid people of the Cloud Ark will find a way, in spite of all opposition, to win through to the realm of clean space and follow Red Hope to a better place.”
Ravi was one of those who could never quite tell when he was dismissed. He began to mumble out a stirring response, but Julia glanced at Camila to let her know that she could stop recording, then propelled herself toward the nose of the White Arklet. Camila followed in her wake.
After a few moments of squirming through tubes, they emerged from the port into one of the modules that made up the Shipyard. It was something of a madhouse. The total roster of the Red Hope expedition was two dozen. Most of those were already aboard the heptad or the triad, waiting to be mated with the vehicle’s frame, but a few were “outside” in space suits and several were in here, engaging in hasty conferences or shoving bundles of supplies about.
Adding a bizarre note were four members of the General Population—apparently Shipyard workers—who had been zip-tied, hands behind backs, to convenient attachment points around the inside of the module. Most looked fine, but one man had a stream of small blood globules drifting away from a laceration on his eyebrow. Paul Freel had mentioned in passing that several of the MIV team had become unwitting accomplices, helping to assemble the frame of Red Hope on the understanding that it was part of a backup plan to rescue Ymir. Apparently they had changed status to witting, and raised objections.
The bleeding man was staring at Julia through the eye that hadn’t swollen shut. “Julia!” he called out.
In an odd way Julia had nothing to do. The other Martians were busy shoving their hoarded supplies through the port into the heptad. One by one the Martians were following suit, and so the space was rapidly clearing out. She ignored the bleeding man at first. But it got to the point where only one Martian—Paul Freel himself—was remaining. Lacking Ravi’s feel for ceremony, he was checking off items on the screen of his tablet, paying Julia no attention whatsoever.
“Julia!” the zip-tied man said again. He wasn’t shouting. His tone was almost conversational.
“Yes,” she finally said.
“What’s your friend’s name?” he asked, nodding toward Camila.
Julia bridled for a moment at the impertinent request, then remembered that it was never too late to turn an enemy into a friend. “Her name is Camila,” she said. “And let me say, sir, that I am shocked and dismayed to see what has occurred to you. Let me assure you that—”
“Hey, Camila!” the man said.
“Yes?” Camila answered, sounding very much the scared eighteen-year-old girl.
“Your friend is crazy,” the man told her.
“Madam President?” Paul asked, before Julia had time to react.
She turned toward Paul, her face burning.
“If you would do the honors?”
“What honors?” Honestly, these engineers. Was she supposed to break a bottle of champagne over it?
“Close the hatch when I have gone through. Then we can undock.”
“Happy to.”
“See you on Mars.” He stuck his hand out. She grasped it lightly and gave it a little shake. Camila, rattled by the exchange with the bleeding man, had forsaken her duties as camera operator.
Paul Freel reached into the portal joining Earth to Mars, pulled himself through, turned about, and closed the hatch on his side. Julia followed suit on hers. Immediately she felt, as much as heard, the hisses and clunks that signaled the undocking of Red Hope. Unfamiliar noises radiated through the module’s hull too, very close to her, and she realized that these were the boots of space suits moving around.
“The alert is canceled,” announced a synthetic voice. The color of the lights changed.
Camila emitted a short, explosive scream. Then she pointed down the length of the Shipyard, toward where it connected with the Stack.
Down in the Caboose, some thirty meters away, a few people could be seen, dressed in orange vests. One of them looked directly at her.
It was Tekla.
The synthesized voice spoke out again, sounding a second alert.
That wasn’t part of the plan.
Tekla must have gathered her legs against something down in the Caboose capable of pushing back, because all of a sudden she was flying toward them like a rocket. Her arms were in motion, reaching this way and that to slap at anything that could help her correct her course, but her eyes were fixed on Julia and she was coming straight for her. Something gleamed in her hand, a thin arc of silver light: the honed edge of a dagger.
A crisp metallic noise resounded through the module as Julia pulled back the hammer on Pete Starling’s revolver.
“Gun!” shouted the bleeding man. “Gun! Gun!”
If Tekla heard, she did not care, but only pushed back harder against a strut in the neighboring module and came on faster.
To Julia the weapon’s recoil came too soon, as if it had gone off accidentally. She’d been in space long enough to know that it would knock her back, and it did; but she also saw things she could not explain. Camila had entered the picture, flying in from the side with an arm outstretched. The wall of the Shipyard itself reached out to body-check Tekla. A moment later it struck Camila, then Julia. She had expected the high-pitched hiss of a bullet-sized hull puncture; but what followed was more like a roar. Like the crowd in a football stadium when a pass is intercepted. Camila’s arm had turned into a wing of fire. Something took Julia from behind and hurled her toward the Caboose. She looked around, thinking, crazily, that the bleeding man had somehow gotten loose and tackled her. But the force pushing her along was no human being. It was a torrent of escaping air.
“JIRO, CAN YOU HEAR ME?” DINAH ASKED FOR THE FOURTH TIME.
She conjectured that he could, but that he was simply too weak to answer. So she went ahead and delivered the good news. “We made it,” she said. “I have Izzy on optical. We’ll converge with them in about half an hour.”
“Good,” he said, “good.” She was startled to hear anything at all. But the second “good” was a lot fainter than the first one, and she reckoned it was all he could get out.