Lifeline by Kevin J. Anderson Page B

the gardener, but stopped as she noticed the tension in his back.
    Kaitanabe ripped the lilies out by the roots, crushing the bulbs in his hands. He yanked the leaves off silently and tore the delicate flowers.
    Karen took a step forward. “What—?”
    The gardener froze, then slowly placed the lilies down on the ground, as if embarrassed. He stood up, brushing his dirt-covered hands together. It took him a moment to place an indifferent mask on his face.
    “This entire garden … none of it is food.” He indicated the plants with a nod of his head. “All this time I could have been growing food.”
    He padded away, leaving the ruined flower bed and clods of dirt on the path.
    Karen stared at him until he disappeared into the foliage. She couldn’t even hear him moving. Deep in one of the branches of a sculpted tree, a burst of cheerful bird song echoed in the garden.
    The Bifrost Lounge held a dozen people. The chairs, tables, and small holoscreens had been arranged in a haphazard but calculated way. Karen was sure Orbitechnologies had spent a lot of effort on psychological studies to give it just that “homey” touch. Everything was done in earth tones with splashes of green here and there, artificial flowers, real plants.
    Three women sat at a table playing a game with a well-worn deck of paper playing cards. Clustered together in the high-throughput ventilation area, four people shared a cigarette. Karen smiled to herself. One of Orbitech 1’s developments had been an alveoli-scrubber drug—a timed-release capsule that cleaned deposits from the lungs. This made tobacco smoking safe again, but since it cost so much to import tobacco from Earth, few of the Orbitech colonists could smoke anyway.
    The lab work waited, but Karen avoided it for now. She needed to be with other people, even if she did nothing more than sit and observe. She was getting tired of hiding with nothing but her problems for company. That was no way to make things better for herself.
    She entered the lounge quietly so no one would notice her. A man in a red sweat suit hurried up to her. “The shuttles are going down! Either this orbit or the next one.” He looked as if she should be interested, but he went off to tell the others before she could respond.
    The shuttle Miranda had crashed on the Moon days before. Most of the people on Orbitech 1 were still furious with Mr. McLaris and the pilot who had stolen the shuttle. Mutineers, some people called them. Some claimed that it was just like upper management to steal the goods and screw the other employees; others chuckled bitterly that McLaris had screwed even the other managers.
    But the other two shuttles were a different story. The Ariel and the Oberon had been trapped in low Earth orbit, arriving at the end of their runs just after the War. At least they hadn’t been blasted in the space-based weapons exchange like the Earth-orbiting stations, but now the two pilots had limited supplies and no fuel to go anyplace else.
    Every ninety minutes the two shuttles dipped lower in their orbits as the vanishingly thin atmosphere slowed them like quicksand. They had about another day and a half before the craft would hit the ionosphere—not like a stone skipping across the water, but streaking across the sky in a dazzling fireball.
    The Colony Communications—ConComm—network between the Aguinaldo, Clavius Base , and Orbitech 1 kept communications open twenty-four hours a day. Occasionally it picked up low-wattage broadcasts from Earth or amateur radio operators, or intercepted transmissions between groups of War survivors, but very few of the transmissions were directed out into space. The colonies were on their own as far as Earth was concerned.
    But ConComm also broadcast regular updates of the situation with the Ariel and the Oberon. What else did the people have to do but watch and listen to the pilots’ gamble for survival? Heroes — we could use some about now, Karen thought.
    Clavius