Mining the Oort (30 page)

"The hell I can't!"

"But you can't," she said seriously, "because you'd be out on your ass if you did. Remember the entrance test you took? The one your father gave you the answers for before you took it? Well, hell, Dekker! Where do you think he got them?"

33

Some of the students at the Oortcorp training school called Phase Six the "garbage course." When those students graduated and shipped out to work for the project they might change their minds, because Phase Six was important.

The reason it was important had to do with the places where they would go to work. Those places were spread out over many billions of kilometers of space and they performed quite different functions, but they all had one vital feature in common. Each one was no more than a metal shell that was afloat in the most hostile environment human beings have ever tried to survive in: space.

Space is lethal to a degree that nothing on Earth can match. Stripped naked of resources anywhere on Earth, a human being could still survive, at least for a time. He could go weeks without food, days without even water. Without air to breathe, though, he would die at once. If that same human being were cast unprotected into space his lungs would burst, his blood would boil, and he would be dead in minutes.

The only thing that keeps all spacefarers from suffering that quick and brutal death is their complex of pumps and water purifiers and air regenerators and power-plant and life-support systems, and those systems were practically identical in every station of the Oortcorp project.

If anything went wrong—as, sooner or later, something always does—it had to be fixed at once. If it wasn't, people would die. There would be no outside experts to save them. There wasn't any plumber to call up or ambulance to summon across the million-kilometer stretches of empty space. The people who worked there had no one to rely on but themselves. It was they alone who had to learn every last one of the skills that were needed to keep that complex and fallible system running; and that was what Phase Six was all about.

34

Dekker's class had started out with a full complement of thirty-four chosen men and women, every one of them carefully selected for education, ability, and intelligence. It dwindled fast.

By the end of Phase Five nearly half of the original thirty-four were gone. Dekker DeWoe was still there. So were Ven Kupferfeld, and Toro Tanabe, and Shiaopin Ye, and Jay-John Belster, and a dozen or so others from the original roster, but that was all. Sixteen of those bright and able students had turned out to be not quite bright and able enough—or, Dekker could not help reminding himself, dishonest enough—to keep their grades and psychological fitness high enough to survive the ordeal, and so the class number was down to eighteen . . . for one night.

When that night came Dekker didn't know it was coming. He was getting ready for bed, staring into the mirror as he brushed his teeth, not liking what he saw. It wasn't the physical reflection that bothered him; physically Dekker was in about the best shape of his life. The polysteroid and calcium shots were down to bare maintenance levels, and the braces had lain untouched under his bed for months now. It was almost possible for Dekker to forget that he was a Martian suffering from the environment of a more dire planet than his own . . . except when, now and then, he was reminded by such bizarre happenings as the sudden, surprising first autumn fall of snow. Snow! And his progress at the school was—well—optimal. It deserved congratulation . . . provided you didn't know how it had been made possible.

After all, simply getting as far as Phase Six was a victory of sorts in itself. What spoiled it for Dekker DeWoe was the knowledge that the victory was riddled with fraud. Not just his own, either. Dekker hadn't talked much with Toro Tanabe after the conversation with Annetta Bancroft, because after that he had understood at last how the Japanese had breezed through so easily. When he looked at the rest of his classmates it was with suspicion: how many of them were fakes, too? And when he looked in the mirror what he saw was that very un-Martian creature, a cheat.

It was terrible to know that Annetta, and probably Ven, and perhaps any number of other people knew the truth about him; but the worst part of all was simply knowing it of himself.

Even the little bits of recent good news had suddenly turned into bad. It was good that his mother would be there for his graduation . . . but, when he saw her, what was he going to tell Gerti DeWoe?

When, that night, he heard a commotion in the hall outside his quarters, he peered out of the bathroom, toothbrush in his hand, to see what might be going on. Toro Tanabe was already at the hall door, talking excitedly to someone outside. When Tanabe turned and saw Dekker, he called, "Come and see, DeWoe! We have some new blood for Phase Six." And when Dekker hesitated, he added irritably, "It doesn't matter that you are getting ready for bed, come anyway. Hurry."

Dekker did hurry, after his fashion. That is to say that when he washed his face and pulled on a robe he did it rapidly, but by the time he got to the door the last of the new people was already disappearing into a doorway down the hall. Dekker looked after him in puzzlement. "Did you say they're coming into Phase Six with us?"

"Yes, exactly, DeWoe. But that is not all. They are not ordinary students. These people are all veterans—eight of them—and from the Oort cloud itself, actually! They have been on Earth on R-and-R between tours of duty, only instead of going back to the Oort they have been ordered to join us for a refresher course and then to go to Co-Mars Two."

Dekker looked at his roommate in perplexity. "I never heard of such a thing," he said.

"There has never been such a thing! It is quite irregular. Do you see, DeWoe, it must mean that Co-Mars Two needs people very badly!"

"My name," the Phase Six instructor said the next morning, "is Marty Gillespie, and I used to be head of services at the Nairobi Skyhook plenum until I retired." He looked retired; he was an elderly man with no hair at the top of his head but a scraggly white pigtail tied over the back of his neck. He was short and plump, and there were lines in his face, but he looked amiable enough as he studied his new class. "What you're going to learn here is what you need to know about housekeeping on a space station, but before we get into that I want you all to stand up and tell me your names."

Dekker, up close to the instructor, turned around to see which were the new ones. They weren't hard to pick out. There were eight people who had been in the Oort, six men and two women, and they were conspicuous among the familiar faces. They carried themselves with an air of assurance that most of the others lacked, and they had clumped themselves together in a tight group. Dekker noted that one of the women, though apparently a little older than himself, was quite tall and not at all unpleasant to look at. He filed her name away in his mind: Rima Consalvo.

Gillespie had also noted the grouping and shook his head. "You're going to have to pair off to share terminals, and I don't want you new people all sticking together; so if you're one of the ones that're in from the cloud, I want you working with a buddy that isn't. You can tell him what things are like out in the field, and he can tell you what he's just learned here and you've probably forgotten. So, let's see, you and you, you go with her, you two together—"

Dekker recognized a chance when he saw it. All it took then was a little inconspicuous sidling through the crowd, and when Gillespie came to Rima Consalvo, Dekker was right beside her. She gave him a quizzical look, then, when Gillespie obligingly paired them, a grin.

"Nice to meet you," Dekker whispered, and she nodded.

"Remember who you're with," the instructor ordered. "Now, you probably want to know what I mean by housekeeping. I don't just mean tidying up your quarters, though you'll have to do that, too. Mostly I mean staying alive, you yourself and everybody in the station with you. That means knowing how to deal with power loss, or accident, or fire. Second, I mean making sure the station does its job: that's instrument and communications maintenance. Last there's keeping the crew fed and healthy and reasonably happy in their work, which means food preparation, laundry, cleanup, and general repair—anything from fixing a squeaking door to tackling a stopped toilet. Any questions about any of that?"

He was looking around at the expressions on the faces of the class. None of them were looking pleased, but it was Toro Tanabe who put his hand up first. "I did not enter this course to fix toilets!" he said.

"Nobody ever does," Gillespie said pleasantly, "but sometimes the toilets have to be fixed. You crap in them, you fix them if you have to. Any other questions?" He looked around briefly, then said, "You probably don't know what to ask yet, do you? Well, let's get into it. You teams take your places—pick any screens you want, they're all the same—and let's start with a look at how we go about maintaining pressure integrity."

When they had their seats, Rima looked at Dekker inquiringly, Dekker nodded, and so she was the one who started the display.

It was, like all the school's training programs, clear and complete—though not, to Dekker, very interesting. Maintaining pressure integrity was not a challenging subject for someone who had grown up in an airtight Martian deme. It wasn't for someone who had spent four years in the Oort cloud, either. All the same, side by side they watched the 3D schematics of a station's air system, along with the automatic programs for sealing every door and bulkhead in the event of pressure drop; Dekker noticed approvingly that Rima Consalvo paid attention, in spite of the fact that she, too, must have known all this long before. He considered that her attitude was very nearly Martian. They had an interactive screen, of course, but for this first tutorial there was nothing for them to do but watch, and they both kept their hands off the keypad. Dekker had plenty of chances to notice that Rima Consalvo had a nice profile and that, although her perfume wasn't Ven Kupferfeld's, it was still quite pleasant.

When the program had run and the instructor asked if anyone hadn't understood anything, it was a while before one of the students raised her hand. "Maybe we just haven't come to that part of the course yet," she said tentatively, "but what happens if there's a massive collision and the power for the automatic systems goes out at the same time as the hull is breached?"

Gillespie gave her an approving look. "Good question, Clarkson. You're on your toes, but you're right, we just haven't come to that yet. In a minute we'll set up some problem simulations for you to deal with, and that'll be one of them. Any other questions? Then go to step two on your screens, and let's see what some of the problems might be."

On the way to lunch they walked together, naturally enough, and Dekker had plenty of time to tell Rima Consalvo all about himself. He did it with smiles and animated gestures, not entirely because he was aware of the fact that Ven Kupferfeld was only a few steps behind them. Consalvo responded, too. She showed definite signs of being interested in him, he thought, as well as being quite interesting herself. She had evidently had a privileged childhood—well, didn't every Earthie child?—but then she had signed up for the Oort. She described her four-year hitch out in the cloud, where she specialized in snake-handling by choice, now and then taking her turn in one of the spotter ships.

"But that really wears you down, DeWoe, out there all by yourself for weeks at a time. Snake-handling's better. You don't have to wear those damn bodysuits, and you're on the base ship with your friends so when you're off shift you have somebody to talk to. I was really afraid I'd be missing all those guys," she added, as they joined the counter line, "but it looks to me like there are some good people here, too."

That was a remark that pleased Dekker, since naturally he concluded that he was one of them. Unfortunately they got separated in the line, because Consalvo had had to go back for a clean tray, and their conversation was interrupted just when it was going well. Dekker was careful to save a seat for her on the assumption that they would have the whole lunch hour to get to know each other better. Maybe even to get her to answer a few questions more explicitly. Like why she had made the jump from a life of ease to the Oort. Like her age, for that matter. He guessed, as well as he could, that Consalvo was in her early thirties, Earth years, but she seemed to have that strange reluctance of Earthie women about revealing their ages—as though ten years or so one way or another could make much difference. Anyway, she certainly did seem to like him, and Dekker considered that that promised well for the future on Co-Mars Two.

But when Consalvo came off the line with her tray she passed right by him with a nod and a friendly, but not inviting, smile, to sit down two or three tables away.

That was a disappointment. It was a surprise, too, when he saw that the person she sat with was, of all people, Ven Kupferfeld. A moment later another man joined them—Dekker recognized him as one of the new group from the Oort, somebody named Berl Korman.

Then there was a second surprise and maybe an even more unwelcome one, as Jay-John Belster put his tray down at the same table.

Dekker concentrated his attention on his killed-animal cutlet. He wasn't really being snubbed, he explained to himself. It was only natural that Rima Consalvo would want to get to know as many of her new classmates as possible—but why those particular two new classmates? At least, he thought, her choice of companions seemed to prove that she wasn't avoiding him because of some prejudice against Martians—supposing that anyone could still think of Jay-John Belster as a real Martian.

When they got back to the training center after lunch, Consalvo seemed as friendly as ever when she took her place right beside him again. The rest of the class was still drifting in, which gave him a chance for a little conversation. Dekker debated mentioning that he had been looking forward to having her company at lunch. It was certainly true, but he guessed that it probably wasn't a good idea to say it, since it might sound to her as though he were trying to be, well, possessive, and without much excuse considering the shortness of their acquaintance.