Burning Chrome
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Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 Next page with dread. Korolev picked apathetically at a viscous pudding of chiorella. Stoiko snatched a drifting scroll of printout and read aloud. "Paranoia with a tendency to overesteem ideas! Revisionist fantasies hostile to the social sys- tem!" He crumpled the paper. "If we could seize the communications module, we could tie into an American comsat and dump the whole thing in their laps. Perhaps that would show Moscow something about our hostil- ity!" Korolev dug a stranded fruit fly from his algae pud- ding. Its two pairs of wings and bifurcated thorax were mute testimony to Kosmograd's high radiation levels. The insects had escaped from some forgotten experi- ment; generations of them had infested the station for decades. "The Americans have no interest in us," Korolev said. "Muscow can no longer be embarrassed by such revelations." "Except when the grain shipments are due," Grish- kinsaid. "America needs to sell as badly as we need to buy." Korolev grimly spooned more chlorella into his mouth, chewed mechanically, and swallowed. "The Americans couldn't reach us even if they desired to. Canaveral is in ruins. "We're low on fuel," Stoiko said. "We can take it from the remaining landers," Kor- olev said. "Then how in hell would we get back down?" Grishkin's fists trembled. "Even in Siberia, there are trees, trees; the sky! To hell with it! Let it fall to pieces! Let it fall and burn!" Korolev's pudding spattered across the bulkhead. "Oh, Christ," Grishkin said, "I'm sorry, Colonel. I know you can't go back." * * * When he entered the museum, he found Pilot Tatjana suspended before that hateful painting of the Mars landing, her cheeks slick with tears. "Do you know, Colonel, they have a bust of you at Baikonur? In bronze. I used to pass it on my way to lec- tures." Her eyes were red-rimmed with sleeplessness. "There are always busts. Academies need them." He smiled and took her hand. "What was it like that day?" She still stared at the painting. "I hardly remember. I've seen the tapes so often, now I remember them instead. My memories of Mars are any schoolchild's." He smiled for her again. "But it was not like this bad painting. In spite of everything, I'm still certain of that." "Why has it all gone this way, Colonel? Why is it ending now? When I was small I saw all this on televi- sian. Our future in space was forever " "Perhaps the Americans were right. The Japanese sent machines instead, robots to build their orbital fac- tories. Lunar mining failed for us, but we thought there would at least be a permanent research facility of some kind. It all had to do with purse strings, I suppose. With men who sit at desks and make decisions." "Here is their final decision with regard to Kosmo- grad." She passed him a folded scrap of flimsy. "I found this in the printout of Yefremov's orders from Moscow. They'll allow the station's orbit to decay over the next three months." He found that now he too was staring fixedly at the painting he loathed. "It hardly matters anymore," he heard himself say. And then she was weeping bitterly, her face pressed hard against Korolev's crippled shoulder. "But I have a plan, Tatjana," he said, stroking her hair. "You must listen." He glanced at his old Rolex. They were over eastern Siberia. He remembered how the Swiss ambassador had presented him with the watch in an enormous vaulted room in the Grand Kremlin Palace. It was time to begin. He drifted out of his Salyut into the docking sphere, batting at a length of printout that tried to coil around his head. He could still work quickly and efficiently with his good hand. He was smiling as he freed a large oxygen bottle from its webbing straps. Bracing himself against a handhold, he flung the bottle across the sphere with all his strength. It rebounded harmlessly with a harsh clang. He went after it, caught it, and hurled it again. Then he hit the decompression alarm. Dust spurted from speakers as a Klaxon began to wail. Triggered by the alarm, the d~cking bays slammed shut with a wheeze of hydraulics. Korolev's ears popped. He sneezed, then went after the bottle again. The lights flared to maximum brilliance, then flickered out. He smiled in the darkness, groping for the steel bottle. Stoiko had provoked a general systems crash. It hadn't been difficult. The memory banks were already riddled to the point of collapse with bootlegged television broadcasts. "The real bare-knuckle stuff," he muttered, banging the bottle against the wall. The lights flickered on weakly as emergency cells came on line. His shoulder began to ache. Stoically he continued pounding, remembering the din a real blowout caused. It had to be good. It had to fool Yefremov and the gun crew. With a squeal, the manual wheel of one of the hatches began to rotate. It thumped open, finally, and Tatjana looked in, grinning shyly. "Is the Plumber free?" he asked, releasing the bot- tle. "Stoiko and Umansky are reasoning with the guard." She drove a fist into her open palm. "Grishkin is preparing the landers." He followed her up to the next docking sphere. Stoiko was helping the Plumber through the hatch that led from the barracks ring. The Plumber was barefoot, his face greenish under a scraggly growth of beard. Meteorologist Umansky followed them, dragging the limp body of a soldier. "How are you, Plumber?" Korolev asked. "Shaky. They've kept me on the Fear. Not big doses, but and I thought that that was a real blow- out!" Grishkin slid out of the Soyuz lander nearest Korolev, trailing a bundle of tools and meters of a nylon lanyard. "They all check out. The crash left them under their own automatics. I've been at their remotes with a screwdriver so they can't be overridden by ground control. How are you doing, my Nikita?" he asked the Plumber. "You'll be going in steep to central China." The Plumber winced, shook himself, and shivered. "I don't speak Chinese." Stoiko handed him a printout. "This is in phonetic Mandarin. I WISH TO DEFECT. TAKE ME TO THE NEAREST JAPANESE EMBASSY." The Plumber grinned and ran his fingers through his thatch of sweat-stiffened hair. "What about the rest of you?" he asked. "You think we're doing this for your benefit alone?" Tatjana made a face at him. "Make sure the Chinese news services get the rest of that scroll, Plumber. Each of us has a copy. We'll see that the world knows what the Soviet Union intends to do to Colonel Yuri Vasilevich Korolev, first man on Mars!" She blew the Plumber a kiss. "How about Filipchenko here?" Umansky asked. A few dark spheres of congealed blood swung crookedly past the unconscious soldier's cheek. "Why don't you take the poor bastard with you," Korolev said. "Come along then, shithead," the Plumber said, grabbing Filipchenko's belt and towing him toward the Soyuz hatch. "I, Nikita the Plumber, will do you the favor of your miserable lifetime." Korolev watched as Stoiko and Grishkin sealed the hatch behind them. "Where are Romanenko and Valentina?" Korolev asked, checking his watch again. "Here, my colonel," Valentina said, her blond hair floating around her face in the hatch of another Soyuz. "We have been checking this one out." She giggled. "Time enough for that in Tokyo," Korolev snapped. "They'll be scrambling jets in Vladivostok and Hanoi within minutes." Romanenko's bare, brawny arm emerged and yanked her back into the lander. Stoiko and Grishkin sealed the hatch. "Peasants in space." Tatjana made a spitting noise. Kosmograd boomed hollowly as the Plumber, with the unconscious Filipchenko, cast off. Another boom and the lovers were off as well. "Come along, friend Umansky," said Stoiko. "And farewell, Colonel!" The two men headed down the corridor. "I'll go with you," Grishkin said to Tatiana. He grinned. "After all, you're a pilot." "No," she said. "Alone. We'll split the odds. You'll be fine with the automatics. Just don't touch anything on the board." Korolev watched her help him into the sphere's last Soyuz. "I'll take you dancing, Tatjana," Grishkin said, "in Tokyo." She sealed the hatch. Another boom, and Stoiko and Umansky had cast off from the next docking sphere. "Go now, Tatiana," Korolev said. "Hurry. I don't want them shooting you down over international waters." "That leaves you here alone, Colonel, alone with our enemies." "When you've gone, they'll go as well," he said. "And I depend on your publicity to embarrass the Kremlin into keeping me alive here." "And what shall I tell them in Tokyo, Colonel? Have you a message for the world?" "Tell them . . ." and every cliche came rushing to him with an absolute rightness that made him want to laugh hysterically: One small step... We came in peace |
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