Analog SFF, June 2011 Read Online Free Page B

know the rules."
    Because their utility craft were little more than flying broomsticks: compressed-air bottles, saddles, and minimal controls mounted to latticework frames. A counterpressure suit was your only protection.
    "But I don't have to like the rules,” Thad said. Which, emphatically, he did not. What if he had overlooked something? Joining the rescue team might have given him a chance to cover his tracks.
    "Details,” Hsu prompted.
    "You heard Gabe switch to private channel two.” It had all come down to Gabe taking his cue, because everything on the public channel got recorded. Sooner or later, he would have figured out what Thad was building. Certainly the bullshit about Tiny and making a still for her would not bear scrutiny. That fable was all Thad could come up with on the spot, blather to occupy Gabe's mind until they got farther from the station. “When I linked in, Gabe was already mid-rant. He missed Jillian, unbearably. He knew—but couldn't explain how—that she was cheating on him. He loved her and needed her and couldn't bear for anyone else to be with her. He would show her. And then"—Thad paused dramatically—"he unclipped his tethers."
    "And you . . . ?"
    "What do you think , Lyman? I tried to talk sense into him, damn it."
    "And not a word of this reported to base."
    "I didn't dare switch channels! There was no telling what Gabe might do if I wasn't on. If I didn't respond when he expected an answer."
    "And he jumped anyway."
    "As I keep telling you,” Thad said.
    He had never been much of a basketball player. On a good day, his vertical leap was two feet. On Phoebe, that was more than enough leg strength to vault two men and their gear past escape velocity. He had let go of the body, untethered, before coming to the end of his own fully unrolled tethers. After the ropes pulled him short with a jerk, Thad had watched the corpse recede into the darkness.
    Hsu tipped back his head, staring through the command-center dome. “He had second thoughts."
    "What do you mean?” Thad asked.
    "Every indication is that Gabe froze to death. But when Tina and Lewis found Gabe, the suit heater was on. He must have been in late-stage hypothermia by then, half delirious. It's a marvel his suit still recognized his voice.” Hsu sighed. “By then it was too late."
    The heaters kicked back on once Thad replaced the batteries. Not done till Gabe was unequivocally dead.
    "It's a shame,” Thad said, meaning it. Gabe was not a bad guy, only in the wrong place at the wrong time.
    "A damn shame."
    Silence stretched awkwardly. After a while Thad said, “It's been a hell of a day. I'd like to . . . hell, I don't know what.” Except that he knew damn well. He had to finish what Gabe had interrupted, and get everything stashed away. At least then the man would have died for a reason. “Something other than relive this disaster."
    Hsu nodded. “Sounds like a good idea. Get some sleep."
    "I will,” Thad said. And wondered if he could.
    * * * *
    CONVICTION
    2023
    Monday, April 10
    Marcus Judson slipped into the back of the downtown Baltimore hotel ballroom more than an hour late. Though the room was packed, it did not seem like anyone was having a ball. Certainly not his colleagues huddled at the speakers’ table at the opposite end of the room.
    He surveilled from behind a freestanding sign that read The Power of Powersats: a Town Meeting . From the way Jeff Robbins, one of the EPA representatives on the dais, blotted his face with his handkerchief, the townsfolk bore, however metaphorically, torches and pitchforks.
    The PowerHolo orientation spiel (of which Marcus was thoroughly sick, after many such gatherings) ran about thirty minutes. That meant the Q&A session had just begun. It did not bode well to find Jeff already wound so tight. Plenty of head-in-the-sand types in the crowd, then. Damned Luddites.
    Marcus hated being such a cynic—but he was more this way every day.
    This could have been any public