Chapter Twelve

Ragtime: Joké

Joké has a better EVA suit than anything they have on the Ragtime – companies are cheap – but it’s still hard going. Her muscles are screaming with the exertion of it all, microgravity be damned. If not for the fluid and temperature balance of the suit, she would be drenched in sweat.

Grab the next rail, propel forwards, try not to bounce off anything. Travel from node to node down the truss, try not to get confused by the turn off to the spokes of the torus.

She is vigilant of robots, but they scramble about ignoring her, seeming to have their own mission. She sees a flash of her father crossing her visual field, running, saying words she cannot hear. That’s not now, so it must be later. She stops.

“Decisive, come back,” she says.

“Joké?”

“Hmm?”

“What is it, baby?”

“Action Governor!”

Lawrence sighs over the comm. “Is there a point to this?”

“Mmm, no, just checking on you.”

“Mission accomplished. Shutdown protocols in place. Equivalence goes first, then me.”

“Mm-hmm, sounds good.” Joké ducks under a series of dangling cables that look like jungle vines; then she sees a man, sad, trudging, linked to the Us. “Nobody soothed his nightmares when he was a child.”

“What, darling?”

“Nothing, governor. Odabo.”

A clear glowing arrow pointing aft, but an intersection, and different arrows – one pointing to Node M, the other to Node E. The first nodes without a number. There’s also a one-foot cut-out of Snoopy plastered to the wall.

“Captain,” says Joké.

“Go.”

“Ahh, what’s in Node E?”

“Node E is the wrong direction. The leak is aft.”

“Mmm, and I’m going aft, but what’s in Node E?”

“Experimental. I don’t know. They don’t tell us. It’s sealed and I’ll never know. It’s automated. All I do is check the door.”

“Ooh. I like shiny, experimental things.”

“Are you getting distracted?”

“Uuuhh, no. Out.”

She pledges to check out Node E on her way back because it gives her an uneasy feeling. With external microphones she can hear a whistling sound, the rushing of air through a small aperture. She pushes, flies through the air, feels a pull. Debris and loose objects move in the same direction. She is at the end, but not in danger, she doesn’t think. A shutter has slid down to form a seal, but it is incomplete. The door stopped about a foot from the end, and atmosphere rushes away, along with whatever objects will fit the space. Globules of grey-green fluid float in the air like a snowstorm, and she hopes that’s not something from the waste system. Joké’s body moves from momentum and air current, but her spacesuit won’t fit through, so she’s not worried.

“Captain.”

“Go.”