Exo: A Novel (Jumper) (41 page)

I slipped the ice pick back into its wooden sheath and retrieved the hunting knife. The ice pick was an eighth of an inch at its thickest, but the holes it punched were less because of the stretch of the rubberized cloth. The hunting knife’s cross section was half again as thick and three quarters of an inch from back of blade to cutting edge.

When I stabbed the bag with it, the resulting gash spread open like lips of a mouth opening to say “oh,” and the jet of ice crystals fountained out without stopping. I felt the bag vibrate as more and more of the water within boiled. The outgassing jet spread into a broad cone shape and the bag actually pushed against my arm, pivoting my body on my long axis. As we spun, the spreading cloud became a spiral of brilliantly lit crystals.

I waited it out, careful to keep the jet pointed away from any part of the suit. When the jet finally stopped, the bag was less than an eighth of its original size and solid as a rock.

The bag dropped to the table in the vault with a
thunk
that I could hear even through the helmet, and vapor immediately formed around it.

Joe pointed my cheap automotive infrared thermometer on it and showed me the readout: minus twelve degrees Fahrenheit.

“Yeah,” I said, speaking loud through the helmet. “Small holes sealed. Big hole didn’t.”

“Right,” said Joe, handing me the next ball-shaped bag. “Try this.”

I took seven more ice bags into orbit.

All of the ice bags contained tap water, but now they also had various additives. We tried chopped cellulose, cotton, wool, fiberglass, superabsorbent polyacrylamide beads, and various synthetic fibers.

“We have a winner,” I said, later, helmet off.

The best mixture featured chopped bamboo fiber mixed with longer lengths of a wool-like synthetic fiber that entangled with itself and the bamboo. The combination rapidly formed a mesh across the punctures, freezing from the edges and building across the gap, forming a fiber-reinforced ice patch even when I sawed a hole three inches long through the cloth.

Joe was more cautious. “Maybe. Works well in the
short
run. We’ll have to see how well it handles cycles of warming and freezing.”

“It
should
be self-healing. If it melts to the point of leakage, rapid evaporation will freeze it again.”

“It’s got potential. Better to test it, right?”

I nodded and unstrapped the life-support pack. Joe automatically supported it as I shrugged off the straps and, as he set it on its shelf, I did the same thing with the connected helmet. We went through the rest of the postmission checklist, right down to scanning for micrometeorite impacts.

“You’re getting good at this,” I said.

“
We
are,” he corrected. “I’ve always worked well with you.”

Except when you chose to
work
with another.
My face must’ve shown what I was thinking, because his closed up again.

“It’s true,” I said. “Works well with others. Achievement unlocked.”

Joe muttered, “Works and plays well with—” He shook his head angrily. “Let’s get the rest of the suit off.”

I took off the coveralls and hung them. We were now using the new portable power supply and it remained attached to the suit for the entire mission. I flipped the interlock and turned the rheostat. The suit expanded away from me, letting go, and I took a sharp inhalation of breath that was half pressure release and half surprise.

Joe automatically supported the flange while I jumped out of the suit, then hung it on the rack, carefully averting his eyes.

When he finally turned back toward me, I stepped forward and put my arms around him.

He gasped and then his arms tightened around me with desperate—almost suitlike—pressure. He lowered his face into my hair and breathed deeply.

I stood there for the space of three deep breaths. When I let go, he did too, his mouth half open, his eyes questioning.

“Cory is going to work you like a dog for the next ten days,” I said. “How would you like to go surfing?”

*   *   *

We hit the waves for three hours at Laniakea on the north shore of Oahu. When I jumped him and his short board back to his house, the press population on the curb had doubled, probably because of how he had disappeared on them earlier in the day.

The reporters didn’t note the arrival, though, because I delivered him directly to his bedroom and, carefully not looking at the bed, kissed him lightly on the lips. As his arms closed around me, I jumped away.

In the morning I met Jade and Tara at Jade’s house. “There’s no press here?”

“We’ve kept low.
We
weren’t scheduled back from Europe yet.”

“When do your parents get back?”

Jade looked at her watch and made a face. “Two days, seven hours. On the bright side, Dad texted that Mom is relaxing and actually enjoying the last bit of their trip when she isn’t haranguing me all day.”

“Well, that’s something.” I jumped them to Cory’s lab and went back for Joe.

He was dressed and ready, but he didn’t look very rested.

“You look like shit,” I said.

“Trouble sleeping,” he said. “When you go to hug someone and they vanish…”

I’d experienced some of that myself but I said, “Well, you’ll probably sleep well tonight.”

We joined the others at Cory’s lab and he led us down to the temporary work space off of the machine shops that he’d arranged to use for the work.

“First things first,” Cory said. “The press calls started. Joe’s status as a student working for
me,
a researcher in mechanical counterpressure suits, leaked out of the Cardinal Careers center. My cell and voice mail directs reporters to call university communications. They have the press release Tara helped me prepare before her trip, but we are definitely in that
next
phase.”

I nodded and looked at their faces. “Everybody is still good with continuing?”

Cory said, “You’re definitely covered by the university’s privacy policy. The campus is private property and media reps are not authorized to enter academic or residence areas unless specifically invited.”

Joe said, “That’s better than what’s happening back at my parents’ house. I’m good.”

Jade said, “We’re in.”

Tara said, “Right.”

I looked back at Cory and raised my eyebrows. He nodded firmly in return.

“Right, then. I’ll bring in lunch, as arranged. Work hard.
Ad astra per aspera
.”

Cory laughed. “Yes,
maxime asperum
.”

*   *   *

For my next appointment, I wore the Nomex coveralls and the Merrell boots I usually wore over the suit. Both were a little loose, but I wore a bright blue turtleneck under the coveralls and wore doubled socks on my feet, and they looked and felt fine.

The receptionist was looking down at her computer when I appeared before her, but she must’ve caught some movement because her head jerked up and her mouth dropped open.

“I have an appointment,” I said.

“You
certainly
do!” She picked up the handset on her phone and pushed a button. “Fran, she’s here.” She put down the handset and said, “Ms. Wilde will be right down to get you.” She pulled a piece of paper from her top drawer. “While you’re waiting, would you mind autographing this? It’s for my daughter.”

It was a color printout of the photo Flight Engineer Rasmussen had taken of me from the observation cupola of the ISS—side lit by direct sunlight and front lit by light reflected off the ISS, floating in front of a mostly dark Earth.

“Uh, what’s your daughter’s name?” I finally managed, taking the marker she held out.

“Alisha.”

I wrote, “For Alisha, Welcome to the Womaned Space Program! Best wishes, Space Girl. p.s.—this is my first autograph
ever
.”

When she read it, the woman said, “Ever?”

I nodded. “How old is she?”

“Eleven.”

I reached up and ripped the Space Girl patch off of the Velcro on my shoulder and set it on the desk. “Give her this.” I tapped the shoulder of the figure in the photo. “It’s the one I was wearing then.”

She reached out blindly to the tissue box and blew her nose.

A woman with short dark hair came down the stairs and said, “Welcome to BlimpWerks. We are
thrilled
to have you here, Space Girl.”

I shook her hand. “Pleased to be here. Nice to talk to you in person.” Fran Wilde was the person in the firm’s R-and-D department who’d first told me about their new nylon/Kevlar fabric over the phone.

Ms. Wilde noticed tears in the receptionist’s eyes. “Is everything okay, Audria?”

Audria nodded, tried to speak, then just tapped the photo and showed the patch.

Ms. Wilde read the inscription and said, “Oh, my.” She squeezed Audria’s hand before saying to me, “If you’ll just come this way.”

There were four other people in the conference room.

“She gave Audria the Space Girl patch off her shoulder.”

“For her daughter,” I said.

She introduced the people, though I’d already met Mr. Papadopolis, the sales engineer Joe and I had talked with before. Mr. Eaton was their president, Ms. Quincy was their manufacturing supervisor, and Ms. Adouki was their chief of marketing.

Mr. Papadopolis had been doing some reading. “I’m surprised you aren’t talking with Bigelow Aerospace. They’ve actually put inflatable habitats in orbit.”

I shrugged. “Their modules are too heavy. Even their smallest unit is three thousand pounds and it’s air-lock sized. I want a bit more room.”

Ms. Quincy, the manufacturing supervisor said, “We do not make habitats. We make blimps. Aerostats. We certainly don’t have anything tough enough to survive micrometeorites and space debris.”

I nodded. “
I’m
working on that. I just need envelopes that can handle ten psi. You’ve done twice that with the smaller test sphere, correct?”

Ms. Wilde said, “We did it with all the spheres. We needed to confirm the degree of deformation.”

“Good,” I said. “I want those and I need some modifications. How much for the spheres as they are?”

Ms. Adouki’s stepped forward. “How public is this project?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It’s not a secret, is it? Would you post video of the spheres in orbit?”

“I suppose so. These are too big to
hide
.”

“Would you object to logos painted on the spheres?”

“That’s one of the modifications
I
wanted. Our Apex Orbital Services and Space Girl logos. Possibly an Iridium Communications logo. Did you want to sell ads to someone else? Or did you want a BlimpWerks logo?”

Mr. Eaton and Ms. Adouki exchanged glances and Ms. Adouki said, “We would love to sell ads to others.”

I shook my head. “No. Our brand. Our advertising platform.” Tara had been very specific about it. She’d said, “Buy them if you have to, but I don’t think you’ll need to.”

Mr. Eaton said, “We would settle for BlimpWerks logos and an endorsement on your part. We would provide the spheres and modifications, within reason.”

Tara is always right. I continued from her script.

“We would also add a BlimpWerks logo to my coveralls or life-support backpack. We would provide video and stills of the spheres deployed, with the BlimpWerks logo prominent. If you wanted me to deploy one of your special designs, that could also work—you’d just need a bit of gas to inflate it. Without the Mylar, it wouldn’t last very long in that intense ultraviolet, but it would make a fantastic photo and video shoot.”

Mr. Eaton looked at his team and nodded firmly.

“What are the modifications you need?” asked Ms. Wilde.

“I need to add some aluminum flanges. Also, have you ever seen
matryoshka
—Russian nested dolls?”

*   *   *

Dad and I both changed into swimsuits before he jumped me to a tiny strip of beach in a north-facing, cliff-bracketed cove, the only beach on a tiny lava island sticking out of the Pacific off Costa Rica. The cove’s inlet was filled with sharp rocks, sheltering the beach from the northern swells but making a boat landing extremely dangerous.

The only inhabitants on the island were seabirds and they weren’t thrilled with our presence. Fortunately, they stuck to the higher rocks and didn’t use the beach which, Dad told me, was underwater several times a month during the higher spring tides.

“So how did
you
find it?”

“I saw a picture in
National Geographic
. They were out here shooting the Blue-footed Booby rookeries. I liked the privacy so I paid a pilot take me on a flyover.”

“A pilot? How far off the coast are we?”

“Seventeen kilometers. When you look at Google Earth it doesn’t even show up. It’s on the charts as a marine hazard because those—” He pointed at the teeth-like rocks at the mouth of the cove. “—are all around the waters.”

“I don’t recall you ever bringing
me
here before.”

Dad smiled slightly. “That’s correct.”

“Or Mom?”

“You mother has been out here more than a few times.” Dad’s smile got bigger.

I blushed. “Privacy, you say.”

He nodded.

“So, like this,” he said.

Dad twinned between the beach and one of the taller rocks just outside the cove. As I watched, he moved his “beach self” into the low surf and water began pouring out of his “rock self,” flooding outward in all directions. As his “beach self” moved deeper into the surf, the water pouring out of his “rock self” rose higher and higher. When he was up to his neck, he didn’t go any deeper, but in the cove so much water was flowing toward and through him that the water level in the cove was a good yard lower than the water outside.

He jumped away, back onto the beach, one “self” only, and the waters sloshed violently against the rocky arms of the cove and up onto the sand as the water poured over the “teeth” at the mouth of the cove to rebalance the water levels.

“Is that what you did to Lawrence Simons?”

His hand went reflexively to the scars just below his left collarbone, lighter than the rest of his skin. “Yeah. Last resort. I was chained to the floor and they had guns out and the next time your mother came into the room they were going to shoot her.”