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by Benjamin Crowell
Not Specified, 18 pages.
Originally Published in Jim Baen's Universe, Volume 3, Number 2, August 2008 , 2008
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It’s not easy to barricade a door in zero gravity. Lee looked at the shambles she’d made of her apartment. She’d torn out every article of furniture she could detach, and tried to wedge it all into the little entry hall so that the door couldn’t be opened. It was all flimsy stuff, though — even these days, with nuclear rockets, it was still expensive to lift anything heavy into orbit.
She had no idea if it would be enough of a barrier to keep out her would-be rescuers. It sounded like things were getting a little chaotic, so yeah, maybe. Under normal circumstances, they’d surely find some way to handle an old rich bitch refusing to be evacuated from the station — but the whole reason for the evacuation was that these weren’t normal circumstances, so maybe they’d just take the hint and bug off. Well, she wasn’t going back down there, no way. Gravity would mean wheelchairs and motorized beds. Hmph! Take you to the potty, watch to make sure you didn’t fall in.
No thank you. Lee intended to stay right where she was, in orbit. Hell, a hundred and six years ought to be enough for anyone. And riding down in a ball of fire, on a space station reentering the atmosphere — now that had style!
* * *
What could be more frustrating? You get all nerved up for a good pissing match, and then they stand you up. No busybodies insisting on saving your life, no fresh-faced young astronauts pleading ever-so-sincerely. So now the irony of biology took over: she was hungry, and her belly didn’t care that it was all going to be over in a few days anyway. Her larder was empty, and it was time to go shopping.
She opened the door for the first time in two days, and launched herself down the corridor. The lights were on, but it looked like nobody else was home. Someone’s ball-point pen was floating loose, and she reached out and grabbed it absentmindedly as she went by.
She came around the corner into the observation lounge. Drop-dead-gorgeous view of Earth. She wondered idly what continent her ashes would flutter down over. Turn another corner, and there was someone there, floating with his back to her. One of the other residents of the geriatric wing?
“Hello?”
No response, no movement. Was he asleep? She grabbed a railing and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Sir? Excuse me?”
He didn’t answer, but her tap had started him rotating slowly. She retreated a short distance back along the railing to keep his feet from hitting her, and then his face slowly rotated into view, upside-down from her perspective. Dead. She remembered his face. Larry? Carey? Didn’t have all his marbles left, but he’d been a nice enough guy. He’d been a diabetic, and both those feet were prostheses. He’d probably been left behind, and died because he didn’t get his medication.
It didn’t paint a pretty picture, did it? Not enough lifeboats on the Titanic. Women, children, and scoundrels first. With hindsight, it wasn’t so surprising that the evacuation had been a mess. First Brazil had canceled their lunar program, and all those handsome Brazilian boys had gone home. After that, SkyLife’s bottom line had sunk into the red, and this silly asteroid scare had been the last straw. Their shares were trading almost in the penny stock range these days — she’d picked some up herself when the price had first dipped below two bucks — and with their market capitalization that low, it meant that their investors had written off the station itself as a complete loss. You couldn’t even salvage the office furniture out of a bankrupt orbital business. She’d been naive to think they’d try so hard to make her leave. If they couldn’t afford the boosts to keep their main asset out of the stratosphere, then it shouldn’t have been a surprise that they’d cut corners on the evacuation.
She went through his pockets and fished out his wallet: Carey Guelich. She should call his family and let them know. It seemed wrong to leave him floating out here in the corridor. She found his apartment number on his ID, towed him down the hall to it, and used his thumbprint to open the door and deposit him inside. Poor guy. Even on a good day, he hadn’t always seemed too sure of what was going on. He’d probably been scared and confused when he died. She felt a twinge of guilt for huddling in her room, thinking only of herself while he’d been out there dying.
She went on to the station’s little overpriced grocery store. Its storefront was closed and locked. Well, that figured. The glass looked pretty flimsy, though — everybody used lightweight construction materials up here. She went back to her apartment, got her biggest barbell (four kilograms worth of inertia), and returned to the store. She flung it at the glass, and it shattered with a satisfying crash. All those boring sessions of waving the weights around had come in handy after all. An alarm went off, but at least it was safe -- [End of Preview.]