FALLEN ANGELS

That's the spirit! I'm a stranger in a strange land fullof wonders and delights. What was the point of being marooned if you couldn't enjoy it? He needed to embrace Doc Waxman's attitude; or Steve's, or even Mike's. The Round Mound paraded his seemingly inexhaustible store of knowledge with the same sort of delight as the kids Alex knew in the day-care center. Gee, Mister MacLeod, look what I found! Mister Mac! Mister Mac, look at this! Isn't it neat! That was Mike. Each nugget of information was fascinating. The world was full of new-found marvels and he wanted to share the excitement with everybody. They all did. They had a certain sense. It wasn't a sense of e

A sense of wonder.

That was it. A sense of wonder, in the fine old original meaning of the word. They wondered at their world. Because when you did that, everything was wonder-full.

Later, after Steve had gone, Alex lay abed in the dark, breathing slowly and naturally, imagining the prana from the air streaming into his body, strengthening it. Prana was the universal energy, manifesting itself in gravitation, electricity, nerve currents, thought. A kind of Hindu unified field theory. It was nonsense, of course. There was no such energy, and Steve knew it as well as Alex did.

Still, the mind-body interface was a fu

Like cobbling together a spaceship and flying into space.

Believing wouldn't make it happen; but not believing would make it not happen. Everything starts as somebody's daydream.

"Alex?"

"What?" He turned his head. In the dark he could not see Gordon, but he could sense the youngster's presence in the other bed.

"About… About the dip trip…"

"What? That again?" Couldn't the kid let it be? I'd like to have seen him do better. "What about it?" he snapped.

"I'm sorry I didn't speak English."

"… When?"

Gordon twisted around, painfully, to look at him. "When? In final i

Idiot. "Gordon, it was too late. The missile must have been in flight before I, before, hell. I should have torched off and gone home. They'd found us. We knew it."

Silence.

"Maybe we could have made another orbit. Only, we don't carry all that much oxygen. And we needed the nitrogen, we did, that's not… not just Lo

"Then it wasn't what I said. Or didn't."

It had really been bothering Gordon. The stilyagin must have flunked some math courses. "What do you picture me doing about anything, with a couple of seconds to work with? What kind of acceleration is that to move a mass like Piranha, with three tiny embarrassed fins and the scoop dragging us, too?"

Silence filled the blackness between them. Finally, Gordon spoke again. "Alex, do you think this Titan business will work?"

Alex crossed his arms behind his head and stared at the ceiling. Blackness should have stars in it, he thought. "I don't know. If there is a ship and if we can find fuel… What do you think?"

He heard a heavy sigh in the darkness. "If we can rendezvous, no problem. If they have to come and snatch us as we go past… They will not do it."

"No, I don't think they would."

Gordon hesitated. "Maybe my family can…"

"Maybe they could what? Overrule Lo

He was begi

Alex remembered the old Eskimo on the glacier describing how his wife and daughter had been killed and eaten by his erstwhile comrades. And he hadn't chased after the ca

Eskimos abandoned their aged and infirm to the Ice. Krumangapik had done it. During their nighttime trek across the Ice, warmed by that invisible beam of prana from SUNSAT, he had told of building his mother's Final Igloo.

She was old and frail and she had insisted. She even picked the spot. When it was completed they had hugged each other and said good-bye; and Krumangapik had sealed the entryway to keep the wolves out and left her there and never looked back.

Alex shivered as he remembered. "A duty to die."

How long would it be before elderly Floaters took themselves to the airlocks out of a similar sense of duty? Yes. That was how they would do it. No injections, because they had to conserve the medicines. No slashed wrists, no blood droplets to purge from the air system. They would climb into the airlock, nude, so as not to lose the fabric of their clothing. They would just turn on the pumps to evacuate the chamber. Alex remembered dying such a death. Later, a detail would reenter the airlock and salvage the valuable organics.

Perhaps that was the most unfortunate consequence of the new era of shortages, both in Orbit and down in the Well. That it forced them all, Downer and Floater alike, to be unkind.

"Is it right to string them along?"

Alex jumped. He'd thought Gordon was asleep. "What do you mean, Gordo?"

"These Downers. Fandom. They're risking a lot to help us, aren't they? Shouldn't we tell them they're wasting their time?"

"Don't burn bridges, Gordo. There might be enough fuel to reach orbit on our own."

"Or no fuel at all. Meanwhile, she puts her neck at risk for us. Maybe we should contact Big Momma for instructions."

"No!" Alex spoke sharply. "No," he repeated more softly. "We'd have to make contact through this Oregon Ghost character. If we do, the fans will know how iffy the whole scheme is and then…"

"And then?"

"And then they might give the effort up. Do you want to be stuck down here the rest of your life?"

"No, but--"

"Look. They're already in deep enough for what they've already done. We'll just let things go long enough to see if there is any chance at all. Then… Then, we'll decide."

"All right, Alex," Gordon said doubtfully. "You're the boss."

Alex relaxed into the pillow and closed his eyes. The room did not become any darker. He listened to his pulse pushing the blood through his arteries. "Gordon?"

"Yeah?"

"She's too old for you."

Gordon didn't answer right away. "She's younger than she looks, Alex," he said after a moment. "Gravity."

"Go to sleep, Gordo." Alex tried to roll over on his side. He almost made it. Good news from all over.