AFTERMATH

  Sergeant Lewis was lying in the hospital bed.  "Damn!" she said. When can I get up and walk again?"
  The surgeon replied, "We had to rebuild your shin bone, recreate some ligaments, restore muscles, reestablish the nerves, repair the third-degree burns on the skin, and after two days of consciousness in a hospital bed you want to get up and move around?"
  "Well, I'm a person of action.  I've never been able to sit or lie still. Give me a break!"
  "Okay.  I'll tell you what. We'll begin physical therapy tomorrow. If you make good enough progress, you'll be able to continue your treatments on board Constellation, when she leaves. But that won't be for a while."
  "Why?  What's up?"
  "For one thing, after Captain Allegretto's assassination, Commander Vasa and Private Mbwami suffered from oxygen privation. They've pretty well recovered by now."
  "How long was I out? Must've been some time."
  "Just a day. And we helped Nature along, so we could operate while Aphrodite was stabilized."
  "Stabilized?  What do you mean?"


  "Someone find out what's causing this swaying! We can't bear too much of it, and it seems to be getting worse."
  "Ms. Governor, we've just received word that part of the exterior wall has been blown out by the Militia. A kind of hara-kiri. Fifteen of them were sucked out into space. We lost five Constellation crew members."
  "What can be done?"
  "We've sent an emergency crew there to seal off the area on the inside. A space walk will be needed to recover Aphrodite's skin. Repair crew is at the ready; we're getting the alloy out there."
  "This wobble can knock us out of orbit if we don't watch out. Get the engine crew to begin some countersteering maneuvers. I'll be there to join them after I've checked out security and taken a look at the casualties."
  "Yes, ma'am. We'll get at it right away."
 Governor Kyo found President Selim in the sick bay, making sure that everything possible was being done for the wounded. He was particularly interested in assuring the lives of the two  prisoners, and in isolating them in secure facilities. When they were stronger, he wanted to attend the formal interrogation. This was, after all, his area of expertise. Before going into politics in a big way, he'd risen to number one spy in Space Security at the age of 30! He was a man of great intelligence and of proven courage (just as Captain Allegretto had said in introducing him).
  "How do these people do it? This Constellation crew is something else. In less than an hour, they mopped up the bastards. It's a good thing they were able to capture a couple of them. I can't wait to get my hands on them!" he said to the Governor as she entered. "Did we lose anybody? And what's going on with the Station?"
  "There's been extensive damage to the outer shell: a 7-meter hole ripped in the side. Twenty deaths in all, five of them ours. Lieutenant Smirnoff saved the lives of Commander Vasa and Private Mbwami, who couldn't have held out too much longer. Another crew member, Sergeant Lewis, was shot in the leg.  We're trying to save it now."
  "And the wobble?"
  "I've got the engineers working on that on two fronts: first, find a way to fight the force of space, if we can determine a pattern of waves causing the wobble. I have a couple of superb mathematicians on it right now. Second, a repair crew is about to go outside and put on a temporary skin. With luck, that will be finished in eight to ten hours. Within a week we'll have it good as new."
  "Congratulations to everyone involved, Magita."
  An official handed the Governor a note. She read it quickly, then said, "I've been assured that the two oxygen-deprived people are stable. No loss of brain power. We're in luck there. Commander Vasa has been here so often, I feel I've gotten to know her. She's an extraordinary person."
  "You know she's in the ELB, don't you?"
  "No, I didn't. She's never mentioned it. No one else has, either."
  "Maybe she doesn't want to be gaped at as though she's a freak. There are ten or so ELBs on board Constellation now, but we'll increase that number. Given all the time they spend in space, we need a core of people who just don't age. Especially with our next mission, as soon as we can get things straightened out with this damn Militia business."
  "May I ask what that mission is, or is this a secret?"
  "Actually, you'll be part of that mission, in charge of it, in fact. We're planning on going further than we've ever tried to go before, to the far side of the galaxy."
  "You mean, the other arm?  But that means somehow going around the core, the black hole, the antimatter escaping. And the time! Not everyone's an ELB!"
  "No, but we have found several wormholes that will allow us to travel at well beyond the speed of light. You techies really understand all of that stuff; I only know what I'm told. But it will be dangerous. We don't know if the crew can survive the pressures there. One of your tasks will be to find the right crew. We had expected Captain Allegretto to take charge. But now..."
  His voice trailed off. He tried not to seem overly concerned about the death of this well-regarded officer, just as he always tried not to show how deeply he cared for everyone he got to know. Not your average politician, even less your average chief interrogator.
  "Damn Militia!"


  Blurry lights. Two ovals, no spheres, no ovals. Awfully bright. Stars? Let's see. Ah... what's holding me down? Where am I? Oh, I remember. Everything blacked out. Boris saved my life! Did he get to Maria? Where's Maria? She tried to say something. All that came out was "Mmmff. I, waaaan;" but that was enough to bring a nurse to her side.
  "How are you?  How do you feel?"
  Big light brown glob. Gotta focus. Oh, it's a nurse. I'll tell her I'm okay, except for a pounding headache. "Ahmokayhedpoudsnhurts" is what the nurse heard. Christina could see the two lights clearly now. She was in the sick bay. A nurse was at her side. She smiled, then drifted off to sleep, glad to be alive.
  She and Maria were up and about the next day. "All tests negative." Strange way to say that you're in perfect shape. They went to see Carlita, just as the doctor was leaving her.
  "How's the patient, doctor?"
  "Given all the damage that's been done to her leg, I think our team was fortunate to save it. With enough rest and the right kind of rehabilitation, she'll be as good as new. But do you have proper facilities on Constellation for physical therapy? and a complete medical staff?"
 "What kind of freighter service does he think we run?" thought Christina. "This sick bay looks like a field hospital compared to our facilities." Out loud, though, she said, "You wouldn't believe how advanced we are. And our staff! One name will tell all–Dr. Stanley Narb."
  "Dr. Narb! The creator of the longies, er, I mean, the Extended-Life Brigade! He's here on Aphrodite?"
  "The one and only. And yes, he's here. You want to meet him? How about lunch today?"
  "I'd be honored, but please, don't go to any trouble."
  "No trouble at all. Maria, would you make the arrangements? Lieutenant Smirnoff can handle the details.  When you've done that give me a signal before you come in."
  The surgeon went away, almost floating.
  Christina went in to see Carlita, alone.
  "Commander! Sorry I can't get up. They have my leg in this contraption. Tell them I can do my rehab on board."
  "Gee, you don't even let us say hello, and you want to get up and move about! Well, the good news is that your rehab starts tomorrow. And the better news is that I won't let them keep you out of Constellation when we're ready to go. And now I have a surprise for you. Close your eyes!"
  The wobble became a jerk at this moment, throwing Maria into the room and practically on her cousin's injured leg. "Carlita!" "Maria!" They began asking each other so many questions that they never got around to answering!
  Christina left them chattering away. "What a pair," she mused. She had never had a cousin or a brother or a sister, or for that matter, mother or father or any relative at all. They were all killed by the Militia when Christina was just a few days old. She always wondered what it might be like to have a real family. She was brought up by various foster families and in boarding schools. A perfect candidate for the ELB, if you can make it to and through the Academy. They look for people who won't miss family life, especially because the process renders you sterile, so that you'll never have a family of your own. Maybe they sterilize you out of humanitarian concern, she didn't know, no one ever told her.
  Well, now on to the only family she had: Constellation! Her heart grew heavy when she thought of Captain Allegretto. He had taken her under his wing, showed her the ropes, was like a father to her.  But now...  She wept softly and wondered who the new Captain would be. But she knew she would never meet anyone like him again.

   The inside work was holding pretty well, pressure was restored to the damaged room. It still looked terrible in there. Christina saw traces of blood on the floor, and a little icon that somehow the crew had not seen. All trace of her five crew members was gone, except for this. Christina thought that Boris, who was fairly close to Misha, would appreciate receiving this. A tear fell down her cheek. "You're all heroes to me.  We'll find out what we can, and I swear I'll do what I can to help wipe out this Militia. If I can't do it legally before my time runs out, I'll have to find other means." Other means? what other means?  She had no idea.
  Just then, another jerk! What's going on? Uh, oh! Is there a crack in that window? Better get out of here!
  She made it out the door just in time: the lock had barely slipped into place when a loud crack and a roar of gushing air could be heard.
  Outside, the unexpected jerk of the Station had made the spacewalking crew lose its grip on the wall piece, which smashed in the glass in the temporary wall. They saw a chair fly out, but no person. "We seem to be in luck. Hope they've closed the doors, Charlie!"
  Spacewalk is not exactly the word to use for this work, which in reality is much more dangerous than it looks. These Space Stations spin at just the right velocity to create internal gravity, which of course also affects the immediate area. The problem is, they're up here on the station, far above the not-quite-breathable atmosphere of Venus, and those damn suits are heavy! Not to mention the materials, which are not weightless: they have Earth weight. The pulleys and other equipment are not there for window dressing, and the work is hard.
  Still, this crew finished their task well ahead of the schedule they were given. Once they got the permanent replacement wall in place, they were able to remove the inside temps, and another crew fixed up the damaged rooms like new. More importantly, the wobbling could now be arrested, and Aphrodite resumed its normal slow and smooth spin.

  Two days of unsuccessful interrogation. All the staff could get out of the two terrorists was their names–Ah Sun and Rhee Su-Kyum. Threats didn't work. Soft talk didn't work. President Selim grew impatient. He decided to take over the interrogation himself. In a surprise move, he had the scene shifted to a secured committee room, with comfortable chairs, soft drinks, a view of Venus or the stars, depending on the time of day. As a precaution, an invisible field kept the terrorists away from him. He told the guard to watch the proceedings on the TV set-up, but not to disturb them unless danger arose.
  "So, Ms. Ah and Mr. Rhee," he began, "you came here as part of a contingent set on destroying Aphrodite. Naturally, we'd like to know why you're so intent on doing this, and how you expected to get back to Earth. We discovered how you'd stowed away in Blue Girl's freighter, in what must have been intolerable circumstances. It's bad enough being in the cabin of one of those old tubs, let alone in the hold."
  A trace of a smile crossed Rhee's mouth. Maybe he'd struck a responsive chord there.
  "Let's see, at the rate that old crate moves, it must have taken at least a week to get here. Just enough time for the mesovita to wear off. You must have been groggy at first."
  "When we came out in the cargo area, we were ready to get you and your workers in the Devil's vineyard.  Too bad Steph missed you."
  Ah, so he was the prime target, as he had thought.
  "But it's just as well that he hit Allegretto. That's one less monster in the world."
  Allegretto? How could they have known he was a longie? Even the other longies didn't know that. "So you weren't after the Governor, after all. Hmmm. We thought you were after her, because she had figured out how to accelerate the de-greenhousing of Venus."
  Silence. Glares. I'll try another tack. Don't want my opening to close.
  "Rumor on Earth has it that Deacon Ong has decided to go after the planets. Mesnos might be next, they say."
  "Mesnos?  Chicken feed."
  "Quiet, Su-Kyum," said Ah Sun.
  "Don't tell me you're after the Polaris Station. That would be suicide! But then, suicide seems to be your game. What brought your leader to kill himself?"
  "We're a disciplined group of people, Mr. President. And principled. Our objective, as you must know, is to put an end to the ungodly activities of the World Government."
  "What do you mean, Ms. Ah, by ungodly activities?"
  "Attempts to reverse God's reign over Nature. First, the mountains: look what happened when you tried that."
  "I don't know what you're taught in the Primitivist faith, but maybe you've never heard it from our side. An approaching ice age about 2100 A.D. caused the various nationalist Earth governments to join together in effort to save life on the planet. This is what gave rise to the World Government. Our scientists studied many ways to warm the atmosphere, and after looking at countless alternatives, they could find only one solution to the destruction of life as we knew it: by cutting the Himalayas to about 4,500 meters (the altitude of the Tibetan Plain), the coming ice age would be aborted. In the end, this plan would have restored Earth's climate to what it had been around 2020, before the glaciation began."
  "Lies! The other mountains were cut down, too. God wanted to punish humanity for its sins and abominations, the decline of morals. Plagues and diseases only sharpened medical responses."
   "We understand that point of view, Ah Sun, and we allow people to express it. What we don't tolerate is violent terroristic action designed to take lives."
  "To save souls," corrected Ah Sun.
  "Well, you probably know that many individual countries, thinking of the possible benefits to them of doing something similar, decided to proceed not only there but throughout the entire globe, leaving just a few mountains over 3500 meters standing. This was a political decision, not a scientific one. The mountain-leveling was accomplished by about 2300; but minor flaws in planning and execution–they hadn't listened to the scientists, who warned of dire and unpredictable consequences–minor flaws caused a rapid rise in the sea level, while converting much of the temperate zones into subtropical regions, and the polar zones into temperate zones."
  "The Devil's work, it was," snarled Rhee. "What a disaster! We warned them! All the coasts, all the islands, gone! In less than a century! The ice melted, more of it than any of you imagined."
  "You're right about that: slight changes in the jet stream caused major climatic changes. The Earth no longer looked the same; it rapidly became a tropical planet, except for some temperate areas at the upper latitudes, above 50 degrees. Worse, population growth brought pressure on available space; we had to look elsewhere. Venus and Mars were obvious places to start, and then we undertook rapid expansion of colonization efforts. The discovery of a hyperspace worm hole around the central core of the galaxy will soon send us to the far reaches of the galaxy, thanks to the discovery of a way to extend lives to about 350 years." Maybe this will stir them up a bit.
  "Monsters like Allegretto deserve to die! Vasa will go next! Then all of the longies!"
  Suddenly, Ah Sun drew a small plastic satchel from her pocket and broke it open on Rhee Su-Kyum's arm. "You've said too much!" she shouted, rubbing herself with the same poison. They both fell to the floor, writhing horribly, then suddenly lay quiescent, their eyes open in a glassy stare, saliva dripping from the corners of their mouths, their bodies stiff.
  "Guards! Take these bodies to be examined right away! We'll have to develop an antidote for whatever poison they have. Quick! We don't have a moment to lose!"