Ammonite

Начало книги

MARGHE’S SUIT WAS still open at neck and wrist, and the helmet rested in the crook of her left arm. An ID flash was sealed to her shoulder: “Marguerite Angelica Taishan, SEC.” The suit was wrinkled and smelled of just‑unrolled plastic, and she felt heavy and awkward, even in the two‑thirds gravity of orbital station Estrade.

She stood by the airlock at the inside end of A Section, The door was already open. Waiting. She rested the fingertips of her right hand on the smooth ceramic of the raised hatch frame; it was cool, shocking after two days of the close human heat of A Section.

The sill of the airlock reached her knees; easy enough to step over. No great barrier. The lock chamber itself was two strides across. The far door was still closed, sealed to another sill, like this one. Four steps from here to B Section. Four steps. She had recontracted with SEC, endured six months of retraining on Earth, traveled eighteen months aboard the Terragin, and spent the last two days on the Estradebumping elbows with the three‑member crew, all to take those four steps. “Well, Nyo and Sigrid say good luck, but they’ll be out there for hours yet, fixing the satellite.” Sara Hiam unclipped her headset. The slight, small woman with the atrophied muscles and club‑cut dark blond hair was matter‑of‑fact, using her doctor persona. In the two days since she had come aboard Estrade, Marghe had learned that Hiam had several distinct facets to her personality, facets she rotated to face any given situation. It was a survival tactic, one way Hiam–and Sigrid and Nyo–had managed to spend five years up here without going mad. Marghe knew there was a great deal of the doctor she had not seen; she wondered what the real Sara Hiam was like.

Читать дальше →