Ringclimber

Chapter 21 - And Beyond...

Gordon has flown Phil up for the closing party. Phil is almost afraid to touch Sharon when she steps through the lock, suit steaming with heated frost. Her fishbowl pops, and she catches it, shaking out her hair. Her face is fragile with the weight of experience, limned against the light of the next team member out of the lock. She looks up at him with drawn face and hot eyes, and she seems about to say something. He presses a finger to his lips. "Not yet," he replies. "You might change your mind."

Anne, at the airlock, smiles. She turns to Kyle, who has watched jealously, and clasps his shoulder with an armored hand. Pat stands in the corner laughing, while Erin clasps Gordon and Michel to her tightly.

Sharon thinks, I don't want to be here. I want to be back out there. I don't think I belong here anymore. How am I going to go on with only normalcy waiting for me in the morning...

"I'm still alive," Sharon whispers. "I'm still alive. Rael's gone, Harrison's gone, but I'm alive."

Erin hears this. She leans as close as helmet rings allow and whispers. "Hey, kid, I've got a story for you. I've been waiting for a long time to tell it to you. I think you're ready."

"Oh?"

"It's about a girl who called herself Jane Tennyson."

"How do you know about that?" Sharon demands, eyes wide.

"Let me tell you." Erin takes her best friend's arm. "It's about being alive."

Suddenly, Sharon sees a tall grey-haired couple looking at her from the door with eyes that seem about to burst. "Pierre! Lissette!" she cries. And for a moment, she is a child again, with all of the tragedy in her life swept away by her victory.

There are too many people outside the anteroom. Sharon feels a strange reticence, and stops at the threshold of the door.

It seems like there are hundreds of press people, their cameras and audio pickups glinting in clusters on their foreheads as they ask...

"How does it feel, Ms Lazlo, can you tell us what it was like."

"We're just glad to be back right now. In a way." Her face splits in a smile. "But I can tell you it was great looking down from the beacon."

"Mr. Trafton, your previous expedition failed and this was the team that rescued you. Are you happy? Do you think this proves that robots can't make it in the rings?"

Kyle's eyes are very strange and angry, and his jaw is dark with a thick beard. "They can't." He states flatly. "I barely could, either. Thanks to these fantastic women for making this dream possible." But there is something still hard behind his eyes. Sharon leans into the question. "Kyle more than carried his own weight, believe me. He's just being modest. Couldn't have done it without his help."

"Ms. Lambert, your Flying Doctor Service has been seeing some competition from a couple of new firms since you left. What do you think you'll be doing about that?"

"Getting some sleep in a G-field?" she mocks.

"Ms and Mr. Goldstein, what do you think was the role played by your company's suits in the success of the team?"

Erin and Gordon trade looks, and Gordon waves her into the breach. "The suits performed well. Sharon's suit is a little more custom than the others, and, unfortunately, that seems to have made it a little more fragile. We had to replace it twice. We had relatively few other failures, all of which were recoverable. We think this model is the probably the most reliable we've ever developed. There will be full reports available to our development teams, of course, and I'm sure the next generation will do even better as a result of our experience."

Pat is standing near the back, hoping not to be noticed, but, of course, her tiny mother chooses this moment to push through and hug her. "Pat, honey," she gushes.

"Miss your family, Ms. Yan?" someone asks above the growing clamor.

Questions escalate to a roar, and the team quails. They won't be the first to think that the adventure was less arduous than the reception.

Content, Layout, and Images Copyright © 1999 by Mark Cashman except where indicated (NASA photos)