“Very well,” Ravi said, with a note of regret that sounded only a little forced. “Perhaps you’ll be wanting this.”
He held out a sheet of paper. Taking it from him, Julia recognized it as the presidential seal, much the worse for wear. Ravi had carefully peeled it from the wall, bringing most of its rectangle of blue tape with it. Julia smoothed it out and tucked it under one arm.
Slowly drifting away from her, Ravi snapped out a salute.
Julia returned it. “Godspeed, Ravi. I look forward to hearing your first transmission from the surface of Mars.”
“And I look forward to sending it, Madam President.”
“We shall meet again, I feel. Somehow the intrepid people of the Cloud Ark will find a way, in spite of all opposition, to win through to the realm of clean space and follow Red Hope to a better place.”
Ravi was one of those who could never quite tell when he was dismissed. He began to mumble out a stirring response, but Julia glanced at Camila to let her know that she could stop recording, then propelled herself toward the nose of the White Arklet. Camila followed in her wake.
After a few moments of squirming through tubes, they emerged from the port into one of the modules that made up the Shipyard. It was something of a madhouse. The total roster of the Red Hope expedition was two dozen. Most of those were already aboard the heptad or the triad, waiting to be mated with the vehicle’s frame, but a few were “outside” in space suits and several were in here, engaging in hasty conferences or shoving bundles of supplies about.
Adding a bizarre note were four members of the General Population—apparently Shipyard workers—who had been zip-tied, hands behind backs, to convenient attachment points around the inside of the module. Most looked fine, but one man had a stream of small blood globules drifting away from a laceration on his eyebrow. Paul Freel had mentioned in passing that several of the MIV team had become unwitting accomplices, helping to assemble the frame of Red Hope on the understanding that it was part of a backup plan to rescue Ymir. Apparently they had changed status to witting, and raised objections.
The bleeding man was staring at Julia through the eye that hadn’t swollen shut. “Julia!” he called out.
In an odd way Julia had nothing to do. The other Martians were busy shoving their hoarded supplies through the port into the heptad. One by one the Martians were following suit, and so the space was rapidly clearing out. She ignored the bleeding man at first. But it got to the point where only one Martian—Paul Freel himself—was remaining. Lacking Ravi’s feel for ceremony, he was checking off items on the screen of his tablet, paying Julia no attention whatsoever.
“Julia!” the zip-tied man said again. He wasn’t shouting. His tone was almost conversational.
“Yes,” she finally said.
“What’s your friend’s name?” he asked, nodding toward Camila.
Julia bridled for a moment at the impertinent request, then remembered that it was never too late to turn an enemy into a friend. “Her name is Camila,” she said. “And let me say, sir, that I am shocked and dismayed to see what has occurred to you. Let me assure you that—”
“Hey, Camila!” the man said.
“Yes?” Camila answered, sounding very much the scared eighteen-year-old girl.
“Your friend is crazy,” the man told her.
“Madam President?” Paul asked, before Julia had time to react.
She turned toward Paul, her face burning.
“If you would do the honors?”
“What honors?” Honestly, these engineers. Was she supposed to break a bottle of champagne over it?
“Close the hatch when I have gone through. Then we can undock.”
“Happy to.”
“See you on Mars.” He stuck his hand out. She grasped it lightly and gave it a little shake. Camila, rattled by the exchange with the bleeding man, had forsaken her duties as camera operator.
Paul Freel reached into the portal joining Earth to Mars, pulled himself through, turned about, and closed the hatch on his side. Julia followed suit on hers. Immediately she felt, as much as heard, the hisses and clunks that signaled the undocking of Red Hope. Unfamiliar noises radiated through the module’s hull too, very close to her, and she realized that these were the boots of space suits moving around.
“The alert is canceled,” announced a synthetic voice. The color of the lights changed.
Camila emitted a short, explosive scream. Then she pointed down the length of the Shipyard, toward where it connected with the Stack.
Down in the Caboose, some thirty meters away, a few people could be seen, dressed in orange vests. One of them looked directly at her.
It was Tekla.
The synthesized voice spoke out again, sounding a second alert.