King cautiously cleared his throat. “Until we understand more about what we’re doing here, maybe we shouldn’t tell them we’re from the past.”
“If that’s really what’s going on,” Song-Ye said.
“Why not tell them—because it makes us sound crazy?” JJ said. “As if showing up on the Moon without a spaceship isn’t crazy enough already?”
“Or because we might create a time paradox. I’ve seen it a million times. King’s right, we’d better be careful.” Dyl went over to sit at the small, metal-topped table the crew used for eating their meals. He sank into the chair, deep in thought. “If this were an episode of Star Trek, we’d find a way to use the comm console in the MCC to get a message to Mr. Zota.”
Everyone looked expectantly at him. “And?” King said. “Then what?”
Dyl thought for a moment. “What I want is for someone who knows what’s going on to explain it to us. But in an episode of Star Trek, we’d have to use our own ingenuity to solve our problems, find a way to reverse whatever happened, and get back to Earth and our time.”
“Sure, sounds simple enough.” King’s tone was light. “So, as I understand it, the plan is to … use our wits?”
JJ smiled. “I’m in, since that’s what I was planning to do anyway. All we have to do is be brilliant. You know—act natural.”
“Maybe we should do a twelfth-order diagnostic of the fleem hyperducts,” Dyl said.
Song-Ye gave him a withering glare. “This isn’t some stupid TV show, Junior.”
Dylan pretended to turn on an imaginary recorder and speak into it. “Hypothesis: Reluctant time traveler Song-Ye Park is no ordinary human. She is an android whose programming is incomplete. Therefore she lacks humor and imagination.” He turned off the imaginary recorder.
“lt’d explain a lot,” JJ chuckled, while Song-Ye fumed at Dyl. “Then again, your hypothesis may need some work. Meanwhile, we’re on a moonbase. I say we jump in with both feet and try to figure out what Commander Zota has planned for us.”
***
Seven
Though Major Fox was still suspicious of the young newcomers at Moonbase Magellan, he saw advantages to having them there. “We have our orders, and you have the proper clearance. I shan’t look a gift horse in the mouth. There’s always work to be done on the moonbase and not enough personnel to accomplish it. I could use some assistance outside. The new solar-power array isn’t going to install itself.”
“Walk on the Moon?” Dyl asked, his expression dubious. “That’s kind of dangerous, isn’t it? Commander Zota didn’t—”
JJ’s heart pounded with excitement, but she tried to act professional. “If you need us on a job outside, Major, we’d be happy to help.” To her brother she added in a low voice. “Find your spirit of adventure, Dyl. Look how well you’re walking already. This is a perfect chance to test how much better you can move here on the Moon.” Her mind boggled at the very thought of treading on the lunar surface, leaving footprints just like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did. In JJ’s time, only twelve men had walked on the Moon! And now she and her friends were here, boldly going where … where, only a handful of people had gone before.
“You don’t have to twist my arm to do a moonwalk,” King said, “even if we do have to go through all the work of putting our suits back on.” He started humming “Walking on the Moon.”
Fox spoke over the humming, as he led them back to the ESM to gather their suits and equipment. “With only four crew for some time now, important secondary projects have been put on hold. However, your unexpected arrival has doubled our complement. The classified message instructed us to put you to work—and we certainly have plenty to do.”
JJ turned to the others. “We’re here for a reason. We can’t waste a chance like this.”
In a low voice, King said, “I’ve learned not to second-guess a lucky break.”
“This isn’t exactly luck,” Major Fox said in his dry British accent. “I shall expect each of you to pull your own weight.”
“No problem with the weight,” Dyl spoke up. “Especially since here we only weigh a sixth of what we’re used to.”
The others groaned or chuckled, but Major Fox was all business. He pressed his thin lips together and inspected the four new arrivals. “Apparently, you are all eminently qualified?”
“Commander Zota thought so,” JJ evaded. “And we’re fast learners.”
She wished she had better explanations, but the situation was still confusing … not that she was complaining. It still hadn’t entirely sunk in that they were actually on the Moon, not in some elaborate simulation.
Back on Earth, these bulky spacesuits had seemed so real because they were real, and now the four teens would wear them outside. As far as she knew, even this far in the future, they were the youngest people ever to set foot on the Moon.
Remembering Commander Zota’s instruction, and accepting assistance from Major Fox, the four newest crewmembers at Moonbase Magellan went through the complex steps of donning their spacesuits once more, following the steps on the checklists. Major Fox told them they would likely be inside those suits for six or seven hours to complete the day’s work. This time Song-Ye didn’t complain about the diaper.
They sealed their helmets, and soon all the systems lights glowed green. JJ’s suit radio tested properly, and air flowed, producing a metallic taste as she breathed it inside her helmet.
Eager to explore, JJ hurried to the airlock door and grabbed the wheel on the inner hatch to open it. Fox spoke over the suit radio, stopping her. “Not so quickly, Cadet Wren. Speed is the enemy of caution. That airlock is the final barrier of protection between these habitable modules and the harsh external environment.”
JJ felt a flash of irritation. Something about the man’s words struck her as condescending.
Dyl instantly came to her defense. “Believe me, Major, my sister knows how important airlocks are. She’s a space nut and can tell you about every mission from the 1950s through the Space Shuttle program. I’m pretty familiar with how airlocks work myself.”
JJ suppressed a chuckle. Her brother’s love of science fiction didn’t give him actual experience with airlocks, but he understood the concept. Knowing that her brother couldn’t see her smile through the tinted faceplate, she thanked him with a clumsy thumbs-up signal.
Fox, who seemed a bit confused by Dyl’s outburst, herded them all into the large airlock chamber and turned to the control panel. “We must of course seal the inner door before we can open the outer one.”
He secured the inner hatch with a loud clunk. Dyl stood well away from the doors of the airlock. Song-Ye impatiently reached out to release the outer hatch, but Fox stopped her. “This chamber is still filled with air, Cadet.”
“What’s the difference?” Song-Ye asked. “The inner hatch is already sealed.”
“If you open that hatch now, we’ll all be expelled with the outrush of atmosphere.”
“It would waste the moonbase’s air too,” JJ added. Fox tapped a gauge on the wall that showed the air pressure dropping. “We’re currently draining the air into reservoir tanks. Just be patient a bit longer.”
“I can see why a person wouldn’t want to come back inside just for a short bathroom break,” King said. “Getting in and out is kind of a pain.”
“It’ll be worth the trouble just to be out there,” JJ whispered, more to herself than the others, but the voice pickup transmitted her words.
“Don’t I know it,” King agreed, chuckling.
Finally, when the lights on the external door panel turned green, Major Fox grasped the hatch wheel with both gloved hands and released the outer hatch. The last faint traces of air escaped into the black starry void.
JJ looked out upon the lunar surface. Moon, sweet Moon. She had dreamed about this for years. I’m really here.
Through her helmet visor, she stared out into the velvety black sky studded with an inconceivable number of bright stars. No bl
ue skies on the Moon because there was no atmosphere. A band of the Milky Way that looked like a misty river arced overhead from horizon to horizon. Before them lay a blisteringly bare tan landscape dotted with ancient craters.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Fox announced, “Welcome to the Moon.”
***
Eight
Even though there were many other footprints in the dust outside the hatch, JJ felt a giddy thrill. A million questions filled her head, but Major Fox seemed so businesslike that she swallowed most of them, to avoid being seen as childish. In this situation, she wanted to be taken seriously.
“You may egress now,” Fox said with a bit of a nudge.
“One small step ….” JJ whispered. Walking forward onto the packed lunar surface, she turned in her bulky spacesuit to get her first external view of Moonbase Magellan. Bright lights shone through the thick transparent window ports, and from the greenhouse windows of the ag bubble. She saw a modular rover vehicle connected to an airlock hatch in the ESM, ready to go.
The place reminded her of a campground, with modules connected, equipment outside, and various excavations and outposts scattered across the crater floor, widely separated. She could see a module separated from the main base by a hundred meters or so, and near that, a curved interlocked array of mirror segments—a telescope—as big as a football field! JJ wanted to ask about everything. She felt like a gawky tourist, but who wouldn’t? Dyl, King, and Song-Ye, also walking with great wonder, bounced about in the low gravity.
“Look up there,” Dyl said, pointing with a gloved hand. “It’s the Earth, right in front of us in the sky!”
They all turned their curved faceplates upward, and JJ felt a chill at the sight of Earth hanging in space like a big blue marble aswirl with clouds. Right now part of the planet was in shadow.
“As you can see, when viewed from the Moon, the Earth goes through phases, similar to the Moon’s phases when one looks at it from Earth,” Major Fox said.
“I wondered why our view of the world wasn’t quite full.” Dyl chuckled. “I guess Earth’s just going through a phase.”
“Pfft,” Song-Ye said.
“The phase of the Moon between a quarter and full is called gibbous,” King commented. “At the moment, though, I’m less interested in the Earth’s phase than in finding out how the Moon feels? He took a few quick steps, hopped high in the air and pretended to slam dunk a basketball.
“This is amazing!” even the Korean girl admitted. She sprang upward, did a graceful spin, and touched down again.
“I’ll bet I could jump a few feet in the air, no problem,” Dyl said. JJ noticed again how much more easily her brother moved on the Moon, though he still seemed tentative. Maybe he wasn’t ready to “fly” just yet.
“Feet?” Major Fox asked. “I’m sorry, I don’t follow—what do you mean by that?”
“Meters,” JJ quickly amended. Obviously no one at the moonbase would use old-fashioned measurements like pounds or feet. The cadets would have to remember to use metric units. “He meant he could jump and get his feet a few meters off the ground.”
“Ah. That is certainly within the realm of possibility, but your tasks today do not require jumping a few meters in the air,” Fox admonished. “Our priority is to set up a supplemental solar-power array for Moonbase Magellan.”
“We’re not going anywhere in the rover?” JJ asked, crestfallen. The enclosed, pressurized vehicle looked intriguing. She wanted to stand on the low lunar mountains and look down into distant craters where meteors had bombarded Earth’s only satellite eons ago.
“Longer expeditions are for another time, Cadet. Magellan has needed this additional array for half a year. For safety and efficiency, the task requires five workers. However, since safety protocols preclude all four base crewmembers being outside at the same time, we’ve been unable to attempt the job. Now that you’re here, however, this is our first priority.”
“Somebody needs to do it—might as well be us,” JJ agreed, trying not to sound as excited as a kid going to Disney World.
“Sure, why not?” Song Ye said.
Major Fox explained how when Moonbase Magellan had been established decades earlier, versatile vehicles had pushed crumbly lunar soil—called regolith—up against the modules for added shielding and packed it tightly like the walls of a snow fort. Metal-wrapped packages of unused equipment, tools, spare parts, and supplies were piled in exposed caches across the crater floor; the moonbase modules were too cramped to keep all those large items inside.
“There’s just … dirt everywhere,” Song-Ye said. She scuffed with her boot and kicked up a spray of tiny pebbles and dust that settled back to the ground in slow motion.
“The regolith is made up of powder, broken stones, all sorts of loose material,” Major Fox said, “created by billions of years of bombardment from space. It’s a great resource for us, as you’ll see later. But first, the solar-power station.”
Major Fox led the cadets in a low-gravity march to a large rectangular canister that rested on the ground at an angle, as if it had just been dumped there. With meticulous movements, Fox unclipped a tool at his waist and began to remove the protective packaging from a canister.
“In its zero-gravity environment, the International Space Station Complex manufactures highly efficient solar power films,” Fox explained. “They shipped this extra equipment from Earth orbit, along with modules for an eventual ambitious expansion of the base here. But, alas, plans were curtailed, and the new array was never set up. The collectors are quite fragile, so be very careful.”
“Why do you need so much power for only four people at the base?” King asked.
“There are eight at the moment,” Song-Ye pointed out.
Fox gestured to the four solar-power collectors linked together in the crater. Looking like a chain of satellite antenna dishes, the arrays were connected to one another and also to cables that ran back to the moonbase modules. “While the base can function with the amount of power we already produce, it’s always wise to have an extra safety factor. There are countless unknown hazards in space. We make our own air and water, and grow our own food when possible. Our goal is for Moonbase Magellan to be entirely self-sufficient someday—and that requires power. Because we’re in darkness two weeks at a time, we have to store up as much energy as possible during the sunlight period.”
“They look like big windmills,” Dyl said.
“No wind out here,” King observed.
“Solar wind,” Fox corrected. “A constant stream of cosmic rays and solar radiation falls on the lunar surface. We can use the sunlight for energy, but it also poses dangers. By regulation, we’re limited in the number of hours we can spend outside in our suits per week. Unfortunately, with such a small crew, we’ve sometimes had to push that a bit.”
“Well, now you’ve got us to help,” Dyl said.
“Yes, though for many tasks, you cadets will need significant training,” Major Fox said. “This is a delicate process. I assume you’ve worked as a team before?”
“No, sir,” King said. “At least, not with each other.”
“We barely know each other,” Song-Ye muttered. “We just met.”
“But we’re ready to learn,” JJ hastened to add. She didn’t want the major to decide that they were useless and send them back inside. “Just show us what to do.”
Under Fox’s direction, his four assistants removed the components from the storage package. Together, they assembled the solar-power array, checking and double-checking each step, and then spent hours raising it and anchoring it. Finally, when all the systems checked out, they connected the power-distribution cables to batteries and to the rest of the network.
The work wasn’t all drudgery, especially for JJ. Each time she was asked to get something or put it away, she added a skip or hop to the task. Soon all of them were incorporating leaps and twirls into their assignments, experimenting with the low gravity, though only when they weren’
t near any delicate equipment. Even Dyl got comfortable enough to bounce from place to place as he worked.
Then, as if it were a film of mirrored spiderwebs, they unfurled the fan-shaped solar collector. Fox used instruments to adjust and aim the reflective fan so that it would gather the maximum light during the long lunar day
“Thanks to your help,” Fox said with genuine gratitude, “Moonbase Magellan is now more self-sufficient than it has ever been. And watching you enjoy your assignments has reminded me how much I enjoy working here.”
They had worked so smoothly together that the solar-power collector was finished ahead of schedule. With two hours remaining of their suit time and life-support packs, Major Fox led them over by the steep crater wall, where pipes and canisters and enclosed machinery had been set up. JJ thought the area resembled a small oil refinery.
King sounded mystified. “Is that some kind of industrial complex? A mining operation?”
“Maybe they found a vein of gold on the Moon,” Dyl joked. “Or Swiss cheese.”
“Better than gold or platinum. It’s our most precious resource,” Major Fox said. “Buried in shadows in the darkest part of the crater, the lunar soil contains water ice.”
“Pfft.” Song-Ye was not impressed. “All that work for ice cubes?”
“I remember a couple of space probes searching for water ice on the Moon—Clementine in 1994, and LCROSS in 2009,” JJ said. “It was supposed to be really important for the future of the space program.”
“Why do you say ‘water ice’ like it’s some big deal?” Song-Ye asked. “What else would ice be made of?”
“I’ve heard of ammonia ice on some of the really cold planets or moons,” King said.
“And you’ve seen dry ice, haven’t you?” Dyl asked
“We use it to make creepy fog at Halloween,” JJ added. “Doesn’t even leave a puddle behind.”
“Hence the term dry,” King said. “When it melts, it doesn’t become liquid like water ice does. It goes right from being solid to being a gas.”
Moonbase Crisis Page 6