Moon Panic

by Bradley Birch

  Jason finally considered returning to civilian life. He missed blue skies and fresh air, but he was given the opportunity of a lifetime. Mankind had found its first alien artifact since the Waste. In a binary system, a cylinder was found spinning at the Lagrange point. The object was clearly artificial. The mission wasn’t so much a science team with a military security detail, but a security mission with a small science team.

  The following eight years were more like civilian life than Jason could have imagined. An alien construction promised to be the most exciting discovery singe the Webgates first opened. The Sunshine Pill, it was named, for its shape and the uniform yellow infrared emissions as it dissipated heat from the two suns. But in all those eight years, not a thing happened.

  The science folks were abuzz, sure. Their calculations were published thousands of times over. The Pill spun with enough force to generate nearly twice the gravity of Earth. The problem was no one was quite sure of the thickness of the Pill’s shell. If the shell was a superdense computer matrix hundreds of meters thick, then gravity on the inside would be comparable to Earth’s. However, both of these thoughts were based on assumptions that the Pill was some sort of O’Neill cylinder and that inhabitants walked about on its hollow interior. These were popular initial theories, but as the years dragged on, no test or scan could prove if the Pill was hollow or solid. The only certainty was that the heat it gave off paled in comparison to the energy it absorbed from the suns. A new theory formed that it was some kind of battery, and that the Pill was either storing massive amounts of energy—potentially making it a planet-destroying bomb—or teleporting the energy for use elsewhere.

  The theories and scientific jumbo rolled off Jason’s back like sweat during his morning treadmill. Life guarding the Pill was as slow and stable as in any suburban household. Jason made friends with a member of the civilian staff, a girl named Amber with rose hair. Like many who worked for the contractors, she had come from object poverty. She traded her life not for the pennies a day, but for food and bed the ships provided her. Given the quality of space food and the size of the civilian cabins, she must have been quite desperate, indeed. The contracting company then traded her to the USSN for massive profits. Tax dollars funded her expenses, which were far cheaper than the cost of training soldiers, and all three parties benefitted.

  Love blossomed half out of proximity, half out of boredom. Amber would give towels to Jason from the bottom of the pile, where they were still warm. She’d smile as he dried his hair into a messy bush. There was no expectation of privacy on starships, and soon she was no longer waiting outside the stalls with warm laundry, but joining him inside the showers, sometimes in front of other soldiers if the facilities were busy.

  “They should have named you Rose,” Jason told her as he played with a lock of her hair.

  “I wasn’t born with hair, silly,” she replied with one hand on his chest. Amber was the first woman Jason had ever loved in his adult life. Alan would have recognized that Jason had simply never before in his career had the time to form a long-term relationship, but Jason was not a man of science.

  Then, during one shower tryst, Jason felt something scratch against his foot. He looked down and uttered a shocked yelp that filled Amber with near suicidal shame. The last four toes on her right foot had shriveled to little bony claws. A pit, shallow but apparent, rested at the edge of her foot’s bridge.

  “I was lucky,” Amber told him, tears hidden in the spray. “We caught it in the first few days. Any longer, and I wouldn’t have been able to walk.”

  Jason had no idea how he had missed the Waste for so long. They had been screwing for nearly a year, now. He realized that the deformity had been hidden beneath the neon socks she always left on when she crawled into the bunk with him. He met her eyes, but he looked through her, and only saw the tendons and delicate bones that were visible in that pit. He saw the twisted nail that had been filed down to a point like the tip of a pen. Amber left the shower so that he wouldn’t have to make any excuses.

  Amber met with Jason a few times again that week. Always, his eyes avoided hers. Always, he was first to break contact. Always, he had little to say. Before she knew it, his cabin was empty.

  That was how Jason Reidberg came to be stationed on the US3 Hamilton. The Pill was scientifically inert. If something were going to burst forth from it and massacre humans, it was just as likely to occur in ten thousand years as one. The real danger to humanity was shaping up to be Earth’s own moon. Drones and rovers confirmed repeatedly that lunazoe was destructive in ways far beyond the Waste. After five years aboard the Hamilton, (on which, Jason celebrated both forty years of life and twenty years’ service in the USSN,) it was appointed to a mission around lunar orbit.

  And finally, Jason had a chance to fire a weapon in a non-simulated environment. He slipped back into military identity so quickly that he could hardly believe how much he had changed since the boredom of the Pill. The meetings he now attended were still rife with scientific nonsense, but there was something underneath it that he understood. During briefing, the whole team watched slides of the silver streaks forming across the lunar surface. Year by year the streaks grew like some slow, insidious lightning storm. This was a battle, Jason realized. The enemy wasn’t conventional, but it was a battle, nonetheless.

  As it turned out, the moon whispers terrified people. They terrified civilians, they terrified the top brass, they terrified heads of state. Six of the seven destroyed Pelagic centers had been broadcasting SOS signals off and on for eight years. The official explanation by Nora Dobbs was that the lunazoe was shorting out the electronics. The SOS chips were simple, near-indestructible components. They were designed to work even if no other system was functional, and could broadcast for nearly half a millennia. The breakdown in the underlying circuitry would have automatically tripped the SOS chips, believing—rightfully so—that some catastrophic event had taken place.

  This explanation satisfied people for a few years. As the signals blinked in and out of existence, the timelines started to make people very uncomfortable. The Pelagic research drones demonstrated how quickly the lunazoe broke down everything it came in contact with. How could the chips have survived for nearly three decades? Someone had finally gotten tired of passive observation and decided it was time to strike.

  The US3 Hamilton bombarded branch 23C of the lunazoe with maser radiation. Half a dozen cruisers held orbit around the moon, unleashing focused beams of sterilizing atoms into the lunazoe structure continuously for months. Jason’s nights were no longer spent gambling with his fellow servicemen or tossing around with the housecleaning staff, but the bonds he formed were paradoxically stronger. He spent hours calibrating systems and reading diagnostic logs with the crewmen. Erin Zeiger, the nuclear physicist, became Jason’s right-hand man. Or woman, in this case. While he operated the maser cannon, she ensured the power levels were steady. They worked in a four-hour shift every day, and while the relationship was not yet physical, it was somehow more intimate than what he had with Amber.

  First Captain of the US3 Hamilton, Captain Robert Hawley, held progress meetings at the first of every month. His jaw was clean shaven and his head buzzed like he was still in boot camp, but his face was a board which wore years of unwavering discipline. On the sixth of these meetings, he announced that the 90% reduction in 23C’s growth had held steady since the mission’s beginning. “I hope you like your day jobs,” he told the attendants, “because the USSN has approved a large-scale operation to microwave every inch of the lunazoe from now until the cows come home. Starting next week, we’ll be reinforced by four to six cruisers a month for a minimum of the next two years. Construction will begin in two months’ time on permanent geostationary maser habitats. I’m told that a lot of money will be going into these, so if you’re sick of sleeping in tuna cans, keep up the good work and maybe you can get promoted to a new rig. Oh, and to celebrate, alcohol will be available in the mess until 21:00 RT. Enjoy
.”

  Amazingly, even with the watered down juice that passed for beer, even with the two-drink limit, Jason found that he did enjoy himself. Thanks to strict rationing, Jason hadn’t had a drop to drink since one night aboard the Bishop when Amber had produced a miniature bottle she had stolen from an officer’s room. The two beers made him feel light-headed and tipsy. Across the cafeteria table, Erin’s blushing cheeks revealed that she was feeling the same.

  “There’s something they’re not telling us,” Erin shouted over the noise and commotion of rowdy crew. “Don’t you think so?

  Jason told her he had no idea what she meant.

  “Well, the whole quarantine has been unusual from the start,” she said, “though I guess everything about the lunar quarantine was totally unprecedented at the time. But did you know that actual communications are included in the quarantine? It happened after the first moon whisper.”

  Jason thought for a moment. A high-calorie, low-taste chocolate lump sat half-eaten on his tray. “I can see why they’d be concerned, but it’s silly to think that transmissions could be dangerous. Even for something as bizarre as the moon whispers.”

  “You’re right,” Erin replied, “but I don’t think it has anything to do with danger. What nobody knows is that the Pelagic institute is contracted to maintain the communications quarantine.”

  Jason thought for another moment. “They’re handling all the lunazoe research. Communications aren’t a military jurisdiction. Makes sense it’d get lumped in with all the other science junk they handle.”

  “Yeah, but there’s a big difference between military regulation and a private institute,” Erin insisted. “Pelagic isn’t beholden to all the parts of the CSC. They have to abide by the rules for all their outgoing communications, but it says nothing about information they receive. By a matter of law, communications that a private entity receives, even if the communication itself is public, does not necessarily get entered into public record. Pelagic has the right to without information about any moon whisper they pick up.”

  “You think they’re hiding something from us?”

  “Yes! That’s what I’ve been saying this whole time. Look, today was the proof in my eyes. You know what’s significant about branch 23C? P14 was located along it. P14 was the fourth center to broadcast an SOS. There hasn’t been a whisper from that site for two weeks. Now the USSN is planning to irradiate the whole damn thing.”

  Erin was pounding a fingertip into the table to drive her points home. The cheery red blush on her cheeks had spread to every inch of her face. Jason felt too slow and stupid to understand. “The radiation’s been doing the trick,” he told her.

  “The radiation’s been working since the second month!” Erin shouted at him. “We’ve seen about 90% reduction in lunazoe spread month after month. What changed? One of the moon whispers stopped.”

  “So then there’s no real big mystery,” Jason assured her. “I heard about the whisper stopping as soon as it happened. In fact, I thought at the time that it was us who killed it. Everybody sort of realizes it.”

  “No, Jason, you’re not putting two and two together. Think. The whisper stops, then we have a massive expansion in our force. That’s how the military operates. No action is unprovoked. It’s too expensive to do things without reason. Actions happen in response to something. It is triggered. In this case, over a hundred cruisers are being committed after the cessation of one broadcast.”

  Jason broke eye contact to study his uneaten chocolate. He gave it an absent poke. Too soft to constitute a chocolate bar, too hard to constitute a brownie. “Two plus two?” he asked.

  “Two plus two, Jason, is what triggered the initial deployment? Pelagic has been studying the lunazoe for decades. They’ve been monitoring the transmissions for over half that time. What changed to justify sending us out here to begin with? It has to be something we don’t know about.”

  Jason nodded. He was starting to get it.

  The next morning, Jason was shocked that he could develop a hangover from two lousy drinks, then he remembered he wasn’t the same young kid who’d go out on weekend benders with the other trainees in boot. The physicists talked a lot about relative time in terms of space travel, and he wondered if this was what they meant. How had his youth slipped away so soon? Hell, he could scant recall his time around the Pill. When he was in his sixties, would he regard his lunar tour with the same vagueness?

  Erin stirred beside him. Her Germanic heritage always seemed bland to him. The great beauties of the world were always exotic flowers with stark features. Erin could have been any girl he’d known growing up. He grazed a soft cheek with a gentle finger, knocking a tangle of chestnut her out of her face. He hadn’t known her a year, and already this time seemed to outweigh the whole of his Sunshine Pill tour. No, he decided. He would not regard his time on the US3 Hamilton in the same fashion as the years orbiting the Pill or warning off pirates. This time felt meaningful. Erin’s eyes fluttered open.

  The USSN was, as expected, behind schedule, but they did bring in another four cruisers over the next two months. The sterilization expanded to branch 35A. Branch 35A was notable for being the source of P12’s whisper. After that, cruisers arrived almost every week. Bombardment began on two of the fringe branches: D6 and D9. No whispers ever came from these limbs of lunazoe, but Erin studied maps of all the Pelagic centers and estimated that P1 was on the path to be consumed by D6 within two years.

  Pelagic 1 was arguably the most important lunar asset in history. As its name implied, it was the first research center constructed by the institute. Its fruitless work on the Waste vaccine had long since ceased, but it remained the only moon base that was still manned. Manned was a bit of misnomer in this case, however, as there were no men in the station, but rather an array of drones, robots, and other autonomous machines. Day by day, they were sent on suicide missions to study the silver streaks that stretched out hundreds of miles from the swamp.

  While they appeared silver from Earth, it was interesting to note that the infected lunar flesh was actually a mostly translucent glassy substance, having formed trillions of hollow cells that refracted sun- and earthlight—salt crystals. It was never clear why the lunazoe formed rigid structures in these branches but created a slushy swamp around P4.

  Rovers dropped picks and chisels into the branch, breaking off flakes and collecting dust for analysis. Readings were beamed to Pelagic’s orbital stations, where much of the work was then done via simulation. Live study never lasted long before the lunazoe broke down the delicate sensors of the rovers. Their dissolution into dust would subsequently be studied via telescopic lens.

  Erin found justification for hidden motives in every new maneuver, as if eliminating a potential threat to all life on Earth wasn’t reason enough to slow-nuke the moon. Jason kept a practical mind about things, but her endless string of rationale swayed him further and further to the realm of conspiracy. Their combat shifts increased to six hours a day, with a short break as orbital positioning changed. During the live fire, they rarely needed to exchange words. Finally, Jason worked up the courage to ask Captain Hawley at one of the progress meetings what the correlation was between the moon whispers and USSN targets. Hawley’s response was quite clear.

  “The disinfection strategy of the USSN was devised through a joint commission composed of military intelligence, senior Pelagic institute officials, and presidential advisors. The attacks are devised to maximize available orbital resources while remaining flexible as our forces continue to expand, with complete and utter eradication of the lunazoe being the USSN’s chief goal.”

  To Erin, involvement of the Pelagic institute was tacit admission that something dark and sinister was occurring behind the scenes. They lounged together sipping energy juice and watching the news. The ADC was celebrating what they anticipated to be the fifteenth consecutive year in which new Waste outbreaks had dropped. They were now classifying the Waste threat neutralized.

 
; “Maybe the ADC will cure lunazoe next,” Erin said. She was leaning against Jason, but in a friendly way. There was nothing sexual about their friendship.

  “Lunazoe isn’t alien,” Jason replied. “It doesn’t fall under their jurisdiction. Besides, they didn’t cure Waste. It was that genetics company. A lot of people think their trials actually delayed widespread vaccination manufacturing.”

  Erin made a bitter face. “Then maybe they can divert their efforts to all the survivors. My brother-in-law has been wheelchair-bound for twenty years. Waste got both his knees.”

  They both stood at the same time. The routine was ingrained in each of them, as it was for countless other crewmembers across all the deployed cruisers. They walked step-in-step. Jason didn’t know what to say about Erin’s brother, so he said nothing at all. Some had been crippled twice as long. Some were turned into literal monsters. Estimates were wild, ranging from 70 to 300 billion survivors. It would be decades still until they could all be treated with grafts and transplants. There simply wasn’t enough human flesh and muscle to go around. During a time that was called the space renaissance, economists claimed that, when all is said and done, Waste will have set humanity back a hundred years.

  Jason and Erin arrived at the starboard maser cannon control center as branch 23C rotated into a striking angle beneath them. Operating modern weapons was little like warfare of yore. The control room could have been an office in any financial, technical, or engineering firm. The only difference was the type of data fed to them on the screens. Jason ran through a list of prechecks, bouncing the occasional value to Erin, and the maser cannons spun out of idle mode.