David McLeod was not normally clumsy by nature. He was a cautious thirty-five, and rather pleased at himself for remaining in good shape. He mulled the Lights and the Heavies as he jogged around the track. One and two-thirds loops made a five-kilometer run. He, like most users of the track, ran in the direction of spin of the giant asteroid, thus increasing the feeling of gravity and getting a better workout. Each trip around was “Pi” kilometers—3142 meters. He liked to run four revolutions, making a little over twelve and a half kilometers. He got his best thinking done on the track, where there were no distractions.
He was two-thirds of the way around his third lap, about eight and a third kilometers, when the ground beneath his landing foot hammered back at him, throwing him into the air. He was conscious of a loud thundering that filled the air as he twisted in an arc that would be instantly familiar to anyone who tracked hurricanes.
Coriolis force tossed him forward as the shockwave travelling through the air pitched him head over heels. David's right leg, the one in contact with the surface when it threw him, seemed to form a new knee about halfway down his shin, and he knew that he was seconds away from some serious pain. He tucked and rolled, though he remained on the 'ground,' just in case there was a rebound effect. A pulse of energy tried to lift him from the surface, but it was far too weak. At that point, the pain in his right leg occupied his entire universe.
It took his companions nearly half an hour to find him, his right leg swollen and nearly purple. He was not only conscious, but once they pushed some pain medication into him, he seemed almost normal.
“Man, you gave us a scare there!” said Freddy Howlett. “Thought you might have floated out the back!”
“Something hit us, didn't it?” David asked.
“Yup,” said Harel, reading the information on fractures from the Doc-in-a-Box emergency kit. “Seems to have whacked us pretty darned close to where you were on the track.” He hummed distractedly. “You've got a fracture of the tibia and fibula, of course, but I want to make sure I get this right. If we can't fix you, we're going to have to go home.”
Freddy put his hand on David's head and intoned, “Heal!”
“That's not funny,” said David, a devout Presbyterian.
“Sorry, man. It's just that I'm not done with my studies yet.”
“Nobody is. Everyone's going half-speed, like they've got all year,” said Harel. “Me, too. It's just so damned peaceful up here. No war, no politics, no problems with food or water or shelter. No weather…”
“No doctors,” said David. “Not a knock on you, Harel, I know you're doing the best you know how. But I could use a good orthopedist right now.”
“No offense taken,” said Harel. “I wish you had a good ortho doc too.” He continued mousing through the Doc-in-a-Box menu, looking for anything he might have missed.
“This stuff you're giving me for the pain is wonderful. What is it?”
“I have no idea. But don't get used to it, we only have whatever's loaded into the Box. OK, I've splinted his leg, and the swelling seems to have stabilized.” Harel looked around the circle of faces. “Anyone else have anything to add? No? OK, let's carefully get him on the stretcher.”
A couple of the crew cobbled together a stretcher from some tarps, two long pieces of rebar, and a spar of iron at each end. It was makeshift and massive, but not unusually heavy, even with David in it. They carefully lifted the man into the stretcher and four men grabbed a piece of rebar and lifted together.
“Slowly at first, please,” said Harel. “Remember, this isn't like Earth. How about two more at the center section? Good. Slow march back to base.”
David stared at the bare fields on the opposite side of the chamber, idly marveling that the dirt didn't just fall on top of his head.
***
“Commander, this is a tough one,” said Celine. “Got an injured crewman up on Perseus.”
“Injured how?” Lisa asked.
“Broken leg,” said Celine. “Tibia and fibula. Complex but not compound.”
“Small favors,” Lisa murmured around a quiet dread in her heart. Over twenty years ago, she watched a crewman get both femurs crushed in a power door, then had to nurse him as he slowly died from rhabdomyolysis. I hope this isn't the end of the Perseus mission.
“I'll forward the circuit over,” said Celine.
“UNSOC-DRC, over,” said Lisa automatically, fitting the headset over her short hair.
“Commander Harel Mazzo here,” said Harel. “I've got a possible problem. David McLeod shattered his right lower leg on the jogging track. Seems a piece of debris, a big one, hit the shell directly beneath him, and the shockwave threw him about five meters. Coriolis sent him flying and he did a somersault besides. Leg's pretty messed up.”
Lisa listened to the faint crackle of space for a moment before keying.
“Do you have any firm intentions?”
“None yet,” said Harel. “This just happened. The Perseus is fine, not even a crack. We're moving an external drone into position over the crater, but you know how long those things take. Not worth a crewman's life to go out and personally eyeball it. Another hour and we'll know how big the crater is.”
“What about return?”
“Well, that's the problem. We originally agreed to remain up here ten years, and it's barely been two. I'd like to see us complete five, at the very least, because that's the length of time that it will take for most of the science types to gather and reduce their data sets. On the other hand, David's leg has to heal somehow, and we all don't want him to have a permanent deformity because of this.”
“I don't envy you the choice. I don't really see what I can do down here, though. I won't pressure you either way.”
“How about plugging me in to some real doctors in the meantime? All I have is a Doc-in-a-Box. It's OK for simple X-Rays and such, but if bone necrosis or some other crap I can't even pronounce sets in, we're going to have another Reinhart here,” said Harel.
Lisa felt a stab in her heart. Harel had no idea she was Reinhart's commander when he died.
“That I can do. Give me a few minutes—I want you to have the best, not the UNSOC best, but the real best.” Lisa knew she'd catch some grief for that remark if it ever got out, but she didn't care. There would not be another Reinhart.
***
Later, when she talked about the incident with Shep, her husband, she cried softly on his shoulder as they lay in bed.
“Shhhh,” murmured Shep. “That was a long time ago, and you did all you could. UNSOC didn't care then. Now you are UNSOC, and you're doing your absolute best to make sure that everything turns out perfect for this crewman.”
Lisa could do no more than nod in the salty puddle in the hollow of his neck.
Shep continued to hold her until she relaxed in sleep. Only then did he relax his guard and follow her into slumber.
***
David pulled through, though when the bones knit, he did have a slight limp. He had no pain now, but he knew his pain and his limp would be worse after planetfall. He shifted allegiance from the Heavies to the Lights. He earned the enmity of both camps, but he didn't care. He knew it would be slow suicide to start haunting the axis, where centrifugal force from the spinning Perseus vanished and microgravity ruled. Experiments back in the dawn of the Space Age proved that bones just didn't heal in microgravity. At best, a porous structure developed that seemed to bond the bone fragments one to another, but as soon as any significant stress was placed on the bone, the structure shattered like Styrofoam, and it was back to square one.
So he spent his time crutching around, tending plants, and working on his science project, which was ironically measuring the fitness of his fellow crewmen. He was able to document a new phenomenon, however—bone regrowth under lessened gravity. He couldn't generalize from a single point, of course, but he could write up a useful monograph about it. The doctors on the ground gave him endless suggestions about what physiological p
arameters to measure during his recuperation.
Unfortunately, one of the side effects they had not counted upon was the slight lengthening of the leg bones that occurred during convalescence. Full gravity, as well as the stress of standing, walking, and later running, would act to compact the new bone into the break, making the bone stronger in the area around the break.
Half gravity, though, meant that compaction did not occur, so he ended up about fifteen millimeters taller on the injured leg. This was why he developed the limp, which ruined his efficient running motion. He soon began to experience knee and back pain, to the extent that he had to stop running altogether and concentrate on strength training.
The crew of the Perseus was relieved that they didn't have to return to Earth quite yet, but the incident ended the attitude of mañana that prevailed previously. There was nothing like a brush with danger to focus one’s attention.
Harel more rigorously enforced debris watch. Video captured prior to the impact proved that the piece of debris that struck could have been lasered, had all lasers focused on the fragment of Lunar crust when it was first detected.
Telemetry of the crater blasted out of their home revealed a pit one meter deep and two across. Although still small compared to the fifty-three meter thickness directly underneath it, the inner surface of the Perseus revealed an upward blister of cracked iron and some small spalled fragments. The impactor would never have broached the hull, but David escaped much more severe injury since he was ten meters from the impact blister instead of directly atop it. Another couple of steps and he would have experienced much more than a broken leg.
It was a sobering thought to all. Harel damned himself for not keeping a tighter ship. Lisa Daniels refrained from mentioning anything, especially over the airwaves. They all knew, especially David, how lightly they had gotten off.
***
One by one, the scientists finished their data collection, reduction, cross-checking, and write-ups. They submitted their papers to the appropriate journals, where they were juried, corrected, amended, accepted or rejected, reworked, or abandoned.
Nothing urgent appeared on the horizon. Perseus, her functions on automatic, operated without human input, but definitely with human monitoring. Food grew almost on its own; chickens grew, mated, laid eggs, and became dinner. Nobody was in debt or shirking their duties.
“Harel, a moment.” Freddy Howlett was one of those who had finished their work relatively early, and despite intense searching, could not find anything that fired his imagination enough to start another project.
“Yes,” Harel said, turning from his screen. The commpad, well-worn after six years of almost daily use, waited.
“I'm, uh, underemployed,” Freddy admitted. “My paper was well received, there was minor talk of an award, but that's not why I did it.”
“I remember. ‘Some Aspects of Microgravity on Cavitation of Fluids.’ A bit beyond me, I'm afraid.”
“That's OK, nobody's paper makes sense to me either.” The two men shared a chuckle. “But I'm done up here.”
“We still have six more years to go,” pointed out Harel.
“Says who?” asked Freddy, but with a smile. “Last time I checked, I didn't sign a contract or agree to anything formal. Besides, it's not like we're costing UNSOC a dime. Sure, UNSOC's monitoring us, but that's just a matter of pointing an antenna at us, isn't it? It's not like they're doing anything down there that costs money.”
“They also aren’t nuking us,” said Harel. “Perseus's location enters into every one of their debris intercepts.”
“Only because Perseus by itself is valuable in the fight against debris. Not because it's manned. Hell, when was the last time we went EVA? Nineteen months, wasn't it?”
“Yes, and only because the impact crater was so close. The only other time we put on spacesuits is to visit the aft chamber to get something. And we get out the skintights and helmets for the monthly airlock drills so they don't dry-rot.”
“Right. The point is, UNSOC can't hold us here. We could boogie out any time we want. What happens if we show early? It's not like they could send us back up here to finish our term.”
Harel was kicking at the ground under their feet. “I'm not liking where this is going. What do you propose we do? Blow up everyone's work simply because you're homesick?” Harel held up a hand. “Wait. That's not what I meant to say. Assume you're bored shitless and want to do something more interesting. Are you sure you've exhausted the Perseus?”
“One day, I took twenty consecutive rides down the Helix. Nobody knew or cared. I was dizzy as hell for an hour. Another time, I tried to see how long I could float in microgravity up on the axis before I got to the end of a safety tether. Fifty-seven minutes! Another time, just for the hell of it, I tried to take a maneuvering unit out into the aft chamber and dock with the ground, free-falling from the axis. I got to within ten meters of the ground before I freaked out and blasted back to the center.”
“Damnit, man, you could have been killed!”
“I know. That's when I knew I wasn't depressed, just bored. What I'm saying is that if I'm bored, there's got to be others like me. I think it's time to talk about this out loud.”
Harel looked at the man. “How many in your camp?”
“I don't have a camp. I haven't talked to anyone about this—that would be disloyal. I'm just ready to climb the walls.”
“Maybe there should be a discussion,” said Harel.
***
The topic was carefully opened, but nobody had to indicate which side they were on. Harel was smart enough to know a fatal divide when he saw one, and he had no desire to preside over the first orbital civil war. He gathered everyone together for a talk.
“Above all, there will be no bullying. Even if we have one person who wants to stay up here, we stay. Nobody will be marooned and nobody will be forced to go. That was part of the deal when we agreed to remain behind, and I see no reason to change it now.”
The group looked at Harel, waiting for the next part, where he would normally invite proponents of each side to point out the good things about their position and the problems with the other side.
They were stunned when he got down off the podium and made his way towards the door.
“Wait!” called Laverne Roberts. “You can't just pull the pin on this and leave!”
“Yes, I can,” said Harel, and slipped out of the tent flap.
***
Freddy was not amused. “That's not what I meant!”
“How did the meeting go?” asked Harel.
“It went nowhere, of course! Oh, a lot of people got to express an opinion, and a few of them changed sides, but that's not what I meant about opening a discussion about the topic!”
Harel grinned. “Sounds like you had a discussion to me.”
“It was chaos!”
“Did anyone leave?”
“One or two—they had duty watches or other reasons why they had to go, but you could tell they hated to leave. But we were groping in the dark. We had no idea if you'd approve or not, nor anything else that made sense—fueling the Mooncans, finding a pilot for the landing craft, alerting UNSOC, closing up this giant iron balloon.”
“Huh. Consider this—you probably didn't have a list of all the things we'd have to do when you braced me to leave. Now you do. I'd call that progress.” Harel buffed a carrot on his t-shirt and took a big bite.
Freddy growled and kicked at the ground.
“Freddy, let me tell you something. I allowed myself to get jollied into command. Dumbest thing I ever did. But while I've got the stick, I'll be double-damned if I don't bus every swinging dick up here safely down to Earth. That's my final mission. I don't care if you fly around this giant silo in a pair of wings and a G-string. So long as I get you back to Earth, I will count it as a win.
“But the one thing I will not allow is any action that would serve to prevent us from powering that flying wing back to Mother Earth. And i
n my vast experience of command, all four years of it, nothing said that the best way forward to that goal is with our hands around each other's throats.”
Freddy leaned backwards as Harel pounded his points home. At the end, he wiped his forehead. “Damn! I wish we recorded that somehow. You're right, of course. Still, I got what I wanted, sort-of. The topic is no longer whispered, but actively talked about now. Maybe there will be a rapid resolution.”
***
Lisa Daniels looked at the slightly chipped surface of her desk monitor. Seven years she had lived at this desk. Every missile launch was a throw of the dice. Sometimes, they came up snake eyes, but the very next one came up seven. She wondered idly just how long she was going to be forced to live in this foreign land.
A red bordered message popped up on her screen. Another dangerously large piece of Lunar debris was trying to return to Mother Earth.
“Mission!” she called. Another rock, another bomb. At least we're using up the ICBM arsenal, and not on each other.
Afterwards, back in her quarters with Shep and the children, now alarmingly grown, she stared at her husband. He was so good to me. Gave up everything to follow my career along, just like a 1950s housewife. He deserves better than this life.
“Something, love?” he asked, noticing her expression.
“Just wondering how long I’m going to be forced to work on this treadmill. It's been seven years.”
“Ah, but look at all the lives you've saved.”
“Not as many as I could,” she said.
“More than Subby ever managed, or any of your fellow astronauts. Even McCrary could only save, what, four hundred? You're way past that total now.”
She patted him on his chest, watching his curly brown hair compress, then spring back. “It's not about body count, Shep.”
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