Galaxia

by Kevin McLaughlin

  “Base, this is Hopper One. Detaching clamps,” he said.

  “Roger, Hopper One. Good hunting,” said a voice over the radio.

  Patrick touched a control on the console, and the entire sphere jolted a little. Carmen found the web straps of a seat harness on either side of her and belted the straps into place.

  “Just the magnetic locks letting go,” Patrick said. “You ready?”

  “Ready?” Carmen said. For what, she wanted to ask. But he took her response as an affirmative, not a question. Patrick gripped two control joysticks on the console, pushing a button on one.

  Just like that, they were airborne! Carmen gasped, watching the domes recede under them. The floor was as transparent as the rest of the dome. She saw jets of something that looked like smoke or steam when Patrick hit the thrusters, but aside from that she had a clear view of the land below. She gripped her seat firmly with both hands, hanging on for dear life.

  “How high are we?” she asked.

  “The altimeter is right there,” Patrick said, pointing to a display with numbers that were climbing steadily. “We’re a hundred feet up right now, see? I’m going to take us up to about five hundred and stay there. You OK?”

  Carmen closed her eyes, and then opened them again. She looked ahead, where she could see the horizon of the moon’s surface spilling away before them. It was a glorious sight. Finger by finger, she forced herself to relax her hands.

  “Yeah, I’m good,” she said, forcing herself to take even breaths as she slowly relaxed. The more she relaxed, the more she was able to enjoy what she was seeing. “It’s really beautiful up here.”

  His eyebrows went up a little in surprise. Aha! So he had done that fast ascent to see if he could shock her. She smiled. Well, he had his fun, but she wasn’t that easy to scare.

  “I’m glad you like it. It’s too stark for most people,” he replied.

  She could see that. It was stark – bare rock, and fields of dust. Craters, mountains, boulders, cracks and crevasses all displayed themselves beneath the hopper. The terrain was geographically diverse. But it was missing the play of color that you’d see on Earth. No blues, no greens. No amber fields, or rolling hills covered with corn. Despite that, she could see the beauty here.

  “I do like it,” she said.

  They flew on in silence a little while, each taking in the scene rolling by outside. But the lunar landscape looked much the same in one place as it did in another to Carmen. And she realized she didn’t know much about the mission they were on. Patrick said this was more than just a joyride to show off, right?

  “What are we doing?” she asked, breaking the silence.

  “Right,” Patrick said, looking over at her. “I have little stations set up, collecting surface data. But they need maintenance. Nothing lasts forever out here, especially if it’s not tended regularly. We’ll check out four of them, but I’m especially worried about one down on the south pole that’s acting up.”

  “Isn’t that far?” she asked.

  “It is. But we’re moving pretty rapidly. We’ll be there in two hours, work for a bit, and then be back in time for you to be back at the lab.”

  Now she was really curious. Two hours seemed an awfully long way away for a remote station. “Why so far?”

  “It’s the pole,” he said. “There’s ice down there, in some of the craters, where the sun never shines. Water ice. It’s a great resource for us. This station is doing all sorts of readings – radiation, temperatures. But it’s also a control and charging station for a bunch of little robots that are checking the craters nearby for water.”

  “Water seems like such a simple thing,” she said.

  He laughed. “On Earth, it is! But out here, it’s life. It’s expensive to get water up here from Earth, but the more humans we bring here, the more of it we need. So if we can find some decent supplies already here…”

  “Then you can bring more people, expand the base, maybe even have a small city here,” she said.

  “City!” Patrick seemed startled by the idea. “Well, I suppose. But we’re a long way from being ready to build a city here.”

  He seemed lost in thought after that, and Carmen felt awkward interrupting his musing. He was such a strange man! Every time she thought she had a bead on him, he went and showed her some new aspect to his personality. It made him both frustrating and fascinating at the same time.

  A short while later Carmen felt the thrusters shift and looked over at Patrick again. He was working the controls, and she realized that he was throttling back, applying thrust to slow them down. They must be closing on their destination. She looked outside, but all she saw was more craggy rocks and ridges.

  “I’ll bring us down near the site and show you around,” Patrick said.

  “We don’t have suits, though?”

  “We won’t need them. The Hopper has arms that will manage the maintenance we need to do today. If there was a more complex malfunction, I’d come out with a suit. But mostly I think we just need to blow dust off the solar panels. And probably clean another rock out of one of the robots’ charging ports.”

  She nodded, trying to picture what the work would look like. She’d see soon enough though. Patrick had stopped their forward motion altogether, and now the Hopper was descending. The ground was coming up fast, and Carmen found herself clutching her seat in spite of herself. But Patrick braked gently a few times, and their downward plunge slowed, then halted just a few feet above the rocky ground. Their ship, seeming even more like a soap bubble to her this close to the ground, came to rest with a gentle bounce as the legs absorbed the weight.

  He’d set down on the ridge of a crater. Through the glass bubble, Carmen could see dusty solar panels spread out above a crate-like structure the size of a refrigerator.

  “If the water is in the craters, why set the base up on the heights?” she asked.

  “Need the light for the solar panels,” he replied, setting the ship down gently on the ground. Carmen shook her head slightly at her folly. Of course they needed the sunlight. She could see the panels herself, right? Thankfully, he seemed happy enough about her curiosity to overlook her stupid questions. She held her tongue and watched him work instead.

  Patrick goosed the thrusters just a little, and their ship jumped up about two feet into the air and two feet forward. It settled back onto its landing legs as gracefully as the first time, but now Carmen had a much better idea why they called these things “hoppers”! They’d closed about half the distance to the little automated outpost. She looked at Patrick. His brow was furrowed with concentration. His entire being seemed focused on those controls. He hit the thrusters again – a tiny spurt – and they went up and forward another foot. They came to rest about a foot away, and he relaxed back into his seat.

  “It’s a pain in the ass if we bang into something in one of these,” he said. “The sphere is strong – aluminum oxynitride. It’s designed to survive even small meteor strikes. But the mass of the Hopper would crush those solar cells, for example. And anytime we bang into anything, we have to take the Hopper offline for a full series of inspections. Takes forever.”

  “Do they ever fail inspections?” she asked.

  “Not that I’ve seen. These are tough little machines.”

  Patrick flipped out a new set of controls, and a pair of arms extended from the front of the hopper. He extended one arm out to the side of the boxy structure and plugged it in there. Then he ran the other arm back and forth over the solar panels, blowing air out through a nozzle over each pass. Dust drifted clear of the panels, leaving behind a smooth matte-black surface instead of the dusty white they had been.

  “What’s the other arm doing?” Carmen asked, her curiosity overcoming her resolve to stop asking questions while Patrick was busy.

  He didn’t seem to mind, flashing a smile at her. “It’s doing two things. Charging the battery of the platform from our engines, because the solar cells were so dirty that the
thing was running on backup power. And it’s also downloading the last few weeks of data so I can go over it when we get back home.”

  Home. So odd that he called this place home. It wasn’t like he’d been here that long – how long did they let someone stay in space, anyway? A year? Two? But he called those domes home without any hesitation or irony. She wondered what it took to get a person to feel like this place was home.

  “Why so much data?” she asked. “Couldn’t it just transmit the data back?”

  “I haven’t been able to get out for weeks now. Between preparing for your father’s arrival, and then running out to get him – it’s been tough to keep our primary mission on track at all, right now.”

  She opened her mouth to reply that the people dying on Earth were more important than some rocks, but he cut in before she could say it.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he said, holding up a placating hand. “I know your father’s mission is crucial. I’m not complaining. I’m just explaining why we’re behind. And it can’t transmit the data because we don’t have communication satellites orbiting the moon, and there’s no line of sight. Radio just won’t reach. So we Hop out here as often as is practical and pick up the data dumps ourselves.”

  He went back to his work then, dusting off the device. Once it was fairly clean, he used the same arm to pull a panel from the side, slipping out a circuit board and replacing it with another. He was deft with the controls, his hands lightly moving the robotic arms as easily and delicately as they’d controlled the Hopper on its flight and landing.

  Carmen realized she’d been watching those hands too long and flushed, looking away. What the hell was wrong with her? She pushed the images of those hands touching her from her mind. Come on, she wasn’t in high school. She ought to be able to control her daydreams better than this. But something about Patrick’s manner – his obvious physical abilities coupled with a quick intellect – was incredibly appealing to her. The man was hot.

  “Just about done,” he said, apparently oblivious to the effect he was having on her. Thank goodness. She could feel her cheeks pinking a little at the idea of him realizing what she’d been thinking about.

  He withdrew the arms into the Hopper. The machine looked so much different, just from what – a half hour of work? She glanced at her watch. Not even quite that long. The solar panels gleamed darkly against the pale lunar dust.

  “And we’re done here,” Patrick said. “Bored yet? Or you OK to come see the next site?”

  “I’d be glad to come. Maybe I can help some…?” Carmen asked.

  “Sure, I can show you how to use the controls,” Patrick said. “Let’s get up high, so we can get line of site with the base and check in.”

  “OK”, she replied.

  Then he shot her a wicked grin that she knew spelled trouble. “Hang on!”

  He gave the engines a nudge and the Hopper started pushing gently against the ground. Then he drove up the thrust – and they were flying into space, rocketing skyward. Carmen felt herself shoved back against her seat. Carmen let out a whoop, clutching her seat harness and breathing rapidly. They were going fast! She looked down, and saw the ground plunging away from her. She gulped.

  And then the acceleration went away. Patrick kept just enough thrust to stay aloft. He was laughing, a deep belly chuckle that warmed her heart.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Not laughing at you. Just been too long since I’ve really goosed one of these things like that.”

  “They’re amazing,” she said. “We’re basically in space, right?” She looked out and could see the curve of the moon. She knew enough to be sure that meant they were very high up.

  “Yup. Best way to get line of sight,” Patrick said. “Which we ought to have now.”

  He pressed the transmit button on the radio, saying, “Base, this is Hopper One checking in.”

  “Hopper One, this is base. You’ve got trouble.” Amy’s voice buzzed out of their radio. She sounded anxious, and Patrick’s eyebrows shot together immediately at the tone in her voice. He leaned forward over the controls.

  “What’s up, Amy?” he asked.

  “Early warning sats picked up a CME about twenty minutes ago. It should be hitting in about five minutes. You don’t have much time, Pat,” Amy replied.

  Chapter 6

  “SHIT,” PATRICK SAID. He started punching numbers into the onboard computer, but his frown only deepened as he read whatever results it was giving him back.

  “CME?” Carmen asked, worried at how alarmed Patrick was becoming.

  “Coronal mass ejection,” Patrick replied. “Solar flare. It’s a big one, from the data Amy sent me. And… The computer doesn’t think we can evade it.”

  “So we’re going to glow in the dark?” Carmen quipped.

  He looked over at her, face still grim. “Not if I can help it, no.”

  Patrick flipped the radio back on again. “Base, the computer is telling me there’s no way to get back to you in time, even on max burn. And it says there’s no way to get to the far side of the moon to use it as a shield, either. I’m going to take us down into a crater and try to nestle in through the storm.”

  He was already cutting the thrusters, sending the Hopper into a dive back toward the surface. Amy’s voice replied over the radio, her broadcast already scratchy as they lost line of sight. “Roger. Storm expected to last thirty minutes. We will send the shuttle the moment it’s all clear.”

  “Roger. Hopper One out,” Patrick said. He poked a display on his screen and it lit up with numbers. Counting down. It read three minutes, and the seconds were ticking away.

  Patrick brought the thrusters live, pouring on the speed as he dove toward the surface. Again Carmen was pushed back hard against her seat – but this time was all the more terrifying because of the uncertainty involved. Patrick wasn’t laughing with the joy of flying, this time. He was flying to try to save their lives.

  “I know a little about how radiation works,” Carmen said. “How do we use a crater as a shield?”

  “The transparent aluminum that the Hopper is made from is actually a pretty good shield all by itself. And we have an emergency popup shelter in the back, too – gives just a little more shielding,” Patrick said, jerking his thumb back toward a box stowed behind their seats. “But there are some spots in these polar craters where the sun’s light never touches the surface. If we can get in there deep enough, it’ll stop even more of the radiation from the storm.”

  She could see the crater he was aiming for now. It loomed below them like a dark sore on the surface. The walls of the crater were still high peaks, towering over the surrounding terrain. The area inside those walls looked as dark as space, from here. It was like a pool of shadow.

  “How can I help?” Carmen asked, her nails biting into the cushion of her seat in an effort to stay calm.

  “Right now, you can’t,” Patrick said. “Staying as cool as you are helps, though. Most grounders would be sitting in that seat screaming my ears off. So thanks.”

  “You’re welcome?” she bit out, feeling torn. Should she be feeling miffed, that he thought she’d be a screaming mimi? Or glad that he’d noticed she wasn’t?

  Then they were inside the crater, following one of the steep walls straight to the bottom. The Hopper had lights – enough to see by, barely. Enough to watch the crater wall slide by astonishingly fast as they dropped like a stone into the darkness. Carmen kept her mouth shut tight, but she couldn’t bring herself to close her eyes, much as she wanted to. Watching the cliff face rocket past in the lights was awful. Not seeing it would have been worse. She looked at the timer: fifty-eight seconds.

  Then Patrick ignited the thrusters, and their downward movement slowed so fast that Carmen was thrown up against her straps. She looked down through the transparent floor, the flare of the thrusters showing the bottom of the crater just a few feet below the Hopper. The thrusters flared for another few seconds as Patrick eased back on the power. And t
hen they were on the ground, settled onto the Hopper’s legs.

  Patrick flipped on overhead lights in the Hopper, giving them a good view of the interior, even if the light didn’t reach very far outside. It was pitch black out there. He undid his seat harness and jumped from his seat, bouncing gently against the back wall and pulling himself to the floor. He pulled at the box he had pointed out earlier – the one he said contained some sort of shelter space.

  Carmen undid her own harness so she could go help. “What do you need me to do?” she asked.

  He undid a set of straps and opened a huge tube, something like a flexible duct. “Grab hold of that end,” he said, holding it out to her. She did as he asked. The thing was heavy! Even in the moon’s gravity, it was a lot of weight for her. It felt like a lead apron you’d use to protect against an x-ray on Earth – which was probably precisely what it was, she realized. She glanced over her shoulder. The timer was down to thirty-five seconds.

  When she looked back, Patrick was hooking the other end of the tube to the ceiling, attaching it to a strap there. Once he finished he said, “OK, let go.”

  She released her grip, and her end dropped to the floor, where it hung loosely. It looked like some sort of alien sleeping bag tied to the ceiling of their little craft. It was matte grey, and dangled heavily, coils of some sort of thick wire inside the tube giving it structure.

  “Wait – we’re getting in that?” Carmen asked.

  “The crater and the Hopper will help, but this will shield you from the rest of the radiation,” Patrick said.

  “Bet you use this trick on all the girls,” Carmen muttered under her breath. She picked up the end of the tube.

  “Get in, quick,” he said. She looked at him, and saw the frustration and fear etched in his face. She regretted her joke immediately. And she realized that he wasn’t planning to get inside the thing with her. Which made her angry. What the hell was he thinking? There was room for both of them in there.