Farside

by Ben Bova

  The professor was sitting bolt upright in the shiny new recliner that McClintock had somehow acquired and added to his room’s décor.

  “Decontaminated?” he asked.

  McClintock intervened. “Dr. Cardenas believes we should bathe the Mendeleev facility in high-intensity ultraviolet light. That would kill any nanomachines present there, wouldn’t it?”

  “It will deactivate them, yes,” Cardenas agreed, with a tight nod. She was sitting on the sofa, facing Uhlrich across the low coffee table, fists clenched on her lap. McClintock was beside her. He had brought out one of the bottles of wine he had managed to bring in from Selene and three stemmed glasses, but no one had touched their drinks.

  Uhlrich looked directly at Cardenas, and McClintock marveled at how the man could disguise his blindness.

  “The Mendeleev telescope is bathed in ultraviolet light constantly,” he said. “Solar UV and background radiation from the stars.”

  Before Cardenas could reply, McClintock said, “But the shelter, Professor. The underground shelter. That must be where the nanomachines are lurking.”

  “Ah, I see,” said Uhlrich.

  “The man who died was leaving the shelter and heading for the hopper when he collapsed,” McClintock pointed out.

  Uhlrich began to nod, but then asked, “How is it that the person with him was not affected by the nanomachines?”

  “That’s a good question,” said Cardenas. “We should examine the space suit she wore, too.”

  “I have another question,” said the professor. “How did the nanomachines get there in the first place?”

  “From the nanos that built the telescope mirror,” said McClintock. “They somehow got into the shelter and—”

  “No,” Cardenas said flatly. “That’s not possible.”

  “You don’t think they could have gotten into the shelter?” McClintock asked.

  “The nanos that built the mirror are entirely different from the nanos that damaged the space suit,” Cardenas said. “They couldn’t have damaged the suit, not in a million years. In fact, if you examine the mirror, you’ll find that all the nanomachines that constructed it are completely deactivated.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Uhlrich.

  Patiently, Cardenas explained, “The nanomachines that constructed the mirror are deactivated by now. Dead, if you want to use that term. The nanomachines that damaged the space suit are an entirely different type of nano. Not the same as those that built the mirror. Not the same at all.”

  Uhlrich looked confused. “Then … where did they come from?”

  “I wish I knew,” Cardenas said.

  * * *

  Dinner was awkward. Trudy knows I’m not telling her the whole story, Grant realized. I can’t. I promised the Ulcer that I wouldn’t. He’s right: if the staff found out we’ve got a problem with nanomachines they’d fly out of here like air escaping from a popped balloon.

  A contradictory voice in his head argued, But don’t they have the right to know? If they’re in danger, shouldn’t they be told about it?

  “You’re awfully quiet,” Trudy said.

  Grant snapped his attention to her, sitting across the table from him. The cafeteria was practically empty this early in the evening, but still its stone walls rang with the clatter of dinnerware, the buzz of conversations.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Got a lot to think about.”

  Trudy looked squarely at him, her green eyes unwavering. “Grant, you’re not telling me the whole story, are you?”

  He almost smiled at her. “The whole story is, I don’t want you to take any risks that you don’t have to take.”

  “But you’re willing to take those risks.”

  “That’s right,” he said, picking up a fork and jabbing it into his salad.

  “How come?”

  “It’s my job. It’s what I get paid to do.”

  For a moment Trudy said nothing. She too picked up her fork, but she held it like a fencing saber and pointed it directly at Grant.

  “Installing that spectrometer is my job, Grant. It’s what I get paid to do.”

  “You’ll be doing your job.”

  “And you’ll be taking the risks of working out in the open.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve had plenty of experience. You haven’t.”

  Trudy shook her head, like a stubborn little girl. “There’s more to it, Grant. I know there’s more.”

  She’s like a bull terrier, Grant thought. What in hell can I tell her to get her off this business?

  He looked into her green eyes and saw that she was waiting patiently, expectantly, for him to tell her the truth.

  “I can work outside without as much risk as you or anybody else would face,” he said.

  She put the fork down and folded both hands beneath her chin, waiting for more.

  Leaning over the table so close that their heads nearly touched, Grant told her, “My body’s full of nanomachines. They protect me from radiation damage and any other physical trauma.”

  “Nanomachines?” Trudy whispered.

  “I don’t want anybody to know,” he whispered back.

  She nodded. “I guess not.”

  “I’m trusting you, Trudy. Please, please keep it to yourself.”

  “Of course. Certainly.” A flash of confusion showed on her face. “But … I still don’t see why you don’t want me to go out to Mendeleev with you.”

  He blurted, “Because I think too much of you to let you take unnecessary risks.”

  Trudy’s mouth fell open. Then slowly a smile curved her lips. “You do?”

  “Yeah, I do.” And Grant said to himself, Holy god, that might even be the truth.

  TO MENDELEEV CRATER

  Grant was surprised to see Nate Oberman suiting up in the locker area next to Farside’s main airlock.

  “What’re you doing?” he demanded. “Where’s Harvey?”

  “Hung over,” Oberman said, smirking. “He and Josie had a big night, celebrating his return to … uh, active duty.”

  Before Grant could respond, Oberman added, “Harvey asked me to fill in for him.”

  How the hell did he finagle his way into this assignment? Grant wondered. And why? All the way out to Mendeleev and back with this clown, Grant fumed. It’d be easier to do the job alone.

  But Oberman’s long-jawed face grew serious. “Hey, Grant, I know you don’t like me—”

  “We’ve had our differences, that’s sure enough.”

  “Yep.”

  “Nate, I never tried to take your job away from you. When Uhlrich bounced you I was just as surprised as you were.”

  “I know,” Oberman said. “I was pretty sore about it at the time, but I know you didn’t undercut me.”

  Grant didn’t see any anger in Oberman’s eyes. But there was something, some hint of knowledge that Nate was not sharing with him.

  “I’ve only got ’til the end of the month and then I’m out of here,” Nate said. “I figured I’d do Harvey a favor and finish on a good note.”

  Grant rubbed his beard, thinking, It’d be better if we’re at least civil to each other on this trip. No sense getting him sore at me. If we start pounding on each other out there at Mendeleev it could be big trouble.

  “All right,” he said, sitting on the bench beside Oberman. “You stay focused. That’d be good.”

  Oberman stuck out his hand and Grant clasped it in his.

  But he couldn’t help thinking that Oberman’s real motivation was to get a decent job appraisal to show to his next prospective employer. Then he remembered that Oberman claimed he already had a job lined up at Selene, courtesy of Anita Halleck, no less.

  McClintock stepped into the locker area, smiling like an insurance salesman. Grant thought he looked completely out of place. This is where the working stiffs suit up, he said to himself. What’s this playboy doing here? The man was wearing a long-sleeved white pullover and sharply creased pearl gray slacks. The shirt looked like
cashmere, for cripes’ sakes, Grant thought. The space suits hanging in their lockers had been white once, but now they were gray from hard use. No matter how hard you vacuumed them after a job outside, it was impossible to get rid of all the lunar dust that clung to the suits.

  “Grant, could I speak with you a moment?” McClintock asked, pointedly polite. Noblesse oblige, Grant thought.

  “Go right ahead,” said Grant, as he pulled his thick-soled boots from his locker.

  McClintock’s smile dimmed. “In private, if you please.”

  Grant glanced at Oberman, then got to his feet. He followed McClintock to the door of the locker area and out into the low-ceilinged corridor beyond.

  Lowering his voice, McClintock said, “Dr. Cardenas recommends we decontaminate the shelter at Mendeleev. So Professor Uhlrich wants you to take a couple of high-intensity ultraviolet lamps out with you and kill any nanobugs in there.”

  With a nod, Grant said, “Makes sense.”

  “Good. I’ve already called the storeroom. Two lamps are on their way here.”

  Glancing back into the locker area, Grant asked, “What about Oberman? This’ll tip him off that we’re worried about nanos.”

  McClintock’s phony smile returned. “I already thought of that. Tell him you’re sterilizing the shelter, getting rid of any bacteria in the air, biofilms on the surfaces of the equipment, that sort of thing.”

  Grant said, “Yeah, he might believe that.”

  “No mention of nanomachines to him,” McClintock commanded.

  “He’s not altogether stupid, you know.”

  “No mention of nanomachines.”

  McClintock turned and headed down the corridor, looking to Grant as if he were eager to get back to his office and away from the grimy workers’ area. Can’t say I blame him, Grant thought. This place smells of sweat and machine oil and lunar dust.

  As he returned to his locker Grant saw that Oberman was industriously wiping the metal neck ring of his suit with a heavy cloth.

  “What’re you doing?” Grant asked.

  “Cleaning my suit,” said Oberman without looking up from his work. “I want to do this job perfectly, Grant. I want to show you I can do things right.”

  Grant sat on the bench beside Oberman, impressed with the man’s eagerness.

  “Great,” he said.

  By the time Grant was about to lift the hard-shell torso of his space suit over his head, two clerks from the storeroom arrived, pushing a cart that carried a pair of ultraviolet lamps. Grant signed for them and they left the cart and departed.

  “What’s that for?” Oberman asked. He was almost fully suited up, only his gloves and helmet remained to be put on.

  “Routine health procedure,” Grant lied. “We’re going to disinfect the shelter while we’re out at Mendeleev. UV kills bugs in the air, biofilms, stuff like that.”

  “Huh,” said Oberman.

  Grant let it go at that and picked up his suit’s torso.

  Oberman eyed him intently as Grant lifted the hard shell over his head and wormed his arms through the fabric sleeves. When his head popped through the neck ring, he saw that Oberman was grinning at him.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Your beard. I was wondering how you’d keep it inside the collar.”

  Grant said, “I keep it trimmed short enough so it’s not a problem.”

  “So I see,” said Oberman, still grinning. “So I see.”

  They checked each other’s suit connections and seals, Grant hoping that Oberman was as conscientious and thorough as he should be. My life is in his hands, he thought.

  Satisfied that the suits were in working order, Grant flicked the comm frequency and announced, “We’re ready to go outside.”

  “You’re cleared for outside,” came the voice of the excursion controller.

  Grant recognized the voice. “Harvey? Is that you?”

  “Yup.”

  “I thought you were too hung over to work.”

  A moment’s hesitation, then Henderson answered, “I don’t feel all that great, to tell you the truth. And Nate offered to fill in for me, so we switched assignments.”

  “Without asking me.” Grant felt nettled.

  “Hope you don’t mind, boss.”

  Harvey only called Grant “boss” when he wanted to divert Grant’s displeasure.

  Grant glanced at Oberman. He could see enough through Nate’s bubble helmet to recognize that the technician looked worried, apprehensive. What the hell, he thought. Nate wants to make a good impression on me, and Harvey’s helping him along.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’re entering the airlock.”

  “Copy entering airlock.”

  To Oberman, Grant said, “You pick up one of the UV lamps and I’ll pick up the other. No sense trying to push that dumb cart across the regolith to the hopper.”

  INSTALLATION

  “Okay,” Trudy’s voice said in Grant’s helmet speakers, “now plug in the connector cord from the backup computer.…”

  Grant was standing on the spider-work platform built halfway up the telescope, where its secondary mirror had been placed. It was dark inside the hundred-meter-wide tube, and he was glad that it was nighttime again out on the floor of the crater. He was sweating enough inside his insulated suit. Cooling water gurgled through the tubes of his thermal undergarment, yet still he was perspiring. I should’ve remembered to bring a headband, he berated himself, blinking sweat away from his eyes, wishing he could snake a hand past the suit’s neck ring and rub his eyes, scratch his itching nose.

  “You’re doing swell, Grant,” Trudy encouraged. “Almost finished.”

  Grant saw her snub-nosed gamine’s face on half the display screen he had set up on the work platform’s grilled floor. The other half showed a schematic of the spectrometer’s mount. Trudy’s right, he saw: we’re damned near finished.

  Nate Oberman was way over on the other side of the big tube, carrying out a routine check of the telescope’s steering motors. Grant plugged the computer cord into its socket and the schematic flickered briefly, then its edges turned bright green.

  “That’s it,” said Trudy happily. “All finished.”

  Grant felt good about it, too. “See?” he said to Trudy. “You did it remotely. You didn’t have to come out here after all.”

  “You did it, Grant,” she said. “I just looked over your shoulder.”

  He huffed, then told her, “Well, you owe me a steak dinner when I get back.”

  “You’re on! And no soy product, either. We’ll have cultured steak.”

  Trudy seemed to be glowing happily, but Grant felt strangely glum, let down. He said a reluctant good-bye to her and cut the communications link. Then, on the suit-to-suit frequency, he hailed Oberman.

  “I’m finished here, Nate. How’re you coming along?”

  Oberman replied, “I’ve been finished for half an hour, buddy. I’ve just been stoogin’ around, waiting for you before I headed in for the shelter.”

  “Okay, I’m coming down.” Grant glanced at the digital time display on his wristband. Fifteen forty-three. We can jump on the hopper and get back to Farside in time for dinner, he thought.

  Then he remembered that he had to decontaminate the shelter. Don’t rush that job, he told himself. Take plenty of time, shine UV in every nook and cranny.

  It was well past 1900 hours when Grant finally clicked off the ultraviolet lamp he’d been holding for nearly four hours. He and Oberman had taken off their space suits and stored them by the shelter’s airlock—and then irradiated them with UV, inside and out.

  Standing in the middle of the narrow shelter, in his sweat-damp gray coveralls, Grant looked around, then nodded, satisfied. “That’s it, I think.”

  Oberman lowered his lamp to the steel mesh floor. “Jesus, Grant, we’ve shined these damned lamps everywhere in this dump except up our respective assholes.”

  With a chuckle, Grant said, “Thoroughness is next to godline
ss.”

  Oberman forced an exaggerated sigh. “Okay. Pull your pants down.”

  Grant laughed, but he thought that if Oberman knew his body was filled with nanomachines the guy wouldn’t be so nonchalant about it. They’re therapeutic nanobugs, Grant reminded himself. They can’t hurt anything. They can’t get out of your body. Even if they did, Kris engineered them to go inert once they no longer had my body heat to power them.

  He wished he really believed that.

  “So whattaya think,” Oberman asked, breaking into Grant’s thoughts. “You want to bunk in here or fly back to Farside now?”

  Grant mulled it over for a few moments. “Safety regs recommend we sleep here. No sense flying the hopper when we’re tired.”

  “Unless we have to,” said Oberman.

  “No reason for us to go now.”

  “I thought you wanted to get Trudy Yost to buy you a steak dinner,” Oberman said, grinning. “If we start out now we can make it back to Farside by midnight. Nice romantic midnight dinner, buddy.”

  The sonofabitch has been tapping into my comm link back to Farside! Grant realized.

  “You could even have dinner in bed, I bet.”

  Suddenly Grant wanted to smack him in his leering face. Instead, he took a deep breath.

  “We’ll sleep here,” he said tightly. “You can use the lav first. Just be sure to clean up after yourself.”

  DINNER FOR TWO

  McClintock was examining the bottle of wine that he had offered Uhlrich and Kristine Cardenas the previous day. It had cost him a fair amount of effort—persuasion, cajoling, and finally an actual bribe—to get a few bottles of wine carried to Farside, tucked in with a regular shipment of food supplies. Uhlrich didn’t waste his funds on luxuries such as wine, but McClintock agreed with the Italians: a meal without wine is like a day without sunshine. Even on the Moon.

  None of them had touched the wine when he’d opened it for them. Well, McClintock thought as he pulled out the stopper and sniffed the wine’s aroma, all the better. We’ll have it all for ourselves; I only spilled a few drops when I poured it back into the bottle.