Farside

by Ben Bova

  “Mostly titanium,” Zacharias murmured, studying the spectra. “A little aluminum…”

  “And some vanadium and minor constituents,” said Aichi.

  Zacharias looked disappointed. “That’s the composition of the titanium alloy that the airlock’s made of.”

  “It doesn’t tell us much,” Aichi admitted.

  “The disassemblers wouldn’t be designed to attack all those elements,” Cardenas mused, as much to herself as the two men. “They go after specific atoms, one particular element.”

  “But which one?” Zacharias wondered.

  “Unless we know that,” said Aichi, “we have no way of protecting the alloy against the nanos.”

  “The nanos we create at Selene are deactivated by high-energy ultraviolet light,” Cardenas said.

  “That probably isn’t the case here,” Aichi countered. “If these devices were produced by a rogue laboratory on Earth they won’t have the same safeguards built into them that you would provide.”

  “They should have a finite lifetime, though.”

  Shaking his head, Aichi countered, “Only if they were designed so. That does not appear to be the case here. They have been active for several weeks.”

  “And it looks like they’re spreading,” Zacharias added.

  “How do we stop them?” Aichi asked again.

  Cardenas looked into his solemn dark eyes, wondering, when the answer came to her. “Elbow grease,” she said, breaking into a grin. “Oil and a lot of elbow grease.”

  KOROLEV CRATER

  “Starting descent,” Oberman said.

  Trudy saw that the hopper was falling toward the hard, hard ground. Abruptly, a feeling of weight buckled her knees. Then it disappeared as suddenly as it came and she was weightless again. In the soundless vacuum, she heard nothing, but she knew that the hopper’s braking rockets had fired.

  Another jolt, longer this time. Then back to falling like a rock.

  “You do know what you’re doing,” Halleck said, her voice sounding strained in Trudy’s helmet speakers.

  “It’s all automatic,” Oberman replied. “Preprogrammed.” But he sounded uptight, too, Trudy thought.

  The ground was coming up faster than ever. Trudy could see the smooth concrete slab that would one day be the foundation for the hundred-meter telescope, and the little hump of dirt that marked the buried shelter.

  Weight returned, and stayed. Trudy gripped the handrail and saw the flare of the rocket engine’s exhaust outlining the edge of the hopper’s platform.

  Then a final jar, and she felt the gentle gravity of the Moon once more. She swallowed burning bile.

  “We’re down,” Oberman said.

  “Thank goodness for small mercies,” said Halleck.

  Trudy saw that Oberman had landed them about fifty meters from the shelter’s airlock. The concrete foundation slab sat another fifty or so meters beyond that.

  “Very well,” Halleck said, “let’s get into the shelter and out of these damnable suits.”

  “Right,” said Oberman. Turning to Trudy, he pointed to the ladder leading down to the ground. “Ladies first.”

  The three of them trudged to the shelter’s airlock hatch. Oberman leaned a finger on the green pad of its control panel and the hatch slid silently open.

  “Only big enough for two,” he said, after a glance inside the airlock.

  “Dr. Yost and I will go, then,” said Halleck.

  “Nope,” Oberman said. “You and me, Mrs. Aitch. Trudy can wait out here.”

  Sudden fear surged through Trudy, close to panic. Stand outside here and wait for them? she thought. What if they don’t reopen the airlock? What if something goes wrong?

  Halleck was saying, “Very well, then: you and me, Mr. Oberman. Then Dr. Yost.”

  “Right,” said Oberman, gesturing Halleck into the airlock with a gloved hand. Then he turned back to Trudy and said, “Don’t go wandering off, kid.” She couldn’t see his face inside the helmet, but she could hear the smirk in his voice.

  * * *

  “They’ve gone to Korolev?” Sheer disbelief filled Professor Uhlrich’s voice.

  “That’s what Grant Simpson told me,” said McClintock.

  The professor’s face looked ash gray as he sat behind his desk.

  “But why would they do this?” he asked. “How—”

  “They stole a hopper and took off, the three of them, Mrs. Halleck, Dr. Yost, and one of the technicians, Oberman. I suppose he’s flying the hopper.”

  “But why? Why?”

  “Simpson believes that Mrs. Halleck is the one who brought the nanomachines here, and she wants to get away to safety. Selene won’t take any flights from Farside, so she’s gone to the shelter at Korolev.”

  In a ghostly whisper, Uhlrich said, “And she’s leaving us to die here.”

  “That’s what Simpson thinks. He’s taken a hopper to go after them.”

  “Or to save himself,” Uhlrich muttered.

  McClintock said nothing.

  The professor sagged back in his chair. “We’re going to die. We’re all going to die.”

  “Don’t be so pessimistic, Professor,” said McClintock. “I’m sure Dr. Cardenas will figure this out.”

  Despite his words, though, McClintock saw death approaching him.

  * * *

  Grant knew he was breaking just about all of Farside’s safety regulations as he flew alone across the Moon’s starkly beautiful land. Solo excursions are not allowed: a minimum of two people at all times. The buddy system. Yeah, but we don’t have time to follow the rules.

  Why did Halleck take Trudy with her? As a hostage? What’re they going to do cooped up in the shelter at Korolev? Trudy and Halleck and that jerk Oberman. If Nate lays a hand on her I’ll break every bone in his frigging body. Twice.

  Over the curve of the horizon he saw the worn, slumped mountains of Korolev’s ringwall. Then the floor of the crater came into view. And there was the hopper, parked between the foundation slab and the rounded hump of the shelter.

  Dumbass Oberman didn’t even have the brains to use the foundation as a landing pad, Grant said to himself.

  * * *

  “Well, this is cozy,” Oberman said, once they had taken off their suits and peeled out of their thermal undergarments.

  Trudy looked around and saw that the shelter was identical to the one at Mendeleev, strictly utilitarian: a food freezer; a microwave cooker; a table with four flimsy chairs; a desk-type console with a wall screen above it; four bunks built into the wall, two uppers and two lowers.

  The tiny chamber smelled of the sharp tang of gunpowder. Their three space suits hung by the airlock hatch, their boots and leggings spattered with gray lunar dust.

  “How long will we be here?” Trudy asked.

  Mrs. Halleck blinked at her question. “I don’t really know. I’ll have to call Selene and ask for an emergency rescue flight.”

  “Do you think they’d come here?”

  “They’ll have to! They can’t leave us here to die. I’m not some anonymous technician. I’ll call the chief administrator of the IAA if I have to.”

  Trudy wished she felt as confident as Mrs. Halleck. But she’s an important person, Trudy told herself. She’s right. I’m just an anonymous astronomer, as far as the rest of the world is concerned. But she’s important. They’ll send a flight here to rescue her. And the two of us with her.

  Oberman sat on the edge of one of the lower-tier bunks. “Okay, Mrs. Aitch,” he said, pointing to the console and its computer. “You start calling.” With a leering grin in Trudy’s direction, he went on, “I suppose we’ll hafta spend a couple of nights here.”

  * * *

  Grant landed the hopper squarely in the center of the foundation slab, then climbed down the hopper’s ladder and stepped to the edge of the concrete. He hopped down to the ground in dreamy lunar slow motion and strode toward the shelter’s airlock, kicking up puffs of dust with each step.


  Nobody’s going to land a lobber there, he said to himself, with grim satisfaction. If anybody’s going to leave here, they’re going out with me.

  He reached the hopper Oberman had used and ducked beneath its platform. It was awkward work in the space suit, but Grant managed to open the liquid oxygen tank enough to start a thin stream of LOX leaking out of it. The cryogenic fluid flashed into the vacuum immediately. Nodding inside his helmet, Grant said to himself, Nate won’t be able to go anywhere with that bird.

  CONFRONTATION

  Anita Halleck stared at the grainy image in the shelter’s phone screen. Her personal assistant, a smooth-faced Vietnamese sitting safe in his office back in Zurich, looked slightly perturbed.

  “It’s the weekend here, Mrs. Halleck,” he explained. “The IAA’s chief administrator is at his home in Buenos Aires. That’s a five-hour time difference from here, you understand. Most of her staff has gone for the weekend, scattered all across the map.”

  “You must get to her at once,” Halleck demanded, her voice iron hard, “and get her to contact Selene’s governing council and arrange a rescue flight here. My life depends on it.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’ll do my very best,” said her assistant.

  “Good.”

  His left eyebrow arching a bare millimeter, the assistant added, “It might take a little time, however.”

  Halleck’s lips compressed into a thin, angry line. Then she replied, “This is an emergency. You stay on the phone until Selene tells you when I can expect a flight to land here and rescue me.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Halleck.”

  “And keep me informed every step of the way.”

  “Certainly, ma’am.”

  Halleck cut the connection and swiveled the desk chair to face Trudy and Oberman. “Bureaucrats,” she muttered.

  “But they’ll send a lobber here, won’t they?” Trudy asked, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.

  “Sooner or later,” said Halleck.

  Still sitting on the lower bunk, Oberman shrugged unconcernedly. “We’re going to be here for a couple of days, I bet. Might as well make ourselves comfortable.” He patted the mattress and grinned again at Trudy.

  Trudy turned away from him, but Halleck said, “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Could be fun, the three of us together,” said Oberman.

  Halleck glared at him. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Before Oberman could reply, Trudy noticed that the light on the control pad on the wall next to the airlock hatch suddenly went from green to amber. Before she could say anything, it flicked to red.

  Halleck noticed it, too. “Someone’s using the airlock!”

  Oberman jumped to his feet. “Grant,” he muttered. “Gotta be.”

  The three of them stared at the control pad as it cycled from red through amber and finally to green once again. The hatch slid open and a space-suited figure stepped into the shelter. It was impossible to make out his face behind the heavily tinted bubble of his helmet but Trudy read the name tag on the chest of his grimy suit: SIMPSON.

  “Grant?” Trudy called.

  The figure unlocked the helmet and lifted it off his head. Grant Simpson’s darkly bearded face looked grim.

  “Grant!” Trudy said again, a gust of relief surging through her. She ran to him.

  Oberman’s eyes flicked around the room.

  “Sit down, Nate,” Grant commanded. “Just sit down and you won’t get hurt.”

  “Whattaya mean?” Oberman asked. But he sat back on the bunk.

  Turning to Trudy, Grant asked, “You okay?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Help me out of this suit.”

  Trudy moved behind him. Oberman remained seated on his bunk, Halleck stood uncertainly by the console. As Trudy unlatched the life-support backpack, the phone chimed.

  “Go ahead and answer it,” Grant told Halleck.

  She turned and pressed the keypad. A woman’s face appeared on the screen: sleek chestnut hair perfectly coiffed, golden tan, wearing an expensive-looking blouse of sky blue. She looked distressed.

  “Mrs. Halleck, your assistant said you’re in trouble? Some sort of emergency?”

  Grant strode to the desk, clomping in his space suit’s boots. “There’s been a mistake, ma’am. Mrs. Halleck isn’t in trouble.”

  “And who are you?” the woman asked. “What’s this—”

  Grant cut the connection. Then he smashed the phone screen with a gloved fist. It exploded in shards of plastic.

  Halleck shrieked, “What are you doing?”

  “Have you ever heard of ’roid rage?” Grant asked, smiling maliciously. “I’ve been taking steroids for a long time, lady, and I’m getting goddamned furious with you.”

  Oberman got to his feet. “Hold on, Grant. Take it easy.”

  Faster than Trudy thought possible for a man wearing a space suit, Grant crossed the tiny shelter in four swift steps and swung his still-gloved right fist into Oberman’s face before the man could raise his hands to defend himself. The solid thunk of the blow made Trudy wince. Oberman’s head snapped back and he toppled backward onto the bunk.

  Stomping back toward Halleck, Grant said, “I want to know what your nanobugs are all about. Now!”

  Halleck cringed back toward the desk. “You’re insane!”

  Grant picked up the flimsy desk chair and threw it across the shelter. It banged against the airlock hatch.

  “Now, dammit!” he roared. “Start talking.”

  Halleck’s eyes were wide with fright, but she sputtered, “I … I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Grant gripped her shoulder painfully and forced her to sit on the edge of the console.

  “You brought the nanomachines to Farside,” he said, “and you got that idiot to spread them around for you.”

  “I…” Halleck’s voice froze in her throat.

  “What do the nanos do? How long do they last? What are they programmed for?”

  “You’re hurting me!”

  “I’ll break both your fucking arms,” Grant snarled.

  Trudy went to him. “Grant, please!”

  He pushed her away. Turning back to Halleck, “I want the truth out of you, lady. The truth, or so help me you’ll die right here and now.”

  Anita Halleck fainted.

  THE TRUTH

  Grant let Halleck slide slowly to the floor.

  Trudy looked from her unconscious body to Oberman, still sprawled across the bunk, and then stared into Grant’s darkly frightening face.

  “Grant … you’ll kill her!”

  He scowled down at Halleck’s body, then said to Trudy, “Help me out of this suit.”

  He peeled off his gloves and Trudy helped lift the hard shell of the suit’s torso over his head. Halleck remained on the floor, her eyes shut. Oberman groaned and tried to sit up. He slid off the bunk and onto the floor.

  “Throw some water on her,” Grant said to Trudy.

  Halleck’s eyes snapped open.

  With a glance at Oberman, who sat at the foot of the bunk rubbing his bruised jaw, Grant slid his arms under Halleck’s shoulders and hauled her to her feet. Trudy rushed to the desk chair, righted it, and rolled it toward them.

  Grant pushed Halleck roughly onto the chair. She glared up at him.

  “You were going to tell me about the nanomachines,” Grant said.

  Halleck tried to stare Grant down, but failed. She dropped her chin and muttered, “No one was supposed to get hurt.”

  “Three people have been killed,” Grant said.

  Nodding, Halleck said, “That’s not my fault. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way.”

  “What kind of nanomachines are they?”

  “Gobblers, of a sort. All they’re supposed to do is to attack vanadium atoms. They told me that would cause only very minor damage, not enough to hurt anyone.”

  Grant shook his head wearily. “We’re living on the edge of vacuum out here.
Don’t you realize that normal conditions on the Moon are only a centimeter away from sudden death?”

  Halleck tried to look defiant, but instead her expression melted into a guilty downcast.

  “Why?” Trudy blurted. “Why would you want to hurt us?”

  Halleck made a bleak smile. “You don’t understand any of this, do you? You don’t understand a thing.”

  “Enlighten us,” said Trudy.

  Before Halleck could reply, though, Grant interrupted. “I need to know what the nanos are programmed to do, how long they’ll remain active, how to deactivate them.”

  “As I told you, they’re programmed to attack vanadium atoms. That’s all. The people at the laboratory I used told me that the quantity they gave me could cause pinhole leaks in titanium alloys, produce air leaks. Nothing catastrophic, just enough to cause panic at Farside.”

  “How long will they be active?”

  With an almost careless shrug, Halleck said, “A few weeks, if I remember correctly.”

  “And they’re not deactivated by ultraviolet light, are they?”

  “Of course not. There’s no built-in way to deactivate them, from what they told me. You have to wait until their programmed lifespan ends.”

  “That means we’ll have to abandon Farside,” Grant muttered. “Temporarily, at least.”

  “I didn’t mean for them to cause so much damage,” Halleck said, as if apologizing for spilling milk. “I only wanted to slow Professor Uhlrich’s work.”

  “But why?” Trudy repeated.

  Halleck answered, “Morgan McClintock humiliated me. I decided that turnabout is fair play.”

  “Morgan…?”

  “Carter’s father. He’s pouring money into Uhlrich’s program so that Farside can be the first to obtain imagery of New Earth. And why? To hurt me. To make me look bad in the eyes of the IAA, of the whole world!”

  “That’s why McClintock’s at Farside?” Grant asked.

  “Why else? Carter has no interest in astronomy. He’s there to look after his father’s interests. Well, I thought it would be poetic justice if Farside failed. Failed miserably.”

  “For your own personal satisfaction?” Trudy was aghast.