by Allen Steele
But Apollo had a couple of things in its favor. Earth lies at the bottom of a deep gravity well, while the Moon is the bottom of a shallow one. This means that any ship that leaves Earth has to climb up an imaginary well before it reaches that place where gravity is no longer an issue. Then it has to fire its engines to order to achieve lunar trajectory, and again to brake for lunar orbital insertion or landing. So a sneak attack was all but impossible; we'd be able to see an assault force coming long before it arrived. The telescopes normally used for astronomical research were aimed at Earth instead, and people were assigned to maintaining a constant vigil.
The other advantage we had was that Ammonius was a natural fortress. Its outer crater wall and dome was virtually impregnable to everything except a missile attack, which the Blitzgewehr was supposed to repel, and once its windows were shuttered and airlocks sealed, a strike force would have a very hard time gaining control of the city.
So the inhabitants could hole up in the crater almost indefinitely; it was the job of the Rangers to make sure that the Marines couldn't get through the airlocks. The fact that there were only thirty-six of us, though, didn't make that task any easier. We could only guess how large an attack force would be, although no one doubted that there would be less than three dozen Marines. No one had ever seriously believed that the Pacific Socialist Union would attack Apollo, and the idea that an ISC country would turn on us was ludicrous. So defense had never been a major priority until now.
Every morning, the Rangers suited up and went outside for combat training. It took several days for most of us to learn how to handle our weapons well enough to even be able to hit the targets set up on our make-shift rifle range. We didn't have a lot of reserve ammunition, though, so our practice sessions were kept short. The rest of the time, we were taught battlefield tactics: how to work as squads, how to mount an assault, how to retreat, how to keep from hitting each other in a firefight. All of which is hard enough to learn in any situation, but even more difficult when you're wearing a moonsuit.
Military training would end around noon, and then we'd return to the crater to replenish our life support packs and tend to the scrapes, cuts, and bruises we'd suffered the past few hours. A quick bite to eat, then it was back in the suits and out the airlock again. Most of the Rangers had been tasked to building temporary fortifications around Apollo--regolith berms, big mounds of moondust plowed into position around the crater and its environs--but Logan and I had our own job: learning everything we needed to know in order to become Second Class as soon as possible.
Here's just a few things I had to master. Celestial navigation, using visible stars and the current positions of Earth and the Sun to figure out where I was. Emergency medical procedures, both in and out of a suit. Repair techniques for all types of pressure suits. How to drive different kinds of rovers in all sorts of lunar terrain. Communication protocols. The proper use of emergency equipment ranging from portable solar cell arrays to life-support tents. How to recharge a life support pack's air tanks while in the field, and how to slow one's breathing in order to preserve air if extra tanks weren't available. What to do if your suit lost power. How to avoid hypothermia, hyperthermia, dehydration, radiation overexposure, blindness, and panic.
In short, how to stay alive on the Moon, as well as preventing someone else from dying. "Failure Is Not An Option" was the Ranger motto, but along with it was an unwritten corollary: the other guy's life is more important than your own. Given a choice between saving your skin and saving someone else's...well, there was no choice. If you had to die gasping for air so that another person could continue breathing for one minute longer, then that's what you'd have to do. If you don't like it, then don't become a Ranger.
I was beginning to wonder if I should have stuck to pushing a broom.
Billy was my instructor, just as Nicole was teaching Logan. The four of us went out together, but then we'd go our separate ways, each pair keeping within sight of the other but otherwise not having much contact. By then, I'd given up on Nicole; we were still friends, but it was obvious that she and Logan were steady. Probably just as well. I didn't have time for a girl, not with the pressure I was under to be ready for my walkabout in just a couple of weeks.
Logan and I had never had that little chat we'd promised each other. Perhaps we should have. Our rivalry over Nicole was over, but there was still some lingering resentment. We still got along well enough to work together, but we'd let things fester for too long. We'd pretty much stopped talking to one another, and it could no longer be said that we were best friends.
It may have been just as well that things worked out that way. After awhile, I noticed that Nicole wasn't pushing Logan very hard. When he screwed up during training, she often let him get away with it, showing him a shortcut that would allow him to get through that particular exercise with a minimum of effort. They didn't seem to be very serious about training; they would return to the airlock while Billy and I were still at work. It was clear that Nicole didn't want to knuckle down on her new boyfriend, and while she might be turning in satisfactory progress reports, I wondered how much he was actually learning.
On the other hand, Billy was relentless. No breaks or easy-way-outs, and any second chances he cared to give me were not to be wasted. If I did well, he'd say, "Not bad...let's see you do that again." But if I made a mistake, he'd snarl, "Stop messing around! Get it right or I'm bagging you!" It was an insulting and demeaning way to get through training, but I knew that if I wanted to keep Billy's respect, I'd have to earn it.
The long lunar night stretched on, and I seldom had a chance to do anything except train, eat, and sleep. But when the light of the rising sun touched the mountain peaks on the east side of Ptolemaeus, I received a brief message from Mr. Garcia: SOLO EVA EXCURSION SCHEDULED FOR 11.16.97. REPORT TO AIRLOCK 7 AT 0800 FOR SUIT-UP AND CHECK-OUT.
In other words, I'd completed my Third Class training. Tomorrow morning, I would take my walkabout.
That was a total surprise. Only yesterday, Billy had busted my chops over my failure at sealing a crack in a suit's lithium hydroxide canister. If you'd heard the way he scolded me, you would've thought that I was the most useless individual to ever set foot on the Moon. Figuring that there must have been a mistake, I went down to the ready-room, expecting another twelve hours of fun and games with Billy.
But he wasn't there. Logan was climbing into his moonsuit while Nicole patiently waited for him. He scowled at me when I walked in, but it was Nicole who spoke first. "Hey, Jamey, congratulations!" she said, raising the faceplate so that she could talk to me. "I hear you're going walkabout tomorrow."
"Yeah, sure, I guess so." I shook my head in confusion. "I got a memo from the Chief telling me that's what I'm supposed to do, but..."
"No one told you that you're through training, right?" She grinned. "No one ever does. That's the way we do it in the Rangers. Everyone passes, because..."
"'Failure is not a option.' Right." I looked over at Logan. "Hear that? I'm going walkabout tomorrow."
"Yeah...good for you." He didn't look at me, but instead concentrated on adjusting his wrist controls. "Have fun."
"When are you...?" I began, then stopped myself. If he'd also received notification from Mr. Garcia that he was going walkabout, he would have told me. But he wasn't ready for that yet, and no one was going to send him out on his own until they were confident in his chances of success.
"Soon enough," Logan murmured. "Good luck."
"Thanks." I didn't know quite what to say. "I'm sure you'll..."
"What are you doing here?" Billy demanded.
I turned around to see him leaning against the ready-room door, holding a half-eaten sandwich he'd brought with him from the commissary. "Didn't you get the Chief's memo?" he asked, regarding me as if I was an unwelcome visitor. "You're doing your walkabout tomorrow. Get out of here."
"Huh?" I blinked, not quite understanding what he'd said. "You mean...?"
"Ther
e's nothing more that I can show you." A wry smile. "Well, at least not for now. You're still a provo so far as I'm concerned. But--" an indifferent shrug "--if the Chief says you're ready, who am I to argue? Go home and get some rest. You'll need it."
There didn't seem to be anything else for me to say or do. I would have liked to talk to Logan, but not while Nicole and Billy were around. Besides, he didn't seem to be inclined to speak with me just then.
I'd jumped ahead of him. And he wasn't happy with me about that.
I left the airlock and headed back upstairs. For the first time in months, I was free to do whatever I wanted. No school, no Ranger training; I had a day all to myself. But by the time I got off the elevator, I was already bored.
I hadn't seen much of Melissa in the last couple of weeks, so I decided to head over to Ag Dome 2 and pay her a visit. Over dinner the other night, she'd told me about an experimental crop that was being cultivated in the aeroponics farm: chettuce, a hybrid form of lettuce that tasted a little like cheddar cheese. Meatless hamburgers and tacos were a favorite among loonies, but until now they'd had to do without cheese. There were no cows on the Moon to provide fresh milk, and who puts goat cheese on a taco? Chettuce was a bioengineered solution to this culinary problem.
Perhaps Melissa could let me try some; I was curious to see if it was as disgusting as it sounded. To kill time, I decided to hike across the crater floor instead of taking a bicycle or cutting through the sublevels to the tunnels leading to the ag domes. It had been quite a while since I'd walked through the solarium; although it was late autumn back on Earth, in Apollo it was always summer. Warm sunlight streamed in through the circular window at the top of the dome. Wrens and robins chirped amid the branches of stunted shade trees, while bees and hummingbirds flitted around the cultivated flowerbeds. The solarium was a comfortable oasis, a miniature Earth surrounded by the harsh and airless desolation outside.
There weren't many people in the dome this time of day, so I had the paths all to myself. Or so I thought. I was about halfway across the solarium when someone called out to me. "Hi, Jamey! What are you doing here?"
I looked around, and there was Eddie Hernandez, squatting on his hands and knees beside a row of rose bushes. Sitting on a nearby bench was Nina, a school pad resting in her lap. Eddie raised his hand to wave to me. I waved back, then decided to walk over and say hello. It had been nearly six weeks since I'd seen either him or his sister. Indeed, I'd nearly forgotten all about them.
"Hi, Eddie," I said. "Long time, no see. Hello, Nina."
"Yeah...long time, no see." Eddie wore grubby work overalls and a pair of gardening gloves, and he looked as happy as a kid making mudpies. Nina said nothing; she gave me the protective look she always had when she was with her brother, but I managed to get a smile out of her when I said her name. "How come you're here?" Eddie asked. "Aren't you supposed to be in school?"
"No school for me today...same as for you." I stopped to admire his roses. "I've been in Ranger training lately. I'm...well, I'm taking a day off, so..."
"You're a Ranger now?" Eddie's eyes widened. "Gosh, that's great, Jamey! You're a Ranger!"
I couldn't help but laugh. Eddie's admiration was unpretentious, almost bordering on hero worship. Even Nina seemed to be impressed, and I didn't think anything could get through that thick little shell of hers.
"Yeah, it's pretty good, I guess." I shrugged and changed the subject. "Those roses look really nice. Did you grow them yourself?"
"Uh-huh! They're mine! I planted them here...and here...and here." He pointed to the neat arrangement he'd made alongside the path, proud of his accomplishment, then his smile faded into a worried frown. "But they don't want me to do that anymore," he added. "They want to send me over to the ag domes to do aero...aero..."
"Aeroponics?"
He nodded. "Yeah...aeroponics. But I don't know how to do that, Jamey."
"Colony Service is transferring him to Ag Dome 2," Nina said quietly. "They say they're short-handed over there because they've lost one of the farmers to the Rangers. And since Eddie has been doing so well with this..."
I knew which Ranger she was talking about: Nick Gleason, a Ranger Second Class whose main job was working as an aeroponics engineer. And I knew why Eddie might be nervous. Aeroponics involved growing crops in tanks without soil, with water and nutrients dispensed to them as a fine mist. It was a more delicate procedure than normal gardening; the soil in which Eddie had grown his roses was bioengineered from processed and fertilized regolith, which was suitable for grass, flowers, and small trees, but not food staples.
"I understand," I said. "They must think highly of you, Eddie, if they want you to do that instead." A smile flickered across his face, but he still seemed dubious. A new thought occurred to me. "Hey, look...I'm on my way over there now to see Melissa. She works there. I'll ask her if she can put you on her team. That way, you'll have someone you know who can teach you how it's done."
Eddie's face brightened again. "Melissa, your sister? Gosh, that would be great! I like your sister!" Nina seemed a bit reluctant--she remembered how rude MeeMee had been to her brother when they'd first met--but she nodded anyway.
"No problem," I said. "I'll..."
My wristband beeped just then, signaling an incoming call. "Excuse me," I said, then turned away from the Hernandez kids and raised my hand to my face. "Jamey Barlowe here."
"It's Hannah." Her voice came from the wristband's tiny speaker. "I just heard from Nicole that you're going on walkabout. Is that true?"
Nicole had told Hannah about that? That was a surprise, although it shouldn't have been; the two of them had become friends. "Yeah, it's true. Happens tomorrow."
"Oh...oh, wow." She sounded stunned. "Are you...I mean, are you okay with that? Do you think you're ready?"
"I guess so." I shrugged, forgetting that she couldn't see me. "I'll find out soon enough."
A long pause. For a second, I thought she'd cut the link. Then her voice returned. "I want to see you. Where are you right now?"
"In the solarium, talking to Eddie and Nina. Are you at the hospital?"
"Yeah, but...look, stay there, okay? I'll locate you in the dome." She could use our wristbands to pinpoint my location in Apollo. "Just stay where you are. I'm coming to you."
"Yeah...okay, sure. See you then."
Hannah clicked off. I had a hunch that she wanted to talk to me in private, so I said goodbye to Eddie and Nina, then strolled over to another bench about forty feet away and sat down to wait for her.
About fifteen minutes later, Hannah showed up on a bicycle. She hadn't changed out of her scrubs, but instead had pulled a cardigan sweater over them and left her stethoscope behind. She seemed to be struggling with her emotions when she saw me, her expression flickering between warmth and concern. She climbed off the bike and parked it beside the bench; before I could say anything, though, she spoke first.
"Look," Hannah said as she sat down next to me on the bench, "let me get this out before..." She stopped, took a deep breath. "What you're doing...what you're about to do...has me worried. I know it's something you have to do, but..."
"It's dangerous, sure." I shook my head. "The Chief wouldn't let me go unless he thought I was ready."
"I don't care what he thinks." She looked me straight in the eye. "Do you think you're ready?"
"Yeah, I do," I said, but perhaps I hesitated just a bit before I said that, because her face paled a bit. "No, really," I hastily added. "I can handle myself out there. I promise."
Hannah didn't respond, but her eyes never left mine. In that instant, I realized something that I suppose I'd known all along, but which I hadn't admitted to myself: Hannah really cared for me. All this time, while I had been chasing after Nicole, Hannah had been there, quietly waiting for me to give her as much attention as I'd been giving to another girl.
And with that realization, there came another: I liked her, too.
"Hannah..." My throat was dry, and it
was hard to speak. "Look, maybe I should've...I dunno, spent more time with you, but..."
"Yeah, maybe you should have." An uncertain smile flickered on her lips. "When you get back, you can make up for that." She hesitated. "Is a date too much to ask for?"
This was the first time a girl had ever said that she wanted to go out with me. In fact, I didn't even think it usually happened that way. But I didn't care whose idea it was. "Sure. When I get back, we'll...I dunno, but I'll come up with something."
"Do that. It'll give you something to think about while you're..." Her voice trailed off, and the smile was again replaced by the worried frown. "Before you go, I want to give you something."
Unbuttoning the top of her sweater, she reached the front of her scrubs to produce a small medallion that hung around her neck upon a silver chain. I'd seen it before, floating around her neck when we'd been aboard the LTV that had brought us here. Ducking her head, she pulled the chain from around her neck, then she took my hand in hers and gently dropped the medallion into my palm.
"I want you to wear this when you go out tomorrow," she said. "For good luck."
The medallion was about the size of a quarter and was made of sterling silver. Now that it was in my hand, I could see it more clearly. Embossed upon it was a bearded man who had a walking stick in his hands and an infant riding upon his back. Around its rim was an inscription: St. Christopher Protect Us.
"What is this?" I asked.
"It's a medal of St. Christopher's." Hannah leaned closer to me, her hair lightly brushing my shoulder as she traced the medallion's bas-relief image with her finger. "St. Christopher is the patron saint of travelers. Wearing this is...well, it can't hurt." The smile returned, a bit mystical this time. "Catholics have many patron saints, and we put a lot of faith in them."