Zero-G

by William Shatner

  Lord stopped hard so they were belly-down, then nosed up—all in just over two seconds.

  Dr. May was looking at her calculations. “All right—Sam, cut the pallet on my ‘go.’ ”

  “On your go,” he confirmed. Through the controls, his strong hands felt the cargo pallet complain, argue the maneuver with a tug.

  “Get ready,” she said cautiously, eying the second hand. “Now!”

  Lord drove a palm into the jettison button. The pallet and its contents fell behind, fell down, blasting dust and parcels into the dark sky. There were boulders about and Lord did his best to spot the clearest path he could and head toward it.

  He had decided not to lower the landing gear: it’d probably buckle, and he didn’t want to have exposed struts digging into the surface unevenly.

  There was a contact light to his left, just behind the stick. It went from dark to green. They had reached the surface of the moon.

  Lord heard scraping sounds through the hull, then felt the bumps. He nosed down, deciding it was better to take a bump up here than to rip open the undercarriage and endanger the crew.

  The blunt forward section of the Grissom plowed into lunar mineral, throwing up stones and powder but nothing larger. The force of impact pushed the nose into the lunar crust, caused the aft section of the ship to rise, and then the cabin and the tail section came down—not hard, in the one-sixth gravity, but firmly enough to crack the hull along the hatch.

  The power went out again.

  The eagle is badly bruised but it has landed, he said defiantly to the stark landscape.

  He held up his hands and Saranya searched for his gloves. While she did that, Lord reached behind himself to manually activate his air tanks. He slapped down his visor as they hissed on, then pulled on the gloves. The air wasn’t sufficient to pressurize his suit but the cockpit still had pressure; all he needed was to breathe.

  And hope that help arrived within the next ten minutes.

  SIXTEEN

  WE’RE ALIVE!”

  Saranya May was not just impressed. She was incredulous.

  Lord had activated his helmet comm before collapsing back in his seat. He ached everywhere from the hard landing, bones having been thrust up hard in sockets, spinal discs compressed, the hip joint of his metal leg having given his pelvis a good knocking. He also felt pain growing in his left temple, then his right. He pushed his chin back, helping his nostrils remain clear. He raised his visor and shut off his air. Saranya did the same. The tanks were nearly as tapped out as the cabin air, but if help arrived, they would need whatever was left. Otherwise the cockpit door couldn’t be opened.

  “Are you all right?” Saranya asked.

  “Headache,” he said. “Vision blurry.”

  “We took some lumps,” Saranya said.

  “It may be carbon dioxide,” they heard Landry say.

  Lord was not relieved to hear it. It would only take about seven percent CO2 to kill them.

  “But we’re on oxygen,” Saranya said, trying to understand the immediate problem. “Where is it coming from?”

  “There are stress points where the tanks meet the suits, on the neck seam, and also around the visor,” the copilot said. “There may be hairline cracks.”

  “First Officer—how’s the captain?” Lord asked.

  “Unconscious,” Landry said, a catch in his voice. “The scrubber started to leak, shorted avionics circuits back here. A thermal apron caught fire and he hit his head putting it out. I can’t tell how badly.”

  “How about the cabin?”

  “It’ll need more than new enameling,” Landry said. “Stay where you are.”

  Lord acknowledged, then turned back to the cockpit window.

  The moon was spread before him—he had no idea exactly how far it was, but it was strange to see such stark grandeur that simultaneously appeared so dead. Everywhere, ejecta from collisions and ancient upheavals. There were mounds so smooth they looked like melted ice cream, and boulders so edgy they looked like granite lightning. No, it wasn’t desolate; it was unfinished.

  Lord felt Saranya take his hand in both of hers. He turned his head toward her, and her expression was different from any he had seen so far. There was appreciation flavored with a newfound respect. Together, they bordered on tenderness.

  Lord smiled softly. They just sat there, conserving oxygen by not moving, not speaking. There was nothing to talk about: they were sure Armstrong Base had seen them come in, and either they would get some kind of team there to help in time . . . or they wouldn’t. Lord and the others had done all they could.

  The tanks were draining and the air was thinning noticeably before they heard a hatch opening behind them, in the cabin. There was no air back there, no talking, not even Landry.

  Two loud bangs sounded on the door behind them, followed after a pause by a third. Lord recognized it as the okay-to-enter signal used before accessing airlocks. In this case, the new arrival was making sure the occupants were secure before blundering in and letting out all the air.

  The cockpit occupants lowered their visors, turned the oxygen back on, and then Saranya replied in kind.

  The door opened with a sound like tearing paper. They could hear it even through their helmets. Saranya recognized the new arrival as Armstrong Base Emergency Team Operative Don Christie. The powerfully built former marine was carrying a pair of portable oxygen packs and moving with practiced urgency. He plugged the air hoses into jacks on the tanks to resupply them. Noticing that Lord’s battery was missing, he efficiently pulled one from an equipment belt and pressed it into place.

  “. . . tracking you every kilometer since the gamma wave appeared,” Lord heard him saying as his comm came back online. “We were running our emergency response buggy under you since you zeroed in on the crater.”

  “An ERB.” Lord smiled. “Nice.”

  “It’s a helluva service vehicle,” Christie said. He took a moment to put a hand on Lord’s shoulder. “And that was one hell of a landing, sir!”

  “We haven’t quite walked away from it . . . yet,” Lord said.

  He waited as Saranya climbed from her seat.

  “The base,” she said. “Is it all right?”

  “Whatever that was, it missed us,” Christie informed her. “Got a lot of engineers working on what to do when it happens again.”

  “When?” she asked.

  “That’s what they’re saying, Doctor.”

  When Saranya had exited the cockpit, Lord ruggedly and ambitiously pushed out from his seat. He stopped on the threshold and wavered like a reed.

  Christie offered him an arm.

  “Real gravity is not centripetal gravity, sir.”

  No, it is not, Lord thought. Even at one-sixth Earth’s pull, he had a real center of gravity, bones settled downward, the blood rushed with a familiar up-and-down flow, and his body felt, for a moment, as if it were on a roller coaster speeding down.

  Christie waited patiently until blood flow had regulated and Lord could stand without assistance.

  “Wow.”

  “I know,” the ETO replied. “Isaac Newton is not our friend.”

  Lord insisted on walking unaided as he followed Saranya and Christie to the hatch. He lacked the bounce in his step that he had seen in other moonwalkers; but then they had landed with thrusters, not an unprotected undercarriage.

  And my undercarriage is not as resilient as once it was, he thought.

  Lord’s step—and his spirits—were lightened considerably by the sight just outside the downed shuttle.

  The emergency response buggy was like nothing he had seen in his few short weeks in space; it was the kind of unearthly conveyance one would only see in a hostile, low-gravity environment like Earth’s moon. It looked like a big-bellied metal ladybug stuck atop a dune buggy. The metal mesh of the wh
eels, which resembled the original Apollo rovers, doubled as anode screens for the vehicle’s supplementary ion thrusters. On the top of the vehicle was an array of solar panels pointing in all directions. In the midst of the circle of solar panels was a docking hatch that allowed for a seamless move from the cabin to any habitat. Forward, where the bug’s eyes would be, was a bubble-shaped cabin and a driver tucked inside. From that vantage point, Christie’s partner could see everything left, right, and center of the craft; rear-mounted cameras completed the panorama. Christie ushered them toward a shallow ramp that opened into a small airlock. They entered and waited a few moments as the ramp closed silently behind them in the airless void.

  “Where are the pilots?” Lord wondered aloud.

  “Already on board,” Christie informed him. “Captain Kodera’s injuries required immediate care. He came in on the medtray.”

  Lord nodded. They had two of those on the Empyrean as well, gurneys that rode on slings between the medical personnel as they rushed it along.

  The new arrivals felt a sudden, strong wind pressing down as the airlock filled.

  “Compression complete,” they were informed by a sympathetic synthetic voice.

  Lord opened his helmet and savored the relatively clean, fresh, slightly chilled air around him. Then he closed his eyes, raised his head, and sighed, stretching, as a green light flashed.

  “Nice,” Saranya said from beside him.

  Lord nodded as the narrow door behind them hissed open. Christie ushered them into the cramped main cabin as the buggy started off. To the right, Lord saw a double berth in an alcove with the unconscious Captain Kodera on top and First Officer Landry below. The automated medical compartment was performing a full scan of both men while a pair of medtechs watched the results on their ICs. Lord caught Landry’s eyes as he passed and both men fired off quick little salutes.

  Lord and Saranya sat in comfortable plastic slings with armholes that kept them from bouncing around while Christie took a seat behind the driver. They swung pleasantly, almost in unison, as if they were on a front porch swing. Lord saw Christie thumb a small recess overhead. A small light glowed above Saranya and himself. Lord had seen those in the cockpits of late-model Vampires. Their own vital statistics were being read and sent to the medical bay at Armstrong.

  Moments later, clear of the wrecked shuttle, the ERB’s thrusters had rotated downward and they were airborne, gliding swiftly to the northeast of the crater. The hills and boulders were slipping by them now, the high rim of the crater as rough and jagged as the day it formed.

  Saranya looked over at Lord. Perhaps she’d seen enough of the moon for one night.

  “Jesus, Sam,” was all she said.

  He nodded in accord. It wasn’t a lament, more like a footnote to an adventure he still didn’t quite believe himself.

  Lord didn’t blame the moon for what had happened, and was still enjoying the view. But there were other priorities. He activated his IC, wanting to assure the staff that he was all right. He turned on the imaging component. Janet Grainger’s face hovered solidly before his eyes.

  Due to their distance from the space station, there was a two-­second delay before she replied.

  “Glad to see that you’re all right,” she said with the hint of a smile. “We heard what happened.”

  “I’m as durable as the Man in the Moon,” he said. “How’s EAD Waters?”

  “Dr. Carter is scheduled to release her momentarily,” she said. “Would this be a convenient time for a briefing?”

  “I’m in a lunar buggy, so just give me the headline on the Jade Star.”

  “The situation is fluid,” she replied. “China is obstinately refusing to discuss the status of the station and whatever went wrong up there. Commander Stanton is organizing a recon party and PD Al-Kazaz wants in.”

  Lord was not surprised by any of this. Crises bring out the worst and the best in systems.

  “Thank you, Janet,” he said. “I’ll contact you when we’re at Armstrong.”

  “Very good, sir. And, sir, might I suggest a rest? You’ve had quite a day.”

  “I’d like that,” he said pleasantly. “Perhaps when we’re sure the day is over?”

  “Understood,” Grainger replied.

  Lord signed off and, a moment later, he felt his stomach rise as the ERB suddenly stopped moving forward then started to dip, seemingly all in one motion. The moon’s expansive surface rose out of sight and then they were facing down, surrounded by a nearly mile-wide rill inside the vast lunar crater. The lights of the buggy came on, emphatically illuminating vertical walls formed from an ancient black lava flow.

  Lord almost felt the chill. He knew that these deep, dark, sinuous crevices were some of the coldest places in the solar system. Now and then, patches of water ice gleamed silvery white in deep pockets, like veins of precious ore. As at the head of a comet, there was probably dust in there from the birth of the world.

  The ERB dipped lower, headed toward a landing pad at the mouth of a cave in the northern wall. Once it was over the circular white construction, it landed gently on the thrusters while the wheels immediately rolled forward toward the overhead docking ring, which projected out and down from the bleak, smooth wall, reminding Lord of the watering systems used by locomotives in the Old West.

  As much as things changed, they didn’t.

  While Lord and Saranya slipped from their slings, transparent bubbles stored in the berths were inflated over the flight crew of the Grissom and—mattress and all—they were escorted to the rear of the craft. Lord watched through one of the small windows. After going down the aft ramp, the flight crew was carried across the landing pad. A door in the rock wall slid up to admit them.

  “That leads directly to the ground-level medical bay,” Christie told them as they watched. “There’s also an elevator on the ledge one hundred feet above to lower people down in the event of a surface accident. It was easier to build a small access portal than to build a garage for the ERB.”

  “Less costly too,” Lord said.

  “Cost is always a factor,” Christie noted. “In this case, though, it saves time, not having to fill a large airlock. Also, we share storage and repair services with the science buggy in the Armstrong garage.”

  That made sense, Lord had to admit. Still, he had to wonder which came first: efficiency or economy.

  They made their way to the aft hatch while the driver performed his post-operation shutdown. Christie opened the door, lowered the aluminum ladder extension, then came down. Saranya went up immediately. It wasn’t a question of “ladies first”; Lord had watched her mood change as they twisted in their slings, reflection giving way to a low boil. She had something on her mind that needed expressing.

  “Would you like a hand, sir?” Christie asked.

  “I think I’ll make it,” he assured the younger man.

  Christie nodded in recognition and Lord followed Dr. May out the hatch. It was actually an easy climb, if snug; a little like being pulled up by a wire. Lord ascended just ten rungs and then he was inside the cold, solid lava tube that housed Armstrong Base.

  The first surprise was there wasn’t any kind of ready room between the disembarking area and the station. Once past the door they were right in the middle of the facility, a dome with a series of tubes leading off in seven different directions.

  “Welcome to the Squid, sir,” Christie said as Lord slid from the upper section of the ladder.

  Armstrong Base was definitely a triumph of efficiency over aesthetics. Made of puncture-proof Kevlar and supported by a network of widely spaced steel ribs, the dome was seven feet high by ten feet wide. Lord noticed a series of slightly raised tendrils that ran through the Kevlar like a fine arterial system. He squinted at them. They actually seemed to pulse.

  Christie noticed Lord’s interest. “Ah, our truss geometry,�
� he said.

  “You’ll have to explain that one,” Lord replied.

  “Wire coils filled with liquid helium,” he explained. “We extract it from lunar regolith using a solar cooker. That’s how we maintain a constant temperature.” He chuckled. “You think Pluto is cold? Right here we’ve got the coldest spot in the solar system—negative three hundred ninety-seven degrees Fahrenheit.”

  “Cold enough to freeze books,” Lord quipped.

  “Sir?”

  “Just something from my childhood,” Lord replied wistfully.

  Christie smiled politely. “Perhaps you noticed the ice on the walls of the crevice? We’ve got frozen pools of water here, deposits that make us self-sufficient. That’s Commander Tengan’s goal by 2055.”

  Lord nodded respectfully. When Lord accepted the Empyrean post, part of his briefing file had included an FBI dossier on Blake Tengan. The forty-eight-year-old wunderkind was the only commander Armstrong Base had known in its five years of operation. Tengan had seemed tailor-made for the job: the holder of a PhD in astrophysics from Stanford and a decorated veteran of the First Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta, Airborne. As a young lieutenant, she had led the mission to rescue American geology students held hostage on Pico Bolívar, Venezuela, by the radical Confederación de Acciones Especiales. She not only brought back the three students from the treacherous peak, she captured the CAE leader. The US turned her over to Caracas, breaking a half century of tension between the two nations.

  Despite her record on Earth and on the moon, Tengan was on the FBI’s watch list. There was a sense that her career objective was not just a successful lunar colony but a successful and independent lunar colony.

  Lord didn’t hold that against her. To the contrary. If it were true, then the woman had vision. If that vision was weighted in favor of ideals over economy, Lord could support it.

  Not that anyone asked, he thought with a private chuckle. Or would. Or that it will ever happen.