by Ben Bova
“So you’ve decided to come live with the proletariat for a while,” Wojo said pleasantly. He was a bulky man, big in the shoulders, with a beer gut and the glittering eyes of a seeker after truth. Roughly Paul’s age, Wojo’s hair and ragged beard were already dead white and thinning. He insisted that it was from the radiation dosage he received when he worked out on the lunar surface.
“How’re you doing, Wojo?” Paul asked, sliding his one travelbag from his shoulder and letting it thump softly on the plastic flooring.
“Still trying to get those narrow-minded bean counters in the insurance office to admit that the company owes me premium pay,” Wojo grumbled, not taking his eyes from his display screen.
It was an old, old argument. Wojo demanded compensation for his tractor maintenance work out on the surface, over and above the hazardous duty pay called for in his employment contract.
Paul had steered clear of the fight while he’d been Wojo’s division manager. Now that he was CEO he feared the man would ask him to intervene.
But Wojo had not done that, so far. “They got a new manager in the so-called human resources department. A man so narrow-minded he can look through a keyhole with both eyes.
Paul laughed. “You don’t like him?”
Wojo looked up and gave Paul a withering glance. “He tells lies, his feet stink, and he don’t love Jesus.”
“Yeah,” Paul said. “You don’t like him.”
“He’ll make a ton of money for you. He’s so tight-fisted his palms have never seen the light of day.”
Paul made his way past the receiving desk before Wojo could ask for any favors. Jinny Anson, pert and blonde and feisty, directed him through the tunnels to the sleeping quarters they had reserved or him.
“I tried to find you a corner that’s at least a little quieter than most. No snorers on either side of you, and you can barely hear the pumps.”
“Thanks,” Paul said. “I appreciate the special treatment.”
“Nothing but the best for our new CEO.”
“You’re just trying to butter up the boss,” he kidded. Yet he realized that this was the first time the CEO had visited Moonbase.
Jinny led him through two of the interconnected shelters, down another tunnel, and along the narrow central passageway of a third tempo: She’s a chipper little handful, Paul thought. Fills out her coveralls in all the right places. Then he frowned inwardly. Cut that out. You made a promise to Joanna and you’re gonna keepit. Yeah, he agreed silently. But it won’t be easy.
“How’s the air recycling plant going?” Paul asked, trying to put his focus on business.
“Humming along fine,” Jinny replied. “Getting close to eighty percent efficiency. Gimme another few months and I’ll have the loop closed good, I betcha.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. Then we’ll only need new oxy for what leaks through the airlocks, little stuff like that.”
“Good.”
They stopped at the last partition; Paul saw his name neatly printed on the card alongside the doorway. And Lev Brudnoy’s name on the partition across the narrow corridor.
He doesn’t snore, Paul thought, but he grunts a lot during the mating season. Which is always, for him.
“Not quite an executive suite, huh?” Jinny said, pulling back the accordion-fold partition to reveal a standard habitation compartment, one hundred ninety-six cubic feet that had to serve as sleeping quarters and office. No bigger than anyone else’s quarters.
On a space station, in zero gee, a hundred ninety-six cubic feet was almost generous. Here on the Moon it came close to inducing claustrophobia.
Paul shrugged and gave the standard line, “Beats sleeping outside.”
“Not by much,” Jinny replied with the standard counter.
He could smell a soft flowery fragrance. “How do you stay so fresh in these sardine cans?”
She smiled prettily. “I just took my weekly shower a couple of hours ago. In your honor. Ask me again in a few days.”
A vision of her lithe body glistening with sweat filled Paul’s mind for an instant. “Pheromone heaven,” he muttered.
“More like pheromone hell,” Jinny said. “Head colds are a blessing around here.”
Paul mumbled, “Yeah. Maybe so.”
“My cubbyhole’s at the other end of this row,” she said, grinning. “In case you get lonely.”
“I’m a married man,” Paul said quickly, thinking as he spoke that it sounded terribly nerdy.
Jinny’s grin turned saucy. “Well, just in case…”
Paul thanked her for the escort service and shooed her off, then went into his compartment, dropped onto the bunk, and immediately went to the desktop computer to call Joanna. But he was thinking of how pleasing it would be if Jinny really buttered up the boss; or vice versa.
“I just don’t trust machines I can’t see,” Wojo grumbled.
Paul and the tractor teleoperator were sitting in the galley, hunched over Paul’s hand-sized computer.
“If these things work we can let them do all the construction out on the surface and you can sit down here in comfort and count your insurance benefits.”
Wojo fixed him with a baleful stare. The man’s breath smelled terrible. Like the exhaust fan from a brewery, Paul thought. But where in the hell would he get beer up here?
“Just how smart are these slime-sucking bugs?” Wojo asked.
“Like ants,” said Paul.
Wojo scratched at his shaggy beard. “Read a book once—”
“No!” Paul pretended shock.
With a small grin, Wojo said, “You’d be surprised what I’m capable of. Anyway, this book was about army ants in South America. Every once in a while they run amok and strip the whole festering jungle right down to the bark and bone. Don’t leave anything alive in their path.”
“These bugs aren’t like that,” Paul said.
“How do you know?”
Paul had to think a moment. “Well, for one thing, they’re programmed to stop functioning at temperatures above thirty degrees.”
Wojo heaved his bulk up from the spindly chair and trudged over to the thermostat on the curving wall of the galley. “It’s twenty-seven degrees in here right now. Just a smidge over eighty, Fahrenheit.”
“I thought it felt warm in here.”
Walking back to the long, narrow table and settling ponderously into the little chair across from Paul, Wojo complained, “We need more radiator surface outside. Only way to get rid of heat is to radiate it away. You know that. I know that. But your pus-infested, maggot-brained, excrement-eating systems engineers sitting comfy and cool in their air-conditioned offices in Savannah haven’t seen fit to honor our humble requests for more radiators.”
“But thermal conduction—”
“Isn’t worth a thimbleful of warm spit,” Wojo said. “We’re dug in nice and deep. The rock outside our shells conducts heat about as well as a politician tells the unvarnished truth.”
“So turning the thermostats down won’t help?”
With a massive shake of his shaggy head, Wojo said, “All you’d do is put an extra load on the air conditioners and the radiators. Which we need about as much as a prostitute needs an honest cop.”
I’ll get you more radiators,” Paul said.
“Thank you kindly, sir,” said Wojo. “Now, to get back to these mechanical viruses you brought up here with you — you say they’re programmed to shut down at thirty Cee?”
“That’s right.”
“All that means is that they won’t work out on the surface in daylight. Even at our current level of discomfort, they could be doing whatever it is they’re programmed to do in here right now. How would we stop ’em?”
“Each set of the nanomachines is programmed to utilize one type of atom or molecule. When they run out of that material, they stop functioning.”
“And what materials are these bugs programmed to use?”
Paul punched up the list on
his computer.
Squinting at the small screen, Wojo mumbled, “Titanium, aluminum, silicon — for the love of sweet Jesus, they could munch their way right through the whole body of the Moon and come out the other side!”
“No, no,” Paul insisted. “We have other safeguards.”
“You better show ’em to me.”
Tapping on the miniaturized keyboard, Paul said, “See, a polarizing current can shut them all down immediately.”
“Long as you can get the current to them.”
Paul looked at Wojo’s grizzled face. He’s being extra cautious, and he’s right to look at it that way. This is so new that nobody’s had any experience with it.
But he said, “Look, Wojo, if these nanobugs work we can turn this set of tin cans into a regular palace in a couple of years. Moonbase can start making profits right away.”
“But if it doesn’t work—”
“That’s why we’re conducting the demonstration at a remote site,” Paul said, with growing irritation. “If anything goes wrong, it’ll go wrong out there and won’t threaten the base here.”
Wojo nodded solemnly. “It’ll go wrong out there, all right. With you and me twenty miles from help.”
“We’ll have a hopper, for chrissake,” Paul snapped. “We could jump all the way back here in fifteen minutes, if we had to.”
Wojo nodded. “I suppose that’s true,” he said. But he didn’t sound as if his heart was in it.
Nettled by Wojo’s worries, Paul spent that whole afternoon deep in conference with Kris Cardenas, back at San Jose.
Sitting on his bunk, Paul said to her image in his laptop screen, “You can see why some of the people here are scared of the whole idea.”
“Well,” she admitted grudgingly, “the nanomachines are the size of viruses. They can be carried by air currents and float around. But the Moon’s airless, so—”
“The interiors of our habitation modules aren’t airless,” Paul pointed out.
“Yes, but you’re not using the bugs in your habitation modules, are you?” Cardenas replied sharply, her blue eyes snapping. “You’re only using them out in the remote site, twenty miles from the nearest existing shelter.”
“That’s true, “Paul agreed.
“So there shouldn’t be any trouble. Even if there is, once daylight comes up the bugs will overheat and shut down.”
“Can they last fourteen days in a dormant condition?”
“For sure,” she said. “But in fourteen days you ought to be able to sweep them all up.”
“Paul nodded. “I guess so.”
Cardenas smiled prettily. “Believe me, Mr. Stavenger, we’ve gone through every possible scenario in our simulations. We even rented the big vacuum chamber over at Ames to simulate the lunar environment. Nothing’s going to go wrong.”
“I guess so,” Paul said again.
“Mr. Masterson has been here half a dozen times, checking out every facet of the experiment,” she added.
“Greg?”
“Yes. He’s triple-checked everything. And then some.”
“That’s good,” Paul said lamely, adding to himself, I suppose.
But he went hunting through the underground shelters for Lana Goodman. Moonbase’s so-called permanent resident was a smart scientist, Paul knew, and had no axe to grind in the matter of nanotechnology.
He found her in the photo lab that she had crammed into the minimal space between the laundry and the shower facility.
“Nanomachines?” Goodman was peering at a strip of film through a magnifying glass. Paul saw her elfin features in profile. With the light behind her, her thinning gray hair looked almost like a halo.
Paul explained what he was trying to do, and Wojo’s apprehensions.
Goodman put the film down and turned her full attention to him. “I don’t know the details, but I’ve heard a lot about nanotechnology. Mostly wild claims by enthusiasts and equally wild predictions of disaster by opponents.”
Spreading his hands, Paul said, “Well, that’s what I’m faced with: either the salvation of Moonbase or a disaster. I’d like your opinion on which to expect.”
“Most of what I’ve read about deals with the medical applications,” Goodman said, threading the film into the developing machine.
“Medical?”
“You know, an old lady like me gets interested in nano-machines that can keep the estrogen flowing.” She winked broadly.
“Oh,” said Paul. “I get it.”
More seriously, she asked, “If these nanomachines don’t work, are you going to close down Moonbase?”
“I don’t want to do that,” Paul said.
“I don’t want to go back Earthside,” said Goodman. “So maybe I’m not as unbiased in this matter as you think.”
Scientists! Paul fumed inwardly. They never give you a straight answer. Always hedging everything with all kinds of qualifications and escape hatches. He remembered a professor of economics who complained that the government always looked for ‘one-armed’ advisors: those who wouldn’t qualify everything by saying, “On the other hand…”
“Look,” he said, “all I want is your honest opinion about’twhether or not it’s safe to try this demonstration.”
Goodman looked up at him. “Twenty miles out on the other side of the ringwall?”
“Twenty-five miles, actually. The site is twenty miles out on the mare from Tempo Nineteen.”
“That should be far enough,” Goodman said. “If anything does go wrong, it shouldn’t affect us here.”
That was what Paul wanted to hear.
But before he could thank her, Goodman said, “Let me think about it, though. Ask some people I know about it. If I come up with any problems, I’ll let you know.”
“We’re leaving tomorrow morning,” Paul said.
“Who’s going with you?”
“Wojo.”
Goodman grinned maliciously. “Good. He’s a cantankerous old brute.”
“You two don’t get along?”
“I’ve been chasing his bod for months now, and he keeps eluding me. I think he’s scared of me.”
“Wojo?”
“Maybe he’s still a virgin.”
Paul stared at her for a stunned moment, not knowing whether she was serious or joking.
“Life’s not easy up here for a horny old lady,” Goodman said, with only the slightest of smiles. “Lots of nice young men, but they look on me like their grandmother. Wojo’s more my age.”
“Yeah,” Paul said weakly. “I suppose he is.”
Then he beat a hasty retreat, leaving Goodman grinning at his departing back.
TRACTOR FOUR
Paul was surprised to see Hi Tinker suiting up in the preparation chamber next to the airlock.
Three walls of the cubicle were lined with spacesuits standing on racks like displays of medieval armor. Helmets rested on shelves just above the empty suit torsos, boots on the plastic flooring next to the leggings.
Tink was already in his leggings and boots when Paul came in. He was an amiable Canadian from Toronto, lean and lantern-jawed, with a dry sense of humor and a maddening propensity for puns.
With a lopsided smile he told Paul, “Wojo’s outside already, checking out the tractor.”
“Good,” said Paul, going to the medium-sized suits.
“These nanomachines really worry him, you know.” Before Paul could reply he went on, “You might say the bugs are bugging him.”
Paul ignored the pun. No sense encouraging the man. “What’re you suiting up for?” he asked, stepping into the leggings of the newest-looking suit he could find in his size.
I’m going with you”
“You are?”
Tinker nodded. “You can use a third set of hands to set things up, and I want to scout the territory out on the mare for a telescope site.”
“What’s wrong with siting a telescope here, inside the ringwall?”
“Too much radio chatter in here. I�
��ve got a grant from Caltech to look into developing a major radio telescope facility up here. It’ll need someplace nice and quiet in the radio frequencies. A dome away from home.”
Why wasn’t I told about this? Paul asked himself. Tinker was a consultant, not a regular corporate employee. He came up to Moonbase every three months to check out the astronomical equipment that the base operated for a consortium of universities. Still, Paul thought, if he’s won a grant from Caltech I should have been informed.
Then he realized that he was the CEO now, too far above the ranks to be involved in such details. The thought stung him. Paul wanted to know every detail about Moonbase.
Aloud, he said, “Farside would be the best place for radio quiet.”
Lifting his suit’s torso over his head, Tinker wormed his arms into its sleeves and popped his head up through the metal ring of its collar.
With a grunt that might have been part laugh, he said, “You know that, and I know that, and even Wojo knows that But find me a university that’s got the money to build a base on the farside.”
“What about the consortium?” Paul asked.
Tink shook his head sadly. “Not even the entire International Astronomical Union can raise that kind of cabbage. When it comes to finances, astronomers are at the end of the line.”
Paul nodded, realizing that Tinker didn’t make puns about his work. Be thankful for small mercies, he thought.
The two men checked out each other’s suits and backpacks, then Paul followed Tink through the airlock and out onto the surface of the crater Alphonsus.
“Magnificent desolation,” Paul murmured, as he always did when he went outside.
The tired, worn ringwall mountains rose above them as far as the eye could see. Alphonsus was so wide that Paul could barely make out the tops of the peaks at the center of the crater poking above the horizon. The crater floor, cracked and rilled, seemed as dead and untouched as the first time Paul had landed here. Except for the humps of rubble marking the buried modules of the base and the angular metal framework of the oxygen plant off to the right. The ground was welted with bright cleated trails that the tractors left.