Moonrise gt-5

by Ben Bova

  Killifer said nothing, standing between Brennart and Doug, his face in shadow.

  Turning to Deems, Brennart asked, “Did you get a chance to map any of the ice field?”

  “We didn’t do any mapping,” Deems said, almost apologetically. “Our mission plan called for digging some preliminary cores and bringing back the samples taken. Mapping comes later.”

  “I know the mission plan,” Brennart said impatiently. “I wrote it.”

  Deems glanced at Killifer, who said nothing.

  “So?” Brennart demanded. “What about the cores you dug?”

  “We drilled three cores. You see the analysis of the ice. It’s water, all right.”

  “Is it drinkable as is, or will we have to treat it?” Doug asked.

  “Looks perfectly drinkable to me,” said Brennart.

  “The ice is only ten centimeters deep,” Deems said. Then he added, “Where we dug.”

  “Which is at the edge of the field, right?” Brennart said.

  “A hundred meters from the edge,” said Deems. “That’s what we figured was a safe walk-back distance, what with the darkness and the slick surface — even with the dust on it, there’s not much traction to walk with.”

  “That field is more than ten kilometers across, isn’t it?” Brennart said, more of a statement than a question. “And there are a dozen or more other ice fields scattered about the area.”

  Deems nodded. “That’s right.”

  “But how deep does it go?” Doug wondered aloud.

  “That’s what we’re here to find out,” Brennart said.

  “Right,” said Killifer.

  Brennart straightened up, his golden hair almost brushing the curving roof of the shelter. “All right, we’ve made a good start. Jack,” he turned to Killifer, “I want a complete inventory of the supplies we lost in the crash on my screen by the time I come back in for supper.”

  “No problem,” said Killifer.

  “I’m going outside to set a little fire under the digging. Roger, you did well out there. I’m pleased.”

  Deems’s normally half-frightened expression slowly evolved into a shy, delighted smile.

  “Doug,” Brennart snapped, “shouldn’t you be registering our time of arrival and summary of activities?”

  “I’ve already done that,” Doug replied, biting back the instinct to add, sir.

  “And our schedule-for tomorrow?”

  I’m set to transmit that as soon as we send out the nanotech team tomorrow morning.”

  Brennart looked down on Doug with something approaching displeasure. “Do it now. Right now.”

  “But legally—”

  “Get it into the record!” Brennart insisted. “Tell them you’ll send confirmation when the team actually starts out tomorrow. Exact time and all that.”

  “Very well,” said Doug.

  They squeezed out of the analysis cubicle like four men getting out of a phone booth. This is no place for a claustrophobe, Doug thought as they marched single file up the narrow central aisle of the shelter.

  The cylindrical shelter was divided by thin plastic internal walls that could be load-bearing only in the gentle gravity of the Moon. Brennart and Deems headed for the airlock; Brennart to suit up for the surface, Deems to put his helmet back on and go to a well-deserved rest break in the shelter that housed his bunk. The digging team had not yet linked the four shelters with connecting tunnels.

  Doug followed Killifer to the comm center, another cubicle that was hot and overcrowded with two people in it. The communications technician was at his post, headphone clamped to his ear.

  I’ll take over,” Killifer said. “Go take a leak.”

  The guy grinned appreciatively and surrendered his flimsy plastic chair to Killifer, who took the headset and slipped it around his neck.

  “Anything expected in?” Killifer asked his departing back.

  “Nope,” said the technician as he squeezed past Doug. “Everything’s quiet until the next satellite comes over.”

  The expedition included six miniature communications satellites in polar orbit, following one another endlessly like soldiers on perpetual parade. Moonbase’s regular commsat, hovering at the L-l libration point above the lunar equator, could not’see’ the deep valleys of the mountainous south polar region, so the polar orbiting minisats were necessary.

  Doug had suggested twelve satellites, so there would be continuous coverage, but Savannah had decided that the expedition could do with fifteen-minute breaks between satellites, and doubling their communications costs was not worth the additional coverage.

  While Killifer began punching up the inventory of supplies and equipment carried aboard the crashed lander, Doug sat at the other display and tapped out his legal report for Moonbase and the World Court at The Hague. He could feel the heat that their bodies and the computers and communications sets were generating. Sweat trickled down his ribs.

  They were sitting close enough to be touching shoulders, but for nearly half an hour neither of them said a word. Doug finished his task and set up tomorrow’s work, then — for lack of anything else to do — called up the inventory Killifer was working on.

  “You checking up on me?” Killifer snapped.

  Startled, Doug said, “No. Of course not.”

  “Then why’re you looking over my shoulder?”

  With a shrug, Doug answered, “I don’t have much of anything else to do at the moment.”

  “Then get outta here and give me some space.”

  Doug stared at the older man. “You don’t like me much, do you?”

  “Why should I?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were stuck into this mission on orders from Savannah. Your so-called job could be done by a trained baboon. You’re nothing but a snoop from corporate headquarters.”

  “A snoop?” Doug wanted to laugh. “What’s there to snoop about? I’m here because I thought this expedition would be exciting.”

  Killifer glared at him. “Exciting? You must be crazy.”

  Doug waved a hand. “Don’t you find all this exciting? The first people here at the south pole and all that?”

  “Christ, you’re worse than a snoop. You’re a frigging dilettante.”

  “Well,” said Doug ’I’m sorry you think so. I hope to be as helpful as I can.”

  “Oh great. Just stay out of the way and we’ll get along fine.”

  With a laugh, Doug replied, “It’s not going to be easy to stay out of each other’s way, cooped up in these tin cans.”

  “Then why don’t you go outside and take a nice long walk?”

  Getting to his feet, Doug said, “That’s not a bad idea.” And he left Killifer alone in the comm cubicle.

  Killifer watched him leave, then turned back to his tedious inventory task. He heard a piercing note from the earphone on the headset draped around his neck and quickly clapped the set over his close-cropped hair.

  “Moonbase to Brennart. Emergency notification. A major solar flare is expected in the next twenty-four hours. We don’t know if it will impact your area or not, but you should take all safety precautions.”

  It was a recorded message, transmitted by the minisat that had just come up over their horizon. Killifer duly noted it into the computer log and then started to call Brennart, out on the surface.

  His fingertip hovered over the keypad. I’ll tell Brennart when he gets back in. No sense shaking him up right now. Plenty of time before there’s any danger.

  Too bad it won’t hit while the Stavenger kid is outside, he thought.

  LUNAR TRANSFER VEHICLE

  Before this flight to the Moon, Greg had never been farther than the space stations in Earth orbit. He had been nervous about spending a couple of days in weightlessness, but so far the medication patch behind his right ear seemed to be working: he felt a little queasy, but under control.

  The lunar transfer vehicle was basically a freight carrier; the maintenance gang at the
space station had added a crew module especially for him. It was a small bubble of alloy and plastiglass, barely big enough for the mandatory human pilot and co-pilot and a pair of passengers.

  The bubble was pressurized, but safety regulations required the humans to stay in spacesuits for the duration of the two-day flight. If a stray meteoroid punctured the module’s skin they could slide their visors down and ride the rest of the way buttoned up in their suits.

  The other “passenger,” tightly strapped in to the seat next to Greg, was a drum of lubricating oil. Not romantic, but very necessary for the machinery at Moonbase. With the bulky steel-gray drum beside him and the two pilots sitting in front of him, Greg’s main view was overhead. He cranked his seat back as far as it would go, and realized that in zero-gee ’overhead’ was a matter of opinion. He felt almost as if he were standing and looking straight ahead.

  What he saw was the Earth, glowing blue and white against the empty blackness of space, dwindling imperceptibly as the lunar transfer vehicle coasted toward the Moon. Two days inside this spacesuit, Greg thought. We’re going to smell ripe when we finally put down at Alphonsus. Staring at the Earth, he realized with the force of a physical sensation that he was leaving the world and heading for a place that had no air or water or life of its own. He shuddered inwardly at the thought.

  “Mr. Masterson, sir?”

  Greg could not tell whether it was the pilot or co-pilot speaking to him. Their voices sounded virtually identical in his helmet earphones.

  “We have a problem, sir. Ground control reports an imminent SFE. We’re ordered to reverse course and return to the station.”

  Astronauts and their jargon, Greg thought. “What’s an SFE?”

  “Solar flare event. Extremely high levels of ionizing radiation. Very dangerous.”

  “Lethal,” said the other astronaut.

  Alarmed, Greg asked, “How much time do we have?”

  “Unknown, sir. The flare could burst out any time within the next twenty-four hours.”

  “The radiation could increase to killing levels within a few hours afterward,” the other astronaut said.

  It was annoying to be talking to the backs of two helmets. Greg still could not tell from the voices in his earphones which astronaut was speaking.

  “Can’t we get to Moonbase before the flare erupts?” he asked.

  “Standard safety procedure is to return to the orbital station we started from.”

  “The space stations orbit below the geomagnetosphere,” said the other voice.

  “What’s that got to do with it?” Greg demanded.

  “The geomagnetosphere is like a magnetic umbrella, sir. It offers protection from the heaviest levels of radiation.”

  “Still, all personnel on each station have to evacuate to the ECPM during the peak radiation influx.”

  Before Greg could ask, the other astronaut explained, “Emergency Crew Protection Module, that is.”

  “I see,” said Greg. “But if the flare is still a day or so away, why can’t we go on to Moonbase?”

  “There’s no telling when the flare will burst out”

  “Could be in another few minutes.”

  “But even so,” Greg insisted, “you said it would be several hours after that before the radiation levels got dangerous.”

  They hesitated before one of them answered, “That’s true, but standard procedure—”

  “Can’t we juice this vehicle and get to Moonbase sooner?”

  Again they hesitated. Then, “We’d have to re-light the main engine.”

  “But that would actually cost us less delta-vee than reversing back to LEO.”

  Greg tried to sort out their jargon. “You’re saying that it would be easier to speed up and get to Moonbase?”

  “Yessir.”

  “But we’d have to file a new flight plan and get it approved by traffic control.”

  “And undergo another three or four gees of thrust for a few minutes.”

  The takeoff from Earth had been slightly less than three gees for several minutes, Greg recalled.

  “I can crunch the numbers and then check ’em out with ground control.”

  “Do that,” Greg commanded.

  For several minutes the two astronauts hunched their helmeted heads together, fingers flicking over the keyboards in their control panel. Greg realized they were talking to ground control, back at Savannah. He tapped the channel selector on the wrist of his suit until he found their frequency. Listening in on their chatter was pretty much a waste of time, though: Greg could barely understand half of their technospeak.

  But at last he heard, Trajectory alterations are approved. You are cleared for high-thrust bum to Moonbase.”

  “Cleared for Moonbase. Roger,” said the pilot.

  Greg heard the radio link click off. Then, “Yahoo!” yelled one of them, loud enough to make Greg’s ears ring.

  “Light ’er up and move ’er out!”

  As a heavy hand of acceleration pressed Greg back in his seat, he realized that the astronauts were more than happy with his insistence on pushing ahead to the Moon.

  Killifer’s main assignment was to remain inside the headquarters shelter of the expedition’s base camp and monitor all surface activities. Thus the communications center was his principal station.

  He had quite deliberately erased Moonbase’s warning message from the comm system’s computer memory. He waited calmly underground until Brennart came in. Then Killifer hurried to the airlock, where Brennart was carefully removing his suit and vacuuming the dust from it.

  Sitting on the slim-legged bench next to Brennart, he spoke just loudly enough to be heard over the buzz of the hand vacuum.

  “We got a warning of an imminent solar flare.”

  “When?”

  “About two hours ago. I didn’t say anything about it; didn’t want to shake up the team.”

  Brennart looked down at him, his brows knit in thought. They made an odd pair: the tall, golden-haired leader and his dark, lantern-jawed aide.

  “I might have exceeded my authority,” Killifer confessed. “I erased the warning from the log.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t want anyone but you to know about it. You’re the expedition commander. You should be the one who makes the decision on what to do. If the comm tech or Doug Stavenger or somebody else found out about the warning, they’d be blabbing it to everybody and nobody’d want to be outside.”

  Brennart nodded slowly. “That’s true enough.”

  “I hope I did the right thing,” Killifer said, with as much humility as he could muster.

  “Yes, you did. A warning of an imminent flare poses no immediate danger and we still have a lot of digging to do out there.”

  “The connectors?”

  With a shake of his head, Brennart said, “We’re behind schedule, I know. You don’t have to remind me. The ground out there is all rock. Hardly any regolith over it at all.”

  Without the tunnels to connect them, the expedition members would be stuck in the four separate buried shelters when the flare’s radiation reached them.

  “What do you plan to do, then?” Killifer asked.

  Frowning, Brennart said, I’d better put everybody into the digging. We don’t even have enough rubble to adequately shield the four shelters yet, let alone the connecting tunnels.”

  For the first time, Killifer felt alarmed. But he hid it and said merely. “You always know what’s best.”

  It was dark out on the surface, menacingly, cryogenically dark with the high mountains blocking out any chance of light or warmth. Yet Doug found it thrilling. More than thrilling; it was the most exciting thing he had ever known. To put your bootprints down where no human being has ever stood before. To see what no human eyes have ever gazed on. Danger and wonder and the lure of the unknown, all mixed together. That’s what the frontier is all about Doug told himself. God, it must be habit-forming, like a drug.

  He took a deep
breath of canned air, realizing with a grin that it was an artificial mixture of oxygen and nitrogen at unnaturally low pressure. Every breath we take, every step we make, all depends on the machines we’ve developed.

  So what? he asked himself. How long do you think humans would’ve survived on Earth if they hadn’t developed fire and tools? We’re machine makers, and with our machines we can expand throughout the universe.

  Then he chuckled to himself. Throughout the universe, huh? Maybe you ought to just concentrate on this little base camp you’re building here at the south pole of the Moon. Get that done before you start challenging the rest of creation.

  Starlight guided his steps across the rocky ground. The hard unblinking stars were strewn across the black sky like dust; even through his heavily tinted visor Doug could see thousands of them staring back at him. They lit the ground like pale moonlight on Earth.

  He walked to the edge of the ice field. Staring at its dark flat expanse, Doug felt disappointed that the dust-covered ice did not reflect the stars. It looked almost like a dead calm sea, flat and still and gleaming slightly, as if lit from within. Then he looked up as high as he could from inside his helmet and realized that he could not see the Earth. From Moonbase the Earth was always hanging overhead, warm, beckoning, friendly. The sky down here was empty, lonely.

  Turning, he saw Mt. Wasser, its flat-topped curving peak bathed in glowing sunlight, shining against the darkness like a disembodied beacon. Tomorrow we start up the mountain, Doug told himself. With the nanomachines. With any luck, we’ll be building the power tower within thirty-six hours.

  We’re making history here! The thought exhilarated him. Kids will read about this expedition in their schoolbooks.

  He looked out at the ice field again and suddenly, without even deciding consciously to do it, he ran to the edge of the softly gleaming ice with long, loping lunar strides; almost like flying. Then he felt his boots on the ice and he glided along like a skater, spinning and turning, laughing inside his helmet like a boy at play.

  His earphones chirped. Then he heard Brennart’s unmistakable voice, “This is your expedition commander. I want every person suited up and outside to help dig the connector tunnels. The only personnel excluded from this order are the second-in-command and the communications technician now on watch. Everybody else get to the digging. This includes you, Mr. Stavenger. Get moving. Now!”