by Ben Bova
Joanna thought of it. And turned to Greg, who stood mute and deathly pale, staring through the observation window at his half brother.
Slowly Doug woke from a long, deep dream. He had been swimming with dolphins the way he’d done when he was a kid visiting Hawaii except that the water was cold, numbingly cold and so dark that he could only sense the dolphins swimming alongside him, big powerful sleek bodies gliding effortlessly through the cold black waters. Don’t leave me behind, he called to them, but somehow he was on the Moon and it was Brennart standing beside him whispering something, the secrets of the universe maybe, but Doug could not hear the man’s words.
And then his eyes opened.
He saw that he was in some kind of hospital room. Moonbase. The infirmary. Low rock ceiling painted a cheerful butter yellow. A wide mirror took up almost the whole wall on one side of his bed. He could hear the humming and beeping of electronic monitors over his head.
The door opened and Bianca Rhee stepped through.
“You’re awake!” she said looking happy and surprised and awed and curious, all at once.
Doug grinned at her. “I guess I am.”
“How do you feel?”
“Hungry!”
Bianca’s smile threatened to split her face in two. Before she could say another word, a medic in crisp white coveralls pushed through the door angrily.
“What’re you doing in here?” he demanded of Rhee. “No one’s allowed in here without—”
“Shut up!” Doug snapped. “She’s my friend.”
The man glared at Doug. “No one is allowed inside this cubicle without specific permission from the resident M.D., friend or not.”
Over the next ten minutes, Doug learned how wrong the young medic was. Rhee dutifully left his cubicle, but his mother, Greg, and several strangers poured in, including a funny-looking fat older man with an unlit cigar clamped ludicrously in his teeth.
His mother fell on his neck, crying for the first time he could remember. Greg smiled stiffly. The others stared at the monitors while they checked his pulse, thumped his chest, and performed other ancient medical rituals.
“How do you feel?” everyone seemed to ask.
“Hungry,” Doug kept repeating. But no one brought him anything to eat.
Gradually he began to piece it together from the babbling of their chatter. Nanotherapy. He was alive and well. And would be for a long time to come. It was a lot to take in over a few minutes. It seemed to Doug as if just a few minutes ago he was dying from radiation poisoning. Now they were telling him he would live forever, just about.
“Could I just have something to eat?” he shouted over their voices.
Everyone stopped and stared at him.
“I’m starving,” Doug said.
“You see?” said the old fat guy. “Just as I told you!”
INFIRMARY
Bianca Rhee came back, shyly, almost tiptoeing into Doug’s cubicle after everyone else had left. He had eaten a full dinner, napped a short while, then asked for another dinner. Its remnant crumbs were all that was left on the food tray when Rhee entered and smiled happily at him.
“How do you feel?” she asked, sitting on the edge of his bed because there was no chair in his cubicle.
“Fine,” said Doug with a big grin. “I feel as if I could run up to the top of Mt. Wasser in my bare feet!”
“The nanotherapy is really working.”
“I guess it is.”
“Do you feel — different?”
Doug thought about it for a moment. “No,” he answered. “Not different, exactly. Just — a little tired, but good, just the same. Like I’ve just won my fifth gold medal in the Olympics.”
“That’s wonderful,” she said.
“What about you?” Doug asked. “Have you been checked over? Are you okay?”
She shrugged. “We all took more of a radiation dose than we should have, but I’m okay. No obvious medical problems.”
“Obvious?”
“Oh, I might have a two-headed baby someday.” She tried to laugh.
“And your chances of getting cancer?” Doug asked.
“A few percent higher.”
“Oh.”
“But that won’t happen until I’m old and gray,” she said.
“Besides, there’s no history of cancer in my family.”
“That’s good,” Doug said, but he thought, There will be now, most likely.
Then he noticed that her coveralls were sweat-stained, and there was a fine sheen of perspiration on her forehead.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked. “You’re perspiring.”
“Oh.” Rhee looked more embarrassed than worried. “I — I was exercising a little.”
“Exercising?”
She nodded, keeping her lips clamped tight This isn’t the time to tell him I practice dancing, she decided. He’s a nice, guy, but he’d laugh. The fat little gook in ballet slippers, pretending she’s a ballerina in the low gravity of the Moon. Anyone would laugh.
So they talked about the expedition, about Brennart and what heroism was all about. Doug told Bianca that Brennart was already dying of cancer and had nothing much to lose by his daring.
She shook her head. “I still think it was a real bonkhead thing to do. Just because he wanted be a hero was no reason for you to take such a risk.”
“We would’ve been okay,” Doug insisted, “if the hopper hadn’t broken down.”
“Sure.”
“Well, anyway, I appreciate your coming out to get us. You saved my life.”
Bianca blushed. “I didn’t do much. The radiation was back to normal by then.”
“Still, you must’ve volunteered. Didn’t you?”
“Well… yes, I guess I did.”
“And my vidcam,” Doug went on. “You saved that, too, didn’t you? The corporation owes you a lot”
Her expression changed. “I didn’t do it for the corporation,” Bianca said, so low mat Doug could barely hear her.
“Still,” he said, “you’re as much a hero as anybody.”
She shook her head. “Not really.”
Doug sensed that something had gone slightly off track.
Bianca had been smiling and friendly up to a moment ago, but now she seemed to be almost sad, almost — disappointed.
“Tell me all about it,” he said. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
“It was all in a rush, you know,” she said, still looking unhappy, almost bitter. “Kind of confused. Killifer was pretty nervous, really wired tight. He got pissed off because I grabbed his suit by mistake.”
Doug listened as she haltingly told him what they were doing while he and Brennart were stuck underneath the hopper on the mountaintop.
“… and when you started mumbling about the Yamagata people, he didn’t want to believe you.”
“Killifer?”
“Right. He didn’t like the idea of going out again to find them. He didn’t like it all”
Doug let out a sigh. “I guess I don’t blame him.”
Rhee’s face contracted into a puzzled frown. “And there was something semi-weird, too.”
“Semi-weird?” Doug grinned at her.
“When I got your vidcam, there was another piece of something… a flat oblong hunk of ceramic or metal. I don’t think it’s part of the vidcam. It was all white on one side and gold on the other.”
“Doesn’t sound like anything from the vidcam.”
“No. Besides, the vidcam looked intact to me. Maybe it was something Killifer had on him. I was in his suit, remember. Maybe he already had it in his pocket.”
Curious, Doug asked, “How big was it?”
She shaped it with her hands. “Oh, just about fifteen centimeters long, I think. Maybe half that wide.”
“White on one side and gold on the other?”
“I took it along with your vidcam, and then left it in my quarters,” Rhee said, looking even more puzzled. “But it’s disapp
eared.”
“Disappeared?” Doug sat up straighten.
“It was on my bureau yesterday, but now it’s gone.”
“Are you sure—”
“Of course I’m sure!” she snapped.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” — he laid. “Has anybody else been in your quarters?”
Rhee shook her head. But before she could say anything, the door to Doug’s cubicle slid back and Joanna stepped through. Even in ordinary blue coveralls she radiated power and decision. Zimmerman waddled in behind her, still in his rumpled three-piece suit with the lab coat thrown over it.
Rhee hopped off the bed. “I’m glad you feel so well, Doug,” she said. Impulsively, she darted forward and gave Doug a peck on the cheek, then rushed past Joanna and Zimmerman and left the room.
“Who’s that?” Joanna demanded.
“The woman who saved my life,” said Doug.
Joanna frowned, while Zimmerman smiled bemusedly.
“Does that give her the right to kiss you?” Joanna asked sharply.
“Oh come on, Mom! It was just a friendly little smack.”
“You don’t have to feel obligated to somebody for doing their job,” Joanna said.
Doug laughed lightly. “Simmer down, Mom. She’s just a friend. I hardly even know her, actually.”
Zimmerman eyed him thoughtfully. “Perhaps the nano-machines enhance your sexual attractiveness, hah?”
Doug frowned at the old man. “You must be Dr. Zimmerman, right?”
“Yah.” Zimmerman clicked his heels and bowed slightly, his paunch making it difficult to go farther.
“How soon can I get out of here?” Doug asked. “I feel fine. Terrific, in fact”
Glancing at the monitors over Doug’s bed, Zimmerman said, “Another few hours. There are some tests I must do. Then you get out of bed and I leave this glorified cave and return to civilization.”
Joanna paced over to the other side of the bed. “Do you really feel fine?”
“Like I said, terrific. Really.”
His mother looked across the bed at Zimmerman. Doug saw tears in her eyes. “You’ve saved him.”
The sloppy old man shrugged, suddenly too embarrassed to say anything.
And Doug realized the enormity of what had happened to him. I would have died, he told himself. Under any normal circumstances I would be dead now.
He looked at Zimmerman with different eyes and saw a man of strength and vigor and the kind of passion that dares to challenge anyone, everyone who stands in the way between him and his life’s work. Governments had outlawed nanotherapy. Ignorant mobs had burned nanolabs and killed researchers. But Zimmerman plugged doggedly ahead, despite all of that. Doug understood that even a fat old man can be heroic.
“You’ve given me life,” Doug said.
“No,” Zimmerman said, shaking his head slowly. “Your mother gave you life. I have merely helped you to keep it. And perhaps prolong it.”
“If there’s anything we can do,” Joanna said stiffly, “you only have to name it.”
“I have already informed you of my price, Madam.”
Joanna’s expression hardened. “Yes, you have, haven’t you?”
“What I have already gained will be payment enough. Plus transportation back to Basel, of course.”
“Of course,” said Joanna. She was positively glaring at the old man now.
Doug realized that their conversation, back and forth across his bed, dealt with things he didn’t know about.
“What’s the price?” he asked. “What are you two talking about?”
Joanna tore her gaze from Zimmerman and looked down at her son: so young, so innocent and unknowing.
“She is referring, young man, to the fact that you will not be allowed to leave the Moon.”
“For how long?” Doug asked.
“Forever,” blurted Joanna.
“You are a walking nahomachine factory now,” said Zimmerman. “No nation on Eartb will allow you entry.”
Doug turned from Zimmerman, who looked gravely concerned, to his mother, who looked angry and fearful and almost tearfully sad.
“Is that all?” he asked. “I have to stay here on the Moon? That’s what I wanted to do anyway.7
It was supposed to be Jinny Anson’s going-away party. And it was supposed to be a surprise. But when Anson stepped into the darkened biolab, led by the hand by Lev Brudnoy, and they snapped on the lights and everybody yelled, “Surprise!” Anson took it all in her stride.
“You are not surprised,” Brudnoy said, disappointed, as well-wishers pressed drinks into their hands.
Anson fixed him with a look. “What kind of a base director would I be if I didn’t know what you guys were plotting?”
“Ah,” said Brudnoy. “Of course.”
She was surprised, though, when a dozen of the women started handing her wedding presents. Little things, made at Moonbase of lunar raw materials or cast-off equipment. A digital clock set to Universal Mean Time that told when lunar sunrise and sunset would be. A hotplate of cermet salvaged from a junked lander. A vial of lunar glass filled with regolith sand.
Halfway through the wedding gifts, Jack Killifer showed up and the party quickly centered around the new hero. Just as Anson had predicted, the women clustered around Jack, who had shaved and showered and put on a crisp new jumpsuit for the party.
Even as she continued to unwrap presents, Anson scanned the growing crowd for the astronomer, Rhee. No sign of her. Busted romance? she wondered. Or is the kid too shy to come to the party? She sneaks off every now and then. I thought she just wanted to be alone, but maybe she’s already got a boyfriend tucked away someplace.
Not likely, Anson thought. Rhee’s not much of a looker and she’s too timid to go out and grab a guy for herself.
One of the lab benches had been turned into a bar. Anson wondered if the illicit still had been stashed in this lab all along; certainly they had all the right equipment for it, plumbing and glassware and enough chemical stores to plaster the whole base. The noise level climbed steadily: people talking at the top of their lungs, laughing, drinking. And then somebody turned on a music disk. The display screens along the walls all began to flash psychedelic colors and the lab quivered under the heavy thumping beat and sharp bleating whine of an adenoidal singer.
Couples paired off for dancing. Killifer seemed to be having the time of his life. Anson staggered away from the ear-splitting music, out into the tunnel where the party had spilled over.
Brudnoy was sitting on the floor with half a dozen others. Anson put her back to the wall and let herself slide down to a sitting position, careful not to spill a drop of her beaker of booze.
“You are not reigning at your own party?” Brudnoy asked. Even out here in the tunnel he had to half-shout to be heard over the music.
“Everybody’s having a great time,” she said.
“Are you?”
“Sure.”
“Truly?”
“Yes, of course.”
Brudnoy looked at her with his sad, bleary eyes. “I think you will miss us.”
“Of course I’ll miss you.”
“Will your husband come up here with you? Brudnoy asked.
Anson shook her head. “I’m not coming back, Lev. I told you that. I’m starting a new life.”
“In Texas.”
“Just outside of Austin, actually,” she said, straining her throat to get the words out over the party noise. “In the hill country.”
“The land of enchantment, they say.”
“That’s New Mexico.”
“Oh.”
“But the Texas hill country is beautiful. Air you can breathe. Mountains and valleys and land that goes on forever. Flowers! When the bluebonnets bloom it’s gorgeous. And a blue sky with white clouds. Clean and wonderful.”
“Not like Moonbase.”
“Not at all like Moonbase.”
“And you really want to leave all this behind you?” Br
udnoy made a sweep with his arm.
Anson knew he was kidding. Half kidding, at least. That sweep of his arm took in not merely this crowded underground warren of labs and workshops and cramped undersized living quarters. It took in the ancient ringwall mountains and the cracked crater floor, the vast tracts of Mare Nubium and the Ocean of Storms, the slow beauty of a lunar sunrise and the way the regolith sparkled when the sunshine first hits it, the sheer breathtaking wonder of standing on this airless world and planting your bootprints where no one had ever stood before, the excitement of building a new world, even that crazy mountain down at the south pole that’s always in sunshine.
She pulled in a deep breath. “Yes, I’m really going to leave all this behind me. I’ll miss you guys, but I’ve made up my mind.”
Anson was surprised that she had to force the words past a good-sized lump in her throat.
Doug found that he could not lie idly waiting for the medics to start their tests. He asked for a computer and, once the technician on duty wheeled a laptop machine to his bed on a swing-arm table, he searched through the literature program for something to read.
Nothing appealed to him. In the back of his mind a question simmered, making him restless with pent-up curiosity. An oblong piece of ceramic or metal, about fifteen centimeters long and half as wide, gold on one side and white on the other.
There must be an inventory program, Doug told himself. He started searching the computer files for it.
BIOLAB
The party was winding down. Jinny Anson had gone back inside the biolab, Lev Brudnoy at her side. Only about a dozen and a half people remained, most of them paired off into couples. The music had gone softly romantic, dancers held each other in their arms as they shuffled slowly across the cleared space behind tike lab benches.
As Anson tipped over the big cooler of fruit punch to get its last dregs into her plastic cup, Greg Masterson showed up at the door, looking somber as usual. Anson frowned inwardly. He’s going to have to unwind if he expects to make it as director up here. Otherwise he’s going to have a mutiny on his hands.
She giggled to herself. Captain Bligh, she thought. Who would be Fletcher Christian and lead the mutineers?