Moon For Sale

by Jeff Pollard

  She's supposed to take over as capsule communicator (CAPCOM) soon. CAPCOM is the person on the ground in charge of communicating with the crew, a position which was created because socially inept controllers had shown themselves to be incapable of self-censoring and would flood astronauts with minute details of the operation of the backup environmental systems. CAPCOM is an astronaut and all information going to the crew goes through them, thus making the job essentially a filter for over zealous nerds. When shifts change, you don't want new controllers starting their shifts without knowing what's going on. Thus the next shift of controllers are all present for at least two hours before their shifts actually begin so they can get acclimated to the state of things. Sylvia is waiting to relieve Josh Yerino (who is serving as CAPCOM as well as assistant flight director) when her cell phone rings and she finds herself talking to the crew of Pegasus 3, a serious departure from standard operating procedure. If it were Kingsley, she might dismiss it as eccentricity, but Tim's an Army man and not prone to such behavior without good reason.

  Sylvia listens to instruction and calmly walks out of Mission Control while the room is busy trying to solve the data uplink problems.

  “Are you out of control?” Tim asks.

  “That's affirm,” Sylvia says while walking down the hallway as if she's late to be somewhere important.

  “Why do you think that?” Sylvia asks.

  “Look at the pattern,” Kingsley says.

  “What pattern?”

  “Landing Pegasus 2: there was a communication failure, it's small, rather insignificant, no huge cause for alarm, followed by a failure of the laser range finder. Either problem on its own isn't a huge deal. But that combination is a serious issue. Then the last launch, the best thinking we have right now is a combination of a flaw in the bulkhead and a small flaw in the insulation. Two problems that on their own aren't all that noticeable or suspicious. Now this: a failure of the IR camera combined with a faulty reading on the LRF, making it fairly likely that we would smack into the Aquila instead of docking. You seeing the pattern now?” K asks.

  “No, could you please explain this pattern in more detail,” Sylvia says dryly. “Well, what do you want me to do about it?”

  “See if anyone is acting suspicious,” K says. “We don't know who to trust, so I want you to give me some recon on how people are acting. Is anyone being suspicious?”

  “Where do I even start?” Sylvia asks.

  “Try Hammersmith and Weller. If they're clean, then we can bring them in on this. But I need to know they're clean,” K says.

  “How do I do that?”

  “Display some fucking adaptability,” K replies.

  “Alright,” Sylvia says.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for them,” Sylvia says.

  “They're not in control?” K asks.

  “No, they left after the launch,” Sylvia says.

  “That's suspicious,” K says.

  “Is it?” Sylvia asks. “They don't seem to be in their offices.”

  “That's suspicious,” K says. “Maybe they know I'm on to them.”

  “You're losing it,” Caroline replies.

  “They might be meeting with their handler right now, getting further instructions. Maybe they wanted to get out of the building so they wouldn't be around for the docking failure,” K suggests.

  “Welp, I think we eliminate those conspiracy theories,” Sylvia says.

  “Why?” Tim asks.

  “Because I found them,” Sylvia says.

  “And?” K asks.

  “And they're having sex in your office,” Sylvia says, peering in through the window in the door to K's office, finding Hammersmith and Weller on the couch, apparently inebriated and quite oblivious to the world around them.

  “They're having sex in my office?” K asks.

  “That's right,” Sylvia says as she walks away.

  “Interesting,” K says, annoyed. Sylvia proceeds into an empty conference room and takes a seat.

  “Are you sure it's sabotage?” Sylvia asks, putting her feet up on the conference table. “Sure there's a pattern, but isn't this pattern pretty indistinguishable from, you know, shit fucking up?”

  “It's a little too indistinguishable from ordinary broken stuff,” K replies.

  “Is it?”

  “I'm with K on this,” Tim says.

  “The downlink, that's not screwed up, you guys severed the link,” Sylvia says.

  “Yeah, but don't tell anyone, we don't want any possible saboteur to know we're on to them,” K says.

  “You've been waiting your whole life to say that sentence,” Caroline adds.

  “So you're thinking it's a computer person, the LRF screwed up twice now, the dish pointing the wrong way, the IR camera going off line, those are all things that I imagine a hacker could do, right?” Sylvia asks.

  “Right,” K says.

  “But what about the bulkhead failure? I don't imagine hackers can make flaws in aluminum,” Sylvia says. “These are two different kinds of failure.”

  “Which is why I'm afraid of letting anyone know we're on to them, it might be more than one person,” K says, “They might have somebody in the software team as well as someone in hardware.”

  “Who's they?” Sylvia asks. “Who do you think is behind this?”

  “Who do you think?” K asks.

  “I think you think ULA, but let me tell you, it's one thing to hire a fuck ton of lobbyists and to try to get your way … it's something else entirely to actually sabotage rockets and spacecraft and maybe kill people. That's something else. I don't think they'd do it. I'm looking at China and Russia.”

  “She's got a point,” Tim says. “Chinese hackers have been getting into government and military computers for decades now.”

  “Yeah, but they're not very good at hiding it,” K says.

  “So Russia?” Sylvia asks. “I don't see what anybody has to gain from doing this to us.”

  “Other than ULA making sure they beat us to the Moon,” K says.

  “I don't see them being behind this,” Sylvia says.

  “Well, I guess we found our mole, it's Sylvia, good call on her being the best one to contact,” K says sarcastically to Tim.

  Kingsley's office suddenly erupts in noise. Hammersmith and Weller's phones are going off. They scramble to check their phones and fix their hair. They arrive in Mission Control a few minutes later. “What's going on?” Brittany asks Mission Director Greenwood at the back of the room. He looks like he's about to have a stroke, face red, hands shaking, a wreck.

  “We don't have any data right now, and they were supposed to wait until we got communication restored before going, and then, guess what, tracking cameras showed they were doing TLI. They're on their way to the Moon and we don't have any contact with them,” Greenwood says.

  “No contact? No radio, nothing?” Hammersmith asks.

  “No radio contact for thirty minutes, they did TLI about twenty minutes ago,” Greenwood says. Yerino is busy trying to call Griffin on the radio, but receiving no response.

  “I have one drink and this happens?” Hammersmith mutters to herself.

  “What are we doing to get data back?” Weller asks at nearly a shout to his half of the mission control room, getting mostly frightened looks in response.

  “Ms. Hammersmith, can I talk to you for a minute,” Sylvia Probst says with a tone of voice that gets Brittany's complete attention.

  “He's probably right,” Hammersmith says quietly in her office a few minutes later. “I can see the LRF and comms failure on Pegasus 2 and then this LRF and IR camera failure on Pegasus 3 being a little too convenient, a little too well timed. I don't know about the bulkhead though.”

  “That's what I said,” Sylvia replies. “But then he said it's probably at least two people, one in software and one in hardware. And he wants to know who we can trust and who's a
cting suspicious.”

  “He went to you before me?” Brittany asks.

  “Don't ask me, I'm just following orders,” Sylvia replies.

  “I don't think there needs to be two people in on that, it could just be one very good hacker,” Brittany says. “The bulkhead failure, we're thinking the insulation material was improperly applied, maybe that can be achieved by hacking into the computers down in assembly and changing a timer so they spray the outer lining too early and it freezes the insulation before it's totally spread out. I don't know the exact details, but I mean, everything involves computers. They may not even be in the country.”

  “Are all these computers accessible from the outside world though? I can see the computers where they write code for the capsule, but the computers in assembly? Are those online? Can you accomplish this from outside the building?”

  “I don't know. We'll need to get a real nerd on this,” Hammersmith says. “Like our head of IT security.”

  “Can you vouch for him that he's not the mole?” Sylvia asks.

  “I barely know the guy.”

  “So that's a no-go,” Sylvia says. “It was a fight for me to bring you in on this, and Weller's not allowed on the inside yet, so I can already tell you what Kingsley would say.”

  “He's that paranoid? I mean, I can kind of see him being suspicious of me because of the political rumors, but Weller? That rocket nerd? Come on, that guy does not have a price. Unless they're offering to make him the head of the Russian Space Agency and a huge budget.”

  “Is that out of the realm of possibility? Maybe China, they could put him in charge of the Long March 10 program, who knows. Have you noticed him acting suspicious in any way.”

  “Suspicious how?” Hammersmith asks.

  “Anything. Is he acting any different?”

  “He does seem a little more. . .confident.”

  “Is that why you banged him?” Sylvia asks.

  “Jesus,” Hammersmith mutters. “Does Kingsley have his own office bugged?”

  “No-well, maybe, but that's not how I know about it.”

  “So what's the plan?” Hammersmith asks.

  “How about you go and figure out if Weller is clean.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “Display some fucking adaptability,” Sylvia replies.

  “That's military speak for...”

  “I have no idea, but now it's your problem.”

  “And what will you be doing?” Hammersmith asks.

  “I'm gonna go figure out a trust-worthy computer nerd.”

  The Luna 100 Orion capsule has a hundred thousand mile head-start toward the Moon, but is still fifty hours away from entering lunar orbit. Shenzhou 19 is already in lunar orbit. The crew of Pegasus 3 in a Griffin 3.0 settle in for a three day journey out to the Moon in their space capsule with a total of 13 cubic meters of living space, more than double the volume of the Apollo command module. With their seats secured against the floor of the capsule, the capsule becomes a fairly roomy cylinder with room to float around, and a separate bathroom just barely large enough for you to pretzel your way into. Jim Lovell takes to the freedom of zero-g like an old pro should, flying around effortlessly.

  “Roger Hawthorne, we're reading you, but it seems you're not reading everything we say,” Tim says on the radio. “We're trying everything we can with the comms for the data link. But I can tell you that we have no problems and everything is green right now, over.” Tim Velcros his headset to a panel and floats away. “How long you think they'll buy this?”

  “They don't need to buy anything,” K says. “We can handle this ourselves. If something serious breaks, we can turn the data link back on and get help. But otherwise, we don't need 'em. And first order of business when we get to the Pegasus, we need to shut down that data-link.”

  “Does it have a send but don't receive setting?” Tim asks.

  “Not stock,” K replies. “Have a little faith, come on, I'm a programmer first, eccentric billionaire second.”

  “Yep, she's shrinking all right,” Jim Lovell says from a window. All eyes turn back to Earth. They're passing an altitude of 10,000 km, more than twenty times the altitude of the ISS and Excalibur, and the blue marble has certainly shrunk away from them. In LEO, the Earth takes up half of your sky, but from here, now it's possible to see the whole disc of the Earth at once. It still takes up a large area of your field of view and requires you to move your eyes around to survey the whole thing. “Just wait till we get out to the Moon, she'll fit behind your thumb.”

  K, Tim, and Caroline stare at the Earth in awe.

  “Well, now's as good a time as any,” Caroline says. She floats down away from the window and retrieves a pouch from her personal things. She produces four Capri-Sun like drink pouches and distributes them.

  “What's this?” K asks.

  “A little toast,” Caroline says. K looks at the label.

  “Isn't it bad luck to toast with non-alcoholic, non-carbonated beverages?” K asks.

  “Well the carbonated ones were out because of space burps. And alcohol was out-” Caroline says.

  “You can get around those mission rules you know,” K says with a sly smile.

  “Right. So with those constraints, the best toast material I could come up with is-”

  “A virgin mojito?” Tim wonders aloud, having already tasted his.

  “Hey, you're supposed to wait for the toast,” Lovell says to Tim.

  “Well then,” K says. “To the Moon!”

  “Actually, I had something else in mind,” Caroline interrupts. “I would just like to announce that I am four months pregnant.”

  “Come again?” K asks, choking on his virgin mojito. “You're pregnant? Since when?”

  “Four months ago,” Caroline replies. “Oh, and uh, twins.”

  “You're just now telling me?” K asks, not so much mad as bewildered.

  “I've been trying for four years solid, and with mis-starts you don't want to jinx anything. But four months and it looks good.”

  “You smuggled fetuses on a ship to the Moon?” Tim asks sarcastically.

  “And I kept it a secret,” Lovell adds.

  “How did you know?” Tim asks.

  “You get to my age, you learn a thing or two about women,” Lovell says. “That and she told me.”

  “You told him!?” K asks.

  “And also Brittany,” Caroline adds.

  “Hammersmith knows!?”

  “Which is why I doubt she's sabotaging us,” Caroline adds. “So what do you have to say?” For once, Kingsley is speechless. He fights back tears, and becomes a zero-gravity prototype of stoicism.

  Chapter 29

  “What's cookin'...good looking,” Brittany Hammersmith says to Weller in the most awkward way imaginable. She stands in the doorway to his office.

  “Yeah so that didn't get weird immediately,” Weller replies.

  “What are you working on?” Hammersmith asks. She walks around his desk and tries to get a look at his computer screen, but he makes a few rapid click before she can get there and she only discovers his e-mail open. “Trying to get our software people to stop acting like assholes,” Weller replies.

  “What are you doing later?” Hammersmith asks.

  “You want another ride on the Weller rocket?”

  “Don't ever call anything that,” Hammersmith says with a sneer.

  “We've got serious problems with this data-link, we need to get this fixed.”

  “Well you've got subordinates, and you haven't seen your bed in days,” Hammersmith replies and lets her words hang in the air.

  “You're not just telling me to go home,” Weller replies.

  “Congratulations, you're not completely oblivious to the world's most obvious flirting,” Brittany thinks to herself. “Well, I need to get some rest too. Maybe some relaxation would clear our heads,” she says as she sits on the edge of his d
esk, between him and his keyboard.

  “Back to your place then?” Weller suggests.

  “Your place works better,” Hammersmith says.

  “I'd prefer not,” Weller replies.

  “Your place or nothing,” Hammersmith says. “The press watches my place.”

  “As much as I'd love to, seriously, this is just bad timing, I can't leave them hanging like this.” Weller scoots his chair and looks around her to continue writing an e-mail. She's gotten nowhere.

  “The data-link isn't a real problem,” Hammersmith blurts out.

  “What do you mean?”

  “K cut it, it's not broken,” Hammersmith says. So much for that stealthy approach, Brittany thinks. If he's the mole, he knows K is on to him. Let's pretend like I did this on purpose to judge his reaction.

  “But why would...” Weller trails off. “He thinks there's some kind of-”

  “Sabotage,” Brittany replies.

  “And you're thinking about screwing instead of finding the mole?” Weller replies.

  “Actually I don't believe there's a mole,” Hammersmith says.

  “Look at the pattern,” Weller replies, standing up and walking to his window, looking through the blinds suspiciously. “You have pairs of smaller failure that together-”

  “I know the pattern,” Hammersmith replies.

  “Who does K think is behind it?” Weller asks.

  “Well you and I were at the top of the list,” Hammersmith says.

  “No, I mean who's pulling the strings.”

  “I don't know, the Illuminati? Look, this is the rocket business, things break, if we have a string of problems and our first thought is that we must have been sabotaged, we've got a serious problem with self-evaluation. We're overlooking the obvious and more likely truth that we're not infallible and our stuff breaks without it being sabotaged. NASA had the same problem after Challenger, they said, oh no, it can't be the engines, it can't be the boosters, maybe it was terrorists. Let's be real.”