Anti-Grav Unlimited

by Duncan Long

  “Sure,” I said, hoping my panic didn’t show in my voice. I wasn’t in such a great hurry after my impromptu tumbling routine.

  Needless to say, the weak lunar gravity takes some getting used to. It’s kind of like walking in chest deep water without the resistance of the water to hold you back. A gentle jump can bounce you four or five feet into the—airless—"air.” By the time we’d gone the short distance across the plain separating us from the base’s entrance, both Nikki and I had pretty well mastered the kangaroo hop that can get you around so quickly on the Moon. Jake’s suit had the legs tied together and he functioned like he’d been born on the Moon; his hopping motions were both graceful and functional.

  I half expected the base to be locked up. But of course it wasn’t. There aren’t many unaccounted-for persons walking about on the Moon; burglary is not a problem. The main question was whether or not the air locks on the door would be operational.

  Jake rotated the heavy ring on the door and it popped open. It led into an white plastic airlock barely big enough for eight or nine people at the most. We entered the small room and I closed and twisted the lever of the door behind us; sunlight came through the translucent plastic walls so that we could see. Nikki pushed the “Cycle” button. Nothing happened. The lock wasn’t functional.

  “Power’s down,” Jake said. “The air locks all have an emergency switch in them so that it’s impossible to accidentally get locked out.”

  “What’s it look like?”

  “Probably a panel. Small metal plate door. Something like that.”

  We searched about inside the white plastic lock. Finally, I spotted the thin lines of a panel cover. For some reason it was designed to blend into the rest of the wall; it made everything look nicer but was a very poor practice for such a critical emergency device. “Is this it?”

  “Must be,” Jake replied. “Can you get it open?”

  Obtaining purchase on a small, hairline opening is impossible in a space suit. “Remind me to grow fingernails on my gloves next time we come to the Moon.”

  “Here.” Jake handed me a small-bladed screwdriver from the tool kit that he’d mounted on his suit.

  I put the blade into the crack and jimmied the plastic apart. It suddenly popped off and the plate went cart-wheeling through the space in the chamber, silently bounced off a wall, and slowly fell to the floor. Getting used to the low gravity and airlessness is going to take some time, I decided as I handed the tool back to Jake.

  There was one red button under the panel.

  “Hey, they don’t have auto-destruct buttons on these bases, do they?” I asked.

  Nikki laughed, ” I know a good way to see if that’s it.”

  “Cross your fingers,” I pressed it hoping we were only kidding. I pressed the button. An electric overhead light came on in the chamber to augment the small amount of light coming through the plastic walls. But nothing else happened. There was no build-up of pressure inside the airlock. “Now what?” I asked.

  “Try the cycle button again,” Jake said.

  Nikki pressed the button and in a moment a low hiss started that gradually grew louder. Our suits quit acting like balloons as the chamber filled with air.

  I cautiously cracked my helmet of my suit as Nikki and Jake removed theirs and unlatched the inner door of the chamber to create a small pop as the pressure differences between rooms evened out. I took a deep breath; stale, recycled, but still air. And after the humid conditions on the inside of the suits, if felt very refreshing, cool, and dry.

  We stepped into the first room behind the lock, carefully sealing the door behind us. It was basically a larger version of the airlock: a huge, white bubble that filtered sunlight through it so that the interior was dimly lit. The electric lights seemed to be off. Flipping the switch beside the door didn’t do anything. The power was off inside the base. Fortunately, with a lunar day of fourteen and a half Earth days, we still had several more “days” of light and there was no big hurry to get things started up.

  We put our helmets on a small dispatcher’s desk sitting next to the door. Nikki and I followed Jake’s lead and took off our gloves and laid them beside our helmets, followed by our backpacks.

  “Now, let’s see how this station is set up,” I said, feeling light as a feather once I was freed of the pack and helmet.

  “Our first task will be to locate the radio link.” Jake had told us that the station sensors were connected to an auto radio-link to Earth. If we didn’t disconnect it, it would eventually send back enough information on changes within the base, power systems in use, and so forth, to alert those on Earth that something was going on in the camp. We’d decided that if it suddenly stopped its transmission, anyone monitoring from Earth would assume that it was just an equipment malfunction; for us this was better than having detectors in the base showing that it was occupied (even if those on Earth would be at a loss to explain by whom or what).

  Since we were standing in the command center of the base, a quick search allowed us to locate the monitor.

  “Say good night,” I said as I jerked the electric cable from the back of the equipment. To be on the safe side, Jake also disconnected the antenna from the transmitter, noting, “Can’t be too careful. I’d suggest we spit up and see what sort of supplies we have here. Hopefully enough for a few days — I hate to make the return trip too soon.”

  “Ditto,” I said, my stiff legs making me shudder at the thought. “Let’s split up… Where should we check?”

  Jake gave us a rough layout of the domes that comprised the base. Half an hour later we rendezvoused at the control room again.

  “What did everyone find?” I asked. “It looks to me like they left in a hurry. All sorts of stuff left behind in the crew quarters. Most of it is junk but…”

  Nikki answered first. “There’s enough food and water to supply us for at least a year. My only question is what about the air?”

  “We have a problem there,” Jake said. “When they pulled out, the hydroponics area wasn’t properly shut down. All the—now dead—plants were left in their trays. We’ll have to put in some elbow grease to get the greenhouse cleaned up and new seeds planted. But I think we’ll have enough air until they come online. There’s a pretty good reserve of oxygen in the tanks and we can scrub the air of CO2 for quite a while.”

  “The mining operation doesn’t look like it ever got started,” I said. “I didn’t see a single bot anywhere in the shaft.”

  “I can check that quick enough,” Jake said, bouncing over to a control console. He tapped some keys and an inventory came on screen. He moused his way through several links and then tapped the screen. “There you have it. It looks as though the mine was ready to be worked but, if this is correct, the are still stored in their crates.”

  I nodded. “I saw a bunch of crates in the storehouse.”

  “Then we could probably program them to clean out the hydroponics tanks and growth tanks,” Nikki suggested.

  “"Fraid not,” Jake said, turning back from the screen. “According to the data here, the brains for the units were never shipped. But we should be able to clean up the hydroponics ourselves.”

  “But that won’t help us start up the mining,” I said. The main reason we chose to land at the base had been to produce metal from the ore deposited by the impact of the ancient giant meteor that had created the Copernicus crater. The same metal which—with the help of the solar panel’s energy and some other odds and ends of equipment which could be scrounged or even dragged up from Earth, could then be converted into gravity rods.

  But there were no bots to do the work.

  “Apparently the last shipment to make the base operational was aborted,” Jake said.

  No one said much else about it then. But we knew we’d have to find the bots before it would be possible to build more rods which we all saw as the key to creating our own little business that might do about anything from supply unlimited power to create a full-fledg
ed space ship capable of traveling through the solar system with about as much ease as we now traveled around the surface of Earth.

  After a quick meal of insta-rations, we were ready to call it a day. We made our way to the crew quarters which extended down into the lunar rock, consisting of forty cabins reached via a long, underground hallway leading from the command center. Each cabin was large, ten by twenty meters, and contained a pair of bunk beds, desks, two retrieval monitors, a 3V set, and a small bath as well as a Net device, the latter being dead. Each room was also a jumble as the tenants had apparently been forced to sort hurriedly through their belongings to try to decide what to take back to Earth. A few rooms had even ripened due to dirty clothing having been left behind to take on a life of its own. But most also had the towels, soap, and other supplies we’d be needing.

  Despite my dream of sharing a bed with Nikki, she picked out a room of her own. I said my

  “good nights” to Jake and Nikki—I was ready to sleep. I heard Nikki laughing out in the hallway; apparently she and Jake had decided to stay up a while. Feeling like a school boy, the thought sprang to my mind, Is Nikki interested in Jake?

  I didn’t know. I was too tired to worry about it. The weak lunar gravity made the thin mattress softer than anything on Earth. That—coupled with my exhaustion—quickly dropped me into a dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 11

  “Rise and shine,” Nikki’s voice ordered, drifting in from nowhere.

  I felt a tug on my nose and opened my right eye to see what was going on. My timing was perfect; the overhead light flipped on with blinding clarity. I groaned and pulled the sheet over my head.

  “We need to get going if we’re going to get things done today,” Nikki said as she left the room.

  “Right…” With a brown taste in my mouth, I all but fell from bed then staggered a moment trying to get my footing in the light gravity of the Moon. I finally made it into the bathroom where a shower of hot, slowly-falling water got my eyes to where they’d stay open.

  After rifling through the closets in my room, I discovered a pair of yellow coveralls that more or less fit me. A pair of slip-on sneakers—which I hoped hadn’t been owned by someone with a fungal disease—completed my pre-owned outfit. I wondered why I hadn’t had the good sense the night before to bring along a container of caffinex—in the instant-hot packages that filled the storage area of the mess hall—back to my room before retiring. On the other hand, thinking about getting out of the room and getting some caffinex gave me the will to live.

  I bounced into the control room on my way to the mess and was surprised to see that the whole front of the room facing the airlock was now a clear plastic window which showed the panorama of the plain formed by the crater bottom. The gray stillness of it seemed alien when viewed from inside the safe confines of the room. Quiet, unfriendly, and lifeless. The pink van sitting in the distance looked like some sort of advertising joke that a used-car dealer might pull.

  The pink was the only splotch of color on the whole plain.

  Jake sat at a console speaking to a computer in a low tone and occasionally punching at a key with a beefy finger.

  “How’d you do that?” I asked.

  “What?” He turned toward me.

  “How’d you get the view?”

  “Plastic. When a current goes through it, it becomes transparent. Instant windows. Just had to throw the right switch. We’re using so little energy right now that the solar cells have already fully charged the base’s storage batteries. We’ve got power to waste.” Jake grinned, then went back to his work.

  Nikki sat with another computer across her lap and waved as I entered the mess hall.

  I half floated through to the food storage room and hunted up a packet of caffinex. I have to wake up. I popped the seal on it and breathed in the fumes of the brew a moment before drinking, then shuffled back into the control room, trying to get the liquid out of the cup and into my mouth rather than having the caffinex wiggle around in the weak gravity and depart for parts unknown.

  “What’s on the agenda for today?”

  “Good question,” Nikki answered. “We’d better have a council of war.”

  “Jake?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Uh… Just a moment.” He spoke one last command and the printer next to the computer started coughing out figures. He rose and hopped over to where we were. I noticed that he’d tied his shoe laces together to allow his good leg to pull his bad one along, bouncing as if he were on a pogo stick.

  “Since sleeping all day doesn’t seem to be an option,” I half suggested, raising an eyebrow suggestively as I glanced at Nikki, who in turn, looked as innocent as usual, “we need to decide what we’re going to do. Need to get organized. Have you two been able to pull anything of interest out of the computers?”

  “Yeah,” Jake said. “Got a list of mining equipment and set-up procedures from the computer bank before you woke up. We can go over it later, but it looks like we have all the stuff we’d need to keep the base operating and complete the mining operation. Almost. Everything but the bots’

  brains. It’s just a matter of getting the thing up and running except for the bots.”

  “Nikki?”

  “Yeah. It was among the last of the transmissions they received here before closing up the base. But I find something of interest. The Eratothenes Base had the same model of bots and, as near as I can tell, they were operational.”

  “Where in the world—excuse me—where in the Moon is the Eratothenes Base?” I was having trouble making conversation; I kept looking at Nikki’s figure that was temptingly displayed in a tight yellow jump suit, unzipped to “see level.” I was distracted a moment as I speculated whether this noticeably tempting display was for my benefit or Jake’s. Or maybe Nikki just didn’t give a rip and was dressing for comfort. Who knew? My mind returned to what was being said.

  “Eratothenes Crater is just a hop and a skip from here,” Jake said. “The van would get us there in a couple of hours at the most.”

  “But would they leave the bots behind?” Nikki asked. “I really couldn’t find anything to show the bots are still there.”

  “Bots, even those for mining operations, aren’t as expensive as shipping them home. I suspect that the Eratothenes Base will be like this one. About all they’ll have taken out is the crew.”

  “Do we know that the Eratothenes Base is closed?” I asked. I could imagine stumbling into the base and then having to high-tail it out again.

  “I don’t have the inside information,” Jake said, “but based on the amount of surplus gear that’s been hitting the market, I’m welling to bet that none of the lunar bases is operational.”

  Nikki spoke, “That certainly fits in with what I heard before I lost my job. The gossip among the rocket jocks was that the moon had been abandoned.”

  “So…,” Jake said, ” If we could sneak into the base… and get some bots, we’d be able to get the hydroponics started in a hurry—”

  “And then,” I continued, “get the metallurgical plant and mining operation ready to go as well. That would be perfect. I’d like to see if it’s practical to manufacture the anti-grav rods but I’ll need the bots.”

  “If we could do that…” Jake said, his voice trailing off.

  “There’s about not limit to what we might achieve,” Nikki finished, looking me straight in the eyes.

  “ If,” I said. “Building the magnetic furnace and other equipment needed to make the rods won’t be easy. And we don’t even know if the other base has the bots.”

  “But if you could build the rods here,” Nikki said, “and then mount a full-scale mining and manufacturing operation if it all looked practical…”

  “The sky’s the limit.”

  We all thought about it for a moment.

  “There are still a whole lot of ‘if’s’ in all this,” I reminded them.

  “But we have to have the bots,” Nikki said.

  “We�
��ve nothing to lose,” I said. “Any problem with going over right now to check it out?”

  There wasn’t.

  * * *

  Forty minutes later, I met Nikki and Jake at the front air lock. Jake had some spare oxygen tanks and a carbonylon cable wound around his suit. “We’d better replace our suit tanks. Most of the tanks in the van are depleted.”

  Jake and I crunched helmets together trying to help Nikki. While we struggled trying not to look too clumsy she slipped off her own tank and replaced it. When we’d gotten all sorted out, we refilled the empty tanks from our suits and carried them with us through the airlock and on out toward the van.

  The surface of the Moon is hard to become accustomed to. The Earth is always in the sky. A different side of it, maybe, but always there. Though the sun was setting, it, too, seemed eternally rooted in place. To an Earther, the scene was totally unreal after living on a planet where ALL the heavenly bodies rose and set in twelve hours. It made it seem as if time had stopped.

  We unloaded everything from the van which we wouldn’t be needing for our short flight so that we’d have more room for transporting bots or other equipment back from the base (if it was actually abandoned).

  Unloading the van was quite a job.

  We’d really wedged a lot of stuff into it and getting it unpacked while wearing heavy gloves was no small task. It was a half hour before we lifted off and started traveling up and out of our huge crater. I headed the van toward the north east and the computer took over when it picked up the homing beam from the Eratothenes Base. It was another white-knuckle flight since Nikki had programmed the computer for maximum speed while Jake and I had finished unloading the van.

  Maximum speed on the Moon is very fast since you don’t have atmosphere to contend with and you’re keeping your craft as close as is practical to the surface to minimize the chances of radar detection. Because there’s no atmosphere, everything looks closer and especially so when the surface you’re traveling over is comprised of lunar mountains—with their sheer grades—the size of those in the Carpathian Range. We accelerated the first half of the trip and then decelerated the last half, the tops of boulders and mountains whizzing by seemingly close to our feet. It was fortunate that the suites had gloves so the others couldn’t see how tightly I gripped the non-functioning steering wheel from time to time.