Over the Moon (Star-Crossed Book 1)

by K. McLaughlin

  “Stowaway.”

  “Shit. Sick?”

  “Yup.”

  She reached for her buckles in reflex, getting ready to unbuckle and go – somewhere. He didn’t know where she was thinking to go. He waved her back into her seat. Everyone was so damned hair-trigger when it came to this virus. Even Amy, and she was level-headed as you could get. That’s why he had her as his second in command out here.

  “It’s dealt with,” he said.

  She stopped moving. Inhaled. Exhaled again. “OK,” she said.

  “A passenger spotted him, locked him in the airlock.” He slid into his seat and buckled himself down. His eyes scanned the computer screens displaying the ship’s status. Everything looked good.

  “What’re we going to do with him, Pat? We don’t have a place to quarantine sick people,” Amy said. She still looked worried. And it made sense to be. There were damned few really safe places left right now, and the moon happened to be one of them. He could understand not wanting to lose that sense of security.

  “He’s not going to be a problem, Amy,” Patrick replied. “I opened the outer airlock. He’s gone.”

  She gaped at him for a moment, then snapped her mouth closed before answering. “Jesus, Pat. You spaced him?”

  He turned back to his displays. The last thing he needed was more of this crap from someone else. He was still burning from having had to kill the man in the first place, and the verbal thrashing he got from the passenger only made it worse. “I don’t need this from you, Amy.”

  “No, of course not. Sorry,” she said. “Nothing else you could have done, Pat. Just…Jesus. I’m sorry.”

  It was the least crappy call of a few crappy calls. He pushed buttons on his console, trying to find something to occupy his mind. He was going to have a lot of spare time for the rest of the trip out to the base to consider what he’d done, and if it had really been the only good choice. Too much damned time. He found himself checking out the passenger manifest, wondering who that woman was. Finally he found her photo.

  “Was that who found the guy?” Amy asked, peeking over his shoulder at his screen.

  “Yeah,” he replied. And it could be trouble. Carmen Rosa. Rosa! Damn it, that was the doctor’s daughter. Not only was she supposed to be Doctor Rosa’s primary assistant, she was also the guy’s kid. Their one biggest VIP on this entire mission was that doc, and he’d already allowed his daughter to be in jeopardy. And pissed her off, too.

  In theory, he was going to remain in charge of the moon base. He knew the place. He knew the domes, knew the dangers, knew how to make things happen out there. But in practice, Doctor Rosa had been given pretty much unlimited budget and unlimited access to resources and personnel. So he knew damned well that if he pissed the good doctor off, his ass was going to be back on Earth faster than he could blink.

  And Earth didn’t even seem like a nice place to visit just now, let alone get permanently grounded on. He had sudden visions of being transferred to someplace in Texas, or some other major hot zone for the disease.

  “I think I ought to go back and fill Doctor Rosa in on what went down,” he said.

  “Yeah, sounds good,” Amy said. “I’ll hold down the fort till you get back.”

  The computer said that Rosa’s room was upper deck, first door on the starboard side. Patrick unbuckled and pushed his way back out of the cockpit. The cockpit door snapped open as he approached, and he floated out into an open space. There were small flights of stairs here, to use while in gravity. But out here in space? He could fly, here. He pushed off and glided effortlessly across to the hatch into the upper deck. That never got tiresome. Compared to walking, gliding around in space was like a dream. The only nightmare was the idea of being trapped back on Earth again. He’d stay out here forever, if he could. If they’d let him.

  But for health reasons, a year was the most they’d usually allow anyone to spend on the moon, and his time was already up a month ago. The powers-that-be in the US government ordered him to stay put until this crisis was over, but once they solved the virus issue he was due to be grounded. It might be years before he got another serious space mission again. There were lots of people trying for not a lot of spots.

  He reached Rosa’s door and knocked.

  “Enter,” said a muffled voice from inside.

  He opened the door. There was only one man inside the room – of everyone on this ship, only this one man merited a room to himself. The extra bunk was full of crates, carefully lashed to the wall so they wouldn’t budge. Supplies, Patrick guessed.

  The doctor himself was a slender man, wiry even. He wore glasses, had a mustache and tufts of hair near his ears, but was mostly bald on top. His skin had the same light brown tinge his daughter’s did. He was seat-belted into a chair, working on a computer on the room’s only desk when Patrick came in. Instead of being upset at the disturbance, he looked up with a smile that brightened his face in a way that Patrick couldn’t help but find appealing.

  “Yes? Can I help you?” Rosa asked.

  “I’m Patrick Wynn,” he replied. “We met, back on the ground, sir.”

  “Yes of course – our mission commander,” Rosa said. “I’m sorry, I’d stand, but I don’t really have my space legs. Or my space anything else, really.” He shrugged in a self-deprecating way.

  “No need, sir. I just wanted to pass you a report on an incident a short while ago. We had a stowaway, sir. Sick. He had hidden away behind a bulkhead panel in the main cargo airlock.”

  Now Rosa did look alarmed. “Where is he? If he interacts with anyone at all…!”

  Patrick shook his head and made a calming gesture with his hands. “He never came close enough to anyone to pass on the infection, and we’ll have the area sterilized once we land. He was contained inside the airlock by one of the passengers, and I…” Patrick steeled himself, gritted his teeth before rushing on. “I activated the outer door and cycled him into space.”

  Doctor Rosa looked grim. But he nodded to himself, not really looking at Patrick or anyone else. “Yes, probably right,” he said, not really to anyone in particular. Then he looked straight back at Patrick again. “Nothing else you could have done. No facilities to house the sick on Luna, are there? No quarantine facility.”

  “No, there isn’t.” Although perhaps they could have worked out something. Put up an emergency dome as temporary housing, something to keep the man alive… Damn, but he was overthinking this. The man was dead anyway, would have died within days. Keeping him alive would have put them all at risk. Which would have been insane.

  “Doctor Rosa, there’s one other thing you should know,” Patrick added. “The passenger who found was your daughter. She isolated him before he could get out and infect the ship.”

  “She is all right?” Rosa asked. “You’re sure he never came close enough to infect her?”

  “I reviewed the video feeds myself,” Patrick said. “Never came within twenty feet.”

  Rosa heaved out a sigh and relaxed. “She did well, then. Maybe bringing her along was even a better thing than I had believed.” He looked up at Patrick, cocked and eyebrow and half a smile. “Do you think it was nepotism, my bringing my daughter with me out here to the one truly safe place humanity has left?”

  Patrick recalled Carmen’s hand on his wrist, her hot words, the tenacity she demonstrated – and the smarts she’d shown, in figuring out the right thing to do and taking immediate action. He found himself recalling her face, too. Actually he couldn’t forget it even if he tried. Her cheekbones had sharp angles, her long dark hair pulled back into a braid… He felt himself flush a little, and he thought carefully about how to answer. “I think she’s a remarkably capable woman,” he said.

  Rosa looked amused. “A cautious answer. I like you, Patrick. I think we will work well together. And we must. Too much is counting on us to fail.”

  “I agree completely, sir. You let me know what you need, and I’ll do whatever I can to help,” Patri
ck said.

  “Good. For now, I need to continue my study of all this research – everything that has been done to look at the virus, to attack it, and to try to defend against it,” he waved at his computer. “All in there.”

  Patrick whistled. How many men and women had been working on this, back on Earth, and this man was trying to organize all their studies, all their results, all the data they’d gathered, and collate it into something useful. “I’ll leave you to it, then,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Rosa said. “And thank you for your update – and your candor.”

  Patrick left the doctor to his work. It was still a long way to the moon, and he had far too much time on his hands between now and then. He headed back to the cockpit to file his report with Earth. Nobody was going to be happy to hear about the stowaway. Some heads were sure to roll over that one.

  3

  CARMEN BOUNDED down the corridor, carrying a big box of machinery for the new lab. She’d never have been able to lift this, back on Earth, let alone bounce around with it. Walking about on Luna might not be as much fun as the gliding around in space had been – she really felt like she was getting the hang of it, just before they arrived at the lunar base. But it was still pretty awesome.

  Luna exerted less than a fifth the gravity Earth did. She weighed about one hundred and thirty pounds on Earth – here, she was less than twenty five! It was like the best crash diet plan ever. She felt light as a feather.

  Which was a good thing, seeing as how the ship was parked almost a quarter mile from her father’s lab, and they had to hand-carry most of the equipment. There were a few lifting machines to pick up larger loads and carry them, but they were moving those big crates one at a time. It was slow going, and her father wanted everything set up as soon as possible.

  So he had everyone on the new medical team hauling stuff to the lab dome by hand.

  The lunar base was pretty small. It was made up of a bunch of dome shaped habitat modules – each manufactured on Earth and imported to the moon by ship at huge expense. There was a ring of six domes all connected by tube-like hallways, with one central dome in the middle. And sticking off one side like some sort of strange growth was the new lab dome. It had been set up while they were still en route on the ship, and it wasn’t really finished yet. But it would be soon, if her father had anything to say about it.

  She set her load down carefully and bounded back down the hall for another load. That meant going around the ring to the far side of the base, then out the tube they’d extended from the base to the ship. It was a bit of a hike, and she’d made it three times already. It would be nice to see some new scenery!

  As she was leaving, she heard her father grumbling while he stood over one of his machines. She bounced her way over to his side.

  “What’s wrong, dad?”

  “Hmm? Oh, electricity,” he said.

  “What?” she asked. Sometimes he could be a little distracted, and it made conversations interesting.

  “Electricity. We still don’t have any. The power conduits are in place to provide power to this dome, but there isn’t any flowing.”

  She frowned. “Have you checked in with the admin building?” That was the dome in the middle of the complex. Everything was run from there, pretty much.

  “Yes, but they say turning on the juice is an outside job.”

  Meaning outside the dome, in a space suit. The thought of being outside gave Carmen a rush. What an amazing feeling that must be!

  “How long will it take?” she asked.

  “They couldn’t say. It sounds like their personnel are all tied up unloading. The problem is, we’re going to lose refrigeration on these samples before long. We may need to move them to another dome.”

  Or just get someone to turn the power on, Carmen mused. She wondered briefly if Patrick would help her get the electricity running, if she asked. He’d been so nice about helping her in the galley – and then so cold when it came to dealing with the stowaway! She shivered at the memory. No, she didn’t think that she could rely on him for help.

  Then she thought about Jacob. He might be willing to give her a hand! All she had to do was find him.

  “I might know someone who can help,” she told her father. She bounded away before he looked up to reply.

  Jacob said he’d be working as an engineer. Where would he be, right now? Probably helping to unload, like everyone else, right? She pulled out her tablet. The base computer had all their personal details on file, and was tracking their location. She’d see if she could find him that way.

  It worked! The computer system was incredibly easy to navigate, and finding personnel turned out to be an elementary function. Carmen guessed that if you needed to find someone because there was something wrong, you probably needed to find them right away. In space, small problems became bigger ones quickly.

  Jacob was in the central dome. She marched down the hall, around the ring, to the short hall that ran into that dome. It was larger than the other domes, maybe twice the size. No one was around by the doorway, so she walked right in.

  Inside, Jacob was directing a few other men carrying heavy loads of equipment. “Over there, by the printer,” he said, gesturing at a machine about the size of a big van. Carmen was intrigued, and walked over to tap him on the shoulder. He jumped at her touch.

  “Hey! What is that thing?” she asked.

  He relaxed when he saw her. “It’s a 3D printer,” he replied. “A big one. And that gear they’re bringing in is stuff I’ll use to upgrade the unit’s design. By the time I’m done, it’ll be able to make just about anything we can design.”

  “Anything?” she asked, dubious.

  “Well, anything we can model. It can’t print a circuit board. It can print a chair, or all the parts for a bike, or similar stuff. With the new upgrade, it’ll even be able to print new habitat domes. And with some work, and a few other parts, I think I could even get it to print new printers.”

  “That’s awesome!” she said, and meant it. It really did sound cool, and would probably be very useful. But she had a bigger issue right now: sample containers that were losing refrigeration. “Jacob, I’ve got a problem. I was hoping you might be able to help me out?”

  “If I can, sure. It’s a little crazy around here right now,” he said apologetically.

  “It’s my father’s lab. There’s no power.”

  “Really?” He rubbed his chin. Then he went over to a console and poked at the screen a few times. He pulled up a schematic of the base, and examined it for a moment before turning back to her.

  “Everything looks like it’s hooked up right. But the power all comes from the central hab-dome, right where we’re standing, and is routed through cables to the other domes. The lines are in place, so someone must have forgotten to flip the breakers when they hooked it up,” Jacob said.

  “That doesn’t sound too hard,” Carmen said.

  “Eh. Harder than it sounds. The breakers are outside, where the conduit is plugged into the dome.”

  “Outside! Why outside?”

  “Something to do with safety regs. Can’t run a high voltage power cable through a crew passageway. And nobody has set up separate passages for power to make them easy to service. Not yet, anyway.” He seemed lost in thought for a moment. “Maybe with the new adaptations to the printer we can do that, now…”

  “Jacob, focus,” Carmen said. “My dad’s samples will lose refrigeration soon. They’re on battery power, but that will only last so long.”

  He looked confused. “Can’t we just move them into another dome and plug them in there, for now?”

  “Live virus samples, Jacob. You want them sitting near where you sleep?”

  He blanched.

  “Yeah, me either,” she said.

  “Well, I’ll get one of the guys to help me as soon as I can. They’re busy for a bit, and protocol says we can’t go out there solo. Have to use the buddy system outside.”

  Ca
rmen felt a rush of excitement. Wait – this could be her chance to get outside the base in a spacesuit? On the first day here? How incredible would that be? She smiled sweetly at Jacob.

  “You could just bring me, if all you need is someone to watch your back,” she said.

  “Are you rated for EVA?” he asked. His voice challenged her – he knew this was her first trip into space, so he already knew the answer to that question. And Carmen wasn’t stupid enough to lie about it.

  “Of course not. But this is an emergency, right? And you’d be following regs.” She inhaled and crossed her fingers for luck, then rushed on. “Not like we’d be out there long anyway, right? Simple job, out and back quick?”

  “Yeah, we could get it done fast. OK,” Jacob said. “Follow me.”

  He took her to out of the main room, off to the far side of the center dome. There was an airlock here. Probably to help with maintenance on the other domes. An easy way to get outside and get things done. Jacob popped a suit locker on the wall next to the airlock, and started pulling out chunks of spacesuit. Businesslike, he slipped the bulky elements of the suit over the ship-suit she still wore from the trip up here. His hand slipped getting the top over her chest and brushed her breast, causing him to blush furiously. She hid a smile at his reaction.

  Poor guy. She wondered how often he got friend-zoned. Probably way too often, and she could already tell this time wasn’t going to be any different, even if he couldn’t. He was nice, and she liked him. But there wasn’t any spark.

  Finally he had her all suited up and ran system checks on her suit. Then he started getting himself ready as well. She watched him click the pieces of suit together, hoping this job didn’t take too long. They’d already burned so much time. Carmen wondered how long her father’s samples had before the battery power ran out.

  “OK, check my suit. Make sure the locking points are all good,” Jacob said over his suit radio. She gave each one a tug, but as near as she could tell he had done a good job.

  “Looks good,” she said. “Where’d you learn to do this, anyway?”