by David Nabhan
Rittener moved his eyes slowly from crewman to crewman as he spoke. His reputation had preceded him, as he well knew, and he now brought that weapon to bear. “This isn’t a Terran ship; this is my ship. I will personally execute every single crewman, if I have to, and send the Peerless spiraling into the Sun before I’ll see a single one of my orders disobeyed.” It wasn’t anxiety or fear or outrage or any other emotion he saw reflected back in their eyes; it was utter shock. As if what he’d just said to the crew was nothing out of the ordinary, as if he’d made a bland comment about the weather or some other mundane topic, he simply moved on to close the meeting. “I’ll summon each of you individually to discuss the particulars of your specialties and how I want things run in short order. Unless there are any other questions, you are all dismissed.”
The whole crew sat frozen, no one knowing just exactly what to make of what had just happened. Rittener seemed slightly irritated with their discomfiture and broke the spell by waving his hand and repeating “dismissed.” As the crew silently started to respond, he overruled himself, as if suddenly remembering an afterthought.
“Oh, one more thing. Mr. Kendrick, place Seaman 2nd Class Yeshenko under arrest and escort him to the brig.”
With that one off-handed remark Rittener turned his entire crew to stone just as surely and quickly as if he’d shown them all the head of Medusa. Now a truly interminable and deathly silence descended. Rittener was looking down at his letter of marque, checking to see that all was in order, so he wasn’t taking in the looks of astonishment on the faces of his flabbergasted crew. Owen Kendrick, though, reacted automatically. He pulled himself up, put his meat hook hands on his hips, and gave Yeshenko a gruff order.
“On your feet, Seaman.”
The Tartar Yeshenko slowly obeyed, but while fixing Rittener with a deadly stare and slowly nodding his head as if affirming a stream of unspoken yet toxic thoughts within. Chief Warrant Officer Kendrick was the security officer—a barrel-chested sailor who resembled a bear as much as a man. Yeshenko was sane enough to obey but was tarrying, still playing at sending visual daggers in Rittener’s direction.
“Let’s go, Yeshenko. You heard the skipper.” He motioned to the hatch with one of his bear claws.
As they were exiting Rittener gave a final order. “He’s to be held ‘hard,’ Chief. Seventy-two hours. The charge is ‘overt contempt.’ Log it.”
Held ‘hard’ was simplicity itself. The offender was just stuffed into a stainless steel compartment the size of a closet and forgotten for a while. The only amenities were a miniature commode and a quarter-inch tube that gave out a weak stream of drinking water when pressure was applied. That was it though. No food, feeble light, not a sound worth listening to, no nothing; it was meant to be three days of Hell.
All in all, Rittener thought to himself as the crew exited in silence, the voyage could have gotten off to a better start. But, then again, he reminded himself, it could have been worse.
CHAPTER THREE
ACROSS THE RIVER STYX
THE FESTIVAL OF SYZYGY, a celestial alignment drawn from the lunar almanacs of the thousands-year-old saros of Babylonia, took place shortly after Clinton Rittener’s arrival and inaugural race on Borealis. He was en route to celebrate it with almost every other pilot, at a most unique locale, this one several hundred kilometers south of Borealis. Lunar lava tubes provided many of the things Borealis needed and some were huge and deep, like Tartarus. To reach this ageless pipe, formed during the Moon’s childhood, Rittener and a group of Borelian pilots shuttled across the Field—the lunar surface outside the Dome. Passengers on this track never concerned themselves with the weather because there was none. Air was a prerequisite for climate and there was none of that either. The vacuum, impervious to change, bore down all the way to the lunar surface, rendering it more part of space itself than the realm of humanity.
“Old hands in the Field call it ‘clean.’” That’s what the young man sitting across from Rittener said to him. “I know because my grandfather is one.” He gave an ill-behaved grin in the direction of the elderly gentleman seated next to him. A soundless landscape of sun-broiled crater floors and steep rifts of low, sharp mountains rushed by, exuding eternity. Not so much as a grain of sand had moved here for eons, and even the superbly engineered steel and magnesium arrow that cut through it, sliding on frictionless, magnetic, insubstantial wheels, didn’t—couldn’t—as much as make a swoosh in it.
Rittener had never seen the Field before. Naturally everyone in the car knew that, since his identity was hardly indistinguishable. The young man stretched out his hand. “Hello, Clinton Rittener; I’m Jaager.” He’d ridden this line before and pointed out the starboard view ports. “Watch in a few seconds, as we pass through the next tunnel. Get ready.” The shuttle broke through the next subway, debouching into a stunning Japanese rock garden of stupendous proportions, the precisely raked rows of combed regolith stretching to the horizon. Something had moved these grains, having wrung from them every precious mote of helium-3, and not long ago.
The Field was where helium-3 had been delivered to the Moon via the solar wind, blasted into the airless, defenseless lunar surface amid an angry stream of alpha particles hurled at the Moon over four billion years. Earth’s magnetic shield prevented this gift of the Sun from being deposited on the home planet and it couldn’t be obtained anywhere else. For the benefit of sticklers, there might be stores on Jupiter, Neptune, and Uranus, but few considered the kind of Herculean efforts that would be required to get at that supply, especially when the Moon was such a close and relatively friendly and benign place.
It was mined so simply and easily too on the Moon: it was just scooped up by robotic regolith skimmers. The top few inches of the lunar surface was scraped off, vaporized by solar collectors, and the liberated gas obtained. Exporting it to Terra and Earth was even easier. Canisters of pressurized helium-3 were loaded like ammunition in the breeches of Materials Export Cannons with 800-meter-long barrels. These “pea shooters” couldn’t have been erected on Earth, and along with the Goldilocks Array, would have collapsed under their own colossal weight. But as Borelians reminded everyone, “Nothing is impossible on the Moon.” These behemoths fired projectiles at escape velocity—only around a kilometer per second on Luna—fast enough to overcome the Moon’s gentle gravity and non-existent air drag, and sent the cargo on to parabolic orbits meant to intersect eager customers throughout the Solar System. Fusion reactors, by the hundreds of thousands, powered mankind’s universe and helium-3 was the fuel that fed those reactors. No more simple equation existed.
“Look there,” Jaager had caught sight of one of the pea shooters discharging its precious freight. “That could be headed anywhere.” He sounded genuinely pleased to be acting as guide for the distinguished fellow passenger.
Jaager’s grandfather had settled on an opening remark. Borelians weren’t known for their subtlety. Rufinus, like a lot of miners with decades of experience in the Field, had the tact of a blacksmith pounding the impurities out of an ingot. “On Earth and on the Ring they call this ‘terra incognita.’ It’s amazingly developed, wouldn’t you say, for territory supposedly lying fallow?”
Those were almost fighting words, probably to wind up being used in the next great rallying cry. At the heart of the problem was a hard reality that couldn’t be ignored: the helium-3 was running out. That was the plain fact. For many in the know both in the Inner and the Outer, it was an obvious reality that wasn’t up for debate. The only question was if this new energy crisis would spawn horrific wars like the last one. Earth and Terra both considered the Field “terra incognita” and saw no reason why their considerable muscle shouldn’t be brought to bear to increase the supply of helium-3. Having her customers help themselves to Luna’s reservoir on their own though was an idea that held few Borelian adherents.
Terra had lately increased the pressure, exponentially. Dante Michelson, the fire-breathing Chief Archon of Terra, was well
-known to the Borelians, thanks to his prior office as Terra’s ambassador to the city. Michelson was a hard-liner and had his reasons for the extreme opinions. Like most “ambassadors” he had been first and foremost a spy, and through his network of contacts was in a position to see and hear things like few others.
In short, he believed the Borelians were lying—plain and simple. He thought they’d been lying for years about the equatorial fields. He suspected that their potential yield had been purposefully exaggerated and that the speedy timetable which would infuse the market with additional supplies was hardly more than fantasy. Finally, he knew what this all meant, thinking four or five steps ahead as always. It was ironic that it was his signature on the accord that put the tough questions off a few more years. The Field was legally neither Borealis’ nor was it terra incognita, which would have left it open to anyone. By interplanetary law it currently lurked in the limbo of “disputed territory.” But he’d signed that as the ambassador of a previous regime. He was no ambassador now. As Chief Archon of the Terran Ring he was the most powerful man in the Solar System, and in his mind it was terra incognita.
“I’d only hope that history doesn’t repeat itself.” Rittener tried to say it softly but everyone in the car heard it.
Rufinus wasn’t sure he liked it. “What’s that?”
“Well, the four Petroleum Wars,” Rittener replied.
These conflagrations of the Old Modern made the World Wars of the 20th century seem like polite skirmishes. The comparison came from the mouth of the only person on the train who’d directed campaigns that cut down great swathes of humanity, so it should have held some weight.
“Supply and demand can’t be disobeyed; they’re as uncompromising as the laws of motion. Demand for helium-3 increases relentlessly, and as for the supply, well, as with petroleum, it has long since ceased being created.” Rittener put it as simple as that, even though it was a little more complicated.
The shuttle was designed for comfort and amicability, not moving great numbers, like so many contrivances on the Moon. A padded island ran down the center of the car between long cushions along the wall. Many of the pilots sidled closer now, filling the spaces around Rittener, drawn to the conversation. Borelians didn’t hide their curiosity like others and were strangely overt when it came to showing interest. A knot of pilots and others had already formed when the middle-aged man took a seat on the island cushion directly in front of Rittener. Clinton didn’t need to scan him to know who he was. Borelian scientists were as easily recognized as approaching dust storms on the Red Planet. He acted like one too.
“Gresling, here,” he said his name with an ear-to-ear smile, offering his hand affably. “I’m a PI at the Geologic Survey and overheard your discussion.” He looked like a Borelian principal investigator. Their uniform appearance began with the hair, clipped so short that it lingered in the nether realm between baldness and crew cut. It was the rare man of science though on Borealis without whiskers—but just pencil-thin embellishments. Gresling’s were a horizontal line above the lips and a vertical stripe below them to the cleft. Squeezed under the chin, his overly starched collar was so high and stiff it didn’t seem even part of the tunic. It kept the head on a swivel, alert and observant.
“Things aren’t so clear-cut in the Field and many can be easily misled about helium-3.” He swiveled his head toward the moonscape sweeping past. “It’s not out there, everywhere, just to be picked up and exported.” It was clear he thought anyone who believed that was as simple-minded as the statement.
“Elementary physics says that the Moon’s equator, for instance, should be loaded with helium-3,” Gresling explained. “That’s a good example. Certainly, sunlight striking the Lunar Equator has always been ferocious and packed with helium-3 ions stripped of electrons. If mother lodes of the stuff should be found around the Lunar North Pole where the light struck so much more obliquely, common wisdom intimates that there should be astounding quantities yet to be mined in the equatorial regions.”
The scientist consented that much, but more complex physics gave some answers as to why the simple view was flawed. “Sadly, that’s not the case,” he lamented. “Opinions are changing about the relative weakness and duration of the Moon’s ancient magnetic field. There are many respected scholars who have very plausible evidence that it had been a real force in the ancient past—deflecting the solar wind and depriving Luna’s equator and temperate zones of helium-3 while at the same time funneling the concentrated stream straight to the place where great quantities had already been found—the Lunar North Pole.”
Rufinus was shaking his head in agreement. “Don’t forget the South Pole. Don’t leave that out.”
The scientist’s collar was so tight and stiff he could hardly shake his head affirmatively.
“And certainly as you might imagine, Clinton Rittener, the alpha particles weren’t just deposited on the Moon like rain falling on the surface of Earth’s continental prairies to be soaked up by the sod.” He had a look of satisfaction that he’d been able to reference the old planet so elegantly for the newcomer. “The mineral composition of each site played a very significant role in the calculus of absorption and retention. Depending on the chemistry and geology involved, the precious motes could penetrate too deeply, too erratically, fail to be captured, or even if suffused originally might not be held for billions of years awaiting the robotic scoops of our mining operations.”
Rittener decided to take the scientist skating onto thinner ice, just for fun. “That all sounds very complicated and thorny. It’s amazing you’ve been able to find any at all. So how much do you reckon there is left, and where’s the best place to look?”
What those mineral and geologic hallmarks were for potential h-3 deposits was the most highly guarded secret of the Council. There were fields yet to be mined, but they were scattered all over Luna. And even though Borealis wasn’t speaking plainly about it anymore, from the reserved communiqués issued about the matter from time to time it was fairly obvious that the good old days of h-3 flowing in abundance from the Moon were quickly coming to an end.
“The popular conception that there are oodles of the stuff at the equatorial regions,” he chose his words carefully, “might not necessarily be true.”
Rufinus frowned derisively at the word mincing and answered Rittener’s question with exactitude.
“I can tell you where there isn’t any h-3. Don’t go looking for any at the Lunar South Pole,” Rufinus advised strenuously.
“If conspiracy theorists wish to peddle their rumors about vast stores, secret mining ventures, and all the rest, we Borelians shouldn’t be bothered with it. I’ve been on teams that surveyed every dry hole in every sector around Australis. There isn’t any h-3 there.”
The Aitken Basin straddles the Lunar South Pole, one of the largest craters in the entire Solar System—2,500 kilometers across. Much of what was thought to be known about the region changed after a number of conflicting Borelian surveys were read correctly. The bombshell was that prior astrophysical assumptions about the basin were just simply in error, the reports made clear. Scientists had always guessed at the age of around 3.8 billion years for the crater.
Borealis now had proof that the guess had been off—way off. Radiometric age-dating techniques were a sure way to tell the last time the surface of the basin had been molten. The surveyors had no doubt after checking when those geologic clocks within the lunar regolith had been melted and reset. The Aitken Crater wasn’t age-old, it was actually quite young. They determined that the object that struck came in at a low angle—around thirty degrees—striking a glancing blow that didn’t dig in so much as scrape away. This object still packed quite a punch—blasting into space the top layer of the Lunar South Pole to a depth of 13 kilometers. The event occurred not 3.8 billion years ago but rather at some time within the last half billion years. This accounted for the dearth of helium-3.
“I’ve been down there, turned over stones
, even looked under the ice in the pot holes that litter the place. There isn’t enough h-3 there to boil a cup of tea. Whatever walloped the Moon hit it in the chin hard enough to knock its beard off. The crater goes on forever.” Rufinus made a fist and punched his hand to emphasize.
If the Lunar South Pole had been soaking up helium-3 since the dawn of the Solar System, that treasure was lost forever, having been jettisoned into space along with everything else within the erstwhile surface of the Lunar South Pole.
“Australis is the scene of the greatest theft in the history of mankind,” Gresling philosophized. “There’s no broken glass or splintered door, but the h-3 is missing and the only thing left is that enormous hole.”
Jaager had been minding his manners, seen, listening, but unheard. He took a chance here since he had what he considered a good point. “One asteroid snuffs out the dinosaurs and opens the door for our existence; another robs us of what possibly could have been half of our helium-3 supply.” He shrugged his shoulders over the “spilled milk” that he called it. “I’d say our batting average isn’t that bad.”
“Spilled milk? That’s your analogy?” His grandfather’s snorting reproach made him wish he’d kept his mouth shut. “I’ve heard it estimated that if the reserves lost were anything like those of the Lunar North Pole, it represented an amount of credits sufficient to buy quite a sizeable homestead: North America.”
Whether or not Rufinus had his astronomical figures correct, the ridiculous price of helium-3 had risen to undreamed-of prices and as such was the standard complaint of everyone, from barbers on Terra to chicken farmers on Earth. It was playing havoc with the economy of the entire Solar System. The party line on Borealis was that there was no need to panic and that steps were underway to put everything right. Dante Michelson on Terra knew otherwise, and so did Clinton Rittener. As one of the most famed condottieri of Earth, he was several steps up from just an average mercenary. He had a few contacts of his own.