by Allen Steele
The fact is, Will—he reluctantly admitted to himself—you’re addicted to this sort of thing. You’ve got money squirreled away in several discreet bank accounts back on Earth, probably as much as Jeremy Schneider may earn in the next year in this hellhole. Yet the acquisition of wealth has never been the point, has it? You like your complex game of cops-and-computer-robbers, don’t you? Hell, you love it!
And that’s what it all comes down to, isn’t it? Sure, you could lie low in this place for the next twelve months: doing Jeremy Schneider’s boring job, playing poker for tobacco chews with the boys, watching dumb TV shows in the rec room, griping about the terrible food, going out for an occasional stroll on the surface, waiting for the heat to die down back home. But you’ll probably go crazy that way, won’t you? Because, in your own way, you’re an artist, and artists go nuts when they can’t practice their art. Face it, pal, you need to …
The Koko Taylor number ended and Moondog McCloud growled through the ceiling speaker. Oh, lordy lordy yeah, Missus Koko Taylor, rounding off the Blues Hour here at LDSM, the voice of Descartes Station. Now listen here, boys and girls, don’t forget the general staff meeting at thirteen-hundred hours in the mess hall. You know where that is, now, don’t you? If you’ve forgotten, better ask your buddy, ’cuz the new GM tells us he ain’t gonna accept no excuses for bein’ tardy or absentee, if y’know what I mean.…
A deep-throated chuckle. But if you’re one of our occasional listeners out there who just so happens to pick up our signal quite accidentally … that’s right, Olympus Station, we’re talking about you … don’t worry. None of you freeloaders are required to attend. Another chuckle. Just think about it, folks! We’re going out at the speed of light throughout the universe! This radio show will someday, somehow, be heard across the galaxy! I’m FAMOUS! I’m BAD! And I’m not even in the Arbitron books! I’m …
The voice suddenly dropped to a disappointed mutter.… Moondog McCloud, here at the last radio station in the solar system. Drop a note in the box in the rec room if you have any requests, okay? Until I get a real job, here’s the Rolling Stones with the theme song of our little mandatory meeting today, by request from Slow Mo and the Bulldozer Patrol.…
Another oldie banged over the speaker. As Mick Jagger began singing “Under My Thumb,” the windows of Willard DeWitt’s mind drifted open as if caught by a criminal breeze. His head lolled back on his neck, sagging against the stiff back of his chair, as something Moondog McCloud had just said echoed through his brain: the whisper of an idea, concealed in the offhand remark of the only disk jockey in outer space.
For the next eight minutes, the mind of Willard DeWitt played and pummeled and tinkered with the rough machinery of a perfect scam. He sat absolutely still, his body so inert that if he’d relaxed any further he would have started drooling, entranced with the vision of a perfect scam: if I can … if he will … if we can do this … and then this …
The door to his next-door neighbor’s locker abruptly slammed shut. Willard’s head rocked forward. He automatically shifted in his seat, cleared his throat, stretched his arms to smooth out the sleeves of his sweatshirt. The stream of consciousness had ebbed to a trickle, but still he heard the water of an idea falling over rocks, gliding downstream.
Finally he switched off his computer, pushed back the chair and stood up. He gazed down at his desk, and as Mick sang about a cheating heart coming back to him, a smile slowly spread across Willard’s face.
He had his next scam.
Good Luck, McDuck (Video.1)
From “Welcome to Descartes Station,” a Skycorp training film. Copyright © 2023 by Hi-Quality Film Productions Inc., Flint, Michigan:
(MUSIC UP. Skycorp logo appears, then FADE TO the Narrator; behind him is a large model of the Moon.)
Narrator (on screen): “Hi! I’m Jeff Larson. You probably remember me from when I played Ralph Sweeney, the happy-go-lucky lunar miner in the TV series Moonbase Blues. But what you’re about to see isn’t science fiction, and we’re not about to visit a Hollywood sound-stage. I’m pleased to welcome you to Descartes Station.…”
(POV the summit of Stone Mountain; camera PANS LEFT across the terrain until it STOPS at Descartes Station. An INSET appears in the RIGHT BOTTOM CORNER of the screen, revealing a map of the Moon: Landmarks are HIGHLIGHTED on the map as they are mentioned. The inset disappears, then the camera slowly PULLS IN on the base.)
Narrator (V.O.): “This is Descartes Station … your home away from home for the duration of your employment with Skycorp. Although two other outposts exist on the Moon … Skycorp’s man-tended Permaice Extraction Facility near Byrd Crater at the lunar North Pole, and the automated Stephen Hawking Lunar Observatory at Krasovsky Crater on the lunar farside … Descartes Station in the largest permanently manned station. So let’s take a good look at the place, shall we …?”
(Stock footage of: NASA moonships landing in the Descartes highlands, the first prefab “modular” habitat, Skycorp construction crews building the new structures, etc.)
Narrator: “The first lunar base in the Descartes highlands was established in December, 2005, as a temporary NASA base camp. After Skycorp was formed in 2010, the corporation purchased the facility from the United States Government, and beginning in 2011, additional prefab modules were added to the base, now called Descartes Station. The base continued to expand until 2020, when it was decided that modular construction no longer suited the permanent colony’s growing needs. The new base uses ‘mooncrete’ slabs as the primary building material, with Mylar liners added to the interior walls to ensure atmospheric integrity. In addition, all structures except the control towers, the nearby SP-100 nuclear reactors, and the factory domes are covered with lunar soil, or regolith, for additional protection against radiation. The third-generation facilities at Descartes Station were erected between 2021 and early 2023. As a result, your moonbase is a brand-new, state-of-the-art habitat.…”
(A schematic diagram of the moonbase’s layout gradually FADES IN over the stock footage. As the narrator speaks, the described areas are highlighted in bright red.)
Narrator: “As you can see from this diagram, Descartes Station is actually comprised of several interdependent subcomplexes, which are connected by access tunnels. Oh, and by the way, all the subcomplexes are designed to automatically seal off from one another in the highly unlikely event of a loss-of-pressure emergency. Just thought you’d like to know.…”
(MONTAGE of still shots from Subcomplex A interior: MainOps, mess hall, rec room, atrium, etc.)
Narrator: “In the center is Subcomp A. It has three levels. On top is the tower for Main Operations, the command center sometimes known as MainOps. Below it, on the first level, are various crew facilities … the mess hall, medical clinic, men’s and women’s locker rooms, the rec room, and various small offices and science labs. The second level, which is underground, is comprised mainly of the life-support center … including the water reclamation, waste-recycling center, and water and oxygen storage tanks … as well as storage rooms, the lower level of the medical clinic, and the emergency shelter for solar storms. All three levels are reached through a central stairwell, which also serves as a botanical atrium. Looks like a nice place to visit during your off-hours, doesn’t it …?”
(Camera DOLLIES through an open hatch and moves down an access tunnel into one of the dorms. As the camera moves past rows of sleeping niches, the schematic diagram reappears in an INSET in the UPPER LEFT CORNER.)
Narrator: “This tunnel takes us into your living quarters—Subcomp D, also known as the Dorms. As you can see, this subcomplex is comprised of three separate buildings. Dorm One, on both A and B levels, serves as the bunkhouse for men, with a total of eighty niches. Dorm Two-A, the top level, is the living quarters for women, with twenty niches. Dorm Two-B, the lower level, has mixed-gender living quarters for base administrators. Each level has its own lavatories, which the residents of each level share in common. Dorm Three is res
erved as a temporary residence for visitors to the station, and is not usually occupied. Total available occupancy at Descartes is for one hundred and twenty-eight persons, although the population rarely reaches that number. All niches are single-person.…”
(The diagram fills the screen; then an INSET appears in the RIGHT TOP CORNER, which EXPANDS to show footage of the interior of the Greenhouse. CLOSE-UP of a tomato vine. CUT TO the diagram again, and ZOOM IN on the factory subcomplex. CUT TO still-camera MONTAGE of the subcomplex interior: factory domes, electrostatic scrubbers, access tunnels, control cupolas, etc.
Narrator: “Adjacent to the Dorms in Subcomp D is the Greenhouse, an inflated structure buried beneath the regolith, where various crops are hydroponically cultivated for crew consumption … mmm-mmm, don’t those tomatoes look swell! To the right of MainOps is the place where many of you will be earning your paychecks … Subcomp C, the lunar factories. Entrance to the factories from the surface is made through electrostatic scrubbers, which remove dirt from your hardsuits, or through pressurized access tunnels from MainOps and Subcomp B, which we’ll describe momentarily. After lunar ore is separated at the receiving station, it is sent either to the ilmenite factory, where lunar oxygen and hydrogen are extracted, or to the raw materials factories, where silicon, aluminum, and rare elements are extracted in turn. The raw materials are in turn made into final products … such as milled aluminum rolls, photovoltaic solar cells, and breathable oxygen … and shipped by tractor to the mass-driver station for launch into space. You will receive more detailed instruction on each of these facilities later in your four-week training period.…”
(INSET appears in LEFT BOTTOM CORNER, expanding to show the schematic diagram again. Camera ZOOMS in on Subcomp B. FADES to footage of the EVA ready-room, airlocks, and scrubbers, interior of spacecraft maintenance hangar and vehicle garage, an LTV landing on a pad, etc.)
Narrator: “Finally, we come to Subcomp B—the EVA operations center. From the tunnel to MainOps, you first enter the EVA ready-room, where you suit-up, get checked out by suit inspectors, clock out on the job, and exit the base through one of four airlocks. When you come back in, of course, you’ll enter through electrostatic scrubbers, just as with the factory subcomplex. You’ll be seeing a lot of this place, for sure! Two additional airlocks lead down to the spacecraft maintenance hangar and to the unpressurized garage for ground vehicles. Two landing pads are used by incoming and outgoing orbital spacecraft, such as the lunar transfer vehicle which will bring you to the Moon, and the third pad is used by long-range lunar transports, or LRLT’s. A pressurized tunnel from the ready-room leads to the pad operations cupola …”
(CUT TO the Narrator in the same setting as seen in the beginning of the film.)
Narrator: “Wow! Sure looks like a great place to live and work, doesn’t it? Well, I’m certain that you have a lot of questions now for your Skycorp training instructor, so I won’t keep you waiting. Look for me on your next training film. I’ll be seeing you then. In the meantime, as Sweeney would say … ‘Good luck, McDuck!’”
(Narrator winks and smiles. FADE TO Skycorp logo, then FADE OUT.)
6. First Impressions
Moondust, caught in an electromagnetic dust devil of positive and negative polarities, swirled around Lester and Tina McGraw as they stood in the airlock scrubber. Since they hadn’t been out on the surface for more than a few minutes after disembarking from the Collins, there was little of the fine gray dirt for the scrubber to pick off their suits and suck down the tubes below the gridded deck. Gradually the little tornado subsided as Lester watched the status panel above the exit hatch of the cylindrical compartment. When the scrubber was done, the orange light went out and the pressurization cycle started; a few minutes later, the amber light switched to green and the exit hatch automatically popped open.
“Okay, we’re here,” Lester said to McGraw. She said nothing; small talk was obviously not something in which she indulged. Fair enough, Riddell thought as he pushed open the hatch and stepped out of the airlock, hauling his duffel bag over his left shoulder and carrying his airtight aluminum briefcase in his right hand. But you’re going to make yourself awful lonesome up here unless you learn to start speaking to people.
The ready-room was a long compartment with low ceiling crossed with airducts and conduits, its walls lined with airlocks through which moondogs were entering in a steady trickle. As soon as he came out of the airlock, a suit tech—a skinny kid with acne scars, wearing a Seattle Mariners sweatshirt—came up to guide him to the nearest de-suit rack; he was there more to hold him to the floor, by firmly pressing down on his shoulders, than to lead him. The kid babbled as he turned Riddell around to back him into the rack: “Glad to meet you, sir, my name’s Bill, welcome back to Descartes Station, if there’s anything I can do, just let me know and …”
“Bill, stop brown-nosing and get back to work.” The suit tech at the rack was a muscular woman with crew-cut red hair; in spite of the ready-room’s chill, she wore only a tanktop above her loose khaki trousers. She took the aluminum attaché case and duffel bag from Lester’s hands and carelessly dumped them on the floor, then buckled Lester’s arm and legs into the rack. Bill scuttled away to help McGraw. “Okay, take a deep breath and hold it,” she ordered Lester, then reached to the suit’s chest unit and switched off the air and coolant circulation. She took her time; Lester nearly turned blue before she unlocked his neck collar and pulled off his helmet.
“Feel better?” she asked perfunctorily as she placed the helmet on the rack’s overhead shelf. Lester took a deep breath, then let it out as a steamy froth. The air had the faint burnt-gunpowder odor of lunar dust; apparently the scrubbers couldn’t keep all the dirt from getting inside the base. The smell was exactly as he remembered it. With the helmet off, he could see better, too. The walls of the ready-room were streaked with grime. It had been a long time since this place had last been cleaned.
The suit tech didn’t wait for an answer; presumably, if a moondog didn’t keel over and pass out on the floor, it meant he was feeling just great. “Good,” she said as she rolled a step-ladder behind the rack and unlatched the suit’s rear hatch. “Okay, okay, wiggle your ass back and duck your head forward.…” He did so, and suddenly felt her strong hands grab his hips and pull back. “Good, good. Now pull up your right leg first, pull it straight out of there and put it behind you on the ladder … yeah, okay, now the left.…”
It took about fifteen minutes for Lester to get out of the hardsuit; he was long out of practice with the de-suit procedure, and his assistant was helpful but impatient with his slow progress. When he was out of the suit, standing in the cold room in his thin, watertube-lined nylon undergarment and feeling like a turtle who had just been robbed of his shell, the woman pulled a pair of twenty-pound ankle weights off the rack and briskly handed them to him. “Put these on,” she told him, “toss your pissoir in the bin over there next to the time clock. You know how to clock out, don’t you?”
“Yes. I do.” Lester juggled the ankle-bracelets in his hands. “What’s your name?”
“Smith,” she said. “Lana Smith. Just call me Smitty.” The last was added without a trace of warmth or Irish humor.
“Right.” Lester paused. “Do you know who I am, Smitty?”
Smitty rested her hands on her hips. “Yeah, you’re the new GM. And this is the ready-room.”
“That’s right.…”
She nodded, her face completely blank. “Uh-huh, that’s right. What’d you expect, the Marine Corps marching band? Look, I gotta job to do here and there’s two dozen guys waiting in line behind you. You’ve taken up too much of my time already, so why don’t you try to hustle … sir.”
Lester said nothing. He kneeled and clipped on the ankle-bracelets, which would keep him from bouncing off the floor with each step in one-sixth gee. When he stood up again, another tech was wheeling his suit away to the row of carapaces lined up against a wall, and Smitty was already backing
another moondog into a de-suit rack.
He picked up his attaché case and duffel bag and walked across the chill mooncrete floor, passing Tina McGraw as she wormed the rest of the way out of her own hardsuit. He set down his luggage again, unsnapped the unisex urine-collection cup from his groin, and tossed the pissoir into a hamper next to the time clock. His keycard was in a pocket on his right wrist; he pulled it out, passed it in front of the lens of the clock until he heard it beep, then walked toward the open hatch to the narrow tube-shaped passageway to Subcomp A.
Nobody had been waiting to greet him; the two men walking down the passage in front of him and the guy following behind seemed to be keeping their distance. Uh-huh, Lester thought as he strode into Descartes Station. It figures. Now let’s see what the locker room is like.…
The men’s locker room was located on the second level of Subcomp A, and could have been transplanted in its entirety from a YMCA in any large city in America, down to the aroma of sweaty socks which permeated the large room.
Rock music from the overhead speakers was all but drowned out by the clamor of moondogs talking and aluminum locker doors being opened and banged shut. CRT’s suspended from the low ceiling displayed duty rosters and general announcements; posters of guitar-brandishing rock stars and nude movie starlets were taped to the Mylar-padded walls. The door to the adjacent infirmary was open; inside, a couple of guys were being treated for suit-chafes and minor sprains and bruises. In the shower room at the end of the central aisle, several men were taking lukewarm sponge-baths, rinsing off with quick spurts of cold water from the showerheads. Taped to the door of the women’s locker room was a poster of Moon Maid, from the Dick Tracy comic strip; the door cracked open a few inches and a woman with a towel wrapped around her chest peeked through to beg for an extra bar of soap. Whistles and hoots rang through the room; red-faced but grinning good-naturedly, the woman retreated and the door slammed shut.