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Mother Moon

Page 28

by Bob Goddard


  “And now… four pieces of good news.” She forced a smile. “First, I am delighted to tell you that Will Cooper, our heroic Head of Engineering, is recovering from his daring rescue of Lian Song out on the surface yesterday. Will is back at work today, despite his broken wrist. He is setting a fine example to us all, working on multiple projects to ensure our survival, safety and comfort here at Armstrong Base.

  “Most of you, I know, are following Will’s lead and are back at work determined to make a vital contribution. I hope that by the start of the afternoon shift today we will all be working normally, for the greater good of our entire community.

  “Second good news is that our three sickly colleagues from Unit 35, the recycling tube, have returned to light duties today having been given the all-clear by Doctor Rozek.

  “Third good news is that Lian Song, our Head of Biosphere who suffered a suit failure yesterday, is conscious and making progress towards recovery in the medical unit. She is being treated for problems resulting from the loss of pressure and oxygen starvation. Although Lian is not able to receive visitors at the present time she thanks everyone for their kind thoughts and wishes.

  “Lastly I am pleased to announce that we have a new life growing here at Armstrong Base. Our Head of Personnel, Tamala Ngomi, and her partner Darren Griffiths, are expecting a baby.”

  Tamala and Darren, sitting in Tamala’s room, straightened up at the mention of their names. Tamala’s hand flew to her mouth. Darren started grinning.

  “It is due to be born in June. Under normal circumstances Tamala would have returned to Earth and her native Malawi at the beginning of this week as her three-year tour of duty is over. As that was not possible it now looks likely that Tamala and Darren’s baby will be born here on the Moon. Preparations are in hand. Doctor Rozek reports that Tamala and her baby are in the best of health.

  “Tamala is running extra yoga and meditation classes for you all and Darren is now running three sports sessions each day to allow all three shifts to benefit from some lively ball games. I recommend that all of you take advantage of these meditation and exercise opportunities which promote both physical and mental wellbeing.

  “That’s all for now. Remember that hard work and a positive attitude are key ingredients for a successful future. Let’s all support and encourage each other to achieve the best we can. Thank you for your contribution.”

  Nadia smiled again, closed the transmission then sank her head wearily into her hands.

  * * * * *

  Earth, 1504

  Yonaton’s feet touched the ground as he reached the bottom of the round tower and he held on to the stone wall while his arms and legs shook uncontrollably. He had climbed ropes all his life. On his father’s fishing boat he had been like Mammed, a monkey in the rigging. On his own ship, he regularly climbed to the top of the two masts to inspect the ropes and fittings.

  But after a month in chains in the hold of his ship and then a week without food in the tower, he felt like a shadow of his former self. He was gasping from the exertion of climbing down the rope. This brought on another fit of coughing. All the way down he had timed his coughs to coincide with the crash of waves on the rocks below. With a guard stationed on top of the tower and several more sheltering in the stairwell on the other side – he could hear their occasional guffaws over the ocean noise – he had to keep quiet.

  He shook the rope to let Benyamin know it was safe to descend and a couple of minutes later the navigator was standing beside him in almost total darkness. Only the white foam of the wave tops below were visible in the inky blackness.

  Hands grasped his shoulders and Ben’s hot breath was close in his ear. “I’ve tied a knot near the rope’s end, so that Mammed will feel it as he comes down. The boy is exhausted.”

  “Me too, Ben,” he croaked.

  “I was afraid he would fall if he tried to climb all the way down. He can lower himself in the sling until halfway, then he will have to let the rope fall and climb down the wall the same way as he climbed up.”

  “I hope he will be careful,” whispered Yonaton. “It is too dark to see anything.”

  He coughed again, but the sound was swamped by a new round of raucous laughter from the Convertors on the other side of the tower. The coarse, exaggerated bellow of Gorbel was clearly audible above the others. It sounded as though they were drinking beer and celebrating with crude jokes.

  A swish and dull thump beside them announced the arrival of the falling rope. Ben went to coil it as Yonaton looked up, but the boy was invisible. Only a dark silhouette against the stars showed there was a tower above them. Yonaton was still peering upward when a fall of grit hit him in the eye and made him blink and cough. Finally he heard the scrabbling of Mammed’s bare toes on the stone and the lad was down and safe.

  Yonaton hugged him and whispered in his ear, “That was a very brave thing you did Mammed. Crazy, but very brave. Thank you, my son.”

  Ben wrapped his arms around both their shoulders and said, “I can’t get the rope down. I think the knot I tied must have snagged on the cut end of the window bar. I’ve tugged and pulled, but it won’t come loose.”

  “Then we must leave it,” said Yonaton. “It is a pity to leave evidence of our escape, but it can’t be helped.”

  “And we must hurry,” hissed Mammed. “We have a boat waiting at Crayfish Creek.”

  “A boat! In that small creek?” queried Yonaton.

  “A sort of boat… you will see,” said the boy. “Come on, follow me.”

  Tired, barefoot and bleeding, Yonaton and Benyamin followed Mammed, stumbling over the slippery rocks along the line of the crashing waves. They edged away from the prison tower and the shouts and laughter of the Cardinal’s men, then past the guard at the top of the inner harbour wall.

  By the time they felt the sand of the beach beneath their feet, all three were bruised, with stubbed toes and twisted ankles. But they hurried on along the shoreline, lit only by the stars and a faint phosphorescence from the surf, until their feet splashed into the waters of Crayfish Creek.

  “This way,” hissed Mammed and they followed his splashes, along the edge of the shallow creek, heading inland. Where the stars disappeared behind the dark silhouettes of overhanging trees, Mammed stopped. “Help me uncover it,” he said.

  “What is this…? A log canoe!” Yonaton was shocked at the discovery as he pulled off the covering branches. “Are you crazy, Mammed? We can’t go to sea in a log canoe! It will turn over and we will be drowned.”

  “It is two canoes, Papa Yon. They are joined together and covered with planks of wood. It was the best we could do. All the boats in the harbour are watched and locked in at night. Ifan and Jack have been stopped from fishing these past three days, their boat seized by the Convertors. So they helped me to build this.”

  Yonaton and Benyamin were feeling their way around the strange craft

  “It is strong, Papa Yon. And it won’t turn over if we are careful.”

  “If we are careful? I can’t let you risk your life in this contraption, Mammed. It is enough that Ben and I will drown.”

  “But I must go with you,” pleaded the lad. “They will know it was me who climbed the tower to set you free!”

  Ben intervened, seeing instantly the peril which faced Mammed if he was caught and questioned. “He is right, Yonny, my friend. We can’t leave him here.”

  “There are three paddles and a sail,” said Mammed. “And Lucy has given us food and water. Enough to get us to the reefs and islands in the north west. They won’t find us there.”

  “The Frigate Bird islands?” muttered Yonaton. It sounded impossible in such a craft as this, but the mention of food helped make up his mind. “Well, we can’t stay here, that’s for sure. And the night is half gone already. We must go… and pray that the god of the sea will look after us.”

  * * * * *

  Moon, 2087

  “Lian? Are you awake?”

  Lian blinked a c
ouple of times and tried to focus on the doctor’s face.

  “I have a visitor for you, if you are up to it?”

  Lian’s brow furrowed into a frown.

  “It is your friend, Tamala, come to say hello.”

  She gave a small nod.

  “Here she is. I will leave you two to chat for a little while. I’m just next door if you need me.” Doctor Rozek’s face disappeared and was replaced by a brown one, split from ear to ear by a huge white smile.

  “How are you, sweetheart?” Tamala didn’t wait for an answer but leant forward and planted a noisy kiss on Lian’s forehead. Then she knelt on the floor and held Lian’s hand, as Nadia had done.

  “I’ve been to see you lots of times, Lian, but you were asleep every time.” She smiled. “Which is good, sleep is often the best medicine.”

  “I thought it was laughter?” Lian croaked.

  “What?”

  “I thought laughter was the best medicine? An old English saying?”

  “Well, that’s right, Lian.” Tamala beamed at her. “Any time you feel like laughing, please don’t hold back, it will do you good.”

  “I don’t remember the last time I had something to laugh about.”

  “I do. A few days ago. You were telling me about your Brazilian gentleman’s funny accent. You tittered like a schoolgirl then!”

  “Oh. Yes. I did, didn’t I?” Lian’s face brightened. Tamala felt a rush of relief at the small but significant sign of recovery.

  “Oh my goodness, Lian. I can’t tell you how good it is to see you… awake again. And almost smiling too. Did you hear about the Chilean observatory and the asteroid?”

  “Yes, Nadia told me.”

  “So… the mining of the comet had nothing to do with it, Lian.”

  “It is a very great relief for me.”

  “And something else. Did you see Nadia’s midday vidcast?”

  “No. I was sleeping, I think.”

  “Well, she announced some news about me. A secret I have been keeping. So I can tell you now, at last.”

  “What is it, Tamala?” Lian looked worried.

  “Don’t worry. It’s all good. I’m having a baby, Lian. I’m pregnant! And Darren is the father.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful!” For the first time Lian’s face broke in to a smile. Then her brow furrowed again. “But don’t you have to go home if you are pregnant?”

  “I can’t, Lian. At least, not at the moment. And in three weeks it will be too late to risk a flight home. So it looks as though I will have the first baby to be born on the Moon.”

  “How exciting!”

  “I’m pleased you think so... because Darren and I would like you to be our child’s godmother, Lian.”

  “Godmother! What is that?” Lian looked worried again.

  “It’s a traditional, honorary role, Lian. Someone who provides moral guidance and is a good friend to the child. And to the parents, of course. You would become a member of our family – sort of.”

  “I could be a part of your family?” Lian’s eyes were wide with wonder.

  “Yes. A bit like a special auntie. Someone for us all to love and cherish.”

  “I…” Lian’s face clouded with doubt. “I don’t deserve this.”

  “Nonsense. There is nobody more deserving. And besides, we have a favour to ask. We would like you to make a full genetic survey as soon as the baby is born so we can correct or protect against any defects. You should find it interesting, with Darren half Maori and half English and me half Chewa and half Zulu. You will be our family geneticist and fairy godmother. Please say you will?”

  “I… I would be deeply honoured to accept. Thank you.”

  “Oh! Thank you, Lian!” Tamala leaned over and hugged her, then kissed her on both cheeks. “You will be the best godmother ever. I know you will.”

  She glanced at her comm. “Now, please forgive me, but I must dash. I have to be in the Governor’s meeting in two minutes. I will come and see you again soon.”

  * * * * *

  Moon, 2087

  As he entered Nadia’s office, Will Cooper could think of nothing other than speaking to his beloved Ginny to make sure she was alright. He’d tried to call her as soon as he’d left his room that morning. He remembered the look on Rachel Lim’s face with a double pang of guilt. There had been no vidcall service then or the dozen times he’d tried since. He’d felt a rising tide of panic as the day progressed, as the news from Earth worsened and his tally of failed calls grew.

  The Governor’s meeting included Carlos Ferreira who was standing in for Lian plus Thijs Jansen who’d been asked to update them on the repercussions from the comet impact. Before he briefed them on the appalling state of affairs on their home planet, Thijs alerted them to a problem on their own doorstep. He’d been up to the main observatory on top of Mt Malapert that afternoon, two hours after the last particles of comet dust cleared the Moon’s orbit. He returned with bad news: the two radio-telescope dishes on the far side had been peppered with micro-meteoroid hits and had suffered extensive damage.

  He showed them a brief clip from his helmet-cam footage and it shocked them all. There were hundreds of tiny pock marks from the impacts of the smallest particles, plus many breaches in the dishes’ mesh caused by sand-grain-sized debris. It was all repairable, but would mean a lot more work for Will’s overstretched engineers.

  Then Thijs showed them footage from his inspection of the plass shield protecting the observatory building. Here the larger grains could be seen embedded in the thick material which was distorted in places.

  “I was pleased to see,” he said, “that our shield had done its job. Until I found this…!”

  His video clip, illuminated by his helmet lights, panned to a dinner-plate sized hole in the shield wall. His bulky gloved hand appeared and passed into the orifice with room to spare. As his helmet lights moved they could see the material had deformed into a neat funnel shape that projected from the back of the wall by half a metre. Will uttered an oath at that point.

  “This hole was little bit disturbing,” said Thijs, “so I took a look at the wall of the observatory.” The video fast-forwarded to an opaque curved wall, weathered by years of solar exposure, and revealed another funnel-shaped hole.

  “This one is slightly smaller,” he said, as they saw his hand pass only part way in before it touched the sides. “As you know, the observatory has an inner and outer wall, half a metre apart, to hold the water that provides protection from solar flares and cosmic rays when we are working inside. Fortunately we had drained this when we shut the facility down, otherwise the damage inside would have been much worse.

  “Before I went inside I checked to see where the projectile had exited from the building.” Again the video fast-forwarded to a wobbly image of a short tube of plass projecting out of the opposite wall. As the camera closed in they could see Thijs’ thick gloved finger poking into the hole with room to spare.

  “As you can see the projectile passed through the shield wall and then through the four 40 millimetre walls of the observatory. Fortunately it hit only one screen inside, so equipment damage appears to be minimal. I’m guessing it was a rock about the size of a grape. But a grape travelling at 80,000 kilometres per hour – about twenty kilometres per second – has a lot of energy and can do a lot of damage. This may help us to understand what the Earth has just experienced – a grape measuring six kilometres across.”

  They were all silent while the enormity of the Comet Santos impact sank in.

  Thijs went on to summarise the tsunamis, earthquakes and eruptions from the reports that had made it past the gathering dust clouds via broken satellites to the Moon. There had been only distorted pictures and fractured commentary from any of the news broadcasts since midday. The ISCOM newsfeed, like its vidcomm link, had disappeared completely.

  “Now,” he said, “I am not a seismologist or a geo-physicist, so I can only give you my best guess at what is happening to our lo
vely planet Earth. There are three quite separate processes at work. The first involves the Earth’s crust, which is relatively brittle and transmits shocks as seismic long waves across the surface of the planet.”

  He brought up on to the screen a cross-sectional image of Earth with lines indicating seismic waves.

  “In addition to these long waves, there are also primary and secondary waves which can pass through the Earth’s mantle and, in the case of the p-waves, through the core as well. I won’t bore you with all the detail, just to say that these waves get reflected and refracted in such a way that they reappear at some parts of the Earth’s surface and not others. In particular they can be focussed at the opposite side of the globe to the original shock, as we’ve seen with New Zealand.

  “It appears that the comet’s impact has triggered further quakes in the common earthquake zones. China, Japan, Indonesia and along the western side of the Americas have all suffered. Any of these quakes, where they occur in the ocean, can produce tsunamis. So, in addition to the colossal waves we’ve seen around the Atlantic produced by the comet itself, there are other destructive tsunamis now reaching coasts in many of the world’s oceans and seas.”

  Thijs looked down at his hands which were balled into white-knuckled fists. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “This is very hard...”

  “Take your time, Thijs,” said Nadia, clutching her cruxifix. “This is hard for all of us.”

  He cleared his throat, looked up at the screen and continued. “The third process is the volcanic activity brought on by the comet impact. Some of these new eruptions will be the result of local earthquakes, but the number and ferocity of eruptions suggest another cause. I am going to propose a theory.

  “In conventional hydraulics, such as the braking system in your car, you stamp on the brake pedal. This pushes a piston down a cylinder displacing hydraulic fluid which in turn pushes the pistons of brake cylinders at the wheels. These squeeze the brake pads against the discs slowing the wheels and the vehicle.

 

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