by Garon Whited
“Only the two?” I asked. My mouth was obviously not well-connected to my brain.
Anne smiled. She had dimples.
“Only the two females, Max. I doubt the Captain can or would catch anything from you.”
I laughed in surprise. “I hope you’re right!” I agreed, and dropped it. It was a relief to know there was a lady in the base that didn’t want me for my body. A relief, and maybe just a little sting, too. It’s that masculine ego, you know. Anne isn’t old, just older. Under other circumstances, I wouldn’t mind taking her out. If we were down to the last-man-and-woman scenario, I’m sure she would manage to encourage my procreative abilities, no problem.
I pulled on socks while she had her face in a microviewer.
“And is there good news?” I asked.
“No signs of cancerous cells in the prescan,” she answered, pulling her face out of the viewer to look at me. “Come back in twenty-four hours and we’ll have the full results.”
“Aye aye, Doctor.” I repressed a salute and started to wriggle into my jumpsuit.
“Hurry up with your clothes. The Captain told me he would delay the radio test until everyone was in the control room. I want to see if anything shoots at us.”
I hurried.
Chapter Four
“Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.”
—T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)
I held the door to central control open for Anne—not all the internal doors are pressure doors, but there is always a pressure door between sections and they close automatically unless they’re held open—and followed her inside. Everyone was there, sitting in the chairs and looking at me. I thought I detected a trace of impatience. I couldn’t blame them.
“Sorry to keep everyone waiting,” I said. “Anne had to hold me down to draw blood.” I mock-glared at her. “Vampire.”
Anne blinked at me, surprised, and laughed aloud. “Max! Tell me you aren’t going to admit little, tiny me beat you up? A big, strong man like you?” Anne is just barely tall enough to qualify for the military and looks like she might break if handled roughly. I’m over twice her weight and look like I wrestle bears for a living. Appearances can be deceiving.
“I wasn’t going to admit the beating-up part,” I said, trying to look embarrassed. “Thank you so much.”
“We haven’t been waiting that long,” Kathy interposed. “We’ve been locking down the base, just in case. A lunar quake from a nuke could still rattle us at that distance.”
I nodded, abandoning the joke with Anne. “That’s right. All the internal doors tight?”
“Everything but the one to central control,” Kathy replied, smiling.
The door behind me closed on its own. At her comment, I turned the wheel to lock it in place. I took a seat at one of the monitoring consoles and watched. Captain Carl turned in his seat to face Kathy. We all did.
“Hail the planet with our warning, Colonel Edwards.”
Kathy adjusted her equipment and keyed her headset.
“This is Lunar Base One, calling Earth. This is Lunar Base One, calling Earth. Be advised that there may be orbital weapons platforms targeting radio transmissions. Do not—repeat, do not—attempt to respond with radio. Again, be advised that there may be orbital weapons platforms targeting radio transmissions. Do not attempt to respond with radio. Use laser communications only.”
She unkeyed her headset and turned to Captain Carl. “Shall I continue, sir?”
“How long was the source broadcasting before it was eliminated?” he asked.
The source. The survivors. It sounded so much better when it was phrased differently. And “eliminated”—much nicer than “blown up.”
“I had it on for eight minutes, sir.”
“Can you record our warning and set it to loop?” he asked.
Kathy smiled slightly. “I recorded what I just said, sir. Shall I have the computer play it back on a loop?”
“Yes. Do so. Let it run until someone shoots at it. In the meantime, stand by the laser communications array. For all I know, someone may find one and try to call us.”
Kathy clicked at her terminal for a moment, then the speakers reproduced her voice, repeating the warning over and over again. We grew more tense with every repetition of the loop. Eight minutes. There could be a satellite out there, counting seconds, waiting for a coded signal that would tell it to stand down. A satellite that would coldly, logically fulfill its mission and send a small nuclear device streaking through space to the source of the offending signal.
Eight minutes is a long time. You can’t hold your breath that long. We tried. Our eyes were torn between a screen with a time display and a surface camera aimed at the northeastern ringwall.
“If there is such a satellite,” Kathy said, softly, “the warhead will take longer to get here than it would to reach Earth.”
“And if it will target anything but Earth,” Julie replied. “Earth is like some poor Joe at the bottom of a well. You wouldn’t even need much of a missile. Just enough thrusters to drop it out of orbit and some vanes to steer it onto target.”
Captain Carl nodded. “After eight minutes, we will take a radar sweep of the sky and see if we have anything on a collision course. After the sweep, we will shut down the radar and continue to use the remote transceiver as a decoy signal for any hostile fire.”
Eight minutes of wondering if a thermonuclear warhead is going to land a few kilometers away. I saw Kathy with her hands clasped, watching our video feed, waiting for the flash. Her hands were white-knuckled. Julie was lounging, trying to appear completely at ease, but her eyes kept cycling from monitor to monitor and her left leg kept bouncing nervously. Anne was an alabaster saint, calm, even serene, except for the beads of sweat forming on her brow. I noticed that I was wiping my palms on the legs of my jumpsuit, over and over again. Captain Carl was the only person unmoved; he watched and waited like he was carved from rock. I’m still not taking bets on whether or not he’s human.
Eight minutes can drag by slower than the Friday before a three-day weekend.
At last, Captain Carl announced, “Activate radar. Give me a look at the sky, colonel.” We all jumped when he spoke; it was as sudden and unexpected as a gunshot.
Kathy warmed up the radar and had the computer run a scan of the sky. Blips showed up on the display, scattered all around the planet. Thousands of them, any one of which might be a missile, and no way to tell… yet. The phased arrays swept the sky again, taking another look and matching the old information to the new. Tracks started to appear, ballistic curves and vectors, projections of motion, predictions and courses.
“Preliminary scan shows no incoming objects, Captain.”
Four people can sound like a whole auditorium. We let out a breath we’d been trying to hold since we started broadcasting.
“Keep scanning,” Captain Carl replied. “If anything shows a closing track, discontinue radar and maximize the remote transmitter output. If something is going to use radio-homing to find us, I want it thinking we’re somewhere else.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Meanwhile, the rest of us can go about our duties. I’ll relieve you in four hours, Katherine. Everyone, out.” Captain Carl stood up and ushered us toward the door.
“Can’t we stay and see?” Julie asked.
“Colonel Edwards is quite capable of monitoring the skywatch without help, and we have other things to do. You, for example, need to come with me, lieutenant. We have a discussion. Lieutenant Fleming, I’d like you along as an observer.”
“Of course, sir,” Anne replied, stiffly military. Julie glowered at her but said nothing. They went out; I hung back. My duties were over for now. Spending time on the surface has certain privileges to go along with the hazard—assuming that we still adhered to general regs. Besides, unless and until something decided to crack, pop, or leak, I didn’t have much to do at the moment.
I sat down at the consol
e next to Kathy’s.
“Hi,” I offered.
Kathy flashed me a smile. “Hi, yourself.”
“You know, I’m probably going to have to sit in that seat at some point. Want to review me on how our skywatch works? I’d hate to think a missile was a shooting star and do nothing but make a wish.”
“No danger of that,” she informed me. “I’ve got the computer set up to do most of the work. It tracks individual objects and plots their projected courses. Existing objects are in green. If something new shows up, it appears in blue until it shows a projected path that won’t land near us. If anything is going to hit the Moon, it changes to yellow and an alarm sounds.”
She indicated her terminal and her finger traced along orbital paths. The Earth was a line-drawing representation, not an actual picture, which suited me fine. It looked a lot like a giant atom with all the dots and elliptical orbits around it.
“Something headed for us could be almost anything,” she went on. “A loose bolt. A bit of broken satellite. Anything. If I see anything in yellow, I tell the computer to use imaging radar on it, like so, to get a better idea of how large it is, its shape, and so on. But if it’s under power—that is, if it is accelerating toward us—then the klaxon sounds alert and I shift our emissions to the remote station you set up.” She pointed out the controls and gestured over them without touching, semi-demonstrating.
“I see,” I said, and I did. “Looks simple enough. What happens if the computer goes down?”
“There are three, actually,” she replied, pointing out two other stations, including the one I was at. “Nothing on this base is without a redundant backup; you know that. If one fails, there are still two others on the job. If all three go, we shut everything down and go back to radio silence until we can get them running again.”
“Let’s pray they don’t fail,” I answered. “I’m a mechanic, not an electronics man.”
“And I’m a pilot, not a radio repairman,” she said. “That was Gary’s job.”
“I know.” We were silent for long minutes, each thinking about Gary in our own way. And, probably, about our own situation. Well, it was always there, somewhere in our minds. Sometimes it was up at the forefront, ruining sleep; sometimes it was buried under the needs of the moment. But it was always there. The best that could be done was to forget, temporarily distracted.
It’s a good thing they don’t allow alcohol in orbit.
“I’m glad you made it back, Max.”
I chuckled. “Aw, shucks, Ma’am. T’weren’t nuthin’,” I answered. “Just a walk on the beach. Admittedly, a very bright, dry, hot, beach under enough sunshine to broil chicken, but it still wasn’t anything to speak of. I could have built a sand castle, if I’d had some water. And it didn’t boil away. Or freeze.”
She gave a small laugh. “You’d make light of your own funeral, wouldn’t you?”
“I hope I never have to. On the other hand, maybe I should tape my own eulogy; nobody else would do it justice.”
“It’s a thought,” she agreed, then sobered. “Max… I am glad you’re back.”
“Miss me?” I asked, smiling.
“Yes,” she admitted. “I had a taste of what this place would be like without you around. I didn’t like it.”
I shifted uncomfortably. “My sparkling wit, no doubt.”
“Yes, that. You have the best sense of humor of all of us, Max. I don’t think you realize just how important your sunny disposition is around here.”
“God knows we need someone cheerful. But if Morose Max is the best we have, Christmas is going to be grim.”
She laughed again, surprised and much amused. “Damn you, Max!” she laughed. “How can a girl have a serious talk with you?”
“Try asking. I can be serious.” I put on my Serious Face. I have one; I use it when dealing with persons under my command who have Screwed Up. I’ve had to use it more than I like to think about. I’m just not command material. My rank is due to organization and management skills, along with advanced education and training. I’m a leader, but only on a small-to-medium scale; there’s no way I’m ever going to get a command. I’ll never be the Guy In Charge. No way. And thank goodness.
Well, that used to be the case. If the wheels came off in a really bad way, I might wind up holding the sack. Let’s say that I hoped—hoped hard—to never get a command.
“All right, Max. If you can be serious…?”
I nodded, still giving her my Serious Face. “Go ahead.”
She hesitated.
Before we lifted off from Earth, I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that Kathy never hesitated at anything. Ever. If a decision had to be made, if an action had to be taken, Kathy would pick the right one by sheer instinct and hammer on it like a pile driver. She’s command material. Someone in command can be wrong, but can never be uncertain. I think too much; Kathy just knows the right thing to do, without thinking. I’d bet she was born that way.
Recently, I’ve started to notice that the Executive Officer for Luna Base is most definitely human.
“Max, I just wanted to say… well, I’m sure all of us would like to say… That is, Max, you’re a very… We all appreciate you, Max. It was a dangerous job you just did and I just wanted to let you know that I—we—appreciate that you did it. Any of a hundred things could have gone seriously wrong. And I’m—we’re—glad you made it back.”
“I’m glad to be back, Kathy. It was my pleasure to set up the remote transmitter. I want to know if there’s anyone else alive, too.”
“You do?” she asked, cocking her head at me for a moment. “Sometimes I wonder, Max. You don’t seem so… sometimes you seem… I don’t know what the word is. It isn’t that you don’t care; I know you do. I’ve seen it in your eyes. You care about a lot of things. But you don’t…” she trailed off.
“I don’t seem to care about living or dying?” I guessed. I do, intensely; but she was trying to put something into words and I had no idea what it was. Anything to help shake her thought processes to get the idea out.
“That’s not it. Maybe it’s the way you seem to be so… it’s not callous. Independent, maybe. Like you care about what happens to other people, but no matter what happens, you’ll just keep going on. Like you’re unstoppable. Does that make any sense?”
“Not to me, but it doesn’t have to make sense to me as long as it makes sense to you.”
“I suppose so. But… Max, how long have we been friends?”
I thought about it. “Two years? Maybe three. It takes a while to warm up to me, so I don’t know how long you’ve been my friend. I’ve been your friend for about two and a half.”
“That’s about right. You make friends very easily, Max. You care about people.”
“I’m afraid so,” I admitted. “A serious failing in an officer, yes?”
“Maybe. I’m not so sure.” She paused, watching the screen. “I like having you for a friend, Max, and I’m your friend, too. That and more, which I never really… I didn’t expect to… I’ve never… Oh! Forget it!”
“Okay,” I agreed. “But it would be nice to know what I’m supposed to forget.”
She glanced at me, returned her gaze to the screen. She took a deep breath, then another.
“Did I ever talk about my husband?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Probably not. He was a good man, and I liked him, but he wasn’t…” She groped for a word. “I guess I wasn’t in love. I have never understood love, nor how someone could fall in it. Or, for that matter, how someone could fall in love and not realize it.”
She looked at me and caught my eyes.
“I’ve loved you for a while, Maxwell Hardy. I never knew it, never admitted it to myself, never thought that I actually could love you—you or anybody else. All it took was the destruction of the world to make me realize that I don’t like being alone. The problem is, I don’t like needing people, either. For some reason, I need you.
&nb
sp; “Now, I don’t know how you feel, but you know how I feel. I had to tell you.” She turned back to the screen and didn’t take her eyes off it.
“Fair enough,” I told her. “And while the usual reaction of a man is to either spout off an immediate ‘I love you, too,’ or run screaming into the hills, I’m going to hold off on that for a while.”
“Long enough to get into a space suit?” she asked, grimly.
“No, I’m not going anywhere. So what does that leave? Oh, and what do you want for dinner? I’ll have it unwrapped and waiting when your shift ends.”
She glanced at me, appraisingly. “You’re not just unstoppable, you’re also unfazeable.”
“Nope,” I agreed, letting my Serious Face slip. I grinned at her. “I’m no juggernaut; I’m an astronaut. Or maybe an astronut. I come to a dead halt for some of the most trivial things.”
She arched a reddish eyebrow at me and turned back to her monitor. “Oh? Like what?”
“Well, to name one really recently, needles. I was only half-kidding about Anne. She had to order me to hold still for it. I hate the blasted things.” I shivered. “I take being shot at with more aplomb. I take being shot with better grace!”
“Fair enough. What else?”
I thought for a second.
“Dogs.”
“Dogs?”
“Dogs.”
“I don’t understand,” she admitted. “Dogs bring you to a halt?”
“In a manner of speaking. I like dogs. For instance, I was on my way to my nephew’s high school graduation when a dog ran out into the road in front of me. I stood on the brakes, but I couldn’t completely stop. I didn’t run him over, but I hit him fairly hard. When I got out to look, he was lying there whining.” I thought back, seeing it again, remembering. “I took off my suit coat and wrapped him up—got bit in the process, too; he was in a lot of pain—put him in the back seat, and drove to the local animal hospital. He had no tags, not even a collar, so there was no one to contact.”