by Garon Whited
“Commander Hardy, is the Luna ready for liftoff?” Captain Carl interrupted.
“As ready as a high school date after the prom, sir!”
“Colonel Edwards, prepare your flight plan and we’ll see—”
“Captain Carl!” Svetlana snapped. I haven’t heard such snap in a voice since my mother called me down from the roof when I was six—I still say my homemade parachute would have worked, too. We all shut up and every eye swiveled to stare at her. Even Kiska; we were all in one of the conference rooms for Svetlana’s report and Kiska was adamant about not being alone.
Captain Carl blinked at her for a moment. “I beg your pardon, miss. Do carry on.”
“Thank you. Now, if you will all return your attention to the screen?”
We did so. I’m tempted to say we did so meekly.
“There are other places with potential signs of life,” she continued. “LaGrange five has the only major, closed-ecology habitat station in orbit, if you recall—the Liwei habitat. From a temperature standpoint, it is in far better condition; it is one large cylinder with inner decks and so holds heat better. But it is steadily cooling; whether this is due to an inability to repair damaged components or from a total loss of life, I am unsure.
“There are also six other stations approximately the size of Tchekalinsky Station that may still support life; I cannot give a valid estimate regarding the likelihood of survivors except to say that their life support should have failed in the initial strikes. I consider it probable that any station with power for life support has been repaired. But that is only my opinion.”
She turned off the projector and brought up the lights.
“That concludes my report, Captain. Are there any questions?”
“Is ell-five still habitable?” he asked.
“Yes. The inner cylinders—the lower-gravity decks—will retain heat for considerably longer than the outer ones. Normally, the activity of electrical systems aboard the station is sufficient to make up for heat radiated away, but without those systems, there is a net loss between heat absorbed from the Sun and heat lost to radiation.”
“How much longer will the inner cylinders remain habitable?”
She frowned. “That is difficult to say. The zero-gravity cylinder—the central core of the LaGrange five habitat—is already near ten degrees Celsius. But, more importantly, the air systems are obviously not functional or there would be heat. None of the plant life aboard would be of a type to endure cold. Therefore, the key element of time would be based on the air quality, not the temperature. That I cannot evaluate easily with the equipment on hand.”
There was a momentary silence while Captain Carl thought about it.
“Colonel Edwards, Commander Hardy… get the Luna ready to go to ell-five. If ell-four is capable of repairing their life support, they can wait a little longer. What’s the population of ell-five and –four?”
Julie was at a workstation; she called up the information. “Ell-four has a permanent station complement of thirty, plus specialists working on the Ares. I don’t know for sure. Ell-five has a resident staff… plus tenants… totals two hundred and eleven people there.”
Over two hundred people!
There was a long, thoughtful silence. I can’t really tell you what I was thinking—there were too many things to think at once. The ghostly, silent passageways might echo with the babble of conversation. The empty places might have lovers sneaking a kiss. Lunar football. Lunar basketball!
People.
We were all a little stunned at the idea. Being the last, being alone, being the whole human race…
I finally broke the silence.
“Captain?”
“Yes, Maxwell?”
“We’re going to need more seats in the Luna.”
Chapter Eight
“Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.”
—Harry S. Truman (1884-1972)
Putting acceleration couches in the Luna’s cargo hold was a lot like adding seats to submarine’s top deck. It wasn’t really meant to have seats, and breathing had better be optional.
Unlike a submarine’s top deck, the Luna can have the seats surrounded by air—the cargo bay can be pressurized; it just takes a lot of air to do it, even at the standard seventy percent Earth pressure. We could keep the pressure even lower by using pure oxygen, but the fire hazard would be unacceptable. Still, just pressurizing the bay would allow anyone to breathe for quite a while—two hundred people would use it up a lot faster, of course. There was just no way for the Luna to handle a couple of hundred people on a permanent basis.
It would be impractical to have them hold their breath for forty hours. It’s also impractical to make twenty trips, bringing ten or so at a time. Until we’re configured to use a rocket fuel we can make ourselves, our orbital trips are going to be low-speed, high-efficiency things… and as few and far between as possible.
The problem wasn’t a lack of oxygen; oxygen is easy. The Luna could carry enough for two hundred people to breathe for weeks. With all space travel, it’s always a question of getting the carbon dioxide out of the air. After the carbon dioxide concentration rises to about seven or eight percent, people start to feel it—headaches, dizziness, tiredness—and around ten percent, most people start fainting. Beyond that, it starts to become a more serious problem.
To counter that, Anne and I cobbled together an algae air-scrubber. The thing was a small-scale model of part of Luna Base’s air-recycling plant and used the same edible algae; it made things simpler. The added air purification still wouldn’t keep up with the demand, but it would stretch the time before the carbon dioxide climbed to toxic levels. I connected some manual valves so the Luna’s normal scrubbers could handle part of the load, but it was still a close race on the numbers. If we brought back a full load, half of them might be unconscious for the landing.
That’s called “running out of air.” It’s a very bad thing. So we delayed an extra day; I built more algae tubes to give us some margin.
We scrounged foam padding from the bunks in the unused quarters; after the trip, they could have their mattresses back. I worked out a framework for the pads and used a couple of the extra robots to mass-produce them. Kathy helped calculate where to put the things—they were really just contoured wire under the foam, mounted in a heavy, tubular aluminum frame. We bolted them to the deck plates in rows near the ship’s centerline, careful to keep from interfering with any of the piping or wiring runs.
I realized I hadn’t yet put a new window in the outer airlock door. A detail, I know—but it ought to have one. Sometimes the little things get on my nerves. I determined to fix that one as soon as we got back.
The plan was to float gently over to the Liwei Orbital Habitat at Lagrange point five, dock, do an inventory and headcount, offload everybody we could get along with anything we could carry, then take a second trip if our inventory of the place said it would be worthwhile.
We were sitting in a conference room, discussing the plan—by “we,” I mean the spacer crew; Captain Carl, Kathy, myself, Anne, Julie, and Galena—when Galena made an interesting proposal.
“Please excuse for the presumption, but is idea I have.”
Captain Carl nodded to her. “Your ideas are welcome, lieutenant.” (Note that captain Galena was an air force officer of the United Soviet States—yes, a captain. But Captain Carl was a naval captain—the equivalent of a colonel. Navy tradition states that there can be only one Captain, thus Galena got her air force rank turned into the equivalent naval rank—lieutenant. I was there when Captain Carl explained it to her; she didn’t even smile, just saluted… and asked me about the T.O. out of the Captain’s hearing. Sharp lady.)
“Is not worthwhile to repair habitat station? Electronics damage, perhaps severe—not hardened equipment as aboard military vessels. But was also much farther than most satellites, and no structural damage. Tchekalinsky Station we could save, if we wished. Is not
large habitat station worth such efforts? Many farms, much life support, and outer ring is full gravity.”
Anne nodded. “Captain, if I may?” He nodded. “Galena has a very good point. Here on the moon, we exercise two hours a day just to keep in shape and take calciating drugs to keep our bones from turning brittle. Those drugs won’t last forever. Having a place where we can live in a full-gee environment would be a huge help.”
Captain Carl nodded again. “All right. Maxwell, while you’re over there, take a look at the station with an eye to putting it back in service. Make a list of what you’ll need and send it back before you leave the habitat. And start thinking about alternatives for when we run out of rocket fuel.”
“Way ahead of you, sir. I’ve been thinking about this one in my downtime between breaths. Got a bunch of ideas, from a launch catapult to an induction-field landing cradle.”
His eyebrows went up. “Really? This meeting is properly about planning for the habitat rescue mission, but I deem this to be of sufficient relevance. Explain your ideas, Max.”
“Well, the quickest one is just to change the fuel type in the engines. The Luna uses a high-energy juice to get the efficiency needed for takeoff from Earth—and it’s a fuel we can’t make. We don’t need anywhere near that kind of brute force for launch and landing on the moon. When we have a few weeks of downtime for our spaceship, I think I can jigger the engines to take an aluminum-based fuel instead; the liquid oxygen systems won’t need to be materially changed, just the flow rates recalibrated. Best of all, we can manufacture that from lunar soil.”
Kathy’s face was a study. “Regolith—lunar rock and soil—is about six to ten percent aluminum… and about sixty percent, on the average, of some oxygen compound…”
I grinned at her. “Yes, O Lady of Flight; the moon is a big ball of rocket juice, just waiting to be processed and refined. You’ll be flying that bus out there until we’re all old and gray. Julie can help me rig up processing facilities, the robots can build holding tanks, and you can help me tinker with your precious engines.” Julie nodded enthusiastically at the idea.
I’ve seen Kathy smile before; it’s like watching the sun come out from behind clouds. But that smile could have charged every battery in the base or melted Yakov’s heart. It sure did a number on mine.
Kathy loves flying. And I strongly suspect she loves me. Some, anyway.
Captain Carl rapped his knuckles on the polished concrete tabletop. “Thank you, Commander Hardy. I’m sure we’re all pleased to hear that—colonel Edwards, especially.” Was that a faint smile? “Please submit a detailed report on your launch-and-landing ideas when you get back. We’ll go over them then. Is there any other business?”
Nobody spoke up.
“Good. Katherine, you and I will preflight the Luna. Maxwell, you and Miss Mishenkova finish preparing the guestroom—” the cargo hold full of couches “—and give it pressure. Lieutenants, keep working with our guests.”
Anne raised a hand. “Sir?”
“Yes?”
“Maybe this is just a quibble, but are they guests?”
Captain Carl nodded soberly. “They are guests,” he affirmed. “We are a military expedition sent to evaluate an essentially civilian construction. As sole occupants when our government ceased to exist, we effectively are the government. We exist under martial law—that is, military government. Our guests are not citizens, nor are they members of our organization.”
“Uh. Permission to speak freely, sir?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the biggest load of excrement I’ve ever heard you spout. Sir.”
There was a stunned silence for about three heartbeats. Captain Carl smiled slightly, perhaps a trifle bitterly, and motioned for Anne to go on.
“Sir, with respect, our governments are gone. We have a cloud-covered ball of radioactive ash for a planet and a vacuum-cloaked ball of rock for our present home, and you’re blathering on—begging the Captain’s pardon—about legality? What happened to the idea that we need to jettison nationalism and pull together as a species?”
Captain Carl leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “You raise very good points, Lieutenant. While I do not normally explain myself, I can see this matter is one that will affect us all in the near future.”
He leaned forward, placing his clasped hands on the table. “The situation is this: I was given the responsibility of keeping this base intact and functioning. You, as officers under my command, were assigned duties under me concurrent with that mission. The mission has been expanded, and we are cut off from the normal chain of command. Legally, my responsibilities now cover all persons within this command, whether they accompanied us or arrived afterward.
“Now, we have a few additions to our original crew. Luckily for us, our guests are intelligent, competent, and professional people, willing—so far—to take orders and to live in harmony with the base personnel. That suits me right down to the ground.
“But now we are about to bring aboard some unknown number of civilians. The Liwei Habitat has a variety of people, most of them wealthy elderly who enjoy necessary health benefits from lower gravity, as well as a competent, professional staff that maintains and operates the station facilities.”
He rubbed his temples with fingertips for a moment. “The difficulty is that I am responsible for these people. If they do something stupid, or foolish, or act out of ignorance, they can cause immeasurable damage to this base and potentially irreparable harm to our race as a whole.
“The only people in whom I can place my trust—the only people I feel can tolerate the responsibility and authority of being base personnel—are those in this room.” He looked at Galena. “I specifically include our former guest, here. She and I have spoken at length and she has agreed to join our chain of command as a temporary staff officer, with transfer to the line as soon as I agree she is qualified.”
He sighed. “The point is, we are about to have up to two hundred guests in our base. For all intents and purposes, this base is a lifeboat, a ship under way, and we are the crew. We are about to take on passengers, some of which may eventually become crew. But that will require they learn how to live and work in the lifeboat. That takes discipline, which they do not have. Most human beings do not have self-discipline, the only real form of it. So they must be governed and guided, not coddled.
“If we allow them to do so, they will hold elections, vote for whatever demagogue promises them the most bread and most entertaining circuses—and one thing we cannot permit is this duty to fall on the shoulders of anyone who wants it! While democracy is a fine thing, it does not work when those who vote have no real idea of the issues they face. A space ship cannot be steered by committee; a vessel cannot be commanded by a vote. We must have direction and we must make no mistakes.”
He spread his hands flat on the table and slowly looked at each of us.
“We cannot afford mistakes,” he said, softly. “We are the human race, and we will have to work together, harmoniously and efficiently, if we are to survive. It is easy to forget that, when we have heat and light, air and food and water. We live in a fragile shell of stone, beyond which there is the most hostile, inimical environment Man has ever dared to build in. We are not here to cater to the needs of persons who cannot or will not work. We are here to promote the survival of our race. Anyone who is not in that business is not welcome, and I will not have them in this base.”
There was a thick silence.
“Sir?” Anne asked. “How long do you intend to keep absolute command? And should we start calling you ‘Commandant’ now, or will it wait?”
Captain Carl’s eyes blazed with an intensity of passion I haven’t seen since he ordered me to shoot down a satellite. I think Anne did a dental—that is, she hit a nerve.
“Lieutenant,” he said, voice cold and level, “I intend to keep absolute command until I am as certain as I can be that humanity will survive without it. If that means I wind
up lynched by a mutinous mob or replaced by a competent professional, so be it; I will do my best. And the salutation is ‘Captain.’ Acknowledge.” He looked her in the eyes and held her gaze for several very fast heartbeats. At least mine were fluttering right along. Anne met his look for most of them, then dropped her eyes.
“Aye aye, Captain.”
His expression softened a little. “If it comforts you any, understand two things. First, all of us—myself included—are still expected to hold to the traditions of the military; specifically, our long-standing tradition of honorable conduct. And second… once upon a time, I liked my job. Dismissed.”
* * *
Captain Carl sent Galena with us. She spent a lot of time on Tchekalinsky Station doing maintenance and showed a lot of smarts in putting it back together. She’d be a great help in evaluating Liwei Habitat, and it was her idea in the first place.
Unfortunately, it also meant that Kathy and I wouldn’t get any alone-time on the trip. Or so I thought. Apparently, Kathy was extremely pleased about having an effectively unlimited supply of fuel, and Galena was sympathetic, as well as cooperative. Galena took the watch on the flight deck and Kathy came down to the sleeping racks.
Making love in zero gravity isn’t as easy as you’d think. But we were selected for the mission partly because of our ingenuity. It can be done.
The flight time from Luna to ell-five isn’t like a trip to a higher or lower orbit. Ell-five is in the same orbital path as the moon around the Earth; it’s just sixty degrees back, or “west,” along the track. Ell-four is sixty degrees forward, or “east,” along that line. These are highly stable spots called Trojan points; you put a satellite there and it stays there like a parked car in a pothole. If we were in a hurry, the Luna could crank out enough newtons to get us there in a matter of hours—as long as we didn’t mind the fact our retro burn would empty the fuel tanks. Instead, we decided to take a slow boat and save our fuel for the return trip.