Luna

by Garon Whited

  “Out.” He clicked off. I shut off my own mike and went to suit up. Once suited up and sealed in, I made sure I wasn’t broadcasting before I let my feelings out. I didn’t quite melt the faceplate, but I steamed it up a bit. At least I felt better.

  Svetlana met me at the main airlock and I ushered her in. I didn’t feel like giving her a lesson on how to use the one-person airlock. The main airlock depressurized, the outer doors slid silently back, and we went out to the surface. Svetlana spent a minute or two just looking around, staring at the landscape in the lunar-evening light. I let her gape while I drove the car out from the dugout pocket that served as the garage. After adjusting the sunshade on the car, I parked next to her and cleared my throat over the radio. She climbed on and rode in silence for half an hour or so.

  “Max?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Good habit to get into,” I replied. “Thinking is a vital part of survival up here.”

  “This I have seen.”

  “So what have you been thinking about?”

  “Survival. May I ask of you a question?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “What would happen if a disaster struck?” she asked. I wondered what she meant.

  “Depends on the disaster,” I answered. “If we get hit by a meteor, we’re probably all going to die. In the somewhat smaller scale, if we have an epidemic of the quivering sweats, we’ll probably stand really short watches and get nothing much done until it’s over.”

  “Suppose… suppose something, an accident, killed some of the people at the base.”

  I felt fairly sure what she was driving at, but decided to let her buy more rope.

  “The people in lower ranks would step up and take over.”

  “So, if something happened to the Captain?”

  “Easy. Kathy would get promoted and I’d wind up the executive officer.”

  Svetlana shivered. I couldn’t see her face because of our helmets, but I could tell, even through the suit. Things would not go well for Svetlana with Kathy in charge.

  “And if Commander Edwards likewise perished?” she pressed.

  “I’d have to sit in the worry seat, which I do not relish. After me, it would be Anne, then Julie, then Galena, and then Tsien. I’d have to consult the table of organization to see who our ranking noncom is, but I think Peng would be next… Why do you ask?”

  “No reason,” she answered, quickly. “Just… would we be… could you and I be involved if you were Captain?”

  Aha, thought I. She was still after me. The most attractive cologne in existence is “Unavailable.”

  “I don’t see why not,” I replied, lying through my teeth. “Of course, that would have to wait until after the inquest.”

  “Really?” she asked. “Why would there be an inquest?”

  “Because, if I wound up Captain, that would mean Captain Carl and Kathy were dead. If they were murdered, I’d have to rip someone’s head off.” I paused and turned my shoulders, twisting in my seat to bring my helmet around so I could look at her. For a moment, I had a vision of Kathy pinning Svetlana down in a corridor.

  “Literally,” I added, still holding on to that image. “With my bare hands. By twisting and yanking until it came off.” I relaxed back into the seat and faced forward.

  Svetlana was silent for the rest of the trip, which suited me just fine.

  * * *

  The bunker itself was placed well to the south of the actual runway, out of the way of the construction ’bots, and far enough from the ringwall to be unconcerned about avalanches from the blast. I parked beside it and went inside to look things over.

  The entrance was just a ramp leading down into a circular room, well below the surface. A single LED light was tacked to the center of the overhead, mainly as an assist to the suit lights. The equipment for air exchange was to the right of the door. The fuel cell for providing power to the pumps and charging the detonation capacitors—and the capacitors themselves—were to the left. A four-plex of heavy electrical cables ran up the ramp and out. A ledge, carved into the far curve of the wall, held the rest of the equipment. A couple of blocky rocks were there as things to sit on.

  We also had a few portable remotes and a transceiver connected to a surface antenna. A portable remote resembled nothing so much as a handheld video game screen, but with an pair of antennae. The screen showed the view from the camera of the robot being controlled, and could be switched from robot to robot. It was handy, whether for standing right next to a four-ton robot vehicle that wasn’t designed with a real control room—just a saddle with some basic controls—or for standing ten kilometers away from a dangerous operation.

  I switched on the transceiver so I could talk to the base; this also relayed the signals from the remotes so they could synchronize with the robots. As a first order of business, I looked things over through the robot eyes. There was a robot with a telescopic camera up on the ringwall, with a good view of the drill sites. Once we detonated, we were going to lose it, but we were in a hurry.

  After assuring myself we had everything in place, I checked over the demolitions gear. We already had detonators—sparking units connected to long power cables—fed down into the holes. Once I started the on-site pumps, I’d charge the capacitor bank from the fuel cell, close the contacts to dump power through the cables, and a bunch of sparks would trigger the combination of aluminum dust suspended in liquid oxygen, for a series of very large bangs. All our earth-moving ’bots were already well back from the blast site and lined up, ready to start plowing a runway through the resulting debris.

  Things were about to get interesting.

  “Luna Base? This is Max.”

  “Go ahead, Max.”

  “Is that you, Li?”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  “Just calling in to let you know I’m starting the blasting process. You may feel a rumble in a few minutes. I’ll call back before I close the detonator switch.”

  “Roger that, sir. We’re ready for a rumble.”

  “Check.”

  Svetlana was sitting on one of the blocks. The glare of a remote screen reflected from her faceplate and I wondered what she was looking at. I walked toward her and she straightened up to look at me.

  “I am watching through one of the road robots, since we have no windows. Is that permitted?” she asked.

  “Oh. Sure. Just don’t move anything. We don’t want anything busted by falling rocks.”

  “I understand.” She went back to watching the screen and I started flipping switches, feeding power to the pumps. The pumps all appeared to run smoothly, and I panned rapidly from site to site, watching through the telescopic eye for several seconds. Once I was sure they were running fine—none of them pouring their explosives onto the ground, for instance—I clicked the main power switch and started charging the detonator capacitors.

  While I was doing this, I noticed a movement because of the change in the glare. I turned half-around to get my faceplate in line with it. Svetlana was up and walking around a bit. Well, I couldn’t blame her; things looked pretty boring to this point. We’d been in a rover for a while, and there wasn’t much for her to see in the bunker. Even the road-robots didn’t see much at this distance. I bent down again to regard the remote screen.

  According to the flow on the pumps, it would take four minutes to empty our charges into the rock. The capacitors were still charging, but the gauge showed they would be ready before we were done pumping, so that was all right.

  “Luna base,” I called.

  “Yessir.”

  “Li, I’m about to touch off a big fireworks show. Stand by.”

  “Yes, Sir!”

  I got the detonator—a knife switch with a thick, glass insulator as a safety device—and had it in hand while I watched the pump timer. The home-made charge meter on the capacitors climbed and the needle crept up to the scratched mark, so I shut off the charging c
ircuit. Another minute crept by while the pumps continued to empty the barrels into the holes, and I gave them an extra ten seconds to be sure.

  I pulled the insulator from between the detonator contacts.

  “Fire in the hole,” I said, and closed it.

  Nothing happened.

  “Son of a bitch!” I added. “Li, we have a problem.”

  Silence.

  “Li? Come in.”

  Distinctly unpleasant silence.

  “Calling Luna Base. Come in, Luna Base. Respond, over.”

  There followed an even more unpleasant silence. I growled a little.

  “Blast bunker to Luna. Come in, Luna.”

  “I read you, Max,” came Kathy’s voice. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know, but if I can hear you, that means Luna Base is off the air. Be advised I’ve got a failure to fire on the demolitions. Try to raise them on the laser while I check the connections.”

  “Roger that.”

  I opened the switch and examined it. It looked good, as did the capacitor bank and all the connections. The wires leading out of the bunker were also solidly connected—one to the switch, one to the opposite terminal on the capacitors.

  “I don’t see anything wrong with the local hookup,” I told Kathy. “Anything from the base?”

  “I haven’t been able to reach them,” she admitted. “I’ll keep trying.”

  “Good. I’m going outside to check on the wiring. If I can’t find a problem locally, I’ll have ’bots run along the cable. No over. Hold.”

  I bounced up the ramp and followed the cable for a few meters, then paused to trace it by eye.

  A dozen meters away, a sizable chunk of it was missing.

  I flew more than I bounced and reached the break in nothing flat. From the look of it, the cable had about three meters cut out of it. It would be impossible to splice it together quickly; the power cables to the detonators and the power cables to the pumps weren’t labeled. I resolved to have words with my boys and girls about marking things.

  A worse thought occurred to me. I had no idea when the break occurred. If it was cut before the pumps finished, there wouldn’t be enough explosive in the bores. And even worse than that, every second of delay caused more of the liquid oxygen in the bores to boil away into vacuum, reducing the explosive force of each bore…

  The cable-cutting wasn’t an accident. That was certain. The tracked trail of a robot was quite clear in the lunar dust. The ends of the wire were cut, not just run over and crushed in carelessness. I looked along the tracks, swinging around to face one direction and then the other.

  A robot was rolling along, fairly distant, and getting farther away at its lumbering top speed.

  I hurried back into the bunker and missed my footing at the smooth base of the ramp; I couldn’t stop in time and bounced off the far wall. I made a mental note about safety regulations regarding corrugated decking in temporary structures as I ignored Svetlana’s questions. I picked myself up to grab a remote unit and flip through channels, looking for the moving ’bot.

  I didn’t find it, which meant it was already under remote control.

  I put the remote unit down and looked around. Three remote units were on the ledge, counting mine. There used to be four.

  The one Svetlana had been watching was face-down on her seat. I moved toward it. When she moved to pick it up, I grabbed her wrist and pushed her away. She bounced from the wall, harmlessly. It was lucky for her that the spare suits I’d made were all hardsuits.

  The remote showed the lunar surface sliding grandly along. There was a four-strand length of cable in one of the gripper arms. I turned the ’bot around and gave it instructions on where to stop—just outside the bunker. Then I turned to Svetlana.

  She was already most of the way up the ramp and still accelerating. I charged up the ramp after her, remote in hand, but not to catch her. The important thing wasn’t dealing with her. The important thing was setting off a lot of explosives before the liquid oxygen boiled away and left us with a lot of aluminum dust.

  I didn’t see her when I surfaced. Probably hiding behind a paving ’bot, I reflected. Fine by me, as long as she stayed out of my way. I tossed the remote into the cargo compartment and started to climb into the car, but stopped. Something wasn’t right about the rear of the car. I examined it more closely and realized that something had drilled a hole through the motor compartment.

  Wench. I didn’t think she knew how to run a ’bot that well. Regardless, the car was disabled; I’d have to wait until the ’bot got back with the wire. Or… maybe not. The car had a lot of wire in the motor. I put the remote down on the seat and got out a socket wrench. I unbolted the compartment cover and examined the motor. The electrical coils had shorted and melted, welding themselves into a fused mass. Oh, well. So much for unwinding a couple of meters. I slapped the cover back down and turned around.

  Svetlana hadn’t been hiding. When she fled the bunker ahead of me, she had come out from the mouth of the ramp, turned sharply to run around to the overhead side, and watched me exit. The built-in tunnel vision of my spacesuit kept her concealed as I emerged. Then she went back in, grabbed a remote, and fired up four tons of robot.

  As I turned away from the engine, a gripper arm hit me in the chest like a baseball bat hits a pitch, with about the same result: I went flying. It hurt like hell and I wasn’t sure if it cracked a rib or not. If I hadn’t been wearing a hardsuit, I’m sure it would have.

  My first thought, as I skidded in the dust, was that someone deserved her head ripped off. I’m not a vengeful man, but I was feeling plenty upset, and for several reasons. I don’t like being betrayed. I don’t like being smacked with my own equipment. I don’t like having my wife and unborn child depending on me while some moron slows me down.

  And, to be completely honest… I really don’t like getting beat up by a tiny little girl. It’s embarrassing.

  I got to my feet as quickly as I could, wheezing, half-expecting to get run over. I needn’t have worried. The ’bot was sitting there, backed completely into the ramp with its rear road-grading blade lowered, blocking it as completely as a cat crouching in a drainpipe. Svetlana was smarter than I thought. Even in a suit, even in this gravity, I’m faster and more maneuverable than a ’bot. I could have dodged under it and slid between the tracks if the grading blade had been up. If it wasn’t in the hole, I could have dodged around it. If either condition existed, she would have a real problem. But like this… this was going to be trouble.

  Svetlana didn’t have to kill me. She didn’t even have to hurt me. She had all the air and was protected from the Sun. I had what was left in my tanks and, at best, a sunshade from the heat, but not the harder radiation. Not that the hard radiation was an issue, not with three hours of air left.

  Well, fine. I circled around to the car, pausing to turn in a complete circle every so often, just to make sure another ’bot wasn’t sneaking up on me. Vacuum makes it hard to hear tracks clanking, and the faceplate comes with its own built-in blinders. There’s no such thing as peripheral vision in a space suit.

  I swore, right there, to fix that, even if it meant installing a rear-view mirror.

  Svetlana didn’t relinquish control of her guardian ’bot, though. Its camera swiveled to keep me centered, but nothing else moved. I got to the car and reached for the remote I’d put in the cargo box. In a minute, she could have a real fight on her hands as a pair of behemoths went after each other.

  I picked up a crushed ruin. One of the gripper hands had grabbed it and crunched it before she backed the ’bot into the ramp.

  I indulged in about sixty seconds of head-clearing profanity. I certainly felt calmer afterward.

  So. My situation. I’m out of contact with Luna Base, I have no vehicle, I have three hours of air in my tanks, I’m being slowly irradiated by the Sun, my wife and unborn child are counting on me to arrange for a safe landing, and there’s a mountain in their way that I can’t
move until I fix the detonator wire and fight my way past the giant robot that’s controlled by a crazy woman who thinks she has a chance with me if that selfsame wife and child are out of the picture.

  I’ve had better days.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Travel only with thy equals or thy betters; if there are none, travel alone.”

  —The Dhammapada

  I tried talking.

  “Svetlana? Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, I can hear you.”

  “You want to explain what’s going on?”

  “No.”

  Well, that didn’t help. I felt myself coming to a slow boil.

  “Svetlana, I’m already pissed off and short on time. This is not helping.”

  “Just wait, Max. You are a smart man. When it is over, I will let you in.”

  “When what is over?” I asked. I thought I knew, but I wanted to see if she would tell me.

  “The Captain is dead by now, Max. It is too late for the ship to land correctly; the explosives are boiling away into space as the oxygen escapes, yes?”

  “That why I’m in a hurry. There might still be enough time to take a chunk out of the ringwall with what’s left.”

  “And that is why I cannot let you in, Max. If the Luna crashes, you will have no reason to fight with the new leadership. That is why I have promised to keep you here until called. I… I do not want you to die, Max.”

  “That’s nice,” I agreed. “And if I climb over the robot and come down there anyway?”

  “I will fight you with the robot, Max. I must. I cannot let you save the Luna. You would fight us for Kathy. I know you would. And Kathy would fight, Galena would fight, Marines would fight—no. You must stay out.”

  The other robot arrived with the missing wiring. I went over to it and climbed aboard. The ’bots aren’t really designed to be operated by an on-board person, but there are some basic controls. It’s useful for driving it around in a shop, or when a wireless connector dies. Unfortunately, it was designed on Earth and someone forgot to take space suits into account. I couldn’t fit in the compartment, but I could lie down on top and make it move. That would do.