The Tranquillity Alternative

by Allen Steele

  These were the best excuses he could concoct on the spur of the moment. “Anyway,” he went on, “it might be a good idea if we hold off on entering the base until after we’ve fired the birds, and use the time instead to go over everything at Sabine. You copy? Over.”

  Parnell held his breath as he waited for the reply. Right now, he could imagine Harvey conferring with the Mission Control team at Von Braun. In the old days, no one would have asked permission; they would have just gone ahead and done whatever needed to be done, and let the suits scream about it later. But if his plan was going to work, he had to give the appearance that he suspected nothing sinister of anyone.

  A minute passed before Ray Harvey came back on the air. Ah, we copy that, Gene, but our people here say both the missiles and the mainframes were thoroughly checked out before the last team left Teal Falcon and everything was working fine then. I’m not sure what another inspection is going to accomplish. Over.

  Ryer was watching him intently; her headset was still plugged into her board, so she could hear both sides of the conversation. Gene rolled his eyes for her benefit and mouthed the word dummy. “That’s great, Ray, but that was three years ago. We’ve had some solar activity between now and then, though, and I’m just concerned that something might have gotten fried in the meantime.”

  Parnell shrugged offhandedly as he played his trump card. “Hey, if your guys think everything’s okay, that’s fine with me. But if the President tries to launch those missies at 1200 and they don’t go up on time … well, y’know, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Over.”

  A longer pause this time. Although he didn’t believe in ESP, Parnell almost felt as if he had established telepathic contact with Ray Harvey across a quarter of a million miles of space. No one at NASA had forgotten what happened when Challenger was rushed into launch despite dire warnings from Morton Thiokol engineers about the effects of extreme cold upon the shuttle’s solid-rocket boosters; several senior NASA bureaucrats had decided to take the gamble because Reagan was going to mention the shuttle during his State of the Union Address that night. If Clinton came on live TV and pushed an ornamental button to launch the Teal Falcon missiles, only to have the Minutemen fail to fly …

  Ah, Gene, we copy. Harvey’s voice was stiffly formal, as if he was prepared to summon up this exchange later before a blue-ribbon board of inquiry. We concur with your decision to deviate from mission profile. You have permission to proceed directly to Teal Falcon for purposes of inspecting the missiles. Do you copy? Over.

  Parnell tried hard not to look relieved. “Roger that. Thanks, Ray. We’ll be in touch. Conestoga over and out.”

  He switched off the radio, pulled the headset down around his neck and unplugged the cord, then took a deep breath. Nothing like arguing with a pen-pusher …

  “What was that all about?” Ryer asked.

  Parnell stood up again. “Just what I said. I want a couple of extra hours to make sure Teal Falcon is shipshape. After we get done there, we’ve got plenty of time to go inside the base and play around before we go home. Any objections?”

  Lewitt unbuckled his harness, stood up, and arched his back. “None here. I’ve never been to Sabine before … gives me a chance for a last look-see before we give it to Hans and Franz.”

  Ryer looked skeptical, but she said nothing. “Sounds like a unanimous decision.” Gene pulled off the headset and tossed it on the couch, then stepped toward the gangway ladder. “Go ahead and lower the crane, Jay. I’ll go below and tell everyone about the schedule change. I’m sure Ms. Rhodes and Mr. Bromleigh will be happy, at least.”

  Then he started down the ladder to C-deck. He could already hear the mixed buzz of conversation from the passengers as they gazed through the portholes at the primitive landscape.

  So far, so good …

  Conestoga’s elevator was little more than an open bucket with a hinged door on one side, lowered from the catwalk by a retractable bridge crane. Parnell and Ryer brought the ATS news team down with them; when the elevator touched ground, Rhodes tried to step off first, but Parnell stopped her with a raised arm.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” he said. “Command privilege. Sort of a traditional thing.”

  Actually, there was no such ritual; he just didn’t want to allow Rhodes the dubious honor of being the first person from the last American lunar expedition to set foot on the Moon. The press had done enough for the space program already. She harrumphed a bit as Parnell swung the door open, but didn’t say anything as he stepped onto the cold gray dust of Mare Tranquillitatis.

  Tranquillity Base looked much the same as the last time he had laid eyes on it. Sunlight cast long, skeletal shadows across the gray, pockmarked basalt and reflected off the rectangular black arrays of the solar power station. Just beyond it lay three long humps, like oversize Quonset huts buried beneath the regolith: the base habitats, along with the unpressurized garage. A few spotlights around the camp perimeter were still operating, but most were dark, their filaments either long-since eroded or their globes shattered by micrometeorite impacts.

  Countless footprints lay upon the dusty ground, crisscrossed by tracks left by lunar tractors. Parnell added a few more prints as he slowly walked toward the habitat, feeling again the strange dry-yet-slippery sensation of the regolith with each step he took.

  At the farthest perimeter of the camp, the cannibalized carcasses of three abandoned moonships rose above the flat terrain. One of them was Eagle Four, the freighter from the Luna Two expedition that had brought the Teal Falcon missiles to the Moon a generation ago; it and the two other freighters parked nearby had been stripped of all usable parts once their one-way missions had been completed. They stood like mute sentries above a ghost town.

  Everything was still and silent.

  A few dozen yards away, Parnell spotted the American flag that John Harper Wilson had raised here almost twenty-six years ago, its bunting stiffened by fine wires laced through the fabric so that it appeared to be waving in a nonexistent breeze. A small bronze plaque had been laid on the ground beneath the staff; Parnell bunny-hopped over to it, raising the gold visor of his helmet so he could read the words more clearly.

  HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH

  FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON

  JULY 1969 A.D.

  WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND

  “Liar,” he whispered.

  Excuse me, Commander? Berkley Rhodes’s voice was sharp in his helmet earphones. What did you just say?

  He turned around to see her and Bromleigh coming toward him, shepherded by Ryer. The two correspondents seemed to be having a difficult time mastering the fine art of moonwalking. The white fabric outer covering of their hardsuits was caked with dust, showing that they had already fallen a few times. Fortunately, Bromleigh’s camcorder was still aboard Conestoga; it was not designed to operate in hard vacuum, and the last company to manufacture lunar-grade TV equipment had lost the design specs when it had been bought out by a Japanese conglomerate five years ago.

  Just as well. Parnell didn’t want a picture of this. “Never mind, Ms. Rhodes,” he said. “Just thinking to myself.”

  Looks strange, Bromleigh commented. He stood humpbacked, still trying to get accustomed to the mass of the life-support unit on his back. You kinda think someone else should be here, y’know? Like someone should be coming out to meet us.

  “You’re right.” Parnell looked away from the plaque and cast his eyes around the abandoned moonbase. “Someone should.”

  Did someone come out to greet ships when they landed, Commander? Rhodes asked. I mean, was there a welcoming committee, or … well, did they … ?

  “Oh, sure.” The flag was a little crooked, probably bent over from Conestoga’s landing exhaust. Parnell reached out to straighten it. “We had flaxen-haired maiden girls in grass skirts, walking timidly out to offer us baskets of fruit. And then we went inside where there was a feast awaiting us….”

  Seriously.

  “Se
riously?” He managed to get the staff to stay straight. Not that it mattered; by this time tomorrow, he would be pulling down the flag, folding it and taking it home to a glass case at the Visitors’ Center at the Cape, where tourists could stare at it with bleak stupidity. “Seriously, I think you should—”

  He stopped himself. What he was about to suggest was anatomically impossible, especially in a spacesuit. “Never mind. Cris, if you’ll escort Ms. Rhodes and Mr. Bromleigh back to the ship, they can help you bring down the rest of the passengers.”

  Okay, Gene. He was rather surprised to hear her use his first name for a change; he couldn’t make out her expression through her visor. You’re going over to the base?

  “Yeah. I’m going to check out the tractors, make sure they’re still operational. Jay, are you there?”

  Loud and clear, Gene. Lewitt was still on A-deck aboard Conestoga, checking out the ship before he left her. What’s the word?

  “Tell the Wheel we’re all going EVA,” he said, “then shut her down and suit up. When you get down, c’mon over to the garage and help me get the tracs rolling. Okay?”

  Will do. Over and out.

  “Thanks, pal. See you in a few minutes.” He looked back at Ryer. “When everyone is down, bring ’em over to the garage. Try to make sure no one else falls down, okay?”

  Got it. She turned around and began treading back to the ship, keeping Rhodes and Bromleigh in front of her. Now remember what I told you … small steps at first, big steps when you’ve got your balance.

  Parnell watched them go—and sure enough, Rhodes hadn’t taken ten steps before she went sprawling in a cloud of dust. He turned around and headed for the base, taking bunny-hops which covered a lot of ground in a hurry. He was alone for a few minutes; he could make it count.

  The garage was an open shell, unpressurized and vaguely resembling an immense coffee can half-buried in the silt of a country river. Two lunar tractors were parked side by side within its shelter. Great steel tanks with caterpillar treads and bubble cockpits, they were designed for long-range expeditions, capable of transporting five men apiece across the harsh terrain.

  After he flicked on the ceiling lamps, Parnell made certain that the electric charge cables were still in place; with luck, the tractors’ nickel-cadmium storage batteries would still be functional. They should be; the General Motors Corporation had built the tanks to be the best vehicles that 500 million dollars could buy, cost overruns notwithstanding.

  But the tractors were not his top priority. He went to the far wall of the garage and opened the hatch leading to Habitat One’s airlock. He checked the gauges on the wall; as he had been briefed, the last crew to leave Tranquillity had depressurized both habitats before abandoning the base. They had done so in order to prevent anything inside rusting from disuse; right now, though, this meant that he didn’t have to wait for the entire habitat to be repressurized before he could enter the airlock.

  He opened the inner hatch, then switched on his helmet lamp and climbed into the base. He had to move fast now; although he was counting on the ineptitude of the ATS reporters and the inexperience of the Koenig Selenen astronauts to slow things down, he didn’t want to be caught inside the base.

  The oval glow of the lamp cast weird shadows across the empty racks of the suit-up room. Another set of hatches led into the wardroom, where a long mess bench faced a wall-size projection TV screen. He stepped on something that slid beneath his boot; looking down, he saw an old issue of People magazine with Mick Jagger on the cover.

  “Talkin’ ’bout the midnight rambler,” he whispered under his breath, careful not to let anyone overhear him on the comlink.

  He found the ladder leading to the habitat’s upper deck. It wasn’t made to be climbed by someone in a hardsuit, so he wasted a couple of precious minutes trying to gain good hand- and foot-holds on the rungs, but when he finally squeezed through the small round hatch, he found himself in the base commander’s quarters, an attic-sized space barely large enough to hold a desk, a chair, and a set of metal file cabinets.

  Breathing hard now, he went straight for the desk, praying that it wasn’t locked. He tugged at the bottom drawer and was relieved when it easily slid open. Fine dust sprayed against his faceplate as he pushed empty file folders out of the way.

  When the USSF had established the base, someone had decided that the base commander should be issued a pistol, just in case someone among the crew lost his mind during the long lunar night and tried to blow out the airlock. That had never happened, but so far as Parnell knew the weapon had remained at the base.

  For a few anxious moments, he thought that the gun has been removed. Then the bright glare of the helmet lamp glinted against something resting at the bottom of the drawer. Parnell sucked in a deep breath, then shoved aside some old paperwork until he found the Colt .45 Officer’s ACP automatic.

  “Gotcha,” he whispered.

  From The New York Times; July 11, 1991

  WHITE HOUSE CONSIDERED USING

  MOON NUKES DURING

  DESERT STORM

  By Arthur M. Erikson

  (Special to The New York Times)

  WASHINGTON, July 10—According to classified Pentagon documents, President Bob Dole issued a secret directive to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Department of Defense during the Desert Storm military campaign that called for first-use of lunar-based nuclear missiles against Iraq in the event that U.S. ground forces in Saudi Arabia were overwhelmed by Iraqi soldiers.

  The six-page memorandum, which was released to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and ATS News by a high-ranking Pentagon official, was signed by President Dole and dated September 14, 1990. The memo states that the U.S. Air Force should “immediately place SAC officers in the Teal Falcon bunker” and have them ready to “target vital military sites within Iraq” in the event that conventional forces were defeated in combat by Iraq’s army.

  According to the Pentagon source, one of the sites which would have been targeted by the lunar missiles was Baghdad, Iraq’s capital city. Other sites would have included Iraq’s oil fields and key military installations surrounding Baghdad.

  The Teal Falcon base, located near Tranquillity Base on the Moon, holds six modified Minuteman II missiles, each containing a single nuclear warhead. Teal Falcon’s existence was made public in 1983; it has not been officially operational since 1972, although the missiles were never removed from their silos. It was intended to be a second-strike nuclear alternative in the event of a preemptive strategic attack by the former Soviet Union (see sidebar, page 10).

  The Dole Administration has denied the existence of the memo, claiming that it is a fraud. However, White House chief of staff John Sununu says that if the memo indeed exists, it would only prove that President Dole was willing to “do whatever it takes to protect the lives of American servicemen.”

  Congressional critics of the Dole Administration were quick to condemn the White House for its willingness to use Teal Falcon in the Desert Storm conflict. “If the President had decided to use nuclear weapons against Iraq,” said Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate floor, “then the Middle East would have been engulfed in a nuclear war which could have cost millions of lives, both civilian and military. The decision might have ignited World War III … it’s rash and inexcusable.”

  SEVENTEEN

  2/19/95 • 0941 GMT

  A large aluminum sign, inscribed in three languages, was posted a hundred feet from the entrance to Sabine Crater. In English, it read:

  WARNING!!

  U.S. GOVERNMENT PROPERTY—NO

  TRESPASSING

  DO NOT PASS THIS POINT!

  This Area Is A Protected Military Area And Is Off-Limits To Unauthorized Civilians.

  Injury Or Fatality May Result.

  Intruders May Be Subject To Fines And/Or Prison Terms.

  The warning was reiterated in Russian and German. Just beyond the sign lay the ten-foot c
hain-link fence that completely encircled the low walls of the impact crater; the hard-packed dirt road which led straight across the maria from Tranquillity Base to Teal Falcon stopped at the gate.

  Isn’t that a little redundant? James Leamore commented. He was gazing at the sign through a window slot in the cabin of Tractor One. After all, if we’re killed trying to break in, how can we be fined or sent to jail?

  It was written by the government, Paul Dooley replied. They’ll find a way. He looked up at Parnell, who was sitting in the driver’s seat beneath the Plexiglas bubble dome. Hey, what the fuck do they mean by that, anyway? Is the place mined or what?

  Gene didn’t immediately respond. Instead, he looked over his shoulder to make sure that Tractor Two had halted behind him. The second vehicle was being driven by Cris Ryer; she was carrying Rhodes, Bromleigh, Aachener, and Talsbach, while he had Dooley, Leamore, and Lewitt. They could have pressurized the tractors, but since the nine-mile journey was so short, everyone was still wearing their hardsuits.

  Through her dome, Ryer gave him a silent thumbs-up; she was waiting for him to clear the way through the defense perimeter. Wisely, she wasn’t using her radio. “No, not mines,” he told Dooley. “See those things on top of the crater wall?”

  Everyone in the passenger compartment peered through the windows. Every twenty feet or so, the wall was ringed with small, swivel-mounted pairs of tubes, each vaguely resembling a double-barreled shotgun. “Those are automatic gyrojet guns,” he explained. “They fire self-propelled thirteen-millimeter rounds with explosive charges in their noses. They can punch right through these tanks … and you don’t want to know what they can do to your hardsuit.”

  Nasty, Lewitt murmured, shaking his head inside his helmet. Don’t mess with them.

  Leamore looked worriedly at the thin aluminum shell of the tractor, but Dooley still wasn’t impressed. But nobody’s inside to fire them, he said, his voice once again assuming an irritating whine. I mean, if they can’t …