Moon Dreams

by M.A. Harris

October

  The air was cool in the tunnel cum bunker, but it was silent like in most caverns, the low whining growl that came from the outside was the sound of twenty Stacks at various power levels. Paul no longer really even looked at the video, he knew the sights, and the sounds of the Stacks as intimately as anyone. The sound was more telling than sight, it was made up of the various pieces doing their work, the odd buzzing undertone of the Stacks, the roar of the blowers and flowing gas, the whine of the power converters.

  The data feeds told him that the newest of the Stacks were putting out exactly the power and thrust predicted by the experimental models they had built up over the last six months. Thousands of hours of continuous running, tens of thousands of running data points and multiple tear downs told him that the basic core of the Stack was extremely rugged and long lived. The only things that wore out were the blowers, and they could be designed to survive for decades. He was comfortable that they had a safe propulsion system for their Moonships.

  He glanced at the bank of video’s, the central one, showing the view from a camera at one end of the little canyon showed twenty metal roofed, open sided revetments serviced by a narrow gravel lane. The view was static except for a couple of his people maneuvering one of the middle-aged Stacks out with a forklift. That unit was scheduled for a complete tear down and microscopic inspection. Unfortunately, while some of the parts would find their way into other rebuilds, most of that unit would be destructively inspected to ensure that they weren’t still missing something. Hot hydrogen had turned out to be as difficult to work with as pure water, and water wasn’t called the universal solvent for nothing.

  As the techs carefully reversed the forklift out of the nest of test stands Paul got a good view of the production Paaly Stack propulsion and power module. The basic unit was a stainless steel cylinder two feet in diameter and five and a bit feet tall, though that underlying shape wasn’t particularly obvious under all the encasing piping and equipment wrapped tightly around it. Large inlet and outlet manifold pipes filled two opposite sides, with a third side covered by an intricate nest of stainless steel pipes and shells called the gas plant. The complex plumbing ducted fast flowing, pressurized hydrogen from the blowers, through the chamber and the scrubbers that collected the helium ash that was the only byproduct of the fusion. On the one side not covered by plumbing there was an industrial weatherproof case full of electronics, controls, motor drives, power converters.

  The core of the module was the stack of silicon and magnetic slices now stoutly wrapped in a steel reinforcing frame, the whole thing just under four feet tall by a foot and a bit square after you took the braces into account. The Stack now spun slowly on massive thrust bearings in the chamber to keep it at a relatively stable temperature. The bearings also carried a rather old-fashioned brush and ring system to carry the power in to and out of the stack. A high temperature rated short-range radio system borrowed from gas turbine and racecar instrumentation carried the control signals. It was three and a half times the height of the old experimental Stacks though the stainless steel vessel that surrounded it was only twice as big as the old one. The production prototypes produced twelve tons of thrust at ninety percent power, a better than ten to one thrust to weight ratio since the assembly itself weighed something like a ton.

  As well as the sixteen production units in the thrust stands there were twenty similar units in various stages of assembly in the shop next to the assembly shed. There were parts ready for another hundred modules in various locations around the hollow and across the world.

  Paul also knew that there were parts and assemblies for two more Moonships being readied. The engine room at the top of the Alexis had been ready to receive its twenty Stacks for weeks and there was a growing grumble about the delay, but neither Paul nor Cliff, or for that matter several other senior engineers thought they were ready. There were still problems cropping up all the time, minor ones, but it didn’t always require a big problem to kill you.

  Paul shook his head, and glanced down at the instrument panel, they had another thirty hours to run on this by the test plan he’d developed. He glanced at Cindy Prentice the technician helping with the testing, “Cindy you’ll be OK if I go over to the assembly shed?”

  “Sure Mr. Richards, looks like it’s going to be boring.”

  “Let’s hope so Cindy, excitement is never a good thing on an endurance test.”

  She grinned, “No more hydrogen explosions, or electrical fires?” The second major incident of the test campaign had been a fire in a power converter section that had caused a, fortunately minor, hydrogen fire.

  “The memory of that casing whistling past my ear still gives me the creeps, and Raoul is still in my bad books for running into that revetment with a fire extinguisher without checking to see that the hydrogen lines had been purged.” Paul smiled back faintly, in truth the risk Raoul had taken bothered him more, though he’d had a few nightmares about that wicked snarling whistle.

  Cindy smiled and shrugged, “God had other plans Mr. Richards.”

  “I hope so Cindy, I certainly do, stay awake, I’ll drop by later.”

  -o-

  Paul slid the company car into the parking spot in front of the pleasant little house on a Primus Junction back street and checked the time. He needn’t have worried, Ted’s wife Clarice opened the front door and waved him in. Given that Ted worked until midnight most nights Paul was always worried about waking him up when he arrived for his lessons. The older man might seem as tough as nails, but he was in his sixties.

  Inside, the house was spotless and meticulously decorated. It all looked very natural and right, and because of that it was almost inconspicuous, but Paul knew that most of the paintings were real, and some of them were worth quite a bit, the furniture was all solid wood and some of it was several hundred years old, collected by Clarice over the years of drifting from base to base around the world.

  For all her sixty six years and five foot nothing stature Clarice was good looking and somehow imposing. “The Major is in the den Paul, I’m brewing some coffee?”

  “Thanks Clarice, I’d love some, been saving up my caffeine allowance for it in fact.”

  A sharp nod and a fold of the mouth that indicated pleasure and she was gone. It had startled Paul to find that the young cowhand turned chopper pilot had retired from the Army as a Colonel, though Ted preferred the title of ‘major’ for some reason. He had left the army from a position where he had been responsible for the training syllabus for almost all Army chopper pilots.

  Ted was sitting in front of a big flat panel display when Paul walked in. It was displaying the view over the nose of an attack chopper streaking along at grass top level among scenery that indicated someplace in Europe. Another big display in the corner was dark except for the ready prompt. Paul went over and settled into the chair in front of that, turning to look over Ted’s shoulder.

  Ted’s army career had ended because of a degenerative disease of the eye that ruined his night sight. The colors on the screen were oddly distorted and to Paul’s eyes unnatural, which with the scenery whipping past at a frightening rate made him a bit queasy. But he could see Ted’s mastery, knew that he’d never have the old Texan’s effortless mastery of his machine. The disease that crippled his night sight, to a degree that made it dangerous for him to drive at night, let alone fly, had no effect on his instinctive reflexes.

  The simulation was no game; it was a military grade training and evaluation tool. It was still a blast to play. Ted led his attack troop in low and fast, explosions ripped through the targets and enemy missiles rose in response. Then trees were all around, masking the cauldron of battle.

  Ted leaned back and the display drew out to an operational view, the old soldier sighed, “well so much for that lot then.”

  Paul realized he’d been holding his breath, “Hell of a risk popping up like that on the front flank?”

&n
bsp; “Nah, had ’em distracted, a pop up wasn’t particularly dangerous. But what it tells me is that they pushed a big spearhead out to engage our main force, leaving a screen of light forces. Probably know we don’t have enough to stop the main thrust and come at them from the flank.”

  “Can’t you fix them and come at them from some unexpected angle”

  “No time, no room, no roads, no frigging ammo. This action is running the magazines down fast, the next pulse of logistics support won’t hit for another twenty-four hours and that’s going to be far too late.” He fell into a brooding silence.

  Paul spoke after awhile, “I take it you’re not playing a pickup game with a bunch of high schoolers off the gaming net?”

  A shake of the grizzled head, “Doin’ a bit of on the side consulting.” A chuckle, “A snot nosed lieutenant I taught to fly is now a bigwig general and she’s a tad worried about some of the stuff the Chinese have in the hopper these days.”

  “That looked like Europe; I would have thought you’d be worried about Africa, Asia or the Middle East?” Paul indicated the screen with his chin.

  “Was, Jesse’s a stickler for security so she doesn’t want to tell me where she’s worried about in case I go blabbing. But she knows very well that I know, and everyone else with half a brain knows that the problem’s in the ‘stans. You’d think after all these fricking decades they’d have straightened that mess out.”

  “Coffee gentlemen, and major I’d appreciate your keeping your voice and your language moderated.” Clarice said from the doorway. Both Ted and Paul were rising to their feet at the first syllables; it just seemed the right thing to do. Ted gave his lady wife a peck on the cheek in response to the command, as he relieved her of the tray with its carafe, cups, creamer and little crystal bowl full of little blue packets, a special dispensation for Paul.

  A couple of minutes later Paul leaned back in his chair sipping Clarice’s coffee. She had a special blend that was one of the best he had ever had, Betsy appeared to agree since she served it at the Upstairs.

  Ted waved his hand at the display presently behind Paul, “You come for more tutoring? You said the other week you’d probably be cutting back?” There was amused tolerance in Ted’s voice and face. Ted had been tutoring Paul in the fine points of flying, particularly flying helicopters for four months now. Ever since Paul had found out about Ted’s prior career and then drummed up the courage to ask if Ted could give him some pointers.

  Paul had suspected early on that the Alexis Aurora would handle a lot like a chopper and that had turned out to be the case. Cliff had started a trainer simulator program long before Paul joined but it had been Paul who signed off when the programmers and dynamicists finally delivered it. The system had all of the expected control interfaces and performance characteristics of the Alexis Aurora Aristide in it. There was a full immersion simulator at one end of the construction shed but Cliff and Paul had both insisted on a desktop version. Both the big and small versions were almost game-like in some ways, and both had a scoring system

  The crew selection committee had all agreed that the commander needed to be one of the senior technical team who could do well on the simulator. That meant acing the ‘game’ and passing a stringent physical and mental review. The review team included physicians, two ex Air Force officers, one with a lot of flight training experience, and a few technical types.

  Paul had flown the simulator in competition with everyone else though he’d had no illusions about his skills. He had never done well in any kind of arcade shoot-em-up or simulator. On the off chance that he might do well enough to be considered for one of the backup command slots he had asked Ted to help, he had flown Ted’s sophisticated chopper simulator at least three times a week ever since. He hadn’t always done terribly well on either simulator at first, but he had steadily gotten better and when he started comparing his scores with others he found that he was now consistently in the top ten percent. As the testing scenarios got harder his scores went up, the Moonship wasn’t hard to fly but it required finesse and he consistently reacted right when things went wrong, his insight into the dynamics of the ship and its system giving him an edge.

  He was easily the best of any of the senior engineers and managers. He’d also done pretty well with the review committees, all but one, which was part of why he was here. Paul realized he’d fallen into a reverie sipping his coffee but Ted was the soul of patience, the pale green eyes smiled calmly as he sipped his black coffee.

  “Sorry Ted, I guess I drifted there, this is a bit hard. I still can’t tell you a lot of what I’m doing but as you know it has quite a bit to do with flying. I’m in competition for one of the command slots, and I’ve run into a problem with someone you know, John VanDoone.”

  “Major John VanDoone, US Air Force, Retired. I didn’t realize you even knew him, he’s never mentioned you.” The left eyebrow had risen but there was little surprise in the calm voice.

  “He and I don’t get along well. He seems to think that I’ve been handed a couple of plum assignments that he should have gotten. I’ve also made it very clear to him that I do not appreciate some of his politicking.”

  A sigh, “He’s always been a schemer, seems to think that’s how everyone is. Never can see that most people can’t be bothered, he’s a good poker player though.”

  Paul snorted, “Not surprised. He let slip that he knew you and that you and he’d met while you were still in the Army?”

  “Yeah he was a test pilot; I was in command of the army test group. We were effectively at the same level in two different chains of command, which was just fine with me. He lives on the other side of town; his wife and Clarice knew each other back then and met at some do or another. We’ve met a few times since, though he seems to think that I’ve rather disgraced myself by becoming a cook.” Ted’s tone was good humored and forgiving,

  Paul grunted in sympathy VanDoone seemed to stay close to type, “He is trying to sell the viewpoint to the selection committee that my lack of command and real flying experiences disqualifies me for the slot. To be honest, I’m not sure that I disagree, Ted. But VanDoone wants the slot and he’s likely to get it because he’s got the ex-air force types on the various committees on his side. He’s not a very good pilot, at least not of the vehicle we’re working on. I think he was so sure of his ability that he didn’t practice very much till too late.”

  The gray eyebrow was up again, “Ehe, he’s always been more about hierarchy than skills, but skills flying what? You know rumors are flying around these days? Some of them pretty crazy.”

  Paul shrugged, “I can assure you we are not working on a UFO the Air Force shipped here from Groom Lake.” It was surprising that word was only now beginning to drift out in the form of rumors. Nothing terribly close to the truth yet, but the basic idea of a new propulsion system for air or space craft had gotten out. Several rather crazy rumors had popped up recently, Paul suspected that AI’s security had planted them to confuse and diffuse.

  The old chopper pilot grinned, “You take this sort of thing too seriously and personally Paul. Don’t sweat it, I’m a big boy and know that secrets really are necessary sometimes, even in industry.”

  His kindly smile flickered to a faint grimace, “As for VanDoone, he hasn’t had any pilot in command time for a lot of years. I’d say if the rest of the selection committee thinks you’re ready I’d go with their opinion. In mine you’re about as ready for a command slot as anyone I know and in a pinch I’d even let you fly a Blackhawk. You’ve flown a full motion simulator right?” Paul nodded. Ted nodded in reply, “I’d not tell everyone this Paul, but these days I’d say full mo sim training’s as good as or better than the real thing in a lot of ways. Not always and I’d hate to throw someone straight into the shit from a sim, but if push came to shove I’d do it rather than depend on kid glove training in the real thing. We’re too afraid of crashing and killing pe
ople these days, we’re not allowed to push real life training hard enough any longer.”

  Paul felt himself relax, he’d hoped Ted would say something like that but had been afraid he’d waffle or back VanDoone, in which case Paul might have tried to step aside for the ex Air Force pilot, little as he liked the scheming stuffed shirt.

  Catching the subtle shift in the younger mans posture, Ted grinned, and then got serious again, he leaned forward with a faint frown, “You’re an odd mixture Paul, bloody minded about things you feel competent in, but as soon as you get out of your comfort zone you tend to go wobbly. That’s a weakness in a commander, a good commander listens to subordinates, to experts, but wobbling comes across as weakness. I don’t think you’re weak; you just externalize your thoughts too much. Subtly you need to think of those around you as friendly opponents in a card game for high stakes, they are constantly trying to read your intentions through cues you give away, and they may act on signs you didn’t really intend to send.”

  It was given in a calm, down home tone of voice, from a man Paul had grown to admire. It had the impact of a punch igniting an epiphany of memories from past disasters all the way back BladePower.

  Ted leaned back with a chuckle, “I’d guess you’re seeing some past disasters differently?”

  Paul nodded, “Yes, a lot of times…I guess I always thought that letting your uncertainty hang out was a way to build teamwork.”

  A shrug, “It can be, but only if you’re in a situation where you can afford the loss of control. Doing it in the middle of a bad situation can make things a hell of a lot worse. It’s one of the reasons that one of the oldest military axioms is; make a decision, make any decision, even if it’s wrong. It’s almost always easier to correct a mistake if you’re moving forward as a group rather than wallowing in uncertainty. In battle never give up the initiative and a lot of life can be thought of as battle in one sense or another.”

  Thinking back to the closing days of BladePower Paul had to agree, it had been a battle and one with a lot of casualties he still didn’t like thinking about.

  The two friends sat and chatted their way through three cups of coffee. Only Clarice’s acerbic reminder that Ted had to get ready to head over to Betsy’s broke up the friendly discussion.

  -o-

  The conference room was crowded, the full selection committee and all the subcommittees were present. Paul had been on the selection committee originally, until he had turned up as a leading candidate, he was here today as a candidate. Cliff was here as an observer but wasn’t on the committee since, as the principle Program Manager, it had been felt that people might give his opinion too much weight.

  Ralph Cummings, the chairman of the committee, an ex-air force officer and the head of the operational logistics group, looked around, “Well, if everyone’s ready we need to get this under way.”

  John VanDoone, sitting with his operational evaluation team, looked up. His group reviewed the crew candidates for their ability to carry out tasks as well as evaluated command ability. He smiled at Ralph, “We need to get this out of the way so we can move on.” He glanced across at Paul his smile stiffening, “I’m not sure what Mr. Richards and Mr. Sampson are here for?”

  Ralph nodded, “Yes, we need to move on to the rest of the selections. I’ve asked Paul to appear before us because he has the highest overall score but there was a strong reservation on one of the review committee’s reports.”

  VanDoone’s smile congealed, “I don’t think specifics of the reports are appropriate in this sort of meeting Ralph.”

  “John, this ain’t the Air Force or the Astronaut corps, too small a community, everyone pretty much knows what’s what. All the candidates got glosses of their reports. Since there was a fairly consistent question raised about all the candidates who don’t have prior flying experience I think we need to discuss this with Paul since it affects him in more than one way.”

  VanDoone’s face went red, “I thought that we would decide this as a combined committee and hand down the decision?”

  Ralph steepled his fingers, “John, I need to tell you that the written opinion presented by your subcommittee has set off some rather rancorous debates among the rest of us. I’d like to get it out on the table and discuss it. There is a general feeling that the reservations about giving command to someone who has never actually flown are at least reasonable. But others, and I, are worried about the consistent failure of experienced pilots to do well, particularly in the emergency situations. Granted they have done better than ninety percent of the people who threw their hats in the ring, but none of them have done as well as the top scorers, and the difference is significant and not appreciably decreasing with increasing simulator time.”

  There was a dead silence then Carl Gold, the head of the simulator design team, spoke up, “I’ve talked this over with a number of you by now, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the Moonship’s flight dynamics are enough different from any normal aircraft, even a helicopter, to make it a completely new beast. Given time we could probably tame some of the oddities but we don’t have the time, we need human adaptability. I think the problem with experienced pilots is that they bring their reflexes and subconscious expectations to the task and sometimes they just aren’t appropriate. I also think it indicative that the best of the candidates are all deeply involved with the design of the Moonships and are extremely smart and athletic - all key attributes of test pilots. My opinion is that we go with the simulator results for the selection.”

  VanDoone snorted, “You’re calling these joystick jockeys test pilots? Damn it Gold I’ve commanded test pilots and these are no test pilots. Damn it the top scorer is a girl hardly out of her teens who’s more interested in primping for the boys than taking part in the most important endeavor in mankind’s history.”

  Paul laughed, “Patsy’s a girl and she takes that job very seriously, but technically she’s as sharp as they come and she never makes a wrong move in the simulator. And have you ever gone against her on the sim net? She wipes the floor with any comers flying just about any aircraft you care to mention. She may not have the formal chops of an engineer but she has the eye of an artist and the mind of a surgeon, ask Cliff, she’s been a key member of the suit team ever since she joined. Just because she didn’t go to the Academy and learn the same way you did, don’t discount her abilities.”

  The beady black eyes were hot, even though VanDoone tried to keep his face emotionless. “I have a full appreciation of Miss Finnegan’s finer points Mr. Richards but they are no substitute for hours in the air, experience dealing with real emergencies.”

  Ralph coughed, “John you know that’s a bit specious these days, most pilots don’t ever experience an in flight emergency at all. Not even test pilots, ah…I don’t believe you’ve ever experienced one outside of a simulator.”

  Paul wanted to yell in triumph as the beady black eyes changed targets, while the surrounding face went red.

  Carl spoke again, his thin voice cutting the renewed silence, “And all indications are that training per se is only part of preparing to deal with emergencies. Some people are simply able to operate well under sudden great stress, others cannot. Those who do well do better when well prepared but they tend to do relatively well even without the training. There are some people who can suppress their panic altogether if they’ve been trained well enough. But that’s a fragile prop when there are so many things that could go wrong. The physical evaluation of the candidates tell us that the top candidates are likely all people who react positively to emergency stress, it’s not so clear about the remaining high scoring candidates. So once more I have to recommend we go with the top selects.”

  Standing up Paul glanced around, “I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about this over the past few days. I must admit that I have at times debated stepping aside so that one of the experienced pilots could take the first command slot,” he hesitated and
was faintly amused to sense that most people were holding their breath, “in the end I decided not to do so. Carl’s pretty much outlined the technical reasons for that. From another viewpoint I think that my knowledge of the ship and its systems makes me a reasonable choice. I have also had enough experience dealing with stress in one form or another that I think I’m capable of this. And trust me, I want to do this as much as anyone you could imagine.”

  He stopped, he could go on and on about how much he wanted to go but that wasn’t really a good reason for them to pick him above someone else.

  After taking a breath he continued, “I also think that Patsy should be the copilot, the original intent was that the copilot would be the person with the highest overall scores period and that person is Patsy. I’ve flown the simulator with her a number of times and she always does the right thing in an emergency. Even the times we end up crashing it’s not because she does anything wrong, and she never stops trying even when it’s obvious things are beyond hope. That’s the kind of person that I want as my copilot.”

  -o-

  Twenty minutes later Cliff grinned at Paul over the rim of his coffee cup. “You know Paul you can be a really annoying take charge kind of guy when you want to be.”

  Paul snorted, “I think almost everyone was on my side, even those on the fence, they’d just let themselves be talked out of it by John and their own prejudices. What Carl said was pretty obvious stuff to me. You know, I wonder if it might have been different if we had a few younger pilots? You notice all the pilots are getting on.”

  “Because they didn’t come as pilots, they are all engineers or operational people who came here to do other work. Some of us suggested hiring a few good pilots at various times but Mr. Aristide has always stopped it. This internal selection process has worked better than I had expected but it was pretty much a second thought.”

  Paul thought about that, “You’d think he’d have made it a top priority.”

  “Yes….yes.” Cliff’s voice faded. Paul studied the other man but decided not to push.

  They drank their coffee in silence, then, after what seemed like a big effort, Cliff glanced over at Paul, “I have some news, bad I suppose, a couple of our techs have been requisitioned by another program, they’ll be leaving in a few days. Cindy Prentice is one of them.”

  Paul almost dropped his coffee, “What the hell is that Cliff? I thought Aristide thought this was the most important program in the world. How can he start pulling people in the middle of the test campaign?”

  “I don’t know where they’re going Paul, but Aristide’s spending a lot of money on this and that money has to come from somewhere. Cindy’s a great tech, she’s worked with a lot of AI’s program managers over the years, and I’d guess someone called in a favor. I have to suppose that, since the testing is going well and has settled into routine data gathering, the folks at human resources let it through the filter.” Though Cliff’s defense of the decision was verbally strong, there was no real conviction in his voice.

  Once again the questions about what exactly was going on here arose. Paul felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, he was deep into something that he didn’t fully understand and didn’t fully trust.

  He wanted to ask Cliff some more pointed questions but he guessed that Cliff either didn’t know the answers or wouldn’t answer them if he did. There was also the question of what would happen if he started asking too many difficult questions.

  Cliff looked across at Paul, tried to smile, “I need to be heading home Paul. I’m glad you got the first command slot and got Patsy as your copilot. Any better idea when we can start installing the Stacks in the Alexis?”

  “Not long now, I’d like another couple of months,” he held up his hand as Cliff’s eyes widened, “but less than two weeks should do it unless something unexpected pops up. I want more hours and another couple of tear downs and full reports before I sign off on them.”

  That improved Cliff’s mood instantly, “Oh good, in that case….” They talked as they walked down to the car park.

  Paul trotted up the stairs to the top of the plateau and strode down the path to his little bungalow. Worry and supposition boiled in his mind. What he had learned about Aristides’ odd behavior towards his heart’s desire seemed threatening, and the loss of Cindy Prentice just made that other discontinuity loom larger.

  The sky was pink blue and black as Paul reached the ramp down to his front door. As he had before, he stopped and put one foot on the low wall that defined the entrance and leaned forward thinking, but thinking with no real information did him little good. He had searched the open sources and asked the questions he felt comfortable asking and he still didn’t know where all the money for this program came from other than Richard Aristides’ apparently infinitely deep pockets. He still did not understand why or how Aristide had started the Luna Haven project long before Cooper had invented the Stack, or what the connection between Cooper and Aristide was.

  The sky was star-studded blue black before Paul finally gave up and finished his trip home.