Moon Dreams

by M.A. Harris

Town Warming

  The Moon’s surface came up to meet them, Micah was in the Command Pilots position of the Alexis and Terrance in the flight engineers position, Helena was in the crew compartment. She’d spent some ‘bridge time’ on the way up and would spend the whole return flight in the copilot’s position.

  For all their arrogance and dislike of his position of authority over them they were a disciplined and effective crew, and Paul, almost against his own inclinations, thought they were the best crew in the small fleet. Micah hadn’t Patsy’s natural ‘feel’ for the ships but he was steady and disciplined, which in some ways counted for more. Terrance would never have Raoul’s depth of knowledge but he was quick, good and probably more methodical than the Latino. The Irishman’s cold personality was totally at odds with the reputation of Irishmen and redheads. Helena was the one blot, but while she was not as good a pilot as Patsy, Micah or even Paul, she could handle the ship system well enough, even under pressure, she just had no feel whatsoever for the ship as a whole. But that wasn’t enough for Paul to disqualify her, he was just glad she wouldn’t be his copilot.

  They were carrying a habitation cell and six large freight containers today along with some loose structural materials. In the passenger cabin were six Church of the Stars families. Eighteen people in all with a lot of baggage, one of the freight containers contained all of their worldly goods, or at least that part that they wanted to bring up to the moon. This was the second flight of early settlers and the last for a while. Luna Haven was expanding fast but these people would need to get settled in and start preparing other parts for the settlers who would be following. With the twenty some construction people this made a population of seventy-eight. Some of the folks coming up were the families of the construction workers so they would have something like twenty family groups.

  The MoonDream was on her way back from Luna having dropped off several new construction machines and some freight containers. Frank Johnson was settling in as the Command Pilot now with his own crew. Patsy was swinging between the two ships, taking them up every fourth trip or so to give the main crews a break. All in all it kept everyone busy.

  They were dropping a huge amount of material onto the moon’s surface now, with the two ships they could bring up much more material than the construction crews could use. They were rapidly building up the staging areas with stacks of cells and freight containers. A lot of the new people were going to be working in construction for a while. Next week they’d bring up another construction gang of eighteen to twenty men and women. That was certainly going to be necessary as soon as the MoonBeam came on line, Paul was pretty sure the third Moonship would be used for construction purposes for the first few months, it was still too soon for them to break the news to an unsuspecting world.

  The triple stacks of freight containers rose around them and there was a soft thump as the Alexis came to a stop. A near perfect landing once more, they went through the shut down checklist in rapid fire, cross checking themselves and the computer as they went. They’d not had any disasters yet, but that was because they were careful.

  Conti’s voice came over the local link, “Good morning Alexis, that you Micah?” It had turned out that Conti and Micah were quite well acquainted, though neither man was willing to explain where they had met before.

  “Reading the schedule again Conti? Seems out of character for an old roughneck.” Shot back the tall Israeli.

  “Wanted to be sure I knew who was responsible for Sally, almost put in a protest when I saw it was you instead of Paul, but at least he’s along to keep you out of trouble so I didn’t complain too much.” The hostile look the pilot shot at Paul after this friendly jibe was a sign of how bad the relationship between the ‘military’ flight crew and the civilian Chief Pilot was. With an internal sigh Paul let it pass. It was at least partly his own fault; he had to live with the results of his own stubborn pride and hubris.

  Micah looked away, “Your wife is just fine Conti so settle down. You ready to start hauling cargo out of the old girl?” That was a bit rhetorical since the jack drag was already moving towards the cargo ramp under Charlie’s careful hand.

  “That’s a rogo Micah. Hey Paul, you coming to the house warming we’re going to be having?”

  Paul smiled rather pointlessly at his mike, “Sure Conti, looks like a giddy round of parties for today.”

  A chuckle, “The moon’s best and brightest strutting their stuff Paul, gotta put a stake in the ground to say from this day we’re beyond the construction phase and are a real place to live. This is as good as any though I don’t figure we’ll stop building in our lifetimes, do you?”

  “Never seen a city stop growing till it was about to die Conti and this one has at least a few millennia in front of it as far as I can tell.”

  Another chuckle, “The eternal optimist, but I have to agree with you. Never been a better place to build in my opinion. Whole world ready to be made over again, though I wonder if we won’t create our own version of the Greens, guess they’ll be called Grays though.”

  “And you’ll be called a green…A hell of a flip.” Paul shot back.

  The surface was the same as it had been for many weeks, trampled and covered with tracks, unchanging except when a new foot or wheel print overlaid an old one. The geometrically precise shadows and arcs of falling dust from under the boots of newbies were all familiar now. As was his own joy at leaping across the surface under the black sky. He’d been here when the sun wasn’t up and it was eerily dark, though the work lights provided enough illumination to keep you from running into things.

  He glanced around, the area was changing, a sparse forest of very tall and slender posts supported a golden tent over the big piles of freight containers and the sections of tubing destined for Luna Haven. They were thermal blankets set up to keep the material stored here from getting too hot or cold, since some of it was going to spend a lot of time on the surface they needed protection. They’d had couple of freight containers that had spent a month or more waiting on the surface to be unloaded. When taken back to Earth and sent back into general freight service they’d fallen apart. The thermal stresses of being on the surface of the moon had torn welds and rivets apart. They now had a better idea of which types of containers could take it and which couldn’t but it had indicated a need for some additional protection.

  Paul watched as the big moon bus filled up with newbies and just before it set out he hopped aboard. He knew everyone and everyone knew him so he spent the short trip answering questions. They slid to a stop under the massive awning of the new parking garage and everyone got out and walked towards the big new main airlock complex. They walked down a wide set of stairs and up to the end bulkhead. Over the doors was a fancy aluminum truss-work with an arching sign:

  Welcome to Luna Haven, Present

  Population: seventy-nine.

  The numbers were electronically generated and that part of the sign was wide enough to hold at least a nine-figure number. Paul grinned to himself. And Conti called him an optimist!

  There were three sets of doors in the main entrance, one essentially a single person entry, another that could take four or five and another that could take a party of ten or so or a whole Luna buggy. There was another even larger airlock, in another nearby termination cell, intended to allow some of the very large equipment to be pulled inside for maintenance and repair in a shirtsleeve environment but it took hours to pump down fully.

  Paul headed for the small lock as the greeters helped the newbies through the big lock; everyone had received training on Earth, but in the new environment that tended to fly out the window until people had a chance to settle down.

  In the locker room above the airlocks Paul left his single suit on under a very light outer coverall and made sure his disaster helmet ruff was in place. His other belongings he stuffed into a locker. There were ranks of lockers here, most unused as yet, wai
ting for the rest of the population. The space became noisy as others found their way up from the entrance. Paul found he couldn’t stop smiling as the people laughed and joked, chattered and explored.

  Behind the entrance complex was one of the junction modules. This one still uninhabited but ready, Paul strode down the passageway to the right for seventy feet and turned to the door. The big doors with their red cross showed what this was.

  Inside he found Doctor Jones, Janice to her friends, “Hey Janice, how’s Cooper?” Cooper had come up on the MoonDream as a passenger in the crew compartment.

  The motherly woman with gray shot brown hair smiled at Paul a little sadly, “Resting comfortably Paul, recovering actually. He took the flight fine but he over did it when he got here and then almost collapsed. Mans an idiot.” She frowned and smiled at the same time.

  Paul grinned, it didn’t take Cooper long to make an impression wherever he went, “He’s about normal then, any thoughts on if the change will really do him good?” Cooper had continued his long downward slide and it was the hope of extending his life as much as fulfilling his wish to live on the moon that had moved the steering committee to set up a special arrangement for the very sick physicist.

  “I’d have to say yes for a lot of reasons, the gravity helps of course, but the environment’s very clean here still and that means his immune system won’t be continuously challenged by new pathogens. The change may do all sorts of good from a psychological angle as well and even with an almost universally fatal disease like this that has a major impact. How long, I don’t know, from his condition, on Earth I’d say a few more weeks to maybe six months. Here, we don’t know, but possibly as much as years.” She saw the pain in his face, “Sorry Paul, I know you love the old coot but there’s not a lot we can do for him,” She grimaced, then smiled sadly, “Except give him plenty of toys to play with.”

  Paul grinned back at her through his pain. He reached up and rubbed his hair and bald spot as if to scrub the pain away.

  “You know, there are treatments for male pattern baldness these days. You do look pretty dashing as a young Patrick Stewart, but there are other solutions you know?”

  Paul pulled his hand away, “I’m not sure I like the results of failed attempts Janice and I’ve gotten used to it so why try and cover it up? It’s genetic, dad and granddad went the same route, and it was my uncle’s horrible attempts to hide it that taught me that it was a cross one should simply accept as ones lot in life.” He grimaced, “He grew his hair long and combed it over, tried hair plugs, Rogaine, the Hair Club, everything, it was disgusting sometimes. He tried to compensate by making a lot of money as a car salesman and working hard to be the world’s biggest playboy,” He shuddered, “Some of the women he brought to family reunions still make me wake up screaming.”

  Janice smiled, “Just as long as you’re sure, and it sounds like you have good reasons to be sure! Cooper’s in the unit upstairs, go on up.”

  Paul climbed the steep steps next to the little patient elevator. On the open upper floor he found Cooper propped up with the curtains pulled back. He was sipping a drink, mild as one could imagine. The sharp blue eyes nailed Paul and he smiled, “I thought I heard you nattering with the Mother Superior Paul. It’s good to see you, especially here. Though if here were my apartment it would be even better, dratted woman thinks I need coddling.”

  Paul walked over and settled into the little aluminum frame that served as a chair. They’d quickly found that going out of your way with padding and cushioning was pointless on the moon so things like chairs were tending towards the rudimentary.

  “Did you have a chance to look over the lab we set up for you Cooper?” Paul ignored the gripe, going that road wasn’t leading anywhere anyway. He was still here and still in bed, sipping his drink, Paul decided that the griping was pretty much pro forma.

  Paaly’s eyes lit up, “Yes, and you did good as usual kid, you know for all its being only a small space it’s got about every gewgaw I need, you listened pretty good when you asked. The biggest problem is going to be having anything special fabricated, you’ll have to take the orders down to Earth and bring the parts back, which will slow things down something awful at times. I see the plans for all sorts of shops pretty near term but I doubt they’ll do my work much good.” His voice was a little sad.

  Paul felt pain at this reminder, additional pain on top of the obvious rapid aging of his old friend under the weight of his cancer.

  “Can you tell me what you’re working on Cooper; it looks to me like you’ve gone off on a tangent again?”

  “You know I went off looking at the Paaly rings Paul. Wanted to find out more about what was going on in the coherent rings?”

  Paul nodded, Cooper was getting more animated as he spoke, “Well I found all sorts of things and especially I found that I could probe them in various ways. You can use the rings to detect matter interactions of all sorts in extremely fine detail. You can use it as a kind of three dimensional phased array matter detector. I think the Stack’s shell buggers up the signal but I can see the difference between the mass of the moon and the vacuum above, I think I can detect the outlines of the colony as well, but this is only the start! I know we can come up with a Stack design without a shell; we don’t need the gas flow or high-energy stuff you need for propulsion or power. At that point you can probably sense a lot more.”

  Paul stared at his friend in shock, “A long range mass detector?”

  “I think we should be able to ‘see’ large structures on Earth Paul, possibly down to an aircraft in flight - that sort of thing, probably over very long ranges. I’d guess you should be able to ‘see’ the basic structures of all the solar planets from here. Might be able to track a satellite in orbit on the far side of the Earth from here.”

  “Cooper!” Paul couldn’t go on.

  His friend smiled, “I was almost a failure in life Paul, almost wasted it all, except for a couple of proud moments. With these three things I leave the human race with the tools to conquer the stars, and no man can ask for more.” Tears gleamed in the big blue eyes, he scrubbed them away, “but I’ve got to get the detector working properly, I’m pretty sure it’s working but I get all sorts of flaky results. I need you my friend, my collaborator in chief, to finish this work. When are you going to be able to stop this pointless shuttling back and forth and get down to some real work, worthy of your talent?”

  Paul’s flaming rage at this arrogant jab vanished in laughter, Cooper was still Cooper, would always be Cooper till the end. Laughing Paul got up and hugged his protesting friend’s thin frame.

  Looking down at the bed, “I’ll tell you what you old bastard, I’m here for almost twenty hours in every forty eight so I’ll try and spend half of it with you, and I’ll arrange to have some of my ‘down time’ at Luna Haven from this point on. Not all of them mind you. I should be able to spend a couple of days every couple of weeks up here.” He raised a hand against the protest that was already forming, “and for now that’s all of me you get, we need to keep the build rate up for a while. Once the MoonBeam’s up and we have all the cells necessary for the planned initial population up here, the flight schedule should brake pretty rapidly and with four or five crews I should be able to spend quite a bit of time here.”

  Cooper grumbled but had to accept it in the end.