by M.A. Harris
Future Options
The Alexis settled on her jacks, there had hardly been a tremor as she touched down on the moon. Paul glanced over at Patsy who had happily flown as his copilot today. Raoul was the flight engineer, the old crew at it again. They rarely flew together these days; the three ‘civilian’ crews mixed and matched all the time. Now Patsy flew as command pilot most times she was ‘up’. Raoul had recently been spending a lot of time at the Hollow and elsewhere, working on the MoonBeam and other projects.
Paul’s work at the Hollow had been keeping him grounded on and off as well. He was responsible for packing up the Stack production facility into empty hab cells and freight containers for transportation to the moon. More and more equipment was coming up for installation later, there wasn’t quite a feel of panic yet, but Paul felt that it was going to happen, he just hoped that he, Conti, Cliff and a few others could stop it from getting out of hand.
Panning the exterior camera around Paul sighed. The MoonBeam was sitting nearby under a solar awning. There were three complete landing spots here now, each with solar awnings, ribbed metalized Mylar sheets on a tall hinged frame, designed to keep the solar heat load down while the ships rested on the surface, it also kept them warmer when the sun was down, reducing thermal fatigue problems.
The MoonBeam spent a lot of time on Luna these days, but not all of her time, and yet he had seen her at the Hollow only twice in the last month, which meant she was either spending a lot of time in space or somewhere else, probably on Earth. As he watched the awning over the MoonBeam fell back and the ship lifted out, in a few seconds she had vanished into the black, accelerating fast, in a hurry.
“Damned jar head show offs,” swore Patsy over Paul’s shoulder.
“Language young lady!” Paul said with smile, and then shook his head, “And anyway, none of them are US Marines as far as I know Patsy.” Paul sighed, “The Marines I’ve known have been arrogant but not reckless, and they appear to be both. I don’t understand it, they seemed all right when I was training them but now they seem out of control. I think the power - or something’s - gone to their heads. They came into the Hollow the other day at well over a hundred miles an hour, you could hear her coming down for at least a minute prior to touch down, and they must have hit the ground at five miles an hour, I thought they’d really mashed it at first. Cliff tells me they’ve done it more than once. I had Micah on the carpet about it but he essentially told me to go stuff myself, and Olarik wasn’t much better.”
Patsy snorted, “They’ll get themselves in trouble soon. No complaints mind you, but I don’t think the shock mounting on the Stacks is that good. I had a glitch on the ‘Dreams altimeter once and hit a bit hard, half the Stacks tripped off line and some of them wouldn’t recycle immediately. We put in a trouble note on it.”
“I read it, there’s a software fix for the problem you had but you’re right, we didn’t really design in enough shock mounting. I even told Micah that but he just sneered at me.”
“The MoonBeam has a lot better shock dampers on the landing jacks and on the Stack mounting trunnions. The ‘Dream didn’t get those changes. The new ship in the high bay has the same mods.” Raoul said quietly.
Paul frowned, there had been a lot of improvements in the later two ships, he’d seen to it that as many lessons learned as possible got implemented, but the problem with shock hadn’t been found until the MoonBeam had already flown, “I don’t remember that that design change coming through the approval cycle?”
It was hard to tell given his dark complexion, but Paul was pretty sure that Raoul blushed, he certainly looked down, “Some changes were made during the build that aren’t in the design database.”
“Yes, I had noticed that, but if the mods put in on the ‘Beam are replicated on the new ship without my knowing it, the design database that I and the design oversight committee review is not the one the ship’s being built to.” He could feel his ears beginning to burn.
Raoul shook his head, still looking down, “The classified build notes record the change, I guess that doesn’t get fed back into the formal documentation.”
Paul swore under his breath, “In that case the new ship is being built to an unreviewed configuration?”
Raoul glanced up, his expression defensive, “It’s reviewed, just by a different group. And it’s not been a problem, shouldn’t be, the Stacks are so reliable and powerful and the ships overall design so simple and over spec’d it’s not likely to ever be a problem. Paul we made them better, stronger.”
Paul sighed again, “Yeah probably, the design’s pretty much brute force, but having multiple sets of documentation is asking for maintenance problems.”
“Yeah, well since the people who built them are repairing them it’s not a problem. By the time we have enough ships for it to be a problem the changes will be standard. And I doubt it’ll ever be a problem with this old lady,” Raoul waved around them at the worn interior of the Alexis’ flight bridge. “She’ll have to be scrapped - or rebuilt before long anyway.”
The Alexis had now been in commission for over eight months and in flight almost every day of that time, sometimes carrying much heavier cargos than she’d originally been designed for. The flight time and over loading were both showing. Fatigue was eating at the structure and various systems were becoming progressively more unreliable. The Stacks fortunately were still solid as rocks, a sign that they’d probably over designed them. Unfortunately, the rest of the Alexis was rapidly getting to the point of needing a very major overhaul.
Paul knew that Raoul was trying to deflect his ire and defuse the situation. He let it go, Raoul wasn’t to blame and in the big picture it probably didn’t matter. With a shrug he turned away to finish shutting the Alexis down, carefully noting all the ‘squawks’ as he did so. Raoul would be working on them for a lot of the day with the local ship tech.
When the fourth, unnamed ship was operational in a few months, they’d pull the Alexis out of the rotation and almost completely rebuild her. There was some discussion of trying to do that at Luna Haven, as an experiment. By that time, if the Alexis never got back to flight status it wouldn’t be a major tragedy. Paul knew it was stupid to love an inanimate object like a ship but he loved the Alexis and the thought of her being scrapped was painful, though nowhere near as painful as the prospect of losing Cooper.
Thinking about Cooper Paul smiled. The moon had done wonders for the old man, he had regained years of energy and was often to be found working on his latest development late into the night. Janice Jones was constantly hounding him to bed and making sure he stayed there, sometimes, Paul suspected, by sleeping with the old coot.
Paul felt a little guilty that he had not been able to spend as much time with Cooper as he had promised when the old physicist had first been brought up. Things were hectic, and he found that he could rarely spend more than a day a week in Cooper’s lab, though he did try to make sure Cooper went to bed at a reasonable time on a regular basis. Sometimes that was difficult for both of them, Janice had chased them out of the lab more than once with a cross scolding. They were working on two things now, the sensor application that Cooper had told Paul about and also on how to increase power and thrust output. Paul was doing the latter largely to provide a cover so that they could work on the sensor application without interference.
Patsy clipped her helmet to the wall by the locker and was pulling her light moonsuit out, “You coming to the Mayoral Committee meeting this evening Paul? We need to discuss some of the staffing shortfalls” Patsy was spending more and more time working with Conti on the running of their growing little city.
Paul groaned, “Damn, I forgot about that! It’s even on my scheduler but I was going to blow it off so I could work with Cooper.”
Patsy looked over at him, “What are you and Cooper working on so hard these days?”
He hesitated, covering by fussing with a few last items as he thought, “
Mainly trying to tease a bit more lift out of the current Stacks and figure out what it would take to get a significant improvement in the next generation, whenever we get to that.” He didn’t like not telling her all, but he no longer felt totally comfortable telling everything he knew all the time.
She wrinkled her nose, “I guess I’ll just keep flying, I liked the design work but I guess it never made me want to get up every day like this does.”
Paul grinned, “I know what you mean, even just shuttling back and forth to the moon feels like the greatest adventure on Earth, and I’d not give it up for the world now. But the other stuff’s fun as well.” He tried to make the grin wicked, “And I’m in a position to have it all, for once in my life.”
Raoul smiled faintly, “Just remember amigo, that things never stay the same.”
Paul grimaced at Raoul and looked at Patsy, “Is he always this much of a wet blanket?”
She grinned, “It’s that Latino angst thing, all that cha cha cha on top, underneath a boiling cauldron of dark impulses.”
Raoul whacked her on the butt in passing and she hooked a thumb at him, “See?”
Paul went to check the passengers, Wendy Tauton had been playing stewardess to eleven people on their way up to start their new lives in Luna Haven, he opened the hatch and found everyone bouncing around happily in the passenger compartment as Wendy tried to get them into their moon suits. There were three kids under ten in this group, one of the first installments. Paul had his doubts about this but their parents seemed to think it was a good idea, so who was he to complain?
“Hey Wendy, everything going OK?” He smiled at the slightly harried looking ex-flight attendant.
“Sure boss, just as soon as everyone gets off the ceiling it’ll be great. Sarah’s got the moon bus pulled up and she said she’d come up and help.” Her tone said she needed help. Paul grinned, “Raoul will be aboard for a while, I’m going ‘ashore’ as it were, see you later.”
He did the requisite hops and jumps once down on the surface and then set out in a gentle bounding trot towards Luna Haven, it was only a mile and a half. He glanced over at the seemingly endless rows of containers and hab cells and at the equipment moving around them. There were almost two hundred people here now and there would be over four hundred in another two months. They’d be crowded for a while, but that was not too bad and the installation of new housing modules and farm domes was going on at a furious rate.
Almost half the people from the Coots village were already here and most would be here soon. The Hollow and its environs was becoming noticeably less crowded, that made Paul think about Ted’s comment the month before, if it had been noted by the people in Primus Junction then, it had to be the primary topic of conversation now.
Paul pulled his mind back to the issue at hand, for all his worries about the dark side of what was going on they were building a dream here, a dream that real, good people were making come alive. With three sets of equipment crunching through the surface rock and placing modules they were installing modules at an average of two a day now, rapidly working the stock of modules down. They were also beginning to install more than just housing, on the social side a cinema was operating and some small shops. On the operational side they had built out the first industrial arm. The first manufacturing facility they had set up was for space suit fabrication and refurbishment. They had set up a small array of radio and optical telescopes in a crater a hundred miles away, along with four modules plus a connector as a ‘homestead’ to support it. The observatory was already pulling in information that was as good as, or better than, anything seen before, even by the latest space telescopes.
-o-
There was almost a bustle in the suiting facility above the main lock, it wasn’t crowded but there were six or seven other people there, two of whom Paul didn’t recognize at all. Not surprising given the quick growth rate.
As he stepped out of the lock facility, a little three wheel electric scooter zipped around him, they weren’t yet common but as Luna Haven expanded the Mayoral Committee was already discussing how to run some kind of separate roadbed connecting the major nodes to keep the traffic down.
There was also an ongoing discussion about how to create larger industrial spaces. The concrete tubes were too constraining. Tunnels, hard shell domes, bigger tubes had all been suggested, but the problem of keeping air in and radiation out of a bigger structure was not trivial. In Paul’s opinion the simplest and quickest solution was a variation of the garden domes, an inflated dome over a post and beam structure beefy enough to support a few feet of radiation absorbing gravel.
The connector behind the entry complex was full now. There was a juice bar in the corner set aside for shops and the like, a girl behind the counter called out as he walked past. “Hey Mr. Richards, want a local? We got some tomato juice from local produce!”
He did a double take realizing it was Rebecca Stone, she was just sixteen, and had come up with her family a month or so earlier, “Hey yourself Beck, sounds good, you got some pepper sauce?”
She nodded happily and poured him a glass and gave him the bottle of black sauce. “You bring up the Thompson’s today Mr. Richards? I used to baby sit little Al, guess I’ll be doing it again, though in school now.”
“You going to be the School Marm, Beck?” Asked Paul in surprise.
“Part time, as an assistant, while I’m working on my own stuff, I’m doing a self study thing with Conti; he says I’ve got a pretty organized mind for a teeny bopper.” She grinned happily. Then she turned to the girl woman behind the counter, a somewhat older black haired girl, pretty but with bad acne scars and what looked like a knife scar on her jaw, “Hey sorry Carla, Paul, this is Carla Mazat, Carla this is Paul Richards, our chief pilot and super science guy.”
“Hey easy on the super science, I’m an engineer and a pilot, Cooper’s the mad scientist.” Paul smiled at the dark eyed young woman, “Hello Carla, you come up from the village?”
Carla looked at Beck with a slightly panic stricken expression, shaking her head, “no, no, I came up with my Jose.”
Beck glanced at Paul, her face serious, “Carla’s from the Garrison, the section General Olarik oversees. Her husband’s one of the techs on that side. Amanda Thompson, the Sergeant Major’s wife is heading the organizing committee over there.”
Paul blinked, “Ah yes?”
“Conti wants to talk to you about it.” Beck grinned almost evilly at Paul.
He blinked and nodded, looked at Carla, “How are you finding Luna Haven, Carla?”
She glanced down then back up, “I do’n no yet, my head’s still spinning. The parks are kind of cute.” She said this almost wistfully.
“Parks?”
“The domes Mr. Richards.”
“You like the farms Carla?”
The garden domes had mirrors and diffusers that gave the ‘sky’ a bluish tint with a safely filtered image of the sun; the overall feel was quite pleasant. If you looked out you could see the rolling gray brown of the Luna surface, utterly lifeless and dangerous, but it was somehow less threatening through the faint haze of the dome and with an almost natural blue sky above.
There was a small area of grass in this dome, surrounded by ponds, streams and wetlands that were most of Luna Haven’s water filtration system as well as a place to generate oxygen, grow fish and a lot of berries and reeds. The ‘sun’ side of the dome was blocked by what looked like a cliff, though it was interrupted by a series of ledges and waterfalls. On the other side of the big shield were tiers of aquaculture and hydroponics tanks. This dome was only two months old but it was already beginning to look well established. The planners had said that food, water and good air wasn’t going to be a problem even with the relatively limited land space, Paul had had a hard time believing them but they were already producing enough food for the population, as long as you liked vegetables and fish. Chickens and turkeys were starti
ng in a dome on the far side of the town and looked like they were settling in pretty well.
“Farms?”
“The domes are all three Carla. We’ve set it up so people can interact with it pretty harmlessly as long as there aren’t too many for too long.” He waved at the juice, “We’re already growing some of our own food and soon almost everything. Farming is all about solar power, water and nutrients. We have lots of solar power and we can control all the rest. Biggest thing is that it’s fairly labor intensive though very efficient, and not a lot of people are that interested in being high tech farmers, as yet.
“I was born on a farm in Mexico man, remember a little, then we moved to the barrio in LA, we thought we had it good at first but it’s not good on kids, not illegals especially.” Her face was sad, “I’d love to farm if I could.”
“Good, we need people who would love to farm, when can you start?” Paul replied.
She jerked, suddenly angry, “Hey man I don’t like having my leg pulled, I tell you something about me, and you make fun of me!”
Paul held up his hand, “Carla, I wasn’t making fun of you. You said you would love to farm, we need farmers. Everyone has to work here at something, usually several something’s, farming’s a full time job, it’ll probably lead to you learning the life support systems and so on.”
Carla’s face went blank, “You mean it! You can say I can be a farmer - and make it stick,” She waved her arms, “Where’s the boss manager? I did my stints in the fields; there was always a field boss, he going to take on a Bad Girl Gangster and ex-hooker as a farmer?”
Paul blinked, but shrugged, “No field bosses here Carla. We need farmers not pickers! And no I can’t just make it so, but I know we need people with your interests.”
He looked at Beck who was nodding furiously, “Carla if you would like to work in the gardens you’d be a godsend, I think they’re trying to get one person per dome and really having a hard time.”
Carla was looking almost lost, “I guess Jose didn’t lie, I thought he was just making it up when he said we’d get to start over.”
Beck nodded again, “Oh yes, that’s what we are all doing.”
Paul left them chattering and went looking for Conti.
-o-
Conti was in one of the garden modules, laying on grassy knoll looking at the sky. Paul sat down next to him, “So now the other foot is dropping?”
The older man grimaced, “Yeah. I knew the MoonBeam’s been bringing in people over the last two weeks, wasn’t sure how many in total. I asked Arkan how many and he told me to mind my own business.” There was anger in that, then a faint laugh, “But the consumables draw down says that the numbers are fluctuating, as if they have people coming and going in fairly large contingents. From what Mrs. Thomson has said and the draw I’d guess an average of about forty. And twenty five are family, including a few kids. There have been a few soldier boys and a few gals out wandering, but they have their own set of locks so they don’t come this way much. They had a lot of special equipment stashed too; some of it looks pretty exotic.”
“Damn it Conti I don’t like it at all.”
Conti was silent.
“It’s been there all along Conti, and you have to have known. You’ve worked for Aristide for years; you have to know he runs mercenaries and weapons. And you knew that Aristide and Conrad have had this little space marine thing planned on from before I first saw the Plateau!”
“Damn it Paul….Yes OK I knew it….and more…but I thought I understood what was going on. That Mr. Aristide was in control. But I don’t know any longer.”
Paul grunted, “I sure as hell don’t know.”
Conti rolled to a sitting position, “I’ve built things for Aristide Industries for decades Paul. A couple of times I’ve built military bases, ostensibly for the local government or for an oil field guard force. But they were often used by the Crimson Staff.” He saw Paul’s puzzled frown, “The Staff’s kind of a semi secret conglomerate of military contractors; as you say, mercenaries, gun runners, who knows what else? They all but run some little rat hole countries. Aristide used to hire them as well as do work for them. I think Conrad is actually a senior officer in the Staff. And I don’t know if he really works for Aristide any longer.”
He kicked at the turf, “I think it started when Aristide and other’s started thinking about setting up their own government Paul. Think about it, the Paaly Stack gives us a big advantage, if we can keep a monopoly on it. Luna Haven could become the new Athens, Venice, Amsterdam, London, we could control trade in space for quite a while. Even if it becomes public we are in a very good location to dominate the early rush into space.”
Paul nodded, “But we could do that peacefully, there are thousands of good lawyers who’d help us fight the legal battles, I know a lot of lawyers and many of them are idealists of the worst sort under the skin, give them the stars like we have and they’d fight for us to the last drop of ink in their veins.”
Conti grunted, “Yeah, so, we’re on the far side of the moon, why do we need such a large defense force? And so heavily armed? You haven’t seen some of the things they’ve been unpacking. They’ve been digging emplacements for what I think are Stack powered directed energy weapons and missile batteries.”
He stopped looked at Paul almost as if ashamed, “They have Stack driven space fighters as well. Old F-104 Starfighters if you can believe it, converted into real space fighters.”
“Conti!” Paul’s voice had a rising note of grievance, then he shut up and he lay back to look up into space, the sparks of stars gleaming through the dome, “They damn well intend to declare independence and what else?”
Conti shrugged grimly. Paul swore, Conti laughed harshly in agreement. The two of them lay on the grass looking out into the gray brown wasteland they had decided to make a home.
Conti spoke at last, “So what now Paul?”
“So we go on Conti, what options do we have? We’re only guessing and how do we go back now, our lives are not the only ones on the line if we try and turn back, and how could we?”