by Keith Martin
These bands of rock became the busiest chunks of land on any planet. Every few hours a G-Class Shuttle set down with another full load ready for unloading. Within two hours it was required to be completely unloaded and all pre-flight checks finished for the return trip to Earth. Its destination would depend on where the load waited for them.
6 A Hole on the Moon
All of the wonderment that Otto and Vic had seen in their first few days on the Moon, was nothing compared with what they were shown the morning they officially met Mike Terry eight days after they arrived. They were eating breakfast when a huge man walked up and introduced himself. “Hey guy’s, they call me Ton around here.” He offered his hand, or paw, to them both. “You must be Otto, and you will be Officer Vic. I noticed the supplies were stacking up in the hangers and had a talk with Fred about it. The Commander thinks we can trust you boys and thinks it’s time to show you what we don’t let out into the news. It’s a little project we lovingly call Chamber Alpha. I’m sure we can give it a good name later.” He waited for the two to stand then guided them down to the warehouse that was just off the main hall next to Command and Control. “We didn’t tell the world about this because we figured it would turn into a condo city for the ultra rich up here. And if we sent word down now that this was here we figure every country on the planet would try to get people to the Moon and things would truly get out of control up here.” As he entered the warehouse a miner hit a switch and a section of steel flooring raised up to reveal a road leading down into the core of the Moon.
“We started the dig a few years back. I came up from diamond mining in Africa to head up the team here. We have been at it nonstop since I arrived.” They started to walk down the long ramp, but a transport soon came up to give them a lift. Once they were onboard Ton continued. “It’s the biggest project of its kind. No one on Earth ever tried anything on this scale. Only the denseness of the bedrock made this possible. It’s like an old lava flow. But it’s not that airy stuff we get on Earth. As you can see it’s hard as iron, and safe to dig in. Once you make a hole, it’s like we cemented in a form.” They soon reached the bottom of the ramp, what they saw took their breath away.
“The chamber is a massive underground lava pocket that we found; it was from that hole we dug this chamber. Its three thousand feet long, one thousand feet wide and its ceiling is two hundred feet high. The original cave ceiling was seventeen hundred feet below the surface and we have pulled more than a hundred cubic yards of rock an hour from here for close to three years dumping the slag onto the surface above the cavern to act as a buffer to help protect us from impacts. We work three shifts a day and we use only the best mining equipment to carve out the cavern. We are really actually finished with the main chamber right now. Next we will start to dig out the housing units along the walls. And they will be big houses. There will be room for growing a family in these houses, and if you need to expand, well its just rock. We will send in the diggers.”
Ton had the driver pull out into the chamber as he continued to talk about the massive structure. “All total this chamber has a floor that is sixty-eight point eight acres in size. We are thinking we should put in a garden to help with air quality in here. So I’m having the floor lowered in a ten-acre section so that we don’t have water spilling out all over the place. We are dropping the floor in this area two feet. We are also digging out a small pond next to it for water storage. There will also be over two acres of raised beds making this floor into separated areas for work and play. Next week we should get a real start on the housing units. My men have been working on the ramps and passageways for a few weeks that will lead to these houses.”
Otto cut in. “How long will it take you to train loader drivers and shovel operators to help on this project? If I give you let’s say six hundred bodies, how fast can you get this finished?” Otto only saw a place to truly safeguard mankind from everything life could throw at it. Housing the base underground would protect everyone from the yearly meteor showers that impacted the surface.
“Six hundred bodies?” He exhaled long and deep thinking that over while scratching his scalp and shaking his head in disbelief. He had never thought of having such a workforce on the Moon. But then this was not a normal time in the history of mankind. “You send them to me Otto, I’ll train them.” He took Otto’s hand in his iron grip. “That boy of yours told me you where a force to reckon with. I guess he’s right about that, when can I have them?”
“How about a hundred today, and I’ll fill the rest of the order as soon as I can? But I have two of them right here now.”
Ton looked around and so did Vic. No one was in sight. “Two? Where?” Ton asked confused.
Otto put his arm around Vic’s shoulder. “Well he’s too big to be just one guy. There’s not enough crime to keep him busy on the base, so teach him to dig, I’m willing to bet he can drive a loader like a madman.”
“I can drive a loader now. I used to drive one when I worked in the stockyard. So I don’t need no training, I just need a loader and a pile to dig into.” Vic barked at Otto. “What do you think? I’m no greenhorn!”
Otto and Ton looked at each other and laughed. Ton cracked a broad grin and asked. “Well now we know, what else can you do?”
“Let’s start with the loading, we can go from there.” He gave Otto the look of death. “I’ll be watching you my friend, should have known you would volunteer me for every task that came along.”
Ton pointed to a loader that was sitting nearby and Vic mounted up and got to work. Ton turned to Otto and asked. “So you can drive a loader too, right?”
“Yea, I’ll put in a shift too, I can even train greenhorns to operate one.” He assured him.
“Good, we will need every hand if we start pushing with a crew that big. The slag pile will grow quickly.”
“As soon as he’s finished call me down for my shift. And lets never hold back something like this again my friend. Im in the need to know loop.” With that said, Otto took the transport back up to the base to start gathering Ton a crew.
* * *
Mike [Ton] Terry was the senior digger on the Moon. Six feet tall and three hundred pounds, it was easy to see how he got his name. His bushy brown hair and deep brown eyes gave him a look that was half animal.
He had come up to work on the Moon after he had retired a played out diamond mine in North Africa. His work there had made both him and his brother Steve [Steve Bongo] who worked with him wherever he dug, quite rich. But the challenge of digging on the Moon was more than either of them could resist.
He had answered a trade-add needing miners looking for high adventure. Eighteen months later the two brothers finished training for work on the Moon and they were transported up. He started his new job by designing the runways on the Moon. Next it was all kinds of equipment that was now in use on this dig, and he held patents on them all.
The pay for their work on the Moon had turned into a king’s ransom and they were happy to just keep renewing their contracts and forging on with the construction of S.M.B.
Standard mining contracts on the Moon were for one year; the brothers had passed that date four years ago. But no one was stupid enough to point it out to them. They had work to do and it wasn’t finished yet. It was that easy and they had never looked back. This was their life now.
Ton was heard to say, “A man has his work, the food is great. What more could a man want, what more does he need?”
All the diggers knew he was the force behind their record-breaking speed on the dig. They pulled so much rock from this site they had made a mountain of slag up on the surface.
This first underground city was scheduled for completion in two years. With a crew of six hundred men and woman to help, that time would be cut down to just a few months.
Ton went up to the site he had picked out for his house. It was going to be directly over the ramp entrance into the cavern. He was digging it at the top of the wall so that he would have t
he best of views in the place. He already had a lift installed to bring him up to the house site, and he was doing most of the digging himself. Steve Bongo was digging his home directly under his brothers.
He planned for a small pool that he and Steve could share with vast open porches facing the chamber for both of their units.
An underground lake of ice had been found on the Moon. So water was no longer being shipped up from Earth. The speculation was that a massive ice comet had impacted the Moon millions of years ago, and the dust of the passing centuries had buried it deep within the surface.
This is what made establishing a permanent base of operations on the Moon a reality. They here drilling core samples when they found this underground lake, a sonar probe was sent down to assess its size and what they found amazed them all. The cavern held at least ten billion gallons of fresh water locked in ice.
This is what really started the push to build a fully operational base on the Moon. With all the water they would need, living on the Moon was now possible.
By harvesting the hydrogen from the water the base would have an almost endless supply of fuel for power and a backup supply of oxygen.
The governments of the world had kept the lake a secret from the people of Earth. The digging of the cavern had been kept top secret from the governments of Earth. It was decided that S.M.B. was going to become a permanent military base once they found water there. The real plans the governments had for this base were unknown to the staff of S.M.B. But when they unearthed the Alpha Cavern they understood that the Moon could have much more potential then a military base looking down on Earth.
All that was moot at this point. The only plans for S.M.B. were what the Commanders of the base made for the Moon. The plans of those on Earth no longer had any effect on the goings on at the base.
Ton had a crew tunneling to this ice cavern from the alpha cavern. It would take at least a month to reach it. Mining the ice would be so much easier than trying to melt it, and then pump it out for use.
The water did hold a small amount of salt, but it was nothing that couldn’t be filtered out. It was thought that over the millions of years it had sat in the cavern that its salts had settled to the bottom. It was believed that water might have come from the seas that used to cover Mars. But there was no way to be sure; there was no way to test it that could make its home planet known as fact. The theories abounded, and this was the one most believed.
Ton was looking forward to when the purifiers were online and the water flowed freely. He had promised himself a long hot shower as soon as the system was completed.
It was just the first surprise they had waiting for them deep inside of the Moons crust.
* * *
As they sat waiting for the cargo hold to be filled Pete and Joshua Coffeed up and talked of the mission. Something was still bothering Joshua and he knew it was something big he was missing. It was the words of the Mission Controller communicating with G-4 as it delivered a load of supplies to the International Space Station that snapped his thoughts into a winning plan for this mission.
The station didn’t have room for all the supplies that were sent up. The Mission Controller advised the ISS to store supplies tethered to the hull outside the station. It was like a light going off in his head. He knew he had figured it out. “Pete we are fools. All we have to do is stage the supplies in space. We don’t have to take them all the way to the Moon right now, there will be time to fetch them as needed after we cant return to the surface!”
Pete did some quick calculations and added. “We could get at least 6 loads a day off the planet per G class. Joshua that’s brilliant. Ill patch you through to the base Commander to get him online. Joshua I think you just saved out butts.”
Joshua’s second call was to his father. “Hi Pop. So we are fools and we are all looking at the box. I will not be returning to S.M.B. until I have every living pod in orbit filled with supplies. We will put the old Columba Class Shuttles to work reloading supplies in orbit for the delivery to the Moon portion of this mission. That should save our butts and keep the supplies flowing to you. Copy?”
Otto was glad Joshua was thinking on his feet. No one had even breached the thought of stationing supplies in orbit to him. It was a great idea and would give them a real fighting chance of making it. It would mean 300% more material delivered off planet in the same space of time. “Jesus Son I think you just saved us!”
* * *
Ashley, the eldest child of the Chisholm gang, like her brother and sister, had a stellar college career. Her love was the biosciences. Like her sister and math, or her brother and his hand at the controls of anything that could go airborne. She had a way of seeing through a virus’s makeup as if it was written in plain English on its cell walls.
Otto had trained her to be a leader from the time she could walk. He would take her out of daycare, and take her to work with him. At first she would pass the days in a backpack sleeping. But as she grew she was shown how to do anything he was doing. All of her formative years were spent learning to be in control, she knew how to be an understanding leader, and how to teach others what was needed to complete a job.
Her dad had a landscaping company back then, she learned to plant, dig, install irrigation systems, drive tractors, read blue prints, deal with laborers and clients. If he was doing it, she was at his side. It would make Otto smile when she would sell extra work to a client, and she hadn’t reached five years of age yet, the clients just loved her.
Then came the day she had to go to school. Otto knew she had to go, but he hated it. “I’m losing my foremen to kindergarten.” He had complained. As soon as she was finished with the school day, she was with him again.
He never forced her to work, she didn’t even think of it as work. She was simply playing with her daddy, and oh how she was spoiled for her labor.
Then school and friends took her into the world that all children must grow through she was just a normal little girl, except for the grades. All A’s, all the time, she didn’t join a click like most girls in school; she was the click. The girls hung out with her. The food bill went up at home too. Because Ashley would always bring a gaggle of girls home to study, or just be girls. That meant snacks and soda. She had the house the kids felt safe at.
The fact that Otto had moved them all out to the ranch, and converted the top half of the barn into a playground for kids of any age, had nothing to do with it at all. Even he liked to go up there to play with his gang.
When Ashley was just seven years old, she went out to a large landscape Otto was installing, as he was looking over the blueprints with Sara; the lovely woman who replaced Ashley, off she went to play and look around. The crew knew her, and everyone was watching her as she buzzed around saying hello to her friends.
A new worker who had only been on the job a few days, stood holding a shovel smoking a cigarette. Something all knew not to do. Otto didn’t mind the smoking, but he did demand that it was done while still working. He wasn’t paying for a man to stand around and smoke. “You can’t do that, if you’re going to smoke you have to work!” A hedge stood between Otto and this laborer. The young man had no idea the boss was listening.
“Who are you to tell me what to do little girl? If I want to smoke I will!” The young man belligerently shot back, in his defense.
The foreman moved like a shot, she was going to inform this guy who Ashley was Otto’s restraining hand held her back. “Give her a second; I think she has it under control.” He had mischief in his eyes, and a smile on his face.
“You’re the boss…”
“Not if you can’t work, and smoke at the same time, I’m asking you nicely to get back to work. This isn’t lunchtime. This is work time.” Ashley had heard her father talk of the wasted hours his crews spent smoking and how it was costing the family thousands of dollars a year. She remembered the contract he made that everyone signed, informing them that smoking was allowed, but stopping to enjoy a cigarette o
n the clock was not. To do so could mean termination.
“And what are you going to do if I don’t go to work?”
“He’s too dumb to keep Otto.” Sara said under her breath embarrassed by this person’s conduct.
Otto just smiled and said. “Give her a sec, she has it under control.”
Ashley knew what she had to do, but she had never done it before. She had seen her father do it a few times over the years. So she gave it a try. “If you don’t put it out, and get to work, I’ll tell my daddy, and you’re going to need a new job.” It wasn’t exactly as he would have put it, but then she was just seven years old.
“You’re going to fire me? I’ll just tell him you’re lying. Who’s he going to believe, you or me? You’re just a nosey little girl!”
Otto got out his checkbook, and a pin as Ashley ran to his side. “Daddy...” She had determination in her voice.
He quieted her with a finger over his lips. “I’m writing as fast as I can Sweetness.” He ripped off the check. “Here you go, be nice when you do it Baby Girl.”
A smile crossed her face, and she took the check. Otto and Sara moved to watch how she did it. More than a few of the elder crewmembers had heard this going on and moved closer to join the game.
“This will pay you everything you’re owed. Collect your things and please leave the job site.” She handed him the check, then stood her ground. She had done it perfectly.
He looked at the check not comprehending, then it hit him. “You’re firing me?”
“Yes.” She said loud and clear, a little uncomfortable with the job she was doing, but doing it just the same.
“You stepped on the wrong foot bozo, that’s the boss’s daughter. A little girl just fired you. How does it feel to be stupid?” One of the women on the crew asked walking up, putting a protective arm around Ashley’s shoulder.