Déjà Doomed

by Edward M. Lerner

  Have you seen the terrain here? We can’t not zig and zag. “Who, exactly, is going to be watching?”

  “Listen up,” Pope had snapped, suddenly all business. “There are eyes in the sky. Always assume someone is watching.” Russian eyes, he meant. “Always.”

  Marcus could not help but wonder how someone so paranoid got out of bed in the morning. All he had said was, “Understood.”

  * * *

  Marcus had struggled, before setting out, to find some pretense for getting driving advice from Paul Sokolov. No excuse Marcus had come up with had felt credible even to him, much less stood any chance of passing muster with Tyler. They were not, for public consumption, anyway, planning a long trip. The overabundance of supplies Marcus had told Brad to collect was just for safety. Their caravan would only “happen” to continue meandering west—Tyler’s hypothetical Russian watchers were intended to believe—as on-site inspections found nearby locations to be lacking in “ores.”

  And faster than the rim of Daedalus Crater could slip beneath the horizon in his rearview display, Marcus knew that any experience the trucker might have shared would not have mattered. Sure, Sokolov was an old hand at the Aitken Basin to Daedalus run, and of a half-dozen routes besides, but every lunar “highway” was surveyed, bulldozed clear of rubble, and well marked, the product of a team of engineers laboring for months. Sturdy mooncrete bridges spanned cracks and crevices along the way. A well-stocked emergency shelter and fuel-cell depot sat every hundred or so klicks along the road—in lunar gravity, a practical hike.

  Spring break? Road trip? Hah! Where Marcus and his friends drove, there were no roads. And then, waiting at the other end of this slog was ….

  Marcus had no idea who or what. No one did. No one could. All that said, he wouldn’t dream of being anywhere else—

  At least once they made it to the end of the nonexistent road.

  * * *

  Their dome shelter, its solar-cell-covered surface gleaming in the Sun, gradually inflated. “Just so you know,” Donna began, arms folded across her chest, supervising, “I’d be more than happy to sack out on the floor of my cab.”

  Brad kept unloading supplies from their trailer, stacking what they would need for the “night” beside the shelter’s not-yet-accessible airlock. “Not that I suppose it’ll change anything, but I’d also—”

  Marcus, who had been unloading and deploying yet other solar panels to recharge their tractors, pivoted at the lost conclusion to Brad’s gripe. The three of them had jacked in with meters-long fiber-optic cables to a router mounted to the side of his tractor. A quick look confirmed the expected: the cable had pulled loose from Brad’s helmet.

  “I got this,” Marcus told Donna, who turned back to monitoring the dome. He picked up the loose cable plug and walked it over. Catching Brad’s eye, Marcus mouthed, “Lost anything?”

  Brad jacked back in. “My marbles? Yeah, at least a day ago. Here’s a thought. Daedalus is way over the horizon. How about we use helmet radios? It’s not like they’ll interfere with anything.”

  Maybe not, Marcus thought. No, almost certainly not. It didn’t matter. Whatever any of them put on the air, even at low power, with nominally short-range helmet transmitters, Russian satellites might hoover up. Being a nitpicker about Farside protocol took less energy than admitting the possibility of exceptions, then negotiating over how careful everyone promised to be. One careless word—Tyler, damn you! You’ve made me paranoid—might blow the mission’s cover. “We’re on Farside. Except in an emergency, we don’t use radios.”

  “Fine.” Brad went back to shifting crates and canisters.

  “Done here,” Donna broke the awkward silence. “Want me to make a few holes?”

  Because, while mere radio silence stymied ears in the sky, to remain credible they had to raise dust for eyes in the sky. And that dust-raising had to look serious. It meant, every stop, kabuki prospecting: surveying around their encampment as though homing in on locations identified by satellite sensors, drilling boreholes, and running (worthless) gravel and regolith through portable instruments. It meant, choosing among the (worthless) boreholes at random, setting off blasting charges, followed by more playacting at on-site assays. It was all of a piece with, Donna’s wishful thinking notwithstanding, erecting the shelter at every stop rather than suggest pessimism about their latest test site.

  “Drill away,” Marcus said. He was as bone-weary as anyone, as aggravated after every exhausting slog at putting on a show for hypothetical observers. Perhaps more aggravated, because he got to be the bad guy who insisted on the arduous charade. But pushing onward toward the alien site? He would push harder, if he imagined they could have coped.

  “Busywork it is.” Donna sighed. “Because, just look around. The lunar surface needs more holes.”

  “What do you suppose we’ll find?” Marcus asked. “When we arrive, I mean. Any theories?”

  He asked only in part as a change in subject. Preparations for this trek, and for keeping its purpose and ultimate destination secret, had all but precluded looking ahead to their arrival. Given the CIA’s insistence that they get started no later than local dawn, there hadn’t been much opportunity for longer-term planning. And despite their best intentions to plan more while en route, inevitably—after gulping a reconstituted, freeze-dried dinner in the shelter, and calling in, for appearance’s sake, to the observatory, and statusing Tyler, and remedying whatever had most recently gone awry with their gear—they needed to sleep. Whether or not they could.

  It’s under control, Tyler assured Marcus time and again. America’s best minds are working the problem.

  Maybe they were. Certainly someone Dirtside had compiled a long list of equipment for the expedition to bring: little of which Daedalus Base stocked, or that Marcus could have explained withdrawing from inventory if it had, and more than they could have transported had even half of it been available. And when, ill-equipped, they arrived? The experts would walk Marcus and crew through whatever needed doing.

  So: quit worrying.

  Hell, yeah, Marcus worried. In the few, scattered moments he had found to think since leaving Daedalus (after two near collisions and an axle snapped by driving over a pothole, they had abandoned discretionary conversation, cab to cab, as an existential distraction), he had concluded those experts … weren’t. The CIA, DIA, and whatever other three-letter agencies had been looped into this project had precisely the same experience with ancient, alien, high-tech archeological sites as did his little team. None. On top of that, Tyler’s Dirtside “experts” understood little about what was possible in lunar conditions, or how things were done here, or how long everything took. Ignorance did nothing to stop Dirtside from relaying their conjectures, recommendations, and directives.

  So maybe Farside’s comm restrictions were a Good Thing. It was beyond imagining how much “input” Tyler’s brain trust would have forwarded, how much additional “dialogue” they would have demanded, given half an opportunity. If they hadn’t been limited in their interruptions by the small number of laser-equipped lunar comsats ….

  “Find?” Donna yawned. “We’ll find more dust. But even traces of organic matter might say a lot about them. If eons of vacuum, temperature cycling, and hard radiation haven’t destroyed the residues. At least we know to look for pay dirt near the robot, beneath Ethan’s leaning rocks.”

  “And inorganic dust,” Brad added. “Materials traces. Judging from our glimpse of the spacesuit before it crumbled, I’m guessing plastics and metals. Depending on their tech, maybe shards of ceramic.” He ventured details, most going over Marcus’s head, about how they might best try to sift, sort, and characterize near-microscopic fragments blended in with the regolith. Or, depending on how those trials went, how best to collect dust to truck back to Daedalus. Alas, a vacuum cleaner could do nothing for you in a vacuum.

  “No alien artifacts?
No keys to the galaxy? Where is your sense of wonder?”

  Brad snorted. “The wonder is that the spacesuit and its mummy, even in their sheltered alcove, lasted till we saw them. No, I expect only dust. Oh yeah, and to feel foolish about all this secret-agent claptrap. And I’ll admit to hoping for a less insane drive back to Daedalus.”

  “And you, chief?” Donna asked. “What do you suppose we’ll find?”

  Good question, Marcus thought.

  For more than a week now, analyst hordes Dirtside had pored over maps, old and new, assembled from satellite images captured with visible light and IR and radar, at every available wavelength. Nothing yet as much as hinted at artifacts or aliens, of anything more exotic than craters and lava tubes. The more time elapsed without spotting anything noteworthy, the more ill-considered this haste and secrecy and lying to everyone seemed. Nor had the prospecting bot had anything further to report. It wouldn’t, at least until the Sun rose there to recharge its batteries.

  What did he anticipate? “I expect,” Marcus said, “the unexpected.”

  Chapter 8

  Outside the inflatable igloo, the Sun still hovered just over the horizon. Unending dawn made Marcus’s exhaustion seem wrong—almost more so than the siren song of sleeping pills. But they had managed almost two hundred klicks since their last camp, despite Donna’s tractor snapping a track. Lunar gravity helped with jacking up the vehicle. Muscle atrophy from months in that same gravity? Not so much. As odious as exercise sounded, he would do some before trying to sleep. They all should.

  With well-practiced contortions, he wriggled out of his spacesuit. The mottled coveralls he slipped into were little cleaner than his outside gear. At every stop they tracked more lunar dust into the portable shelter. Even in Daedalus Base, with its top-notch air filtration, with a fleet of Roombas running around the clock, a faint odor like spent gunpowder was pervasive. Here, the stink was overpowering. On the bright side, that smell masked the reek of three people gone a week without a shower. Inside his vacuum gear, there was no denying his own stench.

  Brad, wheezing from the dust, finished changing a few seconds after him. Donna emerged soon after from the shelter’s tiny toilet compartment. “Who’s on dinner duty tonight?” she asked. “I only remember it’s not me.”

  “You sure about that?” Brad said. “Seems to me that—”

  The comm console began to chime.

  “God damn it,” Brad swore. “We’re supposed to have another forty-five minutes before your CIA buddies bug us.”

  First thing upon entering the igloo, Marcus had jacked the Agency datasheet into the comm console, but this wasn’t his ringtone for messages from Earth. “That’s the observatory”—and, till now, as directed, the base had waited for him to call. This did not bode well.

  He took the call on speaker, audio only. His friends looked as bedraggled as he, too, must. “Judson.”

  “Glad we caught you.” The voice was Jack Soo’s. “Well, more so that we caught Donna. I assume she’s also there. We’ve got a situation.”

  “I’m here,” Donna called out.

  “We had a bit of a brawl a little while ago in the social hall. Started over baseball, of all damn things, though I’m hazy about the details apart from too many beers. For the most part, we’re talking bruises, split lips, and the like. But Larry Erlich has a broken arm.”

  Donna cursed under her breath. “You’re certain?”

  “The crack sounded plenty unambiguous, his arm sure as hell looks wrong, and he can’t turn his wrist without yelping in pain. There’s no bone sticking out, I’m happy to say, and bruising but no bleeding. I emailed you a picture.”

  Donna took a look. “I’d need an X-ray to confirm, but sure, everything points to a fracture.”

  “About that,” Jack said. “We have X-ray gear, right? Because I sure can’t find it in the infirmary.”

  “How can you not …?” she trailed off, giving Marcus a very unhappy look.

  “Give us a second,” Marcus said. He tapped mute.

  Anger radiated off Donna in waves. “Tell me you didn’t. You asked me, and I told you it’d be medical malpractice.”

  The CIA, and not only Tyler, had insisted, albeit without any way to enforce their order. In the end, the decision had been Marcus’s. “Sorry, I can’t say that. Deep into third shift, a few hours before we left Daedalus”—while, as Icarus had confirmed, she had been snug in her quarters—“I boxed up our X-ray equipment and put it on my trailer. Can you imagine how we’d feel finding even small fragments of a body with no way to view inside?”

  “No way?” she echoed, glowering. “Here’s a way: sending for the gear when and if we find a use for it. Removing basic medical equipment from Daedalus was so damned irresponsible!”

  Marcus stood his ground. “There’s still an ultrasound machine on-site for imaging. I didn’t touch that. But tell me. Who at the observatory, apart from you, is trained to use the X-ray or the ultrasound equipment?”

  “Larry.” Her glower darkened. “Using two good arms. That unfortunate coincidence doesn’t excuse you.”

  “It’s no excuse,” Brad said, “but at the moment it is relevant.”

  “Fine,” she snapped. She toggled off mute. “Stop mucking about in my office, Jack. Taking X-rays and interpreting the results both require training. Larry’s in no shape to X-ray himself, especially if, as I suspect, he’s dosed up on Demerol. You’ve contacted Aitken, haven’t you?”

  It’s lucky, Marcus thought, this connection is audio-only. There could be no mistaking the anger on her face.

  “First thing I did,” Jack said. “The ER doc at the hospital eyeballed the same visual you saw. He’s pretty sure it’s a, um, I think he called it a ‘displaced fracture,’ and that it’ll need surgery. But before he recalls the nearest courier for ambulance duty and a 2500-klick schlep to us, he requested an X-ray to confirm. I told him our paramedic was away, but a lot closer than Aitken, and he said to check in with you.

  “So: I found someone who wasn’t drinking to prep our little shuttle. Satellite shows you guys at about 900 klicks from here. As the rocket-propelled crow flies, that is. I can pick up Donna within the hour.”

  Donna said, “I imagine Larry told you this, or the ER doc did, but keep that arm elevated, and immobile with a splint and a sling, and use an ice pack wrapped in a towel to keep down the swelling, Jack, till I get—”

  “We need another moment, Jack.” Marcus tapped mute again. “You can’t go.”

  “What the hell? Of course I’m going. Jack can fly me back here in a few hours.”

  Marcus shook his head. “It won’t be a simple in and out. Once you’re on-site, everyone who was in that melee will want checking over. Anyone who’s had the least ache or pain or twinge or stuffy nose will demand your opinion while you’re there. It’ll be days before you get back. As for helping Larry, you going sounds counterproductive. The ambulance will retrieve him that much sooner if the ER doc isn’t waiting for you to confirm what he already suspects.”

  “Since when do you make medical decisions?” Donna snapped.

  Brad frowned. “These are our friends, remember? Either of you ever had a bad break? I have, and it wasn’t fun. I’m thinking Larry won’t mind a friendly face, and someone on hand who knows what she’s doing, even if it’s ‘only’ until the medevac team arrives.”

  “If they’re even needed,” Donna added. “If an X-ray shows minimal displacement, they won’t be.”

  Both were right, of course, but whatever pain Larry was in, Marcus’s guilt would put it to shame. That didn’t matter. “Never mind the time we’ll waste parked here, cooling our heels till you get back. How do you propose to explain returning with the base X-ray gear?”

  “I’ll think of something,” she insisted.

  “Forget it,” Marcus said. “You’re not going. We won’t, can�
��t, do anything that might raise questions about this outing.”

  “And you suppose Donna’s refusing to help won’t raise questions?” Brad asked.

  “It won’t,” Marcus said, “because Donna isn’t the one refusing. I’ll veto a flight to retrieve her. Folks at Daedalus can blame me for being a jerk.”

  “ ‘Jerk’ doesn’t begin to cover it,” Donna said.

  So be it, Marcus thought. He did not need Tyler to remind him they were on a mission of national security. Who knew what knowledge might be lost to the country, if, as improbable as this seemed, anyone else got to the site first?

  He unmuted the link. “Sorry, Jack. Bit of consultation here. We”—the royal we—“think it’s better that Larry go straight to Aitken.”

  “Donna? You agree?”

  Marcus locked eyes with her.

  “All things considered?” she managed. “Yes.”

  Marcus said, “Jack, it’s best we let you attend to that. And then, please, confiscate whatever beer you can find. You can blame me”—for that, too.

  He broke the link.

  “You okay, Donna?” Brad asked.

  “What do you think?” she said coldly.

  * * *

  Fork in hand, Valerie more stirred than sampled the mush lumps in sauce on her plate. She had already forgotten what she had requested; visual inspection revealed nothing more specific than slop. The office cafeteria might be the antidote to trimming her pregnancy cravings.

  But Jay Singh had, somehow, finished a bowl of bean soup and most of a big salad. That might signify only the cast-iron stomach of youth, but her money was on him not noticing what he ate. Her tablemate—on the edge of his seat, gesticulating with a half-eaten sesame-seed roll—was nigh onto giddy. His latest prototype, based on neural nets, was having some success. Neural nets, she gathered, combined computer science with cognitive science, the latter itself an interdisciplinary blend of biology and mind studies. She, meanwhile, having dredged up the expression nigh onto giddy, was feeling nigh onto ancient, and unprepared to take on yet another esoteric variant of AI.