Déjà Doomed

by Edward M. Lerner

  “Maybe.” Marcus tipped his head back, gazing upward. Earth was almost half full. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Yevgeny said nothing.

  “We may as well resume our shuffling.”

  Yevgeny asked, “Why put an observation post here on the limb of the Moon? Wouldn’t somewhere more toward the center of the Earth-facing side be more natural?”

  Marcus sneezed. The ubiquitous lunar dust was really beginning to get to him. Once tracked inside the igloo, it got onto, and into, everything. Including inside his vacuum gear. “To you and me? Yes. To an alien psychology? We can’t know.”

  Basic geometry said that a base near the center of the Earth-facing side was almost one lunar radius, almost twelve hundred kilometers, closer to Earth than this location. On the margin, that much closer was better. But why monitor the planet from anywhere on the Moon? Why not from low Earth orbit? Even a geosynch orbit was much closer than the Moon. “For the iridium?”

  “Perhaps.” Sneeze. “Suppose these aliens did find an iridium lode, and that they were good at exploiting it. There may be no iridium left but in mine tailings tracked around on alien boots, or bounced here, there, and everywhere over the eons by meteorite impacts.” Another sneeze. “We three found only scattered traces. A certain long-distance prospector is apt to be very disappointed.”

  They plodded over another four hundred or so square meters, sometimes aimlessly chatting, sometimes speculating about the aliens, more and more often in companionable silence. For the moment, at least, Yevgeny had run out of topics to circuitously probe. Apparent honesty would do that. It wasn’t that the Americans didn’t keep their secrets—but they were open about what was off limits.

  Three times already he and Marcus had swapped helmet videos. They did it by flash drives, of course: both teams were based on Farside, and helmets used in the quiet zone did not stream video. Yevgeny had sampled the footage on a dedicated datasheet, its wireless chip removed, without spotting anything suspicious. Of course, he had not yet attempted to plant a virus in flash drives he had provided, either. The Americans would be most on their guard while this procedure was new; they might get careless after going awhile without finding anything. The Americans’ cooperation and lack of attack software so far might reflect only the same ruse.

  One way or another, the agreed-upon protocols—working in pairs where possible, and swapping helmet-cam data (even for the pairs)—was working. It documented their efforts well and enforced cooperation.

  After hours of unproductive effort, Yevgeny was hungry enough for even a reconstituted snack to sound edible. “At the end of this swath,” he began, “why don’t we—”

  “Huh!” Marcus had come to an abrupt halt. They had swapped instruments, and the American now wielded the magnetometer. He slowly swung it, first side to side, and then at an acute angle to the furrow their boots had been plowing. “Interesting. What does radar show?”

  A strong return! And a graceful arc, unlike anything they had so far seen. “If I were to guess, a buried wire cable.”

  Several blasts of compressed nitrogen scattered enough regolith to support that guess. The suspected cable faded out to a familiar faint spatter—but two paces farther along the course implied by the arc, a strong radar return indicated more of the cable. A pace later, another gap. They followed the traces until—

  At the brink of a narrow ravine, looking down, Marcus whistled. “Do you see that?”

  With helmet lamps switched on, Yevgeny saw something. A tangled mass of … pipes? girders? Pitted and worn to the point of near transparency. With his visor set to max magnification and night vision, sinuous trails of dust on the regolith below suggested where most of the thing had long since eroded away. But whatever this thing had been, the mad vibration of the magnetometer handle made clear it was metallic.

  “Yes, but what is it?”

  “My best guess? The remains of a collapsed antenna tower. And even mostly sheltered in this ravine, look at how it’s been worn away. Antenna or something else, it’s ancient.”

  Yevgeny squatted for a closer look at metal reduced to Swiss cheese and gossamer. “We knew whatever we found would be old. I mean, mummies.”

  “There’s old, and there’s old. Google mummification when you have some time. In a dry environment, and they don’t come much drier than here, human bodies will mummify naturally. At most that takes a few thousand years. But a mass of metal? Imagine how long that took.”

  The American fell silent, peering back along the boot tracks they had most recently left.

  “What are you thinking?” Yevgeny prompted.

  “We’ve now got chunks of protected cable, assuming cable is what we found, and the dust from when moonquakes or meteoroid impacts or whatever laid some of that same cable bare to micrometeoroid erosion. Using a sample of the buried cable, I’ll bet we can estimate how long an exposed chunk would’ve taken to wear away. Okay, I couldn’t, but someone can.”

  * * *

  And indeed, Ilya could. He estimated many million years.

  Chapter 14

  Arms outstretched, leaning backward to balance an oversized crate, Brad grumbled, “I don’t recall stevedore being among my responsibilities.” He shuffled from the newly arrived cargo shuttle toward the closer of the trailers parked nearby, alongside which boxes, water and LOX tanks, and stacks of solar panels earlier off the ship sat in jumbles. Trailers and supplies alike cast long shadows to the east; in another few days, the Sun would set.

  “Other duties as assigned,” Marcus rebutted, following with a yet larger crate. “The key element in every well-written job description.”

  Everyone was busy, everyone vocal. Muttering about crates of disassembled mining equipment—trencher, bulldozer, portable crusher, and more—massive enough to be heavy even on the Moon. Cheering, and sometimes jeering, various of the foodstuffs. Grousing at a stack of broken-down metal ore boxes, and the expectations thus implied. Expressing their ambivalence with the life-support and exercise gear that would extend their stay. Acknowledging it all, item by item, as it came off the ship. Puzzling over illegible scrawls and cryptic abbreviations on a few of the package labels. Catching up on current events with the pilot and copilot. All a scripted, precisely timed charade for the benefit of the Chinese satellite passing overhead.

  Some of my best work, Yevgeny thought.

  Dirtside, in protracted negotiations, FSB and CIA had settled upon two longtime Aitken Basin residents as flight crew: Anya Ivanova and Wanda Samad. The American was a cute little thing, but a touch sarcastic for Yevgeny’s taste. Her acceptability to the CIA had banished the few, lingering doubts he had long harbored about her being a CIA asset.

  “Coming through,” Ekatrina called. She came down the ramp from the hold with another of the several boxes labeled groceries. Nikolay followed with two of the many gas canisters to feed the fuel cells to see them through the approaching lunar night. He also held a telescoping antenna mast, intended for improved communications, clamped beneath an arm. Ilya brought out the first of the deflated, bundled shelters: two for Yevgeny’s team, a spare for the Americans, and one to serve as their shared work area.

  “Wide load on its way up,” Yevgeny warned. He and Marcus lifted the largest of the outgoing items, an oblong crate. Like everything outbound, this was marked Humboldt Ore Samples.

  “What did you put in here?” Marcus asked. “Rocks?” He chuckled at his own joke.

  They inched sideways up the ramp. The box’s contents were not heavy as much as irreplaceable. Within, embedded in strong but fragile aerogel, was the alien mummy that—with extreme care—they had lifted off the lava-tube floor. Bags of dust from the first, crumbled mummy were tucked in at this mummy’s feet. With dozens of bungee cords, they helped Wanda and Anya secure this precious cargo to deck brackets.

  Yevgeny somehow summoned the energy to marvel at the pilots’
clean counterpressure suits, their individualized colors bright and untainted, their personalizing decals still crisp. His and his team’s heavier duty, “soft” suits were splotchy gray, no matter how often they scrubbed—and most of what dust did come off clung leechlike to surfaces in their shuttle’s cabin. At least the regolith reek in the cabin masked some of the stink of four people in tight quarters gone two weeks without a shower ….

  “Next,” he called out.

  Ilya and Nikolay sidled up the ramp, shoulders hunched, bearing another large crate. In size, color, and shape it matched the one item of cargo not yet offloaded. Yevgeny peeled the label from one of the twin boxes, Marcus from the other. When Ilya and Nikolay returned down the ramp, the box that had never left their hands had been relabeled groceries. The similar box, still secured to the deck, now bore a Humboldt Ore Samples label.

  At Yevgeny’s hand signal, he, Marcus, and the two pilots jacked into a cabled daisy chain. They went radio silent while, outside the ship, gripes and banter continued for anyone eavesdropping.

  “Are we good to go?” Wanda asked.

  Yevgeny had already double-checked the list in his pocket. He compared it once again to the cargo put aboard the shuttle. “I believe so.”

  “Assuming we agree where you’re going,” Marcus added.

  “Right,” Anya Ivanova said. She was tall and unsmiling, her eyes in a permanent squint. Her English, although more than adequate, retained a thick Russian accent. “First stop is Base Putin. My supervisor will meet us on tarmac with a tractor-trailer. Should he be delayed, we will make excuses until he arrives to take possession. He will receive everything we have aboard but this.” With a boot tip, she indicated the relabeled crate. It held lunar rocks, laced with carbonaceous chondrites sneaked up from Earth. “We fly this to Daedalus Base, hand it over to Jack Soo, or anyone he designates, then home to Aitken.”

  “Agreed,” Wanda said. “That’s the plan.”

  * * *

  The ship’s itinerary was but one small piece of an elaborate plan, and Yevgeny permitted himself a moment’s silent satisfaction. With precision and grace, like a production at the Bolshoi, the many moving parts had come smoothly together.

  Just as he had assured Marcus.

  Five days earlier, even Marcus had admitted something had to change. About: rapidly depleting supplies and no way to justify supplies for an extended stay without raising eyebrows. Neither the instruments nor the expertise to address Dirtside’s esoteric questions about the alien mummy—and strict orders, until those questions had answers, to steer clear of the alien airlock. Curiosity and skepticism rampant, even among the American’s own staff at Daedalus Base. The Chinese astronomer—who just happened to be the son of a Central Committee member—announcing his intention to visit that observatory.

  And Marcus’s idea to cope with all that? Revealing to the worlds everything that had been discovered. With no further need for secrecy, they could get whatever supplies were needed.

  “Give it a shot,” Yevgeny remembered saying. Why not act supportive? The proposal could not possibly gain approval.

  Someone Dirtside—whether Marcus’s CIA handler or further up the chain, Marcus did not volunteer—nixed the idea. Of course they did! The Americans no more planned to share alien technology with China, or the EU, or anyone else, than they had intended to share any of it with Russia—until Yevgeny had forced their hand. And if the American government had given in to softheaded altruism? He had had no doubt the Kremlin would have said nyet.

  Then Yevgeny had put forward his own plan. It did not foresee any outbreak of selfless magnanimity, or require rival agencies to forget their mutual suspicions.

  “Set aside the geopolitics,” Marcus had said. “The way I was slapped down, I’ll grant I’m no judge of those. After a month, or two months, or however long our governments expect to conceal matters here, then what? You would have the worlds believe we’re busy mining. As a practical matter, how do we sustain the illusion of a viable carbon mine?”

  And Yevgeny had just smiled. Waited for Marcus to see it.

  Eventually, the American had. “They’ll have to smuggle up carbon, as long as the secrecy holds. Not a mere sample-box worth, either, but in industrial quantities. Making repeated supply flights to us, to cover delivering the carbon here, so we can transfer it to Daedalus. At least until the big carbonaceous chondrite asteroid reaches lunar orbit.”

  “And you worried this little adventure might impede the construction of your toys.”

  “Shipping all that mass. The cost would be enormous …”

  Astronomical struck Yevgeny as the more appropriate adjective. “And?”

  “I should feel guilty about this. Shouldn’t I?”

  “Should you? I believe you feel guilty only about not feeling guilty.”

  For a long while, Marcus had stared up through the cab window, out into space. “Starfaring aliens visited once; how can a bigger ear on the Universe be anything but a good investment?”

  And Yevgeny had smiled. “It’s good to have a plan upon which you and I can agree.”

  * * *

  The White House and Kremlin had also agreed.

  And having executed to that plan, the on-site teams once again had ample supplies. The construction team at Daedalus would soon have ore samples to give credence to Marcus’s ongoing absence, and ample carbon thereafter to make their steel. Ilya’s geologist cronies would receive a different set of rocks; Humboldt Crater (and Yevgeny had no clue why anyone cared) was among the comparatively few lunar features with uplifted, fractured floors. At Base Putin with its tight security, Russian and American physicians—in a proper lab, working side by side—would inspect the mummy. Materials specialists from both nations would test samples of the aliens’ superior mooncrete. They had needed a carbide drill bit to excise a few small chunks.

  All while the MSS would have had their suspicions allayed. A Chinese agent at Aitken Basin had been allowed to steal a glimpse at the cargo shuttle’s outbound manifest. Likely the MSS had fastidiously taken inventory as cargo came off the ship, had monitored the radio chatter. Soon they, and anyone else with an interest, would see heavy machinery at work digging, grinding, and sifting the surface.

  Meanwhile the seven of them would deploy the new gear and stow their replenished supplies. They would inflate their new shelters, then coat them in spray foam and regolith as shielding against the ceaseless sleet of cosmic rays. They would deploy a new batch of solar panels to compensate for covering up the domes’ solar cells. They would assemble their new microwave beamer to boil traces of water bound to the deep regolith, a hood to collect the steam, and piping and tanks to store water, LOX, and liquid hydrogen. Perhaps they would even get some long overdue, much needed sleep.

  Because soon, surely, with their Gordian knot of problems resolved, Dirtside would give the go-ahead to open the alien base.

  Chapter 15

  As the alert timer on his HUD entered its final seconds, Marcus found himself turning toward the “dead” prospecting robot. That was silly, of course. If he hadn’t, as always since Yevgeny’s arrival, kept a discreet distance, the bot’s camera still would not have seen his face, what with the setting Sun streaming at him and his correspondingly fully tinted visor. And anyway, barring some last-minute schedule change, Val wouldn’t even be the one watching.

  Her housebound “condition” was a complete fiction, but the knowledge didn’t prevent a pang of worry with each unanswered ring. After the fourth tone she accepted the link, a small, translucent image opening in a corner of his HUD. She perched on one end of the living-room sofa, leaning toward the coffee table and (by inference) the datasheet camera. “Behind” her, Nikolay fiddled with something on their bucket excavator. All part of the show ….

  “Hi, hon,” Marcus said. “You look great. Glowing. How do you feel?”

  “Sweaty, not gl
owing, but otherwise fine.” Pause. “I wish I could see you.”

  The routine priority (and standard, weak encryption) for interworld calls like this was part of sustaining the charade. All too often that meant, as with this call, accepting an inconvenient few minutes. Today’s two-minute slot came at mid-work shift, and that meant an audio-only helmet connection from his end. Worse, given the five-hour difference between their time zones, it meant Val getting up at the crack. “Count your blessings, hon. I haven’t showered in three weeks.”

  “Didn’t say I wanted to smell you.”

  The damned ubiquitous dust turned a snort into a sneeze, not pleasant while wearing vacuum gear. Happily, she only got to hear it. “Sorry about that. And how’s Little Toot faring?”

  “You’re sticking with wanting to be surprised? You do realize, everyone else knows.” She patted her stomach. “At the moment, the little dear is fluttering away in here like no one’s business.”

  “I wish I could feel that.”

  “Me, too.” She smiled wistfully. “Any idea when you’ll be getting down to Earth?”

  He didn’t know how long he would be here, which likely was what Val meant. How long would it take the CIA to find and vet plausible miners—somehow also space-trained and competent in astrobiology, archeology, and no telling just yet what gamut of other specialties? He did not see himself leaving until those replacements arrived. “Before Little Toot makes an appearance, if I have anything to say about it.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean that as a nag. I know you’re busy, and Daedalus does need carbon. But how are you holding up? You sound tired. You okay?”

  “Sixteen tons, and what do you get? Another day older.”

  “Okay, Tennessee, I hear you, though as old as your chondrite must be, I can’t imagine it’s achieved coal status.”