“From the moment the shell appeared, humankind’s most significant problem would have been the lack of energy. That problem would have only gotten worse, because we can be sure that there’s no longer any wind blowing anywhere. And in Europe, where CERN is, they’ve been shutting down nuclear power plants one after another. Even if your Chinese countrymen were still producing electricity, it’d never be able to reach Switzerland.
“And I can’t imagine anyone would be willing to divert a large amount of an already very scarce, vital resource just for the chance at possibly talking to ten astronauts stranded in space. We’re not that important to those people down there. The day-to-day struggle for survival, that’s what matters to them now. And we can’t do anything to help them with that.
“That is, if there even is anybody alive down there, which I doubt. We should be worried about doing something we can directly control—trying to ensure the survival of homo sapiens as a species. But we might even be too late for that, too.”
“You’re both right,” Maxim said. “You, Yue, and you too, Mike.”
What is Maxim doing? Has he switched to Michael’s side? Jonathan wondered.
“But just take a look around here, Mike,” Maxim said. “The moon base is stable. We have energy, air, water, and food. Yes, the moon is not optimal, and Mars is certainly the better home in the long term. But we’ve got time. It’d probably even be enough to move ten years from now. So, I think we can also give humankind more time to try to contact us. Maybe then we’d even be able to help somehow. We can’t know for sure, but if we learn we could help, yet we’re too far away, I’m not sure we could ever forgive ourselves. We shouldn’t take that risk right now.”
Good. It looks as if Michael is still by himself, Jonathan surmised. At least nobody had immediately jumped to take his side. They were lucky. Everything was going relatively well right now. When things were going well, people were less inclined to make changes. All they needed to do was try to ensure that the moon base continued to operate smoothly.
September 9, 2035 – Moon Base Unity
He’d tried. Nobody could accuse him of not trying. But it hadn’t worked. Michael turned onto his other side in his bed. All that remained was to implement the plan that he’d been devising during the last few weeks. Those satisfied smirks would soon be gone from Maxim’s and Judith’s faces. They didn’t seem to know who they were dealing with.
October 13, 2035 – Moon Base Unity
Jonathan bent over the lettuce bed. He pushed the shiny green leaves to the side. There they were—weeds—sprouting up here, too. In the last few months they had started spreading everywhere. He would have to determine what kind they were. They were probably growing so well because they had so little competition. But at least keeping up with weed removal gave them something to do, so the gardening work didn’t get too boring.
He heard a clattering noise from the rearmost corner, from the area where Maxim grew his flowers. Had some bowl or cup fallen over? Maybe from one of those weak moonquakes? He turned toward the sound but couldn’t see anything. Most of the moonquakes weren’t even perceptible to a person. However, nothing had ever fallen over before, which was why the sound was so strange.
And what was that sound? There was a hissing noise too. He felt a slight movement of air that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. That wasn’t the ventilation system. Shit! He had to get out of there quickly!
Jonathan jumped up and banged his head against the low ceiling. Lucky for him, the airlock wasn’t even ten meters away. He ran, hunched over, pulled open the inner door, and jumped into the airlock. The rapidly decreasing pressure in the greenhouse ripped the door from his hand. He had to be quick. He would still be able to breathe through the mask, but if the air pressure dropped to zero, he’d die if he hadn’t gotten into his suit in time.
It was hanging over a chair. He pulled the bottom part on. Then he tried to pull on the HUT, but it got caught on his breathing mask. He took a deep breath, held it, and ripped the mask off his face. Quick, the HUT. He first closed only the most necessary fasteners and snaps. He was running out of air. He pulled on the helmet, but it got caught on his chin. He pulled it down forcefully. He had no time. He connected the helmet to the HUT, and the closure clicked shut. The life-support system started running at full blast and blew fresh oxygen into his face.
He’d made it. He inspected the suit, tightened everything better, and closed the remaining snaps. That was close. If he hadn’t reacted so quickly, who knows? Then whoever was on the next shift would’ve likely only found a frozen corpse. If he’d checked on Maxim’s flowers instead of getting himself to safety right away...
The flowers! Safe in his spacesuit, he ducked back into the greenhouse. It was still illuminated as if nothing had happened. But he could see patterns of frost on the roof panels. He touched a lettuce leaf, which snapped in two. That was fast. He walked to Maxim’s corner. The flowers were gray, and nothing had survived. The commander would not be happy.
There was a round hole with frayed edges right in the corner in the transparent plastic. A meteorite strike? He knelt and looked around on the ground. How large would the chunk of rock have to be? The hole was about ten centimeters across. But he couldn’t find any stone that size, and if a meteorite had been that large, it should have left a proper crater. Maybe it had only been as big as a pebble, and the hole had been caused by its high kinetic energy?
He had to call for help. Jonathan stood up again. They needed to seal the hole as quickly as possible. Maybe they could at least save the soil. How long could the bacteria survive in there? If it froze, they’d have to start all over again from the very beginning.
“Yue, do you copy?” She should have just started her shift in the command center. How could he avoid giving her too big a scare?
“Yes, what’s up?” They never used pet names out in the open. They had agreed on that, because they both had the feeling that their relationship was somehow unfair to the others.
“I’ve got a small problem here. Can you send Maxim to help me? Tell him to bring duct tape and one of the scrap parts of the greenhouse panels.”
“Maxim is on the exercise machines right now. Should I tell him when he’s done?”
“No, it’s a bit urgent. Send me Wayne then.”
“He’s in the shower.”
“Send me anyone, then. The main thing is someone gets here quick.”
“What’s going on? I’m afraid no one’s going to be quick. They’d all have to prepare for EVA first. It’s going to be at least thirty minutes.”
Shit. By then we can kiss the soil goodbye. Guaranteed.
“Wait, Jonathan, Mike is already outside. He’s servicing one of the rovers.”
“Ah, perfect, tell him to come as fast as he can.”
“With duct tape and scrap panels. But why is it so urgent?”
“We’ve had an accident.”
“What? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine. I’ll tell you everything later. Right now, I just need Mike.”
Michael Galveston, of all people. In recent weeks, the American had made himself more and more isolated. Lately, he seemed to prefer to take jobs that took him far away from the base. When was the last time he’d seen him?
“Jon, you need me? Where are you?”
“Greenhouse 3. Please hurry. Duct tape—”
“I know, Yue told me. I’ll be right there.”
At almost the exact moment, the door to the airlock opened. A man in a spacesuit, hunched over, came into the greenhouse.
“That was fast,” Jonathan said.
“I was right near here.”
“I thought you were repairing a rover?”
“Just maintenance. I had to test drive it a bit too.”
“That was lucky for me.”
“What’s going on?”
“Something that shouldn’t have been possible. Come take a look, Mike. I don’t want to influence your assessment.”
<
br /> He walked toward him. They met in the middle.
“Can I have the duct tape and scrap piece, please?”
“They’re outside on the rover.”
“Okay, I’ll repair the damage as quickly as I can. Maybe we can still save the soil.”
“Damage?”
“There at the back, Mike. I’d like to hear what you make of it.”
He left the greenhouse. The rover, a one-seater, was stopped right in front. There was a piece of transparent plastic on the seat. Michael had placed a roll of adhesive tape on top of the plastic. He grabbed both and moved quickly around the greenhouse. The hole was at the back right. From below he couldn’t see anything. Jonathan climbed on the roof. It held him without a problem—he weighed no more than twenty kilograms here on the moon.
There was the hole! Its inner edge was bent downward, as if a large amount of heat had melted the plastic. He placed the transparent patch on top. The size would work well enough. First, he covered the hole with duct tape. Then he placed the plastic patch on the tape and put another layer of duct tape over the patch. There, that should hold. At least it was more stable than before. He knocked on the roof from outside, but then it occurred to him that Michael wouldn’t be able to hear anything due to the lack of any atmosphere inside.
“Mike? The hole should be sealed again. Please switch on the air regeneration and climate control systems again. Maybe we can still save the soil if the air pressure recovers quickly enough.”
“Roger.”
“Let’s meet in the airlock, then.”
“Okay.”
“Thanks, Mike, for coming so quickly.”
“Of course.”
“So, what’s your opinion?”
The airlock offered just enough space for two men in spacesuits. There would’ve been more comfortable spots for a conversation, but he wanted to hear Michael’s immediate impression of the hole.
“A meteorite strike,” Michael said. “Seems relatively obvious to me.”
“But don’t you think the hole in the roof was too big? A ten-centimeter-sized rock moving at a cosmic velocity wouldn’t have left much of the greenhouse standing, I think.”
“The meteorite was very small,” Michael said. He opened his fist and showed him his palm.
Jonathan bent over it. On the silvery glove was a reddish-gray pebble, maybe three millimeters large. “Are you serious?”
“Always. Maybe the rock was a little bigger before, but not much. It hit the greenhouse. A portion of its considerable energy was converted into heat. The heat melted the hole out of the roof material. The plastic that the building is printed from melts at low temperatures so the 3D printer can soften it without consuming large amounts of energy.”
“Hmm,” Jonathan said. What Michael said sounded logical. Maybe under a microscope they’d even find bits of plastic still bonded to the mini-meteorite.
“Where did you find that, Mike?”
“It had rolled two beds away, or rather hopped, since there were no tracks.”
“What if it’s just a big piece of moon dust?”
“Well, first, something must’ve created that hole. And second, it’s clearly different from the dust.”
That was true. Anyone could see that just from the color. The reddish hue indicated that its source was an asteroid with a high iron content.
“What if that rock had already been lying here for a long time?” Jonathan asked.
“That’s possible. I’m just a doctor, like you. We’re not geologists. But there’s probably some way to determine how long a meteorite has already been on the moon.”
“Yeah, probably.”
Other people should decide that. Luckily, the base had two trained geologists in Maxim and François.
November 20, 2035 – Moon Base Unity
“Not so fast, Wayne, please. I’m going to be sick.”
He let up on the accelerator. Man, man, man, this Michael guy was sensitive! Ever since the incident in Greenhouse 3, they were only allowed to go outside in groups of at least two. An event like that could repeat itself at any time, according to Maxim, who had again resumed his commander’s role. And if a micro-meteorite struck a spacesuit, the person wearing it—if death wasn’t instantaneous—would have maybe three minutes to get help. That was too dangerous for solo missions. So far, nothing else had happened.
“Wayne, please! I feel like I’m about to fall off the back,” Michael said.
Oh no, he’d unintentionally pressed down the accelerator while he was lost in thought. If only he’d taken someone else along with him! The ride to the solar installation had been much more enjoyable the last time with Judith. She’d even egged him on to go faster, and thus he’d set a new personal record for driving the route with someone riding pillion.
But the doctor was a real party pooper. They rolled along at almost a walking pace. At that speed, it’d take them nearly two hours to reach the shelter.
“If you want, I can go a little faster.”
“No, Doc, that’s all right, I understand. Too high a velocity is bad for the head bone.”
The actual reason why he was now taking his time was somewhat different. At speeds up to 10 km/h, the autopilot controlled the rover completely. Wayne could then look at the world around him as a passenger, and even take a little nap if he wanted. He was supposed to press the dead-driver button every 60 seconds while in autopilot mode, but there was little in life where the right-sized piece of duct tape wouldn’t help.
As he had discovered on his many rides, the moon was not as boring as he had once thought. That was because of the shadows. Depending on the sun and Earth’s positions, the shadows grew and shrank, and moved from east to west. New vistas were constantly revealing themselves. A barely hidden crater would suddenly appear out of the blackness as a bottomless lake, or a strangely shaped peak would suddenly peek up out of the darkness. Yesterday, the rocky needle might have been there too, but today the Earth was in a different position, and now that rock over there no longer looked like a pregnant woman, but instead, more like a farmer with a pitchfork.
Due to the shell, the Earth now looked like a second sun. It had become brighter. Its reflectivity, its albedo, now exceeded even that of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons. From a distance, it must look like an expensive jewel. Anyone who saw the solar system for the first time would think its third planet must be a dead, ice world. From nearby, and the moon was very close by, the Earth had lost a lot of its fascination. That was why Wayne usually kept his eyes on the surface of the moon.
The rover made an unusually sharp right-hand turn.
“Everything okay, Wayne?” Michael asked.
“Everything’s great.”
They were coming to the bridge over the trench where Maxim’s accident had taken place. Wayne and Atiya had built the bridge with the help of the 3D printer. The autopilot kept the vehicle right in the middle of the approximately three-meter-wide roadway, the surface of which had been roughened due to the slight incline.
It was not much farther to the power plant now. Wayne took over the controls. He accelerated the rover to 30 km/h on the straightaway. Then he braked, drove slowly around the 180-degree curve, and raced up to the next switchback. Michael clung to his back like a small child.
They stopped right in front of the entrance to the shelter. Wayne got off first. When Michael tried to stand, he suddenly started to wobble. Wayne grabbed his shoulders tightly and held him up.
“Thanks,” Michael said, “I guess that was a little too much excitement for me today.”
“Probably just the lack of air at this altitude,” Wayne said.
“Yes, very funny.”
“Sorry, I’m still not used to having someone ride behind me. If it were just up to me, you wouldn’t have needed to come along. I can inspect the solar panels all by myself too.”
“No, when Maxim says something, we’ve got to do it. That much is clear.”
Michael took a step for
ward. Then he took his backpack off the rover. “I think I need to stretch my legs a bit,” he said. “You can go on without me.”
“Didn’t you just say we’ve got to do everything together?”
“Well, we’ll be back together in, what, three minutes? Maxim didn’t say we had to go to the bathroom together too.”
“Roger. You need some alone time.”
Maybe Michael just wanted to jerk off in his suit in peace. He could understand that. It was not a simple matter to be completely alone for even a few minutes in the base. And a man has certain needs now and then.
Jonathan slapped Michael on the shoulder with his right hand. “Then have a nice walk, Doc. I’ll go take a little nap.”
Wayne had just made himself comfortable on his air mattress when he heard Michael rumbling around in the airlock. That was not a long walk, but he guessed it must’ve been long enough. He turned onto his other side. When he pressed his left ear into the pillow, nothing ever disturbed him, not even if someone was to start snoring right next to him.
Then there was a crashing noise. Wayne jumped up. He reached around, trying to find the light switch. He found it and the room got very bright. The sound came from above and to the left. He could see a small misty cloud up there. He heard a hissing noise. Shit. Shit. Shit. The air was escaping. Wayne was startled, because then he heard a hissing sound from his right too. But that was just the inner airlock door.
Michael was coming in. He was still wearing his spacesuit but had removed his helmet. “What’s going on here?” he asked. “The airlock almost wouldn’t let me in. It said it measured a drop in pressure inside.”
“Didn’t you hear the crash? Up there, another meteor hit!” Wayne pointed to the mist cloud, while he tried to slip as fast as possible into the bottom part of his suit. He had to stay calm. Panicking could cost him his life. “Can you help me with the HUT?”
The Wall: Eternal Day Page 19