That’s Yue’s voice! Jonathan felt his throat tighten around the swallow of food as it went down. He put the spoon on the table and pushed the bowl quickly to the side. The soup splashed onto the tabletop, but he didn’t care. Nobody else was in the command center.
He jumped to the radio. “What’s wrong? Where are you?” he asked.
“Ah, Jonathan, a bit of luck. I’m in Greenhouse 5.”
“You okay?”
“So far, yeah. I’m done with my shift. But the airlock won’t let me out.”
“Are you alone? Who’s scheduled to be outside with you?”
“Mike left about half an hour ago. He was complaining about his stomach or something.”
“He shouldn’t have left you alone!”
“Mike has no patience. He wanted me to come in too, but I insisted that I needed to finish the bed.”
“So, then he should’ve... Ah, it doesn’t matter now. What’s going on with the airlock?”
“It just won’t open. The red light is on.”
Shit. Yue’s spacesuit is in the airlock. Without it, she can’t get back to the base. “That’s the pressure sensor.” It unlocked the airlock only when it measured a normal air pressure on the other side. Either it was faulty, or there was a vacuum on the other side. If a vacuum was indeed the case, then Yue mustn’t open the door, or she would die.
“I know,” Yue said. “But it’s probably just gone haywire. I could manually activate the mechanism.”
“Don’t you dare! What if there was a meteorite strike in the airlock? As long as the door is closed, you’re safe.”
“Yeah, great. So how do I get out again?”
“Stay calm. I’ll figure it out. Just don’t open the door under any circumstance. You’ve got to promise me.”
“I promise, Jonathan.”
He jumped up. He needed to wake the whole base immediately. Somehow they had to get Yue out of there.
“Yue?” he said into the microphone.
“Yes, I’m here. I can’t go anywhere else.”
“Good, we’re all in the command center now. Together we’re going to find a solution.”
“I’ve calmed down some now. It’s a bit uncomfortable, but it’s warm. I can breathe through the mask, there’s water and fresh lettuce, so I can survive for a while.”
“Great. I like your attitude.”
“So, anyone have any ideas?” Maxim asked. The commander was in sweatpants. Jonathan had gotten him out of bed.
“We repair the airlock,” Kenjiro said.
Nobody answered. The suggestion seemed so trivial, but why hadn’t anyone else come up with it?
“Okay,” Maxim said. “That was easy. Can you take care of it?”
Kenjiro nodded.
“I’ll come with you,” Atiya said. “Not that anything’s going to happen.”
“Yue, did you hear us?” Maxim asked.
“Loud and clear.”
“Ken and Atiya are going to repair the airlock. They’ll be there in half an hour.”
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” Kenjiro reported via his helmet radio.
“First the good,” Maxim said.
“The good is also the bad. The sensor’s correct. The airlock where Yue needs to change into her spacesuit is a vacuum. We’ve recovered her suit. Atiya’s bringing it back to the base.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“Looks like a new meteorite hit,” Kenjiro said.
It looks like, he said, not it was a new meteorite, Jonathan thought. Ken always selected his words very carefully and intentionally. What was he leaving out? Jonathan decided to talk to him about it later. But only after Yue had been saved.
“Can you repair it?” Maxim asked.
“The hole in the roof? Yes, no problem.”
“But?”
“It also took out the life-support system. Even if we seal the airlock again, we won’t be able to refill it with oxygen.”
“You can’t repair the life-support system?”
“No, since it was completely smashed to smithereens. It was only a few centimeters below the entry hole.”
“What if we replace it?” Maxim asked.
“There’s no replacement,” Yue said. “I know our inventory very well.”
“How about removing a unit from a different greenhouse?” Maxim suggested.
“That wouldn’t work. The air hoses here are such that we’d have to cap the oxygen and CO2 supply to the greenhouse. Yue would have to hold her breath for about a quarter of an hour.”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass,” Yue said.
“Will anything work?” Jonathan asked.
“Don’t panic yet. We’re still thinking,” Maxim said.
“May I say something?” Michael asked. “I’m really sorry I left Yue outside alone.”
“That’s not going to fix the problem now,” Jonathan said, annoyed.
“I’ve got an idea,” Michael said. “The ARES landing capsule has a rescue tube, a kind of inflatable airlock, which can be sealed on both sides. Someone can use it to get from one spaceship to another without an airlock. The tube fits up snug against the destination so that no air can escape. Then you simply crawl from one spaceship to the other by cutting a hole in the ship’s wall. But we wouldn’t even have to do that. We could set the tube against the door that won’t open, then open it by force, and then Yue climbs safely into the tube.”
“How long’s the tube?” Maxim asked.
“Ten meters.”
“It’s about 150 meters to the entrance to Greenhouse 5. Do you have about 15 of those tubes, Mike?”
“No. But the tube is flexible and not that heavy. We could inflate it at the base’s airlock and put Yue’s spacesuit inside. Then we seal it up, move it to the greenhouse, and connect it to the exit. Yue enters through the airlock. Maybe it’ll lose some atmosphere that way, but surely not more than a third. She puts on her spacesuit, and she’s safe.”
“That just might work,” Judith said.
“Good idea, Mike,” Maxim said. “Did you hear all that, Yue?”
“Yeah, you’re coming to pick me up in a tube. Excellent.”
Jonathan insisted on helping with Yue’s rescue. The ARES emergency tube had a diameter of about 1.20 meters and was barely nine meters long. A person couldn’t stand up inside it. It was designed for rescue maneuvers in zero-gravity, where a person could float through the tube like someone swimming underwater. It wouldn’t be easy for Yue to put on her spacesuit in the confined area, so Judith had climbed into the tube too, so she could help Yue get the suit on.
“You can close the airlock hatch now,” Maxim said.
“Roger, closing the hatch,” Judith answered.
“Now decoupling the tube,” Maxim announced. He detached the clamps that connected the plastic monster to the base’s airlock.
Jonathan watched everything. The tube reminded him of a giant worm, especially since it had bands every 80 centimeters, making it look segmented like an earthworm. However, the tube became rather stiff after it was filled with gas so that it couldn’t be wiggled like a worm over to the greenhouse. Instead they had to carry it, Maxim at the back, Jonathan in the middle, Wayne at the front.
The plastic worm slowly made its way across the leveled terrain. What if a meteorite hit here now, of all times? Or at the moment when Yue was getting into her suit in the tube? That wasn’t going to happen. Jonathan watched the ground so he wouldn’t stumble. It was strange, however, how often the base had been struck recently by supposedly random meteorites. There were no signs of other impacts in the area they were walking. And, for a year-and-a-half, absolutely nothing like that had happened, but then, since October, suddenly all these accidents...
Statistically it was probably not yet significant. They didn’t know anything about any impacts that might’ve occurred before in the area around them. But it still seemed a bit strange.
The worm reached its goal. Maxim clamped the o
pening to the inner door of the greenhouse.
“On three, Judith opens the inner hatch of the tube, and Yue opens the airlock door and moves as quickly as possible into the tube,” Maxim said.
Both confirmed the instructions. Jonathan’s heart was beating fast.
“One, two, three!”
The two women sprang into action. Jonathan didn’t hear anything, but that was normal.
“I’m in,” Yue reported. “Now getting on the spacesuit with Judith’s help.”
Jonathan finally started to relax. Now there was little that could go wrong.
“Okay, I’m ready,” Yue said.
They dragged the tube a little away from the greenhouse. Two shapes, each in a spacesuit, climbed headfirst out of the narrow tube. Yue saw him and flung her arms around his neck.
January 7, 2036 – Moon Base Unity
“Do you have a moment to talk?” Kenjiro asked.
“Yes. I wanted to talk to you, anyway,” Jonathan replied.
“Let’s go to my cabin.” Ken pulled him by the arm. They entered his narrow cabin and sat down on the bed.
“Is this about the meteorite strikes?” Jonathan asked.
“I want to show you something.” Kenjiro stood up, bent down, and took a briefcase out from under the bed. He opened it and took out a few printed sheets of paper.
Jonathan saw graphs and tables. “What are these?” he asked.
“A month ago, I analyzed the meteorites that Mike found at the impact sites.”
“And?”
“They are definitely remnants from iron meteorites. But there’s also a high hydrogen content, especially in the outer layers of atoms.”
“Maybe they’re hydrogen atoms from the solar wind that the stones were subjected to while flying through space.”
“That’s possible, yes,” Kenjiro said. “But on impact, these pieces of rock must’ve been heated to extremely high temperatures. I’d think at least a portion of the hydrogen would’ve been released.”
“Maybe it was?”
“I compared them with remains of other meteorites I found on the moon’s surface. The hydrogen content is identical.”
“That could be a coincidence,” Jonathan said.
“And it’d also be a coincidence that all four pieces of rock that Mike found just happened to come from the same asteroid? Their composition, in any case, is very, very similar.”
“Well, it could be an asteroid, I guess, that broke apart over the years, and its fragments are now crossing the moon’s orbit again and again.”
“Yes, that’s also possible, Jon.”
“But you’ve found something even more?”
“I might have.”
“Out with it, already, Ken.”
“The day before yesterday, after the incident with Yue, I retrieved the data from the seismograph. Ever since we built this station, we’ve been measuring and recording all the seismic activity.”
“You’re going to have to explain that to me a bit more, I’m afraid. I’m just the doctor here.”
“There are two reasons why the lunar surface starts shaking. First, there are actual moonquakes. Those occur because the moon is still cooling and thus shrinking. This shrinking causes tension that is released by the quakes. A seismograph can distinguish the resulting curves very easily from those produced due to meteorite impacts.”
“Okay, this is slowly getting very interesting.”
“Yes. If you compared the number of impacts we’ve experienced to the entire lunar surface, then you’d realize that we must be in some sort of hot spot for meteorite activity. There aren’t this many impacts anywhere else.”
“Maybe it’s because we’re near the pole?” Jonathan asked, even though he didn’t believe it himself.
“There’s no factual explanation for it, especially since the South Pole would’ve had to gain this special property only since October. Before that, it was as normal as anywhere else.”
“That’s a whole lot of coincidences.”
“That’s what I was thinking too. And you know what else is strange? At the time of each impact, the same person was nearby.”
“Michael Galveston.”
“Yes, our dear ship’s doctor from the ARES.”
“I bet he’ll just say he likes to take walks outside, if we ask him about it.”
“Quite the opposite, actually. Yesterday I secretly retrieved the base’s airlock data. The person who’s left the base the least is our dear Dr. Mike. And yet, whenever something happened, he was always outside. Quite a coincidence.”
“But not the last time. The day before yesterday.”
“Right. At the time of the impact, he was in the base. But the greenhouse was still within radio range.”
“What does the helmet radio’s range have to do with it?”
“Don’t pretend to be so dumb, Jon.”
“I’m just taking the position of a skeptic, to help you sharpen your argument.”
“Okay. He simulated meteorite impacts with small explosives that he set off by radio. That’s why he had to be in range. Do you remember the meteorite at the solar panels? He couldn’t have done that from down here.”
“But he’s a doctor, not a chemist. How would he learn to build a bomb?”
“Chemistry is one of the foundations of medicine. And maybe more significantly, he served five years in the army, in an engineering unit. He could’ve learned something there.”
“This is all well and good, Ken, but it’s just conjecture, not proof. Or do you have something that shows very clearly that he’s responsible for these impacts?”
“Unfortunately, no. Mike was always among the first to examine the site of the incident. He was even the one, almost every time, to find the culprit. Maybe because he put it there himself, but it also gave him the chance to erase his tracks.”
“Well, then, it’s probably not going to do us any good to start accusing him publicly without any evidence.”
“He was almost always the first, but not the day before yesterday. Then Atiya and I were the first to get to Greenhouse 5. Maybe he didn’t plan it carefully enough, or maybe he couldn’t find a good excuse for why he should be hanging around outside there. Or maybe he thought somebody might start to suspect him.”
“So, did you find anything when you were there?” Jonathan asked.
“Well, unfortunately... no. Some of this data I didn’t get until yesterday. Before that, my suspicions weren’t so strong.”
“Then we need to go look around the site right now. Maybe we could still find something.”
“Where do the two of you think you’re going?” Yue asked. “Didn’t you just finish your shifts?”
“I’ve got an idea of how we might be able to simplify repairing the entrance to Greenhouse 5. I’d like to go test it out,” Kenjiro said.
Jonathan was already halfway into his spacesuit. “I’m accompanying him. It’s regulation.”
Jonathan and Kenjiro approached Greenhouse 5 from the side. It was brightly lit under the transparent roof. Fortunately, the main part of the greenhouse had been spared from the impact. Differently than with the strike in Greenhouse 3 in October, all of the plants had survived the incident. If plants could think, they’d be amazed by the new freedom humans had given them since then. Since the entrance was still not functional, at the moment nobody could get inside to prune, weed, or even harvest. The repairs to the life-support system would take at least two weeks.
They walked around the corner of the greenhouse. Jonathan’s gaze fell on the entrance, which looked like an extra-wide porta-potty. Of all places, a meteorite supposedly hit there. The longer he thought about it, the more unlikely it all seemed.
Then something moved. The door to the porta-potty opened, and an astronaut, slightly hunched over, came out. Without looking left or right, the unidentified astronaut started walking toward the base.
“Hello, Doc,” Jonathan said on the open, general radio frequency. “What are
you doing out here?”
The astronaut stopped with a start and turned around. “Ah, it’s you two, Jon and Ken. Am I right?”
It shouldn’t have been too hard for him to figure that out, because their names were marked in large letters on their helmets, and the sun should have been providing plenty of light.
“Hello, Mike,” Kenjiro said. “Are you working on the greenhouse too?”
“Yes, it’s hard to believe that such a small stone could do all that,” Michael said.
“It’s crazy what’s been raining down on us around here recently,” Jonathan said.
“You noticed that too? Yeah, I’ve been wondering if there’s not something more behind it all. Maybe the shell has made the Earth trojans unstable and knocked them out of their orbit, so they’re now hitting us here?”
“That’s an interesting explanation,” Kenjiro said. “If that’s true, we’d probably be better off leaving for Mars as soon as possible, before we have any more impacts.”
“You took the words right out of my mouth.”
“So, did you find anything in the greenhouse? What do you have in your bag?” Kenjiro asked.
Michael had a green plastic bag hanging from his belt. Did he use it to collect incriminating evidence from the scene? Michael took hold of the bag and lifted it up. There seemed to be sand or dust in it.
“It’s material from the impact site. I was hoping to find some clues to the meteorite’s source. If the meteorite really was an Earth trojan before, I’d think we could identify that somehow.”
“An excellent idea,” Kenjiro said. “Do you want me to evaluate it for you? I’ve got experience doing that kind of work.”
Mike’s never going to allow that, Jonathan thought. Michael, however, came closer and handed Kenjiro the bag.
“That’d be great,” he said. “Thank you so much. I am, after all, just a doctor.”
“Gladly,” Ken said. “Until later, then.”
Michael waved at them briefly, then started to walk away. They walked into the entrance to the greenhouse. Jonathan took one step back, because it was too small a space for both of them.
The Wall: Eternal Day Page 21