Diamond Moon

by B K Gallagher

  Hanson stood silently as he watched his Captain peering across the cold and harsh environment. His pulse raced as he anticipated the conversation he was about to have.

  “NASA believes we are staying,” he told Johan. ‘I just had dinner with them.”

  Johan nodded nonchalantly, as if he already knew.

  “They say they can monitor the quakes.”

  Johan adjusted his pose and turned his way. Hanson watched as his large body resisted the motion. He appeared slightly agitated.

  “Those scientists don’t know shit,” he said. “They’ve nearly killed all of us just sending us here. So what bullshit are they telling you now?” he asked. “The fissure is dangerous. Of course, they’ll pass it off otherwise,” he said.

  Hanson paused, unsure how to continue with his point. He lowered his voice so the other miners wouldn’t hear. “NASA wants to send the sub under tomorrow. They are planning to continue the mission,” he told him. “When I saw the fissure, I admit I thought we’d need to go, but if they can predict the quakes like they say then I think we can stay.”

  Johan chuckled. “They are saying they can predict the quakes now?” he asked. “Let’s see, first there wasn’t supposed to be quakes. Then there were three large quakes, and a giant fissure shows up… and now they can predict them?” Johan let out a barrel of a laugh that ended with him coughing. Asteroid dust from his years of mining had suddenly made his voice raspy.

  “I told you, Mara would tell you anything to get us to stay. And you believed her, didn’t you? You realize they invited you over there just to tell you that bullshit? You probably never even had to be in quarantine. Look at the way she lied to me during that bet. They’re liars. They’re messing with you.” Johan chuckled to himself again, and it turned into yet more coughing.

  “I think it’s safe to stay,” Hanson said. “The quakes are tied to the orbits of the moons. We have two days. We’ll know it’s not safe when we see them leave. Their actions will inform us.”

  “Will they?” Johan said with a frown. “You think they wanted to be here for those last two quakes?” His face grew tense and turned red as he looked directly at him. “I’m trying to figure out why you want to stay here, Jack,” he said. “I know you fixed the crane for her. I thought we had decided to get out of here as soon as we could?” Then Johan sat down his cup of coffee. “I thought you understood I’d get you your own rig if we left? So, what is it?” He stared with a penetrating look. “It’s the girl, isn’t it?”

  Hanson took a slight step backward, and he regretted that he had. He knew his body language had given him away. It felt like Johan was looking right through him.

  “It’s not her,” he replied. “They are uncovering some amazing things down there. Cures and medicines… Things that can help people. I think we should stay and fulfill the mission for them.”

  “Is that what you want, Hanson?” Johan asked. “You want to fulfill the mission for them? You want to help people?” he said with a patronizing smile. He laughed again. “Is that what you want to do?” he asked again, still laughing.

  Hanson thought for a moment. Directly challenging Johan was not easy for him. “Yes,” he said, but his voice had cracked.

  “You can tell me, Jack. You want to risk our lives here because you are chasing a hot piece of ass?” he said.

  Johan was grinning at him from the side of his face, his eyes were peering out of the corner of his squinted eyelids. “You know, it’s almost forgivable…” he laughed. “I think maybe I’ve kept you out here too long, haven’t I?” he said. He laughed even more, and it led to even more coughing.

  “They are using us — risking our safety for their benefit,” Johan continued. “And if that was all this was about it would be a simple matter… but they are hiding something. I’ve seen the way they work around here. They don’t talk about their mission. They keep the monitors off. Keep the comms off. I know when a crew is hiding something from me. Seen it too many times.” His voice suddenly took a more sinister tone, “And I think you know what it is.”

  A gaze from Johan suddenly pierced Hanson’s flesh. His words hit him square in the chest. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” Hanson told him, doing his best to downplay what he knew. “They’re searching for an enzyme, something from one of those creatures,” he said. “All they want to do is find the cures they are looking for. NASA is a safety-first organization. I’ve seen it myself. Think about what it would mean for us to leave now. We’re ruff-necks… Do we want to bail on a mission at the slightest setback?” he argued, seeming to find his footing.

  There was a long pause as Johan realized his judgment was being challenged, and in front of his crew no less. Hanson suddenly looked around the room and saw the entire crew watching them. They stood at a distance, but their work had stopped, and they were seeing the confrontation.

  “Are you saying the miners aren’t safe with me?” Johan asked loudly, making sure the miners could hear. “That seems to be what you are saying.” He looked around the room, expecting a reaction from them.

  Hanson pursed his lips together and didn’t answer.

  “Let’s remember,” Johan said. “We aren’t getting paid for this job,” he yelled. “There are a million asteroids we’d be getting better pay on right now,” he said loudly again.

  His voice echoed through the chamber and reverberated off the metal machinery of the room. “Whatever they’ve found, it’s something so dangerous they don’t even want to tell us about it,” he said. “I don’t see it any other way. Either way means we should get our asses out of here,” he said. “We need to get some rest, then we leave first thing next sol.” He turned away from Hanson and back toward the icy plains, indicating the discussion was over.

  Hanson clenched his teeth. He knew he’d never be able to convince Johan to stay, and he was embarrassed that he’d even tried. He worried that Johan would take it out on him. He had watched his crew growing weary with Johan’s warnings. There was never going to be enough incentive for Johan to stay, not under these conditions, and not without pay. Hanson knew he would not be able to change his mind.

  Johan turned from the window one last time as Hanson turned to leave. He held his coffee mug underneath his hand, but then held it up toward him as he pointed at him. “I told you… We do what’s best for the rig. I’m getting some rest. We leave in the morning.” Then he stood upright and stretched his body in front of the men, puffing out his large chest, and he moved towards the bunks and disappeared down the corridor, leaving Hanson with his crew.

  Hanson glanced around the room at the miners, all of whom had continued to watch there captain leave. Hanson knew he had lost them. “I’m telling you we are safe from the quakes,” he said, but they weren’t listening.

  The crew started to follow Johan. They wanted to move to the next asteroid, and they wanted to get to their next payday, but mostly, they wanted off this moon.

  Hanson couldn’t blame them. The crew would never have accepted a mission as dangerous as this unless it meant a good amount of pay in return.

  Hanson watched as the men exited, all of them preparing to launch the following sol. When the last of them had left, he walked to the drill chamber and found Reese underneath the crane, working to prep the sub for another mission under the ice.

  “You need to be ready to pull the mission, Reese,” Hanson

  told her.

  She looked up from her workbench as she finished polishing the hull of the sub. “Johan would leave right now if he could, wouldn’t he?” she asked. She nodded as if she wasn’t surprised. “He never really wanted to be here…”

  Hanson didn’t have to acknowledge her. “There’s no changing his mind,” he said.

  “I don’t think he changes his mind easily,” Reese said as she flipped the access panel down on the sub she had been working on.

  Hanson sh
ook his head. “No… No, he doesn’t. Not without something very persuasive,” he answered.

  Sol 15; Mission time — 17:04

  Reese watched the team of robots move in tandem through the intricate web of machinery and pipes and tubes and gears. They used their six appendages in all sorts of various ways to climb up and onto and through the cavities of the crane. She could see several of them converging on the upper compartment of the contraption where the motor was housed. They began to move upon the same spot high up on the scaffolding.

  Murphy was holding a command tablet for the team of bots, watching them work together as he communicated the various tasks and operations that would be needed to conduct the repair.

  Then Reese saw something she never even imagined she would see. Several of the robots had turned into an amorphous fluid, combined into one larger unit, and then began climbing the machinery together. They were working in tandem, combining into one robot when necessary, and transforming their shapes to meet the obstacles they were encountering.

  She was amazed by their ability to twist and bend into useful shapes or combine into one larger bot when needed. When it was required of them, she saw that they could separate again. The shapes they were taking seemed endless and limitless.

  “How is that happening?” she asked Murphy, who was standing nearby with his control tablet, orchestrating the work. He seemed to be in deep concentration, watching his army of workers proudly.

  “It’s a highly ionized metallic fluid,” he explained. “Gallium,” he continued, saying it matter of factly. “I use a small dose of indium to create a workable alloy. It’s all controlled with carefully timed high-precision electromagnetic fields. I can program them to turn on and off in a matter of micro-seconds too. That way I can work two fields around each other if I need to by inter-lacing the signals. They can work the arms independently that way,” he said. “They do it themselves once they are programmed right.” He kept watching his bots for a few seconds. “Cool, huh?”

  Reese was speechless. She continued to watch the robots as they climbed around the machinery and performed the various tasks they were programmed to do. She could barely look away as they shape-shifted and climbed, turned knobs, and tightened screws.

  “I can make them combine or take any form I need them to, and they do it on their own once I program them,” he said. “As long as the magnetic field is not stretched too far from the source.”

  “The source?” Reese asked.

  “Yes. They each operate on a self-contained battery. There’s enough power to keep them running for a good amount of time, but they do have a limit to how far they can be shape-adapted,” he informed her. “They can only extend the range of the field. Usually it’s a few meters or so.”

  Reese was amazed. She wondered to herself, “how could someone in the far reaches of space, with little interaction with the field of robotics on Earth, have created such advanced technology?” She was stunned at their smoothness of motion and their agility. Stunned at the way each of them utilized their appendages to balance, climb, hang, open doors and panels, and gain entry to the insides of the equipment.

  “You have several of these operating on rigs now?” she asked while he was intently watching his bots through the tablet monitor.

  “A few prototypes,” he replied, not taking his eyes from the tablet. “But these are my latest. Look at the dexterity,” he said. “Of course, I had to volunteer them to the mining teams. Astromine wouldn’t pay for them. I gave them away hoping they would take some slack off the crew.”

  Reese was studying and taking notes of the robot’s ability to climb and open access panels and adjust to the intricate web of machinery on the crane.

  “You give them away?” she asked pointedly. “Who have you talked to, and how many of these do you think you could build?”

  Murphy didn’t answer right away. He was genuinely lost in the thrill of watching his crew of bots climb around the machinery, which was frustrating Reese.

  “I’ve been talking to Astromine corporate,” he finally said. “They are interested, but they don’t want to buy in unless I can make them work cheaper than the crew. They offered to buy the intellectual property and my designs, but I told them no.”

  “But these robots can do some of the more dangerous work, can’t they? Limit the miner’s exposure to radiation and the more treacherous labor?” she asked.

  “Yeah, but it always comes down to the bottom line. It’s cheaper to send the men to do it. Probably always will be.” Murphy shrugged his shoulders, as if it was an unavoidable matter of fact. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Ahh. You were hoping NASA would be interested,” she said. She took her eyes off the demonstration and looked at Murphy. “Yeah, I’ll talk to them,” she said. “These designs are more advanced than I realized. I’m not sure how you managed to do this outside of current development streams,” she added.

  Murphy turned his head to her, a bit offended. “Maybe it was best that I was outside the stream,” he said, raising his brows at her, knowing she hadn’t thought of it from his point of view. He had another one of his awkward smiles on his face.

  Reese smiled in return. “What else do you have to show NASA?” she asked.

  He tilted his head as he watched the bots continue to climb the crane. “I’ve got specs, demo recordings… some programming. I could put something more together to show them. But only if you say so…” he said. “Look, I’m trying to get out,” he said. “I been on and off these mining rigs way too long. An old back like mine can’t take much more.” He looked in her direction with another wide grin.

  Reese nodded. “You should be working for NASA,” she told him. “Would you ever consider that?” she asked.

  Murphy tilted his head slightly as he watched his robot team going to work. “I think I’m done here,” he said.

  Reese looked with a curious demeanor. “Done with your presentation?” she asked.

  Murphy shook his head slowly. “I mean done with mining. If you have something for me… a job offer, let me know,” he said. He pushed some buttons on his contraption, effectively finishing the demonstration.

  “I would love to have you on my team,” Reese said to him. We could use a good designer for outer solar system missions,” she said. “The next step is Saturn and Titan. We could use these designs on the missions.”

  Murphy smiled one of his big awkward smiles again and turned away from her to begin gathering his flock of robots. “I’d like that,” he said.

  She watched as he collected his robots and began walking them back upstairs. The bots followed him up the stairs and into the hallway that led to the bunk rooms. He had a stroll in his step she hadn’t remembered seeing before.

  “How can we reach you?” Reese shouted up at him. Then she saw him turn and give her another wide and awkward smile, and he waved as he disappeared around the corner and behind the wall.

  He hadn’t answered her question, but Reese figured she’d see him again. She smiled anxiously and returned to her work preparing EUNICE. Her mind was racing with ideas for ways she could use the technology, and she remained stunned as she thought about the ingenuity required for someone on a mining rig to develop such a technology.

  Sol 15; Mission time — 18:49

  Mara was rested from her excursion to the fissure with Hanson, and she was just showing up at the drill chamber after a nap. She expected that Hanson would be speaking to Johan any time now.

  Hanson greeted her at the airlock doors as she walked to the entry. She could see right away that he did not have good news. He helped her though, careful not to open the doors too quickly as he had before.

  “Mara, good to see you,” he greeted her, then he sighed. “I’m afraid Johan is not budging,” he said.

  Mara stopped in her tracks. Hanson signaled for one of the men to get Johan.r />
  “EUNICE is looking good,” Reese shouted as she worked the console. “We’re so close. We’re ready to go,” she said eagerly.

  Mara had a minute to become angry before Johan walked in. She had formulated what she thought was her best argument when she saw him walking into the chamber.

  “I hear you have some news for us,” Johan said as he approached. There were a few miners following him like bodyguards. “I hope with that fissure nearby that you are calling off the mission?”

  Mara looked confused. “Actually, I came to tell you good news about the fissure,” she said. “We can all stay. We found a way to predict the quakes. And the fissure does not appear to be expanding,” she told him.

  “You’re still pushing this nonsense?” Johan said. “Hanson told me your bullshit theories.”

  Mara was already straining to keep her composure. She was used to people belittling her work, but this time it was egregious. Her face twisted and contorted.

  “It’s not bullshit,” she said with a cockeyed smile. “It’s based on real science that Dr. Aman and Julian conducted. They can interpret the signals from the creatures. It matches the quakes exactly. They’ve told me they can tell when and where the next one will occur.”

  Johan patronizingly bounced his head as if he were agreeing with her, and he was laughing to himself as he did. “So, you’re saying there will be another one,” he said. “I already went over this crap with Hanson. Nobody thought there would be quakes at all. Nobody told us there would be ice fissures. You are just telling me what you think I need to hear, and I’m not buying it. I’ve already made up my mind. We’re leaving. We launch in the morning.”

  Mara grew even more frustrated. Dismissing the scientists work and their findings was one thing, but when Johan wouldn’t even listen or consider her theory… Her voice became strained.

  “This discovery is based on documented observations… scientific observations… It’s based on research, testable theories, information from the creatures and their behavior. We know we can predict whether there will be a quake or not. I’m telling you, if Julian says it’s safe, then it’s safe.”