by Bob Blink
"As you can see, there are a number of us present," the Secretary explained. "We concluded a previous meeting half an hour ago, and it became clear that it was imperative I contact you right away. I would like to play video of part of that meeting."
"There won't be others joining us?" General Sokolov asked.
"Not just yet. We will talk about that after we have discussed the matter at hand."
"May I ask why we are seeing a video rather than talking with your scientists directly?" Bykov asked once the transmission was complete. "And why is Dr. Gelon not present?"
Secretary Billings sighed. "It has been a difficult twenty-four hours. Dr. Gelon is in the hospital in a coma. He was attacked last night on the Cal Tech campus. Young Tony and his girlfriend were coming to pick up the computer runs that revealed what you just saw when they discovered two of the building security guards dead. Tony was worried about the Professor, and apparently the young lady is a bit of a pistolero. She grabbed one of the felled officer's weapons, and when they discovered two men who had somehow managed to elude the security forces on the campus assaulting the Professor, she was able to shoot both of them, but not before they had wounded Dr. Gelon."
"Why would they be after Dr. Gelon?" Bykov asked.
"They were part of a cult and apparently felt that Dr. Gelon was responsible for what is happening, or actually in this case I believe it was that he was preventing the aliens from completing their task which would allow everyone to rise up to the heavens in the alien's spaceship."
"Crazy people?" Bykov muttered. "Will Dr. Gelon recover?"
"We don't know, but that's why Dr. Allen and young Tony made the presentation. At the moment they are on a plane heading my way. I want them to work with our NSA folks, who as you know have massive computer power, and begin a search here on Earth for something similar to what they found on the moon."
"That's what you were talking about in the video at the end," Dr. Shen Tai said. "You want us to use our resources as well on this problem, both to verify what you found on the moon, and to seek such an anomaly here on Earth."
Bud Hollister replied. "It is something so unusual that it should be verified. Each of us has independently gathered data, and if you find the same anomaly we would have increased confidence in what we found."
"I will instruct our people to begin as soon as this call is over," Bykov said.
General Ming Tao glanced at Professor Shen Tai. "It is a tedious thing, not difficult," he said. "It will be done."
"Someone should go and have a look at this place," General Ming Tao said. "We need to know that is really what we fear."
"We are gearing up for just such a mission," General Easystone replied.
"Explain," General Sokolov demanded.
"I've ordered a team from Shackelton to set off as soon as they can get the equipment and supplies together. They will take three of our moonbuggies, along with the attachable trailers, and with two men per vehicle to scout the location. We have what we believe is a secure means of communication via satellite that won't be discovered."
"Six men? Who are these men? What is their function at your base? Will they be armed?"
"They are Air Force officers," General Markham explained, and of course they will be armed. They will bring M16's along on the trip."
Sokolov laughed.
"Desk jockeys. These are scientists, not warriors," he scoffed. "For something like this you want some of your special forces people."
"We have no one like that on the moon," General Easystone countered. "Besides, we don't want an armed encounter. We want intelligence and verification that there is something really there. We would prefer that the aliens are unaware of our presence."
"We have special forces," General Sokolov said, "and they are effective fighters and properly armed and equipped for something like this."
"On the moon?" General Ming Tao asked. "That is a violation of our international arms agreement for space."
"Yes, I suppose it is," General Sakolov said unconcerned. "Would you like to quibble over that right now, given our real problem?"
"Would you like your team to rendezvous with our people, and check this together?" the Secretary of Defense asked, not wanting to get sidetracked. He should have known the Russians would have such people there, even though he couldn't imagine why before all of this developed.
"Sadly we lack the equipment to make that kind of journey," General Sakolov admitted. It's almost . . ." He stopped and looked at Bykov for help.
"Twenty-one hundred miles," Bykov said softly, converting the distance from metric units for the others.
"It's twenty-one hundred miles from Peary Crater where we are. That's a third more than your distance. I do not think the delay waiting for us would be prudent even if we had the vehicles capable of making the journey."
"We should end this," General Ming Tao suggested. "We believe they are there. We should bomb them. Use a nuclear weapon and destroy whatever this place is before they learn we know about it. They are likely to spot your recon force, and then where will we be?"
"That brings up another touchy matter," the Secretary said. "I have directed that we shift some nuclear warheads that will work on some of the scientific rockets we have on-site at the Tranquility facility."
"You are planning an attack?" General Sokolov asked, obviously a bit unhappy with the idea. "How big are these weapons?"
Secretary Billings shook his head. "No attack plans at the moment, but it takes time to get anything to the moon, and it seems prudent to have them there in case a time arrives where we might want to pursue such an approach. They are going to be loading up two to five megaton warheads."
"Have your people considered that launching from the moon to hit another location on the surface there is not something to be taken lightly? Our missiles here on Earth have been carefully designed to do such a thing, but the moon is new ground. Also, I am concerned that a typical launch with the missiles flying nearly into orbit before descending to a target would alert our adversary, most likely giving them the opportunity to ensure failure of such an attack."
Air Force General Markham said, "My people assure me it can be done. Launching from Earth is not seen as a reasonable option. Ignoring the risks, the missiles would take days, and almost certainly be detected."
"You want to launch from the moon and use a very low orbit," General Sakolov said.
"I'm not sure I understand," General Easystone said. "You said orbit. You want to go in orbit around the moon with the weapons?"
"Only until they reach their target. You launch and place them in an orbit that is one to two hundred feet above the moon's surface. Whatever assures clearance from the launch point and the target. There is no air on the moon, so the orbit won't degrade. They will continue without additional thrust from the booster going round and round. Once they are close, you drop them out of orbit onto your target."
"That's very clever. I never would have thought of it."
"An old idea. Author Arthur C. Clark used it in his book 2001."
"I get the impression this isn't something you just thought of," Secretary Billings said.
Sokolov grinned. "You are right. This idea has been developed before by our people, and we just happen to have boosters and warheads in place for this kind of operation."
"Let me get this straight," the Secretary asked. "You already have nukes on the moon? Why?"
"Contingencies," the Russian General replied. "And the ones we have on hand include some more reasonably sized devices for this particular problem. There are a number of fifty megaton bombs at Peary."
"Good heavens!" General Markham exclaimed.
"You said this distortion was some twenty miles across. That's big, and we don't know what is there and what they might have to protect them from such a threat. Hitting them harder than might really be necessary is warranted."
"When?" General Ming Tao asked eagerly.
"Let's hold back a bit," the Secretary urge
d. "I'd like to see what we find here on Earth, and given the time, I think it prudent to see what our survey team finds out there at Fermi."
"That is a reasonable approach," General Sokolov replied. "But if things go bad, I believe we will simply launch, regardless of what else we know, and hope for the best."
Chapter 13
South Pole of Moon
Shackleton Crater
United States Moon Base One
The establishment of bases at the lunar poles had happened surprisingly quickly. In 2020 the President of the United States had promised the country a significant investment in space exploration if re-elected. While it turned out he was re-elected in a landslide, by the time of the election the Russians had jumped heavily into their own space program, and had begun a facility in the north polar region at Peary Crater. They very openly declared they weren't claiming the area for Russia, which was disallowed under international agreement, but were establishing a facility that they hoped would benefit all nations and that they would be there on a temporary basis only. No one believed them, but there was little to be done beyond a little bit of yelling in the notoriously ineffective United Nations.
Realizing there was only one other pole to be had, and if they didn't wish to share the site with the Chinese who also had a powerful space program, the United States quickly combined the available resources of all NASA and Air Force space programs, and started their own colony at the southern pole near Shackleton. Heavy lift vehicle programs that had been lingering somewhat while the government fought over just what the goals of the U.S. space program really were, suddenly had money being thrown at them. Private companies showed their own worth by adding to the effort, and in a surprisingly short time weekly launches were taking place as the moon base rapidly became real.
The reason for the focus on the polar regions was two-fold. First, there was tangible evidence from previous exploratory missions that water might be found in those regions in a number of craters that were positioned so their bottoms would always be blocked from the sun which would allow any ice to remain perpetually frozen. Equally important, the far more frequent exposure to power producing sunlight was greater at the poles than anywhere else on the moon. While no place on the moon provided 100% sunlight, the poles provided between 70% to 80% availability over the year, which was far better than the two weeks of sun followed by two weeks of night that the rest of the moon received. The Russians had believed that the northern pole with four identified potential sites for solar arrays was the better choice, but it had turned out that the south pole was the real winner. Now the Shackleton solar arrays sat atop a small hill that received sun even when much of the rest of the camp didn't.
With the program humming along as well as it was, the Air Force space program decided a second base, this one designed more along the lines of supporting future space missions with the ability to launch small payloads, support a planned orbiting space station around the moon for future planetary missions, and less officially to establish a US proprietary facility, was desired. The result was Tranquility base. Significant discussion as to whether this was the ideal location for such a base almost delayed the project, but in the end, the historical significance of the location won out, and the site was formalized. Following Russia's lead, these bases were claimed to be temporary facilities only.
Unlike the poles, Tranquility base was subject to the long alternating periods of sunlight and darkness. It had solar arrays supported by a vast array of batteries, but it also had a small nuclear reactor which provided power for all facilities, including a manufacturing lab that was producing a number of highly secret materials that formed better in the moon's low gravity than on Earth. There were complaints from Russia and China about the nuclear power plant in space, but the President made note of the reactors the other nations had in orbit, and basically ignored all objections. Someone made a comment on Facebook that people ought to wise up and think about the long-term benefits. Mankind could stay stuck on the mudball we called home, or find his way into space, which just might require a few risks. It was a good call, but it was starting to look we might have been just a bit too late getting started.
Shackleton was currently in one of the night periods, with the arrays on the small hill to the southwest of the living structures still in the sunlight, while the majority of the base was shrouded in darkness, illumined by a combination of reflected sunlight from the arrays, the light coming to the moon from the Earth that remained fixed in the sky, and the stars that filled the sky. Designed to accommodate up to fifty people, the current population was thirty-seven, and the odds of that increasing was small given that the excess living space had long since been appropriated for other uses. The addition of more personnel would require significant shuffling of items. Space was one of the premium resources in a place like this.
Most of the base was underground. The various domes, formed by inflating the special rubber and Kevlar material, which was then spray coated with a hardening compound so they would remain inflated in the event of a loss of pressurization, protruded above the surface. They were equipped with special windows allowing a view of the surrounding area, but were interconnected to one another and the more extensive facilities that were entirely underground via a network of tunnels. The tunnels allowed access to anywhere on the base without the need of pressure suits, and could isolate any section via the special pressurization doors at each end of each section.
On the surface, the area between the visible domes with their airlocks onto the surface had been contoured, flattened, compressed, and then sprayed with a special foam-based plastic that hardened to give a textured and resilient surface for walking or driving. Around the perimeter of the entire base, a wider version of the same material formed a smooth roadway for their vehicles, with ramps that led off onto the moon's surface in each quadrant. The vehicles, six rather large, enclosed with pressurized cabins, and four much smaller, open two-seater affairs like the dune buggies they were named after, were stored in an underground garage on the northern perimeter of the base, with a ramp from the below moon level airlock up to the circular track that encircled the base.
Not too far from the 'garage' was the antenna farm with half a dozen parabolic dishes of varying size which covered all the important frequencies needed to support base operations and maintain full contact with Earth. Unlike the solar arrays, they were currently in the dark, like the landscape around them, but still in sight of Earth.
Major Glen Morales made a slow walk around the three vehicles, not entirely certain what he was expecting to see, but feeling that there must be something they had overlooked. Now was the time to find it, as once they departed Shackleton they would be on their own, and depending on where they got into trouble, they would be a long way from help. Most likely days away.
The three vehicles were massive, unlike the little dune-like buggies the Apollo missions had carried to the moon so many years earlier. These were each bigger than a large SUV, enclosed with a pressurized air system and airlock, room for four occupants plus a bit of cargo, and a lot of electronics. There were even rudimentary provisions for cooking, actually microwaving the special meals that the men could eat inside with their suits unzipped. There were less desirable liquid based meals that could be sipped when forced to stay inside the pressured spacesuits.
Large detachable tanks were attached to the sides and rear of the vehicle providing their air supply and fuel for the cells that generated energy to drive the electric vehicle when there was no sun or when the batteries had become depleted. A solar array covered the top of the vehicle, with two deployable sections to increase the rate of energy collection for those periods when the vehicle was stationary. For the planned journey their cargo carrying capability had been significantly increased by the large trailer that was attached to the back of the vehicle. Filled with food, fuel, oxygen, and miscellaneous support gear including weapons and ammunition, the trailer would be essential to their survival for a trip of
the range and duration they had been ordered to undertake.
The tires were something relatively new, but which had been shown to be very effective. They were airless like the previous tires, but these were something called a shape-memory alloy of nickle and titanium woven into a special mesh. They were strong and flexible, actually designed for the rougher terrain of Mars, capable of flexing in response to obstacles, and then regaining their shape. They were strong, resilient, and were said to wear very slowly. All good things when triple A was a considerable distance away. They were bringing no spares. There simply wasn't room, and they had three vehicles to hopefully offset any vehicle based difficulties. In fact, there were three of the vehicles, loaded and ready, waiting for the group to set off.
"What do you think, Boyd?" Glen asked the lieutenant who he would be riding with. "What are we forgetting?"
"You have that feeling too?" Boyd asked.
The planning group, which consisted not just of the six of them, most of the others would be staying behind safe at the base, had gone over the list of items to be carried along multiple times, rejecting many items in order to reduce the weight, but trying to ensure they had everything they would need with suitable backups for any likely mishaps.
"Anyone?" Glen asked the other four travelers standing by their own vehicles. All of the others were the same rank as Boyd, making Glen the senior officer. Steve Reed and Paul Cameron would be riding together and Gene Lee and David Welch in the third vehicle. A number of heads moved side to side inside the clunky suits they were wearing.
"Let's get moving then. We have a long way to go."
The men climbed into their respective vehicles, pressurized the cabins, and completed their radio check. Boyd was driving the lead vehicle as they started away from the base, heading out into the nighttime darkness that wrapped around the vehicles. Night on the moon lasted thirteen and a half days. Shackleton Base was currently five days from sunrise. Night was also quite dark. Not so much here at the base, but once they wrapped around to the back side of the moon, there would be no light being reflected back at them from the Earth. There was nothing to be done about it, however. Their mission was considered urgent, and the trip long enough they were going to encounter both sunlight and darkness as they traveled.
