Within a few minutes, several hundred cubic meters of dust and debris had been moved, exposing a dark, metallic hull buried in the soil. Kate hammered the machine off and set it down next to her. A surface area about the size of a large sofa glistened from the center of the grey hole. It was opaque, like nothing she’d seen before. It showed no signs of scarring or any other external damage, ruling out the possibility of a crash landing in her mind.
“Not sure what to make of this, but I’m trying the tap code now,” Kate said as she knelt down in front of the smooth, black surface. She pulled a ball peen hammer from her tool belt and crept up to the ship.
“Are you recording this, Mary?”
“Affirmative. Go ahead.”
She remembered the sound of the original signal when Jim first detected it on the subspace amateur radio astronomy band, like someone shoveling gravel, only heavier, if that made any sense. Reproducing that sound was impossible, and even if she could, the silence of the vacuum prevented her from hearing it. Instead, Kate raised the hammer up to her chest and brought it down on the dark surface. The thin vibration of the strike shot through her thick gloves.
Ting . . .Ting . . .Ting-Ting-Ting-Ting-Ting-Ting-Ting-Ting
She waited a moment.
Nothing.
“Try again, Kate.”
She tapped it out again, maintaining the same cadence as before, trying to reproduce the timing of the signal Jim heard in 2085. She repeated this for several minutes, pausing in between each sequence to see if the environment changed. Kate knew she wouldn’t be able to hear anything in the vacuum, but if someone was inside the ship and wanted to communicate, they might try a tap code through the hull too. And if that was the case, she’d sense the vibration.
However, nothing happened.
After almost twenty minutes of tapping and pausing, Kate abandoned the attempt and finished setting up the bio-detector. The scanning unit reminded her of a proton magnetometer—a two meter pole with a cylindrical head on top carrying the sensitive electronics that could map out near surface structures. The sensor instrument had proved itself useful in many applications on Earth, Mars, and Ganymede, but this was the first time she believed someone used it on Luna. Because it could detect water and helium in shallow crust, she hoped it might shed some light on whether the interior of the ship was a vacuum or not, and detect any evidence of organic life.
“Mary, I’ve set the scanning angle wide for this. Are you ready to receive data?”
Static crackled across Kate’s audio link, then Mary came on and said, “It’s ready here. Send me a couple of test sweeps to make sure everything’s functioning.”
Kate punched the ENGAGE button on the bio-detector and watched the amber STAND BY lamp turn green. After two minutes, she turned it off.
“It’s working fine at this end, Kate. I got a stream of data and it all appears clean and ready for analysis.”
“Great. I’ll fire up the unit again and return to the lab. Keep monitoring the transmissions and let me know if there’s any problem, okay?”
“Will do.”
Kate gazed around at the desolate moonscape. Again, she asked herself the question: why would an alien ship choose this place to land . . . and hide. The Earth shone like a beacon against the dark sky, even in night-time shadows.
It was the most beautiful sight she had ever seen.
Katie
She almost didn’t recognize Martin. He sat alone under a maple tree, eating a sandwich on an unusually warm, late fall day. Despite the small size of the training center’s campus, it had taken several weeks for Kate to meet anyone from the Aptitudes Testing Center back home. Martin—even though he’d grown frailer—she remembered, but that other girl, the one who cried a lot in the hall, wasn’t here.
Katie strolled over to the tree and waited for him to lift his head. “Hi. Remember me? We did the Aptitudes together.”
Martin’s face remained blank until he recognized her and invited her to sit down. She introduced herself, then they sat in silence for a few minutes, avoiding eye contact. She picked at the thin, brownish grass beside her.
“Do you know what they do to us?” His eyes widened, and a sliver of fear appeared.
“What do you mean?”
“When they take us away for surgery, they . . .” his face reddened, and he looked down. “They remove . . . you know . . .” He motioned at his lower body, then quickly added, “Girls too. Notice none of the teenage girls have any . . . er…” He waved at his chest this time.
Katie couldn’t look at him. The blush boiled through her cheeks, partly from embarrassment at the subject, and partly because she felt something for this boy she hadn’t experienced with others. An ancient yearning; a crush, perhaps. She fixed her eyes on a distant bench near the path.
“Supposedly, it’s to protect us from radiation when we’re in space and other harmful places. That’s not all.” He sighed and finished chewing the remains of the sandwich. “Without those . . . parts . . . we never grow up. Never reach puberty. Did they tell you any of this?”
Katie shook her head.
“You’ll hear all about it soon.”
A perfect silence enveloped them for the next ten minutes. Katie felt an urgent kinship with him, a smoldering desire to hold his hand like she’d seen older kids do back home. Instead, she wedged her fingers under her thighs and concentrated on the rough tree bark scratching through her shirt.
Finally, curiosity got the better of her. “How do you know all this, Martin?”
He brushed some crumbs off his jersey, dead grass from his pants, then stared right through her, eyes distant and helpless, lips tight. “A trainer went over it with me this morning.” Tears welled up and Katie reached out to touch his shoulder, but he pulled away.
“My surgery’s in two days.”
Kate
Kate mounted the LunaScoota and noticed, as if for the first time again, the patchy blue-green-white of Earth. A fleeting thought crossed her mind that if the universe existed through some random, chaotic event, then the odds of producing such beauty were infinitesimal and we all should feel a deep sense of privilege and good fortune for evolving from it. Yet, if some deity created it, and humankind, then we’re here by design, not an accident, and must be more significant than we think we are.
Mary’s voice over the helmet pulled her out of the reverie. “Everything okay there? All I’m seeing is Earth in the sky.”
Kate grinned wanly.
Martin would have loved this view . . .
She squeezed her eyes, pushing Martin’s memory and the Training Center out of her mind. That’s when the urge to cut screamed in her brain, and she swallowed hard to kill the pain of those days. “Yes, all good here,” she lied. “I’m just enjoying the scenery, is all. Gotta secure the gear in the cargo bay, then I’ll be on my way.”
TWELVE
Esther
The early morning hypersonic aircraft home to San Francisco rested on the apron, almost ready for boarding. A few keeners milled about the final security scanner cage, awaiting the call. Esther grunted, leaned back on a green, faux leather and steel chair, coffee in hand, yearning for sleep.
She was miserable.
She checked her indie-comm for a message, but nothing showed. Odd, but not unheard of in these situations. She’d try again when she got home.
The mystery and disconnect between what she thought would make her happy, and the reality of how her depression the morning after, loomed large and heavy, a silent burden crushing her shoulders. It was supposed to be better than this, wasn’t it, Esther?
Clayton Carter was blameless: he was not the problem. The disturbing emptiness slithering through her was the only consistency between him and the handful of others she’d been with over the past few years. It was impossible to understand. The physical urge of release, of reptilian mating, didn’t appeal to her in the moment since the after-effects were hardly rosy and fulfilling. Intellectually, she understoo
d there was nothing to gain from giving in to her base desires but, like the alcoholic who hates drinking, she was at a loss to figure out how to stop.
Her indie-comm chimed, and she peeked at the screen. A message from Clayton, trying to be sincere and thankful and whatever. The negotiation dance . . . an investment. She deleted it and dropped the device into her jacket pocket.
Esther recalled one of her university friends—who had been married three times—talking about relationships, desire and fulfillment. Amy hadn’t found an answer yet, but claimed to be close, exploring the need for some kind of spiritual intimacy she called it, something more than a dim-witted, reactionary lizard brain. Esther wasn’t buying it, but, her random sexual encounters consistently led to a week or two of profound unhappiness and regret.
I don’t know why I do what I loathe doing.
As ridiculous as it sounded, whenever she thought about physical needs, she saw Jim Atteberry and their near-miss of a relationship.
Out of habit, she checked her indie-comm again for something from the lunar lab, then scolded herself for being a slave to her personal tech. Kate Braddock had returned none of her previous messages, and yes, that was strange. However, it wasn’t unusual to wait 24 hours or more for a response from Luna. Between differences in “day time”, the survey requirements, and now mentoring Mary, the lack of a message could be almost normal.
“Good morning passengers, we’ll be boarding shuttle flight 202 to San Francisco in a few minutes. Please have your security passes and tickets ready.”
Mary was such a fun child back then, and Esther smiled at the memories of the girl time they’d spent talking about space and boys and all kinds of other things. It was the closest she’d come to any kind of urge to be a mother. The relationship with Jim evolved too, but after Mount Sutro, Esther conceded it was doomed. He still loved his estranged wife, the policy consultant turned NDU mercenary. The rumor was Janet had been a spy when they’d met too. Whatever, even though Mary’s parents weren’t together, he remained in love with her, and Esther refused to compete with an apparition.
Oh, she’d thought about getting back with him numerous times in the months that followed, but found it easier to immerse herself in the merger of the two TSA directorates instead. Affairs of the heart are over-rated, she thought. Plus, she needed to purge all the Ross 128 records and data, every one of Marshall Whitt’s notes, both private and professional. No evidence of the truth surrounding the alien signal would remain. If the Rossians ever came to Earth, she wanted to be far away, and play no part in it. That was for the politicians.
Except she opened that door again by discussing it all with Clayton. You did it now, Esther. It was a sordid, calculated move to aid the negotiations, as was inviting him to stay the night. The TSA needed a fleet of ships and security, and Titanius had the capacity to provide that. Although California was its own independent republic, it still had much in common with the northern democratic states, so a relationship or partnership with Titanius made sense. Coming clean with him about the Ross 128 signal was inevitable, so why be coy about it? As long as he didn’t broadcast it to the world—something he wouldn’t do lest it tip his hand—there should be no problem. After all, the challenging work was paramount here. Only the job. At least, that’s what she kept telling herself.
Her indie-comm chimed again with another message. She pulled the device from her pocket and saw it was from Jim. He’s up early, no doubt worried about Mary and this thing they’d seen on the Moon’s surface. She texted back “nothing heard yet . . . not unusual. I’m getting on the aircraft in a few minutes and will check comms again in CA.”
Esther drained the last of her coffee and stood up. The flight was ready to board, and she pulled out her ticket and security pass from her purse and moved into the queue. To her right, a young man with a crew cut and athletic build peeked at her over his tablet. When she smiled at him, he averted his gaze and walked away toward the auto-server where a handful of late arrivals picked up drinks and snacks. She hadn’t recognized him at all, but she’d seen the type before. Even today, she was being watched. It didn’t matter which side this guy was on: the game was in play and she wanted him to know that she knew.
Esther’s turn to be scanned at the security cage came up, and she glanced around once more. The young man had disappeared.
Mary
Kate had spent a long time studying the site, and Mary struggled with the intense isolation in the lunar lab. She peered out the viewing window at the harsh, grey environment, thinking how strange and frightening it was to be one of only two humans on the entire Moon.
Travel to the Mare Marginis took a little over an hour, forever if she wasn’t actually riding it. Mary managed her time alone if she had something to work on, a problem to keep her busy. There was music and books, and she still wanted to fix up the antenna they’d used on Kate’s indie-comm when they talked with her dad, so, yeah, lots of things to occupy her mind.
The radio crackled. “I’ve got the bio-detector standing by, Mary. You ready to receive there?”
She scurried over to the computer panel and engaged the recording switches for primary and backup data reading. “All set here . . . go ahead any time, Kate.”
“Engaging now.”
Within seconds, the feed from the remote site showed up on Mary’s screen. It flew by, too quickly to read. A file size counter appeared at the lower right-hand side. Once there was sufficient data buffered, she could begin preliminary cleaning and initial filtering. Kate told her she’d need about two gigabytes, but safer to wait until the counter hit three.
“I’m reading the data one hundred percent. Are you done out there now?”
“Stand by . . .”
A minute passed. Then another.
“I’m gonna give the tap code one more try before returning, okay?”
“Sure,” Mary said, then switched the screen over to show the view from Kate’s body cam. She watched her bound over to the shallow excavation, look around, then fall to her knees.
“Kate is there any kind of radiation coming off that ship?”
“Checking the rad monitor . . . no, nothing at all. Just normal background emissions.”
Mary’s eyes flashed over to the small container of anti-rad pills by the biofeeder. She’d seen Kate take these every day, but unlike hers, they must be for something more than just Luna’s background radioactivity. She made a mental note to ask her about that when she returned. Kate was far from the perfect vision of health, but the extent of her illnesses—physical and mental—remained hidden.
Mary watched the hammer strike the ship’s hull in the one-one-eight pattern numerous times, interspersed by Kate’s own grunting as she repositioned herself on the craft. She monitored the vital signs from Kate’s suit on a secondary viewscreen. After a while here, it became easy to forget that if a suit breeched and the sealant foam failed, their blood would boil in the low pressure, followed by death. She remembered a short story from the early days of space exploration, about the cold equations and the inevitable jettison of a stowaway from a small ship in deep space. A smile crept over her face as she gazed around the habitat. Despite being a million kilometers from home and bothered by the isolation, working here for the summer was about the greatest thing she’d ever imagined.
“I’m not sensing any return taps. Are you picking up anything anomalous from the detector?”
Mary flipped screens again and freeze-framed the scrolling data. “Reviewing it now, and, ah, I see nothing weird. We might have a better idea once it’s cleaned and filtered.”
“Roger that.” Kate’s breathing filled the open transmission link. “Another possibility for not hearing anything is that the ship may not be the Ross 128 vessel. I hate to think that’s the case.”
“I agree.”
“Anyway, I’m heading back in Mary, so I’ll see you shortly.”
“Sounds good. Would you pick up a pizza on the way home?”
“Say
again?”
Mary chuckled. “Never mind, just messing with you.”
“Back soon.”
Mary sighed heavily and looked around the habitat. The bio-data streamed in with no issues. The environmental controls showed everything operating normally: air scrubbers, oxygenators pumping in pure oxygen, hygiene station, backup systems, power supplies . . . all good. Over an hour to kill and no one to talk to. Repairing the indie-comm antenna sure sounded like a good idea.
“Kate, you there?”
“Yeah, I’m en route back to the lab.”
“Do you mind if I suit up and retrieve the antenna from the tower? I’d like to fix it, check the connection, you know, so maybe we could contact my dad again?”
A pause filled the space between them, and it felt enormous. Mary understood if Kate refused; standard operating procedures required that all envirosuit connections be confirmed manually. However, she wasn’t a neophyte anymore and besides, Kate seldom double-checked her own.
“Sure, I guess that’s okay. Just be really careful, run through the suit-up checklist with me by radio, and stay in touch when you’re outside.”
Mary leapt up from the computer panel and fist-pumped the air. Then, leaning forward over the radio mic, she said, “I will, Kate, thanks! Let’s keep the link open, and don’t worry, I won’t be out there long.”
“Roger.”
Before snapping her helmet in place, Mary cast a quick glance at the data streams on the viewscreen, and at the environmental monitor. All seemed in order, so she secured her envirosuit, went through the final checks with Kate, and entered the airlock. The internal parameters screen on her visor showed all suit systems green, so she engaged the pressure rotator and, when it had completed cycling, she opened the hatchway to the moon’s surface.
Echoes In The Grey Page 9
