This is it.
Two smaller outbuildings where they kept survey gear and other equipment had toppled outwards as if from a blast wave. The metallic spines used to reinforce their shape now twisted and poked through the concrete, like structural compound fractures. All the equipment lay scattered across the moonscape. She located the comms tower, folded over on itself in an inverted vee, and various dishes and antennas that hung from it crushed and mangled, couplings, cables and wire strewn about.
But Mary, or whatever remained of her, was gone.
Inside Kate’s helmet, her own vital signs and suit parameters scrolled along the bottom left-hand side of her vision. Her heart rate pumped well over normal, and her VO2—measuring oxygen uptake—fluctuated wildly. The rad counter flashed in large numbers, below it, an estimate of how much longer she’d be able to withstand the radiation before serious health implications arose.
The urge to cut overwhelmed her.
Not now, dammit.
Kate focused on her breathing, deep and slow. Panicking, even though her source of life had been levelled, would interfere with finding a solution
Where the hell is she?
Mounting the LunaScoota again, she hovered and assessed the area. The blast radius appeared to be skewed toward the east, so she searched in an ever-growing cardioid pattern in that direction. With knowledge of Mary’s weight, more or less, and where she probably was when the implosion occurred—near the comms tower—Kate estimated the distance the explosion might have thrown her. The mass of thick debris suggested whatever happened, the force had been formidable. She floated farther and farther away from the main lab’s foundation.
Several minutes passed with no sign of Mary. Fortunately, the rad counter dropped as she distanced herself from the power supply leaks. Then, just before she gave up hope of finding her, a glint of light flashed at her about 50 meters away. Kate broke the search pattern and throttled the scooter toward the light.
Mary lay motionless on her stomach, half-buried in dust and rubble, a corner of her helmet’s visor catching the sun’s rays, her arm twisted at a disturbing angle.
The first thing she checked was the envirosuit’s integrity. Without a remote suit-to-suit link, Mary’s condition remained a complete mystery. She scraped away the powder from around her helmet, and as far as she could tell, there had been one breech, repaired with sealant. Vital signs flashed across Mary’s visor, and to Kate’s relief, appeared almost normal except for the elevated heart rate and shallow breathing. Alive, but unconscious.
She pulled the external data cable from its housing on her chest and hooked it into Mary’s receptor near her shoulder. Immediately, the envirosuit readings and bio-signs scrolled across Kate’s visor. The remaining oxygen was sufficient, several hours’ worth (at which point, her gaze dropped to her own reserves and she found just under two left). The impact had knocked the radio link off-frequency, so Kate rebooted that circuit and synched up their comms again.
“First aid screen for Mary’s suit.”
The medical page flicked on and scrolled up, showing the connection to the envirosuit had been established.
“Pump 0.15 CCs of ammonium carbonate inhalant into Mary’s helmet.”
Two standard warning signs appeared on Kate’s visor, reminding her of the dangers of using inhalant too often, or overloading it in the suit’s bio-system if the first shot didn’t work. She ignored these.
“Proceed.”
Mary’s vitals jumped as her head snapped back. Volume of blood rose; her breath stuttered and hung suspended for a moment.
“Come on, wake up!”
After what seemed like minutes passed, Mary coughed and inhaled, then groaned in pain. She tried drawing her legs up but failed.
“Hey, it’s Kate. I’m here. We’re outside the lab on the Moon’s surface. Do you understand?”
She nodded her head once, then again.
“Kate?” Her voice sounded weak, reminding her of that night at Mount Sutro when a much younger Mary experienced the kind of terror that no one should have seen.
“You’re okay, but listen to me carefully. You’ve been unconscious for a long time and it’ll be awhile before you can think clearly again. Your elbow’s dislocated. I’m gonna give you something for the pain, do you understand?”
The smelling salt had taken its effect and she stared out her visor. “Yes . . . it hurts bad.”
“Pump 60 CCs of pseudophine inhalant into Mary’s helmet.”
Again, the warnings appeared, and Kate told the medical system to proceed.
“That’ll take the edge off until we can get you fixed.”
In a few minutes, Mary sat up with Kate’s help. She then disconnected the data tether and returned to the scooter where she dug a binder strap out of its repair bin to serve as a sling.
“I need to do something with your elbow. Now listen Mary, we’ve got to move, and I can’t leave it this way. It’ll hurt like hell, but once it’s back in place, you’ll feel better.”
“I know.” Tears welled up in Mary’s eyes.
“If you need more painkiller, you’re in control of it now, okay?”
Kate stood in front of her. The initial panic of the situation here had passed, and she focused on whatever the next critical problem was: in this case, fixing Mary’s arm so they could move. Finding oxygen was an issue too. So was calling for help. But she’d deal with those later.
“Is the pseudophine working?”
Mary nodded.
In an instant, Kate’s left boot pressed into Mary’s shoulder and, grabbing the broken elbow in one hand, she extended her arm, pulling it palm up to her chest. Mary screamed, and her body kicked and bucked in reaction to the pressure, so Kate increased the weight on her boot. Then, she folded the arm up and twisted it in front of her, all in one motion, yanking it hard toward her to overcome the natural hesitancy of the suit and forcing the elbow to pop back in. Mary’s high-pitched shrieks dissipated.
The procedure, if she could call it that, was over and Kate wondered if Mary had passed out from the pain. She was still conscious, panting, almost in shock.
The elbow now hinged in its proper direction, so Kate worked it into the sling.
“How are you doing? Watching your vitals?”
“Yeah, better now. I’ll need more of the painkiller, for sure.”
“Do you think you can move?”
“I’ll try.”
Kate grabbed her by the waist and pulled her to an upright position. The lower gravity helped absorb much of the effort. Mary’s balance was off, and she had to spread her legs wide to remain standing, but after a few seconds her body adjusted, and she took a couple of tentative steps.
“What are we going to do? The oxygenator’s destroyed and—” Mary realized the full impact of her observation. “Oh god.” She listed to one side, favoring the slinged arm. “Is this how we die?”
Kate wouldn’t lie to her. They were in a serious, catastrophic position and within hours (in Mary’s case) or less (in her own), their oxygen canisters would expire and that would be that. She’d never given much thought to death, always accepted it as inevitable and ironically part of life. After several years working in dangerous and toxic environments, Kate respected death but did not fear it.
“It’s possible, Mares, maybe even likely, but first, we need to find more O2 and call for help.” She looked around at the total devastation of the lunar lab site and retold herself there was nothing here to glue or patch or resurrect back to operational life. If they were to make it beyond the next hour or two, they’d have to go somewhere else, and they’d have to uncover more oxygen.
Mary staggered up beside Kate. “What about the active mining operations on the far side of Luna?”
Kate thought for a moment. “We don’t have sufficient O2 for a trip that long, but . . .”
“But what?”
“There’s that old mine site at Aristoteles in the north. It’s been left to rot but a fun
ctional habitat was there for the workers who built the place. It was never meant to be a permanent structure, and the builders abandoned it as soon as the automated strip mining operations began. Still . . .” her thoughts drifted to the possibility that the oxygenator and communications systems might still function. If they could hold out until a passing ship arrived, they may make it. “It’s not as far as the active site, Mary, but still a day’s trip. We’ll never arrive there without more oxygen.”
“So, let’s look around here . . . for the emergency cylinders and anything else we might need.”
Kate helped Mary get in the scooter’s small cargo bay, propping her up in a spare seat, and they floated back to the main housing unit, scanning the area for the red and gold canisters. As they approached ground zero, their rad counter alarms screeched.
“Just mute it. We won’t be here long.”
Under what looked like the remnants of the primary console computers and databases, Kate spotted two of the extra suits. She unclipped their cylinders and placed them in the bin beside Mary.
“Check the gauges for capacity.”
“One says about 12 hours . . . the other is just over 11.”
“Let’s keep looking.”
After ten more minutes of combing through the debris, she finally found the cache of emergency cylinders. Normally, several days’ worth of supply was always available, but many of the canisters had cracked and emptied. Still, she retrieved a dozen full ones and put them in the bin.
“Kate?”
“Yeah.”
“Any idea what caused this?”
Kate sighed. She’d run an infrared diagnostic on the debris, scanning for any kind of marker to help her trace the cause, but nothing obvious appeared.”
“I’ve no theory. Someday, they’ll root up the automated log recording box from this mess and figure it out.”
Silence returned as she collected a few tools that still worked, scattered around the area. She figured Mary had dozed off with the painkiller, so her trembling voice surprised her when she whispered, “Do you think I did it?”
“Accidents happen all the time, and despite what we’d like to believe, sometimes there are no reasons for them.” She secured the salvaged tools in the cargo bin next to Mary. “Oh, no doubt there are specific causes for lots of effects, and our tiny brains love it when the dots all line up. But not every accident has a knowable cause, and I’ll bet this is one of those.” She mounted the scooter and gazed across the horizon. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Do you still have your indie-comm?”
“It’s connected here on the dashboard . . . why?”
“Maybe . . .” Mary struggled to find her words as the full effect of the pain meds kicked in. “. . . call my dad. The antenna . . . working?”
They returned to the mangled comms tower and Kate poked around in the dust until she retrieved the Yagi antenna, still in one piece. “I’ll use a spare cable in the scooter’s accessory kit, and hook it in through the comms port. But we must put some distance between us and this radiation.”
Kate rode the scooter back to the remains of the power station and located the second LunaScoota tossed into the dust, not far away. Other than being on its side, it appeared to be fully operational. Good thing they built these to withstand a whole lot of abuse. “I’ll tether this one to my machine in case we need it later.”
What crossed Kate’s mind was not whether Mary had somehow caused the implosion: she felt certain Mary wasn’t responsible for that at all. In fact, short of deliberate sabotage, she could think of nothing that might have caused this amount of devastation. Instead, a darker thought had crept into her head and settled there, one that kept calling for attention.
Was our discovery of the Rossian ship somehow behind this?
FIFTEEN
Kate
LunaScootas operated either as separate units or in tandem, much like old-school terran locomotives, except they could be linked side by side and one after the other. Kate latched the second scooter that Mary rode to starboard of her unit, but left it powered down to conserve its battery.
The decision to fly to the abandoned mining outpost at Mare Frigoris was correct, she knew, but there was no guarantee they’d find the old habitat livable. Still, one objective at a time was the internal mantra. Taskers in the Spacer Program drilled this into her, over and over until it became automatic in the face of an emergency: fix the most critical problem, then move on to the next. It didn’t mean that a Spacer in a dire life or death event could always work their way through it—she’d seen too many of her colleagues perish despite the one obstacle approach. Rather, experience in space and on Earth of people facing insurmountable odds showed they sometimes survived by focusing on the closest challenge first and working the solution for it. One small accomplishment followed by another. The most powerful action, the Taskers said, was to never surrender.
Mary remained in the cargo bin, propped up on the spare seat by a rolled up tarp and bags used for rock specimens. An odd assortment of tools, crates of oxygen cylinders, and anything else Kate could salvage that may prove useful surrounded her. She located the coordinates of the Aristoteles mining site in the Mare Frigoris on the scooter’s nav system and punched in the route. Then, she engaged the antigrav thrusters and as the consist lifted off the surface, it tilted starboard because of the mass of the second scooter. As soon as it was a meter off the ground, its internal compensators kicked in and the machine leveled off.
A hundred meters from the lab ruins sat a high outcrop, and they flew to it, stopping for one last look around before calling Jim on the indie-comm. Kate’s rad counter had fallen into the normal background radiation range, and Mary confirmed hers had too. She attached the Yagi with its new transmission line to a five meter stake and, after a couple of attempts, planted it in a spot where it sank about a meter, more than enough to prevent it from tipping over. Once the comms port on her dash was released and opened, she plugged the other end of the cable into it and, using the commands on the dashboard, synced it to the indie-comm.
Mary groaned as she shifted her weight to get a better view of the set up.
“How are you holding up, Mares? Need any more of the painkiller?”
“Yeah, I’ll take care of it.”
She released another 60 CCs of pseudophine inhalant into her helmet. Kate linked the comms device to both of their radios.
“Ready?”
“Yes.”
The indie-comm connected with the Yagi antenna and it turned out the problem with their previous link to Jim must have come from a bad cable connection. No such issue existed with the current configuration although whether her signal would reach Earth remained uncertain.
Kate punched up Jim’s number and put the call through her encryption filter. After several attempts at establishing a link, the transmitter timed out. She played with the position of the Yagi to improve beam coherence to the west coast of North America and tried again.
Still no luck.
“The signal isn’t powerful enough for reception on Earth. If Jim realized we were trying to communicate he could increase the receiver’s sensitivity at his end.” Kate saw the indie-comm drawing power from the scooter’s electrical system and had an idea. “I’ll try boosting it at this end and see if that works.”
By adjusting the controls on the dashboard, she stepped up the current to the device and retransmitted her call signal. Several minutes passed with no connection.
“I’ll boost it some more, but I’m worried about overloading the circuits. Still, here goes.”
She raised the scooter current again and a warning light flashed on the indie-comm’s screen about the power overage. She looked at Mary. “Here goes.”
Atteberry
“Kate is that you? How is everything up there?” The connection crashed with static and atmospheric noise making readability tenuous.
“Jim, listen carefully. We’ve had. . . garbled. . . catastrophe here
. The entire . . . garbled. . . been destroyed. Mary and I are safe for . . . garbled. . . We’ll wait there . . . garbled. . . but we need a ship . . . garbled. . . . Copy?”
A pause, then Jim’s voice returned. “I copied most. As soon as we’re done, I’ll call Esther and get help.”
“Okay, sounds good. . . garbled. . . is serious. We may not survive.”
“Is Mary there? Can I speak with her?”
In a moment, Mary’s voice came through. “Dad, I’m here . . . garbled. . .a bit but otherwise . . . garbled. . .”
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry I let you go.”
“It was my choice, remember? You wanted . . . garbled. . . this summer. Anyway, we’ve gotta . . . garbled. . .if we’re gonna make it . . . garbled. . . I just wanted to say that I . . . garbled. . . love you, Dad, and . . . garbled. . .”
The connection was deteriorating fast.
“You too, Mares, so much.” Jim’s voice sounded higher than usual.
Kate jumped back on the line. “Tell Esther the cause of . . . garbled. . . is unknown, but my . . . garbled. . .alien ship had something to do with it . . . garbled. . .better be cautious. It’s still here.”
Atteberry waited until he was sure the transmission was over. “Yeah, I’ll tell her.” Then he added quickly, “You took off without leaving a note, Kate. There’s so much we left unsaid.”
Another long pause, full of static and frequency shifts. “I’m sorry, and in . . . garbled. . .happens, I . . . I wish we’d . . . ”
Atteberry sat on his bed in the early morning darkness of his bedroom, the indie-comm still in his hands, and cried. The cruel realization that he may never see his beautiful daughter again tortured him, ripping his heart out with overwhelming guilt for allowing and encouraging her to take the internship on Luna. The pain was like nothing he’d ever experienced before, his own girl, a tangible part of him, torn away for good.
Echoes In The Grey Page 11
