A hint of light slashed across the San Francisco skyline, shining through the parted curtains, and over the bed and wall. The Moon, reflecting the sun’s rays, bled into the black sky. Atteberry wiped his eyes and took several deep breaths.
He thought Esther was still in New York and probably awake, doing whatever it was she did there, so he punched in her code to link her up. After a few seconds, her v-mail came on and Jim said, “Esther, it’s me. Listen, call me as soon as you get this. It’s about Mary and Kate. Something bad has happened on Luna, and I need your help. Please call.”
He stumbled down the hallway to the kitchen and hit the lights, the sting of which caused his eyes to close for a second or two. He poured a glass of water from the tap, took several swallows, then paced around the breakfast nook feeling useless.
A few minutes later, his indie-comm pinged with an incoming link from Esther.
“Got your message, what’s up?”
Something in his mind screamed at him to be careful. “Esther is this connection secure?”
“Stand by.” Atteberry heard the double tones and ping of encryption on the link. “What’s going on, Jim?”
Jim swallowed hard, pushing the fear and panic from his chest. “There’s been an accident at the lunar lab. Kate says something destroyed it. She and Mary are okay for the moment and they’re going to wait, so we need to get a ship there right away to rescue them.”
Esther paused at the other end. Atteberry heard her breathing amid the background sounds of other people talking, laughing, something being announced over a PA system.
“Esther, you there?”
“Yes, I got all that . . . just thinking. Listen, I’m about to board my shuttle flight home but I’m wondering if I should stay here in New York instead. Titanius must be on top of the problem with their lab, and may already be diverting ships. I can speak with the CEO about it too.”
“Thank you so much, Esther, really, I can’t—”
“That’s okay. I’ll make some calls and get back to you soon. In the meantime, if they contact you again, tell me right away, okay?”
“Of course, but it’s possible their comms unit malfunctioned too. Before we finished speaking, we lost the connection, and that was that.”
“Understood. Talk soon.”
The link terminated, and Jim surprised himself by having wandered into the living room while on the call with Esther. He flopped onto the sofa and turned on the side-table lamp. The sun would be up soon and, no matter what happened next, that thought alone gave him a small measure of comfort.
I need to tell Janet.
They’d been estranged since Mary was eight years old, divorced shortly after the Mount Sutro business, and had had no further contact since. Not a card on Mary’s birthday, not an update on where she was or what she was doing . . . nothing. Of course, as a spy or NDU agent or whatever the hell she was, it made sense for her to be incommunicado. Atteberry didn’t know if she was still alive although someone should have told him if she’d been killed. He felt gutted and broken when she left him and Mary all those years ago, and even though they were now apart, he missed her terribly although their marriage was, for all intents and purposes, a sham, a part of the NDU plan to do the things those spy agencies do.
Still, after the tower came down and the subspace transmitting station with it, Janet said she’d know if they were in trouble, so there was no point trying to contact her . . . she would simply be aware. That brought him no comfort. He needed to speak with her, to tell her that their daughter’s life was in serious jeopardy.
He sighed and padded back into the kitchen to brew some coffee. While he poured water into the machine and measured out the beans, Atteberry shook his head in disbelief. Exploring space was as safe, if not safer, than air travel on Earth. The advances made in safety redundancy systems and monitoring over the past few decades were huge. This should not have happened. He understood something about the setup, about the operating protocols, life support, comms, and so on from the Astronomical Society meetings. Several speakers from the TSA and other groups spoke to them about space exploration, not only on Luna but on Mars and Eros too, and plans for the other planets and asteroids in the belt. Despite the increased activity, an incident in space like this was rare.
The machine gurgled and Atteberry poured himself a mug. He carried it over to the breakfast nook and sat down. The sky over the city was beginning to lighten in muted pinks and oranges.
Something Kate said before their link ended haunted him. She pointed out the alien ship was still there, on Luna, and he concluded she wouldn’t mention that if there wasn’t more going on. If that vessel was the Rossian craft they’d heard in 2085—and it seemed likely it was—then what was it doing on the Moon? Could it have destroyed the lab and put the lives of Kate and Mary at risk?
So many questions, but first: he needed to get them home safe. Atteberry trusted Kate with Mary’s life, but still, as her father, he had an obligation to help somehow, to do something. Sitting around like this drove him nuts; made him feel like he wasn’t being a good dad.
He sent Esther a non-encrypted message on the indie-comm.
Would like to help. What can I do?
He punched the device and fired the message out, then shuffled to the basement and turned on his computer. After accessing the CalNet information system, he searched for the whereabouts of Janet Chamberlain like he’d done a thousand times before, but all he found was exactly the same as every other time. The data trail on Janet ended the day she left him and Mary almost ten years ago. Home town, school, the job in Washington, policy papers on discussion boards . . . all in the public domain.
Since then, nothing.
How the hell can I tell you our daughter’s life is in peril?
Katie
The air in the room chilled her, like a winter morning. She wondered for a brief instant whether she’d left the window open in her bedroom back home, then realized where she was and what they’d done.
“Katie . . . Katie?”
A warm hand caressed her cheek. She stirred and opened her eyes.
“Do you remember where you are?”
The sound reverberated through her head, faintly recognizable. She focused on the nurse’s face, the smile and pulled-back hair, the one who dried her tears before going under.
“I’m at the hospital,” she whispered, surprised by the alien nature of her own voice.
“Yes, and everything went well. You’ll stay here for a day and then return to your dorm.”
“Mm.”
The nurse poked around with the machines by her bed, then left. The smile had disappeared. Her entire un-whole body ached, especially her abdomen. Bandages covered her tummy, and she inched her hand over them, then up to her chest where more tape and gauze hid parts no longer there. She squeezed her eyes tight.
A vision of her mother appeared in her mind, from a photograph taken in the kitchen. Katie was seven or eight years old, sitting at the table with a bowl of cereal in front of her. Sunlight caught her mother’s hair just so, and made her smile even warmer. She had her arm around Katie, holding her close, as if trying to fit in the camera’s frame. The open, grey cardigan hung loosely over a white blouse. She held that memory, tracing every detail of the morning her dad took the photo, and fixated on her mother’s face and breasts as her hand lingered over the bandages. A lump rose in her throat; a sting in her nose.
Kate
The LunaScoota, as a moon-roving machine, was built solid but not designed to fly at any significant altitude. It was rated for cruising up to 10 meters high, but rarely ever did given the work Kate used it for. The secondary scooter now strapped and latched to hers, along with Mary and other supplies in its open cargo hold, forced her to cruise even lower than she normally would, around three meters off the lunar surface.
Because of this, the course she laid in for Aristoteles took them east across the Mare Crisium, past the rocky outcrops and craters near Proclus
, then north-east along the Mare Tranquillitatas, and over the 1972 Apollo 17 landing site. Then, they flew through the Mare Serinitatas, and due north to the Aristoteles crater and the Mare Frigoris. The entire trip would cover just over 2,500 kilometers and, at a cruising speed of 300 km/h, would take the better part of eight hours. Kate calculated they had sufficient oxygen reserves to make the trip with plenty to spare—that didn’t worry her. Rather, whether the mine workers’ habitat still functioned remained a mystery and if their reserves would hold out until a ship reached them underpinned everything else.
She linked her envirosuit computer to read Mary’s vital signs, and within a few minutes of travel at cruising velocities, those bio-markers—and Mary’s rhythmic breathing—showed that she’d fallen asleep from a combination of the painkiller, the dissipation of adrenaline, and even fatigue from the stress of wondering if this was the end of her young life.
A couple hours into the flight, Kate switched the scooter to auto-pilot and stretched her back and leg muscles. Fatigue bit hard into her too, and she managed to nap for ten minutes here, fifteen there. ETA to the mine site read 9 hours, 48 minutes, and at some point, she’d need to stop and stretch properly before continuing. Their course took them close to the Apollo landing site near Dorsa Barlow, just before reaching the Mare Serinitatas. She would stop there as long as the trip proceeded smoothly.
Not only were the scooters built to take the abuse of harsh space environments, but they also had massively efficient, battery-driven thrusters that could operate full out for about 30 hours, so Kate didn’t worry about running out of juice on the way there. Besides, she had the second scooter as a backup in case anything went wrong with hers. But so far, so good. She monitored its systems on the dashboard and all lights shone green. If I ever get off this damn rock, I’ll let the designers know they built one hell of a machine here.
Mary grunted and moaned as she pulled herself out of sleep and, in a raspy voice, asked, “Where are we?”
“Cruising through the Mare Tranquillitatas. I plan to stop for a stretch.” Her response was met with silence. “How are you doing?”
She inhaled deeply. “Good. That sleep helped. My arm feels huge, all swelled up I suppose, but the pain isn’t nearly as bad. Whatever you did, it worked.”
“Glad to hear. When we get to the habitat, I’ll put a medi-patch on it, too.”
“Where did you learn to do that? Like, is there nothing you can’t do?”
Kate’s gaze rested on the horizon screaming toward her. Above her head, the Earth followed like a distant alien moon. “There’s plenty I can’t do, Mares, lots of things. But they drilled first aid and survival into us as Spacers. I should be thankful for that training, I suppose.” Mary’s vitals remained stable, scrolling across the bottom part of Kate’s visor. “Your heart rate’s looking good, by the way.”
Mary thanked her then went silent again for several minutes.
“Kate?”
“Yeah?”
“Since this might be the end of . . . if we don’t make it off safely, do you have any regrets?”
She snickered. “Sure, I do.”
“Me too.” A pause. “I’ll tell you mine if you want to share yours. Like, if this truly is it, let’s not leave anything unspoken between us, okay?”
Several more minutes passed. Kate did not want to be the first to spill her guts all over the lunar landscape. She thought about all the things she wished could have been different, starting with the loss of her parents. Didn’t want her any more, they’d told her . . . living without an identity and still screwed up over it . . . or not saying anything to Jim Atteberry about their friendship, about whatever definition of love she struggled with . . . or agreeing to have Mary join her as an intern here, and everything that’s happened. The guilt and shame overwhelmed her.
“I wish none of this alien crap showed up, and because it did, I regret that you’re here and that I put your life in danger,” Kate spoke in a monotone voice, like she was reading some boring training manual. “That’s an easy one.”
“Yeah, I regret being mean with my dad sometimes. I thought he knew all the answers. Now I see he’s just another human being like the rest of us, struggling to find his way in this neural universe.”
Kate recalled how attached those two had been for the longest time, and could only imagine the conversations they’d had about her coming up to the lunar lab. At, what, seventeen years old, there’s Mary pulling away, about to step out on her own, taking on a risky internship, and maybe losing her life over it all.
“I should have spoken to your dad before I left. That was selfish and small of me.”
“When was that?”
“After the Sutro night, remember?”
“Yeah.” Another long pause. “You want to tell me about it?”
Several more minutes passed, and Kate appreciated how Mary didn’t push her into saying anything she didn’t want to, and she sure as hell preferred ignoring her odd relationship with Jim. Still, she recognized it had been eating away at her, and she’d rather not die without addressing this.
“When I left the Spacer Program in . . .” she thought a moment, “the fall of 2082, I got placed as an instructor at City College. My first day there—I remember it so well—the sky was a brilliant blue, soft sunlight, the way it is in September, and I showed up on campus a week before classes began without a clue.” The Apollo 17 landing site blipped on to the scooter’s nav map. They’d be there shortly. Kate took a deep breath and continued. “Somehow, I found my way to the bookstore. Not sure why I thought about going there, but anyway, I wandered around the computer science section, looking at all the books and data slates piled high, found the ones for the courses I’d teach, and that’s when I saw your dad.” She paused.
“I remember him saying you guys met at the bookstore.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I looked totally lost because he approached me to see if I needed help finding anything and we ended up spending the whole afternoon together. He got me set up with the admin people, showed me around campus. Hell, he even helped me find a place to stay.” Kate took the controls of the scooter and veered off course toward the landing site for a break.
“Mary, I’ll be honest. I’ve never had feelings of love like you’ve had . . . the romantic kind I keep hearing about, that you fall in to, that makes you tremble when you see that special person, or the one you daydream about all the time. I’ve never known that.” She brought the scooter a few meters higher to cross over the Dorsa Barlow outcrops. “But one thing’s for sure, and that is I admire Jim, your dad, an awful lot, and I respect him more than anyone else.” She paused and eased up on the throttle. “Is that love? I don’t think I’ll ever find out. But I do regret not saying anything when I abandoned him and my job the day after Mount Sutro. I should’ve at the very least left him a note. He deserved as much.”
Five minutes of silence passed as Kate maneuvered the scooter down to the Apollo 17 landing site. “Time for a stretch, eh? You up for that?”
“Sure.”
Oddly, her mood lightened, as if keeping that to herself these past years had been much more of a burden than she imagined. Releasing it brought more optimism about finding a way home, despite the uncertainty of the mine site and the alien ship. She suddenly felt happier than she had since—
The possibility of seeing Jim again also motivated her. Years ago, she’d lost her family, and vowed not to lose the next closest thing. Perhaps she’d been looking at love incorrectly all along, that it wasn’t another part removed by the surgeries. Maybe it was something she had purposefully denied herself . . . that she could change if she truly wanted to.
“Thanks for telling me that, Kate.”
SIXTEEN
Esther
The hovercab Esther rode in eased up in front of Titanius Headquarters in Manhattan, dropped her there, and merged back into the silent traffic on FDR Drive. She pulled her small luggage bag behind her and swung through the rev
olving door to the lobby. A couple hours had passed since she’d spoken with Jim Atteberry; just under that, she left a message for Clayton to contact her as quickly as possible.
He hadn’t called yet.
Esther’s eyes adjusted to the lighting in the bright atrium. She paused and observed the activity. Two techs dressed in white lab coats ran down a corridor off the main foyer, the shorter one carrying folders and a data tablet. The commissionaire who greeted her with a wide smile yesterday now had a grim, concerned look on his face. Another pair of management types marched across the open space, entered an awaiting elevator cab, and were swallowed up.
They must know about the lab.
Presenting herself at the Visitor’s Kiosk, she dropped her luggage beside her and leaned forward. “Dr. Esther Tyrone. I’m here to see Clayton Carter.”
The commissionaire, with a hint of recognition in his eye, asked, “Is he expecting you, Doctor?”
Esther gambled that he’d welcome her and replied in the affirmative.
Fingers flew over a touch keyboard and the commissionaire invited her to wait while an escort arrived to take her to the executive suites. She moved her luggage off to a bank of chairs and remained standing.
Within moments, a confused middle-aged woman stepped off the elevator and approached her. Esther recognized her as Clayton’s assistant, Marla Sullivan. “Dr. Tyrone, this is a pleasant surprise, but I wasn’t aware that Mr. Carter was expecting you back so soon, and this really isn’t a good—”
“Listen, I know all about the accident on Luna, and I’m here to assist. The two scientists, Kate Braddock and the intern Mary Atteberry, are alive. We’ve heard from them. Now, I must share this information with Clayton.”
Echoes In The Grey Page 12
