Extinction

by Ray Hammond

  But the truth was that business and money alone were not sufficiently exciting to fully engage Negromonte’s mind. He had been prepared to give up his tennis career after his elder brother died, but he still always wanted more out of life than normal corporate leadership offered. Power and money – for many, drugs in their own way – didn’t grip him the way they had seduced his father or his brother. Nick Negromonte also wanted to have fun.

  His first such business-related extreme-sports achievement had been to complete an untethered space walk of over thirty kilometres. Using only his backpack’s compressed gas for steering and propulsion, he had navigated his way from ERGIA’s first-generation climate-control space station to the newly opened Mandarin-Orbital Hotel – a luxury facility built by a Chinese consortium in near-Earth orbit in 2035. On his arrival he had even performed the hotel’s opening ceremony, and had become its first VIP guest.

  A string of other stunts had followed, many of them involving antique aircraft and space vehicles. But this solo voyage to the moon was his most audacious adventure yet.

  Mission Control for the ‘new’ Apollo 11 launch had been established in the main observation gallery of ERGIA’s Space Station. The role-playing weather brokers had been replaced by space technicians moonlighting from jobs at NASA and from the Russian, European and Chinese Space Agencies.

  Packed in front of the vast observation window was a crowd of TV correspondents and their crews. A kilometre out in space the Apollo spacecraft now floated in an orbit parallel to that of the ERGIA space station itself. Nicholas Negromonte was not intending to begin his re-enactment mission from exactly the same orbit as Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, but only the most nerdish of space enthusiasts would quibble about that.

  The refurbished four-part space vessel had been ferried up to the space station for its final assembly a month before. Externally, the vehicle looked unchanged – except for the ERGIA and LunaSun logos painted on the service module’s flanks. Internally, every piece of wiring and every item of plumbing, heating, cooling, sanitary, life-support and systems technology had been brought fully up to the latest standards. Indeed, when Negromonte had originally inspected his purchase he had shuddered and said to his flight director, ‘Imagine travelling to the moon in this thing. It’s like something Jules Verne dreamed up.’

  But no matter how advanced the newly fitted propulsion units, life-support and computer systems were, there remained one obvious problem with the ancient Apollo technology: it provided very little living space. Even though it had been designed to carry three astronauts, its accommodation was still intolerably cramped by modern standards. There had hardly been enough room for the CEO’s exercise bicycle.

  ‘We can get you there in less than a day, of course,’ the flight director had advised as they had discussed the lack of on-board amenities. Fortunately, modern hydrogen-plasma engines could propel a space vehicle ten times faster than could the unstable chemical fuels used during the early years of space flight.

  ‘No, no, we need the delay to build up tension,’ argued Negromonte. ‘We’ll do it over three days – just like they did back in 1969.’

  All was now quiet inside the viewing gallery as the flight controller announced the minus-thirty countdown. Camera lenses that had been focused on the interior of the viewing chamber now swivelled to capture the image of the old spacecraft leaving orbit.

  The monitor screens all around the gallery lit with a close-up image of Nick Negromonte strapped into the commander’s couch. Realizing that his camera had just gone live, he gave a thumbs-up to all those watching.

  ‘Go for launch,’ ordered the flight director, at minus ten seconds.

  ‘Go for launch,’ echoed Negromonte. Then, in a departure from the script he added, ‘See you on the moon, people.’

  ‘Start engine.’

  ‘Starting engine.’ The new Apollo commander leaned forward and touched a button on the main console.

  ‘Five, four, three . . .’

  A quarter of a billion TV viewers on Earth witnessed flames spurt from the single large rocket nozzle as the spacecraft blasted out of orbit. What few of them realized was that this rocket plume was merely a visual effect created by specially designed computer-controlled fireworks. As they burned their hydrogen fuel pellets, modern plasma engines emitted only a bright blue column of light that would have been difficult for the television cameras to pick up against the bright blue-and-white background of the Earth.

  *

  For over fifty years after first setting foot on the moon, humankind had failed to realize what a vital asset Earth’s sole natural satellite presented. It had been the same, perhaps, when the continents of North America and Australia had been discovered. Explorers arrived, identified and named those great empty land masses, and reported back to their own communities, who then did nothing about the new territories for a generation or more. It took time for the collective consciousness to realize how such a significant new asset might be used – and also for economic growth to expand to a point where new opportunities could be properly exploited.

  Humanity’s first reaction to moon exploration had been one of intense disappointment. After a relay of Americans landed in the late 1960s and early 1970s and reported back that the moon was merely a lifeless lump of barren rock, a dust-covered, crater-scarred, atmosphere-free dead place, no human returned until 2018.

  Then, suddenly, the Americans, Russians and Chinese realized, almost simultaneously, that the moon was, in fact, humankind’s ideal launch pad for most space exploration. It provided the perfect orbiting base, construction site and maintenance depot for all civilian, industrial and military travel throughout the solar system. Even better, it required no guidance, maintenance, orbital realignment or navigation for itself.

  Situated only a quarter of a million miles from the Earth (in terms of the distances of space so close as to be almost touching), the moon provided a stable platform possessing less than one-eighth the gravity of the mother planet as well as ample buried polar ice (providing water and raw hydrogen for rocket fuel) and vast tracts of unclaimed real estate.

  With United Nations approval grudgingly extracted, America, Russia and China had invested massive capital sums to create lunar bases, warehouses, vehicle-construction sites and launch pads, all of which were supplied by a never-ending series of unmanned cargo voyages between Earth and its moon. The Europeans had contributed to the moon’s development by building three luxury hotels that had become extremely popular with space personnel on extended tours of lunar duty.

  Within a decade of this moon-base development beginning in 2024, all maintenance operations for Earth-orbiting satellites, space stations, telescopes and first-generation solar reflectors were being conducted from the lunar surface itself. The cost of lift-off from the moon’s low-gravity, zero-atmosphere surface was less than five per cent of the expenditure from hoisting humans and equipment up into orbit from gravity-heavy, atmosphere-dense Earth. For use on the moon, engines could be built that were both small and light.

  All voyages to Mars now began and finished on the lunar surface. By the time President James T. Underwood was being ferried up to the moon to open the ERGIA Corporation’s vast farm of solar reflectors, over twenty per cent of the Earth-facing side of the satellite was under development.

  *

  Michael Fairfax, Emilia Knight and Steve Bardini flew from London to the Jiuquan Space Centre, 1,000 miles west of Beijing, to catch their own ferry ride up to the lunar base. The alternative for them was to re-enter the United States in order to fly from the Kennedy Moon Terminus in Florida, but Michael considered it highly likely that all three of them would be arrested the moment they set foot on US soil.

  As for all the other attendees, the BBC had been required to supply their names and identity details to the White House Secret Service for vetting, yet no protest or query had been raised by the presidential security agents. Either their crimes against the state were too minor to register
on the White House radar, or the Federal agencies were, as usual, busily embroiled in internecine non-cooperation.

  All three travellers had been into space before, the two seismologists having both served tours of duty on Geohazard’s orbiting space station while Michael had taken Lucy for a weekend to the StarCenter Earth-orbiting hotel not long after they had been married. Being a cautious man, Michael had put his various affairs in order before he and his companions left for Beijing.

  From Pacifica One, Council Leader Chanda Zia was able to report that the breakaway convoy of hulk ships had now returned to rejoin the main platform. As he talked, Chanda utilized the camera network that Michael himself had provided to show their legal representative the current conditions within the community.

  For all of the massive cruise ship’s vast reserves, the food and medicines carried on board the Global Haven had not lasted long. But as Zia clicked through the cameras distributed around the luxury vessel, Michael noticed that the Global Haven still had electrical power from its hydrogen engines and solar-powered auxiliaries. He also noted that its leisure facilities, swimming pools and gardens were all in constant use, and that the desalination units were all working flat out.

  ‘But the most important thing is that we now have one day of rain guaranteed each week,’ said Chanda. As the community leader focused a camera on himself, Michael could see that he was seated in the TV studio aboard the Global Haven. ‘It means that we can now manage our water supplies properly – or we shall be able to, once the ash from the Indonesian volcano has cleared.’

  Michael realized that his client was being too polite to point out that both the scheduled rainfall and their possession of the luxury ship had been gained through the hulk people’s direct action rather than by pursuing their legal case.

  ‘We have our first court date set,’ he told Chanda. ‘March first, next year. We’ll need six of you to come to Europe to give evidence in person.’

  *

  The small group of Americans arrived in Jiuquan on the evening before their moon ferry was due to depart. They were now easy in each other’s company: the tension between the three of them had eased since their hasty escape from the United States a month before.

  Without either of them openly declaring their feelings, Michael and Emilia had sought more time alone together. At first they had worried about upsetting Steve but one morning during their stopoff in London the young seismologist had announced, ‘I’m going sightseeing now – I know you two would like some time together.’ And from that moment on it seemed as if they had become a couple.

  After the three of them had shared a late supper of superb Szechwan dishes in the Jiuquan Palace, Michael and Emilia took a stroll in the hotel’s ornamental gardens. The full moon was in perigee – at its closest point to Earth – vast, gibbous and immediately overhead. It was bathed in a reflected sunlight that revealed in sparkling clarity the mountain ranges and the bruised depressions of its impact craters. Even though the ERGIA resource had not yet been officially opened, its vast farm of solar mirrors was already on-line, shining like a halogen necklace strung around the moon’s equator, reflecting enormous quantities of solar energy back down to the Earth.

  ‘Strange to think we’ll be up there ourselves tomorrow,’ said Emilia softly, as she sat on one of the garden benches. ‘It all seems so unreal.’

  Michael put his arm around her shoulders. ‘I’d like us to visit on our own, one day – sometime when we haven’t got such urgent issues on our minds.’

  Emilia merely nodded and Michael pulled her closer.

  ‘Isn’t it sad, though, that no one’s ever going to see the moon in its natural state again?’ she observed quietly.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, gazing upwards, each lost in their own thoughts. Then they rose, headed back to the hotel and, exchanging a chaste but warm kiss on the lips, returned to their separate rooms.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘On behalf of all of the world’s peoples, I am proud to rededicate this memorial to the three brave Americans who were the first human beings to land here on the moon.’

  In the BBC World television control gallery, executive producer Narinda Damle was himself directing the camera angles to be fed to over 200 partner networks back on Earth.

  President James T. Underwood saluted crisply, then stepped forward towards the monument that had been erected inside the Tranquillity Base Visitor Center thirty years earlier. The white, sculpted obelisk had been positioned right beside the highly polished, carefully preserved Lunar Lander that Armstrong and Aldrin had left behind them on the moon’s surface in 1969. As he pulled a cord, an engraved gilded plate was revealed, recording this first-ever presidential visit to the moon.

  After allowing the main camera to hold this shot for a few seconds, Damle checked the other images he was receiving from external cameras on the moon’s surface.

  ‘Camera thirteen,’ he instructed the vision mixer.

  Against the backdrop of a black, star-studded universe, the rocket exhausts of the refurbished Eagle, the Apollo 11’s Lunar Module, could clearly be seen. Once again, the flames were cosmetic rather than functional, but the pyrotechnic designers had recreated perfectly the effect of ancient chemical propellants.

  Perdy Curtis, seated in the gallery with her boss, had ferried up Magnus Blythe, the BBC’s most august world-affairs correspondent, to provide a running commentary for English-speaking audiences around the world. A dozen other anchor people provided voice-overs for viewers in South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Hardly any of the world’s rolling-news networks had declined to pay for this extraterrestrial feed, and it was beginning to seem as if the vast budget allocated for the project by the BBC would self-liquidate even before any repeat fees were taken into account.

  Damle cut to an interior close-up of Nick Negromonte’s face as he manually controlled the final stages of the Eagle’s descent. Sweat had broken out on the pilot’s furrowed brow as he struggled with the controls to land in the precise spot dictated by the TV coverage – a manoeuvre proving almost as difficult as the original one undertaken by Neil Armstrong in 1969.

  With a final flare of mock retro-rocket fire, Negromonte set the gold-foil-wrapped spacecraft down gently on the lunar surface, only 500 yards from the airlock of the Visitor Center.

  ‘Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed,’ he radioed.

  *

  In Geohazard’s seismic monitoring centre in Athens, Dr Giorgio Zaoskoufis gazed up at the wall-screen displaying the events now unfolding on the moon. He knew that Emilia Knight and her friends would be participating later in the live debate and he was keen to see how their warnings would be received.

  It was early on a Sunday morning and Giorgio and his two scientific assistants were alone in the facility. Although a seismic monitoring team remained on duty around the clock, Geohazard’s admin staff worked normal office hours.

  ‘Excuse me, Doctor Zaoskoufis?’ called out Yoyo Kanii, a trainee seismologist on secondment from the Tokyo monitoring centre. She was gazing into a real-time holographic simulation of a deep-sea trench in the eastern Atlantic. ‘Should we be seeing this much activity along the edge of the African Plate?’

  *

  ‘I am proud to be here today for the opening of this new LunaSun solar-energy resource.’

  James T. Underwood was also very keen to become the first African-American President of the United States to secure a second term in office. His media advisers had assured him that making this trip would enhance the electorate’s perception of him as a youthful and daring candidate.

  ‘From today forward the moon will serve all of humankind. The forty-two thousand mirrors on the lunar surface will eliminate the need for street lighting in eighteen of the world’s major cities. Applied more creatively, the power captured by LunaSun will bring respite to flooded regions, steer hurricanes and tornadoes away from built-up areas, and bring scheduled rain to those millions of people currently for
ced to live on floating hulk cities.’

  Seated immediately behind the President, Nick Negromonte nodded approvingly.

  In the television control gallery, Narinda, Perdy and six technical staff ensured that their live feeds were meeting the needs of all their client broadcasters.

  ‘In a few moments I shall press the button to bring this LunaSun facility officially on-line. But before I do so, I want to say something about those millions of homeless people forced to exist on hulk ships in the southern oceans.’

  Damle frowned. This wasn’t in the prepared text that he had been given. ‘Go to two,’ he said. ‘And give me a very slow zoomin on his face.’

  ‘Next week, the United States of America will place a resolution before the United Nations General Assembly calling for all so-called environmental migrants to be reclassified as official environmental refugees, with all the same rights to resettlement that political refugees currently enjoy. I shall be asking all the developed countries of the world to play their part in solving what has become our planet’s greatest humanitarian problem.’

  Nick Negromonte leaped to his feet to initiate the applause, but all around him people were already rising.

  In the sixth row of the audience, Michael Fairfax also rose to his feet. As he joined in the clapping, his mind was racing: how would this move affect his case? But, even before the applause died away, he realized that the President had, in fact, offered very little. Bringing a resolution before the UN was no guarantee that its member nations would readily agree to take in the millions who sought resettlement. Judging by all such previous efforts, the initiative would grab headlines at first, then degenerate into an unseemly squabble between nations who would prefer the unfortunate refugees to be accepted anywhere but in their own home territories.

  ‘Ready for the button shot,’ Damle alerted, as the President stepped sideways.