Extinction

by Ray Hammond

  Those marooned in Luna City initially attempted to comfort each other with unlikely reassurances about what might be happening back home. But after four or five days in a state of shock and denial, people began to finally accept, and then to admit out loud, that all those on Earth must surely have died.

  After his family tragedy in San Francisco, Michael Fairfax now had only his parents at Lake Tahoe to think of. But both Emilia Knight and Steve Bardini had large families to worry about – in Boston and Chicago respectively. A shocked silence and a profound sense of grief increasingly pervaded Luna City. There wasn’t a resident or visitor who had not lost someone close – and most had lost whole families. People huddled together in small groups, friends comforting each other. The Archbishop of Boston announced a Mass of Vigil for those left behind on the Earth.

  One American ferry navigator, revealing himself to be a Baptist lay preacher, organized prayer meetings and Bible readings. He displayed a banner painted silver-on-blue with the words THE DAY OF REVELATION IS AT HAND. Soon makeshift temples, churches and mosques were established in unoccupied offices of the administration building.

  *

  Nicholas Negromonte killed himself by running out of one of LunaSun’s external exits without wearing a moon suit and without carrying any form of oxygen or life-support system. He had used his master pass to override the security systems of the triple-chamber airlock – systems which ensured that those exiting wore fully functioning suits and safety equipment. Then he bounded out, dressed only in jeans and a T-shirt, across the moon’s airless surface.

  No one inside the facility saw him head into the nearby dunes; he had chosen the middle of a sleep period in which to end his misery.

  But despite this desperate attempt to commit suicide, Negromonte had not remained dead very long. A maintenance crew returning to Luna City from a shift spent mothballing the solar-reflector farm had spotted a figure moon-bounding from the airlock of the LunaSun building. They got to him quickly, but he was already unconscious and showing no signs of life.

  After strapping an oxygen mask to his face, the maintenance workers rushed their former boss back inside, cracked open the resuscitation kit kept just inside the airlock, and started to administer defibrillating electric shocks.

  They eventually saved Negromonte’s life. But to their dismay his anguish on regaining consciousness rendered him incoherent. He was immediately admitted to the Medical Center where he was heavily sedated and placed on a suicide watch.

  *

  For the emergency public meeting the American President had dressed himself in a sombre navy suit and a crisp white shirt. His aides had even managed to find him a black tie. Underwood himself had been married and had had three teenage children, although he wore the tie not just as a mark of respect for his own family but for all humanity.

  At the floor manager’s cue he stepped up to the microphone. ‘This is the President of the United States speaking to all people gathered here on the moon, as well as to those of you currently out in space or in the Martian colonies. As we all know, the Earth has suffered a terrible catastrophe, and it seems that we have all lost our loved ones back home.’ He hesitated, with a choke in his voice, then continued, ‘It also seems that I am no longer president of anything. Our once-proud nation has ceased to exist.’

  Underwood paused again, visibly fighting his emotions. Damle ordered the camera operator to close in on the man’s face.

  ‘I know that we all wish to grieve in our own way, but we have to consider our mutual safety – and the safety of those others now out in space. From what I am told, there are sufficient ongoing supplies of air and fresh water for all of us here to survive in Luna City. With a simple rationing scheme, enough food is likely to be produced to meet our needs for the foreseeable future. The biotechnicians in the lunar farms are already stepping up their rate of food production.

  ‘But there are others to think of. Altogether, we believe eighteen hundred and ten human souls are currently in space orbiting the Earth. The hotels and larger space stations have food and water supplies that will last them for some months, perhaps longer, but many of the smaller scientific stations will soon be running short. Although I no longer have any automatic right of leadership, I must call on all ferry pilots and their crew to resupply any of those space stations that become in need. We have everything necessary to keep our small fleet of ferries operational for some years to come.’

  Inside the assembly hall the audience listened distractedly. Few were yet ready emotionally to think about the future.

  ‘If, as it seems, the Earth has been made uninhabitable, this city here on the moon will have to become humankind’s new home, along with the pioneer colonies on Mars. We must now start to get used to the fact that we may never in our lifetimes be able to return to Earth.’

  Once again, Underwood’s overwhelming emotions caused him to pause in his address.

  ‘As I have said, there is no longer any authority vested in me and I am aware that I personally bear a heavy and awful responsibility for what has happened to the Earth. My government was not only a champion of climate management, we ignored, even suppressed, the warnings we were given.

  ‘For that reason I now relinquish any vestige of my office that may remain. I formally resign as President of any American population or nation that may have survived. May God forgive me.’

  All were now silent and fully attentive. Underwood closed his eyes and stood for a few moments, head bowed. When he finally looked up again, the audience saw that his eyes were filled with tears.

  ‘All I would like to add is that, in time, you must all begin to adapt to new social structures. Our groupings are too small – whether here or on Mars – to require sophisticated forms of governance. But to maintain the ideals of democracy we shall need some sort of electoral system to make decisions, to establish our rules for living. You will have to choose a new leader, but all that will have to follow later. For the moment, I can only urge you, as one human being to another, to care for each other and to share our communal assets equally.

  ‘There will be temptations to give way to grief, to become angry and to lash out and do damage to others – even to the harm of this fragile community. I beg you to resist such violent urges. The welfare of all of us depends on it. May God bless us all.’

  *

  Over the following six weeks, two women and three men from the stranded moon community committed suicide by finding ingenious ways to override airlock safety features and running unprotected into the vacuum of the lunar landscape. Unlike Negromonte, they were not fortunate enough to be rescued before they expired fully. The former ERGIA boss himself remained under sedation in the Medical Center. Among those inclined to black humour, such suicides became known as ‘Taking A Moon Walk’.

  Emilia Knight finally took Michael Fairfax to bed with her, but for comfort, not sex. They both lay fully clothed, holding each other, in an embrace that remained emotional rather than erotic.

  Everyone trapped on the moon remained in a profound state of shock. The doctors said that the widely experienced feelings of despair, guilt and personal worthlessness were normal and only to be expected.

  Negromonte’s former personal fitness trainer, Sammy Giles, became an inspiration to all when he embarked on a campaign to promote physical fitness. ‘At least two hours’ working-out each day,’ he evangelized. ‘If you don’t maintain your muscular structure in this low-gravity environment, your body will begin to atrophy.’

  There were some who asked what the point was. If they were doomed to live on the moon for the rest of their lives, why bother striving for Earth-level fitness? Sammy’s response was brutally direct: if the human body’s normal loadings and stresses were abandoned, circulatory failure would follow within months.

  Not all within the trapped community heeded the plea for restraint made by the former US President. Twenty-four hotel staff requisitioned ten cases of the finest vintage wines and spirits from the cell
ar of the Luna Hilton, took over an unoccupied suite on the third floor, and there began a three-day party of such extreme sexual licentiousness that it rivalled the plague orgies of the Middle Ages.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ‘It looks as if dry land is emerging once again,’ Emilia Knight remarked to Steve Bardini and Michael Fairfax. ‘Those are definitely land signatures.’

  She had projected data from the Geohazard satellites up onto one of the BBC’s monitors in the meeting hall. Now that all of the company’s Earth-based sensors had been destroyed, they had to rely on passive probing with infra-red cameras and laser beams to establish what was occurring on the beleaguered planet below. But it seemed that the magnetic disturbance encompassing the Earth had by now almost disappeared.

  ‘Not only are the ocean levels falling, but there seems to be a distinct reduction in seismic activity,’ observed her former assistant.

  ‘I suppose your systems are still working correctly?’ asked the non-scientific member of the party.

  ‘Well, what’s left of them – those in space.’ Emilia glanced down at her communicator screen. ‘Our satellites are all solar-powered, so they’ll go on for ever – or until some piece of internal equipment breaks down.’

  ‘I wonder if there’s anything remaining on that land?’ mused Steve.

  It was now almost four months since Earth had first been shrouded in smoke and ash. A few weeks after the cataclysm itself, Geohazard’s satellite sensors had reported that the temperature around the planet was falling rapidly once again.

  ‘It’s the volcanic winter that everybody predicted,’ Emilia had explained. ‘It’s always been assumed that it was a series of major volcanic eruptions that caused the ice ages of the past. The sheer amount of ash and debris blown into the atmosphere forms an umbrella that stops the sun’s rays from reaching the planet’s surface. Everywhere then becomes arctic – for thousands of years.’

  Steve tapped his communicator screen and turned to his two friends again. ‘In fact, we have to investigate what’s left on this land. There might still be intact buildings – warehouses, stores, landing strips, fuel dumps . . .’ He tailed off as his excitement began to mount. Stupidly, he had even begun to imagine that some people might still be alive.

  ‘Let’s ask Perdy if we can take a look through the Earth-orbit telescopes,’ said Emilia, rising. ‘There might be a break in the ash cover somewhere.’

  An hour later they were standing in the TV gallery, staring at screens showing only endless expanses of brown and grey ash-cloud. The BBC technicians had patched the gallery into the three large telescopes trained on the planet’s surface from various points in Earth orbit.

  ‘Nothing,’ sighed Emilia. ‘No break in the cover at all.’

  ‘What about getting those ERGIA people to whip up some winds, to blow it all away?’ suggested Perdy.

  The three friends turned and stared at her in what was almost a single collective movement.

  ‘You mean we should turn the solar reflectors back on, risk interfering with the Earth’s magnetic polarity all over again?’ said Steve grimly.

  Perdy shrugged. ‘It was only an idea – and it’s not as if it could do any more harm. Who’s down there to worry about it?’

  The members of the group exchanged glances.

  ‘That’s true,’ agreed Emilia. ‘And we really do need to see what’s going on down there. Perhaps we could just turn them on briefly.’

  They summoned Doctor Isaiah Chelouche, formerly the chief technology officer of LunaSun Inc – until Nicholas Negromonte had ordered all operations shut down.

  When he arrived, the bearded meteorologist was out of breath. He had been working out in the gym when Emilia’s text flash had reached him. He hadn’t even bothered to change out of his sweat-stained clothes. ‘You said this was urgent,’ he gasped.

  Emilia showed him the data indicating that large areas of dry land had reappeared on the Earth’s surface, then asked, ‘Is there any way you could use your technology to clear a hole through that canopy of ash so we could take a look?’

  Chelouche sank slowly into one of the gallery chairs and gazed up at the multiple images. ‘Have you got any data on the density of that ash cloud?’

  Steve quickly tapped into his communicator, then transferred the information up onto one of the large screens.

  ‘Yep,’ he said, pointing at the monitor. ‘Our satellites have been probing the atmosphere ever since this disaster happened. We’ve got data on density, porosity, moisture content, stratification, temperatures, particle sizes – in fact every sort of measurement you could need.’

  The meteorologist nodded. ‘Good, good,’ he said. ‘But I would have to ask Mr Negromonte’s permission and he’s . . .’

  They nodded; the former ERGIA boss was still confined to the Medical Center, heavily sedated and under constant watch. The gossip was that Nick Negromonte had gone mad when he had realized what he had personally contributed to.

  ‘Just have a word with your ERGIA colleagues, and I’ll talk to the President,’ said Emilia. Despite his public resignation and the loss of his nation, everybody in Luna City still referred to James Underwood in that way and many still sought his counsel. ‘Let’s meet up again in a few hours.’

  *

  Three weeks after Emilia Knight first made her request, power was returned to the 42,000 solar mirrors of the LunaSun reflector farm. In the absence of their boss, the ERGIA executives had met with Underwood to seek his advice about their resuming some climate-modification output.

  ‘Well, there’s not a lot more harm you can do, is there?’ the ex-president said, rather ungraciously. ‘Why not? Go ahead. Let’s see if anything’s left down there.’

  With his team gathered around him, Chelouche set about reprogramming the company’s weather-management computers.

  ‘It’s not winds that we need,’ he explained to Emilia, ‘but spot applications of heat to cause repeated inversions of the atmosphere – so as to draw moisture up very high, creating stratospheric rain, to wash the ash out of the upper altitudes. If we do that over and over, we can soak the ash until it falls back to Earth. That way we can wash the dirt out and eventually clean up the whole atmosphere.’

  As the thousands of mirrors on the moon re-angled themselves to catch and reflect the sun, all of ERGIA’s other climate-modification systems orbiting the Earth also turned themselves back on, redirecting their solar reflectors to create the energy patterns that would start the process leading to repeated inversions of the planet’s climate.

  In the broadcast gallery, Emilia’s small group watched anxiously as the reflected sunlight first began to play over and then concentrate more fixedly on the night side of Earth.

  ‘Chelouche calculates that it will take between eight and twelve months to clean the atmosphere completely,’ Emilia told the others. ‘But we might see small gaps appear in the ash cover after about six months.’

  *

  In Room 243 of the Luna Hilton, Michael Fairfax and Emilia Knight were sleeping soundly. According to the GMT display on their bedside table – beside which was positioned a photograph of Lucy, Ben and Matthew – it was 5.56 a.m., shortly before dawn. Soon the exterior surfaces of the hotel, and of all the other buildings making up the extended lunar metropolitan habitat, would begin to reduce their built-in sun shading, to admit the sun’s rays for the start of a new ‘day’. Earth’s own circadian rhythms were carefully mimicked throughout Luna City.

  Michael and Emilia had at last become lovers. Hugs and embraces intended to comfort each other had gone on to become sensual, and had then turned sexual. To justify their almost guilty pleasure to themselves, they reminded one another that they had both felt strong stirrings of attraction back on Earth, even before they had started on their doomed campaign to warn the world about the risk of magnetic catastrophe. Their love was not like the frantic escape into lust that was breaking out elsewhere all over Luna City, where scores of casual sexual pairi
ngs were now evolving as the marooned humans celebrated their own survival and warded off thoughts about the future.

  The process of cleansing the Earth’s atmosphere had now been going on for seven months, and it had become a habit for all in the lunar community to drop by the assembly hall regularly to check what progress was being made. Over the last few weeks tantalizing glimpses of blue ocean, even dark smudges of land, had been revealed by the passage of orbiting telescopes. But no one had yet been able to identify the continents sighted with any certainty.

  The phone beside their bed shrilled and Emilia stretched out an arm.

  ‘What?’ she asked groggily.

  ‘You two, get down here now!’ It was Steve Bardini calling from the assembly hall. ‘You’ve just got to see this!’

  Ten minutes later they stepped into the TV gallery to join Steve who was standing beside Perdy Curtis at the control panel.

  The large monitors displayed views of a planet that now seemed almost wholly clear of smoke. Some large white and grey clouds were swirling in typical cyclonic formations, but little else was familiar about this globe.

  The side of Earth facing them was three-quarters in sunlight, and the observers on the moon could see two large dark land masses that seemed totally alien. One enormous continent in the northern hemisphere looked like an upside-down version of Australia, while a second massive shaped tract of land ran south from the equator to disappear beneath the pole itself. Already they could see the white gleam of frost at the poles.

  The door behind them banged open, and Dr Isaiah Chelouche burst in. ‘We’ve done it, we’ve done it!’ His eyes blazed with excitement. ‘Less than two per cent of the ash now remains airborne. Air temperatures are almost back to normal.’

  ‘Then I suggest you turn everything off again immediately,’ said Michael sharply, turning to confront the excited meteorologist. ‘We don’t want any more accidents, do we?’

  The assembly hall was now filling up rapidly as word flashed around the city. Perdy patched all of the three telescope images to screens around the room.