He looked unconvinced, or maybe he was wishing he’d hit me harder. I don’t know. I headed down the stairs to Lunar Ground Control, slower this time. The mantra “slow is fast” existed for a reason that I’d totally ignored when I’d been running.
The door to the LGC was shut, as it should be, which was a relief. The chances of someone working in the LGC being able to turn off the power without anyone noticing was slim. I’d be able to get a list of everyone who was on duty and we could go over the logs in a debrief.
I bounded back up the stairs and went to the module directly above the LGC. Smaller than my bunk, the Remote Power Control Module was a legacy system that used to house the fuses and breakers for the colony. It was still here because the IAC believed in redundancy.
I opened the door, which moved easily. I’d never wanted padlocks on the Moon before this point. Inside, only my PGT offered any light. Racks filled the little chamber with thick vines of wiring. It had been designed to allow for the expansion of the colony by routing to a new breaker board in the OpsMod.
But cutting something in here would have the same effect as blowing a fuse or flipping one of the new breakers.
Gnawing on the inside of my lip, I ran the light of my PGT over the racks, squinting at the cramped labels. In its dim glow, I had trouble getting my eyes to focus. Moving my head back didn’t help because the writing was so tiny. I turned old memories over, trying to find the main power.
Command and control, communications, lighting, life support …
From the pathway outside, a flashlight lit up the interior with a white glare, blinding me. “Nicole?” A young woman’s voice. Cultured. British but rounder—
“Aahana?” I raised my hand to block the light.
“What are you doing?” She lowered the flashlight so it wasn’t pointing directly at me.
What an excellent question. Give as much truth as I could and it would probably fly. “Legacy systems. I was part of the installation team when the colony was new.” I stepped out to join her, gesturing to the interior because shutting the door would make it look like I was hiding something. “I thought I’d see if I could spot a problem.”
“That’s not protocol…”
“Hey! Good job remembering your training. Makes me proud … In truth, since protocol didn’t spot the problem the first time we lost power, I was moving on to second-level troubleshooting.” I gestured to the flashlight. “What about you?”
“Faustino told me to check the old RPCM…” She stared at the module and then back at me and then down at the drill. “What were you doing with a drill in there?”
“Flashlight.” I held it up, pointing to the PGT’s light. But I could also see how it would look to her. I needed to segue her away from thinking about me, and one of the best ways to do that was to make her an ally. “I came from the gallery and it was the best option, but not great. Give me a hand?”
She hesitated, looking at the entrance to the little room. “What are we looking for?”
“We start with the obvious first and eliminate that.” I stepped back in, hoping that she was just a pawn of Faustino and further hoping that he was just being officious. “Want to bring your light in and help me read these labels?”
Aahana squeezed into a space that would have been too small for two on Earth, but on the Moon your ideas of personal space change dramatically. She shone the light on the racks and it helped, but I still had to squint.
Running my finger along the rack, I glanced sideways at her and tried to steer the conversation even further away from my activities. “By the way … if you don’t want to sound like a rookie, call it a PGT.”
She sighed and it softened her. “I know … I know. Pistol Grip Tool, but it’s still a drill.”
“My dear, are you questioning the wisdom of the IAC and their love for acronyms? Be thankful that you didn’t have to memorize the fifty pages of acronyms we did back when I started.” I laughed with my best finishing school sparkle. “Elma had the worst time with them. I can’t remember, did you have a chance to meet Dr. York before she left?”
“At the reception when our class was accepted.” Her eyes glowed with the fervor they all had when they were talking about The Famous Lady Astronaut. “She was so nice.”
“Elma is that, indeed. Why, one time—” The lights came on. Blinking, I lifted my arm to check my watch. “Sixteen minutes?”
Like last time. What was Icarus doing in those sixteen-minute chunks? And when would the next one come?
* * *
Day two of the quarantine. Everyone was nervous and tense, and that was without knowing about a saboteur, so I decided to try to kill two birds with a single stone. The bridge party that I’d been going on about was under way. I sat across from Danika in Le Restaurant. She kept rubbing the back of her neck, and I couldn’t decide if it was a nervous habit or if her neck hurt.
“Claiming,” Danika said, “all trumps.” We all passed and she noted the contract on her scoresheet, giving me a brief example of her handwriting, which was not a match for “Vicky.”
To my right, Luther stared at his cards waiting for his turn to come around again. “The question, in my mind, is if the lunar caves are really a better model for post-Boil Earth caves than actual Earth.”
“Well, is a more hard environment, no?” Catalina looked over her cards. “The Earth has microorganisms and a breathable atmosphere. If we accept the Earth is going to heat to the point the oceans boil, then we also have to accept the loss of both.”
“If we accept?” I raised my eyebrows. The best minds had spent the decade since the Meteor slammed into the Chesapeake Bay trying to find a way out of the runaway greenhouse we found ourselves in. So, was she an Earth Firster or just using a turn of phrase? “Do you have new insight into the data?”
Catalina shrugged, still studying her cards. “I mean, the oceans they are going to boil, unless a miracle happens, that’s why I believe the lack of microbes here is beneficial. It gives us an idea of what we will have to do in the depths of the Earth.”
Danika frowned. “Wait. I think I have something missed. Why have we a need for caves on Earth?”
Catalina lifted her head, staring at Danika as if she had grown an extra hand. “For people who can’t leave. No matter how successful we have here or the First Mars Expedition, there are people who will never survive launch.”
Like Kenneth.
“Right. Sorry…” Danika rubbed the back of her neck. “Sorry. I am today a little vague.”
Around us, small murmurs of conversation made it sound as if everyone was having a lovely time. We were all so good at sounding as if nothing were wrong, and yet … I folded my cards. “Sweetheart … is your neck stiff?”
Her shoulders sank and she looked down at the table. Luther pulled his head back, nostrils flaring as he understood. A stiff neck was one of the first symptoms of polio.
Catalina looked at the cards as if she could get polio from them and set them down on the table. “Why do we quarantine on Earth if we would come here to get sick?”
“I figured it was just a ruse.” Luther stared at Danika as if she were a piece of unexploded ordnance during the war. “Quarantine wasn’t on the original schedule. Neither was Brazil.”
I slid my chair back. “The original schedule went up with the rocket that exploded.”
“Brazil, though? Understand, I was happy to be home, but…” Catalina scowled. “You might wonder if the IAC is covering up anything.”
“Such as?” I wanted to keep this conversation going, but I also had a responsibility to isolate Danika.
“There’ve been many failure recently, that’s all.” She wiped her hands off on her trousers. “What if they know something is wrong with a piece and ignore it for convenience?”
Luther tossed his cards on the table and shook his head. “If you’re going to believe in conspiracies, may as well go whole hog and start mining for green cheese.”
“I’m not saying
what I believe, only I’m saying I understand why people ask themselves.” She shrugged. “Or maybe there are really space germs.”
I snorted. “Please. That’s something the press latched hold of which has no bearing in reality.”
Luther tipped back in his chair, tapping his chin. “Actually … The increased radiation could account for this…” He waved a hand as if encompassing the entire quarantine situation. “That might be why the vaccine reverted from the attenuated version.”
“That happens on Earth, too.” Two days ago, I hadn’t known that the virus could revert, but after reading Ana Teresa’s report, I did. “It’s infrequent, but it has been known to happen.”
“Sure, but maybe the likelihood is increased here. It’s worth investigating so that people can plan for it, if that turns out to be the case.”
Putting my hand on Danika’s shoulder, I bent down. “Come on, Danika. Let’s find a spot for you to rest.”
She hunched in on herself and rose. I put one hand on her back to steer her and she flinched. Sensitive skin or just nervous? As we walked out of Le Restaurant, people stared at us as if Danika would kill them just with proximity. Ironically, there was a chance that everyone here was infected with polio.
Apparently, 95 percent of people developed no symptoms. Isn’t that fun? A bunch of walking disease vectors and only 4 or 5 percent would get noticeably sick. On the Moon, that meant, statistically, sixteen people. Not bad as epidemics go, except for two things.
The lunar sickbay wasn’t set up to handle sixteen sick people.
It was polio, and you could be fine in the morning and dead by night.
Outside, Danika stopped next to Central Park and brushed her hand across the dandelions. “Do you think the LCA would now let me join Ruben? Since we are both sick.”
“I’ll ask. For the moment, we’re going to take you to lie down and I’ll give him a call.”
People could be infectious up to ten days before they showed any symptoms and after they recovered, they could keep shitting out polio virus for six weeks. This quarantine wasn’t going to end any time soon.
TWENTY-FOUR
LUNAR QUARANTINE ON IN “POLIO” EPIDEMIC
Special to The National Times
ARTEMIS BASE, Moon, April 21, 1963—An outbreak of paralytic poliomyelitis has stopped all traffic to and from the Moon. Declaring that the disease has reached an epidemic stage here in Artemis Base, the Lunar Colony Administrator, after conferring with the director of the International Aerospace Coalition, ordered a drastic quarantine. There have been nineteen cases reported in Artemis Base. So far, the disease has not spread to the three outposts, but Dr. Ana Teresa Almeida Brandão asked the IAC on Friday for authority to impose the quarantine. LCA Frisch said last night, “I would like to reassure the families back on Earth that we are doing everything in our power to keep the lunar residents safe and healthy.”
According to the IAC, plans are under way to procure enough of the new polio vaccine to send to the Moon on the next available ship. Even with all urgency, it will be weeks before the supply ship reaches the Moon. Opponents of the space program point to the outbreak, and the severity of it, as a sign that germs in space are more virulent than they are on Earth. The IAC did not respond to a request for comment.
Day three of the quarantine and we’d had two more people come down with fevers. I’d packed Wafiyyah Zinat Abbasi and Eric Wright off to sickbay. I’d caught Todd Sanders washing his hands with disinfectant until the knuckles were cracked.
I bent over a table in Midtown, with my good arm nearly up to my shoulder trying to snake an RF antenna cable back into place. To think, I’d been pleased when I realized that I couldn’t clean the toilets because of my cast. But that was before I realized that Helen and I were the only ones qualified to do spacesuit maintenance among the people quartered in Midtown. With the quarantine in place, we were the ones responsible for doing the full wipe-down and cleaning of the suits after use.
Fascinating thing about a quarantine where you have spacesuits. Unvaccinated people in critical roles could still go through the airlocks to their regular shifts, provided there was a suit for them. Was a spacesuit overkill? Yes. Polio wasn’t airborne. You could only get it from ingesting fecal matter or spittle, and yet … We worked for the IAC, which believed in redundancies and taking every precaution, so people who had not been immunized wore spacesuits if they had to leave their holding area.
A foil meal pack bounced off my shoulder, spinning as it dropped slowly toward the floor. I made a grab for it, but the packet ricocheted off my cast and tumbled down.
“Nice catch.” Helen saluted with her own packet and came to sit beside me on the table. “You’re allowed meal breaks, you know.”
“I just want to finish this cable routing.” The access for the cables was a pain and I didn’t want to start over. “I’ll eat later.”
She watched me, and I have never felt so silently judged by someone drinking cold tomato soup through a straw. “I have a question that you may not be able to answer.”
“All right…” I straightened up, so I could give her my full attention, wincing as my back popped like the Fourth of July. “Try me.”
Helen nudged my meal pack across the floor with her foot. “Which outpost did Eugene and Myrtle head to?”
“They started at Marius Hills and then they were going to The Garden, finishing at the South Pole today.” I picked up the foil packet and nearly set it to the side, but I could feel Helen watching me. When was the last time I ate something? I couldn’t remember, which was never a good sign. Food was fuel. I peeled back the foil and extracted a square lump of date cake.
“Did they report anything unusual at The Garden?”
“This is an alarming train of questioning. And I don’t know. My call with Frisch isn’t until end-of-shift.” I gnawed on the brown block and my mouth flooded with saliva. The brick of congealed cardboard didn’t even taste good, but I was apparently hungry. “Why do you ask?”
“According to Luther Sanchez, who has been in touch with the miners at The Garden because of the work they are doing on ‘his’ plant beds—”
“His?” He was on my list. “Got to love some proprietary stakes.”
She nodded but didn’t smile. “The selenologist on-site recorded a seismic event that was either a blast or a meteorite impact.”
I lowered the brick of food. “But…”
“But they had no blasting scheduled. And it happened during our blackout, so they couldn’t tell exactly where it occurred.”
It took me a moment to put the pieces together. With the main colony offline, they would have received telemetry information only from their sensors and been unable to triangulate the location. “You think it was a blast, timed for the blackout.”
“Or it was a meteorite and we’re jumping at shadows.” Helen crossed her arms over her chest. “Can you tell me why they really went there?”
“They were doing an inventory of mining supplies.”
“During a quarantine.” Helen rolled her eyes. “What did I say about misinformation?”
I clenched my jaw. “That was a true statement.” Could I tell her more? She knew about Nathaniel. She knew about the FBI. She knew we potentially had a bad actor on the Moon. She did not know about the Manifesto. “The inventory would include blasting supplies, so Eugene and Myrtle should be able to tell us if anything is—”
At the end of the “street” leading away from the airlock, Faustino rounded the corner, talking to Paulo Mendes da Rocha, one of the architects on the Moon. Each of them carried a launch/reentry suit that they’d used to venture into other parts of the colony.
“—necessary for another bridge party.” I smiled at Faustino and Paulo. “Do either of you play bridge?”
Faustino looked offended at the mention of the game and laid his suit on the table next to the one I was working on. “You still are talking about it?”
“Morale is important in t
imes of stress.”
“So why suggest more time with the most boring game on any world? Why not a talent show?” He flexed his biceps and struck a pose with his chest out. “I could be a strongman.”
“Please.” I wrapped the remaining food back in its foil. “On the Moon, anyone can pretend they’re strongmen.”
He shrugged. “Music and comedy could be better than a bunch of ninnies sitting around card tables.”
“Ninny?” Carefully, I tucked the meal pack into a hip pocket so I couldn’t throw it at him. “It’s nice to know where we stand in your assessment.”
He leaned back on his heels, brows coming together, and held up his hands. “Wait—does ‘ninny’ not mean ‘quiet person’?”
I sighed. “It means a fool.”
To my surprise, he blushed. “I am very sorry.” He glanced at the intercom on the wall. “Further, I have just told Frisch that he is too much of a ninny.”
Of course, he wasn’t blushing about calling bridge players fools; still, he had apologized. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, Frisch isn’t a native English speaker either, so probably just assumed he had the definition wrong.”
“Mm…” He shook his head, and tapped Paulo on the shoulder, switching to Portuguese. “Do jeito que conversamos?”
“Eu ainda acho que você está sendo uma ‘ninny,’ mas, para você, eu digo.” Paulo rolled his eyes and turned to Helen. “I have been told my chess game is shameful and harangued into asking for help. Can I take you away?”
Helen was quiet for a fraction of a second longer than she needed to be before she answered. “Can you spare me, Nicole?”
Tempting though it was to tell her no, I was curious to see what Faustino wanted. I was fluent in French and German but had only “space Portuguese.” When we were launching from Brazil, I could talk about rockets but all I had caught with these guys was something about a conversation. And, of course, ninny. “Absolutely. You’re due for your fifteen-minute break anyway.”
The Relentless Moon Page 22
