Tears of Selene

by Bill Patterson

  “Good point.”

  “Now, why don't you run some checks on Disco while I put this away?”

  “Sure.”

  “Got enough light to see by?”

  “Yeah. Odd. It's like super-bright Moonlight. When did that happen?”

  “Earthshine. It happened when your eyes adapted—Earth never moves from its spot in the sky. Lots of clouds at the moment on the face of the Earth. Don't waste them.”

  “I'm not. What, eighteen hours until first flight?” Alex ensured the Master Arm switch for the engines was off, then activated the rest of the ungainly flying saucer's components. “Lima?” He looked back to the garage, and noticed that the door was open and the carrier was disappearing inside. He shrugged, pulled up the checklist on his heads-up display, and got to work.

  Reference Desk

  UNSOC-DRC, Kitzingen, Germany, June 10 2087, 1018 CET

  “What do you want in here?” asked Subby. “Everything's probably in German.” The public library was spacious and well-lit, like most libraries were these days. Some people just had to feel paper under their fingers. Others found the gatekeeping function of a librarian an irresistible lure—here was pure information, without ads, malware, or other electronic evil that infested the online world.

  “Information. And stop acting so twitchy. People are going to start staring at you.” Garth walked confidently into the library. Subby, who was trying to look in all directions at once, trailed behind.

  Once inside, Garth made a beeline for the free public computers. He stroked one into life and began searching. Subby tried to read over his shoulder, but Garth soon put a stop to that.

  “Go look for your own stuff. I'd start by trying to read up on UNSOC's operation in the kaserne. Do you know where her office is? No? Isn't it time you found out?”

  “Good idea,” said Subby. “I'll be over there. Don't leave without me.”

  “Never occurred to me,” said Garth in a mumble, already intent on his data search. He found what he wanted: an English translation of a historic article from forty years ago about the kaserne. He settled down and began reading.

  ###

  “He's in a library now,” said Sir Rodney. The UNSOC psychiatrist wasn’t with him this time. “We're not sure what he's looking up, and the privacy laws of Germany prohibit us from finding out. His search history gets wiped when he logs off, so that's out.”

  “What about further up the communications chain?” asked Lisa. “Can't we get an anonymized list of everything everyone in the library was looking at? Doesn't law enforcement do that when they're looking for kiddie porn weirdos?”

  “Ah. Perhaps. Let me get the department on that.” He tapped his commpad for a minute. “Done. But we can do a lot from here. Put yourself in his shoes. You're trying to get into a place that's been around for about one hundred and fifty years, and you know the guards are alert and waiting. How do you go about it?”

  “I'd hole up and wait for six months. Nobody can stay alert, and no organization like this can keep at a heightened state of alert that long, without interfering with operations.”

  “True. In fact, that's probably the smartest thing he could do. There's one factor that will keep him going.”

  “His hate,” said Lisa. “He's got to end this, right? Every night Celine and John are together is a blow to Garth. Right?”

  Sir Rodney shook his head slowly. “Garth has been thwarted twice, resulting in a long jail sentence each time. He cannot risk a return to jail without accomplishing his mission. I mean, he can only kill Hodges once, right? So, no, that equation no longer holds.

  “I could go all Socratic on you, but I respect your time, Commander Daniels. He's got an accomplice with him. Garth is using him for something—perhaps a distraction—on this mission. But Garth works alone, and an accomplice is definitely going to get in the way once Garth has Celine. That guy is going to get thrown under the bus as soon as Garth no longer needs him.

  Lisa leaned back in her chair and looked at the ceiling. Her hair, grown out from the practical spacewoman's bob, fell straight back. The even lighting played over the sculptured planes of her face, effacing the inevitable fine lines that come with age. Sir Rodney was too urbane to ever mention it to her, but he found her strikingly attractive. He chose, instead, to examine his fingernails as she thought.

  “You are right, Sir Blankenfield,” said Lisa, rocking forward to put her forearms on the small conference table. “So he does have time pressure on him, but it's more like 'the feds are on our tails' instead of 'rescue my fair maiden.' That still doesn't answer what he wants from the library.”

  “What's in a library?” asked Sir Rodney. “Books, I know. But in a word—information. What information is so vital to him that he's going to risk capture to get it? Information about us, obviously.”

  “He's after the public access computers, and looking us up. Hmmm.”

  “Yes, hummmm. You're not running a military operation here, although you've got military-grade security in the operational areas because you and your group fire off honest-to-God nuclear missiles. Would Garth be interested in that? No. He is interested in one thing alone—people. You can bet Garth will only target Celine and John, and leave everyone else alone unless they're going to either help or hinder him. The accomplice? He's another matter.”

  “Look, I have to get back inside the Control Room in a few minutes for the daily situation report,” said Lisa. “Let's get to the nub of this. Garth is at a library, looking up info about us. He's got some other guy with him. What's he looking up? We don't know. Why not arrest him as soon as he comes out?”

  “People. You can bet he's armed. Germany won't extradite him to the United States—both Celine and John are here under UNSOC auspices, which require local prosecution. German jails are no picnic, but he's not going to be held all that long, a few years at most, then we lose him again when he’s released. No, oddly enough, I am with John and Celine on this—let's end this threat once and for all.”

  “By killing him,” said Lisa. “You want me to authorize lethal force against an intruder.”

  “An armed intruder whom we firmly believe will kill your Chief Engineer and Senior Communications Tech.”

  Lisa leaned far forward, so that most of her weight was on her forearms. “I will not authorize lethal force by the guards. I will, however, allow them to use appropriate force in self-defense. And that includes John and Celine. I have already warned them that Garth's body had better be wrapped in ammo belts when we get there, otherwise I'll have to throw them to the Germans. Good enough?”

  “Agreed. Oh, and you better weld down the manhole covers all around the kaserne. Not a full ring—four tack-welds should do fine. He's going to come up through the sewer system. Leave a couple unwelded but alarmed. You'll see.”

  Lisa blinked. “That's what he's researching?”

  “Yup. Also, get the local Germans to point out where all the old Nazi escape tunnels are. Because there's always a couple, even now, in Germany. Good day, Commander Daniels.” Sir Rodney stood up, subtly tapped his heels together, and left her office.

  ###

  “Computer is initiating LOX and powder flow,” said Laverne Roberts, one of the Collins controllers who reluctantly agreed to return to the Moon. “Phosphorus powder injected, and we have stable burns at ten percent power. Full flow in six, five, four…”

  Alex, standing where Travis used to stand at the control panel for the Lunar Disco, was too busy at his control panel to be frightened by the enormity of what he was doing. “Travis could do this, so can I,” he said as the Lunar Disco rose from the launching pad in a graceful arc out towards the Oceanus Procellarum.

  “That was smooth,” said Lima Donnelly. “Nice job. Don't forget tradition.”

  “Oh, yeah, sorry.” Alex fumbled for the transmit switch. “The clock has started and Lunar Disco has cleared the tower.” Alex flipped back to intercom and called Lima. “How's our passenger?”

 
Lima bent forward carefully to look inside the faceplate of the person sitting next to him. “Maricella!” He reached over to tap on her shoulder.

  “No answer, Alex. I bet she just passed out. She does look a bit limp, but there are no reds on her internal displays.”

  “It's only a couple of gees!” exclaimed Alex.

  “Don't give her any crap when she wakes up. She's more important to this side-jaunt than you or I. Remember that.”

  “Yeah, OK,” said Alex. A short thudding vibration rattled the craft, and an angry red light glowed atop rocket number twelve. Left of straight ahead, the flame slowly died in rocket twenty-four, and a similar red light came to life. “Just lost two. Twelve, then the computer shut down twenty-four. Dammit, they're the sustainer rockets for the cruise phase. Now we've got to go to Plan B.

  “Collins, we have a problem,” intoned Alex with the phrase that has been dreaded by flight controllers ever since Apollo 13. “Catastrophic on twelve, then controlled shutdown on twenty-four. Cannot see the problem from here, and control panel isn't much help. Advise.”

  “Can't,” said Collins. “Leaving our area in five seconds. Relay through Earth. Farewell…scriiiiii”

  “Collins is out of range,” said Alex. “Switching to Plan B.”

  During Travis's flights on the Disco, after all rockets fired for the launch, they were automatically throttled down to ten percent power for most of the flight, with the exception of four rockets with extended tanks. These 'sustainer' rockets, arrayed at the front, back, left and right of the Disco, would generate as much thrust as the pull of the Lunar gravity, allowing Disco to cruise the three thousand kilometer distance to the Procellarum. During landing, all rockets returned to full-power mode briefly until touchdown. Twelve and twenty-four were two of the four sustainer rockets. Without them, it was going to be a short flight. Thus, Plan B: a pair of rockets at forty-five degree angles, roughly corresponding to northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest points of the compass, would burn to fuel exhaustion. Each rocket's burn time was about half of the cruise phase of the flight, so one would burn while the one right beside it was at idle. It was rough, but workable.

  It also kept Alex too busy to have more than a quick glance around outside. “Damn Travis.”

  “Yes?” said Lima, distracted by the stark beauty of the Lunar surface.

  “He kept yapping about how wonderful it was during cruise phase, just hanging out and watching the Moon go by. I'm busting my ass up here, and haven't had a moment to look.”

  “Good man,” said Lima. “And now you know.”

  “Know what?” asked Alex.

  “What Travis said about the loneliness of command.” The silence stretched out so long that Lima pulled his eyes from the scene outside to look at Alex. He was still working frantically up front, configuring the autopilot for touchdown with a different rocket configuration. “Alex?”

  “I heard you, dammit. And I'll get us all down safely, too.”

  Alex tapped the transmit button twice, acknowledging the last comment, and let the man work.

  Outside, the Moon drifted past in deathly silence.

  ###

  “It's gotta be done,” said McCrary. “We're building the Queen Mary in Perseus's basement, now we've got to start working on how to get it outside,” he said.

  Jeff Gaston waved his hands in the general direction of the airlock. “It's insanely dangerous! Tell him, Horst!”

  “There is an element of great risk,” said Horst, “but it just may be manageable. In any case, there's no other way to affix the reentry tiles onto it, and certainly no way to garage it.”

  “Remember, there are going to be four of them,” said McCrary. “We've got a little over four hundred souls up here. Conservatively, we have to build enough ships to take them all home. I could not live with myself if we maroon one hundred up here without a ship, and no expertise to build one, just because we wanted to get home.”

  Jeff shifted back and forth in his seat, and Commander Smithson groaned inwardly. Jeff was about to go back and re-design the solution all over again. Roger had to be here—this was a decision that he could not delegate. But he hated these Socratic sessions where engineers went back to the beginning of the problem and verified each design element.

  “Let's go back to the beginning,” said Jeff.

  “Good idea,” said McCrary. “I want someone to check me.”

  You're all nuts, thought Smithson.

  “The widest dimension of the inside-built sections is twelve point seven meters, correct?”

  “Including winglet stubs, correct,” said McCrary.

  “So we're going to have to cut a cylinder thirteen point five meters in diameter, centered precisely on the axis of rotation of the Perseus.”

  “Correct,” said McCrary. “Reason—to accommodate the section and carrier, and to ensure that we clear the jambs of the lock doors.”

  “And the longest section? How long do we have to make the lock chamber?” asked Jeff. He sketched a lock chamber on the surface of his commpad. “Let's see, doors always plug on the side with the highest pressure, so the door into here will open into the fore sphere, so no problem there, but the door into the aft sphere will have to open into the lock chamber. So, add thirteen meters onto your longest section.”

  McCrary looked at Jeff's diagram, nodded, then worked his commpad. “Fifty-three meters, make it fifty-five with a one meter clearance.”

  “OK, sixty,” said Jeff with a smile. “The septum wall is only forty-seven meters at the very center. We're going to have to build an extension anyway, so why not give ourselves some breathing room?”

  “Fine. I say, cut the cylinder out, weld patches at both ends of the passage, and process the metal out in space, bringing it inside in finished form.”

  “See, that's where I start having problems,” said Jeff. “The instant you have a clear channel from the fore chamber out to space, you'll have the entire atmosphere in here trying to jam itself down that hole. And you're talking about securing a hole some thirteen and a half meters across! How exactly are you going to do this?”

  “I am open to suggestions,” said McCrary, and sat back.

  Step by Step

  UNSOC-DRC, Kitzingen, Germany, June 14 2087, 1654 CET

  “Target.” The computer announced the event in an even-handed, emotionless voice. “Decision required in two hours.”

  “Good,” muttered Gayatri Vedya. She was forty-five minutes from the end of her shift at UNSOC's Debris Response Center. “I need to get Samar from kindergarten.”

  “Sorry, didn't catch that, Control.”

  “Nothing,” said Gayatri, checking her microphone switch. Dammit, she left it on broadcast again! “Please provide target parameters and projected path.

  The parameters flashed up on her screen immediately, and the projected path showed as a cone along a line terminating on Earth. The cone was unusually wide.

  “Astrogation, what's with the wide cone?”

  “Working on that,” said the shift person at the Astrogation station. Gayatri looked over. Tooban Bukkiah was manning the chair, and Gayatri smiled. Tooban knew his stuff. He was another crooner—one of Panjar's acolytes who would spout baby-talk to the computer. It seemed so soft-headed to her, but she couldn't deny the results. Against all logic and science, a crooner regularly outperformed a strictly by-the-book operator.

  “Come on, Nellie,” Tooban sang softly to the panel in front of him. “Tell me what you know.” On a hunch, he added the presumed orbits of all larger remnants of satellites that were still discernable in space. With the single exception of Perseus, all of mankind's space vehicles were hopelessly trashed from the rain of stone that fell from the Moon over the past five years.

  Tooban sat up straighter and began rotating his display through all three axes. He keyed his microphone, unaware that it was still on, and everyone could hear his soft murmurings to the computer.

  “CAPCOM, the cone is wide
because the computer presumes that Perseus will lock on and fire on the debris when it comes within range. That will perturb its orbit.”

  “Enough to avoid a hit?” asked Gatatri.

  “No. It's going to hit Earth no matter what Perseus does.”

  “Give me the best combination of them and us that will allow us to use the smallest nuke.”

  “On it,” Tooban said.

  “Oh, and thank Little Nellie for us,” said Gayatri.

  A slight coughing was heard as Tooban switched off his microphone. Gayatri made sure her microphone was off as well.

  “And you can go get Samar a little early,” said a deep male voice over her shoulder.

  “Gus! I wish you wouldn't sneak up on me,” she protested.

  Gus would have given her a hug, but he knew she didn't like it, and there was a general warning for everyone from managers on up to refrain from straining professional protocol.

  “Bunch of Puritans,” Gus growled.

  Gayatri looked up as she unclipped her communications gear. “Still want to give me a hug, right?”

  “Absolutely. And I know, Subinay doesn't like it, either. I don't mean anything by it. I grew up in a family of huggers. I get emotionally constipated when I can't give a charming lady a hug.”

  “You're a big ole softy,” she said, thumping him on the shoulder with her small fist. “And thank you for relieving me early.”

  “Have a great night,” said Gus, settling down in the CAPCOM chair next to hers and setting up his comm gear. He logged in the shift change, and sent a brief message to all controllers about it.

  “Solution,” said Tooban. “Gayatri told you?”

  “Yup, Perseus and we get to work together on one.”

  “No, we don't. The best solution that the computer gives us results in unacceptable danger to both Perseus and Earth. The computer wants to drive the asteroid towards Earth, so that intercept occurs over the ocean. However, to do that, the laser must be continuously firing until the moment of detonation. The blast cloud will reflect an unacceptable amount of laser light towards Earth.”