Tears of Selene

by Bill Patterson

  I wanted to be a good neighbor with the host country. That might just kill me yet.

  She tried to push up on the cover, but there might as well have been a tank parked on top of it for all the budging it was doing.

  She relaxed there, thinking. She felt a slow smile, wasted in this stygian darkness, grow on her face. She quickly crawled down to the passage. Instead of retrieving the scuba tank, she took stock of herself. Khaki top, long sleeves, khaki pants. Boots—with laces! Belt. Bra. Oh, she had on her duty one. Maybe that would be helpful. Best leave it on for now. The rest of her clothing should remain on. Wait. She left all of her clothing on, but took off her trousers.

  “Shep, you would love this,” said Lisa. Working quickly, she returned to the rungs of the manhole vault and used her trouser legs to tie herself onto the rungs. She used her bootlaces to make a safety line around her as well. She removed her top, buttoned up the front, and slid the scuba tank into the section where the sleeve was sewn into the main garment. Gathering the bottom of the garment, and holding on by one sleeve, she could swing the tank to gain momentum.

  “Here goes nothing. This better work, or I'm going to look like hell when I put all my clothes back on.”

  She swung the makeshift sling, aiming it so the tank connected bottom-first with the manhole cover.

  A mighty crash sounded. The cover remained unmoving.

  Again, she swung, and again the cover didn't budge. She sighed. “We welded them down good.”

  She continued to hammer at the cover at measured intervals. She wondered what would give out first, the weld, her shirt, or the tank.

  ###

  John was almost a robot as he walked away from WarLand. He dragged Garth's body using a clean sheet of plywood down several levels, using paths he knew to be safe. At the end was a long shaft filled with a staircase that nobody dared to descend. John picked up the body of the man he hated more than anyone in the entire world, and dropped it over the edge until he heard it splash in the sump at the bottom of the shaft.

  “Goodbye, asshole,” he said. He then pissed over the edge into the sump. He dragged down the bloody trap and tossed that into the sump. Nobody was going to even attempt to recover the evidence. With luck, someone would see the wood and not the body, and keep exploring.

  He recovered his things from the temporary sleeping chambers, and locked the interior fence behind him. He never went back into the WarLand again.

  ###

  Lisa took a small break, then resumed her pounding. The smell was tolerable up at the top of the vault, but she longed to be out of the sewers.

  ###

  John was about to step into the cul-de-sac where the main road of the kaserne ended. He heard a sound like a metallic clang. Over and over. John was used to all kinds of machine shop sounds, but he had never heard the like. It also seemed to be nearby, and he knew that nobody lived or worked out at this end of the property. He looked around just as a pebble bounced atop a manhole cover.

  What the hell?

  He ran over to the manhole cover.

  “Hello?” he shouted between clangs.

  He heard a muffled reply.

  “Is someone in there?”

  Again, an indistinct shout.

  “Hang on, I'm going to get help!” John was still carrying the corpsman's bag of medical stuff, and he wasn't about to own up to filching it three weeks ago. He ran up the driveway to a parking lot. Tucking the corpsman's bag under a deck, he looked around for someone. The guards were nowhere in sight. The building was locked. The cars were sitting there, patiently waiting for their owners to need them again.

  John ran back to the manhole cover.

  “Nobody nearby, I'm going to have to go further,” he shouted. “Hang on!” John jogged down the road. He had no idea if it was friend or foe beneath that steel lid, but he was quite done with killing for the rest of his life.

  ###

  Lisa untied herself and tried to get into her clothes. Her trousers had survived their mission of safety harness without stretching out too much, but her khaki top would never serve again. She still draped it over her torso and relaced her boots purely by touch. It was going to take some time for help to come, there was no use wasting energy pounding the lid again.

  The tunnels were so well constructed that her first indication that help had arrived was the first clanging of a pry bar under the manhole cover.

  A small crescent of light was quickly followed by a solid shaft of blinding brilliance. Lisa shut her eyes, the pain driving right to the back of her skull.

  “Come out with your hands up!” shouted a voice that expected instant obedience.

  “How?” shouted Lisa back at them. “I need my hands for climbing!”

  “Oh, shit, it's the Commander,” someone said.

  “Yeah, it's the Commander. I expect a complete report when I get back to my office, which will be in about thirty minutes. Turn off those damned lights!”

  The shaft of light dimmed then disappeared, and only the glow of the sunset served to illuminate her emergence. Which was a good thing, considering the state of her uniform.

  “I'm fine, I don't need an ambulance,” she said.

  The UN Doctor shook his head. “No. You cannot buck me, Commander. I know my rights and obligations. You've been down in those sewers and tunnels and the Nazi area for the past six hours. You've been exposed to molds, spores, and hydrogen sulfide. I am worried about chemical pneumonia and hereby order you into the clinic for observation. You can have your debriefing there.”

  Lisa knew the rules, too. She shrugged and got into the ambulance. “None of you are off the hook,” she said, and broke into a spasm of coughing, causing the doctor to frown.

  “Told you so,” he said, sotto voce.

  “Psychosomatic,” said Lisa in the same voice. “I want all of you on the commpad in the next thirty minutes. Tell Sir Rodney and John Hodges, if he's available, to come in person. Move!”

  ###

  John had just gotten out of the shower when the commpad chirped for him.

  “Answer,” he said.

  “Commander's compliments, and she will see you in the kaserne clinic in seventeen minutes.”

  “Acknowledge,” he said. The commpad blipped and went back to sleep.

  He padded naked into the bedroom. Celine pulled the sheets up to her neck. “Burglar!”

  He kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Lisa's stooge called. I have to be in the clinic in fifteen minutes.”

  “Awww!” Celine said. “But maybe you'll be dried off by the time you get back.”

  John chuckled as he pulled on an engineer's coverall. “I'm back here as soon as I can. I think you can do without the weapons under the pillow now.”

  Celine blushed. “I know, but it makes me feel safer somehow. I'll make sure there's no round in the chamber and it's on safe. Good enough?”

  “Good enough. I'll flash the lights when I come in so you know it's me.”

  “Be safe. Love you, teddy bear,” said Celine.

  John leaned over to kiss her pale lips. “Love you too, my little polar bear.”

  ###

  “Report,” said Lisa as soon as the commpad conference was over and the medical people were shooed out of the room. Both men sat down and pulled their chairs up close.

  “Garth has disappeared into Warland,” said John. “Last time I saw him, he was headed down one of the tunnels. Then some debris fell in on him.”

  Sir Rodney nodded once, happy for a change. “Good riddance to bad rubbish. Did he suffer?”

  John stared at the wall. “Not as much as Celine did, all told,” he said.

  “How is she, John?” asked Lisa.

  “I’m not sure. I'm here, not with her.” John's voice had an air of injury about it.

  “Don't worry, I won't take more than five minutes,” said Lisa. She told them about what happened in the sewers, and the stark choice that Subby gave her.”

  “Ever since we
got an indication that someone was in the sewers, I've had the Germans watching the tunnel. Nobody's come out of it. None of the lift station doors have been forced open. The Germans report that the floors inside the stations were bone-dry, not the usual pigsty that those two would leave them when they emerged.”

  “Subby's still in there?” said Sir Rodney pointing to the floor.

  “So it would seem,” said Lisa. “What it also means is that the Germans have to go find him. We can't do it—we have no authority to be in the tunnels beyond the kaserne boundary, and damn little reason to be in them up here.”

  “Hmmm,” said Sir Rodney. “Have you told the Germans?”

  “I've been busy,” said Lisa. “Although I think they are waiting for me to tell them to move. But I’m laid up here. John, I hate to ask you this, but you are the Vice Commander of this lashup, and I'm going to be stuck in here for three days. What if you do this for me, and when I get out, you and Celine get a week in Switzerland?”

  John twisted his lips one way and another, then allowed them to settle into his natural smile. “I accept, for both of us. Let me go tell Celine, then I'll head over to Ops within, oh, thirty minutes.”

  “Take sixty,” Lisa said. “And a shower afterwards. That's how rumors spread. But hang back, John. Sir Rodney, anything else?”

  “No. My job here is done. I'll wait until the Germans find Subby, but I don't think he survived, do you?”

  “Not really. Garth was prepping his gear. I think Subby might have had an accident.”

  “So we're left with just hunting down Mrs. vanDeHoog,” said Sir Rodney. “I doubt she can run very fast, and we'll have her soon.” He gave the two one of those British open-palmed salutes, spun around, and left the room.

  “Strange duck,” said John. “What did you want, Lisa?”

  “Is he dead?” she asked. John looked at the wall opposite.

  “Oh, John, after all we've been through, don't be that way.”

  John looked at her and his face softened. “You are my commander. If Garth was dead, and I had a hand in it, you can't really expect me to admit it to my commanding officer, can you? Even if you tell me it's completely off the record, you may one day be in a position where you must divulge such an admission. So, whether or not Garth is alive, or that I met him, is going to have to be something you can never know.”

  Lisa nodded. “I didn't expect you to say anything else. Tell me, does Celine have to live in fear any more?”

  “Well, there are still spiders and mice that sometimes get in a set of quarters, so there's that. Otherwise, she should have a very quiet life from here on out.”

  “Good. I know with you around, it will stay that way. Take good care of her, John. I've been worried about her ever since I met her.”

  “I see nothing but good times ahead for our Celine,” said John. “Particularly in Switzerland. But I have to run. Must be on duty in an hour.”

  ###

  After pumping out the water from the aft chamber, the steam in the pipes was replaced with regular air at approximately two hundred degrees Celsius, thoroughly drying out the space. The exhaust air ran through condensers, so very little water, as a percentage basis, was lost. Still, the entire operation took up a lot of time. McCrary called a meeting with all the senior engineering staff.

  “Got a present for you, boss,” said Scott as he and McCrary went over the production schedules for the next two weeks while the aft chamber cooled from its heat bath.

  “Yes?” said McCrary.

  “Parachutes. Same design, about the same size as you had on the ERVs. Of course, there are more of them per lifting body, since they’re bigger. Still, we got them spun, woven, sewed, and the riser lines attached, all while we were on the Moon.”

  “How?” asked McCrary. “Thought there was no raw material.”

  “We found another chondrite on the back side of the Works. We didn't need to preserve the methane, like you did for the first one, so we just hauled it out of there, ran it through the section of the Works for the organics, set the dial for 'ripstop nylon cloth,' and here we are.”

  Horst snorted. “There's no such dial or setting,” he said. “But I get what you mean. Any issues?”

  “Nah. Everything's working like a charm up there. We might have to go back after most of you go home.”

  Horst looked at him oddly. “I thought you were going home with us.”

  Scott scratched his head. “I know—we've had all those years in space, should get home, radiation damage, the whole thing. But this old rock is my home, know what I mean? I fashioned it out of a blob of steel. It's mine. It's kinda hard to explain.”

  Horst held up his hand. “No, I completely understand. Leaving the Collins was tough, too. We were really making things happen up there. There were some issues that just weren't going to get fixed, though, like the micronutrients and some other problems, like modern drugs and chips and other stuff from Earth. We had to come home, but, hell, I guess you don't.”

  “We've got a lot of the Mars Expedition supplies that were never touched, but we'll miss resupply, of course,” said Scott. “But we'll still be up here blasting debris, bringing the day closer when resupply missions might just be possible.”

  McCrary raised his hand. “Nobody's going anywhere yet. We've still got to build the landers and get them to the aft chamber for final assembly. Shall we talk about that for a bit?”

  The men huddled over their commpads as they charted the workdays ahead of them.

  ###

  Throughout the Perseus, the crew made their choices. Commander Smithson kept a rolling count on his commpad for people who definitely wanted to remain. Not many wanted to, mostly those who had recently woken up and wanted to have some more time in space or to pursue the studies that had sent them into space in the first place. They assumed that they would have an interesting life on a spaceship that was far too large for their needs.

  Some crew were going to be ordered to the surface as well. Commander Lee for certain, although only Doctor Kumar would have the authority to order him Earthside. Irma Huertas and her sidekick Marcel Bossenhagen. Let them protest on Earth; Commander Smithson was heartily sick of them.

  Ashley Boardman and Lori Minelli and the children. McCrary. Horst Nygaard. A lot of folks had skillsets that were of use on the Moon but would not translate for the Perseus. Lunar Controllers, for instance. Peter Brinkley asked to go home, and Commander Smithson promised him a seat on the first ship.

  McCrary found an odd message on his commpad one morning.

  Chief, I need a moment of your time. Brinkley.

  ###

  McCrary met Brinkley by the central stream. The stream ran around the equator of the fore chamber and a narrow running track was on either side of the waterway. Used mostly as a central conduit for irrigation, the stream was replenished by a pipe run from the airco systems and pushed along the way by pumps. It was also relatively isolated, being midway between the helices at the front and back of the central axis. It was the perfect place to meet because you could see somebody coming from hundreds of meters away.

  “What's on your mind?” said McCrary.

  “Remember a similar meeting in Honey Room 4 about five to six years ago?”

  “Your family.” McCrary carefully kept his face neutral. He had no particular feeling one way or the other about Brinkley's unconventional family structure, but the 'who’s your daddy' questions never quite went away. Although he wasn't in the command business anymore, McCrary knew that the enforced sterility of the few women in the crew was a source of constant irritation.

  “Yes. There are four landing craft under construction. I want to ensure that my family, all five of us, are on the same craft. We've discussed this, and I was delegated to ensure it happens.”

  “I see,” said McCrary. “I know of discussions to split up the mothers and children, just in case one craft crashes. I can see where you would all want to share a common fate.”

  “Yes
,” said Brinkley. “I don't know how Commander Smithson is going to handle this. His crew, his training, is centered on the Mars Expedition and its all-male crew. I really don't want to get into why Ashley, Lori, and I prefer things this way to yet another commander.”

  McCrary nodded. “And you'd like me to be the one to ask him, right?”

  “If you would be so kind.”

  “Kindness doesn't enter into it. My word of honor does. You requested, and I agreed, to keep secret the structure of your family. I believe I have. I will have a private discussion with Commander Smithson. In return, I have one request.”

  “Tell me,” said Brinkley.

  “When your children get married, if they still do that sort of thing ten or fifteen years from now, would you please let me know? I'd like to see how they turned out.”

  “Funny, their mothers are getting a lot of requests like that lately. Don't worry, McCrary, we've already got you sitting way up front.”

  McCrary stuck out his hand. “Good luck. I suspect things are going to get rather hectic soon. This might be the last time I can congratulate you on being the father of the first children born outside Mother Earth. I envision zero chance of peace once we land.”

  Peter Brinkley shook his hand solemnly. “Good luck, McCrary. You have been the best, most fair, and most diligent commander I have ever worked for. When the dust settles, I'd love to meet your wonderful wife.”

  “You would be welcome,” McCrary said. “Now, duty forever calls.” He turned and made his way towards the aft wall of the chamber.

  ###

  The transfer of the lifting bodies' central fuselage from the inner surface of the Perseus to the central axis was somewhat anticlimactic. The lift itself took hours for each one since the angular momentum slowly bled off as the fuselage rose. After each lift, the Engineering crew checked the lift's rotational brakes for heat damage and remaining life. It took almost two complete days to bring all four to the central axis where it was in microgravity, carefully fit them one by one into the enormous airlock, and slip it into the vacuum on the other side of the septum wall.