Farside

by Ben Bova

  Grant recognized the man on duty: Sherry Phillips.

  “Hi, Grant,” Phillips said, looking surprised as he turned in his chair. “What are you doing here? Come to keep me company?”

  “Have you seen Mrs. Halleck on any of the screens?”

  Phillips smiled amiably. “To tell you the truth, buddy, I haven’t been watching that closely. Nothing’s going on. Everybody’s just moping around, wondering where the damned bugs’ll hit next.”

  “Play back the last half hour on all the corridor cameras,” Grant said.

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “No time to explain, Sherry. Just show me the playbacks. And speed ’em up.”

  Grumbling a little, Phillips tapped on his central keyboard and a dozen screens showed fast-forward views of Farside’s corridors. People scampered along the cheerless passageways like marionettes on amphetamines.

  “There!” Cardenas pointed. “That’s her.”

  “Real time,” Grant told Phillips. The view slowed to normal and Grant saw Halleck and the two others making their way up the central corridor.

  “What’s Trudy doing with her?” Grant wondered aloud.

  “She doesn’t look very happy,” said Cardenas.

  “And Nate Oberman,” Grant added. “Where could they be heading?”

  In less than a minute the display screen showed the three of them entering the locker area by the main airlock.

  “They’re going to suit up!” Grant said.

  He glanced at his wristwatch, then checked the time back on the screen. Twenty minutes ago. They went into the lockers twenty minutes ago.

  Grabbing Cardenas by the wrist, he said, “Come on! If we hurry we can catch them before they’ve finished suiting up.”

  Running alongside him, Cardenas asked, “Why didn’t you see them when you scanned the surveillance views in your phone?”

  “Because Nate must’ve disabled the camera in the locker area,” Grant replied without breaking stride.

  “But why are they getting into suits? Where are they going?”

  “Away from here,” Grant snapped. “Halleck wants to get away before the nanos wipe out this place.”

  “But where’s she going? Selene won’t take her.”

  “She’s got something in mind.” Why is she taking Trudy? Grant asked himself. Is Trudy working for Halleck? Is she part of this disaster? No, she couldn’t be. Not Trudy. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t.

  And Grant realized that whether Trudy was helping Halleck or not, he was glad that she was getting away from Farside and the destructive nanomachines.

  But he knew that he had to bring her back. And Halleck along with her.

  * * *

  Standing engulfed in a cumbersome space suit, Halleck complained to Oberman, “Can’t you go any faster?”

  “Gotta check out the suits,” Oberman replied as he plugged the life-support backpack into the torso of Trudy’s suit. “You don’t want to spring any leaks out in the vacuum.”

  Trudy stood mutely while Oberman finished checking her suit. We’re going outside, she said to herself for the hundredth time. Whether I want to or not, we’re going outside.

  Holding her bubble helmet in her trembling gloved hands, Trudy glanced up at the wrecked surveillance camera dangling from the stone ceiling. Oberman had ripped it loose from its mounting and smashed its lens.

  “Nobody’ll see us in here,” he had assured Halleck.

  Trudy hoped that Grant would notice the camera’s failure and deduce what Halleck was up to.

  Hurry up, Grant, she urged silently. Stop her before she makes me go outside.

  As soon as he satisfied himself that Trudy’s suit was functional, Oberman began tugging on the leggings of his own suit.

  “And who checks you out?” Trudy asked softly.

  Sitting on the bench as he pulled on his boots, Oberman grinned at her. “You do, honey. It’s not hard to do. Just make sure all the connector lights show green. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Then why does it take so damnably long?” Halleck demanded. Like Trudy, she was fully suited up except for her helmet.

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Halleck,” said Oberman. “We got plenty time.”

  “You may think so. I don’t.”

  Getting to his feet, Oberman said, “Didn’t you see me reset the lock when we came in here and closed the corridor door? It’ll take ten, fifteen minutes for anybody to figure out the new combination.” He looked quite pleased with himself.

  As he reached for the hard shell of his suit’s torso, Oberman went on, “All four hoppers are lined up just outside the airlock. They’re all fueled and ready to go: that’s standard procedure. The lobber you came in on, Mrs. Aitch, is sitting on the blast pad, so we’ll have to take off from where the hopper’s sitting.”

  “Couldn’t that be a problem?” Trudy asked.

  “Nope. Those little birds can take off from just about anyplace. And land anyplace. Not like the lobbers; they’re too big for that. They need a nice smooth pad to sit down on.”

  Working his arms through the suit’s sleeves, Oberman said to Trudy, “Okay, now, Dr. Yost, you pick up my backpack out of my locker and connect it onto the clips on the back of my suit.”

  Trudy did as she was told, seething inside with a desperate hope that Grant would break down the corridor door and save her before they forced her outside.

  ESCAPE

  Grant skidded to a stop at the closed door to the lockers, with Cardenas a step behind him. He tapped out the entry code, but the keypad flashed red and the door remained shut. Grant tried the code again; still no good.

  “That sonofabitch Oberman’s changed the code,” Grant muttered.

  “We can’t get in?” Cardenas asked.

  “It’ll take a few minutes,” Grant muttered, flicking open his pocketphone to call up the base’s central computer.

  “You think they’re leaving Farside?”

  “What else? The question is, where the hell are they going?”

  As Grant queried the central computer for the new entry code, Cardenas fidgeted nervously. “I wish there was something I could do,” she said, wringing her hands.

  “There is,” said Grant, his eyes fixed on his phone’s minuscule screen. “Get down to the maintenance center. Toshio Aichi ought to be there with a sample from the mirror lab’s airlock hatch. Find out what kind of nanos drilled a hole through the hatch and how to kill them.”

  Cardenas’s jaw dropped open. “You must be joking! How can I do anything without the proper equipment? I’d need an atomic force microscope, to begin with, and—”

  “You’re going to have to work with what we’ve got at the maintenance center, Kris. I know it’s a tall order, but it’s a matter of life or death. Work with Toshio, he’s pretty smart.”

  “Grant, that’s like asking a surgeon to operate on a patient blindfolded!”

  He looked up from the phone screen and tapped a combination on the wall-mounted keypad. The door slid open.

  Turning to Cardenas, Grant said, “You’re the world’s expert on nanotechnology, Kris. Prove it.”

  “Thanks a lot,” she griped. “And what are you going to do while I’m trying to perform a miracle?”

  “I’m going to get Halleck and make her tell us what kind of nanos we’re up against.”

  With that, Grant stepped through the open doorway and into the locker area, leaving Cardenas standing in the corridor, resentful and angry because she knew Grant expected her to do the impossible.

  * * *

  Moving swiftly down the row of lockers, Grant saw that two of the spare space suits were gone, along with Nate Oberman’s.

  He ran to the end of the row, where the airlock hatch stood. Next to it was the ladder that led up to the flight control center. He grabbed one of the titanium rungs and put his foot on the bottommost. It crumbled under his weight, throwing him off balance.

  The bugs are here! he realized.

  Cautio
usly, he climbed up the remaining rungs and through the open hatch into the flight control center. Josie Rivera was still at the only operative console. She jerked with surprise as Grant clambered up beside her.

  “Grant! What’re you doing—”

  “What’s going on, Josie?” he asked.

  She blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

  Reaching across her to the light-dimmer dial on her console, Grant lowered the lights in the cramped chamber.

  He pointed through the thick glassteel window that looked out on Farside’s spaceport. The lobber from Selene still stood on the sole landing pad, but only three hoppers were lined up between the pad and the airlock’s outer hatch.

  “Where’s the fourth hopper, Jo?”

  “It … it’s gone.”

  “I can see that. Who took it? What’s their flight plan? Where’s their manifest?”

  Josie shook her head. In a small, frightened voice she answered, “I don’t know.”

  “Josie, you’re the flight controller.”

  “Three people came out and took off on the hopper,” she said, trying to avoid Grant’s eyes. “I … I don’t know who they are. They just came out and took off, without permission.”

  “And you let them go? You didn’t try to stop them? You didn’t call me or Professor Uhlrich or anybody?”

  “What could I do?” Josie wailed. “It all happened so fast. I told them to stop but they wouldn’t listen!”

  “Where’d they go?”

  “I don’t know! They wouldn’t say!”

  Grant saw that Josie was close to panic. She’s lying, he told himself. But pressuring her isn’t going to change anything. It’d just be a waste of time.

  Calmly, almost gently, Grant said, “Josie, I’m going downstairs and suit up. I want you to check with the GPS satellites and get a track on that hopper. Then you come down and check me out.”

  “Okay, sure,” she answered shakily.

  “And be careful on the ladder,” Grant added, almost maliciously. “The nanobugs are chewing on the rungs.”

  Josie’s dark eyes went wide with terror.

  * * *

  Trudy was trying hard not to look up into the sky. As the hopper soared on its ballistic trajectory across the barren lunar landscape, Trudy looked downward at the dusty, rock-strewn, pockmarked ground. She swallowed bile, trying to keep her stomach in its place while they flew in virtually zero gravity.

  It’s almost two thousand klicks to Korolev, she reminded herself. It’s going to take us close to an hour to get there.

  An hour of standing inside this space suit, with Mrs. Halleck beside her, gripping the handrail with both her gloved fists, and Oberman standing at the control podium. I hope he knows what he’s doing, Trudy thought.

  As if in answer, she heard Oberman’s voice in her helmet speakers, “Just checked with the GPS system. We’re right on the beam for Korolev.”

  “Good,” said Halleck. Trudy thought her voice sounded anxious, tense.

  “Be there in fifty-four minutes,” Oberman added.

  “Good,” Halleck repeated.

  And what happens when we get there? Trudy wondered. How long will we have to stay cooped up in that little shelter? What’s going to happen to me?

  “We should’ve disabled the other hoppers,” Oberman said, almost as if he were discussing the weather.

  “There was no time for that,” Halleck immediately replied. “Besides, it wasn’t really necessary, was it? Who’s going to come out after us?”

  “Grant Simpson,” Oberman said, his tone more serious. “Grant’ll come charging out after us.”

  Trudy hoped he was right.

  MAINTENANCE CENTER

  Cardenas stared at the thin slice of metal resting on the workbench. Toshio Aichi stood a respectful half meter from her side, saying nothing.

  “That’s the sample you took from the mirror lab airlock hatch,” Cardenas said.

  “Yes,” Aichi replied.

  Standing on the other side of the workbench, Delos Zacharias volunteered, “We confirmed that a nanometer-scale hole was drilled through it.”

  “Using your laser probe?” Cardenas asked.

  “Yes,” said Aichi. “It has resolution in the nanometer scale.” He glanced at moon-faced Zacharias, then added, “Unfortunately, that’s not good enough to give us much information about the nanomachines themselves.”

  Aichi’s face looked like a skull with skin stretched over it, Cardenas thought. He was utterly serious, unsmiling, somber.

  “Disassemblers drilled a hole all the way through the hatch.”

  “Pinhole,” Zacharias said. “Nanometer-scale in diameter.”

  “Enough to cause an air leak in the mirror lab,” Aichi added.

  “What’s the composition of this metal?” she asked.

  Zacharias started to reply, but Aichi silenced him with an upraised hand. “I will call up the information from the computer files. That will give you a completely accurate report.”

  He stepped to the end of the workbench and spoke to the computer terminal there.

  Zacharias said, “It’ll take a few seconds.”

  Cardenas nodded.

  “Here it is,” said Aichi, swiveling the display screen so that Cardenas could see it.

  As she studied the list, Aichi said, “May I express my pleasure at working with you, Dr. Cardenas. You are most respected.”

  Cardenas regarded his stiffly somber expression. “Thank you. I hope that together we can solve this problem.”

  “I have no doubt that you will.”

  Cardenas had plenty of doubt, but she accepted Aichi’s compliment with a mechanical smile.

  Scanning through the display screen’s list, Cardenas saw that the hatch was made of an alloy of titanium, mixed with aluminum, vanadium, and several smaller components. Most of it obtained from the lunar regolith, she knew, scraped up from the topmost layer of dusty ground and refined in smelters at Selene.

  “Was there any residue in the pinhole?” she asked.

  “Residue?” Zacharias asked, his round face puckering into a mild frown.

  Cardenas told them, “The disassemblers took apart the molecules of the hatch’s alloy. They must have been programmed to look for a specific type of atom and remove it from the molecular structure.”

  “Ah,” breathed Aichi. Zacharias nodded.

  “So what happened to the atoms they removed?” Cardenas went on. “They must have been deposited inside the hole that the nanos drilled.”

  Aichi almost smiled. “So we should examine the hole and determine what kind of atoms are contained in the residue.”

  “Do you have equipment that can accomplish that?” Cardenas asked, feeling eager for the first time.

  “The mass spectrograph, maybe,” Zacharias suggested.

  “Can you do it?”

  “We can try,” Aichi said. And for the first time he looked eager, too.

  * * *

  Grant stepped from the airlock and plodded toward the nearest of the hoppers.

  Josie’s voice sounded in his helmet earphones. “Grant, why don’t you take the lobber? I can call the two guys who flew it in here and they could fly it to Korolev for you.”

  She’s trying to make up for letting Halleck sneak out of here, Grant thought. Aloud, he replied, “No, Josie, this is our problem, not theirs. Besides, if Oberman has any sense he’ll plant his hopper square in the middle of the concrete slab out at Korolev. That’ll prevent a lobber from landing there. Lobbers need a pad to sit down on, they can’t land on unprepared ground the way hoppers can.”

  “Oh,” said Josie, disappointed. “Yeah.”

  “You just keep an eye on Korolev, kid. Let me know when they land there.”

  “Right.”

  Grant thought, Keep Josie busy. Let her use the surveillance satellites to keep track of Nate’s hopper.

  As he started to clamber up the ladder to the hopper’s platform, Grant realized that he hadn’t
told Uhlrich what he was doing, what was going on.

  The Ulcer would pop a blood vessel, he thought. Be better to tell McClintock. Let him tell the Ulcer.

  So, once he checked out the hopper’s systems, taking special care to check the propellant supply, he asked Josie to patch him through the communications satellite system to McClintock.

  “You don’t need the commsats,” Josie said. “Your suit radio can—”

  “I’m going to be over the horizon in two minutes, Jo,” Grant reminded her. “Plug me through the commsats.”

  No answer for a heartbeat or two. Then Josie asked, her voice low, “Grant, you’re not going to tell him that I let Mrs. Halleck get away, are you?”

  That’s what you did, isn’t it? Grant thought. But he said to her, “No, Josie. He won’t even think about that. I just want to tell him that Halleck flew the coop and I’m going after her.”

  And Trudy, he added silently. I’m going out to bring Trudy back here. I don’t care if Halleck and Nate break their necks out there. I’m going to find Trudy.

  * * *

  “It’s a minuscule sample,” said Toshio Aichi.

  Zacharias nodded vigorously. “I bet there’s not more than a couple milligrams there.”

  “Will it be enough?” Cardenas wondered.

  “I believe so,” Aichi replied as he tapped the almost invisible sampling of dust from the filter paper in his hand into the focal point of the mass spectrometer.

  Cardenas watched as Zacharias flicked on the spectrometer and the sample in its focus flashed into gas.

  “Got it!” Aichi said, pumping a fist in the air.

  The bright lines of an emission spectrum showed on the spectrometer’s display screen.

  “What did we get?” Cardenas asked.

  “Hold one,” said Zacharias, his chubby fingers working the keyboard. “Yeah! There it is.” A comparison spectrum appeared alongside the spectrum of the sample.