“Not in real-time, of course,” said Adrian, seeking intellectual refuge from his problems.
“Yes. In real-time.” Victor spoke with the pride of one of SERT's developers. “When the libration moves Earth above the horizon, the signals are multiplexed and modulated onto a laser beamed at Earth.”
“Interesting.” An insistent inner voice pulled Adrian back. He couldn't waste what little time he had in idle chatter. Focus, Adrian—39 degrees!
“Wait a minute!” said Adrian, aloud. “Focus!”
“Excuse me?”
Adrian tried to jump to his feet, but couldn't. “Victor,” he said, excitedly, “do you think Skippy could fit through the crater entrance?”
“What? Why?”
“Well, I think it will fit through.” Adrian tried to flex his knee, but it had grown stiff. “Look, I'd do it myself, but I can't walk. Please, Victor, see if you can glide it in. And quickly, before the Sun comes up.”
“Why?” said Victor again, louder this time.
“I have an idea. We need to hurry. I'll explain it as we prepare the roo.”
Victor stood staring at Adrian.
“Please!”
“Okay. Okay.” Victor strode though the entrance. A few seconds later, Adrian heard grunts of exertion. Soon after, he felt a vibration through his spacesuit. Skippy hitting the ground. And a minute after that, Adrian saw the head of the Lunaroo slide in through the crater entrance. Adrian crawled to the roo. Then, while Victor pushed, Adrian pulled. When the Lunaroo had cleared the entrance, Victor stepped back in through the crater opening. “Okay,” he said, “What's this big idea of yours?” He paused. “The leading edge of the Sun is visible now,” he added, softly.
“Lift the roo upright,” said Adrian, trying to keep fear out of his voice.
“Sure. Why not?” Victor bent to the task.
“My idea,” said Adrian, “is to use Skippy to send an SOS.”
Victor stopped mid lift and, through Victor's helmet, Adrian saw the man mouth “what?”
“The roo can still hop,” said Adrian. “So I propose moving it to right below the SERT bowl. We'll have Skippy hop, and when it gets to the bottom of the bowl, we can grab the aluminized fabric and pull it. That will deform the mirror. As the roo goes down, we let go of the fabric and the scope will return to focus.”
Adrian could see Victor staring at him as if he were out of his mind.
“Please finish raising the roo,” said Adrian.
Without answering, Victor heaved the Lunaroo onto its feet.
“The people on Earth doing real-time observing should see a signal dropout,” Adrian went on. “If we time it right, we should be able to send an SOS in Morse code.”
“That's your idea?”
“Yeah,” said Adrian.
“It's crazy.”
“Your point?” Forty degrees.
“Do people even know Morse Code anymore?” said Victor.
“They'll know SOS. Look. We . . . I don't have much time. Let's center the roo and do it.”
Victor shoved the roo directly under the low point of the bowl, paused, and then said. “It feels like . . . sacrilege. I mean an astronomer purposefully degrading the performance of a telescope mirror. And actually, I don't know Morse code”
“Just help me into the roo. I'll do it.”
“It makes more sense for me to do it,” said Victor. “Teach me SOS.”
“No. I'll do it.” Adrian struggled to his feet. Using Victor as a support, he limped to the Lunaroo and got in. He fastened his harness, turned on the power, and switched on the lights. In the bright illumination reflecting off the bowl, Adrian felt as if he were in a gigantic inverted planetarium. “Okay,” he said, his hand on the vertical throttle. “Here we go.” The roo hopped and Adrian's knee throbbed with pain.
After fifteen minutes of SOS sending, Adrian gave it up. The temperature in his suit was going up fast, and the exertion of pulling against seven hundred meters of fabric had increased his oxygen use enormously. And the pain had become excruciating. Adrian hobbled to his place against the crater wall and collapsed to a sitting position with one leg folded, the other out straight. He tried to breathe sparingly, pretending he was just loafing during a camping trip in the outback.
“So we wait,” said Victor, also resting against the crater wall.
“And hope,” said Adrian, quietly. He glanced at Victor's helmet. “Aren't you going to turn on your display meters?”
“I'd rather not know.”
Over the next forty-five minutes, their conversation slowed to the occasional question of how the other was holding out. Eventually, talk stopped altogether.
Adrian's heads-up helmet display, meanwhile, relentlessly revealed how many minutes of oxygen he had left and how high the temperature had reached in his suit. He wondered which would kill him first. He knew when his asphyxiation death would happen. Judging when he'd die from heat was harder. The display indicated a grim race that he couldn't help watching. He read the numbers through sweat-blurred eyes.
Finally, Adrian knew it would be the oxygen—and in just a few minutes. He wondered if he should say good-bye to Victor, but he decided against it. It would take effort and what was the use? In the final analysis, everyone dies alone.
Suddenly the crater went dark. Adrian started, then saw that something had blocked the sunlight coming through the entrance. Forty-four degrees.
“Are they in there?” came Kimberly's bell-like voice.
Adrian almost cried. “Oxygen,” he heard Victor gasp.
“Kim"—it was Ralph's voice—"bring in two oxygen cylinders. Fast!”
“Acknowledged.”
Adrian closed his eyes. A moment later, Adrian felt hands on him, twisting him around to get to the emergency oxygen snap-valve. And a few seconds later, Adrian smelled the sweet aroma of fresh oxygen. He breathed heavily. The mayor was wrong. Oxygen is precious. As he breathed, he heard Victor say, “Nice to see you guys. You know, it's amazing what a little oxygen can do for one's spirits.”
“No kidding,” said Ralph.
“Wait,” said Victor. “Adrian. His suit's cooling system failed. Heater's on full.”
“Kimberly,” Ralph shouted. “Watch him while I get the nitrogen.”
Adrian saw a spacesuited figure dart through the opening and dart back just seconds later.
“We'll roll you over,” said Ralph. “This won't hurt a bit.”
Adrian felt himself eased over onto his stomach and felt activity at his life-support module.
“Damn it all,” said Ralph under his breath. “I really hate to lose the nitrogen. But there's no help for it.”
“What's going on?” said Adrian in a shallow whisper.
“I'm going to vent your air, rather than recirculate it. Hot air out, cool air in. And expansion cooling of the gas.” Adrian heard the clunk of metal on metal. “In the old days,” Ralph went on, “suits used only oxygen and we couldn't do this.”
Suddenly, Adrian felt a thermal gradient, a cooling starting at his back and slowly spreading over his entire body. He looked at the temperature read-out and realized “cooling” was a relative concept. The temperature stood at 42 degrees Celsius, high even by outback standards.
“Victor,” came Ralph's voice. “Think you can make it to the buggy on your own?”
“Sure.”
“Think you're up to driving?”
“Piece of cake.”
“We'll have to help Adrian to the buggy,” said Ralph.
“He has a bashed-up knee,” said Victor.
“Fine,” said Ralph. “Just fine.” He turned to Adrian. “While we're riding back, Dr. Clarke, read out the temperature every ten seconds or so. That'll tell me how much to vent versus recirculate. You sit in the front seat. I'll be behind, controlling the oxygen and nitrogen valves.”
“You've done this before,” said Adrian, with forced lightness.
Ralph chuckled. “Once or twice.” He turned away, a mo
ve of habit rather than necessity. “Kimberly,” he said. “In the buggy, see if you can keep Dr. Clarke—”
“Call me Adrian.”
“Keep Adrian in the shadow of your suit. You too, Victor . . . if you can do that and drive at the same time.”
“Understood,” said Victor.
“Acknowledged,” said Kimberly.
“Okay, Adrian,” said Ralph, “start reciting temperatures.” He and Kimberly half-carried Adrian to the buggy and helped him in.
“Forty-one point five,” said Adrian. “By the way, how did you manage to find us?”
Victor started the buggy and headed toward the FLO.
“An observer on Earth detected a SETI signal,” said Ralph. “Seems that the aliens were sending an SOS. The guy thought he'd gone nuts. Fortunately, instead of calling a psychiatrist, he called NASA. Then a whole lot of other people called. It's good the Earth was visible. And apparently, NASA can respond pretty quickly at times.”
“Yeah, really,” said Adrian.
“Sort of a long way around,” said Kimberly. “Good the libration was in our favor.”
“And it's good we had Skippy,” said Victor.
“Skippy?” said Ralph under his breath. “Oh, dear.”
“Thirty-nine point five,” said Adrian. Then, in sudden euphoria, he started singing, “Good, good, good librations.”
“Damn,” said Ralph. “Too rich an oxygen mixture.”
Adrian gawked like a tourist at the landscape. “Thirty-eight point five.” Looking away at the Earth, he launched into a half-hummed rendition of “Advance Australia Fair.” “Australians all let us rejoice, for . . . what the hell comes next?” Then the euphoria wore off and he shut up.
“Adrian,” said Kimberly with a smile in her voice, “after all that has happened on your very first day on the Moon, you'd probably really like to be back on Earth right now, wouldn't you?”
Gazing out at the lunar landscape, Adrian felt a strange affection for this outpost of Earth, this precious stone, this stark, beautiful but unforgiving world.
“Want to be back on Earth?” he said. “Thirty-seven point five. No. Of course not. Why would you say that?”
Copyright © 2010 Carl Frederick
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Short Story: QUESTIONING THE TREE
by Brad Aiken
Not that we would do anything like this. . . .
It wasn't such an unusual sight, but it was the first time I'd seen it live, the first time they'd snared one of my own colleagues.
I had just come through the revolving doors that deposit visitors into the opulent lobby of the Metro Towers building like a Pez dispenser, from nine to five every day. Across the white Italian marble floor at the far side of the atrium, camera crews for every major news company lay in wait for something deliciously ominous; had to be, to draw this kind of attention.
An elevator door slid open in front of the throng and floodlights poured into the space revealing a middle-aged man with tightly cropped gray hair twisting away from the brightness. His hands were cuffed behind his back, each arm in the grasp of a uniformed federal officer. As he turned in my direction, the familiarity of his bushy gray eyebrows, ruddy complexion, and paunchy abdominal girth sent a chill up my spine. It was Arnie Hirsch, an old friend who'd joined my practice at the District Thirteen Medical Clinic seven years ago.
A familiar voice behind my right shoulder startled me. “Veered from the answer tree.”
I turned toward my new assistant, Carma Johnson. “What?”
“They got Dr. Hirsch on an answer tree violation. His third one.”
I knew what she meant, of course. We were only allowed to say certain things, specifically scripted responses to questions that were always variations of the same things: What do I have, Doc? Am I going to get better? What's the treatment? Could the scanner be wrong? We were told from our first day on the job that there was simply too much liability to let us make up our own answers and that any violation of this policy would be considered a federal offense: This was, after all, a government clinic.
I looked at Ms. Johnson. “How do you know?”
“My friend Wanda is his assistant. She just texted me.”
“She the one who turned him in?”
I felt the brief hesitation in her voice. “Nah, not Wanda. She'd never do something like that.”
My attention was drawn back to Arnie as he snapped at a reporter, “And I'd do it again, God dammit. I'm sick of seeing my patients suffer just because I have to listen to some damn machine.”
I knew exactly how he felt. We'd had that conversation over lunch at least a dozen times. The only reason that I had managed to stay out of trouble was because I didn't have the guts to do what Arnie did. I felt sorry for the poor bastard, but I admired him.
The crowd followed my beleaguered colleague out into the street where a black sedan was waiting. I hated myself for not trying to help, but what could I do?
We stood in the now sparsely populated lobby, staring at the scene on the other side of the picture window by the revolving doors. “Guess we'd better get to work,” I said.
She gave a quick nod and we headed up to the thirty-seventh floor to begin our daily routine. By the time I got into my lab coat and made my way over to the exam room, she had already started the first medscan. Within minutes, a white plinth slid out from the mouth of the giant machine.
“Mornin', Doc,” Mr. Winthorp greeted me, grabbing the back of his neck as he sat up from the exam table that had just emerged from the tube of the Medtron 3000.
Ms. Johnson looked up from the control monitor on the scanner. “No motion artifacts, Doctor. The report's coming up now.”
“Thanks.” I looked at my first patient of the day. “Good morning, Mr. Winthorp.” I did not reach out to shake his hand. “I'm Doctor Jenkins.”
He glanced up at the plaque on the wall displaying my diploma, barely legible behind a coat of fading yellow urethane. “Centerville class of 2012, huh?” He looked impressed. “Good school.”
I hadn't looked at that piece of paper in a long time. “It was.”
“So what are you going to do about my pain?”
I studied the report on the monitor. “The scanner has diagnosed you with a stomach ulcer and entered a prescription into the pharmacy system.”
“Stomach ulcer? I got neck pain, Doc.”
I pulled out my e-pad to consult the company manual and scrolled to the appropriate response grid. “I'm sorry, but the scanner says that your problem is a stomach ulcer. It doesn't mention anything about your neck.”
“My stomach feels fine.”
I scrolled further. Even though I knew most of the acceptable answers by now, it was best to be cautious, especially with a new assistant hanging on my every word. “Some illnesses have no discernable symptoms,” I quoted.
Winthorp was too busy massaging his neck to notice that I was reading a script. “Okay, maybe I do have an ulcer, but this damn neck pain is what brought me in here, not my stomach.”
“Just the same, if you don't pick up your prescription, the insurance company will drop you from their plan.”
Mr. Winthorp let out a huff through blowfish cheeks. He knew there was no point in arguing with a medscan. “Okay, but can you just take a look at my neck? It's killing me.”
The eyebrows on Ms. Johnson's fresh young face crested noticeably.
“I'm sorry, Mr. Winthorp,” I recited dutifully, “but physical contact is strictly prohibited.”
“Come on, Doc. I won't tell anyone.”
My demeanor softened. “Now, Mr. Winthorp, you know I can't do that. I could lose my license.”
He shook his head—with difficulty—and walked out the door.
I felt sorry for the poor sap. There was a time I'd have ignored the rules, taken a look at his neck. But that was before I watched a bunch of my colleagues go bankrupt from lawsuits for doing that sort of thing, or worse ye
t, get carted off in handcuffs like Arnie Hirsch.
But this was a new world. When I graduated from the prestigious Centerville Medical School thirty-three years ago, I couldn't have been more proud. Sir William Osler once said, “The transition from layman to physician is the most awesome transition in the universe.” At least that's what we were told by our first clinical preceptor. And we believed him, thought we were special. After all, we'd gone from sniveling preppies to workaholics whose days were filled with making life-or-death decisions. That kind of thing changes a person. Changes you in ways you can't see, can't feel, can't notice until one day you wake up, look at on old picture of yourself and think, Was I ever really that naive?
But it jades you, too. Rearranges your priorities. Makes it hard to maintain a normal sense of empathy, though most could: It's what made us good at our profession.
Or used to.
Ms. Johnson looked over my shoulder as I stood in the doorway watching Mr. Winthorp make his way out of the office. “Do you get many like that?” she asked.
“Nah. The scanner usually picks up the right thing: You know, whatever it is that's causing the symptoms.”
“I can't believe that guy actually wanted you to touch him.” She shuddered as she spit out the words.
I kept silent. The Board of Medicine was notorious for infiltrating practices with young trainees who were trying to weed out doctors who didn't follow the rules, and I didn't know my new assistant all that well yet.
She turned and looked at me. “I mean, I can understand how some of the older people might think that way; it's what they grew up with. But Winthorp's only forty-two. Why would he think a doctor could find something that a scanner couldn't?”
The poor guy was just looking for a little relief and we didn't give it to him; she had to see that. I wasn't going to fall for the bait. “Guess some people just long for nostalgia,” I said. “Stories they hear from their parents, an old movie, some viral story running around the Web. There are lots of ways to hear about how things used to be. Some people still believe it was better back then.”
Analog SFF, July-August 2010 Page 11
