###
“Damned injectors,” Travis muttered, as he removed the coverplate from the engine preburners. “Five engines down, nineteen to go, including that freaking eighteen. That's thing's quit on me three times now.”
“If you keep talking to yourself, we'll have to rat you out to Doc Kumar,” said Reformed, who happened to be passing through the landing zone.
“You do that, and who will fly you back out here?” Travis peered through the curved faceplate of his helmet. The grin on the man's face, even after almost five years stuck on the dead Moon, surprised Travis.
“Wait, you love it out here, don't you?” he asked Reformed. “Stands to reason,” he said, bending back over the engine. “You're a selenologist, this is the Moon, and it's in one of the odd areas where this KREEP stuff is.”
“Correct, Mr. Nadler. This is my field of study, and here I am, finally out in the field.” The man actually bounded up and struck his bootheels together. “The best part of all of this is, without me, there's almost no chance we could help the Mars Expedition, or ourselves, get home. We're using it all! Phosphorus to ignite those MoonCan engines of yours. Rare Earths for the lasers, and Potassium for fertilizer for the greenhouses. There's a lot more, of course, but the Procellarum is where all the action is. Of course I'm happy?
“Good. Go dig up some KREEP, and let me fix these damned injectors, or there's no way we're going to get home.”
###
The Sun was two days from rising, and it was time to go back to the Collins. Travis completed all of his engine refurbishing days before, and was dirty, sweaty, and ready to head back to the Collins. He also wanted to survive the trip, so he took his countdown duties seriously, at one point shaking Rulebook by the shoulders when the man would not cooperate in the countdown.
“Just hit the button and get us home,” the man growled. “I want to find the man who recommended these damned catheters. All sixty centimeters of my dick are on fire.”
Travis chuckled. “Is that what you two were doing in the pressure cabin the other rest period?” He flipped through a chartbook made of plastic-encased maps and a laminated checklist of actions to perform prior to engine priming and firing.
“…and the horse you rode in on,” growled Rulebook.
Travis smiled to himself, looked through the checklist, set a few controls, and turned to look at the scientists. “Ready? This is going to be like lifting a hippo out of the water. Getting airborne is the hardest part,”
“No air on the Moon,” muttered Rulebook. Travis ignored him.
All twenty-four engines ignited on command, and Travis broke into his characteristic grin as he monitored the computer control of the engines. Three minutes into the burn, and thirty seconds from shutdown, Engine Fifteen fired a tongue of white-hot exhaust out of the side away from the Disco as oxygen ate through the central combustion chamber. The computer, sensing loss of thrust, shut down Engine Three to maintain symmetry in the other engine firings. The remaining eighteen engines throttled down to idle on command and the Disco effected a slow, graceful pitchover from flying forward to flying backward. They were in coast phase right now, four engines firing with approximately the same thrust as the mass of the Disco weighed on the Moon, ensuring level flight.
Travis could take his eyes off of the flight computer and instruments for a minute, so he savored the view from two kilometers height above the Lunar maria. Looking outward, he was spared any liquid aluminum splashes from the sudden impact cone that appeared in the floor of the Disco as it was pierced by a zooming piece of the Moon. But his external spacesuit was splashed and smoking. A shockwave would have pitched the men overboard but for the safety straps all three of them wore.
“You guys OK?” he said into his headset. “Anyone hurt?”
No answer.
He knew the autopilot would get them to Collins, but he would have to land the Disco by hand. He spared a glance at Reformed and Rulebook. Their suits still looked inflated. He peered closer—no red lights. Good, they could afford to wait—he had a wounded bird that he had to set down somewhere. Plus figure out what the flashing lights on his own suit meant.
The impact was off center, which was both a blessing and a curse. It missed the radiothermionic generator by mere centimeters, but the shower of molten aluminum from the solid deckplate ended up over every surface and many of the engine controls. It would have coated Travis' control panel, except he was standing in front of it. As it was, other panels were coated with shiny aluminum droplets, but in front of the engine controls, a dark silhouette protected the vital controls.
It also induced a yaw that continued to increase as Disco flew through the heavens. Travis waited—Disco would eventually return to its original orientation, but when? He queried the inertial navigation unit, ran a time versus angle calculation in his head, and sighed with relief as he aborted a abnormal steering command. The Disco would return to the correct orientation within twenty two seconds before the rest of the engines throttled up to begin their descent.
Finally, a chance to actually fly this thing!
###
“Moonbase Collins, this is Lunar Disco, returning with a whole lot of KREEP. Please turn off your lasers,” radioed Travis. “We've also got a medical emergency, I think. Both selenologists are unresponsive, but their suits appear to be inflated.”
“What happened?” asked Ashley Boardman, who was on duty in the control room.
“Got hit by debris—is splashed molten deck plate on us all. I had my back to it, but these guys got it full frontal. Can't move away from the controls, so I can't give you more on their condition. They’re not transmitting, so I don't know anything.”
“Roger, Disco. Continue your descent. Lasers are cold. I say again, lasers are cold.”
Travis reached out with his entire sensorium, he could almost feel the blasting engines as if they were a part of his body. His hands danced without visual guidance over the control board, adjusting a throttle here, swiveling a nozzle there. His nerve endings reached to the exhaust cones of the engines, his eyes integrated instrument readings into a kinesthetic sense of Disco's flight across the face of the Moon.
On cue, he spun the engine throttles on one side, stopping the yaw exactly on time for the computer-controlled burn down to the surface, touching down precisely on the landing pad outside the northwest arm of the station.
Travis had no sooner safed the engines than two stretcher crews descended on the scientists.
“Wow,” said the head of one crew. “Did you know their belts had melted away? If you had any kind of maneuvers up there, they would have been thrown overboard.”
###
The scientists lived; the only damage they suffered was to their pride. They had fainted as soon as they saw the impact and fan of silvery aluminum engulf themselves and Travis.
Bubba found Travis out on the Disco, trying to assess the damage to the craft, and directing the unloading of the KREEP cargo.
“Travis. Hell of a job you did there,” Bubba said. He looked at the backpack of Travis's spacesuit. “Hey, man, you better get inside and get this thing looked at. You've gotten aluminum spatter all over the environmental control unit. No telling if or when it'll fail. I don't need to be stacking you up in that bunker with the rest of the mummies, hear?”
“I will. Just not yet, buddy,” he started, only to find himself lifted off of the ground.
“Now,” said Bubba, with all of the flexibility of a large mountain. Bubba held him aloft and started hopping towards the airlock.
“All right, all right!” said Travis. “Put me down. I can get there on my own.”
###
“You were on your last layer,” said Irma, holding up the oxygen feed hose. “One thin membrane of polyfluorcarbon left. Move the wrong way, and you'd never make it to the lock.”
“Huh,” said Travis, looking at the air line. “I must have been like this ever since the impact.” He and Bubba hopped slowly down the corri
dor from suit maintenance.
Bubba saw him falter slightly, looked at him just as Travis's eyes rolled up in his head. Bubba caught him mid-hop and carried him to his bunk, tucking him under the thin cover.
###
McCrary shook Travis's hand after a short speech at the next Sunrise Meeting. Travis was simultaneously proud, embarrassed, and eager for the whole experience to be over. Everyone involved had something to say, and Travis had to endure a sustained round of applause.
Afterwards, he and Bubba were kicking back in the cafeteria. “The hell of it is,” said Travis, “at no time did I think I was doing anything heroic. Hell, if I didn't keep piloting, we would have crashed and died. Sure, the job was a little tricky, but anyone could do it.”
Bubba clapped him on the shoulder. “Heroism, or, really, bravery, ain't somethin' that everyone has, buddy. Sometime's it's doin' what needs doin', even when yer fillin' yer shorts. Tell me, were you scared?”
“No. You heard me—I had to stay at the controls, didn't know if the computer or a gyro was out of whack. I was too busy to be scared.”
“Zactly. You stayed at yer post. Them science johnnies conked out.”
“Don't run them down, Bubba. They had nothing to do, saw the whole thing, and thought I bought the farm. I probably would have conked out too, if I thought I was going to buy a farm here on the Moon.”
Bubba chuckled. “I gotta get back to Thor. You're stuck, you know. Everyone thinks you're a hero now, and that's that.”
Travis sighed. “I guess this means more hazardous missions.”
“No bet. You're a marked man now, buddy.”
###
Travis flew out whenever required. Horst solved the problem of the clogging injectors, and there were progressively fewer in-flight shutdowns.
In The Works, enormous quantities of Lunar rock was moved through the jaws of the crushers, emerging as megaliters of LOX, thick plates of steel, aluminum, and titanium, and mountains of silicon dioxide. All of these products were moved to an assembly area, where a blocky shape rose above the machinery of The Works.
###
“You look exhausted, Irma,” said Marcel. “What's going on?”
“McCrary,” she said. “Bastard's got me run ragged.”
Marcel chuckled. “Since when have you been so eager to work with McCrary?”
“I'm not!” she said. “But I've got to be on every load fired out of that thing, otherwise, who knows where it's going?”
“Where are all these loads going, and what's in them?”
“The Mars Expedition. McCrary's sending them everything. Semi-processed KREEP material, thorium, Lunar soil with organics added, boxes of medical supplies—you'd think we'd need medical supplies more now—more thorium. Slugs of iron for use in momentum transfer. High purity silicon wafers. More KREEP material. Marcel, they even threw an entire carbonaceous chondrite asteroid, ten meters across, down that track and out to the Expedition. What do they need all that material for?”
Marcel stirred his food around. “I haven't the faintest idea.”
###
“How much longer, McCrary?” asked Horst. “Have you noticed how the crew's doing?”
McCrary grimaced. “Deficiency diseases. Yes, they're starting to show. Fortunately, it's subtle right now. Doctor Kumar says he's got enough supplies to take care of the two toddlers and people that we cannot lose, like Nadler and Cranston, and the senior staff. But it's going to be a close-run thing.”
“How's the Expedition doing?” asked Horst.
“Smithson reports success. Six months of assembly, and then the big test. How are we doing?”
Horst smiled faintly. “Travis Nadler did his last flight out to the Procellarum last week. He's transitioning to training on The Tank. He's starting to ask questions I am not sure you want me to answer.”
“Such as?” asked McCrary
“Reentry, for one. You're going to have to bring him up to speed.”
McCrary frowned. “I'm not sure. We still have about a year to go. I'd ease off on Tank training, get him busy on other things. Maybe remounting the MoonCan engines on The Tank for in-flight corrections. There has to be something.”
“There's always something,” said Horst. “I'll see what I can do.”
The Tank
UNSOC Lunar Colony Michael Collins, January 16th, 2087, 2001 EDT
The enormous metal shape rolled down the rails toward Nifty. Laser distance-measuring devices fed continuous data to Operations, where Peter watched the clearances with an eagle eye.
Out by the trench, Travis stood in his spacesuit. He had shaped the trench from the very beginning until kilometer five point three, when he started flying the Disco out to the Procellarum, but this was the part that mattered. After all, if The Tank didn't fit, then someone's head was going to roll, and he did not want it to be his.
“Damn fine job, Horst,” said McCrary. “Fits like a glove.”
“Sure hope so,” said Horst. “After all, we were out here measuring everything five different times. It better fit!”
This test was designed to verify the operation of the initial launching magnets, as well as the reverse EMF controls that should stop The Tank well before the end of the track at kilometer ten point seven.
“Funny how something this huge is going to really be something quite tiny,” said Horst. “Any word, Chief?”
“It's right in the groove,” said McCrary. “Now, all we have to do is get this thing off the ground.”
Peter in Operations fed the launch parameters to Irma Huertas, who was filling the seat of Nifty Controller for this test. Later, she would be doing the same thing but from the inside of The Tank, as practice for its actual launch.
The Tank was perched on a specially constructed carrier plate. On the underside of the plate, and at intervals along its raised sides, were high-power electromagnets. Attached to the top of the aluminum-titanium plate were four enormous steel discs, mounted horizontally on magnetic bearings that bore the entire weight of the disc with no physical contact at all. Bolted atop the bottom plate and discs was a final aluminum-titanium launch plate, with specially designed quick-release lugs that would bear Nifty's thrust, transfer it to The Tank, and remain behind at the end of the track. It was a Al-Ti sandwich, with room for spinning disks inside and The Tank on top.
In operation, it was simple: powerful electric motors at Nifty's launch station spun the four discs up to launch speed. The levitation electromagnets were in both rails under the plate, as well as the magnets on the underside of the entire sandwich. At launch, the discs powered generators that maintained current in the plate levitation magnets; the thrust magnets, powered by Mighty Thor, engage; and The Tank and the entire population of the Collins race down the track, lifting into the sky as the horizon of the Moon curves away from the hurtling projectile, flung out of the Moon on a trajectory towards Earth.
Timing was critical, but launch day was still a month away. The Launch Controlers set this test to coincide with the precise launch point a month hence. The Tank was empty, but everything else was the same as it would be one month from now.
Peter, who by now had acquired the nickname of “The Voice of Launch Control,” picked up the countdown at the ten-minute mark. This test should be perfect. It was the thirteenth such dress rehearsal they had done for The Tank since it was first unveiled. The Tank was a simple machine, really. Steel walls one meter thick should keep the passengers safe from most debris. Just in case, though, a layer of titanium/aluminum armor thirty centimeters thick was applied on all surfaces and held in place via welding and an underlayer of silicone putty. Fiberglass batting, one meter thick, was spot-welded to supports throughout the interior. In the case of a large or particularly speedy penetrator, the titanium armor turned the penetrator into a spray of plasma, the putty disrupted the plasma jet, and the steel was the last barrier. The batting existed to absorb any spalling fragments produced.
In fact, the contraption s
o resembled a twentieth century battle tank that Tank was the only name the craft was known by.
***
Peter ran through his countdown with the precision and utter lack of humor that had been the hallmark of Launch Directors from the earliest days. When you were handling hardware worth millions, the time for jokes was long over.
A small electric tractor towed The Tank to its position at the head of Nifty's rail.
“T minus ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, interlocks released, disc generators engaged, one, launch!”
Tank leaped down the track. Travis shuddered. They better adjust the magnets or everyone’s going to get a ten-gee launch, even the little kids. Especially the little kids.
“Telemetry incoming. Tank has performed to spec. Slowing the load down now. Tank has stopped fifteen hundred meters from track end. Reversing drives to move Tank back to the start location. Please clear the track.
Like a brick on a block of soap, Tank smoothly crept back to the start of Nifty.
Gone in a Flash
UNSOC Lunar Colony Michael Collins, February 14, 2087, 2119 EDT
Shutting down the Collins was nearly as difficult as it was powering it up after The Event. The greenhouses were left in place, but Horst's engineers drained the fluids into spun-glass tanks and allowed to freeze for future crews' use. Sean Pallock's crew carefully packed the seeds and other starter materials lovingly placed them in multilayer containers, and lowered them into enormous LOX tanks.
And so it went throughout the entire station. For if McCrary's dream would come true, it would be a matter of years, rather than centuries before Man could once again live on the Moon, and the riches of Lunar stockpile would once again rain gently down upon the earth.
McCrary and Horst walked through the station, compartment by compartment, looking for something off, something anomalous. The colonists left behind many riches: organics, water, knowledge, and graffiti. McCrary designated one entire area, the 'Memento Wall' for every Moondog to inscribe something for the next tenants. McCrary was the last to sign, for he didn't want to dictate how anyone else should leave their mark.
Come In, Collins (Riddled Space Book 2) Page 23
