The Sam Gunn Omnibus

by Ben Bova

  “Just the thing for the tension that arises from pre-death syndrome,” Sam muttered. Loud enough for Skip to hear, of course.

  “The medics say the pills will ease our anxieties and help us to remain as quiet as possible while we wait for the rescue mission,” Skip said, glowering in Sam’s direction.

  He didn’t bother to remind us that the rescue mission, according to Sandi’s unofficial word, was still twelve days off. We would be out of food in three more days, and the recycled water was starting to taste as if it hadn’t been recycled, if you know what I mean. The air was getting foul, too, but that was probably just our imaginations.

  Sam appeared blithely unconcerned, even happy. He whistled cheerfully as Skip rationed out the tranquilizers, then gave his pills to me and scuttled off down the tunnel that led toward our barracks module. By the time I got to my bunk Sam was nowhere in sight. His whistling was gone. So was his pressure suit.

  I put his pills under his mattress, wondering where he could have gone. Outside? For what? To increase his radiation dose? To get away from the rest of us? That was probably it. Underneath his wise-guy shell Sam was probably just as worried and tense as any of us, and he just didn’t want us to know it. He needed some solitude, not chemical tranquility. What better place to find solitude than the airless rocky waste of Mare Nubium?

  That’s what I thought. That’s why I didn’t go out after him.

  The same thing happened the next “morning” (by which I mean the time immediately after our sleep shift). And the next. The Skipper would gather us together in the command module, we would each take our ceremonial tranquilizer pill and a sip of increasingly bad water, and then we would crawl back to our bunks and try to do nothing that would use up body energy or burn air. All of us except Sam. He faked swallowing his pill, handed it to me when Skip wasn’t watching, and then disappeared with his pressure suit.

  All of us were getting grumpier, surlier. I know I found myself resenting it whenever I had to use the toilet. I kept imagining my urine flowing straight back into our water tank without reprocessing. I guess I was starting to go crazy.

  But Sam was happy as could be: chipper, joking, laughing it up. He would disappear each morning for several hours and then show up with a lopsided grin on his round face, telling jokes and making us all feel a little better.

  Until the day Julio suddenly sat bolt upright on his bunk, the second or third morning after we had run out of tranquilizers, and yelled:

  “Booze!”

  Sam had been sitting on the edge of Julio’s bunk, telling an outrageous story of what he planned to do with Sandi once we got back to Houston.

  “Booze!” Julio repeated. “I smell booze! I’m cracking up. I must be losing my marbles. I smell booze!”

  For once in his life Sam looked apologetic, almost ashamed.

  “You’re not cracking up,” he said, in as quiet a voice as I’ve ever heard Sam use. “I was going to tell you about it tomorrow—the stuff is almost ready for human consumption.”

  You never saw three grown men so suddenly attentive.

  With a self-deprecating little grin Sam explained, “I’ve been tinkering with the propellants and other junk out in the return module. They’re not doing us any good just sitting there. So I tinkered up a small still. Seems to be working okay. I tasted a couple sips today. It’ll take the enamel off your teeth, but it’s not all that bad. By tomorrow ...”

  He never got any further. We did a Keystone Kops routine, rushing for our pressure suits, jamming ourselves through the airlock and running out to the inert, idle, cussedly useless return module.

  Sam was not kidding us. He had jury-rigged an honest-to-backwoods still inside the return module, fueling it with propellants from the modules tanks. The basic alcohol also came from the propellant, with water from the fuel cells and a few other ingredients that Sam had scrounged from Base Gamma’s medical supplies.

  We took turns at the still’s business end, sticking its little copper tube into the water nipple of our helmets to sample Sam’s concoction. It was terrible. We loved it.

  By the time we had staggered back to our barracks module, laughing and belching, we had made up our minds to let the other three guys in Barracks B share in Sam’s juice. But the Skipper was a problem. If we told him about it he’d have Sam up on charges and drummed out of the agency even before the rescue mission reached us. I figured if Old Stone Face found out he’d order the rescue mission to leave Sam behind.

  “Have no fear,” Sam told us with a giggle. “I myself will reveal my activities to our noble Skipper.”

  And before we could stop him he had tottered off toward the command module, whistling through the tunnel in a horribly sour off-key way.

  An hour went by. Then two. We could hear Skip’s voice yelling from the command module, although we couldn’t make out the words. None of us had the guts to go down the tunnel and try to help Sam. After a while the tumult and the shouting died. Mickey Lee gave me a questioning glance. Silence. Ominous silence.

  “You think Skip’s killed him?” Mickey asked.

  “More likely Sam’s talked the Skipper to death,” Julio replied.

  Timidly we slunk down the tunnel to the command module. The three other guys were in there with Sam and the Skipper. They were all quaffing Sam’s rocket juice and giggling at each other.

  We were shocked, but we joined right in. Six days later, when the guys from Base Alpha landed their return module crammed with emergency food and fresh water for us, we invited them to join the party. A week after that, when the rescue mission from Kennedy finally showed up, we had been under the influence for so long that we told them to go away.

  I had never realized before then what a lawyer Sam was. He had convinced the Skipper to read the medics’ report carefully, especially the part where they recommended using tranquilizers to keep us calm and minimize our energy consumption. Sam had then gotten the Skipper to punch up the medical definition of alcohol’s effects on the body, out of Houston’s medical files. Sure, enough, if you squinted the right way, you could claim that alcohol was a sort of a tranquilizer. That was enough justification for the Skipper, and we just about pickled ourselves in rocket juice until we got rescued.

  THE CRYSTAL STATUE glittered under the harsh rays of the unfiltered sun. The supervisor, still sitting on the lip of the truck’s hatch, said:

  “He looks beautiful. You guys did a good job. Is the epoxy set?”

  “Needs another few minutes, just to be sure,” said the hoist operator, tapping the toe of his boot against the base that they had poured on the lunar plain.

  “What happened when you got back to Houston?” asked Jade. “Didn’t they get angry at you for being drunk?”

  “Sure,” laughed the supervisor. “But what could they do? Sam’s booze pulled us through, and we could show that we were merely following the recommendations of the medics. Old Stone Face hushed it all up and we became heroes, just like Sandi told us we’d be—for about a week.”

  “And Sam?”

  “Oh, after a while he left the agency and started his own business: S. Gunn Enterprises, Unlimited. The rest you know about from the history disks. Entrepreneur, showman, scoundrel, trailblazer. It’s all true. He was all those things.”

  “Did he and Sandi ever, uh ... get together?” the hoist operator asked.

  “She was too smart to let him corner her. Sandi used one of the other guys to protect her; married him, finally. Cowboy, if I remember right. They eloped and spent their honeymoon in orbit. Zero gee and all that. Sam pretended to be very upset by it, but by that time he was surrounded by women, all of them taller than he was.”

  The three of them walked slowly around the gleaming statue.

  “Look at the rainbows it makes where the sun hits it,” said Jade. “It’s marvelous.”

  “But if he was so smart,” the hoist operator said, “why’d he pick this spot way out here for his grave? It’s kilometers from Selene City. You can
’t even see the statue from the City.”

  “Imbecile,” Jade said. “This is the place where Base Gamma was located. Isn’t that right?”

  “Nope,” the supervisor said. “Gamma was all the way over on the other side of Nubium. It’s still there. Abandoned, but still there. Even the blasted return module is still sitting there, dumb as ever.”

  “Then why put the statue here?”

  The supervisor chuckled. “Sam was a pretty shrewd guy. In his will he set up a tourist agency that’ll guide people to the important sites on the Moon. They’ll start at Selene and go along the surface in those big cruisers they’ve got back at the city. Sam’s tomb is going to be a major tourist attraction, and he wanted it to be far enough out on the mare so that

  people won’t be able to see it from Selene; they have to buy tickets and take the bus.”

  Both the young people laughed tolerantly.

  “I guess he was pretty smart, at that,” the hoist operator admitted.

  “And he had a long memory, too,” said the supervisor. “He left this tourist agency to me and the other guys from Artemis IV, in his will. We own it. I figure it’ll keep us comfortable for the rest of our lives.”

  “Why did he do that?”

  The supervisor shrugged inside his cumbersome suit. “Why did he build that still? Sam always did what he darned well felt like doing. And no matter what you think of him, he always remembered his friends.”

  The three of them gave the crystal statue a final admiring glance, then clumped back to the truck and started the hour-long drive to Selene City.

  But as she drove across the empty pitted plain, Jade thought of Sam Gunn. She could not escape the feeling that somehow, in some unexplainable way, her future was intimately tied to Sam Gunn’s past.

  The Hospital and the Bar

  JADE’S FIRST MEMORIES WERE NOT OF PEOPLE, BUT OF THE bare-walled rooms and wards of the hospital. The hushed voices. The faintly tangy smell of disinfectant. The hospital had seemed so snug and safe when she had been a child. Even though she had never had a room of her own, and had spent most of her childhood nights sleeping in the main ward, the hospital was the closest thing to a home that Jade had ever had.

  She was an adult now, with a job and an apartment of her own. A single room carved deep into the lunar rock, two levels below the hospital, four levels below Selene City’s main plaza and the surface. Still, returning to the hospital was like returning to the warmth of home. Almost.

  “It would be a really good thing to do,” said Dr. Dinant. She was a Belgian, and even though her native language was French, between her Walloon accent and Jade’s fragmentary Quebecois, they found it easier to converse in English.

  “You mean it would be good for science,” Jade replied softly.

  “Yes. Of course. For science. And for yourself, as well.”

  Dr. Dinant was quite young, almost Jade’s own age. Yet she reminded Jade of the blurry memory of her adoptive mother. She felt as if she wanted this woman to love her, to take her to her heart as no one ever had since her mother had gone away from her.

  But what Dr. Dinant was asking was more than Jade could give.

  “All you have to do is donate a few of your egg cells. It’s quite a simple procedure. I can do it for you right here in the clinic in just a few minutes.”

  Dinant’s skin was deeply tanned. She must spend hours under the sun lamps, Jade thought. The physician was not a particularly handsome woman: her mousy hair was clipped quite short and her clothes showed that she paid scant attention to her appearance. But she had an air of self-assurance that Jade sorely envied.

  “Let me explain it again,” Dr. Dinant said gently. Even though the chairs they were sitting in were close enough to touch one another, she kept a distinct separation from the younger woman.

  “I understand what you want,” Jade said. “You want to make a baby

  from my eggs so that you can test it for the bone disease I carry in my genes.”

  “Osteopetrosis,” said Dr. Dinant, “is not a disease....”

  “It prevents me from living on Earth.”

  The doctor smiled at her kindly. “We would like to be able to see to it that your children will not be so afflicted.”

  “You can cure it?”

  Dr. Dinant nodded. “We believe so. With gene therapy. We can remove the defective gene from your egg cell and replace it with a healthy one, then fertilize the cell, implant it in a host mother, and bring the fetus to term.”

  “My—the baby won’t have the disease?”

  “We believe we can eliminate the condition, yes.”

  “But not for me,” Jade said.

  “No, I’m afraid it must be done in the fetal or pre-fetal stage.”

  “It’s too late for me. It was too late when I was born.”

  “Yes, but your children needn’t be so afflicted.”

  My children? Jade pulled her gaze away from the eager-eyed doctor and glanced around the room. A bare little cell, like all the other offices in the hospital. Like all of Selene City. Buried underground, gray and lifeless, like living in a crypt.

  “You must make a decision,” insisted the doctor.

  “Why? Why now? I’ll marry some day. Why shouldn’t I have my own children myself?”

  An uncomfortable expression crossed Dr. Dinant’s face. “Your job, up on the surface. I know they keep the radiation exposure down to acceptable levels, but...”

  Jade nodded, understanding. She had heard tales about what long-term exposure to the radiation levels up on the surface could do. Even inside the armored space suits the radiation effects built up, over time. That’s why they paid a bonus for working up on the surface. She wondered if that was how she had acquired the bone disease in the first place. Was her father a worker on the surface? Her mother?

  Osteopetrosis. Marble bones, it was called. Jade remembered pictures of marble statues from ancient Greece and Rome, arms broken off, fingers gone, noses missing. That’s what my bones are like; too brittle for Earth’s gravity. That’s what would happen to me.

  Dr. Dinant forced a smile. “I realize that this is a difficult decision for you to make.” “Yes.”

  “But you must decide, and soon. Otherwise ...”

  Otherwise, Jade told herself, the radiation buildup would end her chances of ever becoming a mother.

  “Perhaps you should discuss the matter with your family,” the doctor suggested.

  “I have no family.”

  “Your mother—the woman who adopted you, she is still alive, is she not?”

  Jade felt a block of ice congealing around her. “I have not spoken to my mother in many years. She doesn’t call me and I don’t call her.”

  “Oh.” Dr. Dinant looked pained, defeated. “I see.”

  A long silence stretched between the two women. Finally Dr. Dinant shifted uncomfortably in her chair and said, “You needn’t make your decision at just this moment. Go home, think about it. Sleep on it. Call me in a few days.”

  Slowly, carefully, Jade got to her feet. “Yes. Thank you. I’ll call you in a few days.”

  “Good,” said the doctor, without moving from her chair. She seemed relieved to see Jade leave her office.

  Jade walked blindly down the corridors of the underground city. Men and women passed her, some nodding or smiling a hello, most staring blankly ahead. Children were still rare in Selene and if she saw any, she paid them no mind. It was too painful. The whole subject tore at her heart, reminding her again of the mother that had abandoned her, of the cold and empty life she was leading.

  In those days there were only two bars in Selene City, one frequented by management types and tourists, the other the haunt of the workers. Jade found herself pushing through the crowd at the incongruously named Pelican Bar.

  Friends called to her; strangers smiled at the diminutive redhead. But Jade saw and heard them only dimly.

  The Pelican’s owner tended the bar himself, leaving the robots t
o handle anyone too much in a hurry for a joke or a story. He was a paunchy middle-aged man, gleamingly bald beneath the overhead fluorescents. He seemed to smile all the time. At least, every time Jade had seen him his face was beaming happily.

  “Hey there, Green Eyes! Haven’t seen you since your birthday bash.”

  Her coworkers had surprised her with a party to celebrate her twentieth birthday, several weeks earlier. Jade sat on the last stool in the farthest corner of the bar, as distant from everyone else as she could manage.

  “Want your usual?”

  She hadn’t been to the Pelican—or anywhere else, for that matter— often enough to know what her “usual” might be. But she nodded glumly.

  “Comin’ right up.”

  A guy in a tan leather vest and turquoise-cinched bolo tie pulled up the stool next to Jade’s, a drink already in his hand. He smiled handsomely at her.

  “Hi, Red. Haven’t I seen you up at the landing port?”

  Jade shook her head. “Not me.”

  “Must be someplace else. I’m new here, just arrived last week for a year’s contract.”

  Jade said nothing. The newcomer tried a few more ploys, but when they failed to get a response from her he shrugged and moved away.

  The bartender returned with a tall frosted glass filled with a dark bubbling liquid and tinkling with real ice cubes.

  “Here you go! Genuine Coca-Cola!”

  Jade said, “Thanks,” as she took the cold sweating glass in her hand.

  “You’re never gonna win the Miss Popularity contest if you keep givin’ guys the cold shoulder, y’know.”

  “I’m not interested in any contests.”

  The bartender shrugged. “H’m, yeah, well maybe. But there’s somebody over there—” he jabbed a thumb back toward the crowd at the other end of the bar,”—that you oughtta meet.”

  “Why?”

  “You were askin’ about Sam Gunn, weren’t you? Zach Bonner said you were.”

  Her supervisor. “Is Zach here?” she asked..

  “Naw, too early for him. But this guy here now, he was a buddy of Sam’s, back in the early days.”