Moonrise gt-5

by Ben Bova

  Paul stared at the screen. It streaked random colors for a few moments, then Gregory Masterson’s face filled the screen, bloated and distorted because it was almost pressed against the camera lens.

  Gregory was mumbling something. Then he leaned back and they could see he was sitting at his desk, his face dark and grim. Paul was startled to realize how much alike father and son looked.

  Joanna’s hand reached into Paul’s and gripped tight.

  “Fuckin’ sonsabitches,” Gregory muttered. “How the fuck’m I s’posed to know if this piece of crap is in focus? Autofocus my hairy ass…” His voice trailed off into incoherent mumbles.

  Paul saw the crystal decanter of whiskey at Gregory’s elbow. He was waving a heavy old-fashioned glass as he grumbled, whiskey sloshing over its rim onto the desk. The Smith Wesson revolver was resting in front of him, big and menacing, polished steel, long ribbed barrel and fine-grained walnut grip.

  “It’s killing me,” Gregory said, looking straight into the camera. “What they’ve done to me… what they’re doin’ now… might’s well be dead. Serve ’em right, the goddam’ pricks.”

  Paul felt his insides turning to ice. Joanna was staring fixedly at the big screen, where her late husband loomed over her. She seemed transfixed, unmoving as a statue, not even breathing, like a deer that freezes when it’s caught in an automobile’s headlights.

  With his free hand Gregory picked up the heavy revolver. “See this? Oughtta blow their fuckin’ heads off with this. Blam! Right between the eyes. Or maybe shoot off their goddam’ balls, see how they like it.”

  Their balls? Paul wondered. What’s he talking about?

  “Get ’em before they get me,” Gregory muttered darkly. “Only way to do it…’ He lapsed into incomprehensible mumbles again.

  Then he put the old-fashioned glass down with exaggerated care and transferred the gun to his right hand. He studied it for long moments, breathing heavily, mouth hanging open. Paul thought he might have been having trouble focusing his eyes.

  “Get ’em before they get me,” he repeated thickly. “This gun’s my protection, my insurance policy. Make sure they can’t hurt me anymore. Protect myself…”

  Suddenly Gregory’s eyes blazed with fury and he swung the gun madly. The picture abruptly went dead.

  For several seconds no one said a word. They all stared at the blank screen.

  At last Arnold spoke up. “That’s it”

  Paul pulled his eyes away from the screen and saw that Greg was staring at him accusingly.

  “It’s pretty much of a jumble,” Joanna said, disengaging her hand from Paul’s. “Is that the original disk or the enhanced version?”

  “That’s the enhancement,” Arnold replied.

  “The original’s in a bank vault,” Greg said tightly, “with orders to turn it over to the police if anything should happen to me.”

  Joanna gave her son a pale smile. “Isn’t that just a trifle melodramatic?”

  Paul could see that Greg’s hands were trembling slightly.

  “No, it’s not melodramatic, mother,” he answered. “It seems very likely that someone murdered my father. Whoever did it—” he shifted his gaze toward Paul “—might try to kill me to keep this disk out of the hands of the authorities.”

  “That’s stupid,” Paul snapped.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “In the first place,” Paul said, “the disk doesn’t show anything — except that Gregory was blind drunk and had a loaded pistol in his hand.”

  “And felt his life was in danger,” Arnold added.

  “He said someone was killing him,” Greg said, still staring at Paul. “He felt betrayed.”

  Paul started to retort that Gregory was an expert on betrayal, but decided it would only make the situation hotter, so he bit it back.

  “Are you saying,” Joanna asked her son, her voice tense, strained, “that Gregory committed suicide because he felt betrayed?”

  Greg turned molten eyes to her. “I’m saying that my father was frantic. That his feelings of betrayal drove him to drink—”

  “Then he must’ve started feeling betrayed twenty years ago,” Paul snapped.

  “And after he passed out from drinking,” Greg went on, glowering, “someone slipped into his office, put that gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.”

  “Bullshit,” Paul growled.

  Joanna asked, “Who are you accusing, Greg?”

  “We all know who stood to gain the most from my father’s death.”

  “Paul couldn’t have done it,” Joanna said, so calmly that Paul wondered how she could control herself so well.

  “Why not?”

  “Because he was here, with me, that afternoon,” she said, her voice low but firm. “We spent the afternoon in bed together. That’s where I was when the phone call came through.”

  Greg’s face went white with rage.

  “So if you think that Paul murdered your father,” Joanna continued, “then you’re going to have to blame the two of us. I can’t prove that we were here that afternoon. I obviously didn’t want the servants to see us together.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Greg said. “You’re trying to protect him.”

  Almost triumphantly, Joanna said, “If Paul murdered your father, then I helped him. Go to the police with that!”

  “You were sleeping with him!” Greg accused. “You betrayed my father.”

  “Your father betrayed me a hundred times and more,” Joanna said, her voice edging higher. “Paul was the only consolation I had.”

  “Paul and who else?” Greg snarled. “How many other men have you—”

  Paul jumped to his feet and leaned across the coffeetable to haul Greg up by his lapels. “That’s enough! You’d better shut your mouth.”

  Greg pulled free, glaring pure hatred. Bradley Arnold, never moving from his place on the sofa, smiled and raised his hands soothingly.

  “Gentlemen!” Arnold said. “Please! Let’s not allow our emotions to get the better of our judgment.”

  For a long moment Paul and Greg stood confronting each other, the coffeetable between them: Greg tall and slim, Paul a solid welterweight.

  “Sit down, both of you,” Joanna commanded.

  “Please,” Arnold said. “Let’s try to keep this on a civilized plane.”

  Paul took his place beside Joanna again. Greg sat down next to Arnold. Paul saw that Melissa looked alarmed, frightened.

  “If we had wanted to go to the police,” Arnold said, “we would have done that days ago.”

  We? Paul’s ears perked up. Arnold said we .

  “The reason I set up this meeting,” the board chairman went on, “was to try to come to some sort of understanding about all this. Keep it in the family, so to speak.”

  “Then why is she here?” Joanna asked, gesturing toward Melissa.

  “She’s with me,” Greg said. “If it hadn’t been for Melissa these past few weeks I think I would’ve gone off the deep end.”

  You’re already in over your head, kid, Paul said to himself.

  “Now, now,” said Arnold. “Let’s try to be reasonable and come up with a solution that makes some sense.”

  “I don’t see where the problem is,” Paul said. “Gregory committed suicide. That’s all there is to it.”

  “He was murdered,” Greg insisted sullenly.

  “Then show your pissin’ disk to the cops and see what they make of it.”

  “No!” Arnold boomed. His deep voice seemed to make the heavy window drapes flutter. “We should settle this among ourselves.”

  “Settle it how?” Joanna asked.

  “Greg will refrain from showing this disk to the board of directors—”

  “Refrain?” Paul snapped. “He’s got no business showing that disk to anybody.”

  Arnold shook his head disappointedly. “Paul, I’m sure you understand that even though the disk may not constitute the kind of evidence the police could use, it
would certainly look very bad for you in the eyes of the board members.”

  “Especially,” Melissa pointed out softly, “with Joanna’s alibi for you.”

  Paul sank back on the sofa cushions. “You sonsofbitches are going to use this disk to drive a wedge between me and the board?”

  “You can resign,” Greg said. “Just quit and leave the company and I won’t have to show the disk to anybody.”

  “Resign?”

  “You have a golden parachute,” Arnold pointed out. “You won’t be hurting, financially.”

  “Quit the company? Is that all you want?”

  “No,” said Greg. “There’s one additional thing you’ll have to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Divorce my mother.”

  Paul got to his feet again, slbwly this time. “This meeting’s over,” he said through gritted teeth. “There’s the door, Greg. Get out.”

  Still sitting, Greg looked up at him sullenly. “You can’t throw me out. This is my house.”

  “Not any more.”

  Greg’s eyes widened and he looked past Paul to his mother. “I live here, too!”

  “Get out,” Paul repeated, pronouncing each word distinctly. “You can send somebody over to clear out your things later. Now get out of here before I throw you through a window.”

  Greg shot to his feet. “Mom, are you going to let him do this to me?”

  “I think it would be best,” Joanna said. “We obviously can’t live under the same roof anymore. Not now.”

  “You’re letting him throw me out of my own home?” Greg’s voice climbed an octave higher.

  Arnold lumbered to his feet. “Come on, Greg, you can stay at my house until you find a place of your own.”

  The old man pulled at Greg’s jacket sleeve. Looking bewildered, hurt and angry at the same time, Greg let himself be led away toward the door.

  Melissa stood up. “For what it’s worth,” she said softly, “I told him this would happen.” Then she left, too.

  LEV BRUDNOY

  He was a good-will ambassador or a con man, a free spirit or a pariah, depending on your point of view. Levrentь Alexandrovich Brudnoy was a trained fluid dynamicist who somehow managed to wangle a job as a life-support engineer at the ill-starred Russian facility called Lunagrad, and then go on to become its most famous — or infamous — emissary. The Russians had placed their base at the giant crater Aristarchus, up in the area where Mare Imbrium and Oceanus Procellarum merge, nearly a thousand miles northwest of Moonbase.

  Like Moonbase, Lunagrad was originally heavily subsidized by the Russian government. After years of supporting the primitive base as basically an outpost for scientific research and further exploration of the Moon, Moscow decided (long before Washington did) to’spin off the base to private enterprise.

  While Masterson Aerospace Corporation operated the American Moonbase under government contract, NPO Lunagrad, the corporation hastily formed to run the Russian base, sought investors all over the world. Few were willing to risk their money on a lunar base.

  Lev Brudnoy happened to be in Moscow, applying for his second tour of duty at Lunagrad, when the desperate corporate personnel director caught sight of him. Handsome, red-haired, charming, young enough to appear dashing, old enough to appear knowledgeable, Brudnoy would make the ideal ‘image’ of the new Russian space pioneer. After all, the man wanted to return to Lunagrad, no?

  Why did he want to return to the Moon? Some said to realized that this new frontier was humankind’s great new challenge and opportunity. Others said it was to make tht extra salary so he could pay his gambling debts. At leas three different women were certain that handsome Lev was running off to the Moon to escape from them (although none of them knew of the other two).

  No matter what his reasons, the corporate personnel chief knew a media star when she saw one. She interviewed lca extensively, often in bed, and then unleashed him as the new Russian icon: the space traveller, the lunar explorer, the man of the future.

  In his way, Lev helped to raise billions for Lunagrad. He became an international television celebrity. When he went to Lunagrad he brought virtual reality equipment with him so he could ‘escort’ Earthbound visitors through the facility and show them the stark grandeur of the Moon’s harshly beautiful environment.

  The Lunagrad that he showed was mostly a television studio’s carefully prepared set, a heavily cosmeticized version of the grubby reality of the cramped, stuffy, overheated and underfinanced underground shelters that composed the true Lunagrad.

  Money flowed in for Lunagrad. Not enough to really expand the base, but enough to keep it staggering along. Scientists came to the Moon and departed. Geologists and metallurgists explored the wide expanses around Lunagrad. In Moscow the board of directors, chaired now by the woman who had been personnel director, published glowing full-color brochures of the glorious future of Lunagrad.

  Like many tragedies, Brudnoy’s success came crashing down when he went one single step too far. He shuttled back and forth to Lunagrad so often that he became known world-wide as ‘The Moon Man.’ Inevitably, on a certain global television broadcast, he was asked the fateful question: When will tourists be allowed to visit Lunagrad?

  “Why not now?” was his immediate, unthinking reply.

  Within hours the offices of NPO Lunagrad were deluged with requests for visits to the base on the Moon. For the first time in ages, the Russians had scored a public relations triumph over the West. Tourists to the Moon! It was fantastic. But it promised to be profitable. Even at a cost of millions, there were wealthy individuals who — bored with the Great Wall of China and Antarctica and the space stations in low Earth orbit — simply had to see the Moon firsthand.

  Brudnoy led the first contingent himself. Their complaints started even before the booster rocket took off from Baikanour. There were no hotels! They were expected to sleep in barracks, like… like… well, like cosmonauts or scientists. Lunagrad was small, crowded, smelled bad. The food was awful. There weren’t enough spacesuits for everyone to go out for a walk on the Moon’s surface at the same time; they had to take turns. And the suits stank!

  On and on, a litany of complaints that went all the way back to Mother Russia and over the television networks to the rest of the world.

  Lunar tourism was set back twenty years. Lunagrad was exposed as a dirty, dangerous, crowded and unwholesome frontier outpost. Lev Brudnoy was accused of fronting for a fraud. Lawsuits were actually started by several of the American tourists, although the Russian government quietly quashed them — with Washington’s even quieter acquiescence.

  Lev Brudnoy became a pariah. He was no longer welcome in the Moscow offices of NPO Lunagrad, nor in the beds of women who had adored him only weeks earlier.

  Then came the most tragic blow of all. Their finances ruined, NPO Lunagrad declared bankruptcy. Lunagrad would shut down. Permanently.

  Lev was at Lunagrad when the terrible news came. Most of the skeleton crew of scientists and cosmonauts did not blame him, exactly, but they did not console him either.

  Deep in his heart, Lev knew he had done nothing truly wrong. And he wanted to continue his life as a ‘lunik.’ So he commandeered one of the last rocket vehicles left at Lunagrad, reprogrammed its guidance computer with his own hands, and flew it in one long ballistic arc to Moonbase, where he asked for asylum.

  The people at Moonbase had seen Lev on television, of course. They immediately took a liking to the big, lovable redheaded Russian. Besides, they had no way to get him back to Lunagrad; Lev’s rocket transport could be refueled of course, but somehow its guidance computer had broken down as soon as the craft had landed at Moonbase.

  After somewhat frenzied discussions with Savannah, Moscov and Washington, it was decided that Lev could become a Masterson Corporation employee without losing his Russian citizenship. But it was all kept very quiet. Lev’s days as a television idol were over. He became a regular visitor to Moonbase, working the
re six months at a time, then spending a month Earthside.

  He even returned to Moscow, but only briefly. Too many women were waiting for him there.

  MARE NUBIUM

  A part of his mind wanted to giggle. I must be going crazy, Paul thought. Yet it was slightly ludicrous, leaning against the massive boulder, alone on the desolate lunar plain, miles from shelter, running out of oxygen while the fingers of his right hand wiggled pitifully around the metal collar of his surface suit, trying to reach the water tube.

  Suppose I die like this. When they finally find me they’ll think I strangled myself.

  He wanted to laugh but his throat was too dry for it. Sweat stung his eyes, though. I’m not dehydrated. Not yet.

  There! His thumb and forefinger grasped the slim plastic tube. It was just below his chin, out of his field of vision. Blinking the sweat away, Paul slowly, carefully slid his fingers along the tube. He could not feel a kink in it. The tube went into the metal collar ring, where it connected with the piping that ran inside the suit, across the left shoulder to the water tank in the life-support backpack.

  Maybe when I fell I dislodged the connection in the collar, he guessed. Don’t feel any wetness. The tube’s not ruptured. He spent several precious minutes searching for kinks in the slim tube, finding none.

  Must be the connection inside the collar ring, he told himself. No way to get to it.

  He pushed himself up to a standing position and stared out at the sharp horizon, blazing in unfiltered sunlight. Must be at least another ten miles to go. Without water I won’t make it. He held up his forearm display panel. In the shade of the boulder the temperature was a hundred eighty below zero. But just a foot away, in the sunlight, it was over two hundred above, to knew. And still rising.

  His mouth was parched. Can’t go ten more miles it the sunshine without drinking water. You’ll dehydrate and collapse.

  Okay, he said to himself. If it is to be, it’s up to me. You know what you’ve got to do. Make it quick and do it right You won’t get two chances.