Moonrise gt-5

by Ben Bova

  “Must be after midnight, your time, right?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said to the screen. “I’m just glad you got there safely.”

  There was nearly a three-second lag while her words hurtled to the Moon at the speed of light and his response raced back to her.

  Paul broke into a big grin. “Hey, it’s a lot safer here than it is in New York.”

  Joanna forced a laugh. “I suppose so. I’m glad you’re all right, though.”

  Again the lag. Then, “Well, I’ll be here for a couple of days getting things set up. Then we go out to the remote site.”

  “You’ll be travelling by hopper?”

  She noticed, while waiting for his reply, a good-looking young woman in the background of the crowded underground shelter. For an instant she thought it was Melissa, but no, this woman was younger and either white or Hispanic.

  “By tractor. We’ve got too much cargo to haul for a hopper to lift. Had to throw my weight around to get one,” Paul said. “They’re all in pretty constant use.”

  “The oxygen plant?”

  Were there other women up there? Joanna wondered. She’d have to check the files, she decided, and see who was with Paul in those intimate quarters. Vaguely she recalled hearing jokes about living conditions at Moonbase: something about spacesuits built for two.

  “Seems funny,” Paul was saying. “The crew here is breakin’ their humps putting this oxygen facility together, and if the nanobugs work right, we’ll be able to pull oxy directly out of the rocks and even make water with it.”

  They chatted for nearly half an hour, always with that annoying little delay between them. Paul looks so happy, Joanna thought He’s in his element. He loves being there. He’s only playing at corporate business down here; what he really wants is to be on the Moon. He feels free there.

  Free of me, she thought. Free to sample the younger women who have the same love for that frontier as he does.

  Finally she said goodnight, pleading a full schedule and the need to get up early the next morning.

  “Yeah,” Paul said, once her words reached him. “We’re gonna have a busy day, too. Goodnight, Joanna.” Then he hunched closer to the screen and lowered his voice. “I love you, baby.” And Joanna found that her eyes were misting again.

  The following evening Joanna asked Greg to come to the house and have dinner with her.

  I’d love to,” her son replied. He arrived at the house with a big bouquet of flowers. To brighten up the place,” he said.

  Faced with the choice of eating in the ormal dining room or the kitchen’s breakfast nook, Joanna chose the dining room. The butler used Greg’s bouquet as a centerpiece on the long, polished cherrywood table, and set their two places with Joanna at the head of the table and Greg at her right.

  “So how’s he doing up there?” Greg asked as they spooned their soup.

  “I haven’t heard from him all day.”

  “He must be awfully busy.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “He’ll call later. They’re on Greenwich time up there. All the space facilities are.”

  “I know.”

  “So it’s…’ Greg pressed a stud on his wristwatch, “…God, it’s almost one in the morning there!”

  Joanna’s eyes widened briefly.

  Quickly, Greg said, “If he’s out at the remote site, maybe the communications link isn’t there for a transmission to Earth.”

  “He could relay a call through,” Joanna said.

  “If anything had happened, we’d hear about it right away,” Greg said. “There’s nothing to worry about, really.”

  With a weary sigh, Joanna said, “He knows I worry about him every time he goes into space. To him it’s fun, exciting. But it frightens me so!”

  “He should have called you,” Greg agreed. “It’s not very sensitive of him to leave you here worrying about him.”

  Joanna studied her son from across the dining table. Greg’s a grown man, she told herself. He’s matured so much in the past few months. Could he take the reins of the company if anything happened to Paul? Could the two of us handle all that responsibility?

  “There’s no reason to be frightened,” Greg was saying. “After all, Mom, you went to the space station with him, didn’t you?”

  “Once,” she said.

  “It wasn’t so terrible, was it?”

  “I was sick as a dog every minute,” Joanna said.

  Greg laughed. “Really? I heard rumors about that but I didn’t believe them. I guess it wasn’t much of a honeymoon for you, then.”

  “Did you tell Melissa to seduce Paul?” Joanna blurted, surprised to hear herself ask.

  Greg flinched with surprise. “Tell Melissa? Me? I wouldn’t even speak to the bitch.”

  “Do you really hate her that much?”

  His face twisting, Greg snarled, “She was one of Dad’s concubines. Did you know that? Then she switched to Paul. And then she came on to me. She’s nothing but a slut.”

  “You told me that she wanted your baby,” Joanna said. “Perhaps she really loved you.”

  “Love? What’s love got to do with it? It’s nothing but her biological clock ticking. She’ll have a baby with whoever she can talk into bed. Maybe she’ll have Paul’s baby.”

  “I’m having Paul’s baby,” Joanna whispered.

  His mouth dropped open. His eyes flared. “What did you say?”

  “I’m pregnant. You’re going to have a brother.”

  Greg’s face went white. Trembling visibly, he pushed his chair away from the table and tried to stand up. The effort seemed too much for him.

  “You… you’re going to have his baby?” Greg was panting as if he had run a thousand meters. “His baby?”

  Joanna nodded solemnly.

  “Abort it! Get rid of it!”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You can’t have his baby,” Greg seemed about to dissolve in tears. “Don’t you see? It’s the last straw! The final nail in my coffin.”

  “No,” Joanna said. “It won’t be like that.”

  “The hell it won’t! He’ll want to give the corporation to his own son, not to me!” Greg howled. “He’ll push me out of the way, and you’ll help him!” Just then the butler came in with the main course.

  “Get out!” Greg screamed at him. “Get out of here!”

  Wide-eyed, the butler looked to Joanna. She nodded and he disappeared back into the kitchen.

  “Greg, dear,” she said soothingly, “try to calm down. This isn’t going to change anything between us.”

  “It changes everything!” he snapped. “I got Brad out of the way just to make sure. But what good is that now?”

  “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

  “His baby! You’re going to give him a son so he can get rid of me once and for all. He murdered my father and now you’re helping him to kill me! Even after he’s dead he’ll still be killing me!”

  Greg lurched to his feet, swung one fist across the table and knocked china and glassware crashing to the floor. Joanna jerked with sudden fear. Her son was standing over her, fists clenched, murderous rage boiling through him.

  “I knew he was out to get me, but I didn’t think you would help him!”

  “No one’s out to get you, Greg,” Joanna said, fighting to keep her voice calm. “Now sit down and—”

  “You’re all against me! All of you! Brad, him, even you. But you’ll see. I’m smarter than he is. Smarter than all of you. He’ll never come back to you. Never! I’m going to be the master here, not him!”

  He reached over the table and grabbed the vase with his flowers. “I’m going to destroy him. Like this!” And, raising the glass vase over his head, he smashed it on the table top. It shattered into bits, water and flowers exploding from it.

  Joanna sat there, paralyzed with shock and fear. Greg’s insane, she thought. He’s homicidal.

  Shaking his fist at her, Greg bellowed,
“He’s not coming back to you. He’ll never leave the Moon. Never!”

  Terrified, Joanna gasped, “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ll see,” he repeated. “You’re either with me or agains me now. You’ve got to decide. You get rid of my little brother and we can live just as happy as we were before Paul took you away from me. Otherwise…”

  Joanna stared at her son, barely recognizing this wild-eyei maniac who stood over her so threateningly.

  Abruptly, Greg strode out of the dining room, turning at the doorway to shout, “It’s your decision. Him or me. Then he left.

  Joanna realized the butler was standing at the doorway to the kitchen, white-faced. She shooed him back into the kitchen.

  What have I done? Joanna asked herself, looking over the dripping shambles of the dining table. I worked so hard to bring them together and now…

  Greg’s gone insane. He hates me because I’m going to have Paul’s baby.

  Paul wants to be on the Moon and Greg hates the sight of me, Joanna said to herself. I’m all alone. They’ll both leave me and I’ll be all alone.

  No, she realized. Not alone. I have a new life within me. I’m not alone.

  MARE NUBIUM

  Like a madman Paul tottered on toward the glowing red beacon atop the tempo’s communications mast. Dragging his bad leg, staggering, gasping the last fumes of oxygen left in his tank, he pushed himself single-mindedly toward the safety that lay so tantalizingly just beyond the short lunar horizon.

  It’s just over the horizon, he told himself. You can make it. Just over the horizon.

  You know what the horizon is? taunted a voice in his head. An imaginary line that recedes as you approach it.

  World peace is just over the horizon. Fusion energy is just over the horizon. The answer to all your prayers — just over the pissin’ horizon.

  Through his smeared, fogged visor Paul saw that beckoning red eye rising higher and higher. He could not make out the mast itself against the black lunar sky, but he knew that with each step he was closer to safety.

  Unless it’s a pissin’ star, that sardonic voice jeered at him. You could be heading for Mars, for all you know.

  No, dammit, it’s the tempo. Gotta be.

  Gotta be.

  The ground was rising slightly. His right leg collapsed under him and he pitched forward again. This time he put out his hands as usual, but didn’t bother to push himself up to a standing position. Crawl, man. Like a little baby, down on all fours. You can make it. Just crawl right along.

  He was getting dizzy, his vision blurring. Man, what I wouldn’t give for just a ten-minute break. Even five minutes.

  Wouldn’t work, though’. Not unless you can hold your breath for five minutes. .

  Suddenly he wanted to laugh, remembering a conversation with McPherson back when he had first become a division manager. Hie lawyer wanted Paul to make out a will. He seemed surprised that Paul had never had one.

  “You’ve got to make arrangements for handling your estate,” McPherson had said, very serious.

  “That’s easy,” Paul had told him. “I want to spend my last cent with my last breath.”

  Coming up on your last breath pretty soon, he knew. If you’re lucky — damned motherhumpin’ shitfaced lucky — you’ll suck up the last oxygen molecule in the tank the instant you get inside the tempo’s airlock.

  It almost worked out that way.

  Paul looked up from his crawling and saw the mound of rubble that marked the buried shelter. He could even see the comm mast, he was so close. No hopper, though. Only a tractor sitting outside the airlock on four ludicrously thin, springy wheels.

  Who gives a flyin’ fuck? he said to himself as he pushed himself to his feet and staggered, limped, hopped on his one good foot, holding his breath, reaching out with both hands and flopped into the open airlock that stood in front of the buried shelter.

  He pounded the yellow-glowing phosphorescent button that activated the lock. The outside door creaked shut, although Paul could hear no sound in the lunar vacuum. He imagined the creaking as the curving door slid shut on its track, grinding stray dust particles in its path.

  Bracing himself inside the phonebooth-sized airlock, Paul heard the hissing of air and even the chug of the pump. Most beautiful sounds in the world, he thought Beats Duke Ellington any day.

  The overhead light went on and the indicator panel’s green light glowed to life. Trembling, hoping this wasn’t the last hallucination of a man dying of oxygen deprivation, Paul fumbled with the catch of his visor and slid it up. Sweetest air in two worlds.

  He took deep lungfuls of the stuff. Next sonofabitch complains about canned air is gonna get my knuckles in his mouth, Paul promised himself.

  The indicator pad told him the pressure in the airlock was high enough for him to open the inner hatch. He knew he should clean the suit first. Must be carrying six hundred pounds of dust on me.

  But he was too tired, too exhilarated, too anxious to get inside the shelter and out of this foul-smelling suit even to begin vacuuming.

  He opened the inner hatch, clumped in his boots down the steps into the shelter’s single compartment, wincing every time he stepped with his right foot.

  It was a typical temporary shelter. A long aluminum cylinder’tthat had been laid down in a trench scooped out by a bulldozer and then buried beneath a couple of feet of loose regolith rubble to protect it from the meteoroids that pelted the Moon’s surface and the harsh swings of temperature from daylight to Anight. And from the radiation pouring in unimpeded from deep space.

  Radiation. Paul wanted desperately to flop on one of the lovely, beckoning bunks that lined the far end of the shelter, I but he knew he had to worm himself out of his suit first. And check his radiation patch.

  It seemed to take hours, removing the helmet, then the backpack, the gloves, boots, leggings and finally wriggling out of the suit’s torso. The dust was thick enough to make him cough. Hope it doesn’t foul up the air vents, Paul thought.

  His radiation patch had turned yellow. Not good, but not as bad as red would have been.

  Hey, you’re alive and safe with nothing worse than a sprained ankle and a radiation dose that’ll take a year or so off the ass end of your life. Count your blessings, man.

  He limped to the nearest bunk and flopped onto it But before he could close his eyes he thought of Greg.

  I’m not home free yet He might still win this.

  I should have known he’d try to kill me. All those weeks of his smiling and working with me. Started when I agreed to the nanotech demonstration. He’s hated me all along, every inch of the way. I should have known.

  Ought to call the base, get them to patch me through to Joanna. The kid’s tried to kill me. Already murdered Tink and Wojo. I ought to warn Joanna. He might turn on her, try to kill my child.

  But he was too exhausted to do anything but close his eyes and sleep.

  ALPHONSUS

  Paul had been in good spirits when he arrived at Moonbase. The transfer spacecraft that took him from the space station in low Earth orbit to the giant crater Alphonsus was an ungainly collection of tankage, antennas, cargo containers and a spherical passenger module with two bulbous observation ports. With its spindly, spraddling legs the craft looked like a huge metallic spider about to pounce on some hapless insect.

  As the lander literally fell toward the Moon’s surface, Paul commandeered a spot at one of the observation ports and hung there weightlessly, watching Alphonsus rush up at him. The crater’s ringwall mountains looked deceptively soft, tired and slumped from eons of erosion by dust-sized meteorites that sandpapered their slopes to almost glassy smoothness.

  It was hard to get any sense of scale staring out at the barren, pockmarked face of the Moon. He knew Alphonsus was more than seventy miles across, a crater big enough to swallow all of Greater New York, from Newark to Bridgeport. But as he hovered in free fall, watching, it merely looked like a big circle of mountain
s with a dimple in its middle.

  The floor of the crater was cracked, criss-crossed with sinuous rilles. Once in a while a whiff of ammonia or methane or one of the noble gases would seep out from the Moon’s deep interior through those cracks. It was one of the reasons Moonbase had been sited inside Alphonsus’s circling mountains: one day they would drill for the methane and ammonia, valuable sources of life-supporting volatiles.

  Paul saw the unfinished oxygen plant and a crew of construction technicians milling around it like spacesuited ants.

  Oxygen was the most valuable resource of them all, in space. If Moonbase ever became profkable, it would be by selling oxygen to the factories and other facilities in Earth orbit.

  The spacecraft tilted over so that it could land on its rocket exhausts, and the/funar landscape shifted out of Paul’s view. Clasping the handgrips on either side of the port, he felt the slightest of pressures, just a gentle nudge. And then the soft thump of landing. Weight returned, but it was only a sixth oi the weight he felt on Earth. This was the Moon. Paul felt as if he were returning home.

  It took less than ten minutes for the spacesuited ground crew to connect the flexible tunnel to the lander’s hatch. I wish the ground crews at commercial airports worked so fast, Paul thought as he made his way, slightly bent over, through the ribbed tunnel and into the main entrance of Moonbase.

  It was hardly grand. Moonbase consisted of a dozen ‘temporary’ shelters, each buried beneath piles of regolith rubble and interconnected by tunnels barely high enough to stand in. The tempos, developed out of modules for space stations, reminded Paul of mobile homes: long and narrow cramped and confining, buzzing with electrical machinery and the constant rattle of air pumps, lit by ghastly overhead fluorescents that made everyone’s complexion look sickly, smelling of sweat and machine oil and microwaved fast food and too many people crowded too close together.

  Paul loved it.

  Wojo was at the receiving desk, checking out the cargo that the lander was unloading, his computer screen split between the invoice list and a camera view of the spacesuited ground crew hauling out the crates from the lander’s cargo platforms.