by Ben Bova
MOONBASE
“A peasant,” muttered Lev Brudnoy to himself. “That’s what I am. Nothing but a dolt of a peasant.”
He was kneeling between rows of fresh light green shoots that would become carrots, if all went well, bent over the dismantled pieces of a malfunctioning pump. Stretched all around him for a full hectare, one hundred meters on a side, were neatly aligned hydroponic troughs in which carrots, beans, lettuce and black-eyed peas were growing. And row after row of soybeans. Plastic hose lines ran above the troughs, carrying water enriched with the nutrients the plants needed to grow. Strips of full-spectrum lamps lit the underground chamber with the intensity of summer noon.
Off in a corner of the big cavern was a carefully boxed-in plot of lunar sand, dug up from the regolith outside and turned into a garden of brightly-hued roses, geraniums, daffodils and zinnias — all lovingly pollinated by Brudnoy’s own hand. Moonbase’s agrotechnicians and nutritionists were responsible for the hydroponics crops; the plot of soil-grown flowers was Brudnoy’s alone.
Sweating, Brudnoy sat on the rock floor amid the strewn pieces of the pump. For the life of him, he could not see what had gone wrong with it. Yet the pump had stopped working, threatening the farm’s carrot crop with slow withering death. Brudnoy had wanted to fix the pump before the agrotechs realized it had malfunctioned. Now, instead of becoming a hero, he felt like a dunce.
“Lev!” a voice rang off the farm’s rock walls. “Lev, are you in here?”
He scrambled to his feet. Two of the biologists were standing uncertainly at the airlock, several rows away. They started toward him.
“I thought you were leaving today,” Brudnoy said as they approached.
“Flight’s cancelled. Solar flare coming up,” said Serai N’kuma.
“Oh.”
“So we thought we’d take you out to dinner,” Debbie Paine added.
N’kuma was tall, leggy, lean as a ballet dancer, her skin a glistening deep black. Paine was blonde and petite, yet with an hourglass figure that strained her coveralls. Brudnoy had fantasized about the two of them ever since they had first arrived at Moonbase, even after he realized that they preferred each other to men.
“I can’t leave here until this wretched pump is fixed,” Brudnoy said. Spreading his arms, he added, “You see before you a true peasant, chained to his land.”
The women ignored his heartfelt self-pity. “What’s wrong with the pump?” Paine asked.
Shrugging, Brudnoy replied, “It won’t work.”
“Let’s take a look at it,” said N’kuma, dropping to her knees to examine the scattered pieces.
“I’ve taken it apart completely. Nothing seems wrong. Yet it refuses to do its job.”
“Engineer’s hell,” Paine said, grinning. “Everything checks but nothing works.”
“In the old days we would have it shot,” Brudnoy grumbled.
“And then you’d have no pump at all,” N’kuma said, from her kneeling position.
Paine ran a finger along the hose that carried the water and nutrients. “Is the pump getting electricity okay?”
“There’s nothing wrong with the electrical power,” Brudnoy said.
Plucking at the wire that ran along the hose, Paine said, “Except that the insulation on this wire is frayed and the bare aluminum is touching the metal pipe fitting here.”
N’kuma popped to her feet. “It’s shorting out.”
Peering at the slightly scorched metal fitting, Brudnoy said, “1 don’t think the wire we make here at the base is as good as the copper stuff they make Earthside.”
“Didn’t you smell the insulation burning?” Paine asked.
Brudnoy scratched his thatch of graying hair. “Now that you mention it. there was a strange smell a while ago. I changed my coveralls the next day and the smell went away.”
Both women guffawed. In short order Brudnoy produced a new length of wire, Paine spliced it into the line while N’kuma reassembled the pump with hands that were little short of magical. Brudnoy watched them admiringly.
Once they were finished he insisted, “Now I will take you to dinner. It’s all on me! My treat.”
They laughed together as they left the farm. Meals at the galley were free, part of the corporation’s services for Moonbase’s employees.
Brudnoy laughed the hardest. Hardly anyone in the base knew that these two young women were lovers. All the men will choke on their food when they see me with these young lovelies on my arms. Some of the women will, too. Not bad for an old man, he thought.
“Welcome to Moonbase,” said Jinny Anson.
Greg Masterson’s nose wrinkled at the strange smell of the place: human sweat mixed with machine oil and a strange sharp burnt odor, as if someone had been firing a gun recently.
But he made himself smile and took Anson’s proffered hand. “Thanks. It’s good to get here ahead of the flare.”
Anson had gone down to the receiving area dug into the floor of Alphonsus adjacent to the rocket port. Little more than a rough-hewn cavern beneath the crater’s floor, the place was called ’The Pit’ by veteran Lunatics. It was connected to the main section of the base by a single tunnel, nearly two kilometers long. There were plans to put in an electrified trolley line along the tunnel; for now, a stripped down tractor did the job, its finish dulled and dented from years of work on the surface.
She kept a hand on his, arm as Greg hip-hopped like any newcomer to the Moon.until he was safely seated in the tractor.
“I brought you a present,” she said, climbing into the driver’s seat next to him”
“A present?”
Reaching behind the seat, Anson pulled out a worn-looking pair of boots. “Moon shoes. They’ve got weights built into them so you won’t go bouncing around when you try to walk. Remove one weight per day while you’re here, and inside of five days you’ll be walking like a native.”
It was a standard line among the Lunatics. So far there were no natives of the Moon. Women got pregnant occasionally; they were gently but firmly transferred back Earthside as soon as their condition was discovered.
“I was surprised to see a working elevator,” Greg said as he took off his slippers and pulled on the weighted boots.
The tractor was programmed to run the straight tunnel without human guidance. Anson hit the starter button and its aged superconducting electric motor whined to life.
“We just put it into operation last week,” she said. “Makes it much easier to load and unload cargo, once you get the crates through the airlock.”
“Takes a lot of electrical power, though,” Greg said as the tractor jolted to a start.
Anson waved a hand in the air. “Electricity’s cheap. The nanomachines chomp up the regolith and lay down solar cells. Our solar farms are constantly getting bigger.”
“I’ve seen the reports,” Greg said. “And the projections.”
“Good.” They were tooling along the tunnel now at nearly twenty miles per hour. The overhead lamps flicked past, throwing shadows across Greg’s sculpted face like phases of a moon hurtling by.
He’s really a handsome devil, Anson told herself. But there’s something unsettling about him. The eyes? Something. He looks… she struggled to define what was bothering her. At last she thought, He looks as if he could be cruel.
Miyoko Homma felt that she should be standing at attention, like a soldier. As it was, she had bowed deeply to the chief manager of Nippon One upon entering his cubicle and then remained standing with her arms rigidly at her sides and her face as blank as she could make it.
“The solar flare that you predicted has not come,” said the head chief. He was old for Nippon One, in his forties. His belly was beginning to round out, although his face was still taut and his eyes piercing.
“Sir, it will come,” Miyoko said flatly. “It is only a question of time.”
“How much time?” the chief demanded. “We have kept everyone inside. The work that must be done on the surface
is suspended because of this flare that was supposed to erupt. It’s been more than twelve hours now! Twelve hours of lost work! How much longer must we wait?”
Miyoko took a small breath before answering, “I do not know, sir.”
“But you are our astronomer! It is your job to know!”
“Sir, no one can predict the eruption of a solar flare with such precision. The configuration of magnetic field lines that I saw when I first issued the warning was typical of an imminent flare, one that would burst out in twenty-four hours or less.”
“Twelve hours have gone by,” said the chief. With a glance at the digital clock on his desk he added, “Twelve hours and eighteen minutes.”
Miyoko felt like a small mouse trembling between the paws of a very large cat. “Sir, I can only report to you what my instruments show. Any other astronomer in the world would have reported exactly the same as I did. It is unfortunate that the Sun is not cooperating with us.”
The chief settled back in his chair and rubbed his stubbled chin. “The Americans are apparently not afraid of your flare. Our reconnaissance satellite shows them working very busily on their base.”
“But they must know!” Miyoko blurted.
“Or they know better.”
Miyoko clamped her lips shut.
The chief stared hard at her. “It is a great problem. Do I send the surface crews back to work or not? It is most inefficient to have them sitting cooped up in here when they should be working on the surface. Yet…”
“Sir, may I make a suggestion?”
He nodded assent.
“When the flare actually erupts there will be at least an hour before the heavy particle radiation begins to build up. If the surface crews are willing to accept the first burst of relatively light radiation, it should be possible to get them inside to safety before the truly dangerous radiation builds up.”
Immediately the chief said, “Tell me about this first burst of relatively light radiation.” Miyoko could detect no trace of sarcasm in his words.
She said, “When the flare erupts it throws out a burst of high-frequency radiation — mostly ultraviolet and x-rays. This arrives in our vicinity within eight point three minutes, since it travels at the speed of light.”
“How serious is this radiation?”
“To a person already protected by a spacesuit it is not dangerous. In Tokyo the radiation from space averages about four-tenths of a rad per year. On the Moon’s surface it is closer to twenty-five rads per year. The initial burst from a solar flare will increase this dose by a factor of ten.”
“H’mmm,” said the chief. Miyoko thought he was trying to hide the fact that he did not know what a rad was, nor how dangerous it could be.
“When the flare’s plasma cloud arrives, however,” she went on, “the radiation will increase to more than a thousand rads in a few hours. Worse than the radiation dose at Hiroshima.”
That startled the chief. “Worse than Hiroshima?”
“Yes.”
“But the first pulse is not so bad?”
“The surface crews can be brought inside after the first pulse hits,” Miyoko said again.
“We have a full hour before the heavy radiation builds up?”
“At least an hour, sir.” She hesitated a moment, struggling with her own conscience, then added, “In truth, sir, we have no way of knowing whether the heavy radiation will strike us at all, even after the flare bursts forth. The plasma cloud that carries the radiation may miss us entirely.”
“Miss us entirely? Is that possible?”
“Yes, sir. But we have no way of predicting that quickly enough to save men working on the surface. That is why we must get them all inside once the flare erupts.”
The chief sat muttering to himself for several moments. Then a slow smile of understanding spread across his normally-scowling features.
“This is like predicting the path of a typhoon, isn’t it? You know the storm is approaching, but you cannot tell exactly where it will strike.”
“Yes, sir.” Miyoko jumped at his analogy, feeling a rush of relief. “Very much like a, typhoon. An invisible typhoon that cannot be felt, but can kill a person just as swiftly.”
MT. WASSER
“What’s the latest word on this flare?” Brennart asked.
Killifer pushed his little wheeled chair away slightly from the comm console. “No word. The flare hasn’t appeared yet”
The two men were alone in the comm cubicle. Brennart was on, his feet, towering over the seated Killifer. Every other member of the expedition was out digging, even the ostensible communications technician. Brennart knew the mission schedule was in a shambles but he would sort that out and get things going properly again as soon as this flare threat was over.
“What does Moonbase say about it?” he asked Killifer.
His aide made a sour face. “They say the flare ought to have popped by now. Could pop any minute. They just don’t know.”
“With that and five dollars I could buy a cup of coffee.”
“They also say,” Killifer added caustically, “that their regular astronomer is here in the boondocks with us, instead of at her instruments at the base.”
Brennart glowered. “That was Stavenger’s idea, bringing her along with us.”
Killifer said nothing, but his sardonic smile spoke volumes.
“We can’t just sit here and wait for a flare that might not even happen,” Brennart muttered.
Nodding, Killifer said, “Oh, by the way, Moonbase reported that Yamagata sent up a recce satellite six hours ago. It’s in a very eccentric polar orbit”
“With its longest dwell time right over us,” Brennart guessed.
“Right.”
“Damn! They’ll be sending a team down here to make a claim on the mountain before we can.”
“I don’t see how—”
“They could drop a kamikaze crew on the other side of the mountain and use hoppers to get up to the top,” Brennart growled angrily. “Stick a sheet of solar panels up there and claim first use. Then we’re screwed.”
“But aren’t they just as worried about the flare as we are?”
Brennart looked down at his aide with a withering expression. “You don’t know what kamikaze means, do you?”
“Something from history, isn’t it? Last century?”
“Right. History.”
Killifer sat on the uncomfortable little chair and craned his neck to look up at his boss. Brennart liked to be known for making decisions, but now he seemed hesitant, caught on the horns of a dilemma, hung up with uncertainty.
“If only we knew when the flare will erupt,” he muttered, kneading his right fist into the palm of his left hand.
“Or if it will erupt at all,” Killifer suggested.
Brennart whirled on him. “If? You think the whole thing might be a false alarm?”
“I don’t know. I’m not an astronomer.”
“The goddamned astronomer’s out here digging ditches instead of at her post with her instruments!”
Killifer shrugged. “Douggie wanted her along.”
“The flare should have erupted by now, if there’s going to be one,” Brennart thought out loud.
“Even if the flare does come, isn’t there a couple of hours before the radiation really gets serious?” Killifer knew the answer to his question.
“Yes, that’s right,” Brennart said.
“Enough time to get down off the mountain, using our hoppers?”
Brennart stopped his frustrated kneading and sat on the chair next to his aide. “We could jump up to the summit of Mt. Wasser, plant the flag and start the nanobugs working on the power tower, and get down again .before the radiation buildup even begins.’”
“Christ, that’s brilliant,” Killifer said.
I’m going to suit up,” Brennart said.
“You?”
“I can’t ask my people to do something that I’m not prepared to do myself. I take the same r
isks they do.”
“Yeah, but—”
“How many people will we need for a dash to the summit?”
Killifer swivelled his chair to the screen and tapped on the keyboard. “Mission plan calls for six.”
“Strip it down. How many do we actually need ?”
Studying the list on his screen, Killifer said. Two to handle the nanobugs, one to pilot the hopper.”
“Martin and Greenberg are the nanotechs,” Brennart said.
Thinking swiftly, Killifer said, “Maybe we oughtta leave one of them here. No sense taking both of them up to the summit.”
“One person can’t physically handle the task,” Brennart objected.
“All you need is an extra pair of hands. A warm body will do. Either Greenberg or Martin can direct the warm body, and you haven’t risked both your nanotechs.”
Brennart pondered it for all of three seconds. “Right. I’ll take Greenberg. He’s the more experienced of the two. Who can we spare to help him?”
“The astronomer?” Killifer suggested.
“Put her to some useful work,” Brennart muttered.
“You oughtta take Stavenger, too,” Killifer pointed out ’Let him make a legal record of the claim.”
“Perfect!”
Killifer stayed in the conun cubicle as Brennart inarched off to the airlock, where the spacesuits were stored. With a little luck, he said to himself, they’ll all break their friggin’ necks.
Doug felt excited when Brennart came out and told him they were making a dash to the summit of Mt. Wasser. He had been spraying plastic sealant along the tunnel walls just dug out by the others; the sealant made the tunnel airtight. It was dull and clumsy work, inside his spacesuit, with no light except from his helmet lamp. The sealant was doped with a weakly glowing phosphor, so that any gaps in its application would be easily seen.
It was the safest job Brennart could find for him. The more experienced expedition members were handling the flammable aluminum/oxygen propellant mixture out on the surface, desperately working to break up the rock-hard ground enough to allow the tractors to scoop it up and dump it on the shelters and tunnels.
