by Ben Bova
“How come? The nanomachines—”
“We have to go farther and farther out from the base to find hydrogen. We’ve picked the regolith clean of the stuff nearby.”
“Really?”
“Hey, we’re talking about individual atoms trapped in the regolith. There’s just not that much hydrogen out there. One hundredth of a percent, by mass, tops.”
“Still, the cost should be negligible.”
“Nanomachines ain’t cheap,” she said. “We have to produce them here and they won’t let us build the kind mat can reproduce themselves. Scared of runaways that could eat up the Moon, or some equally buttheaded scenario.”
Greg kept silent. He knew all about the reasons for the strict safety regulations.
“So the bugs are designed to operate only during the lunar night. After a few day-night cycles they break themselves down and we have to produce another batch.”
“But they can’t cost very much. A few kilograms can produce their weight in hydrogen thousands of times over, from the reports I’ve seen.”
Anson waved one hand in the air. “Yeah, but at our current rate of consumption we’ll have cleaned out the whole crater floor of hydrogen in another five years. Then it’ll be cheaper to import hydrogen from Earthside.”
“But you recycle…”
“Sure, but recycling isn’t a hundred percent efficient, of course.”
Greg thought a moment. “That’s why Brennart’s mission to the south pole is important.”
“Water’s valuable, even if it’s a thousand klicks away. We can use nanomachines to build a pipeline easily enough.”
“I wonder how much water they’ve found down there,” Greg said.
“Enough to last us until we’re ready to scoop volatiles from passing comets, I hope.”
Greg knew about the comet-scooping idea; it had been relegated to the realm of far-future projects that had neither funding nor anything else except the sketchiest of conceptual drawings.
“Won’t that be expensive?” It was the usual question, expected.
Anson laughed. “Sure it will, but then we won’t have to depend on Earthside for water. Our goal is to be self-sufficient.”
That surprised Greg. “Self-sufficient? When was that made a goal?”
“It’s our goal,” Anson said, “not the corporation’s. The goal of the Lunatics who keep coming back here no matter how many times they return Earthside.”
“Self-sufficient,” Greg repeated. It was a distant dream, he knew. These people are kidding themselves.
“Self-sufficient,” Anson repeated firmly.
“Then why aren’t you drilling for ammonia?” Greg asked.
The sudden shift of subject caught Anson by surprise. “Huh? Ammonia?”
“Nitrogen is your biggest import from Earth. The reason this base is sited at Alphonsus is that there have been seepages of ammonia and methane from below the crater floor. If you want to be self-sufficient you should be drilling for the ammonia.”
“That’s in our long-range plan,” Anson said defensively.
“Maybe we should move it up,” said Greg. “The methane could provide carbon. And hydrogen, too.”
“Not a helluva lot, according to our geological probes.”
“Shouldn’t you say selenological, rather than geological?”
She planted her fists on her hips. “I hope you’re joking.”
Greg let a ghost of a smile cross his lips. “Certainly.”
“Good. Come on, it’s almost time for dinner and we’ve got a lot of cost comparisons to do.”
The Cave was less than half full when they came in and got into line for the meal dispensers. Greg noticed that Anson studied her choices carefully before selecting soyburgers, salad and fruit drink. He punched the same buttons she did, and they carried their trays to a small table off in a corner by a pair of potted ficus trees.
They chewed through numbers with their meal, Anson pulling a palm-sized computer from her thigh pocket to call up data from the base’s main files. Greg quickly saw that while her immediate priorities were to keep costs as low as possible, her long-term goal was to make Moonbase independent of life-support imports from Earth.
She may be getting married, Greg thought, but she really intends to come back here. I wonder if her future husband understands that?
“That’s the only way to make this rat’s nest really profitable,” she insisted. “Cut the umbilical from Earthside. Moonbase has got to become self-sufficient.”
“Even if you have to go out and scoop volatiles from comets?”
“Hey, don’t knock it. Even teeny little comets spew out thousands of tons of water vapor and other volatiles per hour.”
“I understand—”
“Less than the cost of imports, once we get the program started. It’s the design and test phase that soaks up the money. Operations should be cheap: just the cost of the fuel and the teleoperators in the command center. Peanuts.”
“How soon do you see this happening?”
She picked at her salad. “Not for years, of course. Maybe ten or more. Too far out for the corporate five-year plan.”
Greg shifted gears again. “When is the mass driver going to be finished?”
She was ready for that one, though. Probably expected it ’When the freakin’ corporation bumps its priority up closer to the top. We’re not getting much support from Savannah on it, y’know.”
“Why not?”
“Rocket fuel’s cheap enough. The nanomachines produce enough aluminum and oxygen; we don’t need an electrical slingshot.”
“A mass driver would reduce launch costs by a factor of ten or better,” Greg said. Then he added, “It should have been completed years ago.”
Anson scowled across the little table at him. “Sure it should, but with practically no corporate support we have to stooge it along on our own resources.”
“Even using nanomachines, it’s going so slowly?” Greg asked. It sounded accusatory and he knew it.
“Nanomachines.” Anson snorted. “Some people think they’re like a magic wand. Just throw in some nanomachines and poof! the job’s done for you, like the shoemaker’s elves.”
Despite himself, Greg smiled at her. “It doesn’t work that way?”
“Building something as complex as a mass driver is a tough job, even with nanomachines,” she said. “Freakin’ job’s turned into a nanotechnology research program. We’re learning a lot about how to develop the little critters; we’re producing a helluva lot of research papers and graduate degrees. But the mass driver’s more than a year behind schedule.”
“I know,” said Greg.
“It’ll get done,” she promised. “But not on the schedule set up in Savannah.”
“Can you do it entirely out of lunar materials? Even the superconducting magnets?”
“Yeah, sure. And we don’t need superconductors. We dropped that in favor of cryogenic aluminum magnets. Keep ’em cool and they’re almost as good as superconductors.”
“But they draw some current, don’t they?”
Anson shrugged. “Not much. And electricity’s cheap here. We just set up a few extra acres of solar cells. Keep the magnets shaded from the Sun and the liquid nitrogen stays cold. That’s another advantage we’ve got here.”
“Realistically, when do you think the mass driver will be up and working?”
She looked up at the rock ceiling, thinking. “Maybe during your year,” she said. “More likely, not until the next director replaces you.”
“That’s not very good, is it?” Greg criticized.
Anson sighed — almost a huff — and returned her attention to what was left of her soyburger. Then she looked up, her face sad.
“Look,” she said, “I know there’s great things just waiting to be done here. Tremendous things! But I’m leaving. I’m just an employee and I’ve had to stay strictly within the limits the corporation’s set for Moonbase. You can do a helluva lot better,
I know.”
“I didn’t mean—”
Tears were welling in her eyes. “Don’t you think I can see what Moonbase can be, if we really dig in and give it our best? I’m supposed to squeeze a profit out of this place, not plow the profits back in to make it self-sufficient. That’s for you to do. That’s why your mother’s sent you up here, isn’t it?”
Greg realized his mouth was hanging open with surprise. Is that why Mom’s sent me here? No. It was my idea to come here; she was against it. Or was she, really? Has she been manipulating me all along? Does she think that a few months up here will turn me into an advocate for Moonbase?
Before he could formulate an answer for her, Anson’s personal computer chimed. She tapped the comm button and they both heard:
“Word just came up from Tucson. The plasma cloud will engulf cislunar space in less than two hours. Radiation levels will exceed four hundred rads per hour for at least twenty-four to thirty-six hours.”
Anson acknowledged the message, then looked at Greg again. “You’re in luck. Nothing’s going to be moving on the surface for a while. There’ll be a flare party starting before long. Hope you brought your dancing shoes.”
MT. WASSER
Doug heard Killifer’s voice in his earphones, “Word just came in from Moonbase. Radiation cloud’s due in less than two hours.”
“Radiation cloud?” Doug blurted.
Brennart’s spacesuited figure straightened up the way a man does when he’s been slapped in the face. “How much less than two hours?” he demanded.
“Unknown. Less than two hours is the best they can give us.”
“What radiation cloud?” Doug asked.
“Solar flare,” said Brennart.
“A flare?” Rhee’s voice sounded shocked, scared. “Why wasn’t I told about it?”
“Why?” Brennart snapped. “Could you stop it?”
“But—”
Ignoring her, Brennart asked Killifer, “How’s the digging?”
Killifer replied, “Coverage complete on shelters one and two. About half done on three and four. Tunnels are all complete, but they’re not deep enough to be safe without additional rubble on them.”
Brennart sighed. “All right, get as much done in the next hour as you can, then get everybody inside. We’re going to deploy the nanomachines and then return.”
“Right.”
Doug turned to look at Greenberg and Rhee, who had just opened the canister in which the nanomachines were stored. Inadvertently, his glance took in the Sun, hanging low above the worn, rounded mountain peaks. His heavily-tinted visor blocked most of the glare, but still the Sun’s mighty radiance dazzled him.
“We’ve got to get back to shelter right away,” Rhee was saying. “Flares are dangerous!”
“Don’t panic,” said Brennart. “We’ve got an hour, at least.”
Doug was trying to remember how much radiation a flare put out. Enough to kill, he knew.
“Get this on tape!” Brennart ordered. “It’s the reason we’re here.”
Dutifully, Doug walked around the slippery rock summit until the Sun was at his back, then aimed the vidcam at Rhee and Greenberg. Bianca was gripping the big canister in her arms as if she were hugging it, while the nanotech carefully slid a long narrow metal tube from its interior. Brennart stepped into the picture to explain what they were doing. And get the credit for it, Doug thought.
The nanobugs they were using here were of a special type, designed to work in the blazing heat of unfiltered sunlight. They would extract silicon, aluminum and trace elements from the mountain’s rock and use them to build a tower of solar panels that would be in sunshine perpetually. The tower would provide continuous electrical power for the machines down in the darkness of the ice fields that would grind up the ice, liquify it, and pump it back to Moonbase.
The equipment to extract the ice and pump water would be sent by a follow-up expedition. So would the nanomachines to build the pipeline. Brennart’s task was to determine if there was enough ice in the south polar region to be worth the investment — and to make certain that Moonbase established an unshakable legal claim to the territory.
Thus Doug taped the first step in starting the nanomachines’ construction of the power tower. Legal precedence. He grimaced as he squinted through the vidcam’s eyepiece. If Brennart was correct, Yamagata was also providing a witness to their claim, with their recce satellite.
Greenberg opened the tube and placed several even thinner tubules on the bare rock.
“That’s it,” the nanotech said. “The first set of nanomachines for construction of Moonbase’s solar power tower have been put in place at,” he lifted his left arm to peer at his watch, “nineteen hundred hours and eight minutes.”
“Got it,” said Doug. “The tape has a time and date setting, too, so the timing will be verified.”
“Very well,” Brennart said. “Transmit the imagery to Moonbase.”
Doug switched his suit radio’s frequency to the channel for the minisats. No response. Checking the schedule he had taped to his forearm, he went back to the suit-to-suit frequency and said to Brennart, “No commsat over our horizon for another eleven minutes.”
He could hear Brennart huff impatiently. “All right,” the expedition leader grumbled. “Call in eleven minutes. Now let’s get out of here. Quickly.”
“Right,” said Bianca. “Let’s get under shelter.”
Bianca sounded frightened, Doug thought. She knows more about flares than any of us; if she’s scared she must have good reason to be.
“This is what you do when there’s a flare?” Greg asked.
After an intense hour or so in her office, making certain the base was battened down for the incoming radiation storm, Jinny Anson had led Greg back to The Cave. It was already filled with nearly every person in Moonbase. The tables had been pushed to one wall, raucous music was blaring from the overhead speakers, people were laughing, talking, drinking, couples were dancing on the smoothed rock flooring between the squares of grass.
“There’s not much else to do,” Anson replied, her voice raised to be heard over the thumping beat of the music, “except eat, drink and be merry. Until the radiation outside goes back to normal.”
Greg consciously tried to keep from frowning, yet he could feel his brows knitting. Okay, the people who work on the surface ought to be brought safely inside, he told himself. But that’s only a handful. Most of the base personnel work indoors; they could go right on with their jobs even though a solar flare is bathing the surface with lethal radiation levels.
“Relax!” Anson said. “This is just about the only excuse for a party we ever get up here.”
She led him to the row of food dispensers lined against The Cave’s far wall, stainless steel with glass fronts, seven feet tall. Not much of a selection, Greg saw. Most of the offerings were preprocessed soybean derivatives, of one sort or another.
“You mean all work stops while the flare’s going on?” Greg heard the brittleness in his own voice as he selected something that looked somewhat like finger sandwiches.
Anson shrugged. “Might as well. All the surface equipment is shut down. Even the scientific instrumentation outside takes a beating from the flare, so a lot of the researchers got nothing much to do.”
“What about communications?” Greg asked.
“The comm center is always manned,” she said easily, pulling out a soyburger on a bun and heading for the microwave ovens. “Even during a party.”
“Doesn’t the flare interfere with communications?”
“We can always go to the laser comm system if the microwave gets too hashed up.”
“I didn’t mean communications with Earth,” Greg said. “I meant with the expedition.”
Her face went serious. “We’ve got six minisats in polar orbit. They’re hardened, of course, but if the radiation levels exceed their hardening—”
“Then those people are cut off.”
“Righ
t,” she conceded.
“Then what happens?”
“We’ve got two more minisats as backups. We send them up after the radiation dies down. Not much more that we can do.”
Greg thought hard for a few moments, then had to admit, “I guess you’re right.”
The microwave pinged and Anson pulled out her steaming soyburger. “Come on, let me introduce you to some of the gang. Are you straight or gay?”
Greg nearly dropped his plastic dish.’What?”
“Gay or straight? Who’d ya like to dance with?” Sex, Greg realized. It all comes down to sex. That’s what this party is all about. The solar flare is an excuse for these people to have a gene-pool enrichment. Just like neolithic hunting tribes that came together once a year to exchange virgins.
Anson waslooking at him with a positively impish expression. “Have I embarrassed you?” she asked.
“No…”
“We get pretty close to one another, living cooped up in here for months on end she said. “I forgot that most people Earthside aren’t as open as we are. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Greg said, trying to adjust his outlook. “And I’m straight.”
“Great!” Anson said, with seemingly genuine enthusiasm. “Then you can dance with me.”
Riding down the mountain was like dropping down a long dark shaft. Brennart fired the hopper’s main rocket engine once to lift them off the summit, then used the maneuvering jets to nudge them away from its slope. After that it was a long slow fall into the darkness below.
Doug felt his stomach fluttering and wondered how Bianca was handling it. Brennart stood at the podium, his gloved hands on the controls, like a sea captain of old at the helm of his storm-tossed ship. Instead of a sou’wester he was encased in a bulky spacesuit. And instead of the heaving and rolling of the waves, their hopper was falling smoothly in the shadows of the massive mountains, plummeting swiftly, silently, like a pebble dropped down a deep, deep well. This is what the old-time explorers must have felt like, Doug told himself. Danger and excitement and the thrill of doing things nobody’s done before. He grinned inside his helmet. This could become habit forming!
