by Ben Bova
“It will be soon,” said Eldridge flatly. “But that isn’t the point. The point is that you availed yourself of nanotherapy that your constituents can’t have.”
“I told you I’m not against nanotechnology. That’s a matter of public record.”
“Yes, but you’re about to change your position. On this crucial issue of outlawing all nanotechnology, you are going to vote on the side of the angels.”
“Meaning your side.”
“You’re damned right!” snapped Carter Eldridge.
MOONBASE
As soon as Greg reached Anson’s office she scooted around from behind her desk and led him on a half-run back to the control center. She soared along the tunnel on ten-foot leaps while Greg bounded along after her awkwardly, hopping and stumbling despite his weighted boots.
Too much happening now to pipe through my desktop,” she called over her shoulder as they hurried along the tunnel. “I need to see everything that’s going down.”
Greg was puffing as he skidded to a stop at the control center’s airtight door. Anson slid it open and went through without waiting for him.
She rousted one of the comm techs out of his seat, then took in all the working screens in a swift scan of the U-shaped console assembly.
Tower holding steady?” she asked, punching up a multicolored graph on the screen directly in front of her.
The woman seated in the middle chair nodded, headset clipped across her close-cropped hair. “Fading slowly, but within allowable limits. Power team’s already brought the nuke on-line, just in case solar cell degradation exceeds allowable.”
“Good,” snapped Anson, her attention already turning elsewhere.
Greg had forgotten that there was a standby nuclear power generator buried halfway across Alphonsus. With the high-energy protons of the radiation storm beating up on the solar cells spread across the crater floor, the nuke had to be able to provide electricity without fail or they’d all quickly choke to death.
“All right now,” Anson was saying, “where’s that freakin’ Yamagata lobber?”
The chief tech tapped on her keyboard and Anson’s main screen suddenly showed an image of the Moon with a single red dot winking, slightly northwest of Alphonsus’s position.
“That’s the radar plot from L-l,” said the comm tech. “She’s got a nice bright beacon on her.”
Anson grinned fiercely. “Show me our visual horizon.”
A thin yellow circle appeared on the Moon’s image, centered on Alphonsus. The blinking red dot was well within it.
“Hot spit!” Anson yelped. “We can get the big’scope on her.”
“The telescopes are all working on preprogrammed routines—”
“Screw the astronomers! This is important. I’ve got to see if that lobber’s crewed or not.”
With a sigh of reluctance the chief tech began tapping on her keyboard again.
“Humpin’ astronomers’re all down in The Cave, anyway,” Anson said, to no one in particular. “They can complain to me tomorrow.”
“Here it is,” said the technician.
Greg bent over Anson’s chair to see her main screen better. It showed a smear of streaks, then slowly the streaks settled down into the pinpoint lights of stars. And at the center of the image was the big metal spider of a ballistic rocket, a lobber.
The image enlarged. Greg saw bulbous tanks and other shapes wrapped in reflecting foil. And a single bubble of what looked liked plastiglass glinting in the sunlight.
“Crew module,” Anson said. “I knew it! Yamagata’s sending a team to the pole.”
“In this radiation storm?” Greg couldn’t quite believe it.
Without turning toward him Anson bobbed her head. “In this storm. They’re probably wearing specially armored suits. Yamagata’s people are smart, not suicidal.”
“Maybe the radiation level’s gone down,” Greg thought out loud.
With a short, sharp laugh, Anson said, “I don’t think so.”
And she pointed to one of the screens on the far side of the U.
Greg saw an image of the Earth, half day lit, half in shadow. But something was wrong with the picture: flickering streaks of pale colors were messing up the image of the northern hemisphere.
“That’s the northern lights you’re seeing,” Anson explained.
Shifting glowing pale greens and reds, Greg saw. “It can’t be the aurorae,” he objected. “They’re too far south — almost in Florida, for God’s sake.”
Anson looked up at him smugly. “Still think the radiation level’s gone down?”
Greg stared at the screen. Northern lights glowing all the way down to Florida, just about. It must be a monstrous flare, he realized.
Anson yanked a telephone handset from the console desktop and punched a single number. “Security?” she said into the phone. “Pull Harry Clemens out of The Cave right away and tell him to bring his best team with him. Meet me in my office in three minutes.”
She slammed the phone down and fairly leaped out of her chair. “We’ve got to get a comm link with Brennart right away,” she said to Greg, “and that means launching a shielded minisat.”
She made a dive for the door, calling over her shoulder, “Come on, Greg! We don’t have a second to spare!”
Working out on the frontier is nothing more than inventing new ways to get killed. Brennart’s easy tone belied the truth of his words, Doug thought He’s lived with this kind of danger so long that he’s accustomed to it Maybe he’s even become dependent on it.
“Question is,” Brennart was saying, “what can we do back up at the summit there to preserve our legal claim?”
And he turned his spacesuited figure toward Doug.
Stalling for time to think, Doug said, “You’re assuming that Yamagata’s going to try to dispute our claim, is that it?”
“Of course,” said Brennart ’Always assume the opposition will make the move that’ll hurt you the most. That way you’re never surprised, always prepared.”
Doug saw the reflection of his own helmeted figure in the blank visor of Brennart’s suit He tried to imagine the expression on the older man’s face. He’s enjoying this, Doug thought. This is how he gets his kicks. And Doug had to admit that it was exciting, hanging your butt out on the line, seeing how far you dared to go.
“Sov young Mr. Stavenger,” Brennart called out, “what can two of us do up there at the top of the mountain that will satisfy the Earthside lawyers?”
“If we could set up some kind of solar cells,” Doug mused, “and connect them back down here — even just a few kilowatts…’ He had no details to back the bare idea.
Brennart’s cyclops figure turned toward Greenberg, sprawled in his cumbersome spacesuit on the bunk closest to the toilet.
“Well, Greenie, what about it? Can we jigger your nanobugs to produce solar cells without the rest of the power tower to hold them up?”
“Sure,” answered Greenberg, “if I had a laboratory and a couple weeks to reprogram them. Not here, though.”
A gloomy silence filled the shelter.
Bianca Rhee broke the quiet. “What about the cargo ship that crashed? Didn’t it have a power system? Maybe we could cannibalize it”
“Fuel cells,” Brennart said gloomily. “Not solar panels. They were destroyed in the crash, anyway.”
“What pieces of our equipment do have solar cells?” Doug asked.
He could sense Brennart shaking his head inside his helmet. “Nothing much. We knew the base camp down here would be in shadow all the time. The nanobugs were supposed to build the solar tower up on the summit for our electrical power.”
“You mean there’s nothing?”
“A few portable radio units with standard solar batteries. But they run on milliwatts; you can’t get away with pretending they’re providing power for the base.”
“Wait a minute,” Rhee said. “Why do we have to use the summit for a power station? Why can’t we set up a monitori
ng station up there?”
“Monitor what?” Brennart asked.
“Solar flux,” said Rhee. “I’ve got the instrumentation for it”
“What good—”
“We can set up an astronomical station at the summit,” Rhee said, excitement raising her tone a notch. “That’d be a legitimate use of the area, wouldn’t it?”
Doug said, “Sure, why not? We could even claim we’re making measurements to determine how much electrical power we could generate with solar cells.”
They both turned to Brennart. “Pretty thin,” he muttered.
“But it’ll hold up until we can get replacement nanomachines to actually start building the power tower,” Doug countered.
“You’re sure?”
“Nothing’s sure where lawyers are involved,” Doug said. “But it’s the best idea I’ve heard so far.”
Brennart muttered, “Lawyers,” as if it was the vilest word he could think of.
“The Yamagata lobber’s landed.”
Anson stared hard at her desktop screen. It was split in half: the right side showed the frenzied activity of Clemens’ launch team as they laser-welded extra sheets of shielding around a grapefruit-sized minisatellite. Behind them a rocket booster stood impassively, little more than a squat tube crammed with powdered aluminum and liquified oxygen. Once the armored minisat was mated inside its nose cone the booster would be winched up the surface and fired toward the south pole.
The chief communications technician’s worried face filled the left side of Anson’s desktop screen.
“Landed?” Anson snapped. “Where?”
“On the other side of Mt. Wasser from where our people are,” replied the tech. “At least, that’s where L-l lost their radar transponder signal. Near as we can make it out, they put down right smack in the middle of the biggest ice field in the region.”
“Shee-yit,” Anson hissed.
Greg was sitting on a flimsy plastic chair alongside her desk, feeling useless as all the activity swirled around him.
Anson turned to him. “Yamagata’s people are on the ice down there. Now the question is, will they try to get to the top of the mountain right away or wait for the radiation to the down?”
“What do you intend to do with the minisat?” Greg asked.
“Tell Brennart that the Yamagata team’s in his back yard, what else?”
“Won’t that make it seem as if we’re pushing him to take bigger risks than necessary?”
Avoiding Greg’s eyes, Anson replied, “Brennart’s no feeb. He’ll know how much risk he can handle.”
“Can the minisat operate in this level of radiation?”
“The satellite’s only got to work for a few minutes,” Anson said. “Just long enough to tell Brennart that the Japs are in his lap. He’s got to know that! It’s vital.”
Greg wondered what Brennart would do with the information. It’s just going to put more pressure on him, Greg thought. Might push him to take risks he wouldn’t ordinarily take. Doug is out there with him. This might put Doug in even more danger than he’s in already.
Greg felt frozen inside, not daring to let his true emotions show, even to himself.
“I think my ribs are broken,” said Keiji Inoguchi.
Yazaru Kara heard the pain in his co-pilot’s voice. He himself had been unconscious for at least several seconds. The landing in the mountainous darkness had been a disaster. Their craft had touched down on what had seemed like smooth ice, but somehow the craft had tumbled at the last moment and come crashing down on its side.
Now, as the two men sat still strapped into their seats, bundled in their heavily armored spacesuits, Hara thought how like a dream the crash had been. Everything had happened so slowly, gracefully almost, like a kabuki dancer’s delicate movements. But the pain was real. His head throbbed and he tasted hot salty blood in his mouth… He could hear Inoguchi’s ragged, shallow breathing in his Helmet earphones. Every breath must be an agony for him, Hara thought.
A dream of pain and darkness. A nightmare. What was it that the old lamas said ’What if this life is nothing more than a dream within a dream?” Yes, what if?
At least he didn’t seem to be bleeding anywhere except inside his mouth. He had banged his head hard on the inside of his helmet, but thankfully the helmet was well-padded. Nothing broken, Hara said to himself. But if I have a concussion I’ll be vomiting soon. That should be delightful, inside the helmet.
Inoguchi groaned, forcing Hara to ignore his own fears.
“Can you move your arms at all?” he asked his companion.
“Yes, a little.” In the dim emergency lighting of the cockpit Hara saw Inoguchi’s arms move feebly.
He tried to think. “We might as well stay where we are, Keiji,” he said. “At least until the radiation goes down and the base puts a commsat over us.”
“Yes,” said Inoguchi, painfully. “I don’t think I’ll be of much help to you.”
“That’s all right, we’ll just sit here and call for help when the satellite queries us.”
“At least we don’t have to worry about fire,” Inoguchi said, trying to sound brave. “When I flew on Earth, fire was my one persistent fear.”
Hara nodded at the man’s confession, but did not reveal his own. Ever since coming to the Moon, Hara had suffered nightmares about choking to death for lack of air.
MT. WASSER
“Killifer to Brennart,” Doug heard in his earphones.
“Go ahead, Jack,” said Brennart. His voice sounded tired to Doug. Scratchy and strained.
“Just got a blast from Moonbase,” Killifer said. “Yamagata’s landed a team on the other side of Mt. Wasser.”
Doug felt a jolt of shock and saw Brennart’s spacesuited figure stiffen. Their communications gear was in the first shelter, where Killifer presided.
“Play it for me,” Brennart commanded.
Over the suit-to-suit frequency Doug heard, “Anson to Brennart. Yamagata lobber has landed on the far side of Mt. Wasser from your position. Definitely a crewed ship. They’re obviously going to try to make a claim for the area. Foster, the safety of your team is of primary importance, as you are aware. But I thought you should know about this move of Yamagata’s. As soon as the radiation drops to an acceptable.
Harsh ragged static drowned out her words.
“That’s all we got,” Killifer said.
Brennart huffed. “That’s plenty.”
“There’s another message, though,” said Killifer. “Piped in parallel with Anson’s.”
“What is it?”
“It’s for Mr. Stavenger.”
“For me?” Doug blurted. Brennart said nothing.
“Doug, this is Greg.” Doug was astonished to hear his brother’s voice. “I’m at Moonbase. I’ll be taking over the director’s slot when Anson leaves. I don’t want you to take any unnecessary chances out there. Do you understand me?
Play, it safe and come back alive.”
Doug felt embarrassed. “My brother,” he mumbled to Brennart and the others. “Half-brother, actually.”
“He’ll be the director pf Moonbase in a few days,” Brennart said, his voice flat,
“I had no idea,” said Doug.
A dead silence fell upon the bare little shelter. The four of them sat on the bunk edges, the only places to sit, staring at each other like a quartet of cyclops.
“We’ve got to get back to the mountaintop before the Japanese do,” Brennart said at last.
“Do you think they’d try it while the radiation’s still so high?” Doug asked.
“They sent the team here while the radiation flux is pretty damned near maximum,” Brennart pointed out. “They must have hardened suits.”
“And equipment,” Greenberg chimed in.
“And we don’t,” said Rhee.
Doug turned to face Brennart. “What should we do?”
For a long moment Brennart said nothing. Finally, “You said that legally we need two p
eople at the summit?”
“That’s only if we intend to keep a team there. The minimum number is two,” said Doug. “That’s what the Moscow Treaty calls for.”
“But if we’re just going to set up a monitoring station?” Rhee asked.
Doug spread his gloved hands. “As long as the station can function automatically it doesn’t matter how many people are used to set it up.”
“All right, then,” Brennart said. I’ll go alone.”
“You can’t!” Doug snapped.
Brennart planted his fists on the hips of his spacesuit. “Do I have to remind you, Mr. Stavenger, that I’m in command here? Even if your brother’s going to be my boss in a few days, I’m still in charge of this team.”
Trying to keep his voice light, Doug replied, “We all know that, sir. I simply meant that the radiation out there will kill you before you could get the job done.”
“Maybe,” Brennart admitted. “But the job’s got to be done.”
“You have to kill yourself for the corporation?” Rhee asked.
Brennart turned toward her. “Like the man says, everybody dies, sooner or later. Do you think my life would be worth much if Yamagata gets to claim this whole territory?”
“That’s crazy,” Rhee said.
While Brennart and Rhee argued, Doug went to the shelter’s computer terminal and called up the medical file.
“It’s my job,” Brennart was saying. “My responsibility.”
Rhee said, “Oh, I get it. Machismo.” Her voice dripped loathing.
“No,” said Brennart. “It’s very practical. I get paid for results. If Yamagata takes this territory I might as well be dead, professionally.”
And he doesn’t have any other life, Doug realized, tapping out numbers on the screen. Rhee might despise the idea, but for men like Brennart this is a way of life. It’s all they’ve got. The time in-between missions is waiting time, limbo, useless. Call it machismo or stubborness or even stupidity, but it’s the hard-headed ones like Brennart who got the job done. My father must’ve been like that, Doug thought. He died rather than endanger the rest of the people in Moonbase.
“The question is,” Doug said — for himself as much as for Rhee and the others, “is the claim to this region worth risking your life over?”
