Moonrise gt-5

by Ben Bova

  Brudnoy saw Greg, too, and made his way past the dancers and the lab benches toward him. Jinny followed the Russian, drink in hand, feeling a little annoyed. Greg’s a wet blanket, he’s going to rain on my parade, she thought, mixing metaphors in her slightly inebriated condition.

  “Better late man never,” said the Russian, smiling.

  Greg’s face remained somber. “Is my brother here?”

  “Your brother?” Anson asked. “I thought he was in the infirmary.”

  “He was. He just disconnected all his monitors and walked out.”

  Anson glanced at Brudnoy, who looked as puzzled as she felt. “He hasn’t shown up here.”

  Greg’s frown deepened. “He’s got to be someplace.”

  “Want to call security?”

  “No,” Greg said. “I don’t Want to get my mother upset. She’s asleep, but—”

  “We can search for him,” Brudnoy volunteered. “After all, this place isn’t so big that he can hide from us”

  “Why would he want to hide?” Anson wondered.

  “Where the hell is he?” Greg growled.

  Doug was prowling the tunnel that led to Jack Killifer’s quarters. He had put aside his search of the computer’s inventory program when the medics came in to run their infernal tests. After they left, he booted up the program again and found what he’d been looking for.

  The cermet piece that Bianca Rhee had described was a cover for a hopper’s electronics bay. The electronics bay held, among other items, the electrical controls for the main engine’s liquid oxygen pump.

  Doug’s mind had leaped from one point to the next. Remove the cover and the electronics systems are exposed directly to the radiation from the solar flare. Knock out the rocket engine’s propellant pump and the engine can’t ignite. A dead engine keeps the hopper on the mountaintop, where the radiation will build up to a lethal level in a couple of hours or less.

  He killed Brennart! And he damned near killed me. Once Doug was convinced of that, he pulled off his monitor leads, bolted out of bed and ran out of the infirmary in nothing but his flapping pale blue hospital gown.

  Killifer kept the cover in his spacesuit pocket, Doug reasoned as he trotted down the nearly-empty tunnel. It was past midnight, the lighting was turned down to its late-night level. Still, the few people he passed in the tunnel stared at Doug in his loose gown and bare feet.

  Bianca found the piece and thought it might have something to do with my vidcam. She kept it in her quarters and Killifer went in there and took it back. Good thing she wasn’t there when he broke in; he might have killed her, too.

  There it is. Doug saw J. KILLIFER stencilled on the name card beside the accordion-pleat door. He banged on the door frame and called Killifer’s name. No answer. Either he’s sound asleep or he’s not in. Doug pulled on the door handle. Locked. He braced one bare foot on the door jamb and pulled hard. The flimsy catch gave way and the door jerked open, nearly toppling him.

  Doug padded into Killifer’s quarters. Empty. The bunk was a mess, hadn’t been made in days, from the looks of it. The place smelled of unwashed clothes and sweat. Doug closed the door as far as it would go. He’s got to come back here sooner or later. I’ll wait.

  He didn’t want to sit on the grubby tangle of the bed. There was a slim molded plastic chair at the room’s desk. When Doug sat on it he realized that his hospital gown left a lot to be desired. The chair felt cold and sticky on his partly-bare rump.

  He jumped up and went to Killifer’s closet. Two clean pairs of olive green coveralls hung limply there, but once Doug held them up against his own frame he realized how small Killifer really was. No wonder Bianca took his spacesuit by mistake; he’s not much bigger than she is.

  So he waited for Killifer in his loose hospital gown, pacing up and down the tiny room in four strides. Suddenly an idea struck him. The cermet cover must be here someplace, hidden in this room. Doug started to search through the drawers of Killifer’s desk.

  It was the best night Jack Killifer had ever had on the Moon. There’s something to this hero business, after all, he laughed to himself as he headed back toward his quarters, weaving slightly along the tunnel.

  The patty had been great fun, and just like Jinny had said, there were several women falling all over him. He danced with them all, then picked the one who had snuggled the closest and walked her back to her quarters. Sure enough, she made no objection when he stepped into her place with her and as soon as he slid the door shut she was unzipping her jumpsuit for him.

  When he left her quarters, Killifer thought briefly about heading back to the party, see who’s still there, maybe go for a double-header. But as tie started along the tunnel to the biolab he ran into Jinny and Lev and Greg Masterson.

  “Have you seen Doug Stavenger?” Jinny asked him, very serious and concerned.

  “Little Douggie?” Killifer wanted to laugh but held it in. “He’s in the infirmary.”

  “No he’s not,” snapped Greg. He showed no recognition of Killifer whatsoever. They hadn’t seen each other in more than eighteen years, but Killifer recognized Greg instantly.

  “We’re trying to find him,” said Brudnoy, also looking so damned sober.

  Killifer ignored Greg. He wants to be a stranger, fuck him. Suddenly it all seemed awfully funny: little Douggie out on the loose. Maybe he’ll fall down and break his neck. But he made a serious face and shook his head gravely. “Nope. Haven’t seen him.”

  They hurried on past him. Killifer stood in the tunnel, blinking with thought. Douggie’s not in the infirmary. They lost their little Douggie.

  Then a thought hit him hard enough to snap him into sobriety. The cover! Suppose the little sonofabitch has figured it all out and he’s looking for the cover. I’d better hide it, and quick.

  He started running down the dimly-lit tunnel toward his quarters.

  Doug almost laughed at the pathetic stupidity of it. Under the mattress. Killifer had hidden the cermet cover beneath his mattress.

  Maybe it wasn’t so dumb after all, Doug thought. It had taken a real effort of will to work up the strength to touch Killifer’s roiled, sweaty bunk.

  Doug held the cover in his hands. The murder weapon. He stepped over to the desk and placed it down on its surface, gold side up.

  And the door flew open.

  Killifer’s eyes were so wide Doug could see white all the way around the irises. The man stared at Doug, then his eyes flicked to the gold-plated cermet cover, then back to Doug again.

  “Why did you want to kill Brennart?” Doug asked quietly. “Or was it me you were after?”

  Killifer slid the door shut behind him. “It was you. Brennart-’ he shrugged. “Couldn’t be helped.”

  “Couldn’t… be… helped.” For the first time in his life Doug felt real anger, a fury that threatened to shatter his self-control.

  “He wanted to be a big-ass hero, now he is one,” Killifer said. “So what?”

  Before he knew what he was doing, Doug lashed out with a stinging left that snapped Killifer’s head back and a hard straight right, blurringly fast. Killifer slammed back against the rock wall and crumpled to the floor, blood gushing from his nose.

  Doug bent down and grabbed the front of his coveralls. Yanking Killifer to his feet, Doug cocked his right fist again.

  And stopped. Killifer made no move to protect himself. His arms hung limply at his sides. Blood streamed down his chin, spattering his coveralls and Doug’s hand, still gripping the coverall front.

  Doug pushed him onto the bunk.

  “Why?” he demanded. “Why did you do it? Why did you want to kill me?”

  “Because you killed me, you snotty sonofabitch.”

  “Me? I never even saw you until ten days ago.”

  “Your mother,” Killifer snarled. “She killed me. She took away everything I ever had. She exiled me to this goddamned cavern in the sky.”

  “I know that,” Doug said. “But why? Why would she do that?
What did you do to make her hate you so much?”

  Killifer stared at him, wiping at his bloody nose. Slowly a crooked smile worked its way across his face.

  “You don’t know, do you?” he asked, grinning at Doug. “You really don’t know.”

  All of a sudden Doug felt slightly ridiculous, standing over this beaten smaller man in a dangling hospital gown that barely covered him.

  Killifer was cackling with laughter. “You don’t know! You don’t know a friggjn’ thing about it! She never told you, did she?”

  “Never told me what?”

  “About your brother! She never told you what your brother did!”

  “Greg?” Doug felt suddenly uneasy, as if he were teetering on the edge of a tremendous precipice. “What’s Greg got to do with this?”

  “He killed your old man!” Killifer roared. “He murdered your father, kid.”

  “That’s a lie,” Doug snapped.

  “The hell it is. Your brother salted the nanomachines your father was using. The nanos didn’t malfunction. They did exactly what they were programmed to do.”

  Inwardly Doug was falling off that precipice, dropping like a stone into the darkness. He heard his own voice, hollow with shock, “They were programmed to destroy the spacesuits?”

  “Yeah. Your brother asked me for a sample of nanobugs that could eat carbon-based molecules. I didn’t know what the fuck he wanted ’em for, but he was big shit with the corporation so I gave him what he wanted.”

  “You gave him—”

  “Gave him the bugs that killed your old man, that’s right Nobody else knew. Just your big brother Greg and me. But your mother figured it out and shipped me up here.”

  Feeling his legs trembling, Doug pulled up the plastic chair and sat on it. Hard. “But why would she send you here to Moonbase?”

  “To get me outta the way, wise ass! She didn’t want me where I might rat out her son.”

  “Greg.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Greg murdered my father and you helped him.”

  “Hey, I didn’t know what he wanted the friggin’ bugs for. Not until after it happened.”

  “You were just following orders,” Doug muttered.

  “Right.”

  For what seemed like hours Doug sat there, running the story around in his head, over and over again. Mom protected Greg. She knew he’d killed my father and she protected him. And she never told me.

  Never told me.

  Never told me.

  “So, whatcha gonna do now, kid?” Killifer taunted. “Beat the crap outta me? Kill me?”

  Slowly Doug got to his feet. Killifer cringed back on the bunk, his bravado suddenly evaporated.

  “Get out of here,” Doug said quietly.

  “What?”

  “Get off the Moon. Quit Masterson Corporation. Take early retirement and go back to Earth.”

  “And if I don’t want to…?”

  Doug looked down at him. “If I see you here after tomorrow I’ll kill you.”

  From the look in Killifer’s eyes, Doug knew the man believed him.

  ALPHONSUS

  Doug walked alone across the floor of the giant crater, his boots stirring clouds of dust that settled languidly in the gentle lunar gravity.

  He had lost track of time. For hours now the universe had narrowed down to his spacesuit, the sound of his own breathing, the air fans softly whirring, the bleak cracked, pitted ground. He passed the rocket port, where an ungainly transfer ship sat on one of the blast-scarred pads, waiting for tomorrow’s launch Earthward. Past the solar farms he walked, where nanomachines were patiently converting regolith silicon and trace metals into spreading acres of solar panels that drank in sunlight and produced electricity. Off in the distance he could barely make out the dark bulk of the half-finished mass driver, a low dark shadow against the horizon.

  Turning, he looked through the visor of his helmet up at the worn, rounded mountains that ringed the crater floor. Mount Yeager, he saw. And the notch in the ringwall near it that everybody called Wodjohowitcz Pass.

  My father died up there. Greg murdered him and my mother covered it up, kept it even from me. Protected him, protected my father’s murderer. My half-brother. Her son. He’s just as much her son as I am and he murdered my father. And got away with it.

  “Doug? Is that you?”

  The voice in his earphones startled him. He would have turned the suit radio off, but the safety people had fixed all the suits so that you couldn’t.

  A small tractor was approaching him, kicking up a plume of dust that looked almost silvery in the sunlight. Must be the safety guys, Doug thought. I guess I’ve wandered too far out for them. Broke a rule.

  “Doug, are you all right?”

  He realized it was Bianca Rhee’s voice.

  “I’m okay,” he answered as the tractor approached him. Sort of, he added silently.

  He stood there as the tractor pulled up and stopped in a billow-of dream-slow swirling dust.

  “Where’ve you been?” Rhee asked, stepping down from the tractor. It was a two-seat machine with a flat bed for cargo: the lunar equivalent of a pickup truck.

  “I needed some time by myself,” he said.

  “Oh! I’m interrupting—”

  “No, it’s okay. I was just about to start back anyway.”

  “Everybody’s looking for you. Your mother’s just about to roast the infirmary staff under a rocket nozzle for letting you walk off like that.”

  Doug looked at Rhee’s stubby, spacesuited figure and felt glad that their helmet visors hid their faces. He did not want anyone to see his expression right at this moment. Nothing but an impersonal, faceless figure encased in protective plastic, metal and fabric.

  “How’d you find me?” he asked.

  “I like to be by myself sometimes, too.”

  “And you come out here?”

  “No…’ Her voice faltered. “I, uh, I find some cubbyhole where I’m alone and I… dance.”

  “Dance? By yourself?”

  “Ballet,” Rhee said, her voice so low Doug could hardly hear her. “You know, with an orchestra disk.”

  “Ballet,” said Doug. “Sure! Here on the Moon it must be terrific.”

  I’m not very good, even in low gravity.”

  “How do you know, if you don’t let anybody see you?”

  “Every time I fall down, I know!”

  Doug didn’t laugh. He could tell from the tone of her voice that this was very precious to Rhee.

  Softly, he said, “I hope ybu’ll let me see you dance sometime, Bianca.”

  He waited for her reply, but she said nothing. So he said, “You’re the only one in the whole base smart enough to find me.”

  “I checked with the airlock monitors,” she said, sounding relieved. “They keep a record of everybody who goes out.”

  “And comes in,” Doug added. The crew monitoring the main airlock didn’t know that Doug was supposed to be in the infirmary. They had allowed him outside after only a cursory check of the computerized files.

  “You must be feeling awfully good to come out here,” Rhee said cheerfully, clambering back up to the driver’s seat.

  And Doug realized, She must feel awfully strong about me to come out looking for me. It can’t be impersonal, after all. It never is.

  “Bianca,” he asked as he climbed up into the tractor beside her, “how long are you going to be here at Moonbase?”

  “My tour’s over at the end of the month. That’s when the new semester starts.”

  “Well,” Doug said carefully, “we’ve got a couple of weeks to get acquainted, then.”

  He could hear her breath catch, over the suit radio. Then she said, “That’d be fine.”

  I can’t tell her anything, Doug knew, but at least I can have a friend to unwind with. Somebody to help keep me sane.

  “Uh…’ How to say it without hurting her feelings? “You know, it’s good to have a friend here. I rea
lly don’t know anyone else in Moonbase.”

  “There’s Killifer,” she said lightly.

  “He’s leaving tomorrow.”

  “Really?” She sounded completely surprised.

  “Really.”

  “Well, your brother’s here now, isn’t he?”

  “Half brother.” Doug felt his insides clench. “And I hardly know him. He’s always… we’ve never been close.”

  He heard her chuckling. “What’s so funny?”

  “Oh, I was just thinking about some of the other women here. They’ll be green with envy.”

  “Bianca, it isn’t going to be like that.”

  “They’ll say I’m robbing the cradle,” she went on, happily ignoring him. “After all, I’m almost five years older than you.”

  Doug shook his head inside the helmet. “I’ve aged a lot since coming to Moonbase,” he said. And he hoped that he could keep her as a friend without crushing her dreams.

  “You never told me about Greg.”

  Doug could see the sudden alarm in his mother’s eyes. They were having dinner together in the suite Anson had turned over to Joanna: a sparse microwaved meal of bland precooked veal that Joanna had commandeered from the stores at The Cave.

  “What about Greg?” she asked, from across the round table that Anson had used for conferences in her office.

  Despite the roaring emotions blazing in him, Doug still had an appetite. He chewed carefully on a thin slice of veal while his mother watched him, waiting.

  Doug put his fork down and said, “Greg murdered my father.”

  She did not look surprised. Only tired. Suddenly his mother looked utterly weary.

  “He did, didn’t he?” Doug asked, keeping his voice low, not screaming out the accusation the way he wanted to.

  “He was terribly sick,” Joanna said. “He didn’t really understand—”

  “Don’t lie for him,” Doug snapped. “He killed my father. Killifer helped him. I know the whole story.”

  “The whole story? Do you? Do you know what kind of childhood Greg had? How abusive his father was to both of us? Do you know how hard he’s struggled over these past eighteen years to atone for what he did?”

  “Atone?”