Come In, Collins

by Bill Patterson

  Doctor Kumar was frankly amazed that the Commander of Moonbase Collins was still alive. When he was found, his ShelterCan had fallen on its side, and a beam had fallen across the top, crushing it. Lee's helmet saved his life initially, but it was on the verge of ending it as well, as it filled with blood from a scalp wound. He was very nearly dead by the time he made it into Sick Bay, lugged along by his rescuers.

  His skull had been fractured, and he was bleeding freely from a tear around his hairline. The doctors knew his fracture would have to remain open until the inevitable brain swelling went down. Until then, his head was secured in a metal halo they fashioned out of a couple of spare pieces of Lunar magnesium.

  He was still in the halo, propped up in his bunk, when Marcel Bossenhagen was ushered to his side. The brash, opinionated gadfly was shocked into silence by the appearance of the veteran Moonman.

  “So, you see, Mr. Bossenhagen, why the Commander cannot attend any of the meetings,” said Doctor Kumar. “He cannot be moved until his brain swelling goes down, his skull fracture heals, and he regains his equilibrium.”

  “Wait,” Marcel said, his voice pitched low. “How do I know you didn't stage this?”

  “You're kidding, right?” said the doctor. “You think I would break a man's skull, make his brain swell up, and screw him into some kind of torture device just to spoof you?” He rustled around on the table next to the bunk. “Let me show you something...” He shoved a sheet of paper at Marcel. “Look at this.”

  “An X-Ray? OK. Whose?”

  “Commander Lee's.”

  “How do I know that you didn't just drag this up out of medical database?”

  The doctor sighed. “Jesus had a disciple just like you. Look, what will you need to convince you? Get a glove, I'll let you stick a finger directly into Commander Lee's brain. It might kill him, though. How about the Commander's ShelterCan? The beam that fell on it? His crunched helmet, full of his blood? Sorry, the folks who rescued him from certain death didn't stop to take pictures as they dragged him up here. Nobody did. At some point, you're going to have trust someone.”

  Marcel looked around. It certainly seemed that the story about the Commander was real. He noticed Lee's eyes fluttering open. One of his fingers moved, beckoning him closer.

  “Son,” sounded the feathery voice. “Come here.”

  “Sir, you have to rest,” said Doctor Kumar.

  “I'm done with that for right now,” Lee said. “This man needs reassurance.”

  “Commander?” said Marcel. “Did they do this to you?”

  “I don't know who this 'they' you are talking about. I was in my ShelterCan, then the shock wave hit. I remember the Can falling over, rolling and bouncing around, then nothing until I woke up here. Who's in charge? Did McCrary make it? These damned medicos won't tell me anything.”

  “Yes, sir. McCrary is in charge.”

  “Then I can stop worrying. If McCrary's alive, then we'll pull through.”

  “Are they making you say this?” asked Bossenhagen. “This could be all part of some kind of takeover.”

  Lee tried to laugh and gasped in pain. “Oh, no, no, no. I've known McCrary for twenty years. The only time he'll ever want to be in charge is if it's a pure engineering job. He hates command, hates dealing with people, hates everything about my job.”

  “But, sir, he's so dictatorial,” said Marcel. “He's power-mad.”

  Lee gasped in pain once more. “Stop trying to make me laugh. It hurts like hell.” He stopped and breathed heavily a couple of times. “McCrary seems like a dictator because that's his way. He wants something done, orders the best person to do it, and goes on to the next item to get done. He expects everyone to do their duty, and that's it. Feelings don't enter into it.”

  Marcel looked at the doctor. “Anything else we can to do to settle your mind?” Doctor Kumar asked.

  “Um. No, sir,” admitted Marcel. “I can't help thinking I've been hoodwinked somehow, though.”

  Commander Lee reached out a hand, little more than a claw after being in Sick Bay for so long, and grasped at Marcel's arm. He pulled the young man close. “Use Occam's Razor, son. How many people have to conspire just to fool you? Isn't it obvious? Well, you'll have to decide for yourself. But do me a favor, son. If you're going to rebel, don't do it for me. This is the first decent rest I've had in three years.”

  Marcel left Sick Bay with his mind in a whirl.

  ***

  The pipe heating process was going well. The solar mirrors fed molten salt into the heat exchangers, which started up the generator. All of Collins' electrical heat tape was wound around the most essential salt pipes, and there were signs that the salt was beginning to soften and melt. Another two days, and they might begin to shunt the salt into the reactor core and actually achieve fission.

  Vito VonShaick was hovering over the controls like a mother hen. He wondered why he hadn't thought of this method before, instead of wasting time with the clumsy farce they had done last month. He watched the gauges, tied to integral thermocouples, that showed the temperatures stuck at the melting point of the salt.

  McCrary stepped up behind him. “How's it going, VonShaick?”

  Vito jumped slightly. “Well enough, sir. We're up to the melting point, and should stay there for another hour or so.”

  “Why won't it go any higher?” asked Bubba, who was assisting VonShaick. Travis had been left in charge of Sandy in the interim.

  “Heat of fusion,” McCrary absently replied.

  Bubba shrugged and returned to his monitoring duties.

  Vito noticed. “Ever see that trick where a guy will blowtorch a paper cup full of ice water?” asked Vito. “The paper cup won't burn, so long as it's wet. In fact, if you had a thermometer on the inside of the cup, it would read zero Celsius, at least until the ice melted. That's what's happening now. The heat tape is running about eight hundred Celsius, the salt melts around six fifty. The temperature inside the pipe is not going to go above six fifty until all the salt melts. The heat energy is going into breaking the crystal bonds, instead of making the free molecules move around faster.”

  “Ah, I got it now,” said Bubba.

  “Heat of fusion, solid to liquid,” repeated McCrary. “Liquid to vapor, heat of vaporization. Makes hurricanes go whoosh.” He returned to his inspection of the control panel. VonShaick was certain that the Chief Engineer knew every gauge, what it measured, and what it should read at any point in the procedure.

  “So, when do you expect to switch into the core?” asked McCrary.

  “Another twenty-six to twenty-eight hours, sir,” said Vito. “I want to make sure the pipes are around seven hundred before I even think of flowing liquid salt through them.”

  “Starting out at minimum reactivity, I hope. No poisons?”

  “No sir. Ah, sir, if I might be so bold...I don't mind you asking, after all, you're the Chief. But I do know how this gizmo works, and I'm fully qualified in its operation.”

  “No disrespect intended, VonShaick. But none of us have started Mighty Thor from a completely cold and frozen state before. Never hurts to have a second pair of eyes.” McCrary smiled faintly. “Remind me to tell you about a bridge inspection team I was on once.”

  “Yes, sir. Since you asked, though, the salt is almost certainly free of any nuclear poison, since it's been sitting in the pipes, frozen, ever since The Event. Two hundred and fifty or more half-lives of Xenon-135 gone by, and at least sixty since the last attempt, so we're way far out of the iodine pit. When we flow the molten salt through the core, the reflectors will be at maximum distance, and the control rods will be at maximum insertion. After we confirm the free flow of salt through the core, we'll bring the reflectors to the normal operating position, then begin slowly withdrawing the rods until we get to about ninety cents of additional reactivity. That should generate sufficient heat to keep the salt molten. We will leave it at that position for three days. One hundred and eighty hours until we can res
ume normal operations.”

  “Cutting it close, isn't it?” McCrary asked. “Sundown is two-twenty from now.”

  “Not as close as it seems, sir,” said Vito. “The only reason I'm holding it for three days is because I don't really trust this reduced loop length. I want to be able to catch a rise in reactivity as soon as I can. Look, sir, we've gamed this for the past two weeks. Everyone who's knowledgeable about it has approved my plan.”

  “Don't get your shirt up,” said McCrary. “It's part me, too. I pick at things. Truth is, I'm a little nervous. Nukes have that effect on me.”

  “I understand, sir. Heh—during training, they made us live inside a facility for a couple of months, with the knowledge that the reactor is just ten meters of concrete and steel away from us. Lots of men and women couldn't take the strain. Better to learn it on Earth than find out up here, I say.”

  “Right. Carry on.” McCrary took one last look around, then left the control room. They felt the pressure bump from the operation of the airlock, and relaxed.

  “He always this picky?” asked Bubba. “I thought he was going to make you take out the calculation sheets all over again.”

  “That's how he is,” said Vito. “Now, let's not slack here. What I'm really looking for now are the thermocouples in section H3 and K4. They should be showing some conduction effects as the heat spreads.”

  Bubba resumed his vigil at the control panel.

  ***

  Marcel and Irma were on debris patrol in the southwest wing. As the Collins rumbled to life once more, more and more debris became apparent. Their job was to clean the corridors to prevent accidents when larger equipment and haulers traversed them. It was a somewhat mindless job, which was just what they needed at the moment.

  “You have to admit, McCrary has been completely upfront with everything, Marcel,” said Irma, stooping to pick up a section of aluminum channel. “I'm starting to think they're not really hiding anything.”

  “I know. I'm starting to think the same thing,” said Marcel. “What do we tell the others? They look up to me, you know.”

  “Well, now's the time to mold them,” she said. “You control a power block. If you just give up, then you'll just be Marcel Bossenhagen, and everyone will remember you as the conspiracy nut. If you keep the men on your side against McCrary, then you're more like, like, a shop steward. Think of it, you're the counterweight to all of this constant work and toil. The men never get any time off! It's inhuman!”

  “Well, there is that ragged edge of survival they keep going on about,” said Marcel.

  Irma waved the channel fragment in the air. “This hunk of metal could have lain in the corridor for another three years without endangering anyone's survival chances!” she shouted. “We're past the survival part. We deserve a bit of a day off now and again,” she said. “It's up to you to put pressure on McCrary to make sure we get that rest.”

  Marcel sighed. He was almost...almost ready to stop opposing McCrary. In his dreams, he could see Lee's gentle eyes staring reproachfully at him. He looked at his hands, in a filthy spacesuit, then over at Irma. She was on his side. More, she was very nearly driving the cause now.

  “I'll think it over,” he said to her. She walked over to him in that dreamy, floating stride only the Moon could provide.

  She reached around and cupped one buttock. “I'll make it worth your while,” she said. Marcel groaned. He knew which way the decision would go.

  ***

  Reflections

  UNSOC Lunar Colony Michael Collins, August 10 2082, 0900 EDT

  “Ready?” asked Vito, fingers on the rate button. “Adding ten cents of reactivity over ten minutes.” There was no objection.

  Bubba, showing a surprising knowledge of nuclear physics, kept his gaze fixed on the various meters displaying neutron density, core temperature, output temperature, and a host of other data. As Vito slowly removed the control rods, the molten salt, pumped through the reaction vessel and back again, began to heat up. Hot spots appeared and disappeared in the thermal imaging cameras.

  “Response correlation is close to theory,” announced Vito as the ten minutes expired. “It looks like Mighty Thor is ready to generate some limited power.”

  “Good,” said McCrary. “How much extra reactivity are you adding?”

  “I want it to get to one-third power. That should be enough to keep it warm throughout the lunar night, while stretching out some of our batteries. I don't think we should go to full power yet.”

  “Ya durn tootin',” said Bubba, causing both men to look at him quizzically. Vito opened his mouth to scoff, but McCrary waved his hand 'no' to the engineer.

  “Why?” asked McCrary. “I didn't know you were that well versed in nuclear power plant operations.”

  “I ain't, sir,” Bubba continued. “But ever since I was assigned here, I've been boning up. One thing that jumped out at me? Nukes are trickly little buggers. Me, I'm a pessimist. I just feel we gotta go very slowly here, sir. Oh, Thor ain't gonna to blow up or anythin'. But he's been shook up considerable. A slow leak at a weld, some salt keeps seepin' out and puddlin' up and goin' solid, and soon enough you've got a salt stalagmite. One of those might get to critical mass of somethin', afore we even know it's there, 'specially if it's full of reaction products. Some of those decay chains are mighty strange.”

  Vito's eyes bugged out more and more as Bubba went on.

  “If I were you, I'd go tonight at one third, just like Mr. VonShaick is doing. Then during lunar day, we get one of them there spiders in here and run it 'round underneath everything, looking for problems. During the night, the heat from the reactor will be thawin' out more and more salt. Maybe some salt it will react more'n other parts. That's just one kind of nuke problem. You got thermal stresses in the Hastalloy piping. Them engineers mighta missed that when they designed these here pipes. You got molten salt at nine hundert degrees Cee, then on the other side of a frozen plug of salt, you got temps two hundred and fifty degrees colder. We'll get some cracking or worse in the pipes.”

  “Where...where did you learn all of this?” asked Vito.

  “Readin'. How does that sayin' go? Oh, yeah. 'Nothing concentrates a man's mind more than the knowledge that he is to be hanged in the morning.' We were going to start increasing power in Mighty Thor here, and I wanted to be sure I understood everythin' possible about the process.”

  McCrary smiled...perhaps the only time in the past couple of months that he had been known to. “You sound like me at a younger age, Bubba. Good job. Still, Mr. VonShaick is in charge of Mighty Thor. Follow his directions, and don't try any experiments of your own. Clear?”

  “Damn betcha, sir. I'll be a fly on the wall, sir. Sorry, Mr. VonShaick, I shoulda kept my mouth shut.”

  “No, ah, that's OK. Besides, I will need a watch stander, and you appear to be doing fine right now. Ready for the next increment?”

  Bit by bit, they increased the power level of Mighty Thor up to about the one-third mark. There was little perceptible change inside the habitat—the lights continued to be on dim, severe power cuts remained in effect, and the atmosphere was a little cold, just like the previous three lunar nights. With any luck, this would be the last two-week period of study, freezing, and boredom. There was hope in the air that the Collins would not see this kind of deprivation again.

  ***

  The biggest worry, beyond power, was with the consumables, water in particular. Several huge isolated tanks of water, well secured and free of leaks, were scattered throughout the colony. Even if all recycling failed, the colony would not thirst for at least two months. Nevertheless, no recycling system is one hundred percent efficient. Something gets lost with each trip through the multistep processes. Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen did not help either. Storing oxygen was relatively straightforward. Hydrogen, though, was another matter.

  On the Moon, there were few minerals made with hydrogen in their chemical formulas—except for lunar ice. The only
real source of lunar ice, with the exception of a random buried asteroid, was in the South Pole of the moon. Since The Event occurred in the South, McCrary felt the water ice deposits were destroyed or buried too deep in molten regolith to risk mining.

  So, the colonists hoarded their water. The safest place to store hydrogen was to have it snuggle next to oxygen, and store the heavy liquid that resulted. They knew there would be no community well they could sink, no river or ocean to tap. If they threw a cup of water out the door, it was gone forever.

  ***

  McCrary scratched his head once more and looked at Horst Nygaard. “You want to what?”

  “Send an expedition to the surface to study the ejecta. But it may already be too late.”

  “Let me get this straight. The biggest store of water is in these Craters of Inaccessibility, near the South Pole where the sun never shines. You believe, with some kind of evidence I am not competent to judge, that whatever happened down South blasted this fossil ice into the sky around the Moon. Right so far?”

  “Yes. Let me go on, sir. Whatever blew up stuff in the South, it had to be fairly small. Otherwise the ejecta, already a serious navigation hazard, will be impossibly dense and still falling. I think the ice in the Craters of Inaccessibility was merely lofted into space instead of vaporized. It might be possible to find some water-bearing rock or, even better, a chunk of ice on the surface. If we could find them, then we should be collecting them before the sun completely vaporizes them.”

  “It's been one full light since The Event, and we're at the beginning of another one. Do you really think any water is left?”

  Horst scratched his balding head. “I just don't know, sir. But what we're asking to do is far too easy...no consumable expenditures necessary. We're not bringing back anything that would harm the colony in the guise of new tasks. But if there is water-bearing rock nearby, it would be a crime to allow it to steam under the noon sun here.”