“Pretty well,” Stormie said. “We should finish up early tomorrow, which is good because we need to get back. We’ve got a lot of closeouts on the Huntsville contract before we shut down to go underground—”
“I need to talk to you about that,” Jim said. His tone didn’t change, but he spoke with an authority that stripped Stormie of her smile. “It seems we have a problem.”
Jim popped open a panel on the right side of his wheelchair’s “costume,” and carried a drink to his lips. Ice clinked in the wide glass as he drained the cocktail. The half-melted cubes settled on top of what looked like a slice of orange.
Stormie fumbled with the drink in her hand, and then finished it in one gulp. It had been fruity and flavorful, but now it was just cold.
Frank asked, “What kind of problem, James?”
“The kind that will keep you out of training, and ground you if we don’t take care of it.” He rolled over to the desk. “Get that door, will you, Frank? Gale, would you reach my tablet out of this bag?” He bumped the front of his chair gently against the dark blue canvas case.
Stormie propped up the tablet where Jim could reach it—his Christopher Pike costume kept him from being able to roll under the desk—and he typed his password in one-handed. He talked while he opened documents.
“Actually, we have two problems.” He pulled up a picture of Princess Sinta Varramull, the girl Stormie had helped. “Both related to your patient. It seems she has left the country.”
Stormie asked, “Why is that our problem?”
“Because it makes it damn hard to get additional blood samples from her.”
Stormie looked at Frank, but he seemed as puzzled as she was. “Why do we need more blood from her?”
Jim opened a file with some tabulated figures on it, slid it out of the way and opened two more in quick succession. “Because she seems to have been one very sick girl, and I’d rather this be a case of ‘false positive’ than ‘positive.’”
With every word Stormie’s world collapsed a little, like a star becoming a black hole, her dreams slipping along the event horizon on the edge of oblivion. Frank stepped toward her and took her hand.
“What does she have, James?” Frank asked.
“My brother-in-law is trying to get us some of her blood, enough to run our own tests,” he said. “If we can, we’ll run tests all the way down to electron micro … microscopy, if we have to.
“Bruce did some digging on the heiress or princess or whatever she is, and found out she’d spent time in some very odd places. Apparently she was some sort of jet-setter. We may be lucky that she wasn’t carrying some kind of Madagascar jungle flu.
“But what she does have is a strain of HPV—human papillomavirus. That normally wouldn’t be a show-stopper, lots of people have it, but this variety is different. Somewhere in this file they specify what kind it is, but I can’t find it right now. All I know is it’s a mutation, pernicious and drug-resistant, and because of that, if either of you got it, it would keep you out of the training Cave. And that would mean you wouldn’t make your launch, which would mean we’d default on the contract and the game would be over for us. I don’t know what the AC would do—it’s not as if they could find another company right away to run the environmental setup—but we can’t afford to pay the penalties they’d impose.”
Laughter and voices trickled in under the door jamb, but otherwise all was silent.
After a minute, Stormie said, “You said there were two problems.”
“Yeah, as if one wasn’t enough. The other thing Bruce found is that the princess’s husband has hepatitis.” Jim opened a couple of reference windows on his computer. “I’ve done a lot of reading on infectious diseases over the last few hours. Hepatitis isn’t so bad compared to other things that can be transmitted by blood. Here’s one—Rift Valley fever—and there’s American … hell, I can barely say it … trypanosomiasis. Those are real nasty, whereas millions, maybe billions, of people have hepatitis and live okay lives. But those people aren’t trying to colonize the Moon, and don’t have contracts that make them accountable to the Asteroid Consortium.”
“How about our blood tests, Jim?”
“So far, your panels are clean. Whether that’s going to make a difference is anybody’s guess.”
“What do you mean? It’s got to make a difference. If we’re not sick—”
“They may not care,” Jim said, and held up his free hand. “I’m sorry, Gale, but that’s the truth of it. We have test results that may be accurate but may not be conclusive. They have photos of you practically lathering your arms with this woman’s blood, and your own statements that Frank had a cut on his hand and got some of the same blood on that hand. That’s not an equitable transaction.
“I don’t know what else to tell you. It’s a risk management decision, and even though you, Frank, and I may be willing to take the risk I’m not sure the rest of them will be.”
Stormie wished for a fresh drink.
Frank said in a soft voice, “Is there anything we can do, to allay their concerns?” Stormie smiled at the loyalty, dependability, and love in his question.
Their partner looked back and forth between them, his face unreadable beneath his makeup. “I’ve talked to the contract managers about getting you both pico-scrubbed. They may want to couple that with a series of interferon treatments.” He pulled up a new set of documents on his tablet. “I took the liberty of getting picophages ready for delivery from Low-Gee to San Diego. I’ve got all the paperwork ready for your authorizations, and then it’ll take a week or more to get the shipment processed and de-orbited.
“I know this isn’t a happy prospect, and it’s coming down all at once. While you two were ironing out technical details today, this is what I was doing: trying to keep our contract alive. And if we’re going to do anything, we need to do it soon. Do you two want to step out on the porch, or take a walk to talk about it?”
Pressure built in Stormie’s chest, but words would not come. Frank’s eyes radiated strength and resolution that she didn’t feel she deserved. She shook her head.
Frank said, “I believe Stormie means that talking about it is unnecessary, if we have no choice about the course of action.”
She nodded.
“Are you sure?”
Stormie wanted to shout at Jim for even asking the question. They’d already given so much, mortgaged everything, to earn their way into the colony; how could they stop now? Whatever it would take to stay on the roster, to build a better future together, she would do it. Jim should know that by now.
Frank put his arm around her shoulder, and she snaked her own around his waist. He said, “If I recall from the news stories about Low-Gee’s pico-cure, James, this new treatment is still experimental.”
“Yeah, and break-the-bank expensive, and intensely painful.”
Stormie trembled a little, not so much in fear of whatever experimental technological treatment Jim had in mind, but in fear of sabotaging the plans they had worked so hard to achieve. She compressed the fear, in hopes of turning it into diamond-hard resolve.
Stormie looked up at Frank. “What do you want to do?”
He knew what she wanted. She would never easily give up their crazy dream of stepping out toward the stars together. She would face this challenge and suffer the consequences, whatever they might be. She hoped Frank would, too. She needed him to, for so many reasons.
Frank deliberated for only a moment. He hugged her a bit closer, and turned to Jim. “Will an electronic signature be sufficient?” he asked.
Chapter Six
The Maddening Desire
Wednesday, 8 November 2034
Lunar Setup Mission II, Day 8
Van Richards couldn’t see the stars, but he knew they were there and that was enough.
It should’ve been dark enough in the lunar night, even with the Earth glowing up above, to see the stars—but the worklights all around were too much. Even the head-up d
isplay in his helmet washed out any ambient light from the distance of space.
Van didn’t care: he loved it, whether he ever saw any star except the Sun again. He was convinced he was in the right place, with the solemn assurance of a recent convert to the religion of his choice. This was his purpose, his calling.
Okay, maybe not this particular job: opening what, at the moment, was essentially a shipping crate bigger than a Greyhound bus. He was unscrewing the dozen bolts that held down the man-sized access cover: an unglamorous task by any standard. But the fact that the crate was on the surface of the Moon aligned it with his purpose. The thing that solidified his confidence that this was what and where he was meant to be, however, was knowing that within a year he and Barbara would both be here.
Van’s partner at the moment was Roy Chesterfield, the crew foreman. Roy had been a crewmember on the first setup mission before being selected as foreman for the second; his North London accent came through louder and clearer over work channel one than his words. “How are we doing, Van?” he said.
“Gooder ’n snuff,” Van said, putting as much of a drawl in as he could. “Best laydown yet.”
“You think we’ve topped out the learning curve, finally?”
“No, pretty soon we’ll be measuring our errors in microns.”
It had been the cleanest installation yet of the prefabricated shelter units. The shelters had semi-circular cross-sections, so that those that were entrenched close to the surface and covered over with lunar soil for radiation protection looked something like Quonset huts. The exceptions were the central dome about eight meters across and six high that the first setup mission had erected, and the garage units that had big airlocks along their sides.
“Keep it up, Van, and we’ll have you digging all the trenches.”
“Alright by me, boss. I like driving the big machines.”
“Don’t we all,” Roy said. “But the rest are going to be even harder. Coming up behind you now. Spot me while I back up, if you don’t mind?”
Van hopped up the slight incline to the top of the trench. Calling anything that was only a meter-and-a-half deep at its deepest point a “trench” seemed overly generous, but that was the convention. The incline to the surface was so slight that it took three hops to cover the length of it. There would be more digging out and even some rock hauling for the next few shelters, since the Consortium hadn’t gotten the best real estate in the lottery/buyout the U.N. had brokered. They bought some of the less desirable pieces of property and spent more to develop theirs fast, rather than buying better property that they’d have to wait longer to develop. It made the work harder, especially if they had to do any blasting—setting the little shaped charges to break up boulders was tedious enough, but setting up shields to keep the fragments contained was the worst—
But the signature element was that they were further along in getting established on the Moon, and that made all the difference.
Van counted down the meters until Roy had the flatbed MPV—multi-purpose vehicle—in place with plenty of maneuver room. Roy climbed down from the “cab,” which was little more than a roll cage. Only the big truck had a pressurized cabin.
“Ready to open ’er up?” Van asked.
“We’d better be. Henry and Jovelyn should have the junction hooked up to the other end in an hour, and have power up a little after that. It’ll take a few more hours to hook up the ductwork and piping, so pressure check and systems check will have to wait until next shift. Still, we’ll have to work fast to get a path cleared in there.”
“Fair enough,” Van said, and unscrewed the last two bolts.
Roy tugged on the access cover but it didn’t come free. “It’s stuck,” he said. “Give me a hand.”
Van grabbed one handle and pulled when Roy counted three. The access cover resisted, the way a vacuum-sealed lid didn’t want to come off a jar. But that didn’t make any sense, because the cover had vacuum on either side of it.
The cover vibrated through Van’s glove as it came free a second later. Roy carried it to the side; they would find a good use for it somewhere.
Van looked inside. As expected, the stack of transit cases blocked the narrow corridor up to the low ceiling. The shelter was packed from end to end along its entire length, just like all the others. Heavy webbing held all the gear in place against the stresses and vibrations of launch, landing, and emplacement. Van adjusted a worklight for a better look.
Everything—the stacked crates, the straps, even the floor—reflected back shimmering white. He cursed.
“What’s the matter?” Roy asked.
“Looks like it snowed in here,” Van said. He hung the worklight on the inner pressure door—open for shipping, it would seal against the hatchway when the shelter was aired in—and stepped inside. He wiped a thin film of ice off the nearest transit case. “We’ve got ice.”
“How much?”
“Can’t tell. Very thin layer, all over everything. Not whiskers like rime ice, just a thin sheet of crystals.” He started releasing the webbing straps. “I don’t think it’ll slow us down any, I just wonder where the water came from. Shouldn’t be from the plumbing, unless some idiot charged the system before they sealed everything up.”
“Didn’t you read the inventory?”
Van didn’t bother answering. Of course he didn’t read the inventory; why clog up his brain with what was packed in the thing when they were just going to empty it and rearrange everything anyway?
“This prefab’s another farm module,” Roy said. “It has some tooling for the garage that we can take out and stage, some crates of spare suits, and a few other small things, but it’s supposed to have four water tanks. Not bladders, but tanks, filled. Do you suppose one of them cracked?”
“Don’t know what else it could be,” Van said, “or how much we’ll lose when this ice sublimates away.” He had the webbing undone and pulled the first transit case down from the stack. He composed a litany of complaints as he pulled the case backward through the hatch. “Damn low-bid outfit. I bet they didn’t assemble the tank right, left a weak weld or something. Or are they composite tanks, filament-wound?” Roy grabbed the other end of the crate and together the two of them made their way up the incline. Van barely paused in his diatribe; he didn’t leave time for a response. “Maybe a thin spot, or some other defect. Then I bet when they filled the tank they didn’t leave enough ullage in it. Who knows how many times that water froze and thawed since it launched? Tank probably busted when the water froze and expanded, or when the whole package heated up in the sunlight—”
“Are you quite finished?” Roy asked as they swung the case onto the back of the flatbed.
“No. These things always make me wonder what else we’re going to find messed up.” Van hadn’t been impressed with the general workmanship of some of the equipment they used, and it wasn’t as if all of the Consortium’s plans had worked without a hitch. The third set of prefab shelters had crashed instead of soft-landing; the AC built another set and worked it into the supply launch schedule, but that original set remained a twisted hunk of scrap about forty kilometers northwest of the colony on the north rim of Campanus Crater. Eventually it would be salvaged; maybe when Van came back as a colonist. “I bet one of those water tanks cracked. Water couldn’t escape like from a comet. It got deposited and stuck by surface tension, then froze—”
“Enough, please, Mr. Richards.” Roy’s sigh carried over the radio. “We’ve a lot of work to do, so let’s get to it.”
Van frowned. Frustration simmered in his gut—this time ice in the shelter, the time before a broken tool, before that a defective control unit. He knew one day something big would go wrong, and hated giving in to the thought because it smothered little bits of his enthusiasm. He took a deep breath and forced himself to smile. “Aw, Roy,” he said, “why d’you want to take all the fun out of work?”
* * *
“Good work today,” Shay Nakamura said as he steppe
d through the hatch. His slight Japanese accent echoed in the dome that most of the setup crew had taken to calling “Grand Central.” Grace Teliopolous, for some reason, preferred to call it the “pimple.”
Van looked up from his bowl of reconstituted potato soup. It was thick, the way he liked it—he never added as much water as the instructions called for—and a few good shots of Texas Pete gave it enough flavor to make up for the slightly pasty taste and feel. It helped overpower the usual stale locker-room-and-sewer-gas smell, too. He hoped once more of the farm units were up and running the air would clear; and he’d have to make sure some hot peppers got planted, as backup.
“Thanks,” Van said. Despite the way he’d dogged Van during their first orbits, Shay was a good guy, even if he was the setup mission commander. “Didn’t run into too many rocks, so the trenching went pretty easily.”
Shay pulled a packet out of the cabinet, tore off the cover, and tossed the pack in the oven. He sat down opposite Van while his dinner heated, picked up a deck of cards, and without shuffling began laying out a hand of solitaire.
“Why do you do that?” Van asked.
“What?”
Van sighed. He reached into the side pocket of his coveralls and withdrew his datapad. “See this? I know you have one, and if you like I can transfer about a hundred different versions of solitaire or any other game you want to play.”
Shay shook his head. “I like the feel of shuffling cards. I like the sound they make.”
“I bet I can find that sound on here, too, and you can program it to play the sound whenever it starts a new game.”
Shay laid the three of hearts on the four of clubs, with a little thwack as he released the corner of the card. “Yeah, that’ll be authentic.”
“I bet you still read books on paper, too, don’t you?”
“I have one or two,” Shay admitted. “You might try it sometime. Expand your horizons.”
“I’ve got the widest horizons of anybody I know,” Van said.
“I don’t even know what that means.”
Walking on the Sea of Clouds Page 5
