“Neither do I.”
Shay glanced up toward the high windows. “Whatever.”
Van didn’t like the emptiness in Shay’s eyes. “Something eating at you?”
Shay played two more cards before answering. “They lost one of the one-way-trippers yesterday.”
“Anybody you know?”
“No.”
“Still,” Van said, “I’m sorry to hear about that.” If Van had been single he would have thrown in with that bunch, but he’d known better than even to apply. Barbara would have skinned him alive if he’d volunteered to go to Mars knowing he would die there. He didn’t understand her reluctance; you had to die somewhere. “What happened, do you know?”
Shay shook his head and played another card. “No, they just posted the notice. Kind of brings the issue of risk into the spotlight.”
Van nodded, but only out of courtesy. He refused to dwell on risks. Risk management was Barbara’s specialty.
“Probably best to concentrate on what’s front and center, things we can control. Which reminds me: you were just telling me what a good job I did today.”
One corner of Shay’s mouth twitched upward; not much, but enough. “Yes, I was,” he said. “And as long as you keep laying down shelters as smooth as that last one, we might even get back on schedule.”
Van grinned a little in response, but he shook his head. “Don’t count on it.”
“I’m not. Even if we weren’t starting to creep up on the crater’s edge, Murphy always shows up to ‘help.’ Like losing that water tank—that’s going to hurt.”
“How many times you think it froze and thawed?”
“Many. A few times while it was en route, and it’s been on the surface for four months. Do you recall how it was oriented before we split it?”
Van hadn’t been on the split crew for that module. Each habitat had been launched and soft-landed as a set of two, joined base-to-base with another habitat, to form a complete cylinder; the setup crews split them apart—like splitting a big log into two perfect halves, except of course they had to be a lot more careful—so they could be rotated and planted flat side down. It was a delicate maneuver, even with the support cradles and rigging, because the prefabs were monstrous big. They were small enough on the inside—especially filled as they were with everything the Consortium could cram into them—but they were still a little over five meters wide and nearly thirty meters long.
“I wouldn’t know, Shay,” Van said. “Even if I’d been on duty for that split, I probably wouldn’t remember. Everything’s starting to run together in my mind.”
“Is that why you didn’t take down your observations of the ice today? I didn’t see any details in your log.”
“No,” Van said, “it was more important to get the unloading done.” He didn’t add that he hated the “typing mode” built into the suits; the gloves had feedback sensors that let you do touch typing by just wiggling your fingers, but Van had trouble getting it to work. Especially trying to contort his fingers for the SHIFT function—that was the worst. “I took a couple of images, and I’ll write up a report before I rack out.”
They had been on the Moon just over a week, but Van was tired enough that sometimes it seemed like a month. Murphy’s Law had conspired, among other things, to temporarily shut down the furnaces in the unit that processed metal-oxide-rich layers scraped from Mare Nubium into alloys and oxygen—officially the Automated Regolith Processor, Oxygen Extraction and Smelting—which put them behind schedule on pressurizing the habitats. They were also behind schedule because they were still finishing up the first setup team’s unfinished tasks. That was no surprise: all the corporate-built schedules were so ambitious that they weren’t just success-oriented, they assumed success. It produced a near-impossible workload and added to Van’s creeping sense of frustration. Nobody minded pulling extra duty, least of all Van, but it was easy to get discouraged when their progress still left so many things to do. And when he had to write reports about every little thing.
Van yawned. “So tell me some good news, Shay. How’re Oskar and Scooter doing?” Two days ago the pair had flown to Faustini Crater at the lunar south pole, where the first survey team had set up the Lunar Ice Collection and Extraction Operations Module: an automated processor that extracted ice microgram by microgram from dust collected from the crater floor, and compressed the ice into blocks for later recovery. There were no polar oases of ice like people back in the 20th century had hoped, and again the AC had not gotten the best of the available sources, but the surveys showed they would be able to process enough to keep the colony going. The LICEOM, pronounced “lyceum,” was powered by an Advanced Radioisotope Generator—officially Lunar Power Plant, Nuclear, number 2—installed on the crater floor in perpetual darkness. Since the Lunar Suborbital Vehicle—LSOV—wouldn’t always be available for ice runs, and everyone hoped the loads would mass more than its capacity anyway, Oskar and Scooter were surveying and blasting a route so teams could drive down into the crater to collect the ice.
“Oskar’s last message said he thinks it’ll take five or six days to do the main blasting. Then they should be able to grade and fuse a path at least partway up from the crater floor. He’s not sure they’ll get to the top, and they definitely won’t get started on the outer wall.”
Van nodded. “If there’s a way to make it happen, Scooter’ll find it. He’s the best. Hope he waves at the yokels on the Shackleton rim while he’s down there.
“On another subject, you gonna make us draw straws again to see who gets to go next time? I’m still happy to volunteer.”
“I’m sure you are,” Shay said. He checked on his food, stirred it around a little, and put it back in the oven. Van coughed; Shay was warming up the tuna-like casserole that Van always avoided. It smelled like tuna the way a dairy farm smells like milk.
Shay came back to the table and said, “What’s that about, anyway? You trying to score points with the bosses, always volunteering for things?”
Van wasn’t sure how to express his sense of urgency, the maddening desire to get each job done quickly and right. Sometimes his hands itched to be put to work, and he knew from past experience that when that happened he had to do something right or he might end up doing something wrong.
“As cute as I think you are, Shay, I’m really not trying to kiss up to you. I just get antsy sitting around for too long. I feel like I need to be doing something, so I may as well work. Never mind. Got any other news?”
“Heard that all is well on the Forty-Niner. They’re on track to rendezvous with Aten-Galliani in early December.”
Van nodded. Forty-Niner was the second of the Asteroid Consortium’s prospecting ships; the first, with the comfortably uncreative name Prospector, had already rendezvoused with Aten-Ichijouji and was on its way back to the Earth-Moon System. The ships were originally supposed to be named Prospector I and II, until elementary school students in San Francisco collected thousands of signatures on a petition asking the AC to name the second ship after those who went west during the Gold Rush. The asteroids’ double names at least made some kind of simplistic sense. They combined their type—Aten asteroids crossed the Earth’s orbit from time to time—and their discoverers.
Van had considered trying for the asteroid mission, but after taking over a day to get used to freefall on the way to the Moon he was just as glad to be on the ground support side of things for now. Plus, Prospector had been out almost eighteen months—a little too long to be cooped up with just three other people. Their first shipment of ore and ammonia, sent back on a different orbital track than either the ship or the asteroid itself, had been captured a month before.
“Prospector still due back next month, too?” Van asked. The ship was supposed to return just before the new year; the Aten-Ichijouji asteroid was supposed to be captured—or near enough—near L-4, the Earth-leading Lagrange point, five months later.
“Haven’t heard anything different.” Shay pu
shed aside his game, retrieved his meal, and sat back down. They ate in silence.
Van had just scraped the last of his soup from the bowl when the hatch opened and Henry Crafts came in. He was a compact, powerful fellow from Tullahoma, Tennessee. Like Van, Henry was another “grunt” on the lunar setup mission. Nominally, the five grunts—Van, Henry, Jovelyn Nguyen, Grace Teliopolous, and Scooter Mast—worked for the three bosses: Shay, Oskar, and Roy. Everyone deferred to Shay but he didn’t stand on ceremony; in practice, what hierarchy existed didn’t come into play very much except when Oskar was in charge of something. Of all the setup crew, though, Van got along with Henry the best: he didn’t take himself too seriously, the way some of the others did.
“Hey, Henry, Shay was just telling me the Forty-Niner’s flying true. Didn’t I hear from Grace that you were going into the mines once we’re all done?”
Henry sat down and looked skeptically at Shay’s meal. “Not if I can help it,” he said. “I like flying too much to become a mole. I’m hoping to run one of the ferries.”
“So you’re just going to sit on your hands for the time being? They won’t be making regular runs for two years or more.”
“No, it’ll be sooner than that,” Henry said. “If the government was running this show, maybe it would take so long. They could drag things out forever and just keep asking for more money. But the AC’s got to turn a profit soon or one of the other outfit’s going to raid them.”
Shay said, “You think one of the other Horsemen will be able to take Hansen down?”
Van took his bowl to the sink and wiped it clean. He wasn’t that interested in Morris Hansen’s wheelings and dealings, or in any of the other space entrepreneurs the media had dubbed the “Four Horsemen.” He knew all he needed to know: Hansen, who once quipped that “Anybody should be willing to risk a few billion if they stand to make a trillion,” was the driving force behind the Asteroid Consortium, the wide-reaching multinational that planned to exploit its two asteroids and was setting up the lunar colony as its mining camp. The other big players also reached across national borders and were headed by equally flamboyant people: Bhuresh Golgawethy of Extra-Solar; Ferdinand Garcia Vasquez Albierto of Low-Gee Processing, Ltd.; and Alistair MacInnis of Orbital Salvage & Recovery.
He interrupted Henry and Shay’s discussion of international—interplanetary?—high finance. “This is fascinating, guys, but I’m beat like a bad dog, and tomorrow’s only six hours away. Holler if you need me.”
The other two barely missed a beat as Van headed for his rack.
Chapter Seven
Time Yet for a Hundred Indecisions
Sunday, 12 November 2034
The only warm color in the room was the red-brown ribbon of blood that flowed through translucent plastic tubing from Stormie’s right arm to the scanner and back again.
The rest of the antiseptic room blazed cold under the fluorescent lights: the row of cabinets labeled with machine-like precision, the stainless steel table with its orderly array of implements, the ubiquitous anatomy poster. The IV drip into her left arm was clear as ice water. Even the scanning and filtration unit itself, squat and boxy in its cream-colored housing with sky blue faceplate, seemed unwarmed though her blood flowed through it.
Over-conditioned air bit through the hospital gown, and Stormie wished she had taken the thin blanket the nurse offered. At least the gown was a tri-fold—a wrap-around with three arm holes—even if it had to be the standard putrid green.
Nothing to be afraid of, she told herself. Nothing but a million microscopic hunter-killers coursing through your blood.
Stormie squirmed a little on the padded table, and the paper covering crackled loud as thunder. The tubing pulled against the tape that secured it to her arm. In places where the light hit the tubing just right, her blood looked as dark as her skin.
Dr. Nguyen’s smiling face appeared in the wire-crossed glass set in the door. He waved, then came in carrying the brushed aluminum clipboard with all the release forms she’d signed. She hadn’t read them, of course; she supposed no one did. Written in the most obscure dialect of legalese, their clauses and codicils were inaccessible to those uninitiated in the lawyerly arts, even people who were otherwise smart; if system administrators could erect electronic barriers as formidable as lawyers’ linguistic barriers, no computer firewall would ever be breached. The papers all boiled down to I-understand-the-risks-associated-with-this-procedure-and-accept-the-improbable-but-very-real-possibility-that-it-may-result-in-my-death-or-permanent-disability. She had signed them with barely a first thought.
Dr. Nguyen’s black, greasy hair stuck out above one ear, as if he’d just gotten up from a nap at his desk. “How are you doing?” he asked. He reached out his slender hand and Stormie shook it for the third time this morning. “Everything still okay? No irritation?” He bent toward her arm and examined the needle site.
“Seems okay,” Stormie said. “I’m cold, though.”
The door opened again and the same stout, blonde nurse who had witnessed the paperwork—Nurse Myracek—carried in a plastic transit case about the size of a six-pack cooler. The dark, almost hunter-green case contrasted with the room’s stark brightness. She set the case next to the equipment on the steel table as Dr. Nguyen asked her to bring Stormie a blanket. She gave Stormie an “I told you so” look, but smiled and nodded to make it a friendly comeuppance.
“You’ll want to lie back now,” Dr. Nguyen said.
Stormie complied, and the clean paper sheet scrunched against her back. Her empty stomach complained about the preparatory fast. In a moment, Nurse Myracek had her expertly swaddled under a soft, robin’s-egg-blue blanket and put a small pillow under her head.
Stormie remembered something in a poem about the night, lying on the table … something about anesthesia … she tried and failed to recall the line. It might be appropriate, somehow.
Dr. Nguyen snapped opened the clasps on the transit case. They clattered down one by one, then he took off the lid and lifted out a syringe about the size of a cigar. He started making notes on his clipboard.
“Just think,” Nurse Myracek said. “That came from outer space.”
Stormie smiled a little. The nurse made it sound as if the picophages in the syringe were alien creatures brought back to Earth by some survey team. They didn’t come from outer space per se, they were grown and processed in the high-vacuum, medium-orbit foundry that the Low-Gee Corporation developed from the space station nanocrystalline laboratory. “Pico-” was marketing hype: they were smaller than almost any other nanomachines, but not three orders of magnitude smaller. So far they were one of only two commercial products that seemed to require low-gravity manufacture, but on that shallow foundation Low-Gee had built a small technical empire. A greater hurdle than making the things in the first place had been figuring out how to prepare them for descent into the Earth’s gravity well; the shock-and-vibration-damping packaging was expensive, but still cheaper than sending people into orbit for treatment.
Stormie nodded. They came from outer space. And you’re going to put them in me.
“That’s what you and your husband are going to do, isn’t it?” the nurse asked. “You’re part of the Consortium, right? Like Dr. Nguyen? His wife’s on the Moon right now, you know.”
Stormie did know: Jovelyn Nguyen was on the setup crew that had landed just over two weeks before. “No, I’m not a ‘Consort,’” Stormie said. Dr. Nguyen didn’t react to her little jibe. “We’re independent contractors. We’ll be working on the air and water systems in the colony.”
If we ever get there.
She and Frank and Jim had formed Lunar Life Engineering, LLP, shortly after Jim’s water-skiing accident. Bidding and winning their three-year contract renewable to seven had taken long enough, and she intended to renegotiate and extend the contract indefinitely. But their waiting and preparation weren’t over, and she needed this procedure to work if they were to make the original timeline and han
g out their shingle sometime next summer. If it didn’t work … she didn’t want to think about that.
“That’s amazing,” the nurse said. “I can’t imagine living on the Moon and looking down at the Earth. Or would it be looking up at the Earth? That’s so strange. How long does it take to get ready for something like that?”
“When I feel like I’m ready, I’ll let you know,” Stormie said. “Sometimes I think I’ll never be ready, sometimes it’s like I’ve been ready all my life. As long as I can remember, anyway.”
She sometimes questioned her fascination with space; it wasn’t as if she had any astronauts in her family, or had grown up with rockets launching nearby. But while her fellow environmental engineers had pictures of landscapes and glaciers on their cubicle walls, she had a copy of the Apollo-8 shot of Earth above the limb of the Moon. She and Frank would have to wait a little longer, and had to pass a few more tests yet, but if this worked they would finally get there—and they were going to stay.
Dr. Nguyen tugged a little on the tubing as he screwed the syringe onto the port.
“I thought it would have some color,” Stormie said. “Something exotic, like electric lemonade.”
Dr. Nguyen tilted his head to look at the syringe. “I don’t know what ‘electric lemonade’ looks like,” he said. “This has some color, but the fluorescent lights wash it out, I think. If we looked at it in the sunlight, it would be white, but very pale. More like very thin skim milk.” He tilted the syringe and the light played off of it. He looked closely at her face and added, “You can still back out of this, you know.”
“No,” Stormie said. Give up on her life’s ambition and go back to taking water samples from stagnant ponds or digging up square-foot patches of soil to separate for analysis? Go back to writing environmental impact statements and teaching truckers the rules for hazardous material hauling? Go back to looking at the full Moon and dreaming—and knowing she gave up her only chance because she was afraid? “Really, I can’t.”
Walking on the Sea of Clouds Page 6
