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Walking on the Sea of Clouds

Page 8

by Gray Rinehart


  No time to think about that now.

  Van stepped out of the airlock into as stark a desert as must exist in the universe. The Sun was angled about forty-five degrees off the horizon, off to the right, and cast crisp shadows from the equipment and the shelters, but the dead expanse of Mare Nubium stretched to infinity where it met the inky veil of space. Where Van grew up, on the edge of the Mojave Desert near Riverside, the barren expanse nearly teemed with life: tarantulas, roadrunners, desert tortoises. Among the desert plant life, even the carcasses of dead cacti attested to life that once was: but here, nothing. Van resolved to bring a cactus or baby Joshua tree when he came back as a colonist, and when it got too big to keep in a cabin he would bring it outside, sacrifice it to the lunar desert, and leave it as a reminder of life that once was.

  “Radio check, take two,” Jovelyn said.

  “Loud and clear, just like inside,” Van said. “Me?”

  “Loud and clear also. Control?”

  “Read you both loud and clear.” Grace Teliopolous’s voice came through the same, and Van answered back with the five-by-five.

  “You got new orders for us, Grace?” Jovelyn asked.

  “Oh, yes. Shay worked around a couple of things on the schedule. Again.”

  Van nodded inside his helmet. “It won’t be the last time.”

  “No, but it’ll all work out in the end,” Grace said. “I’m feeding you your new checklists on channel two right … now.”

  Van split the view on his head-up display, and opened the new checklist in the left panel. “Wait a minute. Henry said surveying, but he didn’t say what. This is supposed to be easy?”

  Jovelyn spoke up, “Here I thought Shay was going to take it easy on you, so you’d be fresh for your show later. Looks like he wants you to work off some mass, since the camera adds five kilos.”

  “Ha, ha. It’s ten pounds, no matter what the metric police say. And I’m sticking out my tongue at you.”

  “If you do, you’d better be prepared to use it.”

  “That’ll be the day,” Van said. “You and Datu may have that kind of arrangement going, but Barbara would skin me alive.”

  “Enough, you two,” Grace said. “Clock’s ticking, you’re breathing, let’s keep it that way. Get to work.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Van. “And hey, if briefers always get work details like this, I want out of the next drawing.”

  “Me, too,” said Jovelyn.

  Make that the next two drawings, Van thought a few hours later, as sweat tickled his spine and no amount of wriggling could alleviate the itch. It was still better than sweating in zero gee, where droplets could float anywhere, but the gravity was weak enough that surface tension and capillary action usually kept sweat from moving very much at all.

  Their task had been worded innocuously enough in the checklist overview: “Survey and mark the westernmost end supports for the launch rail system, the transfer crane assembly, and as much of the landing pad areas and accessways as possible in the allotted time.” Sure, it sounded easier than splitting down the next prefab units, but the former required a lot of moving around on the surface and the latter was mostly a matter of manipulating the machines that did the work.

  Van would much rather be splitting and planting a habitat. Even with the site prep and the moving into position and the connecting, it was a breeze compared to hopping around outside, sighting in the coordinates and setting in the markers for the acceleration rail system that would stretch northeast across Mare Nubium. There was as yet no lunar equivalent of GPS to guide them, and he’d been a gentleman and let Jovelyn run the EDM transit, so he was the one hopping around with the prism pole. None of the team were licensed surveyors, and they knew only enough to be dangerous, but he was sure if they were surveying anything on Earth she would’ve had to move the electromagnetic distance measurement equipment at least once, if only to sight around some natural obstacles like trees. Here, where no atmosphere diffused the laser and the whole open plain was a cut line, she just stayed at the benchmark and had him range about to each new survey point.

  Deep inside, he was just as happy that he didn’t have to futz with the electronic gear. But most all the other surface work was machine-assisted, and this task was about to wear him down almost frictionless. He hadn’t sweated so much since the summer before he and Barbara got married, when he agreed to help out for a week on her dad’s ranch. He hated that ranch.

  “Okay, Van, got it,” Jovelyn radioed. “Need you to move fifty meters out on heading zero-three-zero.”

  Easy shift, my ass.

  * * *

  “Ready for your close-up, Mr. Richards?” Henry asked.

  “Shut up,” Van said. “Just sit there and don’t let anybody bother me.”

  They were in the two-by-two-and-a-half-meter cabin that was the main Operations Center for the growing complex. That is, Van was in the cabin while Henry sat on a stool in the corridor, just outside the view of the console-mounted camera. One of the monitor screens was split into four quadrants, each of which showed a similar view: a small conference or classroom with tiny, almost indistinguishable faces. Everyone wore casual clothes, so the only way he could tell the corporate types from the colonist candidates was by the digital labels on each quadrant: “Long Beach” was the Consortium corporate office, “San Diego” was the preselection and processing center, and “Utah-1” and “Utah-2” were rooms in the underground training complex.

  “Okay, I think everybody’s on,” someone said from Long Beach—the label momentarily turned green. “We have the feed from Mercator and the other video sites, and we have audio feeds from the candidates who are scheduled for the next session in the mountain. I’m Roger Ellsworth, chief of training, and we’ve arranged this briefing so our trainees can get a first-hand account of how the setup mission is proceeding. Our briefer today is Van Richards, who I understand spent six of the last eight hours out on the surface.” Ellsworth prattled on for another minute or so, reminding everyone about the protocol for questions given the time delay, then asked Van to begin.

  Van had read through the briefing script Shay had written, which was displayed in big letters on another monitor near the camera even though he had no intention of following it. He glanced down at his notes for what he was really going to say—they were on real paper, propped up between the top two rows of a keyboard. He wasn’t going to toe the party line for Shay and say all was well in their lunar paradise. It would serve Shay right for not doing the briefing himself.

  In a stage whisper, Henry asked, “Still going to go through with your little plan?”

  “Absolutely,” Van said.

  “Have fun, buddy.” Henry slid closed the partition.

  Van transmitted the first slide before he even began speaking, and kept it up like a shield; he’d rather let all those people look at the plan view of the colony than at him. The slide showed a draftsman’s ideal view of Grand Central and the array of prefab habitats.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, greetings from the closest dirtball to dear old mother Earth,” Van said, “where your best friend is the low-bid pressure suit with the broken oxygen gauge and cross-wired power system that you hope will hold together for another day in the sunlight. Or another night under the stars.

  “Now, before I get into the prepared briefing, is Gary Needham still in the program? All your faces are too small on my monitor to pick him out. Over.” Gary Needham had commanded the first lunar setup mission. He was back in the pipeline as a trainer while his wife Beverly went through as a trainee: not only would he be among the first colonists, but eventually he would be the colony administrator. Van’s acquaintance with him went back to their days in the service, but he wouldn’t waste transmission time to go into that.

  Van waited while the signal traversed the distance, and then a hand went up in the third row of the crowded “Utah-2” screen. Van leaned in and squinted, but it didn’t help. “Hello, Van,” Gary said. Van waited a few sec
onds to see if he would say anything else, but he didn’t.

  “Howdy, Colonel,” Van said. “I’ll assume you’ve already given your cohorts a detailed account of your setup mission, including everything you left undone. We’ve been giving Roy a hard time about that—he says hello, by the way. Over.”

  After the requisite pause, Gary said, “Yeah, sorry about that. Quit picking on Roy about it, though. He doesn’t deserve it. Next time I see you, I’ll buy you a beer to make up for it. Over.” Needham hadn’t changed a bit: he still accepted responsibility for whatever went wrong on his watch, and Van guessed he was probably still as quick to share the praise for whatever went right.

  “Oh, that’s okay. I think we’ll be buying each other a beer, at the rate we’re going. And you did a good job with that first farm unit—Sondstrom’s plants are growing on schedule, which is a little surprising to me since he’s primarily a mechanic. Anyway, we got most of your ‘punch list’ done, but our schedule’s all hosed up. You’re going to have a lot more work than you bargained for when you get up here.” Van switched to the next slide, which was labeled Mercator Colony—Actual Progress to Date. Almost half the habitat modules were greyed out, and several others were visibly askew from the idealized version.

  “Now, let me tell you what we have gotten done, and some problems we’ve run into. I want you to know full well what you’ll be up against when you get here.”

  Van’s version of the briefing lasted about five minutes before Shay was outside the closed partition, arguing with Henry. Van had already run down the worst of their problems, prioritized based on the time it had taken to fix them—or, in a few especially unfortunate cases, the time it was going to take.

  Now, warmed up to his task, he switched the view and let the camera pick up his face. Behind him, Henry told Shay, “Just listen—he’s getting to the good part.” Van smiled.

  “I told you all that so you wouldn’t have any illusions,” he said. “It’s not my job to give you warm, fuzzy feelings. But it ain’t all bad. Even though I’ve never worked harder at anything in my life, even though the gear is balky and the air reeks, and even though I feel like we’re never going to get done, I don’t want to be anyplace else.

  “Some people talk like life is supposed to be safe and you’re not supposed to take any risks, but I say you may as well climb in your coffin if that’s the case. And you sure as hell don’t want to come up here. But that’s okay, ’cause better you back out now than you get up here and find out you can’t hack it. Life is hard sometimes. Get over it. Making it through the hard parts is what makes life worthwhile.

  “I read somewhere that back when Arctic explorers were planning an expedition, they ran ads in the paper asking for people to sign up and said, big and bold, that the chance of survival was slim. A certainty of adventure, a possibility of glory, and a good chance of death. Sound appealing? People signed up, they came out of the woodwork to sign up for a chance to do something monumental. Because a chance of survival is still a chance, and worth taking the risk. So even though this is hard, by damn I think it’s a chance worth taking. Dream big and dare big, I say. Take the chance.

  “In a few weeks, we’ll have as much done as we can do, and y’all are gonna have to pick up where we left off. You might be mad when you see how much we’ve left for you, and I’m sorry about that. We’re all working hard to make sure this place is ready for you to arrive, but things are already starting to break and we’re having to put them back together. It’s slowing us down, but it ain’t stopping us. And here’s the kicker: it ain’t chasing us away, either. Some of us are coming back, just like Gary Needham is coming back.

  “As soon as we can, my wife and I will push ourselves through the training you’re going through right now, and we’ll join you up here. Jovelyn Nguyen will be along one of these days—her husband probably gave most of you your medical clearance, but it’ll be a while before they get up here, before there’s enough people here to justify a full-time doctor. We’ll see Henry Crafts and some of the others, too, ’cause they’ll be piloting cargo carriers or off working the asteroid mine. We’re signing up for the long haul—and you better be ready for the duration, too.

  “That’s all I have to say. If you like, I can give you the party line briefing now, or I can answer some questions or we can shut this down and I can go to sleep. Just remember: I told you beforehand that we weren’t going to get everything done, and things up here are harder than you might think. So when you get up here you’re going to work your asses off. If you’re still mad at me about that when I get up here, you can punch me in the face. Or tell me ahead of time, and I’ll smuggle up a case of beer and let you have one. Over.”

  Van muted his microphone and reached back to tap twice on the partition. Shay slid it open and said, “What was that?”

  Van grinned. “That was the truth,” he said. “And it was fun.”

  Chapter Nine

  Halfway House

  Saturday, 2 December 2034

  Lunar Setup Mission II, Day 32

  Bright sunlight bathed the lunar highlands: along rills and near rocks, it cast short but ever-lengthening abyss-dark shadows.

  It was a lot better to get this job done in the daylight than the darkness, as far as Van was concerned. As sunset approached, there would be precious few sunlit swathes left. And the big lights on the front of the rig would barely penetrate the darkness.

  A chime sounded from the control panel in front of him; if Oskar had taken off on time, he should be in the area soon. Van checked the frequency and keyed his microphone. “Oskar, this is Van,” he said, dispensing with all radio protocol. “You out there, Oskar?”

  The radio crackled a little. In keeping with the Consortium’s low-ball approach, its electronics were nothing fancy but easy to repair. Van waited a few more minutes, then repeated the call. He was about to transmit a third time when Oskar’s voice blared from the speaker.

  “Lima Victor November, this is Lima Sierra Oscar Victor, over.”

  “Hey, Oskar! Been waitin’ for you to call. Where are you?”

  Oskar sounded annoyed. “Roger, LVN. We’re coming up on your left, Van, about a thousand meters high. I can see you clearly. Looks like you’re right on time, over.”

  “Sure we are, Oskar. Where else would we be?” Van snuck looks out the left-hand window for the suborbital vehicle. “Hey, why don’t you drop down and scout out ahead for us?”

  “Negative, LVN. That’s not in the flight plan. That route hasn’t changed since the last time anyone drove it, over.”

  Van chuckled. Oskar loved flying almost as much as Henry, but he was so by-the-book that he wouldn’t take a risk unless it really needed taking. If even then.

  “You never know,” Van said. “Some transie could’ve burst out, right on our path. You’ll regret it if we drive right into a sinkhole.”

  “Negative, LVN,” Oskar said.

  Van chuckled again. No, I don’t suppose you would, Herr Hintener.

  “I see you now, LSOV,” Van said, slurring the acronym into “ellessovee.” The suborbital vehicle was about sixty degrees up and not quite abeam—call it about 8:30, moving to 9:00, on an analog clock. He was surprised he could see the vehicle at all: the bright sunlight and the lights in the cab washed out just about every outside light source. The flyer was visible only because it caught a good bounce from the Sun. The hydrogen-oxygen flame propelling the flyer burned clear, and even if he was at the right angle the glowing hot exhaust bell would be practically invisible to him. As it was, the reflected light would change and he’d probably lose sight of it before long.

  Van noted the suborbital vehicle’s forward progress, and frowned a little. Oskar wasn’t trying very hard at all. He had enough fuel to fly nap-of-the-moon, but he’d programmed a semi-ballistic trajectory that let him coast after the initial boost. Knowing him, he’d probably programmed it close enough that he’d barely have to light the engines to touch down right at the rendezvous
point. You’re sharp, Oskar, but you’re not much fun.

  “Looking good, Oskar. See you at the implant point.”

  “Affirmative, LVN. Watch out for the transies, over.”

  Van switched off the microphone. “Good one, Oskar.” Even if a transient lunar phenomenon had lit off recently right in the middle of their path—which he supposed they would know, since so many people back on Earth were watching the Moon these days—it wouldn’t affect them that much. Whether it was outgassing or a minor impact, all it might do is raise a brief spray of dust; the big truck would just roll along pretty as it pleased.

  Van switched to intercom. “Grace, you up? We’re coming up on the setup site.”

  She answered right away, but she sounded sleepy. “Yeah, I’m up. Oskar’s nearby?”

  Van looked back into the sky, but as expected the LSOV was out of sight. “I had eyes-on a second ago, but not anymore. He’ll be down and cooling when we get there.”

  “Roger. Do I have time to grab something to eat?”

  “Oh, yeah, plenty. We’re still about twenty-five klicks out, so it’ll be over an hour.”

  “Okay. I’ll start running the arrival checklist in about thirty minutes.”

  “Suit yourself, Telly.”

  “I will,” Grace said.

  “Ha-ha. Hey, leave me a little something, okay?”

  “Why? You never leave me anything.”

  Van smiled. “I’m still a growing boy, don’t you know?”

  Grace didn’t answer, but that was okay. And Van didn’t care too much if she left him anything or not; Grace Teliopolous lived up to her Georgia Tech reputation as a “helluvan engineer,” but she was not a cook.

  An hour later, the LVN-1 crested a rise and Van looked down into a wide valley. In the distance a few large rock formations cast reaching fingers of shadow, but most of the low valley seemed almost to glow.

 

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