And in the middle of the glowing field stood a manmade rock that cast its own shadow in Van’s direction.
Van had already set the vehicle’s radio to broadcast. “I see you, Oskar.”
“Roger, LVN, we have a visual on you also. Come on down and join us.” Oskar sounded as if he was sitting in the cab next to Van. “Henry and I are getting ready to exit the LSOV, over.”
An “X” appeared in the box on the checklist screen to Van’s left, in front of the “Establish close proximity line-of-sight communications” step.
Van smiled at his reflection in the head-up display. He puffed his chest and said, “Roger that, Lima Sierra Oscar Victor. We read your last transmission five by five, and copy your checklist telemetry. Copy your intention to commence Echo Victor Alpha and begin stabilizing Lima Papa Papa November Three and the Romeo Oscar Papa Sierra.”
Van wasn’t sure if it was Oskar or Henry Crafts who laughed over the radio, but it was certainly Oskar who spoke. “Alright, Van, just get your ass down here and get to work.”
Van smiled. All eight members of the lunar setup team were well-trained, highly motivated, and exceptionally capable, but over the past few weeks Van had become even more convinced that sometimes they took themselves too seriously. Oskar Hintener, for example, senior engineer and nominal second-in-command, was wound even tighter than his Teutonic heritage might warrant. Although, Van reflected, it was probably a good thing to be careful—and not the time to test the limits of the colony’s suborbital vehicle—when ferrying and setting up a nuclear power plant.
Van’s eyes strayed to the readouts from the big truck’s nuclear power source, ten meters behind him. The ARG’s output was in the green.
The Consortium had shipped four Advanced Radioisotope Generators to the Moon. They were quicker to install than solar collectors and had the advantage of working throughout the long lunar nights; solar fields and flywheel storage batteries would come later as the colony needed more power. Two stationary ARGs were already operating, one near the Mercator base and the other at the bottom of Faustini Crater. A third, mobile ARG powered the truck Van was driving: the biggest truck in the colony inventory, with the descriptive but typically unimaginative nomenclature Lunar Vehicle, Nuclear. And they were on their way to set up the fourth, short name LPPN-3, just flown in by Oskar and Henry. Since the AC’s lunar real estate was less “prime” than other concerns had acquired, LPPN-3 would power the remote Regolith Oxygen Processing Station, a way station between the main colony and the south pole for crews sent to retrieve ice for the colony’s water supply.
Van understood the need to be careful, especially with the devices that would keep the colony running, but he wished his fellow workers weren’t quite so uptight. Sometimes they almost made him the same way, and if he thought too hard about it that’s how he’d end up. He took a deep breath, held it, and let it go slowly. The air tasted of air-conditioned plastic and dust warmed by the sunlight. He toggled the intercom.
“Coming up on the waypoint, Grace. What’s your status?”
“All set except gloves and helmet. Ready when you say Go.”
“And?”
It took Grace a moment to respond. “And I left a little chicken salad for you.”
* * *
The crew compartment of the LVN-1 was smaller than the interior of a minivan on Earth, but spacious enough after six hours in the tiny control cabin up front. Although, up front there were windows.
The chicken salad was reconstituted, of course—it would be up to Gary Needham and the first full-time colonists to start raising real chickens—and there was only enough to put on three stale crackers.
“Aw, gee, Grace, you shouldn’t have,” Van said. He still had on his pressure suit after coming through the connecting tunnel from the cab; he had only taken off his gloves and helmet to choke down the crackers.
Grace put one gloved hand on her hip and glared at him. Her big brown eyes were captivating, even when she was hot about something. Maybe especially then. Van raised his eyebrows a little and gave her sad eyes until a bright white smile bloomed across her olive face. “I knew I couldn’t stand to hear you gripe the whole rest of the way.” She started to put her helmet on. “See you outside.”
The concoction was mostly satisfying—the mayonnaise was a little thin and there wasn’t quite enough celery for Van’s taste. He washed the snack down with a little water while Grace cycled through the airlock to the outside.
Van ran through the pre-EVA checks with barely a glance at the checklist printed right on the tough suit fabric. The instructions were there if he needed them, but he didn’t need them. His hands knew the routine better than his brain did as he repeated, flawlessly for the hundredth time, the function checks and seal inflations and joint inspections. He locked down his helmet and cycled through the airlock twelve minutes after Grace.
“It’s about time you showed up,” Henry Crafts’s voice said in Van’s ear. Henry and Oskar had set up reflectors to illuminate shadowed areas of the LPPN and the ROPS, and as Van had driven the LVN into range they had directed him to park the truck and its long, low trailer just behind one of the reflector stands about twenty meters away from the processing equipment and its power supply. Now, Henry was about thirty meters away pulling a power cable across the dusty basin floor. It was easy to pick Henry out because of the vertical line of dark blue duct tape he’d put down the outer edge of his suit’s legs.
Van looked away long enough to eyeball his volume control on his head-up display; he blinked to activate it and turned the sound down a little. “Sorry, fancy pants. Grace had prepared me a sumptuous meal, I had to finish it.”
Henry exhaled heavily as he spoke. “Grace, you cooked?” He pulled a few meters of the thick cable toward himself and curled it on the surface. He grabbed the free end and bounded away with it, toward the LPPN-3.
“‘Add water. Stir,’” Grace said. “I can do that. It’s the whole application of heat thing that I have trouble with.”
“Right.”
Oskar interrupted. “Well, at least with Van in his suit only he will have to endure the after-effects of Grace’s cooking. Now, I’m sure you would like to stand in the sunshine and talk for an hour, but we are on a schedule.”
“That’s the beauty of radio, Oskar,” Henry said. “We can shoot the shit all day and barely have to see each other.”
Van turned toward the rear of the LVN-1. Grace was up on the trailer, starting to unpack the scavenger robots. Van bounded to the lift gate at the rear of the trailer. With the exertion, the first drops of sweat broke out on the center of his back. The long johns that formed the inner layer of his suit wicked them away, but others would join them soon enough.
“How do they look, Grace?” Van asked.
“Ugly,” she said, “but serviceable. I’m hooked into the first one, ready to move it onto the lift. Stand by to take it down.”
The scavenger robot hung off the edge of the lift gate as Van lowered it to the surface. Grace stayed on the trailer, but she left the control box on the lift. It was a simple joystick controller, and Van used it to maneuver the robot about ten meters away from the trailer.
The scavenger was a squat, ugly bug that was little more than a meter-wide X-frame with wheels on the four ends and a big pan laid out on top of the X. Secured to one section of its wire frame was a power collector and logic assembly; batteries hung under the pan, fastened to the frame; and a cylindrical nose—or tail, depending on its orientation—extended from the machine opposite the logic unit. The end of the cylinder was equipped with cutters and grinders, and inside the cylinder was a low-slope Archimedes screw. The creature worked by digging into the lunar soil with the cutter end, then moving the residue up the worm screw where it would be deposited onto the pan for transport back to the processor. It was low and wide to resist rollover, and what it collected would serve as its own ballast. The power unit combined solar cells with a microwave collector: during the long lunar night, the robots
would charge their batteries off power beamed to them by the LPPN-3.
Van and Grace unloaded a dozen of the scavengers, then put each through a programmed routine to check its functions. By the time the last one reported its status, they’d been working for over four hours. Van was practically asleep on his feet. His suit had mostly done its job absorbing his sweat, but a thin film that wouldn’t go away tickled the middle of his back. His skin was clammy from his chin to the soles of his feet, and twice already his eyes had closed on their own and he’d had to pop them back open. He took a sip of water from his reservoir, but his chicken salad crackers were long gone.
Of the twelve scavengers, three reported minor problems but Van was in no condition to deal with them. “Hoo, Grace, I’m beat,” Van radioed. “I’ve got to be due for a rest.
“Break, break: Oskar, we’ve got three ’bots that need some tweaking, but otherwise we’re done unloading. How are we doing on the overall timeline?”
It took Oskar a moment to answer, and Van wondered how many scenarios he was considering. Every day the schedule got tighter, and every day they fell a little further behind. Finally Oskar said, “How long will it take you to finish?”
Most of the faults were pretty minor. Van pulled the status reports up on his display and started to calculate the repair time, but he couldn’t concentrate. It crossed his mind to tell Oskar that one of the ’bots had a “bad motivator.” He bit down on his lip to keep from giggling.
Thankfully, Grace supplied the answer. “Give us forty-five minutes, an hour at most, and we’ll have these last three ready to go.”
“Okay,” Oskar said. “Henry and I have the power hooked up to the ROPS, and he’s running up the furnace. Next step on the checklist is to get the microwave beam up and running, so we need to stage all the ’bots in the holding area.”
“I’ll take care of moving the good ones,” Van said. “Grace can take care of the bad ones. She’s better at the fine work anyway.”
“And I’ll do even better if you’re not hovering over my shoulder,” she said.
And I’ll do better if I’m moving around; then if I fall down, I’ll have an excuse.
Van bounced to the oxygen port on the side of the LVN-1 and topped off his suit supply while he conferred with Oskar on where the holding area should be. Oskar adjusted the planned layout to avoid a rock formation west of the ARG, and transmitted the new coordinates to Van’s suit. Van checked the inventory to see where the radio stakes were, then pulled away from the O2 quick-disconnect.
The regulator unit on his suit “burped.” Van froze for a second then reconnected to the oh-two port.
Damn, I really am tired.
His suit’s “black box” confirmed what he’d already guessed: the sound had been the safety valve closing. He could almost hear Oskar scolding him that it wouldn’t have had to do that if he’d been paying attention to the procedure.
He wanted to rub his eyes, and maybe slap himself in the face a little to wake back up, but couldn’t. He focused on the chronometer and counted off fifteen seconds of deep breaths that counteracted a brief, gut-tightening sensation of fear.
He minimized the clock and called up his environment controls. The thermal systems were already taxed from working in the sunlight, but he ticked the temperature down a couple of notches in hopes that a little chill would keep him alert. He reset and then closed the valves on his suit and the LVN and disconnected again; a tiny chuff of air escaped from between the valves, confirming he’d done it right: the way he should’ve done it the first time.
No time to dwell on it, though. There’s work to be done.
Van bounced to the rear of the LVN, found the appropriate transit case, and pulled out the four radio stakes and a hammer. “Here you go, little fellow,” he muttered as he loaded the tools onto the first of the good ’bots, “you can carry these for me.” He grabbed the remote console and started moving the machine to the holding area. The little scavenger, dragging its feed cylinder behind it, looked like a meter-wide trilobite.
When his suit confirmed he was close to the right spot, he disengaged the RF beacon from the first stake and left it on the ’bot’s collection pan. He hammered the stake into the surface and hung the little transceiver back on it: the scavengers would use it as a reference to know the limits of the holding area, and would muster there to get recharged, or whenever they needed servicing, or if they were queued up for processing. He steered the cooperative ’bot to each corner of the area, where he hammered in the other stakes, then left it next to the last stake while he moved the other robots.
He could have commanded them to move to the holding area, now that it was set up, but instead he moved them in groups—two, then three, then three more—in little migrations across the dusty surface. The exertion woke him up a little, and he was glad of it.
Van headed back to see if the last three ’bots were ready and saw Grace bounding across the scattered sunlit dust with her own mechanical coterie lined up behind her. She looked like a twenty-first century Pied Piper leading radio-controlled rats out of Hamelin, until she stopped next to him and the critters kept moving. Van radioed, “Good work, Grace,” as he shuffled out of the way.
Back at the trailer, Van rode the lift gate up and stepped onto the open-mesh metal bed. He didn’t bother to call up the packing diagram: he could see what he needed to unpack next.
“Y’all ready for the tanks and such?” he asked.
Grace radioed back, “Wait a sec, Van. I want to top off my own tank before we unload anything else.”
“That’s a good idea,” Oskar said. “Everybody take a rest, get a drink, and get some air.”
“I already did,” Van said. “I’m fine for another few hours.” He sent Oskar his suit status to forestall any argument.
“Well, take a rest anyway, Van. I heard you tell Grace a while ago that you were tired. Henry’s got the ROPS running, and I’m about to boresight the microwave emitter on the power plant. Once that’s done, the LPPN can interrogate each of the ’bots and we can all start unloading the ground infrastructure.”
“Whatever you say, Oskar,” Van said. He leaned against the removable side panel of the trailer—it was essentially a low-gravity version of a stake bed—and sipped a little water. He leaned out enough to see Grace hooked up to the LVN. She was standing with one foot propped on the bottom rung of the ladder, as if she was about to climb up into the bed of the truck.
Their pressure suits weren’t as bulky and hard to handle as the old Apollo suits, and they were padded enough that Grace’s suit hid most of her curves. But Grace had prominent curves for a smallish woman, and the suit didn’t hide them all. After a moment Van realized he was concentrating a bit too much on the shape he imagined under the suit—the shape he’d glimpsed often enough in the close quarters of the colony’s prefabricated shelters—and he reached up and smacked his helmet.
He fought down the libido that wanted to see more of Grace, and concentrated on how good it would be to get back to Barbara. His wife’s curves were more subtle than Grace’s, but Van knew them very, very well—
He smacked his helmet again. This was not the time to get lost in a fantasy. He turned the heat in his suit down some more and got back to work.
* * *
“I thought I told you to take a rest,” Oskar said.
In the last half hour, Van had unloaded two of the four storage tanks. He grunted a little as he wrestled the third into position on the lift gate. He didn’t care to explain. “I am resting, Oskar. I’m sleepwalking.”
“Yeah, you’re going to sleepwalk yourself right off the damn trailer. Come down here and let me up there with Henry. We’ll hand the rest of the stuff down to Grace.”
Van didn’t argue. He helped get the third tank unloaded, then bounced over to one of the reflector stands and did some twists and stretches while the others worked. He wobbled a little, and flailed his arms to keep his balance. When he tried to touch his toes, his eye
s closed involuntarily.
Now that all four of them were working on the same thing, he expected the confusion and frustration to double. Oskar seemed to keep a map and a task list side-by-side in his head, though, and doled out their assignments with strict efficiency. He kept them out of each other’s way for the most part, and kept them working on the support systems in good order. Van was impressed, though he would never tell Oskar that.
They worked together to set up the tanks and plumb them to the ROPS, then Oskar split the team again. Oskar and Henry hooked up a separate tank of helium and used an IR detector to examine all the valves and fittings for leaks, while Van and Grace set up the sunscreens that would keep all the tanks, pumps, and piping in shadow during the long lunar days. Some of the power of the LPPN-3 would have to go into selective heaters on valves and other components, but it was important to protect as much of the system as possible from the thermal shock of the Moon’s three-hundred-degree-Celsius temperature swings. Van was just as happy to assemble the frames and stretch the aluminized Mylar to shade the equipment: it was less exacting than the leak check.
Oskar and Henry finished the leak check while Van and Grace were putting away their tools. “Dinner break,” Oskar called over the radio.
Van smiled when Henry asked, “Grace isn’t cooking, is she?”
* * *
Van felt slimy. His T-shirt and shorts clung to him, but so did everyone else’s. He studiously avoided looking at Grace.
The LVN was cramped with all four of them inside, but still roomy enough after hours in his suit. Henry had drawn the short straw, so he cooked. He whipped together a reasonable facsimile of frittatas with reconstituted vegetables and powdered eggs. Van dozed a little while Henry cooked. The smell of the garlic and spices Henry used was almost strong enough to overpower the smell of sweat.
Grace called up some music from her collection—light Latin rhythms that reminded Van of a high-class Mexican restaurant—and they ate in relative silence.
Oskar wolfed down his portion and held up his glass of water. “Good work, everybody. Here’s to the ‘Halfway House.’”
Walking on the Sea of Clouds Page 9
