Walking on the Sea of Clouds

by Gray Rinehart

  And Stormie was grateful for that, because otherwise she never would have met him. But she was in too good a mood, with the habitat training behind them, to let Frank sink into self-pity. She thought for a few minutes about the best way to get him out of it.

  She’d tease him out of it.

  “Look at it this way,” she said. “You ought to enjoy the desert this time, because pretty soon we’ll be in the worst desert in our corner of the solar system.” She grinned at him; his cheek twitched as he set his jaw against smiling.

  After a moment, he shook his head. “It is not the same,” he said. “I will have conditioned air with me all the time up there. I can set the humidity the way I like.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” she said. She decided against arguing over the details of setting the humidity. “And the dust doesn’t blow around up there.”

  “No, it does not.”

  “Of course, it’ll be more lonely than the southwestern desert. There probably aren’t as many tarantulas.”

  He stiffened—Frank was not on friendly terms with arachnids. After a moment he relaxed. “Go to sleep, devil woman,” he said. His voice betrayed the smile his face hid. “Stop trying to cheer me up.”

  * * *

  Monday, 5 March 2035

  Lunar Colonist Group 3, Training Day 29

  The dead Springer spaniel lay on the stainless steel counter. Its coat looked clean, as if the dog had recently been bathed. Its eyes, mercifully, were closed.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Barbara Richards said.

  “Afraid not,” Terrance Winder said over the open intercom. It was a voice-only feed, though they were watching her via the ubiquitous monitoring cameras.

  It was three days since Group Two had left the training facility. Two couples from Barbara’s group had self-eliminated in that time, so the tunnels fairly echoed, they were so much roomier than when she arrived. That was excellent for Barbara’s morale.

  Facing the animal on the counter was not so good.

  “Why a dog?” she asked.

  “It’s an agreement we have with a couple of nearby animal shelters. They’re going to euthanize the dogs anyway, and this is better than cremating them or landfilling them. They like the idea that the dogs are used for scientific purposes.”

  Scientific, right. Surely the trainers knew that she, as a rancher’s daughter, had grown up with working dogs. It was possible they knew that she loved and respected the animals. If this had been a sheep or a cow, no problem—she would go to work and get the meat aging. But a dog? That was just wrong. She wondered if cat lovers had to prep a cat.

  She wished she hadn’t eaten breakfast.

  With two desultory knocks, Gabriel Morera came into the tunnel junction. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. He sounded as enthusiastic as the dog.

  “No problem,” Barbara said.

  Winder said through the speaker, “Okay, we may as well get started. You’re both familiar with the procedure?”

  Barbara hummed, considering the question and the look on Morera’s face. “Familiar may be too strong a term,” she said. He looked at her and nodded in understanding.

  “If you mean we’ve read through it, yes,” Morera said. “And did the sim in Colony Life.”

  “And promptly tried to forget it,” Barbara added. Morera smiled.

  Over the speaker, the Consortium training manager cleared his throat and said, “That’s understandable, which is why this session is proctored. We’ll walk you through the procedure, step by step.”

  Step by step it was. The little banter with Morera had lightened Barbara’s spirits, but it didn’t seem to have done much for his. If they could have projected the checklist and run it themselves, in their own time, it would’ve been better.

  Van hadn’t gone through this training procedure yet, so he hadn’t given her any pep talk or supposed wisdom. This training hadn’t been considered necessary for the short-term setup missions, and she would probably have discounted Van’s advice in favor of her own experience growing up around the ranch and the slaughter.

  But, Barbara’s name came up in the random selection before Van’s. The AC was big on random selection. Barbara suspected they had some statistician on staff who justified his continued employment by consulting random number tables instead of using a computer. It would fit the AC’s image of never using any higher technology than they absolutely had to—an attitude Van defended but which grated on Barbara. Newer technologies were inherently more reliable and longer-lasting, so why bother with older things even if they were reparable? But she wasn’t being paid to make those decisions … just to live with them.

  Their first task was to prepare the vacuum chamber—the Funerary Desiccation Device, by the Consortium’s parlance. The story went that the FDD was once to be named an Apparatus but the acronym FDA was considered inappropriate. It normally folded up in one corner of this tunnel junction: an end junction, currently with nothing on the other side of it except the rest of the sealed mine. It would be similar on the Moon, except there were two of the FDD chambers in two separate end junctions.

  The FDD chamber was, fortunately or unfortunately, human-sized. The AC probably considered it fortunate, because they didn’t have to order and install a smaller one for training on animal carcasses and because the fact of its size would remind the trainees that they might have to do this procedure on a person some day. That was the unfortunate part for Barbara—as if she needed something else to attack her overall confidence, something else to insinuate doubt into her mind. That human-sized chamber did just fine.

  A chill ran through her body as she and Morera folded the chamber down from the wall like a macabre Murphy bed. It was one thing to watch it in the computer game, another to physically set up the thing. The thought of putting a real person in the chamber raised gooseflesh in places she hadn’t thought possible. She gritted her teeth as her thoughts segued to Van lying in the chamber—and then to her.

  That’s what they want, Barbara. They want you to forget that this is an animal, and think about it being a person. Look at the dog and forget what they want. Look at the dog and pretend it’s just a really big cat.

  Barbara breathed more steadily and pressed on with Winder’s instructions.

  The chamber was intended to desiccate a body before it was transferred outside to the furnace—on the Moon, a solar furnace—for reduction and recovery of its calcium, potassium, and other elements. Vacuum tubing ran from the chamber to ports connected to the outside of the habitat, and it suited Barbara fine that they would use the natural advantage of the Moon’s lack of atmosphere to evacuate this particular chamber. A standard vacuum pump would pull air out of the chamber, all right, but into the habitat, and no one ever really enjoyed the slaughterhouse smell. She had the most trouble as she considered the bulbous water traps she attached to each hose: they were specially designed for the vacuum line to trap and hold as much moisture as possible to purify and re-use later. Thinking about that as she handled them made her sick to her stomach.

  Again she reminded herself that this was all part of the psychology of the training, as well as the practical instruction. They knew the risk before they signed up, of course, and if they ever pretended not to know they were reminded by the piles of forms they signed and countersigned and witnessed. Most people signed up for the standard preparation that she and Morera were practicing today; but she and Van had opted for the more expensive route of having a portion of their final crystalline ashes returned to Earth instead of recycled into the ecosphere the lunar colony was trying to create and sustain. She wanted her dad to have something to say words over.

  Winder talked them through setting up the chamber, locking down the junction, and going on the airline respirators. Barbara was grateful that she would smell the dry, slightly rubberized air inside the mask instead of the dog’s opened remains. Winder asked which of them wanted to make the first cuts, and neither answered right away. He suggested they do rock-paper-scis
sors to decide, but Barbara took another look at Morera’s face and picked up the scalpel herself. Morera smiled at her, and crossed himself.

  The first few cuts weren’t so bad, as they were intended to drain as much fluid from the body as possible—not so much different from draining the blood from a meat animal, except that it would take more time in lower gravity. But as the cuts became more complex and attacked the eyes and inner organs, the instrument dragged her hand like a lead weight. The realization crept up on her that this operation was not designed to preserve but to hasten an orderly destruction; and even though this dog didn’t look that much like the Border Collies her dad kept on the ranch, that didn’t matter. Its coat was soft and once it had run and played, perhaps worked a ranch like her father’s, and chased squirrels or cars or maybe sticks. And from the back of her mind, where she had safely stored it, came the knowledge that this procedure was meant for human beings.

  Tears collected in Barbara’s eyes and she fought against spilling them inside the face mask. She lost that fight momentarily, regained control for a time, and lost again. The delicate blade she wielded may as well have been made of roughly chipped stone, as bad as her hand started to shake. She performed mechanically, cutting where and when Winder told her, trying to shut out the sounds of slicing flesh, short bursts of air pressure as Morera blew out the contents of arteries and organs, and the occasional drip into the catch basin. She concentrated so fully on each cut that she didn’t appreciate how many she had made before Winder told Morera to take over. She stepped back and looked at the eviscerated corpse, at the blood and vitreous humor and other liquids that collected in the drip pan like oil underneath a car.

  She grabbed at the front of her mask.

  “You don’t want to do that,” Morera said, his voice muffled by his own mask. Winder’s voice, clear and amplified by the speaker, said the same thing an instant later.

  They were right, and Barbara mentally kicked herself for even thinking of giving in to nausea. What would her dad say? She looked down and into a far corner of the junction chamber to compose herself; she clamped her jaws tight and clenched her throat and took slow, measured breaths. After a few moments, she relaxed and turned again to the task at hand. She took up the air hose while Morera took up the scalpel.

  Morera crossed himself again as Winder started directing his first cut. Barbara wondered what he prayed for in that moment, though she thought she knew.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Fallback Position

  Saturday, 14 April 2035

  Frank barely kept track of where the days went, but he trusted them to keep coming. At first when they left the Utah facility, everything moved in rhythm like a well-rehearsed dance: he and Stormie stepped lightly through a brief and surprisingly cordial visit with his family, six more weeks of learning the finer points of wrangling the lunar vehicles and equipment, and last-minute business arrangements with James. Frank came to wish he had an old-style page-a-day calendar instead of his datapad, so that in the physical act of ripping off the previous day and concentrating on the new day he would feel less disoriented. Family meals and restaurant meals and dining hall meals became one and the same; the faces of his fellow trainees and his relatives and his friends became interchangeable as the days sped by.

  On the second Saturday of April, Frank and Stormie stepped off the plane in Guiana. Frank sighed in contentment as the air wrapped around his body like a warm, moist compress. The jungle atmosphere settled around him soft and heavy, all the more comforting after their weeks in the New Mexico desert where the lack of humidity irritated him like an atmospheric itch. The dry air on board airplanes he stood well enough, because he knew it would end, but dry air all around that would never go away, harbinger of static electricity and cracked skin, was another matter. He chuckled now at the complaints about the heat and humidity he heard from the others.

  Two other couples had flown in on the same plane as Frank and Stormie: Jake and Harmony Adamson, he to be a construction laborer before he transitioned into his role as Mining Director and chief miner on the Consortium’s asteroid, she to be a construction engineer, surveyor, and laborer; and George and Yvette Fiester, who would be, respectively, a vehicle mechanic and machinist, and a private laboratory services provider and colony “doctor.” Frank was still impressed that the others would carry out multiple tasks, along with a myriad of additional duties they would pick up at the colony; in contrast, he was quite content that his primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary duties all boiled down to the same thing: keeping the air breathable and the water potable.

  After clearing Customs quite easily, since none of them had much baggage or anything to declare, the AC bused their contingent to the Kourou space launch facility where they joined three other couples awaiting transport.

  Sonny Peterson would be another construction foreman and in charge of power production; his wife Arvati was an electronics technician and general laborer. Chu Liquan had been selected as a power engineer and construction laborer, and his wife Marilyn Chu was a private laboratory analyst who would also help maintain water extraction equipment. And Rex Stewart, favoring his healed but still hurting hand, would be the foreman and chief laborer of the tunneling project, while his wife Maggie ran a private service tending the colony’s animals and, to a lesser extent, its plants. The other would-be colonists were scheduled for later flights, or placed on waiting lists, or simply dismissed as qualified but unneeded. Frank rejoiced that he and Stormie did not have to suffer that ignominy.

  All together the dozen new colonists would join the eight already on the Moon: Gary Needham, the primary construction foreman and laborer and the acting colony superintendent; Beverly Needham, who Frank had been surprised to learn had been assigned as a communications and electronics technician and primary Command Post controller rather than as a nurse; Bruce Lindsey, primary vehicle mechanic, maintenance foreman, and hydraulics and pneumatics technician; Alice Lindsey, electrical engineer in charge of pressure suit maintenance; Chuck Springer, another hydraulics and pneumatics technician and primary oxygen production supervisor; Trish Springer, mechanical engineer and primary fabrication supervisor; Eva Sondstrom, an electronics technician and geologist; and Bent Sondstrom, a vehicle mechanic, machinist, and construction laborer.

  Frank’s perception of time changed again, for the better, at the launch base. It had been weeks since he had experienced any residue from the picophage treatment, and he marveled at the human body’s ability to “forget” pain. Occasionally twinges struck him like deep bruises—uncomfortable, but bearable—although the procedure had also produced some stiffness and lethargy. The intervals in which any real pain returned to torment him lengthened into comfortable amnesia, and did not recur even when the doctors implanted his required biocapsules, so he was able to enjoy himself.

  Briefings on safety measures, training on escape and survival equipment, and dry-runs of countdown procedures came and went so quickly that Frank was left dazed, as if he had suffered through two semesters’ worth of thermodynamics class in as many weeks. However, he and Stormie happily stole an hour here and there to walk, talk, relax, and dream.

  To try to realize some economy of scale in the production of the new “flex-class” Ariane launch vehicles, the Consortium had originally booked an unprecedented twenty-four launches a year out of Kourou. They had never flown that many, and the European partners had happily sold the launches to other customers, with only partial credit back to the AC even when the rival Apollo-Aten Mining & Materials was launching something. But the AC maintained sway over the launch schedule, with wedges of time, orbital insertion, and payload they could manipulate as needed—within the capabilities of the launch system. As Frank and Stormie learned during the final flight preparations, the high-passenger vehicle’s flight readiness still had not been approved, so the AC was limited to only eight seats per launch. In response, they split Frank, Stormie, and their fellows into two groups and arranged separate launc
hes for them. Since they were bound first for the Clarke station to await transit to the Moon, it did not matter except to the accountants how many launches it took to get them into orbit. Jake suggested they draw straws to see who got to launch first, but the Consortium had already assigned them to their groups.

  The first group launched on April 24th—Frank’s birthday—but he and Stormie were not among them. They watched the launch from the fallback position and toasted their companions’ voyage. Frank argued that champagne was more appropriate to wedding cake than birthday cake, but he enjoyed both.

  “It would have been a nice birthday present,” he told Stormie as the countdown processed through a planned hold, “to be launching today.”

  “If you can’t have good luck, have good timing, I always say,” Stormie said. She leaned in and whispered. “And if you can’t have good timing, have good sex.”

  “That makes no sense,” he said. “And I have never heard you say it before.”

  She leaned in and kissed him, long and deep. She tasted of champagne and chocolate. When they broke for air, she said,

  “Come live with me and be my Love,

  And we will all the pleasures prove,”

  at which point she broke into giggles. Frank laughed with her.

  The countdown continued, and at its termination, the great vehicle began its ascent. From where they stood, a white cloud billowed from the ground and a dull rumble reached them shortly thereafter as the clock counted up. When the clock reached +00:01:27, the vehicle exploded like a Fourth of July firework.