Walking on the Sea of Clouds

by Gray Rinehart

  Barbara noticed Stormie hesitate in making her next play; she took the trick, but seemed distracted. With each succeeding trick, she seemed more and more agitated. Watching her, Barbara missed some of the conversation.

  “I don’t know,” Maggie was saying. “I think, when it comes to salvation, it’s not the hundreds of things I’ve done that made God unhappy. It’s the one thing I did that made him happy. It’s not all the thousands of things I do wrong every day. It’s the one thing I did right.”

  Stormie took the last trick and turned to Barbara with a half-smile. “Ready to play a while?” she asked. Then, sotto voce, “I think I’ve had as much fun as I can handle in one day.”

  Barbara leaned forward and gave her a friendly hug. “Thanks,” she said. “I’d love to. You go get some work done, and keep us all alive.”

  Stormie transferred the game status to Barbara’s datapad, said farewell to the ladies, and they replied in kind. But Barbara noticed that Stormie frowned as she left.

  * * *

  Monday, 3 December 2035

  Frank sat cross-legged with eyes closed on the floor of the Third Avenue farm tunnel. Just as he found solace in the aeroponics modules when he and Stormie were on the Clarke station, here in the farm tunnels he found the deepest peace. He breathed in the clean smell of productive soil, soothed by the bubbling aerators in the fish tanks at the other end of the habitat. If he concentrated hard enough, he could imagine he was in an open field, with a small brook trickling over rocks in the distance. He imagined it was night, since it was nearly midnight in the long lunar sense, but a cool and comfortable night such as he had enjoyed at his family’s home. As he imagined this faux night, he missed the wind: it should be rustling the leaves of the genetically engineered trees behind him. Of course, the trees should be many meters tall instead of the bush-like plants engineered for the colony. But he would still like to hear their leaves moving in a breeze.

  He wished, as he thought about the rustling leaves, that he had a better sense of smell and could smell the apple blossoms. But there were limits to his perception.

  He heard humming at the other end of the habitat—not the hum of machinery but a person humming a tune he did not recognize. He kept his eyes closed, though, preferring to keep this moment of respite to himself as long as he could.

  After a few more minutes of quiet reflection, Frank opened his eyes and uncrossed his legs. He knelt, and started putting away the tools he had been using earlier when he was adjusting one of the air filters. The filters in the farm tunnels were similar to those in the main tunnels, but the microorganisms in these filters did not convert carbon dioxide to oxygen—the edible plants in the farms took care of that—instead, they were specially-tailored MACEFs that devoured some of the hydrocarbon byproducts of plant respiration. He saw now that Maggie Stewart was humming as she fed the rabbits in their cages at the other end of the tunnel. He waved, and she smiled and waved back.

  Frank scrolled through the screens on his datapad and entered the results of his filter maintenance. He had three more farm tunnel filters to adjust before he would be through for the day. Stormie had agreed to take his place at the water treatment system design review this afternoon, which was just fine with him. He would much rather be among the plants and animals than stuck in a room looking at drawings on the big screen. It was not really anything new, and it was ridiculous to have so many meetings to discuss something for which the major engineering was already done. But, if it made people feel better to have talked about it more than they actually worked on it, he supposed he should not begrudge them their pleasure. At least they did not force him to participate.

  He picked up his tool bag and glided along the length of the habitat toward Third and Bravo.

  “Good afternoon,” he said as he approached her. “Thank you again for the Thanksgiving feast last week.”

  She chuckled. “Good afternoon to you, Frank. You’re welcome, even if you do exaggerate.”

  Frank smiled. Perhaps “feast” was a bit much to describe two small rabbits and a chicken served with the “first fruits” of the colony farms: a salad of lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, and tomatoes. They had about a spoonful of mashed, locally-grown potatoes each, augmented by reconstituted potatoes that Maggie made palatable by copious amounts of chives and parsley.

  “Nevertheless, I enjoyed it,” Frank said. “And I look forward to the next feast you have planned. I assume you will continue to celebrate each new harvest?”

  “Oh, yes. It looks like we’ll have some soybeans soon, and we’ve set up a darkroom to grow mushrooms. Gabe is worried about the wheat, though—he doesn’t think it’s going to produce the way the geneticists said it would. And then one of these days we’ll have corn. And apples and pears.”

  “I am very glad it is going so well.”

  “Thank you. I hope you’re having a good day.”

  “Any day I get to spend among the plants is a good day.”

  “I think so, too. And I appreciate all the help you gave me when I was trying to cultivate things on my own.”

  “It was not very much,” Frank said, “but you are welcome. For me, working among the growing things is very therapeutic.”

  “Have you been helping Gabe, then?”

  “No,” Frank said. Gabriel Morera, the botanist who had arrived in mid-October, seemed very friendly but Frank had not wanted to intrude on his area of expertise. “It seems he has everything very well in hand, and does not need my assistance.”

  “Needed or not, I’m sure he’d appreciate it. Want me to ask him for you?”

  Frank shook his head. “Thank you very much, but that is not necessary. Perhaps if he needs help bringing in the first big harvest.” He smiled at her and gestured with his tool bag. “I hope you have a very good day.” He slid by her on his way to the tunnel junction.

  “Just a minute, Frank.” She approached him, wiping her hands on the apron she wore. “I’ve got an idea for you.”

  Maggie glided ahead of him toward the junction, and stepped into the small storage room just before the hatch. Frank stopped next to the bubbling fish tank; the catfish looked almost big enough to eat.

  A few moments later, Maggie emerged from the storage room carrying a small tomato plant growing in what appeared to be a large can. “Here,” she said, “why don’t you take this and put it up in your lab, or even in your and Stormie’s room?”

  Frank looked closely at the can-turned-planter. Maggie laughed.

  “I think it was a can of peaches,” she said, “but this seems to be a good way to recycle it. And since you like plants so much, may as well let you have one.”

  Frank took the plant and put his face close to it so its tiny leaves brushed his cheek. It smelled mildly acrid, a foretaste of the fruit it would produce. “What variety is it?” he asked.

  “That’s a Roma. Would you rather have a different one? All we have are Romas and grape tomatoes right now.”

  Frank smiled. “No, this will be fine. Are you certain I can have it?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not certain, but I’ll make it okay. Gabe’s got the idea that he’ll germinate the plants and sell them to people, so they can grow whatever they want to grow. I think he expects people will be willing to grow little things like herbs, so we can have some variety. But I’ll convince him that giving you one is like advertising. If it works out well, we’ll start our own little farmers’ market in Grand Central.”

  Frank thanked Maggie and took the plant. A farmers’ market on the Moon; he liked that idea.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Ice Run

  Friday, 4 January 2036

  Frank’s voice barely came through Stormie’s ear buds, beneath Nat King Cole singing “Love Letters.” The other colonists wouldn’t hesitate to interrupt her rest with the most trivial complaint, but Frank was too much of a gentleman—one of the reasons she had married him. She figured it must be important, so she turned down the sound and said, “Say again?
”

  Frank shook his head and frowned. “Your number is up, as they say. You were just selected in the ice lottery.” He pointed to the computer screen on the end wall of the cabin they called their “apartment.” Its spacious four-square-meter living area was, at the moment, almost completely filled by their fold-down bed.

  Stormie sighed. These moments of rest were few enough, she didn’t want to be bothered. She didn’t need to see the message to know what it said: another pseudo-random selection had her tapped for extra duty. Her first inclination was to complain since she had been picked for funerary duty … four months ago already? But that was a different lottery.

  This was the regular draw to select people to wrangle the monthly load of ice from the South Pole. It would be a long trip with a lot of hard work at the far end, but more than ever that ice was critical to their survival. The colony was still grossly inefficient, as she often explained to anyone who would listen. Stormie didn’t mind going, but she was concerned about Frank pulling double duty for the two weeks she’d be away.

  “Report to operations Sunday afternoon for your briefing,” Frank said. “Depart Wednesday the ninth, just before local sunrise.” He read the notice with all the emotion that he might read a menu; he didn’t sound too upset at the prospect of her being gone.

  He’s probably glad he didn’t get picked, because he knows how ticked off I’d be. He’d be trying to figure out how to get flowers and candy as a mea culpa, with the nearest florist 400,000 klicks away. Although flowers and candy might be nice.

  “Want to cut cards to see which one of us goes?” she asked.

  Frank said, “I am not sure what good that would do—your name is already on the list. See? Right there. Stormie Pastorelli.” He rubbed her foot for a second. “Do not worry, my dear. With only three dozen of us to choose from and a trip every lunar day, you or I were bound to be selected eventually.”

  “Who else is going?”

  “Would you like to read the list for yourself?”

  Stormie opened her eyes and glared at him, but couldn’t hold it more than a second against Frank’s grin. She turned off the music and said, “Okay, pass the screen down here.”

  “Can you not read it from there?”

  “No, you’ve got the font too small.”

  Frank unclipped the screen from the end wall. He held it out to her, but pulled it away when she reached for it. “No, wait a moment. Where is your datapad?”

  “In the lab.”

  “Then I feel sure you can wait until I am finished with my e-mail.” He clipped the screen back to the wall. He turned away, but she could tell even from the back of his walnut-brown scalp that he was still grinning.

  Stormie sat up a little and tried to reach past him for the screen, but Frank slapped her hand away. She punched him in the back. “Be that way, then.” She lay down and put her arm over her eyes.

  Frank chuckled and scratched behind her knee.

  “You can stop that right now,” Stormie said. “You know that doesn’t work.”

  “Nevertheless, I am compelled to try.”

  Frank knew Stormie wasn’t very ticklish, but never seemed to care. He probed where her tickle spots should be. Eventually she gave up ignoring him and actually smiled.

  * * *

  Sunday, 6 January 2036

  Stormie woke to an empty bed. She thumbed the apartment computer on and a note from Frank popped up on the screen. “I left early for H2O sampling. I also worked preliminary calculations on air, H2O for your trip. Please check. Also see note from JF. Love, F.” Even in a brief e-mail message, Frank’s language was formal in a way she found both irritating and endearing.

  Stormie tapped the wall next to the computer screen. Jim sent a message? She called up her inbox, but when she saw the subject—“Ice?”—she sent it away again.

  He’s probably going to tell me not to go, that it’s not our job. He would support a one-off, short-duration assignment that was out-of-scope to the contract, but not a two-week trip that would make life miserable for Frank.

  But more than any rescue operation or other task, this was their job, as much as any air sample or design review or exfiltration test. The colony had to live and breathe, and LLE couldn’t make that happen without raw materials. And with eighteen new colonists due to arrive next month, and the number of transient asteroid miners going up the month after that, this resupply operation was more important than any in the past. Plus, with something as critical as water, the responsibility to keep it supplied had to be shared. How could Stormie and Frank enforce water regulations if they didn’t help top off the supply? And unless they found an unknown aquifer as they dug new habitation tunnels—or hit a vein of water ice in the asteroid the AC was mining—that water would have to come from the pole.

  Stormie wouldn’t let Jim type her out of going on the ice run.

  But she didn’t want to deal with that right now. To delay reading Jim’s message, she dressed, went to LLE’s little lab, and ran her own set of consumption calculations for the trip to the pole and back. When she called up Frank’s results, they differed from hers by about ten percent.

  She did her calculations again; they were correct. Frank was usually more careful—no, Frank was always more careful. If anything, he was more precise about computations than she was.

  She was still trying to figure out where he went wrong when he came in a half hour later. Sample bottles clinked together as he set the basket down on the little utility table. “What are you working on so feverishly?” he asked. He walked around the table and looked over her shoulder.

  Stormie pointed at his result. “Trying to find out where you got this value. I ran my own set twice, figuring four people for twelve and a half days. Normal losses, normal reloads—”

  Frank wrapped his arms around her and kissed her cheek. “I included an extra safety factor, my love. I added extra margin since you are going on this mission.”

  Stormie smiled. “Okay, that explains it. I appreciate that.” She kissed him and rubbed his stubbly head. He probably wouldn’t shave at all while she was gone. “You seem to be taking this awfully well, considering how much extra work it’s going to be for you.”

  Frank raised his eyebrows. “Well, I have given that some thought. I expect that I will send you with most of our hard work for the month.” He turned away and started pulling bottles out of the basket. “Since you will spend most of your time just riding in the truck, you will have plenty of time to do the air balance calculations for the next shipload of colonists, and review the plans for hooking up utilities in the next tunnel. I thought I would ask James if he would like you to balance our books and calculate cost and revenue projections for the next few months, to ensure we can pay our outstanding debt. And I thought you might want to consider some changes to our statement of work in case we get to renegotiate our contract.” He looked up at her with a big grin on his face.

  “Huh,” Stormie said. “So what does that leave for you to do?”

  “That, my dear, is the beauty of this plan. I will work very diligently while you are gone. I expect that two or three samples per day will suffice, and perhaps an air filter or two will require cleaning, but otherwise, I believe things here will be nice and quiet. It will be like a vacation.”

  “Very nice, for you. Thanks.” She looked for something to throw at him, but nothing was suitable. She knew he was playing, so she didn’t want to throw anything dangerous—or expensive.

  “My pleasure,” Frank said. He picked up one of the sample bottles and held it in front of the light. He swirled it and squinted at it. “And what did you think of James’s message?”

  “Oh, crap, I forgot about that.” Stormie retrieved the message, read it, and was surprised to see that Jim didn’t insist that she back out of the trip. Quite the contrary: Jim was negotiating with the Consortium that Stormie should get a bigger bonus since this trip was going to leave their shop one-deep for almost two weeks. It sounded as if he w
as back in fighting form, the old Jim who could squeeze money out of the tightest capitalist misers, and that made her feel good.

  “That might be a tough sell,” Stormie said, “but I guess it makes sense, since you’ll be stuck doing my sixteen-hour days on top of your lazy-bones fourteen-hour days.”

  “Please, do not remind me. And Lord forbid I should get sick while you are gone. You may return to find half the colony will have contracted Legionnaire’s disease, or worse.”

  “Then I guess I’ll have to ride to your rescue,” Stormie said. “As usual.”

  Frank grinned his perfect grin. “You can rescue me anytime, Abbey Gale,” he said.

  Stormie turned back to the computer screen. She sensed him behind her before his hands were on her arms, his lips on her neck. She tilted her head to give him more access. He reached around to the front of her jumpsuit and pulled the zipper down about a hand’s breadth.

  Stormie took his hand, brought it to her mouth and kissed his fingers. “I love you, Frank,” she said, “but there’s just too much to do.”

  Frank touched her cheek and kissed her. “I know,” he said. “But I was overcome by the thought of you rescuing me.”

  * * *

  The pre-trip briefing started off well, at least.

  Frank was surprised how full the multi-purpose room—the “big room”—was; since neither he nor Stormie had been tapped for ice duty before, they had always submitted their pre-trip calculations and skipped the actual meeting. Did so many people usually attend?

  He pulled out the chair so Stormie could sit at the unfolded conference table. He sat against the wall behind her. Gary Needham also sat at the table along with the other three selectees and Yvette Fiester, acting colony physician.

  Gary had an agenda printed on real paper, on an antique clipboard; it was a not-so-subtle signal he had adopted that his status in the Consortium afforded him certain luxuries. Frank hoped he used the same agenda before every ice run and kept it filed away in between.