Walking on the Sea of Clouds
Page 42
Keith Phillips, with whom I was stationed at the 4th Space Operations Squadron, may recognize his contribution to chapter 11. The men and women of the Secretary of the Air Force and Chief of Staff of the Air Force Executive Action Group will almost certainly recognize their part in chapter 16. And Rob Gray, whom I knew at the Air Force Flight Test Center, should recognize his contribution to chapter 24.
Tedd Roberts (a/k/a “Speaker to Lab Animals”), with whom I’ve had the pleasure of serving on various science- and space-related panels at science fiction and fantasy conventions, should recognize his contributions to chapter 21.
If you recognize a contribution you made that I have not acknowledged here, please accept my thanks and my apologies for not listing you personally.
For reading the novel (or portions thereof) in draft form and providing me with helpful feedback and encouragement, I owe tremendous thanks to Ada Milenkovich Brown, Edmund Schubert, Oliver Dale, Faisal Jawdat, James Galt-Brown, Diana Rowland, KeAnne Hoeg, Kristen Minervino, and Brian Ceccarelli. Double thanks to Allen Moore for his enthusiastic feedback and for letting me adapt an experience he lived through to the needs of one of my characters. Thanks also to Kevin Smith for help with the initial idea for the pico-scrub treatment. Thanks to Bryan Thomas Schmidt for his careful, considerate, and sometimes challenging editing.
Special thanks to Orson Scott Card, whose 2003 Writing Workshop showed me what was wrong with my first novel and whose 2004 Literary Boot Camp gave me the confidence to keep putting words on paper; to Dave Wolverton, whose 2008 Novel Writing Workshop provided excellent feedback on an early part of this novel and who graciously helped me craft the final product; and to Kevin J. Anderson and the staff at WordFire Press, for taking a chance on this story.
For putting up with me as I struggled to get it all down in electrons, and then on paper, I especially thank Jill and Stephanie and Christopher. You are tremendous blessings to me.
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.
Acronyms
AC: Asteroid Consortium
ARG: Advanced Radioisotope Generator
ARPOES: Automated Regolith Processor, Oxygen Extraction and Smelting
CGOC: Company Grade Officers’ Council
ELSPAP: Emergency Life Support Pressure Acquisition Procedure
EVA: Extra-Vehicular Activity
FDD: Funerary Desiccation Device
LICEOM: Lunar Ice Collection and Extraction Operations Module
LLE: Lunar Life Engineering, LLP (Limited Liability Partnership)
LPPN: Lunar Power Plant, Nuclear
LSOV: Lunar Sub-Orbital Vehicle
LVN: Lunar Vehicle, Nuclear
MACEF: Monocellular Atmospheric Circulating Emulsion Filter
MPV: Multi-Purpose Vehicle
NOTAC: Notice to All Colonists
PROM: Programmable Read-Only Memory
ROPS: Regolith Oxygen Processing Station
Chapter-By-Chapter Notes
Chapter 1:
The lunar phase information here and throughout, as well as sunrise/sunset times, came from the US Naval Observatory’s data services web page and from LunarPhase software. LunarPhase was made to help amateur astronomers know when they can make detailed observations of different lunar features, and in this case it was very helpful to one author as well. Highly recommended, and a lot of fun to play with.
Chapter 4:
The fictional “Meredith’s Moon” satellite uses an orbit postulated by Dr. Robert L. Forward, who, in addition to being a consultant for the Air Force Rocket Propulsion Laboratory, also wrote several science fiction novels and stories. Unfortunately, Gray did not have the chance to meet Dr. Forward during the years he served at the Rocket Lab.
Chapter 5:
The poem Frank quotes is “To Anthea, who may Command him Anything,” by Robert Herrick. (The poem, along with all the poetry quoted at length in the novel, is in the public domain.) Herrick is probably best known for his poem, “To the Virgins, to make much of Time.”
Chapter 6:
Readers with a particular taste in music may have caught the paraphrased line from the song “Nobody Loves You Like I Do” by Emerson, Lake and Palmer.
The Advanced Radioisotope Generator introduced here is a takeoff on the Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator considered by NASA to power future planetary missions. Very technical readers may point out that Gray took excessive liberties with the technology and did not adequately address all of the safety issues involved. Hopefully that dramatic license did not detract too much from their enjoyment of the story.
Chapter 7:
The poem Stormie tries to remember, and Nurse Myrachek brings her a copy of, is “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot.
The song Stormie remembers her grandmother singing, “Who You Gonna Throw in the Lake of Fire?” was by Keith Green.
Chapter 10:
The poem Frank thinks of, after reviewing a few more lines from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” is “To See a World in a Grain of Sand” by William Blake:
To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour
Chapter 11:
The biocapsules mentioned in this chapter (and later) were invented at NASA Ames Research Center, in the Space Biosciences Division.
Chapter 14:
Monopropellant thrusters, the basis for the monopropellant turbines, also work with hydrogen peroxide as a fuel. Turbines using H2O2 would have the advantage of producing only oxygen and water as exhaust.
Chapter 15:
“Take it to the Lord in prayer” is a key phrase in the refrain of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”
Chapter 16:
The M/V Independence is a real ship, and was actually intended to recover solid rocket boosters after Space Shuttle launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base. By the time of this story it would be ancient, but it holds a special place in Gray’s heart because it was used in a maritime search-and-salvage operation that he directed while part of the Titan System Program Office.
Chapter 18:
The song about having church on the Moon is “To the Moon” by Sara Groves.
Chapter 19:
“Come live with me and be my love” is the opening line of “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Christopher Marlowe.
Many fans of Frank Herbert’s Dune should be able to recite “The Litany Against Fear” from memory.
Chapter 20:
Frank recites several phrases from “High Flight” by John Magee, and Stormie counters with lines from “The Dalliance of Eagles” by Walt Whitman.
Chapter 28:
“I am the color of the earth” happens to be the first line of “Color” by Mavis Mixon, from Bitter Fruit: African-American Women in World War II, edited by Maureen Honey and published in 1999. The verse attributed to Stormie’s brother Erick, however, is original.
Chapter 31:
“Defeat upon defeat” and “I do not know beneath what sky” are from “Unmanifest Destiny” by Richard Hovey, from Modern American Poetry, edited by Louis Untermeyer and published in 1919.
Chapter 32:
If it is not clear from his shorthand, the hymn Frank quotes is “Breathe on Me, Breath of God.”
Chapter 34:
“I’m folding up my little dreams” is the first stanza of “My Little Dreams” by Georgia Douglas Johnson, from The Book of American Negro Poetry, edited by James Weldon Johnson and published in 1922.
“Each age is a dream that is dying” is the close of “Ode” by Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy, from The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900, edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch and published in 1919. Readers familiar with the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory may have recognized the line “we are the dreamers of dreams,” which is from the poem’s opening stanza:
We are the music-makers,
>
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
About the Author
Gray Rinehart is the only person to have commanded a remote Air Force tracking station, written speeches for Presidential appointees, and had music on The Dr. Demento Show.
Gray retired from the U.S. Air Force after a rather odd career. He began as a Bioenvironmental Engineer, became a project engineer, then became a space and missile operator. Over the course of his career, he kept rocket propulsion research operations safe, fought fires as head of a Disaster Response Force, trained Air Force ROTC cadets, refurbished space launch facilities, “flew” Milstar satellites, drove trucks, processed nuclear command and control orders as an Emergency Actions officer, commanded the Air Force’s largest satellite tracking station, protected militarily critical space technologies, and wrote speeches for top Air Force leaders.
Gray is a Contributing Editor for Baen Books, and his fiction has appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, and other venues. Through a quirk of fate, his story “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium” was a finalist for the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. He is also the author of a variety of essays, articles, and other nonfiction, and a singer/songwriter with two albums that feature science-fiction-and-fantasy-inspired songs.
Gray’s “alter ego” is the Gray Man, a famous ghost of Pawleys Island, South Carolina. For more information, visit graymanwrites.com.
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