Stars That Sing the Requiem

by Deb Houdek Rule

  One of those dreamers put on a pressure suit and stepped onto the glaring Lunar surface.

  Tears don't fall well in low gravity, Laika thought as she stared across black gulf to the glittering blue globe of Earth.

  ~~~

  On the red sands of Mars, Clara stood on a hillside. She felt so light, so free. Above her, Phobos and Deimos raced across the sky. There, low on the horizon, a single bright blue star drew her attention.

  In her mind, she listened to the echoing requiem song of the howling wolves.

  THE END

  Flowers on the Moon

  As the train curves on the approach to the old airlock there’s a good view of the barrier mountains rising at the edge of Mare Nubium. Beyond is the crater that old maps call Alphonsus. Now it’s called Mariah Valley, though most maps add a notation naming it the The Valley of Mariah’s Flower.

  Try to imagine it as Mariah saw it from the train whispering across Mare Nubium. But remember, even Mare Nubium isn’t quite the same as the one she saw. The shadows are softer. There’s a hazy look to the sky, dulling the stars, lightening the darkness. And the train, then, made no sound except to the tourists and commuters within. Luna, herself, remained wrapped in the eternal shroud of silence and lifelessness that had always cloaked her.

  Out the window of that train, Mariah watched the stark landscape pass by. The gray of the lunar rocks was burningly bright while casting sharp-edged shadows of deepest black. No motion disturbed the still-life tranquility of the scene. The passage of the train through the broad valley raised no dust, sent no rush of wind to stir the powdery soil. Neither distant mountains nor nearby rocks heard even a hint of the train’s passage.

  Luna ignores us, Mariah thought. When we’ve gone by it will be as though we were never here. That’s how some would rather it remained forever. The train rushed toward the towering wall of a mountain. Some long-ago meteor had struck the moon throwing up these high, sharp peaks. The might of that falling rock was nothing next to the slow, but persistent, might of man.

  Lights came on in the car as the mountain swallowed the train. Regular commuters didn’t look up from their papers and PIDs. The tourists oohed and aahed in predictable quantities while some vainly attempted pictures. Mariah sat quietly, her bag clutched on her lap like a precious treasure, looking at everything but only reacting within. Beyond the train, the glassy tunnel wall rippled barely a hand’s breadth away.

  As the train slowed, a faint shiver passed through the cars. This caused no reaction in the tourists, but all the local commuters now looked up. It was nothing more than a small quake, possibly caused by the same forces within the moon that produced the gas venting which made Alphonsus so appealing for the project. A regular occurrence, but never a thing to take lightly when beneath a mountain, especially a mountain having stresses put on it unlike any in its history.

  The airlock sent a different sort of shudder through the train. Mariah craned to see behind her, catching a glimpse of blackness eclipsing the tunnel end. Air filled the tunnel until the pressure matched the interior of the cars. The cars crackled and groaned as the pressure changed. Then, slowly, the train started forward again.

  Mariah breathed heavily, straining to see forward, as the train continued through the mountain. Her view was blocked so she couldn’t see The Valley until her car emerged from the mountain.

  First she gasped, then unexpected tears flooded her eyes. Who ever imagined, who had ever thought, there would be a blue sky on the moon? The train now traveled, much more slowly than before, through a pressurized tube elevated above the surface. Beyond, the landscape looked much like the previous plain, save for the bluish haze hanging low over it. Looking to the ring of mountains surrounding Alphonsus Crater, the sky showed distinctly blue. Vaporous wisps of atmosphere curled up the mountain slopes. If she looked directly up, through the clear roof of the car, the sky that appeared blue at an angle was darker, almost black, with stars still showing through. Mariah quit looking up.

  Closer to the train were still the gray rocks and soil of Luna. The sun still shone hotly down upon them, but the shadows were softer, the light diffused into the darkness. Below the tracks the land fell away until they passed over a small stream. Miracle enough for some, to see water flowing freely over the surface of the moon. If they’d achieved pressure enough for that… Mariah wanted more.

  The tourists muttered amongst themselves. They’d paid dearly to see this and were disappointed. How could they not be? The Valley looked bleaker than the most barren of terrestrial deserts. How could they know they gazed upon a wonder beyond compare? This world, Earth’s moon, had never known a breeze to stir the soil. There had been no drifts, no dunes. Water had never left the its imprint in branching, twining channels etched in the surface. Erosion had been a thing that took eons with the solar wind and gravity slow forces of its action. Never had this world known the blurring of light by atmosphere, or the insulating tempering of heat and cold. To the Terrans it looked dead, deader than the alien harshness they’d just left behind.

  Lower the land went, and perceptibly thicker became the atmosphere beyond the train’s tube. Eagerly, hopefully, Mariah stared down at the land moving by. There it was; a hint of green amongst the gray. Several varieties of lichens had been introduced to the surface, and recently some moss. None yet, however, could survive the immense extremes of Luna’s long days and nights. No plants yet existed independently on the surface of the moon. Still, it was wondrous progress.

  “I don’t see the big deal,” she overheard one tourist say. No, he couldn’t. The photoelectric conduits strung from mountain peak to mountain peak couldn’t be seen from here. Nor could the artificial ionosphere they generated be seen. Using the sun’s abundant energy the conduits ionized the upper layer of gases, the heavy inert gasses, radon and xenon, the ones less easily lost to Luna’s low escape velocity. Below came the layers that held the lighter molecules, the oxygen, nitrogen, and CO2 that human lungs and Terrestrial life so cherished.

  “Smog,” the same voice said with disdain at the hazy layer through which they passed. “Mankind goes all the way to the moon to bring air pollution.”

  Ozone, Mariah thought, thinking lovingly of the gas that made a dangerous nuisance of itself at breathing level on earth but provided such a lovely radiation shield higher up. Already The Valley had ridden out solar storms of intensities that sent the residents of other lunar cities running to radiation shelters. Of course the people of Alphonsus had been inside the bubble, but the atmosphere cushion outside had kept the rad levels down to tolerable margins.

  The train slowed again and Mariah tore her attention from the view to look at the town at the base of Alphonsus’ central peak—another oddity of this crater. The only surface city on Luna had a tiny permanent population, the others commuted in from the nearby cities. Coming to a stop, the train’s magnetic field slowly dissipated settling the cars down onto the wide rail. Despite the admonitions of the speakers to remain seated, everyone in the car but Mariah stood, gathered their belongings, and crowded toward the exits. The doors sighed, equalizing the minor variation in pressure. Hissing open, they let the flood of people out onto the platform.

  Mariah waited until they’d all gone before she took her bag and stepped out. She wanted to have the full effect of the town without a swarming crowd around her.

  Onto the simulated wood platform she stepped. Before her stood lampposts and park benches. Small trees grew up from the pavement surrounded by a riot of flowers. Yes, there they were, the flowers growing on the surface of the moon – growing in a container beneath a bubble. She looked away from them, hugging her bag closely to her. To the right of the platform was a general store made to look like an old barn. This absorbed roughly half of the tourists, most of the remainder being sucked in by the refreshment stand to the left. The commuters vanished into other buildings, some to work the tourist concessions, others among the scientists and engineers of The Valley atmosphere project. Only
Mariah remained on the platform.

  Moving to the right, she came to the end of the platform and the pseudo-wrought iron fence marking the boundary. Clasping it with one hand she leaned as far over the fence as she could, trying to touch the bubble. She could see it, despite attempts to make its surface non-reflective and invisible, and that ruined the illusion of being in the open. What destroyed it totally, for her, was the feeling of being enclosed. She could feel the boundaries of the bubble as thoroughly as she could feel the presence of the walls and tunnels of the sub-lunar city where she’d spent her life. Beyond the bubble stretched The Valley. Suited people were scattered in the near distance, working at various tasks about which she could only guess. Part of the regular work here was the hunt for lichens and spores that may have spread and taken root on their own. While some had been found, none had survived the long lunar day/night cycle. Life was tenacious, but never before had it been presented with a challenge such as this.

  But nothing was as tenacious as the will of man. It made Mariah proud as she gazed out over The Valley to be part of a race that could dream such a thing as this, then make it real.

  “Mariah!”

  She spun to see Grandfather coming across the platform toward her. Dancing over the platform, she leapt, letting Grandfather catch her in his arms. It annoyed her to see several tourists aiming their cameras at her low-gee performance. Then she ignored them, concentrating wholly on the old man before her. When had she become taller than he? His skin was wrinkled and leathery with a tan unlike any ever managed by a person on the moon. In one hand he held a cane. A cane? Had he been injured? She remembered that when she was young he’d almost died in a tunnel collapse near the beginning of the project.

  Seeing her expression, her Grandfather held up the polished wood for her to see better. “No, I don’t need it, my dear. Not much anyway. It’s funny how at ninety even one-sixth gee can feel like a burden to old bones. But I have it mostly because it’s from the first surface tree we tried.”

  “You had a tree growing outside?” She hadn’t heard that before.

  “Only briefly. It was started in the labs then taken out and planted in native soil. Poor thing didn’t last out a month, but it did start extending roots into the lunar soil, at least a little bit.” He smiled somewhat sadly. “It’s a start, still a long way to go.” He twirled the wooden cane. “And its genetic stock lives on, even if it does not.” Mariah fingers played over her bag as she thought of its precious, hopeful, contents.

  Mariah looked back across the platform to the barren, smoggy valley on a world that wanted no part of it. This was Grandfather’s life’s work. He’d started on The Valley atmosphere project as a young man, when Mariah’s father was a baby. It had taken nearly a decade to fill in the gaps in the mountains, making an enclosed bowl of the valley. More time had gone into experiments on the best way to get Luna to hold an atmosphere for any length of time. So low was the escape velocity that in the intense heat of the long lunar days the molecules fled into space too rapidly to replenish. Layers had to be built, with heavier, less active, molecules on top serving as the cap to hold in other, vital gasses.

  Once the crater that was this valley held atmosphere they’d move on to the next, sealing the ring of mountains, putting on the cap, filling it with gasses, many of which were gotten from the rocks and soil of Luna itself. Then the two areas would be joined and on they would go to the next, and the next, until they’d covered the entire surface of the moon with an atmosphere. Theory, plans, and prayers looked to the day when the atmosphere-holding cap – a permanent, planetary inversion layer – could be raised above the confining mountains and humans could walk on the surface of the moon without pressure suits or breathing gear. Before that time they planned to have plant-life bred which could tolerate the extreme length of the day/night cycle and the corresponding temperature variations.

  It would be more than Grandfather’s lifetime away. More than Mariah’s too. It would be forever if some had their way. The moon’s pristine surface was being contaminated by the atmosphere project, some said. Various groups had threatened and tried to stop the project every decade or so over the years. Some foamed at the mouth over the nuclear reactors that broke the lunar rock down into its component elements. Others fumed at the Kozyrev Vent that enhanced Alphonsus’ natural gas venting. Grandfather mostly ignored them until time took care of the problem, but Mariah feared this time it was different.

  “They’re threatening to shut down the project,” she said quietly. “The Earthsiders are making noise about it too, said they can see The Valley with the naked eye. They call it a ‘smudge on the moon’ and want it stopped. Polluting their God-given right to view an untarnished moon. Same with the enviro-dolts, here and on Earth. Say it’s not natural.”

  “‘Naked eye’ my naked ass,” Grandfather huffed. “They’re not seeing this without a scope.” He sighed. “Same litany as always. Nothing we do on this world can ever be ‘natural.’ Not now, not ever. And nothing we can do on Earth can be unnatural… not if we’re native to that planet and not descended from Martian microbes or something.”

  “Some complain this atmosphere will require constant maintenance, constant work by man to hold it in place.”

  “Stupid argument.” Grandfather dismissed it. “How long would the people of Southern California last without constant maintenance of their artificial environment?”

  “They’re serious this time,” Mariah insisted. “They tried to blow the dome at Mare Australe. It was hushed, but I know what almost happened.”

  Grandfather lost his smile. “I hope they were shown to the exit — without suits.”

  “Only one was caught. A kid, not more than twelve or thirteen.”

  “Fronting for the others,” Grandfather sighed deeply and stared up at the bubble. Mariah followed his look. It was several layers of plasticized kevlarium with self-sealing gel between. Small meteors had already struck it without breaching all the layers. Even any bomb short of a nuke that vaporized the whole valley was unlikely to do irreparable damage. Shrapnel that penetrated would leave holes immediately sealed by the gel. Pressure valving and designed-in compensators would take care of most of a contained blast or shock wave. The bubble itself had some flexibility. Local damage to structures and people wouldn’t destroy the entire community. Coupled with the exterior air pressure — substantially higher than Luna-normal vacuum — the bubble had little cause for concern. The Valley, itself, however had more weak points than could be counted, chief among them the train tunnel airlock.

  Mariah could see the worries play across Grandfather’s face. “It’s not just the lunatics we have to deal with, but the legislators too. We have a centuries’ long project that can be shut down on the whim of some short-lived, short-sighted political twerp. One foolish generation can destroy the labor and accomplishment of a dozen generations preceding them, and deny that accomplishment to all the generations that follow.” He sighed. “What we need is something dramatic to show them, something that will so inspire their pathetic souls that they won’t dare destroy it.”

  Mariah squeezed her bag and smiled.

  ~~~

  Grandfather’s house was one of the old ones, dug into the base of the central peak. It had been part of the traditional lunar tunnel complex until the bubble was built over it. Then the face had been opened up. Grandfather had built a log cabin facade over the entry out of lunar concrete giving the house the same impression as the rest of the town; a Disneyesque version of a Terrestrial American frontier town.

  Entering the front room of the “cabin,” however, Mariah noticed Grandfather hadn’t abandoned his airlock. It stood open, but with controls set to monitor and seal if the pressure dropped. The front room was also done to resemble a pioneer cabin, but further in the old tunnel house was as blandly neoteric as the rest of the lunar cities, Mariah’s home included. On one side, however, the wall was exposed lunar rock. She put her hand on it, disappointed to find it cov
ered with a transparent sealant. The opposite wall contained a mural showing The Valley beneath a bright blue sky. Puffy white clouds piled up against the mountains at one side, raining down on slopes covered with trees. In the foreground the floor of the crater was a carpet of flowers.

  Mariah stared at it, at the flowers, thinking Grandfather would not see this dream in his lifetime, and if things went the way they were heading now, she wouldn’t see it in hers. The tears that had filled her eyes on her first sight of The Valley had been tears of achy joy and pride, those filling it now were ones of frustration and dread that the dream would be snatched away.

  Grandfather stood behind her, squeezing her shoulders. “I know how you feel.” His voice echoed the emotion she felt. “I’d feared there would be no one of my family to carry on after me. Your father hated this place so I feared he’d infected you with it too. It was my fault, of course. The Valley was my life and my family. My children got pushed aside for it.”