Lunar Descent

by Allen Steele

  “Say what?”

  “Me said his momma’s coming up here to run the place.”

  “Sheeit, I believe it.…”

  “Maybe she can get our bonuses back.…”

  “And maybe she can go down on us, too.…”

  Okay, Lester thought, that’s it.

  He snatched the spittoon off the table in front of him and swung his arm back. “And I hope we’ll learn to respect each other!” he yelled, and pitched the can out in the direction of the last voice.

  Men ducked and howled obscenities as the can hurtled over their beads, spraying brown slime across their shoulders and backs. It hit the San Francisco travel poster with a loud CLANG! and splattered mucus across the poster and the table beneath it as it ricocheted across the room. Moondogs jumped to their feet, staring at the wall, then at Lester, then back at the wall again. Suddenly, the mess hall was deathly quiet.

  At the targeted table, a huge black man slowly stood up and started moving toward Lester. Head shaven, with a trim mustache framing his scowling mouth, he was not much smaller than a shopping mall; his clenched fists looked as hard as bricks, “Muthafucker, I’m gonna …”

  “You’re going to what?” Lester shouted back. He didn’t wait for the giant to get to the front of the room; instead, he quickly strode down the aisle between the tables. Men and women quickly got out of his way as he advanced on the moondog. Lester met him before he left his table.

  “Tell me about it,” Lester demanded. “What are you going to do?”

  The giant glared down at Lester, and Lester stared straight back at him. Blood pounded in Lester’s ears like kettledrums; he barely noticed the expectant silence in the mess hall. If he swings, Lester thought distantly, he’ll plaster me like a tomato across the floor.…

  “Do you know my mother?” Lester snapped. “Huh? Have you ever met my mother?”

  The big man said nothing, just kept staring at Lester. “You can say what you want about me,” Lester continued, lowering his voice to a tone of restrained menace, “but unless you want your ass kicked, you leave my mom out of this.”

  A young black man sitting at a nearby table politely cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said, smiling as he peered at Lester over the top of his rimless glasses, “but do I understand you correctly in that you’re saying you’re going to kick Tycho’s ass?”

  Lester didn’t move his eyes from Tycho’s face. “That’s right,” he said evenly. “If Tycho makes any more remarks about my mother, I’m going to kick his ass.”

  “That may be difficult,” the young man replied, smiling a little, “but that’s beside the point. You’re saying that, even if he happens to inquire about your mater’s health, you’re going to attempt to kick his ass?”

  “My mother’s been dead for ten years,” Lester said, still not looking away from Tycho. “And, yeah, I’m going to kick his ass. And it won’t be an attempt, either.”

  The kid crossed his arms. “Still,” he pontificated, “I’m not sure how you can be …”

  “Shaddup, cool.” Tycho looked away from Lester to cast his chill gaze on the young man, who immediately shut up. The big moondog looked back at Lester. “Too bad about your mother, man,” he rumbled. He paused, then quietly added, “I’m real sorry about that.”

  Then, without another word, he turned around and went back to his chair. Lester silently let out his breath. Thank you, Jesus, for not letting me die.…

  He turned and looked across the mess hall. “Now!” he shouted. “If I’ve finally gotten your attention, maybe you can start this meeting!”

  Lester began to walk slowly back down the aisle. “Let’s get a couple of things straight,” he continued, allowing his gaze to sweep across the faces. “I’m the new GM, and I’ve had as much shit as I’m going to take from you people. If you don’t like me, then keep in mind that I don’t like you very much either. In fact, there’s nothing in my contract which says that I have to treat you as anything but a bunch of low-life grunts for hire. The difference between me and you is, I’ve got the power to fire you if I feel like it, and there’s not one fucking thing you can do about it.”

  “Fuck you,” someone in the back of the room murmured.

  “No, you’re the one who’s fucked,” Lester retorted, not bothering to look round. “Your ASWI local contract gives me the right to terminate your employment whenever and for whatever reason I please, so don’t even think about getting the union to bail you out. In fact, the union doesn’t give a wet shit about you guys. You’re an embarrassment. They let Skycorp screw you in the contract talks last year because ASWI wanted to get concessions for the Olympus Station beamjacks instead, and you were an expendable giveaway. And as for Skycorp, the reason why the company sent me up here was for me to be a hardass. They spent righteous bucks to send every one of you up here to do a job and for me to make sure you do it, and now they want their money’s worth. I’m only too happy to oblige.”

  He reached the front of the room again and turned around to look them over. “Make no mistake about it, pilgrims. I’m not your buddy, I’m not your pal, and I’m not going to let things slide the way Bo Fisk did. And you’ve gotten me pissed off already. From the moment I landed here, I’ve gotten nothing but attitude from you guys. I’ve had a chance to look around this place, and it’s a goddamn sewer. Now, I’m going to clean this place up and get it working right again, and I’ll be only too happy to purge the whole work force if I don’t get some cooperation from you people. Have we got this straight?”

  No one said a thing. Lester leaned against a table and crossed his arms. “You people have been hired to do a tough, lousy job,” he went on in a calmer tone of voice. “Things were getting sloppy here. You got away with it for a while, but Skycorp found out how much this base was fucking off, so they cleaned house. If you were here then, you’re still here only because you weren’t screwing around on company time—and that’s twenty-four hours a day the way I see it, because they pay you and me too well for us to be fooling around. Understand?”

  A few coughs, some hushed murmurs, but no reply. The crowd watched him. “If you were jerking around and just weren’t caught,” Lester went on, “don’t count on getting away with it with me. And if I hear any more shit like I got on the radio coming in, you’re outta here.” He snapped his fingers for effect. “Fired, and I don’t give a rat’s ass what it does for your sick grandmother or the kids you’re putting through school. Do I still have your undivided attention?”

  A few heads were nodding. Mostly, the response was as if a harmless puppy had suddenly turned dingo: stunned disbelief. “If you’re new here,” Lester went on, “that’s no excuse, either. Skycorp couldn’t find anyone decent to work in this godforsaken hole, so they hired you instead.”

  “What about you?” someone loudly asked.

  “I’m here because they couldn’t get anyone else dumb enough to take this job,” Lester answered honestly.

  For the first time since he walked into the room, people laughed without malice. Good, he thought. I’m beginning to get somewhere.…

  “Okay, you’ve got the ground rules. Now here’s the lowdown.” Lester propped a foot up on the table and wrapped his hands around his knee. “As of first-shift tomorrow, we’re coming out of work-slowdown. Everyone on all three shifts is back on the job.”

  A moment of silence … then cheers rang through the room as the moondogs whistled and stamped their feet. “Hot fucking damn!” a man at one of the front tables yelled. “We’re gonna get paid again!”

  Lester nodded and waved his hand. “Yeah, yeah, I know you’ve been spinning your wheels, and not everyone’s been getting full-time pay. That changes at oh-eight-hundred local tomorrow. But before you start counting your money, you better know that there’s another side to this.…”

  The room lapsed into silence again. “We’re going to continue making aluminum and photovoltaics for the powersats, because Skycorp’s going ahead with the Korean project,” L
ester continued. “Same product as always. But what has changed is … there’s going to be more of it.”

  He took a deep breath. “Tomorrow morning, there’s going to be a press conference in Huntsville, where a major announcement will be made. I’m authorized to spill the beans to you guys early. Skycorp is going to tell the press that it’s made an agreement with Uchu-Hiko, and that they will be cooperating on a separate SPS project.”

  Lester looked around the room, and saw that he had everyone’s complete attention. He indulged in a pause before letting the other shoe drop. “They’re going to start building a powersat for Japan.”

  “Say what?” somebody asked.

  “You heard me the first time,” Lester said. “Uchu-Hiko wants a powersat for Japan and Skycorp’s going to make it for them. But this time they’re going to do it just a little differently. Since the Korean project is already go, the company is going to build the Japanese SPS concurrent with the Korean SPS.” He held up two fingers. “So that’s two powersats that are going to be made by the boys at Skycan at the same time. And I don’t have to tell you where all the raw materials are coming from, either.”

  Now there were murmurs and low whistles from the crew. “How come Uchu-Hiko came to us?” someone in the crowd asked. “I mean, why don’t they just do it themselves?”

  “Because we’ve already got the resources in place,” Lester replied. “They have a space station, but it isn’t big enough to house a construction crew. And we’ve got the experience from building three of these suckers so far. Once the first phase of the Korean project is finished, Olympus Station is going to start work on Phase One of the Japanese powersat. Since they’ll both have the same equatorial orbit, they can be built side by side. But even before then, we’re expected to have stockpiled everything they’ll need to start the first phase. Aluminum roll for the skeleton, oxygen for the beamjacks, glass, photovoltaics. The works. Everything they need to hit the ground running. So, for us, the first phase of the Japanese SPS starts tomorrow, at least a year before the actual construction begins. That means we’re expected to be producing and stockpiling materials for Japan’s SPS in addition to the stuff for the Korean powersat.”

  The silence was an abyss into which he could have fallen. Men and women were glancing skeptically at each other. “What’s this about stockpiling?” Tycho suddenly asked. “You mean we’re going to be making the stuff, then just letting it sit there?”

  Lester nodded. “Uh-huh. It’s not going off the mass-driver until the first phase begins up there.” He shrugged. “Call it twelve months at least, though I’ve been told it might be as close as six, because Skycorp’s going to be hauling ass with the Korean powersat.”

  “Okay.” Tycho stretched back in his chair. “That’s fine with me, just as long as we get our bonus pay back. Know what I mean?”

  Lester’s mouth tightened. Now for the hard part … “The bonuses and performance risers will be—” He stopped himself. “They may be reinstated. No promises.”

  Tycho’s mouth dropped open as anger surged through the mess hall. “What do you …?”

  “Listen to me,” Lester said. “The union’s backing the company up on this. No bonuses unless we earn the money. We’re going to have to work for it.”

  As he expected, the noise level rose still higher. Lester quickly held up his hands. “Just listen to me!” he yelled. “Skycorp has zero confidence in this base right now. In fact, they’re about an inch away from selling the base to Uchu-Hiko.…”

  “What?” at least half the people in the room shouted in unison.

  Tycho was out of his chair again. “You gotta be shittin’ us—!”

  “Just shut up and listen!” Lester yelled. When the room finally quieted down one more time, Riddell went on. “The Japanese may be a co-partner in this deal, but the word from the inside track is that they’re still unhappy with the deal they made with Skycorp. They want Descartes Station, and if the boys in Huntsville start to think we’re not worth the grief, they’d be just as happy to sell this whole place to Uchu-Hiko. I’m sure you know what that means.”

  “No,” another moondog said. “I don’t know what that means. So our paycheck comes from Tokyo instead of Alabama. Big fucking deal.”

  “No.” Lester shook his head. “It means you get a pink slip and two weeks severance pay and a ride home. I’m telling you, Uchu-Hiko won’t play with a losing hand. They’ll buy the capital assets from Olympus and get rid of us. Then they’ll bring in their own team to get the job done. It must be a tempting option for Huntsville, or Arnie Moss—”

  “Oh, fuck, that bastard …?”

  “—wouldn’t have told me about it,” Lester finished. “The Japanese space workers still aren’t unionized. They’d probably work for less.” He shoved his hands into his jumpsuit pockets and shrugged. “Hell, I dunno. Maybe they won’t even bother with space workers. Maybe they’ll just go teleoperation instead and replace us with a bunch of robots. It’ll be slower and less efficient to do it that way, sure, but perhaps they’ll figure it beats the hassle of supporting a human work force.”

  “I don’t fucking believe it,” someone grumbled.

  “You better come to believe it,” Lester replied, nodding his head. “The bottom line, folks, is that we’re going to have to work like dogs if we’re going to regain the bonuses you guys had before the purge, or even to keep our jobs in the first place. Now, there’s a bright side to this.…”

  “Oh, please …” someone else said. “I can’t take too much more of this healthy optimism.”

  Lester ignored the jab. “We’re on a probation period for the next six weeks. Our fiscal first-year production quota is going to be one hundred fifteen thousand tons of finished material. If we can ship twelve thousand tons of material within that six-week probation period—that’s twelve thousand tons shot down the mass-driver by August twelfth—we’ll be awarded bonuses commensurate with those six weeks plus full pay and bonuses for the period during the work slowdown, just as if we had been receiving monthly bonuses all along. A new performance riser also kicks in, with a five percent increase in net pay if we meet the annual quota.”

  A few appreciative murmurs and whistles. “Not bad,” Smitty said. “But what if we don’t meet the quota?”

  “We start asking Seki, here, for Japanese lessons,” another moondog finished.

  A middle-aged Japanese-American man sitting next to him grinned. “I don’t think it’ll do you any good,” he said.

  “What about supplies?” asked a young woman wearing a black beret. “We sent the company a personal-items list about three months ago, and they said everything on it was suspended from export. What’s going on?”

  Others murmured support. Another tough question. “They’re still suspended,” Lester said. The murmurs turned into outraged shouts. “Nothing nonessential gets shipped up unless it’s life-critical,” Lester finished, ignoring the protests. “Mail gets delivered, but no ‘care’ packages. So if you were expecting home-baked cookies or comic books, forget it.”

  “What the hell are they trying to prove?” a big hairy guy in the back of the room demanded. “I mean, what the fuck?”

  “Yeah!” someone else shouted. “You tell ’em, Mighty Joe!”

  “It’s because they’re trying to put pressure on you guys, that’s why,” Lester shot back. “Huntsville figures you’ve been taking it easy for too long, so they want to make life as uncomfortable for you as they can.”

  Before the voices could rise again, he held up his hand. “Hey, hey, I didn’t make the rules. I don’t like it either, but that’s the way it is. Write a letter to the board of directors if you want, but don’t take it out on me. It’s like the bonus situation. If we get through the probation period and meet the six-week quota, the nonessentials get shipped up here again.”

  More pissing and moaning, but at least no one was calling him names again. Lester paused and cleared his throat. “Umm … and if you haven’t guessed
already, this is a dry town again. The rules prohibiting liquor and recreational drugs are back in force. No booze or dope under any circumstances. Possession is grounds for termination of your contract.”

  That was one regulation Lester was fully in favor of, but there was no sense in letting the crew know that. The atmosphere in the mess hall was becoming nastier every second. “Who’s gonna stop us?” someone in the back of the room yelled.

  That’s a good question, Lester thought. It occurred to him that Descartes was still without a new security chief. The last one had been nailed in the purge; he had been caught looking the other way when the drinking and doping had been going on. Skycorp had yet to tell Lester if a replacement was on the way up. If the company thinks I’m going to double as the security chief, Riddell thought, they’re dead wrong. I can’t run this place and be the resident arm-breaker, too.

  He ducked the last question. It was time to wrap this up before the scene got any uglier. “That’s it,” he said, getting up from the table. “You’ll be seeing me around. New maintenance and clean-up schedules will be posted tomorrow on the computer, so check your niche terminals. That’s part of your job, too, and your pay will be docked if you don’t report for cleanup detail. If you have any questions, my office is right down the hall, across from the labs. Second shift goes back to finish their regular clock, and third shift reports on schedule.”

  Hardly anyone was paying attention. The moondogs were getting up from their benches, talking among themselves as they either headed for the door or wandered to the coffee pots for a refill. Lester suddenly felt exhausted. It had been a grueling day so far. All he wanted to do was find his office and lock himself inside for a few hours. A quick nap, maybe …

  “Excuse me,” a familiar voice behind him said. “Mr. Riddell?”

  Lester looked around; it was Tina McGraw. Besides himself, she was the only person he had yet seen who was wearing an unaltered Skycorp jumpsuit. “Hi, Tina,” he said wearily. “What can I do for you? And call me Lester, okay?”