Lunar Descent

by Allen Steele

  “Like the Doors, huh?” Mighty Joe said as he took a last hit and clamped his thumb and forefinger over the bowl and stem to extinguish the pipe. Seki only needed a hit to get him high, and Joe’s pot was precious enough to have him stretch the load. “McCloud’s got something about the oldies. Sometimes I wish he would play some more new stuff.”

  “Fuck all the new stuff. I’m telling you, rock died in ’11 when the Beat Snails broke up. But Jim Morrison … man, that’s my favorite person in history.” Seki rocked his head back and forth with his eyes closed as his palms kept time with the music. “Y’know, they said that he didn’t really die back then? Did you ever hear that story?”

  “Yeah, I heard that.” Joe found the film capsule where he had tucked it in the crotch of his suit and began to tap the dregs of the pipe into it. “Naw, he didn’t die,” he went on. “At least not when everyone said he did. He ran a seafood joint down in Florida till he died.…”

  He stopped to search his memory. “Three or four years ago, I think. Yeah. Just before I signed on with Skycorp.”

  “Aw, come off it.…”

  Mighty Joe shook his head. “No, I’m not kidding. Jim Morrison was this crazy old dink who ran a beachside seafood shack on Captiva Island, where I used to live. A hangout for the locals, right? He had this recipe for Cajun-style steamed shrimp that would make your eyes water.…”

  Koyama laughed. “Can’t be the same Jim Morrison.…”

  “Sure was. Sometimes on Saturday nights he’d get plowed and bring out this beat-up old Les Paul guitar he kept in the storeroom, sit down at one of the picnic tables outside and start banging out Doors numbers for us. ‘L.A. Woman,’ ‘People Are Strange,’ ‘Horse Latitudes,’ ‘20th Century Fox’ … maybe you’d think he was putting you on at first, but when you heard that voice you knew it was him.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “Seriously. Then he would tell us again how he had faked the whole death scene in Paris ’cause he was sick of doing concerts and the press and shit. All that Lizard King crap, the cops always on him ’cause he had flashed his dick once during a show … he’d had enough, that’s all.” Joe unsnapped a pocket on his suit and thrust the pipe and his minuscule stash back into it. “We kept trying to talk him into jamming with one of the local bands, just so’s we’d get to hear ‘The End’ done properly, but he wouldn’t have none of it. Nice old’ fart, even if he did steal my girlfriend.”

  Seki cracked up. “Ah, c’mon! He would have been in his nineties.”

  “Shit, that didn’t stop him. I’m telling you, Old Jim was the sex dynamo of the Gulf Coast. He was bedding ladies young enough to be his granddaughter and they’d always come back the next day saying that he was the greatest lay of their lives. My girlfriend told me he’d …”

  “Shh!” Seki suddenly signaled Joe to quiet down as he cupped his right hand over his headset. He listened for a second, then solemnly looked askance at Mighty Joe. “Umm, roger, we copy that, MainOps, he’s right here with me … brought out some coffee just a few minutes ago.”

  Another pause. “Okay, I’ll put him on right now.” He nodded his head toward Mighty Joe. “Lester wants to talk to you on Three.”

  “Goddammit,” Joe muttered irritably. “Why did you tell him I was here?” But he pulled his headset up from around his neck and carefully laid the bone-phone against his jaw. “MainOps, this is Young.”

  Joe, this is Lester, he heard the general manager say. What are you doing out there in the fields?

  “I brought some coffee out to Seki, that’s all.” Mighty Joe grinned at Seki. “Just making a little wake-up call, sir. Gets kinda lonely for him out here.”

  Seki had to cover his mouth with his hand to keep from guffawing over the comlink. You’re supposed to be helping the pad crew with the repair of your tug, Lester said sternly. If Seki needs a coffee break, he can wait until his shift is over. Your place is back here at the base.

  Joe rolled his eyes but refrained from making any smart-aleck remarks. Lester was sounding pissed-off this morning. “Ah, yeah, we copy that, Lester. I’m coming right over to Subcomp Bravo this minute.”

  Negatory on that, Joe. That’s why I was looking for you in the first place. I’ve got a little LRLT flying job for you. I want you in MainOps in fifteen minutes … and no more coffee breaks on the way, you got that? The combines aren’t a doughnut shop for you. Over.

  Mighty Joe clenched his left fist and yanked it up and down over his lap; Seki smirked and nodded his agreement. “Roger that, MainOps,” Joe replied. “Over and out.” He tapped the headset lobe with his finger and added, “You jerkmeat corporate tool.”

  “He sounded a little pissed.” Koyama reached behind him and popped the airlock hatch as Joe shrugged out of his shoulder harness and reached under the seat for his suit gloves. “Flying job? I thought he had you grounded till the Dreamer was fixed.”

  “Guess that’s come to an end,” Joe said sullenly as he thrust his left hand into a gauntlet and locked down the wrist joint, but he was secretly pleased. He had gone to half-pay during the Beautiful Dreamer’s downtime, but what he had really missed was flying. Rusty and Anne had been taking the other tug, the Edgar Mitchell, up to low-orbit for the weekly rendezvous-and-supply junket while he had been stuck in the dirt, which was six weeks too long for his regular aviation fix. Any chance to get off the ground again, even if it was only for an LRLT bus-hop, was fine by him.

  “I don’t get it, though,” he thought aloud as he fitted on his right glove. “We don’t have another LTV rendezvous for at least four days, and that’s nothing Wright and Noonan can’t take care of themselves. A crop-duster flight is something he can get anyone else to handle. What’s he want me for?”

  “Guess you’ll be finding out soon enough.” Seki picked up Mighty Joe’s helmet and waited for the pilot to finish the pre-EVA checkout of his suit. “Hey, what’s with you and Noonan, anyway? I heard you guys were some kind of hot number lately.”

  “For me to know and you to mind your own friggin’ business about.” Joe took the helmet from Seki, held his breath and ducked his head into it, then clamped down the collar-ring. Once the suit was repressurized, he let out his breath and switched on the comlink. “Okay, lemme out of here. I gotta go see what the man wants.”

  “You’re ten minutes late, Joe,” Lester said from the command station as the pilot tromped up the stairs into MainOps.

  “Fire me, then. I don’t give a shit.” Joe sauntered down the curving aisle past the work stations, idly glancing through the windows at the distant mass-driver. On a wall-screen was a close-up of the mass-driver station: a cargo canister—shaped like a giant soccer ball with an engine at one end, lying on a launch sled—came off the loading line and began to accelerate down the long, floodlighted track. As it diminished to a tiny spot, it reached the ramp at the end of the track and shot off the launch sled. Mighty Joe looked through the windows again, just in time to see the distant canister bulleting into the black sky, its RCR’s already firing to maneuver it along its cislunar glide path to Olympus Station. On the screen, another canister was coming on the rail.

  “Joe …” Lester repeated.

  “Awright,” he said, turning away from the window. “I’m coming. Take it easy.” Riddell was seated behind the center console on the raised dais; somewhat to Joe’s surprise, Butch Peterson sat in the chair next to him, with her long legs crossed and a datapad in her lap, wire-rimmed reading glasses perched on the edge of her elegant nose. Lord, he thought absently, I’ve always had a thing for women who wear glasses … and if Annie could read minds, she’d castrate me for what’s in my head right now.

  Riddell stared at him over the edge of his console and seemed ready to say something, but instead motioned for Joe to come up the steps. “What’s your schedule for Thursday?” he asked.

  “Schedule?” Young walked up the steps, leaned against a bulkhead and shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. “Lessee. I’ve got an urgent me
eting with my broker, then there’s a producer from Paramount who wants to film my life story. And after that, there’s going to be an orgy in the Hilton … y’all are invited, of course. Think you can be there, Butch?”

  Peterson didn’t even look up at him. She pushed back her glasses and glanced at Riddell. “Did we have to ask this guy?” she said with quiet disgust.

  The GM shook his head. “Emerson is down with the flu, Quack is on permanent rescue standby, Wright is assigned to the Mitchell for an LTV rendezvous, and everyone else is tied up. He’s the only LRLT-rated pilot available on short notice.”

  Mighty Joe’s attention was caught by a geologic survey map of the north polar region which was displayed on two of the GM’s screens. Noting the interest in the pilot’s eyes, Riddell explained, “Dr. Peterson has been reviewing the latest findings from our Byrd Crater facility. Butch, if you want to …?”

  “Not particularly,” Peterson said. She sighed and reluctantly turned around in her chair. “To make it simple, I’ve been analyzing the recent core samples and satellite pictures from the permaice facility at the north pole. There’s substantially less ice showing up in the samples than in previous batches, which gives us some reason to be concerned. Understand?”

  “Uh-huh,” Joe murmured. He did indeed understand, despite Peterson’s condescending attitude. Ancient deposits of permaice lay below the topsoil of the lunar north pole, scattered there by a comet which had struck the Moon millions of years earlier; since sunlight never reached much of this permanently shadowed region, a significant quantity of this ice had never melted. Its existence had been confirmed by a Space Studies Institute lunar probe in the 1990’s and had been one of the major discoveries that helped push the industrial development of the Moon. It was a natural resource, not just for water, but also for hydrogen: one of the most crucial volatiles used on the Moon, and also one of the most expensive bulk-item imports from Earth.

  But the full extent of the lunar permaice had never been fully understood; if this natural well was drying up, nothing would replace it besides praying for another comet to strike the Moon, which was pretty unlikely within the next few thousand years.

  “I can guess the rest,” Joe said. “You want me to fly Butch up there for a checkup, maybe to make sure the robots aren’t drilling in the wrong place or something.”

  “Yes and no,” Lester said. “I’m going with you, too. I skipped the last chance to go up to Byrd, when Emerson made a pickup a couple of weeks ago. In fact, I haven’t been up there since I got here.”

  “Right …”

  “Good.” The GM turned back to his console. “I want you to get a crop-duster ready for flight by Thursday at oh-eight-hundred. Water tanks and all. Should be just a one-day trip. Any problem with that?”

  “Just a little one,” Mighty Joe said. “We might not have a flightworthy crop-duster.”

  Riddell said nothing, but only waited for him to elaborate. Joe rested his butt against the edge of the desk. “To get the Dreamer off the ground again, we’ve had to cannibalize parts from the LRLT’s.” Riddell started to say something, but Joe held up his hand. “Wait a minute before you start yelling at me again. It’s not as bad as it sounds. For the most part they’re interchangeable parts, modular stuff we can take off one boat and put on the other within a few hours. No big deal. We do it all the time. But in this case, if you want to have a tug and a LRLT on the flight line by Thursday, we’re going to have to get a little creative, since we’ll be missing a backup fuel pump for the crop-duster.”

  Lester blinked. “I don’t get it,” he said. “If you’re missing a backup fuel pump for the LRLT, why didn’t you request one from Skycorp?”

  Joe grimaced. “We did … seven weeks ago, even before the Dreamer crashed. But because it was a standby unit then, our pals in Huntsville put it on the soon-come list.” Before Lester could ask, Joe added, “That’s as in, ‘Yeah, it’ll soon come.’ Like, don’t hold your breath.”

  Lester closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. “Okay, I get it. So what do you mean by getting a little creative?”

  Before the pilot could answer, the phone on Riddell’s desk buzzed. Lester held up a finger, signaling Mighty Joe to wait, as he picked up the receiver. “Riddell,” he said. “Yeah, uh-huh … damn … okay, Tina, I’ll be right down. Don’t do anything till I get there unless you have to.…”

  He put down the phone and stood up. “Gotta go somewhere,” he said as he quickly moved past them both and hopped down the steps from the dais. “Butch will brief you on the rest. Just get that crop-duster flight-ready by Thursday, okay?” In a few quick steps he strode down the aisle and disappeared through the stairwell hatch, ignoring the duty personnel’s questioning looks at his abrupt departure.

  Peterson watched him go, then looked around at Mighty Joe. Joe just shrugged. “Hell if I know,” he murmured. “None of my business anyway.”

  The geologist sighed. “That’s the whole problem with this place,” she said. “Everyone’s only looking after their own business.” She looked down at her datapad; then, as a thought seemed to cross her mind, she looked sharply up at Joe again. “That remark you made about finding a creative solution to the fuel pump problem … you’re not talking about getting one from Honest Yuri, are you?”

  Mighty Joe only smiled and looked away, pretending to be gazing out a window. “Oh God!” she yelped. “Don’t tell me you’re going to get one from Honest Yuri!”

  “Okay,” he said agreeably, patting her knee and turning to walk down the steps from the platform. “I won’t tell you I’m getting one from Honest Yuri.”

  He looked over his shoulder in time to see Butch drawing back her arm to heave her datapad at him. “Now now now,” he scolded, wagging his finger at her. “You heard what he said. Get a crop-duster flight-ready by Thursday. And it’s your trip, after all.”

  Peterson brought her arm down, dropped the pad on the desk, and sagged in her chair. “No,” she whimpered helplessly, covering her face with her hands. “Not spare parts from Honest Yuri …”

  12. A Little Gratuitous Violence

  The rec room was located on Level One of Subcomp A, downstairs from MainOps and at the opposite side of the building from the mess hall. It wasn’t a very large room—only about half the size of the men’s locker room—nor was it very comfortable. The floor was uncarpeted, the walls were decorated with framed antique Weekly World News tabloids (WW2 BOMBER FOUND ON MOON—Now scientists know how it got there! and HUMAN SKELETON FOUND ON MOON—‘Absolutely mind-boggling,’ say shocked scientists and MOON LANDING WAS A HOAX!—NASA made $30 billion movie to fool the world) and it was furnished mainly with wire-mesh chairs and tables which had been converted from discarded fiber-optic cable spools. The inevitable food-can spittoons for the tobacco-chewers were scattered across the tables, surrounded by greasy brown spots where moondogs had misjudged their aim. The single, slitlike window looked out upon the dusty, micrometeorite-pitted domes of the Dirt Factory.

  The rec room had all the ambience and charm of a bus station lavatory, but it was the closest thing the Descartes crew had to a social area. A soda machine dispensed cans of Pepsi and Nehi and tasteless nonalcoholic near-beer; there was a holographic games table, a small shelf of broken-spine paperbacks and ragged magazines with cover dates from last year, an exercise machine in the corner, and a wall-screen TV.

  The TV was hooked up to a high-gain antenna on the roof which received signals from the lunar comsats, which in turn intercepted TV signals from a variety of Earth-orbiting satellites in the geosynchronous Clarke Belt. This arrangement had its benefits and drawbacks. On the plus side, it meant that Descartes Station could pick up virtually any commercial TV network on Earth that used communications satellites. But as the Moon gradually orbited the Earth, the signal from one comsat was lost and was replaced by another. Sometimes it happened quickly, in mid-program; a crowd of moondogs could be watching a Bruins hockey game when, all at once, it was replaced by a t
urgid British costume-drama or a dumb Israeli cop-show like Yitshak & Menachim. This meant, overall, that the available viewing time for turgid or dumb TV fare from the good ol’ U.S.A. was limited to a few weeks a month, and was jealously fought over by moondogs who were off-shift.

  Every now and then, it led to serious disagreements.

  As he strode down the corridor to the rec room, Riddell heard the argument even before he caught sight of Quick-Draw McGraw. The security chief was standing outside the open door; she held her Taser ready in her right hand, and she looked up as the general manager approached. From within the room Lester could hear voices shouting:

  “Listen, asshole, you want music, you listen to the fucking radio—!”

  “Fuck you, buddy! We were here first, so get the fuck outta—”

  “Fuck you too! We’re here to watch this every fucking … hey hey hey, put down that—!”

  There was a loud spang! as a spit-can was hurled across the room. “Don’t mess with me, you spic muthafucker, or I’ll—!”

  “Who’re you calling a spic?” Crash! “Huh? You calling me a spic?”

  “Yeah, I’m calling you a spic!”

  “You watch your mouth, man, or I’ll tear off your dick! Now you get the fuck outta here before I—!”

  Lester didn’t have to ask what was going on. He stopped next to Quick-Draw, careful to put his back to the corridor wall to keep out of the line of fire. “What shows are they trying to watch?” he asked quietly.

  Quick-Draw contemplated Lester’s question. “I don’t see how that matters,” she murmured, not looking away from the door. “If they go on like this, they’ll …”

  “Just tell me what they’re fighting over,” he demanded. He glanced at the Taser in her hand and shook his head. “I want to see if we can arbitrate this thing before you go in shooting.”

  Quick-Draw let out her breath. “Ummm … Jesus and his friends want to watch Ouch, That Hurts! And I think Bee-Pee and his buddies want to see The Drunk Brothers Rock ’n’ Roll Keg Party.” She shook her head before he could ask the obvious next question. “And don’t ask me who got there first. I arrived only after they started throwing chairs at each other.”