Lunar Descent

by Allen Steele

  He raised his right wrist in front of his face and touched a stud on his watch. The digital face lit up: 1306 hours. Good God, it was Sunday afternoon already. He should have been on his shift in MainOps hours ago.…

  Lester started to sit up. His tender muscles betrayed him, though, and he collapsed back on the floor, his head striking the thin carpet. He hardly felt the impact. Perhaps he should just lie here for a few hours longer. It was dark, he was reasonably comfortable, and maybe the base could run itself without him for a day or two. Why, sure it can, he thought. They don’t need me upstairs. I mean, what could possibly require my attention …?

  The get-happy calypso beat of “Pressure Drop” slowly faded from the speaker nearby, drowned out by Moondog McCloud’s familiar voice. Yeaaah now, The Maytals, rat-c’here on LDSM …” Harry Drinkwater was sounding awful today, hoarse and rasping. That’s going out by special request of the strike committee, for all our brothers and sisters in the effort.…

  Strike committee? “Brothers and sisters in the effort?” he mumbled aloud. What kind of crazy shit was this?

  Here’s another reminder that there will be a special meeting of all station personnel … McCloud coughed raggedly. There was a noticeable lack of his usual hipster patter. ’Scuse me. There’s going to be a meeting in the mess hall at exactly fourteen-hundred hours, for all those interested in participating in or supporting the strike. Till then, of course, work will be continuing as usual … A dry chuckle. For all you who are capable of working at all, that is. Just remember, now. Strike meeting at the mess hall in about an hour. Be seeing you. Now here’s Wintermute and the Cowboys.…

  “What the hell?” Lester forced himself up on his elbows. Strike meeting? Strike meeting?

  He suddenly recalled the last thing he had said last night—or rather, early this morning—just before the homemade liquor had won and he had plastered his face on the floor of Storage Two. Oh, no …

  He struggled to his knees. Not that …

  He lurched to his feet, retched and swallowed acidic bile, groped through the darkness for the door. Don’t tell me someone actually took me seriously.…

  At the exact same moment that he found the handle, he heard footsteps in the outside corridor and the door was abruptly opened from the other side. Standing in the shaft of bright light, Monk Walker was holding a steaming mug of hot coffee. “Lester?” he said. “Are you okay?”

  One whiff of the coffee was all it took for his stomach to make one mighty, volcanic surge. “Sure,” Lester managed to croak. “Just super …”

  Then he doubled over and vomited on the floor.

  Monk got Lester cleaned up and into some fresh clothes, and even managed to get some fresh coffee into his stomach, but there was nothing he could do for his hangover. “At least you got the rest of the booze out of your system by vomiting,” the chief physician commented as they walked down the corridor to the mess hall. “I’ve been treating people like you all morning. Guess we should consider ourselves lucky that nobody came down with acute alcohol poisoning, considering the way you guys were drinking last night.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” Lester still felt fatigued—why was it that getting drunk required so much work?—and even though the shower and the coffee had helped somewhat, the hangover was still very much with him. “I appreciate it, Doc,” he added, for lack of anything else to say.

  They rounded a corner; the mess hall was straight ahead. The door was closed and Tycho was standing in front of it. “It was worse for you because you’ve been on the wagon for so long,” Monk added quietly.

  Lester shot a look at him, and Monk nodded. “Butch told me, and I checked your medical records. For recovered substance-abusers, a lost night in an eight-year period isn’t all that uncommon.” He paused. “As long as you don’t make a regular habit of it, that is. If it happens again, I might get seriously worried about you.”

  “Nggh.” Lester slowly shook his throbbing head. “Don’t worry. I think I just remembered all the reasons why I stopped drinking.” Something else Monk had just said occurred to him; he stopped walking and turned to face him. “Butch … Susan left shortly after we got to the party. Is she …?”

  “Mad at you?” Monk stopped walking and folded his arms across his brown tunic. “Sort of. More like disappointed, though.” The string of wooden beads in his right hand clicked a couple of times. “She cares for you,” Monk added softly. “Maybe a little more than you know. You let her down last night. If she wants to talk to you, though, it’s going to have to be something she’ll decide. Butch is stubborn that way.”

  “You know her pretty well, don’t you?”

  “Pretty well, yeah.” Monk raised an eyebrow and frowned at him. “If you’re insinuating that we’re …”

  Lester shook his head. “No, no, nothing like that. I know about … um, about your vow of celibacy. What I’m getting at is …” He faltered. “Hell, Monk, if she likes me that much, why didn’t she do anything about last night?”

  There was the faintest hint of a smile on Monk’s face. “We’re close friends, Les,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean she always confides in me. When she talks to you again—if she talks to you again—you’re going to have to pose that question to her yourself.” He tapped Lester on the arm and cocked his head toward the door. “Better hurry now. I think the meeting’s about to start.”

  However, when they got to the door, Tycho stepped in front of them to block their way. “You with the company?” he asked stonily. The question was directed more at Lester than at Monk; Tycho folded his arms across his chest and looked down at the general manager from his formidable height.

  Lester sighed. “C’mon, Tycho, I run the joint. Lemme in.” Tycho didn’t budge, and Riddell tried again. “Remember who brought the subject up in the first place? Now let us in …”

  He started to move past the huge moondog, but Tycho put out a hand and, firmly but gently, pushed Riddell back. “Question’s still the same, man. I’ve already thrown Quick-Draw out of here. What’s your excuse?”

  It was, Riddell had to admit, a damn good question, at least for himself. However, he was also getting fed up. He was beginning to consider his chances of sucker-punching Tycho—which were not very good, at least in terms of getting away with it, let alone surviving Tycho’s likely reaction—when Monk intervened. “We’re here as nonpartisan observers,” Monk said. “We won’t interfere and we’ll respect whatever decision is made in there.”

  Lester looked first at Monk, then back at Tycho. Monk shot him a warning glance; Tycho nodded once at Monk, then waited for Riddell’s response. Obviously even Descartes’ general manager—especially the GM—wasn’t getting through the door unless his loyalties were made clear. “Okay, okay,” Lester said reluctantly. “Nonpartisan observer.”

  Tycho didn’t say anything, but his gaze never left Lester’s face as he stepped out of the way. “Thanks,” Lester said as he opened the door and walked into the mess hall. Again, Tycho said nothing, yet there was an amused glint in his eyes as he admitted them to the meeting.

  The meeting was just starting as Lester and Monk entered, yet the moment they walked in, all eyes turned toward them and a mean silence descended upon the mess hall. Mighty Joe Young was standing at the head of the room; the pilot looked as if he was just about to bring the meeting to order, but Lester’s entrance had stopped the proceedings cold. It was much like the general station meeting that Riddell had called upon his arrival almost seven weeks ago, yet this time Lester was clearly not in charge. Some things had not changed, though. He was no more welcome now than he was then.

  There were two empty chairs at a table in the back of the room. Monk led the way through the uncomfortable silence to the table. The five moondogs already seated there said nothing as Lester sat down, but Riddell sensed that they would have moved had there been any other vacant seats. Now I know what a leper feels like, he thought.

  “Okay …” Mighty Joe began, and the attention moved t
o him once again. “Thank you all for coming … uh, and I don’t think I need to explain what this is all about. We’re here to talk about a general walkout against the company. If our gatekeeper let you in the door, that means you’re at least willing to discuss this without automatically taking sides with the company. Now let’s …”

  “What about him?” someone across the room shouted.

  Similar grumbles swept through the room and Lester swallowed a hard stone in his throat. There was no doubt whom the unseen moondog meant. He glanced at the door and weighed his chances of making it outside before someone thrust a noose around his neck.

  Mighty Joe held up his hands. “If Mr. Riddell is with us right now,” he said, “it means he’s at least willing to listen. That right, Les?”

  Once again, every face in the room turned toward the back of the room. Lester quickly nodded his head and gave Mighty Joe the thumbs-up. Again there was discontented muttering, but no one moved to eject Riddell from the mess hall. Joe nodded back at him. “If the truth is to be told,” he went on, “and I’m sure you’ll agree with me that the time for bullshit is over”—he grinned like a pirate—“well, it was Lester himself who suggested a strike. Last night, when we were engaged in … uh, call it an executive-level meeting if you want.”

  Knowing laughter from around the mess hall. The temperature of the room seemed to warm just a degree or two. Lester guessed that most of the people at the meeting were suffering from hangovers of their own. He didn’t have to wonder, though, about how fast the word of a general strike had moved among the crew. Nothing remained secret in Descartes Station for very long. Except maybe the facts …

  The laughter died out. “Moving right along …” Mighty Joe continued.

  “If it’s his idea,” the same voice from across the room demanded, “why don’t we get him to speak?”

  There was an abrupt silence … then, all at once, everyone began making noises of approval. Joe seemed unprepared for the suggestion; his eyes danced back and forth as he held up his hands in an attempt to restore order. “Hey, hey, hey—!” he yelled.

  Monk laid a hand on Lester’s shoulder. “If you want to get out of here …” he whispered. Lester shook off his hand. Moment of truth. If you want a chance to be heard, he thought, it’s right this second.…

  “All right!” he shouted as he stood up. “Okay! Shut up!”

  If Lester had claimed that he had a grenade in his hand and was about to pull the pin, he couldn’t have attracted more attention. Suddenly, the mess hall went still. In some sense, he was still the boss Even if they didn’t respect his opinion, at least they wanted to hear it. Better make it good, because you’re not going to get this break again.…

  “Joe’s right,” he said, addressing the faces around him. “It was my idea to go on strike, even if I was drunk when I said it.…” Precious few laughs. “And even if I am a bit hung-over, I still support the idea.…”

  Loud applause and yells started up. “Hold it!” he shouted, raising his arms. “Just hold everything!”

  The noise died away again. Nervous, yet managing to hide his trembling hands, Riddell slowly walked down the center aisle between the tables, gradually making his way toward the front of the room.

  “I’m in a favor of a strike,” he continued, “but you’ve got to know what you’re up against.…”

  “Don’t try to bullshit us,” someone behind him said.

  Lester didn’t look around. “No bullshit. I’m not trying to talk you out of anything. You just need to know the odds before you start.”

  He held up a finger. “One. ASWI’s not going to support us. The last union agreement with Skycorp specifically rules out a strike by any off-Earth employees for the life of the current contract, and that doesn’t expire for another seventeen months. That means any strike we call is going to be illegal, and neither ASWI nor the AFL-CIO is going to be there to back us up. We’ll be on our own.…”

  A woman at a nearby table spoke up. “So what? If it’s illegal, who gives a damn? What can Skycorp do about it?”

  “That’s a good question,” Riddell replied. “What it means is that Skycorp can legally fire everyone on this base, whether they were participating in the strike or not. Since you’re—since we’re all union members, that makes us all culpable in the eyes of the law. Look it up in your union book if you don’t believe me.”

  Again, there were murmurs from the crowd. Lester held up a second finger. “Two. The reason ASWI made that agreement with the company is because of the nature of what we do here. Now, maybe the Korean SPS project will be held up because we’re not shipping them aluminum-roll or solar cells anymore, but that’s not what’s going to get to them. It’s oxygen! If we won’t ship oxygen to Skycan or any other orbital operations …”

  He snapped his fingers. “They’ll have to shut everything down. Or go seriously into the red. What I mean is that, within two or three weeks, Skycorp and Uchu-Hiko and NASA and all the other companies that use lunar oh-two for life-support and propellant will either have to ship up LOX from Earth or start bringing people back to the ground because they don’t have anything for them to breathe. Either way, it’ll will cost ’em some serious money.”

  “Then that’s good leverage to use against them,” Quack Lippincott said. “They don’t give in, we don’t send ’em any more air. Isn’t that the general idea?”

  “Yes and no.” Riddell held up his hands to quell the noise before it could start again. “In theory, yeah, it’s a great bargaining tool … but only if the other guy’s playing clean.”

  He turned around slowly, pivoting on his feet to search out every eye he could find. “It’s leverage, sure, but it also means they have the legal right to play dirty,” he continued. “If you don’t know it already, there’s a special hangar at Phoenix Station for a military lander. It belongs to the 1st Space Infantry of the U.S. Marines. They built that lander just in case the Russians or the Japanese or someone else got nasty ideas about taking over Descartes by force. That’s the whole reason why the 1st Space was formed, to protect American space installations against hostile takeovers. So you know, and I know, that the First could easily deploy troops on the Moon.…”

  “You’re lying!” someone yelled. “Siddown and shaddup!”

  This time, though, there was no support for that lone opinion. “You know it’s true,” Lester went on without raising his voice. “There’s nothing secret about any of that. Now look at it from their point of view. An illegal strike. Critical supplies threatened, not to mention a precious trade agreement between the U.S. and Japan.”

  He stopped and looked at the hesitant faces arrayed around him. “We could have the posse coming down on us in a matter of days. And I shouldn’t have to remind you that there isn’t a single firearm on this base. A rapid-deployment force could overrun Descartes in a few hours, and all we could do is chuck a few rocks at them and use bad language.”

  Scattered coughs. Some mumbling. Everyone present knew that what Riddell had explained was true. Descartes Station was a mining operation, not a fortress. There had been no need to arm the base; any conceivable outside threat was supposed to be handled by the 1st Space. Yet no one had ever envisioned a day in which the cavalry itself would be the invaders.

  “So what are you saying?” asked Casey Engel. “Give it up? Don’t go on strike?”

  “I don’t much like that option,” Joe said.

  Lester glanced at him and nodded his head. “I don’t either,” he agreed, “but you have to know the risks involved before you—before we commit ourselves.” He faced the room again. “Okay, those are the drawbacks. Now here’s what we stand to gain.”

  Once more, he began to tick off points on his fingers. “One, if Uchu-Hiko buys Descartes from the company—and I received word yesterday that Skycorp’s already working on just that kind of deal—we’re all going to lose our jobs anyway. So it really doesn’t matter if Skycorp fires us for calling an illegal strike. We’re scre
wed if we do and screwed if we don’t.”

  Scattered laughter. Riddell grinned and held up another finger. “Two, if we make sure that this is publicized, it means that Skycorp can’t screw us without attracting public attention … and believe me, the first labor strike on the Moon is bound to make major headlines back on Earth. The Japanese like to conduct their business quietly. If they think acquiring Descartes is more trouble than it’s worth, they may not decide to sign the deal.”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? It’s a long shot, but if Uchu-Hiko decides to drop the ball because of a strike, then Skycorp doesn’t have a ready and willing buyer for the base. And if that’s the case, then we …”

  His eyes, still wandering around the mess hall as he spoke, lit on a corner of the room where he hadn’t looked before, and he saw Butch, her elbows propped up on the table, her face resting in her hands. She was gazing directly at him. The expression on her face was unreadable.

  Don’t think about that right now, he told himself. He deliberately turned his back to her. “Then we … then we’ve got a chance of keeping our jobs,” he finished. “Maybe. Like I said, it’s a long shot.”

  Whispers and murmurs coursed through the mess hall. “I don’t know about all this ‘long shot’ stuff,” Quack interrupted. “Let’s say Uchu-Hiko decides not to buy the base and Skycorp has to keep us. We’ve still staged an illegal strike. That’s bound to make the boys in Huntsville madder’n hornets. Who’s to say they won’t fire us anyway?”

  “Nothing,” Lester admitted, “except that they’ve staged one purge this year already. It cost them a lot of money to hire, train, and ship out new personnel to replace those they canned last April. Half of you guys represent a considerable dollar-investment for Huntsville. Somehow I have a hard time believing that they’ll dump all of us, because it’ll only mean that they have to replace us. That’s a lot for any company to absorb in one fiscal year. And they’ve got to keep Descartes operational in order to complete the Korean SPS.”