Asimov's SF, Sep 2005

by Dell Magazine Authors

  I pulled the little curtain open and slid out of my rack, the same sort of bunk you see on a nuclear submarine, bare feet on the deck, yawning, stretching, hands pressed against the upper bulkhead. Christ, I smell skunky again already. And it's five more days before my turn in the shower comes round.

  Somebody in one of the other curtained-off bunks farted softly in his sleep. Great.

  I got a set of coveralls out of my drawer, one of six new ones I had left, Dunbar neatly stenciled on every breast pocket, pulled on my felt deck shoes, turned and opened the tunnel hatch, crawled in and pulled it shut behind me. Swell. Light's burned out again. Wonder if there's any more left? How long ‘til the next consumable supplies lander shows up? Two months?

  Weird prickle in the back of my neck: I'll be gone by then.

  Pushed open the other hatch and crawled into the messhall. It was just another dormcan, with a kitchenette and some tables, bright fluorescent tubes lining the overhead.

  My old buddy Meade Patterson called out, “’ bout time you gotcher ass out of bed, Dunbar! Getcher coffee so we can get going!"

  "Up yours.” That got me the usual bird. Hell, you got to wonder about a man in his forties still wants everyone to call him “Meat.” I said, “You're just pissed off because I'm senior geologist on the planet."

  He snickered, “Not for long, ole buddy."

  Oh, yeah. Right. Time to hurry.

  * * * *

  Outside, it was a bright and sunshiny day, daylight now seventy hours old, sun well above the eastern horizon, grazing-incidence reflection gone from the landscape, though the shadows were still quite long, black fingers and smears reaching away from the rubble of Moonbase.

  I pushed up my gold sunvisor, so I could get a true-color look at the mooncar, and was struck by the mess we'd made of the place in only ten years. Not just the humps of buried habitats, but the trash and tracks, footprints of forty men churning up charcoal dust year in and year out. And lander stages. As far as the eye could see from ground level, lander stages. Since 1965, counting the three crashes, there had been over a hundred landings here, mostly setting down south and east of the Moonbase site, out on the mare part of the crater floor, ten manned, the rest supplies and hardware.

  I was always glad the crashes had been just supplies, fresh fruit, fresh underpants, whatever. Imagine having to bury someone here? Imagine that.

  Buckling vinyl straps over the instrument payload and the supply canisters we'd be dropping off at the observatory, Meat said, “Damn! These EVA suits are the best thing ever to come out of fucking Apollo!"

  I got in the left-hand seat and started clipping carabineers to D-rings on my suit. “How about the only thing?” Lot of bitterness about Project Apollo on the Moon. Seemed like a good idea at the time. The Army's Project Harvest Moon would use the Gemini M/C configurations to deliver men and hardware starting in ‘65. Meanwhile NASA would have the time to get the kinks out of Apollo, so we could use its five-man reentry capsules and three-man landers, would get quarterly crew rotations started in 1967.

  Meat got in beside me and started hooking up. “Oh, these mooncars are pretty good. Lot better than that Stirling jeep we started out with. That fucker never worked right!"

  I remember when they sent up film of the fourth and last Saturn C-5 exploding in the blue sky over Florida, big, bright, orange-and-black puff-ball blossoming above the pretty white clouds, bits and pieces showering into downtown Miami, starting all those fires.

  I remember thinking we should've known better, when Apollo 1 burned on the pad in January ‘65, killing those three NASA astronauts, but Apollo 2 flew just fine come August, and in September, me and three other guys climbed on top of a Titan IIIZ and set out for the Moon, with no way home.

  They'd sent us some tape, too, of the Senate hearings in 1970, when the Army was authorized to develop Gemini R and start bringing us back.

  So, meanwhile, I've been on the God-damned Moon for nine years.

  Meat said, “Let's get going. Sooner we can get up there, the sooner Carl can finish talking and we can be on our way. Jeez. That boy is nuts!"

  I slid the hand controller forward and the mooncar started rolling, wire tires flexing gently over the bumpy ground. “Oh, he's all right. You know Drake told me the both of them wanted to skip their rotation and stay on here even after the Gemini R comes on line?"

  "Both of ‘em are nuts."

  "Maybe so."

  Meat reached over and tried to clap me on the shoulder, but the Apollo suits weren't flexible enough to support that much arm rotation, so he patted my steering hand instead. “Well, you won't have to wait, buddy-boy! You'll be on your way home with the Russkis, this time next week."

  My eyes went up to the black sky reflexively. Nothing. Bright sun. Blue sliver of Earth hanging perpetually seven degrees above the middle of the western horizon. But Almaz 9 had been up there for two weeks already, the fourth manned Russian spacecraft to fly around the Moon, the first one to launch atop their new UR900 superbooster, with one of those big Oryol landers aboard.

  I think maybe the government wouldn't have agreed to a Russian “rescue mission,” but Gemini R-1, the first unmanned test, had come down in the middle of Riccioli, making no attempt to stop, leaving nothing but a big, bright star pattern in the dust. R-2 had worked, only a month ago, actually bringing home two tons of Lunar samples, but by then it was a done deal.

  Meat said, “Ole Wild Bill, by this time next month, you'll be home, docs'll be through with you, and that old wife of yours'll be so sore she'll need a wheelchair!"

  Old wife. As if we had nine years of catching up to do together? By this time, we were clear of the last layer of lander stages and space junk, and I slid the controller forward toward its stop.

  Meat said, “Hey, take it easy, Wild Bill! You crash our asses, neither one of us'll ever smell pussy again."

  I pulled back a little, though not before we took a good four-wheel bounce that made my teeth snap together, and said, “Meat, I ever tell you how much I hate being called ‘Wild Bill'?"

  He laughed, “About ten million times, Wild Bill."

  * * * *

  From the observatory at Site 5, fifteen klicks up into the north ringwall mountains, you get a good view back downslope to the mare floor of Riccioli. From up here, Moonbase looks like someone emptied a car trash bag full of old soda cans and crap all over a parking lot.

  I remember when they'd faxed up an illustration of the moonbase the Russians said they were going to build over at Mare Smythii, we'd all gotten a good laugh. So neat and orderly and clean. Compared to it, ours looked like some redneck trailer park.

  The observatory itself was just a mess of hardware, antennas, and telescopes scattered around on the dirt, no blue sky, no atmosphere, no reason for a dome. The pressurized part was just a hump with an airlock door in it, where Carl and Frank dragged an inflatable shelter up here and buried it by hand, with honest-to-God shovels.

  Nuts, all right.

  There'd been some discussion about stopping them from moving up here, radiation exposure and crap, but no one wanted to put them under arrest, so ... Sagan's voice crackled in my headphones, “Welcome to Emerald City! You got my stuff?” He was in one of the old Gemini moonsuits, of course, complete with vulcanized patches where the thing had gotten ripped, limited to ninety-minute EVAs. It'll be a long time before there's enough of the new ones to go around.

  Meat said, “Where's Drake?"

  Carl lifted a thumb, motioning at the shelter. “Inside soldering up a black box for the new radiotelescope project.” Another gesture, at the half-assembled steerable dish we'd trucked up here in a hundred pieces over the last few months.

  "You guys are taking a big risk, soldering inside a pressure tent. He burns a hole, the birm'll come down on him. All we'll be able to do is put up a marker."

  He shrugged, plainly visible in the pathetic old suit. “It's our risk. We'll take it."

  Meat said, “What's this new on
e do?"

  You could see Carl's eyes brighten right through the clouded old faceplate. “We're calling it Ozma II. Once we get the dish finished, Frank has this idea about some stuff we can look at. Tau Ceti. Maybe Epsilon Eridani..."

  "Great, more woo-woo."

  He said, “Bill, I showed you the equation."

  "Yeah, you did. Half the terms are unknowns. Wishful thinking."

  "Well ... we're on the fucking Moon. Can you think of a better place for wishful thinking?” He waved his arms up at the dead black sky. “Christ, you can see it at night, Bill! There are billions and billions of stars out there! Surely..."

  Meat said, “Don't call me Shirley."

  "What?” He'd already been lost in his dream, ready to treat us to another half-hour diatribe, that would wind up with him riding a spaceship, not to Mars, but to Barsoom.

  Meat said, “Ah, hell. Let's get this crap unloaded, so we can get on upslope and start setting out our own crap."

  * * * *

  It was quiet in the radio shack, and private, privacy something men wanted for their monthly call home. Anyway, we'd all learned to operate the equipment and didn't need help from Moonbase's lone Signal Corps officer, who was kept busy repairing all the old junk continually wearing out and breaking down.

  On the black and white TV screen, my son Billy was looking different than the last time we'd talked. He's good at this. Looking at the camera lens, not the TV screen on his end. Hard around the eyes still, though he'd been home from Viet Nam for three years, almost done with pre-med, I guess.

  He said, “You trimmed your beard again."

  I smiled and fluffed it with my fingers. It felt like steel wool. “Ah, it was starting to fill up my helmet."

  A grin. “Well, you look more like Castro now, less like the Old Man of the Mountain."

  "Where's yours?"

  He rubbed his narrow, square chin, preened a skinny little Cisco Kid moustache. “They're going out of fashion. I think I may chop the pony tail next."

  When he was a kid, everybody said he looked just like me; I don't think so. His chin was flatter, less cleft, nose narrower, straighter, longer, a lot more like his mother's brother Fred, if you ask me. “What the hell kind of shirt is that?” It looked like some kind of military tunic, complete with gold braid on the collar and cuffs.

  He smirked. “Polyester."

  "You mean like Ban-Lon?” I'd liked my Ban-Lon golf shirts.

  "Nah. Stiffer."

  "What color is it?"

  "It's purple, Dad."

  I snickered. “What, no more beads and sandals?"

  "Times change."

  I could see a shadow forming behind those hard eyes, even in the grainy TV picture, and figured I'd better talk about something else. “Times change, and we are changed within them."

  The eyes cleared suddenly. “Right. Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. Childeric, King of the Franks.” We'd always had that, Billy and me, if nothing else. No matter what else was wrong, I could take my son on a walk in the woods and we could chatter about smart-guy stuff.

  I said, “You still seeing that girl, uh...” Jesus, try hard ... “Sarah?"

  I could see he was pleased I remembered her name. “I am."

  "I liked the picture you faxed up. She's real pretty.” Tall blonde girl, with bright blue eyes. Kind of a big nose, but it fit her face. “How's your mother?"

  A frown. A little shrug. “Doing all right, I guess. Parts manager at a tractor place now."

  "That's good. Uh. She still seeing what's-his-name?"

  The frown deepened. A slow nod. What do I want him to do, tell me about his little half-brother now? The kid had been born in late 1966, well before we knew I was going to be stuck on the Moon, so even if Apollo had worked...

  I said, “School?"

  A sudden brightening. “I got early admission to Johns Hopkins, Dad! UVa's graduating me a year early so I can start med school in the Fall!"

  "Jesus, that's great!"

  He said, “I've applied for a NASA Space Medicine Fellowship. They say with my ten veteran's preference points, I'm a shoo-in."

  I'd only had five points when I got into BU in 1948. Then again, I wasn't wearing a Purple Heart, much less a Bronze Star. The Army faxed me his citation, but I still hadn't got him to talk about it. I said, “Why? I thought you were going into trauma medicine."

  He nodded. “That too. The Space Medicine Fellowship requires a double major."

  "I still don't understand."

  "Dad, there's a lot more talk, these days, about funding Nova/Rover as a real project. Since the Russians let Dr. Chelomei publish his book last year...” Vladimir Chelomei, Chief Designer of Spaceships, whose Almaz 9 and Oryol 1 would be coming to carry me home, already orbiting overhead. “Target launch date of the proposed Mars Expedition One is November 12, 1984."

  I said, “I'll believe that when I see it.” Then, “Jesus. I'll be fifty-six years old by then."

  Another slow nod. “Yeah. And I'll be thirty-four."

  I'd been thirty-seven the day I left for the Moon. “And you'd like to go."

  "Yeah. They'll be gone for three years. Twelve men, and they'll need a doctor. A good one."

  That future started unfolding in front of me. Oh, Christ. “Sure will. We've got a field surgeon, a physician, and a pharmacist up here, three out of forty.” Too old! I'll be too fucking old. “If it's not just a God-damned dream."

  I could see those hard eyes watching me carefully. Then he said, “There's something you need to know, Dad. Last month, they finally flight-qualified the Rover 1 nuclear rocket engine. The 75,000-pound thrust prototype is ready to go."

  "The solid-core jobbie from Project NERVA?"

  "Yeah."

  "So...?"

  "Dad, they're talking about bolting a Rover 1 on the back end of an S-IVB stage, mounting leftover equipment from the Apollo Applications Program, some of the Orbital Workshop components, on the front. There's enough Apollo/Saturn hardware left over in protected storage to fly three missions, now that they think they figured out why the rockets were blowing up. They're calling it Project Starover."

  I grunted. Starover. Jack London? No, not that. Those Dig Allen Space Explorer adventures that NASA engineer had written in the early sixties, when I was training for Gemini. Joe something. Green? Was that his name? I said, “No one's going to Mars with that setup."

  "No. Anyway, the Mars Excursion Module won't be ready before 1982, no matter how much money they throw at it. They're talking about flying precursor missions to three near-Earth asteroids, starting in 1977."

  All I could do was sit there.

  He smiled again, “There'll be a three-man crew for each mission. An astronaut-engineer, some kind of scientist, and a geologist."

  I said, “And this is funded."

  A shrug. “Almost. They won't vote on the next fiscal budget ‘til Fall anyway."

  "Doesn't sound like something McGovern would approve of."

  "He's been pretty quiet since the impeachment hearings."

  Damned hard to justify impeachment of a newly-inaugurated President, McGovern's anti-war ticket having made Bill Miller into a one-termer, despite the fine economy handed him by Nixon, but the Republicans, controlling both houses by slim margins, had tried. “Well, the hearings didn't go to the full House."

  "No. You did hear Vice President Eagleton's going to resign?"

  "No!"

  "On the news this morning.” He was tapping his temple, giving me a knowing look. Hell, there's a limit to what we can say. This is an open circuit.

  "So, who...?"

  "Sargent Shriver, they say."

  "The Peace Corps guy?” Great, another fucking Kennedy. You gotta wonder what people are thinking, with Jack and Bobby both holding Senate seats these days, one each in Massachussetts and New York. If Teddy hadn't run his car off that bridge and drowned, there'd be three of them by now.

  "They say McGovern will never run for re-election n
ow, since he made a fool of himself trying to pull us out of Viet Nam just when we were winning."

  "1976 is a long way off. Anything can happen."

  He smiled. “Maybe so, but the Democrats are already talking about Ed Muskie as their nominee."

  "Uh ... Maine?"

  "Yep. And the Republicans are looking at Ted Agnew."

  "Who?"

  "Governor of Maryland."

  "Never heard of him."

  He laughed. “I think he was still on the Baltimore School Board when you left for the Moon."

  "Jesus.” Time flies when you're stranded on another planet. “A Polack and, what? French?” Agnieux, maybe?

  "Greek. If he wins it, we'll go to Mars, Dad. And in the meantime, the Republicans say they want to be true to Nixon's vision."

  God damn Nixon's the one who got me stuck up here. But I didn't say that. Watch your mouth now. “So you think I should apply for this ... Starover, when I get back home?"

  "Yeah. You and Mr. Patterson are the world's only experienced field planetologists. It'll be you and him and a rookie."

  "I don't think Meat's going to want to go anywhere again anytime soon."

  He shrugged and grinned. Looked away from the camera for a second. Frowned. “Um. Time's about up."

  I said, “Yeah. It's good talking to you, Billy. When you were in Nam, I missing seeing you.” Missed seeing anyone, no calls from home for almost eighteen months.

  "Well. I'll be back soon. I'll get them to fax you the Starover details as soon as they're available."

  "Thanks. Hey, next time can you bring your sisters with you?” Millicent was almost sixteen now, little Beatrix ... what? Twelve? Jesus.

  His eyes softened at last. “I'll try, Dad. I'll sure try."

  The picture suddenly turned to static.

  * * * *

  Meat and I were at the turnaround point of our final traverse together, way up in the hills west of Moonbase, just below the crest of the rimwall. It's funny how little the Moon looks like the illustrations in all those science fiction magazines I read as a kid, or the movie George Pal made out of Heinlein's book Rocketship Galileo. What'd they called it? Destination Moon? I'd liked Rocketship XM better.

  Did I really think I'd one day walk on Mars? Maybe so.