The Tranquillity Alternative

by Allen Steele

  “Watch and learn,” Parnell said, although he made certain that Dooley didn’t watch too closely.

  He switched the tractor’s radio transmitter to a different frequency that only he knew, then tapped a six-digit code number into the keypad beneath the transmitter. There was a short pause, then the digital readout above the radio displayed six zeros. At the same moment, electric motors opened the fence gates, allowing them entry into the compound.

  Okay, Dooley said. You sent a radio password. I’m impressed. He leaned back in his seat as much as his life-support pack would allow. Real impressed.

  Parnell smiled to himself as he grasped the oversized knob of the stick-shift and moved the tractor into gear. Dooley didn’t know the half of it. The regolith between the fence and the crater wall was crisscrossed with tiny wires, a motion detector that would set off the guns if the proper code wasn’t received by the bunker on this particular frequency. Moreover, only the tractors contained radios capable of transmitting on this wavelength; none of their hardsuit radios could do the same. This meant that the only way into Sabine Crater was inside a tractor; an individual on foot would be shredded by the gyrojet guns if he attempted to gain entrance. Mines could be dodged, if one knew the exact pattern in which they had been laid out or if an intruder had a metal detector. This way, only someone driving a tractor from Tranquillity Base who knew the correct code sequence could enter the crater.

  Yet there was no sense in letting Dooley know this. So far as Parnell was concerned, this man wasn’t really Paul Dooley. Even if Cris Ryer was working with him, she didn’t know the code … and neither of them knew that the defense perimeter worked both ways, coming and going.

  Welcome to my little rattrap, he thought.

  Their caterpillar treads bumping over small stones and spewing little plumes of dust, the two tractors moved through the gate and down the access road to the lip of the crater, following the arrows on signs posted along the way. The road led up the crater wall and through a narrow passage which had been excavated in the crater lip. As he drove into the pass, Parnell downshifted to accommodate the steeper grade inside the crater and switched on the headlights.

  For a few moments he could see little but the dense shadows thrown by the walls on either side of his vehicle. Then he was through the pass; Sabine Crater opened up before him, and there at the bottom lay Teal Falcon.

  At first glimpse it seemed as if nothing man-made existed inside the crater. Everything was the same dull-gray color; not until the tractors moved slowly down the access road that wound around the interior wall did one realize that this was the result of camouflage paint. The small, squat dome of the control bunker, the short masts of the telemetry array, even the hatches of the six missile silos on the far side of the crater—all had been disguised to fool Earth-based telescopes, LEO spysats, even orbiting lunar probes.

  Parnell only half-listened to the exclamations of his passengers as he maneuvered the tractor down the roadway. If Laughlin and Dr. Z were right, he was leading a saboteur—possibly two saboteurs—straight to the heart of one of America’s most lethal defense systems. He was taking a terrible risk; his only hope of thwarting him, her, or them was the fact that he was forewarned, and that he probably knew a little bit more about this system than they did.

  He glanced down at the passenger compartment. As if he were reading his mind, Jay Lewitt looked up at him. Their eyes met for a moment; Lewitt nodded his head, then pointedly fixed his gaze upon Dooley, who was studying the complex through the windows.

  Parnell almost sighed with relief. At least he wasn’t going into this alone. Dooley might have an accomplice, but Gene also had his own backup. That, and the pistol hidden in the thigh pocket of his suit, gave him some reassurance.

  The road leveled out as the tractor reached the bottom of the crater. Hauling its wheel to the right, Parnell drove directly to the launch bunker’s dome, putting on the brakes when he was a dozen yards away. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw that Cris Ryer had brought Tractor Two to a stop just behind him.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’re here.”

  The dome was only the most visible part of the Teal Falcon bunker complex, an anteroom containing a couple of oxygen tanks for replenishing life-support packs and a few maintenance tools. In the center of the floor was a large round hatch, which Parnell unlocked by tapping another six-digit code into a keypad on the wall. The hatch popped open; Lewitt raised it, exposing the top of a ladder leading down a sixty-foot shaft into the lunar crust. Fluorescent light fixtures along the mooncrete walls automatically flickered to life as Parnell led the way down into the bunker.

  The bunker was composed of two underground spheres, both containing three levels, connected to each other by a single passageway between the second level of each sphere. They had been excavated by U.S. Space Force crews using small nuclear charges, similar to the methods used for subsurface bomb tests in the Nevada desert. After the chambers had been formed and decontaminated, polystyrene balloons had been inflated within each sphere, forming airtight inner walls which were later protected by aluminum outer walls. Once floors, ladders, bulkheads, furnishings, and equipment had been installed and an airlock built on Level 1A of Unit A, the shaft leading down to Unit B was filled and permanently sealed; the shaft in Unit A was the only way in or out of the bunker.

  Teal Falcon was self-sustaining, its electrical power coming from a small nuclear generator placed in another underground sphere within the crater, its water and oxygen drawn from subsurface tanks near Unit B. It contained living quarters for four men, and was designed to sustain them for up to four weeks. It was capable of surviving all but a direct hit from a one-megaton nuclear warhead, but that hardly mattered; an incoming missile from Earth would be detected long before it reached ground zero, by which time the launch crew would have fired its own birds in retaliation and retreated from the bunker.

  In a word, Teal Falcon was a fortress.

  Or better yet, a doomsday machine.

  Fitting nine people into the airlock was a tight squeeze, but fortunately it had been designed to accommodate the USSF military engineers who had built the complex. Once the ceiling hatch was shut, Parnell flipped open a wall panel near the inner hatch and activated the pressurization controls.

  As air rushed into the compartment, electromagnetic scrubbers kicked in, cleansing their suits of all the dust they had collected. A small dust storm swirled around them as the grime was swept down through the metal grids in the floor. Even here, Parnell recalled, there was a fail-safe method of protecting the base: a candy-striped toggle switch inside the airlock control panel, labeled VOID, would blow out the airlock and render it unusable to forces attacking the base from within the crater.

  In the old days processing through the airlock would have taken a couple of hours, while their bodies absorbed enough nitrogen to prevent a mass-attack of the bends. Fortunately, NASA had managed to invent zero-prebreath suits before its life-sciences budget got slashed. As a result, they only had to endure each other’s company for about thirty minutes before the indicator chimed, signaling that it was safe to exit the airlock.

  Unlike Tranquillity Base, the Teal Falcon bunker had been pressurized by the last crew to depart, so that the base could be used quickly in the event of war. The hatch opened into a larger chamber surrounding the airlock. Its cold metal walls were lined with racks and lockers.

  “We’ll stow your suits here,” Parnell told the others once he had removed his helmet. “You’ll find jumpsuits in the lockers … sorry, but you’ll have to look around until you find something that fits.”

  As Berkley Rhodes took off her helmet, she gasped at the sudden rush of frigid air. She wisely didn’t complain, but went wide-eyed at the thought of undressing in front of seven men. “Uhh … Gene, isn’t there a place where a lady can change in privacy?”

  Parnell shook his head as he disconnected the feedlines from his backpack. “Sorry, ma’am, but the people who built this p
lace didn’t think women would ever be allowed down here.” He cast a glance at Dooley and Leamore, who were standing on either side of her. “I’m sure these gentlemen will turn their backs, though. Right, guys?”

  Leamore nodded distractedly; he was too busy disconnecting his air and electrical cables to wonder what Rhodes looked like in her skivvies. Aachener and Talsbach were ahead of him; they had already pulled off their life-support packs and were helping each other out of their suits, murmuring to each other in German. Bromleigh was, as usual, keeping his customary silence as he patiently went through the de-suiting routine. Ryer apparently didn’t care one way or another; she was taking the usual shortcuts known to professional astronauts.

  Dooley, as always, was utterly lost. He had finally managed to wrench his helmet off the ring collar; he, too, gasped at the first rush of frigid air. “Why’s it so goddamn cold?” he yelped, then he wrinkled his nose. “Jesus, it smells like gunpowder in here!”

  “That’s moondust you smell,” Lewitt told him. He turned around to help Dooley out of his suit. “The place hasn’t been used in three years … what else would you expect?”

  Parnell saw the break for which he had been searching. “You’re right,” he said, exhaling a plume of steamy air. “It’s pretty cold. No telling how the CLLSS is operating, either.” His backpack and helmet off and stowed on a rack, he detached the thick gloves from the wrist cuffs and shoved them into the locker he had just opened. “I’ll go below and check the system, make sure everything’s up to par.”

  “Need help?” Ryer asked.

  “No thanks. I can manage.” Without bothering to remove the rest of his suit, Parnell trudged over to the floor hatch, hauled it open, and climbed down the ladder to Level 2A.

  The logistics deck was slightly wider than the one above it. It was packed with consoles and IBM computer mainframes, their lights glimmering in the darkness until he found the switch that turned on the ceiling fluorescents. It didn’t take him long to find the master panel of the closed-loop life-support system. He spent a few minutes reactivating the base’s oxygen supply and adjusting the thermostat until it was reset at a relatively comfortable 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

  The ceiling ducts creaked as dusty warm air began to seep through the vents. He could hear muted conversation from the suit-up room above, along with a little bit of dry laughter. Once again, Parnell was alone for a few minutes.

  He reached into his thigh pocket and pulled out the automatic he had taken from the base commander’s office. Now he had to find a place to hide it: somewhere he could grab it in a hurry.

  The narrow passageway leading to Unit Two was open, its hatch slightly ajar; beyond that were the bunker’s living quarters. That was secure—he could always stash the gun beneath a mattress or in a galley drawer—but it was also too far away. He needed a spot close to the ladder leading down to the bottom level of Unit A.

  There. A small, narrow space between one of the IBM mainframes and the bulkhead, close to the hatch leading down to level 3A. He knelt as low as the cumbersome hardsuit would allow and shoved the gun into the darkness. When he withdrew his hand, the Colt remained in place, squeezed between the back of the computer and the wall. It couldn’t be seen, yet it was near enough to the hatch that he could snatch it in a second.

  He stood up and walked across the deck back to the ladder. Perhaps he had a chance after all….

  Ryer was removing the diskette from a pocket of her hardsuit when she heard Parnell climbing back up the ladder. Her back was turned to the floor hatch, but she didn’t want to risk letting him spot the diskette again. Once had been enough to arouse his suspicions; if he saw it again, especially here and now, its presence would raise too many questions.

  The jumpsuit Cris had found in the locker where she had stowed her helmet and gloves was one size too small for her, and she had intended to search through the other lockers until she located a larger one. She didn’t have a choice now, though; she hastily picked up the one-piece garment and shoved the diskette into a breast pocket.

  She was beginning to step into its legs just as Parnell reached the top of the ladder. She glanced over her shoulder at him; their eyes met for a moment, then his face reddened and he quickly looked away, obviously embarrassed at catching a glimpse of his second-in-command in her undies. She hid her smile by turning her head; pretending that nothing had happened, he walked over to help Rhodes hang her hardsuit on a rack.

  The chivalry of Southern gentlemen. There were times, Cris had to admit, when heterosexuality had its advantages.

  The others were nearly finished getting dressed. Zipping up the front of the suit—it was a little small, although she reckoned Laurell would have enjoyed the way it clung to her body—Cris looked over at Dooley to see how he was doing. With Lewitt’s help, he had finally managed to struggle out of his hardsuit. The jumpsuit he’d found was not his size, either, and the tight fit did little to flatter his body, but at least he had stopped bitching about it. He caught her gaze for a fleeting second, then looked away.

  Uwe Aachener and Markus Talsbach had the benefit of experience and training. They had long since traded their hardsuits for jumpsuits and were now leaning idly against the outer airlock wall, murmuring to each other in German as they studied the Americans with ill-disguised contempt. Talsbach checked his wristwatch, but Aachener didn’t look away when Cris’s eyes met his; judging from the leer on his face, he must have been watching her the entire time she had been wearing nothing but bra and panties.

  He gave her a salacious wink, and it was Ryer’s turn to blush and avoid eye-contact. There were also times, she reflected, when she was goddamned glad to be gay.

  As she bent to try on the pair of high-top sneakers she found in the locker—at least these were too large rather than too small—she noticed that the diskette made a slight bulge against her left breast. If she could see it, someone else might, too. Maybe if she turned around, she might be able to switch it from her breast pocket to …

  Her train of thought was broken as Parnell clapped his hands for attention. “Okay, people,” he called out. “If you’re ready, then we’re going below.”

  Too late. She would just have to hope that no one took a close look at her.

  There were muttered comments as everyone picked up the gear they had brought with them from Conestoga: Bromleigh and Rhodes their airtight camera cases, Dooley his laptop computer, Lewitt and Parnell the envelopes containing the passwords that the U.S. Government, adding insult to injury, had denied her.

  Ryer finished lacing up her sneakers, then stood up, empty-handed but certainly not empty-pocketed, turned around, and fell in behind Parnell as he led the way down to the heart of the machine.

  So far, so good …

  From “The Lost Frontier” by Ellen Schaeffer; The New Yorker, April 30, 1992

  The Dole Administration’s announced intention to sell Tranquillity Base to Koenig Selenen GmbH has been largely dismissed by the shrinking cadre of space supporters as a wholly political decision, a blatant attempt at populism made in an election year by a Presidency which was clearly losing ground to the opposition. To be sure, there’s some truth to this allegation: Dole was clearly embarrassed by the revelation that he had authorized the first-use of the Teal Falcon nuclear arsenal during Desert Storm. He attempted to soothe the public by shutting down Tranquillity Base, but by then the scandal was out of control; the only possible recourse was to sell the abandoned base to the Germans, in effect washing his hands of the entire matter.

  But what space advocates neglect to mention, perhaps even purposefully, is that almost none of Dole’s election opponents have come to the defense of Tranquillity Base. Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, the apparent Democratic front-runner after Super Tuesday, has actually gone on record to support the White House decision, albeit in terms of widespread military cutbacks. Senator Albert Gore, Senator Paul Simon, and Senator Tom Harkin have remained mute on the question.

  Former Californ
ia governor Jerry Brown alone has opposed selling Tranquillity Base. He proposes that the United States use the base for exactly the same purposes as Koenig Selenen intends: as a lunar mining colony and, in the long run, as a site for disposal of high-level radioactive wastes from the same nuclear power plants that Brown says should be shut down. The only difference between Dole’s stance and Brown’s is that Brown wants to keep business within the United States; however, no American corporation has any interest in pursuing high-risk space enterprise, while Koenig Selenen is clearly gearing up to accept Dole’s offer.

  The majority of voters aren’t paying much attention to Governor Brown’s counterproposal, except perhaps as another indication of how radical his campaign has become. The pro-space constituency is small, and not a particularly vocal one at that; all it takes to overwhelm their plaintive cries for the renewal of the sixties-era “High Frontier” is the mention of a single word: deficit.

  That word alone is a massive, towering obstacle which none of the other candidates are willing to assault. Myopic or not, both parties agree that selling Tranquillity Base is a certain way of reducing the deficit, even though the base absorbed less than three percent of the federal budget when it was operational. It’s a visible target, it’s politically incorrect, and it makes for a great sound-bite on the evening news. It takes at least sixty seconds to give good reasons for keeping Tranquillity Base in American hands; a candidate’s opposition to Tranquillity Base—“Let’s sell the moon base, and sell it now!”—takes only two seconds before the network affiliates cut to commercials.

  And this is the way we’ve reached the end of America’s greatest dream, the conquest of space. Born out of World War II, nourished by the Cold War, matured by grand visions of permanently settling the Moon and Mars … now relegated to the retirement home like a doddering grandfather who thinks Eisenhower is still President and his grown-up children haven’t started dating yet. And the children, entranced with the instant gratification supplied by new toys like home-computer networks, virtual reality, and fifty cable channels of reruns, are only too willing to let Gramps die so they can inherit his money and fight over the silverware.