He slung the canvas bag with the amplifier over his shoulder. “You want to go up?”
“Of course,” she said.
The elevator was a small hatchwire box, capable of carrying four people. It creaked as it ascended through the turret.
Ward loved the big observatories, these gleaming interfaces between humans and infinity. They were necessarily set high in remote places, where the wind blew and the stars murmured. This one, of course, was the champ.
He had become a cosmologist because astronomy seemed dull. He had never been much interested in the mechanics of stars, or the chemical properties of the planets. It didn’t matter to him that there were volcanoes on Pluto or nitrogen on Neptune. Nor did he care how the sun cooked its helium.
Give him the beginning and end of the universe. Edgar Ward on the track of the Big Bang. Yes, indeed. The Schramm was less a window on the galaxies than on creation.
They rose toward the telescope housing.
By God, this was the way to live.
Ward remembered how it had been when they’d opened the observatory. They’d invited the top people in the field to attend, but few had actually come. The shuttle flight scared most of them off. But Swifthawk had come from Kitt Peak, Yamoto from Princeton, Stevens from Hamburg, Coddie from Greenwich. Haswell and Corrigan at Fermi had received invitations, but they’d declined, thank you very much, Haswell claiming a stiff work load, Corrigan a bad back. Then they’d changed their minds and come. Ward had admired that. He’d been at Moonbase when they arrived, pale and shaken. But they’d come. And they’d endured the lunar flight to get here, where they’d all gathered in the well, and toasted the Schramm, and the future.
The elevator stopped. “Penthouse,” said Ward, opening up.
They walked out into the cage. It was a relatively narrow space about the length of an ordinary living room. Mesh panels rose not quite shoulder high on both sides. At the near end, a ladder descended to ground level.
Amy gravitated immediately toward the eyepiece. Its housing was mounted on a universal joint, and projected down from the ceiling. A padded chair had been installed for the observer. “Did they actually come up here?” she asked. “They could see the same image on the monitors downstairs, right?”
He smiled. “They loved it up here. They claimed the image was clearer, that it got distorted by electronic transmission.”
Their eyes met and they laughed.
She looked at the chair, and at him. “May I?”
“You’re in charge.”
“Yes.” She sat down, and adjusted the viewing tube. “Hard to believe.”
It was covered with dust.
“I won’t be able to see anything, will I?” She put her eye to the lens.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Depends on the status of the amplifier.”
She looked, and shook her head. “Dark. How long will it take? After we put it in?”
“Depends how good an image you want.” The unit would collect photons over a period of time and, on signal, analyze its data base, and provide a picture. The picture would be far sharper than anything one could see through a conventional telescope. “I’d say we should have something in forty minutes.”
“I’d like to wait that long then, if you don’t mind.”
“It’s the same picture you’ll see at Moonbase.”
“Don’t care. I’d like to see it here.”
Ward decided he liked her. He nodded, gave her a thumbs up. “Then that’s the way we’ll do it.”
The cage was equipped with a series of work lamps. He turned them on. In order to get at the amplifier, he would have to remove a secondary mirror. It would be awkward, but he could handle it.
“We have coffee,” said Amy, surprised. “Would you like some?”
Ward had forgotten. They’d always kept a coffee maker and an ample supply up here. There was even a styrofoam cup dispenser and a small basin with running water which, fortunately, they had not shut off. “Yes,” he said. “If you don’t mind.”
She ladled some out of a small green tin into the coffee maker. It smelled good. One of the lamps flashed against the bottom of the container. The beam crossed the room and set a bright circle on a distant wall.
“It’ll be a few minutes.”
“Okay.”
Ward produced a screwdriver.
The mirror assembly was protected by a glass frame. He began removing screws. When he’d finished, Amy handed him his coffee. “No cream or sugar,” she said. “Sorry.”
They pulled the frame loose and set it aside. The mirror was fitted into a set of flanges.
He rotated it and lifted it out. Amy removed the spare amplifier from the canvas bag, and spread the bag out on the floor of the cage. He understood and laid the mirror cautiously on the canvas to protect it from scratches.
The amplifier was a tapered black box with lenses at both ends. He could not see any damage, but then he had not expected to. He released two springs, turned it counter-clockwise, and pulled it free.
“Lovely,” said Amy.
“We’re in good shape.” He inserted the replacement unit, fitted the flanges into the collar, and rotated it. The springs clicked. Perfect.
He handed her a remote. “Would you like to activate it?”
“Sure,” she said. “My first official act.” She aimed it and squeezed. A red lamp blinked on, and the internal computer hummed.
“We’re becoming irrelevant,” he said.
“That seems a little strong.” Her voice might have echoed through the dome. “They need us to come over and make repairs.”
Ward was seated on the floor of the cage. It wasn’t comfortable. “There might be another phase coming for us. Maybe when—if—we go to the stars. But meantime you and I will just sit around the pool.”
Her eyes fastened on him. “Not even then, Edgar. If there was ever a mission made for robots, it’s starflight.”
Ward was thinking that she was correct, and that the probability was that no one would ever really go anywhere. And the final quake hit. It rocked the cage, and pitched Amy off the arm of the chair on which she’d been balanced. For a terrifying instant, he thought the cage would break loose. He splashed coffee down his shirt front and leg. Below, a klaxon erupted. The lights flickered, and died.
“Edgar? Are you okay?” Her voice was whispery. Frightened. The shocks were still coming.
Aside from the red lamp on the amplifier, they were in total darkness. “Yes.” The klaxon continued to wail.
She moved close to him. “This is going to be a trip to remember.” She stiffened.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was never like this under the previous management.”
They sat in the dark and waited.
“We’ll be fine,” Ward said. “After we’re sure things have settled down, we’ll clear out.”
“Is the elevator working? Can you tell?”
“No. The lights are out.”
“How do we get down?” She almost concealed the quiver in her voice.
“There’s a ladder. We’ll be okay.”
Conversation in the dark, whatever the specific circumstances, tends to become intimate, takes on a dimension of truth that lamplight dissipates.
“So,” said Ward, feeling her proximity more intently than he had at any other time, “how do you like the Moon so far?”
“It’s a little scary,” she admitted. “But, if I had to go through a quake, I’m glad you were along.”
“Thanks,” he said. He used his remote to silence the klaxon.
“I wanted to come to the Moon,” she told him, “because this is where you get your ticket punched. You run the Schramm, you get to meet everybody. They all have to deal with NASA/Smithsonian’s director. They’ll want to keep me happy. I expect to put in my two years, and go back to a choice assignment.” He could sense that she was smiling. “Like you.”
“What makes you think it works like that?”
“Hard to see why it wouldn’t.”
“You’re going to find that people are more apt to remember the things you’ve denied them. I wouldn’t want to discourage you, but I fully expect to spend the rest of my career staying ahead of a lynch party.”
The jolts lessened and became infrequent. And stopped.
The darkness was not quite stygian: he could see his hand in the glow of the status lamp.
“Edgar, do we have a flashlight?”
“No,” he said. “Not up here. We have a few in the annex.”
She laughed.
“What?”
“I think we’ve had a demonstration of why we shouldn’t be out here.”
Maybe this is why we should be out here.
He heard her moving around. “I think the coffee maker’s still working. And the telescope. We’ve got the important stuff.”
“Good.” He sighed. It was a poor way to end his long association with the observatory. “No point putting it off,” he said. “Let’s start down.”
“Wait a minute, Edgar. I haven’t seen the quasar yet.”
“You still want to bother with that?”
“After all this? Of course I do.”
When the red lamp went green, Amy was already in the observer’s chair. Ward heard the clean metallic sound of the eyepiece moving, and then the sharp intake of her breath. “It’s beautiful.”
When she had finished, he took his turn.
The quasars, seen through the Schramm, were always spectacular. On this night, as Ward finished up what he considered the meaningful portion of his career, none had ever been more so.
4C-1651 was a brilliant blood-red star.
More than a star: a fire in the night. A blaze. A conflagration, frozen in time and space. It was a dazzling beacon on the far edge of creation, removed from him by unthinkable immensities. The photons entering the telescope’s system of lenses and mirrors had begun their journey billions of years before the sun was born. Before the lights in the Milky Way had come on.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. “You’re right,” said Amy. “This is the place to see the show.”
The descent was not difficult. Halfway down, Amy called his attention to a cool breeze. “This place is drafty,” she said. Ward had never used the ladder before, and he ascribed it to their exposed position. But when they got to the bottom, he detected no change.
They started through the dark, across the floor, toward the passageway.
“Edgar, you don’t think we’ve sprung a leak, do you?”
“No.” Punch a hole in the air seal, and you got a catastrophic event. Right?
Ward remembered the area as being generally open, but they encountered consoles and shelf units and work tables everywhere. After he got poked in the eye by something that fell over on top of him, he walked with a hand extended in front of his face.
They found a wall, and a few minutes later they arrived at the airlock. He located the control and tried the GO button. “Power’s off here, too,” he said. “We’ll have to crank it.”
Her voice came out of the dark. “Can I help?”
“Just stand clear.” The emergency panel provided access to a wheel. He turned it and counterweights moved in the walls. He heard the metal door lift.
Amy moved past him to check progress. “Keep going,” she said. “The passageway’s dark, too.”
Starlight spilled through. When the door was about halfway up, they slipped underneath.
“Everything down except the telescope and the coffee maker,” said Amy. “How do you figure it?”
“Damned if I know. That’s the kind of stuff I leave to the technicians.”
“I’m anxious to be out of here,” she said.
“I think maybe we are losing air. If so, the dome’s going to get cold. And that means the equipment will take a beating.” He stared out across the lunar terrain. “Damn. First thing we do when we get to the flyer is let Moonbase know.” He held up his hands, trying to gauge which way the air was moving.
Back the way they’d come.
It was probably being drawn into the dome. There were ducts on both sides of the lock. He pulled over a chair and stood on it to reach one. “It’s going in here.”
“Maybe it’s just circulating.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then what?”
He tried the other one. And shook his head. “Same here. Maybe there’s a hairline break somewhere in the system. We’ve got a couple dozen of these things scattered around. I hope they’re not all sucking air.”
They walked quickly through the passageway, grateful that they were able to see again. At the annex lock, Ward pressed the control, not really expecting it to work. It didn’t.
Amy already had the emergency panel open. She pulled on the wheel, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Let me,” he said. He twisted it. Put his weight to it.
Ward shifted his position. It was made of rippled plastic with handgrips. But he strained without result. “Uh-uh,” he said, at last.
She looked at the closed door. Looked at him. Fear dawned in her eyes. “Edgar—”
He tried again. And gave up.
“There might be a vacuum behind it,” she said.
Panic hovered out on the edge of awareness. They could see the flyer, resplendent in starlight, on the plain.
“How about the commlink?” she said. “Maybe we can get help.”
“Everything’s dead.”
“We know the coffee maker’s getting power. How about we try tying into that?”
“I’m not a technician, Amy. Would you know how to do it?” She shook her head. “What else do we have?”
He tried the wheel again, shouted at it, gave a final fruitless yank.
“Edgar, is there another way out?”
“There’s an airlock in the rear of the dome. But we don’t have suits.”
“There are no suits in the dome?” Her amazement at the stupidity of the arrangement was apparent.
“We’ve never had a reason to keep any out here.” Ward tried to think. “We need to get a commlink working. Which means we’ll have to string cable down from the cage.”
“That sounds like a lot of cable. Where do you keep it?”
His heart sank. “In the annex.”
“Behind the door.”
“I’m afraid so.” My God.
“This place is certainly well laid out for an emergency.” Her voice was getting an edge. “Look,” she said. “Moonbase monitors seismic events, right? They must know we’ve had a quake.”
“I hope so. They might suspect we’re in trouble. If they do, they’re trying to raise us right now. When we don’t respond, they’ll come looking.”
“But—?”
“It’s late at Moonbase. Almost two in the morning. I doubt anyone will even notice there’s activity until they come in tomorrow and read the printouts.”
“Wonderful.”
“I’m sorry. I guess we’ve become complacent.”
“I guess so.” Overhead, a comsat was moving. Twinkle, twinkle.
“Maybe they’ll get worried,” he said, “when the Schramm doesn’t come back up on the circuit.”
“They might. But that won’t be until tomorrow morning either. Remember we told them we could be down for six hours.”
Ward’s stomach felt cold.
“Maybe we could disconnect one of the commlinks and take it to the cage?”
He saw no other choice. But he didn’t know a thing about them. And they’d be working in the dark.
She looked at him, and anger flashed. “Come up with something, Edgar.”
He looked away from her. Toward the floor. Up at the comsat.
Her eyes followed his. “If we had even a flashlight,” she said, “we could sit here and bounce an S.O.S. off the thing.”
The search for the flashlight was desperate, swift, and futile. They moved through the dark dome, yanking open drawers, feeling tabletops, st
ruggling with cabinets. Ward’s frustration raged. How could they have been so negligent? What was the point of compartmenting if you had to be in the annex to survive?
How could he have been so dumb?
They groped through doors and across desks. He checked the washroom. She examined the operations office.
Almost two hours had passed since the quake. And the air was beginning to feel a trifle stuffy.
The telescope towered overhead. “You know,” she said, “we’ve got a quasar inside that thing. And we can’t produce a goddam flashlight.”
He sat back on a desktop. “Not a very auspicious start for you,” he said.
She banged a door shut. “Nothing,” she said. “I can’t believe there isn’t one here somewhere.”
Quasar. She was right: their quasar was brighter than a thousand galaxies. Why did they need a flashlight? With an index finger he couldn’t see, he drew an imaginary line out of the eyepiece toward the side of the cage. Then down onto the floor of the dome. Toward and through the slightly less black patch of darkness at the airlock into the passageway. And up into the sky. Four lines. Three changes of direction. “Amy,” he said, “there’s a mirror in the washroom.”
She did not answer.
He was redrawing his lines. No reason why it should not work. “My watch case is reflective. That makes two.”
“Edgar, what are we talking about?”
“You’re right,” he said. “We’ve got light. All we have to do is get it to the comsat.”
She touched his wrist. “It might be possible.” Back out in the passageway, where they could see, she produced a pocket computer and released the cover. Stars glittered in the polished metal. Not perfect, but close enough.
Three.
The washroom mirror was metallic. It was framed over the basin, about the size and dimensions of a medicine cabinet. Pieces of the wall came out with it.
They selected a location on the floor that combined lines of sight with the cage and the passageway. When they were satisfied, they set a chair in place and put the washroom mirror on it. “Once we’ve got the angle, we’ll tie the mirror down to keep it steady.”
A Voice in the Night Page 18
