by Dan Eaton
We walked a little further in silence and then I asked her, “Why? Why are you helping me?”
“Um-mm…, you need help? Or because I like Myra and she’s not got a chance with you until you get past this Nina thing. Or…” She swung around, wrapped her arms around me, and suddenly was a very feminine presence pressed tightly up against me as she looked up at me with her soft, chocolate eyes and said, “Now that I know you find me hideous, maybe I just like the challenge of making you my boyfriend and I need Nina out of the way just like Myra does.” She backed away just as swiftly as she had pressed up against me and started laughing. In between fits of laughter, she said, “Oh, Bryce, if only you could see the look on your face right now.”
“Nice, Thank you, I guess.”
We finally made it to Seline’s Bistro. I said, “I never told your dad, but I really like the name of the place. Nice tie into the location without hitting you over the head with it.”
Ananyu gave me a bright smile and said, “Actually, the restaurant is named after my papa’s favorite aunty. By happy coincidence, her name also ties in nicely with the location as you said.”
We stopped on the way in and saw Willie so he knew where he could find me. Ananyu sat me down in the restaurant where she could talk to me while she folded napkins and put out place settings. Chef Patel came out to say hi and Ananyu had him bring out a dish of his latest experiment. He had made up candied pecans and they tasted great. I had no clue what he used for the cinnamon flavor and decided it probably really didn’t matter.
Eventually, Willie showed up and we said goodbye to Ananyu and headed off to get ready for the Gogo game. Javin and Meadow from school joined us along with enough of the adults from our Gogo group that we were able to spend the afternoon in team play. We were having so much fun, I actually lost track of time and it was almost five o’clock before Willie asked me what time I needed to be home. We quickly broke up the game and then I headed home from Willie’s place. I took off at a run and passed through the segment directly to the west of the segment Willie’s home was in and then headed south to our segment. Coming in from the western end of our segment allowed me to avoid the Cherneski’s house in case Myra was about and I managed to squeak in the door just as the clock on the wall hit five o’clock. Mom insisted that I get cleaned up and change into some nicer clothes. When I came back down, she handed me a stack of boxes, handed Dad the birthday cake, and then led us off to the cafeteria.
Once we arrived and got everything ready it didn’t take long before people started showing up. The usual suspects started trickling in, my classmates and their parents with the exception of Myra. Christine showed up along with Mom’s boss Dr. Belvert, some of Dad’s co-workers, Miss Gayle, and of course Sandy and some of the gang from Mussconny Machine. The new kids from freshman class and their parents started showing up, each looking a little unsure about what was going on. Mom and I had visited each of their homes and had personally invited them. We figured they’d get used to how parties worked at the habitat eventually, yet I remembered how strange it felt at first and wanted to make them feel as welcome as possible. Dr. Taylor and Nurse Oak from Medical surprised me by showing up. I figured with the growth in the number of people at the Habitat, they’d probably had enough of these things to go to.
After things had been going on for a while, Mom got everyone’s attention and they sang me happy birthday. I wasn’t expecting much in the way of presents, although Mom had a pile of them for me. She handed me the one from her and Dad. I opened the box and there was an authentic Cardinals jersey. It was navy blue with red sleeves and collar which each featured a white stripe, the Cardinal’s bat logo was emblazoned on the front, and the back had Yugo 15 for my favorite player and his number. This had to be one of the most expensive jersey’s in existence because they had actually ordered it from the Major League Baseball shop instead of getting the special dispensation from the Cardinals to have it made locally like Myra had done the year before. The shipping must have really sucked.
The next box was from Sandy and was heavy for its size. I wasn’t surprised, though I was very grateful when I opened it to find two Coke cans.
Sandy said, “So, uh, I know you still like the stuff, so I figured you’d enjoy them.”
I gave Sandy a thumbs up and thanked him. Next up was a small box from Ananyu and her parents. Inside I found a bag of the candied sham pecans Chef Patel had me try at the restaurant.
“You really seemed to enjoy them so Papa said we should make a present of them to you.”
I really had liked the pecans and made sure they knew it as I thanked the Patels.
I thought I was done with the presents, when Mom handed me a very small box and said, “Christine brought this, but said it’s not from her.”
I opened the box and there was a note. It said, “IOU until better times.” I looked over at Christine, who gave me an encouraging nod. The note had to have been from Myra. Christine didn’t want the two of us talking, yet she must have allowed an exception since she was the one who brought the note to me. The note made me sad because I missed Myra and wished she could be at the party, on the other hand, it gave me hope that maybe Christine was making progress with Myra since she allowed her to send me the note.
The party ran on for a while, nevertheless, it eventually started to die down. That was when I noticed my parents were sitting with Miss Gayle, Christine, and Sandy and they were all looking at me like something was up. I wandered over to the table and said, “Whatever it is, I didn’t do it.”
They laughed and then everyone else looked at my mom and dad and Mom said, “Bryce, Sandy has another birthday present for you. Before he gives it to you I just want you to know your father and I have thought long and hard about this. Neither of us is totally comfortable with this, however, it’s a good opportunity for you and maybe it’s okay if we let the little bird take a hop out of the nest for just a little bit. Go ahead Sandy, tell him.”
Sandy looked at me for a moment and then said, “So, uh, Bryce, remember that canister assembly I had you help me with three weeks ago?”
It had been a challenging, yet fun job that was hard to forget. I said, “You mean that piece for the Sunshine guys we sent on to the Fabrication plant?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. So, uh, Sunshine Inc. has put together a mission out to the Earth-Moon Lagrange point to try it out. They asked me to come along in case there’s any issues with the hardware and I’m allowed to bring a helper. I’d like you to come along if you’re interested.”
I was totally shocked by what Sandy had asked me and just stared at him for a second before I said, “You meant it? This isn’t a joke is it? That would be so cool! But what about—-”
Miss Gayle spoke up and said, “Missing school with your favorite teacher who came all the way to the Moon to share your adventures with you? Don’t worry about it. I’ll just load you up with so much homework, you won’t have time to miss me.”
I was glad she was saying it with a smile on her face and I hoped she was kidding about the amount of homework. I could see how after coming to the Moon to be with us kids, she might be a little disappointed that the first adventure would be one in which I would leave her and my classmates behind.
“I, and the rest of the school, will also be expecting a multi-media report from you on this little outing due no later than one week from your return.”
Christine spoke up and said, “Bryce, before I can permit you to go, you’ll have to pass the suit orientation class. If all goes well, you won’t be working in a vacuum, yet the rules for this work specify you have to be wearing a full vacuum rated suit and not just a transport suit like you wore on the lunar shuttle. Report to Sam Tanner tomorrow morning at the Security office and she’ll get you started on the training.”
We left the party shortly after that. I had thanked Sandy for asking me to go with him and Mom and Dad walked with me back to the house. Dad was excited for me, I could tell, however Mom was reserv
ed. I mean, I could tell she was happy for me. She was also worried and trying not to show it. I gave her a big hug when we got home and told her not to worry before I went to bed. Sleep didn’t come easy because on one hand, I was worried about passing the suit class, while on the other hand, I was really excited about the trip on the other.
CHAPTER THREE
Exile
Good morning fellow NLH residents. It’s Monday, July 19th, 2038.
In financial news today, on the Lunar Stock Market shares of Mussconny Machine are trading at $29.25 a share, Mussconny Fabrication at $31.94 a share, Hotel Whipple shares are at $30.13. O’Reilly’s Shellfish Company is up at $24.44 a share, CDB Farms is trading at $24.66 a share and MM Brewing is at $2.52.
Transcor Corporation is pleased to appoint Neal Stoddard as executive VP of their Lunar Projects division. Neal will be making periodic visits to NLH and other lunar habitats to inspect progress on Transcor’s various projects. Please give him a warm welcome when he has an opportunity to visit here.
I went with Mom and Dad down to breakfast. We went a little earlier than normal since I wasn’t heading off to regular school this morning. Instead, I had to report to Sam for the suit training. We were sitting there talking about what we expected our days to be like when Mom mentioned she’d be working with Blayze’s mom, Marisa Daniels, today. Remembering the mystery about what Blayze’s mom would be doing at NLH, I said, “Why the heck do you need a jeweler?”
“Marisa was a jeweler back on Earth. Her hobby that she was very passionate about was bee keeping. She’s going to be growing honey bees and bumblebees for the habitat.”
There are a lot of plants in Mom’s gardens that depend on pollination to produce fruit. Some of them, like tomatoes, can be easily manually pollinated by shaking the bush. Others could be manually pollinated, yet took far more work.
Adam liked to tell people that a benefit of working for my mom was that he, Myra, and I just had sex all the time. In truth, we all found manually pollinating the plants to be a pain in the rump. For the stuff we couldn’t manually pollinate, Mom had been going to a lot of trouble importing bumble bee hives. I always thought honey bees were the best pollinators. It turned out that they didn’t do well in greenhouses which was effectively what all of our gardens were. Bumble bees, on the other hand, did a great job and didn’t get confused in greenhouses.
Mom said, “She’s going to be working with me to see if we can provide enough clues to the honey bees so that they can go from the hive to the flowers and back again without getting lost.”
“I thought the bumble bees were better at pollinating plants, why bother with the honey bees at all?”
“Because Chef Patel would love to be able to do some magic with honey. Bumble bees don’t do that trick and successful honey bee hives last a lot longer. Having both, gives us options”
My mom also shared that Marisa being a jeweler wasn’t going to go to waste. She said, “I’ve been talking to Marisa about her starting a side business creating jewelry. Sandy suggested she talk to someone over at the Regolith processing plant to see how often they come across semi-precious stones like peridot or garnet. She could design the settings for the stones using the metals we have available, which includes some gold. If she goes ahead with it, I’m sure Miss Gayle is going to be talking to her about your rings.”
“Rings? What rings?”
“Your school rings. Sometime between the end of your sophomore year and your senior year of high school, it’s traditional for there to be class rings. Knowing Miss Gayle, I’m betting that you have yours by the end of your sophomore year.”
Mom was right, Miss Gayle was very pro-tradition and a little on the impatient side. I was sure sometime soon, she’d probably bring the subject up and have us focus on the design elements we wanted to see in our class rings.
When we’d finished eating, Mom and Dad gave me hugs and we headed off our separate ways. I walked over to the older section of the Habitat where the Admin and Security office was located. Sam Tanner greeted me with a smile and said, “Morning Bryce, eager to get going, hey?”
Sam still made me a little nervous. I guess she sensed that because she said, “Come on in and have a seat. I won’t bite, I promise you, hey. The way this training works is it starts with an introduction to the three types of pressure suits currently in use. After the introduction, there’s a short test, and then there’s an in depth section on each of the three types. There’s a test after each section and then finally, there’s a practical test where you’ll have to correctly put on a standard suit and then demonstrate the correct thing to do in a series of simulated failures. There’s a second section of the practical test where you have to correctly hook up and monitor someone wearing a travel suit.”
Sam asked me if I had any questions and then said, “Miss Gayle has volunteered to be the travel suit wearer. She said she would do it either way, however, she asked if it would be possible for you to do that section of the test in class. She thinks being exposed to this would benefit both classes. I told her you and I would make a decision on that when we got to that point. If you’re not comfortable doing the test in front of your peers, then I won’t ask you to do something no one else taking the test has to do. I think it would be good for you, but the certification is hard enough as is.”
She gave me a minute to think on that and then said, “To gain the suit certification, you need a score of ninety percent on each section.”
I was surprised by how high the passing grade was and asked Sam about it.
“The suit protects you in an airless environment. Knowing how to use your suit is the difference between life and death for you. Knowing how the two other suit types operate, and how to handle emergencies with them can mean the difference between life or death for someone else, possibly one of your friends. Keep that in mind while studying this material. People who use these suits all the time, consider passing the tests with anything less than ninety nine percent careless. You are a sharp kid and I think you should get a one hundred percent on almost all of the tests.“
Sam’s talk had driven home the point that this wasn’t just a big, safe, adventure I was going on. I could die and I was understanding the worry I saw on my mom’s face when we talked about this trip. Sandy and Sam both thought I could do this. My parents had faith in me that I could manage the trip safely. It was scary, nevertheless, I decided I could do it and promised myself that I’d score 100 percent on all of the tests. Anything else felt like I would be letting Sam, Sandy, and my parents down.
I said I was ready, and Sam led me over to a cubical that helped to shut out other things going on in the office.
“You can use the monitor here to do the course work or you can download the files to your E-pad and go off on your own. Taking the course is your responsibility so handle it however you want.”
I told Sam I’d just do it in the cube. I couldn’t think of anywhere else I could go that would have fewer distractions so the cube worked fine for me. I started in on the first section and there was a short history of space suits first off. I was really surprised to learn the suits worn by the Apollo astronauts had been made by Playtex, the maker of bras for women. The early Russian suits were made of rubber-soaked canvas and instead of fancy, air proof zippers, they used a tube that you crawled through and then sealed with something like a bread clip.
I was just about through with the introduction section on the travel suit when Sam came by and asked me if I was getting hungry. It was almost lunch time and Sam asked me if I wanted to go eat with her. I followed her out of the office and next door to the Northern Grill. I hadn’t eaten in here since the first meal we had at the Habitat back during orientation on the first day. They had the same selection here as they did in the large cafeteria. Sam went with a cheeseburger and fries. I decided to go with the same choice along with a glass of milk with the chocolate flavor added. I would have liked to have had a Coke, however, it had been two and a half weeks since
the last supply ship came in and the luxury items like Coke had already run out.
We sat down and Sam started asking me questions about the new kids. When I had her filled in I asked her where she’d gotten the funny accent. She chuckled and said she had grown up in St. Cloud, Minnesota. The upper Midwest accent just went with the territory. What I found really strange was she said her parents had owned a house boat and most summer weekends would find her and her friends, swimming in the river with her parents and having cookouts on the riverbank at night. The river, she was talking about was the Mississippi river and from what I knew of the river around the Saint Louis area, the idea of swimming in it was a totally foreign concept. The strong currents in the river as it swept past the St. Louis area made entering the water there without a life vest a dangerous proposition. Sam said that north of St. Cloud, the river was more like a chain of lakes between dams with much gentler currents.
After lunch, I jumped back into the details of the travel suits. The suits were relatively inexpensive and worn by untrained personnel when there was a need to protect them from the possibility of cabin pressure loss. They were descendants of the suits the Gemini program astronauts wore in that they weren’t self-contained and the air inside the suit was supplied by a hose connected back to the spacecraft. I spent the afternoon going over the details and then came back in the next morning to take the test on the section while I was fresh. That set the pattern for the rest of the week and by Friday morning I was ready to take the first of the two practical tests.
