Riddled Space Page 9

  “Lee! You're looking well. How is the family?” Lisa stopped talking and the computer, recognizing the silence, spliced in the appropriate 'beep', unchanged since the Project Apollo days, indicating end of transmission. It also locked out her microphone until it got a return beep from the Moon. This prevented cross-talk, imperative when the delay time between responses was a minimum of three seconds.

  “Doing well, Lisa. I am glad to see you in command. How are Shep and the children?”

  “Fine, fine, Lee. How's your computater? Do we have full greens?”

  “Lisa, Lisa. Again with the 'computater'? I thought you'd give it a rest when you became a Commander. All greens. The light beam encryption is solid. The techs know their business. So, talk away.”

  “Quietly, though. I'm using a throat microphone and headphones, Lee. Everyone knows this office is bugged. If you miss something, just ask me to repeat. How are things in the Collins?”

  They exchanged technical discussions about projects of mutual interest. The Works, under McCrary's gentle ministrations, was growing in capacity at a startling rate. It should be back to its usual processing rate within the month.

  Lisa mentioned Panjar's tether experiment, and Lee gave cautious approval for it to move forward.

  “I hope you can understand how we have a newborn fear of things falling out of the sky at us. If they do send something here, I want it to land no less than one kilometer away. We'll have to run a lot of remote landing tests before I will reconsider allowing Mooncans to land closer to our site.”

  One of Lisa's other screens filled up with messages from one of the vendors. “I completely understand, Lee, and I'll let them know. Anything else? I'm still catching up on some of the things Holt let slide.”

  Lee fingered his keyboard, peering at a screen of his own. “McCrary has some things he wants to ask Roque, and some notes on systems that he forgot to list out for Hodges. I'll have the tech squirt them over the beam when we're through.” He moved closer to the camera. “Don't be so hard on Holt, Lisa. He was under extreme pressure from our masters downstairs.”

  Lisa twisted her mouth. “I’m sure I'll find out soon. Well, it sounds like we're both busy. Talk with you later, Lee.”

  “I'm turning this over to my tech. Lee, out.”

  Lisa waved at Lee's image. “Celine,” she called. “Check out that beam—there's something on it.” She shut down her photophone screen and called up the vendor. Always something to do. Command was never boring.

  ***

  It wasn't anything in particular, but Lisa had a sense that she was needed in Astrogation. She had learned early on to recognize these promptings and act on them. She floated quietly out of the Commander office, down a short passageway, and peeked into Astrogation. Celine had her legs wrapped around her perch, her hands curled into fists and aimed towards a dark-haired crewman who was facing away from the hatch. Lisa backed out, and moved quickly to the junction of her office and the passageway.

  “Celine, could you do me a favor?” Lisa called as she floated back to Astrogation. She drifted into the cubic, braking her momentum against a handhold. As she suspected, Celine had regained her perch, the crewman was at least a meter further away, and everything seemed okay.

  “Ma'am?” asked Celine.

  “I need you to give me a report on our next orbital boost, assuming no transports arrive from Earth, and maximum Mooncans arrive with unfavorable velocity vectors.”

  “Yes, ma'am. It will take about two hours, assuming normal duty operations.” Celine was frowning at the crewman when she said this. Lisa pretended to not notice.

  “That will be fine. Bring it by when your shift is over. Thank you.” Lisa turned to the crewman. “Did you need Celine for something?”

  “No, Ma'am,” he said. “In fact, I was just leaving.” He turned in the air and kicked off down a different corridor.

  Celine scanned her screens. Sensing that Lisa was still there, she looked up. “Commander? Something?”

  “No. Don't forget the report, please.”

  “I'll see you as soon as my shift is over, Ma'am.”

  ***

  Lisa was staring thoughtfully at the Apollo One patch when Celine tapped on the hatch combing.

  “I have that report you asked for, Ma'am.” She floated into the office, her hand holding a memory module.

  Lisa received it and indicated a perch. “Set for a minute, please.” Lisa inserted the module into her computer and called up the report.

  She and Celine went over the report for a few minutes. The Collins, even at an altitude of two hundred and fifty miles, still encountered atmospheric drag that would pull the station from the sky in about ten years if periodic thruster burns were not administered by incoming shuttles. Worse, LOX deliveries via Mooncan had the disturbing tendency to accelerate the orbital decay, as it was difficult to rendezvous with the Chaffee without giving the structure a shot of momentum in the wrong direction. Scheduling thruster burns was a delicate matter—no burns could happen while any Mooncan, shuttle, or OTV was in flight to the station.

  “So, October second is the ideal day for a boost?” Lisa concluded.

  “Yes, Ma'am. I've already asked the Collins to put a hold on Mooncan launches and they're not anticipating any Betsy flights. But you will have to interface with UNSOC for any Earth—origin flight holds.”

  Lisa attacked the keyboard. “Done. I've sent a 'hold' request to UNSOC. All I needed was the date. Thank you, Celine, this report is quite good.”

  “Thank you, Ma'am.”

  “Before you go, I'd like to ask you about your hidden talents.”

  Celine stopped her first move to de-perch, and settled back. “I don't understand. What talents?”

  “I don't mind if you teach the crew unarmed combat. I just wish you wouldn't do it in the Astrogation section.” Lisa looked at her blandly. “There's a lot of equipment we'd have to send back to Earth for if it gets broken, and I don't want to write out the report explaining why. Can you take your classes to the gym?”

  Celine turned bright red. Her mouth worked, but she couldn't quite get anything coherent out.

  Lisa smiled and put out her hand. “Hang on there, Celine. I'm on your side. I was in the exact same position about twenty-two years ago, but I was about ten years younger than you. And shorter. And not nearly as attractive. Still, I was cornered by a crewman. I suspect this is not the first time this has happened up here, is it?”

  “No, Ma'am. Commander Holt knew it was going on, too, but he couldn't quite get it to stop, either.” Her eyes grew shiny little worms as tear ducts pumped out fluid. Normally gravity would have spread the tear fluid over the eye, but free-fall allowed them to grow from the duct openings—a little shiny tube of water that would grow until something broke it, upon which it would collapse into a spherical drop, wobbling around the cabin.

  Lisa handed over a tissue. “Take your time. I'll talk for a bit until you feel better. Since I popped into Astrogation, I've had a brief look at your file. Garth is quite an asshole, isn't he? I bet you are relieved that he can't get you up here, but then about ten minutes after you got here, you realized that your problems multiplied about a hundred-fold, right?”

  Celine nodded, still dabbing at her eyes. “Sorry, Ma'am,” she said. “I've been trying to make it day by day here. I didn't want to bother you, but I have tried to figure out how it is the men aren't hassling you as much as they are me. The other women are either married or are solid with one of the guys. Me, I just want to be left alone to earn my place here.”

  “I thought so. By the way, you might not know it, but Commander Holt was highly complimentary of your performance. He did note, though, the effect you have on the men up here.”

  Celine said nothing. She was beyond embarrassed.

  Lisa smiled and leaned forward. “Celine. Listen to me. There is a way to get the harassment to stop, you know. I will give you a trick that helped me when I was a newbie until I got enough rank th
at nobody hassled me anymore. Do you want to know how it works?”

  Celine finished dabbing her eyes, straightened up, and a shudder seemed to pass through her. The time for emotional catharsis was over, Lisa saw, and the professional mask was firmly tightened down.

  “I will manage, Ma'am.”

  “I suppose you will. But while you are managing, I will have to keep 'dropping by' to make sure you're not thumping various crewmen. No—that's not the way to handle this. Sure, you can pound a couple of crewmen, especially when they make the mistake of underestimating you. Smart men will leave you alone. Sensitive men won't even try. But there are a number of men here who will look on you as a challenge. They are certain that you will fall for them, refuse to take no for an answer, and things will go downhill from there. That is something that I cannot allow to happen. I am speaking now as your commander, and I require your attention. Ready?”

  Celine was shocked out of her position. “No wonder they don't make a play for you, Ma'am,” she said. “I’m listening.”

  Lisa leaned closer. “You alone cannot prevail. The secret is to turn their strength against them. Here's how to do it.”

  The Chondrite

  UNSOC Lunar Colony Michael Collins, October 2, 2080, 1000 hrs

  Back in the Engineering spaces, Horst Nygaard was noncommittal. “With all due respect, McCrary, have you thought this through? I have no idea if the reactions you’re talking about are workable.”

  “Test project first,” McCrary said. “Check for miners, metallurgists on staff. I'll check back home. Roque on the Chaffee will help. Should be doable.”

  Gradually, the pilot project took shape. Across the base from the now up-and-running Works, a spindly jungle of piping and mirrors sprang up. Moondozers and electric trucks with gigantic metal mesh tires delivered the olivine to the site. There, the rock crushers, looking more like gigantic nutcrackers than anything else, reduced the rocks to fine sand. Piles of olivine sand began mounding up at The New Works. The pilot project started using the new process, but the results were not as efficient as forecast. A cycle of testing and evaluating gnawed at the problem for weeks.

  Horst was juggling the personnel schedule when Frank Maleski, resident selenologist and industrial chemist, knocked on the panel. “Come on in, Frank,” Horst said, shoving the keyboard aside. “I'm not getting much done here anyway. What's on your mind?”

  “This new project of the Chief's.”

  “Yeah. We're not cranking out the oxygen fast enough. The reaction's taking too long, but nobody really knows why.”

  “I've been thinking about that. I think our problem is the CO2 concentration – it's too low. We're using as much as we can spare out of the base recycling units, but I don't think it's enough.”

  “I don't see where we can get any more. The UN isn't going to send us a ship full of dry ice.”

  “We don't have to ask them. I've been going over the reconnaissance missions they flew when Collins was first established twenty years ago. Look here...” Maleski pulled out his electronic pad and tapped the screen a few times. “Here's a map of everything within two hundred kilometers. I'm superimposing an image taken with one of the satellites that was looking for gasses. I exaggerated the scale, that's why you see individual pixels all over. See this one spot here, the one in the blue?”

  “Yeah, that's, what, thirty-five klicks away?”

  “Right in this crater. The blue is for methane. It's faint, so nobody followed up on it. Hell, the only way I found it was by turning off everything but this one wavelength. But the only explanation for methane on the moon is a burned out asteroid smacking into the surface.”

  “But if there's that little methane, there's no reason to go out there.”

  “I bet that's what the Founders thought. They were probably looking to use the methane as a hydrogen source. But we need carbon. I bet there's a lot of carbon in that crater because that methane is outgassing from something. Bring back a ton, burn it in Lunar oxygen, save the exhaust, and we're not limited by the CO2 we're breathing out. Besides, we'll need carbon for alloying if we ever want to make steel.”

  McCrary was poring over the production results from both Works when Horst and Frank fairly burst into the room. Raising an eyebrow, he turned away from the spreadsheets to look quizzically at them.

  “Sir, Frank Maleski here has something I think you should look at.” Horst nudged the suddenly wooden Frank to the fore.

  Stammering slightly, he repeated his slide show from before. When he finished, he said, “Sir, I know thirty-five kilometers is a long hike, but we can make it there and back in about twelve hours with a Moon truck.”

  “Not on just one image,” replied McCrary. “I want more confirmation, first.” He sat back and twiddled his stylus. Frank started to reply, but a touch on his arm by Horst stopped him. They waited, impatiently, for what seemed ages. But within a minute or two, McCrary blurred into motion. Stabbing at the intercom, he rang first the Commander, then the transient barracks, then the head of the Science section.

  Within minutes, the three of them were striding towards the Commander's office. Doctor Emmet Jenkins, head of the Science section, joined them just outside the door. Mrs. Lange opened the door and they filed in.

  Once again, Frank repeated his slide show, this time on the larger screen in the Commander's office. He was by far the junior man there, and was appropriately intimidated. But at the last slide, he stopped, unsure of what to request.

  Weng Lee looked at McCrary and said, “I take it you want to go there and dig around.”

  “No. Too risky for that little evidence.”

  “You must have something you want, else why drag these men over here?”

  “I need more evidence. More than a single image from years ago.” Turning to Dr. Jenkins, McCrary asked, “Got anything that can search for methane?”

  Dr. Jenkins frowned. “I'll have to look up the spectroscopy first, then see if we have a filter that can pass it. I don't know off the top of my head.” He took out his commpad and tapped it furiously. “It seems like we've got something that will work in the 3000 wavename region where methane lives. Mr. McCrary, you have yourself a sensor.”

  A rapid knock on the door answered him. Mrs. Lange stuck her head in the doorway. “One of the pilots says he was told to report here. Are you expecting him? He's dripping wet and a bit grumpy.”

  Lee looked to McCrary. “A pilot. For the sensor, I imagine.”

  “Sorry I'm late, sir,” Eddie said to Commander Jeng. “I was in the shower.”

  McCrary gave one of his rare smiles to the man who was dripping slow-falling drops of water onto the floor. “Pilot Zanger. Excellent. Got a passenger for your next run.”

  Zanger looked around at the assemblage. Nobody seemed to be on their way home. “Which one, Chief?”

  McCrary inclined his head towards Dr. Jenkins. “Doc's sensor.”

  Dr. Jenkins cleared his throat. “It's not ready yet. But it will be a small box, about 50 centimeters on a side. We'll strap it on the side of, um, Betsy I think her name is, and splice it into her computer.” He motioned to McCrary to continue.

  “Do a couple of orbits of the Moon, just missing the mountains. Some orbital plane changes. Then off on your run.” He peered at the pilot slyly. “You're competent, guide beam or no.”

  Zanger looked at Lee. “I should probably ask for more pay for this run. Somehow, I don't think I'd get it.”

  “Good images, case of beer on Earth,” said McCrary. “Some folks downstairs owe me some favors.”

  Zanger smiled. He reached over to McCrary and shook his callused, battered hand. “You have yourself a pilot, sir.”

  “Beer, on Earth. Not here,” McCrary said. “This is important.”

  Daisy-Clipper

  UNSOC OTV Betsy, October 16, 2080, 1000 hrs

  Watching the peaks reaching to claw his beloved Betsy out of the sky, Zanger regretted that he sold his services for such a small price.
<
br />   “Shoulda held out for at least a case of whiskey,” he muttered as his gaze alternated between his radar altimeter, the mountains rushing towards him, and the computer's path projection. His passenger, an astronomer rotating back to Earth after doing his research stint, was rigid in his seat.

  “We're still okay?” he asked for at least the fifth time this orbit.

  “Yes, we'll clear the peaks by at least half a kilometer. No problem.” Zanger continued his hawk-like stare at the altimeter.

  “Pilots always say that until just before impact. All the accident reports say so.”

  “If you'll just open your eyes, you will see the mountains are sliding just beneath us.” Zanger gave another tug on his harness. “Ready for the third pass?”

  “Ready. The sensor is cold, the filespace is empty, and we are ready to take some pictures.” The astronomer flipped a switch on the jury-rigged control box. “Inertial platform slaved to shutter control.” The computer window began filling with the names of the image files. “Another thirty seconds and we're done.”

  As they arced smoothly away from the lunar surface to rendezvous with the Collins in Near Earth Orbit, Zanger flipped the mike switch one last time. “McCrary, how about that beer?”

  “Let you know when Doc says they're good. Bad, do 'em again when you come back.”

  “I expect an answer by the time we get to Chaffee.”

  “Doc will radio you. Out.”

  “He doesn't talk very much, does he?” asked the astronomer, relaxing now that the Moon was a comfortable distance away. Pilot Zanger grinned. He had hours of McCrary stories for his passenger.

  Tar and Steel

  UNSOC Lunar Colony Michael Collins, January 27th 2081, 1017 hrs

  Doctor Jenkins was ecstatic. “I don't know why we never thought of doing this before!” he exclaimed. “Who knows how many volatiles are out there, buried under the dust?”

  “Dig 'em up, you lose 'em to the vacuum,” remarked McCrary, peering at the image on the scientist's monitor. “Gotta tent it over, then dig. Pumps, tanks. Mmmph.” McCrary mumbled to himself. “Still, good news. Thanks, Doc,” he said as he slapped the doctor on the shoulder, then turned and left the lab.