Moonrise (32 page)

“Right,” said Killifer.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Doug asked.

Brennart wheeled and leaned down slightly to read the nametag printed on the breast of Doug’s suit.

“Oh. Doug. I suppose you’re going to remind me that you wanted to land further out, aren’t you?”

Surprised at the sarcasm in the older man’s voice, Doug said, “No sir, it hadn’t entered my mind.”

“No,” Brennart said. “Of course not.”

“Were any of our life-support supplies on this ship?” Doug asked.

Brennart huffed. “Of course there were! The only question is how much of it have we lost. Jack, check it out.”

“Right,” said Killifer.

“What can I do to help?” Doug asked again.

“Just keep out of the way,” Brennart snapped. “Like the man said, leave the real work to the professionals.” Then he started walking back toward the first spacecraft, leaving Doug puzzled and feeling more than a little hurt.

The base that Yamagata Industries established at the beautiful and prominent crater Copernicus, on the Sea of Rains, was called Nippon One. Admittedly, this was an unimaginative name of no intrinsic grace and would be changed to something more poetic in time. For now, however, its utilitarian nature mirrored the character of the base itself. Nippon One was small, crowded and unlovely: little more than a collection of huts buried beneath protective regolith rubble, much as Moonbase had been nearly twenty years earlier.

The worst part of serving at Nippon One was the lack of water for bathing. Even with nanomachines to ferret out atoms of hydrogen imbedded in the regolith and combine them with lunar oxygen, water was scarce and precious. Yamagata engineers had developed an ultrasonic device which, they claimed, cleaned the skin more efficiently than detergent and water. Nippon One’s inhabitants complained that its ultrasonic vibrations gave them headaches, its vacuum suction sometimes plucked hair painfully from one’s body, and it did nothing to relieve the body odors that made lunar living so unpleasant.

Still, it was a great honor to be assigned to serve at Nippon One, even if only for a few months. Yamagata’s brightest young men and women eagerly sought lunar postings; this
new frontier was the key to rapid advancement up the corporate ladder.

Miyoko Homma was the daughter of an old and honored Japanese family. Trained in astronomy and mathematics, she was determined to prove to her elders that a woman can add luster to the family name, just as a man can. She had jumped at the chance to work at Nippon One.

That was four months ago. Now, sitting in a cramped cubicle, feeling sweaty and filthy in fatigues that she had been wearing for several days on end, all she truly wished for was a steaming hot bath and just a bit of privacy.

She was checking the telescopes sitting up on the surface of Mare Imbrium, a chore she did daily, patiently studying the images they showed on her display screen as she ran each instrument through its checkout procedures to make certain that it was operating within its designated parameters. Her mind was wandering, though, to thoughts of home and comforts that she would not know for another two months.

Sitting next to her, close enough to touch shoulders, was Toshihara Yamashita, one of the communications technicians, headphone clamped to his ear.

“Have you heard the news?” Toshi asked. “The Americans have sent an expedition to the south pole.”

That jolted Miyoko out of her reverie. “No!” she said.

“It’s true. The chiefs are trying to decide if we should put up a reconnaissance satellite to watch them.”

“But we’re sending a team to the pole, aren’t we? I’ve heard about the preparations for weeks now.”

“The Yanks have beaten us to it,” said Toshi. “Somebody’s head will roll.”

“Have they gone to the Bright Mountain?” Miyoko asked.

“Where else?”

“Ah, that’s too bad. Now they’ll set up a base there, won’t they?”

“Of course. That’s what we wanted to do.”

“And there’s water ice there, too,” Miyoko murmured. “Now the Americans will claim it all.”

Toshi leaned back in his spindly chair, shrugging. “If the ice fields are big enough, we can send a crew out there and stake our own claim. Maybe there’s enough for more than one.”

Miyoko felt doubtful. “Even if there is, the Americans will want it all, they’re so greedy.”

Laughing, Toshi replied, “We would too, if we got there first.”

“I don’t believe—” The image on Miyoko’s screen suddenly caught her eye. Glancing down at the monitor displays, she saw that she was looking at a real-time image of the solar X-ray telescope.

“Look at that,” she said.

Toshi glanced at the screen. “At what? It looks like a bunch of noodles, all twisted together.”

“That’s a sunspot field,” Miyoko said. “It’s gaining energy very rapidly. I’ll bet there’s going to be a solar flare erupting within a day or so.”

“So what?” Toshi said carelessly. “We’re safe down here.”

“Yes, of course. But no one should be out on the surface if the flare’s plasma cloud reaches the Moon.”

Toshi’s face grew serious. “The Americans.”

“Someone should warn them.”

“They have their own observers, don’t they?”

“Yes, I think so. Still …”

“You’d better let the chiefs know. Let them decide what to do.”

“The expedition took off at fifteen twenty-two, Eastern time.”

Jinny Anson’s image on Joanna’s wall screen looked tired and tense. She’s lost enough weight over the past few months for it to show in her face, Joanna thought. Is she ill?

“The two crewed ships landed safely in the Mt. Wasser area,” Anson went on, “but one of the freighters crashed on landing.”

“What?” Joanna nearly came out of her chair.

Anson had not waited for her reply. She continued without
a break, “About half of the cargo was damaged or destroyed in the crash. Mostly scientific instruments and life-support supplies. We will have to either cut the mission short or resupply much sooner than anticipated in the mission plan.”

Almost as an afterthought she added, “There were no injuries to the expedition personnel.”

Joanna relaxed a little. “I want to be included in the decision on cutting the expedition short or resupplying.”

She could see that Anson was waiting for her response. When it came, the base director nodded as if she had expected it. “Of course. We’ll need to talk it over with all the top division management, as well.”

“How did the crash happen?” Joanna asked.

They discussed the situation haltingly, impeded by the three-second roundtrip lag between Earth and Moon. Joanna had always found the communications lag annoying; this day it was maddening. Doug was out there in the open, more than a thousand miles from shelter, and the expedition was already in trouble the instant it touched down.

“Jinny,” she said finally, “I have a favor to ask of you.”

Anson’s normally pert face, now drawn and weary, showed a sudden flicker of curiosity once Joanna’s words reached her. “A favor?”

“I’d like you to stay on a few weeks longer up there. Until the expedition returns. I don’t think it’s a good idea to change base directors while that team’s down at the south pole.”

Anson’s expression went from curiosity to alarm. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Mrs. Stavenger.”

Surprised, irritated, Joanna snapped, “Why not?”

For three infernally long seconds she waited for the answer. “I’m getting married. All the arrangements are made.”

“Is that all?” Joanna eased back in her chair. “The arrangements can be changed. I’ll personally pay for whatever it costs you. I want you at Moonbase until the expedition safely returns.”

I can’t have Greg up there while Doug’s out in the wilderness, she told herself. It’s a chance I won’t take.

But Anson replied firmly, “Mrs. Stavenger, it’s not my fault that the expedition departed nearly three weeks late. I’m going to get married in San Antonio two weeks from tomorrow. I am leaving Moonbase on the first of the month, eight
days from now, as planned. I’m afraid I can’t change those plans.”

Her temper flaring, Joanna replied, “As long as you’re an employee of Masterson Aerospace, you will follow the directives of your superiors. I want you at Moonbase until that expedition comes back!”

The two women stared at each other from a quarter-million-mile distance until Anson’s image on the wall screen stiffened noticeably.

She took a visible breath before replying. Then, with deliberate calm, she answered, “Mrs. Stavenger, if I have to resign from Masterson Aerospace, I will. I’m getting married on the seventh of next month in San Antonio, in the Alamo, and
nothing
is going to stop my wedding.”

Joanna’s immediate instinct was to tell the ungrateful little snot that if she thought she was going to travel back to Earth for her stupid wedding on a Masterson spacecraft she had another think coming. But Joanna stifled that response. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, she told herself.

“I would appreciate it very much,” she said to the image on the wall screen, “if you would reconsider your position. I will be happy to get you the Alamo for a future date. Or the Grand Canyon, or the Taj Mahal, if you prefer. And I will of course want to give you and your husband a substantial wedding gift, since you are such a loyal and valued employee of this corporation. Please think it over.”

Before Anson’s stubborn-faced image could reply, Joanna clicked off the connection. I’ll give her a wedding gift, she said to herself grimly. And then I’ll send her to our African division and let her play with the tsetse flies for the rest of her career.

She didn’t have to call up the list of waiting messages to know that Greg was impatient to talk with her. He had flown in from Kiribati to keep up the pressure on his mother to name him the new director of Moonbase. Greg has his own sources inside the board of directors, Joanna realized. He knows I’ve been planting the seeds for him, and he’s impatient to see them grow.

Over the years, the space operations division had become the tail that wagged the corporate dog. Sales of new Clippership
models were the mainstay of the corporation’s profits. When Clippership sales were strong, the stockholders received dividends. When Clippership sales sagged, workers were laid off. But the orbital manufacturing end of the space division had never broken clearly into the black. Even with raw materials supplied by Moonbase, the metal alloys and pharmaceuticals produced in the space stations were still too expensive to compete in the marketplace, except for the Windowalls, and even their profits were declining as the market for them became saturated.

Joanna and the board of directors had looked into several reorganization plans that would separate the Clippership production from the orbital manufacturing work. A dozen bright young executives wanted to be named head of the Clippership program; nobody wanted to be stuck with orbital manufacturing.

Well, Joanna told herself, if Greg can actually find the strength to shut down Moonbase, all our orbital manufacturing will go down the drain with it, except for the Windowalls, and their costs will jump. Paul’s dream will be dead. But maybe it will be for the best. I’ve given it nearly twenty years; how long can I keep on hoping for a miracle?

And there was even more trouble with the nanotechnology division, which was also tottering on the brink of collapse. Nanomachines were used on the Moon to produce water and build solar cells, but their uses on Earth had been slowed to a crawl by government regulations and a massive public relations campaign of demonstrations and protests, based on ignorance and hysterical fear, in Joanna’s view. Medical applications of nanomachines had been brought to a standstill by so-called safety regulations, although those who were rich enough went to nations such as Switzerland; the Swiss government’s regulations did not apply to foreigners, especially very rich foreigners, who quietly bought their nanotherapies there.

Joanna herself had been toying with the idea of accepting nanomachines to keep her arteries clear of plaque. And there was always the temptation to use the bugs to tighten up sagging muscles, renew wrinkled skin, even break up fatty deposits and harmlessly flush them out of the body.

Kris Cardenas had gotten herself into legal hot water by
using nanobugs on herself to restore her failing eyesight. No glasses, no contact lenses, no surgery. The bugs restored her natural lenses to their youthful flexibility and strengthened the muscles that controlled them. Twenty-twenty vision, from only a few injections over a three-week period. Followed by three years of hounding by government lawyers and endless hearings in courts and the Canadian parliament. And Cardenas had all the prestige and authority of a Nobel Prize backing her.

Joanna shook all that out of her thoughts as she phoned the chief of the space operations division and asked him to come to her office.

“Why not use the virtual reality system?” Ibriham Rashid asked playfully.

Joanna was not amused. “Omar, you’re no more than fifty yards down the hall from me. Get your butt over here. In person.”

“Now?” he teased.

“At your earliest convenience,” Joanna answered, with as much sarcasm as she could muster.

“Harkening and obedience,” said Rashid.

Ibriham Muhammed al-Rashid had been born in Baltimore, third son of second-generation Palestinian-Americans. For all of his forty-two years he had balanced a firm belief in Islam with a firm belief that science and technology were gifts of Allah to help men in their struggle for existence. From his earliest childhood it was apparent that he was extremely intelligent and even more extremely motivated to rise high in the world. Johns Hopkins and MIT honed his intelligence. And his diplomatic skills. At school he was quickly dubbed “Omar the Tentmaker.” Instead of becoming angry at the derogatory nickname, Rashid turned it into a badge of honor.

His career with Masterson Aerospace had been little short of meteoric. As head of the space operations division, he knew that the corporate knives were being sharpened behind his back. Space operations was the corporation’s largest division, thanks to the Clipperships, a profitable cash cow that various reorganization plans sought to carve up into smaller sections and remove from Rashid’s control. He resisted those attempts with a mixture of deft corporate maneuvering and unfailing loyalty from his division staff. He also used his
urbane charm wherever it would do the most good—especially with the chairwoman of the board.