Moonrise (39 page)

After a heartbeat’s span of silence, Brennart added in a more relaxed tone, “A little dieting won’t hurt any of us.”

So they grabbed prepackaged meals from the shelter’s food locker and took turns sticking them in the tiny microwave oven.

“Stand back from the oven. You don’t want to get exposed to any radiation that leaks through,” Greenberg said so solemnly that Doug couldn’t tell if he was joking or serious.

Brennart raised his visor to eat his meal, and Doug could at last see the man’s face. If Brennart was worried, he didn’t show it. He looked calm: thoughtful, but certainly not jittery.

“That’s our guide,” he said, pointing to the radiation meter built into the airlock control panel. “That, and our suit patches, are the only way we have of telling how high the radiation level is.”

The suit patches were cumulative, Doug knew. They changed color with dosage, going from green through yellow to red. Once they turned red you were supposed to get inside
shelter, no matter what you were doing out on the surface. He looked down at the patch on his right arm and was startled to see it had already turned a sickly greenish yellow. Just from the work we’ve done outside today, he thought. What color will it be when the radiation cloud hits?

How can they eat this garbage? Greg wondered as he chewed on the little sandwich. It tasted like sawdust and glue, with a core of hard rubber.

He felt uncomfortable at the flare party, and most of the people around him seemed uncomfortable in his presence. Jinny Anson was perfectly relaxed, apparently, but the others stiffened visibly as he approached them. They were friendly enough, but Greg saw them put their drinks down or try to hide them behind their backs. Laughter died out as he came up to a knot of party-goers. People became polite, their smiles strained.

The new boss, Greg figured. They know I’ll be in charge here in a week, the board chairwoman’s son, and they don’t know what kind of a boss I’m going to be. Inwardly, Greg frowned at the irony of it. I don’t know what kind of a boss I’m going to be, either. Obviously there’s alcohol in most of those drinks, even though nobody’s offered me any. What else is going down?

He had made a sort of ragged circumnavigation of the Cave and ended up back near Anson, who was deep in conversation with a tall, ragged-looking old simp with a mangy beard and sad, baggy eyes. Greg left his dish of unfinished finger sandwiches on the nearest table and went toward her.

“Here he is,” Anson said as Greg approached them. She waved Greg toward her, then introduced, “Greg Masterson, Lev Brudnoy.”

The legendary Lev Brudnoy! Greg realized that Brudnoy’s legend was more than twenty years old now. The poor geezer must be pushing sixty, at least.

“How do you do,” said Brudnoy gravely, extending a calloused hand. His coveralls were a faded olive green, splotched here and there with stains. He was about Greg’s own height, though, and wider across the shoulders.

“I’m very happy to meet you,” Greg said perfunctorily.
Brudnoy’s grip was strong; Greg got the feeling he could have squeezed a lot harder if he’d wanted to.

“So you are going to be our leader for the next twelve months,” Brudnoy said.

“That’s right.”

“I knew your step-father, Paul Stavenger. He was a good man.”

Trying not to bristle, Greg said, “I thought it was my father who gave you permission to join Moonbase.”

With a slow smile, Brudnoy answered, “Quite true. But I never met your father. He never came here and I was never invited to meet him when I visited Earthside.”

“Oh. I see.”

“I am most indebted to him, of course. And to your lovely mother—whom I also have never met.”

Feeling awkward, Greg tried to change the subject. “I suppose you’ve been here at Moonbase longer than anyone else.” It was inane and he knew it, but Greg couldn’t think of anything else.

“More than twenty years,” Anson said.

“Not all that time has been spent here on the Moon, of course,” said Brudnoy. “I visit Earthside each year, as required by our health regulations.”

Greg knew the regulations. They were based on the idea that living on the Moon deconditioned the body for living in Earth’s heavier gravity. Every Moonbase employee was required to undertake an exercise regime to keep muscles and bones strong enough for an immediate return Earthside.

“Yet,” Brudnoy went on, almost wistfully, “my trips Earthside grow shorter and my stays here grow longer. This is my true home. Earth is a distant dream.”

With a sardonic smile, Greg said, “The food’s better on Earth.”

“Quite true,” Brudnoy agreed.

“What we grow in our farm is for nutrition, not gourmet taste,” Anson snapped.

“Mostly soybeans,” said Brudnoy. “What little variety we have comes from them.” Before Greg could comment, he went on, “And green vegetables, of course. We recently introduced carrots, but they aren’t doing too well.”

“Everything else we have to bring up from Earthside,”
Anson said defensively. “We have to go for the highest nutritional values per kilo, not taste.”

“That’s obvious,” said Greg.

Looking nettled, Anson turned to Brudnoy. “He’ll fit right in; up here ten minutes and he’s already complaining about the food.”

“I can prepare for you a fresh salad,” Brudnoy said, completely serious.

“A salad?”

“After all my years of adventuring, I have become a farmer. My true calling: to be a peasant.”

“I’d like to see your farm,” Greg said.

“Lev’s got a green thumb,” said Anson. “He’ll turn us all into vegetarians one of these days.”

“Can’t we bring meat animals up here?” Greg asked. “Fresh meat would be good.”

“Oh, sure,” Anson replied sarcastically. “We’ve got the wide-open prairies around here; get some cowboys and a herd of cattle.”

Greg felt his face redden. “Maybe something smaller? Chickens?”

“Or rabbits,” Brudnoy said. “I remember reading somewhere that rabbits have a high ratio of protein to bone.”

“Okay,” said Greg. “Rabbits.”

“We have to be very careful about what we bring in here,” Anson said sternly. “This is a closed ecology and we can’t afford to endanger it.”

“But rabbits—-”

“Look what they did to Australia.”

“Jinny, my dear,” said Brudnoy, “we would not allow them to run wild and breed at will.”

“We could control them, couldn’t we?” Greg asked.

Looking completely unconvinced, Anson said, “Well, you’re going to be director. You look into it.”

Turning to Brudnoy, Greg asked, “Could you look into it?”

“Certainly,” said the Russian. “I would be most happy to.”

Anson’s face eased into a smile. “You’re going to be okay, Masterson. Delegating responsibility already. That’s the mark of a successful manager.”

Greg couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or sincere.

“Rabbits will be the salvation of Moonbase,” Brudnoy
said, with a happy grin on his bearded face. “And I have found my calling!”

“You have?” Anson asked, looking askance at the Russian.

“To feed the hungry masses!” Brudnoy said. “To end the dreariness of packaged foods. I will not be a lowly peasant. I will become the master of cuisine for Moonbase.”

“A noble calling,” said Anson.

“Thank you!” Brudnoy said to Greg. “You have given me a new purpose in life.”

And he clasped Greg in his long arms with a Russian bear hug.

“Now what can I do for you in return?” Brudnoy asked once he had released Greg from his embrace.

Gasping slightly, more with surprise than anything else, Greg stammered, “I … I don’t really know.”

“I am yours to command,” Brudnoy said. “Call upon me at any hour and I will be at your side.”

With a sloppy military salute, Brudnoy turned abruptly and strode off into the crowd.

“Is he for real?” Greg asked.

Anson smiled knowingly. “Lev is as real as they come. If you need any advice about anything, ask him. He’s a lot smarter than he lets on.”

Greg nodded, not knowing how much he could believe. He looked at the party-goers, still talking and laughing and drinking.

“I didn’t know that liquor was allowed in the base,” he said.

“It isn’t,” Anson replied.

“Do you mean to tell me that there’s no alcohol in those drinks? Nobody’s popping pills or snorting anything?”

“What I’m telling you,” Anson said firmly, “is that company regulations do not allow alcohol or any other substances that impair judgment or reflexes. We’re even careful with aspirin up here.”

Greg smirked at her. “Sure. And if I tested a random sampling of your employees’ blood levels—”

“It doesn’t work that way,” she snapped. “Not here. We judge people by their performance, not by some numbers set down in a book of regulations.”

“So you wait for somebody to kill himself. And the people around him.”

“Not at all.” Anson’s voice was calm, reasoned, but beneath it there was stainless steel. “We live and work very close to one another. If somebody sees that someone is too—out of it, let’s say—to do his job, then they don’t let that person start working.”

“They report him sick?”

“They send him back to his quarters. Or her. They call for a replacement.”

“And that’s all?”

“We pay for performance here. If a person needs a replacement more than twice in a three-month span, we send him back Earthside.”

“Or her?”

“Or her,” Anson agreed. “It happens now and then, but not often enough to be a real problem.”

“And that’s the way I’m supposed to handle the situation? No matter what the company regulations say?”

Anson made a small shrug. “That’s the way things have been handled here for years. If you want to change it, that’s your prerogative. You’ll have to do your job in your own way, of course.”

“Of course,” Greg said. “But your way has been working fine, is that it?”

Anson smiled prettily. “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.”

The party showed not the slightest sign of slowing down. Greg watched, a stranger among the revelers, feeling like a pale and vapid ghost, almost invisible, noticed by the others just enough to make them feel uneasy and move away from him. Even Anson got tired of him and danced off with one of the younger men.

Terribly self-conscious and ill at ease, Greg made his way through the partying throng to the main exit from the Cave. Stepping through the airtight door into the empty tunnel outside was like stepping from bedlam into blissfully peaceful silence. It felt cooler out in the tunnel, easier to breathe.

Greg thought for a moment, then strode toward the control center. Make certain it’s really adequately manned, he told himself. Check on the status of the radiation storm, maybe talk with the astronomers back at Tucson.

The control center was quiet. The big electronic map of the base glowed in the darkened room just as it had before the flare erupted. All three positions at the U-shaped set of comm consoles were occupied. Several of the screens were badly streaked with interference, others were altogether blank. But the three communications technicians were at their jobs, sober and quietly intense.

The woman in the middle chair turned and saw Greg standing over her. “What do you think—” Then she saw the nametag on Greg’s coveralls. “Oh! Mr. Masterson, it’s you. I figured it was too soon for my relief.”

“How’s the link with Brennart’s team?” Greg asked quietly.

“Something coming through now,” she said, pointing to one of the working screens.

Bending over her shoulder, Greg saw a pair of spacesuited figures in brilliant sunlight pulling a tube or something from a large gray canister.

While they fiddled with the tube on the bare rocky ground, another figure in a gleaming white spacesuit with red stripes down its arms and legs walked into the picture.

“That’s it,” one of the spacesuited figures said. “The first set of nanomachines for construction—”

Suddenly the picture on the screen wavered, distorted into wild zig-zags of color, then broke up completely. The screen dissolved into hissing streaks of black and gray.

“Switch to backup,” said the tech on the operator’s right.

The screen showed the figures in spacesuits for the briefest flicker of an instant, then broke up into electronic hash.

“Three? Four?”

The technician shook her head. “All gone.”

“Five and six?”

“All of ’em.”

Greg asked, “Can’t you regain contact?”

She pointed to a hash-streaked screen. “Not now. The satellite links are down.”

“But there were six satellites, weren’t there?”

“Yessir, but the storm’s knocked all six of them out. Bing, bing, bing, one right after another. All six gone.”

“I have to go to the toilet,” said Bianca Rhee.

She whispered the words to Doug, leaning the helmet of her spacesuit against his so she wouldn’t have to use the suit radio.

They had been sitting in the half-covered shelter for several hours with nothing much to do except stare at the blank curving walls. Doug knew that the plumbing in the suits was different for women, and the suits were not meant to be worn for more than twelve hours at a time. From what he knew about solar flares, they would be in their suits for at least another twenty-four hours, perhaps considerably longer.

“If your urine collector is full you can void it into the chemical toilet,” Doug said to her, “without getting out of the suit.”

“That’s not my problem,” Rhee said.

“Aren’t you wearing—”

“No,” she said. “Are you?”

Wonderful, Doug thought. People have been using spacesuits for a century and still nobody’s come up with anything better than a plastic bag you stick on your bare butt. What do they call it? FC-something: fecal containment system? Some system. And you have to slap it in place before you zip up your suit, of course.

“It’s not safe to get out of your suit,” he said.

“But I’ve got to!”

“The radiation level’s still too high.”

“I can’t do it in my pants.”

Why not? Doug thought. But from the sound of Bianca’s voice, even muffled through the helmets, there was no debating the issue.

He turned to Brennart and clicked on his suit radio. “Sir, do we have anything that we can rig up as temporary shielding in the john?”