Moonrise (44 page)

“Where’re you going?” Doug called, more puzzled than annoyed or frightened.

“Come here, quick!” Brennart motioned with one long arm.

Doug tried to imitate Brennart’s lunar glide and hopped clumsily to the older man’s side.

“Down there. Can you see it?”

Doug peered into the inky blackness far below. “See what?” he asked.

“Lights. Like landing lights on a spacecraft.”

Doug stared. Far, far below he thought he saw two tiny gleams of lights, one red, one white. But when he looked directly at them, they disappeared.

“Masterson Aerospace to Yamagata lander,” he heard Brennart calling. “Can you hear me?”

That’s the Yamagata lander? Doug wondered. Down there?

“Masterson to Yamagata. Do you read?”

Doug was about to turn back to their hopper when he heard in his earphones, “Yamagata to Masterson. We read you.” The voice was weak, strained.

“We’ve just established legal claim to the mountaintop and we have a working base down at the ice field,” Brennart said, gloating happily. “You boys might as well pack up and go home.”

“We can’t. We crashed on landing. Both injured.”

Doug suddenly heard the pain in the man’s voice.

Brennart’s attitude changed instantly. “Does your base know of your condition?”

“No. Communications impossible in radiation storm.”

“We’ll try to get a team to you as soon as we can,” Brennart said.

“We are protected from radiation, but one of us is badly injured and needs medical attention.”

“We’ll do our best,” said Brennart. “Sit tight.”

“That is all we can do.”

Doug grabbed at Brennart’s arm. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.”

“We’ll get help to you as soon as the radiation dies down,” Brennart said. “Hang in there, guys.”

“Thank you.”

Without another word Brennart turned and loped back to the hopper. Doug ran alongside, almost matching his long gliding strides. They jumped up onto the platform together and Brennart slid his boots into the foot restraints and pushed the throttle forward in one motion, not even bothering to put up the railings.

But the hopper did not move.

Doug slid his boots into the foot loops and grabbed the edge of the console to support himself.

But the hopper did not move.

“Christ on a surfboard,” Brennart yelled. “It’s dead.”

“What’s wrong?”

Brennart swiftly scanned the meager control panel. “Everything’s in the green, but the goddamned engine won’t light.”

Doug felt cold sweat breaking out on him.

“Damn!” Brennart tugged at the throttle again. Nothing happened.

“What’s wrong?” Doug asked again.

Brennart turned toward him. “No time to check it out. Come on.”

And he jumped off the hopper’s platform. Doug followed him without questioning. Brennart was unfastening the empty cargo pod.

“Undo the oxy tank,” he commanded. “Get it down on the ground. Fast!”

Doug found the clips that held the bulbous green tank and clicked them open, then rolled the tank off the edge of the
platform into his waiting arms. Shocked at how heavy it felt, he let it slip and thump onto the rocky ground. He felt immense gratitude that it didn’t burst apart.

Turning, he saw that Brennart was rolling the canister of nanobugs along the bumpy ground. He wedged it against the hopper’s other side.

“Get under the platform,” Brennart urged, dropping to all fours. “Come on!”

Doug dropped to his hands and knees and crawled beneath the hopper’s platform, between the oxygen tank and the nano-machine canister, nearly banging his helmet on the dangling nozzle of the defunct rocket engine.

“How are we going to fix it from under here?” he asked Brennart. There was barely room enough to turn on his side, Doug saw. They could never get onto their backs, not with the life-support backpacks they carried.

“We’re not going to fix it,” the older man said. “We’re going to sit out the storm down here. This is our own little radiation shelter. Cozy, huh?”

“We’re going to stay here?” Doug heard a tinge of fear in his own voice.

“Nothing else we can do,” Brennart said calmly. “Can’t poke around trying to check out the hopper’s systems, not in this radiation flux. We’d be fried by the time we figured out where the malf is.”

“Malf?”

“Malfunction.”

“Oh.”

“So we pull down as much mass as we can to shield us from the sides and we hope the platform and rocket plumbing is thick enough to shield us overhead. And we wait.”

“But how can we tell when the radiation’s gone down enough—”

“When we hear a satellite signal. Either our minisats will come back on the air, or Moonbase’ll put up a new commsat to reestablish a link with us.”

Doug puffed out a breath. “And in the meantime?”

“We wait.”

Stretched out prone beneath the hopper’s platform with a couple of tanks and cargo pods. It didn’t seem like much protection to Doug.

“Snug as two bugs in a rug,” Brennart said.

“Not quite.”

“Well, we’re better off than those Japs. Crashed on landing. And they need medical attention.”

“So will we,” Doug said.

For a moment Brennart did not reply. Then, quietly, “Yeah, I suppose we will.”

“What do you think happened to the hopper?” Doug asked.

Brennart’s shoulders wormed slightly inside his suit. “Something simple, most likely. Radiation knocked out some primary system, like the computer control or the oxidizer pump.”

“Isn’t the hopper shielded against radiation?”

“Sure, but that doesn’t make much difference now, does it? Like the man says, this is where we’re at.”

“They should’ve been back by now,” Bianca Rhee said to no one in particular.

Roger Deems looked frightened, as usual, as he sat at the silent communications console.

“Shouldn’t they?” Bianca turned to Killifer, standing with Greenberg behind her.

Killifer slowly nodded, looking grim. “Yeah. Something must’ve gone wrong.”

“Can’t we talk with them?” Rhee pleaded.

Deems said shakily, “Up there on the mountain, they’re out of line of sight from our antenna, and we don’t have any working commsats to relay a signal to them.”

“But there must be
something
we can do!”

“Wait,” said Killifer.

Rhee stared at him, aghast.

“That’s all we can do,” Killifer said, almost gruffly. “Unless you want to kill yourself, too.”

“You think they’re dead?”

Killifer grunted, then answered, “As good as.”

“The radiation is definitely receding,” the main communications technician said to Greg. “In another five or six hours it ought to be almost down to normal.”

Greg nodded curtly. He’d been hearing “another five hours” for the past six hours, at least.

“You’d better get some rest.”

Turning, Greg saw it was Jinny Anson who had just entered the control center.

“You look like hell,” Anson said cheerfully. She was fresh and bright-eyed.

“I’ll wait here,” said Greg.

“Get to bed before you fall down and hurt yourself,” Anson said firmly. “That’s not advice, it’s an order.”

Greg smiled tiredly at her. “You’re ordering me?”

“I’m still director of this rat’s nest. Get your butt into your bunk. Now.”

For a moment Greg wondered how far he might go in showing her who the real boss was. How far might she go? he asked himself. She’d call security and have me carried to my quarters, he realized, staring into her steady, unwavering steel gray eyes.

“Okay,” he said, his voice slurring slightly, “but you call me—”

“The instant anything happens,” Anson promised.

Greg trudged off to his quarters, not certain he remembered exactly where they were. He found the door eventually and flopped fully clothed on the bunk.

He dreamed, not of Doug and the others trapped in the radiation storm, but of his mother. The two of them were in the Cave, at the flare party, dancing together.

“Did you mean what you said back in the shelter?” Doug asked.

Lying prone beside him, Brennart said, “What did I say?”

“That you didn’t care if you lived or died?”

The older man hesitated a moment, then replied, “Yeah, I meant it.”

Doug couldn’t believe it. “Really?”

“Everybody dies, kid. Sorry I let you come along, though. You shouldn’t have been involved in this.”

“You think we’re going to die?”

“I’m already dying,” Brennart said. “Cancer in my lymph nodes.”

Shocked, Doug blurted, “But how could they let you keep on working?”

With a low chuckle, Brennart said, “Because they don’t
know. I have my own doctor, my own physical. The corporation records are … well, doctored.”

“Falsified?” Doug had never dreamed such a thing was possible.

“Friends in high places,” said Brennart. “It happens when you’ve been around long enough.”

“You really have cancer?”

“Terminal—unless the radiation treatment we’re getting right now burns it out of me.” He laughed sardonically.

“Cancer,” Doug repeated.

“It’s kind of an occupational disease when you spend a lot of time up here.”

“But,” Doug’s mind was churning, “but there are treatments. Nanotherapy could—”

“Find me a nanotherapy clinic that’s still open and I’ll go to it,” Brennart said bitterly. “The ones that haven’t been shut down by the lawyers have been burned down by the mobs.”

“Even in Switzerland?”

“Switzerland, Thailand, Argentina—the only people I could find doing nanotherapy now are crooks and frauds. Black market; you pay in advance and you take what you get. Not for me.”

“But my mother’s talked about clinics in Switzerland.”

“Your mom’s a very rich woman, Doug. I don’t have that kind of money. Or clout.”

“I do,” Doug said.

For a few moments Brennart was silent. Then he said, “I appreciate it, kid, but I think it’s too late for me even with nanotherapy.”

“How do you know—”

“Hey, I’ve had a damned good life. They’ll put up a statue to me here on the Moon after I’m gone. What more could I ask for?”

“How old are you?”

“Fifty-one, in September. If I make it that far.”

“I’ll be nineteen next August.”

“Maybe not.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” Brennart said. “I shouldn’t have let you talk me into bringing you along.”

“I’m not sorry about it,” Doug said. He realized that he truly meant it. “I would’ve kicked myself for the rest of my life if I hadn’t come up here with you.”

Brennart made a noise that might have been a snort, or a suppressed laugh. “You know what we used to say about test pilots, back when we still used test pilots? More guts than brains.”

Doug laughed out loud. “Yeah, that’s us.”

“That’s what it boils down to. You know what you’re doing is dangerous, but it’s so damned inviting! Like a really nasty-looking woman you see at a bar. You know she’s trouble, but you can’t help yourself.”

“I’ve never heard it put that way before,” Doug said.

“Yeah.” Brennart almost sighed. “You can’t turn it down, so you tell yourself you can handle the danger, you’re prepared for it.”

“My father must’ve been like that.”

“He was one smart turkey, let me tell you. He knew when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. Never took a chance he hadn’t calculated out to six decimal places.”

“I never knew him,” said Doug. “He died before I was born.”

“That’s what impressed me about you, kid. You didn’t just decide to run up this mountaintop for the glory of it. You calculated the odds, first.”

“I didn’t calculate on our hopper dying, though.”

“Like the man says, you can’t win ’em all.”

Doug nodded, blinking at perspiration that was trickling into his eyes.

“If we get through this without being totally fried,” Brennart asked, “what do you want to do with your life?”

“You mean the ten minutes I might have left?”

“Come on, seriously. Have you thought about it?”

“Not much.”

“You ought to. A guy in your position has all sorts of opportunities open to him. You ought to start thinking seriously about them.”

“I’ve sort of been following my father’s footsteps,” Doug admitted. “I’ve never thought about anything but Moonbase.”

“You could do a lot worse,” said Brennart. “Your father knew which way was up.”

“I sort of thought I’d like to study architecture.” It was something of a confession. Doug had never told anyone about that, not even his mother.

“Architecture?”

Shrugging inside his spacesuit, Doug replied, “Lunar architecture, you know. I want to build a real city here.”

“Oh-ho,” Brennart said. “You really have the bug, don’t you?”

“Maybe it’s genetic.”

“No,” said Brennart. “It’s the frontier. It gets to you. Like Mark Twain said, ‘When it’s steamboat time, you steam.’ ”

“Steamboat time?”

“In Twain’s era the steamboat was the exciting thing. Another generation of kids wanted to be railroad engineers. Then came airplanes, and any self-respecting youngster wanted to be a pilot.”

“And then came the Moon,” Doug said, “and they all wanted to be astronauts.”

“And now you want to be a lunar architect.”

“If we get out of this,” Doug pointed out.

Ignoring that, Brennart went on, “You want to build, to add something to the world. Like your dad. That’s good. Everybody should leave his mark on the world.”

“You’ve certainly left yours,” Doug said. “They really will build a statue to you.”

“I’ve had a helluva lot of fun doing it,” Brennart said. “Too bad it’s got to end.”

“Like the man says,” Doug quoted him, “everybody dies.”

They fell silent again.

Eventually, Doug said, “I wish I could have had a life like yours.”

With a low chuckle, Brennart replied, “You can have it, kid. It’s not all that much, you know.”

“But you’re a real legend! You’ve done so much!”

“Except the one thing I really wanted.”

“What was that?”

“Mars.”

“You wanted to go on the Mars mission?” Doug felt stupid
as he heard his own words. Of course Brennart wanted to go on the Mars mission. Who wouldn’t?