Fiction River: Moonscapes (12 page)

“Sharon, honey? You don’t need to be scared.” Nancy’s voice was soft, and clear. Not coming through speakers. That was just her talking.

Sharon leaned enough to look down.

Nancy stood on one side of the hatch. Her helmet was off. Her black pixie-cut hair hung loose around her pale face. She had beautiful skin and pale pink lips.

Across from her, Boyd lifted his helmet free. He twisted around to stow the helmet and then looked up. His dark eyes met hers. He smiled, his full lips parting to reveal perfect white teeth.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, Sharon. We’re not going to hurt you.”

A sigh escaped from Sharon’s lips. That was it then. If they were infected with something, some ancient microorganism that had been sleeping in Charon’s ices, she was exposed now. When this had all started, she had come back from a survey mission, gathering core samples from a search grid around the geyser field. When she had come back into the habitat, they were all naked. All of them, together. She had just turned around and gone back outside.

After all her time on the
Veil
, and in training for the mission, she hadn’t realized how much she missed simply going outside. Of course on Charon she still had to wear a suit, but she didn’t care about that. It was just like wearing clothes.

She’d never seen a landscape like Charon’s before. It was a bluish tan gray color, not that different from the moon, but with much more water ice. The areas around the geysers were brighter and sparkled from frost. From space it looked something like a speckled egg with the older surfaces being darker than the fresh younger surfaces where water ices coated the surface. The surface was rippled in spots too, from impact shockwaves that had traveled through the surface and froze in place before settling. The bright distant sun was small, and yet still illuminated enough of the surface to see. That alone made it look much more alien than the Earth’s moon.

“Sharon?” Boyd said. “What are you doing?”

She took a breath. “Nothing. Thinking.”

“We didn’t mean to exclude you,” Nancy said. “We’re sorry. One thing led to another, we were fooling around, and got carried away.”

“You could have joined in,” Boyd said. “No one would have minded.”

They wouldn’t have minded?
What did that even mean?

“You didn’t seem interested.”

“No one ever asked me,” Sharon said, her voice barely a whisper.

“What?” Boyd said.

She couldn’t say it again. It was too embarrassing. She wasn’t a virgin. There was Chad Gehrke, her first year in college. Her only one-night stand, and it was an awkward, uncomfortable experience. The condom he wore had actually come off during sex and she spent the next two weeks until her period terrified that she was going to get pregnant the first time she had sex. And after that, she’d dated Steven Painter. Sex with Steven was just something they did like clockwork once a week, on Saturday night. It never lasted more than a few minutes, after which Steven fell asleep.

No one had ever made her squeal like Nancy.

Nancy appeared beside her, hanging onto the rungs with one hand and boot. Sharon shrank back in her chair but there was nowhere she really could go. She filled the space. She’d made sure the seats were built to accommodate someone her size, but they still felt like kid chairs.

Nancy wasn’t wearing her gloves any more. She had on the rest of her suit still, but her hands were as bare as her head. Her nails were painted green, like her suit. She reached out.

Sharon watched Nancy’s hand. It was small, the nails neatly trimmed and short, but green. A shiny lime green color. She must have used a portion of her personal weight allotment to bring cosmetics, which was just weird. Of all of the things to bring out to the far reaches of the solar system, Nancy had brought fingernail polish? Or had she manufactured it on the ship? It might be possible, but Sharon had never stopped to ask the question. She wouldn’t have thought about it.

Nancy’s fingers brushed Sharon’s ankle, caressed the smooth skin and then higher, tickling the soft hairs on her leg. Sharon closed her eyes, her throat tightening while Nancy’s hand moved in small circles against the light hairs. Nancy shaved her legs, and more, Sharon had seen that in the habitat.

“No one is going to hurt you, Sharon.”

She didn’t open her eyes but she smelled Boyd when he drew close, the salty masculine smell of him. His breath was warm against her shoulder. His soft lips touched the skin and she shivered again.

Her eyes opened. She looked at the two of them, hanging easily beside her chair. “Why? What caused this? There has to be something about Charon that caused it!”

Nancy’s pink lips twitched in a small smile. “In a way, I guess. At least for me. It was one thing on the ship. Cramped. Everybody was always around. Then we came here.”

“It’s so big,” Boyd said. His lips grazed her shoulder. “We walked out on the ice and there was a whole world.”

“That’s right.” Nancy looked at Sharon with bright eyes. “You’ve seen it. A whole empty world. We’re alone out here, this small pocket of humanity. It’s beautiful and terrifying all at the same time.”

It was. It was. The first time Sharon had walked outside after the landing, she had turned to the light. The sun was bright but tiny, like a flashlight far off in the darkness. She’d seen the Earth fade away to invisibility when they left, but here she had stood on a ridge of fresh ice and the sun was so far away.

“Blackstone understood it,” Boyd said. “I don’t know how, when she’s never been out here, but she gets it. She talked about each one of these worlds being a new start for humanity. We’re a tiny pocket of life on a dangerous world.”

“We’re not as strong as you,” Nancy said. Her hand slid up Sharon’s leg, past her knee, circling the smooth skin on her inner thigh. “You looked at it all, and you went to work. It impressed the hell out of me. Nothing fazes you. Not during the trip, not even coming here.”

Boyd kissed her shoulder again and looked at her with dark eyes. “So we lost it a bit. In a way it was Charon, it’s just so far removed from everything we left behind. We took comfort in each other, all of us, except you. You walked away.”

Sharon drew in a shaky breath. Her cheeks were hot. Nancy’s hand was warm and stroked higher on Sharon’s leg.

“I didn’t know how, I’ve never, not like that.” She couldn’t continue. She couldn’t think.

“It’s okay,” Nancy said. “When you left we realized what we’d done, how isolated you must have felt. That’s why we came after you.”

“There’s a lot of work to do,” Boyd said. “We can’t do it without you, and we can’t fool around forever. We have to come up for air sometime.”

Nancy winked. “If you’re interested, though, we can have some fun before we go back.”

Nancy’s finger grazed along the edge of Sharon’s panties. Her legs parted. Her breath caught in her throat.

“Yes. Please.” She closed her eyes.

Maybe it was the moon, something about Charon that had infected the others, and now infected her. Maybe it was simply feeling small and alone on the edge of the solar system. How could she know without running tests and experiments? There was so much about this world that they didn’t know yet. Either way, did it really matter?

Nancy’s lips grazed Sharon’s thigh and she gasped. Strong, masculine hands slid up her shirt and she surrendered to their touches.

***

Communication with the
Veil
was restored three days later. Angie Tran contacted them.

“Charon Base, this is
Veil
command. Come in.”

Sharon crossed the main room of the habitat. Around the edges were the six chambers that led to their personal rooms. Everyone was back at work, at least during the regular work shifts. They still paired off in the evening, the pairings changing each night. Sharon activated the holographic screen.

Angie Tran appeared. “Sorry we’ve been out of touch, Sharon. Terra Blackstone was visiting from Diaspora Base on the moon.”

Blackstone? That wasn’t possible. “Excuse me?”

“Yes, they’ve developed a new communications technology. It eats up a lot of bandwidth, but allows real-time holographic communication. We’re working on our own initiator up here. How do things stand there?”

They had all agreed not to bring up the incident with the
Veil
. They all were fine, and further analysis of the water ice mined failed to show any presence of unknown microorganisms.

“We’re fine,” Sharon said. “Our survey is progressing well.”

“Glad to hear it. We’re going to start plans to establish a permanent presence on Pluto. I’ve discovered something there that we can’t explain yet. I’d like your help with it.”

“You’re abandoning Charon?”

Angie shook her head. “No. We need Charon’s water. Pluto can supply nitrogen and methane we need, between the two worlds we have an opportunity to build our new future.”

“In that case, if it’s okay, I’d like to lead up the efforts here on Charon.”

“As you wish. I’d still like your input. I’ll forward you everything as we get it.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“Okay.” Angie smiled. “I’m glad our communications blackout didn’t cause any problems. We’ll be in regular touch after this.”

“That’d be good,” Sharon said. “Thank you.”

They ended the call.

Boyd was over at the kitchen station, a pot steaming as he worked with Terry to fix dinner. Sharon rocked back in her chair. Charon was home now. More people would come and join them. This was her world, her family, and her future.

Introduction to “
Moon Shine”

Matthew Lieber Buchman is the science fiction name for the military romance writer M.L. Buchman. His friends just call him Matt. He’s writing two different series for Sourcebooks, and is indie-publishing several novellas. Still, he finds time to write the occasional short story for us. He previously appeared in our
Christmas Ghosts
volume under the M.L. Buchman byline.

He says the inspiration for this story came in one sentence: “Write a weird-ass voice piece in which a moon plays an essential role.”

So he did.

Moon Shine

Matthew Lieber Buchman

It had been an awful long climb up the old gravity well from Mercury Station to Europa Station. My rig was almost as tired as I was from sitting for frickin’ ever at the damn controls.

Earth Comm was always in such a damned rush that a girl could barely scratch the old itch before bein’ assigned some stupid new plan. Never should have signed with Planetary Engineering; them people didn’t have a damned clue about what was going on up-system. Or down-system for that matter. You’d think that if a girl had just spent three months busting her butt on Mercury, there might something that needed doin’ closer by than Jupiter.

But I didn’t mind all that much, it kept me in space where I like being and also this girl enjoyed being kept comfortable in beer money even when something broke down.

‘Til now.

The climb from Mercury all the way out to Jupiter’s orbit had taken its toll and the
Elsie
had more problems than her itchy commander who’d just spent four months in solitary confinement in a box no bigger than a Lunar Rolligon without a single man in grabbing distance.

I did the old Jupiter atmosphere aero-brake. I roared up from the inner system with enough speed to send me to the stars, rode a hard curve down into the methane and hydrogen and crap that Jupiter calls atmosphere, bleeding off speed and creating heat, and then the
Elsie
and me climbed all nice and slow up to the orbit of Europa.

Except the damn moon wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

Now there’s something about them orbital mechanics that’s kinda important…they don’t much change. The Earth is gonna take a year to get around Mother Sol every time. And Jupiter, she’ll mosey her fine behind through a full orbit when it damn well pleases her. But she’ll do it regular as can be.

Now them little moons do the same thing, just like clockwork.

Except I’m looking out my nav port and there ain’t no moon anywhere in sight. Last I checked there was seventy-something moons they’d found around Jupiter. Though why you’d be calling a space rock less than a kilometer across a moon instead of a rock is way past this girl’s understanding. You’d have to be asking them fools at Earth Comm and this girl sure wasn’t about to.

First, there’d be no end of paperwork and second, you’d never be able to understand their answer anyway.

Third was more important though, at least to me personal-like. My comm gear went down somewhere around about when I crossed Mars orbit and I was hoping to have some service chick more nimble than me crawl into
Elsie’s
guts and fix things up right. I’d tried it, but no way had the access ports been built for big women like me. Some thin guy with no breasts or hips had designed the damn thing. The only way I was getting in to where the comm gear was broke was with an ax.