Girl on the Moon (17 page)

Due west, the horizon was impossibly close, and curved. It looked ridiculous—the horizon was flat, the Earthling in her insisted. Boulders ejected from meteor impacts, and small, perfectly round craters were strewn at random around the Marsh of Decay. The moon seemed like a shooting gallery for meteors, like it must get struck by something huge once a week. Conn’s human mind couldn’t comprehend the moon’s timeline. Intellectually, she understood that she was looking at the results of a billion years of meteor strikes with no atmosphere to soften the sharp, deep cuts and craters. But she knew she couldn’t truly understand how long the moon had been untouched by life, or wind, or wear.

Which reminded her of her first task for the day: find evidence the moon shower aliens had been to the Apollo 15 site. The Chinese had evidently come up short, or weren’t sharing their findings. Eyechart and Daniels hadn’t looked for evidence yet, not thoroughly. Conn made her way toward the Apollo 15 plaque, about three kilometers south-southeast, narrating what she saw, stopping to examine this or that rock or crater when Brownsville asked her to. She would install equipment and perform experiments later in the day, off feed, but right now, she would have a sizable audience, once Brownsville released the footage. She was much more conscious today when there were no footprints where she walked—not only because she was looking for evidence of the aliens, but because she had settled into an appreciation of how empty the moon was.

She approached the Apollo site. Antennas and equipment were exactly where astronauts Dave Scott and Jim Irwin had left them in 1971.

But beside one antenna was an indentation in the dust, as if it might have fallen and then been replaced upright. By Scott or Irwin? Eyechart or Daniels? The Chinese? Or somebody else?

Then she stood before the commemorative plaque:

APOLLO 15

FACLON

JULY 1971

“Brownsville, I’m not seeing any nonhuman footprints. There sure are a lot of human ones this close. Not so much around the descent stage.” The descent engines would have cleared much of that dust during landing, and subsequent takeoff. “I see two sets of footprints between here and the European lander, which I assume are those of Erik Tyzhnych and Scott Daniels. Two sets between here and the Chinese lander. Many others that I presume were left by Dave Scott and Jim Irwin. All human.”

“The aliens had to have investigated the site,” Gil Portillo said from Brownsville. Gil was CapCom—an anachronism from the early days of spaceflight, “Capsule Communications”—the one in Brownsville doing all the talking to the astronauts. Though others could and would be CapCom during the mission, Conn hadn’t yet been without Gil’s voice in her radio since landing on the moon. “The plaque is only nine inches wide. They had to get close.”

“I’m here looking right at it.”
I’m looking at the landing marker for Apollo 15...holy crap.
The dust was blasted away for meters around the descent stage. Outside that radius, to the north, west and east, footprints. Except
...

“Wait. Brownsville, there’s a swath about a meter wide—make that two separate swaths—in a west-northwesterly direction from the descent stage. It’s hard to make out. But the footprints in those areas are slightly disturbed. Blurry...Are you seeing?”

“Some of us are and some aren’t, Conn.”

“Here, I’ll pan. These are really clear.” She pointed her helmet camera directly at footprints that looked like they’d been made five minutes ago. Then she panned to the disturbed areas. “But here the footprints get—I don’t know. Blurry.” She moved closer, careful not to add her own tracks to the confusion. “Look! Where the footprints end, there are still smooth places, really hard to see, I don’t know if you can pick them up from the camera. Gil, what if something came and went, a hovercraft of some kind maybe? Something that would disturb the dust but not leave any footprints or tracks.”

“We see it, Conn. We think you’re right. Good eye.” This was exciting. Because no matter how much everyone worked to convince themselves that aliens had invited humans to meet them on the moon, it was still a hypothesis. But something had ridden some kind of hovercraft to and from the Apollo 15 landing site. And no one on Earth, not even Dyna-Tech, had invented a hovercraft that would work on the airless moon.

So it hadn’t been a human being riding that hovercraft.

Conn did her best to follow the delicate tracks, and found them heading for Hadley Rille. She had a sudden thought: was the alien hovercraft able to cross the kilometer-wide canyon?

The tracks ended at the lip of the chasm. And her hour of scheduled exploration was up. She reluctantly headed due north toward her lander. There, she picked up an equipment bag, took a breath, and began to do science.

September 1, 2034 (US central time zone)

Five hours later, Conn was again following the ridge bordering Hadley Rille, this time, looking for a safe way down. Many scientists would give their eyeteeth for samples from the bottom of the canyon, or even the strata on its sides, but Conn hadn’t found any place where she could safely descend.

She halted and took a pull from the water nipple inside her helmet as she scanned the ridge. All she could hear, other than Brownsville intermittently on her radio, was her own breathing.

She saw a flash of movement, which startled her—she had grown used to the stillness and solitude of the moon. A rover, traveling fast and silent along the ridge from the south toward her like something from a dream. Eyechart and Daniels were scheduled to be asleep. This must be the Chinese taikonauts.

The rover was headed right for her. And it wasn’t slowing.

She waved her arms above her head as best she could in her pressure suit. No effect. She turned to her left and lunged out of the way.

The driver must have seen her, finally: the rover jerked left as he yanked the steering wheel, kicking up dust and rocks as it skidded and tried to find a grip. After a second, which seemed much longer, the tires bit, but there was no time for the driver to straighten out. The rover whipped left and crashed through the lip of the ridge. It went airborne, spinning, crashed down facing backward...and then shuddered and rocked another long second before tipping over the ridge, into the canyon. Conn watched in horror as the rover’s back end struck a boulder and bounced in the one-sixth lunar gravity before turning upside down and falling away into the gorge.

“Did you
see
that?” Conn nearly shrieked. Gil Portillo said they had, and advised caution approaching the accident site. It wasn’t until then that Conn realized she was bounding toward the edge where the taikonauts had gone over. She skidded to slow herself and intentionally fell forward, arms outstretched to brace herself on the ridge. The rover had taken some of the lip with it, and she was able to lean over and look down.

The rille sloped relatively gently for about ten feet, then dropped precipitously. A taikonaut sprawled no more than five feet below her, gripping rock to keep himself from sliding the rest of the way down the canyon. Conn’s blood was rushing in her ears. “Brownsville, he’s in trouble. I can’t see the rover, or the other taikonaut.”

“Conn, stand by.”
Stand by?
She had to help this guy. She bent over the break in the ridge and reached as far as she could, but it wasn’t enough. So she lay on her stomach and inched her way down slowly, keeping what she hoped was a good grip on the damaged lip of the rille with her feet. Laying down in a pressure suit on a rocky surface surrounded by vacuum wasn’t recommended by the equipment manufacturer. She stretched: now he was within reach. But she didn’t have solid enough a grip on the ridge to support them both.

“Conn, you need to get back to safe ground and stand by!”

She ignored Gil. But she did realize her approach was stupid—she had a spool of CAT-5 cable in her equipment bag. She tried to scrabble backward to safety, but she didn’t have the leverage. She panicked for a moment before she worked out the right way to push herself backward with her arms. That did it. She backed up and out, frantically looking for her bag. She spotted it not far away, and ran to it.

She rummaged for the cable—and saw the kink and the hole in the pressure pipe running up her right leg.

She kept her head. She had duct tape in a pressure suit-friendly dispenser. She tore off a long piece and wound it around the pipe, plugging the hole.
Help yourself first, then others
, had been a mantra from her survival training. She couldn’t do anybody else any good if she died herself. She hoped the kink let enough pressure through, or else her shin and foot were going to depressurize.

She scrabbled back to the break in the ridge. “Conn!” came Gil’s voice over her radio. “Listen. The Chinese say one of them is alive, but the other isn’t, according to vitals. But they can’t tell who’s where. The one you’re looking at, is he moving?” Conn couldn’t see movement, though he seemed to have a strong grip on the rocks keeping him from sliding down. On the other hand, he couldn’t be in great shape if he couldn’t tell Chinese ops his situation. Or maybe his radio was busted.

She lied and said, “Yes, he’s moving. I have cable. Is there any way to get me on his frequency?” There wasn’t. Brownsville said they would relay to the Chinese that she was attempting a rescue, and they would let their taikonaut know.

“Only the cable goes over—not you,” Gil said.

Conn wound one end of the cable around a boulder, then lowered the other end and tried to get the taikonaut’s attention by waving it, to no avail. She thought for a moment, then reeled it back in, coiled it in a long loop, leaned over, and swatted his head with it. It worked: the taikonaut stirred, pulling himself up on his elbows just enough to see up.

He saw Conn and the cable. Conn showed him it was attached to a boulder, not just her. He let go with one hand and flailed at the cable, missed—tried again, and got it. But then he slipped, sliding down the ridge with a one-handed grip on the cable, pulling it taut. It held. But the taikonaut’s pressure suit’s bulk was such that he couldn’t reach over his head with his other hand.

He tried to get purchase to push himself up, but his feet were dangling over the abyss. Up on the ridge, Conn was trying to lift the taut cable up far enough to get herself underneath it, for leverage. Their combined efforts got her to where she was able to duck underneath and put the cable across her shoulders. She hoped to God the cable didn’t break from all this—durability wasn’t the number one priority in an environment with no life and no atmosphere.

Conn tried to stand from her crouch and pull the taikonaut up the slope. Even at one-sixth gravity, it was difficult—if man and suit weighed four hundred pounds on Earth, they weighed sixty-seven on the moon. She moved him up a few inches, far enough for him to get a grip on the slope with his feet and then he climbed far enough to reach the cable with his other hand.

Conn kept the cable on her shoulders and slowly backed up as the taikonaut pulled himself over the lip of the rille. He and Conn both crumpled in relief.

After a time, the taikonaut rolled over and peered over the side, probably looking for a sign of his crewmate. Or just getting a better idea what his fate would have been had he not been rescued. Conn mimed that she wanted to check his pressure suit for holes. He let her, and then examined her in return. He gave her duct tape work a silent and weary thumbs up. They faced one another and fell into an awkward hug.

Conn blamed herself, which she knew was inappropriate. Chinese operations control had advised Cai Fang that Conn was exploring along the canyon, and had been screaming at him to slow the rover down. Seconds before the crash, Luan Yongpo, the survivor, had seen Conn and had tried to get Cai to stop.

The ultimate fault, perhaps, was in the amphetamines the Chinese taikonauts had taken, the better to be awake and alert when the aliens arrived. Luan speculated that Cai might have taken a double dose.

Conn didn’t envy Luan, who had to continue the mission and serve as China’s ambassador to the moon-shower aliens in some fraction of twenty-four hours. She wondered remotely if Cai Fang had been bipolar, undiagnosed. Amphetamines were dangerous for bipolar people. An overdose doubly so, she imagined.

Conn was scheduled to go back inside the lander for an hour at 2:00 p.m. central. She went in early. She was scheduled to test the lander’s rover capabilities, just get it moving a little bit. She would do that in due time. For now, she took her suit off—no feed coverage—and cried.

September 1–2, 2034 (UTC)

Erik Tyzhnych and Scott Daniels slept until 6:00 p.m. central time—midnight UTC—right through the accident. Luan was still inside his own lander. He was scheduled to come back outside at midnight UTC, and the Chinese said the mission was still on and would be accomplished, so Luan had to be ready—or at least able—to meet the alien visitors.

Conn was outside again, alone, sifting through basalt in the name of science. She had been outside for three of eight scheduled hours as the date turned to September 2 in London.

She had broken the lander in as a wheeled rover/vehicle. She was meant to only drive it enough to be confident it worked, but she sought and got permission to move closer to the European lander. There was no operational advantage to moving. But after the morning’s tragedy, she was feeling a powerful disinclination to be alone.

The rover drew power partly from the lander’s fuel cells and partly from Conn pedaling to augment the fuel cells and keep them from draining too fast. It managed a spritely five kilometers per hour. Once the day’s history was made, she would be able to cover a great deal of ground.

Conn didn’t care if most of the science she was doing was ultimately the property of this or that corporation. She was exploring the moon, helping humankind learn what it was made of. She was examining craters made by meteors hundreds of millions of years ago. Even when she was setting up sensors and antennas for purposes she did not know, she was exploiting her unique opportunity on the moon. On the moon! And Peo had taught her that profit motive was not, by itself, a bad thing. The possibility of profit was how the majority of science in the world got done.