Lunar Descent (10 page)

Is this the answer to the question of why you quit modeling
?

Took me a while to formulate the answer, didn't it? (
laughs
) Yeah, it is, but only a little bit. As it turned out, my contract with the Ford Agency happened to come up for renewal at the same time that I was finishing up my doctoral work at the university. The Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston wanted me aboard as an associate, and Skycorp was offering me a contract to do basic research at Descartes Station, so … (
shrugs
) There wasn't really much of a choice, as I saw it.

Was the salary that they offered you comparable to your modeling fee
?

Oh, nowhere even close! But it wasn't a question of salary. As I said before, lunar geology had been my calling in life. Why should I give up a chance to live and work on the Moon … my lifetime dream … just for a few more years of having the bottom of a swimsuit run up my ass? Besides, by that time I was twenty-nine years old. In the high-profile modeling world, that meant I was almost over the hill. I don't think there really was that much of a choice.

You were engaged for a short time to tennis champion Bill Cooper. That broke off as soon as you announced your intention to quit modeling. Did he want you to continue being a model
?

I … (
sighs
) Hey, that's a personal matter between Billy and me. I don't want to comment on it here.

It's been said that he wanted you to stay in modeling, and that he broke it off when you opted for a full-time career as a research scientist
.

No comment. It's nobody's business but our own. The breakup was peaceful, that's all anyone needs to know. Next question.

A lot of people believe that you were crazy for opting out of modeling when you were at the top of your profession
.

My profession is science. Modeling was how I paid the bills. I was more than happy to get out of it when I could.

Your nickname in the modeling field was “Butch
”…

Still is. That's what everyone calls me. Butch Peterson.

How did you get the name
?

Because I was hard to work with. Maybe it's my mean streak. Maybe they meant “bitch” and somebody just misspelled it. Who cares? I like the name. Describes my character accurately. I'm a tough cookie.

Tough enough for the Moon
?

Well, Skycorp's sending me up there in about five weeks, on a joint-operating agreement with the Lunar and Planetary Institute, just as soon as I complete my training at the Cape. Three years with the Descartes Station science team. We'll get to find out, won't we? (
laughs
) Hey, and if it doesn't pan out, I can always pose for a centerfold in
Playboy
, right?

5. The Usual Gang of Idiots

“You know, of course, that he's going to want to change everything,” said Mighty Joe Young.

He was watching from the traffic control cupola on top of the LTV maintenance center. Out on Pad One, under the glare of the ring of landing beacons, ground vehicles moved in on the
Michael Collins
as hardsuited pad rats dragged fuel lines and power cables across the reinforced mooncrete apron toward the LTV. Mighty Joe dispassionately watched the scene through the triple-thick windows. “This guy's going to be nothing but trouble,” he added sourly.

Casey Engel, the pad operations manager, didn't look up from his console. “Give him a chance, willya?” he answered softly as he watched a bank of TV and computer monitors. “He's company, but I heard he's been here before. He might be a blessing in disguise, for all we know.”

“I doubt it.” Mighty Joe shook his shaggy head. Joe Young resembled the cinematic ape after whom he was nicknamed: six-foot-six, 275 pounds of hard muscle covered by hairy, sunburned skin, heavily bearded and long-haired except for the beginnings of a bald spot on the crown of his head, which he kept covered with a baseball cap from a Florida alligator farm called Gatorama (“the only place in the world with more lizards than Skycorp,” he was fond of telling people). Most of the time Mighty Joe was grinning, as if all the universe were a great cosmic gag and he was the only one who knew the punch line. Now he was glowering through the windows at the moonship.

“Bullshit,” he groused. “Fucking company's up to something. First we get a work slowdown, then we get fifty new guys sent here in the last few weeks, and now
this
guy shows up.” He thrust a hairy finger at the spacecraft. “I'm telling you, pal of mine, there's a shitstorm coming. I can smell it and I can feel it.”

“Umm.” Casey was barely paying attention to the tug pilot. Cupping his right hand over his ear, he listened to the voices in his headset. “Yeah, we verify that, Ray,” he said. “Engines are safed and we've got you on external power. You're go to pop the hatch any time you're ready.” He glanced over his shoulder at Mighty Joe. “Sorry, Joe. You were saying …?”

“Nyahh … forget it.” Mighty Joe looked away from the
Collins
toward the other side of the landing field, where his own ship was poised on Pad Two. A couple of other pad rats were working on the tug, their arms thrust deep within service hatches leading into the guts of the big, ugly spacecraft, prepping the ship for its next flight in a few hours. He smiled as he gazed upon the tug, once known as the
Harrison Schmitt
until he had rechristened it. Slightly smaller then the LTV on Pad One, but with larger DPS engines and trusslike strongbacks running along its lower fuselage, it resembled an albino toad which had just crawled out of a sandbox. Gray lunar dust was caked on its sides; its wide flight-deck windows and mid-deck airlock hatch gawked at him like an amphibian face. There were too many moonships named after old, dead astronauts already, and the tug was the only thing on the Moon bigger and uglier than himself. Its registered name had been insolently crossed out with two red swaths of paint, and its unofficial name had been crudely painted below:
Beautiful Dreamer
. No one got the inside joke behind the new name, which suited Mighty Joe Young just fine. Let the uncultured peasants lose sleep over it.

“Listen, the
Dreamer
's still having trouble with Main Bus A,” he said as he watched the pad rats crawling around the tug. “Probably a short in one of the conduits or something, maybe down in the mid-deck I think. The last flight up we had to keep switching over to the backup cells. I put in my report. Has anyone gotten around to fixing it yet?”

Casey sighed. “I dunno …”

Mighty Joe stared at the back of Engel's head. “You
don't know
? Hell, Casey, I gotta fly that thing with a faulty electrical system!
Why
don't you know?”

Casey nodded toward the tug. “See that kid on the left? That's one of the new guys Skycorp sent us this month. I brought it to his attention and he told me he'd look at it once he read the section in the service manuals.”

“Once he read the …? Jesus and Mary, what was the kid doing before they sent him up here, flying model rockets in his backyard?”

The pad supervisor looked at him irritably. “Now that you mention it, he's got an NAR patch on his vest.” Casey tapped a finger against the National Association of Rocketry patch on the right sleeve of his jacket. “Just like this one.”

Mighty Joe grimaced. “Okay, okay, I'm sorry. Just get him to fix my damn ship, all right? That busline bothers me, and I gotta fly with it.” He paused, again watching the activity on the field. “Just tell me one thing. Is the
Dreamer
going to launch on time?”

Casey waited until he had monitored the securance of the fuel line against the side of the
Collins
. A moondog climbed a ladder on a landing gear strut to manually push its collar into position and lock it firmly into place; when he was done, he turned and gave Casey a thumbs-up from across the pad. The controller nodded, double-checked his computer screen to make sure the seal was airtight, then touched a couple of buttons on his board to start the pump cycle. “You're go for launch,” he replied without looking at Young, “but your window doesn't begin till fifteen-hundred. It's been moved back.”

Mighty Joe took a deep breath and carefully counted to ten before he replied. He had a bad temper; everyone told him so, and he was trying to overcome a tendency to jump all over people. “May I ask,” he queried as politely as he could, “whatever the hell for?”

Casey didn't say anything. He studiously watched the post-touchdown procedure until Joe laid a huge hand on his shoulder and squeezed just a little bit. Casey winced and testily shook off Mighty Joe's paw. “Lay off, willya? It's not my call. The new GM radioed MainOps just after they landed. He wants a general staff meeting in Mess at thirteen-hundred. We're all supposed to be there in one hour. No exceptions. So that means you don't launch till fifteen-hundred.”

“What the
fuck
?”

“Hell, I don't know!” Casey snapped. “I'm just telling you what I heard. Anyone who doesn't show gets their pay docked for the day.” He glanced over his shoulder at Young. “The best I can do is fifteen-hundred if I'm going to get you guys up without a scrub. I ran the flight-plan through the computer. You'll still make the pickup with the
Collins
AOMV, no problem.”

“No problem.” Joe let out his breath, then balled his right fist in his left hand and cracked his knuckles. “No problem,” he repeated. “Okay.”

He nodded his head lazily and turned to saunter toward the open hatch of the pressurized passageway leading back to the main building. He waited until he heard Casey's relieved sigh; then he turned back. “But remember,” he added. “I want a clean launch at fifteen-hundred. Got it? No holds, no scrubs. And I want that main busline fixed. Everything copacetic, right?”

“Uh-huh. Yeah. Right. You got it, Joe.”

“Delightful. I'm ever so fucking glad to hear it.” Mighty Joe bent low and turned his wide shoulders to squeeze through the hatch into the tunnel. Great, he thought. Nothing to do but sit around and beat off until launch-time.

If he had ever doubted it before, he didn't doubt it now. The new GM was going to be nothing but trouble.

There was a portrait of Alfred E. Neuman, cut from the cover of an issue of
Mad
, taped to the door of the Lunar Resources lab. Below it was a handprinted sign: “The Usual Gang of Idiots,” with the names of the Descartes Station's science staff listed underneath. Once there had been five names on the roster, but now there were only two: Susan Peterson, Ph.D., and Lewis Walker, M.D. The three other names had been crossed off the list.

The string of brown prayer beads made a soft, rhythmic snapping noise, like tiny castanets, as they moved through Monk Walker's fingers:
click
…
click … click … click
…
click
… Butch Peterson usually found it a soothing background sound, like the random music of wind chimes tinkling in a summer breeze. It was the sound of Monk's mind at work. Now the prayer beads sounded disturbed, restless. Butch stared for a few more moments at the raw data from the most recent local geological survey before she finally gave up. She swiveled her chair away from her desk terminal and stared at Monk Walker.

The chief physician was sitting on a stool next to the window, gazing out at the lunar plain. Windows in Subcomp A were rare; much of the base lay underground and most of the above-ground structures were buried by regolith, so space for windows had to be scalloped out from beneath the soil. They were lucky to have this one window in the science lab, and luckier still to have such a good view. The gentle slopes of Stone Mountain rose on the southeastern horizon, with the crescent Earth hanging overhead, but she sensed that he wasn't really looking at the scenery. She looked at the small string of beads in his right hand and noted that they were moving outwards from his palm. In the Buddhist tradition it meant that the object of Monk's meditation was external, outside of himself.

Butch had learned not to interrupt Walker's meditations; if he wanted to speak, he would interrupt himself. No one else on the Moon received this kind of courtesy from Butch Peterson. Indeed, she itched to make some sort of smartass remark—
Playing with yourself again
? or
Try chewing your nails, it's quieter
—but she deferentially kept her silence.

Monk's gaze presently moved from the window to her, and the clicking of the beads paused as he raised a questioning eyebrow. “Yes?” he asked.

She smiled and shrugged slightly. “Penny for your thoughts?”

“I'm driving you crazy again? Sorry.” He considered her remark. “They're probably not worth even a penny.”

“Naah. Your penny-ante thoughts are worth a nickel to anyone else's.” Butch moved the mouse across the pad so that the cursor touched the
SAVE
function; then she tapped the button to close the file. Might as well, she thought. Can't get a damn thing done today, anyway. “How about some tea?”

She stood up from her chair and arched her back as she asked the question, wrapping her arms behind her and letting her head tip back, feeling her breasts stretch against her washed-out Royals sweatshirt. A standard modeling pose, remembered from the old days, but it felt good. A sexy stretch; the grand old dames at the Ford Agency would have been proud. If she had done this outside the privacy of the lab, at least seventy-five guys in Descartes—not counting the small handful of gays—would have been driven apeshit.

But not Monk. The only deliberately celibate man on the Moon was sitting right here in her lab. Butch spied on Lew Walker out of the corner of her eye; his expression was totally neutral. Butch Peterson could have jumped up on her workbench and started a striptease, and Monk would have warned her that she might fall off and bruise herself … or dismissively turned to look out the window and started playing with his beads again. Her stretch didn't do a thing for him. He nodded his close-cropped head. “Tea sounds good.”