Moonrise (33 page)

Joanna enjoyed his attentions, as she did those of Carlos Quintana and several others. It amused her to watch the male ego at work, and to manipulate their testosterone-driven ambitions toward goals of her own choosing.

Rashid stepped into Joanna’s office and looked around appreciatively. He was short and compact in build, rather like Paul, thought Joanna, although slimmer. A trim black beard framing his oval face, Rashid had movie-star looks: huge soulful dark brown eyes and a smile to die for. He was smiling now as he sat in the delicate little loveseat, facing Joanna’s personal chair.

“Desert golds and tans,” he said, noticing the decor. “And a scent of jasmine. Are you trying to make me homesick?”

Joanna laughed. “For Baltimore?”

“Racial memory,” Rashid bantered. “Jung claimed that we all have primitive memories stored in our subconscious minds.”

“Maybe my ancestry goes back to the desert,” Joanna said. “I like this color scheme. And I love the Southwest.”

“Arabs prefer cities. My people are great architects.”

Joanna decided they had chatted enough. Time to get down to business. “Omar, how would you feel if I suggested that my son Greg be the next director of Moonbase?”

Rashid did not seem surprised. He eased one arm across the back of the loveseat and crossed his legs. “O’Rourke is slated for that position.”

“I know, but …” She let the sentence dangle.

“O’Rourke is very competent. Unimaginative, true, but very competent.”

“I asked Jinny if she’d stay on until the polar expedition came back and she refused,” Joanna said.

The slightest of tics twitched at the corner of Rashid’s mouth. “You should have spoken to me first. I would have told you she’d refuse. She’s going to be married.” His voice was soft, yet Joanna heard his disapproval. She had gone over his head to speak directly to Anson.

“My other son’s out at the south pole with Brennart.”

“Yes, I am aware of that.”

“I don’t like the idea of changing base directors while the expedition’s out there.”

Rashid shrugged elaborately. “It really makes almost no difference whatsoever. The base director is in no position to help or harm the expedition.”

“Really?”

“The expedition is rather self-sufficient. Brennart knows what he’s doing.”

“Even with one of the cargo ships crashed?”

Again the shrug. “They’ll resupply earlier than scheduled. It’s not a major problem.”

“So you don’t think Anson’s leaving will be a problem?”

“Of course not. If I did, she wouldn’t be leaving, believe me.”

Joanna studied his handsome face. Rashid seemed completely at ease, totally confident.

“Then allowing Greg to take over … ?”

He spread his hands. “It shouldn’t be a problem. O’Rourke has more experience, but your son has shown quite remarkable leadership qualities.”

Almost, Joanna blurted her fear that Greg still hated his younger half-brother. You’re being irrational, Joanna told herself sternly. Yet the fear was still there, gnawing inside her.

“This must be a very difficult decision for you,” Rashid said softly, smiling at her from an arm’s length away.

Joanna’s thoughts snapped back to the here-and-now.

“No,” she said. “No, it isn’t difficult at all. Unless you are actively opposed, Greg Masterson will replace Jinny Anson as the director of Moonbase.”

“Effective on the first of the month?” Rashid asked.

“Yes. But I want Greg to get up there right away and spend Jinny’s final days at Moonbase getting oriented.”

“How soon … ?”

“Today,” Joanna snapped.

Rashid dipped his head slightly. “Harkening and obedience.”

Jinny Anson felt her teeth grinding together as she looked over the graph on her desktop screen.

“Solar flare,” she said, almost accusingly.

The technician who had been monitoring the astronomical instruments in Bianca Rhee’s absence nodded unhappily.

“And it’s going to be a big mother, is it?”

“Class Four flare. Maybe a five.”

Anson leaned back in her creaking plastic chair and glared at the young tech. “How soon?” she snapped.

The technician was barely into his twenties, still an undergraduate student who had taken a year off to make money by working at Moonbase. Standing in front of Anson’s desk in his baggy, frayed coveralls, he shuffled his feet uncertainly.

“Hard to say,” he replied. “I’ve checked with Tucson. Next twenty-four hours, for sure. Could be a lot sooner, though.”

“Great. I’ll have to alert the surface crews.”

“And, uh—Brennart’s people?”

“Yes, them too. They should have their shelters dug in by now. Will the radiation hit them?”

The young man looked miserably unsure of himself. “Hard to say,” he repeated. “Oh, they’ll get the first pulse sure enough: the ultraviolet and X-rays. But the heavy stuff—that depends on how the interplanetary magnetic field’s twisted up.”

Rankled, Anson said, “So you don’t know when the particle cloud will hit or how heavy it’ll be.”

“Nobody could tell you that,” the kid said defensively. “Not this far in advance.”

“Okay”—Anson squinted at his nametag—“Albertson. Thanks for the bad news.”

The kid fled her office as if afraid for his life.

A Class Four solar flare, she thought. Maybe a five. Just what we need. Angrily she punched her keyboard to call up the communications center. Got to get all the surface workers inside. And warn Brennart’s people.

As she spoke to the comm center, Anson pictured in her mind what they were going to be facing. The most violent event the solar system can produce: an explosion on the Sun with the force of a hundred billion megatons of TNT. More energy than the whole world consumes in fifty thousand years. Hardly a quarter-second’s worth of the Sun’s total energy output, but enough to kill anyone caught in its lethal plasma cloud. Enough to wreck unprotected equipment.

“What about cislunar traffic?” the comm technician asked.

“What’s it look like?” Anson asked back.

The tech’s face disappeared from her desktop screen and a visual display of the Earth–Moon traffic showed four green arrows representing unmanned freighters heading for the factories in Earth orbit and a single violet arrow of a passenger vehicle on its way to the Euro-Russian base at Grimaldi. There were three yellow arrows, as well: Yamagata spacecraft, two inbound, one heading Earthward.

As she watched, Anson saw a new red arrow appear on the screen. A passenger-carrying craft was leaving Earth orbit, heading for Moonbase.

“What’s that new blip?” she asked. “I don’t recall anything scheduled today.”

The technician’s voice answered, “Message just came in; it’s in your voice mail. Your replacement is on his way.”

“O’Rourke’s coming now?” Anson felt puzzled, annoyed.

“It’s not O’Rourke,” the tech’s voice replied. “It’s Gregory Masterson III.” The technician pronounced the name with appropriate awe in her voice.

“Shit on a shingle!” Anson exploded. “Get that poor dumb boob on the horn and tell him to abort his flight and get his butt back home where it’s safe. That’s all I need, having the boss’s son fried!”

“It’s ice, all right, but I’m afraid it’s pretty thin,” said Roger Deems.

He, Brennart, Killifer and Doug Stavenger were jammed
into the analysis lab of the expedition’s main shelter. Deems was still in his cumbersome spacesuit, minus only its helmet, which made the little cubicle even more crowded. The only light came from one of the computer screens.

Doug could hear the grating patter of regolith rubble being piled on the shelter’s curving roof. Outside, the expedition’s minitractors were struggling to dig up enough surface dirt to provide the necessary coverage for radiation protection and thermal insulation. The regolith here in the south polar highlands was thin and hard, its normally powder-like texture vacuum welded into the consistency of concrete. The remotely operated little tractors were having a hard time digging up enough of it to cover the expedition’s four shelters. Brennart had to send people out to jury-rig some of their aluminum and oxygen rocket propellants to burn into the hard rock and break it into manageable chunks.

“We should’ve brought a couple tons of plastic explosives,” one of the tractor operators grumbled.

Deems’s job, immediately upon landing, had been to lead a team to the ice field that the unmanned probes had identified and take samples.

Peering at the computer screen where the spectrograph’s analysis of the ice was displayed, Brennart said heartily, “Looks good enough to drink!”

“A lot of dissolved minerals,” Doug said, tracing a calcium line with his outstretched finger.

“You could say the same about Perrier!” Brennart snapped.

Killifer said nothing, standing between Brennart and Doug, his face in shadow.

Turning to Deems, Brennart asked, “Did you get a chance to map any of the ice field?”

“We didn’t do any mapping,” Deems said, almost apologetically. “Our mission plan called for digging some preliminary cores and bringing back the samples taken. Mapping comes later.”

“I know the mission plan,” Brennart said impatiently. “I wrote it.”

Deems glanced at Killifer, who said nothing.

“So?” Brennart demanded. “What about the cores you dug?”

“We drilled three cores. You see the analysis of the ice. It’s water, all right.”

“Is it drinkable as is, or will we have to treat it?” Doug asked.

“Looks perfectly drinkable to me,” said Brennart.

“The ice is only ten centimeters deep,” Deems said. Then he added, “Where we dug.”

“Which is at the edge of the field, right?” Brennart said.

“A hundred meters from the edge,” said Deems. “That’s what we figured was a safe walk-back distance, what with the darkness and the slick surface—even with the dust on it, there’s not much traction to walk with.”

“That field is more than ten kilometers across, isn’t it?” Brennart said, more of a statement than a question. “And there are a dozen or more other ice fields scattered about the area.”

Deems nodded. “That’s right.”

“But how deep does it go?” Doug wondered aloud.

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Brennart said.

“Right,” said Killifer.

Brennart straightened up, his golden hair almost brushing the curving roof of the shelter. “All right, we’ve made a good start. Jack,” he turned to Killifer, “I want a complete inventory of the supplies we lost in the crash on my screen by the time I come back in for supper.”

“No problem,” said Killifer.

“I’m going outside to set a little fire under the digging. Roger, you did well out there. I’m pleased.”

Deems’s normally half-frightened expression slowly evolved into a shy, delighted smile.

“Doug,” Brennart snapped, “shouldn’t you be registering our time of arrival and summary of activities?”

“I’ve already done that,” Doug replied, biting back the instinct to add,
sir
.

“And our schedule for tomorrow?”

“I’m set to transmit that as soon as we send out the nanotech team tomorrow morning.”

Brennart looked down on Doug with something approaching displeasure. “Do it now. Right now.”

“But legally—”

“Get it into the record!” Brennart insisted. “Tell them
you’ll send confirmation when the team actually starts out tomorrow. Exact time and all that.”

“Very well,” said Doug.

They squeezed out of the analysis cubicle like four men getting out of a phone booth. This is no place for a claustrophobe, Doug thought as they marched single file up the narrow central aisle of the shelter.

The cylindrical shelter was divided by thin plastic internal walls that could be load-bearing only in the gentle gravity of the Moon. Brennart and Deems headed for the airlock; Brennart to suit up for the surface, Deems to put his helmet back on and go to a well-deserved rest break in the shelter that housed his bunk. The digging team had not yet linked the four shelters with connecting tunnels.

Doug followed Killifer to the comm center, another cubicle that was hot and overcrowded with two people in it. The communications technician was at his post, headphone clamped to his ear.

“I’ll take over,” Killifer said. “Go take a leak.”

The guy grinned appreciatively and surrendered his flimsy plastic chair to Killifer, who took the headset and slipped it around his neck.

“Anything expected in?” Killifer asked his departing back.

“Nope,” said the technician as he squeezed past Doug. “Everything’s quiet until the next satellite comes over.”

The expedition included six miniature communications satellites in polar orbit, following one another endlessly like soldiers on perpetual parade. Moonbase’s regular commsat, hovering at the L-1 libration point above the lunar equator, could not “see” the deep valleys of the mountainous south polar region, so the polar orbiting minisats were necessary.

Doug had suggested twelve satellites, so there would be continuous coverage, but Savannah had decided that the expedition could do with fifteen-minute breaks between satellites, and doubling their communications costs was not worth the additional coverage.

While Killifer began punching up the inventory of supplies and equipment carried aboard the crashed lander, Doug sat at the other display and tapped out his legal report for Moonbase and the World Court at the Hague. He could feel the
heat that their bodies and the computers and communications sets were generating. Sweat trickled down his ribs.

They were sitting close enough to be touching shoulders, but for nearly half an hour neither of them said a word. Doug finished his task and set up tomorrow’s work, then—for lack of anything else to do—called up the inventory Killifer was working on.

“You checking up on me?” Killifer snapped.

Startled, Doug said, “No. Of course not.”

“Then why’re you looking over my shoulder?”

With a shrug, Doug answered, “I don’t have much of anything else to do at the moment.”

“Then get outta here and give me some space.”

Doug stared at the older man. “You don’t like me much, do you?”