Moonrise (38 page)

“Radiation cloud?” Doug blurted.

Brennart’s spacesuited figure straightened up the way a man does when he’s been slapped in the face. “How much less than two hours?” he demanded.

“Unknown. Less than two hours is the best they can give us.”

“How’s the digging?”

Killifer replied, “Coverage complete on shelters one and two. About half done on three and four. Tunnels are all complete, but they’re not deep enough to be safe without additional rubble on them.”

Brennart sighed. “All right, get as much done in the next hour as you can, then get everybody inside. We’re going to deploy the nanomachines and then return.”

“Right.”

Doug turned to look at Greenberg and Rhee, who had just opened the canister in which the nanomachines were stored. Inadvertently, his glance took in the Sun, hanging low above the worn, rounded mountain peaks. His heavily tinted visor blocked most of the glare, but still the mighty radiance dazzled him.

“We’ve got to get back to shelter right away,” Rhee was saying. “Flares are dangerous!”

“Don’t panic,” said Brennart. “We’ve got an hour, at least.”

Doug was trying to remember how much radiation a flare put out. Enough to kill, he knew.

“Get this on tape!” Brennart ordered. “It’s the reason we’re here.”

Dutifully, Doug walked around the slippery rock summit until the Sun was at his back, then aimed the vidcam at Rhee and Greenberg. Bianca was gripping the big canister in her arms as if she were hugging it, while the nanotech carefully slid a long narrow metal tube from its interior. Brennart stepped into the picture to explain what they were doing. And get the credit for it, Doug thought.

The nanobugs they were using here were of a special type, designed to work in the blazing heat of unfiltered sunlight. They would extract silicon, aluminum and trace elements from the mountain’s rock and use them to build a tower of solar panels that would be in sunshine perpetually. The tower would provide continuous electrical power for the machines down in the darkness of the ice fields that would grind up the ice, liquify it and pump it back to Moonbase.

The equipment to extract the ice and pump water would be sent by a follow-up expedition. So would the nanomachines to build the pipeline. Brennart’s task was to determine if there was enough ice in the south polar region to be worth the investment—and to make certain that Moonbase established an unshakable legal claim to the territory.

Thus Doug taped the first step in starting the nanomachines’ construction of the power tower. Legal precedence. He grimaced as he squinted through the vidcam’s eyepiece. If Brennart was correct, Yamagata was also providing a witness to their claim, with their recce satellite.

Greenberg opened the tube and placed several even thinner tubules on the bare rock.

“That’s it,” the nanotech said. “The first set of nanomachines for construction of Moonbase’s solar power tower have been put in place at”—he lifted his left arm to peer at his watch—“nineteen hundred hours and eight minutes.”

“Got it,” said Doug. “The tape has a time and date setting, too, so the timing will be verified.”

“Very well,” Brennart said. “Transmit the imagery to Moonbase.”

Doug switched his suit radio’s frequency to the channel
for the minisats. No response. Checking the schedule he had taped to his forearm, he went back to the suit-to-suit frequency and said to Brennart, “No commsat over our horizon for another eleven minutes.”

He could hear Brennart huff impatiently. “All right,” the expedition leader grumbled. “Call in eleven minutes. Now let’s get out of here. Quickly.”

“Right,” said Bianca. “Let’s get under shelter.”

Bianca sounded frightened, Doug thought. She knows more about flares than any of us; if she’s scared, she must have good reason to be.

“This is what you do when there’s a flare?” Greg asked.

After an intense hour or so in her office, making certain the base was battened down for the incoming radiation storm, Jinny Anson had led Greg back to the Cave. It was already filled with nearly every person in Moonbase. The tables had been pushed to one wall, raucous music was blaring from the overhead speakers, people were laughing, talking, drinking, couples were dancing on the smoothed rock flooring between the squares of grass.

“There’s not much else to do,” Anson replied, her voice raised to be heard over the thumping beat of the music, “except eat, drink and be merry. Until the radiation outside goes back to normal.”

Greg consciously tried to keep from frowning, yet he could feel his brows knitting. Okay, the people who work on the surface ought to be brought safely inside, he told himself. But that’s only a handful. Most of the base personnel work indoors; they could go right on with their jobs, even though a solar flare is bathing the surface with lethal radiation levels.

“Relax!” Anson said. “This is just about the only excuse for a party we ever get up here.”

She led him to the row of food dispensers lined against the Cave’s far wall, stainless steel with glass fronts, seven feet tall. Not much of a selection, Greg saw. Most of the offerings were preprocessed soybean derivatives of one sort or another.

“You mean all work stops while the flare’s going on?” Greg heard the brittleness in his own voice as he selected something that looked somewhat like finger sandwiches.

Anson shrugged. “Might as well. All the surface equipment is shut down. Even the scientific instrumentation outside takes a beating from the flare, so a lot of the researchers got nothing much to do.”

“What about communications?” Greg asked.

“The comm center is always manned,” she said easily, pulling out a soyburger on a bun and heading for the microwave ovens. “Even during a party.”

“Doesn’t the flare interfere with communications?”

“We can always go to the laser comm system if the microwave gets too hashed up.”

“I didn’t mean communications with Earth,” Greg said. “I meant with the expedition.”

Her face went serious. “We’ve got six minisats in polar orbit. They’re hardened, of course, but if the radiation levels exceed their hardening—”

“Then those people are cut off.”

“Right,” she conceded.

“Then what happens?”

“We’ve got two more minisats as backups. We send them up after the radiation dies down. Not much more that we can do.”

Greg thought hard for a few moments, then had to admit, “I guess you’re right.”

The microwave pinged and Anson pulled out her steaming soyburger. “Come on, let me introduce you to some of the gang. Are you straight or gay?”

Greg nearly dropped his plastic dish. “What?”

“Gay or straight? Who’d you like to dance with?”

Sex, Greg realized. It all comes down to sex. That’s what this party is all about. The solar flare is an excuse for these people to have a gene-pool enrichment. Just like neolithic hunting tribes that came together once a year to exchange virgins.

Anson was looking at him with a positively impish expression. “Have I embarrassed you?” she asked.

“No …”

“We get pretty close to one another, living cooped up in here for months on end,” she said. “I forgot that most people Earthside aren’t as open as we are. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Greg said, trying to adjust his outlook. “And I’m straight.”

“Great!” Anson said, with seemingly genuine enthusiasm. “Then you can dance with me.”

Riding down the mountain was like dropping down a long dark shaft. Brennart fired the hopper’s main rocket engine once to lift them off the summit, then used the maneuvering jets to nudge them away from its slope. After that it was a long slow fall into the darkness below.

Doug felt his stomach fluttering and wondered how Bianca was handling it. Brennart stood at the podium, his gloved hands on the controls, like a sea captain of old at the helm of his storm-tossed ship. Instead of a sou’wester, he was encased in a bulky spacesuit. And instead of the heaving and rolling of the waves, their hopper was falling smoothly in the shadows of the massive mountains, plummeting swiftly, silently, like a pebble dropped down a deep, deep well. This is what the old-time explorers must have felt like, Doug told himself. Danger and excitement and the thrill of doing things nobody’s done before. He grinned inside his helmet. This is definitely habit forming!

His earphones chirped with the signal from one of the minisats. Quickly, Doug plugged his vidcam into the comm port on the belt of his suit and played the tape at top speed. He heard a brief screeching in his earphones, like a magpie on amphetamines, then a verifying beep from the satellite. The data-compressed signal had been received. “What about transmitting our claim?” Brennart asked before Doug could report to him.

“Just did it,” he said. “Squirted the tape to the minisat. When it comes over Moonbase’s horizon it’ll transmit the whole scene to the base.”

“How soon will that be?”

Doug made a quick mental calculation. “The satellite orbit is one hour. Should be in forty, fifty minutes.”

Brennart huffed again. “Plasma cloud might hit by then.”

“The commsats are hardened, aren’t they?”

“Up to a point.”

“Is there a chance the radiation could knock them out before our message reaches Moonbase?”

“Ever heard of Murphy’s Law?” Brennart replied.

“Yes, but—”

“It’s all a matter of degree. There’s no such thing as absolute hardening. The minisats are built to withstand a certain level of radiation. If the plasma cloud’s levels are higher, then the satellites will be kaput.”

“Then we’d be cut off from Moonbase.” Bianca’s voice was filled with apprehension.

“Until they pop up more satellites, after the storm is over.”

“I wonder how hardened the Yamagata snooper satellite is,” Doug mused.

Brennart made no answer, and when Doug tried to talk to him he realized that the expedition leader was talking to the ground on a different frequency. Doug switched to that channel.

“… landing lights haven’t been set up yet,” he heard Killifer’s voice, almost whining. “You told me to get everybody inside—”

“Never mind,” Brennart snapped. “Turn up the radar beacon to full power. I’d like to have
some
idea of where the ground is!”

“Right.”

Doug knew there were no lights beneath the hopper’s platform. We could crash in this darkness, he realized.

The little cluster of instruments on the control podium included a laser altimeter, and Doug saw that its digital readout was falling so fast the numbers were almost a blur. Still Brennart did not fire the rocket to slow their descent. It’s like parachute jumping, he thought. See how long you can stay in free-fall before you chicken out and pull the ripcord.

He felt his heart racing as he clutched the flimsy railing with both hands and marveled at Brennart’s cool while the hopper plunged deeper and deeper into the eternal darkness.

“Are we there yet?” Bianca’s voice bleated in his earphones. She’s trying to make light of it, Doug thought, but this long free-fall must be bothering her. I wonder how she did on the trip to Moonbase from Earth? She must have been in misery all the way. Greenberg had said nothing since they’d climbed aboard the hopper and damned little before
that. Doug realized that the nanotech engineer was as closed-mouthed as anyone he had ever met.

Straining his eyes, Doug peered over the railing into the darkness below. He could make out vague shapes in the darkness, like monsters from a child’s nightmare reaching up to snare him.

Then a lurch of thrust nearly buckled his knees and the landscape below was briefly lit by the rocket’s silent flame, like a scene suddenly illuminated by a lightning bolt’s flash. Before Doug could blink it was inky dark again and they continued to fall.

Then another flash and surge of thrust. Then a gentle bump and Doug felt the comfortable reassurance of weight once more. They were on the ground.

“Don’t just stand there,” Brennart commanded. “Get off and into the shelter.”

For a moment Doug was transfixed, immobilized with admiration for Brennart’s piloting. The man really is as good as all the stories about him.

“Move!” Brennart bellowed.

Almost laughing, Doug knocked down the hopper’s railing and jumped softly to the ground.

“Which shelter?” Greenberg asked. He had turned on his helmet lamp, Doug saw. So had Brennart. He did the same, then Bianca followed suit.

“Number four,” said Brennart, pointing with a long arm. “The others are already occupied.”

They trooped to the airlock, Greenberg in the lead. He may not say much, Doug thought, but he sure makes it clear that he wants to get safely inside.

“Don’t take off your suits,” Brennart commanded. “Go right through the lock and into the shelter. Leave your suits on.”

Doug waited for Bianca to go in, then turned toward Brennart.

“Go on, go on,” the expedition commander shooed impatiently. “We don’t have all damned day.”

Doug ducked through the airlock hatch, waited for it to cycle, then stepped into the shelter. Bianca and Greenberg were sitting awkwardly on the edges of two facing bunks, still encased in their bulky spacesuits, looking like a pair of
hunchbacked giant pandas. There were no internal partitions in this smaller shelter; it was merely a dugout for sleeping and eating.

The pumps chugged and the inner airlock hatch opened to let Brennart step through. He had to bend over slightly to keep the top of his helmet from scraping the shelter’s curving ceiling.

“Not enough rubble on top of us to provide full shielding,” he explained, “so we stay in the suits until the radiation dies down.”

“That could be days!” Rhee blurted.

“We’ll need the extra shielding the suits provide,” Brennart said calmly. “It’ll be uncomfortable but better than getting fried.”

“And the backpacks?” she asked.

“We can take off the backpacks and breathe the air in here, but otherwise we will stay buttoned up. Like the man says, better safe than sorry.”

“What about eating?” asked Doug.

Brennart turned toward him slowly, his helmet visor staring at him like a blank-eyed cyclops. “We’ll take a quick meal now, before the radiation builds up. After that, I’ll decide when and if it’s safe to open our visors for food.”