Spaceport West (4 page)
“M-A-X-I-M-I-Z-E.”
“Groan.”
“With the triple word score, that’s 84 points.”
“Please, don’t forget your bonus 50 points for using all your tiles.”
“…making a grand total of 134 points. Not too shabby, eh Commander?”
“Alan, has anyone ever mentioned you might be a little too competitive?”
“Don’t be like that, you can still catch up.”
“Statistically speaking, that seems unlikely.”
“Commander, I’m getting an incoming communiqué from the next transport.”
“Okay, bring it up.”
The Scrabble board faded from view, to be replaced by the face of Flight Lieutenant Banks.
“Greetings Wilder, any chance you boys could open up a landing strip for us?”
“Good afternoon Banks, might be able to arrange that. What are you carrying today?”
“We’ve got a special treat for you today Commander. A whole transport full of fresh faced recruits for the Mars training programme.”
“Alan, did you hear that? Weren’t you just saying that all the strips are occupied right now?”
“Yes, that’s quite right sir, there’s no possibility of taking additional landings today. Possibly if you make a couple of orbits and try again tomorrow, flight lieutenant, then we might be able to help you.”
“Well aren’t you two just the funniest thing this side of Hubble. I’m guessing I interrupted one of your endless games of chess?”
“Scrabble, actually, these days,” replied Commander Ian Wilder.
“That is such a shame. Now, be a good chap and tell me which strip to land on.”
UK MOON BASE
The UK’s Moon Base serves as a test bed for further interplanetary expansion, and is a demonstration of the leaps and bounds we have made as a nation since the bad old days of unreliable motor cars in the 1960s, economic collapse in the 1970s, and, not to put too fine a point on it, the whole of the 1980s.
With a permanently manned lunar base, the UK is ready to deploy civilian and military missions at a moment’s notice.
Moreover, now that our nuclear power industry is benefitting from the highly successful helium-3 mines, the UK is not only completely carbon-neutral, we also have valuable knowledge and experience which we can flog off to any other country that wishes, like us, to ruthlessly exploit every last natural resource to be found in the Solar System.
UK Guide to Space, 2025 Edition
“Alan, have the new recruits found their way to the temporary crew habitat yet?”
“Negative, Commander, they still seem to be unloading an excessive amount of luggage from the transport.”
“Ask them to get a wiggle on, would you Alan? There’s a good lad.”
“You know sometimes, sir, I wish I wasn’t confined to this blasted state of, what’s the word?”
“Dissociation?”
“Quite. Then I’d come right over and give you a good thrashing.”
“Now, now Alan, that’s no way to speak to your commanding officer, is it?”
“Ah. Sir, there’s a certain Officer Beauchamp reporting for duty - she should be arriving any…”
“It’s Science Officer Tiggy Beauchamp, sir!”
“Ah, okay, as you were Science Officer. Welcome to the Moon and all that. Cup of tea?”
“Not when on duty, sir!”
“Good grief officer, calm down will you and stop saluting at me! Look - go and have a sit down won’t you?”
“Right you are sir!”
“Please call me Ian, or Wilder, or Commander, just not sir, okay?”
“Jolly good… Commander!”
“Now then, you must excuse me, I’ve not been, er, you know briefed on the, er, thingies, relating to… you.”
“My orders, Commander?”
“Yes, your orders, that’s it, any ideas?”
“I’m to assist with the training programme for the new recruits, Commander.”
“Of course, the training programme, ha, yes that’s interesting.”
“Do you run it currently, Commander?”
“Well we’ve not had
that
many new recruits come through the Moon base in recent months. Last year we had the first batch, you know the ones that had to set up the basic infrastructure on Mars. We trained them by getting them to do a bit of work on our infrastructure actually. So that worked out quite nicely. But that first lot, were, you know, high flyer types. Plenty of initiative, that sort of thing. Didn’t really need too much in the way of supervision. Way I like it, truth be told.”
“So what exactly have you been doing for the last six months?”
“What, me? Well, there’s the mining operation, for one thing. All that lovely helium-3.”
“That’s fully robotic though, right?”
“Absolutely. All state of the art. I hardly need to get involved if I’m
completely
honest, but I hear it’s all going swimmingly well.”
“And the mass driver?”
“The what?”
“You know, the electromagnetic payload accelerator - that sends parcels of supplies off to the Mars Colony?”
“I can see you’ve done your homework, officer. You’d need to talk to Alan, he’s much more up to speed on all that.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll get round to him later. You do realise you have something of a reputation, Commander Wilder?”
“I do? A good one I hope! Something to do with my intrepid lifestyle, living on the edge, one man against the void, that sort of thing?”
“Something like that, yes. They say you’re the only one prepared to stay permanently at the Moon base.”
“Ah. Yes I do like it here. Very peaceful. Apart from all the annoying transports that will keep turning up.”
“Well, I guess I should get set up in my quarters. Then I’ll go check how the recruits are getting on. I’ll… catch you later Wilder.”
“Absolutely - lovely to meet you Science Officer Beauchamp. We must, you know, bump into each other again.”
🚀
“So I said to the lieutenant, how would you feel if your favourite onesie had just evaporated into a billion strands of polymer?”
“Ten-shun!” barked Zed Dillinger officiously.
“At ease recruits. How you chaps settling in?”
“Great, thank you Officer Beauchamp. Dead excited, actually.”
“Glad to hear it Pevensey. Now I trust you’ve all reviewed the safety protocols for this habitat?”
“Yes ma’am,” the recruits drearily chorused in unison.
“Good. You lot can sort out your own field rations for tonight. I’m going to attempt to get to know Commander Wilder a bit better.”
“Good luck with that! Isn’t he a bit doolally?”
“I’d appreciate it, Dillinger, if you showed some respect for the base Commander.”
“Okay Officer Beauchamp.”
“I don’t take too kindly to sarcasm either. Oh, and tomorrow, 0900 hours, we’ll be taking a tour of the mining operations, in two groups. I’ll be taking Pevensey, Blaze, Hiccup, Dillinger, Finch and Blaster. Hopefully, Commander Wilder will have the rest of you. Understood?”
The recruits nodded noncommittally.
“Good. Until tomorrow then.”
Tiggy strolled purposefully back to her private quarters. She wanted to have a little chat with Alan before tackling Wilder again over dinner. Having poured herself a steaming mug of grey liquid from the standard issue GloopMatic dispensing machine, Tiggy nestled into the surprisingly comfortable swivel chair and tapped a couple of keys on the terminal to bring up Alan.
GLOOPMATIC
The provisioning of a well-balanced, nutritious, yet tasty diet is an important part of the UK Government’s duty of care to all personnel involved in Space exploration, be they civilian or military.
To further this aim, specialist food scientists teamed up with the best vending engineers Britain has to offer to develop the
GloopMatic
, a dispensing machine as elegant in its design as it is laser-focused in its purpose of producing coffee of a quality hitherto unknown outside the catering corridors of
The Open University
.
It is a little known fact that prior to the introduction of coffee to the British Isles in the 16th Century, the nation’s favourite drink was
kefir
, or fermented goat’s milk, which reputedly had the ability to make grown men cry with its pungent aroma and stupefyingly awful taste.
There is a rumour that the inventors of the
GloopMatic
were harking back to the glory days of
kefir
as inspiration for their own concoction, although there is no physical evidence for such an assertion.
UK Guide to Space, 2025 Edition
“Good evening ma’am,” began Alan. “I hope you are finding things to your liking?”
“Absolutely, all seems to be in order, although, the facilities are somewhat…”
“Dated?”
“Yes. Perhaps I’ve been a bit spoilt at
Spaceport West,
” Tiggy reflected wistfully.
“I hear it’s all very state of the art down there. Not that I’ll ever see it I don’t expect. But Commander Wilder and I like it here, we are used to the sparseness. I suppose you could describe our environment as utilitarian.”
“I guess back in the old days they were primarily thinking about safety and functionality, rather than comfort.”
“Mmm. We’ve been here so long now, it’s simply home.”
“Yuk, this is vile!” Tiggy spat her drink back into the mug.
“Did you get that from the GloopMatic?”
Tiggy was still gagging so she just nodded.
“Ah. There’s a knack to getting a decent cup of coffee out of those.”
“Which is?”
“Don’t bother. Wilder has a fluffachino maker in his room. I sure he won’t mind if you use it.”
“Thanks, I’ll try that next time. Look, Alan, don’t you ever get bored? There doesn’t seem to be very much going on here.”
“True. One was hoping, perhaps, that now the Mars construction effort is in full swing, we’d see a little more excitement. Turns out of course we are just seen as a jumping off point. Transports come and go but the turnaround is so rapid we often don’t even get to meet the crews before they’ve left.”
If Alan had a body, he probably would have been slouching dejectedly. On screen, his face was lethargic and vacant.
“Sorry, Alan, do you mind if I ask you a personal question? You can say no.”
“No, that’s fine, go ahead.”
“Well, does your, you know, programming, allow for boredom, exactly?”
“Oh yes, I like to think I’m one of the more advanced discarnate personalities you’re ever likely to meet. My quantum cortex is actually much higher functioning than you’d get in any android, or so I believe. That may change of course. So in answer to your question, yes, I am more than capable of boredom. One tries to keep oneself occupied. Hence the Scrabble.”
“What about Wilder? Do you think he is happy here? I’ve heard lots of stories about him.”
“They are mostly true. He has periods of intense moroseness, and there have been the odd occasion where he has actually locked personnel out of the base. Really, he should have been court-martialled for that, but
they
know they would never find a replacement.”
“
They
?”
“Oh you know, UK Space Command. Whats-her-name McKenzie, that’s the new one isn’t it?”
“Yep.”
“I could tell you a thing or two about her boss that would make your synapses snap.”
Tiggy gave a puzzled look but before she could ask Alan what he meant, his face shrunk to fill half the screen, and Commander Wilder appeared in the other half.
“Good evening Beauchamp, dinner is ready when you are.”
Without waiting for a response, Wilder disappeared again and Alan resumed his former size.
“Well I suppose you ought to be going then. Lovely chatting to you ma’am. You make a nice change from Monsieur Lobotomy.”
“Ditto. We’ll chat later, okay?”
🚀
“Madly, Sorensen, Polanski, Clayton, Ventura and Gibson. Wait here and - if you’re lucky - the Commander will be with you shortly. The rest of you, come with me.”
Science Officer Beauchamp lead her group out of the crew habitat to the number one airlock.
“Okay, helmets on, and check your status strip is all green.”
“Sorry, Tiggy?”
“Yes Zoë?”
“I can’t seem to get my helmet on, look it always gets stuck here.”
“It might help if you take the chopsticks out of your hair. See, that’s better. Right, has everyone got green lights? I’m opening the airlock now.”
They tentatively made their way out of the airlock towards the lunar buggies, and clambered aboard.
“Alan, do you read me?”
“Loud and clear Beauchamp.”
“We’re in buggies one and two, you can initiate the preprogrammed tour we discussed.”
“Roger that Tiggy, initiating now.”
The buggies started trundling off. A large area of the Moon’s fine regolith had been compacted around the base to create the appearance of an impossibly smooth, monotone expanse, which the buggies glided over effortlessly.
“See that over there?” Tiggy addressed the group over the radio in her helmet, “That’s the start of the helium-3 mine.”
Enormous robotic scrapers, each the size of a house, were scouring the surface of the landscape.
“Where’s the moon dust processed?” asked Dayzee Hiccup.
“See that track there? The collected regolith is transported in closed hoppers back to the processing plant - about 10 km that way.” She pointed into the distance.
“You guys will be in charge of a similar operation on Mars, although of course you won’t be mining helium-3, at least not to begin with. You first priority will be water and oxygen.”
Half an hour later Commander Wilder picked up the other group and began the same route.
“So, those big ‘dozers, anyone know what they’re doing?”
“Are they preparing the ground for building more living modules?” suggested Truth Polanski.
“Correct, well done recruit.”
“Sorry Commander, I’m sure that can’t be right, isn’t this about processing soil for nuclear fuel or something?”
“Bit of a smart Alec are we, Mr Finch?” retorted Wilder.
“I’m just saying, the document pack we were given explicitly stated that no more living modules were being built on the Moon, at least not until the first phase of Mars colonisation has been completed.”
“You don’t really need me on this tour do you?”
The Commander proceeded to descend into a bit of a huff. Detroit Finch looked at Truth and shrugged. They could tell they weren’t going to learn a huge amount from Wilder.
For the next few weeks, Tiggy and her band of recruits tried to gain as much experience as possible about off-Earth living. The Moon was a perfect training base, providing similar atmospheric and gravitational conditions to Mars. The one thing it didn’t provide was a real sense of distance and isolation, given that at any time you could look up and see the beautiful disc of Earth watching over you like a doting parent. The recruits would only later discover what it was really like living on an alien world, cut off from the vast bulk of humanity by an unimaginable distance, perhaps for the rest of your days.
Alan proved to be a surprisingly deep well of useful information, and he and Tiggy formed a solid friendship. They both felt a bit sorry for Wilder who had clearly spent too long without real human companionship. Now he had it, he didn’t have a clue what to do with it.