Apollo's Outcasts (43 page)

"Uh-huh. That's right." She tried not to look eager, but everyone knew better. Perhaps her experiences had made her a better person, but the fact of the matter was that she'd never fit in well here.

"I thought so." Dad smiled at her, then looked at me. "What about it? Ready to go home?"

"No, I'm not." I took a deep breath. "I want to stay."

For a moment or two, Dad simply stared at me. The smile faded from his face. "Come again?" he said at last, as if he hadn't heard me correctly.

"I don't want to go back," I said. "I'm sorry, but...I really want to remain here. On the Moon."

No one said anything for a second or two. Jan was sitting beside me; from the corner of my eye, I saw her lift a hand to her mouth, something she did when she didn't want anyone to see her expression. "Jamey..." Dad stopped, shook his head. "Son, you can't stay here. You need to come home now."

"Why? There's nothing there for me...besides you and my sisters, I mean." I'd been rehearsing this moment in my mind for almost a month; the time had come for me to make my case. "Look at this," I went on, pushing back my chair to stand up from the table. "Look at what I'm doing. I'm standing on my own two feet. Back on Earth, I'd just be stuck in a mobil again...."

"It doesn't have to be that way. You can always go swimming...."

"Swimming?" I almost laughed out loud. "Dad, I've walked thirty-one miles across Alphonsus. I've flown across this crater in a paragliding suit. I've learned to play moonball."
Not well
, I silently added, but I didn't mention that. "I'm a Ranger. How can--" I pointed to the open door of my bedroom, where the swim-fins mounted above my bed were visible, "
that
compare to anything I've done here?"

Dad laid a finger against his lips, the way he did when he was listening. Jan didn't say anything, but she was watching me intently. "Go on," my father said quietly.

"Dad...Jan...Melissa..." I let out my breath. "This is home. The Moon is where I was born. Earth is just the place where I grew up."

Dad winced. "Was it really that bad?"

"No, it wasn't. I didn't mean it to sound that way. It's just that...here, I'm no longer a cripple who has to be helped around all the time." I looked at Jan. "I know why you didn't go away to school. You stayed behind to take care of me. But you don't have to do that anymore. I can get by on my own now...or at least I will, if I remain here."

Jan didn't respond, but there were tears in the corners of her eyes. A wan smile and a nod told me that she understood what I'd said. I turned back to Dad and went on. "I know it's a lot to ask, but...please, I'm begging you. Let me stay."

Mr. Lagler cleared his throat. "If I may say something...?" My father nodded. "Stan, I haven't talked about this with Jamey, but I think he's right. In the short time he's been here, he's made a place for himself. My wife and I would be willing to keep him for awhile longer, or at least until our son returns from college."

"That isn't necessary, Algis," Mr. Porter said. "We have another boy...another young man, I should say...who's now on his own. Another Ranger, in fact..."

"Billy Tate," I said.

"Uh-huh." Mr. Porter smiled at me. "He needs a roommate, now that his uncle has...um, decided to leave us...and I think we could find an apartment that the two of you could share. With proper adult supervision, of course."

I'd never thought that I'd be willing to share space with Billy, but the days when he was my nemesis were long over. "Sure, I could do that."

Mr. Porter nodded, then looked at Dad again. "I'm not trying to break up your family, but...well, Jamey is one of us now. A loony. He's earned his right to stay...if you'll let him."

My father didn't say anything for a long time, but instead regarded me with thoughtful eyes as he absently ran his finger back and forth across his lips. Beneath the table, I felt Jan touch my leg. When I glanced at her, she smiled and nodded, giving me her silent approval. So did Melissa. I think she was happy to get rid of her kid brother anyway. Some things never change.

"Three conditions," Dad said after a few moments. He raised a finger. "One...you stay out of trouble. No more getting into wars without permission."

All of us laughed at that. "Done," I said. "I'll call home first before my next firefight."

"Which brings me to my second condition." He raised another finger. 'Two...you call home at least once a week, every week, and let us know how you're doing. And let us visit you whenever we can."

"Sure." That was an easy stipulation. I didn't want to divorce myself from my family. I just didn't want to live with them anymore.

"And three..." He grinned. "You get rid of that ugly tattoo."

The days pass slowly on the Moon, and night comes with the gradual lengthening of shadows. You can't see this when you're in the dome, where the reflector ring and sun window impose an artificial sunrise and sunset upon the solarium, but out on the surface, time passes at a different rate. You have to step out an airlock to really see this.

A few days after my father agreed to let me stay on the Moon, he and Jan were ready to go home--their home--again. Melissa was going with them, of course...and so was someone else.

A few hours before the ferry left, Hannah and I went out on the surface. She'd gone moonwalking before, but never with me. The sun was beginning to set upon the distant mountains, and this would be our last chance to see it together.

We left through Airlock 10 and walked out past the reflector ring until we crossed Collins Avenue. The blasted remains of the
Blitzgewehr
lay a short distance away, but we tried not to look at them. They were a reminder of a war we'd fought, and although we'd won, it had been at the cost of the lives of our friends.

Holding hands is almost meaningless while you're wearing a spacesuit, because you can't feel the other person's warmth. Kissing is impossible, even absurd to think about. But we could switch to a private frequency, so that the things we had to say to each other wouldn't be overheard by anyone else.

"Do you have to go?" This wasn't the first time I'd asked that question. Maybe I was just hoping for a different answer.

"'Fraid so,"
she said.
"I've been here too long already. My mother needs to have me come home...and besides, when Lina Shapar's criminal trial starts up, they're going to want to have me as a material witness. So, yeah...I gotta go."

I nodded within my helmet. Since we were facing the sun, its faceplate had automatically polarized. So Hannah couldn't see my expression, and I couldn't see hers. But the tone of her voice told me that she was just as unhappy about this as I was.

"Do you think you'll ever come back?" I asked.

This was something I hadn't asked her until now. There was a long silence, and I caught myself holding my breath as I waited for her to answer.

"You bet I will,"
she said at last.

That was good enough for me. The kiss would have to wait until we got back inside. For now, though, we stood together upon grey sands, our shadows stretching out behind us as we watched the sun go down behind the mountains of the Moon.

Apollo's Outcasts
is a work of fiction, but quite a bit of it is based on solid science...or at least solid speculation. While some of the technology here is my own invention, much of it was derived from books or papers written by established experts in the astronautics field. I've tried to take as few liberties as possible, and any factual errors or misconceptions are my own.

Apollo is loosely based upon a design for an advanced lunar habitat that was presented at the second Lunar Development Conference in July 2000, hosted by the Space Frontier Foundation. Details can be found in "Conceptual Design of a Crater Lunar Base" by Alice Eichold, published in
Return to the Moon II: Proceedings of the 2000 Lunar Development Conference
(Space Front Press, 2000).

Further information about large-scale lunar colonies, including the prospects for helium-3 mining, came from "Final Report on System Architecture for a Self-Sustaining Lunar Colony," a study written in 2000 by Dr. Douglas O'Handley of Orbitec for NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts and the Universities Space Research Association.

Other major sources of information about lunar colonization and mining included
The Moon: Resources, Future Development and Settlement
(Second Edition) by David Shrunk, Burton Sharpe, Bonnie Cooper, and Madhu Thangavelu (Springer-Praxis, 2008);
Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21st Century
edited by W. W. Mendell (Lunar and Planetary Institute, 1985);
The Lunar Base Handbook
by Peter Eckart (McGraw-Hill, 1999);
Return to the Moon
edited Rick N. Tumlinson with Erin R. Medlicott (Apogee 2005); and
Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization
by Robert Zubrin (Tarcher/Putnam, 1999).

The Wallops Island spaceport, including its magcat, or magnetic catapault, is based on a concept study, "Spaceport Visioning" created
in 2002 by the architectural consulting firm ZHA for NASA and the Florida Spaceport Authority.

Several news stories contributed to my understanding of the prospects for lunar ice at the Moon's south pole: "Tons of Water Ice Found at the Moon's South Pole" by Tariq Malik (
Space.com
, March 1, 2010); "Moon Crater Contains Usable Water, NASA Says" by Kenneth Chang (
New York Times
, October 21, 2010); and "Is Mining Rare Minerals on the Moon Vital to National Security?" by Leonard David (
Space.com
, October 4, 2010).

Details about the Moon's geography, particularly Ptolemaeus and Alphonsus craters, came from
Atlas of the Moon
by Antonin Rukl, edited by Dr. T. W. Rackham (Kalmbach Books, 1990) and recent NASA lunar maps located online by Google MoonTM. Further information about Cabeus Crater came from its entry on Wikipedia
^(r)
.

I'm grateful to my friends Rob Caswell and Dr. Horace "Ace" Marchant, who read the book while it was being written and offered invaluable insights and suggestions. Rob also took my pencil sketch of Apollo and transformed it into the layout that appears as this book's frontispiece. Dr. Gregory Benford, Dr. James Benford, and Emily Cambias read the final draft and offered feedback of their own.

I also wish to thank my agent, Martha Millard, whose encouragement for this project went above and beyond the call of duty; my editor, Lou Anders; and my copy editor, Gabrielle Harbowy.

As always, my greatest appreciation goes to my wife, Linda.

Whately, Massachusetts
August 2010-December 2011

ALLEN STEELE was a journalist before turning to his first love, science fiction. Since then he has published seventeen previous novels and nearly one hundred short stories. His work has received numerous awards, including three Hugos, and has been translated worldwide. A lifelong space enthusiast, he has testified before Congress in hearings regarding space exploration, has flown the NASA space-shuttle simulator, and serves as an advisor for the Space Frontier Foundation. Steele lives in Massachusetts with his wife and dogs. Visit him online at
www.allensteele.com
and at
www.facebook.com/Allensteelesfwriter
.