Lunar Descent (35 page)

Remembering, Lester put down the water bottle; he bent forward, closed his eyes and placed his forehead in his hands. “Twenty … goddamn … hours,” he said slowly. “Christ, he was down in that crevasse long enough to dictate his memoirs. And he
knew
we weren't coming to rescue him. He
knew
the general manager was a junkie who couldn't see straight. And you know all that he said on that tape that he dictated? ‘You sons of bitches, I'm going to get you for this.' That was the worst thing he said about us.”

Lester lifted his head again. He steepled his fingers together and peered over them at the rising sun. “I could have saved him, Butch,” he said almost inaudibly. “I could have gotten to him before his air ran out, but I was too late.”

He smiled with grim humor. “And then his ghost comes back to save my ass. Talk about your classic fucking irony.”

There was another long silence between them. Mighty Joe snorted and grunted in his sleep, the radio made a constant static noise, the cabin air regulator made a soft hiss. “So,” Peterson said at last. “That's why you've been riding everyone so hard at the base. Why you've tried to straighten up the base.” Lester looked sideways at her and nodded. She sighed and looked down at her hands. “And I thought you were just a regular company asshole.”

Lester smiled and shrugged. “Maybe I am just a regular company asshole. But I've been the opposite, and believe me when I tell you that it sucks.” He looked out the window again. “So let me ask you a question.”

Butch hesitated. “Do I think you saw a ghost? The answer is, maybe you did … although perhaps not quite the way you think.” She stopped, then added, “And I don't think you were directly responsible for Sam's death either. You didn't get him into that crevasse. He did that himself. But it's still something you and your conscience are going to have to settle between yourselves. I can't help you with that.”

“Uh-huh.” He tapped his fingers nervously on the seat's armrests. “I appreciate that … but that wasn't the question I was going to ask.”

He didn't say anything. After a moment she looked back at him. Neither of them spoke; they didn't have to, because the question didn't need to be spoken aloud. The long seconds stretched on endlessly. After a while, Butch sighed and looked away from him. “That's certainly a change of subject,” she said. “Should have known what was on your mind, the way you were checking me out in the lab.”

Lester winced. “Changing the subject seemed like a good idea.” He glanced over his shoulder to make sure Mighty Joe was still asleep. “Sex and death seem to go together, for some reason. I dunno.”

“Maybe so.” She sighed and dropped her legs from the dashboard, primly folding her hands in her lap. “I'm going to have to think about it, Les. But whatever I decide, it's not here, and not now.”

“Why not?” he murmured smoothly. “The kid's asleep, the cat's been put out for the night.…” She chuckled and shook her head. “And hey, at least it's something you can put in your memoirs. I mean, everyone's done it in the back seat of a car, but how many folks can say they've done it on the floor of a crashed spaceship?”

She blushed and fought to stifle a grin. “Not so fast. You're rushing me.”

“Sorry. I didn't know I …”

“Look,” she said, cocking her head toward the window.

At that moment a small set of bright lights rose above the southern horizon. As the searchlights of the Moon Moths' LRLT stroked across Aristotle Crater, beelining their way toward the crash site, a voice came over the radio.
LRLT One-Three-Zero, this is LSR Flight Alpha-Zero-One. We've got your lights, do you copy? Over
.

“Damn. Just when it was getting interesting.” Lester pulled the headset up from his neck and placed the bone-phone against his jaw. “We copy, Alpha-Zero-One. Riddell here. How'ya doing, Quack? Over.”

We're tired and we wanna go home
, Quack Lippincott replied.
How are y'all doing? That's the important question
.

“Joe's got a couple of cracked ribs, but I think we'll be able to put him in a suit for the walk over. Have you got a stretcher in there for him?”

That's affirmative. Monk's here with us, so he can tend to those dinged ribs. Hell of a place for you to park that vehicle of yours, boss. What do you think this is, a goddamn airport
?

Lester chuckled. It was the typical refried bullshit from Descartes' resident Texan good ol' boy. “I'll let you take it up with Mighty Joe, once he wakes up from his snooze. You've got good landing clearance on either side of us. We'll suit up and be ready for you by the time you touch down.”

Good 'nuff
, Quack replied.
We'll keep the engines warm. Make sure you leave nothing behind you might want, ya hear
?

The Moon Moths' chief meant any small equipment that needed to be salvaged from the wrecked LRLT. Lester glanced over at Butch, who was monitoring the conversation, and grinned at her. “We copy that, Quack. I've got everything I want right here.”

Butch Peterson closed her eyes and looked away. But she was smiling. That was the important thing.

PART FOUR

The Great Space Swindle

Black Friday (Video.3)

From “The CBS Evening News With Michelle Woodward”; Friday, August 16, 2024
.

(
THEME UP and FADE. Michelle Woodward is seated at studio desk.
)

WOODWARD:
Good evening, I'm Michelle Woodward, sitting in for Don Houston, who is on vacation this week. There was trouble in space today, as three astronauts were rescued from a remote region of the Moon after their spacecraft crash-landed following engine failure. Yet even more disturbing than that news was the revelation that lunar operations may be endangered by an impending shortage of a scarce, valuable resource—water. Garrett Logan reports from Huntsville, Alabama.…

(
FILE FOOTAGE of an LRLT lifting off from a landing pad at Descartes Station. This is replaced by COMPUTER ANIMATION of the same vehicle plummeting to the lunar surface and making a crash landing, followed by a MAP of the polar region with the crash site highlighted.
)

LOGAN (V.O.):
A Skycorp long-range lunar transport, on its way back to Descartes Station following a routine supply and inspection mission to the company's Byrd Crater Permaice Extraction Facility at the Moon's north pole, went down soon after takeoff from the automated base. The accident occurred shortly after midnight on Earth, Eastern Standard Time. Although the craft was totaled, none of the three crewmembers aboard was seriously injured. The LRLT crashed in the Sea of Cold, about two hundred miles south of Byrd Crater.…

(
FILE FOOTAGE of Skycorp's giant A-frame headquarters building in Huntsville, the installation at Byrd Crater, and Descartes Station. This is replaced by COMPUTER ANIMATED diagram of the permaice wells at Byrd Crater.
)

LOGAN (V.O.):
Yet even as Skycorp spokespersons confirmed that the LRLT's crew had been found and safely rescued by a team from Descartes Station, they announced more bad news. Before leaving Byrd Crater, the same team had discovered that the ancient deposits of permaice—a valuable water resource which lies beneath the bottom of Byrd Crater and is mined for rocket propellant and drinking water for the one hundred and ten-person crew of the industrial moonbase—is rapidly drying up.…

(
FILM CLIP of a Skycorp spokesperson, identified as Holly D'Amato, at a news conference in Huntsville.
)

D'AMATO:
We have received news from the base that the … uh, limited natural ice resource at the lunar north pole is in danger of being exhausted within a matter of … ah, some months.

LOGAN (V.O.):
And that has some people worried.…

(
FILM CLIP with space industry market analyst, identified as Clifford Brandenstein
).

BRANDENSTEIN:
If this is indeed the case, then it's bad news for Skycorp, because if they can no longer extract water directly from the Moon, it means they will have to import all their water from Earth. That means the overhead costs of operating the base could reach beyond the point of profitability. It's no big secret that Skycorp has been considering selling the base to the Japanese. The chief executives at Uchu-Hiko are probably doing handsprings right now … but it's a black day for the American space industry.…

(
CUT TO Garrett Logan, standing in front of Skycorp headquarters.
)

LOGAN:
Corporate officials at Skycorp have refused to comment on what this development means for the future of Descartes Station, other than to say that the company is still studying its options. Spokespersons for Uchu-Hiko in Tokyo have likewise declined comment. However, Skycorp's price-per-share on the New York Stock Exchange fell by 15.2 points just before closing today, which may be a harbinger of worse things to come. As one market analyst told us, “Just wait till the market reopens on Monday, and you're going to see some big changes.” This is Garrett Logan in Huntsville, Alabama.…

17. The Birth of a Scam

Elizabeth Sawyer slipped her keycard into the slot next to the greenhouse hatch and shifted her slender body so that Willard DeWitt couldn't read the six-digit string which she tapped into the lock's keypad. With a metallic grinding sound, the hatch irised open. “Harry's waiting for you,” the middle-aged hydroponics chief said stiffly as she stepped out of the way. “Fifteen minutes … and you better think twice about pilfering any veggies while you're in there.”

“Thank you, ma'am.” DeWitt flashed her his most winning smile, but Sawyer wasn't having any of his sweet-talk. Folding her arms across the front of her grimy jumpsuit, she gave him a sour look which suggested she would just as soon go after him with a pair of gardening shears.

“Wipe your feet,” she added as DeWitt stepped through the hatchway. There was a disinfectant mat on the floor just inside the hatch; DeWitt stopped and briskly wiped the soles of his sneakers across the mat and smiled again at Sawyer. She absently brushed back a lock of her graying red hair, pursed her lips distrustingly, and touched the button that closed the hatch behind him. “Fifteen minutes,” she said again just before the hatch resealed.

“Ornery old biddy, aren't you?” DeWitt murmured. On the other hand, he reflected, as he turned and gazed upon the vast greenhouse that lay before him, she had every right to be protective about this place.

Descartes Station's greenhouse was a separate structure, adjacent to Subcomp A and almost as large as one of the dorms. Made of dense, inflated Kevlar and buttressed by hemispherical aluminum struts, its domed roof rose thirty feet above the floor, easily making the greenhouse the largest interior space anywhere on the base. The outer shell of the dome was covered with a this shell of regolith fines, salvaged from the mining operations, which protected the crops from cosmic radiation. Suspended from the rafters were racks of track-lights and nutrient bottles whose feedlines dangled down into the long rows of waist-level hydroponics tanks on the floor. More than half of the tanks were given over to the farming of wheat—an efficient oxygen producer which also doubled as a good source of raw grain, which meant that one thing the moondogs' diet never lacked was wheat bread—with the back rows devoted to the cultivation of tomatoes, celery, bean sprouts, and an exquisitively small and precious (albeit experimental) crop of strawberries.

DeWitt walked slowly down the central aisle, relishing the enormous space, the warm humid air which smelled of green and growing things, the vague heat of the overhead lights. The greenhouse was like a Kansas farm field which had been miraculously transplanted to the Moon. It was no wonder that the greenhouse was closed to most of the moondogs; prolonged exposure to this much simple beauty could make anyone homesick in hurry. And besides, the greenhouse was a delicately balanced ecosystem of its own; to have people constantly tramping through the dome would invite damage to this miniature biosphere.
But
, DeWitt mused as he paused to run his hand through the high stalks of wheat thrusting up from a tank,
I could easily move my bunk in here
.…

“Enjoying yourself?” Harry Drinkwater's voice said from behind him.

DeWitt turned to see Drinkwater strolling toward him down the central aisle, his hands shoved in his pockets and a rare uncynical smile on his face. “Thought you might like this,” he added. “Liz lets me in here from time to time, as long as I play an occasional k.d. lang or Randy Travis oldie for her at the station.” He nodded meaningfully at the wheat stalks DeWitt had been stroking. “And as long as I don't touch her crops.”

“It's nice,” DeWitt said softly. He reluctantly withdrew his hand. “You got a good deal … but aren't you supposed to be on the air right now?”

“Lunch break. I've got a prerecorded tape and the CD racks playing DJ for me right now.” He glanced at his watch. “I'm due back on the air in a half-hour, and you can bet Liz will kick us out long before that. As long as we've got privacy, we ought to make the most of it. You said you had something for me?”

“Umm-hmm.” DeWitt started to lean against a hydroponics tank, felt it shudder, and quickly stepped forward again. “You know about what they discovered at Byrd Crater?”

Drinkwater's smile faded into a frown. He nodded his head slightly. “And you know what the stock market's doing?” DeWitt continued. “That Skycorp's price-per-share on the New York exchange went down yesterday by …?”

“Fifteen-point-two points at closing,” Drinkwater finished, pulling a hand out of a pocket and whirling it impatiently. “And probably down more when it opens again Monday. I've got an AP teleprinter in the studio, remember? Nobody here gets the news faster than I do. So what are you …?”