Moon Zero Two (2 page)

When the dazzle of flame had died and the ship was settled, a whole horde of worker ants scuttled toward it—ants on wheels, scurrying to unload, refuel, shove ground staff up into the jets for precisely one hundred and fifty spot checks, and carry away the coked-up debris of the landing.

A long, semitransparent passageway snaked out and sucked itself against the passenger hatch. The hatch opened, and the travelers began to pour out.

Any minute now they would be descending on the Customs hall. Our little man wanted to get rid of us in a hurry, but he didn’t want to let go without a struggle. Very high principles, these nibblers.

“If we settle for twenty-five percent—”

“No,” I said.

“I could impound this.”

“You couldn’t,” I said.

He looked at the identification tag on my helmet. “Now look here, Mr. Kemp—”

“Captain Kemp,” I said. “And I don’t pay one single Moon cent. Right?”

Feet swished smartly across the floor behind me. I recognized the sound of expensive nonfriction sneakers, as issued only to the top boys. And I recognized the voice when it spoke—not personally, but as a type, a very familiar type, all part of the pattern I didn’t like and never had liked and never would accept.

“If you’re Moon Zero Two, I wish you’d sell the thing off with all the other space rubbish you collect.”

I turned to have a look. Nice crisp young man, smart blue uniform and a crescent Moon shining silver on his cuffs. Autocratic upper lip. One of the new breed, the new generation: those who looked tidy all the time, not at all like the ones who had gone out and sweated through the risky years.

“I didn’t quite catch the name,” I said.

“I’m second officer on the Moon Express. You know you delayed us by nearly two minutes?”

“If you took off on time, you’d land on time, wouldn’t you?”

He was all set for a polished, devastating answer, when an older man came up behind him. This one I knew. His eyes met mine, and he smiled and I smiled, but we stayed wary. I liked Fielder, but I thought he was smug; and he thought I was no end of a character, but erratic. And I think we were both right.

His beard was trimmed more closely and somehow more decisively than when we had last met. He must be in line for a fifth stripe and a headquarters job. And the best of interplanetary luck to him, if that was what he wanted.

He nodded curtly when the younger man came to attention.

“I thought you were helping our passengers to find their luggage bays.”

“Yes, sir, but I was just telling this man—”

“I don’t think you could tell him anything,” said Fielder, “about anything. Now, the passengers, please.”

The second officer went away. I’m sure he was good at his job. He’d know exactly how to marshal passengers and luggage and then pair them off.

Captain Fielder said apologetically: “Young generation, you know.”

“We’re all getting older.”

“And some of us are earning pensions with it.”

I said to Dmitri: “Get that thing over to Joe Mercer, will you, Dima?”

Passengers and luggage were converging on the Customs benches. Our tormentor turned his attention greedily to a couple of young women who might, with a bit of luck, be trying to smuggle alcohol or nickel detectors onto the Moon. Dmitri heaved the satellite off the bench and was allowed to go.

“Seriously, Bill,” said Fielder, “why don’t you come back into the Corporation?”

“Corporation now?” I said. “It was only a company last year.”

“We’ve had management experts in to streamline the place. Sort out the problems, unbung some of the pipes.”

“And give it a nice new name.”

“Bill, there are better opportunities now than ever before. Someone like you—”

“Any word on a first flight to Mercury yet? Or Jupiter’s moons? Couldn’t the time-and-motion-study boys find a slot for that?”

He sighed. “Look, you know as well as I do... Same old problem. They’re both a long way. A hell of a long way.”

“So build a bigger engine—”

“They can do that, but they can’t find stuff to line the rocket tubes that’ll take that sort of heat. But we’ve got regular runs to Mars and Venus. What more d’you want?”

It was an argument we’d had many a time before. He knew quite well what I wanted; and it was his firm belief that I was crying for the Moon—well, for the moons of Jupiter, anyway.

Before I could tell him that nothing had changed and that nothing, obviously, was ever damned well going to change, four passengers drifted toward us. They didn’t look good Moon material to me. You couldn’t exactly have called them undesirable aliens, but I’d have thought they would have done better to stay cozily at home on Earth, wheeling and dealing in their own smoky atmosphere. One of them was all too clearly a somebody. Or a something. The other three kept a pace behind him except when he spoke or snapped his fingers, and then they fussed a few inches forward and tried to bow as they walked. It looked weird.

Captain Fielder came to attention. He saluted.

“Good evening, Mr. Hubbard. I hope you enjoyed the trip, sir.”

Mr. Hubbard was the somebody. He was podgy, his head sat down tightly on his shoulders and you felt that if things went wrong for him he might be able to retract it completely, right down between those well-padded shoulders. Not that things were likely to go wrong for Mr. Hubbard.

He acknowledged Fielder’s remark with a grunt, and stumped on.

Yes, sir, no, sir. Hope you enjoyed the ride... may I kiss your feet, sir.
That
was why I wasn’t going back into
the Company. Beg its pardon, the Corporation. I’d never been a passenger pilot, and I wasn’t going to be one.

“That,” said Fielder as though he really thought I’d revel in the information, “was Mr. Hubbard.”

“So I gathered.”

“Mr. J. J. Hubbard.”

“Oh, that one?” Now it rang a bell. “The big money man—‘Hundred Percent’ Hubbard?”

“That’s him.”

“What does he want up here?”

“Hundred percent of the Moon, maybe.”

“Mm. United Nations wasn’t selling, last I heard.”

We strolled together toward the lobby dome. The incoming flight had been neatly sorted out, and little squads of passengers were waiting for the Monorail to Lunar Center. Luggage slid along its tracks and was neatly piled in the loading chutes, ready for the train to come into position. Neat, neat, neat: everything was so neat, you had to hand it to them.

Fielder said: “Somebody’s got to be a passenger pilot.”

“Somebody’s got to be an exploration pilot, too. When they stopped exploration flights...”

But what was the use? Nobody wanted to listen. Nobody wanted to know.

If they’d felt like this at the start, there wouldn’t have
been
any start. Couldn’t they see that: was there nobody who could see it?

Save your breath, Kemp. And save your thoughts: they’ll wear you down.

“They need a captain on the Mars run.” Fielder was still at it “You could get it... even after all this time.”

“I’ve been to Mars,” I reminded him.

“Once. Just once.” He put his hand on my shoulder. He meant well, but I wanted to shake him off. “See you in town—have a drink, right?”

I nodded.

He went, and I took my suit and helmet into Personnel Section. It wasn’t quite as plushy in here as it was out there in the public lobbies and waiting rooms. A few lockers, a row of showers... and the illuminated board at the end of the corridor. I didn’t usually spare the board a glance. I knew it off by heart, anyway.

TO THE MEMORY OF THE SPACEMEN WHO DIED

THAT MANKIND SHOULD LIVE ON THE MOON

I could recite the names. Burton, JanMewicz, McClean, Lee Ying, Duvalier...

But today there was somebody at work on it. An operative with a power-pen was carefully lettering a new name at the foot of the list.

I felt a chill. We didn’t have accidents nowadays. Not really. Not fatal ones.

I went slowly toward the board and watched the letters forming—engraved imperishably on that gleaming surface. O.... VON BE...

“Otto?” I burst out. “Otto von Bech?”

The workman frowned, keeping his hand steady as he started on the next letter.

“That’s right.”

“Otto got killed?” It was no good. I couldn’t believe it.

“Coupla days ago.”

“How?”

“Engine failed on takeoff. That’s what I heard. Went straight in. Crunch.”

Otto. Swaggering, booming, gusty great Otto. There were so many jokes about him. Can’t kill Otto—he’d bounce. Otto the perfect sphere. Protective coloring... marvels of human adaptation...

I looked along the corridor, and then back at the board. In here, the only people who would ever see that name would be Otto’s friends—fewer of them now than there used to be—and the new lot, the kids who wouldn’t even bother to spare the list a glance. It ought to be outside, in the main hall, where the public could read those names and remember. Only, of course, they wouldn’t want to remember. They wouldn’t want to know that you could still get killed at takeoff, at landing, or out there in space. Don’t show them the rollcall of the dead. Bad for the image.

The man with the power-pen edged back to study his handiwork. Casually he said:

“He flew the same sort of space ferry you got, didn’t he?”

“Yes. His was a bit newer, that’s all.”

The man went back to work, and I went out into the lobby again. There was still quite a bit of a space at the bottom of that plaque: enough for the name of W. KEMP to be added when the time came.

A worried passenger was fussing over his luggage. As one of the porters tried to lift it into position for automatic loading, the man suddenly panicked.

“No, just a moment, I... I’ll handle it myself. There’s some... er... I’ve got some fragile instruments inside.”

He reached for the heavy bag and swung it up from the floor.

It kept moving. Caught off balance, he let go, and the bag sailed gracefully over the trolley and landed on the far side with a crash of breaking glass.

Tears came into the man’s eyes. “My Scotch! My Scotch!” He tottered round the trolley to assess the damage.

The porter shrugged. Moon gravity was something you had to adjust to, and the antics of those who weren’t prepared for it were always good for a malicious laugh. Things weighed only a sixth of what they did on Earth. Things—including human beings. The passenger discovered this when, plunging toward his bag, he overshot and went stumbling toward an armchair by the reservation counter. It was a good job the armchair wasn’t occupied at the time.

I headed for the exit. As I passed the information desk, the clerk hailed me.

He was dealing with a slim girl dressed in what must be the latest terrestrial fashion. Not an expensive mode, I judged: it looked neat, sleek, and less extreme than some of the pricey pieces that flitted through here on what had become the almost obligatory Moon-month vacation. The girl, too, was unobtrusive—pretty, with slowly blinking eyes and a nicely generous mouth. And, right now, with a worried expression.

“Captain Kemp flies over to Farside, time to time,” the clerk said. “Bill... this young lady’s looking for her brother. He’s a miner over there. Seems he said he’d meet her on arrival here, but there’s not even a message.”

I didn’t see it was anything to do with me, but I didn’t mind looking at the girl for a few minutes. She had just
that quality of freshness that women lost after they had been on the Moon for any length of time—as though the artificially freshened air and the fresh food and vegetables from the stygian caverns somehow drained them and dulled them.

“Your brother?” I prompted.

“Taplin,” she said. “Wallace Taplin.”

It meant nothing to me. I’d flown supplies for quite a few of the miners—it was just about all that kept me going—but Taplin wasn’t one of them.

“He’s probably waiting in town,” I tried to reassure her.

“Just what I was saying,” the clerk chimed in. He was anxious to get rid of her now, and only too willing to hand her over. I saw it coming. “Mr. Kemp’s going into town. I reckon he won’t mind seeing you onto the Monorail.”

I made some sort of noise, and walked away, with the girl beside me. She was there, but all at once she ceased to exist. Right in the middle of that buzzing, murmuring space, surrounded by these travelers who took so much for granted, I had a clear, overwhelmingly vivid picture of Otto right there in front of me. Otto, waiting with his great ham of a hand shoved out. Waiting to joke, to crack your hand with his grip, to slam you on the shoulder and knock you halfway across the crater.

But there wasn’t any Otto. Not any more. Just a drift of particles in infinity, now.

The girl cleared her throat and said something uneasily. I tried to snap out of it and get her in focus again.

“Sorry, Miss Trampoline...”

“Taplin,” she said.

“Oh, yes. Sorry.”

“My luggage,” she said. “How do I collect my luggage?”

We stepped out onto the platform. The faint tremor of the rail and the hiss of the distant dome lock announced the arrival of the train.

“All stacked up, ready to go aboard,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

But she was still worrying. She looked like a girl with a lot to worry about

THEY GASPED, just as I’d known they would, when the train slid from the short tunnel and out across the lunar plain. Newcomers always let out a squeak of some sort when they emerged into the dazzling brightness and saw the slim concrete Monorail curving round the rocky promontory. There was a dizzy moment when you felt yourself in danger of being launched back into space; then the train gathered speed and hummed along the rail, supported on fragile-looking pillars a steady forty feet above the surface.

Harsh light and harsh shadows and always the backdrop of piercing stars: I’d seen it all, I’d been here too long. I closed my eyes.

“Is that the city?” asked Miss Taplin.

Far too soon for the city. I opened my eyes and had a look. What she could see were the towers and gantries of the spaceship yards. She wasn’t so far wrong, though. The area was a city in itself. Few ships were built anywhere else nowadays: with Moon gravity, the movement and assembly of parts were easier, and space was plentiful— space on the ground, and space up aloft for test flying— and experimental blast-offs didn’t produce angry calls from the Noise Abatement Society.