Chapter 2
“Another unexpected factor in Lunar colonization was the appearance of SunRunners. The need for air and water to replace JVLB recycling losses was a constant drain on base finances . . . These hardy souls cashed in savings, retirement, and even the cost of transport back to Earth to buy large solar-powered rovers and . . . were pivotal to Lunar Base’s growing economy.”
excerpt: “Manned Space: A Study of Sociological Development, Intro.”
I’d been in eighty mph, bumper to bumper traffic in Los Angeles. I never thought half that speed in a locomotive-size lunar rover could be any worse. It was.
The rover seemed to barely touch the regolith, uneasily swaying and bounding across the mare. Occasionally a larger crater would cause a teeth-jarring bump. Vibrations from the motors and suspension seemed to be transmitted straight to my seat despite the surrounding soundless vacuum. I had expected a quieter, calmer ride, not this crazy low-flying-power-saw routine. The cab of the rover made it worse; slung low and forward, my butt seemed just inches from the lunar surface racing by. What a rush.
An hour passed before I began to pay attention, and it was another hour before I got used to it enough to relax my grip on the seat belt. Frans didn’t say a word the whole time, just sat there with a hand on the right control stick, occasionally touching the screen. Finally comfortable enough to look around, I could see the front segmented rollagon wheel blurring by just to my right. I was morbidly fascinated that I could see through the blur. Each of the eight giant rollagon wheels was made of curved alloy struts, with heavy rubber ‘feet’ along the tread-line; in dock, they looked ridiculously mundane, but Out Here they seemed almost magical. Sunset gilded the spinning struts, and the dust kicked into arcs of glittering diamonds. I was hypnotized.
I woke up later when Frans tapped on my helmet. We were still rolling across the lunar surface, though not quite at the breakneck pace of before. Frans motioned for my attention, then reached down beside him to operate a control, which allowed him to swivel around and face backwards. I fumbled beside my seat until I found the knob and released the lock. When I turned the seat around, I saw a small hatch to a rearward area. Frans was already climbing through on his side, and I couldn’t keep from looking uneasily over my shoulder at the lunar surface passing by.
Frans stuck his head back into the cab and motioned at me to ‘come on’. With a mental shrug I slid the hatch open and stepped through, finding myself in a small airlock with Frans. I managed to close the little hatch behind me, then Frans hit an equalizer valve by the third hatch. In just a few minutes we were relaxing in the tiny dining area, steaming dinners in front of us, watching a video view from the front of the rover. A portable joystick let Frans make adjustments as we dined.
“. . . knew he was developing diabetes, the signs were there, but we agreed that what the heck, how bad could it become in less than a month? Which shows just how smart we were.” Frans smiled. “Eat, eat. We don’t want you getting skinny Out Here.”
“But,” I said around a bite of meatloaf, “just what was so darn important anyway?”
Frans stared down at his green beans for an extra moment or two, then looked at me.
“What do you mean?”
“Frans,” I said, then swallowed, “look, I may not be too bright, but this seems obvious even to me. Ray risked death by diabetes for that run, and you have a heart condition, and were ready to risk it by yourself. The company made a big deal, looked like to me anyway, over some matters that seemed trivial. Is this beginning to add up?”
He nodded, and I continued.
“Something important is happening, something mostly secret, something potentially valuable. Wanna tell me what is so important to you that you were willing to assault those officers?”
Frans shook his head and laughed.
“Unbelievable,” he said when he was done laughing, “unbelievable. I wonder how many others have deduced what you have?”
“I don’t know. Everybody is just guessing now, but it was the company that got everyone thinking.” I pulled out my PDA and showed him an image of a memo.
TO: DIRECTOR, LUNA BASE
FROM: DIRECTOR, LDC
SUBJECT: INDEPENDENT EQUIP PURCHASES
PLEASE DETERMINE THE INTENDED USE AND/OR DESTINATION OF THE ITEMS ON THE ATTACHED LIST. THESE ITEMS SEEM IN EXCESS OF PROJECTED NEED. PLEASE CONTACT ME OR MY STAFF UPON YOUR QUICK DETERMINATION OF THIS MATTER. TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION IF NEEDED. USE SECURE COM AND MAIL FOR ALL INFORMATION REGARDING THIS MATTER.
“I see,” he said
“Yup, this caused quite a stir,” I said and snapped the PDA shut.
“Tell me Peter, how did you get that memo?”
“A printout was pinned up on the Common’s bulletin board yesterday.” I smiled. “I think Patty did it. Never piss off your computer expert by enslaving her.”
“So this isn’t an original?”
“C’mon Frans, you’re a century behind, there’s never an original anymore.”
“Of course.” He thoughtfully watched the regolith passing by on the screen. We sat and finished our meal quietly. I knew better than to interrupt his thoughts; another skill learned by grad students.
“Well then,” he finally said, “I think there is no reason not to tell you.”
I saw a lecture coming. As I tucked my PDA into my pocket, I keyed on the digital voice recorder - just in case there was a test later. Frans leaned as far back as the tiny dining area would allow.
“What do you know about the American frontier, Pete? Do you have any special insight on how and why civilization finally overcame the wilderness? No? I have, or at least I think I have. It was because of the mountain men. Many think they were simply asocial, desiring or forced to live away from civilization. Whatever their reasons, these men embraced a harsh and solitary lifestyle. They showed the rest of America that the western frontier was not deadly, that a man could make his way alone. In fact, it even seemed possible to prosper. Without this example I wonder if the American West would have been settled so quickly.”
“Are you trying to say you’re a lunar mountain man, Frans?” I asked with a smile.
“No, I’m not. I’m the second wave. I’m the outback station, the wilderness trading post, the frontier general store.”
“You mean an independent lunar base,” I said with disbelief. Frans nodded. This was getting crazier all the time.
“How long will this take, Frans? Especially with the company on to you now?”
“This is my last run, Pete.” He sat up straight. “They won’t realize it until I put in a bid to supply air and water for the space station, the V. L. S. S.”
“Wait.” I paused to think, not easy with my head spinning. “You already BUILT this base? And we’re going there now?”
Frans nodded
“Okay. You aren’t going back to Lunar Base? Ever?”
“Don’t you think they will be more prepared next time, Peter? They must have had an inkling that something is happening, although I find it odd that they then let me go. I imagine there is already some kind of warrant for my arrest.” Frans smiled gently.
“Crap. I promised Patty I’d get you back to Lunar Base in one piece, too.”
“I know. You forgot to turn off the hand com. When I tried to call and check your progress, you were . . . busy.” I could see that, by the time this was over, I’d have no sense of embarrassment left.
“Frans, I hope you have some way in mind to get me back?”
“Certainly,” he chuckled, “but are you sure you want to go back? They don’t like you anymore, either.”
“Dammit Frans, I have to go back. My research project, my degree, my thesis, my . . .”
“Patty?”
I nodded morosely.
“Well, that’s a good reason Peter. Women are always a good reason. Don’t worry. I’ll get you back. You may have to walk a bit, but I’ll get you back.” Funny how prophecy makes you feel better.
We drove straight through to Frans’ base station, taking turns driving and resting, and I’ve never been so bored in my life. I had trouble staying awake; the lunar surface rolling by at a steady thirty miles per hour was like a sleeping pill during finals’ week, after a six-pack. Coffee didn’t help, so we finally had to get into Frans’ medical supplies and amph me up; then I didn’t sleep enough.
Mostly by luck, I didn’t drive us off a cliff or flip us into a crater. When the terrain began to get up and down a lot, Frans wouldn’t let me drive much anyway. We were heading into the northern lunar polar regions, where a couple of large meteor strikes had gouged a valley in a mountain range a very long time ago. Frans showed me on the survey map, and it really didn’t seem much different from the rest of the moon.
It took us a week of steady driving to reach the valley, including some painstaking mountaineer driving at the end. Even though the sun was now high in the lunar day, the valley remained in near-darkness, lit only by reflections from the surrounding mountain peaks. In the overall dimness, I could just make out a darker streak meandering through the valley, like the dark river Styx winding through the land of the dead. Despite that depressing image from some literature class, I thought it looked cool.
“What’s that creek running through your property, Frans?”
Frans laughed. “Pretty close, Pete. That is where I get my water, anyway.”
“Really? Frans, are you pulling my leg?”
“No, Peter, I’m not. What you see is a crevasse, a stress crack from the original impacts that formed this valley. It has been here for millions of years, gathering dust.”
“Ha! You’d think it would be full by now.”
“Probably it was,” Frans grunted as we jolted through an unavoidable crater, “but vulcanism or perhaps another nearby meteor strike caused a sinkhole. That’s how Ray was able to spot it on the survey maps.” He didn’t say anything else until we reached the valley floor. We finally rounded a ridge and the rover’s lights fell on the station.
“Welcome to Mirkheim,” Frans said quietly.
“Whoooa . . .”
It didn’t seem real. They hadn’t used forged bricks to build sunken bunkers like Lunar Base; instead shimmering purple bubbles seemed to grow out of the base of the mountain, throwing off glassy buttresses. It was almost too much; I was beginning to feel a little lost, but Frans got me back on track.
“First let’s unload, then I will give you the tour.”
“Wait. Is that the station?”
“Yes,” Frans said as he unbuckled, “that’s the station.”
“How . . .”
“We used old solar furnace reflectors as forms, foamed the glass with carbon dioxide as we poured. We used explosives to dig the chambers, then capped them with the glass hemispheres. A little cutting, a little grinding, and a lot of sealant got them fit and airtight. Ready to help me unload now?”
We went straight to work then. Frans was still being quiet, and I didn’t press him about it - I guessed Ray was on his mind. They’d been partners a long time, and I think Frans was missing Ray now that we were here. I knew I was missing Patty and I hoped she was missing me, even just a little.
The work helped. The rover cargo section was packed full of crates and pallets, as well as some large wrapped pieces, and each one had to be unloaded and stowed just so for Frans. On the Moon a thousand pounds of mass weighs about as much as I would on Earth, so the unloading wasn’t difficult, even though we had only a basic hand truck and a come-along. In a couple of hours Frans was his old self and declared it was dinner time. We ate in the rover, since it was still powered up and all the food was still there. In celebration, we splurged on turkey and dressing.
“Okay. I got a bunch of questions; you ready Frans?”
“Of course, ask away my friend,” he said as he sawed the reconstituted turkey breast.
“First, why purple?”
“That was unplanned. The dust we used had some cobalt or iridium in it, something that colored the glass when we smelted it.” Frans chuckled fondly. “I remember Ray wondered if we should build a brothel instead of a general store.”
“Cool. Okay, why bubbles?”
“You should know that, Peter. The best shape for a pressure vessel is a globe. The old reflectors we got for scrap. We layered pure glass with foamed glass, to make them lighter and more insulating. The results were, well, eye-catching.”
“That’s an understatement. Now for the big question - why here? How did you find this place and why is it so special?” Frans chewed thoughtfully for a minute.
“I got the idea from a science fiction story written by an author named Poul Anderson. I’m sure you know there are ice deposits at the poles, but the poles are not a good place to have a base. There’s not enough sunlight for a base to be full solar, and the energy for living and processing the deposits would have to come from nuclear power plants, or some other expensive fashion. I started seeking a closer, easier to reach spots years ago. I’d hoped to find deep dust layers with ice or frozen carbon dioxide, insulated from direct solar heating by the layers of dust above, like the permafrost of Earth’s arctic tundra. I failed to find a widespread layer, but instead there are scattered patches, hiding under ejecta mounds and crater ridges.”
“Ah,” I interrupted, “that’s why Runners keep their charts and logs a secret, so nobody can spot their patches.”
“Correct. I theorized that if there were patches, there might be super-patches easier to utilize than the polar deposits. Basically I needed to find a deep valley on the polar side of shielding mountains, but not so close to the poles that we couldn’t get access to solar power. It turns out you can’t have mountains too close behind your site, the reflected light and heat keep the temperature too high. And you must be able to drive in, of course.” He paused to sip his coffee.
“Sounds like a hell of a research project to me.”
“Indeed. It took four years, including some exploratory runs. But we were working on the station the whole time, gathering the things we needed, working out how we’d build it.”
“So this is the super-patch, this valley with a crack running through it?”
“One of them, anyway. There are others, less accessible, not as much ice. There are likely others we didn’t find, but there can’t be many with as much material.” He finished his coffee.
“How much ice?”
“A lot. Hundreds of tons.”
“What! Tons? Hundreds of TONS? That’s possible?” I barely kept myself from jumping up and doing a lunar newbie bounce off the ceiling. Frans cleared the table while I fidgeted.
“Possible? Yes. Likely? No. We got lucky. Somewhere close, perhaps even one of these craters, there was a comet impact, or maybe an icy asteroid. The crevasse might have twenty thousand tons of material, about 1 percent of it ice.”
“Two hundred tons of ice,” I pulled my PDA, opened the calculator, “two thousand pounds per ton, ice goes for what, about a thousand dollars a pound?”
“Twelve hundred last run,” Frans said while putting the dishes in the washer.
“Uhm, uh, that would be . . .” I looked up, jaw hanging, to see Frans smiling at me.
“Almost half a billion dollars, Peter. Of course, there may not be as much ice deeper in the crevasse, and the fraction may drop to as little as one tenth of 1 percent.”
“Only fifty million dollars then, how sad. Frans, you and Ray are RICH!”
“Hardly.”
“I don’t get it. Even if the rate goes down, you’re still a multimillionaire?”
“Get your surfacesuit on, and I’ll try to explain.”
And explain he did. For the next few days we talked about it and worked on getting the station operational. Sunset was coming soon, and Frans had a lot for us to do while we talked. The station had no independent power when we arrived; they’d run it off the rover when they were here, so we installed several fuel cells for power. To recharge the fuel cells and supply processing power for the station, we ran cables up the slope of the shield mountains, and installed solar panels there. With power on, we installed lighting, heaters, and the “outhouse”, a specialized organic waste recycler.
Two weeks after we’d left Lunar Base, I finally got to sit and relax in the station with Frans. We lounged in the station’s main dome, surfacesuits still on, cold brews in hand, just gazing up at the inside of the glittering purple dome
“This is very cool, Frans.”
“Thanks.”
“Okay, let my try and sum this all up,” I said. “If you try and sell your ice to the company, directly or through other Runners, the market will crash and put the rest of the Runners out of business. You’d have to take up the slack, and the company would eventually find out what was going on. They’d roll the Security Division in here and take your station, since there’s no law Out Here. Right so far?”
“Yes.” He kept looking up at the dome as he sipped his beer.
“If you try to sell to someone else, which could only be the space station, you’d have to use the company for your transport, and they’d roll in here and take your station, and put all the Runners out of business. You could go to the UN and apply for some kind of legal help, but as soon as the company finds out they roll in and take your station, since the UN doesn’t actually have anyone here to help you. In fact, nothing we can think of will stop the company from rolling in here, taking the station, and putting the rest of the Runners out of business as soon as the company finds out about what you have here.”
“We.”
“Huh?”
“We. You are a partner now, my friend.”
“Hmm. Frans, I don’t deserve it, I must protest - okay, since you twisted my arm like that.” At least it brought a smile to his face. “Thanks. I don’t know, Frans, I don’t know; I’m no lawyer, but I think we’re missing something here. What did the guy in that science fiction story do?”
“They ended up preserving their secret. Since they had their own space transport that was enough. We don’t have that option.” Frans peered intently at the dome.
“Well, that’s too bad. The good news is we have a couple of weeks to work it out. Don’t worry, Frans . . . Frans?” His attention seemed riveted to the dome. Suddenly fear ran through me.
“There!” Frans lunged to his feet. “Did you see that?”
“No, what?” I frantically searched the inner surface of the dome, but I saw no breaks or cracks. “What is it?”
“The rover,” he yelled as he jumped to the airlock.
I squinted up, trying to see anything through the sparkling dome. I thought I could make out a flicker of light outside.
“I see it Frans, did we leave a light . . .”
A bright flash lit up the dome, my beer jumped and spilled, and debris pounded the glass. By the time I recovered from my confusion and put my helmet on, Frans was already cycling out of the airlock. I hurried out, but it was too late; we were both too late. I joined Frans as he watched the quick dying flames. Blue light from the dome behind us showed the Luna-bago was a total wreck; the whole rear deck was gone down to the axles, and the cabin was a scorched shell with gaping windows. Frans walked silently around the wreck. My fear rose, and I started to feel short of breath. Would I ever see Patty again?
“Frans . . . Frans, what do we do now?” He ignored me and stooped to examine some piece of the wreck. My emotions were getting the better of me; waves of dizziness hit me. “Frans, I . . .” Afraid I’d fall, I sat on one of the crates. Frans looked up at me then, and I could see his pale face. His lips were moving as he watched me, then he raised his hand and tapped his helmet. I stood up to go see what was wrong with his helmet . . .
I woke with a start and grabbed for the rover controls before I remembered where I was. Then I realized I didn’t know where I was. Then Frans leaned over me, and I did remember, kind of.
“Peter, can you answer me?” His face was filled with concerned.
“Uh, sure. Man, I got a headache.” Even as I said it, the pain was easing.
“Understandable. Anoxia does that. I’m sorry Pete.”
“Sorry? I’m not sure what you mean, Frans.” I sat up and looked around; we were in the main dome again.
“We got in a hurry, and you didn’t open your regulator, and I didn’t wait to check you. That was stupid, and stupid kills.” He sat beside me and shook his head.
“I forgot to turn on my air?” I closed my eyes as my stomach did a barrel roll, and I clenched my teeth against nausea. I had made a near-fatal error. I remembered Frans tapping his helmet; I’d forgotten to turn on my radio too. Breathing only the air in the helmet, I would have been dead in ten minutes, but passed out in just two or three. I’d never thought of myself as stupid, but that was scary. I realized that maybe I wasn’t taking this seriously enough. Hell, even that thought was understated. I would have to either be more careful, or be very dead.
“Sorry I’m such a putz, Frans.” I put my head in my hands.
“We were both at fault. I just need to remember how new you are to this. You’ve done very well so far.”
“Glad to hear it. Any idea what happened with the rover?” Our eyes met, and we mutually, silently, agreed it would never be mentioned again.
“Yes,” he said. He rose and stepped to the crate we used as a work table. He picked something up, and handed it to me. “This.”
“This” was a blackened and twisted piece of plumbing, one end melted away, the other still attached to a fitting. Something else was wired to the remainder of the pipe, something that was out of place.
“What is it?”
“It’s a welding flare. It was used as a detonator, with the gas storage tanks as the explosives. There must have been a timer to ignite the flare.”
“A bomb? How?”
“Liquid oxygen is very flammable. The flare burned through a feed pipe from the liquid oxygen tank, burned the shutoff valve, too. I saw the fire through the dome, but it was already too late by then. When the hydrogen tank ruptured from the fire, well, you saw what was left.”
“Someone tried to kill us.” It was beginning to sink in.
“Yes. The timing was perfect for us to be halfway through our run. We would have just never come back, lost somewhere here on the dark side of the Moon.”
“Wow. You think they know about Mirkheim?”
“Not the location, but maybe the idea? I don’t know.” Frans shook his head.
“But, why? Why kill us at all?”
“Half a billion dollars?”
“Oh. Right. No, wait.” I paused a moment to gather my thoughts. “To collect, they’d need to know where we were and what we had. Then it would be easier and safer to come out here after we left, wouldn’t it? And even if we were here, why risk blowing the place up, when they could just bring a few friends and toss us out? No, they don’t know or don’t care about the ice, don’t know where we are.”
“Very logical, Peter. What motive is left, though?” Frans sat wearily beside me.
“Well, aren’t you the only man on the planet with an independent lunar base? The only competition for Lunar Base Corporation?”
He slowly straightened, his face becoming hard and angry
“What kind of trouble are we in, Frans?”
“I’m not sure yet. Are you up to finding out?”
I stood up and reached for my helmet. “Nothing I’d like better.”
We each carefully checked the other’s surfacesuit this time before entering the airlock. We spent about an hour briefly checking the wreckage and tallying what we had to work with for our survival. We spent another hour finishing the six-pack, then we went to bed. The terminator rolled over us as we slept. Mirkheim was in total darkness when we woke.
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