Moonrise

“Preternatural?” Doug laughed.

Just as they reached the cross tu

“Oh!” said the taller of the two. “We’re looking for the farm.”

She was a good-looking brunette. Her companion was stockier, curly red hair clipped short, with a bosom that strained the front of her jumpsuit.

Brudnoy stroked his bearded chin. “The farm? Why should two such lovely ladies be looking for the farm at this time of night?”

“We just got off our shift,” said the brunette.

“And we heard that you keep bu

Brudnoy’s weariness seemed to disappear. Before Doug’s eyes the tired old man turned into a smiling, boyish swain with large, liquid eyes that blinked at the two women longingly.

“Ah, yes, the bu

“Really?” they squealed in unison. “Can we see them?”

“Of course,” said Brudnoy. “Right this way.”

“It’s not too late?”

“For such lovely newcomers to our humble farm, how could it be too late?” Brudnoy glanced at Doug and rolled his eyes.

“I’ve got to be going,” Doug said.

Smiling wolfishly, Brudnoy said, “Then I shall have to show the rabbits to these young ladies all by myself?”

“Well,” said Doug, “maybe I can hang around for a little bit.”

“If it’s not too much trouble,” the brunette said.

“No trouble at all,” Brudnoy answered grandly. “Just follow me.”

Doug laughed to himself as he followed Brudnoy and the two women back toward the farm and the rabbit pens. No wonder Lev likes to keep the rabbits, he said to himself. And here I thought he only had our nutritional needs in mind.

Well, Doug mused, maybe we can recruit these two for Operation Bootstrap. If nothing else.

MT. YEAGER

“Well, what do you think?” Doug asked.

He could hear his mother’s excited breathing through the suit radio. From their vantage atop Mt. Yeager they could see almost the entire floor of Alphonsus before the sharp lunar horizon cut off their view. In the other direction, Mare Nubium stretched out like an endless undulating frozen sea of rock, dotted with smaller craters and the glowing red beacon lights of the old temporary shelters.

“You were right, Doug,” Joa

She had never been out on the lunar surface before. Doug quietly insisted that she make an excursion with him; they both knew his motive was to get her alone, away from Greg, so they could talk without interruption, without eavesdropping.

Joa

“There’s the mass driver,” Doug said, pointing at the dark line laid out across the crater floor. “And the rocket port. You can see the solar energy farms…”

But Joa

“Those are the tempos, aren’t they?” she asked.

Doug nodded inside his helmet, then grasped his mother’s shoulders gently and turned her slightly to the left.

“That’s Wodjohowitcz Pass,” he said, pointing to a rounded cleft in the ringwall. “That’s where my father died.”

He heard the breath catch in her throat.

“Would you like to see the plaque there?” Doug asked.

“No,” Joa

“We put one like it at the top of Mt. Wasser,” he said. “For Bre

“I know.”

“We really ought to put up a statue for Bre

“Not until there are tourists to spend money to see it,” Joa

Doug laughed lightly. “Right.” More seriously, he added, “Bre

“And you lost him.”

“We all lost him. Mom, if he were still here he’d be pushing Operation Bootstrap even harder than I am.”

“All right,” Joa

Doug went to scratch his chin, but his gloved hand bumped into his helmet, instead. “Well,” he said, only slightly startled, “I need to buy an LTV.”

“A lunar transfer vehicle? Buy one?”

“Would the corporation let us modify one of their LTVs for the asteroid mission? Would Greg?”

“No,” she said. “Of course not.”

“Then I’ll have to buy one. I’ve thought it all through a thousand times,” he said, exaggerating only a little. “I’ve worked it out with Lev Brudnoy and a couple of other people who don’t want their names used, not yet, anyway—”

“You’ve got a real conspiracy going!” Joa

“A cabal,” Doug answered lightly. He immediately added, “But it hasn’t done any harm to Moonbase. Or to Greg. No harm at all.”

“Really?”

Doug returned to his subject. “We need an LTV to get out to the asteroid.”

“But you’ll have to modify the spacecraft. You can’t use it as-is to make a rendezvous with an asteroid.”

“That’s right.” Doug nodded.

“And where will you make these modifications?”

“I’d like to do it right here.”

“At Moonbase?”

“Right.”

“Do you have the facilities here?”

“Not really.”

The proper perso

“Sort of.”

“And how do you propose to get the facilities and people you need without your brother knowing about it?”

Doug spread his arms out wide. “That’s the tough part of it. But I figured once we actually acquired an LTV he’d have to let us go ahead and modify it.”

“Have to?” Doug could hear the amusement in his mother’s voice. “Greg would more likely fire everyone co

“He wouldn’t fire anyone if you were on our side,” Doug said.

That stopped her. Joa

“I can’t be on your side,” Joa

“I know you don’t, Mom,” Doug said. “But you’re going to have to choose.”

“No!”

“You can’t avoid it,” Doug said firmly, knowing that it was going to come down to this, hating the need but fully certain that there was no other way, there’d never been any other way, she was destined to choose between the two of us since these mountains were raised up, since the begi

“It’s not just Greg or me,” Doug explained. “It’s Moonbase.

It’s the future of humanity. Either Moonbase expands and becomes self-sufficient or it dies. My father knew that. You know it! We’ve got to move beyond being a mining town and grow into a community that’s physically and economically self-sufficient. That’s what the diamond Clipperships are all about, but Greg’s too close-minded to see the entire picture, to grasp the fullness of the future.”

“And you do understand it?”

“I honestly think I do, Mom. Either Moonbase grows or it dies. And if Moonbase dies, if we close this little foothold on the frontier, humankind folds back in on itself. The whole human race will sink into poverty and despair — and the kind of mind-controlling dictatorship that the New Morality is aiming at.”

“What about Yamagata and Europeans?”

“They can’t open the frontier the way we can. They’re government-run, they’ll stay small and stick to scientific research.”

“I don’t see where—”

“Dictatorship is already on the march back Earthside, Mom. It’s already happening!” Doug insisted, pleading with her. “Now they want to shut down all nanotechnology. They’ve been censoring books and video for years. They’re taking control of the universities. Don’t you see, Mom? They’re trying to control the thought centers! Once they’ve got them under control they can take over governments. And then the corporations.”