Moonrise

“Well,” said Bre

“Tourists?” Joa

“Aw, Mom, that was years ago,” Doug replied. “Tourists go to the space stations, don’t they? If we could build reasonable facilities for them, they’d spend their money at Moonbase.”

“They could plant their bootprints where no one has ever stepped before,” Bre

“On plastic wings that we rent to them,” Doug added.

Suppressing an urge to laugh* Joa

“Yes,” said Bre

Joa

Bre

Turning slightly, Joa

Bre

“You bet!” said Doug. “I’ve been spending every minute I can in lunar simulators. I can handle a tractor or a hopper and I’ve got the rest of the summer free.”

Bre

Gri

“He wants to go so much,” Joa

Sobering, Bre

“I know,” said Doug. “But it’ll be on the Moon.”

“You want to get to the Moon that bad?”

“I want to be at the frontier. I want to go places where no one’s been before.”

With a solemn nod, Bre

“If I approve your pla

“If I say no, will you still approve the expedition?”

She looked into those ice-blue eyes, then said, “I might approve it more easily if you say no.”

“I mean it, Mom,” Doug said. I’ll go to Yamagata.”

Bre

“If I approve,” Joa

Bre

“I can be the legal recorder,” said Doug. “You don’t have anyone in your group who’s responsible for recording the corporation’s legal claim to the polar region. I can do that for you.”

Bre

Joa

Gri

“Nearly fifty hours!” said Doug.

With a shrug, Bre

“Then I can go?”

Joa

But she sat up straight again and levelled a finger at Bre

Bre

“Don’t worry, Mom,” said Doug, almost dancing with excitement. I’ll be fine. What can happen to me?”

Joa

MOONBASE

“I hate his guts,” said Jack Killifer.

“Who? Bre

“Naw. Little Douggie.”

“Doug Stavenger?”

“That’s right,” Killifer said sourly. “Mama’s boy.”

“How can you hate him? You haven’t even seen him yet He’s not due to arrive until—”

“I don’t have to see him,” Killifer snapped. “The little pissant’s already screwed me over.”

Killifer and Roger Deems were sitting in Moonbase’s galley, a cavern large enough to hold the entire regular staff of fifty, plus a dozen or so visitors. At the moment, in the middle of a work morning, they were the only two people seated at the tables. A few others drifted in now and then, made their way down the line of automated dispensing machines, then headed back to their offices or workplaces.

Known to the regular Lunatics as The Cave, the galley had been carved out of the rock of Alphonsus’s ringwall mountains by the same plasma-torch crews who had dug the tu

They had left The Cave’s ceiling rough-hewn, unpolished rock: hence its name. The walls were smooth, though, and the floor was planted with the toughest species of grasses that could be found on Earth. Twelve square plots of grass, forbidden to step upon, tended constantly and lovingly by the agro team, formed a green counterpoint to the tables and chair scattered across The Cave’s floor.

Full-spectrum lamps spa

“Why’re you pissed with the kid?” asked Roger Deems.

He was sitting across the small table from Killifer. Both men had mugs of what was supposed to be vitamin-enriched fruit juice before them. Both had laced their drinks liberally with ’rocket juice’ from Moonbase’s illicit travelling still.

The two men were a study in contrasts. Killifer was lean, lantern-jawed, his face hard and flinty. His light brown hair was shaved down almost to his scalp. His eyes were deepset, piercing, suspicious. Deems was large, round, plump, his dark locks curling down to his shoulders, his soft brown eyes wide.

He always seemed startled, like a deer caught in a car’s headlights.

Killifer took a long sip from his mug, then placed it down I on the table. I’m supposed to be second-in-command on this expedition, right?”

“Right.”

“Yeah, but Bre

“But Douggie’s only aboard as an observer,” Deems protested. “And Bre

“Yeah, I know. Orders from Mama. She’s the real pain in my ass.”

“She’s the boss.”

“Damned bitch.”

Deems tried to make light of his companion’s mood. “Hey, you don’t know her well enough to call her names like that.”

“I know her,” Killifer muttered. “How d’you think I came up here to the Moon in the first place?”

Deems blinked uncertainly.

“She sent me. Fuckin’ exiled me. Five years I had to spend up here before she’d let me come back. Just because I tried to help her son.”

Now Deems was very confused. “Tried to help Douggie?”

“His half-brother. Greg.” With great disgust Killifer explained, “It was eighteen years ago. I was working for the San Jose division then, not much more than a kid myself. Greg Masterson — his father was the bitch’s first husband — he asked me for a favor.”