Moonrise

The garage was quiet and shadowy, tractors parked in precise rows along the faded yellow lines painted on the rock floor, barely visible in the dim nighttime lighting.

The guard cocked a doubtful eye at him, then checked Doug’s record on his display screen.

“You’ve been here three days and you’ve already spent six hours on the surface?”

“Yes, that sounds about right,” said Doug.

“You some kind of scientist?”

Shaking his head, Doug said, “No. Not yet, at least.”

“Says here you’re okay to go out alone,” the guard said, still dubious. “But you stay inside camera range, understand? If I’ve gotta wake up a team to go out and find you, your ass is go

“Understood,” said Doug, gri

Doug went down the row’of lockers where the surface suit hung like empty suits of armor, looking for one his size. Afte he got it all on, Doug spent an hour reading through the logistics list for the expedition on his hand computer whil he pre-breathed the suit’s low-pressure mix of oxygen and nitrogen. Finally the security guard came out of his cubicle long enough to check out the suit’s seals and co

“Your suit malfunctions, it’s my ass,” he muttered. Once he completed the checklist, though, he pointed Doug to the perso

Through the sealed visor of his helmet Doug said, “Thanks for your help.”

The guard simply shook his head, obviously convinced this strange young visitor was crazy, even though his record said he was qualified for solo excursions on the surface.

The massive steel hatch for the vehicles was tightly closed; Doug used the smaller perso

Doug smiled. “Magnificent desolation,” he muttered, remembering Aldrin’s words. But he did not see desolation in this harsh lunar landscape. Doug saw unearthly beauty.

And more.

He paced out across the dusty crater floor, carefully counting his steps, knowing that the safety cameras were watching him. At one hundred paces he stopped and turned back to face the cameras, the airlock hatch, Moonbase.

Off to his left the ground was scoured bare and blasted by rocket exhausts. The expedition’s four ungainly-looking ballistic Jobbers stood on the base’s four landing pads, the most visible mark of human habitation. The base itself was barely discernible. Just a few humps of rubble marked the various airlocks. Most of the base was dug into the mountain wall, of course.

Mt. Yeager. Doug looked up to its summit, gleaming in the sunlight. More than twelve thousand feet to the top, Doug knew. I’ll have to climb it before I go back home.

He turned a full circle, there alone on the crater floor except for the automated tractors patiently scooping up regolith sand and the distant glistening slick of the tiny, invisible nanomachines quietly building new solar cells out of the regolith’s silicon and trace metals.

Doug saw the future.

Where I’m standing will be just about a tenth of the way along the main plaza, Doug said to himself. The plaza floor will be dug in below the surface, of course, but its dome will rise more than a hundred feet over my head. We’ll plant it with grass and trees, get it landscaped with walking lanes through the shrubbery and even a swimming pool.

It’ll be a real city, he thought. With permanent residents and families having babies and everything. We’ll set up a cable car system over Mt. Yeager, out to Mare Nubium. That’ll be easier than trying to tu

For more than two hours Doug paced out the structures he visualized, the city that Moonbase could become. We can do it, he told himself. If I can get Mom to agree…

Then reality intruded on his dream. “Mr. Stavenger, this is security. You’ve been outside for two hours. Unless you have some specific duties to perform, standard regulations require that you return to the airlock.”

Doug nodded inside the helmet of his spacesuit. “Understood,” he said. I’m coming back in.”

But he brought his dream with him.

BRUDNOY

They had disco

Lev Brudnoy sat at her bedside in Moonbase’s tiny infirmary, his expressive face a picture of grief. Behind him stood Ji

“You know the one thing I regret?” Goodman’s voice was a harsh, labored whisper.

Brudnoy, tears in his eyes, shook his head.

“I regret that you never made a pass at me, Lev.”

For once in his life, Brudnoy was stu

“You came on to just about every other woman in Moon-base,” Goodman wheezed, “except me.”

Brudnoy gulped once and found his voice, “Lovely woman,” he said softly, “I was too much afraid of being rejected. You have always been so far above me…”

Goodman smiled. “We could have had some times together.”

“Never in my wildest fantasies could I hope that you would be interested in a foolish dog like me,” Brudnoy muttered, letting his head sink low.

“You’re a good old dog, Lev. No fool.”

He spread his hands. “I’m nothing but a peasant I spend all my time in the farm now.”

“I know,” Goodman whispered. “The flowers… they cheered me up.”

“The least I could do.”

“I want you to bury me in your farm,” Goodman said.

“Not return to Earth?”

“This is my home. Bury me here. In the farm. Where what’s left of me can do some good.”

Brudnoy turned toward Ji

I’m a witness,” Anson said. “I’ll see that the forms are properly filled out.”

“In the farm.” Goodman’s voice was so faint now that Brudnoy had to bend over her emaciated form to hear her. “Always did believe in ecology. Recycle me.”

Then she sighed and closed her eyes. For a moment Brudnoy thought she had fallen asleep. But then the remote sensors started shrilling their single note.

A doctor appeared at the foot of her bed. Brudnoy struggled to his feet, a big lumbering man, weathered but still handsome, slightly paunchy, his shoulders slumped and his hair graying. There seemed to be new lines in his face every year; every day, he sometimes thought. A ragged gray beard covered his chin.

He felt Anson’s hand on his arm as he shambled out of the infirmary, leaving behind its odor of clean sheets and implacable death.

The tu

“Well,” he said, trying to straighten up, “now I’m the oldest resident of Moonbase. I suppose I’ll be the next to go.”

Anson smiled up at him. “Not for another hundred years, at least.”

“At least,” Brudnoy murmured.

“Come on, let me buy you a drink. We could both use some rocket juice.”

“You?” Some of the old playfulness sparkled in Brudnoy’s sky-blue eyes. “You, the base director? You speak of illegal alcoholic drinks?”

Anson gri