Moonrise

“Doesn’t necessarily involve the corporation?” Quintana’s voice was filled with questions.

“Carlos, I’m his mother. I think I know Greg’s limitations and his capabilities. I think he can handle the Moonbase job. But I might be too emotionally close to be seeing clearly.”

“I understand,” Quintana replied. “I think I am too emotionally close to you to render an unbiased judgment.”

“But if you can’t help me, who can I turn to?”

He sighed again. “Joa

“Thank you, Carlos,” Joa

MT. WASSER

“There it is! Look!” Doug cried out.

Turning awkwardly in her spacesuit to follow his pointing hand, Bianca Rhee saw a tall, wide pi

“That’s Mt. Wasser?” she asked,

“Got to be,” Doug said, nodding inside his helmet. He studied the sunlit jut of rock carefully. Slightly taller than Everest, Mt. Wasser just happened to be situated so close to the south pole that its uppermost reaches were always in sunlight.

And down below, in those shadows, there’re fields of ice, Doug knew. Areas that are always in shadow, where the temperature is always at least a hundred below zero. Water, covered with dust from the infalling meteoroids, kept frozen in the cryogenic dark.

Water and sunlight. The two most important resources of the Moon. Water for life. Sunlight for electrical power. Bre

In the Jobber’s cockpit, Bre

“What are the others doing?” he asked Killifer.

“Right on track. Following us like nice little puppies.”

“Superb.” Bre

The lobber tilted back to its original vertical orientation.

Killifer punched up the camera view of the ground on the main display screen.

“Awful dark down there,” he muttered.

“Infrared,” Bre

The image on the display screen did not change much: still dark, with vague suggestions of shapes looming in the shadows.

“Braking in ten seconds,” Killifer read from the flight plan display.

“I know.”

“Altitude twenty.”

“I know!”

Killifer realized that Bre

“Lights,” Bre

Too high to do much good,” Killifer muttered, but he turned on the powerful lamps that had been installed on the underside of the lobber’s main platform.

Bre

“Boulders!” he yelped. “Big ones.”

Smoothly Bre

“Goldman!” Bre

“Following,” came Goldman’s voice in their earphones, professionally unperturbed.

“Reset the braking program,” Bre

Killifer tapped the keyboard. “Reset.”

The camera view showed a smoother stretch of ground beneath them. Still a great deal of rocks strewn across the area, but they were smaller, less dangerous.

The hard stony ground rushed up at them, stopped momentarily, then came at them again. The image on the display screen blurred; rocket exhaust, Killifer knew. Then he felt a thump and the familiar sensation of weight returned.

“We’re down’ he said to Bre

“Hundred-twenty… seventy… touchdown. We’re about fifty meters off your left rear. About seven o’clock in relation to your cockpit.”

Both men turned in their seats but could not see the second spacecraft from their position.

“The drones,” Bre

The two unma

Killifer glanced at the radar display. “Coming in now,” he said, pointing to the blips their beacons made.

They could see one of the robot craft descending, its braking rockets winking on and off against the dark shadows of the mountains.

“Override!” Bre

But it was too late. The unma

From the passenger module, Doug saw the crash. His first reaction was, My God, that could’ve been us! Then he wondered how much equipment they had lost.

“Well, we’re down safely, at least,” he said to the others in the bubble.

They muttered replies, voices hushed, subdued.

“I think my telescope was in the pod that broke open,”

Bianca said worriedly. I’ll have to go over and see if it survived the crash.”

By the time the six of them unstrapped from their seats and wormed through the hatch to stand on the ground, Bre

Doug followed Bre

“See whose equipment’s on this ship and get them to check out this mess,” Bre

“Right,” said Killifer.

“Is there anything I can to help?” Doug asked.

Bre

“Oh. Doug. I suppose you’re going to remind me that you wanted to land farther out aren’t you?”

Surprised at the sarcasm in the older man’s voice, Doug said, “No sir, it hadn’t entered my mind.”

“No,” Bre

“Were any of our life-support supplies on this ship?” Doug asked.

Bre

“Right,” said Killifer.

“What can I do to help?” Doug asked again.

“Just keep out of the way,” Bre

The base that Yamagata Industries established at the beautiful and prominent crater Copernicus, on the Sea of Rains, was called Nippon One. Admittedly, this was an unimaginative name of no intrinsic grace, and would be changed to something more poetic in time. For now, however, its utilitarian nature mirrored the character of the base itself. Nippon One was small, crowded, and unlovely: little more than a collection of huts buried beneath protective regolith rubble, much as Moonbase had been nearly twenty years earlier.