Moonrise

A gloomy silence filled the shelter.

Bianca Rhee broke the quiet. “What about the cargo ship that crashed? Didn’t it have a power system? Maybe we could ca

“Fuel cells,” Bre

“What pieces of our equipment do have solar cells?” Doug asked.

He could sense Bre

“You mean there’s nothing?”

“A few portable radio units with standard solar batteries. But they run on milliwatts; you can’t get away with pretending they’re providing power for the base.”

“Wait a minute,” Rhee said. “Why do we have to use the summit for a power station? Why can’t we set up a monitoring station up there?”

“Monitor what?” Bre

“Solar flux,” said Rhee. “I’ve got the instrumentation for it”

“What good—”

“We can set up an astronomical station at the summit,” Rhee said, excitement raising her tone a notch. “That’d be a legitimate use of the area, wouldn’t it?”

Doug said, “Sure, why not? We could even claim we’re making measurements to determine how much electrical power we could generate with solar cells.”

They both turned to Bre

“But it’ll hold up until we can get replacement nanomachines to actually start building the power tower,” Doug countered.

“You’re sure?”

“Nothing’s sure where lawyers are involved,” Doug said. “But it’s the best idea I’ve heard so far.”

Bre

“The Yamagata lobber’s landed.”

Anson stared hard at her desktop screen. It was split in half: the right side showed the frenzied activity of Clemens’ launch team as they laser-welded extra sheets of shielding around a grapefruit-sized minisatellite. Behind them a rocket booster stood impassively, little more than a squat tube crammed with powdered aluminum and liquified oxygen. Once the armored minisat was mated inside its nose cone the booster would be winched up the surface and fired toward the south pole.

The chief communications technician’s worried face filled the left side of Anson’s desktop screen.

“Landed?” Anson snapped. “Where?”

“On the other side of Mt. Wasser from where our people are,” replied the tech. “At least, that’s where L-l lost their radar transponder signal. Near as we can make it out, they put down right smack in the middle of the biggest ice field in the region.”

“Shee-yit,” Anson hissed.

Greg was sitting on a flimsy plastic chair alongside her desk, feeling useless as all the activity swirled around him.

Anson turned to him. “Yamagata’s people are on the ice down there. Now the question is, will they try to get to the top of the mountain right away or wait for the radiation to the down?”

“What do you intend to do with the minisat?” Greg asked.

“Tell Bre

“Won’t that make it seem as if we’re pushing him to take bigger risks than necessary?”

Avoiding Greg’s eyes, Anson replied, “Bre

“Can the minisat operate in this level of radiation?”

“The satellite’s only got to work for a few minutes,” Anson said. “Just long enough to tell Bre

Greg wondered what Bre

Greg felt frozen inside, not daring to let his true emotions show, even to himself.

“I think my ribs are broken,” said Keiji Inoguchi.

Yazaru Kara heard the pain in his co-pilot’s voice. He himself had been unconscious for at least several seconds. The landing in the mountainous darkness had been a disaster. Their craft had touched down on what had seemed like smooth ice, but somehow the craft had tumbled at the last moment and come crashing down on its side.

Now, as the two men sat still strapped into their seats, bundled in their heavily armored spacesuits, Hara thought how like a dream the crash had been. Everything had happened so slowly, gracefully almost, like a kabuki dancer’s delicate movements. But the pain was real. His head throbbed and he tasted hot salty blood in his mouth… He could hear Inoguchi’s ragged, shallow breathing in his Helmet earphones. Every breath must be an agony for him, Hara thought.

A dream of pain and darkness. A nightmare. What was it that the old lamas said ’What if this life is nothing more than a dream within a dream?” Yes, what if?

At least he didn’t seem to be bleeding anywhere except inside his mouth. He had banged his head hard on the inside of his helmet, but thankfully the helmet was well-padded. Nothing broken, Hara said to himself. But if I have a concussion I’ll be vomiting soon. That should be delightful, inside the helmet.

Inoguchi groaned, forcing Hara to ignore his own fears.

“Can you move your arms at all?” he asked his companion.

“Yes, a little.” In the dim emergency lighting of the cockpit Hara saw Inoguchi’s arms move feebly.

He tried to think. “We might as well stay where we are, Keiji,” he said. “At least until the radiation goes down and the base puts a commsat over us.”

“Yes,” said Inoguchi, painfully. “I don’t think I’ll be of much help to you.”

“That’s all right, we’ll just sit here and call for help when the satellite queries us.”

“At least we don’t have to worry about fire,” Inoguchi said, trying to sound brave. “When I flew on Earth, fire was my one persistent fear.”

Hara nodded at the man’s confession, but did not reveal his own. Ever since coming to the Moon, Hara had suffered nightmares about choking to death for lack of air.

MT. WASSER

“Killifer to Bre

“Go ahead, Jack,” said Bre

“Just got a blast from Moonbase,” Killifer said. “Yamagata’s landed a team on the other side of Mt. Wasser.”

Doug felt a jolt of shock and saw Bre

“Play it for me,” Bre

Over the suit-to-suit frequency Doug heard, “Anson to Bre

Harsh ragged static drowned out her words.

“That’s all we got,” Killifer said.

Bre

“There’s another message, though,” said Killifer. “Piped in parallel with Anson’s.”

“What is it?”

“It’s for Mr. Stavenger.”

“For me?” Doug blurted. Bre

“Doug, this is Greg.” Doug was astonished to hear his brother’s voice. “I’m at Moonbase. I’ll be taking over the director’s slot when Anson leaves. I don’t want you to take any u

Play, it safe and come back alive.”

Doug felt embarrassed. “My brother,” he mumbled to Bre

“He’ll be the director pf Moonbase in a few days,” Bre

“I had no idea,” said Doug.