The Relentless Moon Read online

  “The NBL is better for spacewalks, yes, because we’re simulating wearing a spacesuit. However, the water also generates drag so the POGO is better at giving you a sense of moving on the Moon.”

  It also didn’t involve nearly the number of expensive resources as putting someone in the NBL.

  Curt hooked the hydraulic line to the large swivel on the back of my harness. The line went up to the enormous A-frame that towered over us like a big blue Erector Set. “Ready?”

  “Affirmative.”

  He grinned, stepping to the side, and powered up the POGO. The line tightened until it counterbalanced my weight. Even simulated lunar gravity made my feet happier.

  “The first thing to know is that you weigh so little that it’s hard to get traction. You’ll note that when I start moving, I lean forward significantly. Walking is basically a controlled fall. Any questions so far?”

  Another predictable hand shot into the air. Vicky Hsu, from the United States. “May I go first?”

  Oh, clever girl. Going first makes you look eager and any mistakes you make are chalked up to being first. The middle of the pack disappears. The person to go last, if done right, can look polite, but most of the time they just look reluctant. Sure, this group was going to the Moon, but we all knew that if you wanted to go to Mars, you had to excel on the Moon. I winked at her. “Absolutely.”

  I stopped leaning and did a normal Earth walk. “Notice how much I’m bouncing?” My feet cleared the ground a little too much as all the force meant to support my body on Earth shoved me upward in the one-sixth gravity of the Moon. “When you lean forward, your force goes backward, transferring into momentum. But be careful. Your goal is precision and economy. It is not speed. In space, slow is fast. Moving quickly can cause you to overshoot your mark. Watch.”

  I got to the far side and turned to come back. Leaning nearly to forty-five degrees, I propelled myself into the lunar lope. I tightened my buttocks and legs to get a nice long, lean shape as I bounded across the floor. It helps with momentum but it also makes your ass look amazing. There’s something very—

  The floor slammed into me.

  Forearms. Chin. Knees. Shoulders. I don’t know what hit first, they all lit up with red alerts of pain. The air evacuated from my lungs. My vision went red and a roaring filled my ears like a rocket launching. What the hell?

  “Nicole!” Curt was by my side, pulling the support crossbar off my back. If I hadn’t been leaning forward in a lope, it would have slammed into my head. Helmet or no, that would have been … not a good day.

  Beyond him, the babies looked horrified. Two of them had stepped forward, or maybe the rest had stepped back, because one of the hydraulic lines had breached and vented fluid all over the place. Some of it had soaked the front of my shirt.

  My lungs burned as I dragged air into them. Wheezing is unglamorous, but I’d had the air knocked out of me before. “I’m fine.”

  At my back, Curt was undoing buckles on the harness. “You’ve split your chin open.”

  Halim appeared with the first aid kit. “That is going to require stitches.”

  “Oh.” I looked down as if I could see my own chin, and the front of my shirt was a vivid red. So, the dampness hadn’t been hydraulic fluid. Noted. “Well. I suppose my modeling career is over.”

  FIVE

  UN REFUGEE COMMISSIONER MAKES NEW APPEAL ON PANAMA

  KANSAS CITY, March 29, 1963—(Reuters)—The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, made an appeal for nations to accept refugees from Panama. Prince Sadruddin said that 1,800 refugees had been accepted or were in the process of being accepted by twenty different countries. The majority of these refugees are Kuna, an indigenous people whose homelands in the Panama islands are flooding under rising sea levels.

  The flight surgeon wanted me to go home. Can you imagine? Ha. As if one of the boys would do that after a little bump on the chin. I took the time to put on a clean shirt and headed to Clemons’s office with all seven of my brand-new stitches. I held a clipboard in one hand because they fool people into thinking that you are serious and busy.

  When I walked into the outer office, his secretary Mrs. Kare looked up with a smile that quickly went to shock. “Good heavens!”

  “I was wrestling a goose.” There’s a game pilots play, where we never give a straight answer to an injury question to anyone except the flight surgeon and then only enough to get back to flying. “Is he in?”

  She almost rolled her eyes at me, and I admired her professionalism that she managed to stop it. “Yes, he’s expecting you.”

  In his office, Clemons had his feet up on his desk with a report propped on his expansive belly. A cloud of his ubiquitous cigar smoke surrounded him. I swear, the only place he didn’t smoke was in the clean rooms. “Ah, Wargin. Can you—Lord. That’s from the hydraulic failure?”

  “Head-butted by a goat.” The skin under the bandage pulled and stung with each syllable. “But I won. You wanted to see me?”

  “Er … yes.” He lowered his feet and stared at my chin. The floor supervisor at the SVMF would have called Clemons to let him know about the accident, but I was not going to let him dwell on the injury, which is why I’d brought the clipboard. I sat down as if nothing were untoward.

  “Halim told my class about the new schedule. I’ve got their current assessments ready for when you need them.”

  “Ah … thank you.” He shuffled some papers on his desk and pulled out a pair of stapled sheets. “I do apologize for not mentioning it at the press conference today. You know how those jackals are. But yes, we are accelerating the next launch.”

  “Absolutely.” I swallowed and felt the bandage tighten on my skin. “When did you need us to launch?”

  “Ten days.”

  “I see.” On the one hand, I was delighted to head back to the Moon, where I had some use and where, honestly, life was simpler. On the other hand, I was supposed to have another month at home with Kenneth. I was furious with him for that comment at the press conference, but that didn’t make me love him any less.

  “Malouf thinks that’s the absolute minimum time you need to prepare.” He held out the paper. “Before you say yes, look this over. I’m shifting your role, and this lays out the revised crew schedule.”

  Please let it be pilot. Please let it be pilot. I took the sheet and clipped it to my board. Next to my name it said “secretarial staff.” He had transferred me out of the astronaut department completely. It felt like I had been punched. It was one thing to have someone say you were old hat and another to be sent out to pasture. I suppose I should be grateful he was still letting me launch. “Secretarial … It’s not my strength, but I’m happy to do what the IAC needs.”

  “Excellent.” Clemons looked past me. “Ah, Malouf. Good.”

  “Sorry. I got caught by a colonist.” Halim walked in carrying a file folder, and his expression was tight. He sat in the chair next to mine. “We’ve got one who doesn’t want to launch despite it being a different class of rocket.”

  “I expect we’ll get a few others, which will make … One moment.” Grimacing, Clemons got up and went to the door of his office. “Mrs. Kare. No calls. Icarus program.”

  “Yes, sir.” She glanced over her glasses at me and continued typing as if nothing unusual were happening.

  The Icarus program? I spent six months out of the year on the Moon, and it was easy to lose track of Earthbound projects. I had no idea what Icarus was. Ship? Station? Training protocol?

  Code phrase?

  Clemons shut the door. He ran a hand over his hair and stared at me. At my chin. “Tell me about the accident.”

  “I…” Both of my bosses were in the room. Even if Halim hadn’t seen the accident, this was not the time for games. “I was doing a POGO demonstration. While I was in the harness, the hydraulic sprang a leak.”

  In the chair next to me, Halim shifted and glanced at Clemons. I could feel an entire unspoken c
onversation between them, but the subject matter was beyond my guess. Finally, Clemons sighed and stared at the floor. “I’ve conferred with my security officer and am going to read you on information based on your security clearance and your new need to know. This is TS/SCI.”

  “I see.” I stayed sitting calmly in my chair, but my insides tightened. For a variety of reasons, some due to being one of the first astronauts, some due to my work in the war, and a little bit due to my husband, I had Top Secret clearance. I had no idea which piece of my history Clemons was referring to from my file. With the IAC, my TS clearance had only ever been related to rocket details, and this did not feel like we were about to talk rocketry.

  You have to be “read on” for each SCI—Sensitive Compartmented Information. The government does love its acronyms.… My voice was quiet and steady. My posture was perfect. Inside, was one long clenching of my guts. “May I assume there is no actual Icarus program?”

  “You may.” Clemons settled back in his chair. “If someone asks, the Icarus program is a theoretical project for navigating solo in space.”

  “I question that name choice for a space program.”

  “It makes perfect sense for referring to people who are trying to make us fall back to Earth.” His face was haunted like I had never seen before. “I believe the launch was sabotaged and that it is not the only instance.”

  Years of practice at conversing with my husband’s constituents allow me to sound calm even when I’m not. We had just had a press conference. People had asked about this. “Why aren’t we telling the public? That would clear up the perception the IAC is at fault.”

  “The FBI has asked us not to, because they believe they are close to identifying the culprits. Publicizing this would, potentially, scare them off.”

  Internally, I made note of the fact that the FBI was involved, which meant they thought the sabotage was coming from a U.S. citizen. If not, it would be the CIA or the UN. “Scaring them off does not sound like a bad consequence.”

  “They would regroup and return with a different plan that we couldn’t see coming.”

  A rocket had blown up this morning. I was not convinced they were seeing anything coming now. “So how are we handling it?”

  Clemons cleared his throat and looked to Halim, who said, “Nicole … What are your thoughts on a Brazilian launch?”

  “It depends on the context. In terms of this conversation, it makes me think the saboteurs are local. From an astronaut perspective, Brazil is farther from training facilities but has lower launch costs.” Brazil primarily handled heavy lift cargo vehicles. Their equatorial placement gave them an advantage over Kansas, plus an ocean for rockets to ditch into instead of farm country. The only reason we launched from Kansas was that, at first, it’s where the rocket industry was thanks to the Sunflower Armory. But now? Now it was because of politicians, like my husband, who were trying to keep jobs at home. The theory was that the training facilities for astronauts were already here, but truly it was about money.

  And power.

  I sighed because this wasn’t really about my TS/SCI status. This was about the fact that I was married to the governor of Kansas. “You need me to talk to Kenneth about moving operations out of Kansas? Fine. I’ll make sure he doesn’t balk.”

  “Thank you, that would be appreciated. However, I did brief him this morning after the press conference.” Clemons grimaced. “My apologies for not including you. I am trying to keep you out of the spotlight for anything related to Icarus.”

  In the back of my head, a signal alert went off. Was that part of why Kenneth had wanted me to sit out the press conference? Had he and Clemons talked about this and— Had my husband known? No. Wait. Wait … Clemons said he talked to Kenneth after the press conference. “What role do you want me to have?”

  Halim nodded to the revised schedule Clemons had given me. “You’ll be assigned to be the Lunar Colony Administrator’s personal secretary so that you can interface directly with Otto Frisch.”

  I nodded and tried to quell the sense of relief that I wasn’t being put out to pasture. We were talking about sabotage and terrorists and here I was feeling grateful that I still had a use. “Who else will I be working with?”

  Clemons shook his head. “On the Moon, only the two of you. The FBI would prefer for it to be only the LCA, but … we have information to send to him that I cannot transmit. We believe they have someone in comms.”

  A shiver chased itself over my skin. A saboteur was bad, but someone who was actively inside the IAC was terrifying. “Here or off-planet?”

  “We don’t know.” Clemons rolled his cigar between his fingers. “More accurately, I should say that the IAC does not know but I am not certain about the FBI.”

  “They aren’t telling you everything?” I could understand limiting the information to need-to-know. News of a potential saboteur on the Moon could wreak havoc on the morale of a tiny, isolated community, but Clemons was the head of the agency. He needed to know. “They’re asking you to work this problem without a full dataset?”

  Halim rubbed the back of his neck. “I am attempting to believe that this is no different from a CAPCOM filtering the data a spacewalker gets so they can focus on mission critical work.”

  It was so hard not to yell. My voice was flat calm when I replied, “To continue that metaphor. When I’ve taken a rotation at the CAPCOM desk, my job is to parse and filter the information that the astronaut on orbit receives. But I don’t hide failure points. And when they ask for more details, I damn well give it to them because they are the ones who are actually putting their lives on the line. I’m sitting at a desk.” There is a look that my mother deploys when she is about to explain the errors of a man trying to chase her off a golf course. I could feel my nostrils pinch shut and hard lines form around my mouth. “What the FBI is doing right now is asking a group of astronauts to go to the Moon without giving them mission critical details. They’re asking people to put their lives on the line without telling them that there is a potential failure point.”

  “I am in complete agreement.” Clemons tapped the ash off the end of his cigar with more vigor than strictly necessary. “But my superior at the UN has informed me that the FBI has jurisdiction. So … I am authorized to read on one additional person. And that is you.”

  “To continue the briefing…” Halim pulled a piece of onionskin out of his folder. “This is a draft document intercepted from Earth First. The FBI calls it ‘The Manifesto.’”

  Exodus 32:27 And he said to them: Thus saith the Lord God of Israel: Put every man his sword upon his thigh: go, and return from gate to gate through the midst of the camp, and let every man kill his brother, and friend, and neighbour.

  The planet Earth is recovering from the Meteor strike but the United States is not. The needs of our fellow Americans are ignored in favor of an elite who pursue the false idol of living in space. Money that should rightfully be spent on infrastructure here on Earth goes instead to pay for complex programs that benefit other nations.

  Revelation 16:21 And great hail, like a talent, came down from heaven upon men: and men blasphemed God for the plague of the hail: because it was exceeding great.

  Representing every state and region, we have spoken to each other deeply, of our situation, of what God has done and is doing—in our world and in the unexplored frontiers which we now face. We might measure the world in terms of emergency, of the critical needs for money and manpower needed to keep the people alive in many areas. These needs are absolute, measurable, and commanding. It is our conviction, however, that to interpret the post-Meteor world only in those terms would be wrong. Those needs prove that the ideas we have of one another and of our common life are utterly obsolete and irrelevant to our actual situation.

  We have attempted dialogue to change the course of human events. We have written letters. We have marched. We have begged and pleaded but still our children and wives are hungry. Still they do not have running water.
Still they do not have electricity. We have been patient. We have waited.

  But after eleven years, we are no longer content to wait. Our pleas have fallen on infertile ground and so now we act. This serves as a notice that the lives of the astronauts and astronettes who started us on this fatal path are forfeit until the United States government withdraws from the International Aerospace Coalition.

  Exodus 22:24 And my rage shall be enkindled, and I will strike you with the sword, and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.

  * * *

  My brain churned from the briefing with Clemons and Halim for the rest of the day. So much so that by the time I got home, I had almost forgotten the riot from the night before. Then it snapped into a new focus. Had that been just a riot or had that been Icarus?

  There were extra security guards at our pied-à-terre when I arrived and charred places on the sidewalk. One of the lobby windows had chips in it where someone had thrown rocks—at least I hoped it had only been only rocks. Our building was built to post-Meteor standards and had bulletproof glass. It was stupid, because the chances of another asteroid slamming into the Earth were slim.

  On the other hand, lightning also wasn’t supposed to strike twice and my mother had been struck by lightning three times.

  Of course, she also golfed and was stubborn about coming inside. The point being that the architectural overreaction meant it was as safe a place to put a governor as one could ask for.

  I’ve got to say, it’s a fascinating experience to have to show ID to enter your own building. There was a small line next to the nice young security officer, and as I walked up, I realized that I recognized two of the men.

  “Reynard! Nathaniel!” My heart twisted sideways in my chest, even though these men were both friends. They were also engineers at the IAC and Nathaniel was The Dr. Nathaniel York. If the lead engineer of the space program was here to brief my husband, then he must have turned up something new about the crash. “How are yo—”