Moonfall (27 page)

Moonbase, Main Plaza. 6:28
P.M.

Chaplain Pinnacle was drenched with sweat. He was glad the interview was over, but he wasn’t pleased with his performance. He’d had a heaven-sent opportunity to explain to the world how it really was out here, how the great faiths came together and the theological disagreements tended to fade away. There were no heretics on the Moon.

Out here, the universe looks pretty big
.

Theologians had been describing the creator as infinite right from the beginning. And for the first time, people were beginning to understand what that might mean. Maybe there’s room for all faiths. They seem to coexist quite nicely once they get off-world.

Mark had never felt closer to his God than he did at that moment. Yet this giant comet was coming to destroy the entire place. Why was that?

Moonbase, Director’s Private Dining Room. 6:30
P.M.

It might have been the most memorable dinner Charlie had attended during his entire political career. He’d gone in reluctantly, expecting a funereal atmosphere, with the participants exchanging doomed glances and peeking surreptitiously every few minutes at their watches. But it wasn’t like that at all.

Jack Chandler and Evelyn seemed to be in high spirits. Keith Morley had been to the abandoned commcenter, where he’d opened a permanent channel to his producer. Then he’d sat down with the chaplain, set up his microcam, and done a program. “You were absolutely great,” he was telling a pleased Pinnacle when Charlie walked in the door. “Faith, courage, and humility. They were all there.”

The chaplain thanked him. “A worldwide congregation,” he said. “I would never have believed it.”

Only Bigfoot was missing. He’d promised to come if he could, but they had a message from him:
Thanks for the invitation. Hate to miss the sausage. But if I eat now, we’ll sit later
.

Evelyn and Jack had cooked the meal. There was no sausage. But they did deliver Caesar salad, chicken fingers (real chicken), fried potatoes, mustard sauce, white wine, coffee, and, for dessert, the
piéce de résistance
, fudge nut brownie with ice cream. Not much maybe in Georgetown, but by Moonbase standards, it was a feast of major proportions.

The chaplain bowed his head. Under other circumstances, his companions might have done little more than pause awkwardly. But this time they all joined him.

Charlie had been reared as a Methodist by a skeptical father whose primary purpose in belonging to the Church seemed to be political. It was the power center for the movers and shakers, for those who wielded influence in his hometown. The vice president himself attended church on a fairly regular basis, Methodist or whatever else happened to be handy. Like
his father, he did it out of political expediency. Voters expected pious presidents.

Also like his father, he believed the universe a clockwork mechanism; and if there was a clockmaker, he’d hidden himself too well and had therefore no justifiable complaint with unbelievers. Charlie cringed at the long sermons, when he’d have preferred to play golf. Or sleep late. Churches had another downside: The preacher who found out he had a vice president in the pews often used his opportunity to attack the administration on behalf of his favorite moral issue. Charlie had been pelted from the pulpit over fetal tissue, Social Security cutbacks, voluntary life-termination, biosynthetic research, and the failure of the public schools to include God in the curriculum.

“I’ve always envied people with faith,” Charlie told Mark Pinnacle. “It helps at a time like this.”

The chaplain looked amused. “I wish I could tell you it makes me less nervous.”

The table was set with gleaming silver, cloth napkins, fine china, and exquisite long-stemmed glasses. It was a startling change of pace to the spartan lifestyle at Luna. Evelyn poured the wine and they lifted their glasses. “To Moonbase,” she said.

The laughter and good spirits defied all logic. There was a fair amount of graveyard humor, none of it funny in retrospect (“Here I am with the story of the century and somebody else is going to get to do the wrap-up”), but hilarious at the time.

Charlie discovered how much he liked these people: Evelyn, black, beautiful, whiplash bright, wanting to look fearless, but concealing a trembling hand when she raised her wine glass.

Jack Chandler, the perfect bureaucrat. Reserved tonight, conservative, a man who measured life by precedent and regulation. An hour ago, Charlie would have guessed that Chandler had never learned to enjoy himself. Now the director roared
with laughter at every opportunity. And at one point he exchanged glances with Evelyn, and silently formed the words
I love you
.

Keith Morley, TV journalist, professional cynic. Self-appointed defender of the public weal. A man who enjoyed sacrificing the reputations of political figures. But Morley offered a series of going-away wishes for the others: that Evelyn would avoid the bankruptcy that loomed over Moonbase International; that Chandler would land an even bigger bureaucracy to direct: the cleanup effort after Tomiko; that the chaplain would be transferred to a quiet parish on the banks of the Thames; and that Charlie would get the White House, but only if he still wanted it when he got home.

And the chaplain. This man who had seemed so fearful a few days ago, who’d admitted earlier to being nervous, appeared utterly at home. He thanked Morley, implying that he and the journalist had already discussed his future hopes. He confessed to enjoying himself thoroughly, and wondered whether such an extraordinary evening wasn’t almost worth the risk.

For Charlie, a bachelor vice president, almost all meals not taken alone were, to a degree, working meals, or formal engagements. Tonight, for a few hours, he became just one of the crowd. And he understood Morley’s comment:
only if he still wanted it
.

Chandler covered his french fries liberally with catsup, another product Charlie had not seen at Moonbase. Jack finished one of the morsels off with obvious pleasure and looked around the table. “Anybody ever been in a life-and-death situation before?” he asked.

Evelyn nodded. “When I was five, I was pulled out of a burning building.”

“You remember it?” asked Chandler.

“Oh, yes. Clear as day. In fact, it’s the earliest thing in my
life I
can
remember. It’s sort of the day I became conscious.”

“Were you scared?”

She smiled. “Yes. But of the firemen rather than the fire. They were big and they wore those odd coats and hats and masks.”

“Anybody else?”

Morley said, “I got assaulted and left for dead by a gang once. In New York. They broke me up pretty good. Told me they were going to cut my throat.”

“But they didn’t?” asked the chaplain.

Morley opened his collar and showed them a scar. “They just didn’t do a good job of it.”

Charlie was horrified. For all the political rough and tumble, he’d lived a sheltered life. “Why’d they do it?” he asked.

“Who knows? I took the wrong picture, maybe. Or maybe I just got out of my car in the wrong part of town. I can tell you, it was the worst moment of my life.”

“Worse than this?” asked Evelyn.

“Oh, yeah. Much worse than this. It was personal. Those kids wanted me dead. That’s a terrible feeling, to find out that someone wants to kill you for no very good reason. But the comet. Hell, the comet doesn’t give a damn. It doesn’t know we’re here. It’s just a big dumb pile of ice blown out of somewhere.” He shrugged. “Yeah, this is a lot easier. There’s no hate mixed up in it anywhere.”

There was a pause in the conversation, as if a significant moment had arrived. Charlie refilled everyone’s glass. The wine poured slowly in the light gravity. “Here’s to us,” he said. They joined in the toast, and Charlie studied their eyes over the rims.

Jack Chandler offered another: “To both Tomikos,” he said. “The woman and the comet. The woman because she gave us a warning, and the comet because it’s brought us together tonight.”

4.

Micro Flight Deck. 7:33
P.M.

The microbus lifted off for its last scheduled flight precisely on time. Saber watched the moonscape fall away. Bigfoot’s voice sounded in her earphones. “Saber, the director wants to talk to Tony.”

“Wait one.” Tony was on the circuit with the pilot of the SSTO. She got his attention. “Mr. Chandler,” she said.

“For
me?
”

“Put him through,” Saber told the microphone.

Tony signed off with the SSTO.

“Stand by,” said Bigfoot.

A new voice, precise, measured, weary: “Tony Casaway?”

“This is Casaway.”

“Tony, this is Jack Chandler. I wanted to thank you for what you’re doing. We’re grateful.”

“We want to get everybody out, sir.”

“Don’t we all? But we appreciate it. And I have a request. There’s a TV reporter here with us. Keith Morley. You’ll be taking him off, too. He’ll want you to patch him through to his groundside relay.”

“You want me to comply?”

“Yes. Please. Give him what he wants.”

“Yes, sir. Will do.”

“Good. It’s a pleasure to have talked with you, Tony. Good luck.”

Saber noticed no one had thanked
her
.

She looked down at the lunar surface.

“Looks as if we’re moving up in the world,” said Tony.

“Yeah. Well, you pull the right people out of the fire, it can do wonders for a career.”

He looked at her as if she’d gone over a line.

“Hard to believe,” she said.

“What’s that?”

She pointed down. The entire bulk of the Moon lay between the comet impact site at Mare Muscoviense, in the northern hemisphere of Farside, and Moonbase. “With all that rock shielding it, you’d think Moonbase would be safe.”

There were nine people in the passenger cabin, operational types and technicians, the people who maintained the power systems, the commcenter, and life support. And a couple of Bigfoot’s technicians. They were the last group the Micro would deliver to the orbiting SSTO. Two more moonbuses would follow, and it would be over.

Except for the Micro’s last run.

Saber was charged with monitoring inputs from ship’s systems during launch, but she always made time to watch the moonscape. She loved these altitudes and this place, remote and stark, illuminated by the blue-white Earth. A casual visitor, gazing down into the 117-kilometer-wide crater, would not have noticed that women and men had walked there, had
built
there. For a range of practical reasons, Moonbase was buried. It would have taken a sharp eye from an altitude as close as a thousand meters to observe the antennas and the solar cells and the monorail. She preferred to believe, however, that it was not practicality that concealed Moonbase, but a sense of the fragile beauty of this world and a reluctance to repeat the old errors.

Not that it mattered now. The comet’s glow pushed up past the horizon in three directions, signaling the approach of the monster. It was as if a gigantic sun was rising everywhere. The definition of distant peaks and crater walls had been sharpened. Beyond the western ringwall of Alphonsus, the black regolith of Mare Nubium, the Sea of Clouds, curved into the glare.

“Look at this,” said Tony, switching on a computer simulation. A dime-sized disk and a tiny crescent, representing
Earth and Moon, floated inside a white cone. The comet’s tail.

“You’d think we’d be able to see it out here,” said Saber. But the sky was black as ever. Only Earth seemed different. She wasn’t sure, but it looked dimmer than usual, as if the sunlight were being turned aside.

“They’re estimating the length of the tail,” said Tony, “at seventy million kilometers. It goes all the way out to the orbit of Mars.”

And it’s the next thing to a vacuum
, she thought.

As the Micro continued to rise into the lunar night, the summer-colored comet rose with them, and its light enfolded the Moon. Saber listened to the passengers react as they watched from their viewports.

She sensed that Tony’s adrenalin was pumping constantly now. He actually seemed to be enjoying himself.

“Tony,” she said, “do you think we can actually pull this off?”

He gave her a thumbs-up. “Sure,” he said. “It’ll be close, but we’ll do it.” He switched the comet display off the main screen. “Chandler says Keith Morley’ll be with them. Broadcasting live from the Micro.” He laughed. “We’re going to be famous, Saber.”

“As long as we’re not dead.”

He caught the tone in her voice. “Hey,” he said, “Alisa. We’ll be fine.” Tony rarely used her given name. Only when he was striving for intimacy. In this case, to allow him to reassure her. “Bigfoot thinks we can do it.”

“Bigfoot thinks he’s throwing his life away.”

Tony’s expression darkened. He was usually amiable, but this was serious stuff. “That’s not true.”

“Of course it’s true.”

“He agreed to stay. Nobody held a gun to his head.”

“Look, Tony. He was responsible for the screwup that put us in this position. What did you expect him to say when you told him you needed a volunteer?”

She knew that hurt him, but it was true. He denied it, of course. “Bigfoot wouldn’t stay if he didn’t think we could do it.” He glared at her. “Goddammit, Saber, don’t come if you don’t think we can make this work. I can manage alone if I have to.”

She looked at him a long time. “Tony, do you know you never asked me whether I wanted to do this?”

He paled, and she could see him thinking back, replaying the conversations. “Sure I did,” he said. And then: “I’m sorry. I just assumed….”

In fact, left to her own devices, she did not believe she would have been willing to make the attempt. She liked living, and she didn’t think much of the odds on this one. It wasn’t as if a rescue effort was mandatory. You did what was possible. But nobody should be asked to throw her life away for no good reason.

So she was tempted to take him up on his offer. Let him try it alone. “You assume a lot, Tony. It would have been nice to ask.”