Ben Bova - Moonwar

The spacecraft’s rocket exhaust glittered bright and hot. The ship hung in emptiness, as if thinking over the whole business.

Translating.”

It moved sideways in a quick series of jerky little bursts. Then it slowly descended on tongues of silent flame, blowing a fair-sized blizzard of dust and grit from the crater floor as it settled.

“Show me the map of their landing site,” Doug said to the chief monitor.

“Checking the coordinates… there you are.”

The geological map of the area where the spacecraft was landing came up on the chief’s center screen. It was half a kilometer from the quartet of landing pads. A sinuous rille ran off to the left, like a dry stream bed. The ground looked strong enough to hold the spacecraft’s weight; no problem there. A few minor craterlets scattered around the area, and the ubiquitous rocks strewn across the ground.

“They’re down,” came the controller’s voice. “I’m splitting.”

“Right,” said the chief into his lip mike. “Give me a positive call when you close the tunnel airlock behind you”

“Will do.”

Doug took a deep breath. Okay, he said to himself. They’re down. They’re here. Now the fight starts.

The descent was so smooth that Captain Munasinghe could not tell the precise instant when the ship’s landing pads actually touched the ground. He realized that he could feel weight again; after nearly five days in zero gravity it felt almost odd.

As he slowly got up from his seat, awkward in the cumbersome spacesuit, he realized that it was odd. He felt weight, yes, but it was very slight. Almost negligible.

The moon’s gravity is only one-sixth that of Earth, he reminded himself. That is why our boots are studded with weights, to keep us from jumping and stumbling when we try to walk.

“Good luck,” Killifer said, still sitting in his chair. Munasinghe barely heard his words, muffled by the spacesuit helmet. He nodded at Killifer, who had a strange, tight smile on his face. Was he pleased that the troops were going out to take Moonbase? Or pleased that he didn’t have to go with them? Probably both, Munasinghe thought.

Sergeants barked commands and his platoon got to their feet and lined up in the central aisle. The newswoman got up too, and stood beside Munasinghe. He glanced at her. She seemed calm enough.

“You must stay by me at all times,” Munasinghe reminded her.

“You bet I will,” Edith promised. No smile. No glamour now, inside the spacesuit. She was entirely serious.

His two lieutenants stood at the head of the aisle and saluted. “The troops are ready for debarkation, sir,” said the senior of them, the Norwegian. The other was a short, squat, dour-faced mestizo woman from Peru.

“Visors down,” Munasinghe said, “Check the suits for leaks.”

“What’re they doing in there?” Jinny Anson demanded.

A small cluster of people had gathered around Doug and the chief controller: Anson, Lev Brudnoy, Professor Cardenas, even Zimmerman had come out of his lair and found his way to the control center. Doug also saw Gordette hanging on the fringe of the little crowd, watching everything the way an eagle glares out at the world from its aerie.

The controller’s central screen showed a telescopic view of the Clippership standing out on the crater floor. The other screens showed interior views of the base: corridors, labs, workshops, the rocket port’s underground chambers, the garage—all empty, silent, still.

Brudnoy answered, “I doubt that many of those Peacekeepers have been in space before. They must be checking out their suits very carefully.”

They don’t seem very scared of us,” Doug muttered.

“Yeah,” Anson agreed. “They’re not worried we’re going to zap their ship.”

“Is anything happening?”

They all turned to see Joanna striding into the control center, looking radiant in a clinging metallic gold dress and silk scarf decorated with colorful butterflies.

Zimmerman grunted. He was wearing his usual baggy gray suit; the others were in coveralls or jeans and pullovers.

“You look as if you are going to a party,” Zimmerman grumbled.

Joanna gave him a frosty look. “If I’m going to be taken prisoner by Faure’s troops, I at least want to look presentable.”

Doug almost laughed.

“Hey!” Anson snapped. “Lookit! Both hatches are opening!”

Edith had covered enough military operations to know that all armies operated in the same way: hurry up and wait. Munasinghe’s platoon was in the hurry-up mode now.

“Go! Go!” she heard a sergeant’s grating yell in her helmet earphones.

The troopers were clumping into the twin airlocks down at the end of the passenger cabin. They could go through the airlocks only one at a time, no matter how loudly their sergeants screamed at them. They moved awkwardly in the spacesuits, and once through the outer airlock hatch they had to negotiate their way down the ladders that led to the ground. Not easy to do, encased in the cumbersome suits and carrying rifle, grenades and ammunition belts.

She and Munasinghe were at the end of the line, the last to go outside. Edith’s nose twitched at the metallic tang of the air she was now breathing. It was supposed to be the same mix of oxygen and nitrogen that the ship had been using for the past five days, but somehow it felt drier and colder. It made her nostrils feel raw.

She clumped down the aisle behind Munasinghe in her weighted boots, reaching up to check the minicam she had attached to her helmet. It would show whatever she looked at. If it worked right.

When at last the outer airlock hatch opened, Edith could see that it was brilliant daylight out there. Harsh unfiltered sunshine glared off the rocks and Alphonsus’s dusty floor. The Peacekeeper troops were spreading out across the pockmarked floor of the huge crater, moving slowly, cautiously toward the tractors that seemed to be scattered haphazardly across the ground. She noticed a partially-built Clippership sitting out there, too.

“They thought that they would prevent us from landing by placing their machines on the landing pads,” Munasinghe said, his voice sounding higher-pitched in her earphones than it had previously. “All they have done is to give us cover from any fire they might aim at us.”

Indeed, the farthest troopers had stopped at the parked tractors, huddling behind them as if expecting to be shot at.

“Your troops are afraid of being fired on?” Edith asked, flicking on the backup recorder at her waist. It was patched in to her suit radio’s circuitry.

“We are taking all the necessary precautions,” Munasinghe said. “There is no sense taking chances when we face an enemy of unknown capabilities.”

“But I thought there weren’t any weapons in Moonbase,” she prodded.

That is what our intelligence reports have indicated,” Munasinghe admitted. “But nevertheless, it is better to be cautious than surprised.”

“What on earth are they doing?” Brudnoy asked, genuine puzzlement in his voice.

Doug turned to Gordette and motioned the black man to his side.

“They’re acting as if they expect us to shoot at them, aren’t they?” Doug said, half-questioningly.

Gordette nodded solemnly. “They’re also setting up fields of fire so they can sweep the area if they have to.”

“Absolute nonsense,” Joanna huffed.

“They know we don’t even have spitballs to throw at ’em,” said Anson.

With a tight smile, Gordette replied, “They think you don’t have anything to throw at them. But they’re not taking any chances. Standard operating procedure.”

“Their guns can fire in vacuum?” Zimmerman asked.