Stephen Baxter - Space

And bathed, for today, in comet light.

Xenia knew that Frank J. Paulis thought this day, this year 2190, was the most significant in the history of the inhabited Moon, let alone his own career. And here he was now, a pile of softscreens on his lap, hectoring the bemused-looking Lunar Japanese in the seat alongside him, even as the pilot of this cramped, dusty evacuation shuttle went through her countdown check.

Xenia had listened to Frank talk before. She’d been listening to him, in fact, for 15 years, or 150, depending on what account you took of Albert Einstein.

“…You know what the most common mineral is on the Moon? Feldspar. And you know what you can make out of that? Scouring powder. Big fucking deal. On the Moon, you have to bake the air out of the rock. Sure, you can make other stuff, rocket fuel and glass. But there’s no water, or nitrogen, or carbon—”

The Japanese, a businessman type, said, “There are traces in the regolith.”

“Yeah, traces, put there by the Sun, and it’s being sold off anyhow, by Nishizaki Heavy Industries, to the Gaijin. Bleeding the Moon even drier…”

A child was crying. The shuttle was just a cylinder-shaped cargo scow, hastily adapted to support this temporary evacuation. It was crammed with people, last-minute refugees, men and women and tall, skinny children, subdued and serious, in rows of canvas bucket seats like factory chickens.

And all of them were Lunar Japanese, save for Frank and Xenia, who were American; for, while Frank and Xenia had taken a time-dilated 150-year jaunt to the stars — and while America had disintegrated — the Lunar Japanese had been quietly colonizing the Moon.

“You need volatiles,” Frank said now. “That’s the key to the future. But now that Earth has fallen apart nobody is resupplying. You’re just pumping around the same old shit.” He laughed. “Literally, in fact. I give you another hundred years, tops. Look around. You’ve already got rationing, strict birth control laws.”

“There is no argument with the fact of—”

“How much do you need? I’ll tell you. Enough to future-proof the Moon.”

“And you believe the comets can supply the volatiles we need for this.”

“Believe? That’s what Project Prometheus is for. The random impact today, which alone will deliver a trillion tons of water, is a piece of luck. It’s going to make my case for me, pal. And when we start purposefully harvesting the comets, those big fat babies out in the Oort cloud—”

“Ah.” The Lunar Japanese was smiling. “And the person who has control of those comet volatiles—”

“That person could buy the Moon.” Frank reached for a cigar, a twentieth-century habit long frustrated. “But that’s incidental…”

But Xenia knew that Frank was lying about the comets, and their role in the Moon’s future. Even before this comet hit the Moon, Project Prometheus was already dead.

A month ago, Frank had called her into his office.

He’d had his feet up on his desk and was reading, on a softscreen, some long, text-heavy academic paper about deep-implanted volatiles on the Earth. She had tried to talk to him about work in progress, but he patently wasn’t interested. Nor was he progressing Prometheus, his main project.

He had gotten straight to the point. “The comet is history, babe.”

At first she hadn’t understood. “I thought it was going to supply us all with volatiles. I thought it was going to be the demonstration we needed that Prometheus was a sound investment.”

“Yeah. But it doesn’t pan out.” Frank had tapped the surface of his desk, which lit up with numbers, graphics. “Look at the analysis. We’ll get some volatiles, but most of the nucleus’s mass will be blasted back to space. Comets are spectacular fireworks, but they are inefficient cargo trucks. However you steer the damn things down, most of the incoming material is lost. I figure now you’d need around a thousand impactors to future-proof the Moon fully, to give it a stable atmosphere, thick enough to persist over significant periods before leaking away. And we aren’t going to get a thousand impactors, not with the fucking Gaijin everywhere.” He had looked thoughtful, briefly. “One thing, though. Did you know the Moon is going to get an atmosphere out of this? It will last a thousand years—”

“Iroonda.”

“No, it’s true. Thin, but an atmosphere, of comet mist. Happens every time a comet hits. Carbon dioxide and water and stuff. How about that.” He shook his head. “Anyhow it’s no use to us.”

“Frank, how come nobody figured this out before? How come nobody questioned your projections?”

“Well, they did.” He had grinned. “You know I’m never too sympathetic when people tell me something is impossible. I figured there would be time to fix it, to find a way.”

This was, on the face of it, a disaster, Xenia knew. Project Prometheus had gotten as far as designs for methane rockets, which could have pushed Oort comets out of their long, slow, distant orbits and brought them in to the Moon. The project had consumed all Frank’s energies for years, and cost a fortune. He needed investors, and had hoped this chance comet impact, a proof of concept, would bring them in.

And now, it appeared, it had all been for nothing.

“Frank, I’m sorry.”

He seemed puzzled. “Huh? Why?”

“If comets are the only source of volatiles—”

“Yesterday I thought they were. But look at this.” He had tapped his softscreen and was talking fast, excited, enthusiastic, his mind evidently racing. “There’s a woman here who thinks there are all the volatiles you could want, a hundred times over, right here on the Moon. Can you believe that?”

“That’s impossible. Everyone knows the Moon is dry as a bone.”

He had smiled. “That’s what everyone thinks. I want you to find this woman for me. The author of the paper.”

“Frank—”

“And find out about mining.”

“Mining?”

“The deeper the better.” His grin widened. “How would you like a journey to the center of the Moon, baby?”

And that was how she had first learned about Frank’s new project, his new obsession, his latest way to fix the future.

Ten seconds. Five. Three, two, one.

Stillness, for a fraction of a second. Then there was a clatter of explosive bolts, a muffled bang.

Xenia was ascending as if in some crowded elevator, pressed back in her bucket seat by maybe a full g. Beyond her window, stray dust streaked away across the pad glass, heaping up against fuel trucks and pipelines.

But then the shuttle swiveled sharply, twisting her around through a brisk ninety degrees. She heard people gasp, children laugh. The shuttle twisted again, and again, its attitude thrusters banging. This lunar shuttle was small, light, crude. Like the old Apollo landers, it had a single fixed rocket engine that was driving the ascent, and it was fitted with attitude control jets at every corner to turn it and control its trajectory. Just point, twist, squirt, as if she were a cartoon character carried into the air by hanging onto an out-of-control water hose.

Three hundred meters high the shuttle swiveled again, and she found she was pitched forward, looking down at the lunar surface, over which she skimmed. They were rising out of lunar night, and the shadowed land was dark, lit here and there by the lights of human installations, captured stars on dark rock. She felt as if she were falling, as if the ascent engine was going to drive her straight down into the unforgiving rocks. Sunrise. Wham.

It was not like Earth’s slow-fade dawn; the limb of the Sun just pushed above the Moon’s rocky horizon, instantly banishing the stars into the darkness of a black sky. Light spilled on the unfolding landscape below, fingers of light interspersed with inky black shadows hundreds of kilometers long, the deeper craters still pools of darkness. The Moon could never be called beautiful — it was too damaged for that — but it had a compelling wildness.