John Varley - Steel Beach

That's how it was to be for eighteen hours.

When Liz arrived she told us how it was done. The flag was a mesh construction stuffed into a big container and blasted up from one of the pyro bases, in Baylor-A, about forty klicks south of us, and Hyapatia and Torricelli, to the east. When the shell reached the right height it burst and rockets spread it out and it was set afire by radio control. Neat.

How do fireworks burn in a vacuum? Don't ask me. But I know rocket fuels carry an oxidizer, so I guess it was some chemical magic like that. However they did it, it knocked our socks off, me and Brenda, no more than fifty clicks from the big firebase in Baylor, much closer than the poor hicks in Armstrong, who probably thought they were getting one heck of a show. And who cares if, from our vantage, the flags were distorted into trapezoids? I sure didn't.

Brenda turned out to be a fountain of information about the show.

"They didn't figure it made sense to give a country like Vanuatu equal time with, say, Russia," she said (we were looking at the ghastly flag of Vanuatu at the time, listening to its improbable national anthem). "So the major countries, ones with a lot of history, they'll get more of a pageant. Like the Siberian Republic used to be part of some other country-"

"The U.S.S.R.," I supplied.

"Right. Says so right here." She had a massive souvenir program spread out before us. "So they'll do more flags for that-the Tsarist flag, historical stuff-"

"-and play the 'Internationale.'"

"-and folk themes, like what we heard from New Zealand."

They were telling us most of that on a separate radio channel, giving a history of each country, pitched at an illiterate level. I turned it off, preferring just the music, and Brenda didn't object. I'd have turned off the television, too-Brenda had pasted a big screen to the south side of the tent-but she seemed to enjoy the scenes of revelry from Armstrong and all the other celebrations in all the major Lunar cities, so what the hell.

Get out an Earth globe and you'll quickly spot the major flaw in the Earth-rotational program. For the first six hours only a few dozen countries will swing into view. Even if you give the entire history of China and Japan, there's going to be some gaps to fill, and how much can you say about Nauru and the Solomon Islands? On the other hand, when dawn broke over Africa and Europe the pyrotechs were going to be busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.

Not to worry. When they ran out of flags, that's when they trotted out the heavy artillery.

From the first appearance of that red ensign, the sky was never dark.

There were the conventional shells, starbursts in all the colors of the rainbow. Without air to impede their flight they could be placed with pinpoint precision-one thing Lunarians understand is ballistics. They were also perfectly symmetrical, for the same reason.

You want more? In the vacuum, it was possible to produce effects never seen on Earth. Huge gas canisters could produce a thin atmosphere, locally, temporarily, upon which tricks of ionization could be played. We were treated to auroral curtains, washes of color in which the entire sky turned blue or red or yellow, then flickered magically. Shrapnel shells filled the sky with spinning discs no bigger than a coin, which were then swept by searchlights to twinkle as no stars ever had on Luna, then exploded by lasers.

Still not satisfied? How about a few nukes? Brenda's program said there would be over one hundred special fission shells, an average of one every ten minutes for the duration of the show. These were detonated in orbit and used to propel literally thousands of regular pyro shells into bursts over a thousand klicks wide. The first one went off at the end of the Vanuatu National Anthem, and it rattled our teeth, and then it went on exploding, and exploding, and exploding. Glorious!

And don't think I didn't hear that! You're complaining that sound doesn't travel in a vacuum. Of course it doesn't, but radio waves do, and you obviously never listened to Brenda's top-of-the-line boombox cranked up to full volume. Those poor folks who watch fireworks in an atmosphere have to wait for the sound to arrive, too, and they get a chance to brace for it; we got it instantaneously, no warning, a flash of hurting light and a ka-BOOOOOOOM !

Sometimes wretched excess is the only thing that will do.

"They say this place is haunted."

We'd just been treated to the national anthem of Belau and its flag had faded from the sky (a big yellow circle on a blue field, if you're keeping score at home), and two things had dawned on us. One, you need a breather from wretched excess from time to time, or it gets… well, wretched. Between us we'd emitted not even one "wow" at the last three nukes, and I was thinking of suggesting we switch to Top 40 for an hour or so. Somehow I thought I could survive missing the playing of Negara Ku (My Country; Mayalsia) and Sanrasoen Phra Barami ("Hail to our King! Blessings on our King! Hearts and minds we bow/ To Your Majesty now!" words by H.R.H. Prince Narisaranuvadtivongs). And two, Liz and Cricket were three hours late.

"Who's they ?" I asked, munching on a drumstick of Hildy's Finest WesTex Fried Chicken. Hunger had overcome the demands of politeness; Brenda had miked a few pieces, and the hell with Liz and Cricket. I was eyeing the beer cooler as well, but neither of us wanted to get too much of a head start.

"You know," she said. "' They .' Your primary news source."

"Oh, that 'they.'"

"Seriously, though, I've heard from several people who've come out to visit the old Heinlein . They say they've seen ghosts."

"Walter put you up to this, didn't he," I said.

"I've talked to him about it. He thinks there may be a story in it."

"Sure there is, but there's no need to come out here and interview a spook. That kind of story, you just make it up. Walter must have told you that."

"He did. But this isn't your ordinary filler story, Hildy, I mean it. The people I interviewed, some of them were scared."

"Give me a break."

"I've been coming out here and bringing a good camera. I thought I might get a picture."

"Come on. What do you think the Nipple 's photo department is for ? Dummying up just that kind of pic, that's what."

She didn't say anything about it for a while, and we watched several more ghost flags in the sky. I found myself eyeing the Heinlein . And no, I'm not superstitious, just godawful curious.

"Is that why you've been camping out so much?" I asked. "The story's not worth it."

"Camping… oh, no," and she laughed. "I've camped out a lot all my life. I find if very… peaceful out here."

Another long silence went by, or as silent as it could be with nukes exploding outside and her boombox turned down to a low rumble. At last she got up and walked to stand by the invisible plastic wall of the tent. She leaned her head against it. And by the rockets red glare, she told me something I'd have been a lot happier not hearing.

"Ever since I met you," she began, "I've thought I could tell you something I've never told anybody else. Not a soul." She looked at me. "If you don't want to hear it, please say so now, 'cause if I get started I don't think I'll be able to stop."

If you could have told her to shut up, I don't want to know you. I didn't need this, I didn't want it, but when a friend asks something like that of you, you say yes, that's all there is to it.

"Make it march," I said, and glanced at my watch. "I don't want to miss the Laotian National Anthem."

She smiled, and looked back out over the landscape.