Jack McDevitt - The Moonfall

Saturday, April 13 to Sunday, April 14

Micro Flight Deck. 10:40 P.M.

They'd survived the initial blast. Tony had run with the storm with consummate skill, reigniting the engine at the first opportunity and jinking the bus in ways that its designers would not have thought possible. Watching him, Saber had been grateful that she was riding that night with Tony Casaway.

The initial fury had subsided. They were still taking a lot of hits, but most were glancing shots that banged and clanged and did no serious damage. One tore into a storage compartment belowdecks, but the hatches held; another took out a power conduit and left the passenger cabin in darkness. Fortunately, the occasional boulders that leaped at them out of the dark, and the cascades of melted rock that slashed across the sky, did not have their exact coordinates, and so they lived.

It was as if a wave had passed. The void now was still filled with charging debris. But it was in quantities and at velocities that allowed the sensors to track major threats.

Morley asked whether the Micro had reestablished outside communications yet. The answer was no. "Damn," he said, "this is great stuff." But he added that he wouldn't mind if the excitement died off a little.

Evelyn wondered whether the captain knew the passenger cabin had no lights.

"We know," said Saber. "We'll fix it later. But we're a little preoccupied right now." She was pointing out an incoming fragment while she talked. Tony nodded and moved the Micro out of the way. The fragment was a long, thin sliver, maybe half the length of a football field, tumbling end over end. She heard the reaction in the cabin as it sliced past.

The short- and long-range sensors filled the screens with returns. Sometimes they were rock shards and storms of pebbles and dust; more often they were amoeba-forms that might have been belches of gas or plasma. The viewports revealed mountainous shadows and liquid fire. Occasionally the stars disappeared altogether, as if the Micro were passing down a red tunnel.

They continued to move steadily through the crowded sky at one g.

"Micro, this is Skyport." The voice crackled in his earphones. "Do you read?"

"We copy, Skyport. We are still here."

"What is your status?"

Tony relayed what he knew, fuel usage, damage report, passenger list. "No casualties."

"Micro, we're missing one name."

"Jack Chandler. He didn't make it."

"What happened?"

"Heart attack, we think. Died just before they were scheduled to come on board. His body was left at Moonbase."

The response broke up.

"Say again, Skyport. Do you read?" There was only interference.

Something hit the blister again and was gone too quickly to be seen. It left a crooked star, not unlike the type that a flying rock might put in a windshield.

"We okay?" asked Tony.

The danger was that the blister had to withstand 14.7 pounds per square inch of air pressure. The three decks, cargo, passenger, and flight, were sealed off from each other. So if the worst happened, and the canopy blew out, at least the Micro would only lose its pilots.

Only the pilots.

Saber touched the star with her index finger. She pushed gently at it and traced the individual lines. "I think it's okay," she said. Micro Cargo Deck. 10:41 P.M.

Like Saber, Bigfoot was still inside his pressure suit. As a precaution, he'd put his helmet back on, but he was having problems with vertigo and got it off again just before throwing up. He'd secured himself to the ladder with his belt; and although the accelerated liftoff wasn't nearly as stressful as it would have been leaving Earth, it was nevertheless not comfortable, and left him with bruised ribs and an aching shoulder that he suspected had been dislocated.

C deck, the cargo deck, was a confined space: it possessed no viewports, and it rocked and fell and twisted until his head spun violently. He wished he'd moved more quickly and got to the passenger cabin.

But it could have been worse: since they were accelerating, the vomit had gone to the deck and wasn't floating around. He grinned and felt a little better. SSTO Rome Passenger Cabin, 145,000 kilometers from Luna. 10:42 P.M.

Rick controlled fear by the simple act of cutting off the cause. His technique in this case consisted of lowering his blind and concentrating on other issues. Specifically, on how well things had gone so far. The vice president had behaved well, and if they all came through it, there would be an appropriate reward. For Rick, that reward would consist not simply in winning the White House in the fall, but in running a campaign for a genuine hero. Charlie Haskell, a long shot in his own party a week ago, was going to be unbeatable.

Haskell was off the Moon, riding a bus, for God's sake, and a little one at that. With any kind of luck, communications would be restored, Morley would continue to give Charlie a ton of play, and there'd be brass bands to greet the vice president when he got home.

Rick's juices flowed at the prospect of writing appropriately modest remarks to be delivered to the news services. The phrases were already running through his head: We were fortunate to be flying with What's-his-name, who's one hell of a pilot or we'd all be dead. And, We've taken a heavy loss at Moonbase, there's no doubt of that. But no one's been killed, and that's what counts. Or, Yes, we've lost some people, and I'd like to ask you to join me in a moment of silence for these brave heroes who dared to reach for the future… Charlie was good at this kind of stuff, had a natural flair for it. Probably because he believed it. It was the secret to his success. He was naive, everybody knew it, even he knew it, but it didn't matter. It was all part of his charm. It was what the voters liked.

For Rick, it was a clear demonstration of what the game was really about. The media often maintained that campaigns weren't substantive. But the media didn't understand about electioneering. When they complained that issues were seldom discussed, that the debate got too personal, that in the end a fog of obfuscation was thrown over everything, they were missing the point: An election is an art form. Its purpose is not to illuminate the issues of the day, but to box in an opponent. To watch him try to wriggle free of charges and innuendo. It was Charlie's special gift that he could perform the surgery in a friendly, inoffensive, down-home manner. People liked that. They didn't like vindictive politicians, or hard chargers.

Something smashed into the spacecraft, and the cabin tilted, first one way and then another. There were startled cries, and Rick white-knuckled the arms of his chair. But the plane straightened out and the pilot came on the speaker: "Nothing to worry about, folks. Just a piece of junk bouncing off the hull. There'll probably be more, but we're doing fine."

Rick forced himself to concentrate on the vice president's arrival at Reagan. He pictured the scene, Charlie coming out of the plane, waving to the crowd, moving to a platform for his remarks.

Politics was a struggle for power, in its purest and simplest terms. If the voters were lucky, the winner would go on to improve their lot, because he would need their votes next time. Or because he enjoyed being popular. But issues were irrelevant. Always had been, probably. Once the age of mass communications arrived, presidents became entertainers, celebrities, if they were smart. FDR used his fireside chats; Kennedy had allowed spontaneous questions at press conferences, relying on wit and charm. Reagan knew from the films exactly how a president should behave, and he had exactly enough acting talent to bring it off. In that sense, he was the first modern president.