Jack McDevitt: The Moonfall

Evelyn saw Charlie and joined him. "Well, Mr. Vice President," she asked congenially. "Are you ready to do the honors? This is an historic moment. What you say here today, people will be quoting a thousand years from now."

"Thanks," said Charlie. "I really needed a little more pressure." He glanced toward the pool of journalists, many of whom he recognized. Rick had insisted that there was no more important skill for a politician than to remember the first names of the reporters. It was a habit Charlie had taken time to acquire. "Where are the TV cameras?" he asked.

She pointed to the far end of the auditorium, where a cluster of black lenses jutted out of the rear wall. Other cameras were concealed on either side of the platform.

Evelyn introduced him to the other guests, and Charlie was surprised when Elliott asked him to autograph a program.

Then it was time to proceed. His seat was located immediately to the right of the lectern, the place of honor secured by the fact that the U.S. government was Moonbase International's biggest shareholder. An attractive young woman in a Moonbase jumpsuit caught Evelyn's eye and held up both hands twice, fingers spread, signifying twenty seconds. Evelyn went to the lectern. The crowd grew quiet.

A display suspended from the ceiling acted as a monitor, and she glanced up to check her appearance. She looked pretty good for a CEO, Charlie thought.

A red lamp blinked on at the far end of the auditorium, which meant they were using the rear camera. The young woman did a silent countdown, and when she reached zero, Evelyn leaned forward and welcomed everyone, the entire world, to Moonbase. "Before we go any farther," she said, "I'd like to introduce our non-denominational chaplain, the Reverend Mark Pinnacle."

Pinnacle looked frail and ill at ease. He came forward clutching a sheet of paper, thanked Evelyn, put the paper on the lectern, and in a shaky voice began to read. He asked the blessings of the Almighty on this great effort and thanked him for past favors. One of the VIPs near Charlie whispered that if the chaplain hoped for results, he ought to speak up.

Pinnacle never got away from his monotone, but fortunately, he had the good sense to keep his remarks short. With obvious relief, he turned the program back to Evelyn.

She introduced several of the notables, each of whom spoke for a couple of minutes, with perhaps the most exhilarating moment coming when Slade Elliott strode to the microphone accompanied by the rousing strains of the theme from Arcturus Run. Slade contented himself with delivering a tag line from the show: "Borders exist only in the mind."

Charlie, the principal speaker, was of course last. His name was met with polite applause. "Thank you," he said. He glanced back at Elliott and then looked at the cameras. "I want to thank you for inviting me. This is an hour I'll never forget. And I suspect it's one the human race will never forget."

Two Secret Service agents were seated unobtrusively, in Moonbase jumpsuits, in the front row. Sam Anderson, who headed the unit, and his lone female agent, Isabel Heyman, watched the wings. Rick Hailey, on the aisle, studied him intently. He would be keeping score, of course.

"Moonbase is the future," continued Charlie. "We're taking our first tentative steps away from the home world, and you folks are showing the way." Rick nodded, urging him on.

Charlie looked into the cameras, speaking past the gathered "lunies," addressing himself rather to the voters back home, and maybe to the vast audience beyond American shores. "Moonbase is expensive. We've lost people to get here, and we'll lose others before we're done. We've spent a lot of our national treasure. And sometimes we wonder whether the investment is worth it. Why are we here at all?

"The simple truth is that the planet has become too small. Not for our populations, but for our dreams. We have a rendezvous with the stars. The seeds are already sown. They were sown when the first men and women looked up at the constellations. And they will come to flower in the fountains of the Moon.

"Today people still visit the site of the Apollo landing, where they can see Neil Armstrong's footprints." Charlie looked down at his audience and knew he had them. "Our distant descendants will visit Moonbase," he said, "or its equivalent in their age, and they will see the marks that we have made, you and I, and they will know that we too were here." He allowed his emotions to show. "We've come to believe that we have a cosmic heritage. We've come to the Moon. Within a few weeks, we'll launch the Percival Lowell for Mars.

"Slade Elliott and his alter ego, Captain Tobias Pierce, are absolutely correct: Borders exist only in the mind."

He lifted his right hand to salute his audience, turned from the lectern, waited for Evelyn to join him, and started across the platform. A small ramp led to ground level. An aide appeared beside the beribboned door with a pair of golden shears.

Charlie reached the ramp but decided instead to leap from the platform, forgetting he was at one-sixth g. Despite the weighted boats, he would have sailed out into space and ended in the front seats had Evelyn not seen it coming. She grabbed his jacket and pulled him back.

"Careful," she whispered.

Charlie, grateful to have been saved from a clumsy fall in front of a couple of billion viewers, thanked her. "I owe you a drink," he said.

"At least," she smiled.

The guests flanked him and the aide gave the shears to Evelyn, who passed them to Charlie. Two others held the ribbon for him. "On this eighth day of April," he said, "in the two-thousand and twenty-fourth year of our era, and the two hundred and forty-eighth of the independence of the United States, in the name of the United Nations, I declare this facility, Moonbase, to be operational."

He cut the ribbon. An electric motor in the wall hummed and the doors opened. Beyond, Main Plaza lay in darkness. But a spotlight mounted atop the administration building blinked on, highlighting a park, a cluster of elms, some benches, and a pool. Then the overhead solar panels brightened, and daylight came to the parks and shops and restaurants and overhead walkways.

Applause began. At first it was restrained and polite. Almost perfunctory. But someone cheered, and it built and became a crescendo and went on and on and on.

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