Ben Bova - Test of Fire

The veneer of civilization cracked and peeled away quickly.

The few hundred men and women living on the Moon watched with growing horror as their mother world died. They were safely underground, buried protectively against even the normal glare of the powerful Sun. In their telescopes they saw the Old World disappear under continent-wide clouds of smoke and steam. From their radio receivers they heard the cries of the dying. Then came the pinpoint bursts of light that marked the nuclear deaths of the cities of North America.

They watched, they listened, in silence. Numbly.

And their horror began to turn into guilt. Everyone on Earth was dying. The human race was being flensed from the surface of its mother world. But they were here on the Moon, inside its protective rocky shell. They were safe. They lived while their mothers, brothers, friends, lovers died.

After three days of numb horror and mounting guilt they looked at each other and began to wonder: How long can we keep ourselves^ alive without Earth to supply us with food, equipment, medicine?

The guilt was there, in each man and woman’s mind. The horror went beyond words; none of them could voice what they truly felt. The nights were filled with nightmare screams. But surmounting it all was the drive to live. Deep within each of them was the burning secret: I’m alive and I’m glad of it No matter what happened to all the others, I’m glad it wasn’t me.

Not every man and woman in the lunar community could face the secret. Some retreated into catatonic shock. A handful committed suicide.

Others tried suicide, but in ways that easily caught the attention of their friends. Stopped in their attempts at self-destruction, convinced by the psychologists among them that they had no need to expiate their sins, they returned to the ranks of the overtly healthy. Two of them tried to sabotage the life support systems of the underground settlement, attempting to kill themselves and everyone else. Both of them were stopped in time. Both of them died in hospital beds: one received an improper dose of medication, the other had a totally unexpected heart attack. The physician who was in charge of both patients shrugged his shoulders about them and the next morning was found dead of a huge overdose of barbituates.

Douglas Morgan sat on the edge of the hospital bed, gazing at the sleeping face of his wife. The lunar settlement’s hospital was only six beds and a pair of surgery rooms, carved out of the solid basalt of the lunar crust. Before the Sun’s flare the most serious medical problems facing the community’s four doctors had been broken bones among the miners and depression among those who had difficulty adjusting to an underground life.

The beds were empty now, except for Lisa’s. All mining work had stopped since the flare. The depressions that afflicted everyone were being treated without hospitalization. The last patient to occupy one of the other beds had been the would-be saboteur who had died of a heart attack.

Lisa’s exquisitely sensitive face was pale and drawn. With her eyes closed she seemed almost a mask of death. But if death is so beautiful, Douglas thought, no man should fear it. Her dark, short-cropped hair framed her delicate face and looked more lustrous for the contrast against the white pillowcase and sheets of the hospital bed.

Douglas looked down and saw that his left hand, pressing against the bed’s surface, rested next to Lisa’s hand. The contrast between the two fascinated him. Her hand was so tiny, delicate, almost fragile beside his heavy, thick-fingered paw. Her hand was made for a ballerina, a painter, a musician. His was built to carve rock from lunar caves, to punch equations into a computer, to point and command men. But he knew the strength that her china-boned hands were capable of; he had felt those fingers clawing at him even through the thickness of a pressure suit.

With a reluctant sigh he pushed himself up from the bed and, standing, stretched his tensed back muscles. Tendons popped as his fingers scraped the ceiling.

Lisa’s eyes opened. She was looking straight at him. Her dark smoldering eyes betrayed the delicacy of her features. She was strong. Despite the seeming fragility of her body, she was as strong as a thin blade of steel.

“You’re awake,” Douglas said, instantly feeling inane.

“You’re leaving,” she countered.

“Yes.” He glanced at his digital wristwatch.

“The ship leaves in two hours. I’ve got to get my gear ready and…”

“Why you?”

He blinked at the question. It had never occurred to him that he would not lead the mission.

“Why take on this expedition at all?” Lisa went on. “It’s all nonsense. None of you will get back alive.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” he said.

Lisa’s eyes roamed around the bleak little chamber, the rock walls that had been laser-fused into smoothness and then painted pastel green, the five empty beds sitting stiffly starched and white around them. Finally she looked back at her husband.

“It’s foolishness,” she said. “Male foolishness. You’re just trying to prove that you’re brave.”

He almost smiled. The terrible events of the past few days had not destroyed Lisa’s spirit.

Sitting on the edge of her bed again, he answered carefully, “We are a community of five hundred and seventy-three men and women. Most of us are mining engineers and technicians. We have three physicians, five psychologists…”

“Four physicians,” Lisa corrected.

“Three. Haley OD’d last night.”

She took the news with no discernable reaction.

Douglas resumed, “As things stand now, we can’t survive on our own. And there’ll be no further help from Earth—unless we go Earthside and take what we need.”

“If you go to Earth you will be killed.”

“Maybe,” he conceded, shrugging. “Maybe you’re right and we’re all subconsciously trying to kill ourselves in one grand final gesture, instead of waiting around up here in this underground tomb.”

Lisa sighed, a mixture of weariness and impatience.

“You’re always so logical. The Earth has been destroyed, billions of people have died, and you’re as cool and logical as one of your computers.”

“We’re not dead. Not yet, anyway.” His voice was tight, grim. “And I want to live. I want you to live, Lisa. That’s why I have to lead this mission Earthside. We’ll only go as far as the space station, for sure. We won’t go down to the surface unless…”

“I don’t want you to kill yourself,” Lisa said.

Her voice was flat, devoid of emotion.

“Why not?”

“Because we need you here. / need you here. You’re a natural leader. I need you here to hold this community together.”

He thought for a few moments before replying softly, “What you mean is, you want me here so that you can run the community through me.”

Her gaze never wavered from him, but she did not answer. The silence between them stretched achingly.

Finally Douglas said, “I don’t mind, Lisa. You want the power. I don’t.”

“You’re a fool,” she said, unsmiling.

“Yeah. I know.” He got up slowly to his feet.

Looking down at her, “The baby… it was Fred’s, not mine, wasn’t it?”

The barest flicker of surprise crossed her face.

Then she said, “What difference does it make now? Fred’s dead and I’ve lost the baby.”

“It makes an enormous difference to me.”

She turned away from him.

Suddenly his hand flashed out, grasped her slim jaw and wrenched her head around to face him.

“Why?” he demanded. “Why did you do it? I love you.”

She stared at him, eyes blazing, until he released his grip on her. Then she said, “Go to Earth and kill yourself. Just as you killed him. Just as you killed my baby. You deserve to die.”