Ben Bova - Moonrise

All heads turned to her image.

“Moonbase will build a prototype diamond Clippership on our own. It won’t cost the corporation a cent.”

The board broke into a dozen conversations at once.

Joanna’s voice stilled them all. “But once that prototype ship is demonstrated and the aerospace lines start placing their orders, I’ll expect every Moonbase employee who worked on the program to get a share of the profits.”

Johansen wished for the hundredth time that Quintana were still there. He’d know what to say. As it was, the board sat in stunned silence for what seemed like half a lifetime.

Finally the comptroller spoke up. “Mrs. Stavenger, if your people up there can build a diamond Clippership without additional funding from the corporation and sell the concept to the aerospace lines, I’m sure we can work out an equitable profit-sharing plan.”

Rashid, in an agonized voice, asked, “But what about the fusion program?”

Johansen spoke up. “Let’s wait before we make a decision about that. Let’s see what Moonbase can actually do for us, first”

Sitting in his bare little office in the concrete building on Tarawa, Rashid sank back in his chair. The board of directors nodded their heads — white haired, bald, silvery gray — and agreed with Johansen’s idiotic decision.

Angrily, Rashid punched his desktop keyboard and blanked the display screen on the office’s wall.

Melissa Hart got up from her chair at the side of the desk and stepped behind Rashid. Gently she massaged his shoulders as she whispered, “Let me go to Moonbase. Let me use the sword of vengeance against them.”

Rashid closed his eyes as her deft fingers kneaded the tension out of him.

“Yes,” he said. “You go to Moonbase on the next available ship.”

This one was different. Doug could hardly contain his excitement as he stood in the rocket port’s observation bubble and watched the LTV come down. The LTV. The one they were going to modify for the asteroid mission.

He spotted the puffs of rocket exhaust against the dark sky as the controllers made their final adjustments, then the LTV took shape, big and lumpy with tanks and pods, and then the main engine fired its final braking burst and the ungainly vehicle settled down on its rickety-looking legs in a dirty white cloud of gaseous aluminum oxide and blowing lunar dust.

Doug just stood there, practically on tip-toes, his hair brushing the curved plastiglass of the bubble, and admired the spacecraft. This wasn’t a wom-out cripple, ready for the scrap heap. This LTV was practically new; his mother had insisted on getting quality for her money.

To his surprise, the personnel access tube was worming its way toward the hatch in the passenger pod. Were there passengers aboard the ship?

Doug slid languidly down the ladder into the flight control center and asked the two controllers on duty.

“One passenger. VIP from Tarawa,” said the chief controller.

Surprised, Doug said, “Well, I might as well go down and greet him.”

“Her,” the controller corrected. “Personal representative from the chief operating officer of the Kiribati Corporation.”

“Oh,” said Doug. “The new owners.”

He ducked out of the flight control center and slid down the ladder into The Pit. He walked briskly to the airlock hatch and waited for the indicator light to turn green. As soon as the hatch cracked open, Doug grabbed it and helped to swing it all the way.

“Welcome to Moonbase,” he said. The words almost stuck in his throat. The LTV’s pilot and co-pilot both were holding the arms of a very beautiful dark-skinned woman who looked as if she were dying.

It had been a miserable flight for Melissa. Worse than hell, forty-eight hours of weightlessness. She had never been in space before, and the nausea of free-fall simply overwhelmed her, despite all the medication. She puked her guts out during the first few hours of the flight and had the dry heaves the rest of the way.

The only thing that kept her going was the mantra she repeated to herself all the long, exhausting way to the Moon. It was a mantra of hate. She filled her mind with a vision of Greg Masterson. The man who had betrayed her so brutally. All men were betrayers, of course, but Greg had been the worst. She had loved him, once. She had conceived his baby. Now for nearly twenty years she had survived by hating him. His betrayal had driven her into self-loathing and a life so foul it had nearly killed her, just as she had killed the unborn child within her, but Melissa fought for her life with one burning goal set before her pain-filled eyes: to make Greg pay. To make him feel the agony she had felt. To make him suffer as she had suffered.

It was not a worthy goal, she knew. General O’Conner and the others would be horrified if they could see into her soul. But it was the goal that had kept Melissa sane all these years. And now she was close to achieving it.

Hate can move mountains, she said to herself. Faith, hope and hate. And the greatest of these is hate.

Now her long journey was over. With at least some sense of weight to anchor her stomach, she looked with watery eyes at a bright-faced young man beaming a ridiculous greeting to her.

I’ll take care of her,” Doug said. The two crewmen looked enormously relieved.

“Come on,” he said, taking Melissa by the arm. “You’re okay now. You just need to cleak up a bit and get some food into you.”

Melissa groaned at the thought of food. “I must look a mess,” she said.

Grinning, Doug admitted, “A shower and a change of clothes would help.” She smelled so bad his own stomach wanted to heave.

He led Melissa to the waiting tractor and the co-pilot dumped her one travelbag on the back seat. As they trundled along the dimly-lit tunnel, Doug accessed the central computer and found the room assigned to Melissa. She must be a real VIP, he thought, to get the personnel department to push another short-timer into doubling up.

Fortunately Melissa’s assigned quarters weren’t far from the main airlock. Doug walked her there and told her to take a shower.

I’ll wait out in the tunnel and take you to lunch when you’re ready,” he told her.

Melissa was too miserable and weak to debate with the stranger. She stumbled into what looked like a cell carved out of rock, found the shower stall, and stepped in fully clothed. The water was tepid, at best, but it felt good. Slowly she stripped off her soggy clothing as the water sluiced over her.

She was looking for soap when the water stopped. Blinking drops from her eyes, she turned the controls. Nothing. Suddenly blasts of air pummeled her from vents in the ceiling and sides of the stall. She shivered, but as the air evaporated the droplets on her skin it began to feel warm, even hot.

And then it, too, suddenly stopped. Melissa shook her head, feeling like a hamburger in an automated oven. As she stepped out of the shower she realized that her nausea was gone. She shook her head again. No wooziness at all.

Leaving her soiled clothes in the shower, she opened her bag and got dressed: crisp clean ivory slacks and a pullover blouse of metallic gold. It was a struggle, though; every move she made seemed too big. She nearly toppled over onto the bunk when she tried to step into the slacks. Of course, she told herself. You’re on the Moon. The gravity’s much less here. Carefully, she finished dressing and slipped on a pair of soft-soled espadrilles.

No jewelry, only her wristwatch. She looked at herself in the shadowy reflection of the desktop computer screen; there was no mirror in the room. Warmed-over shit, she appraised herself. Well, girl, that’s as good as it’s going to get.