Ben Bova: Moonrise

Then a sudden thought struck him. Is there a backup set of controls in the EVC? Could Greg pop the outside hatch open and blow all the air out? And me with it?

No, he told himself. Greg doesn’t know I’m coming along the vent, so even if there are backup controls he won’t know to use them. It’s not possible.

He hoped he was right.

In the thin beam of his penlight he saw that the vent ended in a T-shaped intersection up ahead. That’s the junction with the main trunk, he knew. I’m at the end of tunnel four; the EVC is only a few dozen yards away.

He fished the phone out of his pocket again, flicked it on, and said softly, I’m at the juncture with the main trunk.”

The comm tech’s voice said, “Hold one.”

Then Anson came on. “Okay. We’ve got an emergency team in suits ready to start burning open the hatch.”

“In suits?” Doug blurted, startled. “But they haven’t had enough time—”

“They’re breathing regular air at base pressure.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Are you ready to pry open the access cover in the EVC?” Anson demanded.

“Yes,” Doug said. “In about two minutes.”

“Okay. I’ll start the team working on the hatch. That oughtta draw their full attention.”

“Right.”

“They’ve got a spare suit with them, for you.”

“Only one?”

“They’ve got two more, but I told them to be sure they slap one on you before they do anything else.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Doug stuffed the phone back in his pocket, thinking, Once they blow that hatch all the air’s going to rush out of the EVC. Explosive decompression. A spacesuit won’t help unless they can get it on before your blood boils and your eyes pop out of your head.

He inched his way to the final access panel. I’ve got to stop Greg before they blow that hatch, he told himself.

“There’s a body here!”

Deems had to bend over to see the spacesuited figure slumped on the main garage’s rock floor halfway between the hatches to tunnel four and tunnel three.

Several of the team gathered around the fallen figure, bending stiffly in their overpressured suits.

“He’s unconscious.”

“I think it’s a woman.”

“If whoever it is got into that suit without prebreathing, he’s got the bends. Or she.”

Just what we need! Deems growled to himself. Some stupid shit who didn’t get in to safety in time.

Pointing to the man closest to him, he said, “Drag him inside tunnel two and call the medics. Then get your butt back out here right away. We’re gonna need every pair of hands we’ve got.”

It felt spooky as his eight men and women waddled cumbersomely through the main garage to the closed hatch that was the entrance to tunnel four. The garage was usually bustling and noisy with tractors being repaired, technicians yelling back and forth, music from individual disk players wailing over the clang and clamor.

Now the garage was deathly silent and still. It seemed to have taken hours to purge the spacesuit tanks of their low-pressure mix and refill them with room air. Then getting into the damned suits took even longer. The metal shell of the torso and leggings were unaffected by the additional air pressure, but the gloves ballooned so badly they looked like boxers’ mitts, and all the suit joints were painfully stiff. It’s like we’ve all got arthritis real bad, Deems thought.

He watched four members of his team checking out the cutting laser, clumsy and slow in the overpressured suits. The laser looked heavy and sinister, mounted on a tripod like some kind of gun. Clusters of power condensers and cooling blades lined its length. Another pair from their group sat on the rock floor awkwardly connecting power cables together.

Who the hell got himself caught in a suit out here? he wondered. Personnel claimed they checked out everybody working in the garage, they all got into tunnels one and two okay. And the only guy on the surface made it to the rocket port, so he’s accounted for. Somebody’s miscounted or screwed up someplace.

Tunnel four was two hundred yards long, Deems knew. Twice the length of a football field. They were going to lug the laser down to the sealed EVC hatch at the end of the tunnel, dragging the cable along, and start cutting the hatch open.

And when we do, he said to himself, we’ll be killing anybody inside the EVC. He glanced at the three empty suits on the floor by the hatch. Shaking his head inside his helmet, Deems thought that the suits would be about as much good as an umbrella in a typhoon.

The Stavenger kid’s gonna die, he thought We’ll get the two who’re trying to wipe us out, but we’re going to kill the Scavenger kid in the process.

“Did you hear that?” Melissa asked, looking up toward the rock ceiling of the EVC, lost in the shadows beyond the strips of overhead fluorescent lamps.

Greg was hunched over the display screens at the front of the chamber. Tunnel four was almost a vacuum, and although somebody had shut all the airtight hatches in the other tunnels, the oxygen level in tunnel three was sinking nicely.

“Hear what?” he called to Melissa.

“It sounded like—”

“Wait!” Greg snapped, silencing her. “Listen!”

Melissa walked to his side. She felt utterly weary. Her knuckles were skinned, her hands greasy, her clothes a mess. She had stripped off her jacket, and now she felt chilled in nothing but the light sleeveless blouse she had worn beneath it.

Greg tapped on the keyboard and the display screen showed the tunnel outside. Four people in spacesuits were aiming a heavy cutting laser at the EVC hatch.

“They’re trying to get through the hatch,” he whispered.

Melissa stood by him and glanced again up toward the shadowy ceiling. She thought she had heard something from up above, but in this echoing cavern, maybe it was a noise from the tunnel outside that had caught her ear.

Greg laughed, shakily. “It’ll take them hours to burn through the hatch,” he said. “I know the kinds of lasers they use for cutting metals.”

It sounded less than reassuring to Melissa. “I thought you said they couldn’t get through the tunnel at all.”

“They must have set up a death squad,” he said. “They’re just killing themselves faster, that’s all.”

Doug clamped his penlight in his gritted teeth and tried to work the edge of the power drill into the dust-caked rim of the access panel. Things don’t rust up here, he thought, but the dust packs as solid as concrete after a few years.

He had carefully removed the hinges from the access panel, trying to do it as quietly as he could. Surprise is still a weapon, he told himself. As long as they don’t know I’m here I’ve got an advantage over them.

Perspiration stung his eyes but he kept levering the power drill with both hands, using the drill like a miniature crowbar, trying to pry the damned panel loose. Does Greg have any weapons with him? he suddenly wondered. As far as Doug knew there wasn’t a gun anywhere on the Moon. The worst Greg might have would be a steak knife from The Cave. Or a wrench that he could use as a club.

The panel creaked a little. Doug saw light seeping into the vent from below. Worming the point of the drill deeper into the crack he had created, he struggled to his knees — head bent to keep from banging the top of the vent — and leaned all his weight on the tool, wishing for once that they were on Earth where his weight counted for more.

Groaning, the panel edged up an inch or so. Doug grabbed its edge with both hands and pushed, straining so hard he felt pain across his shoulders and down his back.

With a final shriek of protest the panel opened all the way. Doug pushed it clattering aside and looked down into the environmental control center. A pump’s disassembled parts lay scattered oh the stone floor twenty feet below him. He could see another pump, apparently still working, on the side of the narrow walkway. No sign of Greg or Melissa, though.