Luke Marusiak - Lifeboat Moon

“We only explored the beginning but each of the three main branches branch out themselves,” Thad answered. “If you look in the rightmost main branch you’ll see five different paths inside.” Thad was pleased to share the discovery and oblivious that the Japanese viewed him with suspicion.

“This can save us,” Katsumi said.

“This will save us,” Mark replied.

Doug, Sally, and Chuck were in the control room watching the monitors that showed the outside of the hangar. “What do you think they’re doing out there?” Doug asked.

“They’re checking out the cave,” Sally answered.

“Pfft — that’s a fool’s errand.” Doug was in a bad mood.

“So is defeatism,” Chuck answered.

Doug glared at Chuck. “Don’t you two need rest? This shift is for me and Art to cover.”

“Yeah, I guess we need to sleep sometime.” Sally replied.

“If anyone can after hearing that hiss,” Chuck said. “I’m anxious about sleeping in my quarters.”

“Follow our new protocol,” Sally ordered. “Set your quarters alarm to go off at the smallest pressure drop. That will ensure you have time if something like that happens again.”

“But why did it happen at all?” Chuck asked. “We sealed up the quarters before we found out why.”

“It was either that or risk the entire habitation tube.”

Shift Supervisor Arthur — Art Sledge entered the hangar. He regarded Sally and Chuck. “You guys need to rest. We got this.”

“Okay,” Chuck answered. He turned to Sally. “I’ll set the alarm and hope like hell I get some sleep.”

Chuck left the control room. Sally hesitated as she stared at the monitors. “I’m going to patch a feed into my quarters. I want to see when they come back from the cave — and the backside of the crater.”

Doug laughed. “Whatever works but in eleven hours I expect you to be here with bells on.”

Sally typed some commands, checked her contactor, gave the twosome a smile, and departed.

Doug turned to Art. “Did you set your quarter’s pressure alarm?”

Art nodded. “Yeah.” He pointed to the monitors. “What’s going on out there?”

“The dumbasses from Japan Station are looking at the cave Mark and Thad found.”

“Why?”

“That’s my question as well. Did you see those guys in the Manufacturing Pod? They’re clinging to the thought that we can make this work.”

Art stared at the monitors and said nothing. “I don’t think that’s the point.”

“Then what’s the point?”

Art shrugged. “There is none.”

Doug considered his shift partner. “You seem especially down.”

“I now have a bunkmate. He was from one of the pods that were compromised.” Art snickered. “A whiny kid from the Agriculture Pod that’s upset his hardcopy family pictures were sealed up.”

“Like that’s worth being upset about.” Doug flicked a monitor display so it showed the distant sun. The sun’s intensity at the lunar south pole was far less than at the equator and was always a bright spot just above the horizon. “There it is.”

Art looked at the monitor. “Yeah, the perpetual sunrise.”

“No. It’s the perpetual sunset.” Doug stared at the barren moonscape. “What the hell were we thinking coming up here?”

“I can tell you what I was thinking. I was thinking to punch my ticket for 3M Space Mining Corporation so I could get back, be a millionaire, and send other poor slobs up here to mine these precious minerals.”

“And now?”

“And now I try not to think.” Art coughed and cleared his throat.

“It’s a bad time to get the flu. The med-bay is at vacuum.”

Art nodded. “I know.” He sighed. “I’m going to miss the med-bay. Doctor McCarthy gave me amphetamines to fight this gloom. There was quite a supply in the med-bay. High test Adderall is what he called it.”

“Maybe we’re not supposed to fight the gloom.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe we’re supposed to accept it.”

“Is that why you called the guys out there dumbasses?”

“Exactly.” Doug faced Art. “Did you know the director had a plan?”

“What?”

“The director had a plan for after the gamma ray burst. She kept it top secret.”

“If she kept it secret how do you know about it?”

“The ArmCon came by a couple weeks ago and instructed me to make a copy. I was instructed to copy it without viewing the files. So naturally I ran an instruction for two copies to be made, one for the ArmCon’s portable device, and one for me.”

Art shrugged. “You are the master hacker. What did you find?”

“Our good director, ArmCon, and Doctor McCarthy had plans for all of us. They constructed a list of who was most critical and who wasn’t.”

“Makes sense.”

“No, listen. They had breeding plans. They assigned women who could reproduce the highest value and then the good doctor lined up who was going to impregnate whom.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“No, I’m not.” Doug pulled a small memory stick out of his pocket. “I’ve got it all right here. They even had plans of who would survive if the hydroponic farming failed to produce enough. They were willing to reduce the base to forty-five essential personnel if they needed to conserve food.”

“What do you mean reduce?”

“All living quarters have a reversible check valve that no one knew about. That’s what happened to the quarters in Habitation Tube Two. All they would’ve needed to do is open the valves of those they didn’t value.” Doug pointed to Art. “There was a roster of people to save and you my friend weren’t on that list of forty-five. Neither was I.”

“That makes no sense.”

“It does. The director and ArmCon gave us a forty percent chance of becoming self-sufficient within a year. They made contingency plans.”

“Contingency plans?”

Doug snorted. “That’s what military types do. They decide who gets to live and who gets to die. And those destined to die get to be used as food and fertilizer. Is that worth the future of humanity?”

“You’re serious.”

Doug turned back to the control panel. “The thing is, the director was optimistic thinking we had a forty percent chance. After the pod crash, it’s hopeless.”

Art dropped his head into his hands. “This is hopeless.” He kept his head buried. “You’re telling me I count for nothing but fertilizer?”

Katsumi and Yumi shook hands with Mark, Zeke, and Thad outside the hangar door. Mark wondered if Doug, from his view in the control room, was recording the gathering for posterity. Jerry and Habi stood next to the Japanese and were inspecting the fuel cell power usage on the Japan Station buggy.

“This cave you found is very, very good.” Katsumi said.

“I agree,” Mark answered. “We should figure out how to seal and pressurize it.”

“Yes,” Yumi answered. “We’re going to need it.” She pointed to two tall cylinders that were a meter in diameter and mounted to the side of the hangar. “Cryogenic nitrogen storage dewars?”

“That’s right,” Mark answered. “Don’t you do the same?”

“No, there’s little nitrogen up here.”

“We sent tons of it here ahead of our first launch,” Zeke said.

“So what’s the composition of your air?” Mark asked.

“We use a pure oxygen environment as it was too expensive to send nitrogen here. Why didn’t NASA and ESA decide the same?”

“The Apollo 1 fire,” Mark answered. He, like all of his crew, knew NASA used pure oxygen in its Mercury and Gemini space programs but on an Apollo program launch rehearsal test, when there was an electrical spark, the pressurized oxygen environment in the Apollo 1 capsule turned that spark into an inferno. It was an inferno that cost the lives of three NASA astronauts: Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White. Everyone in Moon Base Armstrong knew that story and viscerally felt the need for the safer eighty-percent nitrogen, twenty-percent oxygen mix. Mark only now reckoned with the implications of the scarcity of nitrogen on the moon. “What do you do for static?” Mark asked.