As Paul stood there, though, he saw what Moonbase could become: a whole city, domed and covered with protective rubble, to be sure, but a real city of thousands of people with open spaces beneath its wide dome and green trees and plants and grass, soaring pillars and winding footpaths and broad windows so you could look outside and see the solar energy farms and the factories open to vacuum and the spaceport where ships landed and took off on a regular schedule.
“We’re ready whenever you are, boss-man.”
Wojo’s voice in his earphones startled Paul out of his daydream. Turning, he saw the man standing by the tractor hatch. Wojo’s spacesuit looked hard-used, grimy, its helmet scratched and dulled.
“Yeah,” he said tightly. “Let’s get going.”
It was considerably less than comfortable sitting squeezed together in the tractor’s cab inside their cumbersome space-suits, but Paul knew that a stray meteoroid could crack the canopy and the cab would lose its air in seconds.
The tractor’s cab was a bubble of tempered plastiglass, pressurized to the same five pounds per square inch as the spacesuits, so that in an emergency the occupants could slam down their visor helmets and go to their suit life-support systems without needing time to prebreathe low-pressure oxygen to avoid the bends.
The underground shelters also ran at five psi, for the same reason. The ‘air’ that the Moonbase inhabitants breathed with seventy-two percent oxygen, twenty-eight percent nitrogen. The oxygen came from the lunar regolith; until they drilled successfully for ammonia the nitrogen had to be carried up from Earth.
One of the ongoing research efforts at the base was aimed at producing a metallic glass that had the transparency of good crystal and the structural strength of steel. Someday we’ll be able to ride these buggies in our shirtsleeves, Paul told himself. In the meantime, it felt reassuring to have the bulk of the spacesuit protecting him, comfort be damned. There was only one chance in a trillion of being hit by a meteoroid big enough to crack the canopy, but Paul had no desire to test the odds.
The tractor climbed laboriously up the ringwall mountain over the easiest slope, which Wojo insisted on calling ‘Wodjohowitcz Pass.’
“Your name is too tough to spell for it to be used on maps,” Tinker said archly. “It’ll never pass the spelling test.”
Paul groaned. Wojo muttered.
Paul took over the driving chores once they got down onto the flat of Mare Nubium. Wojo stopped the tractor so they could shift places, then when they were underway again he reached carefully behind their seats and pulled out three prepackaged lunches.
“Best sandwiches this side of Chattanooga,” Wojo said proudly. “Made ’em myself.”
Paul had to admit that they were good. One thing he had insisted on for Moonbase was top-quality food. We have to breathe recycled air and drink recycled water, but by God we’ll eat decently, at least.
“Sandwiched the lunch chore in between your other duties?” Tinker punned.
It’s going to be a long three days, Paul thought. Very long.
“Coming up on Shelter Nineteen,” Wojo called out, one gloved finger on the map readout glowing in the control panel’s main display screen.
The man’s breath stinks, Paul said to himself.
Looking straight ahead, searching for the red light atop the antenna that marked the heaped rubble mound of the shelter, Paul asked, “What the hell are you drinking, Wojo?”
“What do you mean?”
“Water wouldn’t give you a breath like that.”
With great dignity, Wojo asked, “Are you implying that I have imbibed an alcoholic beverage?”
Tinker piped up, “Now that you mention it, there’s been a rumor about somebody running a still back at the base.”
“A still?” Paul snapped.
“An active still,” Tinker replied.
“Nothing but rumor,” said Wojo. “Where would somebody hide a still?”
Paul had to turn almost sideways to peer around the edge of his helmet and look at Wojo’s face. The man avoided his gaze.
“What do you use for ingredients?” he asked.
“Search me,” Wojo replied innocently. “I’m no chemist”
“There’s plenty of exotic chemicals available,” Tinker said, “from the labs and the pharmacy. From what I’ve heard, they might even be using some of the residual rocket propellants left in the landers’ tanks.”
“This had better be a joke,” Paul muttered. “Making booze and stealing rocket propellants isn’t just criminal, it’s goddamned dangerous.”
“It’s a joke,” Wojo assured him.
Tinker laughed. “We got you that time, boss boss.”
Paul made himself laugh with them. But he was thinking that a drunk could kill a lot of people very suddenly at Moonbase. Better look into this joke when I get back.
It was night and would remain so for seventy-five hours more. Yet the broad rock-strewn plain of Mare Nubium was clearly lit by Earthglow. Once Wojo resumed the driving chore Paul leaned as far back as he could and watched the big blue and white crescent of Earth hanging in the dark cold sky. It was in the gibbous phase, fatter than a half-Earth, glowing warm and beautiful out there.
When the Earth was in its ‘new’ phase, Paul could trace out the cities and highways from the lights shining in the darkened globe. But now the glare from its daylit side drowned out the night lights.
Anyway, Paul said to himself, we’ve got work to do. We’re not here for the sightseeing.
“There’s the spot,” Wojo said, slowing the tractor to a stop.
Paul looked at the electronic map on the control panel. The blue dot marking their location was touching the red dot marking the test site.
“Check it out with the GPS signal,” Paul said.
“Already did,” Wojo answered. “Last fix we’ll get for a while. Feeble-minded little satellite’s sinking below the horizon and there won’t be another in sight for a couple hours.”
Tinker helped them offload the equipment and while he and Paul set up a plastic bubble tent for their quarters, Wojo used the tractor’s front blade to dig a trench big enough to hold a full-sized shelter.
“Now we see what these teeny bugs can do,” Wojo said. There were three sets of nanomachines, each sealed in an insulated cylindrical container that looked to Paul like a high-tech metallic thermos bottle. Using the tractor’s communications system he established a link with Cardenas in San Jose, beaming a signal directly to a commsat in synchronous orbit above the Pacific.
The signal was weak, but Paul had Cardenas on-line as Wojo pried open the first container and gingerly carried it to the trench.
“Feel kinda like Aladdin,” Wojo muttered. “Where’s the puff of smoke and the genie?”
Cardenas took him seriously. “You won’t see anything for at least two hours,” she said. “Just drop the container into the trench.” Paul could see tension in her face. And excitement.
Tinker spent the next two hours checking out the ambient levels of microwave radiation in the area, setting out a series of pocket-sized detectors on the dusty regolith. Wojo hauled equipment off the tractor and set up their quarters inside the plastic bubble tent.
Paul watched the trench. “Nothing seems to be happening,” he said.
Three seconds later Cardenas’s streaky image replied, “The nanomachines are reproducing themselves. Everything’s going according to the program.”
Carrying a portable communicator in his gloved hand, Paul walked over to the edge of the trench. Nothing was stirring. It’s going to be a long two hours, he told himself.
Wojo came up beside him. Paul was staring so intently into the empty trench that he only noticed Wojo’s presence when he heard the man’s labored breathing through his earphones.
“You’re out of condition,” Paul said.
“Easy thing to do, up here,” Wojo admitted.
“Better check with the medical people, let them set up an exercise routine for you.” It was a requirement in every employee’s contract; if an employee did not follow the medical department’s prescribed exercise regimen, it was grounds for return to Earth and perhaps even dismissal from the company.