New rules about non-combatants in space required Banner to first join the US Army. Soon after filling out the application he found himself in basic training at Ft. Benning, Georgia with a bunch of regular army infantry recruits. It didn’t kill him but there were a few moments when he wished that it had.
For one thing he couldn’t understand the young kids’ music. “Whatever happened to good old Hip-Hop?” he wondered. There was no other way to say it but this new stuff wasn’t even music.
His opinion didn’t bother anybody. At 28 he was the old man of the group and when they discovered why he was there, and that he had been in outer space, he was treated with an awed deference that he found embarrassing. After awhile they started calling him Gramps because he was always trying to protect them from themselves, offering them advice, and loaning them money that he didn’t really expect to get back.
By the end of training he was as tough as a dog’s old chewstick, knew how to fight to the death, and had made more friends than he could count. Kids that were heading out to Afghanistan, Borneo, Saskatchewan, Nigeria, Venezuela, and a half dozen other nasty killing places where their government thought they should be. He might be there soon himself, he reflected, if this Charon thing didn’t work out.
Then he was off to Houston and the Johnson Space Center to begin training in earnest. The bus let him off at a barracks where, for the next three months, he and the other recruits were put through a rigorous process by a rough old Sergeant who pushed them hard as they learned the bare necessities about surviving in the nekkid vacuum and radioactivity of a space environment. It was all old hat to Banner but he knew better than to let Sarge know that and diligently went through the process with the rest.
Cape Canaveral never looked so beautiful as their bus approached from the coastal road. Banner was surprised to find tears in his eyes when he saw the gantries where rockets went up almost daily. They let them off near a sad little flat-roofed one-story building that could have been built way back in the 1950s where they were given their duffel bags, queued up, marched a quarter mile to a transport where they gave up them back, and then marched to another bus, which took them to a larger building where they were inspected, hosed down, and issued generic space gear that they hastily donned as their loving Sergeant growled encouragement.
Then they hiked a short way through an air-conditioned tunnel, its scuffed walls a bright yellow. Banner waited his turn to squeeze in the elevator with five other recruits. When the doors opened they were hurried into the EEV (Earth Egress Vehicle), nicknamed Little Boots by its mischievous crew. Soon after they strapped in the Wally Schirra “Black Hat” booster was lit, beginning their trip to the Moon. The brutal acceleration of the vehicle brought a few anonymous whimpers from the recruits but it filled Banner with fierce joy.
They wouldn’t let Banner visit his old haunts on the ISS, or rather Freedom as it had been rechristened, during their stopover. He was there to pee, eat, and transfer with the rest of the troops to the Moon Unit taking them the rest of the way to Armstrong Base. The place looked shabby, worn out, he reflected as he pulled himself through the corridor along with the rest, carefully observing military rules so that Sarge wouldn’t get his shorts in an uproar.
He did recognize the old hatch leading into the mess. Inside, he saw that the video screen had been removed and the food station streamlined. Gone were the big old pressurized carboys that held drinks and in their place spigots stuck out from the wall where you could plug in your canteen’s blow hole. One was labeled coffee, one was labeled water, and one was labeled citrus, which oozed out as orange as a Safety Stripe™.
The ass-pad on his chair was gone and he had to curl his legs around the seat base to stay in place. Still, he was doing better than some of the guys, who stared at the food on their trays with a green look about their gills. “Once one of them barfs it’ll all be over,” he thought contentedly. He’d seen it happen before with newbies once the smell hit them—the dreaded chain-puke. The first one who could get out of the room was required to close the hatch behind him and leave the others to their fate.
“You gonna eat that?” he asked the rookie sitting next to him. She shook her head very slowly, not daring to look up.
“Thanks.” He swallowed the gooey briquette happily. That’s when he saw a woman gesturing from the entrance. Her red hair was cropped short, a reddish fuzz, really, emphasizing the flat planes of her skull and sharp angles of her cheekbones. It took him a moment to realize the officer was his Dr. Ashlee Monelly!
“Sarge,” he said to the man glowering from his station on the ceiling above him. “The Captain wants to talk to me.” Sergeant Teigs squinted in the direction he was indicating before saying quietly, “OK, Brummett, but be ready to leave in ten.”
“Yes, sir.”
He was trying to think of what he should say as he drifted towards her self-consciously.
”Uh . . .” he squeaked as she grabbed him in a fierce hug. He put his arms around her and inhaled deeply. She smelled neutral, of course, as everyone did, but somehow her neutrality smelled better than the rest.
“Banner! It’s so good to see a friendly face.”
He was melting into her when he realized that the entire room had gone quiet. He peeked around the back of her skull and saw that, yes, dear mother, everyone was staring at them. Some were smiling, cynically or wistfully, he couldn’t tell. Others looked shocked. Sarge looked like he was about to go major Krakatoa.
“Maybe we should . . .” he pushed off from the footrail pulling her out into the corridor next to a stanchion that used to hold one of Sophie’s old hydrangeas. They huddled together, whispering like two conspirators.
“It is good to see you again,” she said smiling. He saw there was moisture in her blue eyes. —Oh god . . .
“I’m sorry about you and Dr. Christain . . .”
She made a face. “It was going to happen anyway. What about you?”
He shrugged. “Teaching school, thinking about getting married."
“Ah.”
“But I could hardly ask her to wait by the fireside for ten or fifteen years.”
She hugged him again. “Which college were you teaching at?” she said to change the subject.
He laughed. “High school math. I like to start at the bottom.”
“And now you’re going with us to Charon!”
“I hope so. I’ve gotta get through space-basic first.”
“I’m sure you’ll do fine,” she said placing her hand on the blade of his shoulder. He was about to kiss her when an angry gray head poked through the hatch.
“Brummett!” Sarge pulled himself into the corridor where he encouraged the cadets that followed to move along, “Can the bullshit!”
Banner stared at him hopelessly. “I have to go, Ashlee. But I’ll see you soon.”
“Good luck, Banner.” She kissed him on the cheek as rough hands pulled him away.
“Excuse me, M’am,” Sarge said to Captain Monelly.
“Carry on, Sergeant,” she replied, eyes twinkling with amusement.
It wasn’t until they were in the Moon Unit that the old soldier released him, observing dryly, “You don’t have to stand at attention, soldier.”
Banner looked down, turning red, as a nearby soldier guffawed, earning a hard stare from the sergeant.
“Get strapped in, son,” he said not unkindly as he pulled himself down the line, checking each young soldier in turn.
ØØØ
JJ Gatlinberg was a hundred yards from the Chinese far-side base. No one had ever been closer. He had spent the previous eighteen hours maneuvering into position but was way too pumped to feel tired. Even so there wasn’t much to see—some very large tractors, a couple of shacks. Everything else was nestled deep inside the crater, which was roofed by a thick flat sheath. A huge retractable door ran along one side, its motors as tall as five-story buildings. If he could just make it to them without being detected he might find a place to hide until he could slip inside.
He thought he knew where all the security cameras were hidden but must have missed one because halfway to the engine housing he saw soldiers emerging from one of the nearby shacks. He watched them approach. There was nowhere to run.
“Shit! Call the Cap!” he hollered to no one in particular.
He couldn’t see their features in the glare as they approached in their red and gold spacesuits, stopping just inches from him. He watched as one of them raised a thick boot, bringing it down with a crunch. All was blackness.
Gatlinberg turned from the screen with a sigh. Behind him Cap looked on sternly, but resigned.
“You did the best you could JJ.”
“The Nanos were able to move a little closer during the distraction,” someone said.
“So it wasn’t a total loss,” said Cap.
“I was so close.”
“We learned a lot.”
“The next time . . . “
Cap took him by the shoulder. “Not for you, Lieutenant.”
Gatlinberg looked up at him, not comprehending.
“You’re being reassigned. I’m sorry JJ. Lieutenant Gustefson was caught in that blow-out at Cassini the other day and they need someone to replace him with the newbies.”
“Aw, no! Not babysitting. We’re so close to getting in.”
“It’s just for one group,” Captain Spigot (he pronounced it "Spee-jo") replied. “The Chinese will still be here when you get back.”
“When do I leave?” JJ huffed with frustration.
“Can you be ready in ten minutes?”
“But I haven’t slept in . . . yes, sir.”
ØØØ
“Go, go, go, go!” Sarge yelled as they jumped into their spacesuits. Banner helped his partner run down her checklist and then she did the same for him. Soon after they were outside on the parade ground standing at attention, easy to do in a pressurized spacesuit that could stand on its own without any help from the person inside.
Sarge came down the line with that funny little hop people used on the Moon. Hopping right along beside him was an officer. They stopped in front of Banner. The officer seemed to be staring at him intently. Hard to tell when his face was behind a gold-tinted faceplate. “What the hell?” Banner thought.
“Private Brummett?”
“Yessir!” With mounting horror Banner realized that he recognized the officer’s voice. “It can’t be!” He glanced at the namepatch on the man’s chest. “Lieutenant Gatlinberg?” he gasped.
“That’s right, Gump,” the lieutenant grated, putting his helmet right against Banner’s. He had turned off his radio but Banner could still hear him loud and clear. “I don’t know how you made it here, loser, but if you fuck up once I’ll run you back to Earth so fast it’ll take two weeks for your asshole to catch up!”
“Original,” Banner muttered.
“What was that?”
“Yessir! Uh, thank you, sir!” Banner tried to salute but his arm couldn’t quite make it all the way up in his pressurized suit.
“Pathet . . .” Gatlinberg muttered as he pulled away. Sarge stared at him for a moment with what would have been a puzzled expression but Banner couldn’t see his face, either, before following the Lieutenant down the line.
“Holy fuck!” thought Banner, sweat stinging his eyes. “Holy Jesus fuck!”
ØØØ
Hurry up and wait was the same everywhere. Even on the Moon. Banner was sweating in his suit like Aunt Maude at the 4th of July picnic. “I’m even starting to think like a Gump,” he realized. “What a world.” They had brought them out in the long afternoon sun because they were using a leftover atomic bomb to blow a new hole in a crater wall and thought it would be a good idea to take the troopers somewhere dangerous to see how they’d hold up. And here Banner had thought that the whole point was to avoid danger entirely.
“Thinking like NASA,” they called people with his attitude, and it was discouraged in the military.
The ground beneath them began to shake violently. A crevasse opened up a half mile away spewing forth chunks of possibly radioactive debris in tall parabolic arcs.
“Eat dirt!” Sarge growled as the pieces thudded down amongst them, some pinging off their suits. It seemed to take forever as Banner fell like a soap bubble to the regolith.
“Check your status!” came the next command.
Banner ran through his displays. Nothing damaged. Radiation high but tolerable. He dared a quick look around. Sarge was stalking amongst them intently watching his readouts and verifying the answers with his own eyes. When he was satisfied he made them leave in small groups, taking no chances that a vault might have opened up beneath them. Then they were marched back to the transport. At the barracks they were subjected to decontamination procedures before being allowed inside. A few of them had to see the docs but no one would need to go back to Earth.
“What the hey, I didn’t want kids anyway,” someone joked.
“Oh, you can have kids, they’ll just be ugly.”
“Can’t blame radiation for that.”
ØØØ
“Born again to what?” Banner asked his bunkie who was trying to recruit him to a higher cause.
“Born again in Christ,” Antowaine replied with a smile. “I know because the holy Greene, Penrose, and whatisname proclaimed that God’s world is smaller than we can ever see, heaven is in what they call dark matter. God is what they call dark energy . . .” he hesitated. “Or zero point energy, I forget which.”
“Gosh, Ant, I was raised a Catholic and they didn’t exactly teach string theory.”
“The Manifold,” he corrected piously.
“Yeah, and they said we’d go to hell if we talked about it too much.”
“They don’t want you to hear the truth. Where do you think hell is?”
“Somewhere down below . . . and hot?”
“It’s in the dark matter that makes up 22% of all the stuff in the universe, my man!” Antowaine replied cheerfully. “We’re only 4%, God is the rest.”
“The dark energy?”
“They only call it that because they’re ignorant,” he sniffed. “It’s just the Energy, man. It’s where our spirits dwell. It’s where we’re judged.”
“I can live with that, I mean with being judged. I’ve lived a clean life.”
“But you ain’t been born again, Banner. You’ve gotta be washed in the blood of the lamb. You have to accept Jesus for what He is.”
“About that . . . see, the nuns were right, we’ve talked about it too much. Now is the part where you tell me I’m going to hell.”
“You are if you’re not born again!”
Banner shrugged. "Halle-fuckin'-lujah!"
ØØØ
Lieutenant Gatlinberg seemed like was never far away. Part of that was because the base wasn’t very big but it was also because he wasn’t content to sit back and administer the program while letting the Sergeant handle the up close and personal. No, he was in their shit all the time. He even took calisthenics with them in the morning and found inner peace with them during yoga class in the evening. And every minute Banner felt his eyes watching closely, begging for any excuse to wash him out.
The base was eight Quonset huts buried deep in the regolith beneath a dull gray dome of aluminum. Filtered sunlight dappled down two weeks a month, the rest of the time sickly orange sodium lights competed with common sense outside the huts. Not much attention had been paid to a biosphere but nevertheless some scrub grass was growing in the corners, and a few things that could be jimson weed.
At one end was a small parade ground beside two squat buildings. One housed the mess hall and the other was a storage facility. Between them was a slope where the roadway sunk beneath one end of the dome to the main airlock. An entire company could be decompressed at one time. On the other side of the airlock a second dome housed the garage.
One day, while standing on the lump of green-painted sward outside the barracks thinking about the butterscotch pudding they’d had with dinner, he looked up to see the Lieutenant frowning at him.
“Have you heard from her, Gump?” Gatlinberg suddenly asked.
“Sir?”
“Sophie. You were her friend, right? At least she talked about you while I pretended to listen.”
“That would be against regulation, sir.” Banner snapped to attention, adding after a moment’s silence. “I haven’t heard from her since she left the ISS.”
“Yeah. I thought you might know a way.”
“No, sir.”
Gatlinberg turned and hopped away. Was this some kind of test? Banner wondered, watching him leave, feeling shaken by the man’s intensity. The less Jesus Johnny talked to him the better.
The next day the troops were out on the shooting range trying out various weapons. Banner had always been a good shot as a kid, although the first time he’d killed something it gave him a sick feeling and he never did it again. Firing a weapon was different on the Moon. The trajectory was flatter and there was no air pressure to account for. Since his suit made sighting the regular way impossible the gun was held at hip level and sighted electronically through a display on the inside of his faceplate. He soon had the hang of it and was amazed at the distance he could accurately shoot the rocket-propelled fléchettes.
“You’re a regular Davy Crockett, ain’t you Brummett?” the sergeant noted after the results were tabulated.
“Tweren’t nothin’, sir,” he replied, Crockett-like.
Hand-to-hand combat was an especially frustrating exercise in futility. There wasn’t much you could do to an opponent in a battle-hardened pressure suit without a weapon, except crack his helmet open with a rock. “We’ve come all the way to the Moon to fight like cavemen,” Banner thought after one encounter left both him and his opponent lying in the artificial mud, exhausted—until Sarge came along and whacked them both soundly on their heads with his “lickin’ stick.”
Banner did better in the tactical training class. Sitting at a console while running through various scenarios based on actual combat situations, Banner was able to outmaneuver his opponents more often than not. “I guess all those hours of wiizing are finally paying off,” he thought with some satisfaction. Closely reading the manuals they’d been given helped, too, he realized, and gave him an edge on the younger guys who weren’t quite so diligent.
Once a week they were taken out for a long hike across the Moon’s surface. Lighter gravity meant little when you were required to haul eight times your own weight around with you. Sometimes they’d walk in a big circle, returning to base the same day. Other times they spent the “night” on the surface, inflating pressurized tents inside a rill canyon or in the shade of a crater wall. Above them the Earth hung like a revolving blue lamp, the shadow of night creeping across its surface teasing lattices of light from its cities and highways. Banner watched for hours sometimes, waiting for sleep to come.
One day near the end of training they were following along the edge of a steep crater when his buddy stumbled, danced briefly for a moment trying to regain her balance, and fell inside. Without hesitating Banner followed her into the dark shadow, flicking on his lamp, digging at the ground to help brake his fall. Somehow he reached the bottom on his feet. Looking around for the soldier in the gloom he made out a small blinking red light. He gasped, hopping desperately to reach the still figure. The light meant her suit was depressurizing. In less than a minute she’d be dead.
Dropping his pack he ripped open his emergency shelter. Within seconds it had pressurized and he shoved her inside its fallopian airlock. Fearing this would not be enough he started depressurizing his own suit and followed her inside. The fit was extremely tight but he managed to wrestle her helmet off. He saw blood around her mouth, nose, eyes, and ears and that she was fitfully breathing. Removing his own helmet he began giving her artificial respiration, the taste of her blood in his mouth. Finally, with a cough and a wretch, she began breathing regularly again.
“Thank God,” he said over and over as the other troops caught up, quickly erecting a field tent and cutting them out of the shelter. He watched numbly as the medics took over.
“Man, you’ll do anything for a piece of ass,” said one of his buddies admiringly.
“Shut up,” Banner smiled wanly. “Shut the fuck up.”
ØØØ
Training was over at last. Sporting his new corporal’s stripes Banner went into the nearby town of Neil with some of his buds. He bought a round of whiskey for his table. It really didn’t taste like any whiskey he’d ever had but he supposed oaken casks were hard to come by on the Moon.
“Too true,” said the bartender, whose establishment it was. “We make it in the back. It’s basically vodka mixed with a little Liquid Smoke.”
“Uk.”
“But since it’s your last night,” the barkeep learned over confidentially, “Let me buy you a drink from my private stock.” The man poured him a shot of single malt scotch.
“Word,” Banner gasped, rolling the liquid around in his mouth gratefully. “I can’t even afford to drink this stuff on Earth.”
Back at the table Roland was doing an impression of General Starks that caused Cindy Lou to blow beer through her nose. The table burst into raucous laughter as Banner rejoined them.
“To the corporal,” one of them raised his glass and the others followed.
“Dawg.”
“Muh man.”
They all drank.
“What’s next, Banner?” One of them asked.
“I go back to Earth and wait for them to decide whether or not I get to go.”
“That is so great,” Cindy Lou said.
“What about you?” he asked her.
“I’m going down to the edge of Mare Nubium with most of the guys to keep an eye on the Germans. Some of us are going out to Lagrange to help with the new space station and a few can’t say. But you’re going all the way!”
“I hope so,” he looked into her eyes like Jim Beam on a Sunday.
“It’s such an adventure,” she said, touching his forearm. “I’ll probably never see you again.”
“Oh, it’s only for ten or twenty years.”
“That seems like forever.”
“You know, you have the bluest eyes,” he said as she smiled at him.
“Brummett!” Suddenly a figure came up beside them. “You pointy-dicked SOB, let me buy you a drink,” a very drunken John Jesus Gatlinberg croaked while sitting down beside him.
“Lieutenant, ah . . .” Banner gulped, standing.
“Siddown, hoss, that’s an order.”
Banner sat, not knowing what to expect. “It’s a little late to cashier me,” he tried to joke.
“Naw, naw, naw, man!” To his shock Gatlinberg tried to hug him.
“This guy, this soldier,” Jesus Johnny proclaimed to the table of bemused recruits. “You done me proud. Who’d a thunk it, a punk like you? We were on Freedom together, did you know that?” he blearily looked around the table. “And this guy was a low-life weenie. Could barely wipe his ass with both hands. Now you can shoot—you’re the best in the troop. You can fight, I’ve seen ya. And you know how to take care of your own. That makes you a soldier I’m proud to serve with.”
Accepting the compliment Banner finished his beer and poured another, to try and get in the spirit of the thing after Cindy Lou, with sad eyes, said goodnight. Towards the end of the evening he found that Gatlinberg had put his arm around him and was whispering confidentially into his ear.
“You know, I loved that Sophie girl.”
“Sure. Me too.”
“No, I mean it,” he growled. “I’ve fucked plenty of women in my green time but none like her. Did joo fuck her?”
“No,” Banner answered defensively.
“Ah, you woosie. I didn’t think so. That gal is all woman. It takes a real man to get to her.”
Banner flushed with anger. “There’s more to her than just a roll in the hay!”
“Calm down,” Gatlinberg said with a laugh. “Relax. You’re right. I know it. She’s not like any woman I’ve ever had, goddamnit! That’s why it still bothers me. Here, have another beer. I think maybe you’ve got the hots for her, too,” he added pityingly.
“So?”
“Well, you’ll never get her that way, pardner. Women talk, you know, but what they want is another thing entirely. You can listen to them, sympathize—if all you want is to be their brother! That’s why they like faggots,” he burped loudly, and maybe farted, too, Banner realized with disgust. “Or you can be a man and take what you want—and what they want—why else put you through all that bullshit . . . like that little girl you were talking to when I interrupted,” he smirked.
Banner looked at him dumbly, thinking about what he’d lost with Sophie, Annabeth, and now Cindy Lou, and feeling deep, dark despair. He noticed that the bar was closing and the others had gone, except Ferd who lay unconscious on the table, blowing little bubbles in a wet puddle of beer. Banner hoisted him over his shoulder.
“Thanks for explaining things,” he said coldly to Gatlinberg before turning to leave.
“When a shark stops swimming he dies,” Jesus Johnny shrugged to no one in particular.
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More links:
Apollo Over the Moon: a View from Orbit Chapter 4: The Maria
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