Chapter 5

Photo courtesy NASA

Freedom looked like a spider with a monstrous golden egg sac to Group Captain Henry Ireton as they made their approach. The sac was actually a flimsy, unpressurized structure made of thin gold foil meant only to keep prying eyes from seeing what was going on inside.

Ireton oversaw the ship’s approach to the opposite side of the station. He probably should have been using the time to prepare for the day’s meetings but what the hell? Routine felt comforting.

Ireton had been involved in the planning of the Allies’ deep-space ship—code-named Yankee Clipper—at every stage, but this was the first time he’d actually come to see the beast in person. It was state-of-the-art all the way. Maybe pre-state-of-the-art when you came right down to it. But that was the American Way, wasn’t it? The flashier the better. No wonder they’d never really gotten along with the Ruskies, who preferred to do other things in space besides spend money.

The transfer into the station went quickly but Ireton chafed at having to go through the ritual of greeting, which including the playing of a nineteen-70s era rock and roll song chosen by some groundside space geek in his honor—Rocket Man, was it? At least it wasn’t the William Shatner version.

He was met by General Lewis N. Clark, who had been lured out of retirement at his villa in the Moon’s northwest corner to ramrod the project. He was surprisingly informal as he introduced the project engineers.

He was then escorted to a bay overlooking the worksite and there it was, his baby, the Yankee Clipper, its shell a lumpy irregularly dimpled shape courtesy of its double-icosahedral frame.

“Not exactly the interplanetary spermatozoa of 2001,” smiled Lomaine Brooks, the engineer assigned to give him the tour. She was wearing khaki pants and suspenders stretched over her ample frame, and a navy-blue Snorg T-shirt reading:

All this
and
brains, too!

Ireton shook his head. Typical of the US. They'd built a Bugatti when a Chevy would have nicely done the job.

“When can we take her out for a ride?”

“Soon. Maybe six months, eight if we glitch.”

“Hmm. Well, I have a lot of questions.”

“That’s why I’m here,” she answered brightly. “We pressurized the outer hull three days ago and there were no major leaks. We can go right inside.”

He followed her as she propelled herself down the large transparent oval tube leading to the Clipper’s shell. Reaching the airlock first, she opened it before he’d had a chance to catch up, causing him to tumble ass over teakettle when she moved the place he’d planned on landing.

“Newbies always do that,” she laughed, catching him in her powerful arms. For a moment he could feel her warm breath on his face.

“But would you have caught General Clarke?” he asked, grinning as he reached out for a handhold.

“I wouldn’t have had to,” she sniffed while opening the inner lock. “Besides, he’s an oldbie” They were inside a large dark space, lighted by a few safety lamps. Translucent walls surrounded them. Ireton rapped on one with his knuckles. There was a dead, dry sound.

“Aerogel inner walls,” she said proudly. “Light as air and you can bounce a bowling ball off them.”

“I don’t remember designing for a bowling alley.”

She ignored him. “This gridwork along the inner hull connects to bundles of carbon filaments doped with copper that act as radiators for the heat we’ll be generating. That’s what gives the hull its hairy look and buff color.”

“I thought it just needed a shave.” Ireton felt a sense of awe, as he looked around, despite its state of dishabille—the missing panels, the fiber and conduits snaking everywhere. Shining his light inside, he could see where the tanks of hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, lithium, carbon, and water would wrap around the crew’s living quarters.

“At the gooey center is the habitat,” Lieutenant Brooks poked her head into the opening where Ireton had been woolgathering. She looked at him from the tops of her eyes, forehead wrinkled like an inquisitive child’s. “But nothing’s been installed yet. It’s mostly empty space.”

At the end of the corridor they came to a gap leading into the large self-contained icosahedron within.

ØØØ

“The habitat has privacy areas that will be assigned throughout the chamber,” she said leading him across on a Buckyrope™ ladder into another airlock. The sides will be terraced green space, mostly crops but ornamental plants as well, that grow fast and make lots of oxygen. As you know, when the ion motors are lit there will be a very mild constant acceleration that should cause things to settle a bit although it still will be kind of like living in a big bubble.”

Once inside they pulled themselves along into the emergency bridge where Ireton stopped by the Captain’s chair. Around him closely grouped were the stations for NAV, Engineering, IT, and the seat he expected to occupy—second in command. Not what he’d wanted but it would have to do. He knew the Americans would never let a Brit run the show but it was still his baby. Even so the demotion stung a little.

“Questions, sir?”

He hesitated for a moment, lost in thought. “Not really. I helped design this room. I can see what a beautiful job you’ve done.”

“Thank you,” she beamed.

“Have you had dinner, yet?” he suddenly asked.

“Why, no,” she replied, surprised.

“Well?” he asked after a moment of silence.

“Its just newbies hardly want to eat when they first come up.”

“Well, I may be clumsy but I’m hardly a newbie,” he laughed. “And microgravity has never bothered my appetite.”

“Lucky man.”

She took him back, this time through the large void where the habitat would soon be constructed. Halfhearted scaffolding twined deep into the vault. It took his breath away—the largest controlled space ever placed in orbit.

“Watch this!” Lomaine said, pulling herself to the edge of the scaffolding and launching off.

Ireton heard her whoop as she crossed the wide space to the other side. After a moment, and with a silly grin, he leaped after. It was something like skydiving inside the atrium of a building but not so fast, in fact he could feel himself slowing down as he pushed through the air.

“Does anybody ever get stuck in the middle?”

“Only newbies,” she laughed, launching herself straight towards him. She thumped him on the chest hard enough to kill his momentum, while conserving enough of her own to spin lazily off towards the scaffolding. She watched him for awhile as he tried various swimming techniques to get himself to the edge without success.

“Patience, sir, you’ll come over, eventually” she called out to him. “There’s enough air circulation to suck you down a vent sooner or later.”

“Lieutenant, I don’t want to have to order you to rescue me.”

Grinning, she threw him a strand of a Buckyrope.

ØØØ

“My father was a military man, also in the RAF,” he told her as they queued at the cafeteria railing. The Sticko-pads™ beneath it were worn and gave his stockings little purchase, but it didn’t seem to bother him as he used his knees to hold himself in place at the counter while grabbing portions of bread, asparagus—with some kind of clearish sauce holding it together—a piece of blackened chicken (although he suspected the blackening had nothing to do with the recipe), and a hot block of scalloped potato. “He was on loan to the Jamaican Air Force as a jet-fighter trainer, which is where he met my mother. He married her despite, you know, the racial thing,” he said apologetically. He didn’t know why he felt he needed to apologize, perhaps because Lomaine’s skin was so godawful black.

“You’d hardly notice,” she laughed.

“They noticed it enough in school,” he shrugged. “But, really, it wasn’t too bad. Better than being a fatty.”

“I hear that.”

“I didn’t mean . . .”

“No, no,” she smiled. “There ain’t an ounce of fat on this.” She pinched her powerful thigh. “It’s just the way I’m built. But I have to watch it. I can gain five pounds just looking at a piece of cheesecake.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“Why, Group Captain!”

“Call me Henry,” he grinned.

“I’m, ah,” she replied, flustered.

He was surprised that he felt so attracted to her. Usually he preferred the willowy type, whereas Lomaine was built like an effing lorry, he thought, feeling guilty. And the blackest woman he’d ever met. Part of it, he realized, was that he’d been too busy over the previous eighteen months for a proper romance, but part of it was genuine attraction, which disturbed him somehow.

“How about yourself?”

“Oh, you know, science-nerd-girl in grade school. Discovered physics, sports, and boys in high school. Decided I liked physics best. A couple of PhDs along the way. My first job was on the Moon. The usual thing.”

Ireton laughed. “I’ve got to go,” he said looking at his watch and pulling away from the table. “I have to return to London in a few hours and I need to talk with the General first. Thank you for the briefing, Lomaine,” he said gripping her hand. “I enjoyed dinner.”

“Well, I did, too.”

“Call me the next time you’re downside.”

“I’m not sure that I should,” she looked at him questioningly.

“I’m sorry,” he said, feeling a little embarrassed by his oversight. “I just assumed there was no one else.”

“N-o-o,” she frowned. “It’s not that. It’s that I’ve applied for a position with the Clipper’s crew.”

“Ah,” he replied, heart sinking. “I’ve no input either way with the committee, if that’s what you’re worried about. That’s Dr. Monelly’s purview . . . although they say the important thing is compatibility between crewmembers,” he smiled like a naughty little boy.

“I just don’t want to get too compatible too quickly,” she frowned at him momentarily and then laughed, disturbing a nearby technician who’d fallen asleep at his table.

“If we’re going to be mates we should know each other in any case. Besides, I owe you dinner.”

“I’ll think about it . . . Henry,” she added after he’d left.

ØØØ

On the other side of the world, outside Novy Mir, they didn’t care who saw the ship they were building. To the blogosphere it looked like a Tinkertoys™ set that had been jammed together by a crack baby with a Soviet-era atomic submarine at the center. The French proclaimed it the ultimate expression of the modernist ideal, the Russians shrugged and said plumbing wasn’t supposed to be pretty, while the Japanese simply didn’t bother to answer the question.

“Big Banger” was the headline of the Internet ’papes when the Russians slid an immense neoprene sheath over the construct like an obscenely huge prophylactic. It looked like a bright red sausage needing a good grilling. When bags of water started arriving from the Moon the Tweeters™ speculated jokingly about steam-powered rockets.

Then a report circulated that the water was indeed to fuel the monstrosity. It was first to be split by electrolysis. Then the hydrogen would be shoved through the reactor core to be superheated and recombined with the oxygen, working as an afterburner—an oxygen-augmented nuclear thermal rocket. There were plenty of problems with this design but it was simple and they could refill their tanks at Charon. The biggest problem was that they would have to coast between burns while they distilled the fuel.

They christened their ship the Sergey Pavlovich Korolyov, after the “master builder” of the Soviet space program.

Sophie Täuber was living in the French quarter of their lunar base, called jVerne. The city was buried well underground. During the lunar day filtered sunlight reflected down into it from a large mirror on the surface. The gardens that Sophie and her crew were building were already famous for their beauty as well as their practicality. Tall, thin frames invited vines to climb explosively in the weak gravity.

“Who would have thought it, autumn on the Moon?” said “Long” Jean Albertine as he accompanied her beneath a row of young sugar maples.

“The hardest part is making decent soil,” she said. “Lunar dust is worthless for growing things. Right now we use hydroponics for the crops. As we gather compost we refine it, mix it with sanitized lunar dust and sewerage, and make these planting regions. It’s coming along but it’ll take a generation or two.”

They stopped by a vending machine and he bought her an Italian ice. “It’s been a long time since I strolled with a pretty girl,” he said.

“I don’t believe that for a minute!” she laughed. They walked for a while longer. “Why are you here?” Sophie finally asked.

“I think you can guess,” he answered after a pause. “We want you—we need you—to join the Charon expedition. No one has tried to keep a closed ecosystem alive for so long a time. You better than anyone know the complexity of what we’re attempting. To my mind there is no one else I’d trust to manage such a system.”

“Pish,” she replied, scornfully. “What about Robbie Frankel, or Meridia Lacombe?”

“Nobody likes Frankel and Meridia has . . . other problems.”

“Huh. You do know what you’re asking of me? My parents could be dead by the time I return. My nephews and nieces grown up. My friends will seem like strangers. My lovers . . .” She suddenly stopped walking, a distant look on her face. “And I’ll never have children of my own.”

“I know, Sophie,” Albertine stood next to her, resting his hand on her shoulder in sympathy. “I don’t like asking you to make this sacrifice. If we thought anyone else could do it . . . Not many of us get the opportunity to make history. Your name will be remembered as long as Marie Curie’s.”

“Who?” she joked feebly, watching him from the corners of her eyes while fussing over a small planting of wildflowers.

Albertine laughed. “You may discover alien life, be the first scientist to study it and evaluate it. Speak with it.”

“Don’t be melodramatic, Jean.”

“All right, but what scientist could pass this up? You must do this—for yourself, for the human race, for France!”

“Viva la France,” she echoed hollowly.

ØØØ

The von Braun spun like a top as it followed the Moon in orbit at the L5 Lagrange Point. It looked very similar to the space station Werner von Braun had envisioned during the 1950s and had been elaborated upon so famously in 2001: A Space Odyssey. By calling the ship the von Braun the Germans were deliberately goosing both the Brits—by honoring the developer of the V2 rocket—and the Americans—by reclaiming von Braun’s legacy.

Christain Monelly sat in his office finishing his day’s work. EURO–NOL’s strategy, largely at his suggestion, was succeeding. None of their competitors had an inkling of what they were planning or how close they were to their goal. Still, they were a long time from launching and could easily lose this race. It all depended on American hubris.

He snicked his teeth with a splinter of wood while studying the files on his proposed crew and their understudies, each carefully evaluated and selected by Christain personally. He would be meeting with them all soon, the first time they’d be together, but now he was meeting with the head engineer, Walter Thiel, a German, and the Dutch captain Ole Christensen Rømer.

The walls of his office were filled with a surprising amount of bric-a-brac, considering the expense of shipping them here. There were his awards and diplomas, photos, and paintings of him with various politicians and pop stars. And they were all in heavy frames. The walls were made of wood—very thin wood—but real wood. The carpet was lush and ornate, and the window had blinds he could close whenever he tired of watching the Earth meandering about his sky.

His intercom buzzed.

“Mr. Thiel is here.”

“Send him in.”

Walter Thiel was a thin, angular man, his thinning hair plastered straight back. Dead skin would have peppered his shoulders if the environmental manager allowed it, of that Christain was certain. Of course his looks didn’t matter but his competence did. He had been recruited from Forschungszentrum Jülich—the Jülich Research Centre.

“I hope you have gotten comfortably settled in.”

“Yes, of course, thank you.”

“How is progress on the powerplant?”

“No problems with that. The technology is very well known. The problem is keeping the tests secret.”

“As long as we can stay on schedule.”

“If that’s the case then what am I doing here?” he answered testily.

Monelly looked at him closely. His tests had shown that Thiel was high strung, but malleable. He’d be leaving behind an estranged wife and two children but by all accounts everyone would be the happier for it. He was a man looking for direction and Monelly was the person to give it to him.

“We have to prepare for the journey itself, Walter. I want the crew to start training together.”

“Is that necessary?”

“We’re going to be together a long time.”

“Then we’ll have plenty of time to get to know each other.”

Monelly laughed. “You’ll be back to work soon enough, Walter, I’ll see to it. For this week, though, relax, get to know your crewmates. We can lay out your training schedule and maybe share a few drinks in the meantime.”

Thiel sighed resignedly. “Of course, Dr. Monelly.”

“Christain.”

Watching him leave Monelly reflected that all the old boy really needed to cheer him up was to get laid regularly. He was pinning his hopes for that on Fraulein Katerina Egge, who liked the brainy but dumb type. The kind she could push around. Christain’s psychological testing, not to mention his personal experience with her, had indicated that the two could be a very good match, but of course with the human heart nothing was a sure thing. He shrugged. At times he felt like he was running a very expensive dating service.

Captain Rømer proved to be much more affable. The “Flying Dutchman,” as the press insisted on calling him, was renowned for his calm demeanor and cold deliberation. A former test pilot, he had been the head astronaut for the European Space Agency before the split with France and Britain, and the first person to ride the German booster, Hringhorni, into orbit. He had carried EURO–NOL’s flag to the Moon.

Christain met him in the onion shaped module along the north axis of the space station, attached to the framework that surrounded the station like an oversized Faraday shield. It did not spin along with the rest of the station and so was without pseudogravity.

They shook hands. Rømer was a short man, solidly built, square-shaped, seemingly as wide as he was tall.

“It’s good to see you, Captain.”

“My pleasure, Dr. Monelly. I’m looking forward to seeing my crew.”

“They should be along shortly but first I wanted to have a little talk with you.”

“About what?”

“The chain of command.”

Rømer regarded him warily. “Yes?”

“I want us to be clear on this. You command the ship, obviously. I command the mission.”

The Captain grinned. “Christain,” he chided. “How long have we known each other?”

“Officially, I’m an advisor. I have no power whatsoever.”

“Um hmm. And if I told you to go fuck yourself how long would it be before I was back on Earth?”

“Monelly smiled. “How long would it take you to walk?”

Rømer nodded. “You tell me what to cook, Christain, and then stay the hell out of the kitchen.”

“Good, I knew you’d understand.”

“Or I never would have been chosen in the first place.”

The door to the airlock opened and the first member of the crew arrived, the Belgian, ecologic specialist, Geo Lemaître. Walter Thiel soon followed bringing along the rest of his engineering crew, Antonia Carubia from the Czech Republic, and Monelly’s fellow Italian Emily Romagna, the IT specialist. Dr. Katerina Egge arrived next, promptly sneering at the sight of Thiel, who had a splash of lasagna on his shirtfront. He stared back at her, intrigued. The cook, Kirin Wahmke, and pilots Hermann Gromek and Venetia Katherine Phair, all German, arrived together. Last to arrive was the Icelander, security specialist Arne Sak. He coldly surveyed the room.

“I’m so happy we could finally get together,” Monelly said after they had quieted down. “We are about to embark on one of the greatest adventures in the history of humankind. Compared to us Armstrong and Aldrin did take a very small step for mankind. Columbus sailed across a mud puddle. Marco Polo visited his next door neighbor and Magellan took a stroll around the block. It takes light four hours to travel where we’re going. No one will be close by to rescue us if we fail. Our enemies will be nearby. We must be closer than friends, closer than colleagues, closer than family, closer than shipmates have ever been. We can have no conflict, no jealousy, no anger, no strife.” He looked around the room, deliberately meeting each and every eye.

“I’ll be watching you very closely this week. Not as a big brother, or a policeman, or priest, but as a therapist so that we can anticipate trouble before it becomes a problem. Make changes. Keep everyone, if not satisfied, then at least understanding. I’m depending on your help, your cooperation, and your honesty—with me and with each other.

“We will be the first to claim Charon for our nations and unravel its secret. I have no doubt the history of the next thousand years depends on us. We are truly harbingers of a new era, when our peoples, too long restrained by the jealousy and hatred of other, lesser races, will once again take our rightful place at the head of civilization.”

With that he opened the champagne, squeezing drinks into a bulb for each as they toasted one another.

Later, back in his office, he sat sharing a cognac with Arne Sak.

“Nice speech, boss. Do you think anyone bought it?”

Monelly shrugged, unconcerned. “What have you found out?”

“Nothing that’s not in my report. The Allies . . .”

Monelly snorted. “Are they really calling themselves that?”

“I’m afraid so. I don’t know who in the hell they think they are. World War Two was a long time ago.”

“As propaganda it’s useful.”

“If you say so.”

“What else?”

“The Americans are getting nervous thanks to our Slav-Jap-Frog pals but as long as they plan to slingshot around Venus first they’re on a schedule we can beat.”

“What about the Russians?”

“I wouldn’t worry about them. That piece of shit they’re constructing will probably fall apart halfway there.”

“How about the efforts at sabotage?”

“We’re stirring the pot, backing as many groups as will take our money, but they’re mostly amateurs and about as likely to strike at us as any of the others.”

“The Chinese?”

Sak grunted with frustration. “We know they’re sending nuclear material to the Moon. They’re definitely up to something but we don’t have a chance in hell of finding out what that is.”

“Do you have an estimate?”

“Assume that it’s going to be very close.”

“All right, Arne. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Once he’d left Christain opened his window’s blinds and contemplated the blue globe drifting there.
. .