“Getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to you,” I said. “Just think, you wouldn’t be with us if you hadn’t gotten canned. Instead, of riding in a flying junk yard, you’d be sitting at home enjoying yourself.”
“Not being in an itchy, sweat-filled suit wouldn’t be without its finer points,” Nikki said. “But I’m glad I’m here with—”
At that point, the computer failed and we dropped like a rock.
It was only a few moments before the second computer kicked in but I think we all thought we’d had it. Our downward drop was checked with what felt like a quick kick in the seat of the pants. Bots jostled and pushed against us and felt as if they were just this side of crushing us.
I fought to control my bladder, quit screaming in terror, and calmly yelled, “What the hell happened?”
“Computer failed.” Nikki fiddled a moment with the computer that was now off-line.
“Luckily the backup worked. Program’s gone. Must have got hit by a gamma ray.”
I checked my wrist radiation display to be sure I wasn’t being fried like the computer program had been. Still a healthy green. “Jake, you OK?” I asked.
“Banged my nose. Otherwise all right.”
“I’m going to transfer the program back from computer two to one so we’ll have a backup in case that happens again,” Nikki said.
“Is that safe to do?” I asked. “What if—”
“Hold on,” Nikki said.
I gritted my teeth and got ready to take over.
“There,” she said.
“That was kind of a letdown, no sparks, explosions, or falling from the sky,” I said.
“Keep up the letdowns,” Jake said.
“What caused the computer failure? Gamma ray?” I asked.
“Probably. It doesn’t happen often with the new memories but can—rarely—take place. Or the computer might have a more serious problem. I’m having it check itself out now… And… No problems. Must have been a stray gamma ray.”
I eyed a sharp, jagged peak below us and had no trouble imagining my frail body impaled on it.
We reached our base without further mishap. We were all worn out so we called it a day and left the van to be unloaded the next day.
The next month proved very eventful in that we got the bots organized and succeeded in getting both the mine and hydroponics dome operational. We even managed to assemble the base’s solar furnace without crisping any of us.
After Jake had created wire-drawing dies, we soon had bots making wire and armature-wrapping programs for the gophers. Shortly after that, we had several large generators ready and waiting to give us all the power we could possibly need—once we got the new rods manufactured to power the generators.
The tough part was making those first rods since we were short of power. We spent a lot of time during the long lunar nights using minimal power, trying to conserve. But once we’d gotten those first rods made and mounted to the generators, things got pretty easy. Soon the bots were programmed to continue mining, smelting, and making rods. Ah, the joys of automation.
Three months after we’d reached the Moon, we had a huge stockpile of rods and were ready to return to Earth with the second step of our plan: To let people know that energy could now be virtually free, and also to convince the Earth government to abandon old forms of power generation. The first would be easy. Everyone likes the word “Free.” The second part was going to be tricky since someone—maybe even everyone in power—was already out to keep my discovery a secret. But perhaps naively, we figured that we would offer an ultimatum: Integrate the rods into society or we would release the technology covertly in such a way as to topple the corporations controlling the government.
Though things went well on a mechanical level during those three months, the same couldn’t be said about things on a personal level. Though none of us admitted it aloud, I think we were all anxious to get back to Earth. An automated plant isn’t too exciting once it starts going and the Moon, while it has the desolate beauty of a desert, doesn’t have the color, warmth, or safety of Earth.
And I was depressed. Nikki was not unfriendly to me; just not overly friendly. Two men with one well-built woman in a small confined area just doesn’t work out to a balanced equation.
Another month and I suspect Jake and I would have been at each other’s throats. Or maybe Nikki would simply have shot us both to put us out of her misery.
It was time to return to Earth.
Chapter 15
It was a little disconcerting to depart what had become our Copernicus Base with only the bots left in charge; more and more I was beginning to identify with the sorcerer’s apprentice. I could imagine coming back to discover that the whole moon had been converted into gravity rods. But there was no other way; the bots had to be left to their own devices since a huge inventory of rods would be needed for projects we’d been planning for the near future.
Nevertheless, it seemed that more and more my future seemed to hang in the balance of how well these simple machines performed.
We took a few precautions to make sure that we weren’t discovered: We disabled the homing beacon for our base and Jake painted some very realistic looking biological hazard signs which he mounted all over the outside of the base’s domes. It would take a very brave group of people to enter the base if an expedition should arrive from Earth.
We had “air lifted” all of the rovers from the Eratothenes Base by welding gravity rods to them, converting them so they supplied their own power much as my van did. We converted one of the wheeled versions of the rovers further so that we could load it up with odds and ends and take it back to Earth with us. Strangely enough, the hard part wasn’t getting the rover into flying form but rather getting it set up to travel on Earth roads once we got back to terra firma; since the rover had wheels, we hoped to tow it behind the van without raising too much interest. The rover was a lot of work but enabled us to carry a huge number of extra rods back to Earth as well as the stuff we’d be needing for the next steps to get the anti-grav technology released to Earth.
Our “Plan A” was a little simplistic and would require us to improvise a lot along the way.
We hoped to confront whoever was trying to kill us and bargain to release the secret of the rods in exchange for our secrecy about their trying to silence us. In the shuffle, we hoped to bargain for the possession of our Moon base (though we were going to keep it a secret unless we really thought things were going our way).
Obviously, this would take some fast talking and maybe even the threat of releasing the secret of anti-gravity covertly which would—with any luck at all—wreck the world economy in the process.
Which was Plan B: Release the secret of the rods covertly and probably wreck the order of things. Your basic anarchist, teenager style rebellion against authority.
(While the secret of the anti-grav technology could have made us rich, we figured that if we could continue with our automated mining/rod manufacturing operation on the Moon for a while, money wouldn’t be a problem for us anyway.)
While Plan A was a little optimistic perhaps, it would be simpler to do than to try to release the technology as in Plan B. And we knew that Plan B could and most likely would create a major social upheaval that might cause a lot of harm as well as good. And at best it would take forever and a day to carry out successfully without getting us all killed. But if plan A failed, plan B seemed our only alternative.
Either way, we knew it was going to be tough. You don’t just walk up to someone that’s trying to fill you full of holes and say, “Before you pull the trigger, I’d like to have a few words with your boss.”