“You want to get to the Moon that bad?”
“I want to be at the frontier. I want to go places where no one’s been before.”
With a solemn nod, Brennart admitted, “I know the feeling.”
“If I approve your planned expedition,” Joanna asked, “will you take Doug with you?”
“If I say no, will you still approve the expedition?”
She looked into those ice-blue eyes, then said, “I might approve it more easily if you say no.”
“I mean it, Mom,” Doug said. I’ll go to Yamagata.”
Brennart smiled again. “I like his spirit. Reminds me of his father.”
“If I approve,” Joanna cut off any reminiscences, “I want Doug under your direct supervision. I want you to keep your eyes on him every moment. Both eyes, Foster.”
Brennart hesitated a moment, as if marshalling his thoughts. “We’ll have to find some useful task for him. There’ll be no room on the expedition for anyone who can’t pull his own weight.”
“I can be the legal recorder,” said Doug. “You don’t have anyone in your group who’s responsible for recording the corporation’s legal claim to the polar region. I can do that for you.”
Brennart rubbed his chin. “We were going to take turns recording everything with vidcams, but I suppose it makes some sense to have somebody assigned that responsibility specifically.”
Joanna said nothing, but she realized that Doug had thought all this out very carefully.
Grinning, Brennart asked, “You’ve really put in time in lunar simulators? You’re certified for tractor operation? And hoppers?”
“Nearly fifty hours!” said Doug.
With a shrug, Brennart said, “I’ve got no objections to your coming with us.”
“Then I can go?”
Joanna sank back in her chair and closed her eyes briefly. “Yes,” she said reluctantly, “you can go.”
But she sat up straight again and levelled a finger at Brennart. “He’s your responsibility, Foster. I don’t want him out of your sight.”
Brennart nodded easily. I’ll treat him as if he was my own son.”
“Don’t worry, Mom,” said Doug, almost dancing with excitement. I’ll be fine. What can happen to me?”
Joanna stared at Doug, grinning from ear to ear. Just like his father. Who died on the Moon.
MOONBASE
“I hate his guts,” said Jack Killifer.
“Who? Brennart?”
“Naw. Little Douggie.”
“Doug Stavenger?”
“That’s right,” Killifer said sourly. “Mama’s boy.”
“How can you hate him? You haven’t even seen him yet He’s not due to arrive until—”
“I don’t have to see him,” Killifer snapped. “The little pissant’s already screwed me over.”
Killifer and Roger Deems were sitting in Moonbase’s galley, a cavern large enough to hold the entire regular staff of fifty, plus a dozen or so visitors. At the moment, in the middle of a work morning, they were the only two people seated at the tables. A few others drifted in now and then, made their way down the line of automated dispensing machines, then headed back to their offices or workplaces.
Known to the regular Lunatics as The Cave, the galley had been carved out of the rock of Alphonsus’s ringwall mountains by the same plasma-torch crews who had dug the tunnels that now served as living quarters, laboratories, offices and workshops for Moonbase.
They had left The Cave’s ceiling rough-hewn, unpolished rock: hence its name. The walls were smooth, though, and the floor was planted with the toughest species of grasses that could be found on Earth. Twelve square plots of grass, forbidden to step upon, tended constantly and lovingly by the agro team, formed a green counterpoint to the tables and chair scattered across The Cave’s floor.
Full-spectrum lamps spanned the rock ceiling, keeping The Cave as bright as noontime on an Iowa summer day. The Lunatics joked that you could tell how much time a person spent in The Cave by how tanned he or she was. Ceiling, walls, and the smooth rock walkways and floor beneath the tables were all sprayed with clear airtight plastic.
“Why’re you pissed with the kid?” asked Roger Deems.
He was sitting across the small table from Killifer. Both men had mugs of what was supposed to be vitamin-enriched fruit juice before them. Both had laced their drinks liberally with ’rocket juice’ from Moonbase’s illicit travelling still.
The two men were a study in contrasts. Killifer was lean, lantern-jawed, his face hard and flinty. His light brown hair was shaved down almost to his scalp. His eyes were deepset, piercing, suspicious. Deems was large, round, plump, his dark locks curling down to his shoulders, his soft brown eyes wide.
He always seemed startled, like a deer caught in a car’s headlights.
Killifer took a long sip from his mug, then placed it down I on the table. I’m supposed to be second-in-command on this expedition, right?”
“Right.”
“Yeah, but Brennart’s put this snotnosed Douglas Stavenger in ahead of me.”
“But Douggie’s only aboard as an observer,” Deems protested. “And Brennart had to bring him in. Orders from Savannah!”
“Yeah, I know. Orders from Mama. She’s the real pain in my ass.”
“She’s the boss.”
“Damned bitch.”
Deems tried to make light of his companion’s mood. “Hey, you don’t know her well enough to call her names like that.”
“I know her,” Killifer muttered. “How d’you think I came up here to the Moon in the first place?”
Deems blinked uncertainly.
“She sent me. Fuckin’ exiled me. Five years I had to spend up here before she’d let me come back. Just because I tried to help her son.”
Now Deems was very confused. “Tried to help Douggie?”
“His half-brother. Greg.” With great disgust Killifer explained, “It was eighteen years ago. I was working for the San Jose division then, not much more than a kid myself. Greg Masterson — his father was the bitch’s first husband — he asked me for a favor.”
“What kind of a favor?”
Killifer shrugged his bony shoulders. “He wanted a sample of nanomachines. He was a big mucky-muck with the corporation, the president’s son, for chrissakes. So I gave him a sample like he asked for and it turned out bad, her new husband got killed up here. And I got blamed for it.”
“I didn’t know,” Deems said, awe in his voice.
“She said I could work on the Moon until she was ready to let me come back or she’d fire me and sic the police on me. I was too scared to realize that she couldn’t rat me out without turning in Greg, too. So I spent five years digging tunnels.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. By the time she was willing to let me come back Earthside I was so adapted to one-sixth gee I had to spend another six months doing special exercises to build up my muscles and bones. My heart, too.”
“But you made it back okay?”
“Yeah. Except the everything I had on Earth was gone by then. My girl had married somebody else. My parents died within a couple of years. My career in nanotech — forget it!” Killifer snapped his fingers. “Nanotech was dead in the States and everywhere else except a few universities. And you don’t lose five years in a field like that and then boogie back in get a university slot. I came back here. Been a Lunatic ever since, a rock jock.”
“No wonder you’re pissed.”
Killifer leaned across the little table menacingly. “I don’t want you telling anybody else about this, understand? Not a word.”
“Okay, okay.” Deems backed away slightly. Smoothing the front of his wrinkled jumpsuit, he said, “But it seems a shame to take it out on little Douggie.”
“Who cares? He’s his mother’s son.”
“Still…”
.’She’sthe one who forced Brennart to take the kid along. Stuck him on top of me.”
“He’s not on top of you. He’s just an observer. On the org chart—”
“He’s a snoop from Mama in Savannah,” Killifer growled. “Little bastard’s only eighteen years old and they put him in ahead of me.”