Déjà Doomed Read online

  Every day, or so it seemed, Marcus considered advising NASA to suspend further construction until all that carbon arrived—and he never did. There was no point in telling the administrator her pet project should go on hiatus, because her boss would never accept that. It wasn’t that the president gave a damn about radio astronomy, but—

  Red strobing resumed.

  It was neither the time nor the place for woolgathering. “Suit. Headlamps on.” Marcus spotted, lying on the deck of the crane basket, a length of the fiber-optic cable he had somehow pulled loose from his helmet. The cable’s other end looked snug in its socket in the basket’s control panel; that connection felt snug, too, when he gave the plug a gentle tug.

  Bending and stretching for the errant cable plug was a struggle. Any movement in a (despite the name, not really) “soft” pressure suit was like that: a battle against layer upon layer of stiff, often bulky, fabric and internal gas pressure. In a lightweight, counterpressure suit—in essence, a skintight, elastic body stocking—he would have been so much more comfortable and productive. In a CP suit, only your helmet was pressurized. CP suits were common enough for many routine surface excursions. And they were more than adequate for shipboard use, worn against the off chance of a micrometeoroid cabin puncture. Alas, those thin, single-layer suits were less than forgiving around sharp rocks and heavy machinery ….

  With a wistful sigh, he jacked back into his helmet, and the priority-alert icon popped up on his heads-up display (HUD).

  “… Calling Marcus. Come in, Marcus. Daedalus Base calling Marcus—”

  “Not to worry,” Marcus interrupted Brad Morton’s familiar, rasping voice. “A plug came loose, is all.”

  “You okay, Boss?”

  “Me? I’m fine,” Marcus said. “The pedestal? Not so much. We’ve got way too many microfractures. I need you to shuffle schedules and get a structural engineer out here ASAP. We need to know if our problem is a bad batch of struts or something more fundamental. But why are you still at the desk? Shouldn’t Francine be on duty this shift?”

  “Will do, Boss, and you’re right. She’s under the weather, though. Maybe something she ate. I told her I’d stay on.”

  “Too bad. About Francine, I mean. Thanks for stepping up.”

  “De nada.” Brad cleared his throat. “Boss, are we expecting a rush delivery today from Aitken?”

  Aitken Basin colony, in eternal shadow near the south pole, was the main lunar settlement: an international commercial and research hub and the home at any given time to a hundred or more people. While the observatory produced its own steel and concrete items—schlepping such cargo a quarter of the way around the Moon made no sense—their electronics came from the silicon foundries at Aitken. Not to mention that the lion’s share of their oh-two and water came from Aitken’s ice mines.

  Marcus considered. “A shipment to be flown in today? I don’t remember any, and I assume you’re not noticing one on the big board.” On the wall within arm’s length of the duty officer’s workstation. “Why do you ask?”

  “Alert flash just came in. We’ve got a shuttle inbound.”

  “Huh.” Marcus pondered for a while. “Unless I’m mistaken, there isn’t a bird”—comsat—“in line of sight of us.”

  But perhaps he was mistaken. The ground terminal’s optical telescopes were tracking something.

  “It was a direct ship-to-ground downlink beam. ETA, about half an hour. They said they’re couriering in a replacement low-noise amplifier, plus a spare.” Brad again cleared his throat. “Larry”—the astronomer on shift—“knows nothing about us needing a new amp.”

  “No one’s asked me to authorize any rush shipments. Anything else aboard this shuttle?”

  “Six pallets already prepped from our next scheduled grocery order, given that flying all this way with an empty hold would’ve been dumb.”

  “Right.” This just got better and better. The unplanned delivery meant he had no one scheduled to offload. “Brad? Find me a couple volunteers to unload. Given that this is last minute, I’ll authorize overtime. Oh, and for you, too, covering for Francine. Anything else?”

  “As it happens, yes. This rush order is addressed to you.”

  Huh? “I don’t suppose you happened to ask who sent me this shipment.”

  “Momma Morton didn’t raise any slow-witted children. Yes, I asked. John Urban Jr., which meant nothing to me. Of course, it’s not like I follow who’s rotating in and out of Aitken.”

  “Yeah, me either.” Still, the name sounded familiar. John Urban? An actor in the first Star Trek reboot? No, that was Karl Urban. “Once I wrap up out here, I’ll track down who ordered the amp and how and why.” And unless there were a damned good reason for this expedited shipment, the courier fee and the overtime pay would come out of someone’s salary.

  “About you wrapping up,” Brad said. “The shuttle pilot said you, personally, have to take delivery of the package.”

  “That’s strange.”

  “No stranger than a name like a pope.” Brad laughed. “This might be a synapse misfiring, but I kind of half-remember that Pope Urban II called the Crusades.”

  The penny dropped.

  It had been years, but Marcus had once known a man named Tyler Pope. It was worrisome enough that the since-retired CIA agent was making clandestine contact. But while Tyler might have picked any pontiff’s name, he had chosen one who suggested crusades.

  A chill ran down Marcus’s spine. His last encounter with Pope had almost gotten him killed. Striving to sound casual, Marcus said, “Let the pilot know I’ll come by for the package. We’ll get this all sorted out later.”

  * * *

  If Marcus wasn’t imagining things, if this unexpected shuttle flight did involve the CIA, then he should not draw attention to it. So, for awhile, he watched the big robots assembling segments of the immense antenna dish.

  Then he loitered, exchanging pleasantries with two long-haul drivers from Aitken doing maintenance on their tanker trucks. Paul Sokolov was a flaming extrovert, born and raised in Brooklyn. From his teamster days on Earth, back before trucks drove themselves, he had an encyclopedic knowledge of restaurants, biker bars, and strip clubs across America. Marcus found being around Sokolov exhausting, but letting the man prattle on was an easy way to kill time. Tony Tremonti, the second driver, was taciturn under the best of circumstances—as being around Sokolov seldom was. Tony’s full attention was on servicing his rig’s ginormous fuel cells for the next leg of their trip. Apart from a few muttered curses, he had nothing to say. After one of the base’s cargo vans trundled past Marcus on its way to the landing strip, after the runway lights began strobing, he excused himself. He loped onto the tarmac within minutes of the shuttle setting down.

  When the shuttle’s airlock completed its cycle, he found in the pantry-sized cockpit one of the regular pilots from Aitken. Wanda Samad was likewise petite, with flowing black hair, dark and flashing eyes, and delicate, very pretty features. The low, acrylic canopy that kept him hunched over was no obstacle for her; she was on her feet, standing tall, her arms flung back, pivoting at the waist and stretching. Her skintight red counterpressure suit was, well, skintight. He hadn’t seen Valerie, except over comms, for two months. Two long months. And never mind the twinge of guilt over it, there was no way for him not to notice Wanda.

  “Any time now,” she said.

  He popped his helmet, setting it on a shelf beside hers. “How’s life in the big city?”

  “A never-ending social whirl. How’s life in the desert?”

  “Deserted.” Was that enough chitchat to not seem anxious? “You have some kind of package for me?”

  “Yeah.” She rooted around in a small locker, coming up with a many-times-folded datasheet. Its sensor pad was centered in the hanky-sized bit that was folded out. Some kind of delivery-log app was open. “If you’ll d
o the honors.”

  “Oh, come on. You know who I am.”

  “Uh-huh. And I also know you’re supposed to sign for your package.”

  He wriggled partway out of his pressure suit to press a thumb against the datasheet’s sensor pad. “Marcus Judson,” he called out to the voice-recognition software.

  The datasheet blatted.

  “A little uptight, are we?” she kidded. “Try again.”

  He had managed to flunk voice-stress analysis. Relax! he ordered himself. “Marcus Judson.” This time, the app offered a melodious chime.

  “Kudos,” she said. “Got your name right in a mere two tries.”

  His package, once she retrieved it from another locker, was underwhelming: a shrink-wrapped cardboard carton, perhaps a quarter meter on its longest edge. Even by lunar standards, it did not weigh much. As he swapped it from hand to hand, something moved inside. He could just sense the shift in the box’s center of gravity. This might indeed be electronics swaddled in Bubble Wrap. If it turned out to be an unauthorized parts shipment, someone back at the base had serious explaining to do. Except he didn’t believe that.

  He knew one thing: whatever this box contained, Tyler Pope hadn’t brought it. After a heart attack, you did not get cleared for space travel. Someone other than Tyler had couriered this package from Earth, or someone at Aitken had prepared the box.

  So,” Marcus asked. “Who is John Urban?”

  She shrugged. “A name on a package label.”

  “Is he new to Aitken?”

  “Hello? A name on a label. I got to work and your box was waiting.”

  Beyond the cockpit canopy Marcus saw the van pull away. No sooner had it driven off the mooncrete landing pad than its wire-mesh tires grew towering rooster tails of powdery lunar regolith. Through his feet came the faint vibration from motors shutting the cargo hold’s clamshell doors.

  He tried again. “Aitken is a small community. You must know something about him.”

  It occurred to Marcus that perhaps there was no him. “Bush pilot” would be an ideal cover for a CIA agent on the Moon.

  She said, “You can only squeeze so much blood from a turnip.”

  “What?”

  “Blood. Turnip. Think about it. Now what say you zip up and go home? My cargo is gone and the meter is still running.”

  Marcus suited back up and left.

  Chapter 3

  The resource the Moon offered above all others was room. Everyone at Daedalus Base—resident and guest alike—had spacious accommodations, because: why not? The mole could tunnel almost a meter an hour, and the more they dug, the more cosmic-ray-absorbing rubble they accumulated to heap over the base.

  In the company only of his still-unopened package, Marcus found his capacious private quarters more forlorn than luxurious.

  He stared at the box. It stared back. Shrink-wrap. Cardboard. The shipping label addressed to him. With a sigh and a Swiss Army knife, he slit open the box. Apart from Bubble Wrap, the box offered: two standard 4260BJ amplifiers—according to base inventory, five just like these sat in the main stockroom—and a much-folded, somewhat scuffed HP/Dell datasheet, of a model older than the Hitachi unit in his pocket.

  The packing slip claimed he had ordered the amps, and it made no mention of any datasheet. The computer might have dropped into the box out of someone’s shirt pocket. Or it could have been meant to appear that way, just in case the box fell into the wrong hands.

  “What the hell?” he muttered.

  “I do not understand your question,” Icarus said, the voice emanating from a ceiling speaker.

  “I was talking to myself,” Marcus said. “Icarus, I’m not good company at the moment. Begin privacy mode, please.”

  “Privacy mode begins now,” the base AI confirmed.

  And ends, how? For the first time, it penetrated that at some level Icarus was always monitoring. Otherwise, the AI wouldn’t know when its attention was once more requested. But if it was always listening, at least, in private quarters, it did not have eyes.

  Tyler Pope was making him crazy! Unless Tyler had had nothing to do with the package and John Urban was only a clerk somewhere. Unless Marcus himself had ordered this gear, and expedited it, and then forgotten.

  He told himself forty-five was far too young to be having senior moments.

  He stared at his walls. They stared back. They were covered in the same rock-pore sealant paint that was found throughout the base: the shade of yellow that NASA psychologists deemed cheerful and everyone else found bilious.

  He set his everyday datasheet, its webcam folded inside, on his desk. To mask whatever else he might mutter, he started that datasheet playing the New World Symphony.

  Now what, Tyler, are you trying to tell me?

  Both amps looked ordinary. He guessed they were ordinary, and they and the incomplete packing slip were mere props to explain his package’s rushed—and unavoidably public—delivery. Leaving the undocumented datasheet ….

  Unfolded, it covered most of the desk. Apart from the product logo, webcam lens, charging port, mic, an archaic earbud port, and biometric pad, the mysterious datasheet, like any powered-down datasheet, could have been torn off a roll of butcher paper. The other side, when he flipped over the datasheet, was featureless.

  He flipped the datasheet again, put on earbuds (wireless—he wasn’t a caveman), and thumbed the sensor pad. The pad glowed blue and he waited for the datasheet to boot. Instead, after a few seconds, the pad faded. The datasheet was charged but locked.

  He thumbed the sensor pad again, this time speaking, “Marcus Judson.” Nada.

  He tried with his other thumb. No good. One by one, he tried his fingers. No good. The loud music, he guessed, and tapped pause. It would not matter if Icarus (or someone else accessing the room sensors—surely an absurd scenario) overheard him speaking his own name.

  No good.

  Still stressed-out, Marcus concluded. Surprises from a CIA spook will do that. He took several deep, cleansing breaths and tried yet again.

  No good.

  If only he could talk with Tyler about … whatever this was. Or with Wanda Samad, not that she had as much as hinted at being anything other than a courier. Or that he could brainstorm about the puzzle with any of the dozen geniuses on staff at Daedalus. Or with Valerie, because his wife was sharper than the lot of them.

  Val should have been joining him here soon, and rightly so: what she didn’t know about radio astronomy had yet to be invented. After what had seemed endless planning, they—and NASA, and the NSF—had had everything worked out. Simon’s school let out in a few days. He would spend two weeks of the summer at sailing camp and another two weeks at computer camp. Before, between, and after camp sessions, Val’s parents had signed up to spoiling the boy rotten. Val had NASA’s blessing to work on Farside for two months, an NSF grant to cover her travel, and her flight reservations.

  Only all that had gone out the window—and in the greater scheme of things, Marcus could not have been happier about it—when, on his latest “shore” leave, they had gotten pregnant. They hadn’t even known till he had been back on the Moon for weeks.

  No one had any idea what gestation in one-sixth gee might do to a developing human fetus, and no one intended to be the test case. Which had Marcus, beyond missing Val every day, AWOL from doctor appointments, and from awwing at the tiny outfits she continued to buy, and midnight Dairy Queen runs, and converting the guestroom into a nursery, and, well, all the things an expecting dad should be around to do. And it also left him without even the prospect of anyone to talk out this mystery with, unless ….

  Hmm. Just maybe, Wanda had spoken about the package: blood from a turnip. Blood. DNA? If so, saliva should do. He licked his thumb and again tried the sensor pad.

  This time, the datasheet booted.

  Its
desktop icons were all for mundane apps and games. One by one he tapped them anyway, testing the theory that one might disguise something interesting. None did. Delving deeper, he found the solid-state disk stored multitudes of files in a myriad of folders. Somewhere among them might be something to explain everything, but in a quick sampling not a single folder or file name stood out. He had in his possession, as best a quick inspection could disclose, an everyday datasheet—only everyday datasheets did not come with disguised real-time DNA readers, much less come primed to recognize his DNA.

  He waited for something to happen. Nothing did.

  Nor did anything make sense until, for no special reason, using his everyday datasheet, he checked his mail. There, under the subject line Bob, Marcus read, I should never let you leave home without one of these. 1600. Alice.

  Icarus confirmed a laser-based comsat would be overhead at 16:00, 4:00 pm, one in a daisy chain of comsats that, extending to Nearside, would permit a real-time link with Earth. Marcus cleared his afternoon schedule, claiming a splitting headache, pulling rank to keep the base paramedic at bay.

  Alone and in his quarters, 16:00 hours came and went without contact.

  He fretted. He paced. Larry the astronomer came by of his own initiative with a covered meal tray, and for a while Marcus picked at a burger and fries. He paced some more. He went back to the enigmatic datasheet, poking about for any clue he might have missed, for any names he might have been expected to contact. Nada. Zip. Nil. He fidgeted. He paced. Almost, he took a lap around the square, eighty-meters-on-a-side tunnel that was Main Street, but the puzzlement doubtless plain on his face could only raise alarms he did not want raised and bring questions he could not begin to answer.