Transmat World: Chapter 10, Episode 3
Between the Earth and Moon; Wednesday, October 6, 2145 A.D.
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“It’s theoretically possible, but even if I could risk the ship I can’t risk the crew,” said Chuck.
“It’s okay. Rousseau, if worse comes to worse, will there be any way to find you’re … uh … your — “
“CPU/memory chip?”
“Yes,” says Enrique.
“It will be nestled into the remains of my poor little crumpled grasshopper body.”
“You’re making this worse for me than it already is,” said Enrique and paused. “Which means you’re back to your old self. Which means you’ve figured a way out of this, haven’t you?”
“You do me a disservice, Enrique Ramirez, but yes, the chances of my survival have increased dramatically. There is a small amount of aqua regia, a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acid, currently fulminating in my thrust chamber. Fortunately, my thrust tube is titanium, and the inside lining of the Transmat is titanium glass. Both are resistant to the effects of aqua regia, so they should hold up while the acid eats away at the epoxy resin,” said Rousseau.
“Well, you were right, Chuck. That hedbot is too cantankerous to die.”
“I can hear you,” said Rousseau.
“I know,” said Enrique.
Enrique checked on Rousseau every five minutes. It had been twenty-five minutes since the hedbot fell from Enrique’s suit. He rotated his thrusters and burped a few times to counteract the spin created by the leg leak. He wasn’t nearly as efficient as Rousseau.
“We have a radar lock on the hedbot, Enrique,” said Chuck. “Rousseau, we can just make you out. Your altitude and velocity don’t look good. You better shake some booty and get that plug of plastic out of your ass and squirt some gas.”
“Your language is quite colorful, Mr. Barnworth. The acid is beginning to break through on the periphery of the plug. I am warming the walls of my thrust chamber to enhance the effects of the solution. The epoxy must break free when I begin thrust. There will be no time to mix another batch of aqua regia.”
“Make that first blast good and strong,” said Enrique.
“I am preparing to do that now. Beginning thrust application with compressed carbon dioxide. The aqua regia is spewing out, the plug is sliding … sliding … bingo, I have an open thrust tube, and I am applying full thrust. Vision in one eye is getting blurry. I am searching my Transmat database for a higher pressure thrust media. I am switching to steam.”
“We can see the steam plume on radar,” said Chuck.
“Give it all you got, Rousseau,” said Enrique.
“I am pulling a lot of g’s … deceleration taking longer than first calculated … losing tactile sensation in several digits … I see a couple of small craters — ”
Communication with Rousseau stopped. He had not just quit talking. His signal was gone.
There was silence for a minute. Enrique was stunned and shocked and angry. Stunned by the turn of events, shocked at the emotional turmoil created by what amounted to a talking mechanical insect, and angry at himself because he didn’t warn Rousseau about the impending change in deceleration. He felt a tear well up on his eyeball that just hung around there in zero gee. The gloved finger poking his helmet face plate was no help whatsoever.
“The steam plume has dissipated. I’m sorry, Enrique,” said Chuck. His crew was quiet. “We have Lunar Positioning System coordinates of the little fella’s estimated … surface contact point. We have a team to launch a search party from Alpha.”
Enrique managed a phlegm-distorted “Thanks, Chuck, but I don’t think I can afford that.”
“Don’t worry about it. My boss is footing the bill. When you get to Alpha Base, you are instructed to set down at the center of the big circle.”
Enrique absorbed this odd piece of information and taciturnly continued his flight. He knew there was no big circle on the landing area at Alpha Base. You can’t see most of the base because it was buried in regolith for radiation protection. The landing area was in front of ramps leading down to main air locks the size of large hangar doors, which was what they were. The landing area was simply an apron of cleared and leveled basaltic lava, the interstices filled with moon dust.
The base sat directly on the southern pole. Chosen for its absence of crater walls and rills to the north that would block the sun’s rays, the site was also close to one of the deepest craters on the moon near the pole. The bottom of that crater was full of ice, the oldest known ice in the solar system.
A massive solar panel array jutted 200 yards above the moon’s surface and rotated with the moon’s orbit around the earth to always face the sun. Power from the array melted crater ice and turned it into water, hydrogen, and oxygen for Alpha Base. The solar array dwarfed the ten-story Lunar Hotel pyramid with its five-acre Zen rock garden. The base paid for itself many times over by harvesting helium 3 and sending it back to Earth via Transmat to use in nuclear power plants.
Enrique paid close attention to the virtual instruments on his head-up helmet display. It kept his mind off Rousseau and the cold spot on his leg. Alpha Base should be coming up on the horizon soon. Chuck and the crew of Lunacy One now cruised miles above him and had a visual on the base.
“Chuck, can you see Alpha Base?” asked Enrique.
“Oh yeah, we see it. It won’t be long now. Don’t forget about the circle.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Enrique murmured. He had looked at Alpha Base’s landing area on a webcam right before leaving. It was the same flat dusty plain it had always been since the base was completed. He did not not feel like arguing with the guy. There was something glittery on the horizon.
Must be the solar panels, thought Enrique.
Enrique is coming in at 10,000 feet, and the solar array and hotel pyramid were visible along with the landing area — and a circle.
“Chuck, there is a circle in the landing area. Where did that come from?”
“Gosh, Enrique, I don’t know. Maybe you should go down and check it out.”
Enrique slowed his forward motion until above the center of the circle and carefully throttled back on the thrusters, sinking to the moon’s surface. At 3,000 feet, granulated imperfections in the circle became evident. There were even indications of random movement.
Impossible, thought Enrique.
As he got closer, he recognized the pattern. They were people, people in vacuum suits. Enrique was astonished, They must have used every vacuum suit in the solar system. There were hundreds. Most of them had their hedbots with them, and it reminded him of Rousseau. He cut off that thought, determined not to cry over a stupid damn machine in front of all these people. Enrique wished Rousseau could have been there to make acerbic comments.
As he approached the ground in the center of the circle, he goosed the throttle to slow his ascent until he settled to the moon’s surface as soft as a soap bubble. Unlike the cloud he created when taking off, the plume of moon dust around him dropped fast and even like a stage curtain as soon as he shut off the thrusters. A wall of sound engulfed him. Chuck had furtively given out his suit frequency to everyone ahead of time. They had their hands in the air, shouting and moving toward him until the circle was only yards in diameter.
