operator, and an engineering corporation, had commenced the
construction of a Lunar holiday resort, which was already fully
booked for the opening season.
Places like Jupiter, however, were not yet open to the public.
Persons detailed for assignments with the UNSA deep-space missions
needed to know what they were doing and how to act in emergency
situations. The ice sheets of Ganymede and the cauldron of Venus
were no places for tourists.
At Galveston, Hunt learned about UNSA spacesuits and the standard
items of ancillary equipment; he was taught the use of
communication equipment, survival kits, emergency life support
systems, and repair kits; he practiced test routines, radiolocation
procedures, and equipment-fault diagnostic techniques. “Your life
could depend on this little box,” one instructor told the group.
“You could wind up in a situation where it fails and the only
person inside a hundred miles to fix it is you.” Doctors lectured
on the rudiments of space medicine and recommended methods of
dealing with oxygen starvation, decompression, heat stroke, and
hypothermia. Physiologists described the effects on bone calcium of
long periods of reduced body weight, and showed how a correct
balance could be maintained by a specially selected diet and drugs.
UNSA officers gave useful hints that covered the whole gamut of
staying alive and sane in alien environments, from navigating afoot
on a hostile surface using satellite beacons as ref erence points,
to the art of washing one’s face in zero gravity.
And so, just over four weeks after his directive from CaIdwell,
Hunt found himself fifty feet below ground level at pad twelve of
number-two terminal complex twenty miles outside Houston, walking
along one of the access ramps that connected the wall of the silo
to the gleaming hull of the Vega. An hour later, the hy
draulic ramps beneath the platform supporting the tail thrust the
ship slowly upward and out, to stand clear on the roof of the
structure. Within minutes the Vega was streaking into the darkening
void above. It docked thirty minutes later, two and a half seconds
behind schedule, with the half-mile-diameter transfer sateffite
Kepler.
On Kepler the passengers traveling on to Luna.-including Hunt,
three propulsion-systems experts keen to examine the suspected
Ganymean gravity drives, four communications specialists, two
structural engineers, and Danchekker’s team, all destined to join
Jupiter Five-transferred to the ugly and ungainly Capella class
moonship that would carry them for the remainder of the journey
from Earth orbit to the Lunar surface. The voyage lasted thirty
hours and was uneventful. After they had been in Lunar orbit for
twenty minutes, the announcement came over the loudspeaker that the
craft had been cleared for descent.
Shortly afterward, the unending procession of plains, mountains,
crags, and hills that had been marching across the cabin display
screen slowed to a halt and the view started growing perceptibly
larger. Hunt recognized the twin ring-walled plains of Ptolemy and
Albategnius, with its central conical mountain and Crater Klein
interrupting its encircling wall, before the ship swung northward
and these details were lost off the top of the steadily enlarging
image. The picture stabilized, now centered upon the broken and
crumbling mountain wall that separated Ptolemy from the southern
edge of the Plain of Hipparchus. What had pre- viously looked like
smooth terrain resolved itself into a jumble of rugged cliffs and
valleys, and in the center, glints of sunlight began to appear,
reflected from the metal structures of the vast base below.
As the outlines of the surface installations materialized out of
the gray background and expanded to fill the screen, a yellow glow
in the center grew, gradually transforming into the gaping entrance
to one of the underground moonship berths. There was a brief
impression of tiers of access levels stretching down out of sight
and huge service gantries swung back to admit the ship. Rows of
brilliant arc lights flooded the scene before the exhaust from the
braking motors blotted out the view. A mild jolt signaled that the
landing legs had made contact with Lunar rock, and silence fell
abruptly inside the ship as the engines were cut. Above
the squat nose of the moonship, massive steel shutters rolled
together to seal out the stars. As the berth filled with air, a new