Twisting his body so that he pointed himself back toward the asteroid’s bulk, Dan squirted his maneuvering jets and lurched back to the asteroid. Gently, tenderly, he touched down again on its surface. Fuchs was still tapping away with his sampling hammer, rising off the ground with every blow, his anchored tether pulling him back again for another crack.
Dan was breathing hard, but otherwise no worse the wear for his little excursion. With even greater care than before he shuffled back to stand beside Fuchs and help bag the samples he’d chipped out.
At last Pancho said sternly, “Time to come in, guys.”
“Just one more sample,” Fuchs replied.
“Now,” Pancho commanded.
“Aye-aye, cap’n,” said Dan. He rapped his gloved knuckles on Fuchs’s helmet. “Come on, Lars. You’ve done enough for one day. This rock isn’t going to go away; you can come back another time.”
Amanda was at the airlock to help them take off their backpacks and dust-spattered spacesuits. Dan caught a strange, pungent smell once he removed his helmet. Not like the sharp firecracker odor of the lunar dust; this was something new, different.
Before he had time to puzzle out the dust’s odor, Pancho came down to the airlock area, looking so somber that Dan asked her what was the matter.
While Fuchs chattered happily with Amanda, Pancho said, “Bad news, boss. Another section of the superconductor is heating up. If it goes critical it could blow out the whole magnetic shield.”
Dan felt his jaw drop open. Without the shield they’d be cooked by the next solar radiation storm.
“We’ve gotta get back to Selene pronto,” Pancho said. “Before another flare breaks out.”
“What’re our chances?” Dan asked, his throat dry.
She waggled a hand. “Fifty-fifty… if we’re lucky.”
TEMPO 9
We won’t have to go outside, will we?” Cardenas asked nervously.
She was following George through the maze of pumps and generators up on the topmost level of Selene. Color-coded pipes and electrical conduits lined the ceiling; Cardenas wondered how anyone could keep track of which was which. The air hummed with the subdued sounds of electrical equipment and hydraulic machinery. On the other side of the ceiling, she knew, was the grassy expanse of the Grand Plaza—or the bare dusty regolith of the Moon’s airless surface.
“Outside?” George echoed. “Naw, there’s a shaft connectin’ the tempo to the tunnel… if I can find th’ fookin’ tunn—ah, there it is!”
He pulled a small hatch open and stepped over its coaming, then reached a hand back to help Cardenas. The tunnel was dark, lit only by the hand-torch George carried. Cardenas expected to see the evil red eyes of rats in the darkness, or hear the slithering of roaches. Nothing. Selene is clean of vermin, she thought. Even the farmlands have to be pollinated artificially because there aren’t any insects here.
Not yet, she thought. Sooner or later, though. Once we start allowing larger numbers of people up here, they’ll bring their filth and their pests with them.
“Here we are,” George said.
In the circle of light cast by his torch, she saw the metal rungs of a ladder leading up along the wall of the tunnel.
“How much farther does the tunnel go?” she asked in a whisper, even though she knew there was no one else there.
“Another klick or so,” George answered. “Yamagata people wanted to drill all the way through the ringwall and out to Mare Nubium. Got too expensive. The cable car over the top was cheaper.”
He scampered up the ladder, light and lithe despite his size. Cardenas started to follow him.
“Wait a bit,” George called down to her. “Got to get this hatch unstuck.”
She heard metal groan. Then George said, “Okay, up with you, now.”
The ladder ended in an enclosed area about the size of her apartment unit down inside Selene. It was a cylindrical shape, like a spacecraft module.
“We’re on the surface?” Cardenas asked, trying to keep her voice from shaking.
“Buried under a meter of dirt from the regolith,” George said happily. “Safe as in church.”
“But we’re outside.”
“On the slope of the ringwall. Just below the cable-line. The original idea was, if there’s an emergency with the cable-trolley, people could stay in here till help arrives.”