First, scheduled whirly time. The boss ought not to keep anybody waiting. She swung into kangaroo pace, eight or ten kilometers per hour across the murky lava, an easy and exhilarating rhythm. The lamps ahead glared the stars away from her.
The other three were already at the centrifuge. In undiffusing vacuum, not entirely helped by reflection off surroundings, light and shadow, whiteness and dust made their spacesuits a goblin chiaroscuro. Like every newcomer, Dagny when she arrived on the Moon had had to learn how to see, especially after sunset on Farside. Today she effortlessly identified yonder shapes, the supply depot and shelters in their background, the crews and machines, the widespread complexities they were creating. A multi-facility astronomical observatory was under construction in Mare Moscoviense, and she in charge of housing for its personnel. Advancement was fast if you were able, if you survived.
She turned her radio back on. Switching it off in the field had been dead against regulations, but now and then she needed to be alone for a short while with heaven and the life inside her. “Hi,” she greeted. “Prepared and eager?”
Wim den Boer mistook the cheerful sarcasm. “No,” he grumbled. “Damnation, a frill three hours? I’m busy! You know how that hitch in delivering the pumps has thrown my section behind schedule.”
Dagny came to the group and stopped. “Friend,” she replied, “when this job is done and we’re back in Bowen-, stand me a beer in the Fuel tank and I’ll tell you tales of woe that’ll freeze yours in your stein. Meanwhile, don’t fret your pretty little head, or I’ll decide it is pretty little. The zeroth law of thermodynamics says that everything takes longer and costs more.”
“We are rather badly delayed, though, aren’t we?”Jane Ireland argued. She was a good electrical engineer—had helped troubleshoot the grid that carried power from sunlit Criswells to the transmitters on Nearside—but overanxious about political questions. “Do you appreciate how hard Eurospace and Eco-Astro lobby against awarding contracts like this to any private company, ours above all? If we fail here—”
“We won’t,” Dagny vowed. “Let the chief fight his particular battles. If Guthrie can’t outwangle, out-connive, and outroar the combined governments of Earth, we may as well go back there and the North Americans among us embrace the Renewal. Our way of helping him is to meet the contract in spite of whatever Murphy slings at us.”
She had learned early on that her position required even more human skills than technical ones, and set herself to master them. Edmond had been a wonderful counselor at first, but soon she must necessarily grope her own way forward, trial and error, by feel rather than rules, because each individual is unique in the universe.
Pedro Noguchi came to her assistance: “Listen, Wim, Jane, you cannot serve if you fall sick. We have been skimping these sessions as it is. Instead of wasting time complaining, shall we get it done with?”
That quieted them. Strange, Dagny often thought, the loyalty so many of its people bore for Fireball, maybe more than for their countries. She had her personal reasons, but what about the rest? The well-spring couldn’t merely be exciting work, high pay, simpatico management, no limit on a career except your ability and luck. In Fireball, somehow, you belonged, you shared a spirit, as few did anywhere on Earth.
She sought her place and got busy.
The field centrifuge sheered its column above her, 250 centimeters from the broad, gripfooted base, to the four rotor arms. Portable, it didn’t have much in common with the giant stationary machines in the settlements. The arms were hollow, flaring like from the pillar. Out of each dangled a cable, at the end of which hung a cage, its floor a 150-centimeter disc knee-high above the ground. Within this were simple items of exercise equipment, secured by brackets. Beneath the disc was welded a box for the makeweight.
Nobody present, complete with suit and gear, massed the 125 kilos—21 kilos Lunar weight—that made a standard load. Dagny stepped onto a scale built into the base. Disdaining to punch the calculator on her left sleeve, she figured her deficit mentally, and selected the bricks needed to equal it from a stack nearby. Having slid the right amount into the box, she dogged it shut and mounted to the cage. There she closed the door, made herself fast just in case, and commanded, “Report.”