He left the office and started down the corridor toward the power ladder. Wonder what Ernie would do if I told him we'd share our water with the Russians in an emergency? Would he quit the job? Would he yell back to Washington?
Officially, the American settlement on the Moon was called Moonbase, The Russians called theirs Lunagrad. Offi- cially, the two bases were separate and independent of each other. Military planners in Washington and Moscow scowled whenever they thought of the brief rash of international amity that had led to building the two bases side by side.
Technically, Moonbase and Lunagrad were each self- sufficient, each capable of surviving without help from the other. Actually, the Americans and Russians who lived with each other as neighbors all called themselves Luniks and their community Selene.
Now Kinsman strode through the big cavern that linked the two halves of Selene. It was a vast underground chamber with a high chalky white ceiling and rough gray stone walls. The Russians and Americans had turned it into an open plaza with green lawns and tree-lined walkways. Tiny shops and refreshment centers, established by entrepreneurs from sev- eral Western nations, competed with government-owned ex- changes that provided a meager flow of personal goods from Earth. The plaza was always busy with off-duty people: it reminded Kinsman of a New England village green, re- strained and quiet in the soft, low-gravity, highly controlled lunar style.
Kinsman nodded and smiled hello to almost everyone as he went through the plaza. He knew all the permanent residents by name—there were only about a thousand of them.
But as he rode the power ladder up to the main surface dome his thoughts returned to Waterman. How many of our people still think as if they're Earthbound? he wondered. By the time he stepped off the ladder and onto the rock floor of the big dome he was scowling.
Follow the yellow brick road.
The dome was kept darkened; faintly luminescent arrows crisscrossed the fused rock floor, pointing the way to various 278 destinations. Kinsman padded along the yellow arrows, head- ing for the main airlock.
The dome was as large as a modern cathedral, and just as empty. It was the biggest structure on the Moon's surface, a symbol of the eternal spirit of brotherhood and cooperation between the peoples of the United States and the Soviet Union. That spirit had died a little before the dome was finished, poisoned in a world choked by too much population and too few resources.
The sound of Kinsman's slippered feet scuffing along the fused rock floor was swallowed by the dark, sepulchral dome. He could feel the cold of the new lunar night seeping up through the rock, tingling the air. The dome's ceiling was also made from lunar stone, supported on a geodesic framework of aluminum scavenged from spent rocket stages. The main walls of the dome were transparent plastiglass, hauled up from Earthside kilogram by precious kilogram.
Rows of tractors and crawlers and other heavy equip- ment were lined up mute and unmoving in their assigned parking lanes. Facing the main airlock, the right side of the dome was for American equipment, the left side for Russian.
That's political nicety, Kinsman told himself.
Crossing the dome floor. Kinsman did not merely walk along, he prowled. His years on the Moon had led him to an unconscious compromise between his Earth-muscled legs and the low lunar gravity. The result was a gliding, almost floating slow-motion stride that resembled nothing so much as the silent purposeful advance of a stalking cat. In the shadows thrown by the dim, faraway overhead lights, his bony long- jawed face and dark-browed scowl added to the impression of a hunting feline.
He came to the heavy metal structure of the main airlock and detoured around its once-gleaming walls, to the observa- tion area. Despite the low lighting, he could see a faint reflection of himself in the plastiglass wall. You're getting paunchy, he thought. Too much office work and too little exercise. The curse of the middle-aged executive. Looking past his own image, he gazed out at the desolate lunar plain.
The Sea of Clouds.
It was a weary, pockmarked rolling plain of naked rock, pounded for eons by a constant rain of meteors and more 279 recently scoured—close to the dome—by the landing jets of spacecraft. It was a frozen sea of stone, bare and utterly lifeless, with boulders strewn carelessly across it like a half- finished construction job that the maker had abandoned, left to brood gray and ghostly in the light of the gleaming crescent Earth.
If it really were a sea, or even clouds, we wouldn't need the damned water factory. Kinsman's frown deepened as he thought of it. He hated to argue with people, despised the need to prod and pressure them. Maybe we won't need the extra water. But water is life and I don't want to have to refuse it to anyone, including the Russians. He glanced at the beckoning, beautiful blue and white crescent of Earth. Espe- cially the Russians, he added silently.
Turning slightly, he looked across the silent dome's wide expanse to the transparent wall on the other side. The tired, rounded humps of mountains huddled there, guardians of the lunar ringwall Alphonsus, a crater wide enough to hold any city on Earth, including its suburbs. The thought of a teeming, fetid, decaying city here on the Moon disgusted him.
He turned back toward the Sea of Clouds and looked upward for some glimpse of the arriving shuttle. No flare of jets. No glint of Earthlight on smooth metal. He saw the horizon, close enough almost to touch. And beyond it, the blackness of infinity. No matter how many times he con- fronted it the sight still moved him. A few bright stars could be seen through the dome's thick plastic window. The eyes of God, Kinsman said to himself. Then he added, Superstitious idiot!
The pressurized tractors of the ground crew were starting to move out of the big vehicle airlock and arrange themselves around the landing area. Lights were winking on out there, so the shuttle must be coming down. Sure enough. Kinsman saw a puff of bright color, dissipated in an eyeblink. Then another, and the heavy squat shape of the shuttle took form, falling like a stone in a nightmare, slowly but inexorably, falling, falling—another puff of rocket thrust, then still another . . .
The bare rock of the landing area seethed into a minia- ture sandstorm where it had looked a moment earlier as if nothing as Earthlike as dust could exist. The shuttle landed 280 like a fat old lady settling into a favorite chair: slowly, carefully, and then plop! The landing struts touched the ground and bowed under the spacecraft's weight. The engines shut off and the dust storm subsided.
The ground crew's tractors clustered around the still-hot rocket, faithful mechanical puppies greeting the return of their master. A flexible access tube snaked out from the personnel hatch of the airlock toward the main hatch of the ship.
Kinsman nodded to himself, satisfied with the landing. A new batch of ninety-dayers, almost all of them on their first tour of duty on the Moon. They would arrive calling this place Moonbase, the official designation given by Colonel Kins- man's superiors on Earth. Just as the new Russians called their base Lunagrad. But those who stayed on the Moon, those who made their homes in the underground community —no matter how reluctantly at first—would come to call this place Selene. Kinsman had hit upon the name several years earlier and it had stuck, even among the Russians. The ninety-dayers who could see the difference between Moon- base and Selene would return for more tours of lunar duty;
Kinsman would see to that. The others would never come back; he would see to that, too.
Turning to face the airlock's inner personnel hatch, Kinsman watched the newcomers step in. They were women, eight of them, all talking at once. And four silent men. Boys, really. All but the one in the lead bounced clumsily as they tried to walk in the low lunar gravity, a sure sign of the newcomer. The women were wide-eyed, chattering, excited. Their first time.
