"Low gravity is one of our greatest assets. A real tourist attraction," Kinsman said as he slowly ushered Waterman toward the door.
The engineer waved one of his canes. "It's not just the gravity. It's the whole attitude around here. The way people do things here. None of the red tape and horse manure like 276 they have Earthside. No standing in lines or spending your days filling out forms. People have faith in each other up here."
And their faith has made them whole, Kinsman quoted to himself. He answered Waterman, "They're free, Ernie. We've got enough room up here to be free."
Waterman shrugged again. "Whatever it is, it's like a miracle."
"You don't miss Earth at all?" Kinsman asked, stopping at the door.
"The Bronx I should miss? Hell no! My two daughters, yes. Them I miss. But the rest of it—it's just a crummy slum, from sea to polluted sea. It's going to hell so fast there's no way to stop it."
Kinsman thought about his last days on Earth, more than five years earlier. His sudden yearning to see Diane one last time. The madhouse battling with the airlines to wrest a seat on a plane to San Francisco. The shock of seeing a city he had loved turned into a vast concrete jungle: the once-gleaming towers rotting with decay, their elevators useless without electricity; the bridges rusting with neglect; the Bay dotted with houseboats and black with scum. And Diane never showed up; her concert had been canceled.
"And what about you?" Waterman was asking. "Do you miss it? You've been here longer than almost anybody."
Kinsman avoided the question. "I can go back when I really want to. I'm not physically restricted."
"I thought you had a heart problem. I heard . . ."
Shaking his head, "Don't believe all the rumors you hear, Ernie. Selene's like any small town: ten parts gossip to every one part of fact. A little high blood pressure can turn into open-heart surgery on the rumor mill."
The phone buzzed.
"Duty calls," Kinsman said.
The engineer left the office and closed the door behind him as Kinsman went back to the couch. Leaning across it he touched the phone's ON button. One of the wall screens glowed, but no picture came up on it. Instead, the computer's honey-warm feminine voice said, "Colonel Kinsman, you asked to be reminded that the shuttle bringing new arrivals is scheduled to touch down at oh-nine-thirty hours. Traffic 277 control confirms that the shuttle is on schedule,"
"Right," he said, and punched the phone off.
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.
