“A golf course?” I asked, incredulous. “Here on the Moon?”
“Yeah,” said Sam Gunn. “Why not?”
“You mean . . . outside?”
“Why not?” he repeated.
“It’s crazy, that’s why not!” I said.
We were standing at the far end of Selene’s Grand Plaza, gazing through the sweeping glassteel windows that looked out on the harsh beauty of Alphonsus Crater’s dusty, pockmarked floor. Off to our left ran the worn, slumped mountains of the ringwall, smoothed by billions of years of micrometeors sanding them down. A little further, the abrupt slash of the horizon, uncomfortably close compared to Earth. Beyond that unforgiving line was the blackness of infinite space, blazing with billions of stars.
The Grand Plaza was the only open area of greenspace on the Moon, beneath a vaulted dome of lunar concrete. Trees, flowers, an outdoor bistro, even an Olympic-sized swimming pool with a thirty-meter-high diving platform. The Plaza was a delightful relief from Selene’s gray tunnels and underground living and working areas.
“Why not build a course under a dome?” I asked. “That’d be a lot easier.”
“You’d need an awful big dome,” said Sam. “More than ten kilometers long.”
“Yeah, but—”
“No dome. Outside, in the open.”
“You can’t play golf out there,” I said, jabbing a finger toward the emptiness on the other side of the window.
Sam gave me that famous lopsided grin of his. “Sure you could. It’d be a big attraction.”
“A golf course,” I grumbled. “On the Moon. Out there in the middle of Alphonsus.”
“Not there,” Sam said. “Over at Hell Crater, where my entertainment center is.”
“So this is why you brought me up here.”
“That’s why, Charlie,” Sam replied, still grinning.
I had heard of Sam Gunn and his wild schemes for most of my life. He’d made more fortunes than the whole New York Stock Exchange, they say, and lost—or gave away—almost all of them. He was always working on a new angle, some new scheme aimed at making himself rich.
But a golf course? On the Moon? Outside on the airless, barren surface?
Sam is a stumpy little guy with a round, gap-toothed face that some have compared to a jack-o’-lantern. Wiry, rust-red thatch of hair. Freckles across his stub of a nose. Nobody seems to know how old he really is: different data banks give you different guesses. He has a reputation as a womanizer, and a chap who would cut corners or pick pockets or commit out-and-out fraud to make his schemes work. He was always battling the Big Boys: the corporate suits, government bureaucrats, the rich and powerful.
I was definitely not one of those. I once had designed some of the poshest golf courses on Earth, but now I was a disgraced fugitive from justice, hounded by lawyers, an ex-wife, two women who claimed I’d fathered their children (both claims untrue), and the Singapore police’s morality squad. Sam had shown up in Singapore one jump ahead of the cops and whisked me to Selene on his corporate rocket. S. Gunn Enterprises, Unlimited. I didn’t ask why, I was just glad to get away.
I had spent the flight to Selene trying to explain to Sam that the charges against me were all false, all part of a scheme by my ex-wife, who just happened to be the daughter of the head of Singapore’s government. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned—or her mother.
Sam listened sympathetically to me during the whole flight.
“Your only crime,” he said at last, “was marrying a woman who was wrong for you.” Before I could think of a reply, Sam added, “Like most of them are, Charlie.”
My family name happens to be Chang. To Sam, that meant my first name must be Charlie. From somebody else, I’d resent that as racism. But from Sam it was almost . . . well, kind of friendly.
As soon as we landed at Selene Sam bought me a pair of weighted boots, so I wouldn’t trip all over myself in the low lunar gravity. Then he took me to lunch at the outdoor bistro in the middle of the Grand Plaza’s carefully cultivated greenery.
“Your legal troubles are over, Charlie,” Sam told me, “as long as you stay at Selene. No extradition agreement with Earthside governments.”
“But I’m not a citizen of Selene,” I objected.
His grin widening until he actually did look like a gap-toothed jack-o’-lantern, Sam blithely replied, “Doesn’t matter. I got you a work permit and Selene’s granted you a temporary visa.”
I realized what Sam was telling me. I was safe on the Moon—as long as I worked for S. Gunn Enterprises, Unlimited.
After lunch Sam took me for a walk down the length of the Grand Plaza, through the lovingly tended begonias and azaleas and peonies along the winding paths that led to the windows. I walked very carefully; the weighted boots helped.
“We can do it, Charlie,” Sam said as we stood at the glassteel windows.
“A golf course.”
“It’ll be terrific.”
“Out there,” I muttered, staring at the barren lunar ground. “A golf course.”
“It’s been done before,” Sam said, fidgeting a little. “Alan Shepard whacked a golf ball during the Apollo 14 mission, over at Frau Mauro.” He waved a hand roughly northwestward. “Hit it over the horizon, by damn.”
“Sam,” I corrected, “the ball only traveled a few yards.”
“Whatever,” said Sam, with that impish smirk of his.
