“Yes?” Blair said to her. “What is it?”
Her youthful face seemed flushed with excitement. She stepped into the tiny, crowded bedroom, maneuvered past Kobol and Lisa’s chair, and handed Blair a flimsy sheet of ultrathin plastic—the lunar settlement’s reusable substitute for paper.
Blair read the message, his face lighting up.
“It’s from Douglas,” he said, his eyes still scanning the typed words, as if he could not believe what they said. “He’s on his way back. He’ll arrive in forty-five hours.”
They all gasped with surprise. Lisa felt an irrational pang of joy spring up inside her. Idiot! she raged at herself. He’ll spoil everything. Everything.
Yet she could not control the surge of happiness that coursed through her.
Kobol’s face was as gray as a corpse’s. His mouth pressed shut into a thin, bloodless line.
“That’s not all,” Blair told them, waving the flimsy sheet in his hand. “Douglas says he’s bringing twenty-five people back with him. He says most of them are in very bad physical condition and will need hospitalization immediately.”
Chapter 3
The biggest chamber in the underground community was a combination warehouse, depot, and garage just inside the big double metal hatch of the main airlock leading out to the surface. Vehicles were parked next to the airlock’s gleaming, vault-like doors, assembled in precise rows along colored lines painted on the smooth floor: electric forklift trucks, springy-wheeled lunar surface rovers, bicycles for pedalling along the underground corridors.
Supplies were stacked in equally precise ranks and files, each box or crate carefully labelled and arranged in sections according to what was inside it. Machinery, foodstuffs, medicines, clothing—all the things that the lunar settlement did not make for itself were stacked there, row upon row, piled up almost as high as the rugged stone ceiling of the cave.
They are a reminder, thought Lisa as she entered the big chamber, a reminder of how much we depended on Earth. Can we survive without Earth? Kobol says we can, but is he right? Can we survive?
Kobol stood beside her, and at her other side was Catherine Demain. They waited before the airlock hatch, at the end of the wide aisle separating the stacks of supplies from the rows of parked vehicles. Behind them stood a specially-picked team of volunteers, ready to help the survivors from Earth to beds and medical care.
Kobol studied his wristwatch. “Another few minutes, at most.”
“The radar plot is still good?” Lisa asked.
He shrugged his bony shoulders. “I could check with Blair,” he said, gesturing toward the phone set into the wall next to the hatch.
“No. Don’t bother. If anything goes wrong he’ll put it on the public address system.”
She heard the sounds of shoes scuffing on the plastic floor of the cavern, sensed the presence of other people. Turning, Lisa saw that dozens of people were stepping off the powerlift, milling around the cavern expectantly.
Kobol turned too, and his long face sank into a scowl. “Why aren’t these people at their jobs? Nobody’s been given permission to come up here except those...”
Lisa laid a land on his arm, silencing him. She saw that still more people were coming up on the powerlift, chatting, grinning to each other, pressing forward to make room for even more. They were dressed in their work fatigues, almost all of them, but the air was like a holiday excitement back on Earth.
“There must be at least a hundred of them,” Catherine Demain said, smiling happily.
“And more coming.”
“ATTENTION,” the loudspeakers in the ceiling blared, echoes reverberating along the rock walls. “THE TRANSFER SHIP HAS TOUCHED DOWN AT THE LANDING PAD...”
The growing crowd cheered, drowning out part of Blair’s message. Lisa held her hands to her ears; the noise of the crowd was painful as it rang through the cavern.
“...SHOULD BE AT THE AIRLOCK IN APPROXIMATELY FIVE MINUTES. MEDICAL TEAMS SHOULD BE AT THE AIRLOCK IN APPROXIMATELY FIVE MINUTES.”
The crowd was laughing and talking and surging forward now. Lisa felt herself pushed closer to the metal hatch; not that anyone touched her, but the emotional energy of the crowd had a vital force to it.
“Who the hell gave anyone permission to leave their jobs?” Kobol snarled, his voice rising. “We can’t have people meandering around like this!”
Catherine Demain laughed at him. “What are you going to do about it? They’re excited about Douglas bringing back survivors, I guess.”
Lisa watched the crowd. Almost every one of the settlement’s five hundred and some people seemed to have suddenly jammed into the cavern, filling up the big central aisle, spilling over into the narrower passages between stacks of crates. Even the children had come, to clamber over the lunar buggies that they were never allowed to touch.
They were happy. They were excited. They kept a respectful distance from the medical volunteers and the trio of leaders next to the hatch, but they had come to see Douglas’ return, to witness his rescue of a handful of people from Earth.
They want to see that Earth isn’t totally dead, Lisa realized. They’ve come to see survivors of the holocaust with their own eyes.
The crowd surged forward again, kids standing on tiptoes atop buggies and forklifts, an expectant crackle of excitement running through the cavern. Lisa suddenly felt cold, shiveringly cold. She turned and saw the airlock indicator light had turned from red to amber.
Everyone seemed to hold their breath. The big cavern went absolutely silent. The light finally flashed green and the massive metal door began to swing slowly open. Kobol stood as tense as a steel cable just before it snaps. Catherine Demain took an unconscious half-step toward the slowly opening hatch.
“Help them,” Lisa commanded. Two of the medical volunteers dropped the stretcher they were carrying and rushed to the hatch. They leaned their weight on it, swinging it fully open.
The first man out was one of the pilots, grinning broadly as he stepped through, searching the crowd with his eyes until a tiny blonde woman raced through the people standing in front and threw herself into his arms. A murmur ran through the cavern.
A younger man stepped out next. Lisa recognized him as one of the communications technicians. His coverall was stained with mud, his face was grimy. But he too had an enormous grin on his face, a smile of satisfaction, of relief, of accomplishment.
The crowd watched, hushed, as the survivors from Earth came out one by one, most of them supported by members of Douglas’ crew. The medical volunteers helped them onto stretchers and carried them toward the powerlift to the makeshift infirmary that had been prepared for them. The crowd melted back to make room for them.
They were awed into silence as the survivors were carried past. The people from Earthside were mostly men. They seemed weak, they looked thin, as though starved. There were no obvious burns or wounds on their raggedly-clothed bodies.
