Saucer: The Conquest

4

The passengers and crew had to walk from the spaceplane to the base air lock. The fact that Jeanne d'Arcwas sitting on her tail complicated matters somewhat. Base personnel maneuvered the cargo gantry alongside so that the people could be lowered to the surface on the cargo elevator.

While Charley Pine and Florentin went through the post-flight checklists, the other members of the crew maneuvered the sedated Lalouette toward the ship's air lock. Two people from the lunar base came into the ship to assist.

The pilot was near the ragged edge of exhaustion. It took intense concentration to work through the checklists with Florentin. The checks took over an hour to complete, and by that time Lalouette and the others were gone. Florentin exited through the air lock, leaving Charley alone in the spaceplane.

The lunar base would have to wait, she decided. She was about to sign off with Mission Control when Bodard passed her a message for Pierre Artois from the French premier. Congratulations, the glory of France, and all that. She copied it down, promised to give it to him and signed off.

"Another day, another dollar," she muttered as she maneuvered herself out of her seat.

The descent of the main passageway was not difficult in the weak gravity of the moon. After shedding her space suit, she made a pit stop to answer nature's call, then proceeded to the bunkroom she had shared with Courbet. She crawled into her hammock. In seconds she was fast asleep.

She awoke to the sound of hatches opening, metal scraping against metal. She knew what the noise was — base personnel were unloading the cargo bay. Who had done the checklists, to ensure the bay was properly depressurized and that the rest of the ship was maintaining pressure?

Galvanized, she struggled from her hammock and made her way to the flight deck. Florentin was in the pilot's seat, which he had tilted forty-five degrees so that he wasn't lying on his back.

"Bonjour, Sharlee," the flight engineer said.

Charley muttered a bonjour. For the first time since waking, she looked at her watch. She had been asleep for five hours. Not enough, but she felt better. And hungry and thirsty.

They spent a few minutes talking about the main engine and what Florentin and the engineers from the base were going to do to check out the malfunction; then Charley lowered herself down the passageway.

In the weak gravity of the moon, getting into her space suit was easier than it had been on Earth. Actually the suit consisted of two pieces, an inflatable full-body pressure suit and a tough, nearly bulletproof outer shell that protected the pressure suit and helped insulate the wearer from the extremes of temperature present in a zero-atmosphere environment. Air for breathing and to pressurize the suit was provided by a small unit worn on a belt around the waist.

The unit hung at the small of the wearer's back and was connected to the suit by hoses.

Donning the suit alone was strenuous. Only when Charley had triple-checked everything did she enter the air lock. With the pressure suit inflated, she felt like a sausage.

When the exterior door opened the light blinded her. She remembered her sun visor and lowered it with her eyes closed. After her eyes adjusted she got her first real view of the lunar surface. She had seen the photos many times, yet the reality was awe-inspiring. The land baking in the brilliant rising sun under an obsidian sky — she had never seen a place more stark, or more beautiful. And the day was going to be two weeks long!

The cargo gantry was alongside, so she used that for a ladder. Standing on the surface, she bent and examined the impressions her boots made in the dirt. Then she turned and looked for Earth.

There it was, behind the spaceplane. She bounded several paces away and looked again. Should have brought a camera, she thought. Mesmerized, listening to the sound of her own breathing, she turned slowly around, taking in everything. She saw the air-lock entrance to the lunar base, an illuminated bubble that looked like a large skylight, a radio tower, the gantry and the jagged horizon. In the absence of an atmosphere, the visibility was perfect.

"Yeah, baby!"

Charley Pine pumped her fist and headed for the air lock, which was in the side of a cliff. She promptly fell. It was a slow-motion fall, at one-sixth the speed that she would have toppled on earth. Instantly she was all business. Impact with a sharp stone might tear the outer shell and damage the interior pressure suit. If the interior suit lost pressure, her blood would transform itself into a gas; death would follow in seconds.

She had come too far to die in a freak accident between the spaceplane and the base air lock. Adrenaline pumping, she caught herself with her gloved hands, then pushed herself back erect.

Concentrating fiercely, taking care not to overcontrol, Charley walked — or leaped — toward the air lock and entered it. She had to wait for a forklift to bring a container from Jeanne d'Arc into the lock; then the door closed and the operator on the other side of the thick glass began pumping in air.

The air lock led into an underground cavern that had been carved from solid rock. Supplies in containers were stacked along one side of the capacious corridor. Charley stopped to remove her helmet and looked the containers over as she walked toward the locker room. The containers were stacked with their numbers facing out. She was looking for a specific four-digit final number, and didn't see it. The reactor was still on the plane.

After wriggling out of her space suit — one of the base personnel helped her and chatted freely while she did it— Charley got directions to the mess hall.

Just moving along the corridors took a great deal of getting used to. Too vigorous a step would send her to the ceiling; a misstep would send her crashing into a wall. Clearly the lunar gravity was going to take some getting used to. The people she met seemed to have adjusted well, so perhaps the learning curve would be steep.

In the mess hall, which doubled as a lounge, she filled a tray made of superlight, composite material with a judicious quantity of food — better keep an eye on the figure. The food was French, and yet it wasn't what she had eaten in France. One of the cooks, or chefs, was replenishing a warmer, so she asked, "How do you cook in this gravity?"

"It is difficult," he replied with a grin. "The food is not pressing down. We use a pressure cooker for most things, except the sauces. The sauces are difficult."

"I suppose so."

She stood looking around. There were several televisions; they seemed to be running programs from French television, likely sent to an earth satellite and rebroadcast. In one corner of the room was a camera, mounted so that the background was the entire room, which was probably the largest on the lunar base.

She saw Claudine Courbet at a table with two other women and joined them, carefully. Tossing the contents of her tray on the diners would be a poor start to her visit.

One of the women was a geologist, the other an electrical engineer. Both welcomed her and smiled when they heard her accent. Before long all four women were chatting merrily about their voyages to the moon and life at the lunar base.

"I know you have been drilling for water," Charley said to the geologist. "Have you found any?"

"Yes and no. There are ice crystals well below the surface. Not huge chunks, but crystals. We have extracted some and recovered perhaps a hundred liters. To become self-sustaining and build up a surplus we must mine the material in quantity and bake it to extract the water."

"It must be really old stuff," Charley said. "Is it any good?"

The geologist grinned and removed a small bottle from a pocket. She handed it to Charley. "Try it."

Charley hefted the bottle, swallowed hard, then unscrewed the cap and took a tentative sip. The water was cool and delicious. A look of relief crossed her face, and the other women laughed.

"That first sip is always an act of faith," the geologist said as Charley handed back the bottle.

"How did the water come to be there?"

"That is another question," the geologist admitted. She was deep into the various possibilities when a runner came looking for Charley.

Pierre Artois wanted her for a televised news conference in the communications room, which, in addition to sophisticated computers and transmitters, contained a small television studio with a moonscape mural on the rock wall as a backdrop.

Madame Artois was there, off camera. She was at least ten years younger than Pierre, a beautiful woman with a figure that her jumpsuit didn't hide. She shook Charley's hand and murmured something Charley didn't catch; then the cameras came on and the pilot was ushered to a seat.

Reporters in Paris asked her numerous questions, about the flight, the lunar base, and her initial impressions of the moon. She answered as best she could, regaled them with an account of her klutzy fall and bowed out of further questions. Artois smoothly interceded. As soon as she was off camera, Charley found herself standing beside Julie Artois, who listened intently to every question and answer.

Every now and then Pierre glanced at his wife, and Charley realized with a start that Julie was giving Pierre sub-de clues on how to frame his answers through the use of body language. When she thought an answer had gone on long enough, she made a tiny circle with one finger, once against her cheek, once with her hand by her leg.

Pierre was still answering questions when Charley wandered away to explore. As she left the room Henri Salmon, the base commander, followed her out. "Welcome to the moon, Mademoiselle Pine. I trust you have found our accommodations agreeable?"

"Like the Ritz."

Salmon didn't grin. He was a wiry, fit man with close-cropped blond hair, togged out in the blue jumpsuit that all the lunar base personnel wore. His was not as tight fitting as the others', Charley noted.

"If you will permit, I will give you a tour of our facilities," Salmon said.

"Lead on," Charley replied.

Salmon went into a monologue about the base and its systems, explaining with the pride of ownership. Charley reflected that Salmon had arrived on the very first space-plane to the moon and never left. He had been here over six months and had personally supervised every phase of construction. In truth, he practically owned the base.

"The lunar base is lit during the clock day with metal halide lights, which as you see generate entirely white light, artificial sunlight, if you will, which provides us with vitamin D. During the twelve-hour clock night, we illuminate the base with red light to keep people on a proper night and day cycle."

The underground base reminded Charley of a hard-rock mine she toured once on a geology lab field trip. The rock from which it had been quarried was hard lava that lacked cracks or faults. Still, air did leak in minute amounts, Salmon said, so there were some imperfections in the stone. Fire and general emergency alarms were located side-by-side every fifty feet along the corridor walls, alongside emergency oxygen bottles.

She watched the well drilling, looked in the generator room, watched sewage being recycled to extract the water, spent a few minutes in the atmosphere room where the air was scrubbed and enhanced with oxygen and hydrogen as required, and visited the gymnasium.

"A sixth of earth's gravity is insufficient to maintain the muscle tone required to keep the human body healthy over long periods," Salmon explained. "Everyone at the base is required to spend an hour a day exercising in this room, regardless of other duties." He demonstrated the gym equipment for Charley. "Transporting weights to the moon would have been outrageously expensive, so we brought these machines that rely on spring tension to supply the resistance. The amount of effort involved is unrelated to gravity." Salmon moved the heaviest weight without much apparent effort, Charley thought, which proved that he did spend his hour a day here.

There was also a set of barbells in the room, but the weights on the ends of the bars were huge rocks. Salmon saw her inspecting one and urged, "Pick it up. Carefully."

Charley set herself and jerked the bar. It seemed to weigh about a hundred pounds, she estimated, so on earth it would weigh six times that much. When she set it down she laughed. "I wish I had a photo of me lifting that. I would look like Superwoman."

"We'll see what we can do," Salmon said, deadpan. Charley wondered if he ever smiled.

Salmon led her to the science lab and explained some of the experiments as the technicians worked.

"We have found water on the moon," Salmon said, "and we will find more. But the primary purpose of the lunar base, its real justification, is this laboratory, where our scientists are working on creating complex organic compounds."

Charley stood looking at the computers, ovens, test tubes, retorts and other lab gear. "Trying to make food, I suppose."

"Precisely," Salmon said. "Has someone told you about our research?"

"No. But one of the main problems with interstellar space flight, and to a lesser extent bases on the moon or other planets, is going to be food. The astronauts are going to have to make food from waste products, including human wastes, or they'll eventually starve."

"Precisely," Salmon admitted grudgingly. "Our laboratory is already manufacturing more complex organic molecules than can be made in earth's gravitational field. We progress."

"Think of the possibilities," Charley enthused. "Throw some old newspapers and ratty jeans in the microwave, and half an hour later out pops a souffle covered with a delicate sauce."

Salmon eyed her suspiciously and led her from the lab.

They visited the medical bay. Lalouette was out of surgery and recovering, although he was still asleep. They casually inspected the sleeping quarters. All the women were in one dormitory room. Oh, well, she was only going to be here about ten days, then she was going back to earth with Lalouette, assuming he had recovered enough to stand the G forces.

On one corridor they found a large dust curtain. Entering, Charley and Salmon saw a crew busy quarrying rock, enlarging the base. Powerful air scrubbers captured the dust. Two men in hard hats ran the machines that ate at the rock. Joe Bob Hooker was standing beside one of the roaring air scrubbers smoking a green Churchill cigar. "This is the only place they'll let me smoke," he explained loudly to Charley as Salmon conferred with the workers. "They say the smoke will set off the fire alarms."

Charley met people everywhere and heard more names than she could ever remember.

She and Salmon were traversing a corridor that penetrated deeply into the cliff when they passed a door marked NO ADMITTANCE TO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL. The door had a keypad that allowed access. Power cables penetrated the metal bulkhead in which the door was set along one wall, as well as ducts to pipe air in and bring it out. "What's in there?" she asked her guide.

"More experiments. We must keep the room scrupulously clean."

Charley didn't argue. And she didn't believe him.

So what was behind the door? Was that the destination of the reactor? Why in the world did Pierre Artois need a nuclear reactor on the moon? Electrical power was the only possible answer, but why so much?

"Why are you here?" she asked Salmon.

"I make it all work," he replied casually.

"That is what you do. But why are you here?"

He stopped, turned and scrutinized her face. 'You are the first person who ever asked."

"Oh."

Salmon took a deep breath as he thought about the question. "Most people have little dreams, with small goals. They lead small, unimportant lives. Pierre's dream is huge, and he has devoted himself to it body and soul. Do you understand?"

"I think so."

Salmon was intense. "Even if he ultimately fails, he has tried mightily. And the attempt has made him great."

"Like Don Quixote, perhaps."

Salmon didn't think much of that analogy. He merely grunted and resumed walking.

"And your dream?" Charley asked.

"Pierre's dream has made him great. And if we believe, he will make us great, too."

The messiah on the moon, Charley thought, although she didn't say that to Henri Salmon. He had his dream and she had hers, which was to fly. My dream is big enough for me, she told herself.

In the mess hall Salmon bid her a curt good-bye and walked away. "Interesting," she muttered aloud. His jumpsuit bulged under his armpit. Henri Salmon was wearing a pistol. Whatever for, she wondered.

Her lack of sleep was catching up with her. She made her way to the women's dorm and leaped into her bed, which didn't collapse.

Charley Pine was sitting in the dining area after her long nap when Florentin found her. He sat down beside her with his tray. "It was the heater in the main engine," he reported. "It froze up. I've reset the circuit breaker. Seems fine now."

"Why did it freeze?" Charley asked between bites.

"That I don't know. I've inspected everything I can inspect, and I can't find anything wrong."

"Could not duplicate the gripe," Charley muttered in English, then smiled at Florentin. He was the expert on the spaceplane. If he couldn't find the glitch, no one else at the lunar base would either. Some problems a pilot simply has to live with. Fortunately they wouldn't need the main engine to get back to earth. The main burns would be longer, but the computer could arrive at the proper trajectory to account for that.

"How are they coming on getting the cargo unloaded?" she asked.

"Another twenty-four hours or so. Then, Salmon says, they will begin loading the science experiments for the trip back."

"Terrific."

"So how do you like the moon?"

"Reminds me of a cave."

"Yes," he said with a grin. "We call it Cave Base. Do not say that to the press, though. Monsieur Artois is selling the glamour."

"Speaking of glamour," Charley said as Joe Bob Hooker came over carrying a tray and sat down with them. "Hello, Mr. Hooker."

"Call me Joe Bob. Well, whaddaya think?"

Florentin mumbled an excuse and took his tray to another table, where he sat with a collection of technicians.

"What this place needs is a golf course," Charley said to Joe Bob, just to make conversation.

"My sentiments, exactly. I've brought a driver and a box of balls. Been outside hitting a few, figuring out just how far they go. Can't get a real good swing in a space suit, and Artois will have to keep that in mind. He had a designer lay out a course and asked for my opinion. He knows I have a ten handicap."

Charley Pine's opinion of Pierre Artois' public relations skills soared. If he could keep the Joe Bobs of the world happy, there were no limits on what he could accomplish. Too bad the worker bees around here assiduously avoided the Texan.

As Hooker chattered about his golf experiences at deluxe courses around the world, Charley finished her meal. The lunar base personnel who entered the dining area avoided their table.

Money can buy the adventure, she thought, but it can't buy camaraderie. Joe Bob would always be a tourist. And he knew it. He eyed the technicians in their one-piece jumpsuits and concentrated on his food.

She made her excuses and left.

Life at the lunar base was regulated by the clock, almost as if the people were in a submerged submarine. Charley worked out in the gym, then spent the rest of the clock day sitting on an inflatable couch that didn't weigh five pounds in front of a television playing French and Italian movies. She watched people come and go from the cafeteria section of the room while scanning European newspapers that Jeanne d 'Arc had delivered. Around her, off-duty base personnel chattered among themselves. They had engaged her in conversation, then turned to subjects that interested them— problems with the base, professional challenges, gossip and games. Several computers sat on a table against a wall and were set up to play games. Chess sets were nearby and were always in use.

People were the same everywhere, Charley thought rue-lull}'. Even on the moon. People needed intellectual stimulation as well as physical exercise to stay healthy.

The adrenaline rush of the flight had worn off, leaving her depressed and lethargic. With no duties to engage her, she was bored. And blue. She wasn't yet ready to throw herself into computer games. Yeah, this was an adventure of a lifetime, but when it was over, then what?

Yawning and tired, she tossed away the newspapers and sat musing about Rip. Finally she gave up and headed for the women's bunkroom.

In the months that he had had the computer from Rip's saucer, Egg Cantrell had devoted much time and thought to try to learn how it worked. Yet he could not ignore the contents of the database. He had converted his office into a computer center so that he could transfer the contents of the saucer's computer to his own, where he could manipulate the data, attempting to organize it and make sense of it. At times he felt like a man sampling books in the Library of Congress, knowing that reading them all would be impossible. At first he had tried to be systematic. The problem was that all knowledge is interrelated, so no matter where he began, threads to other interesting things led away in all directions. Finally he realized that systematic exploration of the storehouse of information contained in the computer would take thousands of years, and he only had a fraction of one lifetime left. So he abandoned system and, when he wasn't working on the programs that made the computer think, he followed any interesting thread anywhere it led. If he crossed another pathway that looked more interesting, he followed that.

The real problem was that he couldn't read the language. Much of the information was in the form of text, which he spent several months trying to decipher. Finally he realized the task was beyond him. With the help of several academics he knew, he located a young linguistics scholar and gave her a huge sample of the text and the graphics that were embedded around it. That was several months ago. She was still searching for a key, a Rosetta stone, that would give her an opening.

In their last conversation she said, "I am assuming that this language was the parent of all the eartNh's languages. That is a huge assumption and may prove to be wrong. There has been much theoretical work done on the so-called first language, and it's just that, theory. All that said, I guarantee you that I can crack it with a computer."

"When?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"What if it isn't a language but computer code?"

"It's not computer code. Computer languages are cake. I had to eliminate that possibility first."

Today he was examining the design of an interstellar spaceship. It contained a cargo hold for transporting two saucers. The ship reminded him of a giant Ferris wheel, with an outer ring that housed the passengers spinning slowly around an interior axis that held the ship's nuclear engines and fuel. The exterior ring was large enough to hold several hundred people. It also held hydroponic gardens, which were used to grow plants for the humans to consume, and a lab for manufacturing food from recycled organic compounds.

He was tracing the power and life support systems when Rip came into his study.

"Look at this," Egg said. "It might be the ship that brought the saucer people to earth."

Rip stared over his shoulder at the computer screen. "They assembled it in space."

"They certainly didn't bring it into the atmosphere," Egg agreed. "See the hold for the saucers, which must have shuttled people and cargo up and down to a planet."

After a bit Rip said, "If all the people came down to earth, where is the starship?"

"Perhaps some of the crew flew it on to another star. Or if everyone stayed on earth, perhaps they left it in orbit."

"It's not up there now."

"No, it wouldn't be. If it were left in low earth orbit, sooner or later it would have fallen into the atmosphere and been destroyed."

Rip sighed and turned away. He sagged into the only easy chair in the room and stared at his toes.

"You must be patient," Egg said. "Life always works out. Give Charley a chance."

"Umm."

"Give life a chance, Rip. If you are the man for her, she'll figure that out."

"I am the one," Egg's nephew replied. "How could she not see that? How could she doubt it? She's not blind."

"She'll have to discover that truth for herself."

"And if she doesn't?"

Charley Pine awoke from a deep sleep knowing someone was in the room. She lay perfectly still for several seconds, trying to remember precisely where she was. Someone was shaking a person in the next bed. Ah yes, that person was Claudine Courbet, who had gone to bed an hour or so after Charley.

It was a man — Henri Salmon. Now he whispered some-

thing in French. He left the room, and Clandine Courbet bestirred herself. Charley pretended to be asleep.

Courbet dressed in the darkness; then Charley heard the door open and close. She opened her eyes and sat up in bed. There were two other women in the room, both apparently asleep.

Charley sat up, pulled on her flight suit and her boots, then pulled her hair back and put a band on it.

The corridor was lit with red light during the base night hours in an effort to help the humans regulate their internal clocks. And it was empty. She walked carefully along, past the doors to several workshops, toward the steel door that had been locked yesterday. I'm getting accustomed to the moon's gravity, she thought wryly. Afexu more days and I'll look like a native.

She approached the last bend in the corridor with care. Two men were wrestling a dolly loaded with something heavy. The reactor! They punched in the code; then one man held the door while the other maneuvered the dolly through the entrance.

As they disappeared into the space, Charley bounded toward the door — and caught it just before it closed.

She waited several seconds, then pulled it open and followed them through.

A few feet past the locked door she passed through an air lock, both doors of which stood open. Beyond the air lock the corridor opened into a commodious cavern. The two men with the dolly were off-loading the reactor. Clau-dine Courbet was hovering nearby, apparently supervising. None of the three noticed her.

A control console sat facing a large window. Beyond the window, which appeared to be thick, bulletproof glass or plastic, three large objects were visible.

One of them looked like an optical telescope, a huge one,

at least ten feet tall. The largest machine, if it was that, stood at least twelve feet tall and was covered with opaque plastic. Against the wall was another object, a giant cube about six feet high. Power cables three inches thick ran from it to the machine under the plastic.

Charley recognized the cube — it was a giant capacitor. The solar panels on the surface over their heads would never fully charge it, but the nuclear reactor, if used to generate electricity, certainly could.

Above the machines beyond the glass was a large metal roof, one that apparently consisted of panels that could be moved by a complicated arrangement of hydraulic rams. This roof must be the object she had seen from outside and thought was a skylight.

On this side of the window the control console dominated the room. There were four raised chairs, the usual emergency equipment and, against one wall, hangers that held at least a half dozen space suits and helmets.

The place looked like an observatory. Yet the orientation was wrong. When the roof was opened, the telescope wouldn't be pointed at deep space; it would be pointed toward earth.

Now Claudine saw Charley. She looked startled, then approached her.

"What are you doing here?"

"I heard you leave the dorm and wanted to see you set up the reactor."

Claudine blinked once. "Henri gave you the door code?"

"Of course."

Claudine seemed to accept that. She turned and gestured grandly. "What do you think?"

"Wow," Charley Pine said, and meant it.