The Silent War

LUNAR HOPPER

Hoppers are meant for short-range transportation on the Moon. They are ungainly looking vehicles, little more than a rocket motor powered by powdered aluminum and liquid oxygen, both scraped up from the lunar regolith. Atop the bulbous propellant tanks and rocket nozzle is a square metal mesh platform no more than three meters on a side, surmounted by a waist-high podium that houses the hopper’s controls. The entire craft sits on the ground on a trio of spindly legs that wouldn’t be strong enough to hold its weight in normal Earth gravity.

Pancho felt bone-weary as she slowly climbed the flimsy ladder up to the hopper’s platform. She felt grateful that this particular little bird had a glassteel bubble enclosing the platform. It’ll gimme some protection against the radiation, she told herself. She got to the top, pulled herself up onto the aluminum mesh and let the trapdoor hatch slam shut. All in the total silence of the airless Moon.

There were no seats on the hopper, of course. You rode the little birds standing up, with your boots snugged into the fabric loops fastened to the platform.

The radiation sensor display on the side of her helmet had gone down to a sickly bilious green and the automated voice had stopped yakking at her. Pancho felt grateful for that. Either the radiation’s down enough so the warning system’s cut out or I’ve got such a dose the warning doesn’t matter anymore, she thought.

She felt bilious green herself: queasy with nausea, so tired that if there had been a reclining seat on the hopper she would’ve cranked it back and gone to sleep.

Not yet, she warned herself. You go to sleep now, girl, and you prob’ly won’t wake up, ever.

Hoping the radiation hadn’t damaged the hopper’s electronic systems, Pancho clicked on the master switch and was pleased to see the podium’s console lights come on. A little on the weak side, she thought. Fuel cells are down. Or maybe my vision’s going bad.

Propellant levels were low. Nairobi hadn’t refueled the bird after it had carried her here to their base. Enough to make it back to the Astro base? Despite her aches and nausea, Pancho grinned to herself. We’ll just hafta see how far we can go.

Nobuhiko had followed one of the engineers to the base flight control center, a tight little chamber filled with consoles and display screens, most of them dark, most of the desks unoccupied. Still the room felt overly warm, stifling, even with Yamagata’s retinue of bodyguards stationed outside in the corridor.

One console was alight, one screen glowing in the shadows of the control center. Nobu bent over the Nairobi flight controller seated at that console. He saw Pancho’s lanky figure slowly climbing the ladder of the green-anodized hopper.

The Yamagata engineer standing at his side gasped. “She’s not wearing a space suit!”

“Yes she is,” Nobu replied. “A new type, made of nanomachines.”

To the flight controller he asked, “Can you prevent her from taking off?”

Looking up briefly, the controller shook his head. “No, sir. She can control the vehicle autonomously. Of course, without a flight plan or navigational data, she won’t be able to find her destination. And the vehicle’s propellant levels are too low for anything but a very short flight.”

“We could send a team out to stop her,” suggested the Yamagata engineer.

Nobuhiko took a breath, then replied, “No. Why send good men out into that radiation storm?”

“The storm is abating, sir.”

“No,” he repeated. “Let her take off. If she is to die, let it be a flight accident. I’ll have the Nairobi public relations people make up a plausible story that keeps Yamagata Corporation out of it.”

Nobuhiko straightened up and watched the little lunar hopper take off in a sudden spurt of stark white gas and gritty dust, all in total silence.

He almost wished Pancho good fortune. An extraordinary woman, he thought. A worthy opponent. Too bad she’s going to die.

As soon as the hopper jerked off the ground Pancho turned on its radio, sliding her finger along the frequency control to search for Malapert’s beacon. She knew roughly which direction the Astro base lay in. The hopper had only limited maneuverability, however; it flew mainly on a ballistic trajectory, like an odd-looking cannon shell.

“Pancho Lane calling,” she spoke into her helmet microphone. She wanted to yell, to bellow, but she didn’t have the strength. “I’m in a hopper, coming up from the Nairobi Industries base at Shackleton crater. I need a navigation fix, pronto.”

No reply.

She looked down at the bleak lunar landscape sliding by, trying to remember landmarks from her flight in to Shackleton. Nothing stood out. It all looked the same: bare rock pitted by innumerable craters ranging from little dimples to holes big enough to swallow a city. Rugged hills, all barren and rounded by eons of meteors sandpapering them to worn, tired smoothness. And rocks and boulders strewn everywhere like toys left behind by a careless child.

Pancho felt worn and tired, too. Her mind was going fuzzy. It would be so good to just fold up and go to sleep. Even the hard metal deck of the hopper looked inviting to her.

Stop it! she commanded herself. Stay awake. Find the base’s radio beacon. Use it to guide you in.

She played the hopper’s radio receiver up and down the frequency scale, seeking the automated homing beacon from the Malapert base. Nothing. Feeling something like panic simmering in her guts, Pancho thought, Maybe I’m heading in a completely wrong direction. Maybe I’m so way off that—

A steady warm tone suddenly issued from her helmet earphones. Pancho couldn’t have been more thrilled if the world’s finest singer had begun to serenade her.

“This is Pancho Lane,” she said, her voice rough, her throat dry. “I need a navigational fix, pronto.”

A heartbeat’s hesitation. Then a calm tenor voice said to her, “Malapert base here, Ms. Lane. We have you on our radar. You’re heading seventeen degrees west of us. I’m feeding correction data to your nav computer.”

Pancho felt the hopper’s tiny maneuvering thruster push the ungainly bird sideways a bit. Her legs felt weak, rubbery. Bird’s on automatic now, she thought. I can relax. I can lay down and—

A red light on the control console glared at her like an evil eye and the hopper’s computer announced, “Propellant cutoff. Main engine shutdown.”

Pancho’s reply was a heartfelt, “Shit!”