Good to know.
I sat on the edge of Svoboda’s bed and watched him set up.
He’d really gone all out. In addition to the normal monitor on his desk, he’d mounted four other monitors to the wall.
He typed on the keyboard and magically brought each monitor to life.
“A little overboard, don’t you think?” I said.
He continued typing. “Two cameras on your EVA suit, two on Dale’s, and I need a screen for diagnostics. That’s five screens.”
“Could have been windows on the same screen, though, right?”
“Pfft. Philistine.”
I flopped back onto the bed and sighed. “On a scale from one to ‘invade Russia in winter,’ how stupid is this plan?”
“Risky as all hell, but I don’t see what else you can do. Besides”—he turned to me with a grin—“you have your own personal Svoboda. How can you lose?”
I snickered. “But have I covered every angle?”
He shrugged. “No such thing. But for what it’s worth, you got everything I can think of.”
“That means a lot,” I said. “You’re pretty thorough.”
“Well, there is one thing,” he said.
“Shit. What?”
“Well, it’s half of a thing.” He turned back to his computer and brought up the Sanchez bubble schematics. “The methane tanks bother me.”
“How so?” I walked over and hovered behind him. My hair dangled on his face a little, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“There’s thousands of liters of liquid methane here.”
“Why do they need methane?”
“The rocket fuel they manufacture is about one percent methane. It’s needed as a combustion regulator. They import it from Earth in big-ass tanks.”
“Okay, what’s your concern?”
“It’s flammable. Like… super-duper flammable.” He pointed to a different part of the schematic. “And there’s a huge staging tank of pure oxygen over here.”
“And then I’m going to add a bunch of molten steel to the room,” I said. “What could go wrong?”
“Right, that’s my concern,” he said. “But it shouldn’t be a problem. By the time the smelter melts, there won’t be anyone around.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And if the tanks do leak and explode that’s great. Even more damage!”
“I guess,” he said, clearly not convinced. “It just bugs me, you know? It’s not part of the plan. I don’t like things that don’t match a plan.”
“If that’s the worst thing you can think of, I’m in good shape.”
“Guess so,” he said.
I stretched my back. “I wonder if I’ll sleep tonight.”
“You crashing here?”
“Eh…” I said. “Ngugi isn’t going to sell me out again. Have I mentioned she’s a bitch?”
“It’s come up.”
“Anyway, now no one can track me down by my Gizmo. So I can pay for a hotel. I’ll probably be up late fretting, anyway. I wouldn’t want to keep you awake.”
“Okay,” he said. Was there a hint of disappointment in his voice?
I put my hands on his shoulders. Not sure why, but I did. “Thanks for always being in my corner. It means a lot to me.”
“Sure.” He craned his neck around to look up at me. “I’ll always be there for you, Jazz.”
We looked at each other for a moment.
“Hey, did you try out the condom yet?” he asked.
“Goddammit, Svoboda!” I said.
“What? I’m waiting for feedback here.”
I threw my hands up and walked away.
The huge door to the freight airlock lumbered open and revealed the desolate lunar landscape beyond.
Dale checked a reading on the rover’s control panel. “Pressure is good, air mix A-okay, CO2 absorption on automatic.”
I looked over the screens in front of my seat. “Batteries at one hundred percent, wheel motor diagnostics are green, comms are five-by-five.”
He grabbed the control stick. “Port of Entry Airlock, request permission to disembark.”
“Granted,” came Bob’s voice over the intercom. “Take good care of my rover, Shapiro.”
“Will do.”
“Try not to screw it up, Bashara,” Bob said.
“Bite me,” I said.
Dale slapped the Mute button and shot me a look. “You know what, Jazz? We’re breaking every guild rule in the book. If we get caught, Bob and I will both get kicked out. Forever. We’re risking our livelihood here. Can you be a little more fucking considerate?!”
I unmuted the mike. “Uh… thanks, Bob. For… all this.”
“Copy,” came the clipped reply.
Dale piloted the rover out of the airlock and onto the regolith. I expected things to get bumpy but the suspension was very smooth. That, plus the area just outside had been flattened and smoothed over by years of frequent use.
Bob’s rover was, simply put, the best rover on the moon. This was no dune buggy with awkward seats for EVA-suited passengers. It was fully pressurized and had a spacious interior with supplies and power enough to last for days. Both of our EVA suits were stored neatly in racks along the walls. The rover even had a partitioned airlock in the rear, meaning the cabin never had to lose pressure, even if someone went outside.
Dale looked straight ahead while he drove. He refused to even cast me a sideways glance.
“You know what?” I said. “It’s the EVA Guild that’s a threat to your livelihood, not me. Maybe protectionist bullshit isn’t the best policy.”
“You’re probably right. We should let everyone play with the airlocks. I’m sure we can trust untrained people not to annihilate the city with the press of a button.”
“Oh, please. The guild could have members operate the airlocks and let people manage their EVAs themselves. They’re just greedy fucks running a labor cartel. Pimps went out of style a long time ago, you know.”
He snickered despite himself. “I’ve missed our political arguments.”
“Me too.”
I checked the time. We had a fairly tight schedule to keep. So far, so good.
We turned southeast and headed toward the Berm a kilometer away. Not a long drive, but it would have been a very long walk, especially dragging the modified air shelter with us.
The shelter clanked against the roof as we entered the rougher terrain. We both looked up at the source of the noise, then at each other.
“It’s strapped down tight, right?” he asked.
“You were there when we secured it,” I said.
Clang.
I winced. “If it falls off, we pick it up, I guess. It would cost us time we don’t have, but we could hustle.”
“And hope it didn’t break.”
“No way it breaks,” I said. “Dad did the welds. They’ll last until the sun goes cold.”
“Yeah, about that,” he said, “will you be able to handle the next set of welds?”
“Yes.”
“And what if you can’t?”
“I’ll die,” I said. “So I’m fairly motivated to get it right.”
He turned left slightly. “Hang on. We’re crossing over the pipe.”
The air pipeline that carried freshly minted oxygen from the smelter to Armstrong Bubble lay along the ground.
On Earth, no one would be insane enough to ship pressurized oxygen gas through a pipeline. But on the lunar surface, there’s nothing to burn. Also, on Earth, they usually bury pipelines to protect the system from weather, animals, and idiot humans. We don’t do that here. Why would we? We don’t have weather or animals and all the idiot humans are mostly confined to the city.
Dale managed the controls as the front end of the rover bucked up and down, then the rear did the same.
“Is that really safe?” I asked. “Driving over a high-pressure line like that?”