We sank down into shadow–the glare behind us switched off as suddenly as a power failure. Flurries of dust rose up around us like history. A moment later, we bumped softly down onto the Lunar surface. The vehicle stopped shaking and we were down. The Beagle had landed.
THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE
"Welcome to Invisible Luna," Alexei said. He began shutting down the flight controls, switching off all the things he'd switched on before, switching on all the things he'd switched off. "We are now off the map."
He waved at the junk and detritus beyond the window. "This is abandoned test site Brickner 43‑AX92. Not cost‑effective for industrial production. Shut down seven years ago. Leased to Lunar Homestead Sites for one dollar a year, paid up one hundred years in advance, with option to purchase. All ice mined from this site must be sold to leasing company. Part of proceeds goes to company store for credit for supplies, part goes toward purchase price, last part you get to keep–only no place to spend it, nothing to do but melt more ice. Is no big deal. The more you melt, faster you earn out, sooner you work for yourself, sooner you make profit. Lunar sharecropping, da?Does that not sound like good deal? It is if you are lunatic. Even better, water prices stay high."
He peered forward through the window, squinting against the gloom, then began easing the Beagle gently forward. He didn't stop talking for a moment. "More people come to moon every day. All of them need water. Two liters a day for drinking, depending how active person is. Another twelve for washing and flushing. Another fifty liters for breathing, or more for watering plants so they can make oxygen for you to breathe–plus humidity, that uses water too. Another thirty liters for crops to eat. And more if you want to eat meat, because meat has to eat and drink and breathe too before it is meat. Lunar Authority mandates at least one hundred liters of clean water per day per person. That's hard water use, of course. Not soft. Soft includes safety margin, hard doesn't."
"Huh?" That was me. "Soft water?"
"Not like on Earth. Soft water means different on moon. I explain. Everything on Luna is measured in water. We have water‑based economy. We buy and sell with water‑dollars–or ice‑dollars, which are not worth as much because you have to dig them out of ground first. After you dig them up, they become water‑dollars, worth more. Is our own value‑added tax, ha ha."
Alexei kept talking as he drove. The ground was rougher off the landing pad, but not so rough that the truck couldn't negotiate it. The wheels were three meters in diameter, as tall as a full‑grown Loonie, so they just rolled over all but the largest obstacles. They were treaded for off‑road use, which was kind of a joke when you thought about it. Everything on Luna was off‑road. Alexei steered us toward a cluster of three pods, lying side by side. That didn't look so bad, until he explained they weren't our destination. They were for water‑processing.
"There is soft‑water use and hard‑water use," Alexei returned to his lecture. "Hard‑water use is determined by laws of physics. No room to negotiate. What you get is what you see. You need twenty‑four hours of air to breathe, every day. You cannot get by on twenty‑three hours, can you? You cannot get by on twenty‑three hours and forty‑five minutes, can you? No, you need your full twenty‑four hours of air. That requires however many liters it takes to water plants that produce oxygen. Or however many liters you electrolyze. That is hard‑water use.
"Soft water use is negotiable. You can use some water more than once. You can wash yourself in water, then use it again to flush toilet, then use it a third time to water plants. One liter gets used three different ways. Is like getting three liters for one. You do not need fresh water for everything, soft water lets you make water work overtime. But even when water works super golden hours, there is a limit to how hard it can work. You cannot recycle what isn't there–and even softest water turns hard after a while.
"We have more than three million Lunatics on this globe. That means we need at least three hundred million liters of liquid water to sustain life. If there is not enough water for everyone, demand goes up and prices rise. We have to use more and more soft water, until we reach hard‑water limit. That is good day for ice miners, because that is day we all make lots of money–if we can get our water to market. Price of hard water is floor of Lunar economy. Price of soft water is ceiling. Understand, da?Or is it the other way around? Never mind. Is big room to make lots of money. As long as sun shines, is raining soup. Grab a spoon and a bowl. Don't stand there holding fork and wondering why you are hungry. This is why Lunar sharecroppers sometimes sell extra water to invisible economy. Not to leaseholder. But leaseholders have to buy at fair market price, so if sharecropper is in it only for money, is wise to be legal. But I am not in it onlyfor money."
He guided the Beagle into a docking bay and brought it to a careful halt. The front wheels bumped firmly against a bar of foam, set across the end of the bay as a shock absorber. Alexei locked the engines down, then began punching a column of buttons to his left, watching as the light next to each one flashed green. From behind and below us came the familiar clattering sounds of an automatic hatch connection. Somebody must have gotten very rich from that patent.
The docking bay was a deep trench carved into the Lunar surface. Beside it was a flattish dome with a spindly power‑tower rising above it like an old‑fashioned oil derrick. Multiple light‑pipes fed down from the lens arrays at the top and into channels all around the edges of the dome, so the dome glowed from underneath.
Alexei finished locking the vehicle down and put it in standby mode. He stopped to frown at one display. "I will have to take this machine in for service, very soon. We have put on too many miles, too many hours. Never mind. Let's get you safely put away."
He unfastened his safety harness and bounced aftward. He pulled open a floor panel, revealing a hatch set into the very bottom of the cabin. The panel next to it flashed green with confirmations. He punched the unlock, armed the connecting circuits, lowered the pressure tube, connected it, checked the connections, pressurized it, checked the pressure, confirmed it, unlocked the hatch, and popped it. He unzipped the three openings to the pressure tube.
There was a flat cabinet mounted on the ceiling; Alexei stood up, opened it, and dropped the end of a retractable plastic ladder down the hatch. Every door on Luna was a locked hatch. There hadn't been a death caused by accidental decompression in thirty years. And that one, according to Alexei, had been so horrible that every hatch on Luna was replaced in the next five; though some places off the map might still have some of those old hatches installed–probably with extra warning stickers on them.
Alexei climbed down the ladder. Even though the distance from the floor of the Beagle to the hatch on the ground was low enough to jump, he still climbed down the ladder. Both Mickey and Alexei had cautioned us– more than once–that more bones had been broken by Terran overconfidence than any other particular brand of stupidity. It was what Alexei called "the Superman mistake." Just because you can jump that high doesn't mean you can land safely.
The pressure tube was like every other one we'd seen, an extendable plastic column. The ladder went down the center of it. At the bottom was the outer hatch of whatever airlock we were dropping down into. We pulled up the plastic ladder so Alexei could rezip the three zippers at the top of the pressure tube; then he unzipped the three zippers at the bottom. He worked the controls on the lower pressure hatch, popped it, stuck his head in, and took a deep breath. He flashed us a thumbs‑up signal and we unzipped the top three zippers and lowered the ladder again, so we could climb down through the pressure tube. A week ago, I would have asked, is all this checking necessary? Now I knew enough not to bother asking.