The clean lab, where the Moon rock would be processed, was a couple of storeys up. Henry was expecting a close cousin of the Lunar Curatorial Facility back home at JSC.
Well, there was a small, cramped airlock chamber here, a couple of wooden doors, like JSC. But there were no bunny suits or hats. It was just another lab, dusty, lined with grubby-looking wooden benches. There were fume cupboards on the walls, with safety notices, but their doors were ajar. Mike said the room had mostly been used, previously, by oceanographers looking for trace elements in sea water, like osmium or helium. At least there were steel-and-glass glove boxes sitting on the antique wooden benches, cheerfully bolted in place. And there were rocks, nondescript lumps, inside each of the boxes.
There was nobody working here right now. Too early in the morning, maybe.
“…The samples here are mostly just dummies,” Mike said. “A couple of meteorites and stuff. We really wanted to learn how to handle the samples. The containers are under positive pressure. I mean, the interiors contain air at a higher pressure than outside, so if there is any breach of containment the lunar material would be blown outwards, rather than have earthly contamination blow inwards. By comparison, if we were looking at radioactive material the pressure would be negative — air would be sucked inside a box in a breach, so that radioactivity would be contained. We store the samples in ultra-dry nitrogen…”
I know, Henry thought as Mike chattered nervously on. I know.
The positive pressure made the gloves, of black rubber, stick out from the boxes like questing arms, two or three feet long. As Henry walked past, the gloves seemed to bat at his chest, blindly.
“This clean room,” said Henry mildly, “doesn’t seem too clean to me. The lab at NASA is like Fort Knox.”
Mike looked defensive. “We’re trying to establish positive pressure in the room as a whole, but we’re having some trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“It’s kind of leaky. We don’t have the funding you guys have. And—”
Henry laughed. “My friend, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass. Moon rocks are just rocks. We’ll just roll up our sleeves and scrape off the shit. What do you say? Come on, show me one of these fancy boxes NASA has paid for.”
Mike grinned, still nervous. He led Henry to a glove box.
Henry knew from long experience that putting your hands into the gloves was a trick. You had to position your fingers over the fingers of the glove section, and then ram your arm into the aperture, pushing the glove right-side out by main force. It was easy to get your fingers in the wrong hole. And once inside the thick, somewhat stiff gloves, it was impossible to feel anything, and your hands got hot quickly. Learning to do delicate work in these things took time.
He noticed Mike had gotten his hands in there, ready to work, in seconds. Now he was picking up tools inside the box, confidently.
“We’re working to the same standards as you do at Houston,” he said. “The tools are Teflon, aluminum alloys and stainless steel. Stuff that won’t corrupt the rocks. The samples are sliced with lubricant-free handsaws and power saws, stainless steel blades edged with diamond.”
“How do you find those things to work with?”
Mike shrugged. “Buggers. The lack of lubricant makes the saws heavy and difficult to work, and the blades wear out quickly. But you get the job done. You need strong arms, though.”
“That you do.”
Mike pulled his arms briskly out of the gloves, and led Henry to the largest, best-lit case in the room, right at the centre. And there, on a small pedestal, sat sample 86047, an unprepossessing fist-sized lump of coal-black basalt, untidy and inert. Beside it rested a small plastic cube, labelled up-down and with the four points of the compass.
Mike bent to the case, and the fluorescent lighting underlit his face, making him look even younger.
“Here it is,” he said. “I can’t quite believe it’s here. That it’s — you know — real. That some guy picked it up on the Moon, and now it’s here.”
“Believe it. You know about the documentation trail on these babies?”
“Sure…”
In principle each Apollo sample had been photographed before it was picked up off the surface. The photo was the clue to the rock’s context. For instance, the pattern of shadows from the unremitting lunar sunlight gave the clue to its orientation. Since the scientists knew exactly when the rock was picked up, and where, and how high the sun would have been in the black lunar sky at that moment, they could position the rock in a strong light to recreate the shadows in the photograph, and so work out the rock’s precise orientation. Then they photographed the rock again alongside the small dice-like orientation cube. The cube stayed with the rock forever after. All this was important because, for instance, the underside of the rock would have been protected from the sun, and so processed differently.
“…Great theory,” said Henry sourly. “But it heads out the window when your astronaut fouls up. The orientation we have here is just a best guess. Shit. This rock sits there a billion years, waiting to be found, and we screw it up in the first second of contact…”
Two people bustled into the lab: a greying, portly older man, and a woman of about twenty-seven.
The man shook Henry’s hand. “Dr Meacher.”
“Henry, please.”
“Dan McDiarmid. I’m heading up the investigation here, from our side of the pond. Welcome to Edinburgh.”
“Good to meet you, Danny.”
McDiarmid flinched but held his ground. “We weren’t expecting you quite so — informally.” He was eyeing Henry’s stubble.
There wasn’t a trace of Scottish in his accent, as far as Henry could tell. He knew the type, he thought. His creative days long past, McDiarmid had used whatever reputation he had earned to win power and wealth, to turn himself into a Great Man.
Authority. The antithesis of science.
Now the woman pressed forward, thin and intense, sharp blue eyes. “Marge Case,” she said. “I took my degree at Cambridge, and a doctorate in lunar feldspathic breccia crystallization history—”
“I know about your work.” Henry noticed both McDiarmid and Case had just ignored Mike; in fact Case had literally pushed past Mike to get to Henry.
Henry retrieved his hand from Case. “Hey. Mike. Stick around.”
Mike turned, confused. “You want me to get you a coffee?”
“Hell, no, I don’t want a coffee. Well, yes I do, but not right now. Just hang loose, bubba.”
McDiarmid said with evident difficulty, “We want to offer you every hospitality and resource. Marge here will work as your lead technician, and—”
“Sorry.” Henry reached out to Mike, got hold of the shoulder of his jacket, and pulled him back. “Post’s taken.”
Case looked at Mike with precisely the reaction Henry had expected. “But I have a doctorate in—”
“You said already. I’m sure Mike and I can find you something to do.” Henry put his arms around their shoulders, and began to lead them to the door; McDiarmid followed, hands fluttering over his belly. “We’re going to be one big family,” Henry said. “Just like the Waltons. Do you get the Waltons? Now, Mike. Where do we get that coffee?”
When he was done tormenting Case and McDiarmid, he relented and let Mike drive him back to the Balmoral.
Mike drove in silence, apparently confused. Henry wondered if he was being cruel to him, in some obscure way.
Am I just playing games with this guy? Or do I really think he will do a better job than Marge Case?
Well, sure he did.
But maybe he was being too smart at filling in Mike’s life story.
Henry suppressed a sigh. When the divorce from Geena was finalized — when he learned the Shoemaker was canned and he was going to have to leave Houston — it was as if his life was ending. He was glad when that crummy BA 747 left the tarmac at Houston Intercontinental, because it was like a little death.