Beyond the reach of the station's huge blue-white night lamps the landscape was shadowy and unreal. Grinding its way down the gravel-paved road outside the dome was a huge ten-wheeled flatbed truck, its bulbous tires flattening under the weight of its large blockish load. More junk for the construction site. Bensmiller wasn't sure what they were building there. The site at the end of the makeshift road was near Cluster A of glittering Garden domes, each dome itself a cluster of warm yellow stars, each star an artificial sun above a section of a Garden. The project had something to do with the generation of power for the Garden complexes. Station Commander Kreski always demanded expansion, new construction, toward the still-distant end of total self-sufficiency for Station Grissom. Every new dome, every new corridor which snaked across the dust of Sinus Iridum came closer to cutting off the ties to the blue planet perpetually in the southern sky.
Two small beetle-like trucks were following the large flatbed toward the site. Bensmiller shook his head and climbed down the ladder. He dusted the grout from his knees at the bottom. It was more machines. On wheels,on treads, under domes and beneath the lunar soil the machines proliferated. Still, only seven new people had been added to the station staff in four months. The priest wondered why they didn't just send the men home and let the machines spread themselves solidly across the moon's surface.
Father Thomas Bensmiller picked up his clipboard and continued sketching out his report on the progress of the moon church. The main altar was almost finished. The great slab of genuine maple, the first of its kind in all history to rise above the smoky pall of Earth, would soon bear the reenactment of the Supper. It had been set on its rough-hewn moon-granite pillar, and would be consecrated within the month. The rotator for the two-sided cross had been set discreetly beneath the floor in front of the altar. A lectern of woodlike synthetic stood to the altar's right. Bensmiller mentioned them and made note of his satisfaction with them on the multiple forms.
Only a little remained unfinished: painting, some electrical work, the pews for the faithful and the large dual cross itself, Corpus on one side and bare gold on the other.
Bensmiller turned to the statue. Crafted on Earth of Italian marble, it towered more than two meters high on its pedestal of lunar rock The stars shone on her undimmed. He could not look at her and not feel a cool shiver of wonder down his spine. How many kilos of propellant brought you out of Earth's arms to this place, Lady? Kreski kept telling him, over and over, but Bensmiller had made it a point not to remember. Kreski loved to speculate on the riches of the Church spent to build a church on the moon when millions starved in the enslaved East.
But the poor will always be with you. He had said that, the Christ. And the power of the Church could not always reach past the walls of oppression. God would care for His poor when His ministers were barred from them. Yes. The Lord would care for them. Kreski would nod, and nod, and walk away, still nodding.
At those times Father Bensmiller felt very small, and false somehow. Kreski was a huge man, brilliant and cold in his understanding of machines and moon-science. Thomas Bensmiller, third son of an Indianapolis housewife, dark and short, mouse-quick and mouse-quiet in all he did, was no match for the station commander and shrank from Kreski's sharp challenges. What was a priest doing on the moon when there was work to be done on Earth? Bensmiller glanced around at the incomplete church, and thought of the machines and thrumming activity further beyond. Man was running for the stars. God's administrators, such as Monsignor Garif, had decided that the Gospel must follow. Thomas Bernberger had been the first to go. Garif assured him he would be the first of many. There were many men like Kreski on the Moon. It would be difficult.
Give us your strength, Mother. The worst obstacles here are not the rocks and vacuum.
The Mother of God smiled down at Father Bensmiller, as though to say, That is your problem, my son. HI handle my ang\e, you handle yours. Bensmiller had to grin. What a face that sculptor had given her. She had the face of a card shark.
Ten aces up each flowing sleeve, and a dozen secrets behind each ace.
Bensmiller stiffened. The Mother of God had nodded. Then he realized that the floor had shifted sharply under his feet at the same time. It had been a quick twitch, sudden, single, sharp. Moonquakes happened infrequently in that area. Moonquakes, however, were slow, languorous rearrangements of the crust that seldom effected solidly based structures. Explosion! But where was the sound?
Bensmiller glanced up at the Earth. Man had left sounds behind him. He hurried out of the almost-finished church. On the outside of the thick steel door the words were etched into a copper plate: Our Lady of the Endless Sky.
Cod have mercy on them, he prayed. The decompression sirens were already beginning their nightmare wail.
Kreski hovered like a mad vulture over Lock Six. The lock monitor screens showed men galomphing about outside, weird figures swimwalking in the ocean of one-sixth g. The silver hood of a light crane glinted for a moment under the night lamps. It crawled past the unreal gray vista of the screen and was gone. Other men followed, other machines with them. In the strange light the men and machines looked related, first cousins removed by a double layer of fiberglass and jointed stainless steel. Bensmiller's eyes drifted to the painted sign hanging above one of the monitor consoles, reading in black Roman: We are all in this together. He could never quite fathom it, never quite decide what its real portent was. Somehow it seemed to him that the machines were saying it. We are all brothers under the sheet metal. It disgusted him. For the last half of the twentieth century Man had been at war with his machines. Now, in the first half of the twenty-first, he was becoming one of them.
The oily smell of machines was very plain in his nostrils. Was this the first skirmish in a new war?
Kreski was punching buttons by the door of the lock. An embarrassed gleep announced the outer door opening. Kreski caught a glimpse of Bensmiller out of the corner of his eye and whipped around.
"Bensmiller, are you deaf? Go back to your cubbyhole and turn on the air!"
The priest noticed then that, save for the helmet, Kreski was fully suited. The sirens remained in the background, not quite real. His ears had not popped.
"But if there are injuries . . ."
"Damn!" Kreski reddened in anger. "On the moon you're alive or you're dead. I'd sooner you be alive. Mind those sirens, man!"
Bensmiller, cowed somewhat by the huge man's rage, turned and reentered the main corridor. The lock was cycling double-time emergency, air screaming protest at the furious pumps. The priest tried to shut out the noise.
Around the corner stood the Reverend Arthur Chamblen, the other half of the Interfaith Council Lunar Mission. Graying, sixtyish. He was a proud man, tall and lean, proud of the fact that he had been certified physically able to withstand the rigors of space travel, proud of the degree in astronomy, which allowed him to work on the small base telescope backing up the four hundred incher seventy kilometers away. Bensmiller, whose contribution to the station was limited to being caretaker of the numerous laboratory animals, envied Chamblen at times. The man spoke confidently about many things. He had a sharp mind and had no qualms about laying criticism where he thought it belonged.
"He's right about that, you know. Alive or dead. Not much in between." The voice was cold, unmoved. Less the voice of a minister than a physicist. The eyes were much the same, pale blue, ice blue, certain.