Along the walls they were hanging the narrow aluminum ducts, through which the air would soon pass, driven by pumps laid beneath the floor. It all went together so quickly, so logically. It seemed as though the men in the dome were merely throwing the beams and ducts together. Everything fit so well, so quickly the first time. There seemed to be no effort to it. And yet Bensmiller could see and smell the grimy sweat streaming from their faces. He saw the concentrating grimaces, the set jawlines.
This work ... as important to them. Bless their labors, Mary.
In time, only one space remained where a garden unit might be placed, and the tubes and wires were everywhere nearby. Bensmiller left hastily, not wanting to see the altar of God plugged into the clucking machines.
The funeral of Odner and Beckwith was held in Lock One, largest lock and single area large enough for all station personnel to gather. Monahan was there, on a surgical cart plugged into the medical monitors. Soon after, the rocket took Odner back to the arms of Earth, and Beckwith, as his wife requested, was laid beneath the lunar soil Bensmiller watched the coffin vanish beneath the dust through a port, and then fled through the iron hallways of Station Grissom, past the bulletin boards and the graffitti, around the ubiquitous machines, to the only place where he might find shelter.
They had removed the plaque from the door. Inside was nothing but the continuous mechanical purr of automatic activity; the H-culture team was lingering by the lock. Bensmiller recoiled at the sight of the completed garden, yet deftly slipped between the black coffins full of sprouting vigorous life, working his way toward the now-oddly beckoning arms of the Mother of God. Men live, and men die. The priest mediates between death and life. Life comes from God, and goes back to God. Something in him burned to think of bending that path around and feeding life with death, growth with waste, breath with suffocation. Where could God fit into such a closed circle? He touched one of the brilliant green leaves. He could not understand. If God could not fit, no priest could either, extept by selling himself, to the machines and tending their needs while the circle of life ate its own tail.
"Blessed Mother evicted by a radish patch. God help us." He wanted to look up at the Virgin, to draw strength from her, but could not.
Bensmiller bent down and sniffed directly above the carpet of close-planted leaves. The air seemed fresher there. Or was it just a memory?
Pushing himself away from the garden units, he made his way to where the lectern had been. The computer terminal made a soft thrumming sound as it monitored the pressures and pulses of the machines all around. Bensmiller chuckled bitterly. They have uprooted me and planted a machine in my place, he thought. In this place, with such a congregation, perhaps it was just as well. He laid his hands on either side of the terminal keyboard, tears coming that he refused to fight, and thumbed the love-worn pages of his memory.
"The Gospel According to St. Luke," he said, looking out at the silent rows of green. "Listen to the word of the Lord, damn you radishes!"
For two days Father Bensmiller avoided Chamblen and remained alone with his thoughts. The dilemma ran through his mind again and again while he cleaned the endless rows of rat cages and talked to the sad-eyed dogs waggling at him through the close-mesh screening. He wanted to fight, and place his banner on the side of Life; but cast about as he might, he could not distinguish the lines of battle. Men walked the empty wastes with body-function monitors tattling continually to the machines, and felt safer by it. It was hard for him to believe. The poor dogs were too stupid to comprehend the electrodes taped to their skulls and flanks. They wagged whenever he offered his hand to them. Happiness was just another plate of bugger biscuits. He watched men brag about how sensitive their monitors were, and how completely the machines guarded their welfare. He wondered without praying if men would ever again be able to live without them. Nothing in any of his books gave any hint at an answer, nor even so much as admitted the question.
Not long after B-shift dinner call on the second day, the buzzer roused Bensmiller from an uneasy sleep. He put his cot in order and shoved the door handle down. Outside the air tight portal was a man in a wheelchair, smiling.
"Sorry I can't come in, Father," Monahan said. "My wheels won't make it through your door. But I wanted to come over and thank you anyway."
Bensmiller smiled. His eyes burned a little. "Are you sure you should be up and around like that?"
Monahan laughed, and lightly thumped the blanket-covered stump that ended just above his left knee. "Takes more than a little leg missing to lay me low. People heal pretty quick in one-sixth g. I should be on crutches next week, if I'm lucky."
The smiling face peering up at him through a castwide airtight door moved him terribly for one long moment. "1 don't know why you should want to thank me."
"Kreski told me you tried to give me the last sacraments."
"I see."
"Takes guts to tangle with that old monkey wrench."
"He had your best interests in mind."
"Yeah." Monahan grinned sourly. "He's hell to get along with, but he knows his business. Like I said, thanks. Also because I think you're good luck."
"Oh?" Bensmiller was startled.
"Sure. Me and the other guys from H-culture have it figured out. Reverend Chamblen was here for six months before you were, and nobody talked much about a church. But when you get here they start building one right away, and as soon as it's finished, but not finished so that it would be all sacred and everything, that's the time when my Garden blows up. The church was ready and waiting for us to move in."
"But. . . ." Bensmiller was astonished. The man spoke as though the destruction of a church were a blessing sent by God.
"Sixty hours, from total destruction to full operation, in a dome that was never designed for life-support machinery. I call that pretty close to a miracle. It'll be something to tell my kids about."
"But I don't see why. . . ."
"It wasn't easy," Monahan said, his tone gone more serious. "Take it from me, it was a bitch."
Amen.
"No, honestly, Father, me and the guys got to thinking about it, and found you were pretty lucky to us. If they hadn't had a dome, we would have had no emergency margin. Houston wouldn't have liked that. They might have issued a Directive Five."
Directive Five. Evacuate Immediately. The end of Station Grissom. Bensmiller shook his head in wonderment. "I never knew it had been that serious."
Monahan whistled. "Not anymore, but for a while there it was really touch and go... And if it had turned out to be go, it would really have broken my heart. That trip home would have been a one-way trip for me. One-legged men aren't popular as flight or station crew. So things didn't turn out too bad. Except for you, I guess."
"Well, I. . . ."
"You probably feel like a dog that got kicked out of his doghouse so that it could be used as a chicken coop. That must hurt a little, but I figure God forgives more easily than nature. Anyway, it wasn't really fair for you to get shoved out into the cold without someplace to go, so I leaned on Kreski a little bit, and demanded the space in the storage dome where all the spare parts for the new Garden came from. There's quite a hole in there now. So the rest of the H-culture guys got together off-shift, uncrated the crucifix and a couple of pews, and we made you a church."