Farside (17 page)

“What about radiation protection?”

“That’s the next batch. I want you to let these little fellows work on your liver. You come back here in two weeks. I’ll set up a medical exam for you. If everything’s working right, we’ll go on to phase two and build up your cellular repair mechanisms.”

Grant asked, “So what do I do, drink this stuff?”

“That’s right.”

He unscrewed the vial’s top and drank its contents in one long swig.

Cardenas gave him a wry smile. “Welcome to the club.”

*   *   *

Grant knew it was psychosomatic, but as he walked from Cardenas’s nanotech lab to Selene’s main garage, he thought that the dull ache in the small of his back was lessening.

They can’t act that fast, he told himself. But he actually did feel better.

Trudy was already in the garage’s nearly empty waiting room, looking like an anxious little waif in her plain tan coveralls. There were three other people—two men and one woman—also waiting for the tour bus to return.

“Been here long?” he asked Trudy.

“Less than two minutes,” she replied, gazing through the window that looked out on the busy, clanging garage. Busses and tractors were parked in rows, while maintenance crews worked on them. Beyond that stood the big dulled metal hatch of the huge airlock.

Grant was just about to say that Palmquist was late when the airlock hatch swung inward and the bus rolled through, a gleaming silver cylinder on spindly little wheels, its lower flanks coated with gray lunar dust.

The passengers got out of the bus and filed into the waiting room. Grant easily recognized Dr. Palmquist: ghostly pale, wearing a business suit of soft pastel blue, walking very carefully in the unaccustomedly light gravity. He entered the waiting room and looked around uncertainly.

“Dr. Palmquist,” said Grant, going up to him and extending his hand. “I’m Grant Simpson—”

“Ah! The fellow who called me on the phone,” said Palmquist in his soft voice.

“—and this is Dr. Yost, Professor Uhlrich’s assistant,” Grant finished.

Trudy took Palmquist’s hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you, sir. Professor Uhlrich is so looking forward to your visit to the Farside Observatory.”

“So am I, my dear,” said Dr. Palmquist.

As Grant walked them out of the garage area and down the corridor that led to the cafeteria, Palmquist asked Trudy, “You are an astronomer?”

“Yes, I am. Are you?”

Palmquist shook his head self-effacingly. “No, no. I am an economist. But certain, er … certain acquaintances of mine asked me to look in on Professor Uhlrich while I was here visiting Selene University’s economics faculty.”

“I see,” Trudy replied.

The Nobel committee, Grant thought. Those were Palmquist’s “acquaintances.”

As they walked to the cafeteria, Grant thought about the afternoon’s agenda. He knew that Uhlrich had laid on a special flight back to Farside at 1800 hours. Not enough time to ask Trudy to have dinner with me, he told himself. We’ll do this silly tea business with the Swede and then head back to Farside. Maybe Trudy and I can have dinner there, after we drop Palmquist off with the Ulcer.

But all through their brief repast in Selene’s noisy, bustling cafeteria Palmquist spoke only to Trudy, ignoring Grant as if he weren’t there. Grant never got the opportunity to ask her about dinner.

RETURN TO FARSIDE

Uhlrich was practically quivering with anticipation in the tiny reception area of Farside’s one-pad spaceport when the lobber landed. McClintock stood beside him, much cooler.

“Dr. Palmquist,” Uhlrich gushed as the Swede stepped through the access tube’s hatch, “how kind of you to visit our facility.”

Palmquist smiled genially. “I look forward to seeing the work you are doing, Professor Uhlrich.”

As Grant walked with Trudy and the other three men along the corridor to Uhlrich’s office he was amused to see the Ulcer fawning all over the Swede. But when they reached his office door, Uhlrich turned to Grant and said, “Thank you for escorting Dr. Palmquist here, Mr. Simpson. You can return to your regular duties now.”

Then the rest of them went into the office. Trudy glanced over her shoulder at Grant, looking surprised and concerned, but Uhlrich slid the door shut, leaving him standing alone in the empty corridor.

Nodding to himself, Grant thought, Right. I’ll get back to work while you try to impress Palmquist. I’ll build what you need built and you work on getting your fucking Nobel.

Feeling justifiably resentful, Grant headed toward the teleoperations center, which was where he did most of his work. There, and in his one-room quarters. Uhlrich had not assigned him a private office of his own.

The teleoperations center was dim, shadowy, the only light in the chamber coming from the display screens of the consoles set against the far wall. A soft Cuban samba was purring from the overhead speakers. Josie Rivera was at one of the consoles, with narrow-eyed Nate Oberman sitting beside her.

What’s he doing here? Grant asked silently, bristling at Oberman’s presence. He’s not on the tech staff anymore, we’re carrying him in administration until his contract’s up.

What annoyed Grant most about Oberman was the guy’s snotty attitude. Nate could always get under Grant’s skin with just a few pointed barbs. Back in his ’roid rage days, Grant would have pounded Oberman’s face in. I would’ve sent him to the hospital, Grant thought. Or to the morgue.

Dr. Kapstein was feeding Grant extra medications to control his steroid-induced fury, but nonetheless he had tried to keep as much distance from Oberman as possible. So it was only natural that when Uhlrich fired him, Oberman concluded that Grant had been angling for his job.

“What’re you doing here, Nate?” he asked, trying to make his tone casual, noncombative.

“Just visiting,” Oberman replied easily. “Got nothing much else to do.”

Turning to Rivera, Grant asked, “What’s up, Josie?” as he slid the corridor door shut.

Rivera swiveled her chair toward him and gave Grant a flashing smile. “Nothing much, boss,” she said. “It’s been pretty quiet around here lately.”

“How’d your joyride to Selene go?” Oberman asked.

Trying to ignore his snide tone, Grant replied, “I did what McClintock wanted; picked up this Swedish guy and brought him to Uhlrich. No sweat.”

“You and Trudy Yost,” said Josie Rivera.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Must be nice, taking a day off with a good-looking chick,” Oberman said.

Before Grant could bristle, Rivera quickly asked, “Anything between you two?”

Grant felt astounded. “Between … what’re you talking about?”

With a knowing look, Rivera said, “Boy meets girl. It happens all the time.”

“Come on, Josie,” Grant sputtered.

Oberman asked Rivera, “He ever come on to you, Josie?”

She shook her head, turning down the corners of her mouth in mock regret.

“Maybe he’s gay,” said Oberman, with a malicious smirk.

“I could straighten him out, I bet,” said Rivera.

Grant remembered that he’d been attracted to Josie Rivera, with her friendly ways and generous figure. But he had made a decision not to get involved with any of the women at Farside. The place was too small, too inbred. A serious relationship, even a non-serious fling, could cause emotional fracture lines among the staff. Better to stay celibate, or go over to Selene for fun and games, Grant reminded himself. But it had been a long time since he’d had any fun and games.

He didn’t know how to handle their bantering, so he decided to ignore it. “Now look, we’ve got a lot of serious work ahead of us.”

But Oberman wouldn’t quit. “Work on who?”

Grant gave him a withering look. “When’s your contract up, Nate? It can’t be soon enough.”

Josie said, “Now boys…”

But Oberman pointed a skinny finger at Grant and replied, “I’m leaving at the end of the month. And I’m getting a position in the IAA office at Selene. Whattaya think of that?”

“Good,” said Grant, thinking, Anyplace but here.

“Anita Halleck herself recommended me,” Oberman added, sneering.

“And I thought she was supposed to be smart,” Grant said.

“You think you’re better than me, don’t you?” Oberman growled.

For the first time since Dr. Kapstein had started controlling his steroid dosage, Grant felt the urge to start punching.

But he fought it down. “Forget it. We’ve got work to do.”

WORK AGENDA

“Serious work?” Josie asked, her teasing grin fading away.

Pulling up one of the little wheeled chairs from the next console, Grant said, “We’ve got to lay out roads between here and Korolev and Gagarin.”

“And improve the road to Mendeleev?” Rivera asked.

“No, that won’t be necessary,” said Grant.

Oberman huffed. “Hell, you couldn’t even get that mirror over the ringwall.”

Again Grant fought the urge to smack the nasty little snot. Keeping his voice even, he told them, “We won’t be transporting mirrors. We’ll be hauling construction materials in regular tractors. No need to tow big mirror rigs.”

“The mirrors are going to be built at the craters, then?” Rivera asked.

“Right,” Grant replied. “By nanomachines.”

Oberman whistled softly. “So you’ll be hauling nanobugs out to the three craters.”

Grant nodded. “It’ll be easy to get the loads over the ringwall mountains and onto the sites for the telescopes.” Then he added, “Nanos are tiny little things.”

“I just hope you don’t spill any of ’em,” Oberman said.

“That won’t be a problem. If they’re exposed to ultraviolet light they’re disabled, and there’s plenty of UV in sunlight.”

“Yeah, but if you’re moving them at night…”

Rivera suggested, “Maybe we should schedule moving the nanos only during daylight hours.”

Grant thought about it for a few seconds. “Makes sense, Josie. Probably unnecessary, but an extra safety precaution wouldn’t hurt.”

“So how’re the bugs going to work once you’ve got ’em at the sites?” Oberman asked.

“We build temporary roofs over each site. No big deal, just lightweight honeycomb metal sheets. That’ll protect the sites against incoming micrometeoroids as well as solar UV.”

“And once the ’scopes are completed we can take down the coverings, right?”

“Right,” said Grant. “The nanomachines’ work will be finished by then. They’ll be deactivated.”

Oberman rubbed his long jaw as he asked, “You’re claiming that those nanobugs’ll produce mirrors shaped to the tolerances you need?”

“Probably not. We might have to do some final polishing.”

“That means hauling the measuring equipment to the craters,” Rivera said.

“To Selene first,” Grant said. “We’ll have to check the demo mirror that Cardenas is building there.”

“Yeah, but sooner or later you’ll have to lug the polishing equipment out to each one of the craters,” said Oberman. “Christ, you’ll have to haul the whole turntable from here to there. Three theres!”

“Maybe,” Grant conceded. “But the turntable’s a lot more robust than the damned mirrors. Should be no sweat to haul it back and forth.”

Oberman looked totally unconvinced.

“That’s a lot of outdoor work,” Rivera said.

“I know,” said Grant. “That’s why we’ve got to automate the work as much as possible. We need to adapt the robots to do as much of the job as they can.”

“Robots,” Oberman muttered. “You’ll wind up spending more time maintaining the damned robots than anything else.”

“I’m going to put Harvey in charge of robot maintenance,” Grant told them. “His foot ought to be fine by the time we get started on this.”

Josie nodded, accepting Grant’s decision. Oberman looked cynically doubtful.

“Okay then,” Grant said. “Now, the first thing we need to do is get those roads scraped out.”

*   *   *

Once Grant had finished with Josie, he walked down to Farside’s little cafeteria. The place was nearly empty; dinner hour had long passed.

As he stood before one of the food-dispensing machines, wondering which of the meager packaged meals he wanted to select, Trudy Yost came up beside him.

“Hi,” he said, happily surprised. “I didn’t see you come in.”

She gave him a grin. “You were studying the machine’s display as if your life depended on it.”

He shrugged. “Well, it does, sort of. Don’t you think so?”

“I guess so, if you put it that way.”

“The Ulcer let you go?” Grant asked.

“No way. I’m here to pick up meals for the four of us and bring them back to the prof’s office. We’re eating in there.”

“Oh.”

“The professor’s burying Dr. Palmquist with facts and figures,” Trudy said. “The poor guy’s eyes glazed over an hour ago but the prof is just plowing ahead, telling him how we’re gonna produce images of New Earth before anybody else can.”

Grant banged one of the buttons at random and stooped down to grab the package that slid into the tray at the bottom of the machine.

Her voice softening, Trudy said, “I’m sorry he cut you off like that.”

He straightened up and looked into her gentle green eyes. “That’s okay. I’m used to it. I’m just a crummy engineer, far as he’s concerned. Dirt under my fingernails.”

Trudy said, “You’re much more important than that, Grant.”

“It’s nice of you to say so.”

For a moment they stood facing each other, close enough to touch. Feeling awkward, almost like a teenager on his first date, Grant shifted his dinner package from one hand to the other.

“Maybe we could have dinner together some time,” he heard himself say.

Trudy smiled at him. “That’d be great.”

“Uh, my quarters aren’t all that much, but I could microwave a meal for you. It’d be more private than the cafeteria here.”

“I guess,” she said, a trifle uncertainly.

“I’ve got some old movies, Hollywood classics. Or we could watch video from Selene.”

“Sure,” said Trudy. “But right now I’ve got to get dinners for the professor, Mr. McClintock, and Dr. Palmquist.”

“And yourself,” Grant added.

She laughed. “Yep. And myself.” After a heartbeat’s pause, she said, “But I’ll look forward to dinner with you. Real soon.”