New Frontiers (3 page)

Sam seemed surprised to see me there, in the midst of all the flunkies.

“Shouldn't you be rearranging rocks or something?” he asked, over the noise of the milling assistants and the band.

“All done, Sam,” I shouted into his ear. “The course is ready for action.”

He broke into that leering smile of his. “So am I, Charlie.”

The tram glided into the depot, the airlock hatch closed behind it, and the band broke into a raucus welcoming rendition of “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Golfers of all sizes and shapes came pouring out of the tram, together with assorted family members, friends, and hangers-on. I began to worry that I wouldn't be able to see tiny Mai Pohan in the crowd.

But there she was! She looked like a little waif, standing alone in the swirl of people, like a delicate flower in the midst of a storm.

I pushed through the bodies toward her, but Sam was faster. He grabbed her by the arm and led her to one of the carts that were lined up to take his guests to the Paradise Hotel below the entertainment complex. In all the noise and bustle, Mai didn't see me. Sam was jabbering in her ear nonstop, and she looked pleased that Sam Gunn himself was escorting her.

He seated her in the cart, then climbed up onto its roof and bellowed, “Welcome to the First Lunar Golf Invitational! I want you all to enjoy yourselves.”

I stood there, hopelessly hemmed in by the surging crowd, as Sam clambered down to sit beside Mai. They headed off for the hotel, leaving me standing there, alone in the midst of the throng.

*   *   *

FOR A SOLID
week I tried to see Mai alone, but she was either playing practice rounds or in Sam's company. We had dinner together a couple of times, but always with Sam and a bunch of other golfers.

“It's a very interesting course,” Mai said to me, from across the dinner table. Sam sat at its head, with Mai on his right. Six others were at the table, all internationally-known golfers.

“I got the best designer in the business,” Sam said proudly.

The man on my left, a burly, ruddy-faced South African, Rufus Kleindienst, complained, “Hitting the ball over the horizon is a bit weird. Why'd you make the course so bloody big?”

“We're on the Moon,” Sam answered. “Lower gravity, no air resistance.”

“Yes, but you could have just made the balls heavier to compensate for that. Hitting the ball over the horizon is wacko.”

I agreed with him, but one of the other pros, Suddartha Ramjanmyan, a rake-thin Indian, spoke up: “You are a very long hitter, after all. Now the rest of us have a chance to match you.”

Rufus grinned good-naturedly.

But one of the Yanks, a youthful-looking sandy blond sitting down at the end of the table, piped up. “What I don't understand is why you've made this a mixed tournament. Why not a men's tournament and a separate one for women? That's the normal way.”

Sam explained, “We've got to hustle things along a little. The Sun sets in ten days. That gives us a week for practice and getting accustomed to the course, and three days for the tournament. After that we'll have two solid weeks of night.”

“Two weeks of night?” The Yank was totally surprised. He might have been a champion golfer, but he hadn't bothered to learn the first thing about conditions on the Moon.

“Two weeks,” Sam repeated solemnly. “Starlight's pretty bright, but I think you'll prefer playing in the daytime.”

The Yank nodded weakly.

*   *   *

AS I EXPECTED,
the big problem was the spacesuits. There were three basic types. The standard issue had a hard-shell torso of cermet, with fabric sleeves and leggings and accordion-pleated joints at the elbows, knees, and wrists. A newer variation kept the cermet torso, but its sleeves and legs were made of a reasonably flexible plastic. Then there was the exoskeleton, its fabric arms and legs covered with high-strength carbon fiber rods that were powered by tiny servomotors, slaved to the wearer's body movements. This increased the wearer's natural strength and made the suit feel more flexible.

While the exoskeleton allowed the most flexibility, it was twice the weight of the others, which made it cumbersome, even in the light lunar gravity. And it took an hour or more to put on. And take off.

For four days the golfers tried on different suits, clomping around in their heavy boots, whacking away at golf balls out on the driving range. Most of them eventually went for the exoskeleton, although a handful opted for the standard suit. Nobody wanted the plastic job.

When I saw Mai in the smallest exoskeleton that was available, she looked like a little child being swallowed alive by some alien metal monster.

Try as I might to get some time with her alone, Mai was constantly working out on the course or otherwise in the company of her fellow golfers. In the evenings, she was either with the golf pros or with Sam. Or both. She ignored my calls and my messages.

Finally I decided to face her, once and for all. On the night before the tournament was to begin, I planted myself in the surveillance center and watched for Mai on the dozens of display screens lining the walls of the chamber. Two security technicians monitored the screens, which showed every public space and corridor in the complex.

I watched Mai at a dinner table in Dante's Inferno, sitting with Sam and a quartet of other golfers, two of them women. Sam was chattering away, as usual, and Mai seemed to be entranced by whatever he was talking about. Her eyes hardly left his face, even for a moment. I would have gladly strangled him.

At last they finished their desserts and coffees and got up from the table. Sam took Mai's arm—and she let him do it. He escorted her out of Dante's, along the corridor that led to the elevators, and then down to the level of the Paradise Hotel.

I didn't realize how tense I was until one of the security techs complained, “Hey, look at what you did to my pen!”

I had unconsciously picked up her pen off her desktop and bent it into a horseshoe shape.

As I muttered an apology and promised to buy her a new one, I watched Mai and Sam make their way down the hotel's main corridor. They stopped at her door.

I had to admit to myself that they made a well-matched couple. Mai was just a centimeter or so shorter than Sam, and exquisitely beautiful. Sam was far from handsome, but he radiated a vital energy, even in the security camera's display screen.

My heart was in my throat as Sam began to slip his arms around Mai's waist. But she artfully disengaged, gave him a peck on the cheek, and slipped into her room, leaving Sam standing alone in the corridor, looking nonplussed.

I let out a yelp that made both the security techs jump, then raced for the door, the elevator, and Mai's hotel room.

By the time I got to her door Sam was long gone, of course. I tapped lightly. No response. I rapped a little harder, and Mai's muffled voice came through: “Sam, I need my rest. Please go away.”

“It's not Sam,” I said, smiling happily. “It's me.”

“Chou?”

“Yes!”

For a moment nothing happened, then the door slid back and Mai was standing there in a silk robe decorated with flowers and birds. She looked up at me, her face serious, almost gloomy.

“Hello,” she said, sadly.

“Mai, I had to see you. Why haven't you answered my calls? Why are you spending all your time—”

She put a finger on my lips, silencing me.

“Our last meeting was a disaster, Chou. I ruined your life.”

“Ruined?” I was truly shocked. “You
saved
my life, Mai!”

“I thought they were going to put you in jail.”

“They would have, if it weren't for Sam.”

“You owe him a lot.”

That's when it hit me. Mai was being nice to Sam because she was grateful for what he did for me!

“Sam's getting his money's worth out of me,” I growled. “I don't want you to let him include you in the payment.”

Now she looked shocked. “I would never—”

I didn't let her finish her sentence. I took her in my arms and kissed her. A couple strolling up the corridor passed by and chuckled softly.

“We've been seen again,” Mai said, a little ruefully.

“I don't care. I'm a free man now.”

“As long as you stay on the Moon.”

“Well, yes,” I had to admit.

“So we'll always be half a million kilometers apart.”

“Four hundred thousand,” I corrected, inanely. “But it doesn't have to always be that way. Once my divorce becomes final, maybe I'll be able to return to Earth.”

Mai said nothing.

“Or maybe you could stay here, on the Moon. We'll get married and … and…”

“And I'll give up my career? Become a housewife? And what are you going to do, now that you've built Sam's golf course? Do you think there are others who'd want you to build courses for them here on the Moon?”

I shook my head, crestfallen.

She touched my cheek with her fingertips.

“I love you, Mai,” I whispered.

“I love you, too,” she said. “But I don't see how it could possibly work out.”

Neither could I.

“You'd better go,” she said.

I couldn't move.

“The tournament starts tomorrow, Chou. You're bad for my concentration.”

“I know. I'm sorry.”

But then she smiled and took my hand and led me into her room and neither one of us gave a thought to her concentration or our future.

*   *   *

THE TOURNAMENT STARTED
the next morning. Mai hopped out of bed and headed for the shower. I thought about joining her there, but I decided it would be better if I just stole away. Which is what I did, feeling miserable every step of the way.

Love is strange. Powerful. But sometimes so painful it tears the heart out of your chest.

I had nothing to do. My work was finished. So I went to my quarters, cleaned up, got into fresh coveralls, and made my way to the spacious lobby of Dante's Inferno, which Sam's people had turned into a sort of auditorium, with comfortable seats filling the floor and enormous video screens hanging on every wall.

The place was already full of eager onlookers, while a team of Hell's Belles (looking a little bleary this early in the morning) circulated through the crowd with trays of drinks and snacks.

To my surprise, Sam's name was at the top of the list of entrants. Several of the spectators noticed it, too.

“That Sam,” a silver-haired, dark-skinned man chuckled, “he'll do anything to put himself in the limelight.”

One of the better-looking women said, “Well, it's his tournament, after all.”

Sam had detailed one of his publicity aides to go out to the first tee and introduce the competitors. And there was a flock of sports reporters there, too, waiting for the golfers to come out.

One by one they stepped through the airlock and out onto the barren, airless floor of Hell Crater. Most of them wore exoskeletons, which made them look like ponderous, clanking robots. As each one reached the first tee the reporters huddled around him or her and asked the same tired old questions:

“How do you feel about playing golf on the Moon?”

“Will your spacesuit hamper your playing?”

“What do you think your chances of winning are?”

And then Sam came waltzing through the airlock and out onto the floor of Hell Crater. We all gasped with surprise. He was wearing nothing more over his coveralls than what looked like a transparent plastic raincoat.

It had leggings and booties that covered his shoes, and gloves so thin I could see the veins on the backs of Sam's hands. His head was encased in a transparent bubble of a helmet, his red thatch of buzz-cut hair clearly visible through it. The spacesuit looked impossibly flimsy.

The news team that was interviewing each golfer clustered around Sam like a pack of hounds surrounding a fox, firing questions about his spacesuit.

“Nanofabric,” Sam exclaimed, the crooked grin on his face spreading from ear to ear.

Before the news people could take a breath, Sam explained, “The suit was built by nanomachines, from the nanolab at Selene. Dr. Kristine Cardenas is the lab's director, you know. She won the Nobel Prize for her work on nanotechnology.”

“But … but it's so …
light
,” one of the newswomen gushed, from inside her standard hard-shell spacesuit. “How can it possibly protect you?”

“How come it doesn't stiffen up, like regular suits?” asked another.

“How can it protect you against the radiation?”

“How can it be so flexible?”

Sam laughed and raised both his nanogloved hands to quiet their questions. “You'll have to ask Dr. Cardenas about the technical details. All I can tell you is that the suit gives as much protection as a standard suit, but it's a lot more flexible. And easier to put on and take off, lemme tell you. Like old-fashioned pajamas.”

The other golfers, in their standard suits or exoskeletons, hung around the edge of the crowd uneasily. None of them liked being upstaged.

Mai hadn't appeared yet, and I began to wonder if something was wrong. Then she came through the airlock, wearing a nanosuit, just like Sam.

“No!” I bellowed, startling the tourists sitting around me. I bolted from my chair and ran to the airlock.

There was a team of beefy security guards at the airlock hatch, in dark gray uniforms. They wouldn't let me take a suit and go outside.

“Only players and the reporters,” their leader told me. “Mr. Gunn's orders.”

Feeling desperate, I raced to the communications center, down the corridor from the airlock area. It was a small chamber, studded with display screens and staffed by two men and two women. They didn't want to let me talk to Mai, or Sam, or anybody else out there on the golf course.

“Mr. Gunn's orders,” they said.