Project U.L.F. Page 5

  * * * * *

  The rest of Wyatt’s day was uneventful. He spent most of it in his office sifting through dozens of administrative chips and filling out forms. He hated the bureaucracy; it stopped him from doing what he considered to be his real job, that of planning and budgeting for his department, training the new U.L.F. recruits, and organizing the away teams.

  As much as he liked the challenges and responsibilities that his position imparted, Wyatt missed the excitement of trapping and the camaraderie of working in an away team. Numerous times throughout the day he had caught himself daydreaming, staring into space, thinking about Mannheim’s offer. He would not decide today. It was a big decision to make.

  * * * * *

  It was Wednesday of the following week when Wyatt finally called to accept the offer. Mannheim’s face appeared on the telelink. On seeing Wyatt he brandished his smile again. “Ah Wyatt, I was just thinking about you. You’ll be pleased to know that nearly all the arrangements for the expedition we discussed have been finalized. All we need now is to hear your decision—I assume that’s the reason you’re calling.”

  “Yeah, it was. I’d like to be the team leader if the offer still stands.”

  “Excellent. Excellent. Of course the offer still stands. As I said, nearly everything has been arranged. The expedition is scheduled to leave late next week, so you have time to make whatever arrangements you feel are necessary. Oh, and Wyatt, don’t bother coming in to work next week, we’ll take care of everything at this end. All you need do is take the last shuttle up to the moon-base on Wednesday evening and Robert will meet you and brief you once you arrive. Do you have any other questions?”

  Wyatt was somewhat taken aback by Mannheim’s news. “Er…no, I guess not.”

  “Good. Well, if you think of anything that you want to discuss between now and then, you know where I am. Otherwise, I guess the next time we’ll be speaking is when you return in a few months. Good luck with the trip.” Mannheim was about to hang up but he stopped and added, “Congratulations, Wyatt, I knew I could count on you.” His image folded to a horizontal white line and then was gone.

  Wyatt sat in shock for a few seconds. They really were keen to get the mission away as soon as possible. The end of next week? How on earth did they manage to organize something on such short notice? What about all the documentation that normally accompanied a mission of this scale? It usually took him a few weeks just to wade through all the red tape. Still, this was Mannheim’s baby and he was in charge at the IZP. If he wanted things done quickly, then, Wyatt concluded, there were probably corners that could be cut when necessary.

  * * * * *

  The shuttlecraft was banking to the left and she had a perfect view of the lunar landscape as it passed below them. They were still a long way up, ten kilometers, probably. The huge craters and valleys appeared as nothing more than pockmarks and grooves. She could almost imagine the moon as being made of putty that had been prodded and scooped at with giant fingers, the impressions of which she was looking at now. The analogy made her smile. Cheese, she thought, Dad always said it was made of cheese. She smiled again at the stupidity of it all.

  The shuttle straightened out and the wing obliterated her view once more. She felt the two pads at her sides push against her, clasping her hips and waist firmly. They were getting close. Pushing her cheek against the window, she thought she could make out a structure on the surface far away in front of them but she could not be sure. The craft began to make a slow but discernable descent. She settled back in her chair. Her adventure had started at last.

  * * * * *

  The team of engineers stood behind the doors, their eyes flicking from the red light that held them here in the landing bay beyond the toughened glass. As they watched, two lanes of green lights flickered into life. What appeared to be a solid wall at the far end of the bay developed a crack that widened as the two doors pulled further apart. The blackness beyond was pinpricked with spots of light. All eyes now darted around, searching the sky for the craft they knew was out there.

  After a few minutes, what looked like a star seemed to grow and split in two before revealing itself for what it truly was, the brightly lit cockpit windows. As the shuttle got closer, the smaller winking lights of the shuttle could be seen, one on the tip of the tail and another at each wing tip. It glided in through the doors that had opened just far enough to let it pass and slowed to a halt, hovering about a foot above the bay floor. The doors slowly closed, shutting out the perpetual night once more and almost simultaneously, with the same ease, the shuttle descended to come to rest.

  The red light flicked off and a message, printed in green and reading ‘Pressurization complete,’ came on in its place.

  The doors parted and the engineers spilled through, none of them in any doubt as to what their task was. Alan Chambers marched straight toward the shuttlecraft.

  As he approached, a strip dropped away from the side of the ship and lay on the floor, a makeshift gangway for the passengers.

  He did not recognize her at first, half expecting someone else to emerge from the ship behind her. Then he realized that it must have been eighteen years since he had last seen her.

  He had imagined she would just be a larger version of the little girl he had met, a bigger body but the same face he remembered from all those years ago. It was a crazy idea but somehow it seemed entirely reasonable to him until a second ago. It could only be her, though. She would be about twenty-five years old now. Still, it was hard to believe the little girl he remembered had grown up so fast into the beautiful young woman who stood before him now.

  She turned towards him and, seeing him approaching to meet her, proffered her hand in greeting. “Hi, I’m Kate,” she said, her smile interrupted only by the mouthing of the words.

  “I know,” he said, grasping her slender hand, which was dwarfed in his.

  She frowned, puzzled by the admission, the smile faltering slightly.

  “Your father asked me to meet you personally. Make you feel at home and show you around during your brief visit.”

  “You’re a friend of Dad’s?”

  “Yes,” Alan said, as though the young woman should know this. He frowned, “You…you don’t remember me, do you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, I suppose it was rather a long time ago, and you were only a little girl when we last met. I’m Alan. Alan Chambers. Excuse the attire,” he said indicating his stained clothes with his free hand. “I’m the chief engineer here. The muck comes with the job.” He smiled, looking almost embarrassed.

  “Hello Alan, Alan Chambers,” she said beaming. “It’s nice to meet you…again. Now are you going to let go of my hand?”

  He looked down to see that he was indeed still grasping her hand tightly in his. “Oh, I am sorry,” he said. He let go quickly, as if she had stung him. She laughed.

  “Shall we go?” she asked, “I’d like to see as much as possible while I’m here.”

  “Yes, yes. Of course.” Alan backed out of her way and fell into step beside her.

  * * * * *

  Alan and Kate walked slowly down the corridor. The walls were seamless and arced over their heads into a low ceiling. There was no discernible lighting but the corridor was bright. It seemed that the light emanated from the walls themselves and reflected back off their clinical white surfaces. Above the sound of their footfalls a constant hum could be heard. The moon-base was in a continual state of unrest. Day and night were all rolled into one here. Something was always going on.

  “So how is your father? I didn’t really get much chance to talk to him. I didn’t want to run down his link credit. Even the cheap rate for earth-moon telelink calls is pretty extortionate.”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that. He’s done rather well for himself. In fact, he’s looking to retire from the business quite soon. How do you know him?”

  Alan smiled, recalling events. “He and I were at MIT together…”
Images flicked through his mind like a high-speed private slide show, “…back when it was MIT, of course,” he added. “We were the best of mates then. Still are, really, only we rarely get to see each other now. He asked me to go into business with him but I got offered a position here. Good money. Good prospects. I turned him down.”

  “Knowing Dad, I bet he wasn’t pleased at that.”

  “No, I don’t suppose he was,” Alan mused, raising his eyebrows. He sighed, “But we were friends, you know, and he respected my decision. Of the two of us he’s come off better, but I wouldn’t change anything. Your dad was always the thinker, whereas I needed to get my hands dirty.” They walked a little further before Alan, irritated by the awkward silence between them, spoke again. “But what about you? Student, eh?” he smirked, looking her up and down out of the corner of his eye.

  “Well, almost. I graduated three months ago. Did Dad tell you that as well?”

  “Lucky guess,” he said.

  Kate stopped and looked at herself. Her heavy unladylike boots were partly obscured by her loose-fitting slacks, and a colorful but weathered light jacket covered her T-shirt. A bright red cap, decorated with the symbol of the Raptors, her favorite PowerDisc team, adorned her head. “Is it really that obvious?” she called up the corridor after Alan. Alan did not bother to answer; his grin was as good as a reply. “Come on,” he said, “I’ve got to show you how to use the zero gravity system.”

  * * * * *

  The zero gravity system was a way of moving between floors. It was easier to use when ascending or descending only a few levels, as opposed to the speed lifts that allowed rapid movement between hundreds of levels. At its very basic it was a hole in the floor and a hole in the ceiling. On the wall behind the orifice was a single rung located at about chest height.

  “Okay, grab the rung and step into the hole,” Alan said.

  Kate peered over the edge of the hole and looked down. “That goes down about three floors!” She was completely oblivious to the fact that her long dark hair was floating ethereally around her head until Alan pointed it out to her.

  “Zero gravity,” he said, “You won’t fall. Come on.”

  She did as she was told. Stepping from normal gravity into an area of zero-gravity was a weird sensation. She hovered next to Alan who explained that the zero gravity system was rather like an invisible cylinder that spanned three or four floors at a time. The slightest force could propel a mass through this designated space indefinitely because of the weightlessness bestowed upon it.

  “Right, which way do you want to go?” he asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Which way? Up or down?”

  “Oh, up, I guess.”

  “Okay, push down on the rung. Gently, mind, it takes a little getting used to.”

  Kate pushed off and ascended slowly through the air. Alan called up after her, “When you pass through the ceiling, grab the rung you find on the wall there to stop yourself, then step out onto the floor. If you feel that you’re tipping over just stick a foot outside of the zero-gravity area and it will stabilize you, straighten you up.”

  “Thank you,” she called back sarcastically.

  She watched as Alan came up through the floor after her and then they continued their tour together. The moon-base, she learned, was huge. Larger than she had imagined. Alan told her that it was built into the side of a massive crater, the sea of tranquility or something like that. Only a small fraction of the moon-base was visible on the surface and this consisted of arrival and departure bays for domestic craft, such as the shuttle she had arrived in, and larger ships such as freighters and large expedition craft. The most striking features of the moon-base on approach, Alan said, were the two control domes that regulated the comings and goings of all transport passing through the base. From above the lunar surface they resembled a pair of bug eyes searching the heavens, which, metaphorically speaking, they were.

  Domestic craft approached the moon-base from across the surface, coming in through bays located on the outer slopes of the crater. The bays for freighters and larger craft were actually located in the crater itself. These were more like platforms on which the gigantic craft could land before being lowered into the ground and enclosed by ceiling doors.

  The base allowed the use of much larger craft since the moon possessed only one-sixth of the earth’s gravity. This meant that ships that, due to their size, would never be able to break earth’s gravitational pull could easily be launched from the moon. The moon was not so much a stepping-stone to the further reaches of space as a springboard.

  Beneath the crater there were one hundred and fifty bays for the larger craft, up to one hundred and twenty of which might be in use at any given time. Beneath the control domes and the domestic craft landing bays the moon-base penetrated over three and a half miles down into the moon, with five hundred levels accommodating over twenty-five thousand people.

  “I’ll show you where you’ll be staying while you’re here, and then I’ll take you to see the base director,” said Alan as he stepped into a speed lift.

  “Great! Is there any chance I can get into one of the control domes?”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Down one hundred and twenty seven floors please.”

  “Complying,” came another voice.

  The curved door slid shut across the entrance. Within seconds the door slid open again.

  Alan stepped past her into the lobby. “Your room’s down here. Come on.”

  Kate cautiously stepped out into the corridor, which stretched away almost as far as she could see. She couldn’t believe they had descended so far so fast. Again, the walls were of the same clinical whiteness, almost dazzlingly bright.

  “So what are you doing here?” Alan’s curiosity had gotten the better of him.

  “I’m here on a placement, from my university actually.”

  “Oh, really? Where did you study?”

  “Princeton. I did biology there.”

  “I heard Princeton has the best biology course around.”

  “They do, and I was the best in my year. That’s the reason I’m here. I basically won the placement. It’s like a school prize.”

  After a few twists and turns they found themselves outside her door.

  “You’ll need to identify yourself to the computer as the new occupant of the room. Place your hand on the imprint plate and follow the instructions.”

  Above the imprint plate, which comprised a flat plate of glass in an alcove in the wall, was a small keypad and a speaker. Another voice stated, “Ident sequence initiated. State your name please.”

  “Kate Frere.”

  “Thank you. Checking records.”

  Alan stood smiling, fatherly, next to her. “That’s just so the computer can recognize your voice when you’re in your quarters,” he confided to her.

  The computer-generated voice came again. “Check complete. Frere, Kate S., arrived 1440 hours standard Earth time aboard shuttle Aurora. Ident accepted.”

  With the conclusion of the message the door slid away from in front of them.

  On the newly revealed wall opposite them there was a window through which they could see a panorama of countryside. The hills were a patchwork of greens, browns and yellows.

  “Wow! What a beautiful view!” exclaimed Kate. Then she remembered that she must be at least a mile and a half under the surface of the moon, “But…?”

  Alan stepped into the living quarters, explaining the anomaly. “The view is a computer-generated image. The boundaries of the image can be altered so you can have it fill the whole wall if you like, or you can simply make the frame smaller so you see a snippet of it.” Alan ordered the computer to make a number of modifications to illustrate his explanation. “Most people prefer having the image in the form of a window, the idea of being this far below ground makes them jittery for some reason and the window idea makes them feel better, makes it feel more like a home. You’ll find other windows in other rooms,
but this is the only one that is adjustable. Anyway, dump your gear…” he said, indicating her rucksack, “…and take a look around. I’ll fix us some drinks.”

  The living quarters were very much like a standard two-story apartment. Bedroom and bathroom upstairs, kitchen and living room downstairs. The upper floor had a third room, too small to be a second bedroom but too large to be a coat room.

  “What’s this room for?” Kate called to Alan who was ascending the stairs with a glass in each hand.

  “Which…? Oh, that one. Well you can use it for storage purposes if you like, but this is in fact a sensory stimulus room. It can be whatever you want…within reason,” he shot her a smirk. “For example, you remember the scene from the window downstairs?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Well, take a look at this. Computer, I’m on a balcony and I’m looking out over a field of poppies.” As Alan described the environment he professed to be in, the scene appeared around them. The floor became whitewashed wood before their eyes and a balustrade appeared in front of them. Noiseless fans around them mimicked the breeze that swayed the poppies and scents leached from ducts in the ceiling so that the scene was accompanied by the appropriate smell. Kate closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, moving forward to lean on the edge of the balcony.