"Rise and shine," Nikki's voice ordered, drifting in from nowhere.
I felt a tug on my nose and opened my right eye to see what was going on. My timing was perfect; the overhead light flipped on with blinding clarity. I groaned and pulled the sheet over my head.
"We need to get going if we're going to get things done today," Nikki said as she left the room.
"Right..." With a brown taste in my mouth, I all but fell from bed then staggered a moment trying to get my footing in the light gravity of the Moon. I finally made it into the bathroom where a shower of hot, slowly-falling water got my eyes to where they'd stay open.
After rifling through the closets in my room, I discovered a pair of yellow coveralls that more or less fit me. A pair of slip-on sneakers--which I hoped hadn't been owned by someone with a fungal disease--completed my pre-owned outfit. I wondered why I hadn't had the good sense the night before to bring along a container of caffinex--in the instant-hot packages that filled the storage area of the mess hall--back to my room before retiring. On the other hand, thinking about getting out of the room and getting some caffinex gave me the will to live.
I bounced into the control room on my way to the mess and was surprised to see that the whole front of the room facing the airlock was now a clear plastic window which showed the panorama of the plain formed by the crater bottom. The gray stillness of it seemed alien when viewed from inside the safe confines of the room. Quiet, unfriendly, and lifeless. The pink van sitting in the distance looked like some sort of advertising joke that a used-car dealer might pull. The pink was the only splotch of color on the whole plain.
Jake sat at a console speaking to a computer in a low tone and occasionally punching at a key with a beefy finger.
"How'd you do that?" I asked.
"What?" He turned toward me.
"How'd you get the view?"
"Plastic. When a current goes through it, it becomes transparent. Instant windows. Just had to throw the right switch. We're using so little energy right now that the solar cells have already fully charged the base's storage batteries. We've got power to waste." Jake grinned, then went back to his work.
Nikki sat with another computer across her lap and waved as I entered the mess hall.
I half floated through to the food storage room and hunted up a packet of caffinex. I have to wake up. I popped the seal on it and breathed in the fumes of the brew a moment before drinking, then shuffled back into the control room, trying to get the liquid out of the cup and into my mouth rather than having the caffinex wiggle around in the weak gravity and depart for parts unknown. "What's on the agenda for today?"
"Good question," Nikki answered. "We'd better have a council of war."
"Jake?" I asked.
"Yeah. Uh... Just a moment." He spoke one last command and the printer next to the computer started coughing out figures. He rose and hopped over to where we were. I noticed that he'd tied his shoe laces together to allow his good leg to pull his bad one along, bouncing as if he were on a pogo stick.
"Since sleeping all day doesn't seem to be an option," I half suggested, raising an eyebrow suggestively as I glanced at Nikki, who in turn, looked as innocent as usual, "we need to decide what we're going to do. Need to get organized. Have you two been able to pull anything of interest out of the computers?"
"Yeah," Jake said. "Got a list of mining equipment and set-up procedures from the computer bank before you woke up. We can go over it later, but it looks like we have all the stuff we'd need to keep the base operating and complete the mining operation. Almost. Everything but the bots' brains. It's just a matter of getting the thing up and running except for the bots."
"Nikki?"
"Yeah. It was among the last of the transmissions they received here before closing up the base. But I find something of interest. The Eratothenes Base had the same model of bots and, as near as I can tell, they were operational."
"Where in the world--excuse me--where in the Moon is the Eratothenes Base?" I was having trouble making conversation; I kept looking at Nikki's figure that was temptingly displayed in a tight yellow jump suit, unzipped to "see level." I was distracted a moment as I speculated whether this noticeably tempting display was for my benefit or Jake's. Or maybe Nikki just didn't give a rip and was dressing for comfort. Who knew? My mind returned to what was being said.
"Eratothenes Crater is just a hop and a skip from here," Jake said. "The van would get us there in a couple of hours at the most."
"But would they leave the bots behind?" Nikki asked. "I really couldn't find anything to show the bots are still there."
"Bots, even those for mining operations, aren't as expensive as shipping them home. I suspect that the Eratothenes Base will be like this one. About all they'll have taken out is the crew."
"Do we know that the Eratothenes Base is closed?" I asked. I could imagine stumbling into the base and then having to high-tail it out again.
"I don't have the inside information," Jake said, "but based on the amount of surplus gear that's been hitting the market, I'm welling to bet that none of the lunar bases is operational."
Nikki spoke, "That certainly fits in with what I heard before I lost my job. The gossip among the rocket jocks was that the moon had been abandoned."
"So...," Jake said, " If we could sneak into the base... and get some bots, we'd be able to get the hydroponics started in a hurry--"
"And then," I continued, "get the metallurgical plant and mining operation ready to go as well. That would be perfect. I'd like to see if it's practical to manufacture the anti-grav rods but I'll need the bots."
"If we could do that..." Jake said, his voice trailing off.
"There's about not limit to what we might achieve," Nikki finished, looking me straight in the eyes.
"If," I said. "Building the magnetic furnace and other equipment needed to make the rods won't be easy. And we don't even know if the other base has the bots."
"But if you could build the rods here," Nikki said, "and then mount a full-scale mining and manufacturing operation if it all looked practical..."
"The sky's the limit."
We all thought about it for a moment.
"There are still a whole lot of 'if's' in all this," I reminded them.
"But we have to have the bots," Nikki said.
"We've nothing to lose," I said. "Any problem with going over right now to check it out?"
There wasn't.
Forty minutes later, I met Nikki and Jake at the front air lock. Jake had some spare oxygen tanks and a carbonylon cable wound around his suit. "We'd better replace our suit tanks. Most of the tanks in the van are depleted."
Jake and I crunched helmets together trying to help Nikki. While we struggled trying not to look too clumsy she slipped off her own tank and replaced it. When we'd gotten all sorted out, we refilled the empty tanks from our suits and carried them with us through the airlock and on out toward the van.
The surface of the Moon is hard to become accustomed to. The Earth is always in the sky. A different side of it, maybe, but always there. Though the sun was setting, it, too, seemed eternally rooted in place. To an Earther, the scene was totally unreal after living on a planet where ALL the heavenly bodies rose and set in twelve hours. It made it seem as if time had stopped.
We unloaded everything from the van which we wouldn't be needing for our short flight so that we'd have more room for transporting bots or other equipment back from the base (if it was actually abandoned).
Unloading the van was quite a job.
We'd really wedged a lot of stuff into it and getting it unpacked while wearing heavy gloves was no small task. It was a half hour before we lifted off and started traveling up and out of our huge crater. I headed the van toward the north east and the computer took over when it picked up the homing beam from the Eratothenes Base. It was another white-knuckle flight since Nikki had programmed the computer for maximum speed while Jake and I had finished unloading the van.
Maximum speed on the Moon is very fast since you don't have atmosphere to contend with and you're keeping your craft as close as is practical to the surface to minimize the chances of radar detection. Because there's no atmosphere, everything looks closer and especially so when the surface you're traveling over is comprised of lunar mountains--with their sheer grades--the size of those in the Carpathian Range. We accelerated the first half of the trip and then decelerated the last half, the tops of boulders and mountains whizzing by seemingly close to our feet. It was fortunate that the suites had gloves so the others couldn't see how tightly I gripped the non-functioning steering wheel from time to time.