Jack McDevitt - Moonfall

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Moonfall

By Jack McDevitt

Scanned, formatted and proofed by BW-SciFi

Ebook version 1.0

Release Date: September, 9th, 2003

HarperPrism

A Division of

HarperCollins

Publisher

10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022-5299

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware

that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and

destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the

publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and

dialogues are products of the author's imagination and are not to

be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or

persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written

permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief

quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For information address HarperCollins Publishers,

10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022-5299.

ISBN 0-06-105112-8

HarperCollins®, and HarperPrism®

are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

A hardcover edition of this book was published

in April 1998 by HarperPrism.

First paperback printing: January 1999

Printed in the United States of America

Visit HarperPrism on the World Wide Web at

http://www.harperprism.com

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Fran and Brian Cole,

the Clearwater Desperadoes

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted for assistance, advice, and encouragement to: Franklin R. Chang-

Díaz of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center; Ted Dunham and Bruce Koehn of the Lowell

Observatory; Terry Gipson, St. Louis Science Center; Sergei Pershman, University of

Pennsylvania; Eileen Ryan, Kitt Peak National Observatory; Jim Sharp, formerly of the

Smithsonian Air & Space Museum; George Tindle, U.S. Customs Service; and Judith A.

Tyner, California State University, Long Beach.

The manuscript also profited from the guidance of Fred Espenak of NASA

Goddard, both directly and from his excellent book,

Fifty Year Canon of Solar

Eclipses: 1986-2035

(Sky Publishing Corp., Cambridge, MA, 1988). Thanks to Ben

Bova for permission to use his version of Moonbase, the details of which were

derived particularly from

Welcome to Moonbase

(Ballantine Books, 1987).

Geoff Chester of the U.S. Naval Observatory and science fiction writer Walt Cuirle

of the Isaac Asimov Seminar were subjected to constant harassment during the

production of this book. They bore up patiently and both are, I believe, still talking to

me.

Maureen McDevitt helped the manuscript through several incarnations, and Caitlin

Blasdell provided her usual good judgment at HarperPrism. Thanks also to Dolores

Dwyer for editorial assistance.

Ron Peiffer assisted with the Coast Guard segments, and Lewis Shiner brought the

duct tape.

MOONFALL

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs,

even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with

those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much,

because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory

nor defeat.

—Theodore Roosevelt

CHAPTER ONE

TOTALITY

Monday, April 8,2024

Cruise Liner Merrivale, eastern Pacific.

5:21 A.M. Zone (9:21 A.M. EDT)

The

Merrivale

was bound for Honolulu, four days out of Los Angeles, when the

eclipse began. Few of the passengers got up to watch the event. But Horace

Brickmann, who'd paid a lot of money for this cruise, wanted Amy to understand he

was a man with broad scientific and artistic interests.

Yes,

he'd told her last night

while they stood near the lifeboats and listened to the steady thrum of the ship's

engines and watched the bow wave roll out into the dark,

total solar eclipse.

Wouldn't miss it. To be honest, it's why I came.

And when she'd pointed out that the

eclipse would also be visible across much of the United States, he'd added smoothly

that it wasn't quite the same.

She'd hinted she'd also like to see the event. Amy had been beautiful in the

starlight, and his heart had pumped ferociously, bringing back memories of his

twenties, which he recalled as a time of romance and passion. It was Horace's

impression

he'd

terminated the various relationships of his youth, much to the

despair of the women; that in those early days he had not been ready for serious

commitment. But still there were times he woke in the night regretting one or

another of his lost paramours. He wondered occasionally where they were now and

how they were doing.

It was an odd sort of dawn, Sun and Moon clasped together in a cold gray

embrace. The ocean had grown rough and Horace sat in his chair sipping hot coffee,

wondering what was keeping Amy. He tugged his woolen sweater down over his

belly and reminded himself that it was dangerous to look directly at the spectacle.

Most of the other early risers had brought blankets, but Horace wanted to cut a

dashing figure and the blanket just didn't fit the image.

To his consternation, a voluble banker whom he'd met the previous day appeared

before him, greeted him with the kind of cheeriness that's always irritating early in

the morning, and sat down in an adjoining deck chair. "Marvelous experience, this,"

said the banker, lifting his eyes in the general direction of the eclipse while extracting

a folded copy of the

Wall Street Journal

from a pocket of his nautical blue blazer. He

tried to read the paper in the gray light but gave up and dropped it on his lap.

He began to chatter about commodities and convertibles and price-earnings

ratios. Horace's eyes swept the near-empty decks. A middle-aged man at the rail was

watching the eclipse through sunglasses. A steward strolled casually over and

offered him one of the viewing devices the ship had been distributing. Horace was

too far away to hear the conversation, but he saw the man's annoyed expression.

Nevertheless, he accepted the viewer, waited until the steward had turned away,

dropped it into a pocket, and went back to gazing at the Sun. The banker babbled

on, fearful that the Fed would raise the prime rate again.

The wind was beginning to pick up.

The steward approached Horace and the banker, holding out the devices. "You

don't want to look directly at it, gentlemen," he said. Horace took one. It consisted of

a blue plastic tube about six inches wide, with a tinfoil disk attached to one end.

"Point it toward the eclipse, sir," said the steward, "and it'll project the Sun's image

onto the disk. You'll be able to watch in perfect safety." The tube was decorated with

the ship's profile and name. Horace thanked him.

She was now twenty minutes late. But Amy had an eight-year-old daughter to

take care of, so there was a degree of unpredictability in any rendezvous.

He became aware suddenly that the banker had asked a question. "I'm sorry,"

Horace said. "My mind was elsewhere."

"No problem, partner." The man was finishing up with middle age. He was

oversized and prosperous-looking. His hair was shoe-polish black, and the deck chair

complained whenever he shifted weight. "I know just what you mean."

A deep dusk had settled over the ship. The banker cleared his throat and essayed

a quick look at his watch. He had to raise his arm, so that the face of the instrument

caught a reflection from a porthole. It seemed almost as if by consulting the time he

was exercising control over the event. The last of the gray light drained from the sky

and the corona blazed out, pale and somber. Horace heard awed conversation and

drawing in of breath.

The stars emerged, and the ocean was swallowed up in the dark.

"Wonderful thing, nature," said the banker. "Beautiful."

Horace mumbled an appropriate response.

Over the course of an hour or so, the event concluded, the eclipse passed, and

the banker went in to breakfast. Amy didn't show up, and the

Merrivale

plowed

through a sea that remained gray and unsettled.

Horace stayed in his chair a long time. A damp chill had stolen over him. Later,

wandering the decks, he saw Amy and her daughter at a dining table with several

others. She was deep in animated conversation with a man Horace had seen going

off the high-dive yesterday. He lingered for a moment but she never looked up.

It was as if the shadow that fell across the ship had touched the heart of the

world.

• • •

Space Station L1, Percival Lowell Flight Deck. 8:03 A.M.

There was never a

time we didn't know that the canals were bunk, that

Percival

Lowell's

network of interconnecting lines, and the areas that darkened in the summer

as the water flowed, were just so much self-delusion. Adams and Dunham, in 1933,

before I was born, showed that Martian oxygen was less than one-tenth of a percent

of the terrestrial level. That should have been enough. But people still hoped, even

as late as when I was in high school during the sixties. Until

Mariner 4

sent back

those godawful pictures just after Thanksgiving 1964 and we knew we were looking

at the end.

Rachel Quinn's grandfather had wanted to be an astronomer, but he went to the

wrong college because it was local and it didn't cost much. He had to take what they

offered and somehow he ended up as an accountant. But he owned a marvelous

telescope, one through which Rachel had seen Jupiter's moons and the demon star

Algol and the Great Comet of 2011. And she too had thought what a pity it was that

Mars had no canals.

The thought was in her mind a lot these days as they prepared for launch. How

different this mission might have been, had there been someone at the other end.

Welcome, people of Earth.

Well, Mars has some primitive biological forms, but

nothing that would take note of her arrival.

She wondered why the drive to find other beings among the lights in the sky was

so strong. It was, in fact, so deeply ingrained that no one ever seemed to make the

point that we'd be far safer if we were alone.

Launch was twenty-two days away. Sunlight blazed through the windows and

gleamed off

Lowell's

silver prow. They were at the Lagrange One station, popularly

known as L1, suspended between Earth and Moon, fifty-eight thousand kilometers

above the lunar surface. And they were ready to go. The ship's nuclear power plant

had been tested in the Mojave Desert and in lunar orbit; its navigational systems

were already locked on Mars; its survey gear was loaded; spare parts were on board;

and the video library was in place. One of the technicians had programmed its

control circuit to ask Rachel each morning a variant of the question, "Is it time yet?"

NASA had invited schoolchildren around the world to name the nuclear-powered

vessel that was going to Mars. The winner would receive a trip out to L1 to get

photographed with the six astronauts and to watch the launch. Hundreds of

thousands of suggestions had poured in, names in all the languages of Earth. An

army of secretaries and junior assistants and interns had culled through the deluge,

relaying those that seemed to have originality and flavor to a panel of judges.

There'd been rumors of animosity and deadlock, and one judge did in fact resign, but

the panel eventually emerged with its choice: the

Percival Lowell.

There was irony in calling the Mars vessel after a man who had been both

monumentally wrong, and persistent in that error until his death.

But he had

dreamed,

the winner said

, for all of us. Without him, we would not have had

Barsoom or the Chronicles. The irresistible ache that carries us outward was born

with

Percival Lowell. That was the phrase that stuck in Rachel's mind. She didn't

agree with it, but you could make a plausible argument for it.

The child was Chinese, a high school senior from Canton, who was scheduled to

arrive in two weeks with the rest of the crew. So far, other than herself, only

geologist/flight engineer Lee Cochran was aboard.

Rachel didn't much care what sort of name they stenciled on the hull as long as

the ship was ready to go. And for the first time in her experience with government

projects, everything seemed set with time to spare.

The

Lowell

consisted of a long central stem, with flight deck and crew areas

forward and the nuclear engine at the rear. Crew areas, but not the flight deck,

could be rotated to simulate .07 g. It wasn't enough to make the trip comfortable,

but it approached the effect generated on the station itself, and was almost half

lunar gravity. A lander was tucked under the belly of the craft. Sensor dishes,

telescopes, feeder ports, and antennas projected from the hull.

The engines were powered by a Variable Specific Impulse Plasma drive. The

system, electrodeless, electrothermal, radio-frequency heated, and magnetically

vectored, had been designed during the late 1990s, but not actively developed until

President Culpepper took the decision to push for a Mars mission as the natural

second step after the establishment of Moonbase.

Years ago Rachel had flown a prototype moonbus on powdered aluminum and

liquid oxygen. Now she sat atop a nuclear monster that would take her across the

interplanetary void.

It was a nice feeling.

The hatch to the flight deck opened and Lee poked his head in. "Hello, Rache.

What are you doing

here?"

She was seated in the pilot's chair. The day's simulations were over and she felt

almost guilty, as if she'd been caught playing solitaire with the computer. "Smelling

the roses," she said. It seemed now that her entire life had been directed toward this

moment, had been intended to get her into this seat. And she was making it a point

to savor the success. She'd wanted it when she was ten years old, peeking through

Grandpop's telescope. It had been in the back of her mind when she went to flight

school, when she was flying patrols over Zagreb, and when she'd begun piloting the

buses between the lunar installations and L1. When Culpepper announced nine years

ago that the nation would go to Mars, Rachel Quinn had fired off an application

before the speech ended. "Where should I be?" she asked Lee.

"It's Monday. Director's breakfast."

She'd forgotten. Yesterday she had lunch with the vice president, who'd been

passing through to do the honors at the Moonbase ribbon-cutting ceremony this

afternoon. Today it was to have been bacon and eggs with the station director.

Tomorrow it would be another lunch, this time with a Chinese delegation of

diplomats and industrialists. It seemed as if the most time-consuming part of her job

was rubbing shoulders with every VIP who arrived on L1. And with the Mars flight

imminent, and Moonbase officially opening today, there'd been a horde of

heavyweights.

Lee frowned. "Another faux pas for the NASA team."

Rachel shrugged, trying to suggest she had more important things to do. But in

fact they were well ahead of schedule.

Most of the

Lowell

jutted outside the station. Only the forward sphere, which

contained the flight deck, was enclosed within a pressurized bay. She looked down at

a single technician switching umbilicals. "I'm ready to go, Lee," she said.

So was the ship. It was now only a matter of briefings and politics.

Lee sat down in the copilot's seat. An image of Mars, wide and bleak and rust-

colored, floated in the overhead display. "It'll come soon enough," he said.

"Meantime, I think you ought to get yourself over to the breakfast. You're the star of

the show these days, and it wouldn't look real good if you ignored the director."

Rachel frowned. "I hate the politics involved with these things." Actually, she

didn't. Not all of it, anyhow. She'd enjoyed meeting the vice president yesterday. But

it was part of the astronaut code that all groundhuggers, even vice presidents, were

comparative unfortunates. Members of an inferior species.

"What the hell, Rache, grow up." He grinned. Major Lee Cochran was tall and

easygoing, with animated good looks and hair that consistently fell into his eyes.

"Half the job is politics and public relations. Who do you think pays for this toy?" He

was the media darling of the crew. Still in his thirties, he'd shown up last month on

somebody-or-other's list of ten most eligible bachelors. Unlike Rachel and the others,

he had a talent for delivering quotable lines. He was a twin kill, two for the price of

one, an astronaut flight engineer who was also a world-class geologist. Cochran

would eventually use the lasers and sample collectors to get at the heart of Mars, to

begin putting together, finally, a definitive history of the planet. Still, though no one

would admit it, it wasn't his technical skill that had gotten him the assignment, but

his ability to relate to the media.

He says the right thing,

the mission director had

told her.

Talk to him before you go down the ladder. Get his input. Listen to Lee and

there'll be no more of that "giant leap for mankind" crap.

Yeah. Rachel had pretended her feelings were hurt, but the man was right. As

was Lee now. If they didn't want to repeat the Apollo scenario, make a couple of

trips to Mars and say good-bye, they needed to take the PR seriously.

Moonbase Spaceport. 8:11 A.M.

When Vice President Charles L. Haskell stepped out of the microbus onto the

passenger walkway, he became simultaneously the highest-ranking U.S. government

executive ever to set foot on the Moon, and an overgrown ten-year-old kid. His heart

hammered and he very deliberately placed his foot on the exit ramp that led directly

through a tube into the passenger lounge. He thought,

Yes, this is it, I'm really here.

He took a deep breath, recalling the dinosaurs and model starships that had once

filled his life. He passed an innocuous remark to Rick Hailey to hide his feelings, and

accepted the handshakes of the Moonbase officials waiting to greet him.

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MoonfallByJackMcDevittScanned,formattedandproofedbyBW-SciFiEbookversion1.0ReleaseDate:September,9th,2003HarperPrismADivisionofHarperCollinsPublisher10East53rdStreet,NewYork,NY10022-5299Ifyoupurchasedthisbookwithoutacover,youshouldbeawarethatthisbookisstolenproperty.Itwasreportedas"unsoldanddestroyed...

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Jack McDevitt - Moonfall

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