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him, Rick thought after the second time. It had happened while he was asleep,
and when Yoshiko had shaken him awake he had to admit that he had indeed been
dreaming about a colony on the Moon.
Both Yoshiko and Tessa were looking at him like hostages in a bank robbery or
something. That accusing look, combined with the adrenaline rush from waking
to their screams and his own fear of death, suddenly pissed him off. As he
rubbed the sleep from his eyes, he said, "All right, dammit, maybe I am in
control of this thing. And if you're right about that, maybe you're right
about experimenting with it, too."
"What do you mean?" Tessa asked nervously.
"I mean if I'm God all of a sudden, then why don't I use it for something?
Like make us a bigger ship, or at least a more modern one. Something with a
shower, for instance. Or how about the Millennium Falcon? Maybe we could go to
Alpha
Centauri as long as we're out here."
"Nyet!" Gregor said loudly. "Do not experiment! It is more dangerous than you
can imagine."
Rick snorted loudly. "Well, comrade, if I'm in the dark then it's because you
guys are holding back on me. If you know what's going on up here, then tell
me.
Why shouldn't I dream up a nice, big fantasy instead of this cramped little
can?"
"E equals MC squared, that's why," Gregor said. "Your ghost cannot violate the
known laws of physics. We do not know where the energy comes from to create
the...ah, the physical manifestation, but we do know that a clumsy attempt to
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manipulate it can result in a violent release of that energy."
"You do, eh? And how do you know that?"
Gregor conferred for a moment with someone else in the control room with him,
then came back on line. "Let us just say that not all of our underground
explosions in the 1970's were nuclear."
Rick looked out the window at black space. "You've made a weapon out of
ghosts?"
he asked quietly.
Gregor said, "Is an industrial accident a weapon? It is not useful unless you
can direct it, and that's what I'm trying to tell you now. You are the focus
of this phenomenon, but not its master. If you are careful you can maintain
it, but if you attempt to manipulate it, the result will be disastrous."
"So you say."
"So we have come to understand. We do not have all the answers either."
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Rick's mad was wearing off, but frustration made him say, "Well why don't you
come up with some? I'm getting tired of being the scapegoat up here."
Gregor laughed softly. "We are doing our best, but you will understand if that
is too little and too late. We are having trouble reproducing your situation
in our flight simulators."
"Hah. I'll bet you are." Rick took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "All
right," he said, "I'll try to be good. But if you learn anything more about
how this works, I want to know it instantly. Agreed?"
"Agreed," Gregor said.
Rick rubbed his eyes again and unstrapped from his chair. Looking pointedly at
Tessa and Yoshiko, he said, "Okay, then unless anybody has an objection, I
think
I'll have some breakfast."
"No problem," Tessa said, holding her hands out. Yoshiko nodded. They both
turned away, either to give him some privacy or to escape his anger, but
whichever it was he really didn't care.
Tessa pulled herself into the equipment bay and began taking a navigational
reading while he re-hydrated a bag of dried scrambled eggs.
"Hey," she said a few minutes later. "We're on a polar trajectory again." She
looked directly at Rick, who was sucking on a packet of orange juice.
"It's not me," he protested. "A polar orbit means we can't land. The command
module wouldn't pass over our landing site again for an entire lunar day."
That was twenty-eight Earth days, far too long for a crew to wait on the
surface. In order to rendezvous with the command module, they would have to
make an orbital plane-change in mid-launch, a much more tricky and fuel-costly
maneuver. Either that or the command module would have to make a plane change,
which was equally difficult.
Yoshiko acquired a rapt expression for a few seconds, then said, "Unless you
land at the pole. The command module would pass over both poles on every
orbit."
"We can't land at the...can we?"
"Absolutely not," Gregor's voice said. "Even I will not allow that kind of
risk.
You would have bad lighting, extremes of temperature, no margin for error in
landing sites, possibly even fog obscuring your vision on final approach."
"Fog?" asked Tessa.
"It is possible. Current theory predicts water ice in some of the deeper
craters near the pole, where sunlight can never reach them."
"Wow," whispered Rick. "Ice on the Moon. That would make supporting a colony a
lot easier."
"Rick." Tessa was looking intently at the walls, but they remained solid.
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"Look, it's a fact," Rick told her, still put out with the whole situation.
"Ice would make it easier to set up a colony. We wouldn't have to fly all our
water up from Earth. That doesn't mean I think we're actually going to build
one, okay?"
"All right," Tessa said. "I just want you to be careful." She looked out the
window at the Earth, now just a tiny blue and white disk in the void. "So,
Kaliningrad, what do you suggest?"
Gregor said, "Give us a minute." He took longer than that, but when he came
back he said, "We want to check your guidance computer's program. Perhaps we
can discover where it intends to take you."
So Rick, who had at least trained with the primitive keyboard and display,
pulled himself down into the equipment bay and ran the computer while
Kaliningrad talked him through the procedure, and sure enough, the program was
indeed for a polar trajectory. And when they checked the computer in the
lander, they learned that it was programmed for a descent to the rim of the
Aitken
Basin, a 6-mile-deep crater right on the Moon's south pole.
"That's ridiculous," Rick said when he heard the news. "How could we be
expected to land on the south pole? Like Gregor said, the light would be
coming in sideways. Shadows would extend for miles, and every little
depression would be a black hole."
Tessa, who had been running the computer in the lander, said, "Well, maybe
this switch labeled 'Na inject' could provide a clue. If it sprays sodium into
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