Moonbane

“Yes.”

I closed my eyes.

The two men continued their seminar as I drifted toward sleep. And then, in dreams or out, I heard the first thing that gave me hope since Jimmy Rogers’s voice had lulled me from my home and despair, the first thing since all of this horror had begun that led me to believe, as Pettis’s daughter and I and everyone else so fervently wished, that things might be the way they were again.

“One thing we know for sure,” Proctor drawled. I could almost see him grinning in red light. “If we get to do this, the wolves are history.”

CHAPTER 19

Prognosis

I awoke to find Pettis looming over me, his gun shouldered. He was framed by morning sunlight blooming through the open dome slit above him. I had gone through a night of rough sleep; snippets of nightmare mixed with the sound of real gunshots, of wolves devouring their mates, and through it all, unimpeded, the careful, slow discussion by Doc and Wyatt of the future of the Moon and Earth.

“Thanks,” Pettis said softly, indicating the still-sleeping form of his daughter. I had forgotten about her. But now, the stiffness of my body announced itself with gusto.

“You were supposed to wake me,” I whispered.

Amy stirred and sat up, rubbing the rough night from her eyes.

“You were busy.” Pettis crouched next to his daughter, talking to her gently.

I stretched, then climbed to the cage above. Wyatt was curled in one corner under the focuser, snoring, while Doc stood peering over the side of the cage at the floor below.

“Remarkable beasts,” he said. The floor was littered with destruction. By the door two dead wolves lay in a fierce embrace, tearing mouths locked onto one another’s necks, claws buried deep into chests. They had obviously been the last, because the rest of the room was dotted with neat mounds of white bones.

“Wyatt shot those two as they were slinking off at dawn,” Doc said. “As soon as they were wounded they went berserk and tried to rip each other to shreds. Blood sends them into a feeding frenzy. And yet, their mindlessness lasts only as long as the blood. After devouring a victim, they reverently stack its bones. Wyatt thinks it has something to do with religious belief, or fetishism. It’s an intriguing thought.”

He lapsed into silence. “What are you thinking about?” I asked.

“Tea, actually.” He gave me his wry smile. “It’s been four days since I’ve had a cup of tea. They had none of it in that bomb shelter. Only coffee. I don’t know what you Yanks see in the beastly stuff. Ground-up beans.” He made a face.

“Why didn’t you tell me there was a plan to get us out of this mess?”

“You didn’t ask,” he answered. “As a matter of fact, whether there is one depends very much on how much of Kramer Air Force Base is intact. If—”

“If any of a thousand things went wrong, we’re dead,” Pettis completed, reaching the cage ahead of his daughter. “I didn’t tell you, or anyone else, because first, it was a national security matter, and second, I couldn’t see any use in getting anyone’s hopes up. And anyway, we still don’t know it’ll work.”

“We’re going to try, aren’t we?” Amy asked him.

“I sure hope so,” Wyatt drawled from his corner, yawning. “If not, all those brilliant ideas of mine last night went to waste. Anybody hungry?” He looked at Doc and grinned. “It just so happens there’s some tea, if you’re interested.”

“Bless you!” Doc said. “Even if your ideas were all wasted.”

They revived their symposium as Pettis unlocked the ladder and we descended.

Proctor was better than his word about breakfast. There was a commissary stocked with a hidden hoard of untouched food. The eggs were powdered, but there was marmalade, biscuit mix, and tins of canned fruit. Wyatt was a good cook, and with Amy’s help, we soon were eating a hot, rejuvenating breakfast.

“I might as well tell you,” Doc said, his fingers caressing a cup of Earl Grey, “what we have in mind at Kramer Air Force Base. The shuttle Lexington, which has been docked at Kramer for the past seven months, is more than capable of making a round trip to the Moon in its modified form. You may have read something about it in the popular journals, though the military has tried to keep a tight lid on it.” He looked at Pettis. “I can’t imagine there’s much in the way of national security left.”

Pettis waved a hand. “I’ll tell you when to stop, Doc.”

Doc looked at me. “Have you ever heard of Big Dumb Boosters?”

The term rang a bell, but not a loud one.

“On the drawing board,” Doc continued, “Big Dumb Boosters, which were designed in the 1960s, would have made the space shuttle unnecessary. They were to have been massive launch vehicles, quite similar to the Energia rocket that the Russians have developed and utilized so effectively. Quite simply, they would have been giant, unsophisticated first-stage rockets to lift great weights into space.

“But NASA, with the military behind it, decided on the much more complex and technologically showy space shuttle to exclusively perform the tasks that the BDBs would have, and since the shuttle would get all the money and attention, most other plain booster research was abandoned.”

Doc sipped his tea. “After the shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986, NASA, and especially the Pentagon, realized just how vulnerable the space objectives of the United States were with all of its eggs in the shuttle basket, and the Big Dumb Booster concept was revived. It was all done quietly, through the Air Force, because the NASA budget just wasn’t there for it.”

He finished his tea and looked longingly at the empty cup. “To make a rather long story brief, there’s a Big Dumb Booster at Kramer Air Force Base, with the space shuttle Lexington attached, capable of reaching the Moon. It was to have delivered a retooled lunar excursion module to the Moon to defuse the public relations impact of the Soviet Mir space station, and to monitor recent Soviet lunar activity. The plan now is to strip all that military spy junk out and pack a good load of nuclear weapons, which they just happen to have at Kramer, on board, and—”

“That’s enough, Doc,” Pettis said.

Doc frowned. “I can’t really see that it matters if we tell him—”

“Maybe later.”

“I’ve been thinking about that last calculation we came up with…” Proctor said, wandering into the conversation.

Wyatt and Doc resumed their discussion.

“We’d better check our transportation,” Pettis said, motioning for me to come with him as Amy cleared the table.

“I want you to understand something,” Pettis said when we got outside. “I saw how bright your face got while you were listening to Doc’s bullshit. That’s exactly the reason I didn’t want to say anything about this.”

“You don’t think we can get out of this?” I asked.

“We might. But probably not. I’ve never been much of a pessimist, but I think we may already be finished as a race. Have you thought about how quickly things fell apart? Use what happened in Hopkinsville as an example. If the wolves landed everywhere on the planet, you’ve got half the human race dead or metamorphosed the first night. By the second night, three quarters of those remaining are gone. By the third, nearly all the rest. We started out with seven hundred in Hopkinsville. We barely got out with four. Those are bad odds. Couple that with the fact that the first thing the beasts destroyed was the technology, especially communications, and I don’t see much to sing about.”

“But maybe—”

His anger flared. “I don’t like maybes. They only make you think too much. It’s either yes or no.”

“What about Amy? Don’t you think she needs you now a lot more than she ever did? Don’t you owe it to her to keep going?”

“I owe her more than that. And I’ll never stop going,” he said. “I just don’t know if we’ll be able to squeeze out of this as a race.”

“I’m still counting on signing that copy of my book for you,” I said.