‘I was asked to leave the com dome,’ said Bill.
‘They asked you to leave?’ asked Anna.
‘Mike said it was classified because it was military.’
‘We could be getting side lined,’ I said.
‘We are. I listened to the recordings. They were pretty explicit. I was surprised they hadn’t erased them.’
‘You’re sure you didn’t misinterpret them?’ I asked.
‘Absolutely. Here’s a copy,’ said Bill, handing over a memory card. ‘General Gilby definitely said not to tell you about their conversation and Neil confirmed it. And they’ve asked Doug to prepare a plan to take the Asimov Rille. Just a contingency plan they said.’
‘But why did they ask you to leave the com dome during their communication?’ asked Anna.
Bill shrugged. ‘It’s very distrustful.’
‘I suppose they have to be prepared in case they do turn out to be violent,’ I said.
‘Yes, but why not talk to us about it?’ said Anna. ‘You’re overall commander and I’m your deputy. Bill is your military adviser. Why keep us in the dark? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Unless they’re using us. Maybe assuming we’ll lull the infected into a false sense of security until a trap can be sprung,’ I said.
‘What other weapons have they brought, other than the projectors?’ asked Anna.
‘There was a large container which Vlad and Ludvic transferred from Uspekh 2 to Dragonstar 4,’ said Bill. ‘I checked it out and it contains conventional weapons. I saw a heavy duty rocket launcher and a quantity of automatic rifles.’
‘They didn’t try to conceal those, though,’ I said.
‘Were you aware of them?’ asked Anna.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but only to be used as a last resort. Now it’s starting to look as if it is part of a larger plan.’
We all looked down into our coffee. Why were the military trying to isolate us?
Anna asked, ‘Do you think they have a plan to attack the infected, radiate them and let that be an end to the matter?’
‘Let’s keep collating and be careful with whom we share information,’ I said. ‘But it does worry me. It’s certainly the way governments behave, but I’m surprised Neil would be a party to it.’
‘He might not have a choice,’ said Anna.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Later in the day, I wandered into the common room for coffee and a snack. I noticed Doug ahead of me preparing his meal. I microwaved a packet of flavoured rice to go with some rehydrated salmon and then waited until I could see his meal was ready.
‘Ah, Doug. We must catch up. Join me at the table over there,’ I said, indicating one which only had two seats.
‘Be there in a minute,’ he said, and I made a beeline for it, sat, and hit record on my minicomp.
‘So, Doug, how’s the Dragonstar repair going?’
‘Very well. They’ve repaired one leg and are manufacturing a replacement for the mangled second.’
‘No other damage?’
‘No, Mark. It came off not too badly. I’ve posted two guards at the landing site. A bit worrying that they’ve stolen equipment from outside Moonbase.’
‘What, you mean the missing spectrometers et cetera? That is a bit strange. Any idea what they might be doing?’
‘No. That’s more your field, Mark. Must say that with lunar nightfall coming in a few days, protecting our assets will become much more difficult. They could even steal a lander and take an Orion back to Earth.’
‘Are those weapons from Dragonstar 4 safe, Doug? Where have you stored them?’
‘They’re fine. We put them in the garage dome and have two guards in there whenever the outer door is opened.’
‘So, how do you think we should proceed with the infected and the rille, Doug?’
‘I’ve been giving that a lot of thought. It’s a shame we can’t irradiate the inside of the rille. That would finish it there and then.’
‘But we might not want to. There seems to be a number of benefits to some sort of symbiosis with them, Doug.’
‘Well, that’s more your domain. I’ll just make sure you have military backup when it’s needed.’
‘You dealt with the mob?’
‘Yes, Mark. As I said, it won’t happen again.’
‘I hope not,’ I said.
‘I’ve suspended Dyson and Mackay.’
I doubted that would be enough and decided that I needed to take some steps to protect the infected.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Bill, Anna and I met up in the rec dome last thing before the sleep period and we made some contingency plans. Bill had checked it for electronic bugs as well as LRPs.
In the morning, I found Vicky sitting alone at a table in the common room.
‘Hi, Vicky. How’re you feeling today?’
‘Okay. Able to live without the entity, but every now and again I remember the loss of the total recall she gave me.’
‘You’d still rather have the LRP?’
‘Absolutely, sir. It really is like losing a family member,’ she said.
I looked around the room and saw Anna coming in with Crystal. I watched the reaction of the Marines. A few looked at the black woman sullenly, but no one said anything, either derogatory or even a simple good morning. Jack Kane, one of the nurses, was seated near the kitchen counter and I saw him say hi to the two girls, but that was it.
‘I’ll see you later, Vicky,’ I said and joined Anna and Crystal at the kitchen counter to make myself some breakfast; just a bowl of cereal and some toast. ‘Join me when you’ve got what you want,’ I said.
A few minutes later, the three of us were sitting at a table on the other side of the common room, away from the military contingent. The panoramic view of the moon’s surface was spectacular. Shadows were growing as the fortnight long lunar day moved into its last third. The shadows exaggerated the smaller lunar features making the scene even more stark.
‘How are you this morning, Crystal? It’s been a day now,’ I said.
‘Awful, Mark. I don’t want to live like this. It’s as if I’ve lost half my mental abilities. My normal memory is as good as it ever was, but it isn’t a patch on what I had with my entity,’ she said, sitting back and looking the epitome of misery.
‘What else? We need to know.’
‘It’s difficult to sleep. I kept waking up during the night. Before, I would close my eyes and she’d wake me up when we’d planned. She cut my need for sleep to two or three hours. Last night I slept nearly nine hours and I’m still not refreshed.’
‘Is there any other effect?’ asked Anna.
‘My mind. I’ve lost some of my faculties. We’ve been working on quantum mechanics in the rille and I tried to think about the project last night. I hadn’t a clue. I’ve lost the ability,’ she said.
‘How do you mean?’ I asked. Could I get her to spill the beans over what was happening at the rille?
‘I couldn’t remember any of the equations or even the reasoning behind them. It’s just a tangled fog.’
I guessed she hadn’t realised that she was giving us an insight into their activities. ‘What’s the project?’ I asked.
‘We’re linking quantum gravity with general relativity. It was all so clear, but now it’s just mental chaos.’
‘Would you like one of the Moonbase laptops?’ I asked. Good grief, this was fringe science!
‘Oh, no!’ she exclaimed. ‘That wouldn’t help at all, we were working in five dimensions.’
I looked at Anna and saw that her eyes had widened at the same time as mine. Was Crystal serious? Were the infected really working on five dimensional quantum mechanics? Linking general relativity with quantum gravity had been the scientific puzzle which physicists on Earth had been trying to resolve for more than a hundred years.
‘Tell us more,’ I said.
Crystal pulled herself out of her slouch and sat upright. She looked annoyed and was staring at me. ‘No, I don’t think so, Mark. I shouldn’t be talking about it at all really. Tosh wants us to keep it to ourselves.’
She’d rumbled my questions. ‘How is Tosh?’
‘He’s fine.’
‘What’s he working on these days?’ I asked casually.
‘Sorry, Mark. I spoke out of turn. I shouldn’t say anymore, even if I could remember it.’
‘But we’re interested, Crystal. Trying to understand.’
‘Then ask Roy or come to the rille. I’m not saying anything else until I get my entity back. Being without her is torture. I’m not thinking straight.’
‘Roy will be back tomorrow, and we’ll talk it through,’ I said. I’d blown my chance of extracting any more information from Crystal.