Test of Fire (1982) Read online

"I didn't want them" she said, her voice as flat and controlled as if she were reading off a list of numbers. "Other things were more important."

  "And for five years I worried that the radiation you'd been exposed to in the flare . . . Jesus Christ, Lisa, why didn't you at least ask me?"

  "It was none of your business. It was my decision to make."

  He sank onto the end of the bed, head bowed, tears of frustration welling up in him. "Four children," he muttered. "Four children of mine . . . and you never even said a word to me about it."

  "We had more important things to do than to argue about having babies," Lisa said.

  He looked up at her. She was perfectly calm, totally in control of herself.

  "They were mine, weren't they?" he heard himself snarl at her. "Not Demain's or Blair's or Marty's. Or maybe some of the miners? Do you know who the fathers were?"

  Even that failed to crack her facade. "They were yours, Douglas. Only yours. But the decision to keep them or not was mine."

  Nodding bitterly, he hauled himself to his feet.

  He swayed there at the end of the bed for a moment, as if drunk.

  "Okay," he said. "You made your decisions. Now I'm making mine. I'm taking an expedition Earthside as soon as we can get it ready. You can lie there and swell up and burst, for all I care. I don't believe it's my kid. I'll never believe a word you say to me, never again!"

  He stamped out of the bedroom. Lisa lay unmoving, listening to him rummaging around the other rooms for a few moments. Then she heard the corridor door slide open and slam shut.

  He'll be back, she thought. He's angry now, but he'll cool down. He'll come back, feeling sheepish.

  And I'll ask him to forgive me. He will, and then I'll forgive him. We're having a son. I'll tell him that all the tests indicate that. He'll stay to see his son born. He'll be back. Soon. He won't stay away long.

  But he never returned to her.

  It took three months to organize the Earthside expedition to Douglas' satisfaction: three months of frantic preparation, of meticulous detail work, of unceasing training for the men he hand-picked to go with him, of driving, flogging everyone— himself most of all.

  Lisa watched the takeoff of his spidery transfer craft on the video screen in her bedroom. Every ship in the settlement was needed to lift the expedition members toward the Earth-orbiting space station. Douglas, she knew, was in the very last spacecraft. When its rocket engines ignited and it leaped off the Moon's dusty surface and out of view, she felt a sudden, searing pain in her abdomen.

  Her son was about to be born, five weeks prematurely.

  BOOK TWO

  Chapter 8

  Alec stood at the observation dome's main window and gazed across the tumbled, broken wingwall floor to the bleak horizon.

  Hanging above the weary, slumped mountains of Alphonsus, floating softly in the blackness, shone the blue, beckoning crescent of Earth. It glowed, catching the light of the now-quiet Sun on bands of glistening white, casting vivid shadows across the pitted gray lunar floor.

  From slightly behind him he heard a soft voice:

  "All of beauty's there, And all of truth. Let me leave this land of mirthless men And return to the home of my youth."

  Turning, Alec saw Dr. Lord, the astronomer. The old man was smiling faintly; the Earthlight coming through the window caught the wispy remains of his dead-white hair and produced a halo for him against the darkness of the room's dim interior lighting.

  "I didn't realize you were a poet," Alec said.

  Dr. Lord's voice was the whisper of a dying man.

  "Oh, yes. Back before the sky burned, when there were still girls for me to impress, I spent hours memorizing poetry. Between the poetry and the observation work, I made out rather well. You know, working all night at the observatory . . . you asked a girl to keep you company." He chuckled faintly at his memories.

  "Has the Council meeting started?" Alec asked.

  "Yes, about ten minutes ago. Your mother said the vote won't come until after considerable debate, and it would be impolite for you to be present while they re trying to decide."

  Alec nodded. "I wouldn't want to offend any of the Council members."

  "No, that wouldn't do," Dr. Lord agreed.

  Turning back to the window, Alec thought, All of beauty's there, and all of truth . . . and much, much more.

  Dr. Lord moved up to stand beside him at the window, and Alec could see their faint reflections despite the deliberately low lighting of the observation dome. Lord was ancient, frail, his chalky skin stretched over the- bones of his face like crumbling antique parchment. He breathed through his mouth, so that his lips were drawn back to reveal big, rodent-like teeth, surprisingly strong and healthy in his deathlike face.

  Alec studied his own face and wondered what it would be like if he ever reached Dr. Lord's age. He was taller than the old man, but not by much. Not as big as his father or most of the men he knew.

  His features were too delicate, almost feminine, and his hair curled in golden ringlets no matter how short he cropped it. But he had his mother's dark, smoldering eyes. And he saw that there were tight, angry lines around his mouth. Tension lines.

  Hate lines.

  "I was there when it happened," Dr. Lord muttered, more to himself than to Alec.

  Alec said nothing and hoped that the old man wouldn't go through his entire litany. For a few moments the only sound in the dome was the faint electrical hum of the air fans.

  "We had no idea . . ." Dr. Lord looked as if he was still dazed by it, even now, more than twenty-five years later. "Oh, I had proposed that perhaps the Sun emits a truly large flare every ten millennia or so . . . Tommy Gold had suggested it earlier, of course, and I was following his lead."

  He paused, and Alec tensed himself to beg the old man's permission to leave. But, "When it happened, I was at the observatory in Maine . . . it was summer, but the nights were cool up on the mountaintop."

  Alec had missed his chance, he knew, and he could not risk being called impolite. So while the old astronomer rambled away, Alec stared out at the luminous crescent of Earth, narrowing his thoughts to the debate going on in the Council. He knew that the choice was between Kobol and himself.

  Kobol had the advantages of age, experience, and no personal involvement. As a Council member, he was physically present at the debate.

  No risk of impoliteness for him. Alec's only advantages were his mother, and the urgings that burned inside his guts.

  ". . . the sky just lit up. For a moment we thought it was dawn, but it was too early. And too bright. The sky burned. It got so bright you couldn't look at it. The air became too hot to breathe. We ran down to the film vault, down in the basement, behind the safety doors where the airconditioning was always on. But they all died. Peterson, Harding, Sternbach . . . that lovely Robertson girl. They all died. All of them . . ."

  Alec put a hand on the old man's frail, bony shoulder. "It's all right . . . you made it. You survived."

  "Yes. I saw you here. I saw this dome." Lord's soft voice was agitated, shaking. "I think I must have gone a little mad, back then. You have no idea ... no conception . . . everyone dying ..."

  "But we found you," Alec soothed. "You're all right now."

  "It all burned. The sky burned. There was no place to turn to. Nowhere to go."

  Very gently, Alec led the old man away from the window. "Come on, let's get you down to your quarters. You're tired."

  Dr. Lord let Alec lead him to the powerlift.

  Usually it stayed unpowered and people clambered up and down using their own muscles.

  But for the old man, Alec touched the ON switch.

  A strong whiff of machine oil puffed up from the recess beside the ladder, and a motor whined to life, complainingly. The ladder rungs began creaking past them. Alec helped the aged astronomer onto one of the steps and hopped onto it beside him. Wordlessly they descended five levels, to the living quarters.

  He left th
e old man at his door, then followed the rough-hewn corridor toward the settlement's central plaza, where the Council's meeting room was. The rock walls of the corridor were lined with pipes carrying water, electricity and heat: the settlement's three necessities. Light tubes shone overhead, not so much for the aid of the pedestrians as for the benefit of the grass that carpeted the corridor floor.

  As he padded on slippered feet through the meager, oxygen-producing growth, Alec wondered what it would be like on Earth. To be outside without a suit. Would he be frightened? There were stories about men going crazy, out in the open with nothing to protect them. And the gravity . . .

  With a shake of his head, he dismissed all fears and strode doggedly toward the central plaza and the Council meeting room.

  Chapter 9

  There was a crowd in the central plaza. Alec knew there would be, but still it shocked him to see so many people in one place, milling around, not working, almost touching each other at random. The big high-domed cavern was buzzing with a hundred muted conversations.

  The elaborately carved doors of the Council chamber were still closed. No one was allowed in or out while the Council was in debate. The doors had been lovingly designed and produced by one of the original members of the Council, after he had retired from active duty. He had died not long ago, and willed his remains to the food reprocessors.

  Alec drifted through the crowd aimlessly, careful not to touch or be touched by any stranger. He was too nervous to wait in his quarters for word of the Council's decision. But this crowd was making him even jumpier. He could see that everyone was reacting the same way: the more people who poured into the plaza, the more excited everyone became. The noise level was growing steadily.

  "You look like a man in need of refreshment."

  The voice startled Alec. He turned to see Bill Lawrence, one of the settlement's bright young engineers and one of his lifelong friends. Thick dark hair cropped short, beard neatly trimmed, Lawrence approached the world with a kind of stiff formality that melted into playfulness with his friends.

  "Do I look that uptight?" Alec asked him, forcing a grin.

  "Everybody's that uptight" Lawrence answered.

  "Why do you think they're clustering here?"

  Lawrence took him by the arm—a privilege granted only to friends—and guided Alec through the shuffling, chattering crowd back toward the stone benches that circled the dwarf trees at the far end of the plaza. Several more of Alec's closest friends were there, sipping from plastic cups.

  Alec sat in their midst, wishing that Lawrence's brittle bones hadn't ruled him out of the Earth mission.

  Handing him a cup, Lawrence explained, "Deitz brewed this stuff in his chem lab, in between experiments on rat poison and rocket fuel. It's strictly illegal, but sells for twenty-five units a liter."

  Alec took a cautious sip. The liquid burned his tongue and almost gagged him. "Yugh . . . who would buy a liter of that?"

  "Nobody."

  They all laughed.

  Zeke, a roundish golden-haired young man who was called "the Bumblebee" because of his constant air of busy-ness, said, "We're going to turn Deitz in to the Council ... as soon as we've finished drinking up the evidence."

  Alec shook his head. "You'll be dead long before then." He placed his cup down on the bench beside him.

  "It's sort of scary seeing everybody hovering around here," Joanna said in her throaty voice.

  She was tall, dark, leggy.

  Alec nodded agreement. "Isn't anybody at work today?"

  Lawrence, still standing, eyed the crowd. "Only those with really essential duties. Everyone else just walked off and came here."

  "I don't understand it," Alec said. It was frightening.

  "Kobol's people had a little parade just before you arrived" said Zeke the Bumblebee. All the miners and techs . . . they said it was a spontaneous demonstration."

  "A parade! Without permission?"

  Lawrence nodded grimly.

  " First they leave their jobs and then they parade without the Council's permission." Alec's voice sounded shocked, even to himself.

  "Kobol wants to head the Earth mission,"

  Joanna said.

  "It's not just the Earth mission," Lawrence corrected.

  "It's control of the Council. If Kobol can get his way, he'll head the mission and then return to take over the Council. Your mother's fighting for her Chairmanship in there."

  "Kobol can't defeat her," Alec snapped.

  "If he comes back from Earth with the fissionables,"

  Lawrence said, "he'll demand an election and Lisa will be forced to step down."

  "Which is why it's important that you head up the mission," Zeke took over. "I sure as hell don't want to see the miners and techs taking over. We'll be overpopulated and run into the ground inside of a few years. Kobol's followers never seem to understand that you can grow people a lot faster than you can carve out new farmlands."

  "Kobol won't head the mission," Alec said tightly. "And he won't take over the Council."

  "Says who?" a new voice shouted at him.

  A man in his mid-thirties was standing between the bench on which Alec sat and the next one. He was big, shaggy-haired, and wore the fire-red coverall of a miner.

  "It's impolite to break into a private conversation,"

  Alec replied carefully, noticing that several other miners and techs stood behind the speaker.

  "Oohhh." The miner pursed his lips. "Now we mustn't be impolite, must we? Wouldn't want to make the frail little scientists' darlings break into a rash."

  Lawrence put a hand on Alec's shoulder. "Pay no attention to them."

  Alec forced himself to turn back to his friends.

  "Kobol's gonna set things straight around here," the miner continued loudly. "Put you brittle-boned sweethearts in your place. The settlement's gotta be ruled by the strong! You eggshells push buttons all day while we break our asses for you. Gonna be a lot of changes."

  Struggling to control himself, Alec got to his4 feet. "Let's get out of here," he said quietly to his friends. 'There are limits even to politeness."

  But the miner stepped lithely around the bench and planted himself squarely in front of Alec.

  Grinning, he rested his fists on his hips. He was a head taller than Alec, and bulged with strength and self-confidence.

  "Hey, don't get upset. I didn't mean to make you cry!"

  Alec stood glaring at him.

  "In fact," the miner continued, laughing, "I really oughtta wish you good luck on your vote in the Council. You're gonna need it!"

  He leaned his head back and guffawed; the miners and techs roared with him.

  Alec could feel Lawrence's hand on his arm, tugging at him. "Come on, Alec; you're only embarrassing yourself by listening to him."

  "Hey wait," the miner went on. "Listen, kid, I'd vote for you myself if I was on the Council."

  Alec said nothing.

  "Sure! I really would. Providing I got the same goodies that the rest of the Councilmen are getting!"

  Alec could feel the heat of his anger giving way to something far colder than lunar ice. He pulled his arm free of Lawrence's grasp.

  "What do you mean?" he asked in a voice so low that he could hardly hear it himself.

  "Go ask your Momma, little boy." The miners and techs were all grinning hugely now. Most of the crowd in the plaza had swarmed up to surround them.

  Alec took a step toward him.

  "What's the matter, kid? She's already fucked half the Council for you, why not a couple of real men?"

  Alec aimed for the throat. The miner put his hands up to protect himself and Alec slammed into him. They toppled over the stone bench together and landed on the grassy ground with a thudding grunt. Someone screamed, voices shouted, but that was all far away. Alec felt the solid strength of the miner's muscular arms grabbing at him.

  The miner was big and catlike, hard-handed and strong. But he hadn't spent hours each day in th
e Earth-gravity centrifuge, as Alec had for months.

  Alec scrambled to his feet and turned, saw the miner still in a crouch, knees bent, one hand touching the ground like an ape's.

  Looking up at him, the miner smiled. "I heard you got a temper, kid. Now you're gonna see what it costs you."

  He got to his feet slowly. Alec stood still, realizing that they were standing between benches now, little room to maneuver. Every nerve in him, every muscle was screaming with rage and anticipation.

  But he held himself in check, waiting, waiting.

  The miner towered over Alec, big as his father.

  He made a feinting move to his right. Alec ignored it. Another left, and again Alec did not respond.

  Then he launched a straightarm blow to Alec's head.

  Alec slipped under it, kicked the man's knee out, chopped hard at his kidney and brought a cupped hand up into his face. It caught his nose. Blood spurted and he fell heavily against the stone bench.

  He looked surprised now, with blood splashed over his face. The grin was gone. He got to all fours, tried to rise to his feet again, but the damaged knee would not support him. He went down again on his face.

  Alec looked around at the circle of spectators.

  "Anyone else have something to say?"

  Lawrence came to his side. "Come on, it's over. Let's get out of here."

  Alec let his companions lead him through the hushed crowd while the miner's friends bent over him.

  They made their way to Alec's quarters, which he shared with his mother. Gradually, one by one, his friends drifted away until only Joanna remained.

  They were drinking legitimate liquor now, part of the precious supply that was synthesized each year from the unusable waste products of the hydroponics farms.

  Joanna was sitting on the padded sofa, feet tucked up beneath her. Alec sat beside her. The furniture was all made of lunar stone, their most plentiful material, and padded with foam cushions. The room was spacious by lunar standards, big enough for a large viewscreen on one wall, two chairs and a low stone table in front of the sofa. Paintings hung on the other walls, and the ceiling panels glowed with a soft fluorescence.