Ornithoptera Lunaris

(Author’s Note: Back in the mid-1970s, my friend, Robert Charles Cornett (often called RC Squared for the obvious reason) and I decided we wanted to be science fiction writers. Oh, it was a thought I’d had for a long time and one that Bob had as well. We talked about it, and we wrote a number of science fiction short stories, which for some reason, were never selected for publication. Eventually, we did sell a number of science fiction novels including Seeds of War, and Remember the Alamo, both of which became limited series. We also put together a collection of short stories. The following is one of those.

Please remember that these stories were written in the mid-1970s. I point this out because cigarettes have a role in his story and it is not one that is easily removed. The structure of the story and one of the characterizations make it impossible to remove the references without destroying one of the characters. I elected to keep it in and point out that I don’t advocate using tobacco products.

I’ll also note that this story was written before there were home computers. The original manuscript was created on a manual typewriter and if you want to have some fun, try doing that. The keys require real pressure, you can’t go back to fix a misspelled word, and in fact, you can’t have the manuscript spell checked. I have added a couple of updated references however. Rather than reading a book its physical form, one of the characters is using a tablet. There are references to the Internet, added in the world today. We didn’t make these predictions back in the 1970s.

Anyway, the point here is that some of the references are dated and I’ve left almost everything intact which captures, I suppose, the flavor of the times. There will be an additional note at the end of this which is important. I can’t mention it here because, well, spoilers.)

 

Ornithoptera Lunaris

I

Bea Riley yawned, stretched her legs, and lit up another cigarette. Lambert, she noticed, had finished his book on plasma physics and was now reading an advanced calculus text. Not studying it, reading it, much as someone else might have read a bit of light fiction before going to sleep. In a moment, her presence intruded and he glanced at her over the top of his tablet. Another man might have asked her for a cigarette. Another man who had known her in college as Lambert had, would have asked her to share a cup of coffee and later a pass at her. Lambert did neither.

Lambert eyed her briefly. At 28, she was slender, athletic, and beautiful. She had long red hair and pale blue eyes that were as thin as cellophane. The line of her face was so fine it hurt him to look at her and his eyes dropped back to the tablet.

Lambert hated her cigarette smoking. He hated everyone’s smoking and couldn’t believe that the regulations allowed it but only because she claimed a tribal exemption. He wasn’t sure what tribe, or why the exemption would allow smoking, but the bureaucrats bought the excuse.

He couldn’t believe that in the enclosed environment anyone would be selfish enough to smoke. The habit disgusted him. It was a vile smelling, filthy habit that tasked the air scrubbers. People who smoked the filtered brands were bad enough, but Riley insisted on the damned Pall Malls that left little shards of tobacco in the smoker’s mouth.

Well, if she wanted the damn things bad enough to use up five percent of her personal effects allotment to bring four cartons and two fifths of scotch up to Tycho Crater, she could smoke them. Lambert just wished she’s smoke them in her own room instead of in the lounge where he was assaulted by the odor.

Riley’s chair creaked noisily as she got up. The smell of the tobacco became stronger and Lambert felt the hairs rise on the nape of his neck. She was coming closer and he wanted to run. Irrational, irrational, he thought, but he still wanted to run. Of all the women he had ever known, Lambert considered Riley to be the most desirable, and the most frightening. He was afraid of women, but Riley terrified him. When she spoke, he could tell from her voice that she was standing next to him.

“It’s beautiful. No matter how many times I see it, it’s always more beautiful than the last.”

“What is?” Lambert did not look up. He did, however, stop reading. The interruption had broken his train of thought and he found, to his great consternation, that he could not remember which integral he had been approximating in his head.

“Earthrise. Isn’t it fascinating how it hangs there, just over the rim of the crater? Like some giant, blue, half marble, striped in white.”

Lambert twisted around so he could see through the triple-layered, Plexiglass window. It was the only window in the station.

“Such poetic words. You’re a hopeless romantic, Riley. I must confess though, it does have a certain aesthetically pleasing quality.” Lambert was a scientist to the core. He had absolutely no sense of what constituted art, only numbers and formulae.

“The trouble with you, Chris, is that you have no soul.”

“Soul? Oh, you mean religion. Of course not. There’s no such thing as God. I don’t believe in mythology. Man evolved biologically, from the lower organisms.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did man evolve? What was his reason for doing so?”

“Survival.”

“That’s not what I meant. Don’t you see, there has to be some purposive reason for man’s existence. Something must give reason to life.”

“I see no reason why there need to be any purpose behind chance biological occurrence.”

“Oh Christ, Chris. You’re the one who’s hopeless, not me.”

Lambert was spared the agony of further obviously futile discourse by Schattschneider’s entry.”

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“No, no. Dr. Riley and I were just discussing trivia. I believe Bea refers to it as religion. What’s up, Karl?”

“Well, I know you’re both on stand-down, but I’d like to ask you to go outside and have a look at the prime focus for me. There’s some kind of trouble with the reception and Edwards thinks it’s external. I wouldn’t ask you, but there’s no one else I can send. Tish Kirchoff and Spel Balfour are both on sleep cycle and Jirasek’s ill. He caught a head cold of some kind fooling around with the air conditioning unit. I’d go myself, but you know what the regs say: ‘Whenever external repairs are to be effected, a team consisting of two members must be sent out in order that one may assist the other, and, in the event of an emergency, a third member must remain suited up in the rescue lock to assist in the recovery if necessary.’ Well, that leaves me for lock duty. I can’t send Edwards or Garrick because they’re on duty and if I pulled them off, I wouldn’t be left with anyone to handle the data from the 500-meter interferometers or monitor the incoming signals from the Saturn probe on the 25-meter dish.”

“I’m game, Karl. Haven’t been outside for more than a week. Ready, Bea?”

Riley looked longingly in the cigarette in her hand. It was only a third gone. Eighteen more months to go at Tycho Base and she had only two and a half cartons left. She sighed and carefully stubbed it out, and zipped the remaining two-thirds of it into the sleeve pocket of her coverall.

“There’s something that I haven’t told you two,” said Schattschneider.

“What’s that?”

“The core elevator isn’t working. The main circuit panel is shorted out.” Immingham is working on it, but she figures it’ll take at least a day and a half to rewire. You’ll have to take the ladder up to number seven lock and walk it from there.”

Damn, thought Lambert. It was a 500-meter ladder climb to lock seven, then a five- kilometer hike along the trail to the summit and another 500-meter ladder climb to the prime focus.

“You know I wouldn’t ask if we could afford to postpone it until the elevator is fixed, but we’re right in the middle of the Coal Sack scan. We can’t afford the down-time.”

II

Tycho Crater has a radius of 40 kilometers with a rugged peak rising in the middle. At an expense of some thirteen billion dollars, the floor of the crafter had been bulldozed and smoothed into a parabolic basin and lined with high-gain radio cable. The prime focus sat atop the peak on a titanium steel tower. By varying the displacement of the focus along a track running the length of the 160-meter boom atop the tower the antenna could be ‘aimed’ throughout a traverse near thirty degrees. The whole project, electronic hardware and software, life-support system for the station crew, engineering and landscaping and the station itself, had cost the investing nations 125 billion dollars. It was the most powerful radio telescope in the solar system.

Lambert checked the chronometer on the wrist of his suit. The converter in the backpack would provide eight hours of breathable air. Estimating an hour each way for the hike and thirty minutes going and coming to climb the tower with the tools and equipment, that left four hours to find and correct the trouble and an hour’s emergency reserve. Lambert didn’t think there would be any problems.

He was wrong.

III

The trail hadn’t been used in nearly ten years, not since the core elevator had been completed, but despite the extremes of heat and cold, erosion is a slow process on the moon and the trail had remained virtually unaffected. It was pitted in places from the impact of small meteorites, but it had been originally designed for heavy construction vehicles and in most places was nearly a dozen meters wide. As Lambert covered the ground in three-meter bounds, using the loping gait most suitable for travel on the moon, he watched the little bits of gray dust arch out ahead in ballistic trajectories in front of his boots before plummeting back down. The cleat marks from the tractors used in the antenna construction hadn’t been seriously disturbed in the fifteen years’ time. They probably wouldn’t be in 1500 years either. As best he could remember, only about half a dozen others had hiked the trail since the antenna construction had been completed. After the development of the sub-micro circuit, maintenance had dropped to nearly nothing.

They were making good time and Lambert estimated they were only about half a kilometer from the summit when the first sign of trouble appeared; a large rock slide blocking the trail.

“Repair party to Tycho Base.”

“Tycho Base. Go.”

“We seem to be having a bit of a problem here. There is a large pile of rubble blocking the trail. I think we can navigate it, but it’s going to slow us down some.”

“Chris. This is Karl. What are you talking about?”

“There’s a large jumble of rock blocking the trail. Didn’t the seismographs pick up any tremors?”

“Negative. I’ll run a computer search, but nothing recent shows. Can you give me any more information?”

“We’ll take a closer look and let you know. As far as I can tell, the map coordinates ought to be about Blue Alpha 37. When we get to the base of the slide I’ll turn on my emergency beacon and you can get a transponder lock on the location.”

Fifteen puzzling minutes later Lambert called Tycho Base again.

“Karl, you’re not going to believe this, but it isn’t a rock fall. I’ve checked the inner wall face carefully and there isn’t any evidence of a fault. No sign that it was a slide at all.”

“Well, what is it then? Somebody didn’t just push the stuff up there. Is it meteor rubble?”

“I don’t think so. It’s all in great bid chunks and the composition doesn’t seem right. The stuff looks like it’s just plain moon rock to me. I’m afraid it looks exactly like somebody pushed it up here.”

“Karl. This is Bea. There’s something else. I just checked my dosimeter. It’s in the red zone. Chris’ is too. I ran a Geiger count, but it turned up negative.”

“All right. We can’t afford to take chances. Come on in and we’ll check everything out.”

IV

Schattschneider, Lambert, Riley, and Devi Razin were sitting at the table in the main lounge. Schattschneider was fiddling with his tablet and Lambert and Razin were sipping coffee. Riley got up from the table and walked to the window. She dug pack of Pall Malls from her left sleeve pocket, started to shake one out and then remembered the remains of the earlier one.

“Let’s not fog up the room with smoke now,” said Schattschneider.

She shoved remains back into the pocket and turned toward the table.

“You’re sure it’s not serious then, Dev?”

When the Indian doctor spoke, her English was slow and precise, like everything else about her, unhurried and exact.

“It should not be. You will probably have a headache and a little nausea in two days’ time, but you were not exposed for long. I do not believe the level was high, but we should know more when Evelyn gets here.”

As if on cue, the lounge door slid open and Immingham walked in.

“I’m inclined to disagree. Chris and Bea came out of decontamination nearly clean, but it’s going to take a while with the suits and tools. I’m afraid they were plenty hot. Hot and dirty as it turns out. I found residue on Bea’s book. Analysis suggests it’s what’s left of contaminated liquid sodium.”

Schattschneider put down his tablet and leaned forward.

“Reactor coolant?”

“That’s my opinion, Karl. It’s what I’ll put in my official report.”

Lambert lifted his cup, then slowly set it down.

“Look, it can’t be. We don’t dump waste anywhere near there. No one does.”

“Chris, I’m telling you it’s reactor coolant. From all indications, probably some type of fast-breeder. I found traces of zirconium containing twenty-seven percent uranium 235. There’s nothing else it could be.

Schattschneider said, “All right then. If Eve says it’s reactor coolant, then it’s reactor coolant. The question is, how did it get there?”

“Eve, what about the Geiger counter?”

“It seems to be in working order, Bea. I don’t like inventing theories, but I’d say it just sort of overloaded. My guess is that the impulses were impinging on the electron multiplier tube just too fast for the scaling unit to count. It wasn’t calibrated for as high a level as the stuff I found on your boot. A similar thing happened back in the 1950’s when they first discovered the van Allen belts.”

“Well, I suppose the first move is to contact all the other bases, see if any of them are dumping the stuff, though I can’t believe anyone would be that stupid.” Schattschneider left for the communications room.

Razin left for the infirmary to check on Jirasek and run some more lab tests. Immingham got herself a cup of coffee and walked back to the table. She sniffed the coffee, tasted it carefully, then set it down.

“I hate to bring this up, but sooner or later, we’re going to have to face it. Somebody is going to have to go out to that rock slide or whatever it is you two found, and measure the radiation level. That, and try to figure out what caused the slide, plus get through and fix the antenna.”

“Easy enough said, but can we do it? I mean, well, if the radiation level is really that high, won’t it be dangerous?”

“We’ll have to talk to Tish, she’s the physics expert, I’m only an electrical engineer with a physics background, but I think so. Whoever goes out could wear white coveralls inside the suit and a sun shield on the outside. I might be able to rig up some additional shielding, and I could recalibrate the Geiger counters to register higher levels, that way whoever goes could avoid the major hot spots.”

V

Two hours later they were all seated in the lounge again.

“Well, I checked with the other installations,” said Schattschneider. “They all wanted to know what we were drinking over here. None of them have any idea how reactor waste could have been dumped on the upper trail. Everyone dumps it in the Hadley Rill.”

“Who said it was reactor waste?” grumbled Balfour.

“I did.” Immingham gulped her coffee and made a face.

“And I concur.”

“Don’t be an ass, Karl. How could it get there?”

“That’s what we’re here to discuss.”

“I don’t really see how we can discuss anything until we have more data. Like I said to Chris and Bea earlier, someone is going to have to go back out there and take some readings.”

“All right. I suppose the antenna repairs will have to wait until we figure this mess out.”

“Okay, then. I’ll get down to the repair shop and see about rigging up that extra shielding. Tish can help.”

“Right. Now the question is, who goes?”

“Don’t look at me,” said Lambert. “I already gave at the office. So did Bea.”

“I don’t think they should go either.” Razin looked at Schattschneider. “They’ve already been exposed. I wouldn’t want them getting recontaminated.”

“I agree. Spel, you get suited up. Chris and Bea can relieve Garrick and Edwards and one of them can go with you. The other can stand by in the lock.”

“Gee, thanks.”

VI

Balfour and Garrick cautiously approached the slide. The Geiger counters began to climb rapidly as they neared.

“I guess we better try to find a way around this mess, Dave. Why don’t you work your way around to the left and I’ll try the right?”

“Check. Just make sure you don’t fall off the cliff.”

“No sweat.”

Garrick searched for several minutes and finally found a spot where the readings fell within safe tolerances. He found a few toe and hand holds and pulled himself up. Over the lip of the rocks he could see the antenna, or at least what was left of it. The titanium and steel tower looked like a plastic food container that had been left out in the sun too long.

“Well, shit. Spel, you there?” There was no answer. “Spel, this is Dave. You there, damn it?”

“Dave, this is Bud. What’s going on?”

“I lost Spel. Can’t reach him on the radio. He’s probably being blocked off by the rocks. I found a way over the slide. Not a good one, but a way. You’re not going to believe this, but the damned antenna is melted.”

“Say again all after damned.”

“I said the antenna is melted. Looks like a big pile of rubber. We’re not going to fix it with anything we’ve got at Tycho. I really doubt that it can be fixed.”

“Shit. Schattschneider isn’t going to like this one bit.”

“He isn’t going to like it? What about the taxpayers?”

“I guess you better find Spel and get back in here. Then we’ll decide what to do.”

Garrick searched for thirty minutes. There was no sign of Balfour. Finally, he worked his way toward the cliff, following Balfour’s footprints. They ended at the edge.”

“Oh my God… Bud. Bud, somebody answer quick.

“Go, Dave.”

“I… I… can’t find Spel. It looks like, well, it looks like he might have fallen off the cliff.”

“Damn. I’ll be right out.”

Edwards and Garrick searched for five hours. They crawled along the cliff and around the slide until they came to an impasse. They crawled over the slide and hiked for as far as the antenna. They searched both sides of the trail back to the station.

“Search party to Tycho Base.”

“Tycho Base. Go.”

“I’m sorry, Karl. We’ve checked and rechecked. There just isn’t any sign of him. If we don’t come in pretty quick we’re going to run out of air ourselves.”

“All right.” Come on in. We’ll put together another party to check the base of the cliff for the remains.”

VII

Lambert found Edwards in the biology lab. He was working with some white rats in a glove box. Zoology was not Lambert’s field, though he was always interested in any scientific endeavor, Lambert was, however, mildly surprised to find Edwards in the lab. Jirasek was in charge of life sciences, Edwards was an astrophysicist specializing in radio astronomy like Lambert.

“What are you up to, Bud, messing around down here in Ian’s private bailiwick?”

“Promised I’d feed the animals for him while he’s sick. Can’t just let all this expensive U.N. software starve. Ian told me it cost 125,000 dollars to send these two rats up here. The Council on Space Exploration’s appropriations committee would have a fit if we let them go hungry. Besides, the lab animals have become sort of a hobby with me. When I took my undergraduate work back at the University of Iowa, I had a double major, mathematics and zoology. I wound up taking my masters in physics and then moving into astronomy because they were starting to plan out the construction here and suddenly astrophysics looked to be a rosier pasture. I guess I had the astronaut bug pretty bad even then. You’d have thought I’d have gone into aerospace engineering and tried for a slot on the shuttle pilot list, but I don’t know, I guess I didn’t really feel I had a chance. Radio astronomy seemed like the closet I’d ever get to the stars.”

“Close as any of us will ever get, I venture to say. The problems with interstellar flight are too vast even for the science to handle.”

“I don’t know about that. I remember when I was very young, my grandfather once told me that when he was a little boy nobody believed that man would ever travel faster than the speed of sound. Too much friction, they said. If we can come as far as we have in three generations, well, who knows?”

“What on Earth, er, ah, what is that thing?” Lambert was indicating a large, foldout cork board along one wall.

“That,” smiled Edwards, “is the thing that keeps me from going crackers up here. My butterfly collection. I keep it here in the lab and I add to it from time to time. Finest butterfly collection on the whole moon, I dare say. In fact, it’s the only one.”

“Last time I checked, the lunar surface was not exactly considered prime habitat for Lepidoptera.  How do you add to it?”

“Over here. Butterflies. They’re part of Ian’s experiments. Turns out he has an interest in entomology too, so whenever one dies off, we mount it on the board, after we run all the tests, of course. Can’t mount them all, some have to be dissected, but we get a few that are submitted to non-destructive analysis. This one is our pride and joy. An Ornithoptera priamus. This one came from New Guinea, though you find them in the Moluccas, and in Australia. The exciting thing is that this one laid eggs and we got a few mutants. Ian thinks they function so well because they’re better adapted to the one-third gravity, usually mutants don’t survive because the delicate gene balance necessary to body function. Ian’s suggested we call them Ornithoptera lunaris, but I don’t think it’ll catch on.”

“Fascinating, but I really came down here to talk to you some more about the slide. When Bea and I were out there, I got the impression that, well, I suppose it sounds silly, but I had the feeling, just before we came back in, that somebody was watching us. I didn’t mention it to anyone because I didn’t want Razin declaring me unfit for duty. It’s been bugging me though, and I had to tell someone.”

Edwards stopped putting the water bottle on the hamster cage and looked at him steadily. “You know, Chris, when Dave and I were down at the prime focus mount, looking for Spel, I had a funny thought. I was looking at the tower, the way it was melted and all scrunched up, and I said to myself, ‘They swatted it, smashed it like a bug.’ I didn’t say, ‘The damned thing’s melted.’ I said, ‘They smashed it.’”

VIII

Schattschneider went down to the lounge. A bleary-eyed Immingham looked up at him from her cup of coffee.

“Any news?”

“None of it good. Dave and Bud are coming in. They didn’t find anything. He must have gone over the cliff. Do you feel up to checking the bottom?”

“I’m okay. Not nearly as tired as I look.”

“Okay.” Schattschneider walked over to the chair where Kirchoff had fallen asleep and put his hand gently on her shoulder.

“Tish, you awake?”

“What? Oh. What is it, Karl?”

“They didn’t find anything. Somebody is going to have to check the base of the cliff. You feel up to it?”

“Fine. I was just a little tired.”

“If you do find him, it may not be a pretty sight.”

“I can handle it.”

“All right, but take care of yourself. We’ve already lost one person. I don’t what to lose another. Especially you.”

“I promise I’ll be careful.”

Schattschneider kissed her and watched her walk out. Then he went back to the command center and sent Razin up to the rescue lock.

“We’ll take the train from lock five to the base of the cliff and start our search there.”

“Roger that.”

Kirchoff and Immingham sealed the lock, turned, and started along the lower trail. Unlike the upper trail, it had been built only for people and was quite narrow. It wound around the side of mountain and in places was blocked by large rocks which had to be climbed. It took longer to reach the base of the cliff than had been expected.

They found the suit easily because it was standing upright in the middle of the trail. Kirchoff gave a shout over the microphone and ran over to it. She reached out to touch the shoulder and it toppled slowly forward. Quickly, she turned it over and then recoiled in horror as she looked at the face plate.

The suit was empty.

“Karl? You there?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“We found… the suit.”

“I suppose… there… is no chance.”

“I really couldn’t say. I said we found the suit. He’s not in it.”

“You mean you found what’s left of the suit?”

“No. I mean we found the suit, damn it. Complete and unbroken. There’s no way that he could have gotten out of it.”

“Are you trying to tell me that you found an empty suit?”

“Not trying damn it. Am.”

“Well, where in the hell did he go then?

“God damn it. How should I know? I’m not clairvoyant. I’m telling you the damned suit’s intact, and I’m telling you the damned thing is empty.”

“I don’t think I like the sound of this.”

“How do you think we feel?”

“You’d better pick up the suit and bring it in.”

“Right. Eve, give me a… What the hell?”

“What’s going on out there?”

“Eve’s gone. She was right behind me. I was looking at the suit and when I turned around she was gone.”

Schattschneider shouted. “Tish, get back here right now. That’s an order. Forget about the suit. Forget about Eve. Forget about everything. Just get back in here!”

“I’m on my…”

Schattschneider’s ears were blasted by the scream over the speaker. He sat down heavily in the chair. “Tish! Tish! Speak to me, damn you. Speak to me.”

The radio was silent.

Schattschneider buried his face in his hands and wept. He was still crying when Lambert came into control room and helped him to his quarters.

IX

Fifteen minutes later they were all seated at the conference table in the lounge. Even Jirasek had come up from the infirmary. Edwards was seated in the director’s chair.

“Well, I suppose you all know the situation. We’ve lost three people… missing anyway. I suppose we have to presume that they are all dead.”

“I don’t think that we should presume anything.” It was Razin. “We don’t know what happened out there. They may still be alive. If they are, Eve and Tish still have enough air for four hours. I think we should try to find them.”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea or not. I don’t want to make the kind of decision that might get more people killed.”

“I didn’t know any one made you acting director.” They looked toward the door. Schattschneider was leaning against the frame.

“I didn’t mean anything by it, Karl. I was just following procedures. I, that is, we, didn’t know how long you would be, well, indisposed.”

“I’m fine now and I’m resuming command. We will, of course, mount a search party at once. This time, however, four of us will go. We’ll take back up radios and flares and we’ll leave someone outside the lock. If we get into trouble, we’ll fire a flare and he can report to whoever is left inside. That is, assuming radios are out. If we don’t come back, then that those who are left can get into contact with the main base at Copernicus and the higher-ups will have to figure out what to do about it. At any rate, if we don’t come back, I don’t think they should come looking for us.”

Garrick spoke first. “Karl, are you doing this based on your judgement as project director, or just because Tish is out there?”

“That will be enough of that, Dave. I’d do the same thing even it was you lost out there.”

“I really don’t know how to say this, but don’t you think we should take a weapon of some kind with us?” It was Edwards.

Garrick snorted. “What do you suggest we use for a weapon, your good looks? This is a scientific installation, not the Rocky Mountain Arsenal.”

“Dave’s right,” said Schattschneider. “I don’t know of anything here that could be used as a weapon and I don’t know what you think you’re going to do with it anyway. You act like there’s some kind of monster out there.”

“For all we know, there might be. Anyway, I just thought I’d feel better if we had some way to defend ourselves.”

“All right. We’ll split into two teams. Dave and Bud in one. Devi and me in the other. Jirasek can wait outside the lock as an observer. Lambert and Riley will stand by in the control room.”

“How come they get to stay behind?”

“You’re beginning to make yourself tiresome, Dave. Bea and Chris got a pretty good dose of radiation from their first trip out and Ian still has a head cold. This is going to be difficult enough without having along someone who might suddenly decide to get sick on us.”

“Got it all figured out, haven’t you? You’re going to go out there and find your mistress and you don’t give a damn how many of us get killed in the process.”

Schattschneider stared across the table at Garrick. For several seconds he said nothing, then there was a quiet snap and he laid the broken pencil on the table.

“All right, Garrick, I’m only going to tell you this once. Go out to the ready room and suit up. Then pick up a spare radio, a flare packet, and a coil of climbing rope, and get your ass up to lock number five. If you have trouble with that, you can file a formal complaint when we get back.”

Schattschneider rose and left. The others followed him. After a few minutes Garrick muttered something under his breath, rose, and walked out.

X

They formed up outside the lock and checked their equipment. Schattschneider noticed that Edwards was carrying a long pipe with a knife blade affixed to the end like a bayonet and a satchel of plastic explosive they used for excavations.

Schattschneider indicated the pipe. “Where’d you get that thing?”

“I used one of the legs from a camera tripod and a chisel bit from the soil sampler. Anyway, it makes me feel better, whether we need it or not.”

At the base of the cliff they split into two groups. “Try to keep the other group in sight and under no circumstances get separated from your partner. Loop a coil of rope around your left arm to keep together, but don’t tie yourselves up. At the first sign of trouble, send up one of the flares and get the hell out of here. Just don’t get excited and start reporting each other as three-eyed monsters.”

They found Balfour’s suit lying in the middle of the trail. It was still sealed and pressurized. For several minutes they tried reaching Kirchoff and Immingham on the radio, but there was no answer. It became inevitable that they lose sight of each other as they spread out in the search pattern.

Garrick and Edwards were working their way along the bottom of the crevice when they spotted the suits. They approached them cautiously. Both were empty, just as Balfour’s had been.

“Well, what the hell do we do now? Crawl back out of this hole and call the others or send up a flare and get the hell out of here?”

“How should I know? I guess we crawl up the slope and try to raise the others on the radio. I don’t know about you, but somehow, two empty space suits don’t look particularly menacing to me. Kind of spooky, yes, but not really threatening.”

“Okay. We’ll do it your way, but I suppose one of us ought to have a flare handy just in case.”

“Right. You do that. I’ll lead the way up the slope,” said Edwards.

Halfway up the slope, Edwards felt the line connection him to Garrick suddenly go slack. He turned around and saw Garrick’s suit tumbling slowly back down the slope as though it was empty. Then he saw it. Edwards did not wait to find out what “it” was. He threw the spear and ran up the slope, pulling a flare as he ran. As he neared the top another “it” appeared above him. Edwards pointed the flare and pulled the lanyard. “It” exploded in a ball of flame.

Edwards reached the top of the slope and was running in the direction he thought the others would be. As he ran, he popped two flares skyward and dug the plastic explosive out of his satchel. He primed the explosive and attached a ten-second timer.

Edwards ran down a gully. As he rounded a corner, he could see Schattschneider and Razin ahead of him. He yelled at them over the radio, but it didn’t seem to be working. Edwards stumbled into the suits, knocking them over.

They were empty.

XI

From the lock, Jirasek had seen the red streaks of light from the flares. He keyed the radio. “They’re in trouble.”

“Say again.”

“I said, ‘They’re in trouble.’ I can see the flares. Two of them. I’m going to help.”

“No. Don’t be a fool. You know what Karl said. Come back in immediately and seal the lock. Dog it shut.”

“Nothing doing. They need help. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have fired those flares.”

“Ian, listen to me. Don’t go out there. Come on back in and we’ll call for help.”

It was too late.

Jirasek was gone.

XII

Jirasek broke out onto the plateau just in time to see the battle, such as it was. It wasn’t much of a fight. Three of the “its” were chasing Edwards across the plateau. Edwards turned just long enough to heave something. It landed in front of the three and detonated with a bright flash, stunning them. Two did not get up, but the third rose unsteadily and continued its pursuit. As Edward neared the edge of the plateau, the “it” reached out a long tentacle-like appendage and touched him on the shoulder. There was a flash of brilliant green light and Edwards stopped, frozen as if he were a statue.

For a full minute, Jirasek watched the proceedings in horror before he turned and ran. He ran back toward the base. He ran as hard and fast as he could. He ran until he felt as though his lungs were about to burst. He almost made it. He was within sight of the lock when they got him. He just had time to scream a warning to Lambert and Riley.

 Then there was nothing but silence.

XIII

Lambert did not see them grab Jirasek. He did hear the warning over the radio, but the transmission was so garbled that he could make no sense of it. Lambert’s first impulse had been to leave the station and help Jirasek. He was halfway out the lock before he realized what he was doing. He drew back suddenly and sealed the lock. Lambert was a scientist, with a scientist’s curiosity, but he was not a fool. He caught his breath and dogged the hatch. Then he started back down the ladder to the control room.

Riley almost jumped out of her coverall when Lambert entered. She dropped her pack of cigarettes, spilling most of them on the floor.

“Damn, Chris, you might have told me you were coming back down.”

“Sorry. I didn’t think. Did you hear Jirasek’s message?”

“Yes, but I couldn’t understand any of it. It sounded like he said he was collecting bottles.”

“That’s what I thought too. It doesn’t make much sense. Do you think, maybe, his mind snapped?”

“I don’t know what to think. I’m not a psychologist. I’m just an astronomer, and right now, I’m pretty a damned scared one, too.”

“Well, you can relax. I dogged the lock shut. We’re safe now from whatever it is.”

“I wonder, are we? You heard what Kirchoff said. Balfour’s suit was sealed, but he wasn’t in it. If whatever is out there could pull Balfour out of his suit without holing it, a steel door might not stop it either.”

“Walk through a steel door? Oh, come on, I don’t believe that. I didn’t figure you for one to believe in ghosts.”

“Who said it was a ghost? I’m just saying that a sealed moon suit didn’t stop whatever it is.”

“Maybe it’s the Russians. Maybe they took Balfour out of the suit and resealed and repressurized it to throw us off the track.”

“Kirchoff was a Russian. Whatever it is that’s out there got her too.”

“All right then, the Chinese. How do I know?”

“Maybe it isn’t Chinese either. Maybe it didn’t come from Earth.”

“There’s no sense making up an extraterrestrial explanation for something that can be explained in terrestrial terms.”

“May I remind you that we are not on terrestrial soil.”

“Oh, all right. Have it your own way. There’s a little green man out there who likes to reach through moon suits and make the occupants disappear with a wave of his magic wand.”

“It makes just as much sense as repressurizing an empty suit.”

“Horse shit”

“Are we going to stand here arguing or are we going to do something?”

“What would you have us do?”

“Not going outside, that’s for sure. We’d better try to raise Copernicus Base.”

They tried the radio. Then they tried the land line. They tried for an hour and a half. Nothing. Riley ran through a whole pack of cigarettes. Lambert ran through a complete set of replacement printed circuit cards for the radio. There was still no answer. Not from Copernicus, not from Alphonsus, not from Clavus. Nothing from Lomonosov Crater.

“I don’t understand it. All our communications can’t be out. Not at the same time. And I replaced every part in the damned radio.” Lambert sat in front of the radio panel staring at the flashing lights that told him nothing.

“I think we have to assume that whoever or whatever is out there, doesn’t want us talking to anyone else.”

“You realize what you’re suggesting? If whatever is out there is blocking our communications, it’s intelligent. I’m not sure I’m willing to believe that. If Balfour and all the rest had been killed by a rockslide or a quake, I could accept it. Even an energy plasma or radiation. If whatever got the others is intelligence, it must be human. It would mean all this is an organized attack on the base, and that could mean that we’re part of the opening act of World War Three… Well, you couldn’t even call it a world war anymore.”

“It might be somebody else, something else. It might not be human.”

“Bea, you’re talking about intelligence life from somewhere outside our solar system. Something with the technological capability to make interstellar flight a practical reality. The whole notion is preposterous.”

“So was building a permanent base on the moon thirty years ago. Now there’s half a dozen of them.”

“It’s not the same.”

“No, it’s not. But it doesn’t have to be. Less than a hundred years ago science was positive that man would never walk on the moon. Now we’ve mounted a dozen manned missions to Mars and over a hundred manned probes to the other planets, including those hidden in the Kuiper Belt. Who knows what a race that has been around for five hundred or a thousand years more than we have might have accomplished.”

“It won’t work, Bea. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.”

“In the first place, we don’t know if Einstein is right. Nobody’s ever tried to go faster than the speed of light. Even if faster than light travel is normally impossible for natural phenomena, whoever we’re dealing with might have found a way to short-circuit the theory. They might not even have to travel at faster than light speeds. If Einstein’s theory is correct, time dilation should occur at relativistic speeds. If they weren’t concerned about the changes back home or had a very long-life span to begin with, speeds approaching that of light might be fast enough.”

“All right, Bea, I concede the possibility, though not the probability of the argument. All we’ve really established is that we don’t know what caused eight people to vanish. You take the alien theory. I think I prefer to stick with a more human enemy.”

“You are, then, at least willing to believe that we are dealing with an intelligence of some sort?”

“Not completely, but right now it’s the only thing that makes much sense. I’m willing to operate on that kind of assumption until I can find a more satisfactory explanation of why all our communications gear suddenly went out.”

“I guess then that the only real question is what do we do now.”

“We wait.”

“Just wait?”

“Just wait Sooner or later one of the other bases is bound to try to contact us, and when they find out they can’t reach us, they’ll send someone over to find out what went wrong.”

“How long do we wait?” Riley’s voice sounded flat.

“I don’t know. If there has been a war I’m pretty sure they’d try to read us fairly soon.”

“Maybe not. Not if they think we’re all dead over here. They might not to bother then.”

“Sooner or later somebody would try. We can last here for months without resupply. As long as we stay put we’ll be all right.”

“It seems to be that you’re overlooking a few points. If war had broken out, wouldn’t we have been notified, had some sort of indications at least, say from an increase in political tension on Earth if nothing else?”

“Not necessarily. Not if it had been a sneak attack. They might have sabotaged all communications, jammed the Internet and maybe even bombed the other bases.”

“Then why not bomb ours?”

“Maybe they wanted to take this place intact.”

“I don’t think so. The main antenna is melted, remember? Anyway, if they’d bombed the other bases, the seismographs would have picked up the tremors.”

“All right, so I don’t have all the answers. Maybe they just holed their habitats and let them suffocate. I still think our best move is to sit tight for a while. If nothing happens after a few days we can take the tractor out and try to reach the main base at Copernicus. That’s the biggest site. If it is war, and anyone survives, they ought to be there. Better be. Copernicus has the only landing facilities for the Earth Shuttle.”

“Once again, how long do we wait?”

“I guess about two weeks, unless whoever is out there tries to get in.”

“Why two weeks?”

“Ought to give the other bases time to reorganize, time to send someone to look for us. Besides, if Copernicus Base isn’t there now, it won’t be there in two weeks either, and if it isn’t there then, well, it won’t matter how long we wait.”

“I suppose we ought to make some sort of contingency plan. In case we have to leave here in a hurry.”

“Right. We should work on getting the tractor ready for an extended trip. Load in supplies, oxygen, so forth. Maybe rig up some additional shielding around it, just in case someone did detonate a bomb. Anyway, it’ll give us something to do. We ought to continue monitoring the radio, and keep an eye on the Internet, just in case. We’ll work out some sort of schedule, for monitoring, sleeping, working. That way we can have one of us in the comm center at all times. If they do restore communications, a message could come through at any time.”

“There’s something else we ought to do. The tapes will have all the radio conversations recorded, but I think we ought to make log entries for what we’re planning and doing. We ought to make a copy of the tapes and logs too. That way we can take one with us and leave one behind. If we don’t make it, maybe someone will find the set we leave here.”

Lambert started for the tractor locker and then remembered. “I guess we better try to fix the elevator first. It be one hell of a ladder climb to the crater floor.”

“Wouldn’t you know, the one piece of equipment in the whole place that doesn’t have printed circuits.”

XIV

It took almost two and half days to fix the elevator. During that time the radio and the Internet remained silent. Had either of them been an electrical engineer, it would not have taken so long, as it was, they had to go through the process of completely rewiring the main circuit panel with a technical display on one of the tablets.

On the morning of the third day, Riley was playing the communication tapes when Lambert entered the control room.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “If a state of war does exist, why hasn’t either side tried to force one of the air locks and take the base by now?”

“Maybe there aren’t any of them left. Maybe everybody killed everyone else off. That could explain why no one answers the radio.”

“Maybe, I don’t know. There are a lot of things that just don’t make sense. Everybody vanishing, but nobody trying to get in, the radiation counter and seismographs giving no indication of nuclear attack, the radio not working, the Internet still down, either for that matter, and somebody using the upper trail as a dumping site for reactor waste, plus the main antenna being melted. I don’t think all the other bases were wiped out any more. I think we’ve been isolated for some reason. I don’t know how or why.”

“Then you’re saying that whoever was out there is still there, but that they aren’t in any hurry about opening us up?”

“Oh, I don’t know what I’m saying. What have you got there?”

“The tape of the last communication with Jirasek. I was just about to play it back. Want to hear it?”

“Might as well. We’ve been so damned busy with the elevator that I’d forgotten about it.”

The quality of the recording was not good.

“…God… (static)… out. They’re… (Static)… Edwards… (static) …collection bottles… (static)… stay in… (static)…”

The recording ended in an unintelligible scream.

To hear any one scream like that was enough to give Lambert chills, but to hear a scream like that, not yell or swear or curse, but scream…

“Well, I guess that’s it,” Riley was saying. “I’m afraid about all I could get out of it was that he said ‘collection bottles’ and not that he was collecting bottles. To me, either statement makes an equivalent amount of sense, or rather, lack of sense.”

“Ditto. Guess I’ll go take a shower. There doesn’t seem to be much left to do but wait, and I need one anyway.”

“Right. I’m going to get some cigarettes and go down to the lounge. I’ll make a radio connection to the inter-phone just in case someone tries to call. We can answer it just as easily from there.”

XV

Something was bothering Lambert, something nagging away at the back of his mind. It was some little thing to be sure, he didn’t know what, but it was somehow important. As he passed the biology lab on the way to the showers he remembered that the animals hadn’t been fed for almost three days. He opened the door.

Here. This was the place. It was something somebody had said. Ian? No. Wait a minute. Yes. Or was it…Bud? Yes, something Edwards had said. No. Still not right. Something both of them had said. Now, what could it be?

Lambert looked slowly around the room. He needed to see something that would jog his memory, something in the room. The rats? The hamsters? That was it. Over there, near the wall. His gaze locked on the object, and with a cold and growing horror, Lambert finally put it all together.

XVI

When Riley came into the lounge, Lambert was sitting at the conference table drinking coffee. He had a towel wrapped around his wrist.”

“Well, well, if it isn’t Ron Ely.”

Lambert looked up at her a little distantly. “Who?”

“Ron Elly. An Actor. He used to play Tarzan on an old television back in the early seventies or the late sixties. I forget which.”

“Oh, I see.”

Riley broke open a fresh carton of cigarettes, took out a pack and tore off the cellophane. She shook out a cigarette and lit it.

“Mind if I have one of those?”

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I don’t.” Lambert took the cigarette and lit it rather clumsily. He inhaled deeply and coughed.

“Don’t try to smoke it all at once. Take it a little at a time. If you’re not used to them they can be kind of rough.”

Lambert stared at her. He had regained his composure now, but it wasn’t easy to say. “I know what happened to the others.”

“What?”

“I said I know what happened to the others. I couldn’t figure it out at first, but I know now. I had to put something Jirasek said with something Edwards said. You were right, Bea. Oh my God, I’m so sorry, but you were right.”

“You’re not making any sense, Chris. What in the hell are you trying to tell me.”

“Here, do you know what this is? It’s the answer. It says it all.”

“Edwards’ butterfly collection? What’s that got to do with it?”

“Everything. Jirasek told us when he said ‘collection bottles’. You were right there, Bea, whatever’s out there isn’t a human, but it sure as hell acting like one. It’s collecting samples. Samples of human life… We’re the damn samples.”

“Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”

“I think I’m right about something else too. I think we’ve been isolated. I think that it, or they, or whatever you want to call it, is just sitting out there, maybe playing some alien equivalent of solitaire, and waiting for us to open up. And when we do, we’ll both become prime specimens, pinned to some galactic butterfly board. Ornithoptera lunaris… or Ornitoptera humanis”

“What if we don’t open up? What if we just sit tight and wait for help to come? Sooner or later one of the other bases is bound to send someone to find out what went wrong over here. As soon as they can’t raise us by radio or land line or Internet they’ll come over here to find out what happened.”

“I think they probably already have sent someone. We’ve missed our 1200 radio check for three days. Whoever they sent wouldn’t know what he was walking into, probably couldn’t fight it even if they did. No. I don’t think we can count out any outside help. The only real question is whether the ‘collector’ will get tired of waiting and go away, or take out his can opener and come in after us.”

Riley sat there for a moment, digesting what Lambert had said. She wasn’t sure if she believed it. The answer was just too incredible. And then, as if suddenly accepting her fate, she said, “Well, shit. Just shit.”

Riley stood and opened her locker, searched and then took out a bottle of Cutty Sark scotch. She held up the bottle.

Lambert nodded and she filled two plastic glasses half full.

 “We’re not going to make it easy for it, or him, or them, are we?”

“No.”

“So, I guess we better find some way to pass the time.” Riley tossed her head, shaking her long red hair and running a hand up one it to lift it from the nape of her neck. She swallowed her scotch and looked at Lambert.

“Do you want to continue with whatever experiments we can?”

“I don’t think so,” she said, refilling the glasses. “The main antenna is melted anyway. If I’m going to be a prize specimen, I want to be sure I’m going to be well preserved in alcohol. I’m going to get drunk.”

Lambert looked at her perspiration-grimed, beautiful face. He lifted his glass asking for a refill.

“To butterflies,” he said. “No. To drunken butterflies.”

(A final note: For those who believe this is somewhat derivative of Alien, I’ll point out that the story was written in the mid-1970s, three or four years before Alien was released. For those who wonder how I can prove it, I say because it was part of that short story collection that Bob and I had written. I have the letters to our agent and the rejections from the publishers. I have the table of contents that lists the story among those we had written… and this was originally written on an old manual typewriter. Try typing on one of those for several hours. Not a major physical feat but certainly more difficult that using a computer key board.

And yes, I can see a couple of plot holes, based on the increased technology of today, but some of that didn’t exist when the story was written. I mean, they should have known that the tower was destroyed… shouldn’t they have had video monitoring? We could create a problem with that as well. Some sort of computer glitch that didn’t tell them what the problem was and they couldn’t see it because, given they were on the moon, there would be no reason for video monitoring. Wouldn’t have to worry about vandalism or other such nonsense.

Anyway, the story would make a good movie, I think. We’d need a little more blood and gore at some point, and throw in a sex scene showing, at least, some of the interaction among the crew.

There isn’t much else to say about the story. It is what it is. A short story that takes place on the moon in the future… and given the attitudes of the 1970s, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that we’d have bases on the moon by today. Makes you wonder what happened to suck the sense of adventure out of all of us.) 

War Game

Note: Bob Cornett and I wrote the novel, Seeds of War about a campaign against a perceived enemy race on Tau Ceti Four. Although this story is not in the book as it is written here (there is a variation), it is in that same universe. The style is a little different but the characters are the ones that would be found in the book. I thought it interesting enough to post it here. 

Image for a moment that you are a combat infantry soldier in the twenty-second century. Then go further and imagine that the entire solar system in a war with the inhabitants of a planet a dozen light years from Earth. Next, imagine that you are deep in enemy territory, and that your squad has been cut off from the rest of your unit and surrounded. Finally, imagine that you’re only fifteen years old. Ready? Begin.

TAU CETI FOUR – INVASION PLUS ONE read the scenario board at yesterday evening’s briefing. But that was yesterday. It is now five o’clock in the morning in an endless corridor somewhere beneath the planet’s surface. When the platoon made its infiltration jump at 0300 there was a thin, blue, cloudless sky above, and a desert encircled enemy citadel below. Now there is only hard rock underfoot, and nobody knows what’s above.

There are enemy troops up corridor and down corridor. Nobody knows for sure how close they might or might not be. Nobody knows for certain how many there are. Nobody knows for certain what they look like. The only thing that is certain is that if we don’t bug out of here in one hell of a hurry, we are going to get our collective ass stomped.

And the only way out is down an intersecting corridor a hundred yards ahead where an auxiliary tunnel joins the main at a right angle.

There are thirteen of us counting our Tactical Advisor, Sergeant Marquette, Lucky Thirteen Linda Zalaznik calls us. Soldiers, SCAF, Combat, PAI, Pathfinder, Shade Tactical Tan, Manually Operated, Hand Fed, Air Cooled.

Air Cooled. Not the way I’m sweating. So much for shorts and knee socks.

I try telling myself it’s only the textured Impervium body armor and that ambient air temp is, after all, 96 degrees. No go. It isn’t the body armor, nor the heat.

It is fear.

I am fifteen years old and a very young adult young lady for my age. I remind myself, but I have never been in combat before, and I am afraid.

I tilt up the polarized visor on my battle helmet and steal a look at the rest of the squad. Everyone is sweating except Marquette. He alone has been in combat before. He alone has seen death and caused it. South Africa in forty-three, Panama in forty-seven, Canada in forty-nine. The blood of many on his hands.

“I’ve killed more people than all of you together have friends,” he told the squad once, and we believed him.

I wonder how many I will kill before the killing is finally over.

Susan Norton is our squad leader. She nods at Zalaznik, who is point, and Linda levels her assault rifle and steps around the corner of the intersecting corridor.

There is a loud buzzing noise and she staggers backwards out of the tunnel and collapses. Lucky Linda’s luck has expired.

“Shit!” cracks Norton’s voice in my ear buds.

Her finger stabs briefly at Patterson, von Ehrlick, and Martinez. The finger of death. They nod grimly and without a word go around the corner low and fast rifles firing.

There are three more loud buzzes, then silence.

“Goddamn it,” says Norton, losing her cool. She tossed a grenade around the corner, waits for the flash, and then pokes her head around to check the damage.

She screams.

Steve McAllif grabs her ankle and pulls her back out of the tunnel mouth. Norton has both hands over her eyes. Her forgotten rifle lies where it has fallen.

Marquette pushed McAllif aside and kneels by Norton’s head.

“I can’t see. I can’t see!” cries Norton.

“Of course, you can’t,” says Marquette, pulling her hands away from her face. “I’ve told you at least a dozen times, Norton. Keep you fucking visor down in combat.”

There is no emotion in his voice.

Marquette checks Norton’s eyes, pulls a plastic bottle out of his web pouch, and puts two drops in each eye. Then he takes off her helmet and bandages her eyes with sterile pads and gauze.

“It’s still up to you people,” he says without looking over his shoulder.

Bastard.

Command falls to McAllif.

“What do you think, Lara?” he asks me.

I wonder briefly whether he asks because he values my military opinion or because we have friends and have been lovers. Then I remember. Steven is Command II. Daniel Flying By O’Rourke and I are Maneuver 5 and 6 respectively. Steve is asking what I think because I’m going to be the next one around the corner. Maneuver 1, 2, and 3 have already had their mistakes.

“I think, since they can see us the instance we step into the tunnel mouth, we’d better fix it so they can’t see us,” I tell him.

“What do you suggest we do, turn out the lights?” cracks Marchetti.

“No,” says O’Rourke. “We wily pathfinders wait until dark and then attack. Kill ‘em all,” he offers helpfully.

I glance at the perverted Mick Cherokee and then glare at McAllif. I hope the stare is sufficiently icy and say, “Turn out the lights is what I suggest. Two violet smokes ought to do it.”

Steve nods. “Right. Smoke.”

“And masks.”

“Masks?”

“It’s a tunnel. It’s going to be full of smoke. We might want to be able to breath.”

Steve reddens slightly and I can see his dark eyebrows pull down beneath his visor.

“You’re cute when you blush, McAllif,” I tell him, buying time before I have to enter the tunnel.

He gets even redder as he yanks off his helmet and pulls out his gas mask.

“Mask up,” he rasps, slapping it out his face to cover the flush.

When everyone is ready he nods at O’Rourke and me.

I unclip a small grenade, snap off the safety tab, and flip the trigger bar. As it starts to billow blue-black, I edge over to the tunnel mouth and toss it around the corner. Danny waits fifteen seconds for mine to work, then steps into the open, heaves his as far down the tunnel as he can, and ducks back fast. The enemy does not fire.

Ten seconds pass. Fifteen. McAllif, looking like a helmeted bush hog behind his mask, nods.

“Do it.”

O’Rourke and I go into the tunnel together, low and fast. I know at once we’ve made a mistake. I can’t see a thing.

The grenades had done their work. I bump into one wall, take a few steps, bounce off the other, and stumble over someone who grunts. I have no idea where O’Rourke is.

We find each other by the process of collision, and both go down.

He rolls away from me and I hear him stumbling to his feet. Suddenly there is a rapid series of low-pitched, ugly, ripping sounds and the air above me is knifed by laser fire.

The normally invisible beams cut ruby-red pencils through the diffusing smoke. Lethality in technicolor. I just have time to think, “I never dreamed that war could be so lovely,” when a low shot searing across my bare forearm brings me painfully back to business.

The enemy is firing blind, and with death flashing inches over my head, I decide the tunnel floor is the safest place to be.

But not for long. The smoke is beginning to dissipate, and I realize it’s now or never. I begin crawling rapidly along the tunnel wall, toward the enemy.

As the smoke thins and I get nearer to the source of the laser fire, I can make out three indistinct shapes huddled behind what looks like a sandbagged revetment. I pull a flash grenade from its retaining clip on my shoulder harness, tear off the safety tab and foil, and rolling to my back, punch the actuator. The throw is perfect and I flop over and bury my face in my arms.

I can almost feel the heat wash over me as the light finds a path through my polarizer and tries to force its way up under my eyelids, but there is no noise. I decide that I am still alive.

Crawling forward I shove my rifle barrel over the top of the sandbags and have a look. I am instantly sorry.

Yesterday’s mistakes, three bodies, lie torn and shredded amid young blood in the bottom of the sandbagged pit. I have to fight hard to keep my breakfast from coming up in my mask. No strap on training aids this time. These are real people.

I check the bodies while O’Rourke covers me, he’s even more stoic than usual. It is SOP. We pulled the power packs from their lasers, scatter the firing servos, and see to our casualties. Then McAllif forms the reminder of the squad and we strike off across the sand toward the rally point, having somehow found our way outside.

The RP lies just beyond the third dune. Pickett, a sandy haired kid with a peach fuzz mustache is the commander. His exec is Heineken. Heineken has a build like a gorilla. His body is covered with curly black hair that matches his curly black head.

“Intel says we can expect a major push by the enemy within the hour,” Pickett tells us. “Probably a company supported by armor. We’ve got to hold a pass between some hills until help arrives.”

Steve looks at him incredulously. “Hold with what?”

“Just us and the anti-tank squad.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Our orders are ‘Hold until relieved.’”

“Our orders smell.”

“Those are the orders, McAllif. Now take your squad over to that hill and dig in on the far slope. And don’t give me any more crap.”

We spread out along the hillside and I break out my entrenching tool and start chopping away at a likely spot. The enemy arrives before I’m half finished. Of course. I knew they would. I snuggled down as deeply as I can and wait. Got to lure the enemy in close. Got to sucker him in so the anti-tank squad can make the kill first time at bat. They might not get a second chance.

At first there is only dust on the horizon, special effects from a grade B video, then the enemy comes into view by the far dunes, three Light Armored Fighting Vehicles shaped in a vanguard V, followed by a platoon of infantry, the advance elements of the Tau counter-offensive.

The enemy is clever. She is dressed as a soldier of the Sol Combined Arms Force to confuse us, but we are not confounded. Her camouflage is imperfect. Her scarlet arm band gives her away.

The LAFV’s grind abruptly to a halt, the infantry scattering in the sand or cowering behind the heli-arc welded, stressed Impervium plate hulls of the tracked vehicles. Has the enemy detected our ambush, or is she merely being cautious? If we’ve been detected then we’re going to get a pasting. The main batteries of the LAFV’s have nine times the effective range of any weapon in our platoon and five times the destructive power.

The enemy is being cautious. The big guns flash in unison and I burrow deeper into the foxhole and try to pull the non-existent top in after me. Even though I have never been shelled before, I know what to expect. There is a low whooshing sound as the fin stabilized projectiles come gliding in and then three shaking, nerve tingling concussions. Recon by fire.

Three more times the muzzles flash. Three more times there comes the whooshing and then the crashing roar. It seems to me that the concussions do not all come from where the projectiles should have landed, but I am too busy digging a hole in the rocky sand with my face to be sure.

The firing stops and I risk a look. The enemy troops are conferring among themselves. They seem to be arguing about something.

At last the vehicle in the apex of the V edges forward, accompanied by two squads of infantry. It stops a hundred yards from the foot of the hill and transverses its turret from left to right, raking the slope with its Gatling laser, slicing great smoldering trenches with its nuclear-powered fire, churning up clouds of sand and debris. Not being stupid, we do not return fire.

There is another pause, presumably while the vehicle crews discuss the situation by shielded COMM link, and then the reminder of the force closes up with the point of the LAFV.

Steady, steady, they’re almost at the foot of the slope. Wait for it. Now!

There is a wildly bobbing, corkscrewing streak of argon light as the anti-tank missile plows nose first into the turret of the first vehicle, momentarily shrouding it in a snowstorm of white hot plastic. The LAFV continues on for a few yards and then screeches to a halt, the tracks locked up tight, and begins to exude a dense orange smoke. The hatches remain closed, the crew inside.

The remaining armor and infantry open fire simultaneously and I hear Pickett’s voice in my ear buds.

“Start the battle. Start the battle. Anti-tank squad fire for effect on the number two tank. Infantry target independently.”

I poke the barrel of my rifle over the lip of my foxhole, center the crosshairs on the nearest enemy soldier, and press the firing stud. I watch in macabre fascination as her chest turns crimson and she topples slowly to the ground.

Breaking the trace, I swing the rifle ten degrees left and burn out another soldier, then back to the right and a third shot. My aim is not so good this time. The soldier drops her rifle and stands shaking her left hand as though stung by a bee. Suddenly remembering she is being shot at, drops to the ground, hand to her mouth, but she is not fast enough. Another kill.

I am swinging on the fourth mark when something catches my eye. The anti-tank squad has fallen off par also. Number two LAFV is damaged, but still under power. Both it and number three have reversed and are backing away. Behind them a soldier slips and falls into the path of number two. Frozen in time, I watch with clinical detachment as she struggles to her feet, slips again, hesitates for the fatal instant and then scrambles frantically, all sense of reason forgotten in the face of real death.

She screams as the treads roll over her, the sound of tires on concrete.

A second later the body is pushed from underneath the neoprene track pads, a mas of twisted, mangled flesh and broken, crushed bones, the blood staining the sand and the polyfoam.

For a moment, the LAFV continues backing away, the crew unaware they had run over someone. All up and down the line soldiers stop firing, sporadic shots trailing away into nothingness as the storm of battle dies. We are in the eye of the hurricane. Soldiers gather around the remains and I stand slowly, fully exposed to any enemy sniper. It does not matter. The film plate on my chest shows bright red and the power has been cut from my laser. Sometime in the last few seconds of the fight, I have been killed. I didn’t even hear the scoring buzzer.

A noncom with a black and white armband reading UMPIRE runs from the air-conditioned command tent, yelling at us to keep firing.

“Shoot, damn it. Shoot!” he screams. “The battle isn’t over yet.”

No one pays any attention to him. Overhead a yellow flare breaks near the heat lamps, signaling the end of the exercise.

Training Platoon Sergeant Fetterman stalks from the command tent, motioning us to follow him. We form a ragged line near the body, trying not to look at it, while we wait for the sergeant to call everyone in with his radio. When we are all assembled, he calls us to attention and waits while we straighten out the line.

“What in the held happened to you people?” he bellows. “Do you think you can stop and stand up in the middle of a battle just because one of your friends is stupid enough to get herself run over by a friendly tank. This isn’t some game were playing here.”

“Yes. It is just a game,” snaps the guy in the line next to me.

Fetterman walks quietly over and stands with his face inches from the other’s nose.

“What’s your name, trainee,” says Fetterman without raising his voice. It is a rhetorical question. He has already read the nametag above the trainee’s left ammo pocket on his chest protector.

The guy hesitates a second before speaking. His voice too, is quiet. Unlike Fetterman’s, it is not calm.

“Sergeant!” he whispers. “The trainees name is Leupin, Jacques. I’m sorry I sounded off Sergeant. Trainee Mead was a friend of mine and to have seen her just run over like…”

Fetterman’s voice is cold and dangerous. “I don’t give a shit whose friend the deceased was, how she died, or even what her name was, except as it concerns graves registration. The only thing important to me is that she died. She died because she got stupid, panicked, and made a mistake. Just like the three trainees who were killed during the para-drop practice yesterday. None of them had to die. They killed themselves because they got careless and made fatal mistakes.”

“Mead didn’t make any mistake. She got run over by a tank. That wasn’t her fault. It was…”

For a moment, I think Fetterman is going to strike Leupin, but it isn’t necessary. His withering stare is enough to cut off further discussion.”

“This!” he says, “is a mistake. Trainee Mead did not have to die. She killed herself because she panicked and made a mistake. Having fallen twice on the slippery surface, she tried to get up a third time instead of simply rolling out of the way. Had she rolled to the left, the LAFV would have missed her completely. Had he rolled to the right, there would have been sufficient clearance for the vehicle to pass over her without inflicting injury. Trainee Mead died because she made a mistake. That killed her as surely as if she had put a pistol to her own head.

“If you learn no other lesson today, if you remember nothing else, learn and remember this: The only way to get killed in combat is to make a mistake.

“Contrary to Trainee Leupin’s opinion, we are not playing games here. This was a simulated combat situation.”

He waved a hand in the general direction of the red army infantry. “The defending blue troops won this engagement because you jerks fell apart and quit. Had this been actual combat, you would have been wiped out, tanks and all. Had this been actual combat, the blue troops would have successfully defended the pass against a superiorly equipped force, halting your counter-offensive at a critical stage, and very probably costing you the war.

“You have been told time and again that mistakes will kill. You’ve just had a very practical demonstration. If yesterday’s deaths didn’t get through to you, maybe this one will.

“Now a word about the tunnel assault. Alpha squad, your first mistake was getting people simulated killed. Your second mistake was trying to come down the corridor without smoke. Your third mistake was trying to come down the corridor a second time without smoke. Your fourth mistake was coming down the corridor standing up. Your fifth mistake was coming down the corridor at all, instead of using your grenade launcher from the other end. Your sixth mistake was firing your rifles in the smoke and giving you positions away, except for Masterson who exhibited the tiniest inkling of common sense by using a grenade simulator instead of her rifle. Your seventh mistake was getting people killed.

“With the exception of Masterson, all of Alpha squad has earned themselves an hour of extra duty. No. It was an exceptional performance, we’ll make it two. Sergeant Marquette!”

“Yes, Platoon Sergeant.”

“See to it that the punishment is carried out before the Trainees are released for evening meal.”

“Yes, Platoon Sergeant.

“Now,” says Fetterman, “I’m going to say this just once. We are not playing games here. This is not a game. It is a training exercise. The purpose of a training exercise is to teach you how to stay alive in a combat environment. You’re not going to be fighting mock battles with laser training aids and flash grenades in some damned simulator ship for the rest of you lives. In a short time, far too short a time, you are going to find yourselves ejected out of a shuttle over Tau Ceti Four. When that time comes, the rifles are going to be real, and the grenades real, and the artillery real, and the death real. And real people will be dying for real.

“Unless you wake up and pay attention to what we are trying to teach you here and now, large numbers of you are going to be dead.”

Fetterman looks at Leupin, shrugs and sighs.

“All right Trainee, I can see I’m not getting through to you. You still think war is a game. Okay, have it your way, but remember this. There is only one rule by which the game is played. Stay alive. No one ever won a war by dying for his cause. He won it by making the enemy die for his. The acid test of warfare is survival. Mead did not survive. She could have, but she made a mistake. In war, death is not a passing grade.”

Fetterman is quiet for a moment, considering what to do with Mead’s remains.

“Shall I detail someone to clean up the mess?” Marquette askes him.

“No,” says Fetterman at last. “Leave the mistake where it is. Maybe it will give others something to think about.”

He turns to address the entire assemble.

“All right,” he says. “It’s obvious from the performance you’ve just given that we still have a lot of work to do. We’ll run the exercise again, from the top. Tankers take your vehicles back to the original starting position at the far end of the ship. Everyone else form up according.

“And this time do it right. One terminal mistake is enough for today.”

I stand for a moment before moving, staring down at the broken mass I knew only as Mead, Sarah J. Only her nametag is still recognizable. I wish I could have known her better.

“Leave the mistake where it is,” Fetterman had said.

Sometimes I wonder who in the hell the enemy really is.