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I turned my head inside the helmet, bit a nipple (try not to get excited), and sucked some water out. The suit’s temperature systems also chilled the water. Hey, I spent a lot of money on that suit. It was quality gear when it wasn’t malfunctioning and ruining my guild exam.
I gave a mighty grunt and started climbing. Five meters at a 45-degree angle. It might not seem like much, especially in lunar gravity. But when you’re wearing a hundred kilograms of EVA suit and hauling another fifty of equipment, believe me, it’s work.
I wheezed, gasped, and swore my way up the Berm. I think I invented some new profanities, I’m not sure. Is “fusumitch” a word? I finally made it to the top and surveyed the lands beyond.
The reactors lived in irregular-shaped buildings. Dozens of pipes led away to hundreds of shiny thermal panels lying on the ground.
Reactors on Earth dump heat into lakes or rivers. We’re a bit dry here on the moon, so we dump our heat via infrared light emitted into space. It’s century-old technology, but we haven’t come up with anything better.
The smelting facility sat two hundred meters from the reactors. It was a mini bubble thirty meters across, with a hopper on one side. The hopper ground rocks into a coarse grit and put it in sealed cylindrical containers. The containers were sealed into pipes, which forced them into the facility with air pressure. Like an old-school pneumatic tube system from the 1950s. If you’re going to have a bunch of air pumps and vacuum-management systems in your facility anyway, you may as well take advantage of them.
The train airlock stood on the other side of the bubble. The train tracks leading to it diverged into two lines. One ran to the airlock, the other to the unmanned silo car that transported rocket fuel to the port.
I dropped a couple of meters down the Berm and found a position where I could lie back and watch the scene. I had no idea what kind of schedule the harvesters had, so I would just have to wait.
And wait.
And fucking wait.
If you’re curious, there were exactly fifty-seven rocks within reach. I sorted them from smallest to largest, then changed my mind and sorted them from most spherical to least spherical. Then I tried making a regolith castle, but it ended up being more of a lump. Regolith particles are barbed and they stick together well, but there’s only so much you can do with EVA gloves. I could just about manage little half-spheres of dirt. I made a scale model of Artemis.
All told, I waited four hours.
Four. Goddamn. Hours.
Finally, I caught a glint of sunlight on the horizon. A harvester returning to port! Thank God. I stood and prepared the duffel for travel again. (I’d alphabetized my equipment out of boredom, first in English, then in Arabic.)
I hopped down the Berm. The harvester and I converged on the smelter from different directions. I got there first.
I crept around the bubble to stay out of sight of the harvester’s cameras. No real reason to do that—it’s not like anyone would be watching the feeds. I continued along the bubble wall until I got sight of the harvester. There it was, in all its giant shiny glory.
The harvester backed up to the hopper, latched into place, and slowly raised the front of its basin.
Thousands of kilograms of ore tumbled into the hopper. A brief cloud of dust accompanied the avalanche but almost immediately disappeared. No air to keep it afloat.
Having taken a good dump, the basin returned to level and the harvester sat idle. Mechanical arms reached out to attach the charging cable and coolant lines. I wasn’t sure how long it would take to recharge, but I wasted no time.
“One million slugs,” I said.
I climbed up the side of the harvester and threw my gear into the basin. Then I dropped into the basin myself. Easy enough.
I expected a long
wait during the recharge, but it only took five minutes. I have to hand it to Toyota, they know how to make rapid-recharge batteries. The harvester lurched forward and just like that, we were on our way.
My plan was working! I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed. And besides, no one was watching. I pulled an aluminum stock rod from the duffel, climbed to the top of the harvester, and held it out like a sword. “Onward, mighty steed!”
Onward we went. The harvester headed southwest toward the Moltke Foothills at the breakneck speed of five kilometers per hour.
I watched the smelter bubble and reactors disappear in the distance and grew uneasy again. Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t the farthest I’d been from the Shire or anything. The train to the Visitor Center is over forty kilometers. But this was the farthest I’d ever been from safety.
The landscape grew rocky and jagged as we entered the foothills. The harvester didn’t even slow down. It might not have been fast but damn, it had torque.
We hit the first of many boulders and I almost flew out of the basin. I barely kept all my gear inside. Harvesters are not luxury cars. How did the rocks even stay put on the trip back? The harvesters must’ve been a little more cautious on their way home. Still, the bumpy ride was better than walking. That incline would have killed me.
Finally, we leveled off and things got smooth again. I pushed the duffel off of me and climbed back to the top. We’d made it to the collection zone.
The wide, flat plain had been denuded of rocks over years of harvesting. Good. Finally some smooth sailing. The cleared area was roughly a circle. I spotted three other harvesters at the clearing’s edge, scooping rocks into their basins. My harvester rumbled to the edge and dropped its scoop.
