Something Made of Vacuum

It was almost sunset, the end of the Moon’s two-week long Day. Spherical spaceships from eight planets cast long shadows across the flat expanse of Sinus Amoris Field. The Earth was at half-phase, vibrantly blue and white over the gray landscape. A long line of Moon Men in smooth, rotund, hard-shelled space suits waited on the road at the east side of the field.

“I realize this is kind of a weird question to ask on, you know, a business trip, but how do you people have sex?” Helene Friedman said.

“Every visitor asks that,” Tom Easterday said, grinning. “The answer is, we rent a hotel room.”

Helene looked around slowly, and finally said, “There are a couple of buildings for the port, but you said you live over on this side. I don’t see any hotels or buildings. Just sun shades.”

“Well, not here. We go to a hotel in air town.”

“Air town?”

“That’s what we call the crater cities, like Theophrastus, where you’re staying. What hotel are you in?”

“The Hacienda,” she said.

“Okay. Down at the end of that block, there’s a hotel called the Caravansary. They cater to the Moon Men trade. For one thing, they have big doors, right? So we can get in and out wearing our tin cans.” He smiled and waved at the line. The adult Moon Men wore hard-shell space suits with sliding ring joints at the knees and elbows. Each suit was backed with a huge boxy “backpack” holding life-support equipment, causing the wearers to stand bent forward in a simian posture. There were also some smaller suits for children, and a few pressurized “baby balls” propelled over the dusty ground by crawling toddlers, watched over carefully by their parents. Every suit was painted to express its owner’s individuality: abstract stripes and curlicues (and one in polka dots!), manly scenes of eagles in flight or massive Aztec warriors carrying maidens, feminine themes of quaint Christmas cottages in the European woods, or flowers, or tropical fish.

Their helmets were large clear bubbles. The glass on the side of the setting sun was polarized to shade them from the blinding light. The polarization moved as they turned to talk to each other.

Helene’s spacesuit was startlingly different. It was sewn of white fabric, the seams plainly visible. Her helmet was fitted close to her head and opaque except for a hinged glass faceplate. The suit wrinkled when she moved, and she carried exposed air bottles on her back. She appeared antique, out of place, strange. She looked like a visitor from another planet, as of course she was. The adults were polite, but children who came by stared at her.

Tom’s suit was white, decorated with images that showed an unfashionable style even among the famously socially inept Moon Men: he had images of various spice plants, because he ran a business importing spices from Earth. The design was his own idea.

“What are we waiting for?” Helene asked Tom. Her suit had not been originally designed to communicate on the network the Moon Men used. Tom had found her a little transponder that sat on the shoulder of her suit like a parrot sitting on a pirate. Because she was facing toward Tom and had been talking with him, her radio signal went out with a network address that let only Tom hear her.

“We’re going to be stepping off in just a moment,” Tom said. “They usually time the wedding parade so that we’ll reach the church exactly at sunset, which is kind of a big deal for us. There’s sort of a tradition that we’re active and rational and hustling during the Day, and romantic and meditative during the Night. Sunset is the best time to get married.”

“I thought you worked around the clock at the field.”

“Well, of course we do. I didn’t say it was a real consistent tradition.”

“Well, thank you for inviting me to this. I don’t guess too many outsiders get to see a wedding in your ...”

“Village. Yeah, it’s not a secret but we don’t get a lot of tourists here either. I figured it would tell you something about us,” Tom said, and added tactlessly, “I didn’t have a date anyway.”

A couple was working their way down the line, chatting with everyone in turn. The man was painted in a design suggesting a tuxedo, and the woman’s suit was decorated in a very fetching design of antique pink roses on a linen background. Both of them had an odd oval patch of what seemed to be brown paper pasted on their suits over the heart area. “Hey, Tom!” the man said. The network control system evaluated the situation, decided that Helene and Tom had enough proximity to be considered together, and adjusted the network address of his transmission so that Helene was included in the conversation.

“Hey, Gregor,” Tom said. “Helene, meet the bride and groom. This is Gregor, who’s an old college friend of mine, and his beautiful bride is Yeni. Nobody knows what she sees in him. Gregor, Yeni, this is Helene Friedman.”

“Helene! We’re so glad you’re here!” Yeni said graciously, stepping forward to grasp both of Helene’s hands. “Pay no attention to Tom, he’s a goofball. Men don’t understand weddings, anyway.”

“It’s true,” Gregor said, grinning and mugging. “I have no idea what I’m doing. What am I doing? I don’t understand this.”

“Are you a friend of Tom’s?” Yeni asked.

Helene said, “Actually, I’m a salesman. I’m here representing some agricultural producers from … well, on Earth, and Tom’s a customer. I need to talk him into buying more spices from us. He was nice enough to invite me here. I hope you don’t mind. I don’t know if Tom had RSVP’d for me or anything.”

“Honey, it’s the Moon,” Yeni said, waving at the gray emptiness of the lunar landscape. “Two things we always have lots of, are room and food. You’re as welcome as you can be. Did you know Tom has been involved in all the food for our reception? He brought in spices I’ve never even heard of. It’s going to be so great, you’ll love the food.”

“Oh,” said Helene.

“Oh,” said Tom. “Um … actually, Helene can’t eat anything. Her suit’s not equipped for it.”

“You can’t eat?” Yeni said.

“Helene,” Gregor said, suddenly concerned, “that thing’s got a limited air supply, too, right? How long have you got?”

“Another three hours.”

“Tom, you get her back to air town with plenty of time to spare, okay? We don’t want any drama at our wedding.”

“No problem,” Tom said.

Helene looked at their faces. “Don’t you people have facilities to … I don’t know, get fresh air tanks or something?”

“We have algae,” Yeni said. “There’s like a couple of hundred meters of little clear tubes folded up in the life-support thing here, with lights and nutrients, and they throw off all the oxygen we need.”

There was a sudden loud whistle sound, broadcast over the network with an address that let everyone in the wedding party hear it.

“That’s the wedding planner!” Yeni cried. “We’ve got to go. I love her to pieces but she’s a dictator! We’ll see you at the reception!” They left, running up toward the front of the line with the long leaping steps of one-sixth gravity.

Everyone in the line straightened up and faced toward Sinus Amoris Village, a forest of sun shades. The band hired for the wedding stepped to one side of the line and began to play.

A Moon Man band was limited to instruments that could be played in vacuum. The ensemble had a lead electric guitarist, a bass player and a fiddler, all the instruments transmitting their signals by radio to the network controller. The keyboardist had an enormous vest that fitted over his space suit, holding keys that he played like a fat man fingering his waistcoat buttons. The drummer tapped with his fingers on various electronic keys and devices attached to the thighs and belly of his suit. The band also had a strong-lunged whistler who could contribute to the melody and stay on pitch, a skill much admired among Moon Men.

The band launched into a lively march and the wedding parade stepped off down the “street,” a straight path into the village that was no different from the gray ground on either side except that it was delineated by lines of little lights.

At the van, the bride, the groom and the wedding attendants danced the whole way. The others danced, skipped or walked as they pleased or as they could. Little kids took advantage of the chance to run loops around the old folks. Tom tried a few dance steps but decided not to show up Helene, who could manage no better than a hobbled walk in her Earth-made suit.

“Where are we going?” Helene asked.

“First Baptist Church,” Tom said. “It’s on the village square, in the middle. Four blocks, about.”

A wedding parade was an occasion in the village. Moon Men families lined the path with the children in the front, staying carefully on their side of the curb lights while the marchers kept to the street. The network set the addresses of their voices, the band’s music and the marchers so that everyone could hear each other. The people called out, the marchers waved back with cheerful greetings and the band switched to a swing tune.

The village was a tent city of sun shades over empty, unpaved ground. Some shades were enormous sails or flat panels, and some were artistic arrangements of catenary curves between poles set at various angles. All of the shades were flexible solar power fabric and had spent the previous two weeks of Day charging underground batteries and capacitors. Now, as the sun touched the horizon, they began folding up automatically. Some were lowered to the ground and rolled up, others slumped into folds. As the shadows of the marchers grew longer and longer, the village was transformed.

What it was transformed into, was a barren expanse of moon dust no different from a million square kilometers around it, except for the folded sunshades, and the lines of little lights that marked off streets and individual lots of real estate. Some of the wall-less “houses” had tables and a few scattered cabinets, others not even that much. Helene looked past the people lining the parade route in wonder.

“Talk about a town where they roll up the sidewalks!” Helene remarked. “Does the town go away every Night like this?”

“Sure,” Tom said. “We don’t need any structures at Night. It’s not like there’s rain in the weather forecast, right?”

“What about little meteors or something?”

“That doesn’t happen very often.”

The sun set.

At the same instant that the last bit of sun slipped below the horizon, the glare vanished from the sky and all the glory of the stars sprang forth.

Each Moon Man’s helmet depolarized to completely open a view of the Night sky. No sky on Earth, however clear and dark, could compare. The Milky Way was as thick as whipped cream, and stars down to tenth magnitude crowded each other almost to touching. The Earth was blue and white and lovable.

Helene gasped, looking up, and most of the Moon Men looked up as well, not blasé about the spectacle despite having seen it once a month all their lives. “Oh, my God!” Helene said. ’You don’t see this from … you don’t see this in town. Or on Earth, at least not where I live. This is … ”

“Glorious,” Tom said. “I’ve got to tell you, you never get tired of it. There’s an old joke – we’re so lucky to live on skyfront property.” Helene giggled, her head still bent uncomfortably back to allow her to look upward despite her confining helmet.

The wedding party danced, walked and (for the toddlers) rolled into the village square and entered the church, another square of empty ground marked off by lights.

They filed into lines organized by the ushers and sat on the ground, the groom’s family on one side, the bride’s family on the other. An usher, his uniform for the day an artificial flower boutonniere on his shoulder, pointed Tom and Helene into one line. Tom sat on the ground, an obviously well-practiced maneuver requiring a precise sense of balance.

Helene squatted tentatively and almost pitched forward. She stumbled back upright, barely avoiding bumping into the people seated in the line behind her, and was steadied by the usher. “Tom,” she said, “I don’t think I can sit down like that. My suit’s not built for it.”

“I should have thought of that! Sorry!” Tom said. “Come on, let’s stand in the back.” He rose up smoothly despite the weight and imbalance of his “backpack,” and led Helene carefully through the lines of seated Moon Men to a position near the line of lights that marked the side of the church.

Helene stepped over the line to get a better view of the pulpit, and Tom grabbed her hand and pulled her back. “Don’t stand over there,” he said.

“It’s an empty lot,” she protested.

“It’s ...” Tom glanced at the inner surface of his helmet and muttered something Helene could not make out. In the dark, she could see that the helmet was a computer display. Lines of glowing text ran up it. “It’s the office of Selene Freight Forwarding,” he said.

“Nobody’s there right now. In fact, nothing is there.”

“We just don’t do that, okay? Look, they’re starting.”

The bridesmaids stood in a line on the left, all “dressed” in patterns of shimmering blue. Helene noticed for the first time that many of them had little oval-rimmed pictures or designs over the heart which were not part of the “bridesmaid dresses.” The others had a blank white spot in that position, as did Tom.

The groomsmen lined up on the other side, all dressed in the tuxedo pattern. The minister wore a plain white space suit with a design suggesting a clerical collar around the base of the helmet.

There was also an adorable little girl, just big enough to have graduated from a baby ball to a miniature but complete Moon Man suit, standing to one side. She was not the ring bearer because the ceremony did not involve a ring. She was not a flower girl because the ceremony did not involve flowers. However, the custom of having cute little children in the wedding party was so ingrained that it was unthinkable to get married without at least one or two.

The band played Mendelssohn’s wedding march and Gregor and Yeni paced slowly up the center aisle. The people turned their heads as they passed but did not shift: it wasn’t practical when seated on the ground.

The wedding planner stood at the back near Tom and Helene. She had temporary control over the sound in every Moon suit in the church, and adjusted the distribution so that everyone could hear the music, the minister, the happy couple and the bride’s mother bawling from the front row. When the minister began to speak, the bride’s mother cried even louder but the wedding planner dialed down her volume.

Helene watched the ceremony and the other attendees, and out of the corner of her eye, noted that Tom was watching her face.

The minister stepped forward to deliver a pleasant and utterly predictable homily, inevitably based on Matthew 19:4-6. After a few minutes, Helene whispered to Tom, “How do the women put on all that makeup? They’re exquisite. If I tried to use that much makeup, I’d be a total mess.”

“There are little manipulators at various places in the suit,” Tom whispered back. As Helene looked, two small, thin robot arms popped up inside his helmet. “You control them with touch pads in the gloves. It’s how we put on makeup and cut our hair and do the man-grooming stuff you don’t actually want me to talk about.”

“Oh,” Helene whispered, then added, “Why am I whispering? Why are you whispering?”

“When you whisper, the network understands you only want to talk to the person next to you, but also hear what’s going on around you.”

“What if I need to have everybody hear me, like if there’s a fire?”

“Just raise your voice. The network will send your signal farther the louder you yell. But … a fire?”

“You know what I mean. Hush up, the preacher’s almost finished.”

Gregor and Yeni spoke their vows to each other, and, kissing being impractical in a space suit, held hands. After a moment, they faced the audience together and peeled off the brown stickers from over their hearts, revealing the shared symbol they had chosen to represent their marriage to others. It was a stylized representation of the constellation of Libra, The Scales. They recited a little speech, alternating lines, about how they balanced each other, would always keep each other level, would survive the jolts of life and return to equilibrium, and other even sappier sentiments.

The audience went moderately crazy with applause, both mothers wailed, and the wedding planner let everyone hear them all.

Inasmuch as the First Baptist Church was just a bare rectangle of moonscape, with no features except the folded-up sunshades and some cabinets to hold supplies such as communion wafers and wine, there was no need for the wedding party to go anywhere. The band launched into a dance tune and the reception began.

The Moon Men stood and moved to the perimeter, not stepping over the line of lights, to open a dance floor in the middle. At one side, the groomsmen clustered around Gregor. On the other side, Yeni was surrounded by the bridesmaids. At a signal, they grabbed each of them by the ankles and tossed them high into the Night sky toward each other. Gregor and Yeni caught each other at the apogee by both hands and spun around as they fell slowly back to the ground under the pull of the Moon’s mild gravity. They touched down with their feet close, leaned back still spinning and “gave weight”, then opened up holding one hand and started their dance. Moon Men dances were limited to moves that could be done within the constraints of the ring gaskets of their space suits, and could not allow bending backward enough for the dancer to be toppled over by his backpack. Gregor and Yeni danced with high-kneed kicks and fancy footwork, couple spins and individual twirls, and lots of smoldering glances between them.

Gregor danced with his mother, Yeni with her father, the little girls of the families with each other. In a few moments everyone was dancing, except Tom and Helene.

“I don’t think I can do this,” Helene said.

“It’s okay, everybody understands about your suit.”

“The company bought me this suit. It was supposed to be a good one.”

“Well, sure,” Tom said. “If I wanted to buy a space suit, that’s the first place I’d go shopping, is a factory at the bottom of the atmosphere where the only vacuum they ever experience is between the walls of their insulated coffee cups.”

“All right, smart alec,” Helene said. “If you ever come to Earth I’ll take you swimming. I’ll bet you’ll be a natural.”

The caterers arrived, pushing food-prep carts. Each cart had four big wheels suitable for rolling on Moon dust, a refrigerated locker for raw food, and a hot cook-top for frying. Each cart was covered by a big pressurized glass dome. The cooks set up around the perimeter.

Each cook inserted the arms of his suit through gasketed ports into the air space. When the dome was sealed, they could remove their gloves to have dexterity for cooking. In a trice, they were frying shrimp and diced chicken, chopping vegetables, toasting bread and seasoning the food with spices and sauces. Some of the Moon Men gave up dancing and came over to watch the process and chat.

“Tom,” Helene said, “why are all those teenage boys around that one cart? Is that pizza or something?”

“The cook is Maria Fuertes,” Tom said. “She’s a good cook, but mainly she’s a pretty young woman and the boys want to watch her bare hands moving. I think the boys’ parents are going to break that up pretty soon.” Even as he spoke, one Moon Man woman stepped over and dragged one of the boys away by the elbow. The boy turned to a young girl and clearly asked her to dance. Even Helene could see the girl’s nose go up: the boy left to try someone else.

One caterer served all the food. The others loaded their cooked foods into sealed transfer cans and delivered them to the server. The server had a rack of cylinders, about three fingers thick and as long as a hot dog. He loaded each cylinder with six round packets of different foods, each the size of a meat ball, and passed the cylinder through a little airlock to one of the waiting Moon Men.

The Moon Man would attach the cylinder to a fitting above the neck line of his suit and twist it sealed. Turning a knob at the end delivered a hot bite of food to his mouth.

Other caterers had drinks, supplied in a separate cylinder that attached to the other side of the suit. Helene said, “Tom, could I get a beer here?”

Tom looked embarrassed. “Um, you can get a Moon Man beer. I don’t know if you’ve heard about our beer. We like it, but everybody else makes fun of it.”

“Why? What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s flat,” Tom said. “We don’t drink carbonated beverages – there are a lot of problems in one-sixth gravity. Otherwise, it’s pretty good beer.”

“Now that I think about it,” Helene said, “I don’t have a way to drink your beer anyway. Forget I said anything.”

“I’m really sorry,” Tom said. “I didn’t mean to make you feel conspicuous here. I guess I just wasn’t thinking when I invited you.”

“Don’t worry about it, my suit has water,” she said.

One of the women came over and pulled Tom into the dance. The fiddler was leading a lively tune and Tom danced a rustic, elbows-out clog step. A half-dozen women danced with him and passed him on to another.

One partner came up to Helene and introduced herself. “Hi, I’m Carmela. Tom said you’re Helene, right?”

“Yeah. Hi, Carmela. Tom is sure dancing up a storm out there,” she said.

“Tom’s a popular guy,” Carmela said. “You know, because of the food.”

“I’m a salesman,” Helene said. “I’m representing a bunch of Earth companies that sell food on the Moon, including Tom’s company.”

“The thing about Moon Men,” Carmela said, “is that we totally love food. Tom’s a terrific cook, which makes him a big ladies’ man around here.”

“I can see that,” Helene said. “He told me he invited me to this wedding because he didn’t have a date.”

“Oh, hell, Tom could have brought any of a dozen women, including me, I guess. But if he picked any one of us, all the rest of us would have zinged him. I think you’re sort of a safety date.”

“Glad I could help,” Helene said flatly.

“Do you want to dance?” Carmela said.

“I couldn’t dance like that even back on Earth,” Helene said. “Much less wearing this sausage casing. How do you do it?”

“Oh, these suits move better than yours, and anyway, we grow up in them. Come on, we can figure out some things you should be able to do. It’s a wedding, you’re supposed to have a good time.” She led Helene to the margin of the church and stepped over one of the lines to the outside.

“Are we supposed to be here?” Helene asked. “I got yelled at for doing this.”

“Where did you go?” Helene pointed, and Carmela said, “Well, that’s somebody’s office. You can’t just barge in. But we’re in the street here, so it’s okay. Now try stamping your feet.”

Helene stamped one foot. In one-sixth gravity, she bounded up a meter before slowly returning to the ground. “Okay,” Carmela said. “So that’s what not to do. The idea is to move your feet fast but light, so you don’t leave the ground unless that’s what you’re trying to do, okay? Can you touch the ground heel-and-toe?”

“Um, no,” Helene said. “I mean, I try, but I can’t bend my ankle that much.”

“Try moving one foot side to side. Okay, that’s good. Now back and forth, flat to the ground. Now one leg, then the other leg. Good! Left back, left out, right back, right in. You’re getting it!”

Some other women stepped “outside” to join them in the street. One of them stood behind Helene and said, “Helene? It is Helene, right? It’s strange not to know somebody’s name. Look, I’ll be behind you and I’ll catch you before you can fall, so don’t worry about it. You kick up your legs the best you can.”

Gradually Helene achieved a clumsy box step that was fast enough to stay in time with the music. The women hovered protectively over her. One woman who tried to help, though, actually did fall backward and had to be caught by two of the others.

“I’m sorry!” Helene said. “Did I knock into her or something?”

“That’s Susanna,” Carmela said, whispering. “Nice lady, friend of mine, but she’s kind of a drunk. I’ve been at weddings before with her.”

“Oh,” Helene said. “I’m kind of surprised you people ever get drunk. I mean, you’re so careful about everything.”

“If her blood alcohol goes over 0.06, her suit will automatically give her a shot of sober-up,” Carmela said. “She’s at 0.03 now. She’ll be all right.”

“You know what her blood alcohol level is?”

“Oh, right, you’re new here. Helene, Moon Men have no secrets. As long as we talk to each other every so often, the network figures we know each other, and I can see … well, whatever the suit knows. Blood alcohol level, temperature, weight, how much she’s been eating. Actually, looking at Susanna’s blood sugar, if she would just eat some food along with slugging down all that wine, she’d be okay.”

“You don’t have any privacy at all!” Helene said.

“Not a bit,” Carmela said cheerfully. “You do, of course. You know, when we go into air town we meet up with strangers, but out here in the village it’s really kind of odd to stand next to somebody who’s a complete mystery. You think maybe Tom likes the woman-of-mystery thing?”

“I’m here on business.”

“So you are. Okay, ready to dance? Here comes Tom now, but he’s too late! Sorry, Tom, the lady’s taken!”

“I’m woofed anyway,” Tom said. There was perspiration on his face, and little manipulators reached up from the trunk of his suit to wipe his forehead. He stood with his feet slightly wide and his suit stiffened into the “at rest” position. “Helene, you sure you want to try this?”

“It’s a wedding. I’m supposed to have fun.”

“Then go to it, lady. I’ll just watch.”

Carmela led Helene back across the border into the church, and out on the dance floor. The band seemed tireless, and nearly all the guests who were not clustered around the food carts and open bar were still dancing. The fiddler was still leading them in country tunes, and in a moment Helene was part of a group of three women and one man making a rough circle, all dancing for each other.

She stepped back and forth, occasionally making a misstep that sent her up from the ground. Grinning, Helene moved faster, trying to stay up with the others. She lifted her arms and twirled around, bowed at the waist, waved her hands. Sweat dotted her face and misted her faceplate, and the others cheered and urged her on.

Helene stumbled and fell to her knees. She looked down in horror as seams pulled open on both legs. Puffs of air escaped her suit and turned to steam which almost instantly vanished in the vacuum.

Helene screamed.