Something Made of Vacuum

The monorail took Helene racing across the nearly featureless expanse of Mare Serenitatis, riding a rack with her suitcase strapped into the seat beside her. It was a journey of an hour and a half which did not give her serenity but did allow her to calm down somewhat. She had stopped at the hotel in Theophrastus just long to retrieve her new suitcase, arrange with the bank to spend her money without a Moon suit, and get a reservation for her plane back home. She had not had time to get her new clothes washed, but the suitcase was not pressurized. She hoped the vacuum would allow Tom’s scent to evaporate off before she had to wear her clothes again.

She looked up at the Night sky, her rack swinging slightly each time she moved her head, tracing the path of the Milky Way. There was no sky like it on Earth and certainly not in Chicago or any city a traveling salesman might be sent to. She drank it all in. She looked at Earth, too, and watched a storm work its way across Africa.

Presently the monorail rose up to cross the Lunar Appenines mountain range, much less spectacular at close view than they seemed from afar. They looked like rounded hills, covered with little speckles and craters, uninteresting. On the far side was the Appenines Mass Driver that would fling her plane back home, and the city of Eratosthenes Crater where she would board the plane.

On a sudden thought, she directed the rack away from the airlock at Eratosthenes, to the Moon Man village outside the city. She walked from the monorail terminal into the village, which was just as empty and flat as Sinus Amoris village, and approached the first person she saw, whom her suit identified as Govinda Sativendra. His Moon suit was decorated with a picture of some large bridge on Earth, and there was an abstract design in the oval over his heart.

“Excuse me,” she said without preliminaries, “can you tell me how I can ship my suit back to the Easterday Family in Sinus Amoris? I’m going to Earth and I won’t need it. They paid for it.”

“Hello, Helene,” the man said, and studied the display in his helmet. “I’m sorry you’re breaking up with, what’s his name, Tom? But I’ll tell you what, my wife’s brother works for a company that ships machine parts all over, so if we can get your suit to them, I’ll ask him to have it shipped back for you. You can pay his company for it. Hold on a moment.” Govinda spoke for a minute without including Helene in the conversation. “Okay,” he continued, “he says they can do it. You know, I can’t ever remember seeing a whole suit in transit. That’s going to be a little strange.”

“Thank you. You can really do that? It’s nice of you to take the trouble,” Helene said.

“No problem. You’re a Moon Man until you take off the suit, or in any event I’m going to play it that way, so I’m glad to help.”

“I don’t suppose too many Moon Men ever give up their suits, do they?”

“Sometimes kids going out for college or something,” Govinda said. “But usually the family arranges to sell it back to the outfitter.” He touched his finger to her interface port and an address in Eratosthenes appeared in her helmet. “Okay, when you get the suit off in air town, have them send it to that address and we’ll get it back to the Easterdays for you. It’ll probably cost about twelve sequins, so don’t convert all your money to Earth money until that bill goes through. Helene, are you sure you want to do this? You’re obviously pretty conflicted about it. You can stay here in our village for a while if that would help.”

“I’m going back where people can’t see my 38 instrument readings,” Helene said grimly. “I can’t tell you how I’m looking forward to that.”

“All right, I won’t pry. I went to Earth once and liked it. I’m sure you’ll be happy there.”

“Why did you go to Earth?”

“College. I’m a metallurgist, and I needed more education than I could get here. Also I just wanted to. I did a lot of tourist stuff while I was there, backpacked through Europe and things like that.”

“Why did you come back?”

“This is where my life is.”

Helene looked at him silently, then said, “Okay, thanks again, Govinda.”

She retrieved her monorail rack and rode back up to the Moon Man airlock high on the crater wall. Eratosthenes crater was much larger than Theophrastus but the city portion was about the same size. Most of the rest of the area was agriculture and manufacturing that was more convenient to do in air than outside. The town served a port in Mare Ibrium as well as the mass driver that was used to toss cargo down to Earth. A car carried Helene past the usual casinos and tourist businesses to Earth Launch station.

Since the trip home took three days and she had only two changes of clothes, Helene took the opportunity to buy another outfit, which was fabricated while she was having her suit removed. The technician at the station was male, which Helene found slightly uncomfortable, but he was clearly working a bored routine as he extracted her from her suit.

She dressed herself in the clothes she had first picked out with Tom. Vacuum had boiled off all of the volatile oils the fabric had collected from her skin and his. Her clothes smelled, not washed, but lifeless. The technician, at her request, had put her suit back together for shipment. It slumped over without a person in it. Another terminal employee came to pick it up and have it delivered to the address Govinda had given her. She watched it being carried away, waited a few minutes to get her new clothes delivered by a robot cart, then walked out into the lobby of the terminal building.

Her old personal electronics had been built on Earth and had been destroyed by cold and vacuum along with her first suitcase. She purchased another device at a booth in the terminal building, a wide wristband which provided phone service, display and network connection, and strapped it on her wrist.

As soon as she closed the clasp, the phone rang.

The display lit up with Tom’s face, from a camera inside his helmet. “Helene,” he said, “stay right there. I’ll be there in an hour. Don’t go, please. We can figure this out.”

“Tom, don’t do this!” Helene said. “I’m sorry if I led you on. I’m so sorry. But I really was just having a fling while I’m far away from home. I didn’t mean to hurt you, but Tom, we’re not a couple. We never were, never will be.”

“Not buying it. I know better than that, and you know I know it.”

“Damn it, stop trying to analyze my data points and listen to me, you fool! We had one night together. That’s all the relationship we ever had. It wasn’t much and whatever little it was, it’s over now.”

“It is not over, and you’re out of your suit so I couldn’t read your data even if I hadn’t promised not to. But I can see your face. Helene, I’m over Mare Serenitatis now. Just let me get there so I can see your face in … you know, in air. I swear that’s all I want right now.”

“I won’t be here. My plane leaves in a few minutes, and I’m going to be on it. Forget me, I’m going back home. Look, we never had more than two choices – you could go to Earth, or I could stay here. Either one’s the booby prize. This never could have worked, I never meant it to, you never meant that much to me and I don’t want see you!” She terminated the call.

She walked to the boarding area, showed her eyes to the scanner and went through an open airlock door to the shuttleplane bay.

Planes from Earth were thrown into lunar orbit by a tube up the side of Mt. Cotopaxi in Peru. From orbit, they were landed by Moon Men harbor pilots at various fields including Sinus Amoris and the field served from Eratosthenes. Planes going back were launched from the ground by the Lunar Appenines driver and were piloted directly to a landing at a field outside of Quito, to be returned to Cotopaxi for the next trip. Although cargo planes were launched and landed several times a day, there was only enough passenger traffic to support two planes, which held six passengers in a too-small compartment at the nose, along with a cargo hold that carried enough merchandise to make the trip profitable.

The plane Helene boarded happened to be the same one she had arrived in. The plane, a “lifting body” in which the wings were integral with the body, had been brought into the terminal air space. A rolling stair let her climb up to the door and enter the windowless cabin. There were four other passengers, who greeted her but were occupied in setting up their own spaces.

The pilot was the only crew member, but a steward came in to check that each person had stowed his possessions correctly. Helene strapped herself into the seat, by chance the same seat she had occupied on the flight up, and waited.

She was the last passenger. The steward left, the airlock was sealed and the plane was pulled out into vacuum. Helene watched through the window as the cargo bay was loaded by robots supervised by two Moon Men. It seemed strange to her to see their bulky, smooth forms but not know their names or family relationships. The cargo was tanks of helium-3, which was cooked out of the Moon dust and was valuable to power plants on Earth. When all the tanks had been stowed, the plane was dragged to the opening of the mass driver tube.

Launching from the Moon was much simpler than launching from Earth. The mass driver required vacuum all along the path, from the horizontal start to the near-vertical end. On Earth, that meant an elaborate (and to Helene, scary) series of snap-open doors that would slide back just long enough to allow the magnets to drive the shuttleplane forward, then close in an instant so that any air that entered could be pumped out for the next shot. But the mass driver on the Moon was just a series of open rings going up the mountain side.

The plane was wheeled into position at the first ring. Without any further preliminaries, Helene was pressed back into her seat as the plane was grabbed by magnetic fields and smoothly accelerated up through the rings. It reached a gentle maximum of two gravities as it burst out of the mass driver at the top of the mountain, and went immediately weightless. Her stomach lurched.

After that, the passengers faced three days of boredom before reaching Earth.

Weightlessness had been only slightly interesting on the trip out, once Helene had gotten anti-nausea drugs. The cabin did not have the space to fly around without passing close enough to the other seats to annoy the occupants. On the way up, she had done a few tricks such as parking objects in front of her face to marvel that they hung in the air and did not fall, but even that meager fun was not interesting a second time.

Tom called after a few minutes. “I’m just coming into Eratosthenes,” he said breathlessly. “I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

“I’m already in space,” Helene said, looking at him steadily. “You’re too late. Tom, go home. You’re making a big deal about this but we were never that close, really.”

“You don’t mean that. I know you don’t.”

“I’m going home, Tom. You too.” She ended the call.

The seats across from her were occupied by an elderly couple. The woman leaned forward and said, “What I always like about travel is the chance to meet other people, especially on a flight like this where we’ll have enough time for some really good conversation. I’m Carolina Madison and this is my husband Alex.”

“Um, hi. I’m Helene Friedman.”

“Are you from Earth?”

“Yes, I am.”

“How wonderful! We’re going to Earth for a historical tour, it’s something we’ve always wanted to do and now that we’re retired, we finally have the time. We’re going to Greece and Rome and the old medieval cities in Europe and everything. It must be marvelous to actually live on Earth and be able to see all that history. We’re from Second Amendment.”

“Second Amendment? That’s the name of your planet?” Helene asked.

“Yes, it’s historical. We’ve always been interested in history. Our planet doesn’t have very much history since it was only settled about ninety years ago, but of course Earth is so ancient and cultured and civilized. You must think we’re country bumpkins compared to the people you know on Earth.”

“No, no. We’re just regular people on Earth.”

“Oh, everyone says that about their own culture, don’t you think? That’s why it’s so fascinating to travel. We’ve been to two other worlds, ourselves. Here, I’ve got some pictures.”

Helene said desperately, “On my schedule it’s bedtime, so I’ll have to beg off. Nice talking to you.” She pulled up the privacy curtains around her seat, and was in a space with featureless white fabric walls, two meters across and three high.

It was not actually bed time for her yet. She tapped on her wristband device to find a book she had not read, then pulled a tray of warm food out of a slot in the base of her chair. The food was especially portioned and packaged to be eaten in zero gravity. It was meatloaf and mashed potatoes, but her ticket included unlimited refills on wine.