There was just enough time for the Santa Fe, once she was safely over the horizon as seen from Earth, and before she’d risen above the horizon at Tsiolkovsky, to actually land on the rim of Pasteur Crater, offload the Marines and the four LAVs, and take off again, this time under tele-operation from Lieutenant Wood’s PAD. She had just enough fuel remaining to make a final suborbital hop on a course that would take her directly over Tsiolkovsky, three hundred kilometers to the southeast of Pasteur.
The Santa Fe vanished behind the low, smoothly sloping mountains in front of the column of lightly bouncing LAVs.
“LOS,” Wood announced. “She’s over the horizon.”
“How long until she’s over Tsiolkovsky’s horizon?” Kaitlin wanted to know.
“She’s still rising,” Wood replied. “I’d say five…maybe six minutes. Depends on how on the ball they are at the UNdie base.”
“Oh, they’ll be awake, all right,” Kaitlin said with a grin. “They’ll have been watching the Santa Fe on an approach vector for three days now. They know she’s on the way. They’ve probably been at general quarters for the last couple of days!”
“Let’s hope they didn’t get any sleep all that time,” Hartwell said, laughing.
“Roger that!”
She turned slightly in her seat, listening to the radio chatter as Yates lashed the squad with a traditional pre-battle warm-up. “We are lean! We are mean! We are lean, mean, fighting machines! We are Marines!”
“Ooh-rah!” the squad bellowed back.
“We are gonna kill!”
“Marines! Kill! Kill!”
It was, Kaitlin thought, a barbaric ritual, chilling, almost bloodthirsty…and terrifyingly effective. God help any UNdies who get in our way, she thought.
For minutes more, they traveled on across the silent vastness of the lunar surface. Each LAV was powered by a three-hundred-megawatt gas-turbine engine; each tire was independently hooked to its own power train and transmission and could be individually depressurized to increase traction on slippery slopes and in deep powder. Under one-sixth G, each LAV could manage eighty kilometers per hour on the flats…and up to half that on rugged, broken, boulder-strewn or steep terrain.
Unfortunately, this was the Lunar farside, a jumble of craters upon craters upon craters, and the only flats were at the bottom of a couple of the largest, like Tsiolkovsky itself. They were going to be lucky to average twenty-five or thirty klicks an hour.
Which put them ten hours from their target. The mission plan allowed for eighteen.
“Ah!” Hartwell called. “I’ve got a reading! Looks like hard gamma!”
An instant later, white light shone above the rounded mountains ahead, a briefly expanding dome of light that swiftly faded from view in utter silence.
“I guess they were awake,” Wood said.
“Roger that,” Kaitlin replied. “Now if they’ll just celebrate shooting down the Santa Fe and go back to sleep!…”
But the cabin was quiet now, with no more banter. The four LAVs were now utterly alone on the farside of the Moon, with no transport, no chance of retrieval.
It was a damned lonely feeling.
L-3 Construction Shack
2212 hours GMT
“Uncle David! What are you doing here!”
Jack gaped as the tall, lean archeologist pulled his way into the squad bay area, his small duffel bag trailing him on its canvas leash. David was upside down from Jack’s point of view, so he twisted off the bulkhead in a quick rotation that brought them face-to-face.
“Hey, Jack!” David cried as they clasped forearms, rotating slowly in mid-bay. “I heard you were on this ride. Didn’t you know I was coming?”
“Shit, no one tells us anything. They must be getting desperate, though, if they’re throwing in honorary Marines now!”
Several other Marines gathered around the two. Captain Robert Lee braced himself on a deck support. “You’re David Alexander?”
“Yes, sir,” David replied. He extended a hand and Lee took it. Then he fished into his inside jacket pocket, pulling out a manila envelope. “Got my orders here.”
“S’okay,” Rob replied. “Give ’em to the CO over there.” He pointed across the crowded bay. “Colonel Avery. You’ll want to check in with him soon as you get squared away. Welcome aboard, Doctor.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“So, orders?” Jack asked. “What, are you in the Corps for real, now?”
“Not quite,” David replied. “I’m a ‘civilian specialist observer,’ I think they call me now. ‘CSO’ for short.”