Building Harlequin’s Moon Read Free Page A

confirmed they could walk on the moon. They could start to introduce life. They could . . . he gave instructions to wake Ali and Wayne, and went to get ready for them. He sang as he pulled himself down the corridor to Medical.
    G ABRIEL AND A LI WALKED on the barren surface of the little moon. They started inside light pressure suits, taking readings and checking radiation levels, double-testing what they already knew from the tiny sensors that dotted Selene. Ali stripped first, all the way down to underwear and bra and shoes, oxygen tank and mask. Her olive skin dimpled in the cool air.
    He laughed with pleasure watching her; a tiny half-naked woman climbing on rocks; jumping from one to the other, tossing stones and catching them.
    Drawn by Ali’s antics, Gabriel stripped to his pants and shirt, mask and tank, and ran and cavorted and grinned while Ali knelt and touched the regolith, walked to a new place, and touched the surface again. He danced with her on the surface, seeing wonder and reverence in her eyes as she moved easily, gracefully.
    Selene was still a touch unstable; it shivered twice with small quakes in the hours they were there. Ali came and stood beside him. “I like the silence—I like being away from that damned constant data flow. It feels more human here.”
    Gabriel held her, not answering, just feeling the soft touch of her dark head in the hollow of his shoulder. He felt lost without the data, regardless of how ecstatic he was to be on Selene. On Selene!
    “Someday,” he said, “Selene will be information rich like the ship. We’ll enhance the flows some here before we return—I’ll need it to monitor the next steps.”
    She glared at him, a touch distant suddenly. “Be careful—you’ll need too much technology. Let’s keep Selene simple.”
    Her face was bathed in Apollo’s light, her skin duskier than he remembered from the ship. They pulled their masks aside, and he gave her the first kiss on Selene. It was quick. Selene had just barely more oxygen, right now, than the top of Everest. It needed life to make a living atmosphere.
    Thousands of years of shifts had taught them all to take intimacy where they found it, to appreciate it, and consider it friendship.
    They flew happily back up to
John Glenn
. Gabriel returned with Wayne, and while Gabriel and Wayne walked Selene’s surface, Ali packed up cultures and genetic material so they could start seeding the regolith, eventually covering part of Selene with bacteria to begin the process of making soil.
    When they warmed next, all of the bacteria were dead. So they stayed awake and watched the next attempt, killing time designing a huge tent. They would control the atmosphere inside the tent, and use it to build greenhouses and homes; a little city. The tent stood up well to the little earthquakes that came along. They dubbed the new town Aldrin, and stayed there from time to time.
    It took four tries—twenty years—to get healthy cyanobacteria mats spread across the ground near Aldrin and have something like soil. Now it was time to wake the High Council.
    Gabriel spent hours with each of them, running low onsleep, talking excitedly. He had Astronaut play videos for the captain; lost moons dancing into each other. Gabriel watched the captain’s wrinkled face closely, saw how his deep-ocean-blue eyes tracked the flow of moons and proto-comets.
    Captain John Hunter had stayed awake during the long crippled flight that took them to Gliese 876 after they nearly burned up in the interstellar wind. That trip was so long that no amount of post-ice rejuvenation treatments had removed the spots and lines and dark circles that transformed his face. Centuries of pain were etched in odd bends of his fingers and toes, in the hunch in his back, the folds over his eyes. But intelligence still lived in his eyes. If anything, the ravages his choices had created in his body made his will stronger. It mattered to Gabriel that John Hunter see the dream