Moonfall Read Free Page A

scrubber for the shower. Moonbase personnel had a meager allotment to use as each one chose. Charlie knew that he could run as much water as he liked and no one would complain. But someone would unquestionably leak it to the media. He smiled at his own pun. He climbed out of his clothes, stepped into the stall, drew the curtain, and selected ULTRASONIC . The sensation was not at all unpleasant. A thousand tiny fingers poked and probed, loosening dirt and dried perspiration. He wiped down with a damp cloth.
    Afterward he dressed, and accompanied by a staff assistant and his team of agents, went out sight-seeing. Main Plaza, the heart of Moonbase, would not be officially open until after theceremony. But some of the shops were already doing business.
    Main Plaza consisted of a vast dome approximately fifteen stories high and a half-mile long. A canyon five levels deep cut a zigzag through the center of the plaza, housing living quarters and work areas. The ground level was remarkably green: Lawns and parks and patches of forest rolled out in a slight uphill grade toward the perimeter.
    Down the length of the structure, four massive columns supported the overhead. These were regularly spaced, two on either side of the administration building, which anchored the center of the plaza. Shops and restaurants were located in strategic areas, and an orchestral shell dominated one of the parks. Charlie gazed up at the roof, where luminescent panels produced a remarkably good approximation of sunlight.
    The air was sweet and clean and smelled of spring. He strolled its walkways, rode the elevators and trams, got his picture taken by half the people at Moonbase, signed autographs, shook hands with everyone, and generally scared the devil out of his agents.
    There was a lot more to see: the reservoir, the communication center, the space transportation office, the departments of management and technical services, the solar power assemblies, an automated solar cell factory, the research labs. He wanted to visit everything, but he wanted to do it at leisure.
    He had some difficulty adjusting to the one-sixth g, even with the weighted boots supplied by his hosts. But he was pleased to see that his agents also fell over themselves periodically. The lone staff assistant, Rick Hailey, was the only one who seemed to adapt easily, a circumstance that irritated the agents. There was an old joke about a football game between the Secret Service and the White House staff: Ten minutes after the agents left the field, the staff scored.
    But Rick, who was his campaign manager, seemed born to low gravity. He’d gotten around L1 as if he’d lived there all hislife. Now he was showing the same agility on the Moon. When Charlie commented, Rick laughed it off. “Public relations means never having to touch ground,” he said.
    Then he recommended they cut the stroll short to sit down in a café and talk about the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
    It was an election year, and consequently the political overtones of every act were intensified. Especially when you were behind. Charlie was not yet forty, too young to be taken seriously as presidential timber. His lack of a mate offended the family values people, who’d become a major force in American politics. Furthermore, he’d been given little of substance to do in the Kolladner administration, and the president had not always hidden his own preference for “older, wiser heads.”
    “After you’re finished with your remarks,” Rick said earnestly, “the media people are going to want to talk politics. Don’t get sucked into it. Moonbase is a special place. Above politics. Talk about the stars, Charlie. Where we’re going. Opening up the future. That sort of thing. Everything else is trivial.”
    There was this about Rick: He was the only purely political appointment Charlie had ever made who was worth a damn. His full name was Richard Daley Hailey and he was the son of a particularly well connected Chicago