Star One: Tycho City Survival Read Free Page B

Moon
their permanent residence. There were a number of homes, apartment buildings,
businesses, and small skyscrapers that reached nearly 60 feet into the air
built across the center of the cavern. There were also a number of small shops
and factories on the perimeter.
    Perhaps the
most amazing thing of all were the numerous growing plants and trees. They did
amazingly well in the lunar soil and the controlled environment of Tycho City. The cavern floor was green with growing grasses as well as small trees and
shrubs. It almost looked as if you were back on Earth. The growing plants also
did wonders for the air, taking out some of the CO2 and replacing it with
oxygen. There were also hidden machines that quietly circulated the air and
made sure the air quality remained breathable.
    Mase took a
moment to look around. This was his home. It seemed so Earth-like and if not
for the lower gravity, you would never know you were on the Moon. He took a
deep breath, drawing in the fresh air. It was like this every time he returned
from an inspection trip. He smiled inwardly to himself. So much had been
accomplished and there was still so much more to do.
    Linda stood
quietly, watching the commander. She knew how he felt about Tycho City. In the eight months she had been here, she was beginning to feel the same way. Tycho City had that type of effect on you and the man beside her had built it.
    “I can’t wait
for us to get the new fusion reactor installed,” she mentioned, looking over at
Mase. “It will be nice to have normal gravity.”
    “Yes, it
will,” responded Mase, in agreement.
    He had been
here for such a long time that he scarcely noticed the difference anymore. In
the early days, there had been no increased gravity until the first of the two
fission reactors had been installed.
    Linda nodded
as the two walked over to a small electric car. She really enjoyed her job, and
Mase was easy to work for. He was exceptionally polite and did an excellent job
running Tycho City and the other operations on the Moon. Sometimes Linda didn’t
see how he did everything.
    Once she got
home later, she needed to send a short message to her parents in Kansas City. That was the only bad thing about living on the Moon; family was so far away.
She tried to speak to her parents several times a week, as well as her younger
sister Karen. She was very close to her sister, and it had been hard to be
separated from Karen these past months.
    Mase and Linda
took the small electric car to his office, which was in one of the larger administration
buildings. Once inside, Mase went to his office and began working on his
Farside report. He wanted to get it to Jane as quickly as possible. Once it was
done, he would give Steve a call on Star One and then get a bite to eat. Then
it would be out to the mass driver on the wall of Tycho Crater. Since he was responsible
for Tycho City and the Farside facility, his duties seemed never ending.
However, he loved his job and would not trade it for anything. He knew that
Steve on Star One felt the same way.
     

Chapter Two
     
    Later that
afternoon, Mase was in a small Moon Buggy, which was traveling down a recently
built road to the mass driver. Tycho City ran a number of mining operations in
the crater as well as in the surrounding area of the Southern Lunar Highlands.
    They had found
that the numerous small meteors buried just beneath the Moon’s surface were
rich in various metals and in high demand on Earth. The metals were mined and
then taken to Tycho City to be refined. The refined metals were then taken to
the mass driver on the rim of the crater and put in pods to be hurled toward
Star One and Earth. They also mined helium three, which was used in the two fusion
reactors in Star One.
    It was twenty
miles from Tycho City to the rim wall where the mass driver was located. At the
speed they were forced to drive due to the Moon’s light gravity, it took the
Moon Buggy nearly an hour to travel the