***
Connie and Walt decided that going for a hike wasn’t such a bad idea after all, with Jake joining them, and they explored one of the side ridges near camp until it seemed safe to return. They slipped into the hut quietly, mixing in with a group they had waited for to come along. Jake, being more experienced with this sort of thing, managed to allow for a half-empty bottle of whiskey to mysteriously appear on the edge of the galley table, the donor remaining anonymous. It was clearly a peace offering, was instantly accepted, and the unspoken pact consummated.
When the cook finished setting the galley to rights after the evening meal, he was in a much better humor, and took up his favorite pastime, which was badgering the weatherman. It was an ongoing sideshow; their perpetual altercation provided live entertainment for whoever chose to watch. The hut was full to capacity with everyone who was done with their day, but had not yet retired to the tents for the night.
Susan sat at a table with Dr. Atkinson and Alistair Adams, her maps laid in front of her. Lt. Richards watched the two combatants sparring for a moment, laughed with the others, then took a deep breath before settling into the folding chair at the table across from Susan. She turned her eyes up from the map for a moment, seeing him there, but went back to her studies without any other sign of recognition. He wore the smile he had acquired while listening to the two staffers hurling their insults, and kept it in place for as long as it could be maintained without the fear of looking stupid. Then he settled for a friendly, interested attitude as he peered over the inverted map.
“What are you doing?” he asked Susan as innocuously as he could.
“My job,” she told him.
He had tried over the past days to approach her in a similar vein, with the same essential results. She had refrained from outright hostility in putting him off, but could hardly have been said to be in any way approachable. Taking no notice of how he was received, he continued to attempt to find a breach in her defenses, hoping to find a way to open a dialog of any kind. He was perfectly well aware of how she felt towards the project he was tasked with.
It was hard for him. He found her to be even more captivating than he had expected when he was viewing her picture in the Captain’s office. Knowing that she despised him for what he was doing was bad, but not as bad as having to hide his feelings behind an altogether alien persona. He didn’t recognize the person sitting across from her, who was trying to befriend her in order to gain the information needed to fulfill his mission. He didn’t much care for that person, either.
“Same here,” he said, taking the pocket notebook from his cargo trousers. He made a show of looking at the page he had opened at random, while not looking at Susan. She corrected her posture in a sharp motion, punctuated by the scrape of the chair leg on the floor, but refrained from speaking.
Dr. Daniels, who would be departing for the Polar Plateau in the morning, joined this uncomfortable partnership without noticing the tension that kept each of them at bay. He was intrigued with the Lieutenant’s role in establishing a lunar base. He had studied the rocks that came back from the moon and spoke of going there himself.
“Past my time, though, I’m afraid,” Daniels sighed, smiling wanly.
The Lieutenant, not wishing to be impolite, merely nodded. It was more than Jake, who had also just joined them, was capable of, to refrain from asking the question.
“When will it be?” he inquired.
“Maybe the year 2020 or so,” the Lieutenant answered. He didn’t know whether to be grateful for the interruption and change of subject, or resentful for the intrusion when he had Susan to himself.
“Oh,” he said, deflated.
“Thinking about going?” Lt Richards asked, smiling at Jake.
“If I could, absolutely, except I’ll be too old, too.”
“I’m afraid that’s right,” he said. “By about 50 years.”
“If I weren’t, though, what would it take?” Jake asked. “Who’d get to go?”
Lieutenant Richards thought for a moment. “It wouldn’t be much different than this. More like the South Pole Station, really. There will probably be an enclosure with various modules that perform different functions. The personnel would be very much the same. You will have mechanics, plumbers, all of the trades. Cooks. If it were today, Dr. Daniels would almost certainly be a Principle Investigator,” he said, again being polite. That observation might have been true if he had said “twenty years ago.”
“Not just research, you know,” Alistair added. “If the ice that you are looking for is found, which, of course, it would have to be, the hydrogen could be separated for fuel. The lunar station would be a jump-off point to other points in the solar system, Mars, I should expect.”
“True,” the Lieutenant said. “That is one of the more attractive reasons for a lunar station.”
“And if you don’t find ice on the moon?” Susan asked, suddenly very much interested. “Don’t tell me. You will have to work the process in reverse and transport the gasses to make water. And it takes energy to complete the process, does it not? You’re not going to be transporting diesel engines like here, I suppose. Go ahead, say it. Nukes. I can see it now - nuclear waste dumps all over the solar system. You people won’t ever learn, will you?”
Lt. Richards kept his silence, unsure how to answer. It had been discussed as a possibility. Everything had been discussed as possible. He knew how atomic energy was thought of by many people, but reasoned that it was misinformation and prejudice that led them to those beliefs, though it would hardly do to say that now, not to her.
“Not to mention getting it off the ground,” Susan continued, her accumulated anger now finding a conduit for release. “Here’s a beautiful picture to contemplate. The booster explodes two hundred miles down-range with a few hundred pounds of enriched uranium on board. The entire southeastern United States gets a nice hot shower. But wait, that’s not it. You contract with some poor country that needs the cash to launch from there. Make it sound like you’re doing them a favor. Then, when it happens, it’s just a bunch of natives who get toasted. No problem!”
“We can make containers that are safe from any catastrophic event, or we will be able to by then,” Lt. Richards said quietly.
Dr. Engen laughed. “Of course, you will. I have about as much confidence in that as I do in the belief that you can turn the Ross Sea into an oil field without having an impact on the environment. It isn’t possible. Just being here has an impact. We have an impact. Are you aware of our impact on the marine biology of the McMurdo Sound?” she asked, sweetly.
“No,” he answered, unsure where she was leading.
“Let me educate you,” she said bitterly. “It seems that we have polluted the Sound so much that the animals we have been studying there are starting to die off. So now we have new studies being done to examine how human occupation of an ecosystem has a deleterious effect on that system. Now, that’s science, huh? Set up shop in a pristine environment and study how your existence there destroys it. Beautiful.”
“Are you advocating not advancing science because science itself has a negative effect?” Dr. Daniels asked, fascinated.
She hesitated before answering. “In some instances, yes.”
Lt. Richards watched her from across the table. He knew she was directing her anger at him as the most likely target. That could not be helped, as he clearly represented everything she most cordially hated. Still, understanding her feelings wasn’t the same as being immune to them. He wanted her to see him, but she only saw what he represented, and that was something he didn’t really support, either.
Atkinson was surprised. “I can’t believe that. As a scientist, you have to believe that the increase in human understanding is the most important thing. It is only through discovery that we can gain the knowledge that will allow us to balance human life with the ecosystem in the long run.”
“I’m not so sure,” Dr. Daniels said, caught up in the abstruse ar
gument. “Susan has a point. The effect of McMurdo station on the McMurdo Sound has to be considered a microcosm of the planet as a whole. It will require a total paradigm shift in how people view their world to change the effects.”
“Pretty hard to get the whole world to do anything,” Alistair said. “No one is going to want to change everything until it doesn’t cost them to do so.”
“True,” Dr. Atkinson allowed, “and developing countries who don’t share our prosperity won’t sacrifice the chance for it by putting restrictions on themselves for what could be considered abstract theory.”
“They are going to have to,” Susan said with finality. “No one is going to do anything until they are forced to, and that includes government. It is environmental activism that will get the people to push the politicians to act.”
The Lieutenant cleared his throat.
“What?” Susan asked, daring him to answer.
“Until those groups tone down the rhetoric and sound more credible, nobody in the mainstream is going to pay much attention to them. Hell, even the socialists spouting their party line don’t sound as immersed in their ideology. Not that there is anything wrong with the message,” he added quickly. “It just needs to come across as more reasonable.”
The others at the table admired his courage, if not his discretion.
“And what would you have us do?” she asked him, challengingly.
“Me? I would have our government make a massive investment into developing alternate forms of safe and inexpensive energy, then heavily subsidize the new technology until it can be commercially viable. Then we guarantee our own long-term strategic independence from oil-producing countries, clean up the environment, and produce a whole new industry for America to export at the same time. And we don’t have to ask Americans to give up their lifestyle as a concession to the environment. We create a new and better way to have the same things.”
Susan stared as if she were looking right through him.
“Are you serious?” she finally asked.
“Of course,” he said, calmly folding his hands on the table.
It had clearly never occurred to her that he, of all people, or anyone who wore the uniform, could possibly have such a view.
“Then why…?” she started to ask.
“Because I don’t want to see this place ruined any more than you do,” he said, “but if that is what it takes to guarantee our security until we don’t have to do those things anymore, then that is what we have to do. But I hope that we can eliminate the need for it, eventually.”
Dr. Engen continued to stare at him until she got up and walked out, an altogether different look suddenly having come over her, as if her most deeply held conviction had just been turned on its head.