The Moon and the Desert, page 1
Table of Contents
DEDICATION
PROLOGUE
PART 1 RESURRECTION CHAPTER 1: The Moon and the Desert
CHAPTER 2: Broken Doll
CHAPTER 3: The Ghost of Jack Steele
CHAPTER 4: Ohm Wasn’t Built in a Day
CHAPTER 5: Nightmares and Daymares
CHAPTER 6: Setbacks
CHAPTER 7: The Doll Factory
CHAPTER 8: More than Human
CHAPTER 9: Less than Superhuman
CHAPTER 10: . . . But What Am I?
CHAPTER 11: Strategic Retreat
PART 2 LOVED AND LOST CHAPTER 12: The Chase
CHAPTER 13: Catch of the Day
CHAPTER 14: Loss and Love
CHAPTER 15: Profile of Courage
CHAPTER 16: Tropical Heat
CHAPTER 17: Game, Set . . .
CHAPTER 18: . . . Match
PART 3 THE RETURN CHAPTER 19: Exploring Beautiful Places
CHAPTER 20: Visions . . .
CHAPTER 21: . . . and Portents
CHAPTER 22: Radical Solutions
CHAPTER 23: Putting It Together
CHAPTER 24: Don’t Call It Piracy
CHAPTER 25: Weighty Matters
CHAPTER 26: Express Delivery
CHAPTER 27: A Walk in the Dark
CHAPTER 28: Old Flame
CHAPTER 29: Out of Hell, and into . . . Hell
CHAPTER 30: Greetings and Suspicions
CHAPTER 31: Incubator
CHAPTER 32: Shepard’s Flock
CHAPTER 33: Ship of Lies
CHAPTER 34: Detective Work
CHAPTER 35: Under Pressure
CHAPTER 36: Crisis
PART 4 AFTERMATH CHAPTER 37: Recovery
CHAPTER 38: Anticipation
CHAPTER 39: The Return
CHAPTER 40: Homecoming
CHAPTER 41: Reunion
CHAPTER 42: Tribunal
CHAPTER 43: In the Spotlight
CHAPTER 44: Court Martial
CHAPTER 45: Redemption
CHAPTER 46: The Beach and the Stars
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
THE MOON AND
THE DESERT
ROBERT E. HAMPSON
The Moon and the Desert
Robert E. Hampson
What would it really take to make the Six Million Dollar Man? a medical thriller on earth and in space!
Glenn Armstrong Shepard had his sights set on going to Mars as a flight surgeon, but a training accident on the Moon left him crippled. Now he has a new plan: to be fitted with bionic prosthetics and come back even stronger.
Fate and the Space Force have other plans, and Glenn is grounded. Another doctor—his ex-fiancée—takes his place, and Glenn will have to fight to prove he can be an astronaut once more. . . .
BAEN BOOKS by ROBERT E. HAMPSON
The Moon and the Desert
Stellaris: People of the Stars
edited with Les Johnson
The Founder Effect
edited with Sandra L. Medlock
The Moon and the Desert
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2023 Robert E. Hampson
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN: 978-1-9821-9249-5
eISBN: 978-1-62579-904-3
Cover art by Dominic Harman
First printing, March 2023
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hampson, Robert E., author.
Title: The moon and the desert / Robert E. Hampson.
Description: Riverdale, NY : Baen Publishing Enterprises, [2023] |
Identifiers: LCCN 2022056101 (print) | LCCN 2022056102 (ebook) | ISBN 9781982192495 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781625799043 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PR6058.A5548 M66 2023 (print) | LCC PR6058.A5548 (ebook) | DDC 823/.914--dc23/eng/20221205
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022056101
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022056102
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Electronic version by Baen Books
www.baen.com
DEDICATION
To Ruann—the love of my life and protector of my writing time. You’re that special person who truly knows who I am.
To Mom—my first fan, first reader, and finder of typos. Thanks for staying up and watching all of these shows with me.
To Dad—my hero and role model. I wish you could have seen this one. We miss you, deeply.
To Sandra—my sometime co-author, sometime co-editor, and always copyeditor. You make it all look good.
To Sam Deadwyler—my mentor for a fantastic career in research—including the first glimmer of bionics.
. . . and to Rick Boatright—alpha reader and technical watchdog. A good friend, and great conversationalist. You’re gone much too soon; you would have loved this one.
PROLOGUE
Oh, this is well and truly going to suck, Glenn Armstrong Shepard thought to himself as he started toward the crashed Dragonfly trainer. “Mission Control, this is the Monitoring Medical Observer,” he commed. “Pilot Morykwas is trapped underneath the Dragonfly. I’m closest. I’m going in to pull him out.”
“Negative, MMO, that’s a highly dangerous situation right now,” came the response.
“His vitals went through the roof. Blood pressure increased, respiration and heart rate were elevated. I told you all of that. He knew he was losing control, and I knew he was losing control. It was obvious to anyone watching his vitals, so don’t tell me you couldn’t see it.”
Glenn could see Rick Morykwas trapped underneath the struts and spars of the test vehicle. It was a simulator for the Mars flyer. It was much too fragile to operate on Earth, so they trained on the Moon. The problem was that with no atmosphere and less than half the gravity of Mars, it was unstable as hell. Rick was trapped and Glenn was the closest of the Moonbase support team.
“I’m going to have to crawl under there to get him out.” Glenn knelt down to make his way under the wreckage. He immediately saw his spacesuit’s temperature indicator begin to rise.
“MMO, you can’t crawl in there; you’ll rip your suit. We can’t risk two people.”
“Easy for you to say, CAPCOM, you’re sitting in an air-conditioned room in Tucson. He’s at risk of burning up.”
A new voice came on the line. “CAPCOM, lockout the rebroadcast and make sure this is a closed channel. Nothing goes out. MMO, this is FLIGHT. Don’t risk yourself; this isn’t your job.”
“Like hell it’s not.” Glenn respected the Flight Director, but that simply was not an order he could follow.
There were spars in the way, and a white glow further down the metal rod. He could feel the heat through his gloved hand—through insulation and into the interior of his suit. The stakes had just risen drastically. “FLIGHT, the hydrazine tank has ruptured. We have a fire in vacuum. That means the oxidizer tank is ruptured as well.”
“That’s why you need to stay out of there, MMO. There’s no point in risking yourself. You’ll never see the flame!”
Glenn knew it was already too late for that warning. His left hand was tingling, and it was starting to sting. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure if the flame had gotten to Rick yet. At least . . . he couldn’t see any white spots near the upside-down cockpit.
“Hang on Rick, it’s Glenn. I’ll pull you out of there.”
“Glenn, it’s hot. Something is blocking my legs. I’m trapped.”
“One of the spars has your legs pinned. I’m going to try to lift it up. See if you can slither out.” Glenn crawled up under the wing root and pushed up on hands and knees to put some upward pressure on the frame of the Dragonfly. As his backpack touched the frame, alarms went off in his helmet display. The heat of a fire couldn’t spread in vacuum, but it could certainly be conducted through the metallic frame of the trainer.
Glenn ignored the warnings and vowed to get this over as quickly as possible. He reached for Rick to help him out, but the pilot was facing away from him. He grabbed the rescue handle on the other man’s life-support backpack. Carry straps and handles had proven their worth for soldiers and emergency workers on Earth, and they were now standard equipment off-Earth as well.
As he started to pull, Rick screamed—the leg of his spacesuit had that same white hot glow Glenn had seen earlier. The hydrazine flame was right there, and he’d have to pull Rick through it.
The problem was, he didn’t have enough leverage.
Glenn inched forward, closer to the fire, and grabbed the rescue handle with both hands. More red lights showed on his helmet display. A squirt of warm water came from his drinking tube—the heat was beginning to affect his own life-support. A sharp tug got the pilot away from the invisible flame. Free of restriction, Rick turned over and started to crawl out from under the wreckage.
“Mission Control, Rick is loose, he’s climbing out.”
“MMO, FLIGHT. I told you to get out of there. I don’t want to risk both of you. Especially not the chief medical officer for the mission.”
“FLIGHT, you assholes knew this was happening. I told you that his vitals indicated he was in trouble, and you told me—and I quote—‘stay in my lane.’ If Rick dies, it’s on you. If I die, I’m coming back to haunt you and make sure you never get another night’s sleep. Now shut the hell up and let me do my job.”
Rick rapped on Glenn’s helmet as he crawled past. The frame shifted as he passed, and Glenn could feel additional pressure on his back. To get himself out from under it, he’d have to flip over and scoot out on his back. The air in his suit had gotten warm. He nudged the airflow valve with his chin and was rewarded with even warmer air. It tasted strange, too, sort of sickly sweet . . .
Crap. The coolant system ruptured. That’s propylene glycol! He noticed how raspy his voice had become when he next activated the comm. “Mission control. It may have been foolish, but Rick’s out. I’m starting my extraction now. Wish me luck.” Glenn turned over on his back and reached up to shift the frame out of his way. A white glow enveloped his left arm. Someone screamed over the comm. As he gasped for breath, he realized it came from him.
He scooted on his butt, half crawling, half dragging himself out from under the wreckage by pulling with his legs and right arm. He needed to let go of the spar he was holding with his left hand. He tried and heard a new alarm—suit integrity. The fabric of the suit had melted onto the hot metal, pulling his hand away had torn it open.
At least the temperature is dropping.
There was a boulder directly ahead, part of the frame was resting on it, and there was just enough gap for him to roll over and crawl out. More red lights appeared in his display, and he heard an ominous cracking and popping from behind him—just before his oxygen tank blew up and drove him feet-first into the boulder.
PART 1
RESURRECTION
CHAPTER 1:
The Moon and the Desert
George J @spacefan
Any news on the astronaut injured on the Moon?
USSF Public Information Office @SpaceForceOfficial
@spacefan, US Space Force is unable to comment at this time.
Please see our website for the latest news and exciting opportunities in the Space Force!
ChirpChat, January 2039
Glenn Armstrong Shepard drifted in and out of consciousness. He really had no way of knowing if he was dreaming or actually seeing and hearing his surroundings. He saw white—white walls, white ceiling, people moving around him, all in white. There was a strange lack of depth to it all.
The next moment he was watching the Dragonfly crash. The trainer reminded him of a Wright Flyer—a biplane with a fuselage of tubing and wire, just . . . longer, with wings three times the size of the Earth-bound original and reaction-control rockets for training on the Moon. This one had to be a dream; he was the pilot.
He watched himself struggling to control the unstable trainer. The right wing of the Dragonfly began to lift, so he corrected the tilt by firing the control thruster on the left wing. The burn was too long. Instead of coming level, the left wing rose even higher than the right had. The nose was starting to lift as well.
It was surreal, how he was both watching the imminent crash, and part of it at the same time. He vaguely heard Mission Control telling him to “stay in his lane.”
“He’s going to lose it,” he heard himself saying into the dedicated channel to Mission Control. “How the hell is he supposed to fly this in Mars’s atmosphere if he can’t hold it steady in vacuum with half the gees?”
“Pilot. You need to eject.” He heard his own voice coming over the comm.
“I . . . can . . . control . . .” he grunted through gritted teeth.
He heard himself scream, and everything faded to black.
Glenn was drifting, his viewpoint changing as he directed his attention to his surroundings. There was a female doctor preparing an operating room. She was dressed from head to toe in a white isolation garment. He couldn’t see features, but he felt he knew this person.
Female. Tall and thin, mid-forties, long brown hair, pale skin like most of the people on Moonbase who ignored the mandatory hour-a-day “grow lights” which substituted for sunlight. He couldn’t see any of that, but her voice triggered memories.
He knew her.
“L.I.S.T.E.R., we need to set the bay for hyperbaric oxygen, with pressure at twenty-two PSI and oh-two at thirty percent. In preparation, we need a Level One hard decon. Double check the pressure seals right now, give me hard vac and two-hundred thousand lux UV B and C sterilization for ten minutes, then prep for hyperbaric conditions.”
An artificial voice replied. “Acknowledged, Dr. Barbier. Closing shutters and pumping down to hard seal.” The thick transplas portholes into the procedure room darkened, and there was a thrum of air pumps. “Decontamination commencing.” The pumps stopped, and the faintest glow of light was visible through the darkened ports. After ten minutes, the glow reduced and there was a slight hiss of air. “Argon purge commencing.”
Hyperbaric therapy was common in the treatment of decompression sickness and “the bends”—caused by air bubbles in the blood—and had been in use since divers first ventured into the deep ocean. It was also useful as a follow-up for astronauts whose spacesuits lost pressure; however, as a medical treatment, it had risks. High pressure oxygen should be the perfect healing environment; unfortunately, too long an exposure would cause seizures. The counter argument was that pure oxygen would speed the healing process and could prevent the need for amputating badly damaged limbs.
Yvette waited for the rescue crew to bring her one-time colleague, friend, and former lover into the sickbay facility on Moonbase. The reports had mentioned burns and a crush injury, and complications from those injuries involved heightened risk of infection and lack of blood flow to the affected limbs and even organs—especially in the reduced pressure environment of the lunar surface suits. Thus, she’d elected to sterilize the medical bay by exposing it to vacuum. It was easy enough to do on the Moon, easier still in this location right on the edge of Moonbase’s pressure dome. Once her patient arrived, the increased pressure and oxygen concentration would force oh-two directly into his tissues no matter how badly damaged the circulation. She would need to balance the atmospheric pressure to gain the maximum benefit of oxygen penetration to his damaged tissues and keep her patient stable until she could figure out the extent of his injuries.
The visitor standing in the hatch to the med bay had two stars on his collar, but the doctor was just too tired to care about his rank. Besides, she was a civilian. There wasn’t too much he could do to her if he decided she was insubordinate.
“How is he, Doctor?” the two-star asked.
“He’s a tough SOB, General.” Yvette Barbier stripped off an outer set of gloves, then pulled down her mask and face shield to rub at her eyes. There was a lot of blood—on her scrubs, gloves, mask, and hair net, but the shield had protected her face and the wisps of blonde hair on her forehead. “There’s no way he should be alive, and frankly, I’m not sure that he should remain so from the point of view of the Hippocratic Oath. Keeping him alive may well cause more harm than good. Both legs are crushed below the knees. One leg has a fracture above the knee while the other has a partial fracture—what we call a ‘green-stick break.’ His entire left side is burned. Even if he keeps the arm, the healing from that is tricky, and he’ll probably lose it to circulatory failure. The heat damage is severe, even on top of the burns.”
