Leaving Home

"I don't know what you are imagining that I am up to." I said in controlled frustration, "Six months ago I did not know there were mind readers and then by accident, I meet Mary. I brought her here because I thought she could have a life. Now I find out you have the triplets working for you. It explains a lot about how you get away with stuff. Timing is everything? I do not have an agenda here. All I want is to have a life and for Mary to have one. If I find that I cannot do this, then we leave on the next flight."

Ali looked at me. "You don't waste any time. Ok, I can't read your mind, but I respect you. I will call a truce and ask for peace between all the mind readers."

"You mean there are others?" I asked.

"Ya, plenty on the other side. The Chinese cannot control them and we are at an advantage, because they want to come to our side. Most of them are confused and don't understand that they have an extra sense. We need you and Mary to go over and attract them to yourselves. I have some ideas. The triplets are not the best choice here. They aren't even supposed to be down here."

"Why is life a continuous conspiracy around you?" I asked. She just shrugged her shoulders and made a jester with her eye that there was someone behind me.

"Guess who has been working with the mind readers?" Ali mentioned.

I turned around to see Julia staring almost straight into my eyes.

"God, Julia my life has become so complex. I just want to scream." I said.

"Welcome back Perera. You got smaller or did I grow?"

I smiled and gave her a hug. "That woman you brought, she knows everything. I talked to her just a few minutes. It is as if it was your mind I was speaking to." Julia says.

"It was bound to become that way. I followed her dreams and she was seeing this place or the tubes as they will be in a few years. When awake she reads everything I think and feel. But her life had been lived among people who feared her and I was the first to welcome her in."

"You sure did. Mom knows about you and me. The triplets let the cat out." Julia says.

I looked over at Ali. "I make no promises. Mary and I will be living in another flat. I want a fresh start. Life is short."

Ali said, "Shaun has his own family now 6 flats down, has some empty rooms as so many are moving into the tube. Stay here for lunch. Then you can find him running a restaurant, on the warehouse corridor, Shaun's Soup and Bread. Julia will show you."

So we stayed and chatted. Mary seemed relaxed. Something about Ali reassured her. I didn't trust her, but I trusted others even less. Mary sat next to Julia and they were bonding. Got that right away. I guess when compared to Mary's previous social circumstances, this was paradise. Maybe it was better, on reflection.

I started to relax and when ever I do that, then hell breaks loose. Xing Xing runs in, red hair flowing behind her. She whispers to Ali.

"We are all friends here. You can speak to the group." Ali says.

The woman was still catching her breath. "We have to move quickly. No, I am not staging this Anthony. Yes, Mary needs to help because no one knows her. A fresh face inspires interest and she radiates innocence."

She continued, "The North Wall habs have now been in place for over three years. They are deciding on a program to bio-engineer mind readers, beauty whores and some things I do not wish to mention. They have moved a number of prototypes into the secret lab area. They think we know nothing about them. There are a number of mind readers there, but they are in confusion and North Wall is untrained to deal with this. The objectors cannot prepare an escape plan. We will give them one."

Ali spoke. "I was very glad to hear Anthony had arrived." She looked over and smiled. This is why I don't trust her. Who am I. Just a guy with some speciality talents and much too attractive to powerful women. What was her plan?

Ali dropped the smile and continued. "It is time to tell the Chinese about their lava tube and then send Anthony in as a specialist in tube management. They don't know you're here, so we send you up and co-ordinate you're arrival with the orbital crew."

"I suppose I have been on Earth for the last two years, found a new wife and all that?" I asked.

"Yes, exactly. You will come with special equipment to locate the tube. We have the location and have been sitting on it for years." Ali added.

We are to take a few weeks and using Mary's talents to locate and befriend the mindreaders. At some point Shaun will organize a musical night for North Wall. About the time we spring the news:

NEW LAVA TUBE 10KM LONG

COULD BE 400M ACROSS.

They will be in a good mood. The people will hear before the brass can put a cork in it. Bloody Canadians can't follow protocol. This is the plan.

The offer was made, that I come and survey for lava tubes. We knew that they had found a small one to the east of the first hab. They were sitting on it. We knew of a larger one to the north-west and deeper. Ali sent messages through the CNSA. If she knew something about a second tube then... The American news programs were broadcasting that there was a large lava tube suspected north of the China habs. A Canadian, Anthony Perera was on his way to help in the search. Ali was devious.

It was fifteen days later that we landed before the chinese habs. We had our stories and history straight. An official translator and a watcher met us at the airlock of Hab 2. I really wanted a tour, but they whisked us off to an official meeting. We were never to wander about and go anywhere without our minder. Something different here. Oppressive culture. Maybe a pressure cooker.

Mary was loving it. She was excited because she could talk to the mind readers, even though they knew no English.

"There are more pictures in their thoughts, but it is clear to me what they are saying. I am trying to restrict my thoughts as you taught me, but even this conversation and others we will need to have, will leak our purpose." Mary explained.

"Just relax and enjoy our stay. That is message enough." I stated with a smile as we went to our third meeting. A planning committee of the tunnelling group.

I took my legit, but useless, tube finding equipment the next day. Boarded a jumper and mounted my devices. Then we were off, me, the pilot and a chinese assistant, hovering a few metres above the ground and following a grid pattern. It took five days and gave Mary time to communicate information to the mind readers. She sat in the peoples dining-room pretending to read Chinese history, while she was actually somewhere else doing subversive work. She was telling the people about herself, all the difficult and happy moments and what happened when she met me. She was telling them everything she knew about Plato South and the program to settle native peoples from North America. How everyone was welcome, and how they formed their own government. At night, while I slept, she was answering many questions, lots of questions in her own innocent way.

She was sound asleep when I woke.

I got rather tired of the grid. But soon we were over the said location and I got excited about something my pilot could not read. I directed him on a new grid and noted on a pad the new info. The next day, I called in the Bore Machine crew and gave them the data. They went to work. We hit some iron and much nickel on the way. By the time we reached the tube, 6 days and 12km later, we had also drilled through a kilometre of solid ice. I hoped they were paying me well. I am going to pretend that I picked that route because of the ice, the minerals were a surprise.

I led the officials into the tube after the crew had installed enough lighting. I was impressed. It was as Ali said, but she did not tell me about the lake at the lower end. We had the tunnel airlocked, so the water vapour floating about would not escape. Plato South would welcome such a good find but Plato North had it.

Great happiness, positive omens, I was there lucky coin. I called a party and told people about it, before asking permission. Two days later we had a party.

Shaun brought all the musicians he could find. The triplets made a return from Lunar orbit. Julia and Ali were honoured guests. The other girls were there as well. Kimberly the youngest at ten, Khloe the second at twelve, Zoey the second oldest a tall 15 and last Julia now 19 and a tall beauty.

There was a grand display of Chinese talent. It is amazing, what a trained acrobat can do when presented with 16 percent gravity. The air worked a little different when musicians tuned their instruments. Maybe something to do with lower air pressure and higher argon levels. I believe these habs used a small percentage of helium.

What caught my eye an hour into the bash, was a young couple snuggling in the corner. Eye to eye and in full passion. It would have not stuck with me, if I did not see it again out in the corridor, a different pair. When I next saw Mary, she just smiled and put her eye to mine. "I think you started something. It would be best if you don't admit to it."

"I always thought of this as our private find. A very intimate kiss. Just between us."

"Do not be silly. No good deed goes unpunished. Now you have raised the passion level for all mankind."

I gasped, "God, save me!"

The lights went out. All the lights went out. Someone held my hand and led me out to an airlock. Suits were ready and we were out the door. It seemed that dozens of people were milling quietly about. Then hoppers were rising full of people. We were away. Not into orbit but across the crater floor to Plato South. Most of the mind readers had come with us, crying children. The ones left behind would keep quiet for fear of punishment or use the 'wait and see' approach. Certain persons were out of the cellars. The triplets had been busy.

Most of the mind readers wanted to go back to Earth and try to make a life in Canada. The experimental persons, chose to stay and live in our tube. After a year many of the emigrates to Canada returned secretly, to Plato South, the psychic chatter in Canada was overwhelming and jobs scarce for people without proper English.

* * *

It was at this time. When we returned from North Wall that I noticed the two young boys in our Shaun flat. We had moved in and Shaun did not explain the two children, that he had obviously taken charge of. It was Mary who finally brought up the topic.

"This is not fair, that you should find out this way," she said the second night we were back in our room. "One child belongs to Yvette and the other is from Xing Xing. They are your sons. Those women tricked you, up in lunar orbit. It was not always Yvette that you slept with."

I just sat and listened. Stared into space and tried to keep my mouth from falling open. What was I to say when meeting Yvette and Xing Xing? I felt so bad that Mary started to cry and that made me cry, so we held each other. Then I heard this wailing coming from one of the upper bedrooms.

It surprised me just how sad and lost I felt. I even forgot Mary sitting by my side in the love seat. Those sisters had taken love and turned it into something else. They must have known just how vulnerable I was and yet I was giving of myself in a chance that something would grow.

Mary explained. "The boys can feel your pain and they know in some way who you are. It is going to be difficult, if you don't pull out of this low spot. They are your sons and you have some chance to be a father, because the women have to work away much of the time. I don't think Shaun will mind, if you can take some of the responsibility."

So I pulled out and looked at the positive. I had a family, a loving wife and a supportive environment. It did seem a little late for taking the boys to Earth. They were 21 months old and their bones were likely to be too underdeveloped for Earth gravity.

I would have to ask around and see how people were dealing with lunar gravity. Children were all over and about a third were born here. That meant we had 900 children born in Plato Crater habs. This was also showing us that people were not concerned with returning to Earth. If they did, the children would have to stay behind. Maybe I was being a little pessimistic. There was technology that could be used in future. Exo Skeletons that would allow someone young to gradually adjust to stronger gravity. Time would tell.

Shaun was a beneficiary of all this. Zoraida got tired of the antics of her two sisters and retired to lunar life and a contracting job with the materials separation unit. They needed all the help they could get. She had moved to Shaun's flat and they began a little dance, where they both found love. The boys came along and they volunteered to adopt them. That is a South Wall adoption, where nothing was written. They had a ceremony and a party but again nothing written.

The Ion Pulse

Impulse engines, ion engines, improved chemical rockets. We had a research department now. A team of rocket students in Sydney, Cape Breton, N.S. had expressed dissatisfaction with the program in the Cabot University research facility. They wanted more opportunity to work with ion engines. When they approached Doris in Candle Lake, she offered them to be a part of a new operation starting up in Plato South.

Zoraida would be the person trying to steer these young people and to find other experts in the field. The science was well developed but everything would be, if possible, built using lunar materials. We found some loose plans the Chinese had sent to Plato North. An actual engine was more difficult, but friends in Toronto were able to locate two dysfunctional engines at Ryerson University. These engines would disappear from a Scarborough warehouse one night, and not be noticed for a month.

The following year, they woke up to the fact that we had copied their nano-ion thruster and made it into a major machine. No moving parts. Electro-magnetic and electrostatic versions. Liquid heart ion generator. We called it the LLHIG ( Lunar Liquid Heart Ion Generator). The power was sufficient that a ship could be moved out of lunar orbit. A large wheelship with multiple motors could be sent on its way to Mars. But we did not want to take five days to move the ships out of orbit so we resorted to chemical rockets when the time came.

We intended to build wheelships. Ion engines are very efficient but produce a low acceleration. By turning the wheel on its side and spinning it we had gravity and could adjust it for lunar or higher weight. It was a good thing the centre axle could be stationary as we needed a point to connect the framing, where the engines could be secured. On the other side of the centre were attached the framing for the giant solar sails. These were extremely thin and of our own manufacture. They collect the solar wind and processed the sunlight for electricity. The wheel itself used a substantial amount of power, as it was carrying a thousand persons. But the engines needed a strong power source, as well, to project ions at high speeds away from the wheel.

It would take less than four months for a Mars trip and about three months for a Venus trip, as the planet was often close by.

Ted's Struggle with Sunshine

Ali said, "Doris, we need your people here with all their material skills. I know that you stitch in solar cell materials into the backside of our outside suits. We need to find a way to make thin sheets of this fabric and produce square kilometers of it."

The Earth woman, who had yet to visit Plato Crater, was up on the video panel in Ali's office.

"I have got your memos and we are researching it. You will have to be able to produce synthetic materials of a certain strength." Doris commented.

"Yes, I have my people working on it. I will send you a list of chemicals, that we cannot yet produce here." Ali answered.

Doris found one fellow, who had been encouraging American manufacturers to produce a Kevlar like material in vacuum instead of a bath of sulphuric acid. This was not practical on Earth or in orbit. They were thinking in terms that returning the product to Earth would be too expensive.

None of this made sense unless you were manufacturing on the Moon and not shipping back to Earth. What is the Earth to us?

Ted Pringle was not that happy with living on Luna, even for a short stint. He was single and getting on into his 40s. But he needed to try his idea and this was his chance. The patent rights were very much in force, but he was the expert so he quietly disappeared one night from Nashville and arrived the next day in Candle Lake. He was given a tour of the base, introduced to the spacesuit women and told that part of his project would be to combine a light sensitive material with his own. This would make it a new patentable material. There was a woman there, Sherene, who was one of the persons researching new materials for the spacesuit manufacturers. He was drawn to her and they exchanged ideas until he realized that she was smarter than himself.

"I am going to Plato South in a few days. I need you if this is going to work. You have knowledge that even 4NM never ran into." Ted explained.

That night he realized he was in love and he knew nothing about Sherene. Was she married? Would she be able to love him? He did not sleep and got up early to go for a walk in the prairie sunrise. The full moon was setting.

As he was thinking of turning around and returning to the cafeteria, he saw a woman sitting on a bench in the park. It was Sherene.

She looked over at him. "You are up early. Come sit down and we can enjoy the sunrise together."

They later ate breakfast together and she spent the day showing him the materials department.

It was she that asked him. "I am not a young woman. Been married. Have children now grown up. Helen and I have worked together here, since the base started. I am self-educated, so there are great empty spaces in my knowledge."

"I understand that you are very important to this department." Ted said.

"Not as much as before. We have young university folk here and more coming. Even Helen is considering retiring. There is a change going on."

"I would think it would be difficult to leave all this. At the top of your field and everything."

"If I met the right person? I believe in new starts." she said.

"This last few days I have been thinking of marrying two different materials together, but last night I was thinking of a different type of marriage."

"Well, we will need more time, but I see no problems yet."

Ted's face went from white to red and he reached out for her in a hall alcove. Held her as if his life depended upon it.

It was another month before they boarded the shuttle and flew to the Moon. On board, were all kinds of chemicals that would not be allowed under normal circumstances. But the shuttle had never crashed. Only 42 passengers this time.

Ali welcomed them. She put them up in Shaun's flat.

I was able to work with Ted and Sherene for the next four months helping them with a new vacuum cavern. This cavern was my work during the time Ali was negotiating with Doris. It had to be two kilometers deep and 150 meters wide by 40 meters tall. About 860 tunnels using the old equipment. But Doris had sent me a new set of three machines with a 4 meter diameter. It meant that 340 tunnels would do the job. One tunnel a day per machine or only 114 days. We were the tunnelling experts.

I used two of the older machines starting from the top and new machines from the bottom. Everything was finished in 70 days. It also took every spare person on the south wall. Ali organized the interior rock cutting crews and the conveyor systems. A crew of ten per tunneling machine and 40 persons handling the extracted rock.

The cavern was finished three weeks after Ted and Sherene arrived and they helped me design the equipment layout for the sail materials. That they were so sure as to the effectiveness of the material, was a work of double genius. There were some false starts. This first material was not ready yet for space, but there was another use. And we wanted to put the damaged materials to work.