They returned to the apartment, where Ruth and Jen were preparing a meal. Chase rode in his electric wheelchair, which the medics had insisted he use when traveling any distance. He detested the contraption, which made him feel old and senile, but reluctantly obeyed the decree because of his "condition." What that condition was precisely, nobody could agree on. Chase thought it might be anoxia, a legacy from the past that was only now rearing its ugly head; if so, nobody was prepared to admit it. One of the medical specialists, Dr. Weinbaum, was coming tomorrow to carry out more tests, and probably, Chase thought resignedly, to start him on yet another course of treatment.
Nick settled down to watch "Psychic Space Cats" on TV, one of his favorite programs about a race of highly intelligent telepathic cats that had adventures on exotic worlds in distant galaxies. Chase hadn't yet figured out whether the cats were puppets, animated models, or the real thing, they were so amazingly lifelike.
"When's your next lunar trip?" Chase asked Dan as they were eating.
"Six weeks from now, October tenth," Dan said. "We're flying out to Censorinus where the new mass-driver is being installed. They're planning to lift seven thousand tons of graded ore for aluminum smelting. Hey--" he suddenly remembered "--the whole thing will be televised, so you'll have a chance to see it in operation."
"Where's the ore being processed?" Ruth asked.
"The construction shack off Long Island." Dan picked at a chicken leg. "You know, we get enough oxygen as a by-product of the smelting process to sustain all the islands and to use as rocket propellant. About forty percent of lunar rocks are oxidized."
The bulk of the building materials for the colonies had come from the moon: It was easier and cheaper to transport vast quantities of ore with the low-energy mass-driver from the lunar surface and process it in one of the four construction shacks that were reorbited in the vicinity of the island being built.
Each construction shack weighed over 10,000 tons, with a power plant of 3,000 tons, and housed 2,300 workers in 36 modules.
Currently a million tons a year were being mined, then launched into space and brought to the ring of colonies for processing. The mass-driver accelerated pods bearing forty-pound payloads of ore along a superconducting magnetic track--no wheels--on the lunar surface, traveling two miles in 3.4 seconds, at which speed the pods dropped away and the payloads achieved lunar escape velocity. For nearly two hundred miles, or two minutes of flight time, the payloads weren't high enough to clear the mountain ranges, which meant that the mass-driver had to be located in one of the broad flat plains, such as Censorinus, filled with lava three billion years ago.
Once in free flight the payloads continued to a target point 40,000 miles out in space. Two days after launch they arrived at the catcher, a storage craft 300 feet wide and a quarter of a mile long. There the payloads were caught in a rotating conical bag of nine-ply Kevlar fabric, the material used to make bulletproof vests that could stop a .44 magnum shell fired point-blank. Once full the catcher became an ore transporter and, like the huge supertankers on earth, began the long slow haul to the colonies 240,000 miles away.
Mercifully Dan didn't have to endure the weeks of tedium suffered by the crew of five. As one of the transport coordinators he was able to fly in, do his job, and return by fast passenger craft. The round trip usually took about three weeks.
Jen helped herself to more salad. "Did any of you see the newscast last week of the shuttle from Emigrant Junction?" She shook her head, pensive and sad. "Those poor people . . ."
Jo said, "I thought conditions were so bad that no one outside an enclosure could remain alive, yet they keep coming. It has to end sometime."
"It isn't the same everywhere," Ruth said. Her smooth tan and the sweep of graying hair over her forehead successfully camouflaged the disfiguring scar. "Some places have survived almost untouched. There was that story about the isolated village in the Philippines where the way of life had hardly changed." "Yes, I remember that," Dan said sardonically. "They were living off giant frogs. I wouldn't call that 'normal,' would you?"
"Oh--
"Sure it was," Dan said, straight-faced. "Frog quiche. Frog a la mode. Frog on toast. Frog Supreme. Frog--"
Ruth held up a stick of celery threateningly.
"Maryland. Ouch!" Dan fell back laughing as the celery hit him on the chin.
"Is Daddy being silly again?" Nick inquired gravely. Like most five-year-olds he had a severely disapproving view of adult humor, finding it not only incomprehensible but also totally unfunny.
