Luna Lacuna
by Laura Montgomery
The January sun stood only just clear of the Atlantic ocean, exhibiting its usual gaudy display of gold flung toward land across the water. The waves coming to shore cut dark horizontal lines across the shining carpet. Where the gold didn’t reach, the pewter-colored water shone hard and brilliant, a bright glare to the right of the two dawn runners making their way northward along Florida’s Space Coast. Launch towers at the Cape were distant smudges across the flat expanse of beach, water, and causeway.
Captain Jack Rampling, USSF, was a big man with dark yellow hair. By dint of work, will power, Academy requirements, and an overwhelming irritation with himself, he’d shed most of his high school fat, sloth, and growing pains, replacing it with muscle, strength, and endurance. Now he pounded along the sand in shorts and a thin cotton shirt, barely breaking a sweat. He’d been stationed at the Cape for more than a year and the sun no longer burned him. He was dark from it.
Niall Yarrow, his friend from high school and now in charge of his own remote-sensing company, ran at Jack’s left, probably using Jack to block the sun. Niall’s red hair was dark with sweat, and his pale skin wet with it. Niall didn’t live in Florida and wasn’t used to it. He’d been the athletic one in high school, naturally lean and an adequate member of the track team. Jack suspected Niall spent too much time at his desk nowadays. Niall wasn’t audibly panting, but maybe he was close to it.
Jack considered slowing. It would be an act of mercy. Instead, it seemed more fun to make Niall talk. “Your company’s moving out. No more just looking down.”
“Sure,” Niall panted. “The Moon counts as looking up.”
“Like the Space Force,” Jack said, deliberately pompous, working to goad his friend.
“Listen,” Niall said. “I need to run something”—he gulped air—“by you.”
“Is it serious?” Jack asked. He was familiar with Niall’s game. If he acted too interested, Niall would take forever to make his latest disclosure.
“It’s interesting.” Niall gave him the vulpine grin that used to mean he’d figured out something especially evil for the battlebots to do. They’d won that competition their junior year, justifying the smile.
“How interesting?” Jack didn’t let up the pace. He didn’t believe in pandering to his own curiosity.
“You’ll hate it.” Niall’s voice no longer sagged. He always gained strength from making trouble.
“Then you have to tell me.”
Niall waited several seconds, and their feet pounded against the sand. “I’m pretty sure you’ve got a Moon base.”
Jack almost stopped, but forced himself on. “A what?”
“A Moon base. I think the Space Force has a secret Moon base. Probably on the dark side.”
Jack refrained from pointing out that the Moon didn’t have a dark side. It was just hidden from observers on Earth. Niall knew that perfectly well.
“Is that why you’re putting a bird around the Moon?” Jack’s voice dripped skepticism, but inside he wondered. He was working launch safety in his current billet. If there was a Moon base, and it was secret, he’d have no need to know about it.
Jack hoped fervently his friend hadn’t lost his mind and was putting a satellite in lunar orbit to look for secret Moon bases.
After high school, Jack had won a coveted spot in the Academy and spent his four years in the Springs. Niall had gone on to engineering at Embry-Riddle. Once out, he’d spent three years with Vision, a remote sensing company whose fleet of satellites did Earth imaging, weather, and dynamic AIS data tracking. After three years in the large corporation, Niall had struck out on his own. He’d picked the right time, when venture capital was high and always looking for places to land. At twenty-six, Niall Yarrow had gotten funding for his start-up, Wheeling Remote Sensing, and now, five years later, his company had a small constellation in orbit around Earth. Niall’s current visit to the Cape this week, however, was driven by his launch of a new satellite headed for a more ambitious destination, a cislunar orbit.
“Of course not,” Niall said. “I’ve got a solid business case with the water miners and the PGM people. Lots of contracts.” He snapped his head around, the grin back, to try for a face-to-face gloat.
Jack was having none of it, and kept his eyes fixed on the long stretch of sand ahead. He pressed left against Niall and away from the water, which was starting to reach for his shoes. It was a fine line, getting the harder wet sand, but not getting running shoes soaked.
Jack hated to indulge Niall and exhaled audibly. “So why do you think there’s a Moon base? On the far side.”
“NOAA had a rulemaking. When there was no one there.”
Jack waited. Niall liked this game too much. He’d dangle obscure tidbits, forcing one to ask for more information. Jack refused to play, even if he couldn’t figure what a NOAA rulemaking had to do with a secret military Moon base.
NOAA was the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It regulated and licensed remote-sensing satellites that took pictures of or otherwise remotely sensed the Earth and the activity on it. Jack had had dealings with the agency in the course of his Space Force career, and didn’t need to play Niall’s game—didn’t ask for more.
Niall ran without his earlier effort, clearly gifted of a second wind. “You know what a rulemaking is?”
“I do.” A regulatory agency like NOAA couldn’t just announce its rules overnight. It had to publish them as a proposal for everyone’s comments. Then the agency might modify the proposed requirements in response, disagree with the comments and issue the new rules anyway, or a combination of both. Rulemaking could take years.
Niall grimaced, deprived of his fun. “Well, in 2019, NOAA said it was thinking about making anyone sensing the Moon get a license. When it was explaining the proposed requirements, it had a long song and dance about how Congress gave it the authority to do so. My lawyer said that authority was not clear—not clear at all—and NOAA was making a real stretch. Maybe, he said, NOAA was trying to help DOD hide a Moon base. Then, NOAA could order anyone who had to get a license to sense the Moon not to sense the base.”
Jack felt a measure of relief. “So it was a joke.”
“Well, yes.” Niall was running well now. “Larry meant it that way, but why else would they’ve done it?”
“So now you need a license for your satellite to sense the Moon?”
“No,” Niall said. “Not at all. NOAA withdrew that part of its proposal. Complete about-face.”
“So if you see a secret Moon base, there’s no one to tell you to keep quiet about it?”
Niall kept his face forward, but an eye slid over to check Jack’s reaction. “I would consider it my patriotic duty,” Niall said. “To keep my mouth shut. You know me.”
Jack did know Niall and wasn’t worried about him going to the press.
“Sounds like there’s no Moon base,” Jack said. “If there were, they’d be making you get a license nowadays. It’s not 2019 anymore, and there’s enough eyes up there I’d think they’d want to make you get a license to be able to order you to keep quiet.” Jack and Niall had been kids in 2019, but there were more lunar operators now than then. Private companies had robots on the Moon looking for—and even finding—platinum group minerals, but their findings were as secret as anything the Department of Defense might protect. The European Space Agency had a small “village” capable of housing fifteen live humans, but it rarely held more than half a dozen. NASA had its habitat, and it housed around a dozen, despite the cramped quarters and the constant mold issues. China had an ice mining rig, manned by a rotating crew of four. The whole world knew about all of these.
“It sounds like they’d make us,” Niall admitted, “but maybe it’s like the formula for Coke. Too important to try for legal protection. Even with an order, there’s still the risk of disclosure from someone ordered not to sense it.”
“Aren’t you the one always telling me the government wants more power all the time?” Jack asked. “Maybe NOAA just had a knee-jerk notion that it should be doing something.”
“Or maybe DOD asked them to, then changed its mind.”
They ran in silence for another minute. At Jack’s side, Niall ghosted across the sand effortlessly now.
“I think the fact you still don’t have to get a license now is more telling,” Jack said. “Pay attention to the parts that don’t support your crazy theory.” He picked up the pace until Niall was a good shade of red, even protected by Jack’s shadow.
Jack finished his review of the waivers for the flight termination system. For once, they were minimal and the rationales sufficient to demonstrate an equivalent level of safety to the range requirement. Sure, the FAA looked at this, too, but he subscribed to the view that a responsibility shared was a responsibility ignored, and didn’t want to fall prey to the syndrome.
He shared an office with two others, but they were both at a meeting, so he pushed away from his desk and opened the double-hung window. It didn’t look onto the ocean, but in January it was plenty cool enough in the morning. Even if his view of the road and other low-slung buildings wasn’t the most glamorous, he could hear the water now. When his office mates returned, Trainor would close the window, and Subs would whine he liked it open too. They’d all agreed at the outset, however, that whoever felt hot got to decide. You could always put on more layers if the arctic hell of southern air conditioning wasn’t your thing.
Unfortunately, completing the waiver review and opening the window left him twenty minutes before lunch to be snared by Niall’s nutball idea.
It made no sense, and Jack knew it. Also, he was sure a DOD Moon base wasn’t allowed. The United States had signed a treaty back in the middle of the previous century agreeing not to put forts on the Moon. He called up the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies on his cuff and sent it to his desk’s screen. Sure enough, the treaty’s Article IV said, “The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military maneuvers on celestial bodies shall be forbidden.” He leaned back. That sounded clear to him. Niall had had his fun, and no one needed to say anything more about it.
His eye fell on the next sentence. “The use of military personnel for scientific research or for any other peaceful purposes shall not be prohibited.” Was that a loophole? NASA was the public research agency for space. Could DOD conduct scientific research? Of course, it could and did. DARPA was DOD’s. There was the Air Force Research Lab headquartered at Wright-Patterson. The Navy and Army both had research labs and so did the Space Force.
But what would the military research on the Moon? Telescopes? Maybe the Space Force were watching for aliens.
Jack’s lips twitched, but now he needed to know. Not technically. Not legally. But personally, he needed to know. He found NOAA’s 2019 rulemaking proposal and the final rule in the Federal Register. At first, he thought Niall had made it all up because there was no mention of the Moon, but then his eyes landed on the code words: the Earth’s moon was a “celestial body.” Everyone had their own jargon. The proposal made it sound like NOAA thought no one could do anything in space without a license. Looking at the final rule, where NOAA answered comments on its proposal, it didn’t sound like the satellite operators agreed. A lawyer had once told Jack that agencies were supposed to explain themselves when they did anything different. In the second document, where the agency was supposed to do just that, NOAA glossed over what Niall had called the agency’s about-face. Although it didn’t come out and admit as much, it seemed like NOAA recognized Congress hadn’t given it authority to make companies sensing other planets get a NOAA license, but NOAA was pretty vague about it. Why?
Niall had planted a brain worm in his head, that was for sure. Jack decided he needed food. That would get rid of it.
Niall Yarrow, founder and CEO of Wheeling Remote Sensing, Inc., stepped into the company’s visitor’s office at the Cape. Morning sun poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows. As he did every time he used the space, Niall dropped the blinds to cut the glare behind his screens. The desk faced the window, and when the sun rose high enough, he would open the blinds so he could see out onto the garden and its palms, swirling ferns, and picnic table. He’d planned to take meetings out there whenever he didn’t need his screens. He almost never got to take meetings out there.
He’d awoken early this morning. LunWheel’s launch two afternoons earlier had gone flawlessly, and he was grateful for that. Unmanned rockets almost never failed anymore, but he didn’t want his to be one of the exceptions. The vehicle had stayed on course, with no one like his friend Jack having to issue a destruct command. The vehicle’s first stage had flown back to the Cape; the second stage had reached orbit and released the LunWheel spacecraft. Nineteen hours after launch, the spacecraft had carried out its translunar injection maneuver and LunWheel was now headed for cislunar space. It would reach lunar orbit in a little over two more days. That meant two days of waiting: waiting to see if the autonomously programmed spacecraft deployed as designed, freeing LunWheel from its confines; waiting to test that all the instruments functioned in their new environment; then waiting to see if the bird found anything in the Moon’s craters, highlands, and maria—in its regolith, to be precise.
He could wait. He was patient. In the meantime, his fingers rolled a staccato rhythm across his desk, and his foot tapped the ground. He stared at the blinds, where the slits between each made stripes of the bright green glare behind them.
LunWheel was his newest baby, and he’d got it in the lunar game early. Sure, governmental lunar orbiters had led to maps good enough for NASA to decide where to land; but LunWheel would let Niall’s customers look harder for treasure without having to commit to a landing before resolving at least some uncertainties.
LunWheel was the first build of a planned lunar constellation. It was a three-axis stabilized, nadir-pointed spacecraft, designed for continuous operation. He wasn’t nervous about the hydrazine propulsion system capturing the spacecraft into a polar orbit at the Moon. That would work. And he’d pored over the calculations himself for the timing necessary to obtain an orbital plane optimized for the best lighting conditions in polar regions during summer and winter seasons.
There were just so many steps where something could go wrong. Additional burns would be needed to circularize the orbit and maintain it at its planned altitude of 50 ± 20 kilometers. Its large solar array would provide power during the sunlit portions of its lunar orbit, and a sturdy lithium-ion battery would maintain bus voltage and operational power during orbital eclipses, not to mention survival power during those rare instances where the Earth itself eclipsed the sun. Wheeling had planned for and thought of everything.
But what if it hadn’t? Niall knew this was all nerves and usually set them aside when he couldn’t check and double-check everything for the ninth time.
It was better to contemplate the instrument itself, which was a true work of art. The hyperspectral scanner would let geologists identify different minerals and look for water. In addition to its active and passive sensors, it would employ the newer charge-coupled devices that would directly convert the spectrometer’s images into electronic signals for transmission to Wheeling’s ground stations. It would deploy lidar and radar for detection and ranging, the arrays of sensors measuring whole swaths of the lunar surface at a time. Ultimately, LunWheel would downlink the raw data to Wheeling’s Earth station receivers for processing and sharing with Wheeling’s customers.
Then it was up to his clients to figure out what was valuable and where they wanted to go to get it. Geologists would pore over the data, looking for water ice, checking basaltic lava for ilmenite for electrostatic separation into oxygen and iron, and sifting and scraping the data for platinum group minerals along ancient crater rims.
He’d maybe been pulling Jack’s leg about his imaginary DOD Moon base during their run on the beach. Mostly. Niall had also been gauging Jack’s reaction, and he was certain that if there was a secret Space Force Moon base Jack didn’t know anything about it.
Niall considered the question. He and Wheeling’s lawyer Larry Gordon had agreed that if they were DOD, they’d put any Moon base on the far side. Amateur astronomers didn’t need to see it. Heck, they wouldn’t have wanted to risk backyard astronomers finding a strange glint where there hadn’t been one before. It would be logical to check the far side first. He’d been too busy—and too keyed up, to be honest—for the launch to indulge his curiosity. Now, however, it might be funny to check it out.
He dropped his chair height and pulled the keyboard tray toward him, stretching his legs out nearly flat in a position unconsciously reminiscent of the video game posture from his teens. The desktop synched and sank with the chair to their preset heights. It made him feel like a race car driver.
In keeping with his working theory, he called up the far-side data from the U.S. Geological Survey. It had what he wanted, government data from the pre-Apollo Lunar Orbiters. Lunar Orbiter 4 had photographed about seventy-five percent of the lunar far side, and the fifth orbiter had gotten almost all the rest. But that was long ago, and there’d been plenty more imaging since then. If there were spots that hadn’t been updated or given better resolution in the government GIS database, those would be the interesting parts to investigate. Where had resolution improved and where had it not? Sure, there were private satellites showing plenty, as would LunWheel, but if it had a structure on—or in—the Moon, the government would fudge where it could. So, where did it look like it was fudging?
The lunar far side wasn’t like the face the Moon showed Earth. With telescope and even naked eye, humanity had long viewed the near side’s dark areas—with what the ancients had characterized as lunar seas or maria, walled craters, and evidence of ridges and rays. No, the far side lacked the near side’s dark sweeping maria—except for the small one in the northern hemisphere—but had far, far more craters with radiating rays crossed by more craters, craters inside craters, and rays crossing rays.
He was well aware that when the USGS released its comprehensive 2020 lunar map and GIS database, that it had had to reconcile different scales and different methods from different sources. This meant that maps of the same feature that had been mapped by different groups wouldn’t match precisely. The government could ascribe any fuzzy areas to the attempt to reconcile those discrepancies. Whatever the logical explanation for them might be, it didn’t matter. Niall would have his own bird on the scene shortly, and it could just look at those areas and he’d be able to see for himself. Assuming he could find them.
He opened a new file and began writing code.
It had been several days since Jack Rampling’s friend had tried to plant a brain worm in his head about a Space Force Moon base. He hadn’t even thought about it. So when late on a Tuesday the wing commander put Captain Rampling on her calendar for 8:30 a.m. the next day, Jack canceled his standing 9:00 a.m. call with the FAA, polished his shoes, and made sure he was wearing clean everything. There was no one else on the calendar invite.
The next morning, he drove to Patrick Space Force Base instead of north to his office on the Cape, and parked in the lot adjacent to the new headquarters building. Even housing both Space Force and FAA offices, it was a modest sprawl of a building, its lack of height reflecting the large tracts of land the Space Force occupied. Vertical heights were reserved for the launch towers that dotted the coast to the north at intervals sufficient to achieve acceptable levels of risk for neighboring launch operators.
The sun had solidly cleared the horizon but still shone straight in his eyes as he exited his vehicle. He checked his cuff and was relieved to see he had fifteen minutes to spare. He slipped his tablet into his front jacket pocket in case he needed to call up any information. It disturbed him that he didn’t know what the meeting was about. The late-arriving invite had contained no subject, and he couldn’t think what he needed to brief the range commander on. There’d been no safety issues in months, and she’d want to talk to the colonel about such things, not him. The colonel hadn’t been on the invite.
He wasn’t nervous. He did, however, like to brush up on a topic before meeting with the brass. He’d spent a couple hours last night going over all the safety waivers for upcoming launches, checking them against the regulations, making sure he knew their status. That was all he could think she’d be interested in.
It was early, but the lot was already full of other cars. The pavement was still hot from the day before, and the smell of it mingled with the salt air. The entry faced the Atlantic, so he made his way around the building, avoiding the in-ground sprinklers giving the knee-high hedgerows their morning drink. An arctic blast of air hit him at the entrance, matched only by the cold gaze of the eighteen-year-old at the door who was taking his security duties seriously.
Through security, Jack took the stairs to the top floor, made his way past the general’s receptionist, and into her office.
General Melanie Tucker, USSF, was in her late forties, a blue-eyed blonde who’d seen a lot of sun and not worried about it. She was drifting toward plump, and of middle height for a woman, maybe five-five, and Jack would tower over her if she stood. She didn’t stand. Instead, when Jack saluted, she gestured to the empty chair in front of her desk. The other was occupied by a civilian in a dark suit, who wore his hair as short as any Marine. He was also in his middle years, pale and gaunt, and clearly didn’t live near the Cape.
“Mr. Merritt,” the general said, “this is Captain Rampling. Captain, this is Mr. Merritt. He’s visiting from Maryland.”
Merritt stood and shook hands, and Jack forced air through a suddenly tight chest. He knew what it meant to be “from Maryland” and have no first name offered. This was someone from the intelligence community. Was someone putting up a secondary payload that would require special attention? He should have been intrigued. Instead, something nagged at him.
So Jack said only, “Sir,” and sat when the other man did.
They both turned to Tucker.
Her eyes scanned from one to the other. “I’ll need you to help Mr. Merritt, Captain. He has some questions for you. I want to be present when he asks them.” She gave Merritt a hard look, as if perhaps Merritt had not himself initially thought her presence necessary.
Was the range commander trying to protect him? From what?
Jack swallowed.
Merritt leaned back in his chair, offering no false smile. No one liked him showing up, and he knew it and wouldn’t try to improve the situation. “I’d like you to tell me about what you do here, Captain Rampling.”
Jack’s mind went momentarily blank. “My job?”
Merritt’s lips almost twitched. “Yes. Your job.”
“What’s this about?” Jack demanded. He hadn’t appreciated the stab of fear.
“If I don’t have to tell you,” Merritt said, “I’d rather not. How about you just tell me what it is you do here at the range?”
Tucker nodded at him, her expression unhelpful.
Jack took a long breath. “Sure. I’m the range safety officer on the Space Force side—government and commercial. I oversee launch and reentry safety for reusables, the old expendables, capsules, spaceplanes, the lot—anything that flies out of or returns to the range.”
Merritt waited, clearly wanting more than Jack’s usual truncated spiel.
“I make sure the flight safety systems are compliant. I work with the civilian safety team here on any design changes in destruct systems, qualification testing, acceptance testing; downrange coordination; briefing and training the flight control officers. A lot of that is done by the permanent civilian staff.”
Merritt allowed Jack to continue for several more minutes, only looking at him expectantly whenever Jack stopped to see if the man from Maryland had heard enough. Jack found himself wracking his brain to unearth any scrap of information about his job and how he did it.
Finally, Tucker intervened, pointing out that she didn’t have all morning.
“To what extent do you work with the payload operators?”
Jack blinked. “We like to know their fuels, the oxidizers. Any monopropellants. That feeds into the risk calculations for a launch.”
“Mr. Merritt,” Tucker said, “Captain Rampling can talk about payload safety a long time too. Do you want him to?”
“Any lunar payloads?” Merritt asked.
Jack had to think. “Yes. About a year ago. Parts for the Gateway project went up uncrewed. That was one of ours—a Space Force launch.”
“Do you recall the contents?”
Jack didn’t. It made him feel like he was failing an oral exam. Then it came to him. “We asked if there were propellants. We always do. But everything else was classified. Above my clearance.” He didn’t have to know the answer—wasn’t supposed to know, in fact.
Merritt leaned forward, sway backed, arms on the chair rest, hands laced together. “Did anyone say anything about it? That you recall?”
“No, sir.”
Merritt settled back again in his seat. Two hard spots formed to either side of his mouth. “The rest of this conversation is classified. You are, in fact, not to mention this meeting to anyone.”
“Sure.” Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw Tucker flinch. “Sir.”
“What do you know about the Department of Defense’s extraterrestrial operations?”
Jack knew a lot. Anyone who’d attended the Academy did.
“Mr. Merritt,” Tucker said, “the captain knows plenty. Before he starts describing our satellites on orbit and our personnel seconded to NASA’s Moon base, perhaps you could just come out with what you want to know.”
Merritt stared long at the range commander, but she stared right back. “Yes, ma’am. It was a matter of efficiency. I don’t want to tell him anything he doesn’t already know.”
“It isn’t looking efficient,” Tucker said. “Not from where I’m sitting.” Her tone was polite. She even smiled.
Merritt looked away. He plucked his tablet from the small table that perched between the two visitor chairs and studied it.
“Do you know a Niall Yarrow?”
Sweat sparked the back of Jack’s neck. What had Niall done? Worse, what could have happened to him? “I do. Is he all right?”
Merritt produced an anemic smile. “He’s fine. Did you see him recently?”
“Sure. Just a few days ago. He was here for a launch.”
“And did you tell him anything you know of the Space Force’s extraterrestrial activities?”
Jack’s face scrunched. “I don’t think so. He’s in the business—remote sensing. He knows as much as I do about a lot of it. What I do is mostly unclassified. Except for the transmissions to the rocket, of course.” He’d forgotten to talk about that in his job description.
“Its installations?” Merritt was leaning forward with his back swayed again.
Niall’s ridiculous suggestion about one installation in particular came to him in a rush. “We do have a Moon base?” he blurted. “Niall found it?”
“How do you know about that?” Merritt snapped.
“Mr. Merritt,” General Tucker admonished her visitor.
Merritt looked at her and paled, realizing what he’d given away, but far too late.
Tucker again smiled politely. “Less tiptoeing. More thinking.”
The look Merritt gave Tucker was not one Jack would have ever sent in a general officer’s direction.
Merritt collected himself. “Define ‘Moon base,’” he said primly.
“I don’t know.” Jack thought to the Outer Space Treaty’s words. “An installation? A fortification?”
“How do you know about it, Captain?” General Tucker asked.
“I don’t, ma’am.” Jack’s brain was racing. “I thought Niall was joking. He was asking if we had one. I told him I was sure we didn’t.”
“And what made him ask you?” Merritt had himself under control again, his voice calm, his skin color back to normal.
Jack explained about NOAA’s aborted attempt in 2019 to regulate imaging the Moon and how that had made Niall think DOD was hiding something. No one had people or bases on the Moon back then so why would a license be necessary to take pictures of it? Unless there was something there?
“Old Daniels’ll get a kick out of that,” Merritt muttered. “She warned everyone not to try it. Or so she says now.” He pushed his shoulders back. “You’re to speak of this to no one.”
“Will you be talking to Niall?” Jack doubted he’d get an answer, but he had to try. “Did he find it?”
“Not yet.” Merritt’s eyes shifted between the two Space Force officers. “We will not be talking to him. We’ll be watching him.”
“Mr. Merritt,” the general said, “do you mean to tell me you came all this way to bother my staff, and Mr. Yarrow hasn’t even found it yet? How do you know he will?”
Merritt stiffened. “Mr. Yarrow’s search has been looking in all the ‘dark’ spots, the gaps in our public mapping. Now that he has his own satellite orbiting the Moon, our technical staff advises us it’s only a matter of time.”
“Do you want me to ask him to stop?”
“Captain Rampling, I repeat: you must not say a word of this to your friend.”
“Of course, sir.”
“And no hinting either,” General Tucker added.
Jack swallowed. “No, ma’am.”
“We do have one thing we want from you,” Merritt said.
The general sat preternaturally still, and Jack felt the cold, conditioned air deep in his skin.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“We want you to keep tabs on him. Keep talking to him about it. We want to know if he’s doing it for the Chinese.”
Jack found himself on his feet. Some autonomous internal system kept him squarely at attention in the presence of a general officer instead of grabbing Merritt by the neck. “No. He’s my friend. Also, he wouldn’t.”
“Captain,” Tucker said smoothly. “Do, please, sit down.”
Jack sat. “You don’t know him. For him, this is all about curiosity. He’ll be thinking it’s amusing.”
“You’re perhaps blinded by your friendship,” Merritt said.
Jack pounced. “Exactly. I’d have a conflict of interest. Niall’s like a brother to me. He was my best man when I got married. I was his. I’ve known him since high school. I’m not your man.”
Merritt’s smile was thin. “So he’ll trust you. Also, we’ll be listening. We won’t be relying on your judgment.”
Jack looked to his general, but she only gave the barest nod. “It would be good to agree, Captain.” Or she’d order him to.
Merritt had let Jack ask questions. He’d even answered some of them, so Jack knew that Merritt’s people hadn’t been watching Jack or Niall in particular—which questions made Merritt act righteously indignant–but had a program in place that alerted them when particular searches triggered an alarm. Niall had started one of those searches, looking for areas where the federal government’s lunar maps had fuzzy areas.
Merritt had assured Jack that not all of Jack’s calls would be monitored, just those with Niall. Also, Merritt wanted Jack to get right on it, so after dinner Jack told Lin he had some work calls and shut himself in their study alone.
He made sure the video chat was securely logged in to his personal account, which was the one Merritt’s people would monitor, ironically enough. Merritt hadn’t given Jack a script, just told him to get Niall talking about his hunt for the Moon base.
When Niall picked up, Jack told him he was on a secure line since he had some questions about Niall’s bird and its capabilities. Niall happily retired to a different room away from his wife, and answered all of Jack’s questions.
“What’s this for?” Niall asked when Jack ran down.
“I can’t say yet,” Jack told him.
Niall’s grin showed a lot of white teeth. “Not yet? I’ll take that for an optimistic answer.” Niall always complained that he never had government customers. Jack regularly pointed out he was doing fine without them.
“How’s everything else?” Jack asked. “Found your Moon base yet?” It was a question Jack would have asked without the visit from Merritt, purely on the grounds that it was ridiculous; but he was sure his voice sounded strange and hollow, like a man trying to set someone up.
Niall’s eyes lit, and he propped his elbows on his desk, leaning into the camera. His thin face was intent. “No, but I’m on track.”
“You’re instrument’s working already?” Jack was surprised. It had only been three days since Niall’s launch.
“No, but I’m checking the USGS maps.”
“Because they have a little square marked ‘Moon Base.’” The sarcasm helped make his voice sound normal.
Niall rolled his eyes. “No, jerkface. It wouldn’t be a secret then. The USGS reconciled a bunch of different images in 2020. They were at different scales, and now they’re supposed to show everything on the same scale. I figured I could look to see where these so called ‘reconciliations’”—he did two-fingered quotation marks in the air—“showed less detail than earlier maps. Looking for the lacuna in the data.” Niall’s grin grew giddy. “The luna lacuna.”
“Hakuna matata, to you too.” Jack kept his voice dry. An ironic tone also masked his hollow voice.
“You know what’s the best thing?”
“What?”
“I found three today. Three lacunae.”
Jack’s heart sank. “Oh? Now what?”
“When LunWheel checks out, I’ll have it look in those spots. See what I can see.”
“Of course, you will,” Jack said. He didn’t know if he sounded sarcastic or despairing.
Niall kept on sounding giddy. “I’m looking for telescopes because if I had a secret Moon base, I’d have it looking for aliens. Like Oumuamua, the extrasolar visitor.”
Jack knew he should say something snarky, but could think of nothing.
“The Space Force,” Niall concluded confidingly, “looks up.”
When Jack hung up, he waited to see if he’d hear from Merritt or any of his people. No one called, so Jack went and joined his wife for a game of WarCursed, but he couldn’t keep his mind off the idea of a functioning Moon base. It was mind-boggling. All the work that had been done to check how the lunar regolith affected spacecraft on landing had taken place recently. How had anyone put up a Moon base while dealing with those issues? And not been discovered? The Gateway hadn’t even been launched in 2019, the date NOAA gave Niall’s lawyer the big clue.
But all that was just a cover worry, to mask his concern over Niall. He knew Niall wouldn’t do anything crazy with the information if he found the base, like take it to the press. Niall was more responsible than that. On the other hand, Niall was looking for the damned thing. It was just like him, but how responsible was that?
Lin beat him soundly and gleefully.
“Well?” Larry demanded. The lawyer’s dark eyes were big in his equally dark face. “Show me.” He was a slender man, but tall and with big hands. He reached over Niall’s desk for the stills.
Niall couldn’t keep the grin off his face. “This one. Even you should be able to make it out. Looks like a telescope.”
Larry took the flimsy from him and scowled at it. “I don’t see anything.”
“The glint,” Niall said. “See the smooth curve? I think they’re watching for aliens. Makes me feel secure.”
Larry scowled again. “It’s all gray and black.”
Niall looked ostentatiously to the heavens for support, but briefly so as not to overdo it. He was still grinning. “How such a genius as you can’t see the most obvious stuff. How long have you been working here?”
Larry Gordon handled Wheeling’s regulatory compliance with NOAA. It was he who’d made the joke about how NOAA must’ve been trying to protect a secret Moon base when it proposed licensing Moon imaging despite the fact Congress hadn’t told it to. It had been a great idea, and Larry deserved the credit for it.
“You’re sure?” Larry sat down and screwed up his eyes to look more closely. He was only ten years older than Niall, but suddenly looked it.
Niall snatched the flimsy back and replaced it with another. “Here, try this one.”
Now Larry’s eyes widened. “Should have shown me this one first.”
Niall had told Larry about his initial hunt for low-resolution spots that might have been left bland on purpose and what he’d set LunWheel to focus on. Niall relied on attorney-client confidentiality when he had to. It was indeed a privilege. It also meant he had someone to share his victory with.
Niall allowed himself a smug smile. “Pretty good, huh?”
Larry was shaking his head. “Still can’t believe it. I was just joking.”
“Sure,” Niall said. “Me, too. At first.”
The lawyer tore his eyes from the image. “Are you going to tell them you know?”
Niall shrugged. “Who would I tell?”
“Your friend Jack, for one. He could tell you where to go.”
“I don’t want to get him in trouble. He’s military. And he didn’t know when I saw him last.”
Larry’s head jerked up. “You told him about this?”
“It’s fine,” Niall said soothingly. “It was before I even tried to find it. But, yes. I don’t want anyone thinking he told me.”
“And I want full credit,” Larry said. “It was my idea, and I never worked for the government, so it would be pretty clear I wasn’t sharing state secrets. That’s the approach. But, Niall. You’ve got to tell someone you’ve found it. They’ll want to read you in.”
Niall cocked an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
Larry looked sheepish. “It’s what they do in shows.”
“And you’re always telling me not to get my legal advice from video,” Niall said.
Larry stood. “I’ll go look into it.”
With Larry gone, Niall sat quietly, staring at the smooth gleam of his polished desktop. It took him a long moment, but he made the call. The person he wanted wasn’t there.
The next day, a sovereign wealth fund called.
It was a little over a week later when Merritt showed up in Jack’s office in person. He insisted on using the SCIF. Jack went through the rigmarole of coding and securing the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, which was really just a small room hardened against monitoring, hacking, and other activities of ill intent. The round table seated eight comfortably, and Jack had been in there once with twelve while they all slowly asphyxiated, but that had been an emergency and not repeated. Oxygen levels were the least of his worries, however. Merritt’s face was grim.
Once they were seated, the door locked, and the air filters hard at work, the man from Maryland wasted no time on preliminaries. “He’s found it.”
Jack swallowed. “When?”
“Two days ago. Has he called you?”
Jack felt a spark of temper. “You know he hasn’t.”
Merritt looked affronted. “We only monitor the calls with your friend. And you notify us about them.”
Jack didn’t believe him. “Right.”
“And he’s talking to the Chinese.”
Jack was on his feet. This time there was no general around to moderate his reaction and his hands flexed and clenched. Also, his stomach roiled. “That’s not true.”
Merritt shrugged. “It is.”
“You’re lying.”
“Who’d be more likely to know? Us or you?”
Who’d be more likely to be steeped in deceit, was the real question, Jack thought. Carefully, he unclenched his fists and put his hand on the table. He sat back down. “Why,” he bit out, “didn’t you people ask Congress for authority for lunar licensing? Once all the lunar activity started? Then you could put your secret shutter control conditions into the license and tell anyone who spotted the Moon base to keep their mouths shut. Under legal order.”
Merritt’s shoulders rose and fell. “That was a decision at the policy level. Someone decided to take Coca-Cola’s approach. There’s a good argument that keeping something completely secret works better than letting some know about it. And it’s not what we’re talking about right now.”
“So call him up,” Jack said. “Tell him not to talk about it. He’s got some level of clearances just for the Earth remote sensing. You won’t even have to threaten him. He’s no traitor.”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“I’ll tell him to cut it out,” Jack said.
“You will not.” Merritt produced a thin smile. “We have something else in mind for you. We want you to follow up, see where he’s going with it.”
“He’s going nowhere,” Jack insisted.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?”
Jack hated himself. Merritt had eventually reached out to the general, who had reminded Jack that she expected him to provide all reasonable assistance required of him.
It was too soon: his wife hadn’t finished the first trimester, but it was all he had that was worth making a call for.
“Lin’s pregnant!” Jack announced with false, hearty cheer. It wasn’t a topic he could run through a sarcasm filter. Lin’s pregnancy wasn’t a topic he should be using for Merritt, but he tamped down the queasy feeling.
Niall was thrilled for both of them.
Jack didn’t have to bring up the Moon base. Once Niall had said all the right things, he leaned toward the camera, his hands wrapping around his elbows. “You on the secure line?”
Jack felt hollow of a sudden. He had nothing to worry about, he told himself for the thousandth time. Sure, Niall was too curious for his own good sometimes, and, sure, he had a slight reckless streak, but he had his company and his employees to consider, his own family, his freedom from incarceration. And he loved his country.
“I am.”
“I’ve got news too. Not as good as yours, but fun.”
“Shoot,” Jack said.
“I found it.”
“Found what?” Jack knew he was dragging things out purely as an avoidance tactic. He didn’t care.
“The Moon base!”
“You’re kidding.” Jack forced himself to look interested, amazed, and surprised. Maybe he even succeeded.
“On lunar far side.”
“How do you know it’s ours?” Jack asked. “And not Chinese.”
“Found it in one of the USGS lacunae.”
Why the man couldn’t say “gap” was not something Jack pondered. His friend found everything too fun, from language to Moon bases.
“But speaking of the Chinese—” Niall paused for dramatic effect and Jack’s stomach clenched. “They reached out.”
Jack swallowed. “What did you say?”
“I told them to get away from me.” He batted the air with his hands. “Away from me now.”
Relief washed through Jack in a physical wave. “Smart. That was smart.”
“He’s lying to you,” Merritt said the next day on the beach.
“Or you are.”
Merritt had found Jack on his run, and had insisted he stop and talk. It gave Jack yet another reason to dislike the man. Merritt looked absurd in his suit and dress shoes on the sand’s edge. He’d gestured from near the dunes to get Jack over. At least Jack had his back to the rising sun, and it was in Merritt’s eyes.
“We want you to tell him there’s no harm in talking to the Chinese. See what they want.”
“He’d never,” Jack scoffed, “believe I’d suggest that.”
“It’s a way to draw the Chinese out. We’d like to know how they saw what he was doing.”
It was incredible that the Chinese would have been watching Niall or the USGS—or both—and been able to tell what Niall had done so quickly. It was even more incredible that the NSA had been watching the right Chinese. He supposed computer programs could follow many things and alert their operators, but still. It was all incredible, and he knew it.
“So ask Niall,” Jack said, watching Merritt’s face closely.
Merritt shook his head in a way that said he found Jack a little slow. “We don’t know if we can trust Niall.”
“You can trust him as much as me,” Jack said. “You know he told the Chinese to go pound sand.”
“That’s what he told you.”
Jack realized he was standing at attention, and folded his arms. “Do you know any different?”
“You know I can’t share classified information, Captain.”
“This makes no sense. What you’re really asking me to do is trap Niall. Then you can threaten him with jail to keep him from talking about the base.”
“Captain Rampling, may I remind you that you are supposed to help us?”
“To trap my friend.” The sun burned into Jack’s back. “I don’t think the general knew you meant to do this.”
“I don’t think a captain will be asking her to clarify.” Merritt’s lips pursed into a new kind of smile.
“If I suggest it, he’ll think it’s okay,” Jack pointed out.
“If you trust him as much as you say you do, you shouldn’t worry. Right?” Merritt produced another one of his thin smiles, and Jack pressed his arms against his ribs to hold still.
“Right,” he said.
Jack spent the rest of his run slick with three kinds of sweat: cold, nervous, and exertional. He seriously considered trying to warn Niall, but the general had cautioned against hinting. He was being monitored when he talked to Niall. He thought about crossing his eyes when he spoke with his friend about the Chinese. Niall could then maybe figure that cross meant “double cross” and not do or say something stupid, but there were three problems with that: anyone monitoring the call would see it; it was ridiculous; and—worst of all—Niall would ask what was wrong with his eyes.
Merritt hadn’t admitted to trying to trap Niall, but it was obvious what was going on. If they were really after the Chinese, they’d enlist Niall himself. The claim they didn’t trust him was anatomically implausible. No, for whatever reason the NSA had, this was entrapment, plain and simple.
Jack had no good excuse for this next call to Niall. He’d already told his friend about Lin’s pregnancy. Since they’d each married, the two didn’t talk as often as they had even in the years after school. Niall would think it strange to get a pointless call.
Jack almost slowed down. Maybe that was a good thing. The topic itself should alert Niall to something being off—really off.
That evening after dinner, he texted Niall for a call and went into the study, closing the door and the windows and cutting off the smell of the ocean and Lin’s garden flowers. That was fine. He didn’t deserve to be smelling the outdoors—not now that he’d entered Merritt’s muck.
His stomach clenched, but he placed the call.
“Now what?” Niall’s fox smile was as cheerful as his red hair. “I’m hearing from you a lot these days.”
“Just calling to say hi. Lin’s doing her pregnancy swim.”
“That’s a thing?”
It was now. Jack riffed on that, asked after Niall’s family, and otherwise talked in circles.
Finally, Niall said, “You want to know about the Moon base, don’t you?”
“Of course. I’ve been waiting to hear about it in the news.”
“I’d never do that,” Niall said earnestly.
“I know. I know. I have been wondering how the Chinese knew to call you.”
“It was bizarre. It happened really fast. Like, why would they be watching me rather than looking for it themselves? And, if they already knew it was there, why would they need to talk to me?”
“Spies,” Jack said sourly, well aware of his listeners, “have weasel brains. They think in circles. Now they’ve got you doing it.”
Niall showed his teeth. “I’m not losing sleep over it.”
“Maybe you should engage with them. Try to figure out how they got through your firewalls.”
A pause grew. It grew longer. Sweat sparked on the back of Jack’s neck. Niall wasn’t an idiot. He was about to figure out that something was seriously wrong. There were regulations requiring permissions to talk aerospace issues with certain countries, and China was one of them. Jack swallowed. He waited for Niall to laugh and mock him for a failed gotcha.
Instead, Niall frowned. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“Aren’t you curious?”
“I’m always curious. But you?” Niall’s ready grin had long vanished.
Jack gave a wan smile. “You know me.”
Again, there was a long pause. It was almost as if Jack could watch Niall processing the algorithms. “Well, if you think it’s a good idea, I’ll give it a go.”
Jack shrugged. “Why not?”
Niall opened his mouth. Closed it again. “Listen, I’ve got work to catch up on. I’ll let you know what I find out.”
They ended the call.
“You asshole,” Jack said, knowing someone would hear, and it wasn’t Niall.
***
Jack spent the next two days sick to his stomach. Lin asked if he had sympathy morning sickness, and he assured her that was probably what it was, despite the fact Lin herself had had none so far.
He’d done it. He’d set the trap and Niall had walked right into it. To find out how the Chinese knew about Niall’s discovery meant Niall would have to admit to knowing about it himself—and that might be a nail in his coffin, a coffin that Jack had helped build.
Jack had tried to make his suggestion a strange one, but it had come from him and Niall had trusted him. Niall had probably thought that Jack was doing something appropriate because Jack always did what was appropriate.
Not this time. And if Jack himself could do something this wrong, why wouldn’t Niall? Only, the consequences for Niall were far worse.
Late in the afternoon of the second day, Niall texted asking if he could stop by Jack’s office the next morning. He had something big, really big. Jack forwarded Niall’s message to Merritt, and agreed to meet with Niall in the SCIF at 10:00 a.m.
His stomach continued to pain him.
To Jack’s surprise, Merritt showed up an hour before the scheduled meeting. “I caught an early flight,” he said. “And you need coaching.”
Niall’s arrival put an end to the coaching, and Merritt vanished into a second-floor office. Jack ushered Niall down the hall and to the special door with its codes and seals. Neither of them said much, which was strange for them.
Someone had left a window open at the end of the hall, and Jack took a long breath of fresh morning air before he gestured Niall into the SCIF. Niall’s face was set and still, and he took a chair across from Jack without his usual bounce.
Jack settled in. Maybe Niall had figured it all out and come to yell at him. That would be all right, he told himself. He’d maybe lost a friend—almost a brother—but Niall wouldn’t be going to prison. He cursed Merritt.
“So,” Jack said. “Something big? Really big?”
Niall gave a short nod. “But I need something from you first. I need to see whoever put you up to this so they can hear it too.”
Now that it had come, Jack felt calm. His stomach stopped hurting. Niall knew. Niall was safe. Niall was furious with him, and Jack knew that what he’d done wasn’t something that could be forgiven. But Jack hadn’t misplaced his trust.
He set aside his own rage.
“That could take some time,” Jack said.
“I’ll wait.”
“Here?”
“Here’s fine. I figure we’re being monitored.”
“Okay.”
They sat in silence for maybe ten minutes. Jack felt no need to say anything. Niall had the ball and he meant to let him run with it. Niall apparently saw no need for chitchat either.
The door finally opened, and Merritt stepped into the room. It looked like he’d obtained any permissions he needed to talk to Niall. His appearance also suggested that the NSA hadn’t been monitoring Niall unless he was talking to Jack. If it had been surveilling Niall, Merritt wouldn’t need to reveal himself to hear what was “really big.” He’d already know.
Jack stood. Niall didn’t. “Niall,” Jack said, “this is Mr. Merritt from Fort Meade. He doesn’t have a first name.”
Niall stretched a lean arm over the chair back next to him, effectively blocking Merritt from taking it.
Merritt gave his thin smile and took a different seat. “I hear you have something really big, Mr. Yarrow.”
“I do.” Niall maintained his aggressive lounging posture. “But it’s more about you than the Chinese. Sorry about that.”
Merritt stiffened.
“I learned,” Niall began but stopped. “No. Let me change that. I figured out—”
Niall was showing off. That was a good sign.
“—that someone was torturing my friend Jack here. Apparently, it was you. I know Jack. He’s a good fellow. He does everything by the book, and he follows orders. And suddenly he thinks I should violate all sorts of regulations and talk to the Chinese? That was crazy talk.”
“You made a call we couldn’t monitor,” Merritt snarled. “On a completely dark line.”
Niall showed all his teeth. “Just trying to check in with one of your bosses.”
Merritt stood. “Mr. Yarrow, you have knowingly misled me about your big news.”
Jack couldn’t stop his guffaw.
Merritt glared at him.
“Please.” Niall gestured to Merritt’s empty seat. “Sit down. I’m trying to help.”
“You are not,” Merritt said, but resumed his seat.
“I am. I want you to think twice before you torture honorable men again. I suffered. I even worried you’d threatened Jack’s family to make him trick me. Terrible stuff. What I really don’t like is you probably made Jack suffer even more. That’s not right.”
“How did you figure it out?” Merritt demanded through stiff lips.
Niall scowled. “I already told you. He suggested I talk to the Chinese.”
Merritt turned on Jack. “This is your fault. You should have told him the Chinese might have offered him money.”
Jack was laughing, maybe with a thread of the hysteria attendant to sudden and extreme relief. He tried to stop, but was horrified to find himself still hiccupping involuntarily.
“That would have been worse,” Jack said. “Sir. I picked the best thing I could for him not to see right through me.”
Merritt’s head pivoted from one to the other of the younger men. “How was what you said the best thing?”
“Look at him.” Jack waved toward Niall. “He’s all about curiosity. Showing off what he can figure out. It really was the thing most likely to tempt him. For the love of heaven, man, he figured out we’ve had a Moon base for more than two decades. A secret one. Curiosity would work better on him than anything.”
Niall managed to look proud despite his slouch. “It was when he said, ‘you know me,’” he offered helpfully, expertly mimicking Jack’s wan, desperate words.
Merritt turned on Jack. “You did do it on purpose.”
Jack spread his hands, careful not to look toward Niall. There was a mic in the room. “I really couldn’t say. Sir. It was a terrible experience for me, and I’ve been trying to forget it. I suffered.”
Merritt stood again. “You, Captain, are not cut out for intelligence work.”
“No,” Jack said, rising to his feet as well. “The Space Force looks up.”
***
Laura Montgomery is a practicing space lawyer who writes space opera and near-future, bourgeois, legal science fiction. Her latest book, His Terrible Stall, is the fifth in her Martha’s Sons series, which is set on the lost colony world of Now What We Were Looking For. Her most recent near-future novel is Mercenary Calling, and it follows one man’s efforts to save a starship captain from charges of mutiny. Her fiction website is at LauraMontgomery.com.
Before starting her own practice that emphasizes commercial space transportation and the Outer Space Treaties, she was the manager of the Space Law Branch in the FAA’s Office of the Chief Counsel, where she supported the regulators of commercial launch, reentry, and spaceports. There she worked on issues ranging from explosive siting to property rights in space. She has testified to the space committees of both the House and Senate, and is an adjunct professor of space law at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law. She writes and edits the space law blog GroundBasedSpaceMatters.com, and speaks regularly on space law issues.