Artemis

3

I slinked along a huge corridor on Aldrin Down 7. I didn’t really have to sneak around—at this ungodly hour, no one was in sight.

Five a.m. was a largely theoretical concept to me. I knew it existed, but I rarely observed it. Nor did I want to. But this morning was different. Trond insisted on secrecy, so we had to meet before normal working hours.

Barn doors towered every twenty meters. The lots here were few and large, a testament to how much money these businesses had handy. Trond’s company workshop was labeled only with a sign reading LD7-4030—LANDVIK INDUSTRIES.

I knocked on the door. A second later, it slid partially open. Trond poked his head out and looked both ways down the hall.

“Were you followed?”

“Of course,” I said. “And I led them straight to you. Turns out I’m not very bright.”

“Smartass.”

“Dumbass.”

“Come in.” He gestured me forward.

I slipped in and he immediately closed the door. I didn’t know if he thought this was stealthy or what. But hey, he was paying me a million slugs. We could play 007 if he wanted.

The workshop was effectively a garage. A huge garage. Seriously, I’d kill to have that space. I’d make a little house in one corner and then, I don’t know, install fake grass in the rest of it? Four identical harvesters, each in its own bay, filled the room.

I walked over to the nearest harvester and looked up at it. “Wow.”

“Yeah,” Trond said. “You don’t realize how big they are until you see one up close.”

“How did you get them into town without anyone knowing?”

“It wasn’t easy,” Trond said. “I had them shipped here in pieces. Only my most trusted people even know about it. I pieced together a staff of seven mechanics who know how to keep their mouths shut.”

I scanned the cavernous workshop. “Anyone else here?”

“Of course not. I don’t want anyone knowing I hired you.”

“I’m hurt.”

The harvester stood four meters tall, five meters wide, and ten meters long. Reflective material coated the hull to minimize solar heating. Each of the beast’s six wheels was a meter and a half across. The bulk of the machine was a huge, empty basin. Powerful hydraulics on the front and a hinge on the rear provided the basin’s dumping mechanism.

The front of the harvester had a scoop with associated articulation. There was no passenger compartment, of course. Harvesters were automated—though they could be remote-controlled when necessary. A sealed metal box rested where you might expect a cockpit. It bore the Toyota logo, along with the word “Tsukuruma” in a stylish font.

Roll-around toolboxes and maintenance equipment surrounded the harvester wherever the workers had left off at the end of their shift.

“Okay,” I said, taking in the scene. “This is going to be a challenge.”

“What’s the problem?” Trond walked over to one of the wheels and leaned against it. “It’s just a robot—it doesn’t have any defenses. Its only AI is for pathing. I’m sure you and a big tank of acetylene could figure something out.”

“This thing is a tank, Trond. It’s not going to be easy to kill.” I walked partially around the harvester and got a closer look at the undercarriage. “And it’s got cameras everywhere.”

“Of course it does,” said Trond. “It needs them to navigate.”

“It sends video back to its controllers,” I said. “Once it goes offline, the controllers will roll back to footage to see what happened. They’ll see me.”

“So cover up any identifying marks on your EVA suit,” Trond said. “No problem.”

“Oh there’s a problem. They’ll call the EVA masters to ask what the hell’s going on, and then the EVA masters will come out to get me. They won’t know who I am, but they can drag my ass back inside and have a Scooby-Doo moment when they pull my helmet off.”

He walked around to my side of the harvester. “I see your point.”

I ran my hands through my hair. I hadn’t showered that morning. I felt like I was a wad of grease that had been dipped in a vat of dirtier grease. “I need to come up with something that has a delayed effect. So it’ll happen after I get back inside.”

“And don’t forget, you’ve got to total the things. If there’s anything left to fix, Sanchez’s repair crews will have them up and running in days.”

“Yeah, I know.” I pinched my chin. “Where’s the battery?”

“In the forward compartment. The box with the Toyota logo on it.”

I found a primary breaker box near the forward compartment. Inside were the main breakers to protect the electronics from power surges or shorts. Worth noting.

I leaned up against a nearby tool cabinet. “When they’re full, they take their stuff to the smelter?”

“Yeah.” He picked up a wrench and threw it into the air. It lofted toward the ceiling.

“Then they… what? Dump their load and go back to Moltke?”

“After they recharge.”

I ran my hand along the sleek, reflective metal of the basin. “How big’s the battery?”

“Two point four megawatt hours.”

“Wow!” I turned to him. “I could arc-weld with that kind of juice.”

He shrugged. “Hauling a hundred tons of rock takes energy.”

I climbed under the harvester. “How does it deal with heat rejection? Wax state-change material?”

“No idea.”

When you’re in a vacuum, getting rid of heat is a problem. There’s no air to carry it away. And when you have electric power, every Joule of energy ultimately becomes heat. It might be from electrical resistance, friction in moving parts, or chemical reactions in the battery that release the energy in the first place. But ultimately it all ends up as heat.

Artemis has a complex coolant system that conveys the heat to thermal panels near the reactor complex. They sit in the shade and slowly radiate the energy away as infrared light. But the harvesters had to be self-contained.

After some searching, I found what I was looking for. The heat-rejection system valve. I recognized the type immediately—Dad and I had attached many of these in the past while repairing rovers.

“Yeah. It’s wax,” I said.

I saw Trond’s feet approach. “What’s that mean?” he asked.

“The battery and motor housings are encased in a solid wax reservoir. Melting the wax takes a lot of energy, so that’s where the heat goes. The wax lines are surrounded by coolant pipes. When the harvester comes home to recharge, they pump cold water into those pipes to re-chill the wax, then pull the newly heated water back out. Then they cool the water off at their leisure while the harvester gets back to work.”

“So can you make the harvesters overheat?” he asked. “Is that your plan?”

“It’s not that simple. There are safeties to prevent overheating. The harvesters would just shut down until they cooled off. Sanchez’s engineers would fix the problem right away. I have a different idea.”

I wriggled out from under the harvester, stood, and stretched my back. Then I climbed the side and dropped into the basin. My voice echoed as I spoke. “Can any of its cameras see in here?”

“Why?” he asked. “Oh! You’re going to ride a harvester to the Moltke Foothills!”

“Trond, can the cameras see in here?”

“No. Their purpose is navigation. They point outward. Hey, how will you get out of the city? You don’t have airlock privileges.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I climbed out of the basin and dropped four meters to the ground. I pulled a chair toward me, spun it around, and straddled it. I rested my chin on my palm and got lost in thought.

Trond sidled over. “So?”

“Thinking,” I said.

“Do women know how sexy they look when they sit like that?”

“Of course.”

“I knew it!”

“Trying to concentrate.”

“Sorry.”

I peered at the harvester for several minutes. Trond wandered aimlessly around the bay and fiddled with tools. He was an entrepreneurial genius, but he had the patience of a ten-year-old.

“Okay,” I finally said. “I have a plan.”

“Yeah?” Trond dropped a socket driver and scurried over. “Do tell.”

I shook my head. “Don’t worry about the details.”

“I like details.”

“A lady’s got to have her secrets.” I stood up. “But I’ll completely destroy their harvesters.”

“That sounds great!”

“All right,” I said. “I’m going home. I need a shower.”

“Yeah,” said Trond. “You really do.”

Once I got back to my coffin, I threw off my clothes faster than a drunk prom date. On with a bathrobe and off to the showers. I even paid the extra 200ğ for a soak in a tub. Felt good.

I spent the day doing deliveries as usual. I didn’t want some perceptive asshole to notice a break in my routine immediately before a huge crime got committed. Just a normal day. No need to look at me whistling innocently. I worked until about four p.m.

I went home, lay down (it’s not like I could stand up), and did some research. I envy one thing about Earthers—they get much faster internet. We have a local network in Artemis that’s handy for slug transactions and email, but when it comes to web searches, all those servers are back on Earth. And that means an absolute minimum of four seconds’ wait for every request. The speed of light just isn’t as fast as I’d like.

I drank so much tea I had to jog to the communal bathroom every twenty minutes. After hours of work, I came to a conclusion: I really wanted my own bathroom.

But by the end of it I had a plan. And like all good plans, it required a crazy Ukrainian guy.

I pulled Trigger up to the ESA Research Center and parked in the narrow hallway.

Space agencies around the world were the first to rent property in Artemis. In the old days, Armstrong Ground was the best real estate in town. Since then, four more bubbles sprang up, and the space agencies remained. Their once cutting-edge design was now two decades out of date.

I hopped off Trigger and went into the labs. The first room, a tiny reception area, was a throwback to the days when real estate was much more limited. Four hallways led off at odd angles. Some of the doors couldn’t be opened if others were open. The ergonomic abortion was the result of seventeen governments designing a laboratory by committee. I went through the center door, down the hallway almost to the end, and into the microelectronics lab.

Martin Svoboda hunched over a microscope and reached absently for his coffee. His hand passed three beakers of deadly acid before he grabbed the mug and took a sip. I swear that idiot’s going to kill himself someday.

He’d been assigned to Artemis by ESA four years ago to study microelectronic manufacturing methods. Apparently, the moon has some unique advantages in that area. The ESA lab is a highly coveted posting, so he must’ve been good at his job.

“Svoboda,” I said.

Nothing. He hadn’t noticed me come in and didn’t hear me speak. He’s like that.

I smacked him on the back of the head and he jerked away from the microscope. He smiled like a child seeing a beloved aunt. “Oh! Hi, Jazz! What’s up?”

I sat on a lab stool opposite him. “I need some mad science from you.”

“Cool!” He spun his stool to face me. “What can I do?”

“I need electronics.” I pulled schematics out of my pocket and handed them over. “This. Or something like it.”

“Paper?” He held the schematics like they were a urine sample. “You wrote them on paper?”

“I don’t know how to use drafting apps,” I said. “Just—what do you think?”

He unfolded the paper and frowned at my scribblings. Svoboda was the best electrical engineer in town. Something like this shouldn’t be a challenge for him.

He turned the sketch sideways. “Did you draw this with your left hand or something?”

“I’m not an artist, okay?”

He pinched his chin. “Art quality aside, this is an elegant design. Did you copy it from somewhere?”

“No, why? Is something wrong?”

He raised his brow. “It’s just… it’s really well done.”

“Thanks?”

“I never knew you were so talented.”

I shrugged. “I found electronics tutorials online and worked from there.”

“You taught yourself?” He looked back to the schematic. “How long did it take?”

“Most of the afternoon.”

“You learned all this today?! You’d make a great scientist—”

“Stop.” I held up my hand. “I don’t want to hear it. Can you make it or not?”

“Sure, sure,” he said. “When do you need it?”

“The sooner the better.”

He tossed the schematics on the lab table. “I can have it for you tomorrow.”

“Great.” I hopped off the stool and whipped out my Gizmo. “How much?”

He hesitated—never a good sign during negotiations.

He’d done odd jobs for me for years, mostly removing anti-piracy chips from smuggled electronics. He usually charged 2,000ğ for freelance work. Why was this time different?

“Two thousand slugs?” I suggested.

“Hmm,” he said. “Would you consider a trade?”

“Sure.” I put my Gizmo away. “Need something smuggled in?”

“No.”

“I see.” Goddammit, I’m a smuggler! Why did people keep asking for other shit?!

He stood and gestured for me to follow. I went with him to the back corner of his lab where he did his off-book work. Why buy your own equipment when the taxpayers of Europe will buy it for you?

“Behold!” He gestured to the table.

The item in the middle wasn’t much to look at. Just a small, clear plastic box with something inside. I took a closer look. “Is that a condom?”

“Yes!” he said proudly. “My latest invention.”

“The Chinese beat you by seven centuries.”

“This is not your everyday condom!” He slid a thermos-size cylinder over to me. It had a power cable and a hinged top. “It comes with this.”

I opened the top. Tiny holes inside adorned the walls and a rounded metal cylinder stood mounted to the bottom. “Um. Okay…”

“I can make a profit by selling these kits for three thousand slugs each.”

“Condoms only cost fifty slugs. Why would anyone buy this?”

He grinned. “It’s reusable!”

I blinked. “Are you shitting me?”

“Not at all! It’s made of a thin but durable material. Good for hundreds of uses.” He pointed to the rounded metal part of the device. “After each use, you turn the condom inside-out and put it on this cylinder—”

“Ew.”

“Then you turn on the cleaner. There’s a liquid cleanse cycle and then a high temperature bake for ten minutes. After that it’s sterile and ready to use again—”

“Oh God, no.”

“You should probably rinse it off first—”

“Stop!” I said. “Why would anyone want something like this?”

“Because it saves money in the long run, and it’s less prone to failure than a normal condom.”

I gave him my most dubious glare.

“Do the math,” he said. “Normal condoms cost way too much. No one manufactures them locally—there’s no raw materials to make latex. But my product will last through two hundred uses, minimum. That’s ten thousand slugs of savings.”

“Huh…” Now he was speaking my language. “Okay, maybe it’s not so crazy after all. But I don’t have money to invest right now….”

“Oh, I’m not looking for investors. I need someone to test it.”

“And you think I’ve got the dick for the job?”

He rolled his eyes. “I need to know how it feels for the woman.”

“I’m not having sex with you.”

“No, no!” He winced. “I just want you to use it the next time you have sex. Then tell me how it affected your experience.”

“Why don’t you bang a girl and ask her yourself?”

He looked at his shoes. “I don’t have a girlfriend and I’m terrible with women.”

“There are brothels all over Aldrin! High-end, low-end, whatever you want.”

“That’s no good.” He crossed his arms. “I need data from a woman who is having sex for fun. The woman has to be sexually experienced, which you definitely are—”

“Careful…”

“And likely to have sex in the near future. Which, again—”

“Choose your next words wisely.”

He paused. “Anyway. You see what I’m after.”

I groaned. “Can’t I just pay you two thousand slugs?”

“I don’t need money. I need testing.”

I glared at the condom. It looked normal enough. “So it’s effective? You’re sure it won’t break or anything?”

“Oh, definitely. I’ve run it through a battery of tests. Stretching, pressure, friction, you name it.”

A disturbing thought popped into my head. “Wait. Have you used this one?”

“No, but it wouldn’t matter if I had. The cleaning process renders it sterile.”

“Are you kidd—” I stopped myself and took a breath. Then, as calmly as I could, I said, “It would matter, Svoboda. Maybe not biologically, but psychologically.”

He shrugged.

I deliberated for a moment, then finally said, “Okay, it’s a deal. But I’m not promising to run out and get laid.”

“Sure, sure,” he said. “Just… whenever the next time it comes up naturally, you know?”

“Yeah, all right.”

“Excellent!” He picked up the condom box and cleaning device and handed them to me. “Call me if you have any questions.”

I took the items gingerly. Not my proudest moment, but logically speaking there was nothing wrong with it. I was just doing some product testing, right? That’s not weird, right?

Right?

I started to leave. Then I stopped and turned back toward him. “Hey… have you ever heard of something called ZAFO?”

“No, should I have?”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. I’ll drop by tomorrow afternoon to pick up the device.”

“It’s my day off. Want to meet at the park instead? Say, three p.m.?”

“That works,” I said.

“Can I ask what this thing is for?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. See you tomorrow.”

Conrad Down 6.

I drove Trigger down the familiar hallways and tried to ignore the sinking feeling in my gut. I knew every crooked hallway, every shop, and every scratch on every wall. I could close my eyes and tell where I was just from echoes and background noise.

I rounded the corner to Crafters Row. The best tradesmen in town worked here, but there were no flashing signs or advertisements. They didn’t need to draw in customers. They got their business through reputation.

I parked in front of CD6-3028, got out, and hesitated at the door. I turned away in a moment of cowardice, steeled myself, then turned back and rang the buzzer.

A man with a weathered face answered the door. He had a well-trimmed beard and wore a white taqiyah (head covering). He stared at me quietly for a moment, then said, “Huh.”

“Good evening, Father,” I said in Arabic.

“Are you in trouble?”

“No.”

“Do you need money?”

“No, Father. I am independent now.”

He furrowed his brow. “Then why are you here?”

“Can a daughter not visit her father simply to honor him?”

“Cut the crap,” he said in English. “What do you want?”

“I need to borrow some welding equipment.”

“Interesting.” He left the door open and walked into the shop. That was as much invitation as I was going to get.

Not much had changed over the years. The fireproofed workshop was hot and cramped, as they all were. Dad’s meticulously organized equipment hung on the walls. A worktable dominated one corner of the room next to a collection of welding masks.

“Come on,” he said. I followed him through the back door into the residence. The tiny living room was palatial compared to my humble shithole.

Dad’s place had two coffin bunks along one wall. Very common among lower-class Artemisians. Not as nice as bedrooms, but they allowed privacy, which was good. I grew up in that house. I did… stuff in that bunk.

He had a cook nook with an actual flame-based stove. One of the few advantages to living in a fireproofed room. Way better than a microwave. You might think a real stove meant tasty meals, but you’d be wrong. Dad did his best, but Gunk is Gunk. There’s only so much you can do with algae.

There was one big change, though. Along the back wall a meter-wide sheet of metal ran from the floor to the ceiling—it wasn’t even close to vertical. I’d estimate 20 to 30 degrees off true.

I pointed to the new feature. “What the hell is that?”

Dad looked over to it. “It’s an idea I came up with a while ago.”

“What’s it for?”

“Work it out.”

Ugh! If I had a slug for every time he’d said that in my life… Never a straight answer—everything had to be a goddamn learning experience.

He crossed his arms and watched me like he always did during these little quizzes.

I walked over and touched the sheet. Very sturdy, of course. He never did anything half-assed. “Two-millimeter sheet aluminum?”

“Correct.”

“So it doesn’t need to handle lateral force…” I ran my finger along the intersection of the sheet and the wall. I felt small bumps every twenty centimeters. “Spot welds? That’s not like you.”

He shrugged. “It might be a stupid idea. I’m not ready to commit.”

Two hooks jutted out from the top of the sheet, just centimeters from the ceiling. “You’re going to hang something on it.”

“Correct. But what?”

I looked it up and down. “This weird angle is the key… got a protractor I could borrow?”

“I’ll save you the trouble,” he said. “It’s twenty-two point nine degrees from vertical.”

“Huh…” I said. “Artemis’s longitude is twenty-two point nine… ah. Okay, I got it.” I turned to face him. “It’s for prayers.”

“Correct,” he said. “I call it a prayer wall.”

The moon always points the same face toward Earth. So, even though we’re in orbit, from our point of view, Earth doesn’t move. Well, technically, it wobbles a bit because of lunar libration, but don’t worry your pretty little head about that. Point is: Earth is fixed in the sky. It rotates in place and goes through phases, but it doesn’t move.

The ramp pointed at Earth so Dad could face Mecca while praying. Most Muslims here just faced west—that’s what Dad had done all my life.

“How will you use it?” I asked. “Special straps or something? I mean—it’s almost vertical.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He put both hands on the prayer wall and leaned forward onto it. “Like this. Simple and easy. And it’s more in keeping with Qiblah than facing west on the moon.”

“Seems silly, Dad. It’s not like Muslims in Australia dig a hole and face down. You think Muhammad’s going to be impressed?”

“Hey,” he said sharply, “if you’re not going to practice Islam, you don’t get to talk about the Prophet.”

“All right, all right,” I said. I pointed to the hooks. “What are those for?”

“Work it out.”

“Ugh!” I said. Then I grudgingly added, “For attaching a prayer rug?”

“Correct.” He walked to a table near the cook nook and sat in one of the chairs. “I don’t want to poke holes in my usual prayer rug, so I ordered another one from Earth. It’ll be here in a few weeks.”

I sat in the other chair, where I’d had countless meals throughout my life. “Do you have a shipping manifest number? I can arrange to get it here faster—”

“No, thanks.”

“Dad, there’s nothing illegal about pulling strings to—”

“No, thanks,” he said, a little louder this time. “Let’s not argue about it.”

I gritted my teeth but kept quiet. Time for a change of subject. “Weird question: Have you ever heard of something called ‘ZAFO’?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that an ancient Greek lesbian?”

“No, that’s Sappho.”

“Oh. Then no. What is it?”

“No idea,” I said. “Just something I saw in passing and wondered about.”

“You’ve always been curious. You’re great at finding answers too. Maybe you should put your genius to work on something useful for a change.”

“Dad,” I said with a hint of warning in my voice.

“Fine.” He folded his arms. “So you need welding equipment?”

“Yeah.”

“Last time you had access to my equipment it didn’t go well.”

I stiffened. I tried not to break eye contact, but I couldn’t help myself. I looked at the floor.

He took a softer tone. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled-for.”

“No, it wasn’t,” I said.

We had an uncomfortable silence—we’d mastered that art over the years.

“Well…” he said awkwardly. “So… what do you need?”

I cleared my head. I didn’t have time for gnawing guilt. “I need a torch, a couple tanks of acetylene, a tank of O₂, and a mask.”

“What about neon?” he asked.

I winced. “Right, yeah. Neon, of course.”

“You’re getting rusty,” he said.

I didn’t need neon. But I couldn’t tell him that.

When you weld aluminum, you need to flood it with a nonreactive gas to keep the surface from oxidizing. On Earth they use argon because it’s massively abundant. But we don’t have noble gases on the moon, so we have to ship them in from Earth. And neon weighs half as much as argon, so that’s what we use. It didn’t matter to me, because I’d be working in a vacuum. No oxygen to oxidize the metal. But I didn’t want him to know that. Also, I’d be cutting steel, not aluminum. But again—no reason to share that with Dad.

“So, what’s this for?” he asked.

“I’m installing an air shelter for a friend.”

I’d lied to Dad more times than I could count, especially when I was a teen. But every time—every damn time—it tied my stomach in knots.

“Why doesn’t your friend hire a welder?” he asked.

“She did. She hired me.”

“Oh, so you’re a welder now?” He widened his eyes theatrically. “After years of telling me you didn’t want to do it?”

I sighed. “Dad. It’s just a friend who wants an air shelter in her bedroom. I’m barely charging her for it.” Residential air shelters were common, especially among recent immigrants. Newcomers tend to be paranoid about the whole “deadly vacuum outside” thing. It’s irrational—Artemis’s hull is extremely safe—but fear isn’t logical. In practice, personal air shelters quickly become closets.

“What’s the illegal part?” he asked.

I gave him a hurt look. “Why would you assume there’s—”

“What’s the illegal part?” he repeated.

“Her apartment’s in Armstrong up against the inner hull. I have to weld the shelter directly to it. The city requires all sorts of extra inspections if you weld to the inner hull and she can’t afford them.”

“Hmf,” he said. “Pointless bureaucracy. Even the most rank amateur couldn’t damage a six-centimeter plate of aluminum.”

“I know, right?!” I said.

He folded his arms and frowned. “Darned city getting in the way of business…”

“Preach.”

“All right. Take what you want. But you have to reimburse me for the acetylene and neon.”

“Right, of course,” I said.

“You all right? You look kind of pale.”

I was about ready to puke. Lying to Dad transported me back to my teen years. And let me tell you: there’s no one I hate more than teenage Jazz Bashara. That stupid bitch made every bad decision a stupid bitch could make. She’s responsible for where I am today.

“I’m fine. Just a little tired.”