Four From The Firmament: Space Life Series, #5

By Barry Shuken

Four short stories dealing with the aftermath of the apocalyptic impact of an asteroid one hundred years from now.

They are told by four who survived, four of rthe ones who were only traumatized.

Read about what is to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Self-Publshed
• Release date: Feb 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224213832

Barry Shuken

I am a retired lawer who loves astronomy and science fiction.. There is  much information on space science easily avialable, but it is used indifferently in fiction. I have been starved for stories that are true to real space science, and i have been looking for some.. When I found none, i set out to write them. The Space Life Series is the result.

Book preview

Four From The Firmament

Space Life Series, Volume 5

Barry Shuken

Published by Self-Publshed, 2024.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

FOUR FROM THE FIRMAMENT

First edition. February 9, 2024.

Copyright © 2024 Barry Shuken.

Written by Barry Shuken.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Four From The Firmament (Space Life Series, #5)

Contents

1. Rock and A Hard Place

2. The Librarian.

3. End Game

4. Coming of Age in the Universe

1.  Rock and A Hard Place

I killed my dearest friend that day. He was my brother, really. I sent the bullets where they would do the most damage, right through his helmet. I used one of our trusty high powered rifles. It was a double tap, to make sure. I hope I killed him fast. Oh God, I hope I did. He had had enough by then.

He was trapped there, a hundred meters from me. A rockslide caught him and damaged his suit, crushing his legs under tons of rock. Shattered stone entrapped him. It still was early days on the Moon. We had foolishly piled our rocks over the maximum angle that was safe. That is determined by the prevailing gravity and friction, not by fools like us. Every  engineer knows that the Moon’s gravity is much less than Earth’s.

We thought our work was important, and we felt its urgency. We were aware that the second Impactor could be on its way. The astronomers said it could hit us at any time and bring new horrors. Too much injury without hope of recovery can create disabling despair. We had come very close to that after the first strike. It almost broke us. It was our job to preserve some hope of survival by providing an alternative world to sustain the remnants of humankind, in time. Delay could be fatal to us all.

I remember thinking that slope was looking a bit steep, but I cast that doubt aside. It was holding, after all. Maybe we should have known better, but we didn't. Maybe I should have acted on my doubt, but  I didn’t. As people trained on Earth, with more than five times the gravity, we had had no intuitive understanding of the slope one-sixth gravity allowed. The kind you need to protect your people. That was understandable, but it was not forgivable. My friend Des paid for it.

When we first came to the Moon, there was nothing. There were no accessible resources of any kind. There was nothing laying around for us to grab and use. That's why they needed us engineers to start from the beginning to  develop  that world. We had to find it  and extract it all. We were the people who made things. As self-appointed saviors of mankind, we felt that dedication to give it a new refuge. Everything living needed was included—water, air, power, dwellings, food, the lot. There was never any question of shipping the vast quantity of supplies the settlements would need. Even in the best of its times pre-Impact, Earth would never have had the ability to lift the provisions for more than a few people up that mountain of gravity that is our world.

Although they had sent automated construction machines to Newton (the imposing name we gave to the first settlement), at the south pole of the Moon,  there was only so much the drones could do. They were good for the heavier work, and even for precise manipulation at the other end of the spectrum. With the tidally locked, constant line of sight that the Moon offered, the machines could be operated twenty-four seven from the Earth to amplify our labor resources. They could set out the foundations and prepare the way, but the detailed construction required more. For many jobs, they were not worth the trouble. They needed constant and instantly available perspective and judgment that was inhibited by remote control from Earth. It soon became obvious that flexible, adaptable, people would be needed if the work were to proceed quickly. We were those people and we were happy to take those risks in service to our kind. We were exposed to every kind of danger. There were the terrible two, radiation and vacuum. But there were so many others. To slip and fall, always a danger in low gravity on the Moon’s sandy surface, could be deadly. There were many ways to die.

Our Impactor came to us in the forties of the twenty-first century. It rocked the world. It was catastrophic, but we were lucky. Many were left alive. It was just dumb luck that it  came when we had technology ready to help us adapt. In any earlier time, it would have exterminated us all.

Post-Impact, the world clamored for aid. Stripped of illusions, we looked out on a Universe that could crush us at any moment, and leave our world without humans. Even the nameless term, Impactor, for that misbegotten celestial mountain emphasized our unfocussed dread. It wiped out the southern half of the European continent and the coastal areas of North Africa, along with much of the Middle East, causing widespread devastation and human losses that were incalculable.

After the discovery was made that the Impactor could have a following companion, the world wanted insurance that the Human project would not be obliterated from the Universe. After so much was lost, everyone considered it obscene that the rest could go too. Everyone remembered the extinction of the dinosaurs. They wanted us to survive.

So, for the first time, men resolved to establish permanent and independent settlements on the Moon and the planets to ensure that any subsequent disaster was not complete. The Moon was the first because it was the most accessible. Robotic exploration had proven it had the resources to live on there permanently.

Every curse has its blessings. The technology the Impact had spurred founded essential space expertise. People had to learn how to live underground away from the unbreathable air. The technology had been under sporadic development before that, but need kicked it to a high level of efficiency. It was adapt or die.

An additional benefit was that the perch on the far side of the Moon provided an opportunity to extend astronomical observation by orders of magnitude. That added long term security to those remaining on Earth. This project, the EarthWatch program, became the first economic pillar for the Moon settlement. The Earth was willing to pay for such knowledge.

That gave the Moon something to give back to the Earth in payment for their founding largesse. It offered a path to survival for a planet with dwindling hopes. There was more to follow, but that was the first brick in what later