The immaculate white airlock door looked brand new, and that surprised her. She thought the moon was surely a dirty place. But perhaps this airlock door was kept far enough away from the blast ejecta of launching and landing Eagles that by the time the causeway was ready to extend, all the moondust had settled again and there was little remaining to grime it up. The door gave a deep grunt, slid aside on unseen rails—with a twin behind it sliding the other direction—and she looked into the moonbase for the first time.
There was a young woman there waiting to greet her, smiling. She was slender and tall, with long dark hair, laying gently over her shoulders. At a guess, she appeared around twenty-four, wearing a standard Alphan duty uniform: beige with a matching turtleneck undershirt, with a long blue stripe down her left arm, the color of Research Section. She wore an Alphan patch on her shoulder and had a wide glossy belt around her waist, to which was clipped two small blocky devices. Each had a little keypad, an emitter on one end, and a three-inch hooded display screen on the other. And then there was that tiny, tiny little miniskirt, leaving almost none of her long, perfectly turned legs to the imagination. Her feet were clad in simple beige heels.
"Specialist Chase," she said with a smile. "Welcome to Plato! I'm Corrine McDonough, I'll be working with you." She held out her hand.
"Please, call me Marcie," said the new arrival, still wearing her blue NASA jumper. Marcie stepped across the threshold into her new home, and took Corrine's hand, squeezing gently. She couldn't help but be taken aback by how lovely Corrine was, how honest and genuine her smile, how perfectly feminine her posture. Marcie returned the smile gratefully. "It's wonderful to be here. I'm not used to space travel."
Corrine's smile softened, sympathetically. She could tell that was Marcie's way of saying she had been ill for most of the trip, if not all of it. This wasn't uncommon. "Neither am I," she admitted. "I'm always reluctant to get on board those ugly Eagles. Fortunately you and I are geologists and so we shouldn't have much need to go careening around in space very often."
"Small mercies," Marcie agreed, grateful. She was glad to learn this beautiful woman was going to be on her team, and she instantly felt that she would likely be one of her closest friends here. "I'm sure I'll miss Earth, but for the time being I'm happy to have my feet on the ground again."
"Feels like Earth gravity, doesn't it?" Corrine said cheerfully. "The base was built on a mascon, a positive gravitational anomaly. The towers around the perimeter of the base amplify the natural effects to bring the actual gravity up to very near Earth-norm. Come on, I'll show you to your living space. You're going to like it here," Corrine grinned as she turned and led Marcie into the busy lunar installation. Marcie repositioned the bag strap on her shoulder and followed after her.
Moonbase Alpha seemed a maze of corridors to the uninitiated, but Marcie had been studying the base layout and had a general idea where most of the important facilities were situated. The base was arranged in a series of concentric circles connected with an array of lateral transit tunnels, all converging on the central base structure. In the middle of this structure on the upper two floors stood Main Mission, the base's command center. Marcie hoped to get to see it, but didn't think it was likely for at least a few weeks, unless one of her colleagues had reason to sneak her in. Main Mission was for department heads and security and people well above her pay grade; she was just a lowly scientist with a very lowly job: the lowest job one could have on Moonbase Alpha.
"How far down has the excavation team got?" Marcie couldn't help asking as Corrine ducked around another communications station. It puzzled her why these stations were positioned in the middle of the corridors, instead of out of the way of traffic.
"Nearly fifteen hundred meters," Corrine answered. "But they've shut down the digger since last Wednesday. Something is... happening down there."
Marcie didn't like the way Corrine had said that. "What?"
"Tell you what," the slender woman said, finally coming to a stop in front of a door. "Here's your living quarters. Your uniforms are inside and your belongings have been transferred over from the shuttle. Take an hour getting settled in, and meet me in Geology, on sublevel two. I'll fill you in." She had an odd expression.
Marcie's eyebrows knitted. "Is something wrong?"
Corrine lowered her voice. "Come find me in an hour, okay? Oh, this is yours." She unclipped one of the devices on her belt and offered it to Marcie. "It's your commlock. Enter your STUTS-ID number on the pad. Once registered to you, it will open any door that you have clearance to pass. It also serves as your personal communicator, so be sure not to misplace it."
Marcie nodded and took the device, having been anxious to be issued her very own commlock, representing her acceptance into this elite community of scientists and explorers. The little unit already had her picture in the little plastic window on the side. She couldn't hide her smile.
Corrine beamed. "Guess you were looking forward to that."
"I was," Marcie nodded. She quickly entered her 10-digit ID number and pressed the door key. The door slid open.
"See you in the lab in an hour," Corrine said, and left Marcie to get unpacked and changed.
* * *
Marcie entered the lab through the double doors, holding her prized commlock and wearing one of her brand new, custom-fitted Alphan uniforms. Corrine McDonough looked up from her workstation, seeing her and smiling.
"Well look at you," she said, admiring her. She knew Marcie wouldn't be here if she wasn't in top physical shape, but she couldn't help a lingering gaze at the lovely shape of her young new colleague.
"I don't know if I'll get used to
this
," Marcie said, pulling at the hem of her skirt, her knees turned inward. "How do we even sit?"
Corrine laughed. "Oh, you will. They're surprisingly comfortable, once you're used to them. And the men here are entirely professional. No one seems to mind that the women here all get to strut around in skimpy little skirts."
"When in Rome," Marcie said, trying to put aside how vulnerable the uniform made her feel. One of the time-honored tenets of astronaut culture was that women were treated no differently than men, regardless of age, marital status or circumstance. For as long as Marcie had spent training for this assignment and preparing her experiments at Space Station V, no one had ever made her feel the slightest bit uncomfortable.
"It does seem," Marcie continued, slipping her prized commlock onto her belt, "that everyone is very serious about their duties here."
"What do you mean?"
"Well on the way down here, I just picked up a vibe... kind of a downer, actually."
Corrine took a deep breath. "News travels fast."
Marcie looked around the lab. It was a spacious chamber full of control panels with blinking lights, switches and buttons, dials and levers. There was a heavy fire axe in a clear plastic box on the wall beside the door, and a row of lockers with digital keypads on each. Corrine was seated on a plain round stool at a workstation against one wall, most of which was actually a window to another chamber. As Marcie entered the room she could see better into the chamber, which appeared to be a sealed room quarried out of the stone, with unfinished walls. A heavy, imposing, red metal door within the chamber was closed; the red beacon directly above it was dark. The door had a circular metal doorwheel, with thick steel spokes. The room looked to be a quarantined, pressurized area. Marcie noticed the airlock leading into it, and wondered if one had to be wearing an environment suit to go in there.
"What news?" she asked as she stood beside Corrine, examining the mysterious stone chamber with fascination.
Corrine's voice was somber. "The disappearances."
At this, Marcie gaped at her new friend. "What?"
"Three people have disappeared since Wednesday. Two of them were operating in that chamber," Corrine pointed through the window. "They were down the tunnel, which is currently sealed off. They were both technicians servicing the digging equipment. Two days later, another tech, my friend Mirial, disappeared. We don't know from where; all we know is she
wasn't
in the catacombs, she was somewhere on the base."
Marcie slowly sat down on the stool beside Specialist McDonough, staring in disbelief. "How could anyone just disappear from Alpha? Is that even possible?"
"There's more," Corrine went on. "Very few people know this but our section, Commander Koenig and Professor Bergman. You need to keep this under wraps, Marcie, promise me."
Marcie nodded, leaning forward.
The dark-haired scientist looked worried. "Lately we've seen some seismic activity beneath Alpha," she began. "Moonquakes. At first we thought it had to be thermal, since the Plato crater is nowhere near any known volcanic zones. But rotation didn't jive with that theory. Then we were thinking it could be a basaltic intrusive coming from a previously unknown magma chamber, but this was ruled out too with seismic reflectivity. Plus the 'duh' factor, that Alpha is built atop a known, well-extinct lava tube. Any magma chambers beneath Plato would have emptied eons ago."
"How far down does the tube go?"
"Thirty kilometers, at its deepest."
"Thirty?" Marcie exclaimed. "That isn't possible."
A new voice entered the conversation. "It shouldn't be. But it is."
Corrine and Marcie were both startled by the arrival of an older woman, appearing mid-40s, wearing the same color as Corrine down her sleeve except the color bar was joined by a gold accent. She was the Research Section Chief, their boss, standing at the door to the lab office opposite the window.
Corrine blushed, looking guilty. The older woman smiled.
"It's all right, Corrine. Rumors are spreading. It's natural. Besides, we weren't going to
