The EarthMasters

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say...

Janine Azzaria’s heart skipped a beat as she opened the service portal. Beyond it was a landscape of horrors. The door opened to reveal places where the soil heaved and boiled. Fumaroles spouted steam and noxious gases. Spontaneous combustion caused some gases to explode in balls of fire. Elsewhere water vapor would freeze on the inside of the outer shell - eventually breaking free and crashing down into the center of the landscape.

There it would melt turning any stable soil into a toxic quagmire that had already claimed several lives. Her space suit was spattered with mud and organic gunk the moment she stepped onto the service platform. She could smell nothing at all, but still had to resist the urge to puke inside her helmet.

“Ready for ejection!”

She stepped aside from the portal opening. Able Yen, the engineer aboard the CSV Deliverance, initiated the ejection sequence. Azzaria watched carefully as a four ton cargo capsule began emerge from the hull of the ship. The nose opened as the capsule extended beyond the portal.

“Ready when you are J.”

Yen switched control over to Azzaria. She looked out over the vast interior. The four tons of organic matter started fermenting the moment it was compressed into the cargo capsule. Now a charge of carbon dioxide would explode in the back of the capsule, blasting the contents out over the landscape. If there was a fire anywhere in the vicinity, the explosion would kill Azzaria and damage the entire portal assembly.

She looked out over the seething mass of disgust in front of her. No flames. She checked the harness locking her to the side of the service platform, then pressed the release button. Even in zero gravity the shock wave was punishing. The atmosphere around her was dense and the compressed gas at the back of the cargo capsule produced a pressure wave that was painful despite the safety of her metal suit.

The sound was not pleasant either. There was a wet, sucking roar as four tons of cow manure, decaying vegetable matter and God know what else burst from the front of the capsule. She watched as her suit was buffeted by the gas, spattered again by the muck.

“Ejection complete, retract capsule.”

Azzaria detached her harness and followed the retreating capsule and closed the service portal door. She re-attached her harness to the outside wall and was immediately buffeted by high pressure jets of water. Her suit was washed and the water drained to join the ejected cargo. Only then was she allowed to enter the airlock into the hull of the Deliverance. Out of her suit, she made her way up to the control cabin. Yen had already strapped in.

Melanie ‘Lightyear’ Crabbe, the captain of the ship, looked over her shoulder. She sniffed loudly. “Don’t even start Lightyear, I don’t stink at all!”

Crabbe laughed. “Yep, I thought I was going to Mars and instead I’m shoveling shit from Earth to NueLuna. Not duty any of us are to going to boast to our grandkids about.”

“Hey, quit bitching. Nowhere near as bad as Earthside duty. Not to mention ending up as part of the service population...”

The Deliverance began to back away from the exterior port of NueLuna. The vast curve of the artificial planetoid began to unfold in the viewport by Azzaria’s head. She saw a flash of light on the far horizon.

“Hey look. They are starting on the exterior cladding, there’s a package coming from from the surface right now.”

All three strained at the window. The cladding crew were slowing down a fifty ton fiberglass package of Moon soil. The flashes were the bursts of exhaust as their grab vehicles latched onto the package and brought it to a halt above the carbon lattice surface of NueLuna. Soon the planetoid, balanced at the L5 LaGrange point between the pull of the Earth and the Moon, would be clad in a protective coat of Moon dust.

Azzaria watched as small vehicles buzzed around the package, maneuvering it to where it would be anchored on the surface. She squinted but the distance was too far. One of those men would be her husband in a few months. They had both been notified of their DNA match by the International Eugenics Agency. She hoped to meet him on the next ‘shit run’ down to the Lunar Surface.

“Talking about service population, Yen, can it really happen as fast as they say?”

Azzaria was leaning into the engineer’s shoulder as Crabbe set up and then initiated their return to Earth orbit. Yen was a ‘floating’ engineer, one of hundreds troubleshooting the development process for NueLuna. Volunteers for the work were easy to find. The attraction was the promise of a job on NueLuna when the ‘Mega Rich’ started to move in.

The planetoid was designed to be the escape from Earth for the richest and most powerful people. Despite its vomit inducing origins, the interior of the planetoid would end up as a semi-tropical paradise. It would be a refuge from the ever declining atmosphere of the Earth, its flooded coasts, polluted food supplies and roaming caravans of the poor and the sick. The better duty was a slot on one of the new colonies on Mars.

Yen seemed to be thinking out his reply. “Depends. All of the geological activity will calm down once they begin the spin - that’s a few months at least. After that come the worms and I have no idea how long it will take them to work their magic. Terraforming can only begin after that. I’d say we have a few years yet.‘

”Worms? Seriously?”

Yen grinned. He had studied the terraforming process with a team back on Earth. Once the shit runs were over he was assured a spot in the army of engineers that would build the interior of NueLuna.

“Yeah, worms. Even I was surprised when I was told. Apparently those little fuckers can eat shit and thrive instead of die. They’ll turn all of that organic matter into stable fertile soil. It’ll feed the Mega Rich as well as improve the stink of the whole place.”

Crabbe laughed as she tapped out last command. “Initiating earth orbit entry burn, everyone fastened down?” Azzaria and Yen raised their thumbs.

The Commercial Space Vehicle Deliverance began to fall away from the surface of NueLuna. There was little to do now until the craft re-entered earth orbit forty-eight hours later.

“I was thinking...in a few years the one place around here worth living in will be NueLuna. A planetoid built with dirt, filled with shit and gunk that will be turned into earthworm shit and gunk. And then the richest, the most connected, the most powerful will come and live right on top of it. Sounds about right to me!”

All three laughed - until Yen reminded them. “Aaah - let’s not forget the cockpit recorders, guys...”

Thomas Cubbines allowed himself a few seconds of distraction before the incoming fifty ton sack of moon dust and rock arrived. He looked out over the far horizon, across the black carbon fiber lattice work of NewLuna. A flash was followed by a slow burn as a small dot began to move away from the planetoid, braking itself down into a spiral that would end up in Earth orbit.

“ I don’t know why you’re so interested, Cubby. You gotta face it, IEG’s hooked you up with a shit bucket sailor. She probably looks as good as she smells.”

“Fuck off Jason, At least she’s female - that’s way more than you qualified for!”

Cubby grinned to himself. He was not usually so fast with a quip. Then he regretted the insult. He had learned years ago as a teenager that he had prime DNA. It made him a candidate for space work, and guaranteed him a wife by the time he was twenty-two. She would be a good genetic match and their kids would be handsome and healthy.

Jason did not have the same prospects. Mentally brilliant he soon qualified as a construction engineer on the NueLuna project. HIs DNA was a mess. The International Eugenics Agency would not assign him a wife. Instead he had been assigned a male partner. Neither one of them needed to be gay. Sometimes they were, sometimes they were just friends and company for life. Unlike Cubby, Jason was in no hurry to meet his future partner.

“Jason...sorry for that.”

“Fuck you very much, Cubby. Heads up!”

The package was coming in hot. Cubby was joined by five other ‘sack jockeys’ all gunning their ‘gas choppers’ to reach the nose of the immense sack. The choppers attached to the nose and front sides of the sack, their exhausts blasting as they slowed the mass of rock and soil down. The jockeys were the envy of NueLuna construction force. They sat astride their machines much like old time Harleys and zipped around the planetoid with a freedom few others enjoyed.

The next hour was spent guiding the five tons of moon soil into position on the outer shell of NueLuna. It was the last of the day and once the package was locked in place the sack jockeys headed to a dormitory station on the shadow side of the planetoid.

The two friends showered and headed to cramped quarters where they would sleep and eat for the next two weeks.

“I got a plan, Jason, gonna need some help.”

“Plan? Plan for what?”

“Gonna meet the wife. Think I have a way during the next down shift.”

Jason looked at his friend and shook his head. “You know that’s not allowed. You don’t get to decide when and where...that’s all controlled by the agency...”

“Yeah yeah yeah....I’ll be at least a month before we both have matching break slots that will allow to meet. Can’t wait that long. I need to know right now. Is she hot? Is she gonna be into me, Am I gonna be into her...what if I hate her on sight? Ever think about that Jase?

“No I never thought about ‘cos the fucking agency says it doesn’t want to spread my DNA around...cos the fucking agency won’t even consider me for a female partner, ‘cos..

“Okay, Okay, I get the message Jase...so help me screw the agency, help me get to see her in three weeks when our downtime starts...”

Jason looked around the small room. Two other jocks were sitting down and engrossed in opening freshly microwaved more packs. He leaned in to his friend and whispered.

“So what’s the plan. I’d really like to hear how you can get around the most tightly controlled program the agency has..”

“It’s simple really. When we get back down to the surface in two weeks we both sign up for extra duty on one of Fred Batties prospecting surveys. I’ve already gotten his okay. He’ll cover for us for up to 24 hours. Once we leave the Tycho Base we secretly head back up to NueLuna - over to where her shit bucket delivers its next load. I’ll be waiting inside the air lock for her - we can meet and check each other out.”

Jason laughed. “For a minute I thought you were serious with a real plan. How in the hell will you get off-Moon to NueLuna?"

Cubby grinned and and winked at Jason. " I have the perfect plan..."