Free Moonrise by Ben Bova Page A

eons of meteoric sandpapering.
    “Hello, rock,” he said aloud, surprised at how dry and scratchy his throat felt.
    He stepped across to the shadowed side of the boulder, then leaned back carefully. Now see if you can wriggle your arm out of the sleeve. Careful! Easy does it.
    It felt as if he was wrenching his shoulder out of its socket, but at last Paul got his arm entirely out of the suit’s sleeve and started to work his hand up past the metal ring of the helmet collar.
    He was sweating so hard his eyes stung. If you get your hand up here inside the helmet, he thought, first thing you do is wipe your eyes.
    Then he realized that all this perspiration was merely draining his body of water. If I don’t get this damned drinking tube fixed I won’t make it much farther.
    Slowly, desperately, he tried to worm his fingers up into the helmet.

SAVANNAH
    Joanna recovered from her space sickness as soon as the Clippership lit its engines for the return flight from the orbiting space station to Savannah. Once they got home, she phoned Bradley Arnold and insisted that they meet with Greg at her house instead of in the corporate offices.
    “It will be much more relaxed,” she said to Arnold’simage in the phone screen. “After all, it’s been his home, too.”
    Arnold agreed. “I’ll have him there first thing tomorrow,” he promised.
    They were in Joanna’s upstairs sitting room, next to the master bedroom suite. Joanna was reclined on the chaise longue. She reached out wearily to turn off the phone console on the table beside her.
    Joanna turned to Paul as the screen went blank. “We’ll resolve everything tomorrow.” She smiled happily.
    Sitting alone on the loveseat beneath her portrait, Paul muttered, “I hope so.”
    They met in the spacious parlor of the house. It had been decorated in what Paul had always thought of as mock
Gone With the Wind
style: frills and doodads everywhere; long sweeping curtains of heavy silk on the tall windows; overstuffed furniture; patterned wallpaper. The house was only a few years old. Gregory had built it in a fit of conspicuous consumption. The worse the corporate profit-and-loss picture became, the more lavishly he spent, it had seemed to Paul.
    So now he sat tensely on the brocade-covered sofa while morning sunlight poured through the windows and Joanna fiddled nervously with the bric-a-brac on the fireplace mantel. It was a gas-fed fireplace, and the architect’s drawing of the house that hung above the mantle concealed the room’s big television screen, one of the first thin-film Windowall screens built in orbit.
    Paul heard a car pull up on the driveway outside. Joanna stiffened, then hurried to a window.
    “They’re here,” she said, looking pleased and apprehensive at the same time. Then her face clouded. “Greg’s brought Melissa Hart with him.”
    Paul’s insides wound even tighter. This isn’t going to be a reconciliation, he knew. It’s war.
    Greg still wore a black suit and tie. Paul thought his underwear might also be in mourning. Dark circles rimmed his reddened eyes. He looked somber, almost gaunt. Melissa, wearing a knee-length violet skirt and simple white blouse, seemed as tense as Paul felt. Bradley Arnold, in a rumpled gray business suit, was the only one smiling.
    Greg had an attaché case with him. The videodisk must be in there, Paul thought.
    “I’m glad that we could all get together like this,” Arnold said as they sat down on the two sofas that faced each other across the carved cherrywood coffeetable. Greg and the board chairman sat on one sofa, Joanna and Paul on the other. Greg clutched the attaché case on his knees. Melissa took the overstuffed armchair by the end of the coffeetable, facing the cold, empty fireplace.
    The butler came in, carrying a tray of juices, coffee, tea, and a plate of toast. He deposited the laden tray on the coffeetable, then stood off to one side.
    “Have you all had your breakfasts?” Joanna asked