Walking on the Sea of Clouds by Gray Rinehart

Author:Gray Rinehart [Rinehart, Gray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Space, Moon, Asteroid, Exploration, Colony, corporations, drama, colonization, fleet, rocket, starship, shuttle, troop, armor, marine, soldier, air force, astronaut, family, marriage, travel, futuristic, history, career, thriller
Publisher: WordFire Press
Published: 2017-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Scientific Purposes

Sunday, 25 February 2035

Lunar Colonist Group 2, Training Day 84

Lunar Colonist Group 3, Training Day 21

Van waited in his seat by the outer wall as the crowd emptied out of the “big room” after Sunday worship. Barbara walked forward to talk to the Stewart fellow who ran the service. Van was impressed by the man’s resilience: just forty-eight hours ago the Consortium evacuated Stewart to Salt Lake City for surgeons to repair his hand, and here he’d been waving it about like nothing was wrong. If he’d ever been a literal Bible thumper, the big bandage on his hand must’ve been enough to quell that temptation. He and his wife had orchestrated a tidy little service, with some nice music played out of her datapad—one odd little number about having church on the Moon, but it was pretty—and slides everyone could download off the server if they wanted. Stewart’s preaching seemed competent, and Van couldn’t fault anything the man had said; but that was probably because he couldn’t remember much of it.

He leaned his head back, looked up into the lights, and listened as the roar of conversation against the recorded recessional faded to a few scattered murmurs. He’d tried to follow the sermon, out of common courtesy, but his mind worked too fast and went in too many different directions. Van liked Stewart well enough to feel a little remorseful at not paying better attention. Before Stewart had sliced up his hand, Van had watched him work in the simulator, and in the actual tunneling practice in pressure suits deeper in the mine, and had decided Stewart would be good to have around—even if he was an old Navy guy.

Van chuckled. He and Barbara were the only Air Force veterans in their training class, and with Gary Needham were the only blue-suiters in the entire program so far. Paul Timmons and Nadia Capell were the only Army vets in Group Three, although a couple in the previous groups had rolled along with the caissons. Arvati Peterson, who’d gone through Group One, was the only Marine he knew of. Most of the prospective colonists were Navy types like Stewart, and most of them were submariners—already used to living in close quarters for extended periods of time. It made sense, in a way that annoyed Van and most of the blue-suiters he knew.

Ah, we shouldn’t complain—it’s not like we were really in the military. Most of us, anyway.

Barbara and Stewart were still talking. Part of him wanted to eavesdrop, but he ignored that part as he looked around at the makeshift chapel. He hadn’t seen it, but he was sure one of the shipping crates up at Mercator was labeled in quasi-military fashion “Kit, Chapel Supply, 1 each” and had everything from crucifixes to prayer wheels—maybe even a Torah. During the setup mission he’d teased Roy Chesterfield that he could just lie on his back to face Mecca, since the Earth was always overhead, but aside from the Stewarts and a few others, he wasn’t sure who of the trainees was what in terms of religion.

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