Tag: the call of the moon-beasts

Tricky to snippet, this.

 “I admit that I’m surprised,” he admitted with a smile. “I didn’t think geologists had a feud going on with the arts.”

“We don’t. But Dee Station? Every crackpot in creation applied for a spot with us. A distressing number of them managed to arrange one.” Lillian sighed. “It wouldn’t have been so bad, if they didn’t keep trying to talk to the rest of us about their mad fancies. It only got worse, Afterward. I’d guess the lot are some of your doctor’s mad dreamers.”

“I’d have to look that up,” Tobias admitted, reminding himself to do just that. “How have your dreams been?”

“Awful, like everyone else’s. Well, everyone except those people, I suppose. How worried are you about the way they’re all dreaming the same nightmare?”

“Since I don’t know why? Very.” Tobias shrugged. “If it means something bad, we might as well find out now.”

And here’s another member of our intrepid little Lunar band.

“You were quiet during the meeting,” Tobias observed on his way back to his quarters. “Everything all right, Asenath?”

I decided that my input would be particularly unwelcome in this case, Commander, the cool voice in his head told him. Considering how nobody else in the room believes I exist.

“Oh, that’s not as bad as it used to be.” Tobias came closer to a smile than he usually did, lately. “The senior staff thinks you’re a safe delusion. One that tells me to be careful, and eat better.”

You should.

“I get enough calories. Anyway, as long as you don’t start telling me to do stupid things, they’ll rationalize you away as a harmless psychosis.” Tobias frowned. “I wonder if that’s true for the people in Ward’s report.”

Endgame approaches.

The Call of the Moon-Beasts

Heinlein Station

American Administrative Zone

Luna

2104 AD

By now Commander Tobias Mather felt vaguely uncomfortable if a weekly meeting didn’t have a looming disaster or deadly peril featured in it. Even now, with the Lifeboat almost ready to go. Especially now, actually. He was morbidly certain that people were going to start getting stupid, now that it looked like everybody might actually leave this leaky Lunar frying pan, and take their chances with the funeral pyres of Earth. For one thing, people were understandably worried about the ‘everybody’ thing. For another…

Tobias pushed that thought down, because Doctor Ward was giving his report. He knew what was going to be in it, but he listened anyway. This was no time to take things lightly.

“It took us a week to get people to talk about the dreams.” Ward was one of the people who weirdly looked better under the not-technically-starvation rations they were all on now. Or maybe he looked more like himself. “You know how it is. Everybody still alive wakes up every so often, screaming. That’s normal. We give them a pill from the medical pharms, they sleep off the nightmares, then they’re good for a couple of weeks. We can manage it, as long as the cultures hold out.”