Fab­u­lae Lunae Vignette – Dri­ve to Houston
A rein­tro­duc­tion

Lunar noir hard sci­ence fic­tion: jus­tice is per­son­al, and back­up is three days away.

Last week’s vignette was Sins of the Son — Mark Mason in an Ida­ho ER, Yel­low­stone still burn­ing, a name that will still mat­ter on the Moon. The Time­line of Events does not stop in that hospital.

Next is Dri­ve to Hous­ton.

Before Con­rad Station.
Before straw-cups and a three-day lag.
Before Nils Carmike has a lunar seat to lose.

There is ash on the Dallas–Houston road, and an astro­naut who has to make the dri­ve anyway.

The Piece

Jacob Con­ner is a lead astro­naut. His job is still, for a few more hours, the space sta­tion. NASA is shut­ting down. Every­thing not relat­ed to pro­duc­ing food with­out sun­light is being shut down. Ware­hous­es, wide-spec­trum lights, coal and gas con­vert­ed to calo­ries: that is the nation­al project. The sta­tion is not.

He hates this dri­ve on a clear day. After Yel­low­stone the ash clogs wind­shields, vents, radi­a­tors. Any­one who dri­ves car­ries a broom. He will spend more time clear­ing the car than mov­ing it. He packs a cool­er any­way — sand­wich­es, ice that will be vol­canic mush by lunch — and goes, because mis­sion con­trol still needs some­one in Build­ing 10 to help aban­don the stack.

What fol­lows is not a speech about the end of the world. It is a con­fer­ence room with a blank feed, a Russ­ian plan to keep Zvez­da and Zarya, a Pro­gram Direc­tor who will have a fit, and Jacob insist­ing that if they sur­vive they will need an off-world pop­u­la­tion as insur­ance. Mose Crane is on the screen from orbit. The Soyuz goes off tar­get. Eigh­teen months lat­er Mose and Lucia are not dead, and Jacob is being told he is pro­mot­ed, not fired. He still hates the dri­ve to Houston.

The sto­ry is Y+0. It is not set on the lunar sur­face. It belongs in the Fab­u­lae Lunae sequence because the lat­er Moon is what you get if some­one refus­es to treat Yel­low­stone as the last word on spaceflight.

Why It Matters

Read­ers who have Mose in Descent into Dark­ness — sev­en­ty-one, every class of vehi­cle, what I say goes — meet him here first, on the oth­er end of a bad reen­try and a retrieval that should not have worked. The colony argu­ment Jacob will not drop is the same log­ic that lat­er puts peo­ple in Con­rad’s Habs: Earth can fail on its own sched­ule. There is no dooms­day clock.

Dri­ve to Hous­ton is also the next Time­line beat after Sins of the Son. The Mason name is already in the fire. The space pro­gram is already being asked to die qui­et­ly so the lights can stay on over indoor crops. Jacob’s answer is hard­ware and peo­ple. Once the dol­lars come back, there will be a pro­gram. The Moon is down­stream of that stubbornness.

It stands alone. It also explains why, years lat­er, there is still a sta­tion to argue over.

You can read the full piece here:
→ Dri­ve to Houston

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Fur­ther Reading

• Dri­ve to Hous­ton — the com­plete vignette
• Time­line of Events
• Fab­u­lae Lunae Vignette – “Sins of the Son”
• The Luna­dyne Inci­dent and Oth­er Sto­ries — “Descent into Darkness”
• Thun­der Moon Tussle
• Mask of the Joy­ful Moon

The Joy­ful Moon is still watching…
and he still hates the dri­ve to Houston.

— Torn MacAlester
Still rid­ing the trails with Nils, Gen, and the whole Fab­u­lae Lunae crew
🚀🌕