Cow Who Jumped On The Moon

The Cow Who Jumped On The Moon

By Lyle R. Amlin

There's no crying over spilt milk...especially when it's not milk and double special when there isn't any to cry over

Well, kids, I know you really like your hamburgers as much as your mom and dad like their steaks...but did you know that you can thank your grandmother for them instead of soyburgers every night? Of, course, it didn't start out that way.

Three years after we had the groundbreaking for Loony City's first building there were about 1,000 Lunar residents. Loony City was the biggest center with about half of the population living in or near the original "orange". The orange was what we called the first building, since it looked like an orange cut in two and plopped in a hole in the ground before we covered it over with six feet of Lunar dirt. Yeah, Uncle Mark and I were part of the first crew on the moon to build the colony, in fact, we are the last ones still alive from that original crew.

Remind me to show you my initials and the date sometime on the frame of the building. No, it's not in the concrete, it's hidden away on one of the main struts of the roof support. If you're interested download the digital pic of Commander Wilson from the website of the Luna Historical Society. Look at the beam to the right of his desk, about a foot off the floor. You’ll have to zoom in about 300% but it’s visible. "LRA 3/17/21" and it's done in MIG welding.

Anyway, to get back to the story...it was just about three years after we built the Orange. Scattered nearby the Orange were the first air rejuvenation/produce farms, the bank of solar cells which is still in operation, the cracking plant where water and air was extracted from the moon rocks, Kaiser's steel mill and Lunar Cat factory, the Lunar Hilton and a couple of smaller buildings. Of course, there was the U.N. Observatory, but that was on the far side and doesn't count.

Oh, yeah, and there was our Jungle Juice plant. I told you about that before. Uncle Mark and I built the plant that same year we built the Orange, just a couple of months after we first landed on the Moon.

Of course, the plant you know about today isn't that first building. That one we made out of a discarded fuel tank and an airlock. It was pretty small, but it served the purpose for a long time. In fact, that's where your burgers and milk started...and your eggs, too...right there in the first plant, sort of.

Like I said, there were about 1,000 people on the moon. There were a couple of small, prospecting camps out in the hinterlands, but almost everyone on the Moon lived right around Loony City, and more were arriving on every ship from Earth.

A lot of the new people were prospectors. They would lease a Moon Cat from Lunar Corporation and take off for the wilds of the Moon. As Heinlein once said, "the Moon is a harsh mistress", and he was right. Sometimes those prospectors didn't come back...and a couple of those 'cats were never found.

Back then we didn't have the communication satellites in orbit like we do now and the 'cats only had line of sight radios in them. Once they were gone from sight they might as well as have disappeared like the Cheshire Cat...and not even a trace of a smile. Then, if they got in any kind of trouble, there was no way for them to let Loony City know about it and, usually, they died.

Well, at this time Lunar Corp was under a lot of pressure from the U.N. to do something about the problem. Loony Corp decided the cheapest thing was to establish a bunch of "Safety Huts" around the area. They would be stocked with air, water and food. A simple solar cell array would keep a battery bank charged. The idea was that one hut would be near enough any prospector in trouble and he could hightail it there if need be. Then he would hole up and wait until he was overdue and search teams would be sent out to find him.

The design was pretty simple. A dome, just like the Orange only about 10 feet across, was buried with an access tube/air lock to the surface. An Orange flag marked the spot and maps were prepared and stocked in every 'cat on the Moon showing where every Safety Hut was located. What? Yes, “stocked”, like printed on paper. No, there was no GPS yet, these were maps you actually could hold in your hand, then fold up and put into your pocket.

Uncle Mark and I were assigned to build a series of six of these huts and we left Loony City in a 'cat and trailer with the materials at sundown. All of the huts' locations had been marked in advance and were set up so that any place more than 20 klicks from Loony City wasn't more than 10 klicks from a safety hut. There were three other teams doing the same thing so, when we all were done, we would have an area about 100 klicks in diameter covered. That was just fine, but the problem was most of the prospectors were heading off further than that.

This was pointed out to Gov. Wilson but it didn't do any good. See, the pressure to "do something" was coming from the U.N., and the plan had been endorsed by those people who were lobbying the U.N. As usual, it was Earthie politics telling us what was best for us. At the very least it was something...and in this case something was better than nothing.

Anyway, Uncle Mark and I set about doing what we were told to do.

The second day out we had found the first Hut location and dug the hole. The next day we erected the hut and the third day we covered it over and ran the check list. This procedure allowed us to finish the sixth hut by the end of the 12th day out. Sunrise was to be two days later, so we decided to take a vacation and we moved into the sixth Hut.

I figured by living in the hut for 16 days, until the sun set again, would be a good test of the hut's operation and, when we finished, we would re-supply the hut with stuff from the 'cat. Oh, yeah, Uncle Mark and I decided to leave an "undocumented" supply of some liquid refreshment in our six huts...heck, it was really good business...some prospector who had an accident would be surprised to find some Jungle Juice on hand...and we bet he would repay us in spades when he was picked up and returned to Loony City...we were right, too, but we didn't know how right until much later on.

The first three or four days we did some minor exploring of the area around the hut ourselves. See, while technically it was "day" because the sun was up, there were a lot of shadows at first and we could move around in relative safety. We took photos and picked up a few rock samples, but there really wasn't much interesting in our area...at least it kept the boredom away. Then we had to hole up. Let me tell you, a 10-foot diameter dome is awfully small for even two men for 14 days...and we were used to the cramped quarters on Luna...image if there were four or five guys! No, we didn't have to stay there, the 'cat would have protected us from the heat, but it was more a point of honor to last it out.

About Day Eight we got started talking about the future of the moon. You know, how big was the population going to get, what was the moon going to do to be self-sufficient both in supplies and cash flow and what were people going to need once they got here.

You have to remember that at that time Lunar Corp was everything. As you know from your history classes, Lunar Corp was created by the U.N. back on Earth.

Lunar Corp built Essy the first permanent Earth Satellite after the International Earth Satellite. The company constructed and owned both the Earth launch vehicles, the Earth-Moon ships, the Lunar Satellite and Loony City, the air/water plant and the farms. The company charged transportation to and from Earth, charged for space to do business and live in Loony City, charged for food, water and air, and taxed every business on Luna. Well, of course there was New Paris which was easily the entertainment capital on Luna and the Japanese had a much smaller version of New Paris. The Russians had a larger facility, but it had very few people there, mostly it was empty space inside their dome.

It was about Day Eight, Mark and I had just finished a bit of lunch, and Mark said, "What about our future?"

"I dunno, couple of more years and we can retire back to Earth, I guess, I dunno," I said.

"No, Johnnie, I don't mean us, I mean the Moon, Luna, what about it's future?"

"Whatta you mean...it's been around for a couple of billion years, it'll still be here when we're gone," I said.

"No...I mean what's going to happen with Loony City? How big is the population going to get? When is Luna Corp going to get some competition? When are we going to become self-sufficient?" he said, sounding almost like a politician...when, of course, he was later on.

"Oh," I said, "THAT future. Well, I suppose it'll just happen as it happens, not much we can do about it, is there?"

"Sure we can. Look, we produce just about everything we use on Luna right now. We have the air/water plant, Kaiser has its steel thanks to you, we have the produce gardens for most of our food and we're even starting to sell some steel to Essy. We're just about self-sufficient right now."

"Well, not exactly," I said, "Luna is really short on carbon and vitamins...both which we have shipped up from Earth. And both the air/water plant is owned by Luna Corp which is owned by the U.N. Besides, the air/water plant doesn't produce that much air and water from the moon rocks as you think it does, in fact, I don't think that we can produce much more H-two-Oh than we do now...you may not be aware of it, but that rock bed they're working is more than half gone and they still haven't found any more.

"And the farms...they recycle the air just fine and I agree that it's nice having a few fresh tomatoes, but the farms just don't produce enough vegetables to us now...and do you know how much water they use? and how much it costs to build a farm?"

Mark answered, "OK, then what you are saying is that we're short on carbon, water, vitamins and cash, right?"

"Yeah, pretty much. More water we'll probably find, even though it's expensive in materials and time to get it out of the rocks. Cash is really not a problem, except what I mean is the time it takes to repay the original cash layout is excessive the way Luna Corp does it. The carbon is a real problem, though since nobody has found more than a trace of it on Luna," I said.

"And carbon, as you are aware, is the basis of all life. Animals are mostly carbon and so are plants. As the population grows, we are going to have to get more and more carbon. The carbon is the big problem, and I don't have an answer."

"OK," said Mark, "I understand about the carbon, but what do you mean about the cash problem? Lunar Corp is funded by the members of the U.N. with Earthie cash...and they've got plenty of that, so what's the problem?"

"The U.N. doesn't have as much loose cash as you think. I've heard Gov. Wilson talk about his budget. The U.N. keeps trying to cut it every year because there hasn't been much return from the colony yet. I know, we're shipping steel to Essy along with some air and water, and we've got a few corporations paying rent to the company for space, but there isn't that much return in cash to the company and it still needs constant cash from Earth.

"And the problem is the way the company does things. Look at the air/water plant. It takes a huge array of solar cells, all shipped up from Earth at tremendous cost, to run the plant. They have to grind up that rock, then bake it, then separate the water out. And all of the machinery was made on Earth and shipped up. And how much water do they get? Well, I've seen the figures. They produce about 100 gallons of water a day and the overhead, figuring in a five-year amortization of the equipment, payroll and upkeep and power useage, is about $2,000 a gallon!"

"And take the farm. Do you know the cost of burying it underground?"

"No idea," said Mark.

"Well, me either, but I know it takes two 'cats five days to dig the hole and at the price the company charges to rent a cat that's $10,000 right there. Then, the frame and sheet steel is shipped up from Earth, along with all of the interior equipment and the solar cells to run the grow lights, and so on...and that doesn't even count the manpower costs to build it...all to purify the air and give us a few tomatoes. If the original setup costs could be reduced then the entire operation would be cost-effective," I said.

"So what you are really saying is if we didn't have to bury the building, and if we could find free water instead of baking it out of rock, then we could build a whole series of farms," Mark was standing up now, getting really excited.

"Yeah, but you have to bury the building to protect it from solar sunshine and radiation," I said..."no, wait a minute, you have to protect the people who work inside it from the sun and flares." I paused a few seconds and then went on, "You know, if we could build it on top of the ground, we could protect it from sunshine with an awning, sort of like we did when we had the trouble with the original Orange."

"Yeah," said Mark, "Just a simple fabric shielding hung from guy wires over the skin."

"Sure, only this time we'd silverize it to work even better and last for years. And as far as solar flares, all we have to do is build a small structure underground for the people to hide out in when it's flare season...plants wouldn't be bothered that much with radiation. You know, I think it'd work," I said. "Let me figure this out," and I picked up my notebook and started sketching.

A few minutes later I had it. (Well, Mark said it took a couple of hours because he had eaten twice and had taken a nap, but I think he was wrong.)

A steel girder structure, laced on the inside with steel cables and covered with steel plates...all made by Kaiser on the moon...about 50 feet wide and 500 feet long, covered by a huge silvered sheet of fabric like an old Boy Scout pup tent. Attached to it was an access tube to a buried dome which would be the living quarters and the solar flare hideout. A couple of mirrors at each end would feed in free sunlight during the two-week Lunar Day and a bank of solar cells would store energy to run the grow lights during the two weeks of Lunar Night.

That would give us some 25,000 square feet of space, enough for corn, sugar beets and, I added, even plant a few grape vines.

The cost: depended on exactly how much Kaiser would charge for the steel stuff, plus the cost of the solar cells and the fabric, but it would be a lot less than the company spent on construction.

"Great," said Mark, "Looks like it would work just perfectly. Let's do it."

"Hold it," I said, "Sorry to throw cold water on my idea, but that's the problem."

"What?"

"Water, cold or hot, doesn't matter, we'd still have to get water from someplace beside rock baking."

"Oh," Mark said and the excitement flowed out of him.

"Yeah, 'Oh'," I said. "Oh, and a supply of carbon. Tell me, though, why you so hot about another farm?"

"Oh, meant to tell you, Brickey was talking to me just before we left. He says we may have to shut the Jungle Juice factory down."

"Why?" I asked, "not enough customers?"

"Ugh, ugh, too many for what we can produce."

"Easy, just raise the price and or add on to the plant...or both."

"We could, but that's not the problem. Brickey says he's having trouble getting corn and sugar. The company's willing to supply us, at a price, but they don't have any to spare and say there's no room in the supply shuttles for any more. Something about needing the space for vitamins, medical supplies and raw carbon to keep their farm operating," Mark explained. "So, if we could build our own farm I'd vote to plant corn and sugar beets."

And that ended the conversation.

* * * *

Usually I don't have dreams, much less nightmares, but that night I did. Like most dreams it was pretty fuzzy the next morning, but in this one I seemed to be sliding down a really slippery slide into a pool of ice cold water...dressed in a space suit that wasn't feeding me any air. Now, I'm not one of those people who think that dreams are telling you the future, but it's really your subconscious feeding your brain information that it has forgotten.

I worried it over for a few minutes, but couldn't figure out what by sub was trying to say to my brain so I did what I usually do with a problem I couldn't figure out...I moved it over to a corner of my brain so it would "chew" on it for a while unmolested. That frequently works for me. You never know how much "chewing" the brain needs, but it usually comes up with some sort of answer.

About an hour later it did and, klunk, there it was.

"Come on, Mark," I suddenly yelled, "let's get the Hell out of here."

"Huh," he said, startled out of a semi-sleep, "why, what's up?"

"Come on," I said, and began gathering up my notebook and started putting my suit on.

"Where we going? What's the matter? The hut spring a leak?" he asked, but he started picking up his stuff.

Twenty minutes later we had packed up our stuff, replaced the food and water we had used in the hut, shut it down and had the cat powered up.

"OK, what's going on?" Mark said, "What's the hurry?"

"Not going to say yet, it's a long shot, but I think we might have solved half of the problem."

"Which problem? Find the snake that just bit you?"

"The farm problem."

"Which farm problem?" he asked.

"You'll see. I had a dream about sliding down a chute into water."

"Big deal."

"Maybe," I said, "but I'm not going to say anything else except...you remember two years ago when we were out surveying and I lost my Oh Two line?"

"Sure, you made the first rocket made on the moon out of a spare oxygen tank...and bearly made it back to the cat."

"Yeah, but remember I said I first took shelter in a cave?

"Yep."

"Well, I just remembered that cave was worn smooth, not like any other cave or lava tube I've ever seen on Lunda.

"So?"

"So...that's where we're headed, to the cave. I remember that it's just a couple of klicks from the first Safety Hut we built, about 20 klicks from Loony City."

"OK, so you want to see an old cave. OK, might as well, I was getting pretty bored back at the hut," he said.

"Me, too. At least, this is something to do," I said.

* * * *

I really pushed that cat, but even so it took us two full days to get to the cave.

Finally, there it was, located in the circular rim of rock thrown up by a meteor impact, just a dark hole right on the floor of the crater.

We parked right in front of the cave.

"You go ahead," said Mark, "explore your cave. I think I'll check out the crater floor."

When I entered the cave my memory of my first trip there came back. The floor and walls of the cave had been worn smooth, really smooth. The black rock almost looked polished. The tube was about 15 feet in diameter and sloped downward. I flipped on my light and started following the tube into the rimwall.

About 75 feet inside the tube expanded on my left into a huge, smooth-walled room about 50 feet across by 25 feet high, then it narrowed down again. About a half klick further on a branch tube took off to the left. It was about the same size, but the smooth floor and walls were suddenly very ordinary rough lava wall tubes. I followed that one for about 100 feet and then turned back, not having reached the end.

Back into the main tube, which was still polished, I headed downward again. By now I figured I was about 200 feet below the entrance. Another half-klick and suddenly I realized that the tube was getting smaller and the floor was absolutely level...well, the tube roof was getting lower...the width was still about 15 feet.

When I had only about six feet of headroom I stopped, kicked at the moon dust on the floor and took my field hammer from my belt and tried to chip off a couple of pieces of floor rock. The hammer point hit the floor and the rock shattered, sending a spattering of chips all over the place, definately not the way rock usually acts. I swung the hammer again and a small chunk of rock flew off, a few more swings and finally two fist-sized chucks came loose. I tossed them into my collection bag and started back to the cat at a run...I was getting excited.

Company cats have small labs in them, located where extra bunks are put for the cats rented out to prospectors. I smacked one rock piece into smaller pieces and dropped them into a beaker, popped a rubber cork into the top and slipped a piece of glass tubing into the cork hole. Then I put the beaker on the electric heating plate and turned on the juice.

Within a couple of minutes the rock had melted into a perfectly clear liquid. I poured some of the liquid into a smaller aluminum beaker and inserted two wires into the liquid, hooking them into the DC circuit. Within seconds bubbles started forming on the tips of the wires. I pulled out the wires, lit a small piece of notebook paper on fire and gingerly dropped it into the beaker... Bang, it exploded.

Just seconds before the explosion...the only damage was a bump on the back of my head when I jumped and hit a conduit on the ceiling behind me...Mark had come back inside.

"What the Hell was that noise?" he asked.

"Oxy-hydro explosion," I said.

"From what? We get a leak in the tanks?"

"No, from the water I electrolyzed into oxygen and hydrogen."

"What water?"

"The water I melted from the ice," I said.

"What ice? Tell me what the Hell's going on," he said.

"Sure. Remember I said the cave floor and walls had been polished smooth?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"Well, I figure that eons ago there was some free water or ice on Luna. Some of it apparently melted, maybe from a meteorite hit, and flowed downhill into my tube. I must be a dammed big tube for the water to run long enough to smooth it, but it did. Then, when it cooled down, the water froze into ice in the tube and it's been there ever since, just waiting for us to come and find it."

"I'll be damned," he said, "how pure is it? Can we drink it?"

"Don't know, all I've done so far is melt it and electrolize it...its water all right. I'll go ahead and run a standard chemical analysis on it now," I said.

"Yeah, do it, do it," Mark said; "You know, this could be just what will make the farm work."

"At the very least," I said.

* * * *

"Damn," I said to myself, "I must have contaminated the sample."

"Don't tell me it's not water?" asked Mark.

"Naw, it's water allright, pure enough to drink. But it's got a few trace elements in it."

"So what, if it's drinkable then it's good."

"Well, yeah, but listen to the trace elements: silicate, boron, iron and carbon...and the carbon is really high, almost one part in a million."

"So what? None of that will hurt us, we can use it. We can build our own farm," he said jumping up.

"Yeah, but where did that carbon come from?" I said., "I'm going to go get another sample and this time be really careful not to contaminate the sample."

"OK, but you say it's OK to drink?" Mark said.

"Oh, sure, I already did that, about 15 minutes ago. Tastes great...and it's less filling too."

I dodged the notepad Mark threw at me and said, "Here, you try it," and handed him a glass half full of water.

* * * *

Well, I got another sample and was really careful. The same trace elements showed up again. The carbon turned out to be tied up in an organic carbonate compound and that really had me stumped. The only place it could have come from was Earth...or from the carbonate asteroids in the belt.

"Of course, that's it!" I yelled.

"That's what?" said Mark, startled at my outburst.

"The asteroid belt, that's where the carbon came from."

"Come on," Mark said, "you gotta be kidding."

"No. Look, the belt has a lot of carbonate asteroids. I think one of them hit the moon right here, probably formed this very crater we're in, melted the water ice here and the water dissolved some of the carbon, and the other elements like the iron in the water, and then flowed down into the tube. I bet we'll find carbon all over the place inside this crater."

* * * *

Yeah, there was carbon everywhere in the crater, but not in enough quantities to recover it. A couple of weeks later we came back with the right equipment and finally we found it...a huge mass about 50 feet down that was about 25% carbon...something on the order of 100,000 pounds of carbon.

Now we had our carbon and our water...all we needed now was the building and the solar cell bank to power the operation.

Kaiser was happy to sell us the beams, cables, panels and piping right out of their stockpile at a good price since they didn't have a ready market for them right now. Of course, Kaiser wanted to know what we were going to put up such a large building for...and where...but we wouldn't tell them.

I sketched out a rock grinding machine and asked if Kaiser could build it. They said sure, but why didn't I just put in a bid for the original grinder the air/water plant had...turns out they figured it was about shot and Kaiser had just about built a brand new one for them. We did put in a bid and got it at just about salvage price.

Getting the corn and sugar beet seeds (and the grape cuttings) shipped up was easy since they only took up about 35 pounds of mass and to keep the project a secret, we had Hickey order the corn seeds, sugar beets and the grape cuttings through Jungle Juice. Fuller, my attorney, formed a new company, Old McDonald's, to purchase everything else.

To finance the project Uncle Mark and I stripped every savings and checking account we had. It wasn't quite enough and we had to get a loan from an Earthie bank for about 20% of the project. If you've ever dealt with an Earthie bank, you know how hard it is to get a business loan, but getting the silvered sunscreen fabric turned out to be the big problem.

The fabric only weighed in at about three ounces per square foot, but 30,000 square feet came in at some 11,250 pounds...you could imagine how much that would cost in freight! The solar cells were another problem. It wasn't the cost of the cells, it was the freight from Earth that cost.

We ended up paying for the cells, but instead of buying fabric made on Earth we rigged up a solar furnace, melted down silicate dust and spun it out as glass thread which was woven into fabric. It weighed more than the original plan called for, but when you figure it was manufactured essentially for nothing right on the moon it was dirt cheap...and it apparently will last forever...at least we've used the same material for more than 75 years now and it's as good as the day we installed it.

With all of the planning and organizing going on, we almost forgot to file a claim with Lunar Corp. Gov. Wilson called us in just before we left and made it clear than we had better resign our positions with the company, which we did, and then wished us well on our farm project...apparently our “secret” was common knowledge on Luna already.

At any rate, it took us four trips in rented cats to haul everything out to the site. The first thing we did was to seal off the large side room in the tube I mentioned, turning it into a large work area. Then we installed the solar cells for energy and ran lines to the workroom and to where we were going to build the farm.

It took about six hours to level off an area and three days to erect the steel beams, two days to hang the cable network and five days to assemble the panels. Two large beams were placed vertical at the ends of the building and a large cable run between them. Over this cable we horsed the glass cloth and pegged it down in the lunar soil. Two large powered mirrors, connected to a small computer, were built at each end of the building which was made of four-inch thick glass bricks. An airlock was built at one end and we hung and sealed the thin steel panels inside, welding them to the cables.

While we had been doing this we had another crew at work at the end of the tube. With electric jacks they had begun breaking out the ice, loading them into a couple of electric powered wagons. These they brought up to the surface and dumped them into a 50-foot long metal cylinder about 10 feet in diameter. When the sun rose it beat down on the cylinder and began melting the ice. Since that ice started at about -150 degrees, it took a lot of energy to melt it...so we used the free stuff the sun throws out.

The melt off was piped right to a large tank made out of plastic net and plastic sheeting located at one end of the farm and from there it was piped to a small electrolyzing tank. The oxygen was set loose right into the farm building and the hydrogen was piped outside and let loose. Later we would keep the hydrogen, but at this time it was a waste product.

The water temperature when we piped it out of the melting tank was about 150 degrees and by having the tank inside the farm, it acted as a great heat sink, helping to keep the temperature up during the Lunar night.

The grinder was set up near the farm building and put to work grinding up that asteroid in the ground. Most of the ground rock was taken directly into the farm and dumped right on the ground, but some was put into a solar heater and baked until CO2 was driven off and then that was pumped into the farm's atmosphere. What we wanted was about seven pounds of pressure composed of 30% CO2 and 70% O2. With a range of plus or minus 5% it wasn't hard...the hardest part was making the adjustment every time we operated the air lock.

It didn't take that long to grind up the rock we needed for the farm, but we kept the grinder going until the asteroid was all gone. That took almost six months and you couldn't hardly believe the pile of dirt we had...we called it "Mt. Ass"...short for "as-teroid" of course.

The first thing we planted when the atmosphere was right were the grape cuttings. Came from the Napa Valley and they were Chardonay grapes, of course. Then we planted the sugar beets and started planting the corn. During the day time we had the mirrors pouring light into the farm and, during the two weeks of night we used the grow lights. The day hours, despite the sunscreen, saw the temperature go up inside the farm alarmingly but when we brought some ice directly from the mine and dumped it into the water reservoir the temperature dropped quickly. At night it was the reverse, of course. At first we had no insulation on the walls and the heat was sucked right out, despite the hot water heat sink. By the second night we had fired up the spun glass furnace and hung a lot of glass batting inside the farm. That worked just fine, especially a couple of months later when we hung some plastic sheeting over the glass.

Do you have any idea how high corn can grow on Luna? A heck of a lot higher than an elephant's eye, that's for sure. That corn, uninhibited by earthie gravity, grew up to about 20 feet...and the size of the corn ears...some of them were 24 inches long. The beets were enormous too. The grapes took a lot longer, of course, almost two years before we could harvest them, and by the time they fruited they had created a grape jungle covering the back end of the farm. They were so tall and thick we had to trim them back constantly or they tended to cut off all of the sunlight from the rear mirror.

Anyway, it came time to harvest the corn and beets.

By this time everyone on Luna knew what we had...especially when we started trucking our water right to Loony City and selling it to the company for about $100 a gallon, one-twentieth what it cost the company to make. In fact, the company contracted to purchase 500 gallons a day. Part of that contract included them supplying us with 300 gallons of sewage a day at no charge, and we took part of our payment in the form of a cat. We built a couple of huge tank trailers and hauled sewage to the farm where we processed it and dumped it back into the farm and returned with fresh water. Even though the tanks held 5,000 gallons each, it meant we had to transport a tank every 10 days. We could do it, but only barely and then we couldn't have any sort of breakdowns.

We finally came up with a plan, a slow-speed train.

What I designed was a small, solar powered engine with a one horse-power electric motor. The motor was geared down so that the loaded train traveled at about 8 kicks an hour and was driven by roof-mounted solar cells. Behind the tractor were several tank cars. Then we automated the train. We constructed a concrete berm about eight inches tall from the farm to Loony City. The tractor had a following wheel which felt the berm and a micro computer directed the tractor to follow the berm. Another sensor turned off the power if the following wheel lost the berm .

So, even though the farm was some 20 klicks from Loony City, the train took about two and a half hours to make the trip. Allowing two hours to load and unload, the train could make more than two round trips a day every day for 14 days of sunlight. And, since each tank held 5,000 gallons and there were three tanks per train, which meant we could haul 30,000 gallons a day, or some 420,000 gallons each way every 30 days. What we did do was construct a half-millon gallon reservoir near Lunar City and fill it as needed. Later, as you know, we built a 25-meter Olympic pool and high-diving platform next to the Hilton Inn...but that's another story.

* * * *

Oops, I'm getting ahead of my farm story.

Like I said, it was time to harvest the corn and pump up production of Jungle Juice. We were contacted by the company mess hall cook who asked if we could spare any fresh corn...seems as if the workers had been asking about it for the past few weeks. We negotiated a price and the cook said he could use about 1,000 ears, picked fresh and delivered the next morning, thank you.

Well, we only had about 800 ears ready to pick and, with the price he offered per ear it was better to sell it as corn than as liquor...so we sold it all. Turned out to be quite a hit and the cook told us he'd take the entire crop. We hesitated. After all, we'd built the farm for a steady supply of corn and sugar for Jungle Juice, not for fresh corn. We asked about the sugar beets. The cook didn't want them, just the corn and hurry up and make up your mind or the deals off.

We made up our mind and delivered the 823 ears of corn the next morning, shipping it to Luna City on our train, then we went ahead and processed the sugar beets into sugar and stored it.

"OK," said Mark after we banked the corn check, "now let's plant corn for Jungle Juice and no more fresh corn sales."

"Well, hold on a minute," I said, "We need to rethink this. I think we should build three more farm buildings and plant two to corn, one for fresh and one for Jungle Juice, and put one to something like potatoes or carrots or beans...something the company farm isn't producing."

"That'll take all of our profits to date," Mark wailed.

"Yeah, but figure the return...and don't forget the water sales to the company...that'll more than pay for everything," I pointed out.

So we did, except we didn’t put in three new buildings, we built four. Two for the corn, one for potatoes and the fourth was split between carrots, beans and onions. This time since we were funding the expansion ourselves we didn’t have any trouble with money, material procurement or anything...although the company certainly soaked us freight on the new solar cells and seeds they shipped up from Earth.

Nine months later the expanded farm was born...good thing we had stockpiled the extra carbon dirt...and we flooded the market with corn...so much so we actually glutted the market. The price of corn dropped and dropped and finally the company cook said he couldn't use another ear of the stuff...and we had about 20 tons of the stuff left...enough to run Jungle Juice for six months. However, we did manage to sell all of the other produce we had planted, so things weren't that bad...but what to do with 20 tons of surplus corn...and more to come.

It was then your grandmother suggested chickens, well, she wasn’t technically your grandmother quite yet, that’s another story. They would do quite nicely on the corn and some of the green leaves from the vegetables thank you and they would produce eggs and meat. So we ordered up six dozen fertilized chicken eggs...and six pregnant doe rabbits and a couple of buck rabbits. Nine months later and a couple of generations they had made a real dent in the 20 tons of corn and we were selling fresh eggs and meat to the company mess hall. Suddenly, the farm manager reported, we didn't have enough corn to keep producing the eggs and meat that were being demanded and still keep the Jungle Juice plant operating.

We built four more farm buildings, giving us a total of nine buildings with a combined footage of nearly 300,000 square feet. In one of the new buildings we planted more grapes, along with orchards of dwarf apples, pears, peaches, apricots, plums and oranges. One was put into corn, another into more vegetable crops and the last new one was planted in oats and grass.

The freight tonnage on our “train” line to Luna City was such that, despite adding to the number of cars per train, we were having a really tough time getting everything shipped out. The guy we had put in charge of scheduling the train suggested a second berm be built so the trains could run both directions at the same time. That solved that problem.

Shortly after that we six calves shipped up from Earth. It was cheaper to raise them on our own corn, oats and grass than to pay Luna Corp the extra freight for the shipping of four adult cows. The first cows were milk cows but we soon added a couple of bulls and began raising some steers. Of course, the farm “pastures” weren’t big enough to hold all of these cattle so we had to add three more larger buildings just for the bovines (that’s what cows and bulls are called, “bovines”. Go google it, kids.)

And that's where your milk, hamburger and steaks came from...we had gotten hold of the tail of a wild tiger and couldn't get off...every time we expanded the demand went up and we had to plant more, then we had too much and had to find a way to get rid of it, then the demand went up and. Well, you see our problem. We decided to sell the meat and other farm produce directly to the residents all over the moon so we opened the first privately owned restaurants in all of the major domes, and called them “McDonald Farmhouses.”

We had one final problem with that though. Remember, we had incorporated the farm as "Old McDonalds Farm"? That was all well and good, but when we opened the second “McDonald Farmhouse” McDonald's Hamburger Corp. in the USA sued us for $5 million for copyright infringement of the name. Just before we went to court we suggested that instead of suing, perhaps we could just buy the franchise rights for all of Luna for $1 million.

They agreed and McDonald's was here. Everything we used was made on Luna...except for the Pepsi syrup. McDonald’s insisted that we buy the syrup directly from them, at a price, before freight was added, that worked out to about $3 a cup, a LOT more than the parent company charged Earth franchises. So we decided to sell Pepsi for $20 a small cup. And since we sold Loony fresh milk for only $3 a cup, or Jungle Juice at about $4 a cup, we didn’t sell much Pepsi for McDonalds.

Keep it simple stupid. KISS in action!



"A Lunar Tan" 

"Jungle Juice High" 

"The Iron Midden" 

"Made On The Moon" 

"Cow Who Jumped On The Moon" 

"Gunfight at the Paris Corral" 

"The Long John Space Suit"