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Book 2
Bouncing off the Moon
by David Gerrold
v0.5 unformatted
FORMATTING BADLY NEEDED
getting : hungryewok
BOARDING
THERE'S THIS THING THAT DAD used to say, when things didn't work out. He would say, "Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time." I never knew if he was serious or if he was doing that deadpan-sarcastic thing he did. The thing is, it usually wasn't a good idea at the time. Like going to the moon. That was his good idea, not mine. Not Doug's or Bobby's either. But like all of his good ideas, it worked out backwards. We got to go, and he had to stay behind, still holding his ticket and wondering what happened-the last time I looked back, he had that look on his face. And that hurt. We made it to the elevator with less than six minutes to spare. They were just about to give away our cabin to a worried-looking family waiting on standby. The dad looked upset and the mom started crying when we showed up. They wanted our cabin on the outbound car so desperately that the dad started waving a fistful of plastic dollars at us, offering to buy our reservation-we could name any price we wanted. Doug hesitated. I could tell he was tempted, so was I-poverty does that to you-but Mickey just pushed him forward and said, "We don't need their money." So we ducked into the transfer pod and the hatch slammed shut behind us with the finality of a coffin lid. This time, we were going in through the passenger side, and I knew what to expect, so the shift in pseudogravity as the pod whirled up to speed didn't bother me as much as it had before. I'd nearly
thrown up when we'd transferred from the car that brought us up the orbital elevator to Geostationary. Dad's good idea this time had involved smuggling something-or pretending to smuggle something so the real smugglers would go unnoticed -and in return, he'd get four tickets up the Line, but the only thing he was smuggling was us. He told us we were going on vacation, and it would have been a great vacation, except it wasn't really a vacation . The whole time, he was planning/hoping that we'd decide to go outbound with him to one of the colonies and not go back to Earth and Mom. It would have worked if Mom hadn't found out. And if whatever it was that we were supposed to be smuggling hadn't been so important that some really powerful people were trying to track us, bribe us, threaten us, and have us detained by any means possible. It would have worked because after we thought about it, we wanted to go. So we went. Without Dad. Without Mom too. The guys in the black hats had shuttled her up. My cheek was still stinging from her last angry slap. It wasn't a great good-bye. And the hurt went a lot deeper than my cheek. The hatch of the transfer pod opened and we were looking down a narrow corridor. "Come on, let's get to our cabin," Mickey said, giving me a gentle nudge on the shoulder. "The outbound trip is only six and a half hours. I think we should all try to get some sleep while we can." "I'm not tired!" announced Stinky-he was only Bobby when he wasn't Stinky. "And I'm not going to bed without a hug from Mommy!" "He's contradicting himself again," I said. Douglas-also known as Weird-gave me a look, one of the looks he'd learned from Mom. "Charles, if this is going to work, I need your help." He turned back to Stinky, trying to shush him with logic. "Mommy isn't here, remember?" We were halfway between nowhere and nothingness, on a cable strung between Ecuador and Whirlaway. There weren't many floors left to drop out from under us-and in a few minutes, we'd be dropping even further away at several thousand klicks per hour. Douglas was right. We were on our own. "Give him to me," I said. In the one-third pseudogravity of the cabin, Stinky was only cumbersome, not heavy. He was still crying, but he reached for me-maybe I should have been flattered, but it seemed
like an ominous moment. Was I going to be the Stinky-wrangler now? Probably. Douglas was already too much of an adult. He thought logic was sufficient. Well, so did I-but with Stinky, you have to use Stinky-logic, which isn't like adult logic at all. "Hey, kiddo," I said, maneuvering him into a hug. "I didn't get my hug either." He slid his arms around my neck in a near stranglehold. "Attaboy. We'll trade hugs. But no doggy-slurps-" Even before I finished the sentence, Stinky was already licking my cheek-slurp, slurp, slurp-like an affectionate puppy. It was his favorite game, because I always said, "Yick, yick-bleccchhh! Dog germs!" And that was all it took. Mommy was forgotten for the moment. It was an old game-it went back to the time I'd been whining for a puppy, and Mom had said, "No, we can't afford a puppy-and besides, we've got the baby." "Stinky isn't a puppy!" I answered back. "Yes, I am!" Stinky had shouted at me. He didn't even know what a dog was then. "Am too!" And then Weird had said, "Put him on a leash, take him for a walk, you'll never know the difference," and that was how the slurp game began. We didn't have a dog, we had Stinky. But I still would have preferred a dog. Most dogs drop dead by the time they're Stinky's age. I tried to wipe my cheek, except the little monster had such a hammerlock on me that I couldn't break free. Time for the next move in the game: "No hickeys! No hickeys!" I shouted, and began tickling him unmercifully. He broke free in self-defense, shrieking in feigned panic. I grabbed him in a bear hug, ready to tickle him senseless, then remembered where we were and stopped before he peed in his pants. For a moment, we just stood where we were, him gasping for breath and me just holding on. Hugging. I flopped backward onto the floor and pulled him down to my lap, curling him into my arms. "I miss Mommy too," I said, almost forgetting about my cheek. He wrapped his arms around me and hung on the way he'd done back in Arizona, in the big meteor crater. Hard to believe that was only a week ago-Stinky had been acting up, as usual. He'd run away from us, down the path that led around and around, down to the bottom of the crater. He was playing "You can't catch me." Then he tripped and slid down the crater wall, and I'd
thought we were going to lose him, but he only slid a little way down and then stopped. I was closest to him-I flattened myself on the ground and tried to get to him. But when I looked down that steep wall, all the way to the bottom, I was paralyzed. But then Douglas grabbed me and Dad grabbed Douglas and I grabbed Stinky, and somehow we all pulled each other back up onto the narrow path and ... for a moment, we hung there on the wall of forever, everyone holding on to each other-and Stinky had wrapped his arms around me like an octopus. When it happened, I was angry-so angry, I couldn't even say how angry-but the whole thing also left me with a funny feeling about him. About what it would have been like to lose him. And now that he was grabbing on to me the same way again, I began to realize what the feeling was. It was the same thing I felt. A grab for safety. The difference was that Stinky had someone to hang on to. So did Douglas, now-he had Mickey. I was the only one who didn't. Which was sort of the way I wanted it, at least I thought I did. Except maybe I didn't. The enormity of what we'd done was just starting to sink in. Mom and Dad's custody hearing had ended up in an emergency court session in front of Judge Griffith. She thought she could resolve it by asking me what I wanted. And I-in my infinite wisdom-had simply blurted out, "I want a divorce." I mean, if Mom and Dad could divorce each other when things got ugly, why couldn't I divorce the both of them? All I'd wanted to do was make them stop fighting over us kids so much- But Judge Griffith had taken my angry words at face value. She gave Douglas his independence; that was okay, he was almost eighteen; and then she gave me a divorce from Mom and Dad-and she assigned custody of both me and Stinky to Douglas. So yeah. At the time, it seemed like a good idea. But now-here we were, alone in our cabin, and I was sitting on the floor, holding Bobby in a daddy-hug because I couldn't think of anything else to do. I guess Bobby thought that I could take care of him-but myself. I was torn between the feeling of not wanting him all over me and knowing that I didn't have much of a choice in the matter. As little brothers go, he'd never been much fun. And whose fault was that anyway ? I'd replayed this conversation in my head plenty enough
times. Douglas had told me more than once that it was my fault Stinky was the way he was. He said I'd resented him from the day he was born. But that wasn't true. I'd resented him long before that. It was Stinky's fault Mom and Dad got divorced. He'd been an accident, and Mom got angry at Dad, and Dad got angry at Mom, and then he moved out or she threw him out, it didn't matter-but if Stinky hadn't come along, we'd still be a family. Or maybe not. But at least things would have been quieter. After he was born, Mom was different. She didn't have time for me anymore. She didn't have time for anything. Everything was about Stinky, and I had to help take care of him too, instead of just getting to be a kid. So of course, I was angry at him. And now, both Mom and Dad were gone, and the only person poor Stinky had to hang on to was me. I suppose, if I thought about it, I didn't really hate him. I just wished he'd never been born.
TAKING AWAY TWO WEEKS AGO.
TAKING AWAY TWO WEEKS AGO, WE'D BEEN in West El Paso-just another tube-town for "flow-through" families. Which is a polite way of saying "poor people ." The way it worked, they laid down a bunch of tubes, three or four meters in diameter, sealed the ends, and let people move in. They called it no-fab housing. The best that can be said about living in a tube is that it's almost as good as not having anyplace to live at all. El Paso gets sandstorms, big ones, and when the wind blows it turns the tubes into giant organ pipes. Everything vibrates. You get really deep bass, well below the range of audibility, four cycles a second-you don't hear it, you feel it. Only you don't really know what you're feeling, you just get this queasy feeling. Burying the tubes doesn't help. They bury themselves anyway, as the sand settles around them. Tube-towns sink into the ground sometimes as fast as a meter a year. The Earth just sucks them in. So they just keep adding more and more tubes on top. Our tube-town was already five layers deep. You're supposed to get air and sunlight through these big vertical chimneys-more tubes-only that creates another problem. The wind sweeps down one chimney and up the other, making the whole house whistle. The harmonics are dreadful. And there isn't a whole lot anybody can do about it either, except
enough bad news, a woman in southern Oregon said that giant worms had eaten her horse. They used to call this kind of mess a polycrisis. And everybody just shrugged and went on with business. Only this one was more than just another cascade of disasters, it was an avalanche of global collapse . They were calling it a meltdown. But we were nearly forty thousand kilometers away, and it was all just pictures on a screen. It couldn't touch us anymore. I didn't know how Douglas and Mickey felt about the news, but the Earth seemed so far away now it didn't matter anymore. Maybe that was the wrong way to feel, but that's what I felt anyway. A departure bell chimed and our elevator dropped away from Geostationary . We were outward bound. Every second that passed, the Earth fell even farther behind us. Above us. Everything from Geostationary is down-down to Earth or down to Farpoint-because Geostationary is at the gravitational center of the Line. It's where the effects of Earth's gravity on the Line are exactly balanced by the tension of Whirlaway rock at the other end. So whichever way you go, dirtside or starside, you're going down. Our tickets were paid for all the way to Asimov Station on the moon, two and a half days away. All we had to do was enjoy the ride as best we could- -and try not to think about the agents of whatever SuperNational it was who still believed that Dad had hidden something inside Stinky's programmable monkey and would probably try to intercept us to get it away from us, even though there was nothing in it except a couple of bars of extra memory, which were just a decoy anyway because someone else was smuggling the real McGuffin off the planet and out to wherever. I was hoping it was all the missing money, and that someone had made a mistake, and we really had it instead of whoever was supposed to-but Doug said it didn't work that way, the best anyone could be carrying would be the transfer codes, so never mind. But ... it was past midnight, and if anyone was really chasing us, they couldn't get to us until we got to the moon. And there was nothing we could do either until we got there. We'd been running for nearly twelve hours already, and we were all exhausted. So even though I could think of at least six arguments we should have been having, what we did instead was crawl into bed. Mickey and Douglas bounced themselves into one bed. Stinky and I flopped over backwards into the other,
with the intention of sleeping most of the way out to Farpoint Station. The trip up to Geostationary takes twenty-four hours. The trip out to Whirlaway takes only six and a half. This is partly because you travel faster on the outward side, but mostly because the outward side of the Line isn't as long. Instead, there's a huge ballast rock the size of Manhattan at the far end. It's called Whirlaway, and inside it is Farpoint Station. But we wouldn't be going even that far. The thing about the Line is that it's not just an elevator, it's also a sling. Tie a rock to a string, whirl it around your head. That's how the Line works. If you let go of the string, it flies off in whatever direction it was headed when you let go. A spaceship can fly off the end of the Line and get enough boost to go to the moon or Mars or anywhere else, using almost no fuel at all except for course corrections along the way. Jarles "Free Fall" Ferris, pilot of the first transport to leave Whirlaway for Mars, was supposed to have said, "Well, the old man was wrong. There is such a thing as a free launch." But depending on where you're going, there are only certain times of the day when you can launch a ship from the Line. Otherwise you have to wait twenty-four hours, give or take a smidge for precession, for the next launch window. Actually, you can launch from any point on the Line, depending on where you want to go. If you launch below the flyaway point-also called the gravitational horizon-you become a satellite of the Earth, because anything below flyaway doesn't have enough "delta vee" to escape Earth's gravity; the sling doesn't give you enough velocity to break free. But above the flyaway point, you get flung far enough and fast enough that you go up and over the lip of Earth's gravity well, and then you just keep on going. The farther out on the Line you get, the faster you leave. For some places, like L4 and L5, you don't want a lot of speed, because then you have to spend a lot of fuel burning it off. Douglas knows all about this stuff. He says that trajectory is the biggest part of the problem. How fast will you be going when you get where you're going? If you're catching up to your destination, you won't need as much fuel to match its speed as if you're intercepting it head-on, because then you have to burn off speed in one direction and build it up in the other. So there are a lot of advantages to slow launches-especially for cargo, which mostly doesn't care, because if all you're doing
is feeding a pipeline, nobody really cares how long the pipe is, as long as the flow is steady. Douglas had tried to explain it all to Stinky, more than once, but Stinky never really got it. He kept asking what held up the rock and why didn't it fall back down on Ecuador? Finally, Douglas just gave up and told him that the Whirlaway rock was hanging down off the south pole and we were going down to it. I think it made his head hurt to say that; he has this thing about scientific accuracy, and that's part of what makes him Weird-with a capital W. I hadn't paid any attention at all to Doug's lectures, but it sank in anyway, by osmosis. I didn't think it mattered because we were going all the way to the end, to Farpoint Station, because that would give us the most flyaway speed and get us to Luna faster than any other transit. At least that's what we thought at the time.
AWAKENINGS
SOMEBODY WAS SHAKING ME AWAKE. It was Douglas. "Come on, Chigger . We've gotta go. Now." "Huh? What?" "Don't ask questions, we don't have time." I sat up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. "What time is it?" Douglas pulled me to my feet and pushed me toward Mickey, who steered me toward-there was someone else in the cabin?-he was tall and skinny and gangly. I blinked awake. It was Alexei Krislov, the Lunar-Russian madman, the money-surfer who'd tried to help us elude the Black Hats on Geostationary. "Huh? How did you get here?" I blinked in confusion. He was wearing a dripping wetsuit. Was I still dreaming? "Shh," he said, finger to his lips. "Later." Douglas scooped up the still-sleeping Bobby and Mickey grabbed the rest of our meager luggage, hanging it off himself like saddlebags. When he reached for the monkey, it jabbered away from him and leapt into my arms. After that incident on One-Hour, where the monkey had led me on a wild breathless chase, I'd programmed it to home toward me whenever Bobby wasn't playing with it. I'd told it I was the Prime Authority. Alexei opened the cabin door, peeked both ways-there was no one there-then led us aft toward the cargo section of the car. Actually, it was the bottom of the car, but the car was a cylinder rotating to generate pseudogravity, so the bottom was the aft. I was too groggy to pay
much attention to what we were doing, I was still annoyed at being dragged out of bed. I looked at my watch. It was two-thirty in the morning . What the hell? We were still four hours away from Farpoint. Alexei pushed us into the aft transfer pod, and we all grabbed handholds. Pseudogravity faded away as the transfer pod stopped spinning in sync with the passenger cabin. Now we were in free fall again. I know that lots of people think free fall is fun. I'm not one of them. It makes me queasy, and it's hard to control where you're moving. Alexei opened the door on the other side and pushed us quickly into the cargo bay. I felt like one of those big balloons they use in the Thanksgiving Day parade. We floated and bounced through tight spaces filled with crates and tubes and tanks. The walls were all lined with orange webbing. Alexei led us through two or three more hatches, I lost count, and finally brought us to the last car in the train. It was cramped and cold and smelled funny. He jammed us into whatever spaces he could, then went back to seal the hatch; he did some stuff at the wall panel, and came swimming back to us, pushing blankets ahead of him. "Bundle warm. Is a little like Russian winter here, da?" The blankets didn't look very warm; they were thin papery things, but Alexei showed us how to work them. They were big Mylar ponchos; you put your head through the hole, pulled the elastic hood up over your head, and then zipped up the sides, leaving just enough gap to stick your hands out if you needed to. We looked like we were all plastic-wrapped, but as soon as I turned the blanket on, it turned reflective and I started feeling a lot better. Pretty soon, I was all warm and toasty and ready to go back to sleep-only I wanted to go back to the bed we'd already paid for. Mickey and Douglas were still sorting themselves out, finding corners to anchor our bags, and stuff like that. Douglas was bundling up Stinky, who still hadn't awakened. That's one good thing about low-gee. You sleep better. I looked to Mickey. "What's going on?" Alexei bounced over. "Is Luna you want to go, yes? Krislov will get you there. I promise. The elevators are not safe. Not for you. So I come to get you, da. I swim the whole way." He slapped his belly, indicating the wetsuit. He started to peel off the harness, which held his scuba gear. "I take free ride in the ballast tank. Nobody knows I am here. My people book for cabins to Luna. We all get bumped for Mister Fatwallets. No problem. We still go home." Grinning proudly,
he tucked his Self-Contained Universal Breathing Apparatus into the orange webbing on the wall. Mickey finished what he was doing and floated down-or was it up?-to drift next to Douglas. He angled himself into the same general orientation and looked across at Alexei. "All of you? You're all leaving? All the Loonies?" Alexei looked grim. "As fast as we can, gospodin. Is very bad, all over. Worse than you imagine. Worse than you can imagine. But no problem." He reached over and squeezed Mickey's shoulder. "Alexei will take care of you. What you told me was very useful, da. I looked, I saw. I made calls. I have clients who worry. I solve their problems. I move their money from here to there, I make money moving it. I move a lot of money now, I make a lot. What you told me, Mickey-I am very rich now. I was rich before, but now I am very very rich. Believe it. Before they shut down money wires, you have no idea how much dollars and euros this clever Lunatic has dry-cleaned. And with money wires shut down now, Alexei cannot send the money on, so Alexei takes care of it. A very great deal of it. I cannot count all the zeroes. And I keep the interest too. But shutting down the flow of money will not keep it on Earth, no. Money is like water. It goes where it wants to. And if there is not a way, it makes a way." He tapped his chest. "I am the way. I find the way. I deliver in person, if necessary. Do you know how much money I am worth because of you? Never mind, you cannot afford to ask." Krislov grinned. "I tell you this, you are worth almost as much. Remember? I make promise to you? I keep that promise. I flow the money through dummy companies. I cannot hold all companies in my name, so I put some of them in your names. All your names-even the monkey. You are all technically very very rich. At any moment, there could be billions of techno-dollars flowing through your accounts, around and around and around-we keep the money going, they can't find it. They shut the wires down, the money is supposed to stop. But it doesn't. It leaks. Every beam of light is a leak." I interrupted with a yawn. "Yeah, but-why did you have to wake us up?" "Because, while I am floating in ballast, I am still on phone. I am coordinating, yes? No. The wires are shut down, remember? But I listen to Line chatter. Why? Because I am nosy, da? Yes, I am-but also because in my business, it is a good idea to listen. So I listen to Line
chatter. And I hear. What do I hear?" He opened his palms in a free- fall shrug. "I hear about paladins. Do you know what paladins are, Charles?" I shook my head. "Bounty hunters. Freelance marshals. They specialize in extradition . They track you down, they catch you, they bring you back where you don't want to go. This is why I ride in ballast. I always make my own travel plans. Is much safer, because suddenly-I can't imagine why, can you?-people at Geostationary want to talk to Alexei. About business? Probably, but maybe I don't want to talk about business. Certainly not my business. So after I deliver you to passenger cabin, I go to cargo bay. As soon as car is on its way, I think we are all safe, but I am wrong. I listen to Line chatter, what do I hear? I hear about paladins at Farpoint waiting for cars to arrive. Maybe they are looking for me? I am disappointed. Only a little. Mostly they are looking for dingalings. Four dingalings and a monkey. Award money is substantial. You are very valuable to somebody, Douglas and Charles and little stinking one. And Mickey too. "So, I float in tank, I think-I think I cannot let them catch Din- gillians. Why? Because some of my companies are in your names and until I can get where I can rearrange the money-flow, I do not want you in that pipeline. Also because I owe you. So, I think-and da, I can do it. I come and get you. I wake Mickey and Douglas. They grab you and Stinky. We all come back here. We bundle up warm." "But-so what?" I asked. "If we're not in our cabin, they'll search the rest of the cars. They'll still catch us." "I don't think so," Alexei laughed. Something went thump just outside the cargo bay. "Because we are getting off here."
FALLING THEN SOMETHING ELSE WENT CLANK and thunk and finally bumpf. Alexei held up a hand for silence, as if he were counting off something in his head. "Wait-da!" He gestured excitedly. "Feel that?" "No-what?" It sort of felt like we were moving sideways. It was hard to tell in microgravity. "We are off of track. Swinging around into launch bay." "Launch bay-?" "Not to worry, little frightened one. Is not the first time a Lunatic has done this. Is first time that Alexei Krislov has done this, yes-but is because this is first time I have need to." "Do what-?" I demanded. Even Douglas looked worried. Something outside the car made a noise that sounded like un- clank-and then everything was abruptly silent. All the background noises of the Line and the elevator car were gone. The effect was terrifying . I'd never heard so much silence in my life before. "We are on our way to moon," Alexei said. "We cheat the bounty marshals. We ride with cargo. In four hours, elevator arrives at Whirlaway . Marshals show warrants, they go to cabin, they open door-but Dingillian family is nowhere, da? Da." A horrible cold feeling was creeping up my spine. "Where are we?" I demanded. "What did you do?" "We have jumped off Line. We go to moon. We ride with cargo." "We're off the Line-?" "Da."
The cold feeling turned into a churning one. "Douglas-!" I wailed. The emptiness outside the walls pressed in on me like a nightmare. I couldn't escape. It was even worse because there were no windows! It was down in all directions-we were falling into the dark! I started flailing in panic-"I don't want to do this! We've gotta go back. Make him take us back! I can't do this, Douglas! We've gotta go back-" Douglas grabbed me, held me me!" "I can't do this, Douglas. I can't!" I started blubbering. "I'm scared! There's nothing to hold on to out here!" "Hold on to me-just hold on. I'm right here." He held me tight in one arm, his face close to mine. He touched my face with his free hand. "Look at me, Charles. I'm just as scared as you. But we're not going to die. Nothing bad is going to happen to us. I've got you right here. And you've got me. We've got air, we've got water. We'll be three days getting there-" "No, Doug, please-" I started to come apart. "I can't do this, not for three days. There's gotta be a way to get back-" "Charles, you know better than that. There isn't any way back. The pod has been flung off the Line. We're going to the moon. There's no way to stop it. There's no way to turn it around." "I can't, I can't-I can't do this!" "Yes, you can. Listen to me. Look at me. We're very comfortable here. It's just a few days. We have air, we have water, we have food, we'll keep warm. You've got your music. It'll be just like Armstrong and Borman and Collins. We can pretend we're in an Apollo capsule. Like pioneers." "An Apollo capsule? Like Lovell and-and-? Whatever their names were?" "Swigert and Haise." That was Douglas. Even in the middle of a crisis, he had to be accurate. "We can do this, Charles. We have to. We're all we have. And Stinky needs you to be brave for him. I can't do it. He listens to you, not me." In my head I knew he was right, but that didn't stop me from being so scared I couldn't speak. My helplessness just came bubbling out. Douglas held on to me and let me sob like a baby into his shoulder. I
was so afraid. It was everything. Mom and her slap. Dad and his lies. Douglas and Mickey. Stinky. Not knowing where we were going. Everything out of control. It had been bad enough being stuck on a high-tension line, caught between everyone and everything-now my worst fear of all had just come true. We were helplessly falling forever . We were a million klicks from nowhere and getting farther away every second. So I held on to Douglas and cried, because he was all there was to hang on to-even though he was falling just as fast and just as far as I was. But But you can only cry for so long ... and then after that, it's boring. Even worse, it's silly.... I sniffed and wiped my nose unashamedly on Doug's shoulder. He backed off a bit so he could look me in the eye. "Are you all right?" "No," I admitted. "Can you hold it together?" "I don't know." "Because I don't want to have to sedate you." "Like Stinky?" "Yeah," he admitted. "And I hated doing it." I didn't answer. I could see the logic of it. Who needs an hysterical eight-year-old? Especially if you've already got a crazy thirteen-year- old? He asked again, even more serious this time. "Chigger-can you hold it together?" "I'll try." I was thinking about the tranquilizer. It might not be such a bad idea after all. But if I was going to die, I wanted to be awake for it. And wasn't that a stupid thought? Wouldn't it be better to be asleep, so you wouldn't know when it happened? "Listen-" His voice got very quiet, very serious. "All we have is each other." "Yeah, I know." For a moment, we just studied each other. He was wondering if I could be trusted-and I was wondering the same thing. I needed him to be strong for me, and he needed me to be strong for Bobby. I didn't know if I could do it. I'd spent so many years shutting them out I didn't know how to let them back in. I didn't know what to say. And even if I did, I didn't have any words-
Finally, I blurted, "I don't have anything to hang on to." "Nobody does," he said. "Ever." Like that was supposed to reassure me. The funny thing was, it sort of did. I let go of him. "I think I'll be okay now." "You're sure?" I was starting to feel embarrassed. "Yeah," I said, and pushed past him back to the others. Mickey and Alexei looked at me with concerned eyes. "I'm fine," I said. "I just have this-fear of cramped spaces. And heights. And falling. And the dark...." "Wow," said Alexei. "Is triple whammy. Not a good combination for space travel, da?" Mickey gave him a shut-up-stupid look, then reached over and put his hand on my shoulder, ostensibly to steady me, but he was slow in taking his hand away, and I knew he meant it as moral support too. Douglas settled in next to him, and the two exchanged grown-up glances; Mickey's had a question mark, Douglas's had a reassuring period . Mickey's look to Alexei hadn't worked. Alexei kept talking. "I don't understand this fear," he said. "Where I grow up, you fall slow, you have time to turn yourself so you land on your feet. You bounce, you don't hurt yourself. So why be afraid?" Douglas said bluntly, "Try it in Earth gravity sometime." "Earth?" He made a face, shook his head. "I do not think anyone will go to Earth for a long time. I certainly will not. I have Luna muscles , Luna bones. I have no desire to be toothpick-man on planet of crazy dirtsiders. You haven't heard latest news, have you? Ecuador has nationalized the Line. Armed troops have seized Terminus." Mickey didn't look as surprised as I thought he would. "How'd they get access?" "According to Line chatter, hurricane relief teams came in to use Terminus as a base. Troops came in with teams, to help prevent looting -but then they started arresting Line personnel. The situation is still ... how you say, very fluid? Traffic is running again, but most cars up are carrying troops. They have already seized One-Hour. Maybe there will be fighting at Geostationary. The U.N. is in uproar, of course-" Mickey looked worried and upset. His mom was still at Geostationary . Alexei was still talking. "We are lucky to get away. Who knows
what will happen next?" He gestured dramatically. "But one thing I am sure, Luna will finally prove what I have been saying all along- Luna doesn't need Earth anymore. We are self-sufficient. We will be new center of human consciousness. Not Earth." Douglas and Mickey exchanged another glance. This time, Douglas had the question mark. Mickey answered, "Yes, Alexei is militant in his Lunacy." Alexei didn't bristle; he wore his madness like a badge. "The laugh is on you, Mikhail. If not for my paranoid Lunacy"-he tapped his head with his fingertips-"you would be in custody very shortly. In another four hours. At the end of the line, how you say, literally. And whose custody would you be in? Up for the highest bidder, I think. And if we are all at war, who knows? Bad accidents happen in war. No, my Lunacy is saving your life. Again. No, no, you can thank me later. The money I have made today is all the gratitude I need."
FLOATING ALEXEI SETTLED US AT THE far end of the pod, in the little bit of space between the cargo containers and the hull. He tucked us and our gear into the orange webbing on the aft bulkhead, spacing us around so that our mutual center of gravity was congruent to the central axis of the pod. If we wanted to go anywhere in the pod, we'd have to squeeze around pipes and cables and supporting rods-and big green glops of hardened foam that looked like industrial-strength boogers. But there was no place to go anyway, so we just stayed where we were, wrapped in our plastic blankets and looking at the ominous round wall of cargo containers in front of us. It was like being a bug at the bottom of a piston. The crates were all big wedge-shaped things, four to a circle, each anchored firmly in place by plastic clamps and foam boogers. Mickey explained that the thick foam pads were how the cargo engineers kept the containers from breaking loose and rattling around in transit. I didn't see how the crates would have much chance to rattle or break loose; we would be in free fall the whole way, wouldn't we? But there was a lot I didn't understand. "The accommodations aren't pretty," Mickey admitted, "but we won't be uncomfortable. Cargo pods are designed for supercargo. Sometimes Line engineers have to ride with supplies, so there's mandated life support for at least five people at a time." Alexei grinned. "Is very convenient, no?" He showed us the ar-
rangements. "See those blue tanks all around? They hold water. Many liters. Microdiaphragm pumps move it around for balance. Water is very convenient that way. Green tanks have oxygen. Brown cabinets hold food-well, MREs." "MREs?" "Meals Ready to Eat. Three lies in as many words, no? Be sure to drink much water. MREs make lumps like concrete in bowel. With no gravity, lumps get even harder. Very much pain. Learn the hard way, yes? Very hard. That is the problem. Too hard even to work out with pencil. Not to worry-if you don't like MRE, you are not hungry enough. Starvation is not as painful, but takes too much longer." He pointed toward the other end of the pod-I thought of it as the front, because that was where we'd entered. "Use that end for bathroom . Use plastic bags, like this? See. Put waste in yellow containers with biohazard symbol. Be very careful. Is possible to make very bad stink in here. Very unpleasant. See those little fans everywhere to keep air moving? They don't make stink go away; only spread it around equally. Don't worry, I teach you how to be careful. Any questions?" Mickey and Douglas seemed to be okay with the arrangements, and I figured I'd learn as we went along-and we'd all take turns trying to explain it to Stinky when he woke up. Maybe we could keep him from wetting or soiling himself for three days. But there was something else that was bothering me. "Um-" "What?" That was Douglas. "You agreed to this?" "Mickey and I did, yes." Mickey said, "We didn't have a lot of time to talk about it, Charles. We had fifteen minutes to decide before the capsule was launched." "You took Alexei's word for it that there were marshals waiting for us-?" "Alexei might be a lunatic, but he's an honest one." Mickey held up a headset. "You want to hear the playback? You want to listen to the Line chatter?" I did, but that wasn't the question. "But the marshals will figure it out, won't they? When the elevator arrives at Farpoint and we're not in the cabin, they'll just phone ahead to Luna. There are marshals on Luna, aren't there? They'll just catch us in the cargo pod." Alexei nodded. "Very good, Charles. But Luna is not Line. Very
much not. On Line, you are always known. Always under camera eye. Not on moon. I will get you down safely, and you will see. Things disappear very easily. Luna is beautiful that way. You will love moon. Especially fresh food. Is big promise. I am hungry already, thinking of salad. Sweet corn, ripe tomatoes, fresh peas . . ." Maybe it was me, maybe it was the lack of sleep, but everything was happening just too fast here. "Excuse me-? Did I miss something? This is a cargo pod, isn't it? They know where we're going to land, don't they?" "No," said Alexei. "They know where we're supposed to land." I didn't like the sound of that. Even before I asked the next question , I knew the answer was only going to make things worse. Alexei said, "Now you want to know where we will land, don't you?" "Uh-okay, where?" Alexei grinned through his scraggly beard. "We will come down where they can't go. Not easily. Very bad area. The maps are not accurate . Not the official ones. From there we go to land of tall mountains and deep ice mines. Is very beautiful. A little dangerous. But not too much-not to worry. You will like. By the time they get to cargo pod, we will all be somewhere else." "But they can track us, can't they? As soon as they figure out we're in one of the cargo pods, they'll-" Alexei's PITA* beeped; he glanced at his wrist. "Ah, there it is now. Time for first orbital correction. Everybody brace yourselves. Hang on to the webbing. This won't be too bad." Mickey reached over and grabbed the still-sleeping Stinky. "Is just a little one-" Alexei started to say, but he was abruptly interrupted by a deep-throated rumble that rattled the whole cabin like an El Paso windstorm. It was loud and bumpy, and we were all shoved sideways up against the hull so hard it was almost impossible to breathe. It felt like we were hanging upside down in a cement mixer. I wanted to scream-but didn't have the air for it. And just when I was making up my mind that I was going to scream anyway, it stopped, and that spooky eternal silence closed in again. "Is that it?" Douglas asked. "Oh, no," said Alexei. "We have maybe fourteen or fifteen more. *Personal Information Telecommunications Assistant.
All the way out." He looked back over to me. "What was question again, Charles? That they will track us? Yes, they will. That is the point of the course changes." "Fourteen or fifteen more? All like that-?" "It's done with solid-fuel chips, Chigger," Douglas started to explain . "They burn unevenly and that rattles everything-" "I know how they burn!" I almost said a whole bunch of other stuff too, except I was too busy concentrating on my next breath. "And why so many course corrections anyway? Can't they aim this thing-?" I looked to Alexei. "Not course corrections. Course changes. Is very precisely aimed," Alexei said, "and we are making serious alteration in trajectory . Is not unheard of. Sometimes cargo gets preempted from one location to another." "But they're still tracking us, aren't they?" Douglas asked. "Chigger 's right. This thing broadcasts a locater signal-they'll know where we are as soon as they figure it out, won't they?" "Eventually, yes, they'll figure it out. The key word is eventually. So our job is to make eventually later than sooner." Alexei continued proudly. "First, this is not only pod to launch. Do you remember five others? All of those pods have been preempted too. Some rich new Luna company bought them in transit-I cannot imagine who, can you? All the pods have been retargeted for different places. Whoever tracks pods thinking we are in one of them will have to send marshals to six different landing sites, all of them difficult, except two." "Oh," Douglas said. "And-?" "And?" Alexei looked puzzled. "You said first, as if there was a second." "Oh. Yes, well second is much more subtle. This is why we have fourteen course changes on each pod. So that no one who is tracking can predict final orbit and landing site until we are already on track. All those changes-we will look like we can land anywhere on Luna. The last burn will not happen until we are on final approach, and that will bounce us off the screens for many long minutes. Whoever tracks will have to spend long minutes projecting-guessing probable touchdown sites. Your lunatic Russian friend is very clever, yes?" "Yes, very clever," agreed Mickey. He'd been very quiet up to this moment. Now his tone of voice had gone all strange, and he asked, "Just where are you bringing us down?"
Alexei grinned. "This is cleverest part. I show you. We started out in Earth equatorial plane, yes? Each of our course changes pushes us more and more up. We go toward north pole of moon-they think we are aiming for North Heinlein, approach pattern is perfect for that- but no, as we come into Lunar orbit, we go three times around and make extra burns. Last change puts us in crazy-mouse orbit. You know crazy-mouse orbit? Near polar, but not quite; elliptical with lots of wibble-wobble. Great fun. We can come down anywhere we want from crazy-mouse, but no one knows where until last minute. Other pods do same thing too, we make them all crazy." "But what do we do?" Mickey asked. "We will be in crazy-mouse just long enough for people tracking us to say, `Oh, shit.' We loop over top of moon, come down around far- side, aim for ground, brake very suddenly, and bounce down in southern hemisphere." "Bounce down ... ?" I asked. "Yes, is very easy. Great fun. You will laugh much. Like rollering coaster." And then he looked honestly puzzled. "Do you not know how these things work?" I looked to Douglas, accusingly. He had that constipated weasel expression-the one that said no, I didn't tell you the worst of it.
CHANGES PULLED MYSELF OUT OF the pocket of the orange webbing that Alexei had stuffed me into. I grabbed Douglas by the leg and pulled him down away from Mickey and Alexei, so I could talk to him privately. If I'd been scared before, now I was beyond scared. There wasn't a word for it. I couldn't believe I was still rational. I should have been gibbering. Douglas's first words were, "I didn't know myself, Chigger, I didn't have time to ask. I'm sorry-but we still would have had to come this way. Think about it." "I have been!" I lowered my voice so he wouldn't hear the sob in my throat. I was terrified. "This is real stupid, Douglas." "Yeah, I know-but we didn't have any choice." "We could get killed." "I don't think so. Mickey isn't stupid. And Alexei-" "Alexei's a lunatic who doesn't have enough sense to be afraid of gravity. Why didn't we just stay on the elevator and deal with the marshals at Farpoint? We didn't do anything wrong. They can't arrest us." Douglas shook his head. "Chigger, you've already seen how these people work. They throw lawyers at you. And they keep throwing lawyers until one of them finds something that sticks. And even if they can't find anything, they still keep you stuck in the courtroom. Either way, you're stopped, which is all they want to do anyway-stop us long enough to get their hands on the monkey." "So why don't we just give it to them? We didn't make the deal to smuggle it. Dad did. We don't even know who's supposed to collect it
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