"starsiders_2_bouncing_off_the_moon_by_david_gerrold_v05_unformatted" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gerrold David)

THE FUNNY THING, DOUGLAS WAS right. This was too dangerous for us. This was a mistake. It had been a mistake from the beginning. It was a whole cascade of mistakes-Mom's, Dad's, Mickey's, and all the lawyers and judges who'd stumbled into this with us. But most of all, it was our mistake. And everything we were doing now was only making it worse. We were getting farther and farther away from help. Every step we took was only making it harder for someone to find us and rescue us. And then there was that business with Alexei. The more I thought about what he'd said, the more it pissed me off. He'd threatened to abandon us. He'd gotten us into this and he wasn't going to help us get out-not unless we did it his way. And I didn't like that. And probably neither did Mickey and Douglas. But none of us were talking about it, so maybe that was even more evidence how serious this was. Or maybe Alexei was right. He was a smuggler and a spy and Ghu knew what else. He knew this stuff. He knew the dangers. And, supposedly , he knew how to avoid them. Maybe it was just an overdose of wunderstorm and we were getting panicky. And then we started down, and there wasn't a lot of time to worry. The way down didn't look as easy as the way up. Alexei had brought us to a place where the rim walls of two overlapping craters intersected. Most of the slope below us was hidden by long sideways shadows. Even so, we could see that the way down to the floor of the
second crater was a broken avalanche of ugly rock. It was a rubble- strewn slope, gashed by several nasty chasms. I didn't see how we were going to negotiate it-maybe by jumping from boulder to boulder? But it turned out to be a lot easier than that. Alexei retrieved the grapple-dart from where it had secured itself and wound up the cord carefully; then he reloaded the dart gun and sighted down into the rubble and beyond, marking the range to the distant silver plain. He muttered to himself in Russian and I got the feeling he was doing some complex calculations in his head. Finally, he made a decision. He sighted down into the rubble, tracking the laser dot as far as he could toward some distant landmark. Then he aimed the pistol forty-five degrees upward, and fired. The grapple-dart flew up and away, trailing the cord after it in great uncurling loops. As before, it glittered in the sunlight, yellow against the black sky above. The dart arced over and down into the gloom below, and as the line fell back into shadow with it, it began blinking out along its length. As before, we had to wait until the butt of the dart-pistol confirmed that the grapple-dart had secured itself. Now Alexei looped the other end around a convenient boulder and began pulling it as tightly as he could. Periodically, he'd turn and look down into the gloomy crater below with his goggles set for light- enhancement. Then he'd grunt and resume tightening the cord. Mickey helped him. When they were done, we had a Lunar zip line. "All right, Mikhail, do you want to go first? Or should I?" "I think you'd better." Alexei nodded agreement. "I think so too. All right, Dingilliansthis part will be easy." From his equipment pack, he produced four little wheels with handles, he handed one to each of us. "Use your grabbers . Click right grabber here, reach up, put wheel on line, click left grabber here. Once you are clicked, you cannot fall off. So enjoy ride. Pick up feet, hold knees as high as you can, ride line all the way down to bottom. Is long way, da? So do not go too fast. Twist handles this way for braking, wheel will slow. Twist other way to release brake. Is good idea to control speed all the way down, especially for beginners. When you get near end, you will see ground getting closer. That is time to go very slow. Even slower than that. Slower than very slow. Do not scrape bubble suit. You will do fine. I promise. Is great fun and best way to go anywhere on moon. Any questions?"
I raised a hand. "Yes, Charles?" "Did you do this on purpose?" "Do what?" "Choose the bounce-down sight so far from where we have to go? I mean, couldn't you have brought us down a little closer?" "I could have, yes. But I wanted the bad guys to look somewhere else. So we hike a little bit and they go to look in six places much farther away. By the time they don't find us, we will be past wherever else they think to look. If I did not think you could handle this, Charles, I would not have used this plan." He added thoughtfully, "I make this plan a long time ago, I am very proud of myself that it works so well. You should be proud too-that you are strong enough to keep up. We are almost on schedule. Wait for my signal. I will call you down as soon as it is safe. Hokay, any other questions? No? I see you all on the bottom ." He swung his wheel over the line, clicked onto the handles, kicked off with his feet, and sailed away over the edge. "Waaaaaaaa-haaaaa! Hoooo-hooooooooo-hooooooooo eeeeeeeyyyy !" He wailed all the way down-or at least as far down as he had the air to shriek. He floated down across the Lunar landscape like something out of a bizarre dream-a silver sprite in a shimmery ball. And then there was silence. It stretched out for the longest time. The three of us looked at each other. "Why doesn't he say something?" I asked. "Maybe he's concentrating on his landing," Douglas said. "What if he fell off?" "He can't fall off." "What if the bottom of the line is in a jagged rock field and he got punctured before he could warn us? What if it's not safe to go down after him?" "Charles, stop scaring yourself. Nobody else is going down until Alexei tells us it's safe." "But if something happened to him-?" "Nothing happened to him," said Douglas. We both looked to Mickey. Mickey was studying the PITA on his wrist. "His signal is clear. His readouts are green. He's alive. He's just not talking. At least, not to us. He might be calling ahead to someone else. Not to worry."
We waited in silence. I looked at the Earth for a while. It hadn't changed its position in the sky. And the terminator line didn't look all that different from before. Most of Africa was still waking up. To another horrible day. We'd only been traveling two hours. We still had a long way to go. And then, the worst thing of all happened. Stinky woke up. And announced, "I gotta go to the bathroom. Where are we?" Mickey and Douglas and I all groaned at the same time. "Can you hold it?" said Douglas. "No," said Stinky. "I gotta go right now!" "Uh-oh-" I said. I knew that tone of voice. And in that same instant, I had a chilling insight about Stinky- and why he was the way he was. I was only angry at Mom and Dad. But Stinky was angry at everyone. It was about control. Everybody in the family had authority over him. Everybody older had power. He had none. There was only one thing he could say to bring everything else to a stop. There was only one thing he do to seize control. And every time he did, everything else came to an immediate stop. At that moment, his single declaration became the ultimate power in the family. Whenever things were totally out of control-there was Stinky demanding, "I gotta go now." If nothing else, he could always be depended on to focus the dilemma on himself. Without even thinking about it, I stepped over to Douglas. "Stinky! Can you hear me?" "Yes. Where are you, Chigger?" "I'm right here." I reached over and pressed against the back of Douglas's bubble, patting the bulge on his back that I assumed was Stinky. "Feel that?" "Yes. I gotta go!" "Listen to me. You've got to hold it. If you go now, you'll have to sit in it for six hours, for the rest of the day. And you won't be able to escape the stink. Is that what you want?" "But I really really gotta go! I mean it!" "Wait a minute-" That was Douglas. "Maybe I can work something out in here. Bobby, can you wait a minute-I've got a bathroom bag. You'll have to climb down from my back-" "I'm all tied up, I can't get out. I gotta go."
Mickey said, "Can you turn around, Douglas? I'll invert the gloves and untie him. Or do you want to use the inflatable?" "Bobby!" I said. "Which do you want to do first? Go to the bathroom or ride the roller coaster?" "What roller coaster?" "The one right here. The Lunar roller coaster." "I can't see it. Douglas has his blanket over me." "Do you want to go on the roller coaster?" "Yes!" "Can you hold it-?" "Um ''Um' isn't good enough. Can you hold it?" "I'll try-" "'I'll try' isn't good enough either. We have to know. Can you hold it for a few minutes more? Yes or no." "Yes." Mickey turned to me. "Charles, we can do it here. Douglas can take care of him in the bubble. Or they can go into the inflatable." "Mickey, he went to the bathroom back in the pod, just before bounce-down. He doesn't have to go-not as badly as he says he does. He hasn't eaten anything in the last twenty-four hours, he doesn't like the MREs. And even if he had eaten, he'd be constipated anyway." "And what if you're wrong?" "I've spent the last eight years monitoring his bowel and his bladder . After you've cleaned him up a couple of times, you start paying attention to these things." Mickey wasn't convinced. "He sounds awfully insistent to me." "He does this everywhere," I explained. "At home, in the car, on trips. Nobody else can ever use the bathroom if he doesn't want them to. If he's not the center of attention, he's gotta go. He does it to escape spankings. He does it to get me in trouble. And he did it at Barringer Meteor Crater-you heard about that?-because somewhere he's figured out that announcing that you have to go to the bathroom is the reset button for reality. You notice, he hasn't said a word for the past two minutes? If something interesting is happening, he forgets he has to go." Right on schedule, Stinky piped up. "I wanna go on the roller coaster!" Mickey turned back to Douglas. "What do you want to do?"
"Chigger is right. Let's keep going." "We haven't heard from Alexei-" Mickey fiddled with his phone. "Alexei-? Can you hear me. Respond please?" To me, he said, "It's a long way down. If he went slow-" "He could still answer, couldn't he?" I bounced up and flipped my wheel over the cord, clicking my grabber onto the other handle with an ease that surprised me. I was getting used to this stuff. Before I could kick free, Mickey blocked me. "Charles, wait-" "Why? If something happened to him, we're on our own. Waiting up here is only going to use up oxygen. You have to stay with Douglas and Stinky. I can do this-" "Mickey, he's right. Let him go. We have to get down from here." Mickey sighed and stepped out of the way. I don't think he liked any of us right at that moment. I didn't care. I kicked free.

GETTING DOWN

I SAILED OFF THE ROCKS and out into open space-above the crater wall, above the rubble-strewn slope, above the gaping chasms, toward the distant gray Lunar plain. Parts of it were so dark the shadows were tangible. There wasn't as much sense of motion as I expected-and there wasn't as much falling feeling either. Even so, my heart lurched in my chest. Here I was again, hanging in open space- I tried looking up. That didn't help. The cord was zipping by too fast. I looked down. That was even worse. I could see how fast the ground was coming up. The line was too steep. I twisted the handles as hard as I could. The wheel slowed, the vibration in my hands and arms changed. But it didn't feel slow enough. "Oh, chyort!" I should have started sooner. "Charles-?" "I'm trying to slow down." The ground was coming up awfully fast. And I was feeling really stupid. I twisted the handles harder-but they were already at their limit; they clicked into a locked position. The wheel was stopped-but I was still going! The wheel skidded and bounced along the cord. Was this what happened to Alexei? Betrayed by the Lunar laws of physics? There wasn't enough weight on the wheel, there wasn't enough friction between the wheel and the line, they were both too polished-and the line was too damn steep! I was
just going to keep sliding all the way down-until I slammed into a big unfriendly boulder. It was a long way down. More than a klick, maybe two. How fast would I be going when I hit bottom? Fast enough to hurt? Fast enough to puncture the bubble suit? Twenty kph? Thirty? More? If only I had a couple of Palmer tubes- That gave me an idea. I took my hands out of the connecting gloves and hurriedly connected the emergency rebreather tube to the valve of the bubble suit. It snapped immediately into place. This was going to be tricky. I pointed the valve and opened it in a series of short bursts. I couldn't hear the outrush of air, but I could feel it. I came skidding to a stop on the line. My downward rush was halted. The line wasn't as steep here. The brakes held. I took my finger off the valve. I couldn't believe it-it worked! I'd traded a few minutes of air- maybe more-for a safe landing. A fair trade. I shoved my hands back into the gloves and looked down. I was hanging thirty meters above a yawning abyss. It was too dark to see how deep the bottom was. "Chigger?" That was Douglas. "What was that screaming about?" "What screaming?" "You were screaming." "No, I wasn't-was I really?" "Yes, you were. What happened?" "I was going too fast. The brakes didn't work. Well, they worked, but they didn't. Alexei screwed up, I think. Even if the wheel doesn't turn, you'll still go skidding down the line. But it's okay. I stopped myself. I used some of the air from my rebreather." "How much?" That was Mickey. "Not too much. Just a few squirts." "Charles, I don't want to alarm you. But it's hard to tell how big a squirt is in vacuum. Don't panic. We've all got spare bottles. We're not going to run out of air. But that's not a real good idea." "It was the only one I had, Mickey. Anyway, you and Douglas are going to have to do the same thing." "No, we're not. I'm going to figure something else out. Where are you now?" "Hanging maybe a hundred klicks over nothing in particular." "How much farther do you have to go?" I peered ahead. "The ground levels out soon. So does the line. It
looks like maybe two or three hundred meters. It's hard to tell." "You'll have to go very slow." "I know that!" "All right. Just keep talking." My arms were starting to get tired. I reached up, grabbed the handles firmly, took a breath, and carefully began untwisting-not very much, just enough to unlock the brake and let the wheel start rolling. Only a little bit. I began moving forward. Very slowly. So far so good. The thought occurred to me that I might have reacted out of panic. The line had a lot of sag in it. Of course the highest part would be the steepest. Lower down, the line would level off enough that the brakes would be more effective. The more I thought about it, something felt wrong about this. Alexei had planned everything else so carefully; why did he screw this up? Lunar explorers used all kinds of tricks for getting up and down steep slopes. This couldn't have been the first time he'd done this. So why didn't he know better? Had he been careless? Or stupid? Or what? The ground came gliding up to meet me. Everything was back to slow motion. It was like one of those flying dreams where you drift along like a cloud. I tightened my grip and came to a halt, suspended only a couple of meters above the Lunar dust. The line went on farther, but the ground dropped away again. Maybe this would be a good place to get off ... ? Two meters. I did the math in my head. One-sixth of two meters. It would be like jumping off a chair. I could do that. "All right," I said. "I've found a stopping place. It's not too far to the ground. I'm going to drop down here. Wait a minute." I looked up at the wheel and the handles and visualized what would happen when I released my grip. The wheel would pop off the line, dropping me down. I just had to be ready. "Here goes-" My hand came free and I fell. The bubble bounced down onto the ground. I didn't fall over. "I'm down." "Good job, Chigger. All right, now move out from under the line. You don't want to get accidentally bumped. We're coming down now. Mickey and I are coming down together." "Huh?" "You'll see. Just keep out of the way." I stared up the line and waited. Several very long moments later,
three luminous bubbles appeared very high up. One very large one, and two smaller ones with silver figures inside. They were moving very slow-painfully slow. "I can see you," I reported. "We can see you too," Mickey called back. "We'll be down in a bit." It took longer than a bit, but I could see them clearly, so I wasn't worried. When they finally did arrive, they hung lower on the line than I had. In fact, they were holding their knees up so they wouldn't scrape the ground. They brought themselves to a stop, hanging all together like the last three grapes on the stem. Douglas lowered his long gangly legs to the ground and unclipped himself and Mickey. He showed me how they'd used some of the leash to the inflatable to tie their two wheels together to make a kind of pulley rig. With both wheels locked, the cord had to twist around first one wheel, then the other. It couldn't skid-at least not very well. "We should have thought of this before," said Douglas. "All three of us could have come down at the same time. With your wheel rigged in, we would have had even better control. We did skid a bit at first, but not as hard as you did." We were on a low hill. Mickey was already settling the inflatable on the level crest of it, opening up the first zipper of the entrance tube so Douglas could go in and take care of Stinky. As soon as Douglas was on his way in, Mickey came over to me and checked my air bottles. "How bad?" I asked. "Not as bad as it could have been. You used up half an hour of breathing. Maybe more. You'll just have to swap in one of your O- bottles earlier, that's all. Later on, we might have to equalize your air supply with mine or Douglas's. What you did was very smart, Chigger -and also very stupid. I hope you realize that. We don't have air to waste. Alexei didn't leave us much margin." "I didn't have time to think, Mickey." "I know you didn't. And I'm not bawling you out. We've just got to be more careful from here on. Okay?" "More careful than what?" I asked. Mickey looked exasperated. "I mean, we're going to have to think harder. Do you understand what I'm saying?" "Do you understand what I'm saying? Is there anything I could have done different?" He got it. Or maybe he didn't. "All right. Fine. Let's just drop it."
He turned back to the inflatable. "Doug, do you need my help?" Douglas was already inside. There was a smaller silver beetle next to him-Stinky. I couldn't see what he was doing, but from his posture, it looked as if he was squatting over a toilet bag. "No, I think we've got everything under control." Mickey turned to me. "Chigger, you stay here. I'm going to follow the line down to its end and look for Alexei." "I'll go with," I said. "I'd rather you didn't. It might not be very pretty-" "I've seen dead bodies before," I lied. Well, in the movies anyway. "Besides, you might need help bringing back the extra oxygen bottles and all the other stuff that Alexei was carrying." "All right," said Mickey. "But if you throw up inside your bubble, you'll have to live with it." "I'll be fine," I said. I hoped I was right. I followed him, hop- skipping over the hill.

END OF THE LINE

WE FOLLOWED THE CORD FOR several hundred meters. The ground was uneven, and generally sloping downward, though here and there it rolled upward too. There were boulders everywhere, of all sizes- some as big as cars or houses, others even bigger; so we couldn't really see too far in any direction. But we weren't worried about losing our way. Not as long as we kept the line in sight. Mostly it was ten or twenty meters over our heads. Mickey turned his transmitter all the way up and called for Alexei to respond, please. We waited and waited, but there was no answer. Several times we paused to circle around some of the bigger boulders , just in case Alexei had come down behind one of them, or even on top ... boulders were too big and uneven and we had to watch our bounces carefully. When we got past that, we took a short rest, each of us taking a small drink of water. Mickey looked over at me. "Y'know-Chigger, you're a pretty good kid." I didn't know how to respond to that, so I just grunted something that might have been thanks. "At first, I thought you were a whiny pain in the ass-but you can take care of yourself. Better than I expected. I respect you for that."
And then he added, "I hope that maybe you're starting to respect me too." "Yeah, I guess so," I said. "Charles, you resent me. I see it on your face every time you look at Douglas and me together. And I don't blame you. Douglas and Bobby are all you've got left, and I must seem like an intruder to you." I didn't know what to say to that either. After a bit, I mumbled half an agreement. "Well, yeah." "So, let's agree to work together anyway, okay? Because we both care about Douglas. And Bobby." "Um. Okay." We slapped gloves, kind of like a handshake, only clumsy, and then we checked in with Douglas. He told us to be glad that odors cannot travel through the vacuum of space. We pushed on. After another fifteen minutes of bouncing and skipping through house-sized boulders, we came around a tall rocky prominence and stopped. We had finally reached the end of the line. Literally. The place where the grapple-dart had anchored itself. Mickey bounced up to the top of a boulder, then bounced over to the next. He tilted himself forward to inspect the dart. "It looks fine," he said. "I'm going to see if I can loosen it and bring it with us. We might need it again." "But Alexei had the pistol." "Well, we'll just have to find him." I was already circling the outcrop, looking for Alexei's body. I wanted to find it-and I didn't. I was morbidly curious-and I was terrified . If Alexei was dead, then where were we ... ? "All right, I've got the grapple-dart," said Mickey. "I'm coming back down." Two quick bounces and he was beside me again. Above us the line was falling slack. "Did you see anything?" Meaning, did you find Alexei? "Uh-uh. It's like he popped off the line and flew away into space." "Knowing Alexei, I could almost believe that." Mickey bounced up and grabbed the sagging cord above us. He pulled the free end over the rocks and began winding it up. "Even without the pistol, this might be useful. Waste not, want not, remember?" He handed me the line to hold, then circled the promontory, looking for anything I might have missed. He spiraled outward among the boulders, then came back to
me. "Nope. He must have jumped off earlier. We could search for days and never find him." After a moment, he added, "And we don't have enough air for that." We started back toward Douglas and Mickey resumed winding the cord. "You know," he started, thinking aloud. "There was a lot of horizontal slack at this end of the line. He might have had time to slow down, even stop." And then he added, pointedly, "You might have too." "Yeah, but I didn't know that." "No, you didn't." We picked our way back slowly. We took turns gathering up the cord and winding it in loose coils. It looked unnaturally thin to me- but everything on Luna seemed spindly. If they made it only one-half as strong as it would need to be on Earth, it would still be three times stronger than necessary for Luna. We spread out and searched from side to side, looking for any sign of Alexei. Even a track on the ground would have been welcome. We searched as carefully as we could-but we were in shadow, there were a lot of boulders, and it would have been easy to miss him in the dark. Mickey stopped to study his PITA. He whispered something to it, studied the display. "All right," he said, with terrifying finality. "I'm going to call it. You know what that means?" "You think he's dead." "It means we can't waste any more oxygen looking for him. If he's dead, we can't help him. And if he's alive, we still can't help him-" He stopped and faced me. "Do you know the first law of Luna?" "Uh-no," I admitted. "It's very cold, it's very selfish. Take care of your own well-being first. Otherwise, you have nothing for anyone else." "That doesn't sound selfish to me. It sounds like good advice." "It is. But a lot of dirtsiders don't like it. The equations are too cold for them. You know what that means?" "Everybody does. Not enough air." "That's right." He took a breath. "All right. Let's go back and talk to Douglas. It's time to make a decision." Douglas and Bobby were sitting together inside the inflatable. Bobby was munching an MRE and sipping at a canteen. I checked the time. We'd have to take another bathroom break in an hour. If we waited until he went now, we might manage two hours, two and a half. Maybe.
Mickey and I stopped outside the inflatable. We checked each other's air supply. We were both fine. Mickey told Douglas what we had found-and what we hadn't found. He traced lines in the thin dust. "Here's where we started. Here's where we are now. Here's the closest two train lines. We could have gone to this one, to the east. It's only half the distance, in fact it's still closer, but there are some steep crater walls in the way. And we'd be in sunlight a lot of the time, dodging from shadow to shadow. Experienced Loonies wouldn't have had a problem with it, but it's too risky for beginners. So Alexei had us going the long way, but safer-heading for this other line here. This way, we stay mostly in shadow, and the biggest problem is that one little crater rim-yeah, that was a little one-and a little bit of sunlight, and making sure that we have enough air. He thought we could do it. So did I. I still do." I couldn't tell what Douglas was thinking. Behind the blurry wall of the inflatable, he was an unreadable silver ghost. "If we call for help," said Mickey, "we'll probably end up in the custody of bounty marshals. Alexei was my only real connection on Luna. I might be able to make some phone calls, but I can't think of anyone who'd get involved for us. For you. Unless-" "Unless what?" "Unless you know who paid your dad to carry the monkey. They'd certainly have an interest in reclaiming their property." "No, they won't," said Douglas. "It's a decoy. Having us caught by bounty marshals serves them perfectly. It's a public distraction." For an instant, the monkey tightened its grip on my head, reminding me it was there. For an instant, I wondered again if it was really a decoy. But something told me I didn't want to voice that thought aloud. "So what's our alternative?" I asked. "Without Alexei, can we still get to the train?" "I think so. My maps are good. Not as good as Alexei's, but he showed me the way, and I think I can get us to Prospector's Station." "And then what?" "Then we keep going. We take cargo trains. We zigzag. We avoid interception points. We get to the catapult somehow. Or we sit here and call for help. But we have to decide in the next few minutes, because if we don't start moving soon, the window closes. We won't have enough air." "How much air?"
"My guess is six hours if we're active, eight if we're resting. We can call for help anytime, Douglas. But if we're going to move, we have to move now." "What about the closer train?" Mickey pointed east-toward the harsh glare of the rising sun. Douglas turned and looked. He didn't like what he saw. I could see that much in his posture. "And the farther one?" Mickey pointed south, toward the darkness. Douglas stared into the gloom. "You really think we can do it?" "Alexei thought so. And he knew the risks better than any of us." "All right," Douglas said. "Let's do it." "You want me to take Bobby?" "No, I promised him he'd stay with me. Let me get packed-"

ag A UNCH

WE DIDN'T TALK ABOUT ALEXEI. Not too much. There wasn't much that either Douglas or I could say-and whatever Mickey was feeling about his friend, he wasn't saying anything to either of us. I got the feeling he was as much angry at Alexei as he was grieving. After a little bit of discussion, we decided to go for thirty minutes at a time between rest breaks. It was mostly downhill, and we were getting our Luna legs now, and Mickey was worried about my air. He didn't say so, but he checked my readouts a lot. He wanted to get us to Prospector's Station quickly. For a while, we were moving through boulders, and then just rocks, and finally, we were back on hard rock and thin dust again. That was easiest. We were heading toward a landmark that Alexei and Mickey had identified as our halfway point. About fifty years ago, in the first days of serious Lunar exploration, the Colonization Authority put down thousands of surveying beacons all over the Lunar surface. These were nothing more than self- embedding spikes with reflectors on top. The reflectors were dimpled with hundreds of little right-angle corners so that any beam hitting them would be reflected straight back to its source. The length of time it took for a beam to return told you how far away you were. By triangulating on several reflectors, you could calculate your position almost to the centimeter. The reflectors also made it possible to make highly accurate surveillance maps of the Lunar surface. The geography of Luna was actually better known than that
of Earth-because two-third's of Earth's geography was underwater. We were heading for one of those reflectors now. There was nothing else there, just the reflector. But three generations of Lunar explorers used the reflectors as opportunities to recalibrate their PITAs. The reflectors were also good for data storage, sort of. Anyone could point a beam at a reflector from just about anywhere, as long as they had line of sight. Suppose you're on Earth and you aim a beam at a Lunar reflector. Luna is 3.84E5 kilometers from Earth. The beam travels 384,000 kilometers one way, or 768,000 kilometers round-trip. That's 768,000,000 meters, 768,000,000,000 millimeters, 768,000,000,000,000 micrometers. 768,000,000,000,000,000 nanometers. Or ... 7,680,000,000,000,000,000 angstroms. There are 10 angstroms in a nanometer. A blue laser, emitting at 4700 angstroms produces one wavelength every 470 nanometers. One wavelength every .47 micrometers. One wavelength every .00047 millimeters. One wavelength every .00000047 meters. 4.7E-7 meters. So if we divide 7,680 trillion angstroms by 4700, we get 1.634 trillion wavelengths between Earth and Luna. Round-trip. If I'd figured this right, if you used one wavelength per bit, you could put nearly 1.634 terabits on a round-trip beam. Or 204.25 gigabytes every three seconds. Not too bad. About 100 hours of music, recorded in hi- resolution mode. That sounded a little low to me. But I was figuring it in my head, and it was possible I'd screwed up the numbers. And I was using a blue laser because that was the only angstrom number I could remember. If you used an X-ray laser, you could multiply that by 10,000, and that would be 2,042 terabytes every three seconds. Which represents a much bigger music collection-about a million hours in hi-res. More if you played all the repeats. If you used 8 beams, each one a different wavelength, all synced together, you would send 8 times 2,042 terabytes-161/3 petabytes round-tripping between Earth and Luna. Was that enough to hold the sum total of human knowledge? No, probably not. I'd heard somewhere that the human race had so many recording machines functioning, we were generating a couple thousand terabytes of information per day. So maybe the Lunar circuit was only big enough to hold a week's worth of global data. But if you threw out all the crap that wouldn't matter a week from now, 161/3 petabyes was certainly enough storage to hold
the most important information the human race needed. But the moon is only visible a few hours per day. So your connection only works as long as the moon is in the sky. On the other hand, if you're broadcasting from L4 or L5, you've got a permanent line- of-sight connection with Luna-and the farther away from Luna you get, the more data you can have in transit. As fast as it returns, you retransmit it. Round and round it goes and no piece of data is ever more than a few seconds away. There was a time-before I was born-when some folks thought that Lunar reflectors could be used to store the entire world's knowledge in a network of laser beams zipping around the solar system. But by the time the reflectors were in place, the cost of optical data cards was already in free fall, and it was obvious that using the reflectors for data storage was another one of those good ideas that was obsolete by the time the technology was ready. You could put 500 gigabytes in a credit card. You could put 500 terabytes in half a pack of playing cards. You could put it in your pocket. Or inside your robot monkey.... Oh, hell. Memory wasn't about size anymore, it was about density. You could even put a few petabytes into a monkey if you packed them tight enough. Maybe even an exabyte or two. That should be enough to hold the sum total of human knowledge. Of course, those would be expensive. Petabyte bars were worth thousands. Exabytes were worth millions.... Hm. But if you only wanted to smuggle 2,042 terabytes of information from the Earth to the moon, you didn't need to hire a courier and a bunch of decoys. You could go out in the backyard, lash your xaser to your telescope, point your telescope at the target, feed a signal into the beam, and fire away for a few seconds. Cheap, easy, impossible to intercept. Dad had bought two cards of used memory for the monkey-which would have seemed weird at the time, except Weird and I had been distracted by Stinky's near-headlong tumble into Barringer crater. Why would we need so much memory for a toy anyway? And what was in that memory? I hadn't had a chance to look at the cards closely, and I wasn't going to do it with anyone else around. What was it that had to be transported that couldn't be transmitted ? Money? Codes? Information? No. All that could be phoned in. So it had to be something that couldn't or wouldn't travel by beam.
There was only one thing I could think of ... and it almost made sense. Maybe. Quantum computing couldn't be beamed. I didn't understand all the details of quantum computing, but it used optical processing. The internal lasers of the processing unit were split into multiple beams and parallel processed. Interference invalidated the process. You couldn't measure the beams, you couldn't look to see where they were-the minute you did that, you changed the data. You could beam the results of a quantum process, but if you transmitted the process itself, you created interference and invalidated the result. So all quantum computing was specifically linked to its hardware . You couldn't even guarantee that one quantum processor would exactly duplicate the results of another quantum processor. That had to do with chaos theory and fuzzy logic and the fact that quantum processors are affected by the time and place they're operating in. So quantum processors are best suited for weighted synaptic processinglethetic intelligence engines. A trained intelligence engine was worth at least a quarter trillion dollars. Maybe more. Depending on the training. And you couldn't just pipe the training from one engine into the next, because quantum doesn't pipe. Each engine had to be specifically trained. According to Douglas, who was reporting what he read in Scientific American, they had finally gotten to the point where the intelligence engines could be trusted to train each other. I didn't understand the details. When Douglas started talking about forced coherency, congruent processing, and the fissioning of holographic personalities, my eyes glazed over. I finally had to tell him that if he was going to stay on our planet, he had to speak our language. What he did manage to get through to me was that there was a way of making two quantum processors marry each other so that their processing was temporarily synchronized -which meant that computers were finally moving from simulated sentience (which is what the monkey was) to actual sentience in a chip. Not that the average person would notice. Simulated sentience was good enough to fool most folks. It didn't make sense that we might be carrying an actual IE unit in the monkey, those things were guarded like plutonium. Despite the fact that IE chips were always the McGuffin in every movie about high- tech robberies, it was impossible to steal one-because they guarded themselves. Anything interfering with their beams invalidated their
processing-and every alarm in Saskatchewan would go off simultaneously . No, it was my hunch that we might be carrying one of the quantum synchronizers-some kind of industrial smuggling or something. We didn't have to understand what it was. All we had to do was deliver it. Only thing is-now that we had thoroughly screwed up Dad's travel plans ... we had no idea where we were going or who we were supposed to deliver this thing to. Maybe the marshals trying to intercept us were working on behalf of the rightful owners. And maybe not. How would we know? Anyway, it was only a hunch. Probably, it was something more mundane-like a bunch of codes-if it was anything at all. Dad said it was a decoy, but what if it wasn't. What if the smugglers thought it would be safer for the decoy to carry the McGuffin? But even if the monkey had a quantum synchronizer or whatever inside, we'd have no way to tell just by looking at the outside of the card. And if there were some way to open it and look inside, that would be interference, and that would ruin it. So whatever it was, it was never going to be anything more than a hunch to me. But ... maybe I should think about this hunch for a bit. Suppose we really were carrying something. It would have to be something extremely valuable, and the mule carrying it would have to be extremely stupid-I didn't like that part, but it made sense. A mule smart enough to know what he had would be smart enough to sell it to the highest bidder. The trick was to give it to someone who would be happy just to get a ticket offworld and who wouldn't fit the profile of a smuggler. Like a dad going to a colony with his kids. And the damn custody battle made it even better, not worse, because it was just the right kind of distraction. Smugglers didn't take their kids with them. Smugglers didn't have angry wives chasing them. And ... if you had that kind of money to invest in that kind of mule, then you also had the kind of money to buy his way through customs or anywhere else. Wasn't it convenient that Mickey was there? And his mom, the lawyer? And Judge Griffith too? And what about Alexei? Was he part of that plan too? No, he couldn't be. He didn't fit in-or did he? Who was on which side? Or was I just being paranoid? Could I even be sure about what Douglas said he knew? No-don't go there, Chigger. That's really a shortcut to lunacy.
Well, we were in the right place for it. That was for sure. Along about then, Mickey stopped us and came back to check my oxygen. "I thought so," he said. "I should have made you change tanks at our last break." "Huh?" "You've been muttering in my ears for the last three kilometers." "I'm fine. See?" I flipped the readout up so I could see it. It was flashing a pretty shade of red. "See?" "Yes, I see-that's very nice. Does the word hypoxia mean anything to you?" "She was Socrates' wife. I think." "Wrong." Mickey was fumbling with the front of my bubble. For some reason I couldn't focus clearly. "Hypoxia was queen of the Amazons," he said. "The Amazons lived in Scythia on the banks of the longest river in the world. They cut off their right breasts with scythes, so as not to interfere with their sword arms. Hercules killed Hypoxia at Troy for not checking her oxygen. Here, try to focus-" He clicked his air hose to the valve in the front of his bubble. Just like I had. An oxygen-jet. "Are we stopping somewhere?" "Yes, we're stopping right here." He pushed himself up close to me and hooked his bubble valve to mine. I couldn't see what he did next, but I started to hear a strange hissing sound. "I'm losing air, I think. I'm hissing." "Take a deep breath, Chigger. Again. Again. Again. Keep on breathing. That's good. Can you see me now? Look at my hand. How many fingers can you see?" I blinked. "All of them?" "Close enough. Look at your readout again." I looked. "It's flashing red." And then I started to get scared- "Relax. You're breathing on my air now. Pay attention. We're going to change tanks on your rebreather. If you can't do it, I'll do it for you. Take your hands out of your gloves and I'll reverse them inward and-" "I can do it." My hands were shaking and I felt suddenly weak and nauseous. "You do it." "Good boy. You know when to ask for help. Do you know how many people have died because they were too stupid or too proud to ask for help?"
"No. How many?" "I don't know either. But it's a lot, I can tell you that." He had his hands inside my bubble now-it looked weird to see my gloves fiddling around at my belt, unclipping hoses and changing their connections. It reminded me of the way Doug used to button me up before taking me out to play. That didn't seem so long ago-but at the same time it seemed very far away. And now it was Mickey. He was acting just like a brother. "There. How do you feel?" "Fine." "Do you have a headache?" "Uh-uh." I touched my head to see if it was still there. My hand touched something else. A furry leg. "Is there a monkey sitting on my head?" "Yes." "Good. Then I'm not delusional." "But no headache?" "No. If anything, I feel giddy. A little light-headed. Like I could fly away." "That's not good either." Mickey reached in and fiddled with the settings on my rebreather. "What are you doing?" "Just making some adjustments. This should do it. There." He pulled his hands out of my gloves and disconnected our two bubbles. We were separated again. He secured his rebreather tube and looked across at me. "All right, you good now?" "Yeah." I was fumbling my hands back into my gloves. "You sure? I've gotta go check Douglas and Bobby-" "I'm good." But I grabbed his hand anyway. "Mickey?" "Yeah?" "Thank you." He gave my hand a quick squeeze in return, then hurried across to Douglas.

PAYING INTENTION -L-n

AFTER THAT, WE WERE ALL a lot more careful. I finally got it what Mickey meant. It was about staying conscious. What some people called paying intention. Dad once tried to tell me about this music teacher he'd had-the one who said you couldn't be a musician if you didn't practice at least three hours a day. He used to tell Dad that an excuse was not equal to a result. What you said you wanted was irrelevant; what you actually accomplished demonstrated your real intentions. I never liked that discussion. It sounded like hard work to me and I couldn't see the reward in it. I always thought you should practice your music because you liked it, not because somebody said you had to. But I'd always listened politely, because it was always so important to Dad to give the Pay intention, this is how the world works! speech. It's not enough to pay attention, he would say, over and over. You have to pay i*n*t*e*n*t*i*o*n as well. And there was all the rest of it too: Volume is no substitute for brains. Better to keep your trap shut and be thought a fool than to shoot yourself in the foot while it's still in your mouth. Don't burn your bridges before your chickens are hatched. Every so often ... I would realize he'd been right. He wasn't just talking to prove he knew better than me. This was one of those times. Well, why hadn't I paid intention when he'd told me about paying intention ? Because ... it's one of those stupid things you have to bump
into yourself, and hope you survive long enough to make good use of the lesson. So I concentrated on every bounce, every hop, every skip-and wondered if this is what it had been like for Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, bouncing around on the moon and trying to collect rocks without killing himself. And every so often, I cursed the monkey. I'd been assuming that the monkey was a good safety monitor. Obviously, it wasn't. It was supposed to beep or scream or run for help if a life was in danger- but it hadn't alerted me that I was running low on air. So obviously, it didn't include an oxygen meter-and it hadn't been paying any attention to my rate of breathing. I was already gasping for breath when Mickey figured out there was something wrong and came back to check my air. If it hadn't been for Stinky, I'd have junked the monkey right there. Except I was still wondering about those memory bars. "Look, there it is," said Mickey. We stopped to look. He pointed toward the horizon. It was hard to see. The dark slope downward was outlined with bright highlights- places where outcroppings stuck up into the sunlight, or worse, places where the shadows dipped away altogether, leaving patches of Lunar soil painted with a hard actinic glare. We had to squint to see anything. Even Stinky, who was still groggy from the tranquilizer, stuck his head out of Douglas's poncho and demanded to know what we were looking at. "It's hard to make out-" Mickey admitted. "Look for a reddish glow." "Oh, I've got it," said Douglas. "Chigger, can you see it?" "No-" The brightness made my eyes water. We were looking at a vast downhill slope, and the horizon was farther away than I had gotten used to. And there was a lot of sunlight being reflected back at us. And ... I didn't want to say it aloud, but there was something moving out there. But if there was something there, I had to tell them. And if there wasn't anything there and I was seeing things, then I had to say something about that too. Didn't I ? "Mickey?" "Yes, Chigger?" "Are there mirages on the moon?" "Well, not mirages. Not like on Earth. You need an atmosphere for
those kinds of mirages. But sometimes you get optical illusions. Or even psychological illusions. Your eyes will play tricks on you. Or your mind. Why? Do you see something?" "I thought I did." "Where?" "Just to the left of the reflector. Something black, running and bouncing across the bright part. Didn't you see it?" "No. Is it still there?" "No." "Did it look like a bubble?" "No. It was too thin. I only caught a quick glimpse. I don't know what it was." "Which way was it going?" "It was coming toward us. Almost head-on." That brought both Mickey and Douglas to attention. They scanned the distance for long moments, punctuated only by one of them asking, "Do you see it?" And the other replying, "No, do you?" Finally, Mickey said, "Well, if it's out there, it's in the shadows now and we're missing it. But just to be on the safe side-" He came over and checked my air again. I started to protest that I was fine, but then I realized that Mickey was only doing what he had to do, so I shut up and waited until he finished. Douglas asked, "Is he all right?" Mickey nodded. "As far as I can tell." To me, he said, "I'm not saying you didn't see anything, Chigger. You were right to ask. But it's not unusual after you've had hypoxia to experience visual or auditory illusions." "Hallucinations, you mean." "Yeah," he admitted. For a moment, none of us said anything. We were all thinking the same thing. Was the kid with the monkey on his head going crazy? And if not-then what was out there? "All right," said Mickey. "Let's keep going. Let's get to the reflector . Douglas?" Douglas started hop-skipping again. I followed. Mickey brought up the rear. Douglas hadn't said much, he'd been concentrating on Stinky most of the time. But now he said, "Mickey?" "Yeah?" "Do you think Alexei abandoned us?"
Mickey didn't answer for several bounces. I had begun to think he wasn't going to answer at all, when he said, "The thought had crossed my mind, yeah." "You know him better than we do-" "I don't know him that well. For all his talk, there's a lot he doesn't say. `I make big deal, I make lots of money, I am embarrassed I make so much money, you will pick up check, da? All my money is tied up in cash, da?'" Mickey mimicked his Russian friend perfectly. "He's always got a deal going somewhere. But nobody ever knows what his deals are. I suppose that's a good thing. What you don't know you can't tell the marshals." We bounced and skipped in silence for a while, punctuated only by occasional soft grunts. After a while, Mickey added, "But it's not like Alexei to endanger someone's life. Loonies don't do that. They believe that life is sacred everywhere. The greatest crime on Luna is to disrespect life. And Alexei is completely Loonie. He wouldn't do it. He couldn't." More silence, more bouncing. I checked my readouts. They were green. I checked them again. This time I looked at the numbers. I checked them a third time and mouthed the numbers as I read them- reminding myself what was optimal. Pay intention. Douglas broke the silence. "So you think he's dead." "We didn't find a body." "You didn't answer the question." "I don't know." And then he added, "But it's the only thing I can think of that makes sense...." I disagreed. I could think of something else that made sense. But I didn't want to say it aloud. Not yet. I needed to think some more. As long as I didn't get distracted again- I could see the reflector clearly now. It was a big silvery ball on a short spindly tripod. The whole thing had been dropped in from orbit and there were fragments of the landing pod around the base. But what caught my attention was the way the reflector had a sparkly-flickery look-all different colors. It was even more spooky because the whole thing was in shadow, so where were the flickers coming from? I pointed it out to Mickey. He explained, "Lasers from all over the system. Everyone tunes their beams to a different color, that's why it looks like a rainbow, and everyone targets on Luna. It's a convenient landmark, and there's no atmosphere to distort the beams. It's kind of
like Greenwich mean time, you know what that is? It's a reference point against which all other clocks are set. Well, Luna is like that too. It's the surveyor's post for everyone in the solar system to measure distances from. Accurate computations of distance are essential for space travel." "Oh, yeah. That makes sense." "We're almost there. Do you want to take a meal break? We can even go in the inflatable for a bit." It was still bouncing along behind him. I opened my mouth to say yes, then stopped. "What's that-?" I pointed. "What's what?" And then he saw it too. It was a bubble suit, like ours. An empty bubble suit. Half-inflated. As if the person wearing it had taken it off and skipped away into the and dark. It was Alexei's bubble suit.

REFLECTIONS

MY FIRST THOUGHT WAS, SO that answers that question. My second thought was, No, it doesn't. Where's the body? How do you get out of a bubble suit and just walk away? You don't. So where was Alexei? The question was more puzzling than ever. And why was his suit here? How did it get here from there? Who else was here? I glanced around nervously. There could be an entire army hiding just behind the horizon. We'd have no way of knowing. Mickey and Douglas were just as disconcerted as I was. Maybe even more so. Because they knew all the stuff I hadn't even thought of-so they probably had even more questions. We all climbed into the inflatable to talk about it. Once inside, we took off our bubble suits, and Mickey equalized the oxygen in all our tanks, something he'd been wanting to do ever since I burned off thirty minutes of breathing to stop myself on the zip line. We pushed back the hoods of our ponchos, took off our goggles, and sipped at our water bottles. I took the monkey off my head and set it aside. We nibbled at our inedible MREs, we inhaled deeply-the air in the inflatable was stale, but it was fresher than the air in the bubble suits-we used our toilet bags, and we talked about calling for rescue. We all knew the arguments. What we were doing was dangerous. Stupid. Foolhardy. Probably unnecessary. I was posthypoxic and hallucinating . Douglas's back was starting to hurt-even though Stinky
weighed less on Luna, he still had the same mass. So even though it mostly felt like he wasn't heavy, the truth was that there was some stuff called inertia and momentum that made carrying the little monster almost as tiring as if we were still on Earth. Mickey's feelings were unreadable. He looked as if he had a lot of different things all going on at the same time. And Stinky was alternating between constipation and diarrhea, catatonia and hyperactivity-so at least one of us was normal. It was a question of endurance. The reflector was our halfway point. Actually, it was more than halfway. It was nearly two-thirds of the way. But Alexei and Mickey had figured that in terms of sheer physical exhaustion, the last third of the Lunar hike would take us as long as the first two-thirds. As much fun as it was to go bouncing across the silvery gloom, it was very tiring too. My legs were beginning to hurt. My calves ached. And I was scared again. I wasn't afraid of Luna anymore. But I respected her now. I had a better sense of her dangers-and I was paying intention. I was terrified by all the stuff I didn't know-especially all the stuff I didn't know that I didn't know. Alexei's empty bubble suit scared the hello out of me. What could have happened that only his empty suit would be left behind? Did something suck him right out of the plastic? I shuddered. And shivered. And wrapped my silver poncho tight around me. Above us, the reflector sparkled with stray bits of light-a thousand different colors, the beams of distant spaceships, other worlds and moons, asteroids, the Earth, the orbital beanstalk, L4 and L5, orbiting satellites-all their questioning fingers of light touched and bounced away, back to their origins, each one carrying a single part of the answer to the question Where am 1 ? You're there-7.68 godzillion angstroms away from here. And we're here-7.68 godzillion angstroms away from there. Sitting under the stars and watching the flickering radiance of your thousand lonely queries. But none of you are more alone than us-sitting here all alone in the dark. How far would all those beams travel on their journeys here and back? How long would it take them? Just the blink of an eye-a few
seconds to Earth, a few minutes to the asteroid belt. What were they all saying? They didn't even know we were here. It was a strange feeling to see so much evidence of human life and still be so far away from it all. We could rejoin it in a moment. All we had to do was tune our transmitters to the public bands, turn up the power, and call for help. I was ready to concede I didn't know as much as I pretended. I'd made my point, I could quit now. I'd still gotten farther than Dad ever would have. And I knew Douglas wouldn't take much convincing if he thought that Stinky or I were in danger. Mickey ... I didn't know what he thought, but he looked tired and irritable and unhappy. Whatever exhilaration we had felt about being on the moon, that was gone, swamped by our exhaustion and our fear. We'd had too many close calls. The wunderstorm was over. Mickey unhooked his transmitter from his belt. "Do we have to talk about this?" he asked. "Or are we all in agreement this time?" He looked to Douglas. Douglas shook his head. He looked to me- That's when something outside the inflatable moved-and I screamed and leapt backward so hard I bumped into the wall and went bouncing sideways, scaring the hell out of Stinky and Douglas and Mickey, and they went bouncing every which way too- It was a gangly black spidery thing, with a grotesque bug-eyed face, and grasping claws. It came right up to the edge of the bubble and pressed its face and hands against the plastic, peering in at us like some kind of vacuum-breathing insect. Even Stinky was shrieking- Douglas grabbed him in a restraining hug and turned him away so he couldn't see- And then I saw the lettering above the eyes KP14CJIOB-I couldn't read the word, the letters were all funny-looking and backwards-until I recognized them as Russian. And then Mickey was shouting, "It's Alexei! It's Alexei! Everybody shut up! Stop screaming! It's only Alexei ! It's Alexei!" By then, I'd already stopped screaming, and Alexei was already pulling himself into the inflatable, one section of the entrance tube at a time. He was careful to close and check each zipper behind him before he opened the next. He still looked scary-like a big skinny faceless thing.
Finally, he popped in through the last zipper and carefully sealed it behind himself. He pulled off the rubbery hood of his scuba suit and finally his breather tube and goggles. He was laughing so hard I wanted to punch him in the gut. How dare he scare us like that? "Is big fright, da? Is Rock Father come to eat poor crazy terries. Scream and scream again. You are much frightened. I laugh so hard I almost choke on my air hose. You did not expect poor Alexei, did you? Is only turnabout to play fair. Alexei did not expect to find you here either. Did you not hear my messages? No, I think you did not. My transmitter failed. I could hear you, but you could not hear me. Very inconvenient, da? So you did not hear me say you should wait, I go for help. No need for rescue. I could run to Prospector's Station and signal Mr. Beagle and be back with help and air in two hours-" "Mr. Beagle-?" "Later. You will meet him later. But I cannot call him now. I hear you in distance-you are looking for me. Calling, da? I realize you have come down from mountain somehow. So I turn around and come back for you before you get lost." "But your bubble suit-?" I asked. "I could not leave it behind, Charles Dingillian, could I? I would never find it again. So I left it at reflector as signal for you that I was still alive." "Oh," Mickey said. There was an edge to his voice. "Is that what that was?" Alexei slapped his chest in mock-frustration. "Ah, you do not understand Self-Contained Universal Breathing Apparatus, do you? Body suit is so firm-fitting it makes airtight seal all around. Strong enough to hold body safe and tight against vacuum. Hood seals tight around goggles and earphones and breather tube. Is not as practical as bubble suit for long distances. No way to pee or poop. No way to drink or eat. Cannot even talk very well. But for emergencies or for short distances, is much easier. Is basic worksuit for Loonies." "We're not Loonies," Douglas said. "Maybe someday you will be," Alexei responded, very matter-offactly . "Earth is falling apart. Luna will have to provide resources to rebuild. Luna will become seat of economic power and political authority for double-planet system of Earth-Luna. Is only logical. We have high ground of discipline and resources. Nobody gets to Luna by
accident. We are a society of hard workers. Earth cannot compete with that. It makes sense that Lunatics should govern, da?" "I think we already have enough lunatics in government," said Douglas dryly. "The old-fashioned kind." "Da, we have our share too. But even our craziest Loonies know the rules. Everybody pays oxygen tax." "And what happens if you don't?" asked Douglas. "You have to stop breathing." Alexei helped himself to one of Mickey's MREs and began unwrapping it. "Nobody ever breaks law second time." He took a disgustingly large bite of something that looked like chopped brick and kept on talking while he chewed. "First I will eat, then I will use toilet bags. Then we will hurry to Prospector's Station. As long as we are this far, no need to call Mr. Beagle for help. We will catch early train, fool marshals. Huh, what is wrong-?" He blinked in surprise, looking at us, suddenly realizing. "You were planning to call for help, da? I see it in your faces. Is lucky I stop you in time-" Alexei turned to Mickey and took the transmitter out of his hands. "Listen, Mikhail, is big mistake to call for help. Everything on Earth is falling apart, so everything on Luna is shutting down. It will be much harder to hide anything-even little one's monkey. Can you go one more hour? Two? Maybe a little more than two? Prospector's Station is only four and a half klicks from here, most. Almost all downhill . Train arrives in few hours. Once we get on train, we can go anywhere ." "As cargo again?" Douglas asked. He looked angry. "No, no, I promise. I have planned idea for disguise. Very clever, I am. I will take you wherever you want to go-even if you change mind. Must go quickly now. We have not as much air anymore. I use up too much air going and coming back and not getting anywhere." Mickey was already whispering to his PITA and frowning at its responses. "I vote no," said Douglas firmly. "We don't have a choice," said Mickey. "Huh?" "We don't have enough air anymore. Not enough to sit and wait for a rescue. Alexei's coming back changes the whole oxygen equation. He used up most of his. Now he's on ours." He was already reaching for his bubble suit. "We have to go. Now."
"How serious is it?" asked Douglas. "Not serious if we go now. If we stop to argue about it, it gets very serious." Douglas looked like he wanted to say something. He looked like he wanted to say a whole bunch of somethings, but he held his tongue. "Bobby-come on, time for another piggyback ride." "Do I gotta-?" "Yeah, you gotta." "Do you want me to take him?" Mickey asked. "I don't mind, really ." Douglas shook his head. "You just keep watching Chigger." The look on his face said it all. He was very angry. And we were going to hear about this later.