by Ben Bova
He landed on his feet, staggered sideways with the acceleration from the bus and fell to the ground. With instincts honed by almost three years on the Moon, he put out both arms, caught himself before he hit the dusty soil, and pushed himself erect. A few staggering steps and he was safely balanced on his feet.
He had kicked up some dust, but not as much as he had feared. This area's not as dusty as some. Jay thought as he watched the powdery clouds slowly settle around him.
Kelly jumped and tumbled when she landed, skidding sideways down the slight slope of a worn ancient craterlet.
Jay dashed after her as 301 trundled off in the opposite direction, on its own, under automatic control.
She was lying on her back and waving frantically at him.
God, she's hurt, Jay thought. Or her suit's ripped.
He slipped and slid down the almost glassy slope of the little crater and ended up on the seat of his pants, by her side.
She had turned onto her stomach, lying still. Backpack did not seem damaged. No obvious leaks. He leaned his helmet against hers.
"Are you okay?"
Kelly reached an arm around his neck and yanked hard.
"Get down, asshole!"
Jay flattened out, feeling his face flame with sudden anger.
"Want those bastards to see us?" she hissed. "Why don't you wave a friggin' flag?"
Jay held on to his swooping temper. For a few moments they lay side by side. Then Kelly wormed her way to the lip of the crater. Jay followed.
Rising only far enough to see across the pockmarked plain, they watched 301 dwindling toward the horizon, with the red crawler still closing the distance between them.
But then the crawler stopped. The pod hatch opened and one of the pressure-suited figures climbed out.
Jay turned his head toward Kelly. "Of all the mother-loving dimwits, you gave yourself diarrhea over nothing. They're surveyors! Look, they're taking out their tools."
"Oh yeah?"
The one man had taken an arm's-length rod from the tool pack on the rear of the crawler. He hiked it up onto his shoulder, then turned and aimed it at the retreating bulk of 301.
The rod flashed sudden flame. A blaze of light streaked across the airless plain and hit 301. The bus exploded. All in total silence.
Jay watched, stunned, as pieces of 301 soared gently across the landscape. He recognized one fragment as the driver's chair, tumbling slowly end over end and smashing apart when it finally hit the ground.
"Jesus," Jay whispered.
"Some surveyors," Kelly muttered.
How in the name of St. Michael the Archangel are we going to get back to the base? Jay asked himself. If we call for help, those guys will hear us and come over to finish the job.
Kelly was pecking at the radio controls on the left wrist of her suit. Is she going to surrender to them? Not likely, he knew.
She pointed to the frequency setting, then to the side of her helmet, and finally put a finger up in front of her visor.
Jay understood her sign language. They're using this freak; listen, don't talk.
They lay side by side at the lip of the little crater, watching and listening. The two terrorists drove their crawler to the gutted wreck of 301 and started inspecting the wreckage. They want to make sure of us, Jay realized.
Leaning his helmet against Kelly's, he whispered, "Maybe we can grab their crawler while they're poking through the debris."
Her voice was muffled, but he could feel the reproach in it. "We wouldn't get fifty meters before they spotted us. They're professionals. Jay. We're lucky they didn't see you dancing around when you jumped from the bus."
His face went red again. And he realized that whispering was stupid, too.
"Then what . . . ?"
"Shh! Lemme hear them."
Jay could not understand the language coming through his earphones, but apparently Kelly could. She repeated it, like a translator:
". . . they could have jumped before the rocket hit them . . . But that means they knew who we were ... It makes no difference ... I can't figure that, must be slang or a joke . . . they're laughing—ah! They're saying we can't get very far on foot. If we call for help they'll home in on our transmission and finish us off."
Jay nodded inside his helmet. That was the crux of the matter.
"Why bother?" Kelly resumed translating. "The oxygen plant will be blasted away in another twelve hours. They'll never get back in time to do anything about it."
Kelly pounded her gloved fist on the glass-smooth rim of rock. "The oxygen factory! That's it!"
She slid down slightly and turned on her side. Jay stayed up at the rim, watching and thinking.
We could send a warning to Moonbase, put them on alert. But then those killers would find us. And that would be that.
So what? he asked himself. You're finished anyway.
They're never going to leave you in peace. She told you that. The only way out is death.
He looked out across the desolate expanse of rock. The two terrorists were making their way back to the crawler now, their foreign words sounding musical yet guttural in his earphones, almost like a Wagnerian opera.
It'd be easy enough to open your visor, wise guy. Jay told himself. Just crack the seal and take a nice deep breath of vacuum. Poof! Your troubles are all finished. You wouldn't be the first guy to do it that way.
His gloved hands did not move. I don't want to die. Jay realized. No matter what happens, I sure as hell don't want to die.
Suddenly his earphones shrieked with a wild whining, screeching wail. He clamped his hands uselessly against his helmet, then stabbed at the radio control on his wrist and shut off the skull-splitting noise.
He slid down beside Kelly. She was staring at her wrist controls.
"Jammer," Jay said.
"They're taking no chances," she agreed. "They're going to leave us out here and jam any radio transmission we might send."
"That means they'll be staying with their crawler," he said. "The jammer's only got a limited range—far as the horizon."
"We can walk away from it."
"If they don't see us."
"How long would it take to get back to Moonbase?"
"Too long," Jay answered. "Unless . . ."
"Unless what?"
"Follow me and do what I do. Stay low as possible until we're out of their sight."
They crawled on their hands and knees slowly, carefully, across the small crater and over its farther rim. The powdery top layer of the regolith turned to dust wherever they touched it. Before long the dust was clinging to their suits. Jay could feel it grating in one of his knee joints. That could be dangerous. Worse, it covered the visors, obscuring vision.
Not that there was much to see. Jay watched his gloved hands tracking along the barren regolith. It reminded him of videos about evolution he had seen as a schoolchild: the emergence of life from the sea onto dry land. Never find land drier than this, he knew.
At last he stopped, sat upright, and took a wiper pad from the pouch on his leg. The dust clung stubbornly to his visor, electrostatically charged by the invisible inflow of solar wind particles.
He helped Kelly clear her visor. Cautiously, he rose to his feet. The damned crawler could still be seen, which meant the men in them still had a chance of spotting them.
Back to crawling, like an infant, like a lizard, like a slimy amphibian just learning to walk. We must make a weird sight, Jay thought.
He stopped again and looked back. Only the rooftop of the crawler was in sight. He flicked his suit radio on for the briefest instant; the shriek of the jammer still burned his ears.
Motioning for Kelly to stand, he leaned close to her and said, "They've got a tall antenna. We're still being jammed, but at least we can walk now."
They cleaned their visors again, then headed off almost due east.
After several minutes Kelly tapped Jay's shoulder. He leaned down to touch helmets.
"Isn't M
oonbase in that direction?" She pointed roughly southwestward.
Jay snorted at her. "Don't try to navigate by the stars. The Moon's north pole doesn't point toward Polaris."
"Yeah, but . . ."
"I'm following SDI's tracks." He pointed to the churned soil. "If we can make it back to the main beat between Moonbase and Copernicus we'll come across an emergency shelter sooner or later. Then we . . ."
He jerked with surprise, then swiftly pulled Kelly down flat onto the ground.
Wordlessly he pointed at the crawler that was slowly making its way toward them. From the direction opposite the crawler they had just left. This one was painted bright orange. It, too, had a life-support module atop it, and a tall whip mast, visible only because of the tiny red light winking at its end.
They sent a team to follow us, Jay realized. They boxed us in: one team from Fra Mauro, the other behind us from Moonbase.
He half dragged Kelly away from the track of 301, angling toward the Copernicus-Moonbase "road" and away from the oncoming crawler. They might not be part of the terrorist gang, Jay thought. Might be a coincidence that they're here. They might even be Moonbase security searching for us. Sure. Might be Santa Claus, too.
For hours they walked, seemingly lost. Not the slightest sign of civilization. Not even a bit of litter. No trace of life.
Nothing but rocks and craters and the sudden horizon with the utterly black sky beyond it. And the dust that clung to them, rasped against their suits, blurred their visors.
Suits are good for forty-eight hours. Jay kept telling himself. Oxygen, heat, water enough for forty-eight hours.
Radiation protection. They'll even stop a micrometeor without springing a leak. Says so in the instruction manual.
But he wondered.
Time and again they tried their suit radios. Still the wailing scream of the jamming defeated them.
"They must have planted jammers along the whole route," Jay told Kelly.
"That means we'll have to get back to Moonbase itself in"—she peered at the watch on her suit wrist—"six hours."
No way, he knew. Not afoot. But they kept walking.
There was nothing else to do. For hours.
Kelly fished a wire from one of her suit pouches and they connected their helmet intercoms, like two kids talking through paper cups and a soaped string.
"It's got a lonely kind of beauty to it," she said. "I never thought of the Moon as beautiful before."
Jay nodded inside his helmet. "I wouldn't call it beautiful. Awesome, yes. It's got grandeur, all right. Like the desert in Arizona."
"Or the tundra up above the Arctic Circle."
"It'll take a long time before people screw up this place. But they'll do it. They're already starting the job, aren't they?"
Kelly was silent for a while, then she asked, "Why'd you put in with the rebels? Against the Peacekeepers."
He expected the old anger seething in his gut. Instead he heard himself answering almost calmly, "I fell for their line. Said the U.S. couldn't trust its defense to a bunch of foreigners. Said Washington had sold us out to the Third World and the Commies."
"I was with the Peacekeepers."
"You were? Then?"
"Before. About three years before."
"So you believe in them."
"They've kept the peace. The nations are disarming. Or they were, before they realized Shamar had made off with his own little arsenal."
"And how do you feel about a hundred little nations bossing the U.S. around?"
"I'm a Canadian," Kelly replied.
"Oh."
They lapsed into silence. Then Kelly spoke up again, "You're lucky you didn't have to go to jail. Most of the other conspirators got long sentences."
"Sure, I'm lucky, all right."
"Your father must have been a big help. He's running the IPF now, you know."
The old anger was strangely muted, but Jay could still feel the resentment smoldering inside him. Or was it shame?
"Big help," he mocked. "Instead of jail he got me banished to the Moon. I can't set foot back on Earth for another seven years, not unless you get me arrested and brought back in handcuffs."
"It's better than being in jail, though, isn't it?"
Jay hesitated. "Yeah, I guess so," he had to admit.
"Your father must've twisted a lot of arms to get you off the hook. Most of 'em got life."
Jay opened his mouth to answer, but he had no reply. He had never considered the proposition before. Dad pleaded with the court to lighten my sentence? He found that difficult to believe. Especially after he had rejected the old man's offers of help. It did not square with all he knew about the stem, uncompromising man who had left his mother so many years ago. Very difficult to believe.
But not impossible.
Jay was still pondering this new thought when he stopped and stared at a tiny red light blinking against the dark sky, just over the horizon. He reached for another cleaning pad and wiped his visor. The light did not move or waver.
"Hey look!" he yelled.
He pointed, then gestured for Kelly to follow him. An emergency shelter. Fresh oxygen and water. His suit was starting to smell bad. Jay realized. He hadn't admitted it to himself until now.
And maybe a radio with enough power to bum through the jamming. Less than three hours left. Won't do us much good to get to the shelter if Moonbase itself gets wiped. Just prolong the agony.
The shelter was a life-support module from the earliest days of lunar exploration, buried under several meters of scooped-up regolith rubble. Safe as a squirrel's nest in winter.
The left leg of Jay's suit was grating ominously as they hurried the last kilometer toward the shelter. The dust was grinding away at that knee joint. He looked over at Kelly.
She seemed to be keeping pace with him, loping along in the dreamlike low gravity.
They bounded down the slight slope to the shelter's air-lock entrance. It was too small for both of them to go through at the same time, but they squeezed into it together anyway. Jay heard somebody laughing as the air lock cycled; it was his own voice, cackling like a madman.
"We made it, kid," he said. "We're safe."
"For the time being," she reminded him, as the inner hatch slid open.
"Not even for that," said the man waiting inside. He held a needle-slim flechette gun in his hand.
There were two of them, both dark of hair and eye, skin the color of desert sand. One was bearded, one not. Both held guns.
The shelter was old and small; its inner walls curved up barely high enough to allow Jay to stand upright. The equipment inside looked ancient, dusty. Even the bunks seemed moldy with age.
They made Kelly and Jay take off their pressure suits. Jay was actually glad to be out of his, yet he felt almost naked and unprotected without it.
"What happens now?" Kelly asked, her voice flat and cold.
"Now we wait," said the bearded one in slightly accented English. "The bomb goes off in little more than two hours. Our superiors will pick us up for transport back to Earth. They will decide what to do with you."
The other was younger, barely out of his teens. Jay saw.
He seemed fiercely amused. "There won't be enough room aboard the ship for two prisoners."
Kelly's mouth dropped open. All pretense of cool professionalism disappeared. "You mean you . . . you're going to leave us here? Kill us?"
The bearded one shrugged.
"Oh please don't!" Kelly pleaded. "Please ... I don't want to die. I'll do anything! Anything!"
She took a step closer to the bearded one. Jay felt his insides chum. The little bitch. She'll offer them her body to save herself. She doesn't give a tinker's damn about what happens to me.
But he realized that both men had turned their entire attention to Kelly, who was pleading so loudly and plaintively that it finally got through Jay's skull that this was a ruse.
Is she ... ?
With one lightning motion Kel
ly kicked the bearded one in the groin and simultaneously grabbed his right wrist and pushed the gun aside. The gun went off and a slim steel flechette thudded into the metal wall of the shelter.
With the roar of a jungle savage, Jay launched himself at the younger one, who had turned slightly away from him.
He swung back, but not fast enough. Jay snapped his wrist, then knocked him unconscious with a vicious chop against the side of his neck.
He looked over at Kelly, bending over the prostrate body of the bearded one.
"I was worried you wouldn't catch on," she said, grinning.
"I almost didn't."
"Try the radio," she commanded, pointing.
It was useless, Jay saw. They had fired several flechettes into it.
"Just about two hours now," Kelly said. "How long will it take us to get back to Moonbase?"
"Depends," he replied, "on whether this shelter has a hopper in working condition."
They bound the two unconscious men with electrician's tape, then worked back into their suits. Jay led the way through the air lock and out behind the pile of rubble covering the shelter.
The spidery body of a lunar hopper stood out in the open. It looked like a small metal platform raised off the ground by three skinny bowed legs. An equally insubstantial railing went around three sides of the platform, with a pedestal for controls and displays. Beneath the platform were small spherical tanks and a rocket nozzle mounted on a swivel.
He inspected the hopper swiftly. "Cute. They shot up the oxygen tank. No oxygen, no rocket. Lazy bastards, though. They should have dismantled this go-cart more thoroughly than this."
Explaining as he worked. Jay ducked back inside the shelter and came out with a i^air of oxygen bottles from the shelter's emergency supply and a set of tools. It took more than an hour, but finally he got the long green bottles attached firmly enough to the line that fed the rocket's combustion chamber.
At least I think it's firmly enough, he told himself.
He helped Kelly up onto the platform and then got up beside her, snapped on the safety tethers that hung from the railing, and plugged his suit radio into the hopper's radio system. Kelly followed his every motion.
