I grab the emergency handle on the red cockpit door. Skin smokes. A smell like barbecue. Strong hands grab me. Pull me away. Fight them!
“Mom! Mom!”
I’m carried away from her, fast, faster …
“Mom! Mom!”
I call and call and call until there’s no air left in my suit to scream with anymore.
22
MISSION TIME
T plus 51:32:22
MY eyes flutter against a harsh light.
A big room. Bare ceiling miles away. White, clean walls. I’m on my back. There’s a small control panel on the wall behind my head. Everything’s too neat. Too far away. I remember a smaller place, dim and comfortably crowded with old things. The noises are all wrong here. Sharp pulses and beeps and what’s that? A sputtering, crackling sound like static, getting louder: rushing, now roaring—
DECOMPRESSION!
“Val! Val!” My chin rubs against something smooth around my neck. “Val!”
“Shhh. Stewart. Shhh.”
Dad’s voice. His face appears close above me, interrupting the light.
“Dad, oh Dad, he’s dead.”
“Calm down, he’s okay.” Dad sits on the edge of the bed. The room goes all angles as my body tilts toward him. But I can’t feel the change. He lifts one of my hands into his, but he might as well be picking up a stick.
“I can’t feel!”
Dad touches my cheek. “Feel that?”
I nod.
“You’re in an Immobilizor. You broke your collarbone.” Dad traces a finger across the white yoke below my chin. The complete rig looks like a chest plate from a suit of medieval armor. “You’re one big bruise from head to toe.”
But I’m alive! I strain to see the Immobilizor better. There’s a big lump below my nose. Fat lip. If I’m this beat up … “What about Val?”
“Broke his arm falling to the lower deck.” The way Dad says it, you can hear the wish that it was worse. “He panicked and jumped straight from the pilot seat to the air lock to escape the decompression. The old fool forgot he was on the Moon.”
“Val didn’t panic.” He rode it out until the last possible moment, then dove through the floor hatch to middeck, just like we’d done a hundred times during the trip. It’s the fastest way. Just a little too fast with gravity helping.
Mom rode it out, but she had nowhere to jump. Something around my heart crumples. “All those years, Dad, I thought Mom had screwed up. But I understand now. She rode it out to save me.”
“Ohmygod!” Dad pulls back from me and looks across the room. “He’s remembered!”
Someone else is here. I crane my head, catch a glimpse of shimmering light in the corner. Oh no!
“Hello, Stewart.” Mrs. Phillips’s voice comes out of the shimmer. It approaches the bed.
“Get away! I won’t let you make me forget again!”
But how can I stop them? They can do anything to me while I’m like this.
“Be calm, Stewart. I’m really me this time, not the Counselor.” The shimmer stops at the foot of the bed. It resolves into a hologram of Mrs. Phillips. On Earth, she’s in a holochamber, navigating a virtual reality re-creation of this hospital room. “Please, don’t worry. That will never be done to you again.”
“Is that true, Dad?” I look at him sitting beside me. He’s slumped and far away, paying attention to some private thought. I haven’t forgotten anything the Counselor said. Dad’s the one who gave permission. “Dad? You’re going to undo the mnemonic suppression, aren’t you? I’ll be able to do AstroNav, won’t I?”
“That stupid AstroNav!” Dad jumps up from the bed and keeps going, crashes into the ceiling. The light panel thumps and clatters. For an instant, his feet dangle near my head, then he settles to the floor. Look who forgot about gravity! Moon gravity.
Dad curses, rubbing his head while digging into a pants pocket. He pulls out a piece of paper.
“It’s all because of this, isn’t it!” Dad waves the application to Space Academy Camp in my face. “Some crazy idea to bring it to me.”
“Your note with the 3-Vid, that pilot you met … you said I should stick to fantasies. I had to do something!”
“That’s no excuse! How could you get into a rocket with that man!” There’s venom in the way he says “that man.” He really does hate Val.
“I didn’t know who he was.”
“Even worse! A drunk! A stranger! He almost killed you!”
My brain shrugs even if my shoulders won’t. “The booster problem wasn’t his fault.”
“You’re protecting him?”
“He didn’t do anything wrong.”
Dad stares at me. “He kidnapped you!”
“No he didn’t.”
Mrs. Phillips comes around the bed. Stands between me and Dad, facing him. “Ted, this is not the approach we discussed.”
“You stay out of this. He needs to understand how dangerous that man is.” Dad steps right through her. “Why did you come to the Moon, Stewart?”
Dad’s so wild. I can’t imagine what he wants me to say. Out of all the reasons, I pick the one that drove me hardest. “To escape the Counselor.”
“Not this time. The trip with your mother. What were you doing here?”
“I thought it was my birthday trip, because I was six.”
“That was an excuse. You came because of that man! To help him hide his stuff from Alldrives. She set up a secret hideout on the dark side for him to use when he finally got back. Don’t you understand, Stewart? He was still millions of miles away—months of travel still to go. But she got that secret message and jumped into action. Anything for Val Thorsten. If she’d listened to me, waited awhile, you would never have been on that shuttle. She’d be alive!”
Dad’s words come like a dam burst and I’m left grasping at facts, trying to make sense of what he’s said. I can’t. Except one thing: there’s a secret hideout somewhere that Val never used. Mom died before she could tell him about it.
“Val didn’t make Mom come to the Moon, you just said it yourself. It was her decision. It’s crazy to blame him.” I look past Dad to Mrs. Phillips for help. “Isn’t it?”
She stands frozen, observing Dad. The sight jolts me. Dad’s her client, too. She isn’t here just for me. She says, “This is completely unconstructive. Forget Val for now, Ted. Talk to Stewart. Tell him.”
Her words scare me. I thought I’d remembered the worst already. “Tell me what?”
Dad clams up, turns his back to us.
Mrs. Phillips walks through Dad and comes to stand on the opposite side of my bed.
“I’m sorry I hurt you and then ran away.”
“You were understandably distraught.” She casts a glance over to Dad, then looks down at me with sad, tired eyes. “Many mistakes have been made recently. Ted, please, speak of Margaret. It’s time.”
Dad turns. His cheeks are moist with tears. “All these years, I’ve wanted to tell you so many things, Stewart, but I—”
“Wait. You wanted to tell me things? I thought you wanted me to forget!”
Dad sniffs and wipes his tears away with the back of his hand. He bows his head. “You wouldn’t heal. You were … stuck … in the accident. Mark and I, we couldn’t put your mother to rest.”
“I don’t remember any of that. I remember someone pulling me away from the cockpit. I remember screaming for Mom. When I try to look forward from that moment, nothing comes.”
Mrs. Phillips says, “We will … fix that. Recovery of all your memories will not be entirely pleasant. But the good will return with the bad.”
“I’m not afraid. You’ve got to hang on to memories even if they hurt.”
“But that’s how we lost you, Stewart!” Dad says. “You kept reliving the accident. Over and over again. It was horrible.”
“Out there with Val … when he drank, he remembered all the bad stuff. He went on and on. I just wanted him to shut up. Was it like that for you and Mark?”
Dad bites his lower lip. Nods, then looks away. “We wanted to be able to live a normal life. The price to help you this way was high. We had to move. We stuck to the false stories so we wouldn’t trigger your memories. Some of the real Margaret … faded with the pretending. But you lost the most.”
“So it’s true. The Counselor took away my memory.”
“Something like that,” Mrs. Phillips says. “Using mnemonic suppression was a desperate and, perhaps, not so wise choice. I blame myself for what happened with the Counselor. Your recent dreams revealed that the suppression was failing. That horrible NewsVid is a reinforcer. We had to make you watch it, but I couldn’t administer the treatment myself. I left the dirty work to the Counselor. The task challenged its programming because in the past few weeks, we’d been preparing you to reclaim the memories. But your father … he needed more time.”
“So that’s what you postponed and why Mark was so upset.”
“Yes,” Dad says. “Mark’s been desperate to end this whole thing.”
“Is Mark okay? Can we call him?”
“Sure.” Dad swings the wall-mounted comm-unit over the bed. “Keep it light for now. I don’t think he’s slept since you died … I mean, disappeared.”
As he dials, he leans heavily on the unit. Dark circles surround his eyes. He hasn’t slept, either. Mrs. Phillips’s eyes are staring and blank. Neither has she.
I thought I’d hate them. I thought I’d never forgive them for taking Mom away, for all those hopeless hours trying to do AstroNav. But they were trying to protect me. Val was, too. He knew, at the end of the memories, Mom was dead.
Mark stares out of the screen at me with a huge, goofy grin spread across his ashen face. He looks even worse than Dad. Behind him, Andrea is sprawled on the workroom sofa, asleep. Her hair hangs to the floor.
“Hey, Stub,” Mark says.
“Hey yourself.” My eyes focus back on the foreground of the picture. Next to his computer terminal is a plate with dark crumbs on it. “Is that my birthday cake?”
“Oh, yeah, was anyway. It was already in the oven when the police showed up. The second I saw the picture of Val, I knew you weren’t dead. Not with Val Thorsten flying that thing.”
Mark believes in Val, too!
“I got right to work looking for you. Someone real good was helping Val hide. I didn’t sort through all the red herrings covering the shuttle’s trail until you were headed down in that fish—”
“Squid.”
“Whatever.”
“What did you think of my landing?”
Mark shakes his head. “I thought of your stupid simulations and the sound of crashing.”
“Oh. I’m better than that now. I learned a lot from Val.”
“Figures. Mom always said—” Mark hesitates over the forbidden words.
“It’s okay,” I say quickly. “I’m remembering. I know he was her teacher at Space Academy. I know she worked for Thorsten Engineering.”
“Really?” Mark glances left and right at the adults crowded near the headboard. “Is it really okay?”
“Emotions are a bit raw,” Mrs. Phillips says, “but we’re stumbling along fairly well.”
“Then it’s over.” Mark’s voice thickens with emotion. “It’s been … I’ve … It’s like we’ve been in a witness protection program all these years.”
Then he laughs. “All those years sheltering you from associative triggers and who do you ship out with? The real Val Thorsten. The perfect trigger.”
“I thought he was lying to me. He’s nothing like the guy in the 3-Vids.”
“You can say that again,” Mark says. “He’s one scary man! Always playing some angle to get money for that stupid ship of his. Always trying to strap me into something!”
It finally sinks in. Mark knows Val personally. He must have gone to work with Mom sometimes and … oh, wow! They were building the Valadium Thruster. “Did you ever see the VT? Were you ever inside it?”
Mark laughs. “Sure.”
“You lucky stiff!”
“I’ll tell you all about it when you get home. I can’t wait to tell you everything!” Mark smiles and shakes his head slowly. “By the way, what was Val up to this time?”
The core! What happened to it? I don’t dare ask. I’m not sure if TIA is on the Moon, but certainly it’s there with Mark, so I only say, “Can’t seem to remember right now.”
But my mind is racing. I strapped the core tight against my suit, then … I don’t remember anything after the shuttle hit. Did the rangers rescue us or people from LunaCom? Could Alldrives have it? The mission would be a complete failure if that happened! I’ve got to talk to Val. But I disobeyed him, left the flag behind. Will he talk to me?
“Later, then,” Mark says, so chill. He loves intrigue. “Guess I’ll sign off. You take it easy, Stub.”
“No other choice with this thing around my neck!”
“Hey, Dad. I hate to say it, but I told you so. I think he deserves an apology. Bye.”
The screen goes dark. Dad swings the unit back to the wall.
“What did Mark mean about an apology?”
Dad slouches against the wall, far away from me. Mrs. Phillips stays out of sight, but I can almost feel her intensity, expecting something to happen.
Dad sighs. “You were never going to need camp, Stewart. You could do AstroNav in your crib. The skill would’ve come back with your memories.”
“I wondered. Mom mentioned that in her journal.”
“Her journal?” Dad lurches away from the wall. “He carries that around with him? He showed it to you?”
“No. I read it without his permission. Did Mom keep a copy? Do you have one?”
“Yes. Saved with some other things for you. Maybe it’s good that you’ve seen it. Maybe it’ll help you understand what I’ve been struggling with.”
“It had a lot in it.”
That doesn’t please him, not one bit. “I’ll tell you why I had to come to the Moon, Stewart. I came to find my nerve. The nerve to let you go like I used to let Margaret go. You can’t know how hard that is to do, when you love someone so much … when you … need them, and they might never come back.”
I do understand. Sort of. I felt—abandoned—while reading the journal, when she didn’t even mention me for a whole year. But Dad doesn’t need me the way he needed Mom, and he did let her go, many times.
I don’t want to hurt him, but I have to know if he’ll let me go now, too. “Did you find your nerve?”
“You’re a piece of work.” Dad laughs, but not a real happy laugh. “When I saw the NewsVid of that capsule burning up … I couldn’t go back and face reentry … not right away … that’s why I’m still here on the Moon.”
He’s afraid of this life I want. I feel bad, because there’s something solid as a stone in me. Whether he finds his nerve or not, it won’t matter. “I’m sorry, Dad. I’m going to be a pilot. I am a pilot.”
“I know, Stewart. I saw you out there.” Dad sounds sad, but after a moment, a small smile comes. “You should have seen their faces in the control room when you flipped that thing over the fence. They couldn’t believe their eyes! Of course, they’d never seen Margaret fly. She had a special skill—grace, really. Terrified as I was, I recognized that same quality in you.”
He really is proud of me. And Mom, too!
Dad seems hurt and vulnerable, standing there staring into his clasped hands. I want to hug him. But I can’t. I have only words.
“Dad. Thanks for telling me. It’s the best birthday present ever.”
The Immobilizor chirps and hums, a friendly sound in the comfortable silence. The machine is busy knitting bones, soothing bruises. Dad doesn’t seem all pinched up anymore, just exhausted. He sways slightly on his feet. Mrs. Phillips leans against the wall, her arm disappearing into it—a misalignment in the holoprojector. They’re falling asleep. I’m wide awake.
I clear my throat, sure I’m about to throw a spar
k in a fuel tank. “I’d like to see Val.”
Dad goes rigid. He glares at me. He’s about to say “no,” then stops himself. “A mission isn’t complete without a debriefing, huh? Just promise you won’t fly away with him. I’d like to get reacquainted with the boy who remembers my wife.”
“Sure, Dad. I want that, too.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Dad ruffles my hair, then smooths it down, neat. “I’ll tell the nurse you want to see him.”
When Dad leaves, Mrs. Phillips peels herself out of the wall. “You’re father just made a big step toward healing. And you, you seem remarkably accepting of all this.”
“I’m not freaking out, am I?” I can call to mind the bits and pieces of my life with Mom that I remembered during the trip in Old Glory; all of the details about FSF Flight 78, but none of it comes blasting in on me. No more squiggles.
“I think I’m okay because I remembered. Without Mom’s example, I might not have survived out there.”
I know something else, maybe closer to the real reason, but I’m not going to tell Mrs. Phillips. Mom wasn’t a failure. Val taught me that: The best don’t always make it home.
“Her final gift,” Mrs. Phillips says, losing her calm and professional tone. The hologram flickers, then disappears.
23
DEBRIEFING
WILL Val come? The worry grabs me, but my body can’t tense up. Weird. What if he won’t come? He doesn’t have to see me ever again. Time really drags when all you can do is stare at the ceiling and listen to medical monitors.
The door slides open. Because of the Immobilizor, I can only see the top half of the door frame. No one is there. “Val?”
“Yeah, it’s me, kid.”
I strain my neck to see. He’s in an airchair. A small Immobilizor covers his left forearm. An ugly smear of plastiskin goes from his forehead, over his nose, across his right cheek, and down the side of his neck. The jacket lays across his lap. The duffel hangs from the back. Everything Val owns is on that chair. Including the core?
I know better than to ask. TIA may be watching us.
Val works the joystick on the armrest. The chair glides up to the side of the bed on a cushion of air.
Shanghaied to the Moon Page 15
