Crater Trueblood and the Lunar Rescue Company

by Homer Hickam

  Durwood’s answer pleased Maria. She’d worked hard to see that the wages for her telescope workers were robust, since it was her strong belief that quality work was usually best accomplished by employees who were both fairly paid and firmly managed. “How are things at Endless Dust?” she asked. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t kept up.”

  Durwood’s face fairly glowed at the mention of his town. “Real good, Miss Medaris, thank ya for askin’. They opened up a new scrape and got some new separators for the Thorium. Guess you heard about Crater’s leg.”

  Such casual mention of Crater caught Maria by surprise. “Crater? What’s this about his leg?” A flutter of worry beat in her chest.

  Durwood took on a sheepish look. “Sorry, ma’am. I figured you already knew. A shuttle car turned over on him. Busted up his leg pretty good. They shipped him off to Cleomedes for surgery and rehab and he never came back. Heard he started his own company over there, something to do with rescuing folks. Not sure what it’s all about, but I know Crescent went with him. That crowhopper girl looked kinda rough, but once you got to know her, she was sorta sweet. Wherever Crater went, she was sure to go. Sorry if that sounds like gossip.”

  Maria tried to act nonchalant. “Well, thank you for filling me in, Durwood.” She tapped a generous tip into her workpad and waved it toward his workpad, instantly transferring the money across.

  Durwood bowed again. “Thank you, ma’am. Hope you enjoy your meal. Just leave the tray outside your hatch. I’ll pick it up later.”

  When the hatch closed behind the App, Maria, feeling flustered by news of Crater, sat back in her chair. Even though his absence saddened her, the flip side of that emotion was anger. After all, he’d had his chance with her, actually several chances, and messed them all up. Or maybe it was Maria who’d messed them up. She closed her eyes and shook her head. Who was at fault didn’t really matter. The point was they were always going to be messed up. Still, she recalled him kissing her that first time, at least the first time when they weren’t wearing space helmets, and how his lips felt against hers, and how he drew her in with his powerful miner’s arms . . .

  Maria flung the memory from her mind. The problem with Crater Trueblood was he was deeply flawed. True, he was attractive, that is, if a girl liked the wholesome country bumpkin type, with long, sandy hair and blue-gray eyes that could see right through you and broad shoulders, muscled arms, strong hands, and . . . Well, those physical things shouldn’t matter, not to a woman like Maria, should they? After all, she was on a trajectory to the top of the Medaris family empire. And how could she marry someone like Crater, who didn’t care anything about either corporate business or money? A man like that would only hold her back, and she was well rid of him.

  Still . . . Crater was a brilliant engineer, which meant he had some mental capabilities. And, though she didn’t much like to be reminded of it, he also had the habit of saving her life. The last time, one step ahead of a band of crowhoppers, as the black-hearted mercenaries of the United Countries of the World were called, Crater had carried her off to Endless Dust, about as wayback as a town on the moon could be. And naturally, Maria dismissively recalled, Crater was perfectly happy there. In fact, he’d wanted to settle down in the little App-run village. With the war raging and a bounty on her head, Maria was, for a time, content to stay hidden away. In a tender moment, she had even agreed to marry Crater and stay with him in Endless Dust, but then a space taxi had landed and a pilot swaggered down the ramp looking for her. It had proved to be none other than Petro, Crater’s older brother who was then a fuser squadron commander for Maria’s grandfather. At Petro’s invitation, Maria stepped aboard the taxi ramp, assuming Crater would follow, but he hadn’t. Instead he’d stayed where he was, in the dust, the hideous captured crowhopper girl beside him.

  Maria realized her cheeks were wet with tears and her dinner salad had wilted. “Why didn’t you come with me?” she asked as she recalled Crater standing there watching her leave, his upturned face filled with an anguish that had not been enough to make him take that one small step to join her.

  But then she imagined Crater’s response, “Why didn’t you stay?”

  Her answer was, “Duty to my family,” which really meant, if she examined her sad and pathetic heart, “I had bigger and better things to do.”

  TWO

  Sleep did not come easily for Maria that evening. Her mind simply would not allow her to rest. An hour before the end of the sleep cycle, she finally gave up and woke her gillie. The gillie rubbed sleep from its eyes, even though it had no eyes or hands to rub with. How may I help you at this hour when actually you should still be asleep?

  “Why have you not kept me apprised of the goings and comings of Crater Trueblood?” Maria demanded. “I just learned he recently suffered a broken leg.”

  Maybe because you told me you never wanted to hear anything about him.

  “When did I say that?”

  The most recent was six months ago when you asked me to investigate an advanced sling pump for jumpcar engines. I told you that Crater Trueblood held the patent for that pump.

  “Yes, and then you said he had an announcement on the patent that he wouldn’t sell it.”

  Because he believed he could come up with a better design.

  “Crater doesn’t understand that in business ‘better’ is the enemy of ‘good enough.’ That sling pump is a brilliant design as it is.”

  Your philosophy fits you well, but why didn’t you tell him that and make an offer?

  “Because I hate him. No, I take that back. I am indifferent to him.” Even as she said it aloud, it didn’t ring true to her ears, and she knew the gillie would not be fooled.

  You say you are indifferent, yet you yell at me for failing to keep you apprised of him? All right and very well. I shall ignore this dichotomy. Over what time period do you wish to know of the goings and comings of Crater Trueblood?

  “Since he left Endless Dust.”

  The gillie vibrated as it connected, searched, and hacked through various puters to gather the required information, then said, Crater Trueblood, twenty-one years old, lives in the twin-domed city of Cleomedes, otherwise known as the Lunar Las Vegas. He is the chief partner in a company called the Lunar Rescue Company, which is on call to rescue anyone who is in trouble on the surface of the moon but principally works for the Cleomedes Casino to look after their often wayward guests after imbibing too much in the way of alcoholic spirits, including the local earthshine. The other partner in this enterprise—barely financially afloat, by the way—is Petro Mountbatten-Jones, his brother, although not by blood, since Petro’s mother adopted Crater when he was three years old. Their associate in this business is Crescent Claudine Besette, the only known female crowhopper.

  “Stop right there,” Maria said. “What’s her status?”

  Crescent Claudine Besette is a former member of the Phoenix Legion, which is a subset of the mercenary Legion of Warriors, also known as the Legionnaires, also known as Crowhoppers. Phoenix troopers are genetically programmed to cease all functions, meaning to die, at around twenty-one years of age. This was done to make them fearless in combat since they know their days are numbered. ‘Life is death. Death is life,’ is their battle cry. There were three Phoenix Legions created, all disbanded after losses of their members were so extensive they could no longer function as organizations.

  “How old is Crescent?”

  Just as you and Crater, she is all of twenty-one, an age when humans are certain they know everything even though they have little experience to know anything, a notable exception, of course, being you, since you own me, who either knows everything or can find it out.

  Maria ignored the jibe. “And she’s still healthy?”

  Unknown. Do you want me to call Crater Trueblood so you can ask him the status of her health?

  Even though she knew the gillie was being sarcastic, Maria was tempted to take it up on its offer. Maybe it was time she spoke to Crate
r, perhaps using the excuse that she’d only called to offer sympathy for his broken leg, or maybe even ask him how much he wanted for his stupid jumpcar sling pump. She dithered about it until the gillie said, Since clearly you don’t know what you want to do, let me remind you that you have a busy day scheduled and you probably should start. First matter on your schedule is to eat your awful breakfast. After that take your meetings. After that you will proceed to the telescope construction site.

  “Thank you, Gillie. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

  Neither do I.

  Maria’s breakfast was the same each day, a biogoop vitamin drink that tasted horrible but was supposed to be good for her. Once she’d choked it down, she called up the managers of the three companies she directly controlled and then sent them off with action lists to be completed with reports back to her before the end of that day. After that she suited up in a biolastic pressure suit and set out in a fastbug on the well-worn trail to the telescope construction site. Her purpose was to inspect the telescope and talk with the foreman about its progress and any problems he was having. Three hours were allotted for this activity, and then she was to drive back to Clyde’s Dream where her jumpcar waited for her. After a flight back to Armstrong City, she was to be met by her limobug to take her to the central business office of Medaris Enterprises for a late round of meetings with various executives. Since she was also the chief financial officer of the combined family corporations, she would also give a report in a vid-meeting with the leader of the family and founder of its fortune, her grandfather, Colonel John High Eagle Medaris. It was another full day like all her days.

  Temporarily removed from any responsibility other than not getting lost on the way, Maria decided to have a little fun by veering off the trail and going through the backcountry. Soon her boot was pressing the fastbug accelerator to the floor. She raced along, twin rooster tails of dust spewing into the vacuum behind her. Whooping and hollering, she steered, slipped, slid, and leaped among the masses of craters pocking the lunar floor. When she reached a massive crater that overlooked the construction site, she tore up the crater’s slope and skidded to a stop just below the rim.

  The gillie came out of its belt pouch and climbed to her shoulder. I have monitored your incoming do4u text messages during your drive out, which, by the way, was far too rapid and therefore extremely irresponsible but at least seems to have improved your mood. There are eight business and zero personal messages. Would you like me to read them to you?

  “No. They’ll wait. Leave me alone for a minute. I want to study the construction site.”

  The gillie shrugged, although it had no shoulders, and crawled back into its pouch. Maria climbed onto the crater’s rim and watched her blue-suited workers swarming over a vast litesteel framework that would eventually support a liquid mirror big enough to hold a shovelball field. When completed, the Clyde Tombaugh Lunar Telescope was designed to give humanity its first clear view of Earth-like planets orbiting around the nearest star systems and perhaps provide an answer to questions that cut across generations. Were there any planets out there where humans could live without suits and helmets? Were there truly other Earths? Scientists said the telescope would be able to see oceans, lakes, continents, and cloud formations. If there were life-forms with advanced technologies, it was anticipated that at night the telescope might even be able to see the lights of their cities.

  Construction of the telescope was not entirely altruistic on the part of the Medaris family. Maria and her grandfather believed that if a new cradle of life was found within range of humanity, another age of exploration might be sparked, which would require advanced propulsion drives. Not coincidentally, Medaris Space Liners (MSL) already had such drives on their puter design boards. If a planet capable of supporting human life was found, and if private groups or governments wanted to go to the stars and were willing to pay for it, ships that could reach quarter–light speed might become profitable to build. It was the way the Colonel and Maria conducted business. First, create a need, and then be ten steps ahead of the competition with a product to satisfy that need.

  Maria had laid out the plan and set the schedule for every facet of the telescope’s construction. “Give me the sick call report,” she said.

  The gillie, from its pouch, reported, Two sinus headaches. No downtime. One skin exposure due to glove failure. Treated and returned to work.

  “Why are they behind schedule?”

  Work on the moon is never easy, the gillie answered.

  “You are no help,” Maria admonished, then drove the fastbug down the crater’s slope, slowing to avoid tossing up dust that might pollute the construction site and the telescope equipment. As she parked the little vehicle near one of the cranes, the white-suited shift foreman loped over, spouts of dust erupting each time his boot struck the lunar surface. “Good day to you, Dr. Medaris,” he said as he bowed. “We’ve had a good day. You’ll see it in my report.”

  Maria recognized the foreman, Morumba Kendatta, arrived only a few weeks before. He’d been brought from Earth to replace a foreman who had ignored the dustlock protocol and breathed in enough of the moon to shred one of her lungs. She was now in the hospital in Armstrong City and her prognosis was poor.

  “You’re behind schedule,” Maria said, directness being her habit. “The bearing mechanisms should have already been installed.”

  “We had trouble erecting the carrier,” Kendatta explained. “Much of the assembly was out of tolerance, so we had to machine components to fit.”

  “Then you should have called me. You also had a skin exposure accident. Something that serious I need to know about.”

  “The injury wasn’t that serious.”

  Maria’s eyes narrowed. “I could bandy words with you, Mr. Kendatta,” she said, “but we both know how it would end. This is my project, you are my foreman, and that means I tell you what to do and then you do it without argument. Are we clear?”

  The foreman blinked.

  “Yes, ma’am, very clear.”

  “I will be here for about an hour. You may go back to work.”

  Maria watched the foreman walk back to the construction site. Many men and women who came to Luna were on the run from something—tax evasion, wars, wives, husbands, and so forth. Maria wondered what had chased Kendatta to the moon.

  Something caught her attention in the sky. When she looked, she saw the telltale sparkles of a trio of hot rocket jets that identified it as a jumpcar, the suborbital taxis of the moon. It appeared to be heading for a landing near the telescope site, which, because of dust contamination, was strictly forbidden.

  “Gillie, sync with that jumpcar’s transmissions.”

  Silent running came the reply.

  “Connect me anyway.”

  Synchronized with all standard frequencies.

  “Jumpcar landing on the Tombaugh telescope site, be aware this is a restricted zone. You cannot land here!”

  Tail first, the jumpcar kept descending, its directional jets spurting, its primary engines pumping flames.

  “Jumpcar landing on telescope construction site, your exhaust will contaminate our equipment. Stop landing!”

  The jumpcar did not stop. A cloud of dust billowing beneath its tail, it settled down. Maria was relieved to see that most of the dust immediately fell back to the surface, but some electromagnetically-charged particles began to drift, the sun’s pressure pushing them along toward the construction site.

  Incensed, Maria climbed behind the wheel of her fastbug and drove to the jumpcar. By the time she reached it, she could see a number of people had climbed out and were standing around its base. She recognized one of them. It was her father. Maria frowned and clicked on her suit’s general communications frequency. “Junior? Why are you here?”

  Her father, John Medaris Jr., nicknamed Junior, was wearing gray coveralls and a helmet with the Medaris family crest, an eagle landing on the moon. Below that was the Medaris family mot
to, De inimico non loquaris sed cogites, which meant Do not wish ill for your enemy; plan it. He turned to look at her but said nothing.

  Thoroughly confused, Maria got off the fastbug. When she walked closer, she was astonished to see that four of the ‘people’ with her father were actually crowhoppers. They turned away, as if they could hide themselves, but their black armor, slit helmets, long arms, short legs, and thick torsos precisely identified them. They were also carrying railgun rifles. The two people standing beside her father were not crowhoppers but willowy and tall, their coveralls made of a sheer, copper-colored material. Their bubble helmets showed elfin-like faces painted bone white with green lips. She couldn’t tell if the creatures, whatever they were, were male or female.

  Maria didn’t dare get any closer. Crowhoppers were ugly brutes who might tear her limbs off just for the sport of it, and the weird face-painted pair looked dangerous too.

  Her father’s presence was equally strange. Although he was on a number of company boards within the Medaris Enterprises conglomerate, he was estranged from his father, the Colonel, and from his daughter. Maria had given him a chance to work for her but had fired him when she’d caught him repeatedly lying and embezzling. There was no reason for him to be at the construction site, especially with crowhoppers and the strange couple in the coppery suits.

  “You have to leave,” Maria demanded, “and when you do, make certain your pilot pivots the jumpcar to create a minimum of dust. As it is, it will take days to clean up your mess.”

  Her father glanced at the copper-suited pair, then squared his shoulders. “Maria, your grandfather is retiring and I am taking over Medaris Enterprises. You will come with me and I will explain the situation in more detail.”

  Her father’s astonishing declaration took a moment to sink in. “Don’t be absurd,” she heard herself saying as alarm bells rang in her head. She needed to get away, but two of the crowhoppers had moved to cut her off from her fastbug.

  The foreman Kendatta drove up on a fastbug and dismounted. “Dr. Medaris, who are these people?”