Crater Trueblood and the Lunar Rescue Company

by Homer Hickam

  “I wish to no longer be employed as your servant.”

  She turned back to him. “Oh, I will miss you! What employment will you take?”

  He dug into a coverall pocket and brought out a thumb puter drive. “Using this device, you can see that I have passed the examination for city building inspector. Unfortunately, I forgot that I needed a puter to plug it in. In any case, I now have prospects and therefore request that you consider becoming my wife.”

  Lady Deepik smiled. “Mister Ajab, I thought you would never ask!”

  “I am asking. What is the answer?”

  “It is yes, of course. I will be pleased to be the wife of the new city building inspector.”

  Crater had only been half listening, his thoughts turned to how to get the couple down the spire. “We’d better go,” he said, disconnecting the auxiliary air hose from Mister Ajab’s helmet. “Your air should remain fresh enough until we get down.”

  “Will you not wish us congratulations, Mr. Trueblood?” Lady Deepik asked.

  Crater looked over the edge to decide the best place to descend. “Right now, I’m just doing my job, ma’am.”

  “Oh, you are the sour one,” Lady Deepik accused.

  Crater, focused on the rescue, wasn’t listening, although if he had, he might have considered the couple sour for not thanking him for saving their lives. He called Crescent to come to the base of the spire to receive the rappelling rope, then used a spring-loaded cam to attach it in a crack. He helped Mr. Ajab climb into a harness and gave another one to Lady Deepik. He showed them how to use the mechanical descenders and then sent Mr. Ajab over the edge first, followed by Lady Deepik. He released the rope, threw it down to Crescent, and then woke up the dozing gillie, which had settled into one of his coveralls pockets. “Gillie, call Petro,” he said, and waited for the connection.

  “Lunar Rescue Company. In a bind, we can find. This is Petro Mountbatten-Jones. How may I rescue you?”

  “Rescue complete,” Crater said. “We’re coming in.”

  “Any trouble?”

  “I had to wait until Mr. Ajab proposed to Lady Deepik,” Crater complained. “That’s why they climbed up there. It was supposed to be romantic or something.”

  Petro laughed. “Well, aren’t you the lunar lovemaster! You’ll probably collect a big tip!”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t too nice about it.”

  “Reminded you of your own marriage proposal, did it?”

  Crater’s eyes turned hard. “Get scragged, Petro. And I’d appreciate it if you never mentioned Maria Medaris to me again.”

  “I didn’t,” Petro replied, “but isn’t it time you stopped carrying a torch for that girl?”

  Although Crescent wanted to shout her approval of Petro’s comment, she kept her mind on checking the suits of the couple although she couldn’t help but mutter, “I should have blasted that woman into atoms when I had the chance.”

  “What was that, dear?” Lady Deepik asked. “Who did you blast?”

  “Nobody, ma’am,” Crescent replied. “Just talking to myself. A bad habit. Your suits look good. Are you ready to go?”

  Lady Deepik looked at Mr. Ajab. “Are you ready for the walk, my darling?”

  Mr. Ajab nodded. “Yes, my lady, I would walk the circumference of the moon if I could walk it with you.”

  Crescent looked at the loving couple and was envious. She knew she would never experience such a tender moment with Crater. It also reminded her of the mad, crazy, desperate thing she’d recently done, an act that would change everything in her life—and Crater’s too. If she thought about it too long, the audacity and irreversibility of what she’d done frightened her, so she gestured to Lady Deepik and Mr. Ajab to follow her, then led them back along the path to their bus, keeping her attention on their safety.

  “Aren’t you going to wait for me, Crescent?” Crater demanded on their private channel as he free-styled down the face of the cliff.

  Blinking away her tears, Crescent growled, “I’ve waited for you long enough,” and kept walking.

  FOUR

  With the snout of a crowhopper rifle at her neck, Maria knew her best chance lay with her father. Since he was essentially a coward and a weakling, she thought if she was tough with him, she might be able to take control of the situation. She stood up from the dead foreman, brushed the dust from her coveralls, and said in a brusque tone, “Junior, what you have done here today is unforgivable, but there is a way out for you, and I will tell you what it is. That creature pulled the trigger, not you. If you immediately stop whatever this is all about, I will tell the authorities you are innocent. Otherwise, you’ll mostly likely be shoved out of an airlock into the dust without a suit.”

  One of the copper-clad creatures standing beside her father spoke, and Maria was surprised it had a woman’s voice, soft as velvet but somehow menacing. “I’m enchanted by her, Junior! Fearless and full of spunk! She is everything you said she was.”

  When Maria looked into the jade-green eyes of the white-faced woman or whatever it was, she saw a burning intensity that frightened her. “We should discuss this without your, um, friends listening in,” Maria said to her father.

  The other copper-clad person, a male, based on his voice, said, “We need to go. CC2232 will be arriving in about thirty minutes.”

  Junior looked surprised. “I didn’t realize it was this soon. The workers will need to be evacuated.”

  “It’s too late for that,” the male replied.

  “We told you we sometimes do the unexpected,” the female said.

  “But I specifically said no violence unless necessary.”

  “We believe it is necessary to punctuate this moment with a major event. This will assure the successful completion of our contract.” The female nodded toward Maria. “Put her in the jumpcar. Use whatever force is necessary.”

  A crowhopper grabbed her arm but Maria shook it off. “Gillie, send everything that just transpired in the last thirty minutes to Colonel Medaris.”

  Sent to Colonel Medaris.

  “You have a gillie?” her father asked. “They’re illegal!”

  “It knows that.”

  “Remove it from her,” the female said.

  The crowhopper removed her belt pouch, opened it, and shook out the gillie, which fell ignominiously into the dust. The crowhopper laughed at the pitiful clump of slime mold until it was no longer funny, mainly because the gillie sent a crackling bolt of discharged electricity through him, killing him instantly. The gillie then jumped from the dust to Maria’s shoulder, crying, Let’s ride!

  Taking her gillie’s advice, Maria burst through the ring of crowhoppers, jumped aboard her fastbug, and stomped on the accelerator. “Gillie, contact the Colonel!” she cried as she steered the fastbug away.

  Contact established.

  Maria heard a young woman’s voice. “Colonel Medaris’s office. This is his assistant. How may I help you?”

  The Colonel went through many assistants and Maria didn’t recognize this one. “This is Maria Medaris. I need to speak to my grandfather. Now!”

  “I’m sorry, but he is in a meeting.”

  “Break into it. This is an emergency!”

  “Who did you say this was?”

  “Maria Medaris, first vice president and chief financial officer of Medaris Enterprises. If you value your job, you will connect me with the Colonel now! I am being chased by crowhoppers and—”

  “I am looking at the list of people on his schedule this morning, and I’m sorry, I don’t see your name.”

  “I’m not on his schedule but—”

  Maria slammed on the brakes and swerved away from three fastbugs boiling toward her from the westerly wastes. A cloud of dust indicated there had been another jumpcar landing. She turned and ran up the slope of a steep crater and launched, soaring over the startled crowhopper drivers.

  “Get me the Colonel, I said!” she screamed.

  Contact lost, the gillie
advised.

  The crowhopper fastbugs were close behind and Maria saw two more blocking her way. She changed course and headed toward a group of battered brown and gray hills. Then a hidden rille caught her front wheels and flipped the fastbug on its nose. Maria was launched across the vacuum into the dust where she rolled, then got to her feet just as a fastbug rammed her backpack.

  Maria was knocked face down on the dust. “Gillie, hide,” she said, then added, “Call Crater Trueblood. Tell him what happened.”

  She was getting to her knees when she was grabbed by a crowhopper, dragged to a fastbug, and pitched in the back with another crowhopper guarding her. The fastbug was driven back to the telescope site, where Maria was pulled out, tossed over a crowhopper’s shoulder, and carried up the ladder of the jumpcar. She was roughly shoved into a chair, her father sitting on a bench across from her. “I just don’t understand why you make things so difficult,” he said. “Buckle your seat belt. We’re about to take off.”

  Maria glared at her father. “Tell the pilot to angle westerly to keep the dust off the telescope.”

  “Maria, you don’t understand. The telescope no longer matters.”

  The white-faced female climbed down from the cockpit. “My name is Truvia,” she said. “My colleague is named Carus. We are known as Trainers.”

  “You look like freaks!” Maria spat.

  If the female was insulted, she made no outward sign. “We are not freaks. We are scientists. The crowhoppers are our inventions. We will discuss all this later. For now, please prepare for liftoff. Carus will be taking off very soon.”

  After the “Trainer” called Truvia climbed back into the cockpit, the jumpcar lifted off and rose for about a minute, then slowed to a hover. Maria released her seat belt and moved to the portholes that ran around the compartment, moving from one to another until she could see the telescope construction site. “What are you doing?” she demanded when Truvia walked up beside her.

  “Perhaps you shouldn’t watch.” Truvia said. “But if you must, do you see that shadow there on the eastern horizon? It will grow.”

  “Grow? What are you talking about?”

  With a roar of its engines and a slight vibration, the jumpcar began to rise again, angling off to the west. Maria, holding on to the handrails beneath the portholes, kept her eye on the shadow, which was indeed growing ever larger, craters and hills being swallowed by its ebony creep. “What is that shadow?”

  “Consider it an announcement that everything that once was will be no more,” Truvia said.

  When it came, Maria saw only a pocked gray surface for an instant, and then it struck the telescope site, a vast tsunami of dust erupting from the impact.

  Maria closed her eyes with a silent prayer for her workers, which was quickly superseded by a desire for revenge. She turned to Truvia. “I will see you strangled for this.”

  Truvia grinned, showing round little teeth between her green lips. “I love your spirit! I am going to enjoy training you.”

  “Truvia,” Carus called, “I need your help. We’re getting caught in the dust.”

  The jumpcar skin rattled with pelting dust and small rocks. Truvia climbed up the short ladder to the cockpit and into the copilot’s seat. Carus said, “I didn’t realize the dust cloud would be so big!”

  The jumpcar was veering from side to side. A blow from something caused it to shudder its length. Its console lights flared, the puter announced: Automatic pilot disengaging. Manual flight only.

  When Maria saw that neither of the Trainers knew what to do, she climbed up and grabbed Carus’s shoulder. “You’re going to kill us all. Get out of your seat!”

  “Let her take over!” Junior called from below. “She’s the best jumpcar pilot on the moon!”

  Maria hissed into Carus’s ear. “I said get out!”

  Carus reluctantly complied and Maria climbed into the pilot’s seat. “What do you want me to do?” Truvia asked.

  “Don’t touch anything!”

  More dust and rocks rattled against the jumpcar’s skin, the noise deafening. Maria firewalled the throttles and directional nose jets to raise the jumpcar’s nose. A loud noise told her something had let go aft, and then a red light flared on the cockpit console. An engine was on fire. The nose dipped. Maria kept fighting to flatten out the trajectory. Dust swept across the viewports. “Brace for impact!” she yelled just as the jumpcar fuselage slammed into the moon.

  FIVE

  Crescent went inside the bus to help Lady Deepik and Mister Ajab through the complex air/dustlock arrangement. “Pressurize to one Earth atmosphere,” she said to the bus puter, and with a sudden hiss, the artificial air mixture began to be pumped inside. The couple started at the noise. “It’s all right,” Crescent said. “That’s normal.”

  “Thank you for helping us,” Lady Deepik said.

  “You’re welcome. After we reach pressure, we’ll get you out of your suits, and then I’ll drive you back to Cleomedes while you rest.”

  “My helmet failed,” Mr. Ajab said. “I believe I shall sue the rental company.”

  “Unfortunately, you can’t sue because there are no laws or courts on the moon, only town rules,” Crescent advised. “In Cleomedes I must tell you the rules are stacked against the tourist, which means if you break any of them, you’ll pay. There will be a fine for us coming out to find you, I’m afraid, but it won’t be much. We’re a bargain, considering what we do. Ah, there we are. One atmosphere.”

  Crescent took off her helmet and backpack and placed it in a storage cabinet and then helped the pair out of their helmets and backpacks, giving them paper masks to wear over their mouths and noses to avoid moon dust. “Please remove your boots, coveralls, plaston sanitizers, and, lastly, your biolastic suits,” Crescent said. “There is little room for modesty, I’m afraid, although I can position a divider.”

  Crescent pulled a corrugated divider from the bulkhead, and Lady Deepik positioned herself on one side, Mr. Ajab on the other. “Take your suits off carefully to keep the dust down,” Crescent advised. “Put your coveralls, boots, and sanitation units in the marked lockers, then peel off the biolastic suits and put them in the waste bin. The rental ones are only used once and will be dissolved. After that, one at a time if you wish, you can proceed into the next chamber, which you’ll recognize as your shower.”

  Lady Deepik and Mr. Ajab followed her instructions, choosing to take their showers separately. After they exited the shower, Crescent entered, washed, drew on a pair of coveralls and slippers taken from a cabinet, and wrapped her long, coarse, black hair in a towel before entering the interior of the bus.

  Lady Deepik and Mr. Ajab greeted her by handing her a glass of wine from a bottle of Apollo’s Fire, a ruby red grown from a vineyard beneath the domes of Cleomedes. Raising their glasses, they said, “Cheers! Thank you for helping us!”

  Crescent politely sipped the wine, careful to swallow only a little, since her liver did not filter alcohol very well. Crater called her on her do4u. “Crescent, are you about ready?”

  “Just a few more minutes.”

  “Get a move on. Time is money.”

  “He is a harsh man,” Lady Deepik said to Crescent.

  “When I asked Lady Deepik to marry me,” Mister Ajab said, “he made no comment other than it was time to leave. What kind of man would not offer congratulations to another man at such a time? It is clear he does not give a scrag for love.”

  “I apologize for my boss. May I say on behalf of the Lunar Rescue Company, congratulations. May all your married days ahead be blissful ones.”

  Lady Deepik and Mr. Ajab poured themselves another glass of the ruby red wine. “You’ll have to excuse me, my dear,” Lady Deepik said, “but are you not a crowhopper?”

  “A former warrior of the Phoenix Legion,” Crescent said proudly.

  “I thought all of you were killed in the war.”

  “Most of us were, but I was captured by Crater, and his mother took me in.
That was in Moontown. I have stayed by his side since.”

  Lady Deepik looked thoughtful. “I imagined a crowhopper to be, well, much different.”

  “Uglier,” Mr. Ajab said.

  “Mr. Ajab!”

  “I’m sorry, Lady Deepik. Excuse me, Crescent. It was a thoughtless remark. Wine loosens my tongue.”

  “I understand,” Crescent said. “And it’s true. We were designed to look frightening so as to strike fear in the hearts of our enemy.” She touched her face. “Consider the gray skin, flat nose, the heavy brow, the lips pulled back in something of a permanent snarl, all a deliberate construction by the Trainers who manipulated our genetic code to make us look this way.”

  “I am certain you are quite beautiful inside,” Lady Deepik said.

  “I am just a woman trying to do a job, ma’am,” Crescent answered, then climbed into the driver’s seat of the bus. “Please relax and I’ll have you back in Cleomedes in a few hours.” She called Crater. “We’re ready, boss.”

  Crater made a closed fist up and down signal and drove the truck along the dusty tracks, with Crescent driving the bus close behind. Lady Deepik and Mr. Ajab settled on a couch and were soon asleep.

  A little over an hour later, they were just rolling past the collapsed rim of the Tralles Crater when Petro called on the Lunar Rescue Company’s private channel. Crater answered while Crescent listened in. Petro said, “Crater, you won’t believe who I just talked to and why.”

  “The prime minister of the United Kingdom. He wants you to come back to restore the throne.”

  “Very funny,” Petro replied. “No, it was Maria’s gillie, which said to tell you Maria’s been kidnapped.” Petro paused, then added, “Again.”

  An astonished Crescent repeated Petro’s added comment, although she made it a question. “Again?”

  In the truck, Crater noticed his gillie, which detested the gillie it had procreated, flash a vivid scarlet. The Awful Thing? How dare it still be alive!

  “Hush, Gillie!” Crater demanded before asking Petro, “What else did it say?”