Crater Trueblood and the Lunar Rescue Company

by Homer Hickam

  Petro’s eyes widened when Crater told him about his new bank account. “We’re rich!”

  Crater narrowed his eyes. “I’m rich and prepared to spend every penny of it on that fuser. Whatever it takes to go after Maria.”

  “But we could really beef up the Lunar Rescue Company! Get ourselves a new truck, maybe even our own jumpcar. Hey, I just thought up a new slogan, ‘Lunar Rescue Company. Running out of air? We care!’ What do you think?”

  “Let’s go see the man about a fuser,” Crater replied in his usual relentless fashion.

  Once inside the tube, Petro and Crater discovered “the man” was, in fact, a woman. She looked up from her desk as they entered. “We’ve been looking around your yard,” Petro said as he sprawled in a chair in front of her desk, “and saw a beat-up, worthless old fuser out there that we’d like to acquire.”

  The woman, a rather large and formidable woman, contemplated Petro. “Who’s your mama, boy?”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “I’m trying to figure out why she didn’t teach you any manners.”

  “Well, she’s the queen of England, actually.”

  The woman squinted at him. “Modern royalty! I should have known. Noblesse oblige turned on its head! Well, Prince George or whatever your name may be, maybe that’s why the royalty on Earth are no longer viable and all we got here on the moon is the czarina, God bless her. Now, shall we start over? You stand up, give me a proper greeting, and then business might proceed.”

  Petro slowly unwound himself from the chair and stood up, but before he could open his mouth, Crater interjected, “Good afternoon, ma’am. My name is Crater Trueblood. This is Petro Mountbatten-Jones. Excuse his informality, the result of heroic duty aboard a fuser in the late war causing a certain addling of his brain. We would like to discuss with you the possibility of buying one of your ships.”

  The woman beamed at Crater. “How nice! That is why I am here, my boy. My name is Mrs. Fletcher. Please have a seat. No, not you, Mr. Son of a Queen addled brains from a fuser. Just this nice polite boy.”

  Crater sat down while Petro, scowling, remained standing. “We’re interested in the fuser on lot number 1472,” Crater said.

  Mrs. Fletcher tapped the keys on her puter keyboard and studied it. “Would you scrap it on-site or do you want it delivered to your yard?”

  “We’re not going to scrap it,” Petro said. “It’s going to be a war memorial.”

  She frowned at Petro, then smiled at Crater. “How nice. Where will it be displayed?”

  “Cleomedes,” Crater said. “Lots of tourists there to admire it.”

  “Well, her name is the Linda Terry after some famous artist of the twenty-first century that the Colonel admired. From her history, I can tell you she was a fuser that knows how to light up a warpod. Knocked out nine in one engagement.” She tapped some keys. “We’re asking one million for her.”

  “Perfect,” Crater said.

  Petro was nearly choking. “Excuse me, Crater. A word?”

  Petro took Crater aside. “Are you crazy? That will nearly clean you out.”

  Crater waved a hand dismissively. “Can that fuser be made to fly?”

  “Anything can be made to fly. I could fly the Empire State Building if I had a big enough engine. But, yes, it can be made to fly.”

  “Then I’ll pay the freight. I don’t want someone else to buy it from under me.”

  “Look around you, Crater. This place isn’t exactly overwhelmed with buyers.”

  Mrs. Fletcher eyed the two young men. “Well? Are you going to buy the fuser or not?”

  “Yes, we are.”

  “Crater!”

  “Shut up, Petro. I know what I’m doing.” He approached Mrs. Fletcher again. “We’ll need to spruce her up a little. Can we use your maintenance shed?”

  “I could rent you some space there. One hundred johncredits a day.”

  “Sounds fair,” Crater said.

  “Fifty,” Petro interjected.

  Mrs. Fletcher frowned. “The king of England or whatever he is seems to enjoy irritating me.”

  “One hundred johncredits,” Crater agreed after giving Petro a sour glance.

  “By the way, do you have a permit?” she asked.

  “Permit?”

  “Of course. Do you think we let anybody wander out of the dust and buy a fuser? You’ll need a permit from the Lunar Council.”

  “What does it take to get a permit?”

  “You pay a fee to apply. Then pay a fee to have it processed. Then pay a fee after it’s approved.”

  Petro snorted. “At what point do we stop paying fees?”

  “I wasn’t talking to you, your royal wretchedness,” Mrs. Fletcher growled.

  “Could we apply from here?” Crater asked.

  “Of course, for an extra fee.”

  Crater touched his pocket where the gillie rested and felt it move. “Can we wait while it’s being processed and approved?”

  Mrs. Fletcher chuckled. “If you have a sleeping bag. Usually takes a week at least.”

  “Well, if it’s all right, I’d like to go ahead and apply,” Crater said.

  “Of course.”

  Crater paid by touching his do4u to her workpad. Then he borrowed the workpad and filled in the application for a scrap permit. Mrs. Fletcher looked it over and said, “I’ll submit it later today.”

  “Would you mind doing it now?”

  “It won’t save you that much time, and there will be an extra fee.”

  Petro stifled a sigh. Crater didn’t flinch. After he touched his card again, Mrs. Fletcher transferred the contents of the form to her puter.

  “Do you want me to pay the processing fee now?” Crater asked.

  “You can, but most applicants wait until after the processing is completed. Like I said. In about a week.”

  “I think I’ll go ahead and pay. How much?”

  Crater paid, then relaxed in the chair while Petro shook his head. “Lovely office you have here, ma’am,” Crater said, stalling for time while the gillie did its work.

  Mrs. Fletcher swept her eyes around the cluttered office. “Well, I do the best I can with what I’ve got. Did I mention it usually takes at least a week for permit approval?”

  “Yes, ma’am, you mentioned it. So how did these fusers end up in your boneyard?”

  Crater had touched on a subject Mrs. Fletcher was apparently pleased to talk about. “The Lunar Council built a lot of fusers to win the war, but once they’d won it, they wanted to get something back on their investment. They dragged the ones which were in the worse shape here to sell as scrap. The rest are in storage in lunar orbit. By the way, they’re also up for sale if you’d like one of them. That’s the long and short of it.”

  “But what if there’s another war?” Crater asked. “Wouldn’t the council need the fusers again?”

  “Why would there be another war? They fought that one as hard as they could—both sides—and then signed a peace treaty which everybody said was exactly what they wanted in the first place. The United Countries of the World wanted cheap heel-3. The mine owners wanted to be left alone to set their own price. So after the UCW sued for peace, the Lunar Council lowered the price of heel-3 and the UCW said they’d never attack the moon again. A win-win.”

  Crater touched the gillie again, which vibrated irritably. He kept stalling. “But if the moon won, why would the Lunar Council lower heel-3 prices?”

  “Well, they didn’t, not really! What the Lunar Council really did was set a price that all the mines would have to go along with. Before the war, there was a lot of competition that kept the price pretty low. Now, with the Lunar Council setting the price, the UCW may end up paying more, not less.”

  Crater mulled over the answer. “But don’t they know that?”

  “Probably, but they don’t care. They can point at the price and say it’s exactly where it’s supposed to be.”

  “Crater doesn�
�t understand higher finance,” Petro said airily.

  There was a tone on her puter and Mrs. Fletcher turned toward it. Her eyebrows went up. “Approved! My stars! That’s the fastest I’ve ever seen that done. There has to be a mistake.” She entered some keystrokes, waited, then shook her head. “Still approved. Without delay, it says. Astonishing. Who are you fellows, anyway?”

  “Just a couple of ex-heel-3 miners trying to start an honest business,” Crater replied.

  “You’ve got some juice, that’s what I know,” she said. “Never seen the like. That’ll be another one hundred to finish the process.”

  Crater paid up. Back outside in their suits and helmets, they found Crescent lounging on a bench. Petro said, “You said I could do the negotiating.”

  “I think I got a good price.”

  “Oh, sure. You simply paid every johncredit you have.”

  “Petro, let’s argue about this another day. We don’t have much time. The gillie got that permit for us, so it isn’t real.”

  “Leave it to me,” Petro said and walked off, disappearing between the rows of junked spacecraft.

  After a few minutes, Crater asked, “What do you think, Crescent?”

  Crescent shrugged. She was hot and irritable, and against her better judgment, she started anew the argument that always seemed to be lurking just beneath the surface of her mind. “What difference does it make what I think?” Without waiting for Crater to assure her that he cared what she thought, she continued. “I heard you and Petro talking on your suit coms. I still think we should go back to Cleomedes and do exactly what Petro said we should do with our new and well-deserved wealth.”

  “Why do I have to keep reminding everyone that, except for the gold coins I’m saving for emergencies, it’s my money, not ours?”

  “Because it may be your money but it’s our business, one that we’ve worked night and day to make successful.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but I’m going to spend it on Maria. After all, I wouldn’t have it if she hadn’t saved it for me.”

  “She wouldn’t have needed to save it for you if she and her grandfather hadn’t stolen it from you in the first place.”

  “Maria had nothing to do with that.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Crater wasn’t sure, so he didn’t say anything except, “I wish you could get more enthusiastic about this rescue.”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t,” Crescent agreed, and looked away at all there was to look at, dust and junk.

  An hour later Petro returned driving a massive forklift. “I’ve found an engine that should work,” he reported. “Boneyard boss said he’d collect it for us and put it in the maintenance shed if we paid a bonus. In other words, I bribed him with your remaining few johncredits.” He raised and lowered the big forks. “All we have to do is move the Linda to the maintenance shed. Hop aboard!”

  With Crater and Crescent sitting alongside him, Petro drove the forklift to the Linda Terry. It took a while to rig the fuser on the forklift, but he managed it without scratching her too much. At the maintenance shed, a pressurized mooncrete shelter, they drove through the airlock doors and deposited the fuser in a crib holder. The shed chief, a grizzled old fellow with a gimme cap on the back of his head, peeked out of his office shack and then strolled up to Petro. “What’s this scrag heap doing in my nice clean maintenance shed?”

  “Well, we’re going to clean her up,” Petro answered.

  The shed chief walked around the dented ship. “Is that so? I heard you got a new engine for her.”

  Clearly, the shed chief knew everything that was going on. “We’re going to make her into a war monument,” Crater said anyway.

  “You’re gonna make a big mess, that’s what you’re gonna do.”

  Crater noticed the shed chief was holding a workpad. “We could pay you a bonus,” he said, and then offered to touch his do4u to the workpad. The shed chief instantly pushed them together.

  “We have a chit that says we can use any of your gear,” Crater said.

  “Let’s see it.” The chief inspected the fake chit on Crater’s do4u as beamed over by the gillie. “That dang Mrs. Fletcher. She’s gonna give away the whole store one of these days. All right, but if you break one of my tools, you’ll replace it. That clear?”

  “Sure thing, pops,” Petro said.

  “Don’t call me pops, you rat-faced creature. Why, I’ll beat you every way until Sunday.”

  “Petro didn’t mean anything,” Crater said. “It’s just his way.”

  “His way, is it? And what’s this?” He pushed Crescent’s hood back. “A crowhopper! My stars! And what’s that on your shoulder, young man? Well, bless my soul. A gillie! A crowhopper and a gillie right here in my maintenance shed and both illegal!”

  “They know that,” Crater replied, “but we’re not here to talk about legalities and such, just to get our ship ready for display. We won’t be here that long. By the way, this is a great-looking shed. I can tell you work hard to keep it up.”

  The chief eyed Crater. “I suspect you’re a nice fellow, so I’ll give you what you need, but hurry up. The Lunar Council owns this lot, and they’ve been thinking about converting the fusers that are up there in storage orbit into commercial craft. They’re supposed to decide pretty soon, and if that’s their decision, they’ll bring ’em here for conversion. I don’t need this old heap in the way.”

  “We’ll be quick, chief.”

  After the chief wandered off, Crater rounded on Petro. “Why do you always have to pick a fight?”

  “And why do you always have to act like a wuss? No wonder everybody pushes you around!”

  “Nobody pushes me around.”

  “Guys,” Crescent said, “the chief is watching us. I think we’d better get busy.”

  “Crescent’s right,” Crater said. “The gillie is fuzzing out their server, but we’ve got to get that engine in double quick and get out of here before they discover we’re not exactly on the up-and-up.”

  “All right, in for the penny, in for the pound,” Petro said. “I see our new engine is coming. Do you know how to operate a chain hoist, Crescent?”

  “Of course. I am trained in all machine shop equipment.”

  “I don’t know what we’d do without you,” Petro said.

  Crescent sniffed. “Me, either.” She looked at Crater for confirmation, but he was busy running his hands over the dented skin of the fuser. She rolled her eyes.

  Twelve hours later they had the new engine in. The chief and most of the technicians had long since gone home. Crater said, “Let’s fill her up and get out of here.”

  “For that, we’ll need a full load of liquid hydrogen,” Petro said. “They don’t have it here, so we’ll have to go somewhere else.”

  “How much propellant will it take to get this ship into orbit?”

  “I have some bad news for you, Crater. I guess I should have explained all of this to you earlier. Fusers can’t fly up to orbit. A tug has to be used.”

  Crater’s jaw dropped. “Then how will we get it into space?”

  “I just told you. By tug. The yard has one. We’ll use it.”

  “That will mean another visit with Mrs. Fletcher, who may already be getting suspicious,” Crater said.

  “We won’t have to visit her,” Petro answered with a wink, “because fuser tugs are not for rent. They’re so big and expensive, only two were ever built.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We steal it, of course.”

  “Like common thieves?”

  “Stealing a space tug would make us uncommon thieves,” Crescent pointed out, which, mostly because it obviously stressed Crater, made Petro laugh. He held up his hand, and Crescent, recognizing the ancient twenty-first century gesture, slapped it with unfeigned delight.

  FIFTEEN

  The boneyard space tug was locat
ed outside the storage lot in a special compound. The tug was a massive chemrocket spacecraft with a clamp mechanism on its belly to pick up fusers or other spacecraft to carry them into orbit. It also had telescoping landing gear that could raise it as high as a hundred feet above the surface to fit over its cargo. The tug, named the Angie Johnston, had cost the Lunar Council billions of johncredits to construct. Now it sat in the dust, mostly unused.

  Petro and Crescent piled into the Lunar Rescue Company truck and headed for the space tug while Crater used the forklift to carry the fuser outside the maintenance shed. As soon as the truck passed through the open gates of the enclosure around the tug, automatic security lights came on. A guard in a dark blue pressure suit and carrying a railgun rifle came outside a guard shack and held up his hand to stop the truck. “What do you want?” he growled.

  “You ever hear of a midnight requisition?” Petro asked as he and Crescent climbed out of the truck.

  “Yeah. It’s called stealing,” the guard replied. “Say, is that creature with you a crowhopper?”

  Petro shrugged. “I don’t know. Is she?”

  “Sure looks like one.”

  “Have you ever fought against my kind?” Crescent asked.

  The guard warily fingered the trigger on his rifle. “No.”

  “After we kill our enemies, we eat them.”

  The guard raised the rifle. “You take another step, you monster, I’ll plug ya.”

  Petro, who’d slipped around the distracted guard, grabbed him from behind, and Crescent snatched his rifle. Petro forced the guard into the dust, then pulled loose the communications wires from his helmet, made him roll over, and then used tape from his kit to bind the man’s hands.

  Petro touched his helmet to the guard’s helmet so sound would transmit. “The crowhopper will kill you if you give us any trouble. I need the password to the tug.”

  The guard’s eyes flicked to Crescent’s grim face and then back to Petro. “I don’t know it. I just guard the blamed thing.”

  “Who knows it?”

  “The pilot.”

  “And where is he?”

  “Asleep at home beside his wife, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “Where’s his locker?”