by Allen Steele
"You find the hole. I'll get the repair kit." Logan launched himself down the center aisle toward a bulkhead locker marked Emergency. "Is this where it is, skipper?"
"You got it." Gordie took a second to glance over his shoulder. "Pull the handle up, then pull it down...that's how it opens. And don't call me skipper...I hate that."
I might have laughed if the situation hadn't been so serious. Instead, I was trying to figure out how to locate the breach. Hannah's finding the fragment helped a little--it meant the hole was closer to the rear of the spacecraft than the front--but it only gave me a general direction in which to look.
The hole could be anywhere. Worse than that, given the size of the fragment, it was probably no larger than the diameter of a pen. Easy to seal, but hard to find. And Gordie wasn't kidding when he said that we were quickly losing pressure; I swallowed, and felt my ears pop.
"Everyone, look around," I said, trying to stay calm. "Look for the hole." Melissa was still weeping, and I grabbed her shoulder and shook her hard. "You too. Stop crying and help me look."
"Oh, why don't you climb back in your little cocoon and shut up!" Her face was screwed up in terror, and tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. "At least you'll have air in there!"
She was wrong, of course; the cocoon wasn't airtight, and even if it was, I wouldn't have lived very much longer than anyone else. I was about to tell her this when I noticed something peculiar: in zero-g, her tears were forming tiny bubbles that drifted away from her face. Floating in midair, as if caught by...
An air current. The sort that would be caused by a hull breach.
"That's it!" I yelled, still staring at my sister. "That's how to find it!"
MeeMee glared at me. "What are you...?"
Ignoring her, I pushed myself toward the aft bulkhead hatch marked Galley and yanked it open. The compartment on the other side of the hatch was no more than a cubbyhole, barely large enough for one person. It took only a second to find what I needed: a locker containing a couple of dozen half-liter bottles of water.
I snatched a water bottle from the galley and kicked myself back into the passenger compartment. By then, Logan had retrieved a plastic case from the emergency locker and had returned to the rear of the passenger compartment. "I got the seal kit," he said, then stared at me in bewilderment. "Hey, man, you picked a hell of a time to get a drink of..."
"Watch." I pried open the cap nozzle, pointed the bottle away from me, and squeezed. Water spurted from the nozzle and instantly coalesced into a thick, steady stream of bubbles, each perfectly spherical if not identical in size.
"What are you doing?" Melissa screeched like a cat who was about to get wet. "This is no time to be playing with...!"
"No! He's right!" Logan caught on; he grabbed a ceiling rail and pulled himself back from the water bubbles, making sure that he wasn't in their way. "Watch where they're going!"
The stream dispersed, becoming a cloud...and then the bubble cloud began to move, caught by air currents we couldn't feel but which nonetheless influenced the bubbles' direction. The LTV was no longer rolling--Gordie had regained control of the craft, at least for the moment--so there was no other force to act upon the bubbles.
The bubbles floated downward, slowly at first, then picking up speed as they moved toward the floor. As we watched, they began to form a spiral, much like a tiny waterspout, that jetted toward a spot in the aisle just past the edge of Logan's seat, across the aisle from where Hannah had been during the blowout. The airborne whirlpool disappeared through a tiny hole in the floor, the place where the fragment had punched through.
"That's it," I murmured. "There's where it is."
Logan opened the seal kit. Inside was a cylindrical object that faintly resembled a chalk gun and a set of flat, cellophane-wrapped patches of different sizes. I held the box while he quickly read the instructions printed on the inside of the lid, then he removed the gun and bent over to insert its pointed barrel into the hole. When he pulled the trigger, pink gunk that looked like chewing gum jetted into the hole. It filled the hole, stopping the remaining water bubbles--and the air--from escaping. The gunk hardened immediately; once it was solid, Logan selected a small patch about two inches in diameter. Tearing open its wrapper, he removed the cover from the adhesive backing and firmly pressed the patch against the sealed hole. The patch was made of some polymer as tough as the metal around it; it stuck to the hole, making it airtight.
"We're no longer losing pressure," Gordie called from the cockpit. "But let's be safe and check and see if there's not any more holes."
I moved through the cabin, squirting a little more water here and there. The bubbles lingered in midair, though, and didn't form any more waterspouts. "I think that's the only one," I said.
Gordie let out his breath as a long, relieved sigh. "That's as close as I ever want to get," he muttered, then he turned his head to look back at us. "Well done, guys...especially you two," he added, meaning Logan and me. "I don't know what I would've done without you."
I nodded, then looked over at Logan. He didn't smile as he packed the sealant gun back into the box. "Why did they fire that ASW at us?" he asked. "That's what I'd like to know."
"I've made the lunar trajectory burn," Gordie said, as if he hadn't heard him. "They're not going to be able to try that stunt again...we're out of range."
"I want to know the same thing." Melissa had calmed down again; so had Eddie, although he still clung to Nina for comfort. "Why did they try to shoot us down? Why are we so important that they'd want to kill us?"
For once, I had to agree with her. First the F-30s that had chased the shuttle after it took off from Wallops Island, then an anti-satellite weapon fired by another fighter. Seemed like someone was going to a lot of trouble just to stop a few kids from going to the Moon.
Gordie didn't reply for a moment or two. "I'm sure they've got a reason," he said at last, not looking back at us. "Anyway...we're safe, and that's what counts."
Logan and I traded a glance. Neither of us said anything, but I could tell we shared the same thought: something was going on that Gordie didn't want to talk about. I looked over at Hannah. She was smiling at me, her gratitude obvious. Then her expression darkened and she quickly looked away, as if trying to avoid answering the same question Gordie had refused to answer.
I remembered what she'd said to me, clearly yet silently: Sorry. As if she held herself to blame for the catastrophe Logan and I had only barely averted.
Hannah knew something, all right...but she didn't want to tell us what it was.
The blowout rattled us, but good. It took awhile for everyone to get over our close escape. Once Gordie put us back on course, though, things calmed down a bit. Then we had to deal with a two-and-a-half-day ride to the Moon.
Imagine being stuck in a metal can about the size of a small bus with six other people just as bored and restless as you are. And that's just the half of it.
For one thing, there's problems with being weightless that you don't often hear about. Because gravity no longer draws your bodily fluids toward your feet, everything rises upward. So you're constantly congested, feeling as if you have a head cold that won't go away. You lose your sense of smell--which was probably for the better, since the head wasn't equipped with a shower stall and we had to clean ourselves as best we could with disinfectant tissues--and also your sense of taste, which was no loss either because our meals came from tubes or plastic wrappers. It was supposed to be beef, chicken, or seafood but only tasted like slightly different flavors of cardboard. Swallowing was difficult at first; it took a deliberate mental effort to choke down whatever was in my mouth. At least I was able to eat; Melissa and Nina were spacesick for the first day or so, and even Logan had moments when it looked as if he was about to barf. Eddie, though, had the appetite of a goat, and he claimed to love the food.
The head was...well, unpleasant. About the size of a small closet, it contained a toilet that consisted of a seat mounted a
bove a hole equipped with a built-in pneumatic suction device. Once you've closed the accordion door, you use wall rungs to turn yourself around until you're in the right position, then strap yourself down with a seat belt. Taking a piss is easy; there's a tube with a unisex cup that you attach to yourself, and all you have to do is let go; the suction pulls your urine away from you and into the septic tank below the toilet.
The other part is a bit more tricky. In theory, the suction is also supposed to remove your feces, but sometimes it doesn't work that way; on occasion it...um, gets stuck. When that happens, there's a wall dispenser from which you pull a plastic glove. You put it on, reach down behind yourself, and finish the job the hard way. I'll spare you the details; they're pretty gross.
Strangely, the only one who didn't have any real problems was Eduardo. After Gordie instructed us how to use the head, Eddie alone got it right the first time and every time after that. Melissa had fits every time she had to use the head, though, and after one really bad accident she had to clean up the mess she'd made.
But we still managed to have fun. Once we folded down the couches, the amount of room doubled. Since we no longer had to worry about the couches or which side was up and which side was down, the LTV became our own little zero-g gym. We could do somersaults and cartwheels that had us spinning from one side of the cabin to the other. I'd never been able to take up diving when I was on the swim team--my bones were too fragile--but I would have won a dozen gold medals from the full-gainers I suddenly found myself able to do. Our first big workout had us bouncing off the walls, laughing like crazy even though we frequently collided with one another. Even Hannah joined the fun for a few minutes, until she sailed into the cockpit and nearly slammed into an instrument panel. After that Gordie lay down some ground rules: no more than two kids could play at a time, and the cockpit was strictly off-limits.
Most of the time, though, we lay in the hammocks Gordie helped us string across the cabin. We'd read or watch movies, but that got to be dull after awhile; I had some novels and vids stored in my pad, but the ones Gordie had aboard were mostly loaded with tech manuals or 20th-century comedies that none of us really liked. We'd sleep, even though it was almost pointless; in zero-g our bodies didn't require as much rest as they did on Earth, so our naps would last only a few hours.
So we spent a lot of time talking. Or at least Logan, Melissa, and I did. Conversations with Eddie were pleasant, and he was really nice once we got to know him better, but it was a little hard to have a meaningful chat with someone who had the mind of a second-grader. Nina was smart as hell, but she didn't seem to like us very much. Melissa was always on the verge of making fun of Eddie, and even after I told MeeMee to knock it off, Nina was constantly defensive of her brother.
As for Hannah...she remained a mystery, quiet, and reserved, only rarely smiling. She avoided both Melissa and Nina, and had as little to do with Logan or me as she could. Yet it seemed that, whenever I looked her way, our eyes would meet for a second and I'd find a warmth there which was both attractive and unsettling. She probably thought that I saved her life, and she may have been right. All I knew was that I wanted to dislike her...but how can you hate the first girl who's ever paid attention to you?
Nonetheless, she was keeping something bottled up inside. At one point, she went to the head and didn't come out for two hours; behind the door, we could hear her crying. She wouldn't tell us what was wrong, though, and no one could get through the wall she'd built up around her.
We were about halfway to the Moon when Gordie made good his promise about showing me how to fly an LTV. At first I was reluctant; after all, the promise had been made while he'd been trying to calm me down. Besides, I had no ambition to become a spacecraft pilot. But Gordie insisted, and I was bored, so while the others slept I went forward to the cockpit, where Gordie had me take his place in the pilot's seat while he hovered behind me.
The flight profile called for a mid-course correction, a routine procedure that has to be done two or three times between Earth and the Moon. In this instance, that entailed firing the reaction-control rockets and main engine in just the right order to keep us on the proper trajectory. "The autopilot can do this on its own," Gordie said, "but no self-respecting pilot lets a computer do a man's job."
Well...not exactly. The computer did most of the work, really. Once I was strapped in, Gordie had me take hold of the pistol-grip hand controller, then pointed to the two small screens directly in front of me. The screen on the left displayed a crosshatch with a tiny square in its middle and a tiny four-pointed diamond just to the right of it; the screen on the right displayed several vertical red and blue bars signifying the LTV's present speed, change of velocity (or delta-V), and rate of fuel consumption. All I had to do was use the hand controller to move the diamond into the middle of the square, and then squeeze the controller's trigger to ignite the main engine.
It seemed simple enough, but getting the diamond into position was harder than it appeared, particularly since it twitched with the slightest move I made. I chewed on my lower lip as I carefully slid the diamond into the square, trying not let it move too far away from the center of the screen. I finally managed to get it there, though, and squeezed the trigger the instant it was lined up. A soft rumble from behind us as the main engine fired, and for a second or two I felt myself being gently pushed back into my seat. I watched the left screen as the little red bar of the fuel gauge inched downward as the little blue bar of the delta-V indicator crept upward. When they met the hash-marks on the side of the screen, I released the trigger.
"And there we go." Gordie reached past me to snap a couple of toggle switches on the dashboard. "Locked and set. Nice work, kiddo. Couldn't have done better myself."
"Yeah, right." Although I was relieved that I hadn't put us on course for the Sun, I thought he was being patronizing.
"Don't believe me? Look for yourself." He pointed toward the window above the dashboard, which he'd told me to ignore while I was watching the screens.
I felt my breath catch in my throat. The last time I'd seen the Moon, it was on the right side of the window. Now it appeared to be almost directly before us. Not only that, but it was many times larger than I'd ever seen it before; it filled the window, sunlight casting dark shadows from its distinct mountains and craters. No longer a small orb in the sky, the Moon had become a vast world toward which our tiny craft was falling.
"You're almost home," Gordie murmured.
Despite the amazing beauty of what I saw, I looked away from the window. "That's not my home. I've never been there before."
"You were born there, weren't you?"
"Yeah, but..."
"Then you're a loony, true blue."
"Sorry, but you're wrong. I grew up in Maryland, not..." I nodded toward the window. "I know nothing about the Moon other than that's where I was born."
Gordie was quiet for a few moments. Thinking that he wanted his seat again, I unbuckled the harness and carefully pushed myself out of it. He took my place without a word, but as I was about to leave the cockpit he looked back at me. "How did that happen, anyway? I mean, being born on the Moon but winding up on Earth."
I'd been asked that question so many times that I'd come up with a pat reply: just worked out that way, I guess. But his interest seemed to be genuine, and considering what he'd done to help me escape the feds, I figured that he deserved an explanation. I grabbed hold of a bulkhead rung and turned toward him again.
"It's a long story..." I began.
"We got plenty of time." He glanced over his shoulder to make sure the others were still asleep, then lowered his voice. "Really. I'd like to hear it."
I hesitated, then went on. "I was born on the Moon, yeah, but it was kind of an accident. I was conceived on Earth, but my mother didn't know she was pregnant until she and Dad went to the Moon."
"Really?" Gordie raised an eyebrow. "She...um, forgive me for saying this, but she must not have been paying a lot of attent
ion."
"Yeah, well...from what I've been told, I guess she was sort of an egghead, kind of like Dad. She'd already had Melissa and Jan, but they were still very little when Dad asked her to come along with him for a three-month stay on the Moon. Apollo was under construction then, and the ISC wanted him up there to help work out the details of the mining operations. And since Mom was a botanist, she could advise them on what sort of crops they'd need to grow for food and air. So they had friends look after my sisters while they went to the Moon, but it wasn't until they'd been there a few weeks that she discovered that she was pregnant."
"And she didn't go home?"
I shook my head. "By then she was well into her first trimester, and the doctors were unsure of how one-sixth gravity would affect my development. There'd been plenty of kids born on the Moon, but they'd never had a case like this before, where a woman is made pregnant on Earth but gives birth up there. The sonograms showed a normal fetus, but no one really knew how I'd turn out. So Mom and Dad talked it over, and in the end they decided that she'd stay on the Moon. If I had LBDS...which seemed pretty likely...she and I would remain in Apollo while Dad went home to pick up Jan and Melissa and sell the house."
"So your whole family was going to relocate to the Moon?"
"That was the plan, yeah." I nodded. "ISC offered Dad a permanent position as assistant general manager and Mom would've had a job in the life support division. They were still living in temporary quarters...one of the inflatable habs...but as soon as Apollo was finished, we would've moved into an apartment that had already been reserved for us. So they had everything figured out. And then..."
My voice trailed off, as it always did when I got to this part of the story. Which was why I usually avoided telling it. "Your mother was killed," Gordie said quietly.
"Yeah." I coughed to clear my throat. "I was about six weeks old when it happened. Mom and I were in the hab when some idiot outside who was messing around with a rover lost control of it. It crashed into the hab and broke the window of the room we were in. The inside doors started to shut, which is what I guess they're supposed to do when there's a blowout like that, and it happened so fast that Mom couldn't make it. But she had just enough time to throw me to someone who was standing just outside before the doors shut, and...well, that was it. She gave up her life to save mine."
