“Mommy!” Julia screamed, pointing back the way they’d come. The five of them were suddenly trapped, hemmed in by the walls of the monument. Julia hid behind the outsized bronze dog. Emerson wedged himself behind the president, and Morgan pushed Ardie’s pram in with him.
The hoverchair was here again, headed directly for them.
Llyra drew her pistol, noticing that Morgan had drawn his own. The person in the chair seemed to bear an eerie resemblance to the figure of Roosevelt behind her. The chair drew up, almost to Llyra’s feet and stopped, without its occupant making anything resembling a threatening gesture.
There was a long silence, then, “Please don’t hurt me. I mean no harm.” It was a woman’s voice, a weak and quavery one at that. “All I want to do is thank you, and ask you to forgive me, if you’ll be kind enough.”
“Forgive you?” Llyra tucked her weapon away, counting on Morgan to protect her if she’d made a mistake. “I don’t even know who you are.”
The woman reached up slowly and unwrapped the muffler from around her neck. She then uncovered her head and face to reveal an aged but otherwise unremarkable countenance. “I’m sorry, I get so cold these days.”
Llyra blinked. Somehow the woman looked familiar, but the younger woman couldn’t place the older woman’s face. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“No, dear, I’m not all right. I’m very old and I’m very ill. But that’s actually the reason I wanted to thank you. You’ll have to excuse my earlier shyness; this isn’t an easy thing to do. But I read that you and your family are going to leave the Solar System, and I called in every favor I had left to track you down here before you go.”
“But why?”
“You may not recognize me. We never met. But years ago, when you were just a girl, I was the international director of the Mass Movement.”
“Anna Wertham Savage,” Morgan supplied. He holstered his weapon and stood beside his wife, putting a protective arm around her. “Your people claimed that by importing raw materials, agricultural products, and manufactured goods from the Moon and the asteroids humanity would change the mass—and therefore the motion—of the Earth’s crust, relative to that of the molten core, causing slippage and buckling that was sure to destroy civilization and maybe even all life on the planet.”
Llyra remembered hearing about this woman. It had been a violent splinter of the Mass Movement, Null Delta Em, that had hijacked the liner. Several people had died on both sides. And now she wanted to apologize?
“I didn’t approve what was done to you, Miss Ngu—Mrs. Trask—even when I believed all that about the Earth’s fragility. And yet they went ahead and did it without my approval. They’re all dead now, and there is no more Mass Movement. I saw to that last, personally. Later, I acquired this degenerative disease I now suffer from, a very old-fashioned one that can be cured in a few hours most places in the System.”
Llyra began, “Then why—”
“But not in the former Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and most certainly not in the city of Amherst, where I have lived for most of my life. I was just supposed to remain quiet and die, slowly and painfully, because some individuals—I used to be one of them—loathe technology and loathe themselves, and all human life, even more.”
“What does all this have to do with me?”
“You showed me the way, don’t you see? You went from one twentieth of the Earth’s gravity to become a champion here. You survived a crime that nobody was supposed to live through, and you helped to turn the tables on the criminals. Now you and your little family are going to the stars. And if you can do that, young lady, then I can go to the Moon where, even as sick as I am, I’ll be able to walk again, and where they will soon cure what’s wrong with me and give me a new life.”
Llyra stepped forward and knelt down beside the woman’s powered chair.
“And you went to all this trouble—”
“I had to. Because no matter what they accomplish for me in the Moon, I wouldn’t feel right in myself until I did. They say everybody has at least on great leap in them. Let this be mine. I may never do anything adventurous or daring again, but at least I will have done this.”
Llyra shook her head. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I do,” Julia chirped. “Say, ‘You’re welcome.’”
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ZERO: THE MASCON
PART ONE: ONE TENTH GEE
CHAPTER ONE: GEGENSCHEIN
CHAPTER TWO: LASERFIGHT
CHAPTER THREE: THE GAMERA
CHAPTER FOUR: BRODY MEMORIAL
CHAPTER FIVE: OLD CURRINGER
CHAPTER SIX: SAVE THE EARTH
CHAPTER SEVEN: BETWEEN THE PIERS
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE WILD BLACK YONDER
CHAPTER NINE: THE MONKEY IN THE WRENCH
CHAPTER TEN: TURNOVER
CHAPTER ELEVEN: NO GOOD DEED …
CHAPTER TWELVE: THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: SURPRISE, SURPRISE
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: MADNESS AT MIDNIGHT
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: GRANDPA MARRIED A MARTIAN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: DOWNSYSTEM
PART TWO: ONE SIXTH GEE
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: GRAVITIC SHOCK
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: HELPING HANDS
CHAPTER NINETEEN: STARTING OVER
CHAPTER TWENTY: AMORIE SAMSON
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: THE ESMERALDA
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: NEW HORIZONS
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: THE EGRESS
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: SAVE THE SKY
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: MOON OF EYES
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: RECOGNITION
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: PREPARATION
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: MEET THE PRESS, PART ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: MEET THE PRESS, PART TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY: THE ADVENTURES OF SAM O’VAR
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: CONSULTATIONS
PART THREE: ONE-THIRD GEE
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: CONFRONTATIONS
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: BEER AND SYMPATHY
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: THE DIAMOND ROGUE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: STAND AND DELIVER
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: CONVERGENCE
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: LIFEBOAT ETHICS
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: SPACE OPERA
CHAPTER FORTY: SURVIVORS
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: FESTIVAL OF WRECKAGE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO: ON THE MEND
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: OF FREE WILL AND CHOICES
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR: THE HOUSE THAT NGU BUILT
PART FOUR: ONE FULL GEE
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE: NGUS IN THE NEWS
EPILOGUE: THE LONE AND LEVEL SANDS
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