Helium3 - 1 Crater
Page 4
Mrs. Hook looked at Crater, then at the devil leader, a man who called himself Boston Blackie. “What do you have to say for yourself, Blackie?” she demanded.
Blackie wasn’t about to take the blame. “Third shift probed that area, ma’am, and gave me and my team the all clear. They must have missed those blamed old things. It happens.”
Mrs. Hook turned to Crater as Petro came walking up. “I told you two to stay put,” she growled, but before they could reply, she waved their potential excuses away. “You two boys did a brave thing. Don’t expect a medal for what you did but, just for the record, I’m grateful.”
Mrs. Hook warily eyed the flock of white-suited engineers and managers emerging from the airlock and coming in her direction, then said, “All right, people, get back to work. I’ll whistle up a float scraper and shuttle and we’ll sort this all out later.”
She subsequently did her whistling, then reported to the ghosts as the engineers and managers were called, while her miners, including Crater and Petro, went back to work. Crater tried not to think about how much trouble he and Petro were in for driving the shuttles without permission and destroying one of them too.
Astonishingly, the shift met the production schedule, but just barely; and after it was over, Montana Bill prayed, beseeching the Big Miner to look after Thumper Tom in the company clinic, and wrapped it up with, “It was a scrag shift, Lord, but we got the Colonel his heel-3 anyway. Thank you at least for that. Amen.”
“Amen,” the miners chorused, then headed to the showers.
:::
FOUR
Every so often, a burst of deadly radiation would escape from the sun and roar across the inner solar system and scour everything in its path. If you were lucky enough to live on a nice, fat planet with an atmosphere and an intact magnetic field, it was not much of a problem. But if you lived on the Earth’s moon, which had neither one, you had a big problem. To avoid the deadly results of these outbursts, Moontown’s people lived in tubes made of mooncrete set twenty feet underground. Scraper’s Row was the largest of the tube neighborhoods and contained seventy-three tubes of residential dimensions.
In the neighborhood called Medaris Acres, eight residencesize tubes were set aside for Colonel Medaris’s personal use. Another sixteen tubes in Medaris Acres were assigned to the chief engineer, the doctor, the dentist, the sheriff, and the preacher. Three more residential tubes were set aside for Very Important Visitors.
The “downtown” or administrative tubes, a cluster of twenty business-size tubes, held the company store, the medical clinic, the sheriff’s office, the chapel, the theater, the library, the art center, and the engineering and business offices. Connected to the downtown tubes were observation towers where, during the two weeks of the long shadow, the people of Moontown could see a sky so filled with stars it was as if God Himself had placed there an infinite ocean of diamonds for them to admire.
The Dust Palace Bachelor’s Hotel contained a cluster of sixteen tubes. Petro’s mother, known as Queen Bess or, informally, Q-Bess, ran the Dust Palace, and Crater and Petro shared one of its tubes. Single miners occupied the other tubes, sometimes with hot bunks, meaning as soon as one man got out of it, another took his place. Nearby was a tube cluster that contained the Earthrise Bar & Grill, a place where heel-3 miners were allowed to let off a little steam as long as they didn’t get too drunk or too loud or try to kill each other. Petro organized his poker games there but his reputation and ability at cards was such, few Moontown gamblers would play with him anymore, a frustrating situation for the royal boy.
Extra-large tubes were placed north of town for the foundry and processing plants where titanium, platinum, silicon, and iron, byproducts of heel-3 production, were processed. There was also a tank farm where heel-3 canisters were stored and readied for shipment, and two big maintenance sheds, one each on the east side and the west side of town. Beneath the town were the grease traps and bioseptic tanks that processed the inevitable wastes of human habitation.
Happy to be alive, the shift that had just survived the two rollers first entered an airlock where they threw off their dustcovered coveralls and boots, and the dustlock crew—dusties as they were known—took them to be washed and cleaned. The miners next passed through a hatch where there were showers that removed the biolastic sheaths. Helmets, along with bio-girdles, were handed over to the dusties for sanitizing. After donning filter masks, the miners moved to the next dustlock and the water showers that removed all vestiges of dust and the biolastic material, and finally through a series of blowers into the changing lock where they changed into their tube clothes.
In the Dust Palace cafeteria, Crater and Petro and the other first-shift bachelors got their food trays and pushed them down the tubular rack. After a day of being enveloped within the pungent odor of bioprocessed air, the cafeteria’s aroma of hot food was delicious to their noses, and their stomachs growled in anticipation. Crater took the soup, the broccoli, the beans, the cornbread, and also loaded up on the carrot cake Q-Bess was famous for. Petro chose entirely brown food: fried potatoes, fried okra, fried shrimp, and fried bread. Of course, none of it was real, being products of the biovats, but it tasted real or at least as real as Q-Bess and her cooks could make it. The spoons and forks Crater and Petro were handed by a cafeteria waiter were moontype, which meant they were six times heavier than they needed to be, giving them the same feel and heft as similar utensils on Earth. That, however, wasn’t the reason for their design.
When the pioneer owners founded the heel-3 towns, they were surprised when the young, healthy miners they imported to work the scrapes became sick and feeble after only a few years. Medical examinations revealed their bones had turned brittle, their muscles flabby, and their hearts weak. Living and working in a world that had but one-sixth the gravity of Earth caused the human body to deteriorate in almost every way possible because muscles, bones, and hearts—evolved to work efficiently on Earth—tended to relax in the light gravity of the moon. The solution was to make things much heavier than necessary. Steel shot was the most prevalent material added to increase mass, but molybdenum and titanium slugs were also used because they were byproducts of heel-3 production. Every hatch in most mining towns was moontype, which meant they were designed to require a hefty pull or push. Miners and their families were also encouraged to walk, do push-ups and sit-ups, and participate in weight training. Every child born on the moon grew up lifting weights. The strategy worked. The muscles, bones, and hearts of Moonians, for the most part, were as healthy as if they’d grown up on Earth.
Q-Bess came over and sat on the bench opposite her boys, who were shoveling in their food as fast as good manners would allow. She knew everything that had happened on their scrape and allowed herself a moment of happiness that they were alive.
Crater was such a handsome youngster, and his face reflected sweetness. Petro, she had to admit to herself, was a bit fox-faced and his eyes a little shifty. Unfortunately, the royal Mountbatten-Windsor lineage had more than a few men with that particular aspect although it didn’t hamper their intelligence. Or, she thought ruefully, keep them from being attractive to the ladies. Her grandfather, the last king of the United Kingdom, had been a brilliant ruler, but it was a woman who’d betrayed him and brought down the monarchy. Since then, the royal family had been on the run. Eventually, she had landed in Canadalaska where she had married Troyce Jones, a commoner and an engineer hired by the Colonel to help plan Moontown. Petro was their beloved son and, since there were no other males left in the family line, heir to the throne. When Jones had died of dust poisoning, Q-Bess, recognizing there was little or no hope of restoring the monarchy, had taken over the management of the bachelor’s quarters and raised Petro as just another Moontown boy.
Asteroid Al, a longtime resident of the Dust Palace, came over and sat beside Q-Bess. He was famous on Earth for being the first human to walk on the asteroid Ceres. After his return, Al, unhappy with the government that ran hi
s country, made his way to the moon, and thence to Moontown and finally the Dust Palace. “You boys keep the scragline picked up today?” he asked.
“I guess we did,” Crater said, surprised that Asteroid Al hadn’t heard about what he and Petro had done. The gossips in Moontown were slipping.
“I guess we could save the whole moon and this bunch wouldn’t care,” Petro grumbled.
“What did you say, Petro?” Q-Bess asked.
Petro stared at his plate. “Nothing, Mum.”
Doom and Headsplitter, both refugees from the Indian subcontinent, walked by, nodding to the boys. The pair had taught Crater and Petro their version of the martial arts, which meant they’d taught them to fight dirty and with the utmost of violence.
“What’s wrong, noogie?” someone called from one of the back tables. “You gonna start crying now?”
“Uh-oh,” Q-Bess said, “here we go. I thought it was too quiet.”
Crater looked up from his meal and saw a fellow at one of the back tables lumber to his feet. He was a big man, blond hair braided into pigtails, an elk sticker taken up from the holster on his leg. A lot of the combat vets carried the vicious knife, which was a favorite of commandos. “Don’t call me noogie again!” he raged at the miner sitting across from him, a fellow with heavy, bored eyes and a thick moustache. He was marked by a diagonal scar from his forehead to his chin.
“Blood’s gonna flow,” Asteroid Al said, although he didn’t look particularly perturbed.
Elk stickers began appearing all over the cafeteria and were slapped down on the tables. The miners who owned them started screaming at each other, taking sides.
Crater was surprised that Q-Bess and Asteroid Al were just sitting there doing nothing to stop the coming mayhem.
“Maybe you should say something,” he suggested.
Q-Bess waved a hand, jangling with bracelets, and said, “Do it for me, Crater. I’m kind of tired.”
Crater didn’t think it was his place to tell anybody anything. He sat there, embarrassed. Petro, however, stood up and banged on the table with a spoon, shouting, “Now, look here, fellows. My mother has a clear rule about this kind of thing.
No fighting in the cafeteria!”
Grim faces turned toward Petro. Q-Bess and Asteroid Al got up and moved. “What did you say, boy?” a miner called.
He was a big fellow, a veteran of some Earthian war, no doubt, muscles bulging on top of muscles and scars etched across his ugly face.
Crater slowly got to his feet. He had to back up Petro whether he liked it or not. “No fighting in the cafeteria!” he squeaked.
“No fighting in the cafeteria?” the angry miner asked. “Is that the best you can do?”
Crater’s heart was racing, and he felt his face getting hot.
He wished Doom and Headsplitter would come back and make everybody sit down and eat their food, but a quick glance around showed no sign of either one.
The pig-tailed miner reached below the table and came up with a pie. “Here’s what I think about no fighting in the cafeteria!” he yelled and flung the pie at Crater and Petro. Before they could react, everyone in the room did the same with their own pies. As the boys were struck while dodging and weaving, a big banner was unfurled:
OUR HEROES—PETRO AND CRATER!
Crater and Petro were covered with pie crust and cream, but they started laughing as all the men and women in the cafeteria surged to congratulate them. Q-Bess kissed them both. “I am so proud of my boys!” she roared, and the applause surged over them as she smeared more cream in their hair.
A party ensued in which nearly every miner took the opportunity to insult Crater and Petro, calling them stupid scragline pickers who couldn’t be trusted on a scrape, and who probably caused those rollers to come out in any case, and were sure to catch it from the Colonel for driving shuttles without a permit.
Petro took most of the credit for the rescue, saying, “So there I was, beneath that scraper that was about ready to fall on my head while Crater was just sitting there, trying to figure out what to do . . .”
Viking Val hooted at that one. “Thumper Tom owed you money, Petro. That’s the only reason you went out there. Tell us what really happened, Crater!”
Crater, looking uncomfortable, replied, “Well, if that’s the way Petro said it happened, I guess that’s the way it did.”
This earned Crater more derision and a few more thrown pies, which he successfully ducked so they hit Petro instead. In a corner, unseen, the sheriff of Moontown observed all the fun and, after enjoying it at first, began to think. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that fate and circumstance had solved for him a vexing problem. He’d found the kind of man the Colonel wanted him to find, although it wasn’t a man.
It was a boy.
:::
FIVE
The annual fastbug race at the Moontown Raceway ran along a track that wound through a series of obstacles, some natural, some man-made, and all treacherous. Crater had cobbled together sufficient parts from worn-out and wrecked company fastbugs to bolt together a machine he called Comet. Crater was certain Comet would win, because not only was it fast but Petro, the best fastbug driver on the moon, would be at its wheel. But there was a slight problem. The race was supposed to start in fifteen minutes and Petro had not shown up. Crater, who was working on Comet’s gearbox, asked the gillie to call Petro again. It did and reported, Petro has his do4u turned off.
Crater felt his stomach sink. If Petro had his do4u turned off, then maybe he was not going to show. A fanfare of trumpets blared through the gillie and all the do4us in the crowd. It was a recording, of course, there being a serious lack of trumpeteers in Moontown. Everyone in the stands and in the racing pits turned to look toward the Colonel’s box, a rectangle of mooncrete with a thick glass viewing pane. Another viewing pane, this one much larger, fronted the stands for everyone else.
The Colonel was wearing a formal tunic with only a few of his more important medals attached. There was a woman standing beside him who also wore a tunic, hers scarlet with a golden sash. She was an imposing woman, her gaze straight ahead, steady and stern. Asteroid Al, who’d put on a suit to see how Crater was doing, said with some awe, “That’s Czarina Zorna.”
Czarina Zorna was the leader of the family that presided over the Russian territories that included most of the Sea of Serenity. “She’s glorious,” Asteroid Al added. “Beautiful, brilliant, a natural leader.”
On the other side of Colonel Medaris stood a man. He was short and had very black hair—an obvious hairpiece—and a thin moustache and a goatee. He was dressed in a plain gray tunic, buttoned up to the neck. “General Caesar Augustus Nero himself,” Asteroid Al said, all but hissing. “A villain, Crater, of the worst stripe. He is not above theft or even murder to gain an advantage over anyone who might oppose him.”
“He looks nice,” Crater said.
Asteroid Al chuckled. “Only you, Crater, would think General Nero looked anything other than the rascal that he is. Your heart is too big.”
Crater looked down, ashamed of his heart. He supposed it was true. He always looked for the best in everybody.
Asteroid Al said, “Chin up, boy. You’ve also got the courage of a dozen lions. You proved it on the scrapes yesterday.”
Crater thought Asteroid Al was wrong. He had no courage at all. That was the real reason he didn’t want to ever leave Moontown. He feared what lay beyond. What he’d done saving Thumper Tom and then the fellows in the maintenance shed had just been instinct. After he thought over what had happened, he’d discovered himself barely able to breathe.
The Colonel addressed the crowd. “People of Moontown and our esteemed guests,” he said, “I invite you to welcome Czarina Zorna and members of the royal party from New St.
Petersburg. We are honored by their presence.” He made a slight nod to General Nero. “And we also have the esteemed presence of General Caesar Augustus Nero with us today.”
“We will see about that,” the Colonel replied in a cold, measured tone.
“We will, indeed,” Nero snapped.
Asteroid Al noticed Comet’s empty seat. “Where’s Petro?”
“I don’t know,” Crater answered miserably. “If he doesn’t show soon, we’re going to have to default.”
“You can’t default,” Asteroid Al said. “Nearly every manjack and womanjill in the Dust Palace has a wager on the Comet.”
“I should go look for him,” Crater worried. “He could be sick.”
“Petro isn’t sick,” Asteroid Al replied with confidence. “He may be playing cards at the Earthrise, or gorging himself on Q-Bess’s carrot cake, but that boy’s not sick. Anyway, Crater, you’re going to have to drive.”
Crater reacted with a shudder. “I can’t!”
Asteroid Al gripped Crater’s shoulder. “Look, Crater, Colonel
Medaris is depending on you! None of these other schlubs can beat Neroburg. General Nero wants to embarrass the Colonel in front of Czarina Zorna. You can’t let him get away with that!”
It was then the Colonel announced, “Drivers, you may start your engines.”
Crater felt as if he might throw up. “I don’t know what to do,” he said, as much to himself as to Asteroid Al. Still, he climbed into the Comet, and the gillie jumped off his shoulder and positioned itself on the fastbug console. Gillie will help, it said. Crater cast a doubtful glance at the thing. “I can’t do this,” he moaned.
“You have to try, Crater.” Asteroid Al said.