Helium3 - 1 Crater

by Hickam, Homer

  “Gillie, any advice?”

  The inn is a lava tube. Gillie can hear through dustlock hatch.

  Acoustic readings indicate normal equipment noise. No sounds detected of biological creatures.

  “Can you see inside?”

  The rock is too thick for gillie’s visual sensors. Gillie can see through the hatch. View is tube with more hatches inset along its wall.

  Crater crept farther inside the dustlock. He found on a hanger rack two ECP suits with the Dustway Inn logo: a wavy line surrounded by small circles—the road going through craters— with the motto “The Dustway Inn, A Bed 4 Your Head” beneath it. Crater decided to keep his suit and helmet on. If he got yelled at by the innkeeper for bringing dust inside the inn, he’d just have to take the guff. In the next dustlock, he found showers, benches to sit on, and a cabinet with clean coveralls, all neatly folded. He also spotted on the deck an odd thin rod, pointed on one end and about four inches long. “Gillie, what is this?” he asked.

  This object is a flechette. Sometimes called a dart. It is launched from a railgun.

  The components of a railgun were simple: an electrical generator, a pulsed power supply, and an armature to launch a flechette, dart, or slug, the velocity of which could be dialed up or down by a rheostat. Crater was aware of their design but had never heard of one being made small enough to carry around. It seemed someone had managed to invent such a weapon.

  “Gillie, what do you see through the dustlock hatch?”

  Crater asked.

  Nothing moving.

  Cautiously, Crater opened the inner dustlock hatch and stepped into the corridor. Its gray irregular walls were rough— not smooth like a Moontown tube—and it took a moment for Crater to recall why. It wasn’t made out of mooncrete but was a natural formation, the interior surface of a small lava tube. The tube sloped downward toward a hatch that stood open. Crater eased toward it, then stepped through into what appeared to be the lobby of the inn. It had a desk cut into an alcove on one side that faced a restaurant and a small bar. The mirror behind the bar was broken, and tables and chairs were overturned.

  Crater stepped back into the lava tube and peered down the natural corridor it formed where there were more hatches.

  Since the inn catered to convoy drivers, Crater supposed they led to rooms for overnight stays. Maybe the crowhopper was in one of the rooms, sleeping off the alcohol the innkeeper said it had drunk. Pleased with himself that he’d at least gone this far, and anticipating a grateful Captain Teller hearing his report, Crater retraced his steps back to the dustlock, planning to go through it into the airlock and outside. There, he’d try to raise the convoy again but, failing that, he’d drive back along the dustway to let the innkeeper know the situation and then wait for the captain.

  In the airlock, he said, “Depressurize and open the hatch,” and the gillie accomplished it. Crater stepped through.

  Unknown biological organism, the gillie warned.

  Crater ducked back inside, the gillie commanding the hatch to close and the airlock to repressurize. The air hissed and Crater opened the hatch into the first dustlock, stepped inside, and locked it. That’s when he saw the airlock hatch panel light up. Someone had entered the airlock from the outside. “Override the dustlock hatch,” he commanded the gillie.

  Override. Hatch superlocked.

  Crater stood inside the dustlock hatch, his heart pounding even though he was safe for now. With the gillie overriding any commands from the outside, he could wait until the convoy arrived. Crater was thinking along those lines when the hatch blew. It flew off its hinges and ricocheted around the dustlock, followed by the crowhopper.

  Crater, backed against the wall, stared helplessly at the terrifying creature. Its legs were like mooncrete pillars, and it was dressed in a black armored suit. Its helmet was also black with just a narrow slit for a view port. It was holding what appeared to be a rifle with a stiff wire butt, a flat, rectangular receiver, and a barrel about a yard long. A railgun. “Who are you?” it asked in a voice that was rough and guttural.

  Crater, summoning his courage and doing his best to keep his voice from cracking, said, “I am a scout with a convoy of the Medaris Mining Company. The main body will be here any minute. The drivers are well armed. You’d better run.”

  “Well armed?” The creature laughed. “With what? Rocks?

  I think you’re lying.”

  “They have guns. We heard there were robbers on the dustway.”

  “Then where’s yours?”

  “I have an elk sticker,” Crater said. “And I know how to use it.”

  The crowhopper turned its headlamp on, playing it across Crater’s face. “Well,” it said, “this is a surprise. You are the one.”

  Crater didn’t know what the crowhopper meant. He only knew he was looking down the barrel of its railgun. He therefore tried to change the subject. “Are you a crowhopper?”

  “Talked to the innkeeper, did you? Crowhopper is what they call me and the fellows. I’m proud of it, boy, not that it’s information you’ll ever pass along. Now shut up and let me decide how to kill you. I could shoot you or I could amuse myself by watching you wave around your puny little elk sticker, and then I’d stab you to death and watch your blood drain out of your puny body. It’s not a choice I thought I would get.”

  Then came an explosion of sound, but not from the rifle. It was a noise so loud that Crater was knocked to his knees. The crowhopper was also staggered. It dropped its railgun rifle and threw up its hands to its helmet as if trying to protect its ears. Crater’s ears whistled, whined, crackled, and hurt. Still, somehow he heard voices. They sounded like Doom, or maybe it was Headsplitter. Pick up the rifle, Crater. Pick it up!

  Crater’s head swam, but he did as he was told and reached for the rifle. Kill this fellow, Doom said, except Crater knew it wasn’t Doom at all. It was the gillie, somehow inside his head. There was another burst of sound, like a detpak going off, but Crater forced himself to focus on the rifle. The crowhopper leaned back against the lava tube, its head down, then suddenly straightened and ran through the opening of the destroyed dustlock hatch. Crater heard the hiss of air and knew the crowhopper had gone outside.

  Crater picked up the rifle. To test it, he aimed at the wall and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. He saw a handle on its side and pulled it back and felt the resistance of an internal spring. When he let it go, something seemed to snap home inside, a flechette ready to be fired. Then, the ringing in his ears subsiding, he cautiously entered the airlock. As he did, the gillie hopped back aboard his shoulder. Can you hear? it asked.

  “Yes. What did you do?”

  Acoustic burst. Directed toward crowhopper, not you.

  “Where is he?” Crater demanded.

  Spiderwalker.

  Crater ducked through the ragged hole onto the mooncrete steps and saw the crowhopper on the spiderwalker heading across the dust. Crater waited until it had disappeared into a large crater, then walked unsteadily down the steps, keeping the rifle at the ready. He stopped to inspect the dust where the spiderwalker had been parked, hoping that he’d get lucky and find something the crowhopper had dropped. Spiderwalker on collision course, the gillie announced.

  Crater looked up, saw the spiderwalker with the big crowhopper on its back running toward him, and raised the rifle.

  The crowhopper was a large target and Crater couldn’t miss.

  Yet he found he couldn’t pull the trigger. His finger stroked it, but he didn’t pull, but then the rifle fired anyway. The flechette struck the crowhopper, disappearing into its thick armor.

  Still, the spiderwalker kept coming. Crater saw the gillie wriggling out of the trigger guard.

  Crater dodged the spiderwalker, but one of its legs knocked him down. He rolled, jacking the rifle handle back to recharge it, but before he could get up, he saw the crowhopper slapping at something, then the spiderwalker running and then hopping away.

  Crater watch
ed the curious sight, then climbed up on the steps to make certain this time the crowhopper was really gone. He watched the spiderwalker until it disappeared, then sat down on the steps and tried to make sense of what had happened. After a while he realized the gillie was no longer on his shoulder or in its holster. He looked around and then remembered the crowhopper was slapping at something as he rode the spiderwalker off. Crater ran to his fastbug, jumped in, stirred up the fuel cells, and pressed the accelerator to the floor. Across the dustway, wheels spinning, dust flying, Crater steered the fastbug around the craters, large and small, following the spiderwalker’s track. Finally, he came to a rille that the contraption had jumped. Crater kept going, soaring across the rille, but didn’t make it. The fastbug struck the far side, pitched over, and began to fall. All Crater could do was hang on and pray he’d be alive when it finally hit bottom.

  :::

  FOURTEEN

  Brother!” Petro was in Crater’s dream. “Brother, are you alive? Answer me!”

  “What’s wrong, Petro? What’s wrong with you?” Crater cried.

  “What’s wrong with me?” Petro suddenly and inexplicably chuckled. “What’s wrong with you, you moron! Come on.

  Wake up!”

  “Is he awake?” The voice was Maria’s. She was in Crater’s dream too.

  “You should kiss him,” he heard Petro say.

  “Kiss him? I’m dirty, I’m sweaty, and I stink from being in an ECP suit for days. Nobody would want to kiss me!”

  “I would,” Crater said because it didn’t matter. He was dreaming, after all.

  “Attaboy, Crater!” Petro said. “Go on, Maria. It’s like a reverse Sleeping Beauty. You wake up the prince with a kiss.”

  Crater’s eyes opened and he realized he wasn’t in a dream at all because there stood Petro grinning down at him and Maria turning away, muttering, “You Moontown boys are crazy.”

  “Please tell me I didn’t say I wanted to kiss her,” Crater groaned.

  “Oh, you said it, all right,” Petro replied, “and she told you to stuff it, more or less.”

  Crater struggled to sit up but Petro held him down. “Take it easy. You’re more than a little battered and bruised.”

  Crater agreed with Petro’s assessment. It seemed he had a lot of bumps and bruises everywhere on his body, and he was beginning to recall things such as the armored giant in black.

  He recalled that the gillie had given him a chance to fight back, but he’d failed to shoot the crowhopper when the opportunity was there. And then the gillie had saved him but now the gillie was gone. And he’d rolled his fastbug while chasing the spiderwalker.

  Crater pushed himself up on his elbows and saw he was in the bar area of the inn on one of the tables. Captain Teller shoved into Crater’s view. “So you’ll live, youngster,” he said. “And I suppose you’ve got a story too. When you’re ready, I’ll hear it.”

  Crater, pleased to hear the very small note of concern from Captain Teller, swung his legs over the table, stood on wobbly legs for a moment, then sat heavily on the nearest chair.

  Looking around, he saw drivers at the other tables, all of them looking worn-out. There were bottles on the tables and Teller saw where he was looking. “We’ll dry them out later. The innkeeper told us about the crowhopper.”

  Crater told his story, including his failure to shoot the crowhopper when he had the chance and how the gillie had done it for him. “Has the gillie turned up?”

  “No sign of it,” Teller said. “I wish you’d have killed that scrag of a bob. Now it’s still out there.”

  “What I don’t understand,” Maria said, “is why the gillie doesn’t use its acoustic weapon to get loose?”

  “Sound waves don’t carry in a vacuum,” Crater said. “There was air pressure in the dustlock when it used it.”

  “Of course,” she replied. “I guess I’m as tired as you are loopy.”

  “I was in a wreck,” he pointed out.

  “Tell me more about the crowhopper,” the captain said.

  Crater tried to remember. He thought he’d already said everything there was to say but as he thought back, he remembered the armor covered more than its chest. It had armor strapped to its legs, like the greaves the ancient Athenians wore in battle, and the helmet had a crest on it, not of feathers or horsehair like the ancients, but a metallic arc, like an ax blade.

  “Maybe what we’ve got here is not a crowhopper but a lunatic dressed like one,” the captain said.

  Crater had heard of such men—they were indeed called lunatics—who’d somehow managed to set up a living tube for themselves in the wayback, usually in a collapsed lava tube, eking out a life with maybe nothing more than a biovat, a couple of beat-up solar panels, and a crusty old microbial oxygen generator. Given enough junk and technical savvy, some people, if they were desperate enough, could live anywhere, even in the wayback of the moon.

  “How’s my fastbug?” Crater asked.

  “I towed it back,” Petro said. “It’s bent a little and the paint’s scratched, but otherwise it’s fine. Don’t let anybody ever say you don’t know how to bolt a vehicle together. But now my truck’s sick. Wheel bearing, I think.”

  Crater rubbed the back of his neck and looked at Captain

  Teller. “We’ll need to fix Petro’s truck before we can go anywhere.”

  “Seems to me you ought to rest,” Teller said.

  “I’m fine, Captain,” Crater replied.

  Teller gave Crater a thoughtful look, then said, “All right.

  Go get what you need from the inn’s store and I’ll use the Colonel’s chit to pay for it. You can use tools from the chuckwagon, just put them back where you found them.”

  Teller addressed the drivers. “Gentlemen, the bar is hereby closed. We leave in four hours. I suggest you get some rest.”

  Irish spoke up. “We ain’t going nowhere, Captain. We didn’t sign up to get murdered out here.”

  “There’s no vote on a convoy. You’ll do what I say or you’ll end up like Klum.”

  “And who’s gonna look after Klum now?” Irish demanded.

  “Poor man there with a broken arm.”

  “The innkeeper’s wife set it,” Teller said, “and injected some bone bugs in him. His arm will knit in a few days.”

  “It don’t keep it from hurting like scrag, Captain,” Klum complained. “I’m going to sit right here and wait for the next convoy heading back to Moontown.”

  “That’s fine, Klum,” Teller said. “But what if that crowhopper comes back?”

  Klum had no reply. He just looked sour. “You’re gonna get yours someday, Captain,” Irish growled.

  “Anytime you’re ready, Irish.”

  Irish stared hard at Teller but there was no fight in him.

  The other drivers hastily drank what was already in their glasses. Teller was going to get his way.

  Crater went off with Petro to see about the wheel bearing while Teller had another talk with the innkeeper. He didn’t like it when the man confirmed Crater’s description of the invader. He wasn’t likely a lunatic but probably a real crowhopper. God help them all, but what was such a creature doing in the wayback of the moon?

  Teller wearily climbed back into his ECP suit. When he went outside through the inn’s auxiliary hatch—the main one welded shut until it could be repaired—he saw that Crater already had Petro’s truck jacked up. Teller went over and stood beside the ruined antenna. It wouldn’t help him make the call, but at least he knew there was a clear view of the comm sats.

  He tapped in the necessary request, linked up with two comm sats, and chose the one that cost the least. The main operator at Moontown answered the call, then switched him over to the Colonel. Teller explained what had happened in as few words as he could manage. “Understood, Jake,” Colonel Medaris said.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going to follow that crowhopper, have a look around.”

  “I need y
ou to get your convoy to Armstrong City on time.”

  “I will, sir. Don’t worry.”

  “How’s Maria?”

  “She’s fine. A remarkable young lady.”

  “And the boy?”

  “He’s raw but he’s doing his job well enough.”

  “I need him to get to Armstrong City on time too.”

  “If the rest of us get there, I guess he’ll also get there, sir.”

  “Then get there. And on time, do you hear?”

  Teller heard and signed off, then walked over to where Crater and Petro were working. “I’m going on scout with your fastbug,” he told Crater.

  Crater, his hands holding the new bearing, looked over his shoulder. “That crowhopper could still be out there,” he said.

  “That’s why I’m going.”

  Petro stood up. “I’ll go with you.”

  “No. Crater needs you more than I do.” He nodded to the electric rifle Crater had leaned up against the truck. “But keep that thing handy. And next time, shoot to kill. Its neck is its most vulnerable spot.”

  Before Crater could answer, if he had an answer, Teller walked to the fastbug and stirred up its fuel cells. Before he began his scout, he allowed himself a brief moment to savor once more the idea of this being his last convoy, that perhaps at the end of it, he would join his wife and children in a little cottage tube within a vineyard dome. There, they would live a long, happy, productive life.

  But then Teller shook off such pleasant thoughts. In the holster on his belt, he had a moontype nine-millimeter pistol, designed to work on the moon utilizing low-powder vacuumsealed cartridges to decrease its recoil. The crowhopper was a threat to his convoy and was out there somewhere. He intended to find the creature and kill it.

  :::

  FIFTEEN

  It was a simple matter to follow the tracks of Crater’s fastbug and Petro’s truck. After Teller reached the rille where Crater had wrecked, he could also follow the splayed footprints of the spiderwalker that led southward. He’d seen a few of the war machines before and they gave him the creeps. With their eight legs, they moved almost like the real thing, and when they hopped and came down on an enemy with their hideous pincers snapping, they were terrifying.