Helium3 - 1 Crater

by Hickam, Homer

  He drove for the next ten hours straight, the gillie on the dashboard, prepared to sound the alarm if it sensed the crowhoppers or any other kind of problem. The gillie looked off-color to Crater so he asked it for a status.

  Gillie sick, it said.

  Crater felt bad. He should have asked it earlier. “What’s wrong?”

  The gillie’s voice was weak. Biolastic cells tried to absorb gillie.

  Gillie fight. Big drain.

  “What can I do to help you?”

  The gillie didn’t answer, which was an answer itself. “I’m sorry,” Crater said and still the gillie did not respond.

  When he needed sleep, Crater pulled the motorbarn off the dustway and sought out a hill and its shade. This became his plan, to drive as long as he could, then seek out the shade, either of a hill or a crater. The motorbarn had a low-powered radar that could pick up anything moving nearby. Crater set the alarm on the radar during the rest period so he could sleep, but sleep was difficult. He worried for the gillie, which was still very quiet and maybe about to die, and he worried about Justice, who was running a fever, and he worried about Pegasus, who was dependent on Crater to recognize the colic or all the other problems horses might have. Of course, he also worried about catching the convoy and getting to the Cycler on time, and whether Maria was okay. He even managed to worry a little for himself, but not much. There wasn’t time.

  After a day of driving, Justice rallied enough to stand watch when Crater slept. Over breakfast, he told Crater more about himself and Pegasus, how in fact his son had been the soldier of the Alabama Irregulars who’d owned the warhorse.

  “He died in the battle of Nashville,” Justice said, his voice trembling with pride and pain. “Pegasus is all I have left of him.” It reminded Crater that the gillie was all that he had left of his parents and, if it kept getting sicker and stopped working, he would not even have that.

  Justice spun a few stories of battles in the North American war in which his son and Pegasus had fought and other stories of his own experiences in the various Earthian wars that had absorbed his life.

  “I don’t understand your pride in being a soldier,” Crater said after Justice had told of an impossible charge his son and his horse had made with his cavalry unit—one where so many had been killed, the battle lost, but glory found.

  “Wars are not noble, nor are battles, for they are bloody, nasty, and awful,” Justice replied, “but have you heard of King Arthur, his Round Table, and his knights?”

  Crater had heard of them, of course, being thoroughly educated in American and English literature by a former professor from Oxford University turned scragline picker. Yet he’d never read any book about the old English king and his famous knights. “It’s just a legend, isn’t it?” Crater asked. “Not real history.”

  “Sometimes,” Justice said, “the legend is more real than the history. It’s not what happened but what we choose to believe happened that matters the most.”

  Justice revealed himself to be a scholar of the Arthurian legends and had texts on his reader that went as far back as Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Latin work, including the Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory, and on to the King Arthur vs. the Aliens movies of the 2040s, just before the great wars erupted.

  No matter when the tales were told and in what method, they still were about the old king, his battles, his knights, and his enemies. Justice told Crater about each of the knights, of Elyan the White who was beloved by Arthur but betrayed him in the end, and Lancelot who was a virtuous warrior yet would steal Arthur’s wife, the beautiful Guinevere. He told Crater about Sir Galahad, the purest knight of all, who quested, along with Sir Percival, for the Holy Grail. Then there was Sir Gawain, the brash, talkative, womanizing knight who made Crater think of Petro even if he was supposed to be a king. And there was Sir Kay, who was the unrelenting warrior, fighting the king’s battles without caring why they were fought, and Mordred, Arthur’s son, who detested his father and would eventually fight him to the death. Crater was particularly intrigued by

  Orgeluse, the haughty maiden of Logres, who tempted and taunted Gawain, nearly causing his death before they were united in love and marriage. He saw parallels with Orgeluse and Maria and mentioned it to Justice.

  “This is why the Arthurian legends are still told,” Justice replied. “The characters are so rich and so defined that we begin to see them in ourselves and the people we know. This Maria is a worry to you, yes?”

  “I wouldn’t say a worry,” Crater said, but then he confessed that she was a worry, indeed. “I see Petro as Gawain,” he allowed.

  “Ah, sibling rivalry for the same girl,” Justice said. “I understand. But, Crater, which of the knights are you?”

  “Galahad,” Crater said, instantly.

  “And what is your Holy Grail? What is the perfect thing you seek?”

  Crater had surprised himself by picking Galahad, but he supposed he had done it for a reason even if he didn’t know what the reason was. He therefore gave Justice’s question serious thought. “I seek the perfect thing in myself,” he concluded. “I want to be perfect in everyone’s eyes. If I mess up, I feel embarrassed and ashamed.”

  “Yet you realize no one is perfect and no one can avoid failure. It is the human condition.”

  “I know it but I can’t stop how I feel.”

  “Oh, but you can, Crater,” Justice replied. “You have to keep telling yourself that you are doing your best—just make certain you are, of course—and leave the rest to the big Fellow who looks after us all. And remember that Galahad ended up being isolated from everyone he loved because he became obsessed with finding the Holy Grail. The irony was when he found it, it was no longer perfect just because it was found.”

  Crater mused on that for a long second, then told Justice of another quest, this one not within himself, but the one the Colonel had sent him off to accomplish aboard the Cycler. It felt good to let someone else know.

  “Is it a worthy quest?” Justice asked.

  “I don’t know. It seemed important to the Colonel.”

  “Do you see the Colonel as King Arthur?”

  “Not really,” Crater concluded after thinking it over. “King Arthur always had the best of intentions. When I stop to think about it, I’m not sure what intentions the Colonel has or why he’s sent me after this package.”

  “But you clearly intend to do it whether you understand his motivations or not.”

  Crater nodded, saying, “I will do it. I told him I would, and I will.”

  “Still, it’s something to think about,” Justice said, and that’s what Crater did as the motorbarn crawled across the face of the moon, and the gillie died a little each day, and the crowhoppers, for all he knew, circled above, ready to pounce.

  :::

  TWENTY-TWO

  The high and irregular rim of Aristillus formed a circle surrounded by ejecta-rays that speared out hundreds of miles. In the center were three peaks, the tallest at least a half-mile high, the result of the impact of the meteorite that had formed the crater. Aristillus was an example of a complex impact crater with an uplift in the central region. As the energy from the impact of the meteor had dissipated, the center of the crater had swollen upward, creating the tall mountains.

  Along the northern rampart, Crater could just make out the remains of an unnamed and even more ancient impact crater nearly submerged in brown and gray lava flows. To the south he could see Autolycus, a smaller, simpler crater, and to the southwest was the vast Archimedes crater with its complicated geometry. To the southeast, he could see the opening between the Caucasus and Apenninus mountains called the Serenity Gap that ultimately led to the vast ocean of dust and lava that was the Sea of Serenity—or, as it was called by the dustway truckers, the Serene Killer. It was all magnificent, and Crater sat there in the driver’s seat of the motorbarn admiring it. When he looked a little closer at the settlement, he beheld, with relief, a line of trucks he recognized. He had caug
ht up with the Moontown convoy.

  Crater walked back into the motorbarn to ask Justice permission for something he wanted to do. Justice thought the idea jolly and pulled himself into the driver’s seat while Crater got Pegasus ready for the outside. The horse, perhaps sensing a nice run, shook eagerly as Crater led him down the ramp, then climbed aboard. “There it is, Pegasus. Aristillus.

  Ready?”

  Pegasus raised and lowered his head and stamped his hooves in anticipation. “Let’s go,” Crater said.

  Pegasus leaped, landed on the downslope, and began to run, every step covering fifty feet or more. Crater yodeled with excitement as he and the great horse closed in on the convoy, then galloped through the huge parking area, snaking through the trucks. As he passed them, he saw other trucks, some from Neroburg, New St. Petersburg, the Luna Water Company, and various freight haulers from Armstrong City.

  The drivers waved and whooped as he passed, Pegasus’s great hooves tossing up plumes of dust.

  Then he spotted the chuckwagon. Captain Teller, Petro, and Maria were standing beside it, perusing a checklist. Since he’d left the gillie in the motorbarn, Crater ran up and down the freq list the convoy was likely using, catching Petro saying, “. . . if my brother ever catches up with us, then—”

  Teller interrupted. “I think we have to assume he will not catch up anytime soon.”

  “But I have caught up!” Crater cried as he and Pegasus rounded one of the trucks, a driver standing there—Irish, as it turned out—falling backward in astonishment.

  “What the—!” Teller yelled as Pegasus leapt over the chuckwagon.

  “Yeehaw!” Crater cried in joyful abandon as Pegasus landed and kept running in astounding strides. Crater looked over his shoulder and was surprised to see Maria coming after him in a fastbug. He pulled back on the reins, and Pegasus slowed to a canter until Maria drove up alongside. She grinned and pushed the accelerator down hard. The fastbug spun its wheels, then soared up the lip of a collapsed crater and flew through the vacuum.

  “Come on, boy, catch her!” Crater cried, leaning forward.

  Through the craters and plains Pegasus ran after Maria.

  She slowed, letting them catch up. “To the Autolycus Crater,” she proposed and jammed the accelerator pedal again to the floor.

  “We can do this, Peg old boy,” Crater said, and the great horse, its breath coming in joyful, swelling puffs, surged forward, and they caught Maria at the crater. Crater gave the horse a gentle tug on the reins and Pegasus got the idea, wheeled around the crater, and took off back toward the convoy. On a straightaway, Maria caught up again, then waved them down.

  “Stop, Crater,” she said. “Please!”

  Crater brought Pegasus to a canter, then a walk. The horse quivered beneath him and then stopped beside Maria. Crater hopped off Pegasus and was astonished when Maria ran to him. He was so unprepared, she knocked him down. Pegasus looked at him with concern, then at Maria, and stamped his hooves. “It’s all right, boy,” Crater said from the dust. “She’s a friend. I think.”

  Maria helped Crater up, then, to his further astonishment, gave him a hug. “I’m so glad you’re back!” she cried.

  “Who are you and what have you done with Maria?”

  Crater asked.

  Maria laughed. “It’s me, silly. Even though you have a low opinion of me and my bossy nature, I can be nice.”

  “I have never had a low opinion of you,” Crater swore, even though he supposed he had, sort of.

  “Then let’s start over. Deal?” Not waiting for him to answer, she put her hand on the nose of Pegasus’s helmet. “And who’s this?”

  Crater told her about Pegasus and about Ellis Justice and the crowhoppers that had attacked them. Then he told her about the Umlaps and how the gillie had returned. Maria listened to it all in solemn silence, then said, “I worried about you while you were gone.”

  “You did?” Crater fought to hold back a grin but he just couldn’t.

  “Of course I did!”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re my friend, Crater.”

  “Only your friend?”

  “Oh, I see. You want more than that. You know, even when you were calling me bossy, I kind of suspected that. All right.

  I will give it due consideration, but don’t rush me. Don’t rush anything. We’re living through a special time. Don’t you see that? We need to just be in the moment, not look beyond even if that beyond includes, well . . . us.”

  “Of course you’re right. We’re much too young to get serious,”

  Crater responded with a cheerful shrug, even though he didn’t mean a word of it.

  “You know what we should do?” Maria asked, coyly pressing her helmet faceplate to his, her lips puckered.

  He concluded he must be in a dream but, if so, it was a wonderful one. “What?” he asked, dreamily, his lips prepared to kiss hers, at least through the plaston helmet.

  “Finish our race!” she cried, pushing him away and laughing. She jumped back into the fastbug and, wheels throwing dust, zipped across the short plain before plunging into another field of craters.

  Crater threw himself aboard Pegasus. “Get after her, boy!” he shouted. Pegasus took off, though he had cooled down and couldn’t catch up with Maria this time.

  When Crater and Pegasus trotted back into the convoy parking area, Captain Teller walked out from the chuckwagon.

  “Ellis Justice arrived, told me all, Crater. You apparently did fair work out there.”

  “As good as I could manage, sir,” Crater said, climbing down from the great horse.

  “These crowhoppers are worrisome,” the captain said.

  “Why are they stalking the dustway?”

  “I don’t know,” Crater said. “Is the convoy ready to roll? If not, I’d like to see Mr. Justice to a doctor, Pegasus to an inside domicile, and the gillie is sick too.”

  Teller’s face was drawn. “Not to worry. I’ve dispatched

  Justice to the clinic and the horse, per his instructions, will go to the maintenance shed where he will be looked after. As for the gillie, you’ll have to take care of it. Unfortunately, there should be plenty of time. The mayor here has declared a weeklong holiday for all government workers to celebrate their team winning the Lunar League Shovelball championship.

  That means we can get the trucks serviced—which we have done—but we can’t pay the town taxes because the tax office is closed and the local police won’t let us leave until we do. See there? They’ve posted guards.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Crater said.

  “Mayor Trakk is eccentric. He hates the Colonel and everything that has anything to do with Moontown. His father was in the Colonel’s original party and was dropped off here to build a way station. Something happened—something to do with money, I’m sure—and there was a falling out. Because of that long ago history plus the result of an unfortunate shovelball game, we’re stuck. All this and we have crowhoppers afoot. Crater, this convoy is well and truly scragged.”

  And so am I, Crater thought. If the convoy was stuck, he wasn’t going to make it to Armstrong City in time to catch the Cycler. He was also doubtful the Colonel would take into account it wasn’t his fault. Somehow, Crater knew he had to get the convoy moving, but how? He was just a scout. There had to be a way but, try as he might to come up with an idea, he couldn’t come up with a single one.

  :::

  TWENTY-THREE

  In the dustlock, the Aristillus dustie told Crater, “You leave your suit here and I’ll clean it for you. Tube clothes are in a locker in the shower room if you need some. Just tap your convoy code in the puter to rent them.”

  “I don’t have a suit,” Crater said. “Just these coveralls.”

  He applied a battery-operated current to the helmet base and removed it. “I’ll need a place for this.”

  The techie took the helmet. “Wearing a biolastic, eh?

  There’s showers i
n the second dustlock that’ll take the sheath off. There’s no biolastic server to put one back on, though.

  You’ll have to find an ECP suit.”

  “No, I won’t,” Crater said, taking off the shoulder holster holding the gillie and carefully placing it on a bench, then taking off his coveralls and folding them before handing them over. “This sheath stays on. It’s good for six months. There’s no bio-girdle required either. The sheath opens and closes, um, down there, and knits itself back together after relief.”

  The techie nodded. “One of the new Deep Space suits. They work well.”

  Since the dustie was friendly, Crater said, “I’m curious about this holiday for your shovelball team. Who did your team beat?”

  “Armstrong City, of course. The Lunar League only has two teams.”

  “Your team beat the only other team in your league and your mayor declared a weeklong holiday?”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “We need to get our heel-3 to market.”

  The dustie chuckled. “Perhaps you haven’t heard. Our mayor is eccentric. Is that a gillie? They’re illegal, you know.”

  “It’s also dying,” Crater said.

  “Don’t let the constabulary catch you with it. They’ll run you in, sure. They’re a rough bunch.”

  Crater thanked the dustie and carried the gillie into the next dustlock to go through the process of dedusting. After he was scrubbed clean in the water shower, he marveled at how the biolastic sheath was almost a second skin, so thin and supple it was as if he didn’t have it on at all. He rented tube clothes, strapped the gillie to his arm, then stepped out into a long corridor that was filled with people wandering this way and that, and poking into the shops that lined the hallway. By the lost and sullen looks of most of the people, Crater was sure a lot of them were stranded drivers.