Bouncing Off the Moon

by David Gerrold

  "The accommodations aren't pretty," Mickey admitted, "but we won't be uncomfortable. Cargo pods are designed for supercargo. Sometimes Line engineers have to ride with supplies, so there's mandated life support for at least five people at a time."

  Alexei grinned. "Is very convenient, no?" He showed us the arrangements. "See those blue tanks all around? They hold water. Many liters. Microdiaphragm pumps move it around for balance. Water is very convenient that way. Green tanks have oxygen. Brown cabinets hold food—well, MREs."

  "MREs?"

  "Meals Ready to Eat. Three lies in as many words, no? Be sure to drink much water. MREs make lumps like concrete in bowel. With no gravity, lumps get even harder. Very much pain. Learn the hard way, yes? Very hard. That is the problem. Too hard even to work out with pencil. Not to worry—if you don't like MRE, you are not hungry enough. Starvation is not as painful, but takes too much longer."

  He pointed toward the other end of the pod—I thought of it as the front, because that was where we'd entered. "Use that end for bathroom. Use plastic bags, like this? See. Put waste in yellow containers with biohazard symbol. Be very careful. Is possible to make very bad stink in here. Very unpleasant. See those little fans everywhere to keep air moving? They don't make stink go away; only spread it around equally. Don't worry, I teach you how to be careful. Any questions?"

  Mickey and Douglas seemed to be okay with the arrangements, and I figured I'd learn as we went along—and we'd all take turns trying to explain it to Stinky when he woke up. Maybe we could keep him from wetting or soiling himself for three days.

  But there was something else that was bothering me.

  "Um—"

  "What?" That was Douglas.

  "You agreed to this?"

  "Mickey and I did, yes."

  Mickey said, "We didn't have a lot of time to talk about it, Charles. We had fifteen minutes to decide before the capsule was launched."

  "You took Alexei's word for it that there were marshals waiting for us—?"

  "Alexei might be a lunatic, but he's an honest one." Mickey held up a headset. "You want to hear the playback? You want to listen to the Line chatter?"

  I did, but that wasn't the question. "But the marshals will figure it out, won't they? When the elevator arrives at Farpoint and we're not in the cabin, they'll just phone ahead to Luna. There are marshals on Luna, aren't there? They'll just catch us in the cargo pod."

  Alexei nodded. "Very good, Charles. But Luna is not Line. Very much not. On Line, you are always known. Always under camera eye. Not on moon. I will get you down safely, and you will see. Things disappear very easily. Luna is beautiful that way. You will love moon. Especially fresh food. Is big promise. I am hungry already, thinking of salad. Sweet corn, ripe tomatoes, fresh peas … "

  Maybe it was me, maybe it was the lack of sleep, but everything was happening just too fast here.

  "Excuse me—? Did I miss something? This is a cargo pod, isn't it? They know where we're going to land, don't they?"

  "No," said Alexei. "They know where we're supposed to land."

  I didn't like the sound of that. Even before I asked the next question, I knew the answer was only going to make things worse.

  Alexei said, "Now you want to know where we will land, don't you?"

  "Uh—okay, where?"

  Alexei grinned through his scraggly beard. "We will come down where they can't go. Not easily. Very bad area. The maps are not accurate. Not the official ones. From there we go to land of tall mountains and deep ice mines. Is very beautiful. A little dangerous. But not too much—not to worry. You will like. By the time they get to cargo pod, we will all be somewhere else."

  "But they can track us, can't they? As soon as they figure out we're in one of the cargo pods, they'll—"

  Alexei's PITA*[Personal Information Telecommunications Assistant] beeped; he glanced at his wrist. "Ah, there it is now. Time for first orbital correction. Everybody brace yourselves. Hang on to the webbing. This won't be too bad." Mickey reached over and grabbed the still-sleeping Stinky.

  "Is just a little one—" Alexei started to say, but he was abruptly interrupted by a deep-throated rumble that rattled the whole cabin like an El Paso windstorm. It was loud and bumpy, and we were all shoved sideways up against the hull so hard it was almost impossible to breathe. It felt like we were hanging upside down in a cement mixer. I wanted to scream—but didn't have the air for it. And just when I was making up my mind that I was going to scream anyway, it stopped, and that spooky eternal silence closed in again.

  "Is that it?" Douglas asked.

  "Oh, no," said Alexei. "We have maybe fourteen or fifteen more. All the way out." He looked back over to me. "What was question again, Charles? That they will track us? Yes, they will. That is the point of the course changes."

  "Fourteen or fifteen more? All like that—?"

  "It's done with solid-fuel chips, Chigger," Douglas started to explain. "They burn unevenly and that rattles everything—"

  "I know how they burn!" I almost said a whole bunch of other stuff too, except I was too busy concentrating on my next breath. "And why so many course corrections anyway? Can't they aim this thing—?" I looked to Alexei.

  "Not course corrections. Course changes. Is very precisely aimed," Alexei said, "and we are making serious alteration in trajectory. Is not unheard of. Sometimes cargo gets preempted from one location to another."

  "But they're still tracking us, aren't they?" Douglas asked. "Chig-ger's right. This thing broadcasts a locater signal—they'll know where we are as soon as they figure it out, won't they?"

  "Eventually, yes, they'll figure it out. The key word is eventually. So our job is to make eventually later than sooner." Alexei continued proudly. "First, this is not only pod to launch. Do you remember five others? All of those pods have been preempted too. Some rich new Luna company bought them in transit—I cannot imagine who, can you? All the pods have been retargeted for different places. Whoever tracks pods thinking we are in one of them will have to send marshals to six different landing sites, all of them difficult, except two."

  "Oh," Douglas said. "And—?"

  "And?" Alexei looked puzzled.

  "You said first, as if there was a second."

  "Oh. Yes, well second is much more subtle. This is why we have fourteen course changes on each pod. So that no one who is tracking can predict final orbit and landing site until we are already on track. All those changes—we will look like we can land anywhere on Luna. The last burn will not happen until we are on final approach, and that will bounce us off the screens for many long minutes. Whoever tracks will have to spend long minutes projecting—guessing probable touchdown sites. Your lunatic Russian friend is very clever, yes?"

  "Yes, very clever," agreed Mickey. He'd been very quiet up to this moment. Now his tone of voice had gone all strange, and he asked, "Just where are you bringing us down?"

  Alexei grinned. "This is cleverest part. I show you. We started out in Earth equatorial plane, yes? Each of our course changes pushes us more and more up. We go toward north pole of moon—they think we are aiming for North Heinlein, approach pattern is perfect for that—but no, as we come into Lunar orbit, we go three times around and make extra burns. Last change puts us in crazy-mouse orbit. You know crazy-mouse orbit? Near polar, but not quite; elliptical with lots of wibble-wobble. Great fun. We can come down anywhere we want from crazy-mouse, but no one knows where until last minute. Other pods do same thing too, we make them all crazy."

  "But what do we do?" Mickey asked.

  "We will be in crazy-mouse just long enough for people tracking us to say, 'Oh, shit.' We loop over top of moon, come down around far-side, aim for ground, brake very suddenly, and bounce down in southern hemisphere."

  "Bounce down … ?" I asked.

  "Yes, is very easy. Great fun. You will laugh much. Like rollering coaster." And then he looked honestly puzzled. "Do you not know how these things work?"

  I looked to Dougla
s, accusingly. He had that constipated weasel expression—the one that says, said no, I didn't tell you the worst of it.

  CHANGES

  I pulled myself out of the pocket of the orange webbing that Alexei had stuffed me into. I grabbed Douglas by the leg and pulled him down away from Mickey and Alexei, so I could talk to him privately. If I'd been scared before, now I was beyond scared. There wasn't a word for it. I couldn't believe I was still rational. I should have been gibbering.

  Douglas's first words were, "I didn't know myself, Chigger, I didn't have time to ask. I'm sorry—but we still would have had to come this way. Think about it."

  "I have been!" I lowered my voice so he wouldn't hear the sob in my throat. I was terrified. "This is real stupid, Douglas."

  "Yeah, I know—but we didn't have any choice."

  "We could get killed."

  "I don't think so. Mickey isn't stupid. And Alexei—"

  "Alexei's a lunatic who doesn't have enough sense to be afraid of gravity. Why didn't we just stay on the elevator and deal with the marshals at Farpoint? We didn't do anything wrong. They can't arrest us."

  Douglas shook his head. "Chigger, you've already seen how these people work. They throw lawyers at you. And they keep throwing lawyers until one of them finds something that sticks. And even if they can't find anything, they still keep you stuck in the courtroom. Either way, you're stopped, which is all they want to do anyway—stop us long enough to get their hands on the monkey."

  "So why don't we just give it to them? We didn't make the deal to smuggle it. Dad did. We don't even know who's supposed to collect it on the other end. Or where the other end is. And besides, there isn't anything in it anyway—just a couple of bars of industrial memory, filled with decoy code."

  "We don't know that. We don't know what's in it. Maybe it's the real stuff. Maybe they lied to Dad too—"

  "Who?"

  "Whoever. I don't know. But you heard what Dad said to fat Senor Doctor Hidalgo. We don't sell what doesn't belong to us. Maybe he suspected something."

  "Oh, great. So that means if there really is something in the monkey, then we could be arrested for smuggling it—?"

  "Yeah. Probably." Douglas looked at me gravely. "I just didn't think we should take any more chances."

  "You panicked, didn't you?"

  He didn't answer immediately. I was right. And I wished I wasn't. I'd always believed that Douglas was infallible.

  He held up a hand. "Let's not have this argument. Please, Chigger?" He said it just like Dad. "We're on our way now. We can't go back. Whatever else, this is our ride."

  He was right about that much, despite the way he said it, so I shut up. For a moment anyway. But this still wasn't settled. I turned back to him. "Okay, but you gotta promise me something."

  "What?"

  "That you won't do this anymore—make decisions without asking me. That's what Mom and Dad used to do. And we always hated it. Remember what you said before? You said 'if this is going to work, I need your help.' We're in this together, aren't we?"

  Douglas put his arms around me and pulled me close. "You're right, Chigger. I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking. I mean, I wasn't thinking about that."

  "No, you were thinking—but you were thinking about the logic stuff, not the people stuff, because that's the way you are." And then I realized, "I'm not too good at it either, am I?"

  He ran his hand over the top of my bald head. It was an eerie feeling. I still wasn't used to it—even though we'd all shaved ourselves smooth two days ago. Everyone who lives in space does, for cleanliness reasons. Douglas sighed sadly. "Yeah, I guess social skills was another of those lessons that got dropped out in the divorce." He kissed me— something he'd never done before, at least I couldn't remember ever being kissed by my big brother. He said, "Okay, Chig. I promise. No more family decisions unless everyone in the family is part of them. Even Stinky."

  "Pinky promise?"

  "Pinky promise." We hooked little fingers and shook on it.

  There was one more thing I had to ask. "Douglas?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Are you and Mickey … you know? Gonna get married?"

  "I don't know. We haven't really talked about it yet. Does it bother you?"

  "I just want to know. Will he be part of our family too? Is he going to help make decisions?"

  "Um, Chig … He is part of it. We have to include him."

  "But we just met him two days ago."

  "Three."

  "Whatever. It's just—how can you make that kind of a decision so quickly? It's not logical."

  "Oh, look who's talking about logic now."

  "You know what I mean," I said.

  "Yeah, I do. And yeah, you're right. It's not logical. But … I've never had anybody love me before. Not like this. And I don't want to lose it. It's very confusing. Maybe it'll happen to you someday. And then you'll understand."

  I couldn't imagine it. So I didn't say anything. I didn't even make a face.

  Douglas ran his hand over the top of my head again. He took a deep breath. "There is a decision that we do have to make very soon, Chig. All of us. What colony are we going to head out to? We'd better start thinking about that now. Because that will be a one-way trip."

  CARGO

  If I'd thought the trip up the elevator was boring, the cargo pod was even worse. At least the elevator had all the cable channels, ha-ha. We could have had some video reception if we'd linked to either an Earth or a Lunar station—but if we started downloading, then our presence on this pod would be obvious to anyone with access to the tracking software. And the whole point of this trick was that they wouldn't know which pod we were in.

  Alexei spent an hour explaining to us how the pods were built and how they worked. That was sort of interesting for a while—but it wasn't really his purpose to entertain us. He said it was essential to our survival that we understood what kind of vehicle we were in.

  "Is only a cargo pod, not a real spaceship," he said. "Is idea to have efficient and cheap way to send supplies and equipment to Luna or Mars or asteroid belt or anywhere else. You put stuff in box, you give box a push—you fling it off Line, da? Eventually, it arrives. Cost for fuel is negligible. You are already out of gravity well, so you only need fuel for course corrections along the way and a little bit more for braking at destination. Is very convenient, if you are not in hurry."

  Then he showed us how the pods were built. "You see all these polycarbonate rods lining the shell? That is the skeleton of the pod. Very light, very strong. You put framework together like Tinker Toy, you clamp cargo wedges into frame, then you attach outer bulkheads all around. Polycarbonate shells—all prefab, all the same. Stamped from injection molds. Because they make only one trip, reusability is no concern—you think, da? Nyet. The shells are product too. Open up pod, take out cargo, close up pod, turn it into house. Very good house."

  Alexei pounded on the bulkhead with his fist. "This is why you find windows and plumbing and wiring in walls—not just because World Space Agency mandates every pod must have basic life support, but because every pod shipped will expand living space at destination. Very clever, yes? We have transport, we have life support, we have new home." He pounded a crate. "Is tradition on Luna, at least one of these crates always contains furnishings, yes. We live in most expensive shipping boxes in solar system. Very nice, da?"

  I shrugged. Maybe Alexei thought this was exciting, but I didn't. We'd grown up in a tube-town—which is really just a polite way of saying we lived in a giant sewer. No kidding. Any tube that failed the structural integrity tests for piping sewage was still considered strong enough for housing. They all came out of the same factory. So I didn't see that a used shipping box was all that much of an improvement, especially not one with 450,000 kilometers on it.

  On the other hand, if you had to live in a used shipping box, you could do a lot worse than a Lunar cargo pod. Alexei showed us how the hull of the pod was made out of six simple pieces: four identic
al curved hull sections, each describing a 90-degree arc, and two identical circular end pieces. Each piece was designed to fit into every other piece, and each panel had its own hatch and window.

  Also, each hull unit had two survival cabinets, one at each end. Each cabinet contained the minimum basic life-support supplies necessary for one person for three days; so the pod had eight total. Alexei showed us how each of the survival cabinets held food, water for drinking and ballast, oxygen-recyclers, self-heating blanket-ponchos, first-aid kits, plastic toilet bags, and personal survival bubbles because you can't pack space suits in enough different sizes. And please read the instructions before opening anything.

  Mickey explained that the pods were essentially the spacegoing version of an Antarctic explorer's travel-hut. A onetime pod doesn't need the same kind of precision machinery as a reusable vehicle, and it's unnecessary to build a whole lander for the delivery of cargo, so the steering and braking systems were the cheapest brute-force method possible.

  "Is the engines that are most clever," Alexei said, glancing at his wrist. "Nyet—not to worry. We are fine for another ninety minutes. Time enough for lesson. I explain fuel rods. Is really quite simple. How do you fire rocket in space? No oxygen in vacuum, da? So you put oxygen in fuel mix. Make whole thing one solid tube of fuel. Ignite at one end, it burns until fuel is gone. Is very efficient booster system. But one big problem with solid-fuel booster. Timing. Once burn starts, you cannot turn it off. So is not good for precision burns, da? Nyet, we find a way. Is much simpler than you think—we use Palmer tubes. Invented by engineer with too much time on hands. Name of John Palmer. Playing with his poker chips at Las Vegas. Very famous story, I share with you.

  "Dr. John Palmer, famous engineer, sits at roulette table, thinks of mathematics of chaos and order. How good luck, bad luck both run in streaks. How random numbers cluster up. Thinks about composition of solid-fuel boosters. Meanwhile, he stacks chips, red and black, red and black, red and black. Then he runs out of blacks, so he stacks two red, one black, two red, one black. Suddenly light goes on in head. He pushes everything onto double zero and gets up from table. Wins eleventy-thousand plastic-dollars anyway—almost forgets to collect winnings, he is so excited.