Bouncing Off the Moon

by David Gerrold

  BOUNCE-DOWN

  I think I passed out. I wasn't sure. One moment I was trying to scream and the next moment everything was eerily silent. "What's happening now?" I called. I don't think anybody heard me.

  But a moment later, Alexei's voice came muffled through the cabin. "We burn off speed. We have come around very fast. Must burn off more speed. Twice more speed. Aim at surface, dive to landing site, then brake hard for last kilometer down. Is very nasty maneuver, but only way to get to safe house. Very safe house."

  I couldn't believe he was conscious. Of all of us, Alexei seemed the weakest. He was tall and gangly and skinny—he didn't have the muscles for Earth gravity, and I'd assumed he didn't have the endurance either. Living so long in lesser gravity, his bones should have softened, his heart should have shrunk.

  It made me wonder if he had been working out in the high-gee levels at Geostationary. Despite all his disclaimers, he must have been; he was handling the heavy gees better than any of us. Maybe he'd been preparing for this kind of escape for a long time. Just how much illegal stuff was he involved in anyway?

  "What next?" I shouted.

  Alexei had explained the operation to all of us, more than once, but I still wanted to hear him confirm the successful completion of each phase of it.

  "More braking—"

  "I'm already broken," Douglas gasped.

  I was glad that Stinky was tranquilized. I don't think I could have stood it if he were screaming and crying and I couldn't get to him. That business at the meteor crater had been bad enough—I still had nightmares. Even so, I thought I could hear him whimpering in his sleep. The poor little kid, I almost felt sorry for him—everything he was going through. It had to be worse on him than any of the rest of �s.

  Alexei's PITA beeped. I started gasping for as much breath as I could before the rockets kicked in—

  —this time I did pass out. I woke up to the sound of Alexei's PITA beeping again. I was beginning to hate the sound of that thing. I had just enough time to say, "Oh, sh—" and then the rockets fired again.

  I didn't remember waking up after the next one. I was just awake and cussing, spewing every dreadful word that I'd ever gotten my mouth washed out for using. The third time I repeated myself, I stopped to take a breath.

  "Is impressive. For a thirteen-year-old."

  I ignored him. "Is anyone else alive?" I called.

  "Yo," said Mickey.

  "I'd ask if you're all right," called Douglas, "but nobody who's seriously hurt cusses that enthusiastically."

  "What about Bobby?"

  "He's not making any noises," called Mickey.

  "He is fine," said Alexei. "I am certain."

  "Can you see him?"

  "Please not to worry. Little stinking one is fine."

  "Don't call him Stinky!" I said. And wondered where that came from. There was a sound from Douglas. Laughter? Probably. But only family members had the right to call him Stinky. No one else. And only when he really deserved it.

  "We will be down soon," Alexei said. "You will see for yourself, everyone is fine."

  "Where are we now?"

  "We have broken orbit. We have fired twice to dive in toward bounce target. Only one more burn—the last one. We brake hard to burn off speed. And then we bounce."

  "You hope—" But I said it under my breath. I was saving most of my air for breathing.

  Alexei heard it anyway. "You will like Luna, Charles. I promise. No bad weather. No weather at all—"

  And then his damn PITA went off again.

  This was the worst one of all—at least the worst one that I was conscious for. The noise was unbearable. Even if I could have stuffed my fingers into my ears, it wouldn't have done any good, the whole pod was roaring and shaking and rattling. Whose good idea was this anyway?

  And this time, I had a very clear idea of the direction of down. It was directly in front of me. All the packing bubbles were pushing up against us—we were hanging from the top of the cargo pod, while several hundred tons of widgets and whatnots trembled ominously only three meters away. Those crates were aching to break free of the violent deceleration and smash upward into our faces. Just how strong were those foam dollops anyway?

  And finally when I was convinced that the incredible noise would never end, it did.

  We were in free fall again.

  But only for a few seconds.

  Something went bang on the outside of the cargo pod. A whole bunch of things went bang. The "Lunar parachutes." The external in-flatables. Alexei had explained this too. We were landing on balloons. A whole cluster of them. Very strong, very flexible. From the outside, the cargo pod would look like a plastic raspberry.

  Depending on our angle and speed, and the kind of terrain we were landing on, we could bounce for five or ten klicks. Alexei said that usually, you try to undershoot the target and bounce the rest of the way to your final destination. He said that some pods had bounced over fifteen kilometers from their initial touch-down points, but that those kinds of bounce-downs were carefully planned. The pods had come in very fast, and at a very shallow angle—and they were aimed down a long slope or something like that.

  But we wouldn't have that kind of ride, for which I was very grateful. The target zone had a lot of rough terrain, and Alexei wanted to minimize our bouncing—so as soon as it was safe, the pod was programmed to deflate the balloons and let us just crunch in. I wondered what Alexei's definition of safe was. I hoped that Armstrong was telling the truth when he said, "It's soft and powdery. I can kick it with my foot."

  And then we hit—bumped—something. The impact came from the side, and it was hard enough to knock the breath out of me with an audible Oof! I heard Alexei say something that sounded like "Gohvno!" I got the sense that gohvno was something I didn't want to step in.

  And then we were in free fall again—or maybe not. But we were still airborne—except there isn't any air on Luna, and we weren't being borne by anything—we were just up.

  And then down. We bounced again—this time from the other side and even harder than before. The whole pod went crunch!

  And then we were up again—floating for a long agonizing moment—until crunchbang! We bounced again. I couldn't believe the balloons were working. This hurt!

  Floated and bounced, bounced, bounced—and then abruptly crunched to a stop—was that it? Were we down? We were hanging sideways and upside down in the webbing—

  I fumbled for the release. It was hard to move; we were still pinned by the packing bubbles. They smelled of canned air.

  "Don't anyone move—" shouted Alexei. "We're not done yet."

  We waited in silence for a moment.

  Nothing happened.

  "Douglas?"

  No answer.

  "Mickey?"

  I called louder.

  "Ymf," said Mickey.

  "What's happening?"

  "Wait," said Alexei.

  The cargo pod lurched. Sideways. "Is the balloons. Rearranging selves. Everybody wait."

  "Douglas? Douglas—?" Where was Douglas! I had this sudden nightmare knowledge that he had died in the crash. Then I would be really alone.

  "Is not to worry. Nobody is dead," said Alexei. "Everybody wait! Pod must settle itself!" The pod continued to shudder and jerk and bump. Slowly, it began to hump itself upright. The pod was pumping air from balloon to balloon, pushing itself up with plastic muscles.

  "Everybody stay still," said Alexei. Like we had a choice.

  I was still worried about Douglas. "Mickey? Can you see Douglas? Is he all right?"

  After a moment, Mickey called back. "He's fine. He's groaning."

  The pressure on my chest began to ease. The packing bubbles were starting to wilt, slowly deflating. I guessed they were timed or something.

  Finally, the cargo pod groaned and settled itself. "Please to wait—" cautioned Alexei. It bumped and lurched one more time, then sagged into an exhausted upright position. We were hanging from the web
bing at the top. The only good news was the Lunar gravity. One-sixth Earth normal. It felt … strange and easy at the same time.

  As soon as he decided it was safe—and not soon enough for me—Alexei unbuckled himself and began climbing around the webbing like a human spider. He unbuckled Mickey first. Mickey's face was covered with blood. He held a soggy red handkerchief over his nose. He must have had a nosebleed all the way down.

  "I go find first-aid kit," said Alexei. "You take care of dingalings." He dropped down between two of the crates, and we heard the packing bubbles squeak and squeal and pop as he pushed his way through. It was a funny noise. It sounded like someone with water in his boots, squelching through a sewer. The canned air smell got stronger.

  Mickey lowered himself to a crate, standing knee deep in squooshy balloons. He picked his way over to stand beneath me. Still holding his head back, still holding the hanky over his nose, he called up to me. "Can you free yourself, Charles?"

  "I think so."

  "You'll have to help me with Douglas. We'll lower him to the top of the crates. All right?"

  "All right." I fumbled around with the latch for a moment—it wasn't hard to unbuckle, but my hands were shaking so badly from the landing that I couldn't coordinate. Finally, I managed to free myself—

  I was never very good at gymnastics, but in Lunar gravity, everything was so surprisingly easy that I wished we could have had gym class on the moon, it was a lot more fun. I hung from the webbing without any effort at all. I did the math in my head; I weighed nine kilos.

  Mickey pointed and I went hand over hand to Douglas. He looked pale, but he was breathing steadily into his O-mask. I wondered if he'd passed out during braking or if he'd bumped himself unconscious during landing, a concussion would be very bad news, but we wouldn't know until we got him out of the webbing.

  Mickey stood just below me, still holding his hanky to his nose. He gave me careful instructions, step by step, how to lower Douglas without dropping him. Even though falling three meters in Lunar gravity is no worse than falling half a meter on Earth, we still didn't want to take any chances. People had broken noses, arms, legs, and hips by underestimating Lunar gravity—especially after prolonged free fall. And we were all very shaky from the bounce-down.

  "Lower him feet first, Charles. Grab him under his arms and hold him till I get his legs. I know it's awkward, but he should be light enough that you can handle him. All right, ready?" Mickey started to take his handkerchief away from his nose, but it was still bleeding too badly.

  "Maybe we should wait until Alexei gets back. Let him do it."

  "I can manage. We'll do it quickly. Wait a minute." He wiped at his nose for a second, then looked up. "Okay, ready?"

  "Ready." I unbuckled Douglas with one hand, then reached and grabbed him before he could fall out of the webbing. He started to slip out of my grasp, but I caught him by the collar and held on. That was enough. Mickey grabbed his legs and lowered him.

  Still hanging from the webbing, I scrambled over to check on Stinky. He was sleeping like a baby, and almost as cute. "Leave him there for now," called Mickey. "Let's take care of Douglas first."

  I let go of the webbing and dropped down to the top of the crates. I dropped impossibly slow. It was amazing. We really were on the moon! I hit a little harder than I expected, and I bounced almost all the way back up, laughing with delight. Mickey gave me a nasty look. "There'll be time enough for that later." He put his hand back to his nose.

  Alexei came climbing back then and yanked me out of the air. "Learn to walk before you fly," he said. He popped open the first-aid kit and began pawing through it. "Here, this will stop nosebleed very fast." He held up a tiny spray bottle, and Mickey tilted his head back.

  While they did that, I went rummaging in the kit for old-fashioned smelling salts. I found a little flat packet of ammonia, cracked its spine, and held it under Douglas's nose—he didn't react. I waved it under his nose again—come on, Douglas! I was ready to jam it up his nostril when he suddenly flinched and said, "Stop it, Charles!" He made a terrible face and pushed me away with both hands.

  He sat up, still wrinkling his nose in disgust as he looked around. He blinked in surprise. "What happened to you, Mickey?"

  "Ahhh," said Alexei, turning around. "The dead have come back to life. Welcome to Luna! My home sweet home!"

  STEPPING OUT

  Mickey finally gave up and put cotton up each nostril and a clip on his nose to pin his nostrils together. He'd just have to breathe through his mouth for a while.

  The funny thing was, he'd been trained in all kinds of safety procedures on the Line, so he was practically a space doctor. Alexei was equally well trained, so you'd have thought between the two of them they could have figured something out—but apparently the low air pressure in the pod, combined with the lighter gravity and everything else, made this particular nosebleed slow to heal. But we couldn't sit around waiting for Mickey to stop dripping. Alexei was certain about that. We'd lose the advantage of our landing.

  The two of them pulled a variety of instruments out of the first-aid kit and began checking everyone out. Ears, eyes, nose, blood pressure, blood gas, adrenaline, blood-sugar levels, I didn't know what else. Except for a lot of residual jitters, we all checked out normal. As normal as possible under these conditions.

  Finally, Douglas and Alexei bounced up to the webbing and brought Stinky down, and Mickey checked him out too. He was fine, but he'd be asleep for several hours longer. I whistled a few notes from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony—what I called the Johnny-One-Note theme; it wouldn't sound like a melody to anyone who didn't recognize the theme, just some vague tuneless whistling—but it was a clear signal to the monkey. It came bouncing down to join us. It squatted next to Stinky and pretended to take his pulse. Or maybe it wasn't pretending—I remembered reading in the instructions that it was supposed to be a pretty good baby monitor. It would howl for help if a baby stopped breathing or had a temperature or something like that. But if it was seriously checking Stinky, then it wasn't finding anything wrong with him. It sat back on its haunches and waited patiently:

  For a damn stupid toy, it sure had a terrific repertoire. And it was smart enough to know when to stay out of the way. Maybe it listened to stress levels in human voices. Or maybe it just sniffed for fear. Douglas might know. Maybe I'd remember to ask him later.

  "All right," said Alexei, looking at his PITA. "We have not a lot of time. We must get moving quickly. Is everybody ready for nice walk? Everybody go to bathroom, whether you have to go or not. I mean it. You are constipated from free fall. Once you start bouncing on the moon, everything shakes down. Is not fun bouncing with pants full of poop." He practically stood over each of us to make sure we complied.

  Once that business was taken care of, he started snapping out orders in Russian to his PITA. It projected a map of the local terrain on the bulkhead. "We are lucky childrens. We have not got too far to go. Here, see? Da? We go here to Prospector's Station. We change clothes, we look like ice miners. We catch train, we go to Gagarin City. Much good food. You like borscht? With cabbage and lamb, one bowl is whole meal. I am hungry already. Come, climb down now to bottom of cabin. Bring everything useful. We will not be coming back. Grab food and water, all you can carry. Mickey, bring first-aid kit too. Waste not, want not." He disappeared between the crates again, but his voice came floating up, issuing a long string of orders. The packing bubbles began squelching again.

  "Can you take Bobby down?" Douglas asked Mickey. Mickey nodded. I looked to Douglas, concerned. He wouldn't have asked that unless he still felt pretty bad.

  "Are you all right?" I asked.

  "I'll be fine. I just need a little time."

  I whistled for the monkey—"Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf!"—and it jumped onto my shoulders for a piggyback ride. I followed Mickey and Douglas down through the crates and webbing, down through the big foam plugs and the still-deflating bubbles. This sure wasn't space travel the wa
y we saw it on TV.

  When we got to the bottom of the pod, the footing was uneasy and squishy because of all the collapsed packing bubbles. I tried to peek out the windows, but there was nothing to see—only the sides of the landing balloons, plastered hard against the glass.

  Alexei was pulling orange webbing off the walls. "Everybody carries his own luggage here. No robots, no porters. Luckily, we have portable pockets." He turned around, lengths of netting drifting from his hands. "Who is to carry littlest dingaling?"

  "I will," said Douglas.

  Mickey looked to him. "Are you sure you can handle it?"

  Douglas wasn't all that certain about it, but he nodded anyway. "I'd better carry him. When he wakes up, he'll feel safer with me."

  "Good point."

  Alexei was rigging harnesses out of the webbing—apparently it had been designed for this purpose too. Douglas took off his blanket-poncho, and Alexei began hanging webbing on him. Mickey made sure that Stinky's blanket was turned on again, and as soon as Alexei was done, he secured Stinky in the improvised harness on Douglas's back. Then they started packing oxygen bottles, rebreathers, food, and water, into the webbing on his front. Also some medical supplies. Probably more sedatives. Finally, Mickey pulled a pair of goggles down onto Douglas's head and fitted them carefully over his eyes; then he helped Douglas put his poncho back on so it covered everything. With Stinky on his back, he looked like a fat shiny beetle.

  That done, Alexei and Mickey began sorting everything else into equal packages of supplies. Everyone had to carry his own air, food, and water. I picked up one of the packs to test the weight and was astonished (again) by how light it felt.

  "You are still thinking Earth gravity," said Alexei. "But you will get used to Luna very quickly. Take off your blanket now."

  Mickey secured one pack on my back and another on my front. The one on my front had two oxygen bottles and a rebreather. He put goggles on me just like Douglas's—they completely covered my eyes and were held on by a thick elastic band; the elastic had padded cups that closed over my ears like expensive headphones. Finally, Mickey pulled the blanket-poncho back over my head, fastened it, and turned it on—I hadn't even realized how cold I was getting. I thought all my shivering was still from the shock of landing. The monkey bounced onto my shoulders and settled itself happily. I barely noticed its weight.