But for now, the outsuit made sparring safe.
Paul pulled a carbon-fiber bo staff from the rack on the wall. Jael gripped her crutches—no, her tonfa, now—and reversed them. They bowed to each other, and she watched her brother. He stood frozen, eyes running over her. What, she took a moment to wonder, was he watching for?
At that moment Paul struck from her right. Reflexively, she swiveled and brought up her tonfa, blocking his staff. The power of his blow knocked her off-center, but she yielded to the force of it and slammed the long end of her left tonfa—this time truly using it as a crutch—into the mat. She whirled it around and down as she bounced back to the right, striking down for Paul’s shoulder, but he was already spinning to her left, reversing the staff in his hands.
She let her downward momentum carry her all the way to the ground, drawing her feet up under her to spin her upper body around and down while she scythed both of her tonfa under her brother’s feet. The look on his face as he pinwheeled, feet spinning for the ceiling, was priceless. He fell, slowly but heavily onto his shoulders while she was getting up.
“Point,” he huffed. “See what happens when you remember your training?”
Jael scowled. It was true that sweeps were her forte, but she hated the fact that she was the most dangerous when she had already fallen over, whether she was on the floor by her own will or not. Still, she converted the scowl into a wolfish smile and said, “Again.”
They faced off a second time. This time Jael didn’t wait for her brother to move first but swung her tonfa around with blinding speed. Paul spun into a block, holding his staff vertically. Her tonfa clacked against it, the force of the blow stinging her fingers painfully. Before she could recover, his foot shot forward, kicking her through the air.
Blushing furiously, Jael felt that she had all the time in the world to assume the proper landing position so that she skipped on the mat, shoulders first. She tried to roll to her feet, but her balance failed her, and she flopped backwards beneath a window, still gasping for the breath her brother had knocked out of her.
“Sorry, sis,” Paul said, landing beside her. “Afraid I got a little excited about that opening.”
Stifling a curse, Jael reached out for her brother’s hand. He yanked her to her feet with little effort into an embrace. Over his shoulder, she saw the flat, gray plain of the Oceanus Procellarum stretching to the distant polar peaks.
“One more,” she wheezed.
“You sure?” Paul asked.
“I’m fine!” she said, her voice sounding shriller than she meant it to. “Now get ready.” She planted her feet and closed her eyes. Her brother was flat-out better at the Art than she was, and she had just given him a point by being impatient. She turned her head and snapped her eyes open, looking at the still Lunar landscape, centering herself, drawing calmness from…
The mustached face, staring into the gymnasium with its mouth open.
She met its eyes, and it paled even further, then disappeared in the space of a blink.
“What is that?” The words were torn from her.
Paul rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on, sis. You can’t be that desperate for a point.”
“Paul, there was a man staring in the port and…” the words tumbled out of her mouth before she could think how crazy they sounded. “I don’t think he was wearing an outsuit!” She took a deep breath. “Not a standard one, anyway. More like the old ones. Like, really old. Apollo old, only not white but black.”
Paul gave her a look and then carefully turned. “That’s impossible, and besides, that’s the landing field out there. No one should be walking around. It’s incredibly dangerous.” He turned back to her. “Are you sure you didn’t hit your head harder than you thought?”
“Paul,” she said, in the most serious tone she could manage, “I did not hit my head. There is someone walking around the landing field right now. And if nobody gets him out of there, he could be fried by the next incoming ship!”
Chapter 2
A Deadly Light
“This is a very bad idea,” said Paul, checking Jael’s oxygen connections.
“Live a little.” His sister’s voice rang flat in his helmet’s earcaps. “It’s not like we haven’t gone outside before.”
“No,” said Paul. “It’s not like we haven’t gone outside before. It is like we haven’t gone outside into a completely restricted area, which is restricted for a really good reason, and that good reason is that the landing pads are only about fifty yards away, where any landing ship could broil us with its nervas, and that’s after it melts our eyeballs out and scrambles our DNA like eggs.”
Jael swallowed. Nuclear-engined rockets were nothing to play around with. “So we’ll watch the sky very carefully,” she said.
“Tight,” Paul slapped the top of Jael’s helmet, with perhaps a touch more force than necessary, signaling the end of the inspection. “I don’t know why I let you talk me into this.” Paul turned to let her inspect his own suit. While they weren’t supposed to be outside on the lunar surface at all, every child on the Moon knew how to do it. After all, they might have to in case of an accident. But they also knew that you never ever went outside alone, and one of the reasons for that was to have someone check your outsuit before you exposed yourself to the unforgiving hard vacuum of the Moon.
“You let me talk you into this because you know I’m right, Whoever I saw out there is in exactly the kind of danger that you’re afraid of going out into.”
“The kind of danger that we’re afraid of going out into,” Paul corrected her. “Because you are afraid of going out there, right? If you’re not afraid, I don’t want you out there with me.” It was a proverb straight from their mother’s mouth.
Since their mother was right about the Moon’s danger, Jael said, “Yes. That we’re afraid of.” Paul didn’t think the flatness of that statement was entirely due to the filtering of their suit radios but decided to let it pass. “Tight,” said Jael, and he felt her slap on the back of his helmet.
“Depressurizing,” he said and punched the big red button set in the frame of the outer airlock door. It began to flash.
Every safety class Paul had ever attended on the Moon, including the very first one they’d been put through on the day the Wardhey family had arrived from Earth four years ago, had said that modern outsuits really didn’t allow the wearer to feel an airlock depressurizing. Their design was supposed to maintain the same comforting, even pressure on the skin whether their wearers were at sea-level pressure, or in deep space. Paul didn’t believe a word of it. As the pressure dropped, it was as if he could feel something invisible and comforting withdrawing, leaving him completely naked under his clothes.
Which, he supposed, was true of every moment of his life. It didn’t make sense, but he felt naked anyway.
“Besides,” said Jael, still pressing her point, “If you really wanted to play by the rules, you could call Mom, just like the Regs say you’re supposed to, right?”
“I did,” Paul muttered. “She didn’t answer.”
“Well, then, you did what you were supposed to, and she didn’t take the call, so we couldn’t ask for permission, and we had to act to save someone who might be in danger.”
“Yeah, you’ve made your point,” Paul said. It wasn’t that Jael was wrong about whoever she had seen being in danger. But she always wanted to push the rules to their very limits, just like she did with the sensei. And Paul wasn’t sure right now whether he was letting her convince him of what he knew was right or what he knew was wrong. “She’ll still say we should have waited.”
“Aw, isn’t the Security Chief answering her loyal little deputy?” Jael teased.
And of course, she wasn’t. Probably because she had seen that it was Paul calling and was sure that her fourteen-year-old son couldn’t be wanting to tell her anything that was actually important, even if he was officially her deputy. But Paul’s uncertainty had exhausted his patience. “Shut up,”
he snapped. “Airlock open.”
He stepped back as the heavy door swung slowly inward. Raw sunlight streamed in, turning the Moon’s surface from a cold gray to a rich, warm gray. He looked up, cautiously. Only the Earth and the stars looked down. A patch of fuzzy blackness blocked the fiery eye of the Sun, thanks to the self-darkening material of his helmet’s visor.
There was no activity on Thunderhead’s two football-field-sized landing pads. The immense discs of fused vaccrete, scarred by hundreds of landings, were bare. Beyond them, only the uneven lunar plain rolled into the distance.
“Come on,” Jael’s voice rang in his ears. “Stop blocking the airlock!”
The eagerness in her voice triggered an ugly suspicion in Paul. He turned back and loomed over his sister, touching his helmet to hers for emphasis, even though it wasn’t necessary for her to hear him.
“If you have made this up, this story of seeing someone out on the landing field,” he said, voice low and precise, “I will never forgive you. Are we clear about that?”
“Paul, I saw what I saw,” she said. “I wouldn’t pull that on you, not for anything.”
“Okay.” He turned away, confident that Jael was telling the truth. “So let’s be as smart as we still can, given that we’re being complete idiots. Where’s the port you were looking through?”
It was a more difficult question than it seemed. Neither of them were used to looking at the colony from the outside. It looked immense. The airlock they had used was an emergency hatch Paul had been able to access with his authority as a deputy. It had been the nearest one to the port Jael had pointed through, but that was relative. The hatch had been outside the gymnasium’s dome and along perhaps a hundred meters of corridor. Now the dome loomed before them like a great, metalloid hill ringed with ports and lights. Each port had a reference number stenciled above it, but that meant nothing to Jael and Paul; they weren’t labeled on the inside, so they had counted the ports on the inside before egressing the station.
“Okay,” said Jael, swinging herself forward and around him. She lifted her right-hand crutch and pointed. “That’s the last port before the gymnasium dome runs into the outer skin of the corridor. It should be eleven ports from right there.”
Paul instinctively moved ahead of his sister, although with the Moon’s gravity, his own walk wasn’t really much faster than her own tripod gait. The Moon didn’t reward strength unless it was precisely applied.
He shook his head within his helmet. He knew that Jael’s disability preyed on her mind, but he suspected he would never understand exactly how she felt about it. Except for walking, she could do everything anyone else could. And the whole family had moved to the Moon, partly because it would be easier on Jael. But she didn’t seem to feel at all happy about it and bringing it up was just asking for a fight.
Paul watched the sky for moving stars between every port. If a bright one started to swell, they’d need to get out fast. Paul was certain Jael wouldn’t be watching as carefully, but there was no sense in nagging her about it.
“Eight…nine…ten…eleven. That’s it!” Jael picked up her pace. Paul accelerated to a loping jog, and the dust of the lunar surface puffed up with every step, hanging motionless before beginning to settle. “Right here. He had to be standing right here.”
Paul pulled up beside his sister and groaned a little. As he should have suspected, there were at least a dozen sets of footprints, crossing every which way. Big and small, with varying tread patterns, they intersected and crushed each other into mush.
“Where did they all come from?” Jael said, her voice rising in disappointment. “No one’s supposed to be out here!”
“From everyone,” said Paul. “We just weren’t thinking about it. Armstrong’s and Aldrin’s footprints are still visible at Tranquility Base, remember? Those footprints belong to every maintenance and construction worker who was ever supposed to be out here. They’ve been here since this base was built and before ships started to land.” He glanced nervously at the black sky. Still clear. But for how long? “We’ve got to go.” He barked a laugh. “We came out here, thinking we were going to follow footprints to find a clue about this mysterious person, just like in some cartoon for preschoolers. It’s like Mom always says: the problem isn’t that there’s no evidence, it’s that there’s too much.”
Jael’s shoulders slumped. “I guess you’re right.” She swiveled toward him, then straightened so convulsively that she shot up off the ground several centimeters. “Wait!”
“What now?” Paul said.
“Don’t move!”
“What is it?” Paul looked at the sky again.
“No, not that. What you just said: ‘since before ships started to land.’ All the landing blasts since then. They will have blurred the footprints. But no ship has landed since I saw that man. His footprints will be sharp, especially as they get farther from the dome.”
Paul said a word.
“I hope Mom doesn’t ever hear your suit recorder,” said Jael. “Come on, help me look.”
“Okay, but no more than five minutes.”
But it didn’t take nearly that long, because Jael had been right. The heavy work boots and the few lighter standard outsuit tracks were all slightly blurred and filled, by weeks or months of dust disturbed by the landing field’s traffic blasts settling into their grooves. All except for…
“What are these?” Jael asked, bending over.
“Show me,” said Paul. He knelt where she pointed a slender crutch.
There, directly beneath the window, was a distinctive set of marks. Standing, Paul measured them. They were a little closer together than his own feet were, facing the port.
“Get down!” snapped Jael.
Paul ducked. “What?”
“Do you want anyone inside the gymnasium to see us like I saw whoever-it-was? I thought you wanted to stay out of trouble.”
Paul growled inside his helmet and bent down for a closer examination of the tracks. Slightly closer together than his own feet, so a shorter person. “Who wears boots like that?” he asked. The sole of the print was square, with only the slightest rounding at the corners, far too small for an adult foot. And yet, behind each square print was not one but two circular heel prints.
“Sis, is this a women’s fashion trend, now? Double high-heels?”
“Well, let me think,” said Jael acidly. “When was the last time I wore high heels?”
“No offense,” said Paul. It didn’t make sense. No one made outsuits with heels, and these had dug deeply into the dust. “Let’s follow them.”
The distinctive tracks weren’t hard to follow. And that was a problem. After only twenty meters, it was clear exactly where they were headed.
“They go straight to Landing Pad Two,” Paul said.
“Well, come on,” said Jael.
“Uh, no?” said Paul, still following her. “We’re getting closer to the pad and further from safety, besides which…”
He was about to point out that they’d been out far too long when Jael made a sound. It wasn’t so much a scream as a squeak.
“What?” Paul yelled, scanning the sky again. Clear.
“The tracks,” said Jael. “They’re gone. And look!”
Paul looked to where his sister pointed. The tracks stopped. It was obvious they’d stopped because the alternating pattern abruptly changed as the mysterious walker had faced squarely forward. And then, just beyond it, a Secutor’s familiar tread-pattern unrolled into the distance.
Paul stared for several long seconds. “So, our mysterious observer just walked over here, climbed aboard a Secutor, and rode it away into the Earthset?”
“It’s the wrong direction for that.” Jael gestured to where the half-Earth hung just over the dome to the southeast.
“Shut up,” Paul pointed out.
“Can you even ride a Secutor?”
“I…don’t know. I wouldn’t think so without some powerful reprogramming.” It ha
d never occurred to Paul to try to hitch a ride on one of the black, all-purpose robots. Their parents had drilled it into them pretty thoroughly not to interfere with any part of colony operations. Most parents did.
“Maybe if we followed it, we could figure out where the rider got off,” Jael said.
“Yeah, and maybe we wouldn’t. If they rode the thing inside, we’d never find footprints again. Besides, I’m not going any closer to that landing pad.”
Jael’s sigh hissed in his earphones, but he knew she knew that he wasn’t going to be argued with. “Well, if we can’t find out where he went, we might be able to see where he came from.” Jael pointed back along the track they had followed, where the hard shadows stood out against the lunar dust like pools of ink.
Hard shadows? Paul looked skyward. A white star was moving, brightening with deceptive slowness.
“Move!” he shouted. “The airlock!” He started running awkwardly, his heart pounding, forcing himself not to kick into an uncontrolled leap from which he would have to wait to come down again.
“Paul?” Jael’s voice held a high note of panic. He knew before he turned what had happened. She had bounced off the surface and was coming down, slow and off-balance, barely moving away from the field.
Gauging his arc carefully, Paul turned and pushed back toward Jael, keeping his trajectory as flat as he could manage. As he passed under her, he dug his clawed boots into the lunar rock and flung his left hand up and over his head.
Yanking his sister down by an ankle, he yelled, “Tuck!” Jael took the hint. She drew her legs up like a ball and fastened her arms to her sides. With all the strength he dared, Paul flung her toward the corridor with its waiting airlock.
The lunar surface brightened with every second. Paul took a step and plunged after Jael in a great leap. He rose shallowly and began to accelerate. Ahead of him, Jael had unfolded and was approaching the surface. With a practiced twist, she landed, and then corrected herself with a huge leapfrog through her crutches and pushed off again, streaking toward the airlock and behind the sheltering curve of the dome. Paul followed, narrowing his eyes against the growing brightness. He landed and leaped, gritting his teeth, awaiting the force of a wind that would burn him alive…
The Girl Who Wasn't There Page 2