by B. V. Larson
“I don’t sell puff-crete. I study it.”
Galina wagged her finger at his faceplate. “You don’t know the Nairbs like I do. They won’t care about that distinction.”
“The lady’s right,” I said, walking toward them. “Planning a crime and doing a crime—that’s damned near the same thing in any Nairb’s book. They’ll convict and punish for either one.”
Bevan looked annoyed. I’m sure we weren’t the first people to admonish him over the nature of his life’s work. He went back to scratching in the trench on the crater floor while I took stock of things.
“Bevan seems to be out of ideas,” I told Galina. “What are we going to do next?”
“There have been thoughts…” she said, looking at me speculatively.
“Uh… like what?”
“Like blindly teleporting a man down there—to see how deep this surface goes.”
“Hell’s Bells, woman! You’re talking about a straight-up perming. How would you get some poor fool back if you got no response at all from him?”
“You know how. I’m talking about using the casting device. We could fire you at this surface, transmitting your body a hundred meters down, perhaps. If you lived, you could report back until you stopped living. At that point, we could print out a new soldier.”
“Uh… hold on. You want to cast me into this rock? Firing blind?”
Galina shrugged. “Don’t be such a baby. We can always print out a new McGill. The casting device can watch you, and it can penetrate any distance or obstacle. Just make sure you die after ten minutes, and we’ll make a new copy. No perming required.”
“You’re not the one dying and risking it all.”
“Of course not. We all have our critical roles to play in this drama. Yours involves penetration of the target. Bevan is here to study and identify the husk of this thing—you are here to explore the unknown.”
I sighed. I realized there was no way I was getting out of this one. “Where do I hook up?”
“To teleport? Not so fast. The crew is coming up from Central to do the honors of casting you.”
“Spooks from Central? And you say they’re bringing up the casting device? That’s a big load.”
“It’s become more manageable in its current form.”
“That reminds me, why didn’t you guys just use a set of gateway posts to transfer me up from Earth? Why do it all the old-fashioned way with a lifter?”
Galina’s eyes slid around to see who was listening. “You’re always so nosey—but I’ll give you an answer. This… ah, surface has odd properties. It interferes with gateways somehow.”
“What? And you’re planning to use a casting device to penetrate it? Why do you think the casting machine will fare any better than a gateway did? I’m going to be doubly-permed.”
“Your cowardly attitude is becoming embarrassing, McGill.”
“Look, I don’t mind dying. You know that. As long as the pay is good, or at least there’s a just cause in it for me, I’ll die a dozen times while people watch. But perming… that’s another matter.”
“All right,” she said, looking disgusted. “I’ll get someone else. There has to be another legionnaire with balls somewhere on the Moon.”
I caught her elbow lightly as she brushed past me. She didn’t like that. After all, she was my superior officer—but she was also my occasional bed partner.
“Not so fast. We might be able to work something out. Just you and me.”
I gave her my best smile, but she frowned back.
“Are you serious?” she demanded.
“I’m always serious about… uh… private moments.”
“You chose Abigail Claver over me last year—among others. I’m not interested.”
“I get that, but don’t you want to know what’s under this big slab of rock you’ve found?” I stomped on the dusty surface for emphasis.
“I do, but you can forget about getting any special treatment from me.”
She marched away, and I watched her go. Even inside that spacesuit, you could kind of make out the shape of her. It was a good shape.
Bevan walked up, eyeing me curiously. “You know the tribune pretty well, don’t you?”
“Word got around, huh?”
“Even among us hogs, yes.”
Right then, I knew he wasn’t really a hog. Not a committed hog, anyway. Never had a true Hegemony puke been born who would call himself what every other man on Earth called him every day.
“Have you met Floramel?” I asked him.
“Who?”
I explained that Floramel was a tall, weirdly pretty woman with an unbeatable brain. He seemed intrigued.
“She’s a big shot in Central’s labs, is she? And you know her?”
“Almost as well as I know Galina.”
He laughed. “I see… well, if you don’t mind putting in a good word from me—I mean, I wouldn’t mind transferring out of the uniformed set into a research group that better fits my talents.”
“That’s what I was thinking. I’ll see what I can do.”
-6-
Floramel showed up on the next shuttle. Instead of getting herself lost and finding a bar, she moved immediately to the secret excavation area under the base.
She put her hands on her narrow hips when she spotted me. Her expression was guarded, but curious. “McGill?”
“Hiya Floramel! Fancy meeting you up here! This Moon base is like a vacation spot, isn’t it? Just like all those online ads always tell us.”
She pursed her lips briefly. She didn’t always get sarcasm, but she’d begun to expect such responses from me.
“No,” she said. “It’s not charming in the least. But I find this mystery to be more stimulating than some low-gravity playground. This is an important scientific expedition. What I’m puzzling about is why anyone thought it a good idea to include you.”
I was pretty sure I’d been insulted, but I kept my smile firmly in place. “I’ve got someone with a big brain who you should meet. His name’s Bevan.”
I introduced my pet hog then, and Bevan seemed shy but competent. Floramel studied him, then consulted her tapper.
She was kind of rude like that. She began doing a full background check on Bevan using the grid, prying into every detail of his life while he stood right there in person. After a minute or two, she looked up.
“Your research is interesting. We could use your perspective on this project. Who recruited you? Not McGill, surely?”
I’d been about to claim credit for Bevan, but I realized she wasn’t going to buy that now.
“Tribune Turov found me,” Bevan explained. “I have… unique qualifications, and I was already under government contract. She was able to contact my superiors and transfer me to her legion temporarily.”
“What?” I demanded. “You didn’t tell me that! You’re a Varus man now, official-like?”
“Uh… I guess so. It’s only a short-term contract, I’m working as an auxiliary, you see—”
“And to think I was calling you a hog and figuring out how to kill you—you should have said something, man. I’ll have to make it up to you later. We’ll have to party professionally whenever we get out of this freezing hole.”
Floramel studied me. “I’m still not sure why you’re here, James.”
I explained Galina’s plan for my one-way ticket into the ground, and she nodded. “I’d hoped that wasn’t the reason. I’d considered security, or specialized knowledge—but no. Of course, you’re here as my guinea pig.”
“That’s exactly right.” I grinned, but she looked troubled.
Floramel and I had a long history, and she’d often felt guilty about my mistreatment in the past. While guilty feelings and a ten-credit piece wouldn’t get you a cup of coffee with Galina, Floramel was a gentler soul. She didn’t like perming her friends, not even by accident.
About then Floramel’s team began to filter in, and they went to work on the trench. They set up al
l kinds of gizmos and big lights. They had drones, too, but they couldn’t fly due to the lack of air. They crawled over the roof and the dirt, using cameras on stalks to examine every inch of the place.
I expected Etta to show up, but she didn’t. I asked Floramel about it when she was reviewing her notes.
“What about my girl?” I asked her. “She’s still part of your team, isn’t she?”
Floramel blinked down at my hand. I’d touched her arm, and I knew that kind of thing freaked her out. I let my hand slide away from her, and she looked up again.
“Etta is upstairs setting up the casting device. If you want to talk to her, please wait until she’s finished with her work for the day.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, striding away. “I won’t be any trouble at all.”
Marching off, I found ramps going up and soon reached the upper decks. Etta was in one of the only open areas, setting up what looked like a dentist’s X-ray machine.
“Do I sit right here in this death-seat?” I asked, fooling with the headrest and the folding arms on the chair.
“Daddy? Oh God, don’t tell me you’re involved in this!”
Etta hugged me, and I lifted her in the air. It had been a few months since I’d laid eyes on her.
“You’ve got this thing wired by now, don’t you?” I asked her. “Looks way smaller than before. What happened to that big white ball of light in the cage-thingie?”
“Oh… you’re talking about the alpha unit, right? We’ve moved on two or three generations since then. This chair—well, it sort of forms the plasma ball in the middle of the person, rather than having them walk into it. That makes the reaction much more stable. The person isn’t moving, see, changing shape and position as the computer is trying to scan them and lock on. This way, we’re able to get a good impression faster, with less chance for error and with a much smaller field size.”
“Uh… okay. You’ve miniaturized the whole thing by having your victim sit in a chair. I get it.”
She nodded, but then her face fell. “I don’t want to watch you die again, Dad.”
“Aw now… there’s no problem. When it comes time, you just shut your eyes and have one of your assistants mark me down as dead.”
She closed her eyes, shook her head, and looked a little sick. I didn’t talk any more about it. I’d learned over the years that dwelling on someone’s fears just made them grow bigger.
Sighing in resignation, she adjusted her reclining dentist’s chair-thing to fit my massive frame. She had to dial out every setting to the max so I could fit comfortably. Once she did that, I climbed onto the seat to try it out for size.
“This is pretty comfy,” I declared.
“I’ll be back in a minute, Dad.”
Etta left, and I do have to admit that I dozed off, just for a second.
“McGill?” Galina’s voice rang out, interrupting my thoughts. “Are you asleep on that thing?”
A sharp, rude blow struck me in the shoulder. I’d taken off most of my spacer’s suit and stretched out on Etta’s little electric chair, making myself at home.
“Sleep? Hell no!”
Staying on the chair, I reached up with my hands, stretching and yawning luxuriously. Galina made faces at me while I did so. She leaned over me when I’d stopped squirming around.
“We’ve got trouble downstairs, in the pit,” she said. “Come with me. I want you to see something.”
“Uh… okay.”
I got up and gave Etta a pat on the head. She was under the chair with a power-driver in her hand. “Dad? Where are you going?”
“Duty calls, girl. Don’t worry, you’ll get to fry my bacon in your chair soon enough. Very nice of you Central types to make it so cushy. Almost makes me look forward to the glorious moment of disintegration.”
Etta looked baffled at first, then she saw who had me in tow. Her face shifted to a mix of amusement and disgust. No doubt she figured I was being dragged away into a personal encounter with the tribune. I grinned at her, enjoying the confusion and hoping she was right at the same time.
Unfortunately, Galina hadn’t come to drag me away to her quarters this time. She really did take me down to the pit.
“There’s something wrong here. I don’t like it,” she said.
“Uh-huh.”
When we got down there, I found the excavation had continued in my absence. Damnation, Floramel’s team had moved a lot of dirt! I must have been asleep for an hour or two.
“Wow,” I said, reaching up to scratch my head. My glove bonked into my helmet, as I was back in my full kit again. “The floor has a crack in it.”
“Yes, it does,” Bevan said. He seemed excited—more excited than before, even. “I thought we should do more than dig out a single trench, you see. We dug around the entire region—or most of it. It was then that I found this mark, right here.”
He walked me over to one far wall of the circular chamber and pointed. There was indeed a crack there. It was just a hairline, and all squiggly, like a crack in an eggshell.
“That led us into digging along the demarcation. We found, after getting some drilling bots to work this area, that it merged with a much larger disruption of the surface.”
Bending down, he picked up a loose chip of debris. “You know what this is, McGill?”
“Uh… a piece of Moon rock?”
“No. It’s not rock. Nothing like this has ever been on the Moon—or it shouldn’t be.”
“Yeah?”
“That’s right. And here’s another, and another. I’ve sent several chips to the lab. The results aren’t back yet—but I already know what they are.”
“You don’t say?”
“They’re collapsed matter. At least, partially collapsed. Here, take this one.”
I reached out and plucked the eggshell-colored chip from his hand. It fit into the palm of my hand with room to spare—but it was surprisingly heavy. “Feels like a chunk of gold—or lead.”
Bevan smiled. Right then, I could see a hint of the mad scientist he really was in those wide, staring eyes of his. “Yes, it weighs about that much. A kilo at least, for a chunk that’s only a few centimeters in diameter.”
“That’s pretty cool,” I said vaguely, tossing the chunk down onto the pile of loose earth.
Bevan stared at me like I wasn’t getting it. I got that look a lot. Shaking his head, he picked up the chunk again and waved it in my face.
“Don’t you get it, McGill? We’re on the Moon. We’re only experiencing one sixth of Earth’s gravity—meaning this chunk is way heavier than it should be. A rock this size made of solid gold wouldn’t weigh more than a few grams here.”
My jaw sagged for a moment as his words sunk in. He was right. The rock weighed at least ten times as much as it should. It was impossibly heavy for its size.
“Uh…” I said. “Is it collapsed matter? Star-stuff?”
“It has to be.”
My jaw sagged, and I looked around. I spun full-circle, on my boot heel.
“I know what this is,” I said in a hushed tone. “I know what we’ve found.”
-7-
“That simply isn’t possible,” Galina told me when Bevan and I confronted her with the truth. “Don’t even try to sell me this bag of Georgia horseshit, McGill. I’m not a fool.”
“It’s true, sir. We’re standing on top of a Skay.”
She crossed her arms and glared up at me. “Look, it just doesn’t make sense. For one thing, a Skay is made of condensed matter, I give you that much. But that means it has a higher gravitational pull. We should be pressed up against this thing, not almost floating at one-sixth Earth’s gravity.”
Bevan leaned forward. “I looked into that. Then I checked with McGill—the gravity of a small Skay is similar to that of our Moon.”
“What? Why?”
“Well, it is dense, yes… but it’s also hollow. That means it has a gravity equivalent to a normal body of similar size.”
Galina’s eyes darted around. She was thinking about it, and I could tell she didn’t like what she was thinking.
“You’ve been inside these things, McGill…” she said quietly.
“Yes, several times as a matter of fact.”
“You’re telling me this could be a dead Skay? How? It’s our Moon, for God’s sake! It’s been around for a billion years!”
“Maybe,” I said. “But the empire has been around for a long time, too. How long has it been since the Skay owned our very own Province 921? You know they used to. The Mogwa took it from them. This would go a long way to explaining why they want it back. They fought here and lost some of their brothers.”
Galina’s pink tongue flirted with her lips. Her eyes were flashing around, her breathing seemed elevated. You could tell by the steamy puffs on the inside of her faceplate. She was beginning to believe—and she was beginning to become fearful.
“How did it get buried in rock? For all this time?”
I shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe it collided with Earth’s original satellite and kind of merged with it. Or maybe it died here and collected millions of years’ worth of dust and comets and asteroids… until they covered it up. Like one of those mammoths they find now and then under a growing glacier.”
She was staring fixedly at the surface now. Workers with machines were sweeping and vacuuming up more and more loose Moon dirt. The revealed surface was undeniably smooth up until the ruptured area.
Galina pointed to the damaged region. “If it’s so hard-shelled, so ancient—what could have cracked the surface like that?”
Bevan walked to the area and examined it closely. Now and then, he picked up a rock sample and pocketed it.
“Something hit the Skay hard—hard enough to kill it. I doubt fusion warheads could do this. Antimatter, maybe? Or something more exotic?”
“That’s great. This is simply unbelievable,” Galina said, talking fast the way she always did when she got excited and scared. “I think we should bury it again. Right now—while we can.”
“What?” Bevan said, standing up straight and approaching the two of us. “We can’t do that. This is a fantastic discovery.”