Joker Moon

by George R. R. Martin

  Growing up in Vyazma, he had never fantasized about the Moon, or other planets in the solar system. He and his friends had occasional adventures on Takis, of course, when they weren’t pretending to be heroic partisans killing Nazis.

  It was only on night flights in his MiG that Grigori was struck by the Moon, its immense brightness over a low deck of clouds. For one moment he wondered what it might be like to go there—to visit some world free from Communists versus capitalists, jokers versus nats. But the moment never lasted—he was too busy either trying to drop bombs on insurgents or flying an aircraft with faulty instruments.

  Yet, now, here he was—two months a lunar resident, with no departure in sight.

  Slip, slide. Hear the hiss of the oxygen pump in his backpack. The tips of his fingers felt cold, and so did his toes. The lunar excursion suit provided survivability in the extreme environment, but not comfort—and its thermal controls were limited. To be fair—though why should Grigori want to be fair—it had only been designed to operate for a score of hours, in early planning for short lunar missions.

  Once the Luna mission was approved, knowing that the desired operational lifetime was now some multiple of the original twenty hours, the teams at the factory had tried to add insulation and redundancy to the suits.

  Well, so far the hinges worked, the pressure seal held, and the helmet—though the tinted faceplate was no longer gold but greenish—continued to function. But Grigori and especially Belka, with his smaller model, had experienced nerve-wracking temperatures on their extremities. Yes, there was some insulation—or Grigori’s fingers and toes would have cracked and fallen off.

  Just not enough.

  Within fifteen minutes, exchanging routine and largely audible messages with Sergei, Grigori had traversed the entire length of the pipeline, passing the link to the science station, but seen no sign of Terenty and Viktor.

  And no damage and no unusual tracks.

  The Luna vehicle rose in the distance like a lighthouse, four stories tall, a skeletal structure now that tanks and modules had been removed, but still imposing. Small lights on the crew return vehicle at the top and near the base provided the only illumination other than starlight.

  Grigori was struck again by the improbability of their survival: In the darkness, stripped like this, its four solar panels drooping, the lander looked frail and old. Babushka was what Sergei had called it upon departure. A good thing there was no wind on the Moon; the vehicle looked as though it would blow over.

  His first inspection, slip-sliding in the churned-up soil around the landing legs, showed him that all hoses and power lines were attached as before. Yet something felt wrong. The darkness and limited light contributed to a sense of menace.

  That, and the absence of any sign of Terenty and Viktor.

  Grigori chose to retrace his route back toward the tents, this time letting his functioning light play across the lines and hoses. And halfway back he saw it—obvious damage, strips of insulation had been peeled off the pipeline! How the hell had he missed that on his outward journey? Damn the lunar night and his failed helmet lamp.

  For a moment Grigori thought the damage was serious enough to compromise the unit, and felt his heart rate spike to levels not approached since the landing.

  “What did you find?” Sergei’s voice was suddenly clear in his headphones.

  “What are you talking about?” Grigori had said nothing.

  “You groaned.”

  Grigori knelt and carefully fingered the loose material with his thick gloved fingers. “All right. There is damage here, two hundred meters from Luna, but the underlying plastic is still intact.”

  Which left him examining the flaps of insulation. This section of the pipe lay straight and flat on the dark gray soil—there was no reason it might flex and bend with insulation tears due to extreme temperatures.

  Grigori stepped back to look at the dirt … and now he could clearly see several boot prints, most of them likely to have been made by Viktor and Terenty, and, given their sharp edges, recently.

  He tried a radio call to Terenty, then Viktor. He heard nothing but a faint, crackly reply from Sergei: “Did you find them?”

  “Their tracks. So we know they made it this far.”

  Grigori triggered the camera mounted on his chest pack and clicked off several images on the unlikely assumption that he and his crew would have the time or bandwidth to share them with Control. Then, as best he could with thick fingers and tape that seemed to harden at his touch, he tried to repair the damage.

  That accomplished, he performed another walk-around, noting that Terenty and Viktor’s tracks seemed to lead to the north, at least for the ten meters Grigori could see.

  “Sergei, Belka, how much time do I have?”

  “Under one hour,” Sergei said. “Come back. They can’t possibly be alive after all this time.”

  True, but that wouldn’t stop him. He plunged into the dust, following the tracks. Over a rise, over another rise, tents and Luna out of sight. The tracks were easy to follow now, and the wide spacing suggested that the cosmonauts had been in a hurry … chasing the Moon Maid? The Moon Maid who left no tracks?

  Since it was clearly out of line-of-sight communication, none of the cosmonauts had ventured in this direction. Grigori kept a moderate pace: no leaping steps.

  A good thing, too: as he crested a low rise just south of the lunar hills, Grigori discovered what looked like a shallow pond of lunar dust.

  The crew had been warned about such features by Musa, one of their geologists—but only one, since the others dismissed the idea. “I call them gold dust,” Musa had said. “An American astronomer named Gold thinks the Moon’s surface is all dust, that spacecraft will sink into it.

  “I don’t believe that, and our landers have not disappeared. But I think that you might find these gold dust ponds and if you do, be careful. They might be very deep.”

  Both sets of boot prints ran directly into the pond, where they vanished. The surface of the pond seemed untouched.

  The feature was perhaps thirty meters across. On the other side was typical lunar soil … with no boot prints that Grigori could see. He stood at the edge, brushing the toe of his boot in the dust, which seemed light and fluffy.

  He found a rock and chucked it underhand into the pond, where it vanished without a ripple.

  Now what? He was looking to his right, searching for a way around the pond, calculating how much time he had left before he would have to turn back.

  Then, like a breaching whale, a suited cosmonaut popped out of the gold dust pond.

  Red ID stripes on the suit’s arms told Grigori who it was. “Viktor!” Grigori shouted, realizing that he was wasting his breath—the signal from his suit would have to travel to Luna before bouncing back to the pond, and Luna was hidden behind hills.

  He waited, vainly, for Viktor to move, to swim, to do something. But the cosmonaut just lay, almost floating, in the dust. Grigori would have to pull him out. On Earth, confronted with a comrade in quicksand, he might have used a branch, or a rope. Here, he had nothing.

  Nothing but his hands, that is. He would have to wade into this pond of dust and pull Viktor out. There was no way to anchor himself … and he was top-heavy in lunar gravity, lacking in traction even on normal soil. But the choice was brutally stark: go in or leave Viktor.

  Grigori tried to put weight on his heels, to remain upright, as he took one step into the pond. His boot sank half a dozen centimeters, in dust above his ankle. But there was something solid beneath, enough that Grigori risked a second step. Now he was up to his knees in dust. And Viktor was still several meters away, out of reach. Well, there was no going back. Grigori wondered how long Belka and Sergei would survive without him—

  Another step took him waist-deep and sliding, sliding. For a sick moment he thought he was going to topple backward and vanish under the dust. Somehow he managed to right himself, but his thrashing triggered a wave in the dust.r />
  And Viktor sank out of sight.

  Grigori looked at the spot, two meters in front of him, and wanted to weep. Worse yet, his head began to ache, a sign that carbon dioxide was building up in his suit.

  He had to go back.

  Rather than turn, and risk falling, he tried to step back. One, good. Two—

  Something grabbed his right boot.

  He tried to shake it off but even as he raised his right leg he saw that it was Viktor, somehow clutching him in a deathlike grip.

  Grigori was able to pull himself to the “shore” of the dust pond, dragging Viktor with him. Once he had firm footing, he kicked free, then dragged his fellow cosmonaut to relative safety. He lowered his helmet so it was touching Viktor’s, hoping to use that method of communication, calling … but no answer.

  Through the faceplate Viktor’s eyes were closed. He was unconscious at best. As for Terenty, Grigori could only assume he was lost in the gold dust pond.

  He was out of time. But lunar gravity allowed him to drag Viktor back toward the tents with relative ease.

  Just this once, the Moon was a helpful mistress.

  “He’s breathing, but his vitals are all over the place,” Belka said.

  Grigori had brought Viktor through the air lock into the hab tent, where Belka and Sergei had assisted in first removing the helmet, then laboriously extracting him through the back of the suit.

  The job was complicated by sheer lack of space. Grigori had had to move into the support tent in order to shed his own suit.

  “What does that mean?” he asked Belka.

  “His temperature is low—feel his forehead. Heart rate is present, but irregular.”

  “Is he in a coma?” Sergei asked.

  “He’s suffering from lack of oxygen,” Belka said. “He may be brain-dead.”

  “Then what do we do?” The birdlike joker was about to panic.

  “We wait,” Grigori said. “When we talk to Control we’ll tell them what happened, how he is, and see what the doctors say.”

  “Our fucking doctors? Good luck,” Belka said. Soviet space doctors were chosen for their willingness to adjust diagnoses to meet political ends.

  At moments like this, Grigori missed the warming properties of vodka. Soviet cosmonauts—like everyone in the Soviet military, or the entire U.S.S.R., for that matter—drank like peasants of the fifteenth century: Given access to alcohol, they would ingest as much as possible as quickly as possible. The purpose, Grigori realized long ago, was to deaden the pain and misery of Soviet life.

  Grigori was not that bad, but given free time or the right occasion—that being any evening or group meal—he would happily knock back three or four shots just to feel brighter.

  The drinks made his male companions funnier, and the female ones prettier—and much friendlier.

  These lunar nights, and days, the few moments not spent listening for equipment breakdowns, then performing repairs, would have been more tolerable had any of them been able to drink. But they had only been able to smuggle a small bottle of champagne aboard, and that had been consumed in celebration of the landing.

  Should he survive, should he have the chance to perform an honest debrief, he would tell his bosses to give cosmonauts their liquor ration. Sailors had it; missions to the Moon were more like sea voyages than airplane flights.

  Of course, that was merely one in a long list of complaints he had for his bosses.

  “We have to tell Control what happened,” Sergei said.

  “Go ahead and try,” Grigori told him. He wasn’t eager to explain how he had lost forty percent of his crew to a Moon Maid, but was too dehydrated, hungry, and exhausted to worry.

  When Sergei failed to reach Control, Grigori actually felt disappointed. Clearly he was ready for a fight, or just an end to this godforsaken mission.

  In order to keep watch on Viktor, the three decided to sleep in shifts. Grigori, the most exhausted, would rest first, in the cave. Sergei would remain in the support tent. Belka would take the first watch.

  All too aware of the different sounds and smells of the cave, Grigori tried to get comfortable on the mat that formerly belonged to Terenty, and cursed again the wrongheaded decisions that brought him and his crew to the Moon.

  Even before his recent troubles, Grigori had grown tired of the one-upsmanship, the desire to simply outdo the United States, that had driven Soviet space efforts since the 1950s—each nation using its missile technology to place humans in orbit in small vehicles, then more humans in larger, more capable craft, including winged ships that landed on ordinary runways.

  Prior to the invasion by the Swarm the U.S.S.R. had already orbited the Zarya space surveillance station as well as an orbital missile system, a space tracking and alert network.

  The Luna mission had hoped to expand that system while garnering global praise. Now … well, now the goal for Luna was to survive until resupply.

  Grigori thought he was experiencing a moonquake, but it was only Belka shaking him awake. “Your shift. Sorry, but you gave me orders.”

  “I did.” Stiff and aching from yesterday’s exertions, Grigori accepted a nutrient bag from Belka, then followed the little joker through the support tent, where Sergei slept peacefully, it seemed, even though he was sitting up. “I always expect to find him perched like a crow,” Belka said, once he and Grigori were back in the hab tent.

  There had been no change in Viktor’s condition. “He’s still breathing very raggedly,” Belka said. “What are you going to tell Control?”

  “That Terenty was killed when his space suit failed, and Viktor left in this sorry condition because he tried to save him.”

  “No ghosts, I take it.”

  “What do you think?”

  Belka laughed and departed for his time in the cave.

  After his breakfast, Grigori took up his position bedside. To fill the time he recorded power, water, and oxygen levels, and did another pointless inventory of the food supplies.

  Then Viktor sat up, eyes open. He seemed confused, awkward.

  Grigori gently set aside his clipboard. “Be careful, Viktor,” he said.

  Viktor’s head snapped around, facing him. He opened his mouth, closed it, swallowed, then opened it again. And spoke several words, which sounded like, “Ya chagha chodo.”

  Viktor’s posture, voice, expression—none of it was Viktor’s. Grigori wondered if this was what happened when a brain was oxygen-starved. How much of Viktor remained?

  Carefully, Grigori answered in Russian. “I don’t understand.”

  Viktor repeated the phrase. Grigori shook his head, spread his hands. He knew how to express linguistic incapacity in French and German, so tried that.

  Nothing. Then he said it in English.

  And Viktor reacted with a jerky nod. Then he said, “Leave this place.”

  “Why are you saying this? What’s wrong?”

  Viktor was trying to get to his feet, and pulled over an oxygen tank. It was as if he had no idea where he was. It didn’t seem to matter. Unsteady on his feet, Viktor again said, “Leave this place!”

  “Who is speaking?”

  The reply was a word or name, two syllables: “Aarti.”

  “Aarti, then. Why do you want us to leave?”

  “This is my home.”

  “We didn’t know. Forgive the intrusion. But we are scientists.” That was a total lie, but they were hardly invaders—at worst, unwitting vandals. “And who are you? Are you a ghost?”

  Belka arrived at that moment, with Sergei over his shoulder. The interruption frightened Viktor, who plunged through the unzipped curtain into the air lock, then began scrabbling at the hatch.

  “Where’s he going?” Sergei asked.

  Belka, meanwhile, was trying to brandish a shovel that was too big for him. “Someone take this!”

  Grigori, however, realized that Viktor was about to open the outer air lock door. He frantically zipped the inner curtain shut—

&nbs
p; —just as Viktor wrenched the outer door open.

  The air inside the air lock exploded outward, flapping the inner curtain so violently that Grigori thought it would tear, and flinging Viktor outside on his face in the lunar soil.

  “What’s going on?” Belka said, crowding Grigori as he tried to peer through the plastic window. “Is he dead?”

  “Not remotely.”

  In fact, Grigori watched the thing that looked like Viktor pick himself up. He was covered in lunar dirt, but made no attempt to brush off. He simply looked back at the hab, then turned and began to walk away in his long undergarment.

  Before the creature had taken a dozen steps, it stopped and looked back again.

  Then vanished in a cloud of dust that quickly settled to the ground.

  “He had to be some kind of joker,” Sergei said.

  They were in the support tent examining their space suits, since the damaged air lock meant that any exit required all members of the crew to be suited. At least until the air lock was repaired.

  “From where?” Belka said.

  Grigori said, “There are jokers and aces who can go places nats can’t. They don’t even need spaceships.”

  “Then why aren’t they doing this fucking mission?” To the extent that he could, Belka stomped out of the hab tent and back into the cave.

  “Why don’t we just go home?” Sergei said, his voice pitifully plaintive.

  “We haven’t completed the mission. There will be consequences.”

  “Worse than this?”

  “Our families will be punished, too. And they don’t deserve this. And besides”—this thought had not crystallized in Grigori’s mind until now—“I will not be pushed around by a ghost.”

  “That was more than a ghost.”

  “Whatever it was, it’s not terminating my mission!” His voice seemed to echo in the tight quarters.

  “Now what?” Sergei said.

  “It’s time to call Control,” Grigori said.

  It took the better part of an hour for Sergei, calling in the blind, to make a connection. But finally the planets aligned and Control responded.