by Homer Hickam
Carillon held up the elk sticker, which had a drop of blood on its tip. “Does this satisfy the rule, Decan?”
“It does, Carillon.” He studied Dion, Absalom, and Lucien who had drawn together. “You are to keep away from these three scragheads for the remainder of this mission. Do you hear?”
Carillon knuckled his forehead. “I will comply, Decan.”
Flaubert shook his head. “If so, it will be the first time.”
After Decan Flaubert had gone back to huddle with the other two decans, Carillon waved the three young Legionnaires to a corner where they couldn’t be seen. “Now, boys, bygones will be bygones, right? We’re all in this together. You are well trained on spiderwalkers, yes? And I think you know how the walkers work much better than poor Carillon. Right?”
Lucien said, “Of course. We grew up playing spiderwalker games on the vids. We know the software and hardware as if we designed it ourselves.”
“Good, good. I think you are also survivors. Is it not true?”
“We want to survive,” Dion cautiously answered.
Carillon looked over his shoulder. The decans were involved in some deep conversation. He turned back to the trio. “This is a cheap-charlie mission,” he said. “Scuttlebutt says the Trainers are being paid next to nothing for it. That means our cut will be very small. I prefer to save myself for another operation, one where the cut will be larger.”
“We don’t know anything about that,” Lucien said.
“Well, you do now.” Carillon leaned forward. “Do you know when most Legionnaires die?”
They shook their heads and Carillon said, “At the beginning of an operation and at the end. We must therefore be especially careful and intelligent during those times.” He grinned, showing a gap in his teeth. “You will do what I tell you and we will live to fight not only for this cheap-charlie pay but for a bigger wad of johncredits in the future. Agreed?”
Lucien, Absalom, and Dion nodded eagerly.
::: TWENTY-TWO
Crater’s do4u buzzed him awake. “Sorry to bother ye, sir,” Riley said, “but we have a high priority mission alert. The Colonel wants the jumpcar to lift off in thirty minutes.”
Crater climbed out of bed and reached for his tunic. “What’s up?”
“You’re headed to Cleomedes. Your passenger is Doctor Laura Wilson. She’s a cardio expert.”
Cleomedes was located southeastward across the Caucasus Mountains and the Sea of Serenity, a distance of around six hundred miles. From liftoff to landing, it would take approximately twenty minutes. It would take a truck four days to make the same distance and that was on a fast convoy down the Helium-3 dustway. There was no established track to Cleomedes from Moontown.
Crater met the doctor in the hangar so no pressure suit was required. “What’s the emergency, Doctor?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “My boss said they needed a consult in Cleomedes. I’m to see a Doctor Vankineni at their hospital. That’s all I know.”
“Sounds like you need to get there in a hurry.”
“I heard you were into acrobatics.” She patted her stomach. “Unless you want to clean up my breakfast, I suggest you keep the flight smooth.”
“Got it, Doc. No acrobatics,” Crater said, taking her bag. “Riley, see the doctor to her chair, would you? And stow her bag away too.”
Riley took the bag and escorted the doctor up the ramp to the passenger compartment. Crater followed, climbing into the cockpit. Riley stuck her head through the cockpit hatch. “She’s strapped in, sir, and her luggage is all set. Ye best keep an eye on that port vernier. Should be all right, but it came out marginal on the tests. I was going to replace it today.”
“Will do,” Crater said, turning to look at her over his shoulder. She had tucked her bountiful red hair beneath a work cap. It made her look all the more fetching. “You know, you can call me Crater when the other techies aren’t around.”
“T’wouldn’t be right, sir. You being me boss and all.” Her eyes were bright. “Maybe someday?”
Before Crater could answer, Riley disappeared below. He waited until he got a light that the outer hatch was closed and the ramp retracted, then called, “Ready for pad transport.”
“Ready for pad transport, aye, sir,” Riley responded. The huge hangar doors ponderously slid open and the jumpcar and its launch pad rolled into the airlock. The inner doors closed and the outer ones opened to the vacuum. The pad rolled outside, then stabilized itself with four legs that pushed out until they made contact with the dust.
“Pad ready for launch, sir,” a techie, not Riley, said.
“Pad ready for launch,” Crater said, then went through the checklist with the puter. He called up the tower, “Jumpcar one ready for launch.”
“You’re number one on the runway, Pilot Trueblood.”
“Thank you. On my mark. Mark. Ten-nine-eight . . .”
Crater firewalled the throttles and the jumpcar lifted off as if it were on greased rails. He rotated the ship, watched the port vernier, and saw it was green ball all the way. At thirty miles altitude, he lowered the nose and saw the peaks of the Caucasus and the crater Calippas.
“Puter, turn off the auto navigator,” Crater said.
Autonav off.
Crater preferred to navigate using landmarks. He flew down the northern edge of the Serenity dustbowl and lined up on the astonishing delta of drainage rilles called Rimii Daniell, a system that aimed like an arrow toward Cleomedes. Past the delta was the Lacus Somniorium or Lake of Dreams, a plain that had the deepest dust on the moon. Farther on was the remnant of the crater named Williams. Off to the north, he could make out the big well-formed twin craters, Atlas and Hercules. Within minutes, he was soaring over the battered Taurus Mountains and then Lacus Bonitatis, the Lake of Goodness, covered with huge boulders tossed there by asteroids smashing into the Tauruses. He pulled up a few miles and saw the domed city of Cleomedes right where it was supposed to be.
Prior to setting up his approach, Crater flew the jumpcar over the town to give the doctor a look at it, so different from Moontown’s severe industrial design. Cleomedes’s transparent geodesic domes covered parks and ponds, and there were many buildings above the surface, all painted bright colors, one of them a casino. Cleomedes was known as the “Lunar Las Vegas.”
Crater called up Cleomedes control and requested permission to land. “Doctor on board,” he added.
“Roger that, Moontown One,” came the reply. “Do you want a hangar?”
“Roger. The doctor needs to get to the surgery in a hurry.”
“Go to mobile pad eight, west field. Welcome to Cleomedes. Casino tokens may be purchased at the landing field.”
Crater backed the jumpcar to a precision landing onto the designated mobile pad, then shut the engines down. He looked over his shoulder and saw Doctor Wilson on the couch, studying her reader. She looked up. “Thank you for the smooth flight,” she said.
“You’re welcome. We’ve landed on a mobile pad so no pressure suit is required after they’ve ported us into the hangar.” He felt the jumpcar move. “There we go now. Just be a couple of minutes.”
Crater watched the giant double doors of the hangar airlock slide open as the mobile pad crept ahead on its tracks. Once inside, the outer doors closed, the airlock was pressurized, and the inner doors opened and the mobile pad completed its journey. Crater climbed down from the cockpit, opened the hatch, and waited for the hangar ramp to arrive. “All ready, Doctor Wilson,” Crater said.
“Thank you, Pilot Trueblood,” she answered, tucking away the reader in a holding net.
Crater followed her down and saw the Cleomedes crew had already removed her bags. “I’ll give you a call when I’m ready to go,” she said.
“Okay, Doctor. Just let me know.”
Doctor Wilson was met by a Cleomedes greenie and led to a hatch while Crater sought out the jumpcar ground crew. “Check the oil and top her off, please.”
&nb
sp; “High test or regular?” a techie asked, a standard old joke for ground crews.
“Pure liquid oxygen and hydrogen,” Crater replied after pretending to chuckle. Then he asked, “Where’s the best place to hang out while I’m waiting?”
“Depends on what you like to do,” the techie answered. “Food and drink, there’s the Retro Restaurant over on Augustus Street. Something a little stronger, there’s the Upper Atmosphere Bar. Of course, there’s the Casino. We got a lot of parks too. You like to fish? They keep the Paddlewheel Pond well stocked with lunabass. For a hotel, try the Roman. You have any johncredits? Cleomedes’s expensive.”
“I have a Moontown chit,” Crater said.
“Lucky you.”
Crater thanked the techie and, after an inspection walk-around of the jumpcar, entered the main tubeway, which was brightly lit and lined with shops. Unlike the Spartan tubes of Moontown, there were fountains that played water across modernistic sculptures of lunasteel. The aroma of the day was apparently chocolate, much stronger than the aromas of the day back home. Before long, he found himself in a small ice-cream shop where he purchased a chocolate and vanilla cone, then went outside to sit on a bench and watch people walk by. They appeared prosperous.
Afterward, he wandered into one of the park domes and sat down on a bench and enjoyed the beauty of the place, the delightful smell of the enriched soil, and the flowers and trees that sprouted from it. The solar lamps were warm on the back of his neck. He wanted to stretch out in the grass and take a nap, and before long, he gave into it. He dozed until his do4u chirped.
It was Doctor Wilson. “Sorry, Crater,” she said. “Looks like you’d better find a place to overnight.”
Crater thanked the doctor for letting him know, then hung up and asked one of the gardeners to give him directions to the Roman Hotel. This was done, and after a pleasant stroll through the clean and bustling streets, Crater came to a hatch with a sign that announced that he was at the entrance of Cleomedes’s best and only hotel. He went inside, checked himself in, and dropped his bag at the tube assigned. Except for a brief foray for dinner at one of the tubeway hamburger stands and a visit to the jumpcar to make certain it was ready for flight, he spent the remainder of the evening there, watching a shovelball game on the vidputer. When he woke the next morning, there was no message from the doctor on his do4u. Breakfast was served in the hotel restaurant so that’s where he went, then checked out. He walked around the shopping area, then had a seat on a bench. He called the doctor but got no response. He left a message and prepared to be bored for a little while.
Before long, the man who owned everything in Cleomedes, General Caesar Augustus Nero, dressed in a silver tunic, black leggings, and silver boots, walked by with an entourage of a dozen men and women following him. He was expounding on some topic, his arms waving as he talked, and a woman, cloaked in a maroon robe, walked beside him. Everyone was intently listening until they began to bump into one another because the general had stopped dead in his tracks to stare at Crater. “Is this the fastbug driver who beat my entry in the Founder’s Day race before the war? I am certain it is. Name and purpose, boy.”
Crater stood out of respect. “Crater Trueblood, sir. I am the pilot of the Colonel’s jumpcar, here to deliver Doctor Wilson to assist one of your surgeons.”
“Bloody nice of the Colonel to send her too. Are you driving in the race this year?”
“I sincerely doubt it, sir,” Crater said.
“Good. Maybe we’ll have a chance. Now, join us. There is something I wish you to see.” And with that General Nero walked on, the entourage picking up behind him.
The destination proved to be a casino being constructed beneath a huge dome. Crater was astonished at the size of it. He’d seen it as he’d flown in and noted it was twice the size of the other domes, but it wasn’t until he was inside that its sheer grandeur was obvious.
While General Nero conversed with the construction foreman who’d come running, the woman in the maroon cloak approached Crater. When she let the hood of the cloak slide from her head, Crater was surprised to discover she was an Umlap. Her long arms and robust chest had all been masked by the cloak. She was a beautiful woman whose hair, long and lustrous, was as maroon as her robe. “The General would like a word,” she said. “So, if you don’t mind, will you wait here until he is ready?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Crater said.
Her lips were also painted maroon and they turned down into a frown, which Crater knew meant she was pleased. She delicately proffered her hand. “I am Perpetually Hopeful, the General’s wife.”
Crater didn’t know if he should bow or what he should do so he simply nodded deferentially. “Wonderful to meet you, ma’am. I’m Crater Trueblood.”
She frowned a little deeper, then nodded toward a mooncrete bench. “Sit. Rest. The General will be with you soon. Do you mind if I sit with you?”
Crater didn’t mind at all. They sat and Crater gazed upward at the great dome. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said.
“The General is a man of vision. Much as your Colonel Medaris, I’d say.”
“The Colonel has his ways,” Crater replied. “Are you from Baikal? I hope you don’t mind me asking.”
Baikal was the main Umlap settlement, or had been until a recent battle between its inhabitants had killed off its men. Umlaps were biologically designed to be hard workers, but the men could also be stubborn, crafty, and a little murderous. The women, by contrast, were generally intelligent and gentle.
Perpetually Hopeful nodded. “Yes, I am the sister of Queen No Nonsense Talker, whom you very nicely saved at Aristillus several years ago.” She smiled, which meant she was about to say something unhappy. “I was once the wife of Hit Your Face.”
This information caught Crater by surprise. Hit Your Face was a brute, having come by his name by performing the act often and well. He had been murdered by another Umlap by the name of Bad Haircut as Crater watched.
“Bad Haircut was my brother,” Perpetually Hopeful went on to say. “Did you know him?”
“I knew him. He was a pretty fair mechanic.”
She chuckled, the Umlap version of sobbing. “I miss him every day!”
Crater thought it best not to say anything else, mainly because Perpetually Hopeful was smiling and therefore sad. She wiped her tears with the sleeve of her robe and brushed her hair back to reveal the hole she had for an ear. She touched it and the General abruptly finished his discussion with the construction foreman and came over. Crater stood. “This is an amazing place, sir,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” he answered. “Nothing like it in old Moontown, eh?” The General held out his hand. “Well, Crater, good to see you. If you ever want a job, I could use a boy—I should say man—like you. I have aspirations as great as the Colonel’s, although in different ways. I would hire you in a second and you could name your own salary. For instance, I’ve heard you know quite a lot about hydraulics. Pumping water through Cleomedes is a great challenge, and I’ve yet to find an engineer who can get a grasp of it.”
“I suppose I do know a bit about water,” Crater said.
“You are being modest. We are very aware of your invention to retrieve water from moon dust. We hope it might go to market soon.”
“It has a way to go,” Crater said. “But I’m working on it.”
“Good boy.”
The General talked on for a little more, and then Perpetually Hopeful reminded him of an appointment. After some pleasant fare-thee-wells, he walked rapidly away, his entourage scurrying to catch up. Perpetually Hopeful remained behind. She studied him. “I sense there is something worrying you, Mr. Trueblood. Is it something I or the General has said or done?”
Umlap women were renowned for their near-telepathic ability to discern what others were thinking. “No, ma’am. Not at all. Especially you. There’s nothing you could ever do to upset me.”
Her face clouded over, which meant she was please
d. “Tell me what it is, then.”
Crater told her about Crescent and her sentence of death and how he had investigated the situation but was having trouble proving her innocence. Perpetually Hopeful inclined her head, taking in the story, then said, “Murder and hate go hand in hand. If not the girl, who would have hated this bloody dictator enough to kill him?”
Crater gave that some thought. “I suppose anyone who was a Tovar. He murdered almost all of them.”
“Well then, what of the Tovars in Moontown?”
Crater stared at her. “I never thought of that!”
“Sometimes a mystery requires an outsider to see clearly the path toward a solution.”
“Is there a way to call a Moontown do4u?”
“Of course, but not with yours.” She withdrew a do4u from her robes. “This one will call anywhere on the moon.”
Crater gratefully took it from her, walked out of hearing distance from Perpetually Hopeful, and asked it to call Riley in Moontown. Riley answered. “Riley, this is Crater. Do something for me, will you? Go to the hangar puter and use the following code to access the personnel files from the main puter.” He gave the number the gillie had stolen years before. “See if there are any Moontown citizens with the nationality of Tovar. I’ll call you back in ten minutes.”
“Aye, will do, sir,” Riley said.
Crater waited with Perpetually Hopeful for ten minutes, which seemed an age to pass, then called Riley back. “It was most easy,” she said. “There is only one Tovar in town. Kurto, the chef at the Dust Palace.”
Crater thanked Riley, clicked off, then stood up. He handed Perpetually Hopeful her do4u. “I must take my leave, ma’am,” he said. “But I will never be able to thank you enough.”
She rose, frowning in pleasure. “A promise to visit us in the future will be thanks enough.”
Crater made the promise, then called the jumpcar techies to prepare the jumpcar and took off running for the hangar. He didn’t wait for the ramp but clambered up the jumpcar ladder. Dropping into his chair, he called up the techies. “Prepare for launch, please,” he said. “I’m in a bit of a hurry.”