by Homer Hickam
“I considered it,” Crescent said, “but I decided it was too far away.”
“I think it best if you put one of the women there,” Maria insisted. “Please see to it.”
“You’re giving me an order?”
“As second in command, yes, I am.”
Crescent came rigidly to attention and saluted smartly. “Oui, Madame Commandant!”
“Oh, don’t be like that, Crescent,” Maria said.
“Do you have any other orders, mein fuhrer?”
“Now you’re going too far,” Maria said, although it was to Crescent’s back as she stalked away.
After dinner, Maria asked Crater to walk with her in the ghostly blue Earthlight. Crater was tired but agreed. There was a series of pointy little hills that he was curious about and he wanted to give them a closer look. He called Crescent. “Maria and I are going to walk to those hills to the east.”
“You mean the commander and the second in command are leaving me without benefit of their leadership?”
“Crater and I have things we need to discuss,” Maria said.
“I shall try my very best to manage without your supervision,” Crescent replied.
“What’s wrong with you?” Crater demanded. “We won’t be gone long.”
The click in both their ears told them Crescent had signed off. “She is in love with you, you know,” Maria said after they’d strolled a way toward the hills.
This was an obvious shock to Crater, who stopped and stared at Maria. “That’s not true. She’s just grateful I look after her.”
“You know it’s true. So what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m not going to do anything because I still don’t believe it,” Crater said, turning to walk again.
“All right, fine. So what are you going to do about us?”
Crater stopped again. “All I want to do is look at those little pointy hills.”
“You can’t look at little pointy hills or whatever and change the subject forever,” Maria said. “Is it Riley? Has she stolen your heart?”
Crater’s expression changed to one of astonishment. “There was never anything between Riley and me! How do you know about her, anyway?”
“I have my ways. Why haven’t you fallen love with her, Crater? She’s a beautiful girl!”
He turned away. “I wonder how those hills were formed.”
“I heard you were at the Earthrise with her quite a few times.”
“Could we just walk and not talk? Or is that not possible for you?”
“Oh, I can walk and not talk with the best of them.” Three steps later she added, “Yes, with the best of them.”
“You only walked three steps before you talked,” Crater pointed out, which was the last thing he said before he was shoved down from behind. At the same moment, Maria was shoved down too. When she tried to get up, a heavy boot pushed down on her neck. The next words she heard were in crowhopper, which she didn’t entirely understand.
::: FORTY
Crater understood the words of their captors. “Should I kill the boy?” a crowhopper asked.
“Not yet,” came the answer. “But soon.”
Crater’s hands were tied behind him, and he was dragged across the dust and roughly thrust atop a spiderwalker where he was lashed aboard with stout cable. Then the rider got aboard and Crater felt the walker undulate as it moved. Hours later he was dragged off the walker and thrown into the dust. Turning his head, he saw Maria lying beside him, her eyes wide and frightened. He wished he hadn’t put the gillie in the refrigerator. It might have been helpful.
Before long, another spiderwalker came and stood over them. At first, Crater thought it was going to walk on them, but it carefully stepped along until its thorax was directly above them. Crater couldn’t figure why until it drew in its legs and the crowhoppers weaved cables through them. The legs and cables fashioned a cage.
A crowhopper reached inside and untied their hands. Crater and Maria sat up, and Maria impulsively took his hand. Crater was glad to hold her hand, if that made her feel better, but his focus was on inspecting their metallic prison. After a bit of inspecting, he asked, “How much air do you have?”
“About five hours,” she said. “I should have topped off but you acted like you really wanted to walk out on the dust so I put it off.”
“But I didn’t want to go anywhere,” Crater said. “You asked me, remember?”
“I could tell you wanted to talk.”
Crater frowned. “I didn’t want to talk. I just wanted to see those pointy hills.”
She took her hand away. “You send me so many mixed signals, I guess I don’t know what to think.”
Crater looked at her in consternation. She had five hours of air left, he had around twelve hours, and here they were arguing. To hold on to his sanity, he looked up and studied the thorax of the spiderwalker.
“What are you looking at?” one of the crowhoppers asked. “It’s impossible to escape. We’re not going to be here very long and you will be well guarded.”
“Where are we going?” Crater asked.
“You? Probably nowhere.”
Crater considered the situation. The crowhoppers weren’t going to kill Maria. She was the reason they’d come to the moon. But Crater supposed they would happily kill him. What was the use in keeping him alive?
With a sigh, Maria lowered her head, pulled her knees up, and wrapped her arms around them in a posture of submission. “Don’t give up,” he told her.
“I haven’t given up,” she said. “I’m thinking.”
Crater turned his eyes to the crowhopper guard. All he could see of his face were eyes that looked very tired. He also appeared to be young. “We were all impressed by your cannon,” the crowhopper said. “Decan Flaubert—that’s him with the three stripes on his helmet—said it was a very nice piece of field expedient battle gear. What did you use for ammunition?”
“Core samples from the nickel asteroid. That was the slippery surface.”
“So that’s what it was! Flaubert said you did two things right. You built the gun and then you stood your ground behind difficult terrain to cross. Where did you study tactics?”
“Nowhere, but I read a lot,” Crater answered. “Let me ask you a question. Why did you bring the crusher along?”
“Flaubert said we would use it to shield us. Who would have thought we’d cross over the crust of a lavatube?”
The crowhopper with the three-striped helmet walked up. “Lucien! Do not talk to these humans!”
“I am bored, Decan Flaubert.”
“Well, stop being bored. We’re not having any luck with our radio. I sent Absalom to climb that hill with the antenna. Maybe we can establish contact from there.”
“Absalom is terrified of heights,” Lucien said.
The decan shook his head. “That explains why I have not seen him up there. I have never seen a more worthless trooper unless it’s you or Dion. Go find Absalom and carry the antenna up there as high as you can go.”
“Yes, Decan!”
Both crowhoppers moved off. Crater looked around and saw no one watching them. “Have you thought of anything?” he asked Maria.
“Yes,” she said. “Do you suppose a gillie would help?”
“I suppose one would,” Crater said, “but I left them in the refrigerator.”
“Did you? Then why is mine in my pocket?”
Why, Crater asked himself, was he not surprised? Of course, Maria couldn’t take no for an answer so she’d gone into the chuckwagon and removed “her” gillie from the refrigerator. She was a Medaris and that’s the kind of thing a Medaris did. “You stole it,” he accused.
“I didn’t steal anything. I simply borrowed it.”
“Borrowing usually implies permission, which you didn’t have.” Crater shook his head, then asked, “Has it said anything to you or even come out of its pocket since you stole it?”
“No.”
“Then I do
n’t see how it can help.”
Another crowhopper walked up and sat on the crater rim again. “What are you talking about? Perhaps I should take your do4u’s away.”
“Open channel,” Crater said to his do4u. “She’s scared, of course. I was telling her you’re not going to kill her. She’s to be ransomed, right?”
The crowhopper shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. This entire war is a complete shambles. We attacked Armstrong City with the mission to capture this girl and succeeded only in wrecking the town. Then we were abandoned by our fleet and sent off into this hellish place to catch her. Where were you going with her, anyway?”
“The people with us are settlers. I was guiding them. They’re not part of this war. I hope you’ll leave them alone.”
“I don’t intend to do anything except get off this nasty, dusty planet alive. As for your settlers, we have no orders to do anything with them. From what I can tell, we have no orders to do much of anything. By the way, who was your cannon server? By the length of his arms and legs and the way he moved, he looked like a crowhopper, only smaller.”
“He’s no crowhopper,” Crater lied. “Just a funny little fellow. A guide, like me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the young crowhopper replied.
“Maria is nearly out of air,” Crater said. “Can you pump up her tank?”
“Certainly. It wouldn’t do for us to let our hostage suffocate, would it? How about you?”
“I could use some air too.”
The crowhopper stood. “My guess is if we ever hear from anybody, they’ll tell us to kill you.”
“My presence is at least keeping your hostage calm,” Crater said.
“I noticed she wasn’t so scared when she was shooting the other fellows.”
“I’m sorry for that,” Maria said, mock-whimpering.
“I don’t think you are,” he said. He cocked his head, listening, then said, “The decan is calling.” He made a sound that almost sounded like a laugh. “He’s sent Absalom back to camp and the idiot can’t figure out how to make the stove work.”
“What’s your name?” Maria asked.
“Dion, madam.”
“You seem young.”
“I am nineteen, madam.”
“Hey, we’re nineteen too!”
“I have to go. Absalom says he’s hungry. The stove, you see.”
“Don’t forget our air,” Crater said, but the crowhopper walked away without reply.
Crater and Maria were once more left unguarded and they switched back to their private channel.
“Did you like my acting?” she asked.
Crater didn’t have time to compliment her. “Gillie,” he said, “do you hear me? Will you come out?”
“It isn’t moving,” Maria reported after a few seconds. “Do you suppose it’s dead? Here. I’ll take it out.”
Maria plucked the little gillie from her breast pocket but all it did was rest in her hand with its eyes closed, although it had no eyes.
Crater poked it. “Hey, wake up!”
“Don’t poke my gillie.”
“It isn’t your gillie. Gillie, do you hear me?”
“Let me try,” Maria said. She stroked its back, though it had no back. “Could you help me, little gillie?”
Hello, the gillie said, perking up. I am a gillie biocomputer. I was designed by the Macingillie Corporation of the Republic of Calimexica and manufactured . . . well, frankly, I’m not certain where. Many of my kind, however, were manufactured in New Shanghai, Third Republic of East China. I am designed to assist you with communications, administration, scheduling, research, and advice. Whenever you are ready, I would be glad to assist you in any of these endeavors. Do you have any questions for me?
Maria looked smugly at Crater, then asked, “Gillie, do you know who I am?”
Not really, it said. Although I know I should. I am uncertain of a number of things, although I am sure I will learn them in due course.
“My name is Maria High Eagle Medaris. You belong to me. This is Crater Trueblood.”
Yes, it said. I know Crater, although I am not certain why.
“Listen, Gillie,” Crater said, “I need your help.”
Excuse me, Crater, but I belong to Maria and I will need her permission to help you.
Crater rolled his eyes. “Tell it to listen to me,” he growled.
“Gillie. Do what Crater says. Is that all right, Gillie?”
“If you’re going to have one, at least learn how to talk to it,” Crater said. “You never ask permission from gillies.”
That’s fine, the gillie said. Thank you for asking.
“This one’s apparently different,” Maria said, wrinkling her nose at Crater.
Crater bit back a sarcastic retort, then asked, “Gillie, can you access the puter that controls this spiderwalker?”
Gillie must think.
“What’s to think about? You either know or you don’t!”
“Don’t be mean to my gillie,” Maria admonished.
Crater dug into a hidden coverall pocket and retrieved a small screwdriver. “When you want something done, always use the simplest tool. Tell me if someone’s coming.”
“Someone’s coming,” she said. Sure enough, someone was. The crowhopper called Dion, this time with a bioair tank.
Crater pushed the screwdriver out of sight into the dust, then positioned his backpack to be filled, as did Maria. Both packs were filled and the crowhopper, without comment, went away.
“I wonder why they leave us alone,” Maria said.
“Because we’re in a cage,” Crater said. “Also, we’re in a vacuum a thousand miles from nowhere. They’re Earthians, after all. They don’t know the moon the way I do. Nobody does, really.”
“You’re full of yourself all of a sudden,” Maria accused.
“I’m tired of being a prisoner,” Crater said.
He stood up and used the screwdriver to open a hatch in the thorax of the spiderwalker, then peered into it. “That’s the puter,” he said. “I was hoping it would have a command pad. Don’t see one, though.”
Gillie has been thinking over your earlier request, the gillie said. I may be able to help. What do you want done?
“Can you access this puter?”
Perhaps.
Crater forced back a sigh. “Well, perhaps you can instruct the spiderwalker to use its pincers to cut the cables that bind its legs.”
That is a complex command.
“Do it anyway.”
“Please do it anyway,” Maria amended.
Gillie will try.
Crater watched the gillie, which didn’t appear to be doing anything except sitting on Maria’s leg. Then the spiderwalker’s legs moved against the cables, stretching them, which caused one of them to snap. Crater dodged as it whipped in his direction.
Sorry, the gillie said. Trying to determine the commands.
The head of the spiderwalker began to move up and down and it lifted one leg, then the other. “Pincers, gillie,” Crater said.
The gillie said nothing, but then the walker lowered its head and snipped apart a cable, then snipped another. The opening was large enough for them to pass through.
“Let’s go,” Crater said, taking Maria by the hand and stepping through the snipped cables. He unwound them, then tossed them away, then swung up on the back of the walker and helped Maria up. “Get behind me,” he said when she tried to sit in front. “I need a shield. They won’t shoot you. Probably.”
Maria gave it some thought, then settled in behind Crater. Crater urged the walker ahead. It didn’t take too many steps before he realized the reason the crowhoppers used that particular walker as a cage. It limped.
::: FORTY-ONE
The spiderwalker’s bad leg wasn’t so bad it couldn’t be used. It hesitated a tick on the uplift but that only caused a slight shudder in the ride. But as time went by, Crater could feel the drag getting worse. Then, without warning, the leg failed
completely. The walker walked on but the ride changed to a lurching gait, and before long, other legs were dragging too.
“They’re following us,” Maria warned. “Just saw them ride over that little hill we crossed a few minutes ago.”
Crater studied the terrain ahead, then directed the walker onto a ridge covered with boulders. By their color, shape, and texture, he identified them as basalt. He jumped off the walker and rolled one of them to the edge of the ridge and over. He watched it tumble down, leaving a bright trail in the dust as it picked up speed. About a hundred feet above the bottom, there was a cliff that launched the rock into the vacuum. It flew until it fell into a large crater and kept rolling until it caromed off the far crater lip. “What was that for?” Maria asked from her perch on the walker.
Crater didn’t answer because his idea was still forming. He climbed up on the walker and drove it forward, then turned down slope until they reached the interior of the large crater. When he was about a hundred yards from the trail the rolling basalt rock had made, he stopped the walker and rotated its head so that its pincers could reach its dangling leg. Squeezing the handle that operated the pincers, he cut off the leg, which fell off into the dust. After that, he ordered the walker to kneel. Since it was missing a front leg, it toppled over, sending him and Maria flying into the dust. “Crater, what are you doing?” Maria sputtered.
Crater picked up the clipped leg. “Stay here,” he commanded.
“What do you hope to accomplish with that thing?” she demanded, still sitting in the dust.
“Stay here, I said.”
“Crater Trueblood, tell me what you’re doing!”
Crater turned around, although he kept walking backward. “Saving your life. Maybe mine too. It might help if you got on top of the walker so the crowhoppers will be sure to see you.”
“Are you crazy? I’ll do no such thing!”
Crater didn’t have time to argue. Carrying the walker leg, he leaped and bounded until he reached the base of the hill with the basalt rocks. He climbed it and removed the shoestrings from one of his boots, then tore off one of the chest pockets of his coveralls. Using an obsidian rock, millions of them mixed in with the basalt, he sawed the string in two, then tied the two ends to the pocket, thus creating a sling. The remaining shoestring he put back in the eyes of his boot and cinched it tight. He then chose a small lump of basalt, placed it on the cloth patch, then whirled it around and made a practice throw at a boulder a hundred yards away. He struck it dead center. “The rewards of a misspent youth,” he said to himself, recalling how he and Petro had made slings when they were kids and pelted miners on the scrapes with pebbles. They’d got their hides tanned for it too.