“Well, yes, but you shouldn't..."
“Damn, this is exciting. I mean, I've worked on racing stock most of m'life, but I've never actually raced."
“Bubba, please don't..."
“Took cars on test laps a couple of times, o'course, but never got ‘em much above a hundred. Didn't really trust my drivin’ skills. But I can't wreck in this thing, right? And we're programmed to get to the Moon no matter what, right?"
“That's true, but don't let that..."
“So what th’ hell, boy! Let's see what the USS Right Honorable Fireball XL-5's got under the hood."
“No, Bubba! Don't..."
Bubba pushed the joystick all the way forward. The Moon swelled to fill the forward port within seconds. "Jesus Christ!" Bubba cried, throwing his hands in front of his face. “Why the hell didn't you warn me? I damn near filled my Maximum Absorption Garment."
Static burst from the screen. “I tried, Bubba, I tried."
Back on the ground, the crowd was whooping and whistling. Miss King William County looked like she was about to faint, and the two suits were racing to their cars, talking furiously into their sleeves. The band was playing “In the Sunshine of Your Love” and marching gaily back to their bus.
The two newspapermen stood spellbound, mouths open. “It ... it just ... disappeared,” the reporter whispered, his voice awestruck. His companion made a squeaking sound that was barely audible. “Tell me you got that, Danny. Please tell me you got that!"
Danny shook his head slowly. “Didn't have time. It was there, and then it wasn't, and there isn't anywhere down here for it to be."
“You didn't get it at all?"
“Uh-uh. Too fast, Ted.” His face fell. “Biggest goddam thing I'll ever cover, and it happened too damn fast." He began sobbing quietly.
“Well, we have to make sure, I guess. Let's check out the area around where that ... that damned spaceship or whatever it is was sitting.” They examined the ground around the take-off point carefully, but there were no trap doors, no mirrors, nothing.
Ted sagged. “They'll never believe us,” he said sadly. “Not in a million, billion years. We might as well not even file. C'mon, Flash,” he said, patting the weeping photographer on the shoulder. “Let's go find a motel with HBO, and a lot of beer. We're not going back home tonight."
The cameraman sniffed. “O-okay, Scoop."
A bit closer to the Moon, the reaction wasn't much calmer.
“Great sizzlin’ wor bar!” Bubba clutched his chest and paused to catch his breath. “I ain't felt nothing like that since the choir-mistress taught me to sing bass.” He shook himself and settled back in his seat. “Mike, how long did it take us to get here?"
“Five point eight seconds. Give me a minute to vent some heat; we built up just a little friction on the way up.” He opened a few holes in the field to let the heat escape.
“Huh! How long would it take us to get to Proxima Centauri?"
“Longer. Why would you want to go there, anyway? There's nothing interesting in the entire system aside from a couple of low-quality eating places."
“Oh, far be it from me to eat in a diner. How's their coffee?"
“They don't have any. Not even an equivalent."
“Don't matter, I don't like coffee anyway. Take us in, Mr. Sulu."
They planned to set down close to the Rover, but far enough away to leave the surrounding ground as undisturbed as possible. Mike argued that closer was better, but his companion insisted. “Bubba, our propulsion system won't leave traces the way theirs did. A shallow depression in the dust, and that's it."
“No, we'll do this my way, Mike. Nothing gets disturbed. It ain't gonna hurt me to walk a few yards.” And that was that. It took a bit of searching, but they managed to find a spot without tracks or prints and settled there.
Mike cut the drive. Bubba keyed the radio and said, “Houston, we're down and safe. Preparing to EVA in ... oh, I dunno, ten minutes? Over."
There was silence, and Bubba was about to transmit again when the speaker cut in. There was a considerable amount of noise in the background. “Roger, Mr. Pritchert. And roger your EVA. How's the weather up there, over?"
“Rainin’ like hell,” he replied. “Can't hardly see the white line. Over."
“Roger that. By the way, there's a control room full of technicians here who seem to think something remarkable has just happened. We lost you for a few seconds, then telemetry showed you were ... well, very close to your destination, over."
“Naw,” Bubba replied. “Nothin’ so much of a much. I may have squeezed through a light here and there, but that's just the way we do it at the Martinsville Speedway. Over."
“Roger. So, how's your food supply? Got enough Chinese food, over?"
Bubba's eyebrows shot up into his hairline. “Oh, you heard that, huh? Um, over."
“Roger."
“Damn. Man ain't got no privacy anywhere.” He opened the mic again. “Roger, Houston, keep in touch. You know how your mother worries, over.” He sat back, fingers drumming on the armrest. “Well. Well.” He drummed some more.
“Bubba?"
“Guess it's time to go out there and do what we came here to do, Mikey.” Still he didn't move, just sat there, chewing his lower lip. Now that the moment was upon him, he was oddly reluctant to go outside. It wasn't fear. The suit was already well tested, he'd been briefed on the peculiarities of working in low gravity, he'd trained in the NBL pool, and in any case, this was something he'd dreamed of doing most of his life.
And, of course, that was it: he was going to fulfill a dream, and there were inevitable uncertainties. Would the reality live up to the dream? Would it be like the old stories he loved so much, or just a prosaic substitute? Would it be even more than he expected? Was he, in fact, worthy of his dream? And finally, what would be left for him after?
“I hate to bring this up, but our air supply is relatively limited."
“Don't rush me, Mike. I gotta nerve up for this."
“Why? We're just going out on the Moon. It's not much different from the practice you did in the pool."
“The hell it ain't. All right, I'm goin'.” Removing Mike from his slot in the ship's control panel, he carefully fitted the little box into the new robotic torso, making sure that Mike was completely connected. Then he suited up, clamped his helmet to the neck ring, and tested the seal. Once he was satisfied, he entered the little airlock and cycled it.
Edgar Allen Poe Hudgins Pritchert stepped out onto the surface of the Moon. Where his boots touched, dust rose lazily in the low gravity. He could almost feel the grit beneath the thick soles, but he knew this was an illusion. He breathed deeply, wanting to smell or taste something other than the air supplied from the tanks on his back, knowing full well that he never could—that no human ever could.
Words swirled in his mind, words intended to commemorate this event in his life, words that he knew deep in his heart were unnecessary: it wasn't as if he'd ever forget this moment, after all.
Instead, he simply stood quietly, turning slowly in place and looking, desperately trying to pack into the few minutes he had here a lifetime's aspirations. Oh, he could always come back. He could get the clearances, the permissions, file the flight plans. But no matter how many times he might return, there would only ever be one First Time.
His eyes blurred, and his hand automatically brushed against his faceplate in an attempt to wipe away tears. His chest and throat ached, full to bursting with wonder and awe. The Moon! He was on the Moon! Somewhere under his feet were the remains of the Selenites, and Professor Cavor's desiccated body; somewhere here, or perhaps over there, the mortal remains of Delos D. Harriman sat propped against a rock, marked only by a poem scrawled on a shipping tag and pinned to the Lunar dust by a knife.
Over there had been a Fall of Moondust; there, just over the horizon, a mysterious monolith with a ratio of one by four by nine had been discovered at Tycho. And just past those ridges, not so very
long ago, the Moon had been Hell. And there, and beyond that....
Not far from where he now stood, mute and inglorious, Neil Armstrong had jumped lightly off the Eagle's ladder and left footprints in the Lunar soil that no one else could ever fill. That those prints were erased when he and Buzz Aldrin blasted off to rejoin Michael Collins in orbit was irrelevant: they would never be eradicated from history—from his soul. This was sacred ground, here in Mare Tranquilitatis; eleven more men had followed Armstrong and Aldrin and left their marks all but indelibly, but Bubba Pritchert of Central Garage was the first in more than thirty years. He stood now where his heroes once had, far too long ago. The enormity of it shook him to his core.
He reached down and ran his glove through the soil. Picking up a handful, he raised it to eye level, working it gently between his fingers as if he were testing loam. He opened his fingers slowly and let it go. It dropped slowly, glittering in the harsh sunlight, like nothing he'd ever seen. A Fall of Moondust, he thought again.
He bent his knees carefully, making sure he kept his balance, then straightened them. He rose a few feet into the air and hung there for a moment, his heart pounding in his chest and the hairs on his arms standing so straight it felt like they would push through his sleeves. Slowly he came back down until his boots touched the soil. The Moon.
And when words finally came, they were unplanned, unconscious: “Dammit, Gus! You should've got here. You and White and Chaffee. Y'all busted your humps to make it. Me, I got a free ride. Y'all's footprints should be here, not mine."
The Earth hung high above him, beautiful and terrible, and he stared at it for what felt like an eternity before he turned back to open the storage locker that had been attached to the scout craft and began assembling the winch and crane.
Something touched his back and he jumped, held to the surface only by his hands on the crane's framework. It was Mike, who had followed him onto the Moon after shutting the ship down and sending word back to Earth that they were ready to start loading the Rover.
“Goddam, Mike, you scared the bejeezus out of me! I near soiled myself, and I don't even want to think about what that would do to the warranty on this suit."
“Sorry. I knew you were going to need help with the crane, so I came out. I was careful not to roll over your footprints, by the way. I know they mean something to you."
Bubba continued to bolt the framework together for a moment before answering. “Thank you, Mike. I appreciate it. That's pretty good thinking for a genius with your limitations."
“'Limitations'? I have ‘limitations'?"
“Later. I want to get this vehicle secured, and then break the crane down so we can get home."
“Later it will be, then,” Mike replied.
They walked the short distance to where the Rover had stood for over thirty-five years, patiently waiting for someone to bring it home. Once again, Bubba felt the wonder he'd felt when, in July of 1969, he had watched from his easy chair as the Eagle landed in a place he never thought he'd be. He reached out his hand to touch it, then drew it back.
“Nobody will know."
“Huh?” Bubba was startled.
“If you bring back another one,” Mike said. “They're all pretty much alike, and I know you've been uncertain over whether or not this is the right thing to do. What are they going to do, come back up here and check on you?"
Bubba reached out again, this time making contact with the seat back. “Lawler was right, Mike. I'd know. You'd know. There are ways for them to check, serial numbers and such."
“Yes, there are. But I know you've been uncertain over whether or not this is the right thing to do,” Mike repeated. “I wouldn't tell."
Even through the thick glove, Bubba felt a thrill go up his arm as he ran his hand along the smooth metal of the Rover. This was it, the first one. Didn't it deserve to be left here, where it had rested for three and a half decades? Wouldn't it be easy enough to convince people that one of the others was this one?
“No,” he said at last. “Let's leave aside for the moment that there are plenty of differences between them. Let's forget that I gave my word to bring this one back, and signed my name to it.” He drew back his gloved hand and held it up in front of his faceplate, turning it first one way then the other.
“People are going to travel far to see this one, because it was the first, the original. They're going to stand in front of it, and feel wonder. Some of them are going to try and sneak out their hand to touch it, and if they do, they're going to feel the same thrill, the same buzz, that I just did.” He dropped his hand back to his side. “It ain't right for that to be a lie.” He began moving the framework closer to the Rover, and Mike used his new arms to help position it.
“I knew you'd say that, or something like it,” he said. “We picked the right man back in 1958."
“Yeah. Yeah. Hope you never have reason to think otherwise. C'mon, let's get to work."
They worked slowly in the low gravity, being careful to remember that their mass was unchanged; they were especially cautious when moving the crane into position near the Rover. The decision had been made not to fold the Rover back into its original configuration, but to transport it as it was. It took time and effort—Bubba was breathing hard by the time they were done—but finally it was securely supported by the chains hanging from the framework.
“Let's take a break,” he said. “I need to sit down and rest a bit."
“We can take the time to refill your air bottles, too,” Mike said. “Once we're back out here there's no way to do it, and if you run out of air I don't know if I can drag you back before you turn blue."
“Damn good thinkin', little buddy. Now I remember why I keep you around.” They returned to the ship's airlock, where Mike connected his tanks to a compressor and proceeded to refill them. Bubba took off his helmet and sat with his eyes closed, trying to regain not only his breath, but his equilibrium as well. “It's a job,” he told himself. “Just another job. Do it clean, do it well, and we'll handle the sheer vastness of the thing later.” He took a deep breath, stretched, and cracked his knuckles. “You about done there, Mike?"
“Yes, I topped off your tanks. You're good for another few hours."
“Then in the words of the ancient Oriental philosopher, ‘Let's get ‘er done!’”
It was, of necessity, slow going, but both man and machine were more than capable of the methodical work needed to safely raise the Rover, move the XL-5 under it, then lower it again so that it rested in the “cargo hold"—the cavity behind the pilot/passenger cabin Bubba had prepared just for that purpose—and was thus protected from the vagaries of acceleration by the inertialess drive. From there it was just a matter of securing the vehicle so that it wouldn't budge, and disassembling and stowing the winch and crane.
Mike set the stasis field around the Rover, then plugged himself into the navigation system and swiveled his cameras to focus on the Earthman. “Well?"
“Home again, home again, jiggety-jig,” Bubba said lightly. “Let's take the scenic route, Mike, what say? I don't think we need to get back in...” he looked at the now-ambulatory AI and raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
“Five point eight seconds."
“...five point eight seconds this time. We'll just mosey."
“Suits me. Will an hour do?"
“Yeah, any more than that and I'll need a rest stop.” He squirmed in his seat. “You'da thought NASA might have come up with something better than a damn diaper in thirty years. I'd almost have been happier with plumbing."
They lifted off the Moon's surface, and began their swift, if not headlong, journey back to Earth. As they cruised through space, the silence was broken only by their report to NASA that they were on their way back, fully loaded, mission accomplished.
About halfway, Mike spoke up. “Bubba, I'm curious. Why your remark about my limitations? I'm encyclopedic, I have access to any and all available databases, and thanks to our clients, I'm not only mobile but
binocular in all frequencies as well. I'm confused."
“It's no wonder,” Bubba said, a little sadly.
“No wonder what?"
The human shook his head. “No, you don't get it, and that's part of the problem. What does that moon back there mean to you?"
“Well, it's a satellite in a more or less stable orbit, cratered by meteor strikes over millennia, with a minor gravitational field and, for all intents and purposes, no atmosphere. As moons go, it's not terribly impressive."
Bubba shook his head again. “That's where you're wrong, Mikey. It's another world, a thing that Man has stared at in awe and fear for as long as our necks would bend that way. It's Mystery and Adventure. We've fantasized more about that tiny little ball than any other thing we got.” He switched the view back the way they'd come. “It's not just a moon, Mike, it's the Moon. We've worshiped it, watched it, studied it, mapped it, and landed on it. It was our first real step off of First Base, and we been trying to steal Home ever since."
“Well, yes,” Mike said. “I suppose..."
“That's what I meant by ‘limitations,’ Mike,” Bubba interrupted. “You ‘suppose.’ I know. And I know what makes you so different from me, from any human, close as you come to it sometimes."
“What?"
“Wonder. You don't have it, can't have it. I don't think there's any way you could ever really understand, way down deep, what my footprints in that dust back there can mean, although you clearly knew they meant something.” Mike was silent. “It's an intrinsic limitation, Mike, and unavoidable, I think. You were ... born, hatched, what?"
“We call it ‘Awakening.’ That's as close as I can come in English."
“'Awakened.’ Good word for it. You were ‘awakened’ pretty much as a full-grown adult, right? I mean, when they switched you on, you already had a hell of an education, correct?"
“Yes, that's accurate. The final Awakening isn't done until the intelligence has had a complete basic data installation. I'm beginning to see what you mean."
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