“Don’t wait.” Drew, Sarah, and the bad guy could be halfway to anywhere. “Tell them to track footprints and keep us posted. No lights. And for God’s sake, tell them to be careful. Follow, not engage.”
“Got it. No lights. No contact. You know they’ll never catch up, anyway.”
“I know. I just want to know where everyone’s going. I don’t want to recycle a bunch of dead cops.”
Drew was counting advantages and disadvantages. His advantage was that he’d once been a runner. He knew how to marshal his energy efficiently. Sarah’s was that she knew how to move in lunar gee. Their disadvantage was that that they could barely see where they were going. Much of the time, their image enhancement was good enough, but then a boulder would loom, and they’d have to veer, leap, or brake to avoid it. A waste of energy that their pursuer, following their tracks, could avoid. The bastard could even use lights if he needed. Not to mention that he had some kind of tech that allowed him to run just like he was on Earth. Drew had seen him burst into the corridor, stop, raise the rifle, never touching a plate. Without Sarah’s helmet-pitch Drew would be dead.
Every runner had heard how unarmed hunters once ran prey into the ground, killing them with their bare hands. An antelope might be faster, but the hunter, whether Native American, Kalahari bushman, or sport-hunting ultramarathoner, was more efficient.
As far as Drew could tell, the disadvantages outweighed the ad-s. Sarah had saved him in the tunnel, but had she condemned herself by doing it? Now they were the antelope, running in energy-wasting spurts and lunges.
Think, he commanded himself. Think.
Meanwhile, he did the only thing he could, and ran as fast as visibility allowed. Maybe he and Sarah were fitter. Maybe they could outlast their stalker, even if he had more advantages. Maybe that was how the antelope thought, right up to the moment the hunter’s hands closed on its neck.
* * *
Raz was out of ideas.
Not that he’d had many to begin with. Outside, it was dark as only Darkout could be. Sarah and Drew, or whatever his real name was, would try to hide, but on the Moon, footprints are forever—or as close to it as made no nevermind. If this Jester guy was on their trail—and Raz had no doubt he was—he’d gradually run them down . . . then fade off into the dark. On Earth, they had IR tech to track him, but here, nobody’d ever seen a need for that stuff. As long as he stayed in shadows, the guy might as well be invisible. And odds were that his crawler was even better stealthed.
Drew was also thinking about footprints. The antelope only lost if the hunter knew where it went. He tapped Sarah’s shoulder, pulled her to a stop. Behind, a pale wash of light blinked on, then off. A suit light on ultradim, just enough for easier pursuit. He’d seen it several times before, a little closer each time.
“We can’t beat him this way,” he said. “We’ve got to do something about the footprints.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Find firmer terrain. Or a beaten path. Anything that at least makes him work to follow us.”
The helmet-to-helmet contact stuttered as Sarah looked around—for what little good that did in the dark.
“—Too bad . . . cut off from the PEL, but . . . harder rock and boulders . . . if we can find a break in the rim.”
The light appeared again. He could feel the panic rise. If the antelope bolted and escaped a hundred and one times, but got caught on the hundred and second, it made no difference. The end was the same, either way.
“How far?”
“Two, three klicks.” Her shoulders were already turning.
And then the antelope were off again.
Razo stared at Archie’s walls. Like any bar’s, they were cluttered. Sports vids, not only from Luna C and Earth but also the O’Neils, as if any grounddweller could figure out the sports played in their zero-gee hubs. A pair of carved-wood carousel horses, all the way from Earth. Dozens of soccer shoes. What in the world would Arch want with soccer shoes? Holos of the first PEL: a single tower on a rotating platform. Flat pics of the construction of the Luna II dome. More, showing a row of reflectors on the crater rim, paired with shots of miners under banks of construction lights, building the solar stills, far below.
A rustle of motion brought him back to the present. Caeli. She’d turned up several coffees ago, when Harken had relieved her on the com, and had been helping Archie serve drinks to the revelers on the plaza. At first Razo had been worried, but wherever the action was headed, it clearly wasn’t going to wind up in Archie’s. Still, he should send her away, tell her to get some sleep. Instead he motioned her to sit beside him.
“I’m going to lose them,” he said. “Everything we’ve got is aimed at finding people who want to be found. I never dreamed of anything like this. How could I have been so stupid?”
“Because you’re human?” Her gaze shifted, then returned. “And just because we do things we regret, way back—it doesn’t mean we’ve got to be perfect ever after. No matter how badly we want to atone.”
“Do you have regrets?”
“Who doesn’t? But most weren’t things I could control.” She smiled. “Right now, I only wish we could have had these conversations loons ago. Though then, we wouldn’t be doing it now, and I’m not sure I’d wish that away.”
There was nothing accusing in her gaze—which made it all the harder to hold. Instead, he looked back at Archie’s photo collection. Bright lights and ultimate darkness: the contrast was what produced the drama, especially in the construction photos, with all the workers under the lights. Perhaps it was the contrast that made the Moon itself worthwhile. Forging a home out of the most inhospitable place humanity had yet reached.
Caeli must have read his mind. “The kid’s right, you know. This is a place for starting over. However many times it takes. And quit beating yourself up for not anticipating this. Nobody thinks of everything.”
Then abruptly she was back to business. “So how much air does our bad guy have?”
“I have no idea, but you can bet it’s more than Drew and Sarah.”
XII
They’d had to use lights at the rim. A quick flash, as dim as possible, then move before their pursuer could draw a bead. Another flash and another move.
One of the many things Drew knew that “Drew” might not was that much of the escarpment dropped at nearly a forty-degree angle. Not vertical, but steep enough they couldn’t just descend anywhere. But within 300 meters, they had what they needed. A boulder-choked crack, perhaps an ancient fault, where exposures of solid rock looked like they might not roll underfoot and at least some of the wedged boulders looked free of footprintholding dust. Not that this would fool their follower for long. When there is only one way down, that has to be the way they went. But it was the best chance they were going to get.
No need to speak. Drew took Sarah’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze. Then they started down. Together.
* * *
“They’re heading for the crater,” Raz said. Caeli was still sitting with him, nursing a cola. “Harken’s team says their footprints are making for the rim, looking like they’re moving fast. They probably reached it quite a while ago.”
“Wow,” Caeli said. “It’s steep on that side. Landing, I never have much time to gawk at the scenery, but if the Sun’s on the rim, it’s hard not to notice. I sure wouldn’t want to climb down.”
“I don’t think they have much choice.”
Raz closed his eyes and rubbed his fingertips across them, brightness shooting in a starburst as he did. When he opened them again, everything seemed brighter but fuzzier, with nothing to see but the clutter on Archie’s wall, slowly coming back into focus.
That’s when it hit. Probably impossible, but when all else is impossible, the probably impossible looms as a beacon of hope.
Archie was behind the bar, wanting to help but also wanting to keep out of the way. Raz tapped the rim of his cup, the universal signal for a refill. “Thanks,” he said as the bartender drew
near.
“For what?”
“Giving me room to think.”
Arch shrugged. “Anyone would do that.”
For the first time in hours, Raz felt himself smile.
“And for collecting things.”
Then he was back on the com, feeling the energy mount within him as he watched his friend’s puzzled face. “Get me McHaddon,” he said.
He turned to Caeli. “Can you do a calculation for me?” It was five hours, give or take, until the end of Darkout. The Sun wouldn’t be fully up until a couple of hours after that, but he didn’t need full Sun. Just enough of it—whatever that might be. “Figure out how much air Drew and Sarah have left.”
Then his com came alive again.
“McHaddon, I need you to roust some folks out of bed, parties, or wherever they are.” He rattled off a list of names and titles. “Don’t waste time on the ones you can’t find. Get those you can and turn ’em over to Lum.
“Arch—can you find Lum? He’s got to be around here somewhere. And Caeli, find out who’s into astronomy. I need the biggest-ass portable telescope we can get, ASAP.”
Beau flexed his hand. Back at the PEL, he’d left the outer glove off too long, and his hand had been only beginning to warm again when the woman hit it with that damn helmet. For a bit, he’d thought she’d broken it, but it was just the pain of a hard blow on near-frozen digits.
Maybe he’d kill her first. His clients wouldn’t mind. Even if he was wrong about this being a revenge job, killing the guy’s friend/lover/whatever-she-was would send a warning that his clients weren’t to be messed with.
He flexed the hand again. It had taken hours, but he was sure he could make the shot now, even from a thousand meters. On Earth, anyway. Why the hell hadn’t he thought to reprogram the autoscope? But there was nothing to do about it now. He’d always prided himself on clean kills, but this might be better. He flexed his hand yet again. That had hurt. Damn lucky bitch.
He checked the power on his grab boots. Still thirty percent. He’d been conserving, waiting for his hand to return to normal, using the boots only when he had to, to make up time lost when he had to stop, looking for tracks. Which hadn’t been all that often. Yes, there were fewer footprints here, but no matter how careful you were, you couldn’t move fast without dislodging rocks . . . and those too left marks.
Keep ’em moving. That was the goal. Moving and dislodging rocks. Moving and burning air. They had to be running low, and there were only two places they could go for more. One was the domes of Luna C Central, and the moment they got within a klick of those, there’d be enough light from the windows for his night vision to have them like bugs on a carpet. He could feel his lips pull in a smile. He’d heard their silly song. From now unto then, just leave on the lights. How fitting if their own motto was their undoing.
Drew was running out of gas, both literally and figuratively. Slipping downslope without dislodging any more rock than he could was painstaking, thigh-burning work. It didn’t matter that the gravity was one-sixth what he’d once been used to. Thousands of meters of downgrade were still thousands of meters of downgrade. Brake, brake, brake, brake, brake. Slip, and brake again, hard enough he could feel the energy draining from his legs, even as he knew he was yet again leaving telltale marks. He wondered how Sarah did it. Women were just plain tough. There’d been one on the track team named Becky who ate mile repeats for breakfast. He himself always had to fight off butterflies before anything longer than 800s.
Meanwhile the lights of Luna C beckoned like the warm glow of a camp-fire. But it was a dangerous glow he knew they could never approach, even though his air gauge seemed to drop each time he looked at it. They had to flee, but flee efficiently, until Sarah could lead them to more gas. If they lived long enough to reach it. And then, they had to run, yet again.
Maybe he should just quit. Behind him he could occasionally see light, appearing and disappearing, relentlessly following. The man was a machine, indefatigable. Nothing could stop him, nothing could tire him.
Which was exactly the thinking that had lost him the conference championship his sophomore year in college. The guy chasing him then hadn’t been superhuman. Drew had just thought he was. A year later, he’d come back with more confidence and had the pleasure of watching the other guy puke at the finish. Some people only looked indefatigable. When they broke, they broke totally.
Keep going, he told himself.
Meanwhile, his air gauge crept lower.
First Darkout was ending. Beau watched as light blazed a crescent on the rim: a mere hairline, but enough to change everything. Here in the shadows it was still dark, but soon the backwash would be a hundred times brighter than the light of the stars. Dislodged rocks and footprints would no longer need to be sought out.
The crater floor was still a thousand meters below, but already Beau could see better. It was time to use the grab-boot power he’d been sparing—get in close enough that even the damn autoscope would score a hit in this gravity that wasn’t real gravity.
The prey was down there somewhere. Running out of air. With him following their tracks, they couldn’t simply hole up and hide. And on the move, their standard-white suits would show up a lot better to him than his would to them.
The time had come.
“What do you mean you can’t see him?”
Yelling at McHaddon wasn’t doing anyone any good, but Raz could apologize later. He desperately wished he could be up on the rim with him, looking through the damn telescope himself. But delegating was the cost of being in charge. Which meant he was still in Archie’s, five hours more tired, five coffees more wired. Caeli had never left his side.
The only place Drew and Sarah could be going was the volatiles mines, and they had to get there soon or run out of air. Or get shot. But just because he knew where they were going didn’t mean McHaddon could spot them in the damn scope.
“Too many rocks,” McHaddon said. “Or maybe the scope’s not big enough.” The biggest portable Caeli had been able to find had only been forty centimeters. “The image isn’t exactly bright.”
Raz thought a moment, then shifted from the scrambled channel he and McHaddon had rigged up with the help of one of Raz’s hastily roused techs to the all-police band. Com security was another of those things he’d never had to worry about before. In the main domes, the com was private. But emergency coms and suit radios were meant to be found, not hidden.
“Barker, Kowalski, Gardner,” he called to Harken’s crew. “Turn around, and flash your lights. Just once. Then move, in case this guy wants to take a pot at you.”
“Got ’em,” McHaddon said, a moment later. “They’re definitely heading where we thought they would.”
“Good. The folks we’re looking for should be in the same direction, farther ahead.”
The silence stretched, nearly broke.
“Sorry. Still too dark.”
“Damn.”
Raz checked his watch. Time was running out. How soon, he didn’t know, but his gut told him he couldn’t wait much longer. He flicked on the com.
“Lum, tell your folks we need some light.” He hated to do this because the Geste guy might have lost Sarah and Drew’s trail, and he might just lead him back onto it. But somehow he doubted that. The guy’d had them out-teched all along.
“Still working on it. How much?”
“Not a lot, but over as broad an area as you can handle.” He gave the coordinates. “They’re down there somewhere but McHaddon can’t see them. We need to give him a little help.”
Lum’s voice was clipped, tense. Not for the first time, Raz wished he’d been able to find someone who didn’t have so much at stake. But Lum knew everything above the rim better than anyone else in the domes, even the parts that weren’t technically his domain.
Beau heard the radio chatter, saw the headlamps.
Hours before, the cops trailing him had wised up and shut off their radios, but not before it had become c
lear they did not like descending endless talus and had no experience at it. Now, the distant lights confirmed what he’d suspected, that he, the hare, the girl . . . all were moving twice as fast as the best cop.
When it came time to get away, that too would be easy. The bottom of the crater was a maze of crawler paths and bootprints, and not by coincidence, his boots were identical to a thousand others. Once he hit those trails they’d never find him.
Which, of course, was the hare’s plan, too. But first he and the girl had to get more air. And there were only two places to go . . . one of which was suicide. That left the one they were indeed heading for. Was it also suicide if you were simply outsmarted?
Five minutes later, Beau had them. By now the backwash from the slowly widening crescent on the rim was ten times brighter than before, and while his targets were still grainy blobs even in his top-of-the-line visor, they were clearly there. Closing in on their destination, but too far from it to have any chance of getting there.
He ran/walked/skidded another couple of minutes, as fast as the terrain permitted. That wasn’t all that fast because it was still godawful steep, but it was faster than the prey could go without the boots.
The range was now 600 meters. Close enough. He found a convenient rock, unlimbered his tripod, and set up the rifle.
Briefly, he wished he knew which blob was which. But even through the scope, they were merely blobs. He picked the leader, aimed low in a vague effort to compensate for the ’scope, and squeezed. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
At least one connected.
Whoever he’d hit went down in remarkably slow motion. As long as he lived, he was never going to get used to this place.
He shifted aim to the other, but this one was making it easy. He—she?—ran to the fallen companion. Again, Beau felt the grin. He really hadn’t enjoyed a hunt this much since his early days. Let them stop the leaks. One was now hurt enough to be a burden. The other should run, but wasn’t going to. He switched on his vid recorder. His clients would like this.
He picked up the tripod, not bothering to unbolt the gun, and moved forward again, grab boots on full power. If anything weird happened, he wanted to be able to react fast. But there was nowhere for the prey to hide. If it ran, Beau would shoot. There was all kinds of time to make the kill, and nobody here but the three of them. Beau had long ago checked the work schedule—leaving an active worksite between him and his crawler was not part of his escape plan. Apparently, ramping up and shutting down for each Darkout wasn’t worth the effort: the folks who worked here were gone for a week. Some triumphs were worth savoring. And the cops on the rim were impossibly far behind.
The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 26 (Mammoth Books) Page 31