The Moon Maze Game

by Larry Niven

  “I’m not sure,” Sharmela put as much comfort into her voice as possible. “But we’ll work something out.”

  “There’s always a way,” Wayne said, and pointed across the divide. “Look: Notice that the far edge is lower than this one. I think that’s a clue.”

  “Clues are good,” Angelique said.

  “I think that we need to pay attention to this.”

  Scotty knelt down, compared the levels. “It does raise some possibilities. If we could get a line across…”

  “Look!” Ali screamed. “Over here!”

  The boy was crouched over at the right side, near another collection of alien tools. At a flat area to the side, they found the carcasses of winged beetles, husks curled on their sides, the size of small children. Scotty looked more closely: Their membranous brown “wings” seemed suspiciously well preserved.

  Next to the wings were strewn additional heaps of tools and materials. This misty cave was a workshop of some kind, a place where busy (alien?) hands had constructed a pair of rickety-looking, skeletal man-shaped pallets with foot pedals and space for a prone human rider.

  “Flying machines?” Scotty asked.

  “Similar to Leonardo’s designs. Reasonable that Cavor would have been familiar with them, and tried to replicate them here.”

  Scotty raised an eyebrow. “Here?”

  Ali gave a wan smile. “Not real here. Game ‘here.’ You know.”

  Scotty swatted his head, tickled, and glad to feel a trace of amusement. “And that answers that. We’re supposed to use these to cross the chasm.”

  “Without practice?” Maud whined, incredulous. “This is absurd! How could Xavier expect us to do this?”

  Wayne crouched down and ran his hands over the device, checking the lines and pedals. “I’m going with Maud on this one. This is insane. How the hell are we supposed to figure this out? How much time were we supposed to have?”

  “More than we’ve got, that’s for sure.” Angelique raised her hands. “All right. All right. We have to figure the IFGS signed off on this. You’ve never used one of these?”

  “No,” Wayne said. “I mean, the Da Vinci in Vegas has a tourist setup, virtual simulation of how unpowered human flight might feel.”

  “And you tried it?”

  “Yeah, a couple of times,” Wayne admitted. “But … naw, you’ve gotta be kidding me.”

  “That’s all it might have taken for Xavier to get it past the board. Who else?”

  Sharmela raised a plump brown hand. She looked uncomfortable. “I have glider experience. And have simulated flight hours.” Her expression, momentarily brightened, dimmed once again. “The 2080 World’s Fair in Ceylon had a winged gliding chamber, but I never went.”

  “That answers it then,” Angelique said. “For what it’s worth, I suspect we would have been able to contest this … if it was a game.”

  “Big if. I think we have bigger fish to fry,” Scotty said.

  “I have.” A quiet, embarrassed voice. Ali’s voice.

  “You what?” Angelique asked.

  “I have flown. Ceylon in eighty. Simulators. Wingsuits. It was a hobby for a while.”

  No one said a word until Wayne cleared his throat. “You again? You just happen to have another skill none of the rest of us possess?”

  Ali’s protest was weak. “I and Sharmela.”

  Angelique was having none of it. “Sharmela is a happenstance. You, on the other hand, are a pattern. I heard a line once: ‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time, it’s enemy action.’ I’ve overlooked this before, but you are leaning on my last nerve. What in the hell is going on?”

  He stammered and stuttered. “I…”

  Scotty took the boy’s shoulders. Hard. “Ali. I don’t know what other gamers’ houses or rooms are like, but yours I’ve seen. The walls were covered in images, gear, games … and some of those images popped up in this little adventure. Now why is that?”

  Ali tried to rebut. “We are being pursued! The bad people will be here soon. We do not have time for this!”

  “Yes,” Scotty said. “We have time.” And he meant it, too. When it came to ferreting out the truth, they had all the time in the world.

  “Ali. Your father invested heavily in the Heinlein dome. It looks very much as if the game was modified to make it easier for you. If that’s true, if you were cheating … I don’t know quite how to put it, but if there is anything you can tell me…”

  Tears sparkled in the boy’s eyes. “I should confess to cheating? It would end me!”

  Scotty was incredulous. “End you? End us! This is real, Ali. People are dying. You’re afraid of the IFGS? Screw the IFGS! You’d better be afraid of those killers following us!”

  Angelique looked as if she wanted to murder him. “To hell with them, too. You’d better be afraid of me.”

  “Maybe it’s more than that,” Maud said. “His life was never at risk. They don’t want to kill Ali, they want to ransom him. So to him, this whole thing is still just a game.”

  “That’s not true!” he yelped.

  Scotty shot him a warning glance. Let her finish.

  “To us, it’s life and death. Can you understand that?”

  Ali paused, looking at the faces around him, tried to bluster, and then folded with a sigh. “I … have no direct knowledge. But in the months leading up to the game, my father’s advisers took special notice of my hobbies. I noticed that they examined my drawings most carefully. Asked many questions about things that had previously held no interest to them.”

  Maud seemed to have calmed down a bit, assuming an almost grandmotherly air. “And then what happened, Ali?”

  “Then I arrived here, and when the game began I saw many things that felt … familiar.”

  Angelique slapped his face, hard. “Just ‘familiar’?”

  “All right! All right,” Ali said, collapsing into surrender. His eyes glittered, but more with tears than anger. “These Moon creatures, they’re derived from my artwork. I didn’t know what to do, what to think. I thought you would throw me out of the game.”

  Sharmela shook her head, dark curls jiggling. “And you didn’t think to say anything once our lives were at risk?”

  Moisture glittered at the corner of Ali’s eye. “I’ve had no time to think. And when I did, I did not think it would make a difference.”

  They looked at him, skeptically.

  “It is the truth!” Ali said. “I did not know, was not certain. You … you all came back for me. I trust you.”

  “But can we trust you? How was it done?” Angelique asked. “Are we supposed to believe that Xavier was bribed? Because frankly, I don’t.”

  “Tricked,” said Wayne. “Never mind, it’s not important.” He grinned. “Except to Xavier. He’s not going to like this at all. Somehow, Ali’s father gamed the Game Master. What did he think, Ali? Let you win the biggest game in history, you’d get bored and decide to grow up?”

  Learn to run a kingdom, Scotty thought. But Ali was in torment. “Darla?” Scotty asked. “What do you know about these things? About flying.”

  “A scosh. Read some of the specs.” She closed her eyes, as if reading the inside of her lids. “I know that the most important thing in any flight is control. What is it…? Pitch, roll and yaw axis? You have to have all three in hand from the time you launch until you land.”

  “Stability augmentation system,” Scotty said from memory, and she nodded enthusiastic agreement. “The thing has to be statically and dynamically stable around all three axes.”

  “So…,” Wayne said, seeming to grow fascinated despite himself. “We don’t have a lot of thrust, but we do have an elevated surface.”

  “Look,” Darla said. “We got to figure that they did all the calculations, and we have a pretty serious margin of error for sustained flight. In this place, muscles will produce power at greater than what they call ‘minimum sink rate.’”

  “I like the sound of
that,” Scotty said. “That lava might even give us a thermal!”

  “Hell yes!” Angelique grinned, then sobered. “Wait a minute. That’s not real lava.” A pause. “At least, I don’t think it is.”

  “Damn. I forgot,” Scotty said. “Nix on the thermal.”

  “What about a safe landing?” Wayne asked.

  Darla closed her eyes and concentrated. “We need a controlled energy loss. If there’s a short runway you might use some kind of netting for absorption—”

  “Like an aircraft carrier?” Scotty asked.

  “Exactly like that. If you were going for some kind of sustained flight you’d want some redundancy built into the system, but this was supposed to be short and sweet.” She ran her hands over the wiring, inspected the pulleys. At any distance it all looked jerry-rigged, but up close this was clearly the work of talented, sober artisans.

  “It looks rickety for the camera, but trust me: This is first-class equipment. We can do this.”

  Scotty tried to visualize it. A flying machine with beetle wings … the pilot would lie on a surface of leather over “wood,” with his feet stretched behind him on pedals …

  Yes, it could work. It damned well better. And there were two of the wooden cradles. Xavier expected the first flyer to crash.

  “How are we going to do this?” Scotty asked.

  Angelique squatted, drawing in the dust with her fingertip. “We have to assume that Xavier knew that Ali and Sharmela had flown before, and that that was how the IFGS approved this.” On hands and knees, she looked down over the edge of the chasm into the flaming horror. “That smoke smells scary real.”

  “Too bad the effects are off here. I’d like to know what that bloody munchkin had in mind.”

  “Long way down,” Scotty said.

  “Probably not as deep as it looks,” Angelique said. “A few of the holos are still working.”

  “What exactly do you think we’re really dealing with?”

  “Safety nets, masked with effects. No safety lines, I think … Foam stalactites on the ceilings … there may have been some kind of maglev device to take the sting off a fall.”

  Wayne nodded. “Remember that we’re on the Moon. Falling just doesn’t have as much energy, so safety isn’t as stringent, I’d bet. I have no idea what Xavier must have said to Cowles, but I think he got his way. As usual.”

  “All right, Scotty,” Angelique said. “What do you think?”

  “That we have to go for it,” he said. “Mickey, you and I will keep an eye on the door?”

  “What about me?” Darla asked. “I’m not just a pretty face.”

  “Stay here. An engineer’s mind will come in useful.”

  “Do what I can.”

  Mickey clasped her shoulder. “Keep an eye on Maud, will you? She seems a little shaky.” Then to Scotty: “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Ali and Sharmela were crawling over the flying machines, inspecting them inch by inch.

  “So…,” Wayne said. “What do we have here?”

  “Look,” Darla said. “We’ve had limited human flight at Heinlein, and some of the larger domes.” She glanced at Scotty. “I think your lady Ms. Griffin was big into it. Mostly, though, it’s just a little playtime in half-furnished domes. You know, before the liquid wall bubbles go in. The locals would gin up some hang-glider wings, and go at it. There’ve been a few flappers, but again, we just haven’t had open areas large enough to really take advantage.”

  “Talked about it, though,” Scotty remembered.

  “Absolutely,” Darla said. “I’m guessin’ they were planning to follow up this game with some kind of tourist flight package.”

  “Should I feel comforted?” Ali asked.

  Wayne donned an expression that he probably hoped would be comforting, but was actually a little creepy. “They wouldn’t want a disaster first time out.”

  Sharmela ran her fingertips over the flying rig, judging. “So the foot pedals operate the wings,” she said. “The arms guide them. The material looks pretty flimsy.”

  “Yeah,” Darla said. “But try to tear it. Look a little closer. That’s Falling Angels, the zero-gee facility. Nanothreaded graphene. Pure carbon. Spider silk is maybe twice as strong as steel. This stuff is about a hundred times stronger than that.”

  Angelique was examining the cave. Anything, anything in the environment might be usable. The walls were festooned with vines.

  Ali stood up, walked along their side of the divide, judging. “Look at this. We have a long flat runway, and a glide path right across. Practice room.”

  Wayne brightened. “Well, God bless the IFGS. Let’s get this in position.”

  “I don’t know about this,” Maud said. “Even if they work, I can’t do this.”

  “Can’t what?” Wayne asked.

  “I can’t fly one of these.”

  He shrugged. “There are only two. They couldn’t possibly expect us all to fly across.”

  “You’re right,” Angelique said.

  “Here we are,” Ali said, pulling “vines” down from the walls. “We have line.” Rope, damned fine rope, and plenty of it.

  They fussed over the rope while Sharmela stretched like a tabby cat.

  Angelique nodded approval. Flexibility was going to be important. “Three of us have had some experience with winged flight. Two were purely virtual. Factor in fear of heights, perhaps, and it’s really only reasonable for one of us to fly across this chasm.”

  “Then … why are there two sets?” Sharmela asked, looking up from an impressive downward dog. Fit/Fat for sure. She was bulky, but as flexible as a seal.

  “Back up,” Angelique said. “I’m not sure. But the others were supposed to create some kind of rope bridge.”

  “That could be done,” Wayne said. “So … attach the rope to the end of a set of wings. Maybe the flyer’s ankles. Someone flies across, anchors it to the far side, and then we’re in business.”

  Maud shrank back. “I can’t do that. I can’t.”

  “Let’s just wait,” Wayne replied, “until we have things set up before we decide what we can or can’t do, okay?”

  * * *

  The next five minutes were practice time. With two gamers providing each flyer initial momentum, Ali and Sharmela took their wings up and down the slope, as the rest watched the flapping and gliding. Sharmela had wonderful coordination, her foot pedaling and arms working perfectly in unison. But what they had to admit was that Ali, cheater or not, was simply better at this. His prior experience might well save their lives.

  “All right,” Angelique said. “Ali? We’re going to give you the chance. Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” Ali replied.

  “First time I’ve ever been happy to have a cheat on board. Anything else to tell us?”

  “I have no idea what else my father’s advisers had in mind,” Ali said stiffly.

  “Not the answer I was hoping for,” Scotty said. “Too bad.”

  “Horses.”

  “You ride a horse?”

  “I have won awards,” Ali sniffed. “There should be horses in the game. We’ll find them.”

  “Oh, we may have gone around them already.” Scotty shrugged. “Let’s do this.”

  “You’ll need to fasten a line on the far end,” Angelique said. “Show me your best knot.”

  Ali took a vine and looped it around and tightened it. A decent hitch knot. Angelique examined it, and handed it back. “Try this,” she said, demonstrating. “Right over left, left over right, makes a reef knot both tidy and tight.”

  He obeyed.

  “Again,” she said.

  Again he did as requested, and this time they passed the result around for comment. “Looks good,” Wayne admitted.

  “We need to glide this until he gets his momentum,” Angelique said. “You and me, Sharmela.”

  The Sri Lankhan stepped up instantly. She gave Angelique an appreciative once-over. “Your legs are longer than min
e. We will have to match paces.”

  As they practiced, Mickey jogged over, looking a bit weary. “I’ve piled about a half ton of junk against that door,” he said. “If that doesn’t work, I don’t know what to do. Barricaded and barred … they’ll need to blow it open.”

  “And probably have the explosives to do just that,” Wayne said. “Get back over there and keep us posted.”

  Mickey glared at Wayne, but jogged back, bouncing as he went.

  “What’s happening here?” Scotty said.

  Even under the circumstances, Wayne’s smile was blissful. “Man’s oldest dream.”

  Ali lay down in the frame again, and Scotty tied a vine rope to his left ankle. Ali worked the pedals and then his hand controls a few times. Squeak, squeak … When he wiggled, they did as well.

  “Well,” Scotty said, kneeling down beside him. “Some game, huh?”

  Ali tried to smile. “I’m afraid you did not know what you were signing up for.”

  “I never do. Did any of us?” Scotty squeezed his shoulder. “You want to be a hero, kid? This is your chance. Probably the best you’ll ever have.”

  Ali nodded. At that moment, the boy looked so young and vulnerable Scotty’s heart ached.

  “This is your moment, then. Take it.” They shook hands. “See you on the other side,” Scotty said.

  The women hoisted the contraption onto their shoulders, and braced. Angelique counted to three, and they sprinted down the slope, Sharmela’s short legs taking three steps to every two of Angelique’s, carrying Ali high … and then the winged craft was aloft.

  * * *

  Kendra spoke without turning from the screen. “Horses?”

  “Horses. They’re in there, too,” Xavier said, and silently dared her to speak.

  She didn’t.

  “Terrance Ivanovich Ladd,” Xavier said. “Every book a bestseller.”

  “Sorry, I was watching the gamers,” Kendra said. “Ali is about to fly. What about Ladd? I read his books, of course.”