“Oh yeah,” the kid said. “Preciate it, Yo!”
He set the tray back on the countertop as he reached down to tap the button on his grey sneakers.
“Have you decided on anything yet, sir?” Javier asked the Captain.
“Yes, I believe so. I’ll have the Grandy White Chocolate Mocha.”
Javier blinked, said nothing for a moment, and then looked back at him.
“Yes sir. Coming right up.”
He traveled back to the lab with all the nice and shiny equipment. Grinders, steamers, frothers, mixers, and twisters. Everything a true connoisseur would want for his coffee.
Crass eased up behind Captain Don and whispered “Gron-day. They pronounce it gron-day. It’s Italian I think.”
“Explains that funny look duttonit?”
“I reckon it does,” Crass said, giving it extra southern drizzle on top of the words.
He looked around the empty floor of the café, searching for his crew of misfits. Where were they at? The shaggy haired kid had already left, walking slower than before.
The little nook in the corner was the place. It had become the official hangout for the extent of their lunar vacation. Mickey and Skye occupied the loveseat on the left, and Eva was reclined back on the couch, watching the TV on the wall and eating a cheese Danish in between sips of a large cup of java.
Playing on the screen was an old movie Crass knew well—Apollo 13. One of the astronauts (played by Kevin Bacon) was docking with the command module miles above the Earth. Crass thanked God for the computers and technology making way in the advent of the 21st century.
Preservation of life was the upmost priority on the totem pole.
“Enjoy your coffee,” Crass said, turning to bounce off to the group. “I’ve gotta find out what we’re going to do today.”
The Captain sipped his coffee. “Want a suggestion? It’s only right, this coffee is righteous.”
“Sure. You know this place better than I do.”
“Take a rover tour and go see the astronaut’s craters just north of here. I think Harry is taking his out there today. He knows a lot about rocks. He’s one of those…Hell, I can’t remember what you call them.”
“A geologist?” Crass shook his head in disbelief.
“That’s the one,” Captain Don said, snapping his fingers. “Nice guy, too. We served in the war together, the one about Freedom.”
Oh. Crass thought. You mean Operation Black Hole?
“I’ll check it out. Are the prices reasonable?”
“Yeah, I think so. Probably cost around $5,000 a ticket I’d guess.”
“Are they insured?” Crass asked.
“Insurance?” the Cap said proudly. “What good is that going to do you if a meteorite strikes your helmet and shatters your precious life support system?”
“Earth to Crass,” he said. “You’re on a foreign planet and no gives a hoot about what happens to us up here. And ALL of the insurance company executives are laid up on Seven Mile Beach in the Cayman Islands, fattening up on fresh scallops and lobsters while drinking beer by the bucketfuls.”
“They made their fortunes years ago,” he added, and took another swallow of the frothy beverage. “Anyways. Go see Jenny at the front desk. She’ll get you fixed up to go.”
Was there something he needed to ask? It seemed like it, but the thought slipped away.
“Ok, I will. What time is our departure tomorrow?” Crass asked, remembering his question at the last minute.
“Ten a.m. UTC. That’s Coordinated Universal Time.”
“Ok. Thanks Cap’n. We’ll see you tomorrow then.”
He watched Captain Don walk to the front doors. They flew open with a hiss of escaping air and he was gone out of sight, still drinking the coffee in his right hand.
Crass walked over to the group, looking out over the black skies and piercing bright Sunlight beyond the glass window panes. Magnificent desolation, he thought. That’s what Buzz Aldrin had said when he saw the rolling grey landscape of the Moon’s surface on a July day in 1969.
He walked over, stopping between Mickey and Skye on the loveseat and Eva on the couch to his right.
“Let’s go take a rover tour. Captain Don recommended it,” he said, as if this made everything all right and perfect.
“I’m down for it,” Mickey said. “But I’m broke and I owe Eva close to half a mil. The house in San Marino will cover it and more probably. I just don’t have the cash in my account to cover it.”
“Pay me for it when we get back.”
A simple enough solution and we could all have fun exploring around the Sea of Tranquility, the quietest place in the Solar System, aptly named so in honor of its crystalline effect.
“Ok. When are we going?” Mickey asked. “The girl at the Welcome Desk said the tours would be starting shortly, close to ten o’clock I think it was.”
He scratched at the stubble on his face; fingernails scraped across the coarse hairs.
“We should go now,” Crass said, turning around and bouncing off across the café. “First one there rides shotgun!” he yelled across the floor. The glass echoed the words back at him.
Eva hit the (-) button on her shoes, and brought it down just a snort. She drank her coffee and quickly scampered over the white floor, making long strides to catch up with Crass. She felt almost weightless here, and it was divine. Simply divine.
Mickey and Skye weren’t far behind. They held hands and moved slower than Crass hoped for, but they looked so much in love by the time they made it to the Welcome Desk that he hardly cared.
Smiles, like the lunar regolith, were abundant everywhere.
And he was happy for it.
5
“Jenny?” Crass asked the pretty redhead behind the mountainous desk created to look like a porous boulder from the Moon’s surface. “We need to get four tickets for Captain Harry’s rover tour.”
The girl made a few quick types and movements around the glass screen of the wireless computer.
“Ok. Do you remember where you unsuited at when you arrived here?” she asked, her eyes as big as an owl’s.
Crass thought about it. He wasn’t sure.
“I remember where it’s at.” Eva glanced up and grinned at Crass. A sideways glance with a touch of kindness in it.
“Alright, good,” Jenny said. “Be there in fifteen minutes. LunaDome personnel will be there to get you in your suits and on your way to see the lunar surface.”
“That’s it?” Crass asked.
“Yes sir. They’ve already got your names in the database. Here is your receipt,” she said. She handed him a slip of paper, and pointed to the dotted line near the bottom. “Sign here for me please.”
Crass put his John Hancock on the perforation. The girl laminated the receipt and handed it back to him.
“Here you go. Thanks again, Mr. Duvall.”
And they were off to the fitting room, led by Eva’s graceful accompaniment.
6
She made it down the curved hall, and found a door with a plaque beside it. ROVER BAY WAITING ROOM it read in bubbly white letters as fat as jumbo marshmallows.
The door slid into the wall and they walked into a room full of space suits and tall lockers, plus a group of six employees, all wearing matching apparel, courtesy of the LunaDome. The space suits were sitting upright on a raised platform. They brought us over and helped buckle up the back part of the suit once we had wiggled inside the new artificial atmosphere created by the Life Support System made into the back. Once the balance shoes came off, we were able to grab the sides easily and hop right in the middle with our warm bodies.
Thanks one-sixth gravity. Thanks Moon.
A lady with black curly hair came walking through the door, and looked us all over with motherly eyes. It was the same lady who’d brought us in when we arrived the day before on the Peregrine I. Crass saw her nametag—LeAnn, People Person.
“Where is the tour taking all of you th
is morning?” she asked. “Tycho. Copernicus or Grimaldi perhaps? Shackleton?”
An employee with the softest voice he’d ever heard said, “This is the local tour, Ms. LeAnn. All of the other rover tours left out fifteen minutes ago. It was only one with a group of wild-eyed teenagers heading towards Tycho. It should be back after midnight most likely.”
All those damn espressos. Those damn kids were probably going to have to urinate like every fifteen minutes when the caffeine elixir hit them right.
“If you ask me, the local craters are the best of all the tours,” LeAnn said, smiling now. “Ya’ll go have some fun. Harry always takes good care of the resort’s occupants.”
She waved at us, and smiled largely, leaving back out through the mouth of the open wall door. Curls of serpentine black hair fell down the arch of her back in fine layers.
We were escorted down a narrow hallway with bright lighting overhead and scientists at work in tiny offices along the wide corridor. The suits were agile and easy to bend in the important areas. Plus, a huge advantage was they were going to keep us all alive once we exited through the airlock and out into the Rover Bay next to the landing tarmac.
“It’s exciting isn’t it?” Eva asked
Her voice came through the interior headset now, voice activated.
“Hell yeah.” Mickey said.
“You think he’ll let us drive it?” Crass asked.
“I wouldn’t get my hopes up.” Mickey walked past the open door of the airlock, and stepped over through the hatch door.
Then Skye was behind him in slow and steady paces. Eva next, and Crass at the caboose. The airlock sealed on the LunaDome side as they walked closer to the outermost metal hatch door.
One pace, two paces, three paces, and then four.
A square blue button shined on the right wall. Mickey pressed it and the landing pad came into view. It was empty, but rolling over the hills was a white rover on large all-terrain tires heading for Tycho crater, which is easily spotted by any Earth dweller.
What you do is go outside and find the light of the Moon, preferably a full one on a clear night. Find the largest dark blue area, Oceanus Procellarum (the Ocean of Storms), and chase it down to the southwest. What you’re looking for is the starfish item with the high albedo. Rays jet out from its base in brilliant spikes like an ejected flare shot from a moving ship.
Crass thought of it as a starburst artifact, of the lunar variety.
The lights of the Rover Bay spilled out and over into the endless plains of grey regolith. They took a left on the walkway leading over to it. Mickey led the pack in long strides like a hurdle jumper.
When he made it to the large mouth of the garage bay, he stopped and stared. Crass couldn’t see his face, but he was definitely intrigued by something, admiring it perhaps. Skye slowed up behind Mickey until he eased forward and over to the flat black Reg Rover with shining titanium everywhere—airbag suspension, and more dual-wheel axles than he could count, or care to right now. The lights of the garage bounced off the tinted glass just as the headlights flashed on the front.
Someone was smiling in large glasses behind the controls.
7
The group walked over to the back of the rover, and saw one space suit attached to the back compartment section of the midnight vehicle. Next to it on the right side, sitting in hollow cutout inserts, were the docking stations for the Life Support Systems, and also how they entered the rover without spreading statically charged regolith all around the breathable cabin space.
The girls went first, and the lunar tour’s chauffeur helped them aboard, and then stepped over to give Mickey and Crass a helping hand with coming out of the suit. It was like peeling out of a very protective sock.
“Harrison Spade,” he said heartily, sticking his hand out in the open. “But call me Harry, please.”
“Crass Duvall, sir.” He shook the man’s hand. His eyes were sharp, the color of sapphires “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Mickey Schwest,” Mickey said, giving the tour guide’s hand a jovial shaking with his caveman hand.
Light classical musical played through the speakers of the spacious cabin. The dashboard was alive with bright lights and electroluminescent gauges, and in the middle, a satellite map showed our route to the belt of craters not too far from here (50 km at the farthest).
Crass noticed zigzagging lines of tire tracks in the soft layer of regolith. They were everywhere, spreading over the surface in indecisive paths of origin.
Free-roaming, he thought. They were just free-roaming here.
He imagined their newest guide, Harry, goosing it and meandering off the path in an abrupt and delirious manner, laughing as he did it. Crass chuckled on the inside, smiled, and found the comfortable seat next to Eva. Stylistic stitching embossed it.
Harrison Spade walked over to the Captain’s chair and wiggled behind the controls. He used his hands to navigate the screen with a cursor below the instrument panel.
“We’ll take her out to the Armstrong crater first. It’s about fifty kilometers northeast of here. Then over to Collins and Aldrin over to the west. We may even see Sabine crater too, and possibly a crashed Surveyor somewhere close out there.”
Mickey had already taken his seat. Crass buckled up, and so did the others, and the Captain. The engines hummed quietly with invisible life forms; they pulsed through the cabin and under the rigid chassis of the rover. Captain Harry put the wheels in motion as they rolled out onto the smooth hills of lunar territory.
He swung the wheel to the left coming out of the garage. We were cruising slowly now, but when the tires sank into the soft pivots of the regolith floor, he stomped the gas and cut a wide doughnut. The rover fishtailed in the sand as the ass end hooked to the right sharply.
Finally, the wheels caught and straightened the vehicle out. We were looking out towards the northwest brim of Mare Tranquillitatis.
Harry smiled, his eyes radiant and alive. “HAHAHAHA!! Whew-O-We! The Moon gets me so excited guys. My bad. I’ll try and contain myself better.”
He threw a look back over his shoulder. Crass and Mickey almost chimed together at the same time.
“Do it again! Again!” they cried.
Harry laughed with gargantuan delight. His face was stretched in a smile nearly the entire trip.
“Maybe later,” he said, accelerating the vehicle and tapping a button for the cruise control.
“Now, who wants to learn how the Moon formed?” he asked with bright eyes that almost stretched to the dome of the rover.
We all gasped. Harrison Spade was the best tour guide ever, hands down. And for the next three hours, we were all his and he was all ours. He was a giant thundercloud with soft, pelting torrents of information. He was lovely, and he was the best.
Hands down.
XIII: Fly, on the Moon
1
After the tour was over and the rover parked for the evening, the group hustled back to the airlock, past the inner door, and eased out of the space gear, returning to their normal attire. They dispersed and went back to their rooms, individually. Crass walked towards the A-Block, Mickey to B, and Eva and Skye were headed over to C.
Crass made it to his room as the door closed behind him. It slid into the wall with motion sensors when he walked past.
Thank you, technology.
He thought this while walking over to the little writing desk (why is a raven?) over in the corner. Something was trying to rise to the surface. He sat down and listened to the still, small voice. It was as clear as glacier water, rolling flawlessly over polished stone. The Moon was a quiet place, for the most part anyways.
Why is a raven like a writing desk?
A nonsensical rhyme from the brilliant mind of Lewis Carroll. Alice had toiled over it, and rightly so, it seemed. It was a strange rhyme.
There weren’t any birds here flying carelessly through the air. No little messengers or couriers to carry forth the seeds, to rain dow
n fertilizer on the barren wastelands, and give it life. What Harry had told them on the rover tour had opened up his eyes to see the Moon for what it really was—a ghost planet, if you please.
Harry said to picture the Moon as kind of a rocky bowling ball that some billions of years ago was floating through Space. From there, it had rolled on down the Milky Way alley, and towards the home of a beautiful cluster of ten blue and green tipped pins.
And the sporty Creator above? Well, he knocked down a perfect strike, giving the Earth a lively explosion. What remained of the volcanic ball afterwards shad lowly moved towards the front of the return box, close to the pins again, but still a good, safe distance away.
There to remind us. There to inspire us, and there to light our paths on those dark nights when no one seems to care, or feels like bothering with intelligent and evocative conversation.
Did you see my last Facesnap post? It got 397 likes!
No, he almost certainly did not see it. And the fact it had almost four hundred blockheads giving it a thumbs up didn’t help.
What was this? A psychological fuckery because he didn’t care to give a damn about something as inane and meddlesome as writing out a grocery list for the week, or snapping a picture of the family pet rolling around on the floor.
Awww, isn’t he cute?
Hey you! Words aren’t brilliant until they’re moved by a verisimilitude that can shake the very foundation under your cold feet. It puts you there, solidly. Buckle the fuck in, Bucko! This ain’t no goddam kiddy adventure.
Crass sighed, and let out a chuckle. He picked up the pen off the writing desk. It was full of lead so it wouldn’t float in the air, heavy but not overbearing. He flipped past Eva’s scribbled page and found a clean white sheet of hotel stationery. The pen came down, and he started marking the page with words of poetry, at least he could try the form out.
Heck, he thought. We could all do that much, couldn’t we?
He thought so. He scribbled some more and it wasn’t long before he was lost waist deep in the vicious jungles of the Prose Forest. The beauty was scary, overwhelming. It brought him great joy. And loony adventures into unknown territory.
LunaDome: A Novel Page 16