by Allen Steele
Again, I wondered why Logan had decided to join Rangers at the same time I did. A few hours after I was shown Jan's message, it appeared on Apollo's newsnet. As Mr. Porter promised, it had been edited to leave out the personal stuff at the beginning. Nonetheless, it was strange to see my sister appear within the Laglers' holo tank, life-size and looking as if she'd been teleported to their living room. Logan was one of the many people who heard what Jan had to say...and the very next day, when I went down to Lunar Search and Rescue to formally volunteer, I was stunned to find him sitting in Mr. Garcia's office.
Logan told me later that he'd decided to join the Rangers after he'd heard Jan's message, and I didn't doubt that this was true. His reasons were the same as my own: if the fight was coming our way, neither of us wanted to be left out.
This was something Melissa didn't understand. That's not why Dad sent us here! she'd yelled at me when I told her of my intent to join the Rangers. We're supposed to stay out of trouble, not get into it! At least Logan didn't have to deal with a bratty big sister; I told mine that I was doing what I thought was right, and if she didn't like it she could jump out an airlock. Still, it was nice to know that she actually cared about what might happen to her little brother. Melissa wasn't MeeMee all the time, even if she sometimes came off that way.
Mr. and Ms. Lagler were a little reluctant--Ms. Lagler didn't like having me put myself in harm's way, and Mr. Lagler reminded me that I would still be responsible for my schoolwork--but they knew why I wanted to do this and gave their consent.
So did Dr. Ernsting when Logan came to him...but why hadn't he talked to me, too? That stung a bit. In the old days, we used to discuss important stuff like this. Logan was my best friend, but lately I'd begun to wonder if he still felt the same way about me. He'd been spending more time with Nicole than with me, and I eventually found out that, when the notion to join the Rangers first occurred to him, he'd called Nicole instead.
I tried to push all that from my mind. This was the fourth time I was going for a moonwalk, but only my first as Ranger trainee. Once Logan and I signed up for Lunar Search and Rescue, Mr. Garcia made sure that he and I were fast-tracked through Basic so that we could get our EVA certification as soon as possible. I'd never again touch a broom; from now on, my sole Colony Service obligation would be to be making it through Ranger training.
So now I was a Ranger Third Class, Provisional. The "provisional" meant that I could be washed out of Lunar Search and Rescue at any time. That was why Logan and I were called "provos." So far, I hadn't been thrown anything that I couldn't handle, but my first two weeks of training had mainly consisted of classroom work and demonstrations. Intense, yes, but nothing that could break me. Today was different. If I couldn't demonstrate that I knew how to handle a moonsuit, I might as well start hunting dust-bunnies again.
The checklist was easy. There were only a couple of minor glitches, and Arthur fixed both of them almost as soon as it--or rather, he--highlighted them on the heads-up display. I was ready to go at the same time as everyone else was. The suit techs gave each other the thumbs-up, and then Mr. Garcia came back on the comlink again.
"Okay, com check," he said. "Barlowe."
"Here," I said.
"Doyle."
"Here," Nicole said.
"Marguiles."
"Here," Logan said.
"Thomas."
"Here," Greg said.
"Very good. We're ready to go."
Mr. Garcia stepped forward from the rack, which had held his suit upright while he put it on, and gestured to the technician standing near the airlock's inner hatch. The tech pulled open the heavy door and the five of us trooped into a windowless compartment with a low ceiling and a tiger-striped hatch on the other side. The suit was easier to walk around in than I expected, but it still felt like I was wearing five layers of winter clothes.
The inner hatch slammed shut behind us, and then we stood in a circle and watched as an LED lamp in the ceiling went from green to orange to red, signaling that the air was being pumped out of the compartment. Our helmets hadn't polarized, so I could see everyone's faces. Logan was taking this very seriously--I'd seen that determined look before, when we were getting set for a 50-meter relay race with another swim team--but Nicole was all grins. When she glanced in my direction, I forced myself to smile back at her. Apparently I didn't convince her that I was confident enough to do this, because she shook her head within her helmet.
"Don't worry, Jamey," she said. "This will be easy. Just like paragliding."
I restrained a groan. My paragliding experience was something I would have preferred to forget. "Sure, okay..."
"Just don't run into me this time," Logan added, glaring at me in a meaningful way. Nicole laughed, but he wasn't kidding and I knew it. He still hadn't forgiven me for our near-collision a couple of weeks earlier. I'd tried apologizing, but he had accepted it with only a cold and distant nod.
What was wrong with him? I didn't know. And he wasn't letting me find out.
"I'm detecting a slight increase in heartbeat and respiration," Arthur said. "You need to calm down, Jamey."
I hoped the others hadn't heard this. When no one reacted, I realized that my suit's voice was for my ears alone. "Thanks, Arthur," I said, and took a few slow, deep breaths. "Better now?"
"You're doing fine. No reason to be nervous. I'll always be here to help you."
I knew Arthur was only a comp masquerading as a human being. Nevertheless, I found that reassuring.
The outer doors opened silently, revealing a long ramp leading up toward the surface. With Mr. Garcia in the lead, we slowly trudged up it, obeying the sign on the wall that read DO NOT JUMP. We came out of the crater's subsurface levels to find ourselves on Apollo's east side. On the right were vehicle ramps leading to the underground garage. Directly ahead, just past the reflector ring, was Collins Avenue, the landing fields visible a couple of miles away. I turned around to look behind me and saw the crater wall looming above us, its windows gleaming like rows of Christmas lights.
It was midnight in Ptolemaeus, which meant that the Moon presently lay between Earth and the Sun. However, although the Moon couldn't be seen from Earth, the same wasn't true for Earth as seen from the Moon. It was almost directly above us in the black sky, a white-flecked blue and green sphere that cast a wan glow across the dark grey basin and turned the distant mountains into lumps of melted lead. There wasn't enough earthlight to illuminate Apollo, so floodlights scattered around the crater's periphery had been switched on. Nonetheless, there were more shadows than light, and those shadows were dark enough to swallow us whole if we stepped into them.
Mr. Garcia led us past the reflector ring and across Collins Avenue until we came to a vacant patch of land between the north landing field and the solar farm. He stopped and turned to us.
"Okay, Rangers...go play."
For a moment, no one said anything. Then Logan spoke up. "Pardon me, sir?"
"I mean it. For the next twenty minutes or so, have fun. Hop around, play tag, build a sand castle, whatever you want to do. Especially you provos."
I was confused, too. We'd been told that this was going to be a training exercise. Instead, the Chief Ranger was treating us as if we were children being let out for recess. "Do we get grape juice and a nap when we're done?" I asked.
Mr. Garcia laughed. "Sure, if you want. But right now, I want you and Logan to get used to wearing your suits, particularly in low-light conditions. If you're going to hurt yourselves doing something stupid, it might as well be here and now, when we can quickly pull you inside. So go have fun, and when we're done here, we'll separate into teams for the next exercise."
That made sense, so Greg and I went off in one direction while Logan and Nicole went in another. We switched on our helmet lamps once we were far enough away from the crater that the nearest floodlight couldn't reach us, then Greg showed me a different way of walking when you're wearing a moonsuit and you're in a hurry. Bounci
ng from one foot to another is the most familiar gait, of course, but I soon learned that the bunny hop, as childish as it looks, let me cover a lot of ground pretty quickly; one good broad-jump could carry me as far as ten feet. But bunny hops could also throw me off-balance if I wasn't careful. I went sprawling face-first into the regolith when I got a little carried away with myself, and the bruises I earned were enough to teach me to watch my step.
Greg was a good moonwalk-buddy. Eighteen years old, he'd been living on the Moon for the past four years. He belonged to a clan, the Starhawks, an extended family of three intermarried couples and their kids; in effect, Greg had three fathers, three mothers, and five brothers and sisters, only one of whom was related to him by blood. Clans had come into existence shortly after Apollo was completed; while he showed me how to get back on my feet after taking a spill, Greg explained that group marriages made it easier for three families to raise children together, not to mention reduce the high divorce rate that had come from the feelings of loneliness and isolation that the early colonists had faced. There weren't many clans, though, and those like the Starhawks frequently had to deal with accusations of immorality, usually from earthside fundamentalist churches and politicians like Lina Shapar, who'd claimed that they were nothing more than an excuse for polygamy.
This was all very interesting, but as I listened to him and perfected my bunny hops, I kept looking around to see what Logan and Nicole were doing. I couldn't hear their voices, which indicated that they'd switched to a private channel, and at first I couldn't see them at all. Then, from the deep shadows about twenty yards away, I glimpsed intermittent flashes of their headlights, briefly revealing each other for a moment before they vanished again.
It took me a minute to figure out what they were doing. They were playing hide-and-seek, going dark while trying to find one another in the shadows. Logan and Nicole were having a great time together...and I wasn't invited.
I couldn't help but feel jealous, and was trying to cope with this when Mr. Garcia's voice suddenly cut in. "Sorry to interrupt, but something has just come up."
"What's happening, Chief?" Greg asked.
"We've got a medical emergency. Regolith Field Beta, out in Mare Nubium on the other side of Ptolemaeus. Harvester accident, man down."
Nicole's voice came online; she'd switched back to the main channel. "Do you want us to return to the airlock?"
"Negative. I'd like all four of you to come along. You and Greg are on duty, and Jamey and Logan might as well get a taste of what we do. So drop everything and head for the north landing field. We have a Pegasus waiting for us."
Logan and Nicole switched on their helmet lamps again, then they joined Mr. Garcia, Greg, and me as we bounded toward the nearby field. It was a good thing I'd practiced bunny hops, because everyone else was doing it; we reached the landing field in just a few minutes, where a Pegasus was already warming up its engines. Technically known as a Long Range Lunar Transport, the Pegasus was aptly named; it was a flying workhorse with a crew compartment up front, an engine cluster in the rear, and a strongback in between that could carry specialized service modules.
When we got to the field, the ground crew had just finished attaching an ambulance, a pressurized module with a red cross painted on its sides, to the strongback. Greg, Nicole, and Logan climbed into the ambulance, but there wasn't enough room for all of us, so Mr. Garcia led me up the ladder into the transport's cramped flight compartment. There were only seats for the pilot and copilot, though, so the chief and I had to stand in the rear and hold onto safety straps slung from the low ceiling.
The pilot watched us come aboard. I didn't recognize him at first, but as I grabbed hold a strap, I heard a familiar voice: "Well, I'll be damned if it isn't Jamey Barlowe."
"Gordie! What are you doing here?" I hadn't seen him in weeks. In fact, I'd been so busy that I had almost forgotten about him entirely.
"My new job, kid...flying this bucket." He grinned at me through his helmet faceplate. "Better question is, what are you doing here? Don't tell me you've joined the Rangers!"
"Yeah, I have. So has Logan...he's in the back."
"Really? Well, isn't that a kick in the..."
"I know the two of you are friends," Mr. Garcia interrupted, "but we have an emergency call and really need to get going."
"Right...sorry." Gordie turned back around to his console. "If you'll shut the hatch, Jamey, we'll be off." As I reached over to close the hatch, he looked at his copilot. "Is the ambulance secure, Sam? Okay, let's light 'em up."
A quick systems check, then Gordie grasped the throttle bars next to his seat and pushed them forward. The cockpit was unpressurized, so we couldn't hear the vertical thrusters when they fired; the deck shuddered against the soles of my boots, and I peered over Gordie's shoulder to see the landing field fall away. The Pegasus ascended to about 1,500 feet before he kicked in the main engines. I caught a glimpse of Apollo, its saucer-like roof illuminated by floodlights, then the transport peeled away on a west-by-southwest bearing.
The flight lasted only a half-hour, and I saw little of the terrain over which we passed, save for the Ptolemaeus crater wall when the Pegasus's searchlights briefly illuminated its mountainous western rim. Mr. Garcia was busy downloading information about the guy we were to rescue, and that gave Gordie and me a chance to catch up. As he'd expected, the FBI had issued a warrant for his arrest for his role in helping Hannah Wilford escape, so he didn't return to Earth. Instead, he'd settled in with "an old friend"--he didn't say so outright, but I suspected that his friend was female--and found work as a Pegasus pilot. It wasn't as much fun as flying LTVs, but it was a steady job that enabled him to remain on the Moon until things got better back home.
"Not that that's going to happen any time soon," he added. "I saw today that President Shapar's pals in Congress just killed an independent investigation of Wilford's death. Her party has majority control of the House and Senate, she can pretty much do whatever she wants."
"There's still protests going on..." began Sam, his copilot. Sam turned out to be short for Samantha, and I suspected that she might also be the roommate Gordie had told me about.
"And they're busting protesters as fast as they can cart 'em off to jail. This new president of ours doesn't have much respect for the Constitution, babe, and it's only to get worse before..." He stopped himself as a light strobed on his navigation screen. "Okay, here we are. Hang on back there, Jamey. It's gonna be a rough landing."
He wasn't kidding. The Pegasus came down fast, with a touchdown hard enough to rattle my teeth and cause me to nearly lose my grip on the strap. But we were in a hurry, and Mr. Garcia ordered me to get the hatch open at once. The dust was still settling as he and I clambered down the ladder. Nicole, Greg, and Logan had already climbed down from the ambulance; Nicole was carrying a large case with a red cross on its side.
Gordie had landed only a few dozen yards from the regolith harvester. It was a massive machine, nearly twelve feet high and sixty feet long, with a big scoop up front and a pair of funnels elevated above the rear. When in operation, the harvester would slowly roll across the terrain upon six wire-mesh wheels nearly as tall as I was, gathering regolith into its maw and feeding it through separators that would comb out the ore containing He3 and other vital materials; the stuff that couldn't be used was thrown out the back. Long, shallow furrows across the grey dust showed where the machine had already traveled; a bulldozer would move in front of it, pushing aside rocks and boulders big enough to jam the separators.
The harvester had come to a halt, and its searchlights revealed a couple of miners in moonsuits standing next to a third figure who lay face-down upon the ground. One of the workmen bounded over to us. "He was standing on the upper platform when we ran through a small impact crater," the miner explained. "The harvester lurched, and he fell off and hit the ground. He says he can't move his right leg and that he's having trouble breathing."
"Okay, we'll take care of it." Mr.
Garcia turned toward the four of us. "Greg, Nicole, you'll assist me. Logan, Jamey, you can help, too. Fetch the stretcher from the ambulance."
Logan and I bunny-hopped back to the ambulance, but when we climbed inside, we ran into a problem. Dozens of white plastic containers were strapped against the bulkheads. All field equipment was boxed this way to protect them from moondust, and it wasn't obvious which one held the stretcher. Logan was about to go back and ask for help when a notion occurred to me.
"Arthur, what does a stretcher case look like?" I asked.
"It looks like this, Jamey," my suit replied, and an image immediately appeared on the inside of my helmet: a long, flat container with a red cross on its front. "Serial number EM-676," Arthur added.
I looked around and there it was, identical to the picture Arthur had shown me, right down to the serial number. "Thanks, Arthur," I said, then Logan and I unstrapped the case from its tie-downs.
"Nice trick," Logan murmured as we carried the case from ambulance. "Maybe you'll impress her yet."
"What are you talking about?" When I didn't get a response, I checked my heads-up display. Without my realizing it, Logan had switched to another channel. "Arthur, switch comlink to Three." I said. A sharp beep, and then I went on: "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not trying to impress anyone."
"Sure you are. And she's already taken."
I suddenly realized that he was talking about Nicole. "I'm not trying to impress her," I said, which wasn't entirely true. "If that's what you think, then you're..."