The Deirdre

  “I see,” I said, which of course I didn’t. “And how do you know that?” I added, still hoping to get to the bottom of the matter.

  “Because I’ve been here for going on two years now, and so I’ve seen it a time or two.”

  Hopes dashed, I postponed that line of enquiry until I could corner an astronomer, or else a practicing druid who could align the Sun between the mounds of tailings and predict how many weeks of winter remained.

  I tried Bemis instead. “Calvin, where did we leave our sun shields?”

  “They’re in the digger’s cabin,” he answered immediately.

  The Beast was resting, otherwise exactly as we had left him months ago, half in and half out of the shadow of one of the seven hills, but a distance of forty yards separated the tunnel’s mouth from that protecting shadow. It helped not a bit that the Sun was shining—a word that describes the true ferocity of the tyrant’s gaze about as well as a trout dances the two-step—directly into our faceplates.

  “I’ve secured mine,” said Perkins. I had been behind him for the whole journey out of the Deirdre, and therefore hadn’t noticed. “I’ll rouse them out of your machine and bring them to you here.”

  “That seems a waste of your time, and ours,” said Calvin. “Sam and I will hold our hands over our faceplates and you can lead us across to the shadow. Then I’ll retrieve the shields.”

  Perkins agreed to this and, gloves held firmly to our faces, we stepped into the full fierce light of day. Since we were now sightless, and scurrying across the roasting surface with Perkins nudging us along by the elbows, I thought it fitting to offer up a chorus or two of the “Three Blind Mice” to pass the time. But, although Perkins seemed to take the entertainment in stride, Bemis uttered my name in such a disgusted tone that I soon felt disabused of the notion and ceased.

  Once in the blessed shade, we were permitted sight again—although, like a parson who wanders into a peep show, I had to take great care in where I directed my gaze. Calvin leapt onto the Beast, climbed rapidly up its great orange flank, worked open the Dutch oven, and got inside. Meanwhile Perkins and I, staying carefully in the shade, reattached the sled and unrolled one of the vacuum tents upon it. This article was not at all the puny little blister we had occupied so ignominiously on the trip out. Even lying in uninflated repose, it filled the entire sled, which caused me to wonder where we were to put the supplies. That tent was in fact the deluxe model, a capacious half-cylinder with room enough to accommodate four men, or two men and their haggises, or, as we soon discovered, one man, two haggises, and a brood of angry hens.

  “How is it that the Deirdre has such a fine collection of vacuum tents?” I asked.

  “There wasn’t always the belowdecks and such, you know. We lived in them while we dug out the mine.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Rented one of your diggers for that,” he added. Then, before I could say a word to stop him, he attached an air cylinder to a valve and turned the cock to start the process of filling the tent with air.

  I stood mute while the tent grew larger and took on its true shape and dimensions, only chuckling audibly two or three times. But finally I could stand it no longer and said, “Well, you’ve done it now, Mister Perkins,” and I chuckled again.

  He said, “If we’re going to be partners, then you ought to call me Lawrence, don’t you think.”

  “Well, Lawrence,”—I knew I’d have to improve on that unwieldy handle somehow—”I see you have gone and sacrificed a cylinder of good air. Don’t feel too bad about it though, Bemis and I made precisely the same mistake on the trip out.”

  “What are you talking about, Clemens?”

  “Please, Lawrence, call me Sam,” I said, feeling magnanimous. “You’ve left us no way in that doesn’t get rid of all the air in the process.”

  I waited patiently for him to say ‘booger me’, or some variation of it, but instead he laughed and said, “Where did you get that idea? Come look at this,” and he led me around to one end of the half-cylinder. I saw immediately that there was an extra piece of material attached to the flat side, with a slit down its middle big enough, if only barely, to admit a man in a pressure suit.

  Bemis arrived with my sun shield then, and I slipped it over my faceplate and dogged the corners down to keep it securely in place.

  “Is that an airlock?” I said, knowing it must be so, but at the same time knowing nothing about how it might work.

  “Yes, of a sort,” said Perkins. “I’ll show you how it operates in due course. For now, we’d best start stowing our kit.”

  The rest of the Deirdres came out of the mine’s entrance about then, some of them carrying huge bundles of supplies, and the rest pushing or pulling the two remaining ore carts, now loaded with spare parts and whatever items of value they could strip from the belowdecks and the galley, including the captain’s desk and Mister Kent’s iron cookstove. All of them wore sun shields, since as it happened Mister Lovelace actually knew what time of day it was, through the miracle of his owning a working pocket watch, as well as the brains to know how to use it, and he had warned the captain about the rising sun in time for him to dig the shields out of the Christmas heap.

  As he lay in the shade of one of the hills, rightly coddling his wounded limb, Mister Lang directed us in the decommissioning of the dust boat. We tore the aluminum sheeting from the vehicle, dismantled the frame that supported it, then used a portion of the sheeting to improvise a second sled in which to carry our supplies. I was sorry to see the end of the dust boat, it had after all been the instrument of our salvation, and by my lights it deserved a bow of the helmet and a moment of silence prior to its destruction. But the Deirdres seemed to feel nothing for the singular craft and tore it limb-from-limb with unsentimental efficiency. For better or worse, its time had come to an end. Future greenhorns stranded in Farley’s Crater would have to wait on a host of winged chariots or a canoe full of red Indians for their rescue from there on out.

  The party intent upon returning to civilization had a surfeit of men, and they rapidly set the second tent atop the naked parade float, introduced it to Garrett’s fine, if inferior, digging leviathan, then attached another makeshift sled to their train. With that completed, we were ready for the gear and supplies to be loaded, and much care was taken in their sharing out between the two parties, according to a scheme based upon both the size of each company and, in the case of the larger, the time estimated to complete the journey to Lucky Strike. The water was given the closest attention, naturally, followed by the air cylinders, and then the food. Perkins handled the negotiations for the newly-reconstituted Clemens-Bemis Expedition, as we thought his superior knowledge, when coupled with his relentlessly pugnacious manner, might serve to prevent the Merriwether Party from hogging precious supplies. And our faith was not misplaced, as even his old friend Percy Lang was called a wily booger once or twice over the distribution of the remaining air.

  As to the food, I offered to forgo the entire store of vacuum jerky in exchange for one dented but otherwise serviceable can of pickled beets, but my trade was vetoed by Calvin, who had somehow acquired a taste for jerky—much like a misguided missionary who spends too much time with cannibals and develops a taste for long pig. After that, the only articles of grub still to be distributed were busy fouling Captain Merriwether’s spare pressure suit, and their disposition was a conundrum. Divvying the chickens up amongst the two parties would mean dragging the haggis full of hens in and out of both tent’s airlocks, costing each a small but not inconsiderable amount of valuable air each time. And in addition, Mister Kent reminded us that any hens deprived of their cock would surely pine for the execrable bird and cease to lay, or worse, simply expire from ennui. The captain declared that they would all die of vacuum poisoning if it were left to him, and in the end the wriggling haggis full of poultry was awarded to the Clemens-Bemis company in exchange for an armload of, yes, vacuum jerky. Perkins was skeptical of the transaction
, but I thought it an excellent trade, which only serves to illustrate my keen lack of foresight, as well as my loathing for jerky in any and all of its forms.

  The steam-powered tractor that had been at the heart of the dust boat was to be put to work hauling the two ore carts, now laden with all the mechanical detritus Mister Lovelace, Winters, and Chalk had stripped out of the mine. The two parties, minus Bemis and Garrett, who were powering up their respective machines, then set to parceling out the most useful of the spoils, with our party concentrating on parts that might help to repair an injured haggis, or if necessary return the Beast’s resonance engine to health.

  I was carrying our share of these goods to the sled when I saw a rock fly past my faceplate. Now, that is novelty, I thought. Hens may fly when living in the Moon, but rocks, if left to their own devices, never do.

  I turned around to see where the missile could have started from, and saw yet another chunk of regolith coming my way. I managed to duck—not an easy thing whilst carrying a double armload of very awkward junk—but before the stone could get to my immediate vicinity, it struck a protuberance on the side of the Beast and ricocheted up into the black sky, soon traveling high enough to escape the shadow in which I stood and catch the rays of the rising sun. Since it would take most of the afternoon to return to the ground, I dismissed it and turned my attention to the mouth of the mine, where I suspected the flying rocks had originated, and was in time to see three men emerge from the blackness and shuffle cautiously out into the tyrant’s fiery stare. Apparently they had misplaced their sun shields, because each wore a hastily improvised substitute; a ragged piece of aluminum atop the helmet served as a sun bonnet, and did quite a poor job of it, I’m sure.

  Captain Merriwether, who was busy securing bundles of supplies to his party’s sled, shouted, “Deirdres, stay in the sunlight!”

  This was good advice, since without proper sun shields the imbeciles from the Hammer ‘n’ Tongs—for that was surely who they were, come once again to squeeze water, or blood if they could manage it, from the stone that was the Deirdre mine—would be hard pressed to see us in the un-shielded glare, especially as they were forced by their position to stare directly into the horrendous rising Sun.

  Still, our standing in the sun did nothing to actually counter the threat.

  Another rock came sailing toward me, hurled, I saw, by the occupant of the haggis in the van. His aim was improving with practice, and his latest offering almost struck me. I stopped to drop my load of junk onto the supply sled and considered. That rock had nearly hit the side of our tent on its way to meet me. I reckoned that I might be expendable, all things considered, but the tent surely was not, and a well-placed piece of regolith, equipped with the sharp points and ragged edges so very common to its species, could tear a hole in the fabric that would put a sudden end to our prospecting plans.

  Perkins of course was way ahead of me in his thinking, and miles beyond me in courage. He leapt from his position on the rear of the Beast, where he had been connecting hoses of some kind from the digger to the tent, snatched up a length of pipe with a nasty, jagged end on it out of my junk pile, and barked, “Sam, grab something sharp, or at least heavy, and we’ll have a go at them. Our sun shields should give us the advantage.”

  I looked around hurriedly. Bemis was in the cabin of the digger, persuading it back to life, so the company’s defense was apparently up to me. I drew a pickaxe—a Clemens-Bemis Expedition pickaxe—from the supplies sled, stepped out of the shade into the blinding horizontal sun, and hopped in the general direction of the foe, with Perkins out ahead of me, and no idea what I was aiming to do, as usual.

  Along with the stones, there were plenty of curses flying through the aether by then, and a dozen men shouting into their radios to no good purpose. I found that I was being encouraged, although not accompanied, I noticed, by the men of the captain’s party, and repeatedly identified as an “evil barstard” by our attackers. From them there was also much talk of lying, of which I was surely guilty, but also of thievery, of which I was not, as far as I could remember.

  It took less than a minute for Perkins and myself to close with the three marauders, which on the one hand was a problem for me, because I was not ready for battle—a statement that I suspect will always be true enough—and on the other a blessing, because I didn’t have time to come to my senses and run away.

  Perkins’s charge was so fierce and swift that his man waddled backwards at his approach and nearly fell over himself in his haste to regain the mouth of the tunnel. Perkins of course pursued him, and soon disappeared into the mine, leaving me to deal with the other two by myself. I planted my boots a few yards in front of the first of the men, whom I strongly suspected was the smart-mouthed leader of these determined, doggedly persistent, and deeply stupid men. I brandished my pickaxe, and speaking quite loudly to cut through the cursing and other caterwauling, said, “Give it up, man. You’ll get nothing but a punctured haggis for your trouble, I can guarantee it.”

  “What?” he said, then growled, “Fuck you, mate,” and swung a shovel at my helmet, something that nearly everyone around there seemed to like to do. Fortunately, my pickaxe was almost in the path of the swing, and I was able to put it in the way in time to deflect the blow. There was no sound from the impact of shovel against axe of course, but a numbing vibration traveled up my arm, and I nearly dropped my weapon. A spirited, very dangerous, and essentially pointless pick and shovel fight then ensued—exactly the sort of destruction we all, or at least the Deirdres, had wished to avoid.

  Although the two weapons were nearly as light as a couple of feathers due to the low gravity, they were also extremely hard to direct accurately with arms encased in inflated canvas tubes. I raised my axe and swung at the man with gusto, and missed him by the better part of a mile. The substantial mass of the axe, which did not it appeared depart with the weight, kept it moving where it wanted to go, and I found myself spun around by its momentum until I’d traveled through most of a complete circle. Definitely too much gusto, I thought. I blocked another blow to the helmet and prepared to swing again, when I noticed that Chalk had come calling, wielding a length of pipe with a huge angry-looking gauge at the business end. He was hopping back and forth in front of the other man, waving the pipe shillelagh over his head like the crazed Leprechaun he was.

  His man held a knife, and a fearsome one too, by the look of it, a long stout blade with a wicked serrated edge. This was a weapon of substance, one far more deadly to a man in a pressure suit than any number of shovels and pickaxes. Chalk, whom I had suspected of being shy when it came to a fight—a sentiment I generally approve of—nevertheless got in the first lick, a stunning blow to the helmet that served to knock away the man’s sun bonnet, if nothing else. Chalk’s blow had been too much for his makeshift shillelagh, however, and the big gauge that adorned its end broke off and hurled itself away. Besides that, it was quite a healthy shot, and its force lifted Chalk ten or twelve feet off the ground. The foe, for his part, staggered backwards upon its receipt and, crucially for us, lost his grip on that ugly knife.

  I swung my axe at my opponent again, summoning up considerably less gusto this time, and was rewarded with a yelp of pain, or at least surprise, as the blade’s edge struck the arm of his suit. Meanwhile, Chalk made a dive for the knife, which lay on the ground between him and its erstwhile owner. He fell within reach of the weapon and was about to take it up, when his opponent, who had recovered somewhat from Chalk’s shillelagh, stepped forward and kicked him squarely in the head, or rather the helmet. It was hard to say who got the worst part of that exchange, but the feline howl that came through the radio left me with no doubt as to Puss’s opinion. For his part, Chalk was stunned into immobility, but for every blow offered there is (I am told) an equal and opposite blow delivered to he who initiated the fun, and the man duly roared in pain. (I don’t know how one is supposed to win a fight at all under such rules, since according to the savants each man w
ill get exactly as good as he gives from now until doomsday. Perhaps it is a matter of where one lands the blows.)

  I turned back to face my own foe, wondering for an instant why he hadn’t clobbered me while I was distracted by Chalk’s plight. It seemed that my blow had had a greater effect than I had expected, and I saw that the glove of the man’s weapon arm was now empty, and his other glove was pressed over the spot I had struck, whether to soothe the pain of it, or to stanch the flow of air from a tear in his haggis, I could not say. It occurred to me then that I was the only gladiator in the arena still possessed of a weapon, and I thought of simply declaring victory, departing the field, and awaiting my triumph in the comfort of my tent, like a Roman general plundering his way through Gaul.

  Alas, I had not counted on the popularity of that knife. Chalk and his man were soon engaged in a vigorous struggle for its possession, each trying to grasp some part of the weapon that would not result in the shredding of their gloves, like a fox attempting to negotiate with a porcupine, and I decided I ought to weigh in, presumably on Chalk’s behalf, before someone got hurt. But how, I wondered, there were already more gloves in the vicinity of that knife than the traffic would bear. Then I had it. I tossed the axe behind me—it rebounded after striking the prow of the Beast and nearly returned itself to me—then I picked up my adversary’s shovel and delivered a smart blow to the helmet on everyone within range, except Chalk, although I admit I was tempted to make a clean sweep.

  The first blow, which I served up to the man battling for possession of the knife, set him staggering, and left me several feet off the ground, as striking downward is liable to send the blow’s deliverer in the opposite direction. The view was better from that height, and I was able to deliver to my original opponent a blow to the crown of his shining brass helmet that left him on the ground, too stunned even to curse effectively. Of course this second blow propelled me nearly into orbit, a result I should have anticipated but somehow did not, and although the view was impressive from up there, I found that I had managed to remove myself from the festivities just when I might be needed most. Fortunately, I was still facing away from the raging sun and toward the mine entrance, and thus as I fell back to the surface I saw Perkins emerge from the black maw of the Deirdre mine, hopping eagerly toward the three stunned figures below me. I say three because Chalk appeared just as incapacitated as the other two, and without my help.