Hollow Moon

by Steph Bennion

  “There’s enough jobs for everyone,” Endymion said, ignoring Bellona’s giggle. “More jobs than people, in fact.”

  “But that’s forcing people to work or starve. That doesn’t seem right to me.”

  Philyra looked puzzled. “What happens here if you can’t be bothered to do your bit?”

  “People in the hollow moon are used to helping each other out,” Ravana replied. “Very few refuse to work, but if they did all that would happen is they would no longer have any friends. But they would not go cold or hungry.”

  Endymion shook his head in amazement. “Working for nothing is crazy.”

  “It’s not for nothing!” Ravana protested. “Father says the hollow moon is everyone’s responsibility as we all need it to survive. If someone couldn’t work for whatever reason, they would be looked after. Anyway, I like being able to try lots of different jobs here. I think it helps you find the one you’re good at and like doing best.”

  She could see it had never occurred to a fascinated Bellona that a community could live and work together in this way. Her brother on the other hand looked unimpressed by the concept of a world without money. Ravana was getting bored of the subject.

  “Would you like to visit other places?” Bellona asked. “Maybe go back to Yuanshi?”

  “I’ve been to places!” retorted Ravana. “Father and I go to Lan-Tlanto at least once a month. I’ve also been to Lowell City on Mars and to Camelot spaceport on Avalon.”

  “You’ve been to Avalon?” Philyra looked jealous. “To the holovid studios?”

  “We’re meant to be going to Daode this week,” added Bellona. Ravana recalled Miss Clymene’s conversation with her father about chartering the Platypus and saw Bellona looked awkward, as if she felt she was being used. “We’re supposed to be taking part in the school band competition at the peace conference. Perhaps you could come with us?”

  “I do play the cornet,” Ravana admitted. “It’s like a squashed trumpet.”

  “Another brass player!” exclaimed Endymion. “Trombone, me.”

  “I play clarinet,” said Bellona. “Philyra plays the flute.”

  Ravana considered this. “Is it just the three of you?”

  Philyra nodded sullenly.

  “You would make four,” Bellona suggested hopefully.

  “Maybe,” mused Ravana, not convinced. While the idea of an adventure to the Epsilon Eridani system was appealing, less so was the prospect of going in the company of strangers. “Would Zotz be able to come as well?” she asked. “He’s my friend.”

  “Is he the one who keeps tripping over his shoe laces?” asked Bellona.

  Ravana smiled. “His father’s just as bad. Professor Wak is one of the leading experts on extra-dimensional string theory but can’t tie a knot to save his life.”

  “Can he play an instrument?” asked Philyra.

  “Who? The professor?”

  “No,” retorted Philyra, irritably. “Your friend Zotz.”

  “Of course!” said Ravana. She knew full well that Zotz had never shown even the slightest interest in music. She lowered her gaze and started to stroke her cat in a none-to-subtle attempt to mask her fraud.

  “Marvellous!” Endymion grinned. “Let’s go and ask Miss Clymene.”

  “Whoopee,” muttered Philyra. “All we need now is a spaceship.”

  *

  By the time Ravana, Endymion, Bellona and Philyra returned to the maintenance shed, Quirinus and Zotz had arrived, having walked the short distance from the monorail station at Petit Havre. At Wak’s insistence, Ostara had contacted Fenris at the palace and arranged a meeting with the Maharani. So it was that Ravana found herself back at the palace, again with her cat in her arms but this time also with her father, Wak, Ostara and Miss Clymene for company.

  They were led to a sumptuous glass conservatory that looked out upon a small leafy courtyard isolated from the rest of the palace grounds. The palace servants, silent as ever, were somewhat perturbed at the sight of so many people disturbing the peace of the Maharani’s sanctum and quickly decided that Zotz, Endymion, Bellona and Philyra were better left to amuse themselves beside the fish pond in the courtyard outside. Quirinus brought with him the device Endymion had found in the kidnappers’ tunnel. He was just lowering it onto the table, fully expecting that they would be kept waiting, when Maharani Uma swept into the conservatory, a sullen Fenris close behind.

  “Well, well,” sneered Fenris upon seeing Ravana. He had just returned from carrying Surya’s cyberclone down to its coffin-shaped maintenance unit in the basement and was in a foul mood. “If it isn’t Ravana and her amazing vomiting cat.”

  “Ignore him, my dear,” the Maharani said sweetly, addressing Ravana. “He sometimes forgets his manners. I have been meaning to thank you for the help you’ve given Fenris and err… your security officer,” she said, with a glance towards the nervously-fidgeting Ostara, having seemingly forgotten her name. “I know you are all doing your best to find my son.”

  There was an edge to the Maharani’s tone that suggested their best was not good enough. It was a subtlety lost on Professor Wak as he drew her attention to the metal box Quirinus had placed on the table.

  “We have established how the kidnappers gained access to the Dandridge Cole,” he informed her. “They left behind this device, which offers a clue to their identity.”

  “A clue?” asked Ostara, the Maharani’s snub forgotten.

  “Your investigator appears to need enlightenment,” muttered Fenris.

  “As indeed do I,” remarked the Maharani, slightly put out by the wild gesturing of Wak’s flattened hand. “What is it you have found?”

  “A personnel scanner, as issued to Que Qiao authorities on Daode and Yuanshi,” Quirinus remarked. “These devices can pick up the minute signals given out by cranium implants. They’re used to track criminals, political activists and the like.”

  “What implants?” asked Miss Clymene, confused.

  “Microchips in the brain,” Wak told her. “The ultimate interface between human and machine! They’re popular with tech-heads across all five systems, but it is only the Que Qiao administration in Epsilon Eridani that insists every child is implanted with one as soon as they are old enough.”

  Ravana shivered. “Yuck. Implants in the brain? That’s horrible.”

  “Maharani, I take it the Raja has such a device?” asked Wak.

  The Maharani nodded. “My son was fitted with an implant as per the usual practice on Yuanshi. I was born on Earth and so do not have one myself; and for various reasons nor does Fenris or anyone else in my household here.”

  “This equipment then was obviously used to target your son,” Wak told her.

  “Impossible,” retorted the Maharani. “The palace is shielded against any electronic methods of espionage and as the girl saw, my son was inside when the kidnappers struck. Perhaps you should ask Quirinus if he knows of another who may have an implant.”

  Ravana glanced to her father, puzzled by the Maharani’s words. He looked back with a most curious expression, but quickly turned away as he caught his daughter’s gaze.

  “Are you saying Que Qiao agents took the Raja?” Ostara asked Quirinus.

  “That’s unlikely. The scanner is an old design,” Quirinus replied hesitantly. “My guess is it was bought on the black market. The real mystery is how someone managed to wander up to the palace waving a scanner around without being apprehended by the guards!”

  “My security team had been called away to complete a health and safety assessment,” the Maharani replied frostily, glaring at Fenris. “The timing was most unfortunate.”

  “I must get to Yuanshi,” Fenris said to Quirinus, ignoring the Maharani’s rebuke. “If I am to negotiate with the kidnappers on the Maharani’s behalf, I need to be there with the authorities in Ayodhya.”

  Ravana looked at her father. “Miss Clymene has invited me and Zotz to play in their band at the peace conference on Daode,” she said
, her expression hopeful. She glanced towards the window, hoping to catch Zotz’s attention. He and Endymion had taken a break from trying to grab fish with their bare hands and were busy soaking Bellona and Philyra with water from the garden pool. “We could all go to Epsilon Eridani together!”

  “It would be a tremendous help and much appreciated,” admitted Miss Clymene.

  “I would be only too happy to provide the necessary finances,” added the Maharani. “Fuel, accommodation; everything you need. I may be in exile but I still have many influential friends on both Yuanshi and Daode.”

  “I’m sure you do,” muttered Ostara.

  “Quirinus has already made his feelings clear,” retorted Fenris. “He will not take us.”

  “You know as well as anyone that I vowed never to return to Yuanshi,” Quirinus said, regarding the Maharani carefully. His gaze fell upon Ravana, who did not hide her excitement at the prospect of an adventure away from home. “However, despite all I’ve said, something has come up and I have some personal business to take care of in Epsilon Eridani. If he is happy to travel with the band, your man can accompany us to Daode.”

  “Yes!” exclaimed Ravana.

  “That is wonderful!” agreed Miss Clymene. “I can’t wait to tell my students!”

  “In that case, I’m coming with you,” declared Ostara.

  “No, you are not!” retorted Fenris.

  “I need to continue my investigations,” she told him, eyeing him coolly.

  Ravana caught her expression, which clearly betrayed her lack of trust in Fenris and as such echoed her own feelings. She knew Ostara had yet to make her mark as an investigator, but with a ship full of strangers she hoped her father would think it would be good for them to have a friend aboard.

  “You are more than welcome,” Quirinus told her. Fenris pulled a face.

  “The moon of Daode,” breathed Ravana excitedly. “Epsilon Eridani, here I come!”

  Chapter Seven

  Voyage to Epsilon Eridani

  INSIDE A SPACECRAFT it was never totally quiet, for there was always the murmur and hiss of life-support systems, the whirr of actuators and the occasional beep of control panels to disturb the eternal silence of space. Yet out in the inky depths of the Barnard’s Star system, somewhere between the orbits of Woden and Thunor, the hush that fell upon the Platypus as the plasma ion thrusters shut down was both deep and heavily pregnant with anticipation.

  Suddenly, a banshee wail erupted from the ED drive. Its cosmic spinning wheel grabbed the membrane of reality, jabbed its spindle, twisted the void into a kaleidoscopic spiral and smoothly stabbed a hole in the space-time continuum. For a split nanosecond the Platypus was no more than a fleeting thread of quanta sixteen light years long. Then the multi-dimensional roller-coaster was over, almost before it began, leaving those aboard nursing fractured memories of an imploded universe and indescribable feelings of nausea. Out across the star-spangled void, the light of a new sun shone through the cabin windows.

  “Extra-dimensional navigation complete,” intoned the Platypus’ onboard computer. “Interplanetary plasma drive and automatic pilot engaged. Estimated time to Daode orbit is twenty-five hours, thirty-seven minutes.”

  “Welcome to the Epsilon Eridani system,” Quirinus muttered gloomily, earning a strange look from Ostara. Ahead, the view through the window shifted as the automatic pilot aligned the beak-like nose of the ship with the faint brown disc that was Shennong.

  “I feel sick,” moaned Zotz. “Is it always like that?”

  “Pretty much,” Ravana confirmed, giving him a mischievous grin. Ostara and Zotz had joined her father and herself on the flight deck for the manoeuvre. Their sickly yet stunned expressions reminded her of how she had felt the first few times she had experienced an extra-dimensional leap. “Is this really your first jump?”

  Zotz nodded. Unlike Ravana, he had lived his whole life on the Dandridge Cole and to her knowledge had never ventured further than Lan-Tlanto with his father. He was transfixed by the distant yellow sun, which was startlingly bright despite being muted by the polarisation of the flight-deck windows. Ravana too was captivated, but for a different reason. She was coming home.

  The four seats on the flight deck were in a staggered row, with the middle two pilot chairs positioned further forward within a nest of flight controls. Quirinus was seated centre starboard between his daughter and Zotz. Ostara had claimed the port-side seat on the far side of where Ravana was now releasing herself from the co-pilot’s chair.

  “Shall I check on the others?” Ravana asked chirpily. She always felt more alive and cheerful when aboard the Platypus, for she much preferred the private realm of the ship to the communal reality of the hollow moon. Even when they carried passengers.

  “I’ll come with you,” murmured Ostara, looking pale. Unlike Zotz, she was no stranger to interstellar travel but that did not mean she had got used to it.

  Unbuckling her seatbelt, Ostara gently wriggled free of the chair and let herself drift in the zero gravity up to the grab handles by the ceiling docking hatch. Ravana’s movements were far more confident and with one graceful backwards flip she was out of her seat, across the cabin and above the entrance hatch, floating poised and ready to enter the crawl tunnel.

  “Show off,” muttered Ostara.

  “Coming, Zotz?” asked Ravana.

  He managed a weak smile. “I think I’ll stay here a bit longer.”

  Ravana grinned. With a fish-like spurt of speed, she twisted in the air and pulled herself through the hatch.

  In deep space the carousel was set to spin once every ten seconds and the crawl tunnel now rotated about her like a rolling barrel. The only handhold, in a recess next to the open hatch to the carousel itself, revolved with the rest of the tunnel. This made entering the spinning compartment a little easier, especially given that Ravana had long ago learned the hard way that it was vital to enter feet first. There was a good reason why the inside of the tunnel and hatchway were padded; nevertheless, she still earned herself a few new bruises by the time she managed to get her feet inside and onto the top of the carousel ladder.

  Ravana pulled herself through the hatch into the brightly-lit space beyond, feeling the faint centrifugal pull of the spinning cabin become more insistent as she descended the rungs. Once clear of the hatch, she glanced over her shoulder and saw Fenris, Endymion and Philyra sat stiffly upon the couch in the living quarters below, still stunned after the extra-dimensional jump. Miss Clymene and Bellona were up to her right, standing at the small kitchenette. Ravana gave them a little wave, slid down the ladder and landed lightly upon the floor.

  The passenger carousel was essentially a drum three metres wide and seven metres in diameter, which when spinning generated a feeling of gravity upon the inside wall in exactly the same way as the spin of the hollow moon. The small size of the carousel meant that the pseudo-gravity was barely a third of that of the Dandridge Cole and no more than the gravity an astronaut would feel on the surface of Luna, Earth’s moon. Like the hollow moon, the floor of the carousel extended all the way around so that the ceiling above where she stood was also the floor of the sleeping area on the far side. When she had the carousel to herself Ravana loved to leap along the endless curving surface and imagine that her pounding feet were somehow powering the Platypus through space.

  Fenris regarded her grimly. “Are we there yet?”

  “We’re in the Epsilon Eridani system,” Ravana confirmed. Above her, Ostara was trying to negotiate the entrance hatch and not having much luck. “Everyone okay?”

  “Am I allowed to throw up?” asked Philyra, looking pale. “I feel terrible.”

  “That’s what being zapped through a wormhole does to you,” remarked Endymion.

  “Actually, it’s the Higgs resonator that makes people feel sick,” Ravana told him. “It aligns the quantum states of every single particle in the ship so we can slip through the wormhole. Extra-dimensional engineering is mind-boggling stuf
f.”

  Ostara reached the bottom of the ladder and stood beside Ravana, returning Fenris’ rather rude glare with a grimace made somewhat lopsided by the dizzy experience of moving in or out of the moving carousel. Without saying another word, Fenris rose from the couch, grabbed hold of the ladder and hauled himself up and out of sight.

  “Yuck,” muttered Ostara, as soon as Fenris had gone. “He gives me the creeps.”

  “Never mind him,” said Ravana, looking around the cabin. “Has anyone seen my cat?” Her electric pet had a hard time comprehending zero gravity so she tended to leave it in the carousel whilst the Platypus was in flight.

  “I’m sure it was here when we took off,” said Bellona, noticing as she spoke that a door to one of the overhead lockers in the kitchenette area was slightly ajar. No sooner had she put a hand to the door when a furry shape leapt out onto her head and off again across the cabin, a manoeuvre aided considerably by the low pseudo-gravity of the carousel. Philyra, who had been engrossed in her wristpad, suddenly screamed as the cat fell lightly into her lap, its diamond-tipped claws outstretched.

  “There’s my little fluff ball!” exclaimed Ravana, scooping the wriggling bundle into her arms. “I hope you haven’t been eating the cutlery again.”

  “Fluff ball?” muttered Philyra, rubbing her arms. “Bag of nails, more like.”

  “Do you know how long it will be before we arrive at Daode?” asked Miss Clymene. “It would be good if we had time for a rehearsal aboard the ship.”

  “We’re still a day away from Daode orbit,” said Ravana.

  “A rehearsal?” remarked Bellona, looking around the cramped cabin. “Here?”

  “We can use the cargo bay,” Ravana suggested. “There’s a bit more room in there, though there’s no gravity outside the carousel.”

  “A free-fall band practice?” mused Endymion. “Cool!”

  *

  Fenris’ arrival on the flight deck cut short a somewhat bizarre conversation between Quirinus and Zotz on the best and worst things about zero gravity, a discussion prompted by an innocent question from Zotz about the Platypus’ toilet facility, which he had been dismayed to learn was a basic vacuum unit in a tiny cubicle in the cargo bay. Zotz took Fenris’ arrival as a cue to go and find Ravana, darting with ease around the older man. Fenris clumsily pulled himself into the cabin in the manner of someone who grimly tolerated rather than enjoyed weightlessness. Quirinus got the impression there was not much that Fenris did enjoy and regarded his visitor with suspicion.