Bouncing Off the Moon

by David Gerrold

  Alexei and Mickey outfitted themselves with even more stuff. Alexei was wearing his scuba suit again; it covered his whole body like a giant rubber glove, but he looked odd without fins on his feet. He had a lot of other gear too, a lot of closed equipment that I couldn't tell what it was for, and even a couple of suitcaselike boxes that he wouldn't let anyone else carry.

  "Isn't that heavy—?" I started to ask, then shut up.

  Alexei grinned. "You learn fast." He popped open a bright red panel and began pulling out flat packages the size and shape of seat cushions. "Everybody gets his own personal bubble. Read safety instructions, dingalings. No smoking. No shoes with cleats. No handball. Use plastic bags for peeing and pooping. Same as in pod. Put all trash in proper receptacles. If you fart, is your problem, not mine."

  The bubble had a flexible circular opening just big enough to fit around a full-grown person. Mickey helped me into mine; it was like climbing into a giant condom. I even wondered aloud what would fit into a condom this big. Without missing a beat, Mickey replied, "You know what that makes you … ?"

  Once inside the bubble, everything looked blurred through the transparent material. The bubble was made out of three separate layers of Mylar, each one "sturdy enough to support life under conditions of normal usage"—although I wasn't sure what "normal usage" actually meant in these circumstances. Each layer had its own zipper, and they could be opened in series from either inside or out.

  Alexei showed us how the bubbles were designed so that they could be linked together, so two people could pass things back and forth if they had to, but it was a tricky operation, and he hoped we wouldn't have to. He also showed us how to use the glove-extensions that were designed into the walls of the bubble—that was in case you needed to handle something outside.

  As soon as everybody was bubbled up, Alexei stepped over to one of the sidewalls of the cargo pod. He put his hands through the plastic gloves—"Always use gloves!" he shouted. "Don't try to push buttons through wall of bubble. Very stupid. You know what we call people who do? Statistics. Okay, I open airlock now." He started pressing buttons on the circular cover of the closest hatch.

  I watched with interest. Alexei hadn't explained this part. I knew there was no airlock inside this cabin, and there was certainly no airlock on the outside. The only thing on the other side of that bulkhead was hard Lunar vacuum.

  The hatch cover popped open and slid sideways on its tracks, revealing—the inside of a matching hatch cover on the other side of the bulkhead. "Okay, get ready for more beautiful clever—" Alexei unclipped a panel on the wall and pulled out two white circular rings, just the right size to fit into the hatch; they held layers of mylar folded over and over into a fat bulge—the whole looked like a plastic tunnel, all collapsed. On each side, there were three zippers, kind of like our bubble suits. Alexei opened one set of zippers, but not the other.

  He slipped the rings into the space between the two hatches, then began fitting the ring on our side into a deep groove. The edge of the ring was as thick as a tube of toothpaste, but not quite as squishy; Alexei worked his way around the circle, pushing it firmly into place.

  When he had the ring fitted all the way around the hatch-groove, he reached up above the hatch with one hand and below the hatch with the other, and pulled two matching levers sideways—the edges of the hatch-groove tightened firmly on the ring. Then he went around the circle again—three times, pressing the edge hard and making sure that the grip was firm all the way around.

  Finally satisfied, he slid the hatch cover back into place and sealed it. "We wait now, for ninety seconds. We wait for seal to harden and test itself. Thirty seconds should be enough, but on Luna we do everything three times safely. Remember, universe does not give first warnings or second chances." We waited in silence. Finally, Alexei looked at his PITA. "Okay, ready?—eighty-eight, eighty-nine, ninety!"

  He turned to a panel next to the hatch and unclipped its safety cover. He unlocked a second safety cover within and pressed the top button. It lit up, and said, "Armed." He pressed the next button, and it flashed, "Opening." We heard and felt the outer door of the hatch popping open and sliding sideways.

  Alexei peered through a peephole in the hatch itself, then began turning a small valve next to it. We heard the hissing of air. "I am filling airlock now," he said. "We let air from cabin inflate outside balloon. Very simple. We use cabin air. Waste not, want not. You will notice pressure change, maybe. As we increase space for air, we get lower pressure throughout total environment. Are you noticing? I can feel it. But Loonies are more sensitive than terries. We grow up that way."

  I watched, but I couldn't tell that anything was happening. After a bit, the plastic bubbles we wore seemed a little puffier, but not very much. And then my ears popped.

  The hissing continued slowly. From time to time, Alexei peered through the peephole again, checking to make sure the airlock was inflating properly. I wondered how he could see clearly through the plastic bubble he wore, but apparently he wasn't having any trouble. Our bubbles puffed a little more, but mostly they still hung on us like big plastic wrappers.

  After a bit, Alexei grunted in satisfaction and popped the hatch again. He slipped his goggles into place and slid the door sideways against the inner hull. Bright Lunar sunlight came filtering in through the opening. On the other side was a plastic tube opening into the airlock, a big plastic bubble. I peered through the hatch in curiosity, to see how it all worked. There were three zippers in the tube so it could be triple-sealed, the same ones Alexei had unzipped before inflating it. Clever.

  "Make sure your goggles are on tight," advised Mickey. "It's going to get very bright." He reached over and tapped one of my earcups through the plastic. "And don't take these off or you won't be able to hear anything. This is also your communicator."

  "I'm not stupid—" I started to say.

  "Sorry, Charles. I didn't mean to suggest you were. It's part of the safety briefing. Required by law and all that. Can you hear me through your headphones? Are you ready?"

  I nodded.

  "Good. All right, I'll go first, then Douglas and Bobby, then you, Charles. Alexei will be last. Charles, Douglas—you want to be very careful coming through the hatch; it's all plastic on the other side—I'll help you through. If you feel any resistance, stop. Don't try to push or force your way through. You don't want to risk tearing the Mylar. It's strong, but there have been stupid accidents. Oh, and before you do anything else, put your gloves on and make sure you can do this—" Mickey held up his hands and wriggled his fingers. "Until you're inflated, you want to keep your hands available."

  He watched carefully to make sure that Douglas and I followed suit. I found the closest set of gloves in my bubble, unzipped the covering patch, and shoved my hands through.

  The hatch was only a meter and a half wide. Mickey would have had to bend down to step through it, but instead he scrooched low and dived straight through. He slapped the ground with his hands and bounced gracefully upright, turning around to face us and spreading his arms like an acrobat who'd just completed a difficult trick and was expecting applause. He grinned through the hatch at us.

  "I can do that." I started to step forward—but Alexei grabbed me by the plastic and pulled me back. "Douglas next," he said.

  The hatch was almost too small for Douglas—he had four oxygen bottles and two rebreathers strapped to his chest; air for him and Stinky both; and he had Stinky on his back.

  But it turned out to be a lot easier than I expected. Alexei told Douglas to hold himself straight, then he picked him up, turned him horizontal, and passed him carefully through the hatch like a stick of wood. Together, he and Stinky and all their supplies must have weighed less than fifteen kilograms. All that Alexei had to do was lift, turn, and push. Douglas went right through. Mickey grabbed Douglas on the other side and turned him upright. Through the hatch, I saw the two of them exchange a quick hug.

  Then it was my turn. I lowered my
goggles into place, stepped forward—the body condom made moving a little sluggish, even in low gee—but I was determined to dive through the same way I'd seen Mickey dive. But before I could, Alexei grabbed me, turned me sideways, and threw me through the hatch like a torpedo.

  Four hands grabbed me on the other side, both Mickey and Douglas at the same time. They stood me up like a cardboard statue.

  I looked around in amazement. We were inside a big round bubble, almost the size of the cargo pod.Maybe bigger. It was hard to estimate the volume of a giant balloon from the inside. An inflatable airlock! Beautiful clever! Just like Alexei said.

  The bubble had two portals. The one I'd come through was a tube that led back to the cargo pod. On the opposite side of the airlock, the other portal was still zipped tight. Even as I turned to look back, Alexei was already diving in. He bounced upright, just as Mickey had. Behind him, the pod was a big lumpy shape, a dark cylinder with plump landing balloons sticking out all over it.

  Beyond the blank wall of the bubble, everything was blurred—of course. I was looking through the plastic bubble I wore and the wall of the airlock at the same time. Even so, I could make out the raw shapes of things, both dark and bright.

  Above, the sky was pure black. Impossibly black. To one side, there was a glare so intense I couldn't even turn in that direction—my eyes watered just from the sideways brightness. But to the other side, there was a shining silver land with an impossibly close horizon!

  I stood and gaped. Uneven rolling surface, broken rocks, jagged lumpy outcrops. A rising wall of mountains off to one side. And everywhere—stark silence! We really were on the moon!

  Wow!

  Whatever else happened, I didn't care. Dad had kept his promise, even if he wasn't here, and I was suddenly filled with a rush of hot feelings. I wanted to thank him. He should have been here. He deserved to be here. And for a moment, I wished he were here—I wished I had someone to share this with.

  Wow was insufficient.

  This was … the moon!

  Did Luna affect everyone this way?

  And then I started laughing. I suddenly knew why Alexei was so crazy. I understood what it meant to be a Lunatic.

  WUNDERSTORM

  We must hurry." Alexei's voice was loud in my ears. It sounded like he was directly behind me; the sound in my earphones was processed to come from the same direction as the broadcast signal, the only audio cues possible on the moon. I turned around to see him sealing the inner hatch of the cargo pod. That was it, the door was shut, we weren't going back. He bounced himself across the bubble to the opposite side—to the other airlock portal.

  As he began opening the first zipper, he asked, "Who goes first? Mickey, do you want honor? Or you, Charles? Do you want to be first dingaling on moon?"

  "Huh? Me?" I looked around. Maybe he meant some other Charles … ?

  Douglas said, "Go ahead, Chigger. If you want."

  "Uh—" I was about to say no, I wanted Mickey to go first, but I didn't want to look afraid either. "Okay," I gulped. Before I could change my mind, Alexei pulled me to the outer portal; it was identical to the one we'd just come through, only still folded up tight.

  "Is close fit," he said. "I walk you through it, one step at a time. No fear, da?"

  "Da."

  "Good. Now we open one zipper, one zipper only—like so, da? Nothing more. Not yet." Very carefully, very slowly, he unsealed the first section of the tube. As the first air puffed into it, it inflated outward. "You step into tube now, Charles. No fear, okay?"

  "Okay." I stepped carefully forward. It was hard to walk while wrapped in a personal bubble—I had to bounce more than walk, but maybe I could do this, with a little practice.

  Alexei pushed me into the tube. I almost filled it. "Hokay, ready? I zip you up now. Watch how I do this. I pat out as much air as possible. Waste not, want not. You want tube tight around you please." He locked the zipper into place and I was sealed in the tube.

  "Now turn around and face next zipper, Charles. Unzip it just like I show you. Just like that, da. Very good."

  The next section of the tube puffed out like the previous one. I stepped into it and began pulling it close to me. As I zipped up the section behind me, I tried hard to keep the plastic close and push as much air as possible back into the tube. "Very good, Charles!" Alexei's voice came mostly through the earphones now.

  As soon as the second zipper was locked in place, I turned around to the third and last one. This was it. One more step and I'd be alone on the Lunar surface. For a moment, I hesitated …

  "Go ahead, Chigger. You can do it." That was Douglas. I was glad he said that.

  "Is good now, little dingaling. Open last zipper."

  I swallowed hard. The seal was just in front of my face. All I had to do was grab it, unclick it from its safety catch, and pull it down. But it was more difficult than I thought. Sitting on my head, the monkey suddenly hugged me close. Did it understand? It patted the top of my head three times. Just like Douglas sometimes did.

  Well, if even the monkey believed in me …

  I pulled the zipper down—

  —and my bubble puffed out around me. I was in a two-meter balloon. My ears popped at the sudden change in pressure. The tube spit me out like a watermelon seed, and I bounced across the Lunar surface, screaming in shock—then laughing in hysterical relief. It was funny.

  "Don't go bouncing!" Alexei and Mickey both screamed at once. "Stay where you are. Wait for us."

  "I'm not doing it on purpose!" I shouted back. I turned around to look at them. I was farther away than I thought. Ten meters, at least. I could see how small the cargo pod was—and the inflatable airlock too.

  That was a scary moment—not because I worried that we were in any danger, but because for the first time I was separated from everything else. I was alone on the moon.

  I still had my hands in the gloves of the bubble suit. I went down on one knee and reached out to touch the ground. Armstrong had been right—it was soft and powdery! Strong tears of emotion started welling up in my eyes. Luna!

  The monkey patted me on the head again, three more times. Just like Douglas. So it wasn't an accident.

  I stood up and looked around, being careful not to face the glare from the northeastern horizon, where the sun was just creeping over the edge of a rill. It would be creeping over that rill for a long time. Sunrise on the moon was fourteen times longer than sunrise on the Earth.

  More to the north, there was something large and bright and blue in the black sky. The Earth.

  How beautiful it was.

  Half of it was cloaked in shadow, the other half was gleaming with day. Beneath the streaks of white cloud, I could make out the eastern shoreline of Africa. That big lumpy shape was Madagascar, wasn't it? I thought about all the horrors we'd left behind; they must be raging across the planet even now. But it looked so peaceful from here—how could anything on that soft blue world be horrible? It looked so fragile. For a moment, I regretted leaving. If I'd spoken one word differently, we could have all been home by now—

  Home in a cramped tube. With Mom yelling at us. And the wind whistling overhead. And the whole house vibrating like an organ pipe.

  No. I wouldn't have traded this moment for anything.

  The moon.

  I wished I could have said something more meaningful, but it all just came out as a single syllable—wow.

  I'd seen people talk about this on television—that sense of awe that you feel whenever you arrive on a new world. Ferris, the most famous astronaut of all, said it best. "It doesn't matter how many previous landings you've made. Every landing is different, and every time, you're filled with a flood of so many different emotions at once, so powerful and so profound, that the only word that comes close to describing it is wunderstorm."

  Once he came to our school and he talked about the first landing on Mars. He compared it to looking at a landscape by van Gogh—Wheatfield with Crows. The first time you look
at it, what you see is startling, and then it's even more startling, and then as you start to look at it closely, you realize just how startling it really is. The light is different—not wrong, different. And after a bit of puzzling, you begin to realize that this is an uncompromising vision; it isn't going to meet you halfway. You have to go all the way there or not at all. You have to surrender to it, because you can't change it. And then, only when you accept it on its own terms, can you see how beautiful it really is.

  I could understand that. It's kind of like the music of Stravinsky or Coltrane or Hendrix. The first time you hear it, it doesn't make sense. You have to learn how to listen to it. Eventually, you have to accept it for what it is, not for what you think it should be.

  And now I could see that the moon is like that too. It is what it is.

  Everything is different than what you're used to. Not wrong, different. The sky, the light, the horizon, even the shapes of rocks. Even the way the ground rolls away is different. Everything. Uncompromising. Scary. Harsh. Hostile. Beautiful. Wunderstorm …

  "Luna to Charles, Luna to Charles. Come in, Charles … ?"

  "Huh?" I turned around. The unreality of everything was getting s more intense, not less. Mickey was already out of the inflatable airlock; he was standing in his own two-meter bubble, helping Douglas through the exit tube. Stinky was a big inert bulge on Douglas's back. Douglas unzipped the third zipper and puffed out into the Lunar vacuum like a big piece of popcorn. He didn't go bouncing across the ground like I did—Mickey caught him head-on, and they bounced back only a meter.

  Alexei was the last one out of the balloon. He puffed up, but he didn't bounce at all. Obviously, he'd had a lot of experience. He hop-skipped around to where the airlock was still connected to the cargo pod and began zipping shut the seals of the connection tube.