The Susquehanna Virus Box Set

by Steve McEllistrem

  Cho glanced down and noticed it too. He said, “Why don’t you go out on a day trip with the tourists. Look at the craters, enjoy bein’ outside. You’re not likely to ever return to the Moon. Might as well see it while you’re here.” Cho placed his hand on Jeremiah’s shoulder. “I think I can get you your son soon—certainly by the time of the next LTV.”

  His voice carried sincerity, even a trace of fear. Behind his glasses, his eyes didn’t waver. The slightly sweet odor of his sweat remained constant. No deception. Jeremiah nodded. He hadn’t yet been out on the lunar surface. Perhaps it would help calm him.

  * * *

  The doors to the airlock opened. Jeremiah, fitted into a pressurized spacesuit, stepped into the small room, where a party of nine waited—an elderly Brazilian couple, a middle-aged French couple and the young family who had flown in on the same LTV he’d taken. Rounding out the group was their tour guide. The family’s older daughter looked up at him and smiled through her helmet. The father nodded hello. The mother said, “I suppose we should introduce ourselves. My husband’s Brian. I’m Roanne. This is our youngest, Kaylee. And no doubt you remember Kyler.”

  “Of course,” Jeremiah said through the open comm connection. “Good to see you again. I’m Jeremiah.” He nodded to the Brazilians and the French, who waved back.

  “Yesterday,” Kyler said, “we saw Shoemaker Crater. And we went to Cabeus and Faustini too.”

  “Sounds like you had a good time,” Jeremiah said.

  Kyler shrugged. “Today we’re going to see a new crater.”

  “That’s right,” the guide said as he closed the doors behind Jeremiah. “I’m Dalben Haynes, and I’ll be taking you to SPR8, a manmade crater here in the southern polar region.” He checked Jeremiah’s spacesuit, verifying that it was properly sealed, then examined the oxygen gauge. “It’s a balmy one-hundred-ten degrees Fahrenheit outside, or forty-three degrees Celsius, three-hundred-sixteen degrees Kelvin. When we exit, your visors will automatically darken to protect you from dangerous solar rays, limiting your ability to see the stars. You’ll notice that the Earth is in half-shadow and that we’re at about seventy-five degrees west longitude, which puts us over the eastern United States. If you want to get a really good look at Earth, set the magnification on your helmet to three when you step outside. But for safety’s sake, stop moving first.

  “Now that the air in the room has been pumped out,” Dalben opened the doors to the outside, “we can exit the hangar and make our way toward the lunar carriage, which is completely powered by solar energy. Off to the right, you’ll notice the Pilgrim, the spaceship that the Escala are planning to take to Mars.”

  Jeremiah glanced at the huge gray capsule a few hundred yards away and wondered what it would be like to travel inside it for eight months, winding up on another world, never to return to Earth.

  “Even though the temperature outside is often habitable,” Dalben interrupted his thoughts, “the lack of an atmosphere requires pressurized spacesuits so as to keep the body’s fluids in a liquid state. There’s also the danger of micrometeoroids, which bombard the Moon quite frequently and which aren’t burned up before reaching the ground because there’s no atmosphere to create friction and thereby reduce them in size.”

  “We heard this part yesterday,” Kyler said to Jeremiah as she took his hand and led him onto the lunar surface.

  Jeremiah looked up at Earth as Kyler tugged at him. He set his magnification to three and stared at the outline of North America. A shadow fell across the eastern half of the continent, which was awash in lights all the way along the coast. Further west, pockets of light indicated large cities—Cleveland, St. Louis, Chicago and dozens more—until the arched shadow of night gave way to daylight somewhere east of the Rockies. The western part of the continent was hidden by a huge mass of clouds that stretched over the Pacific Ocean. Central America and the bulk of South America were also mostly covered in clouds. But the continent’s eastern seaboard, like its northern counterpart, glowed unnaturally.

  “That’s where we live,” Kyler said as she pointed with her free hand, “in New York. It’s bright there.”

  “Yes, it is,” Jeremiah replied. He’d seen Earth through the plas-glass roof of LB1’s hangar but it was more impressive out on the lunar surface with nothing between them but the thin visor and the emptiness of space.

  “Come on, Jeremiah,” Kyler said as she pulled at him. He turned off the helmet’s magnification as she led him to an open-sided vehicle that looked something like a dune buggy, only larger. Wide, knobby tires sat under a flat carriage that held four benches. Atop the vehicle, a plas-glass roof stretched beyond the sides—a handful of scuff marks marring its surface where micrometeroids had struck it.

  Kyler jumped up and grabbed the roof of the transport, eight feet off the ground, where she began to swing back and forth.

  “Kyler,” Roanne said. “We talked about this. No jumping around. Get down from there. Brian, would you grab her?”

  Kyler said, “I want Jeremiah to help me.”

  Brian said, “He doesn’t want to—”

  “I’ll help her down,” Jeremiah said.

  “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” Roanne said. “She’ll glom onto you like a barnacle.”

  “I know what that means, Mother,” Kyler said as Jeremiah lifted her free of the carriage roof. When he set her on the ground, she turned to him and said, “Are you a soldier like Daddy says?”

  “Kyler,” Brian said. “I’m sorry, Jeremiah. I don’t know how much experience you have with kids but she is definitely more than a handful.”

  Jeremiah thought of his son. His whole body slumped. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  “Are you all right?” Roanne asked.

  “Fine,” he answered, shocked that she had noticed his pain through his faceplate. He patted Kyler’s helmet and said, “I like an inquisitive mind and a bold approach. As for your question, Kyler, no, I’m not a soldier.”

  Roanne shook her head and smiled at Jeremiah before taking the second seat with Kaylee. Standing beside the carriage, Brian put his hand on the seat railing and said to Jeremiah, “You sure you want to sit next to her?”

  Jeremiah grabbed Brian’s forearm and squeezed reassuringly. “We’ll be fine.”

  “Okay,” Brian said as he climbed in next to his wife. “But you let us know if she gets to be too much to handle.”

  The elderly Brazilian couple climbed into the front seat with Dalben, while the middle-aged French couple took the back seat. Before climbing into the buggy Jeremiah looked around. The sun, low in the sky off to his left, shone brightly even through his darkened visor. A shallow crater contained perhaps a dozen capsules of blue, red, yellow and green: the cemetery. Apart from the capsules, everything was black or gray: no trees or lakes or animals: just dirt and rocks, hills and craters. Even the sky, which ought to have been filled with stars, looked black through the darkened visor. Only a few of the brightest stars were visible, and even then they were nothing more than dim pinpoints of light. The stark, empty landscape looked like a desert.

  “Jeremiah,” Dalben said, “You’d better strap yourself in so we can get going. We only brought enough oxygen for four hours. We’ll be driving to the east approximately fifteen kilometers to SPR8. The lunar carriage travels at an average speed of thirty kilometers per hour, so we should be at our destination in about thirty minutes. Along the way, I’ll be pointing out some of the interesting features. For example, if you look off to your left, you’ll see the outlines of part of Maginus Crater. Up ahead and off to the right is the edge of Crater Curtius. Behind us too far back to see is Manzinus Crater.”

  “A lot of craters,” Jeremiah said.

  “They’re made by meteors,” Kyler said. She lifted her arms and brought them down at an angle into Jeremiah’s stomach. “Boom!” Jeremiah flinche
d in pretend pain and Kyler giggled. She said, “They crash into the ground and form big bowls of dust.”

  “That’s right,” Dalben said. “But you needn’t worry about meteors falling on us. I checked the meteor report before we left LB1 and the radar shows that we’ll be clear for at least the next several hours.

  “Now you’ll notice we’re traveling along a path that’s been used many times, as evidenced by the tire marks. See how each imprint is as fresh as the day it was made. There’s no wind or rain—nothing to erode them. They’ll still be here in a hundred years unless we drive over them or a meteor hits along this path.

  “One thing of interest is the many rock formations along the way to SPR8. Most of them are naturally occurring but some are man-made. If you look off to the right, you’ll see a cluster called the sphinx, which was created by last year’s tour guides as their final gift before rotating off-Moon. Over to the left there are a series of hills called the camelbacks, all made of igneous rock. Since the first lunar landing in 1969, we’ve learned that volcanic activity occurred here as recently as two million years ago. Hold onto your railings as we drive into this next crater.”

  The lunar carriage went uphill to the rim of the crater and plunged down toward a meteor at its center maybe twenty feet in diameter that someone had painted to look like a mouthful of jagged teeth. Kaylee and Kyler screamed, the latter with delight, as the carriage made its way toward the fiercely painted mouth.

  Kaylee began to cry. As Roanne comforted her, Kyler said, “She’s such a baby.”

  “Dalben,” Jeremiah said, “do you get a bonus for terrifying children?”

  “Sorry,” Dalben said. “It’s all part of the tour. Don’t usually get young kids here.”

  Brian looked back at Jeremiah and nodded.

  The rest of the journey to SPR8 passed quietly. When they reached their destination, Dalben grabbed the portable light from the carriage, brought it over to the edge of the crater and waited for the others to join him. Kyler leapt out of the carriage and began hopping around again. The elderly Brazilians brought up the rear.

  “Kyler,” Roanne said. “Please don’t jump around like that. And stay away from the edge.”

  When everyone reached the side of the crater, Roanne and Brian each holding one of Kaylee’s hands, Dalben said, “Well, here we are at SPR8. This crater was created less than two years ago by the Las-cannons that orbit the Earth—part of an experiment to determine how effective they would be at breaking up an incoming asteroid or meteor. The crater is sixty meters wide at the top and less than ten meters wide at the bottom. Notice the steep sides, slick from the burning of the Las-cannons, which melted the igneous rock that makes up the Moon. The crater is over three hundred meters deep.”

  The Frenchman, holding onto his wife’s hand, stepped closer to the edge and said, “How long did it take to create the crater?”

  “Just over four hours on a medium-power setting,” Dalben answered. He picked up a large rock and threw it over the side, flashing the light on it as it fell, slowly at first, picking up speed until it crashed into the bottom. “Notice also,” Dalben continued, “that it makes no sound when it hits—again because there’s no atmosphere to transmit the sound waves. Here, try it.” He handed a rock to Kyler.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Roanne said.

  “I’ll be careful, Mom,” Kyler replied.

  “No jumping around,” Brian said. “Just drop the rock and back away.”

  Kyler took the rock from Dalben and stepped toward the edge of the crater. Looking back at her parents, she tossed the rock over and leaned forward to watch it drift ever faster to the bottom.

  The ground beneath her feet suddenly began to sink and she fell forward, crying out. Jeremiah dove for her. Grabbing her arm, he pulled hard, and she flew past him to safety. But Jeremiah, unused to the lower gravity of the Moon, couldn’t stop his momentum. He soared past the lip of the crater, tumbling. Hands and feet splayed, he searched for any purchase to stop his descent. The screams of his fellow tourists sounded through the comm as he hit the sheer face of the crater wall. He scrabbled for a handhold, a toehold, anything on the slick sidewall as he plummeted.

  In his desperate attempt to slow his fall, he nearly pushed himself away from the side of the crater. Almost immediately, however, he realized that he needed to stay close to the wall. He tumbled, his head below his feet, stretching out his fingers until he found the rocky surface. With his right hand, he groped for bumps or outcrops, found several, twisting himself so that his feet were back beneath him. He gently dug them into the wall as he slid down the crater, slowing his descent until his right foot jammed against a large protrusion, somersaulting him again.

  The fall took a long time.

  He reached out in search of any kind of handhold, the light held by Dalben tumbling out of view. Then he crashed.

  He couldn’t breathe. His spacesuit must have been punctured. Lying on his back, looking up at the light, it dawned on him that he was going to die at the bottom of a hole on the Moon.

  Joshua.

  Jeremiah’s whole body ached. And then his lungs began to work, sucking in a giant breath of oxygen. Screams and shouted questions filled his helmet. “Quiet!” he commanded.

  The screaming stopped. Only a faint hiss and a clicking noise emanated from the speakers in his helmet.

  “Are you okay?” Brian yelled.

  “Peachy,” Jeremiah replied. He felt the movement of air past his face and realized that the hiss wasn’t coming from the speakers. He groaned as he forced himself to a sitting position. He’d broken at least a few ribs. Every breath brought a knife-sharp pain to his chest. His head throbbed and his legs delivered jolts of agony to his stomach.

  “I can’t believe you survived that fall,” Dalben said. Several clicks swallowed his next words. “. . . break any bones?”

  “I’ve got a hole in my suit,” Jeremiah said through clenched teeth.

  “Where?”

  He waited for a crackle to diminish and said, “I’m looking for it. Hang on.”

  “. . . get help.”

  Another crackling sound and then Roanne said, “. . . we can do?”

  A loud pop issued from the comm link before it died. Taking a deep breath, hoping it wouldn’t be his last, Jeremiah began to examine the suit. He checked his hands first. Despite the urge to hurry, he went slowly and carefully over the garment, finding no obvious tears. He looked down at his left foot. Nothing. Then his right. There. In the dim light he could just make out a rip along the toes about three inches long. Pulling his foot back towards him, grunting with the pain and effort, he realized that his legs were broken. As his hands reached his foot, a piercing needle of agony punctured him. It traveled up his right leg, extending all the way to his head, creating a pressure that felt sonic. He was afraid he’d pass out and let go of the suit. But for now he applied pressure, sealing the tear at least partially. The hissing stopped.

  “I found the rip,” he spoke calmly on the off chance they could still hear him. “It’s in the right foot, about three inches long. If you have any tape with you, you could toss that down. And if you can hear me, blink the light.”

  No acknowledgement.

  The light still shone. He twisted his head to look up at it. Apart from its glare he could see nothing. All he could do was wait, fighting the pain as he held the tear closed with his hands. How much air had he lost? How long until a rescue party came for him? His death would solve a lot of problems for Admiral Cho and Dr. Poole. But what about his son? Would Joshua die here too? So close—he’d been so close to getting his son back. And now he might as well be back on Earth.

  Nausea flooded him. Sweat ran down his forehead. He lay back, pulling his right foot up, hoping he wouldn’t faint.

  Strangely, the rage swelled inside him, filling him with an adrenaline rush th
at made his whole body quiver, wanting to attack. But without an enemy to fight, he would only be hurting himself, using up his air supply too quickly. Not that it mattered. Too much had escaped already: his gauge already in the red zone. He blinked three times, centered himself in his stone dungeon, walling off the pain and anger. Yet the rage ripped him free of it. He knew he had to calm himself down, conserve his oxygen.

  He stared at the light, took slow breaths, concentrated on emptying his mind in an effort to hypnotize himself. After a moment, he managed to relax. He stared up past Dalben’s light into the blackness of space, wishing he could look at the stars, finally remembering that the darkened visor could be adjusted manually. His eyes scanned the controls at the top of the visor until he found the proper setting. By focusing on the clear view option with the masking feature, he was able to create a black spot that covered the flashlight. Beyond it the stars suddenly appeared.

  He looked back into time, back into the creation of the solar system and the Milky Way Galaxy, recalling images from his own creation. Catherine, Joshua, Julianna: the people who once populated his world. The past replayed itself in his mind with a clarity he knew was a lie even as he embraced it. His legs grew cold. He wondered if they would simply cover him up, shovel the omnipresent lunar dust over his body, leaving him alone in the vacuum. More images: family outings of idyllic tranquility; a lake, a canoe, a brief rainstorm; the northern lights. Through the mist of memory he saw movement, but not a sound intruded. Images paraded past in absolute silence, disturbing the perfection of mimetic recall.

  He tried to focus on Joshua, on the poor tormented young man locked in a cage, but his mind kept drifting to his negligent stupidity. How could he have been so careless? You knew this would happen at some point, he said to himself. You placed too much reliance on your abilities. Cocky moron, you deserve to die down here. No! Jeremiah refused to surrender. Hang on, idiot. They’ll send help. Just stay alive a little longer.