Bouncing Off the Moon

David Gerrold Bouncing Off the Moon

Dingilliad – 2

BOUNCING OFF THE MOON

Starsiders 2

David Gerrold

for Jim and Betty and Mae Beth Glass, with love

BOARDING

I here's this thing that Dad used to say, when things didn't work out. He would say, "Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time." I never knew if he was serious or if he was doing that deadpan‑sarcastic thing he did.

The thing is, it usually wasn'ta good idea at the time.

Like going to the moon. That was hisgood idea, not mine. Not Doug's or Bobby's either. But like all of his good ideas, it worked out backwards. We got to go, and he had to stay behind, still holding his ticket and wondering what happened–the last time I looked back, he had thatlook on his face. And thathurt.

We made it to the elevator with less than six minutes to spare. They were just about to give away our cabin to a worried‑looking family waiting on standby. The dad looked upset and the mom started crying when we showed up. They wanted our cabin on the outbound car so desperately that the dad started waving a fistful of plastic dollars at us, offering to buy our reservation–we could name any price we wanted.

Doug hesitated. I could tell he was tempted, so was I–poverty does that to you–but Mickey just pushed him forward and said, "We don't need their money." So we ducked into the transfer pod and the hatch slammed shut behind us with the finality of a coffin lid.

This time, we were going in through the passenger side, and I knew what to expect, so the shift in pseudogravity as the pod whirled up to speed didn't bother me as much as it had before. I'd nearly thrown up when we'd transferred from the car that brought us up the orbital elevator to Geostationary.

Dad's good idea thistime had involved smuggling something–or pretending to smuggle something so the real smugglers would go unnoticed–and in return, he'd get four tickets up the Line, but the only thing he was smuggling was us.He told us we were going on vacation, and it would have been a great vacation, except it wasn't reallya vacation. The whole time, he was planning/hoping that we'd decide to go outbound with him to one of the colonies and not go back to Earth and Mom.

It would have worked if Mom hadn't found out. And if whatever it was that we were supposed to be smuggling hadn't been so important that some really powerful people were trying to track us, bribe us, threaten us, and have us detained by any means possible. It would have worked because after we thought about it, we wantedto go.

So we went. Without Dad.

Without Mom too. The guys in the black hats had shuttled her up. My cheek was still stinging from her last angry slap. It wasn't a great good‑bye. And the hurt went a lot deeper than my cheek.

The hatch of the transfer pod opened and we were looking down a narrow corridor. "Come on, let's get to our cabin," Mickey said, giving me a gentle nudge on the shoulder. "The outbound trip is only six and a half hours. I think we should all try to get some sleep while we can."

"I'm not tired!" announced Stinky–he was only Bobby when he wasn't Stinky. "And I'm not going to bed without a hug from Mommy!"

"He's contradicting himself again," I said.

Douglas–also known as Weird–gave me a look, one of the looks he'd learned from Mom. "Charles, if this is going to work, I need your help."He turned back to Stinky, trying to shush him with logic. "Mommy isn't here, remember?"

We were halfway between nowhere and nothingness, on a cable strung between Ecuador and Whirlaway. There weren't many floors left to drop out from under us–and in a few minutes, we'd be dropping even further away at several thousand klicks per hour. Douglas was right. We were on our own.

"Give him to me," I said. In the one‑third pseudogravity of the cabin, Stinky was only cumbersome, not heavy. He was still crying, but he reached for me–maybe I should have been flattered, but it seemed like an ominous moment. Was I going to be the Stinky‑wrangler now?

Probably.

Douglas was already too much of an adult. He thought logic was sufficient. Well, so did I–but with Stinky, you have to use Stinky‑logic, which isn't like adult logic at all. "Hey, kiddo," I said, maneuvering him into a hug. "I didn't get my hug either." He slid his arms around my neck in a near stranglehold. "Attaboy. We'll trade hugs. But no doggy‑slurps–"

Even before I finished the sentence, Stinky was already licking my cheek– slurp, slurp, slurp–like an affectionate puppy. It was his favorite game, because I always said, "Yick, yick–bleccchhh! Dog germs!"

And that was all it took. Mommy was forgotten for the moment.

It was an old game–it went back to the time I'd been whining for a puppy, and Mom had said, "No, we can't afford a puppy–and besides, we've got the baby."

"Stinky isn't a puppy!" I answered back.

" Yes, I am!"Stinky had shouted at me. He didn't even know what a dog was then. "Am too!"

And then Weird had said, "Put him on a leash, take him for a walk, you'll never know the difference," and that was how the slurp game began. We didn't have a dog, we had Stinky. But I still would have preferred a dog. Most dogs drop dead by the time they're Stinky's age.

I tried to wipe my cheek, except the little monster had such a hammerlock on me that I couldn't break free. Time for the next move in the game: "No hickeys! No hickeys!" I shouted, and began tickling him unmercifully. He broke free in self‑defense, shrieking in feigned panic. I grabbed him in a bear hug, ready to tickle him senseless, then remembered where we were and stopped before he peed in his pants. For a moment, we just stood where we were, him gasping for breath and me just holding on. Hugging.

I flopped backward onto the floor and pulled him down to my lap, curling him into my arms. "I miss Mommy too," I said, almost forgetting about my cheek. He wrapped his arms around me and hung on the way he'd done back in Arizona, in the big meteor crater.

Hard to believe that was only a week ago–Stinky had been acting up, as usual. He'd run away from us, down the path that led around and around, down to the bottom of the crater. He was playing "You can't catch me." Then he tripped and slid down the crater wall, and I'd thought we were going to lose him, but he only slid a little way down and then stopped. I was closest to him–I flattened myself on the ground and tried to get to him.

But when I looked down that steep wall, all the way to the bottom, I was paralyzed. But then Douglas grabbed me and Dad grabbed Douglas and I grabbed Stinky, and somehow we all pulled each other back up onto the narrow path and … for a moment, we hung there on the wall of forever, everyone holding on to each other–and Stinky had wrapped his arms around me like an octopus.

When it happened, I was angry–so angry, I couldn't even say how angry–but the whole thing also left me with a funny feeling about him. About what it would have been like to lose him. And now that he was grabbing on to me the same way again, I began to realize what the feeling was. It was the same thing I felt. A grab for safety.

The difference was that Stinky had someone to hang on to. So did Douglas, now–he had Mickey. I was the only one who didn't. Which was sort of the way I wanted it, at least I thought I did. Except maybe I didn't.

The enormity of what we'd done was just starting to sink in. Mom and Dad's custody hearing had ended up in an emergency court session in front of Judge Griffith. She thought she could resolve it by asking me what I wanted.

And I–in my infinite wisdom–had simply blurted out, "I want a divorce." I mean, if Mom and Dad could divorce each other when things got ugly, why couldn't I divorce the both of them? All I'd wanted to do was make them stop fighting over us kids so much–

But Judge Griffith had taken my angry words at face value. She gave Douglas his independence; that was okay, he was almost eighteen; and then she gave me a divorce from Mom and Dad–and she assigned custody of both me and Stinky to Douglas.

So yeah. At the time, it seemed like a good idea.

But now–here we were, alone in our cabin, and I was sitting on the floor, holding Bobby in a daddy‑hug because I couldn't think of anything else to do. I guess Bobby thought that I could take care of him–but I wasn't even sure that I could take care of myself.

I was torn between the feeling of not wanting him all over me and knowing that I didn't have much of a choice in the matter. As little brothers go, he'd never been much fun. And whose fault was that anyway? I'd replayed this conversation in my head plenty enough times. Douglas had told me more than once that it was my fault Stinky was the way he was. He said I'd resented him from the day he was born.

But that wasn't true. I'd resented him long before that.

It was Stinky's fault Mom and Dad got divorced. He'd been an accident, and Mom got angry at Dad, and Dad got angry at Mom, and then he moved out or she threw him out, it didn't matter–but if Stinky hadn't come along, we'd still be a family. Or maybe not. But at least things would have been quieter.

After he was born, Mom was different. She didn't have time for me anymore. She didn't have time for anything. Everything was about Stinky, and I had to help take care of him too, instead of just getting to be a kid. So of course, I was angry at him.

And now, both Mom andDad were gone, and the only person poor Stinky had to hang on to was me. I suppose, if I thought about it, I didn't really hate him. I just wished he'd never been born.

Two weeks ago, we'd been in West El Paso–just another tube‑town for "flow‑through" families. Which is a polite way of saying "poor people."

The way it worked, they laid down a bunch of tubes, three or four meters in diameter, sealed the ends, and let people move in. They called it no‑fab housing.

The best that can be said about living in a tube is that it's almost as good as not having anyplace to live at all.

El Paso gets sandstorms, bigones, and when the wind blows it turns the tubes into giant organ pipes. Everything vibrates. You get reallydeep bass, well below the range of audibility, four cycles a second–you don't hear it, you feelit. Only you don't really know what you're feeling, you just get this queasy feeling.

Burying the tubes doesn't help. They bury themselves anyway, as the sand settles around them. Tube‑towns sink into the ground sometimes as fast as a meter a year. The Earth just sucks them in. So they just keep adding more and more tubes on top. Our tube‑town was already five layers deep.

You're supposed to get air and sunlight through these big vortical chimneys–more tubes–only that creates another problem. The wind sweeps down one chimney and up the other, making the whole house whistle. The harmonics are dreadful.

And there isn't a whole lot anybody can do about it either, except leave. The Tube Authority told us we could move out anytime. There were plenty families on the waiting list to move in.

So when Dad said, "Let's go to the moon," well–it really did seem like a good idea at the time, once we realized he was serious. I don't think Douglas and Bobby believed him any more than I did, at least not at first, but hell–if it would get us out of the tubes, even for a couple of weeks, we were all for it. "Sure, Dad. Let's go to the moon." I figured Barringer Meteor Crater was as far as we were ever going to get, especially after Stinky's little misadventure.

But Dad was more than serious. He was actually determined.He'd already made plans. He'd hired himself out as a courier and gotten tickets up the beanstalk for all four of us. All we had to do was secure a bid from a colony and we'd be outbound on the next brightliner to the stars. Just one little problem …

I mean, otherthan Mom.

There was this big storm, Hurricane Charles–and no, I did not appreciate the honor of having a hurricane named after me–it had pretty much clobbered Terminus City at the bottom of the beanstalk, so all groundside traffic was shut down, no one knew for how long. So we couldn't go back, even if we wanted to–which we didn't–because while we were all fighting with each other in Judge Griffith's courtroom, the United Nations declared a Global Health Emergency.

That was the otherreason why Dad wanted to get off the planet so badly. He'd figured it out, just from watching the news; it wasn't hard, but most people weren't paying attention to that stuff. By the time most people knew, the plagues were already out of control.

While we were boarding the first elevator up the beanstalk, the Centers for Disease Control was announcing– admitting–that yes, the numbers did suggest the possibility that maybe, yes, we could be seeing–but there's really no need for anyone to panic, if we all take proper precautions–the first stages of a full‑blown pandemic–um, yes, on three continents,but all this speculation about a global population crash is dangerous and premature–

And about twenty seconds after that, the international stock market imploded. More than a hundred trillion dollars disappeared into the bit bucket. Evaporated instantly. So even if there wasn't any real danger, there wasn't any money anymore to deal with it. And that wasa real danger. Because everything was shutting down. And if that wasn't enough bad news, a woman in southern Oregon said that giant worms had eaten her horse.

They used to call this kind of mess a polycrisis. And everybody just shrugged and went on with business. Only this one was more than just another cascade of disasters, it was an avalanche of global collapse. They were calling it a meltdown.

But we were nearly forty thousand kilometers away, and it was all just pictures on a screen. It couldn't touch us anymore. I didn't know how Douglas and Mickey felt about the news, but the Earth seemed so far away now it didn't matter anymore. Maybe that was the wrong way to feel, but that's what I felt anyway.

A departure bell chimed and our elevator dropped away from Geostationary. We were outward bound. Every second that passed, the Earth fell even farther behind us. Aboveus.

Everything from Geostationary is down–down to Earth or down to Farpoint–because Geostationary is at the gravitational center of the Line. It's where the effects of Earth's gravity on the Line are exactly balanced by the tension of Whirlaway rock at the other end. So whichever way you go, dirtside or starside, you're going down.

Our tickets were paid for all the way to Asimov Station on the moon, two and a half days away. All we had to do was enjoy the ride as best we could–

–and try not to think about the agents of whatever SuperNational it was who still believed that Dad had hidden something inside Stinky's programmable monkey and would probably try to intercept us to get it away from us, even though there was nothing in it except a couple of bars of extra memory, which were just a decoy anyway because someone else was smuggling the real McGuffin off the planet and out to wherever. I was hoping it was all the missing money, and that someone had made a mistake, and we really had it instead of whoever was supposed to–but Doug said it didn't work that way, the best anyone could be carrying would be the transfer codes, so never mind.

But … it was past midnight, and if anyone was really chasing us, they couldn't get to us until we got to the moon. And there was nothing we could do either until we got there. We'd been running for nearly twelve hours already, and we were all exhausted. So even though I could think of at least six arguments we should have been having, what we did instead was crawl into bed. Mickey and Douglas bounced themselves into one bed. Stinky and I flopped over backwards into the other, with the intention of sleeping most of the way out to Farpoint Station.

The trip up to Geostationary takes twenty‑four hours. The trip outto Whirlaway takes only six and a half. This is partly because you travel faster on the outward side, but mostly because the outward side of the Line isn't as long. Instead, there's a huge ballast rock the size of Manhattan at the far end. It's called Whirlaway, and inside it is Farpoint Station.

But we wouldn't be going even that far. The thing about the Line is that it's not just an elevator, it's also a sling.

Tie a rock to a string, whirl it around your head. That's how the Line works. If you let go of the string, it flies off in whatever direction it was headed when you let go. A spaceship can fly off the end of the Line and get enough boost to go to the moon or Mars or anywhere else, using almost no fuel at all except for course corrections along the way. Jarles "Free Fall" Ferris, pilot of the first transport to leave Whirlaway for Mars, was supposed to have said, "Well, the old man was wrong. There issuch a thing as a free launch."

But depending on where you're going, there are only certain times of the day when you can launch a ship from the Line. Otherwise you have to wait twenty‑four hours, give or take a smidge for precession, for the next launch window.

Actually, you can launch from any point on the Line, depending on where you want to go. If you launch below the flyaway point–also called the gravitational horizon–you become a satellite of the Earth, because anything below flyaway doesn't have enough "delta vee" to escape Earth's gravity; the sling doesn't give you enough velocity to break free. But above the flyaway point, you get flung far enough and fast enough that you go up and over the lip of Earth's gravity well, and then you just keep on going. The farther out on the Line you get, the faster you leave.

For some places, like L4 and L5, you don't want a lot of speed, because then you have to spend a lot of fuel burning it off. Douglas knows all about this stuff. He says that trajectory is the biggest part of the problem. How fast will you be going when you get where you're going? If you're catching up to your destination, you won't need as much fuel to match its speed as if you're intercepting it head‑on, because then you have to burn off speed in one direction and build it up in the other. So there are a lot of advantages to slow launches–especially for cargo, which mostly doesn't care, because if all you're doing is feeding a pipeline, nobody really cares how long the pipe is, as long as the flow is steady.

Douglas had tried to explain it all to Stinky, more than once, but Stinky never really got it. He kept asking what held up the rock and why didn't it fall back down on Ecuador? Finally, Douglas just gave up and told him that the Whirlaway rock was hanging down off the south pole and we were going down to it. I think it made his head hurt to say that; he has this thing about scientific accuracy, and that's part of what makes him Weird–with a capital W.

I hadn't paid any attention at all to Doug's lectures, but it sank in anyway, by osmosis. I didn't think it mattered because we were going all the way to the end, to Farpoint Station, because that would give us the most flyaway speed and get us to Luna faster than any other transit.

At least that's what we thought at the time.

RUDE AWAKENINGS

Somebody was shaking me awake. It was Douglas. "Come on, Chig‑ger. We've gotta go. Now."

"Huh? What?"

"Don't ask questions, we don't have time."

I sat up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. "What time is it?"

Douglas pulled me to my feet and pushed me toward Mickey, who steered me toward–there was someone elsein the cabin?–he was tall and skinny and gangly. I blinked awake. It was Alexei Krislov, the Lunar‑Russian madman, the money‑surfer who'd tried to help us elude the Black Hats on Geostationary. "Huh? How did you get here?" I blinked in confusion. He was wearing a dripping wetsuit. Was I still dreaming?

"Shh," he said, finger to his lips. "Later."

Douglas scooped up the still‑sleeping Bobby and Mickey grabbed the rest of our meager luggage, hanging it off himself like saddlebags. When he reached for the monkey, it jabbered away from him and leapt into my arms. After that incident on One‑Hour, where the monkey had led me on a wild breathless chase, I'd programmed it to home toward me whenever Bobby wasn't playing with it. I'd told it I was the Prime Authority.

Alexei opened the cabin door, peeked both ways–there was no one there–then led us aft toward the cargo section of the car. Actually, it was the bottom of the car, but the car was a cylinder rotating to generate pseudogravity, so the bottom was the aft. I was too groggy to pay much attention to what we were doing, I was still annoyed at being dragged out of bed. I looked at my watch. It was two‑thirty in the morning. What the hell? We were still four hours away from Farpoint.

Alexei pushed us into the aft transfer pod, and we all grabbed handholds. Pseudogravity faded away as the transfer pod stopped spinning in sync with the passenger cabin. Now we were in free fall again. I know that lots of people think free fall is fun. I'm not one of them. It makes me queasy, and it's hard to control where you're moving.

Alexei opened the door on the other side and pushed us quickly into the cargo bay. I felt like one of those big balloons they use in the Thanksgiving Day parade. We floated and bounced through tight spaces filled with crates and tubes and tanks. The walls were all lined with orange webbing. Alexei led us through two or three more hatches, I lost count, and finally brought us to the last car in the train. It was cramped and cold and smelled funny. He jammed us into whatever spaces he could, then went back to seal the hatch; he did some stuff at the wall panel, and came swimming back to us, pushing blankets ahead of him. "Bundle warm. Is a little like Russian winter here, da?"

The blankets didn't look very warm; they were thin papery things, but Alexei showed us how to work them. They were big Mylar ponchos; you put your head through the hole, pulled the elastic hood up over your head, and then zipped up the sides, leaving just enough gap to stick your hands out if you needed to. We looked like we were all plastic‑wrapped, but as soon as I turned the blanket on, it turned reflective and I started feeling a lot better. Pretty soon, I was all warm and toasty and ready to go back to sleep–only I wanted to go back to the bed we'd already paid for.

Mickey and Douglas were still sorting themselves out, finding corners to anchor our bags, and stuff like that. Douglas was bundling up Stinky, who still hadn't awakened. That's one good thing about low‑gee. You sleep better.

I looked to Mickey. "What's going on?"

Alexei bounced over. "Is Luna you want to go, yes? Krislov will get you there. I promise. The elevators are not safe. Not for you. So I come to get you, da.I swim the whole way." He slapped his belly, indicating the wetsuit. He started to peel off the harness, which held his scuba gear. "I take free ride in the ballast tank. Nobody knows I am here. My people book for cabins to Luna. We all get bumped for Mister Fatwallets. No problem. We still go home." Grinning proudly, he tucked his Self‑Contained Universal Breathing Apparatus into the orange webbing on the wall.

Mickey finished what he was doing and floated down–or was it up?–to drift next to Douglas. He angled himself into the same general orientation and looked across at Alexei. "All of you? You're allleaving? All the Loonies?"

Alexei looked grim. "As fast as we can, gospodin.Is very bad, all over. Worse than you imagine. Worse than you canimagine. But no problem." He reached over and squeezed Mickey's shoulder. "Alexei will take care of you. What you told me was very useful, da.I looked, I saw. I made calls. I have clients who worry. I solve their problems. I move their money from here to there, I make money moving it. I move a lot of money now, I make a lot. What you told me, Mickey–I am very rich now. I was rich before, but now I am very very rich. Believe it. Before they shut down money wires, you have no idea how much dollars and euros this clever Lunatic has dry‑cleaned. And with money wires shut down now, Alexei cannot send the money on, so Alexei takes care of it. A very great deal of it. I cannot count all the zeroes. And I keep the interest too. But shutting down the flow of money will not keep it on Earth, no. Money is like water. It goes where it wants to. And if there is not a way, it makes a way." He tapped his chest. "I am the way. I find the way. I deliver in person, if necessary. Do you know how much money I am worth because of you? Never mind, you cannot afford to ask."

Krislov grinned. "I tell you this, you are worth almost as much. Remember? I make promise to you? I keep that promise. I flow the money through dummy companies. I cannot hold all companies in my name, so I put some of them in your names. All your names–even the monkey. You are all technically very very rich. At any moment, there could be billions of techno‑dollars flowing through your accounts, around and around and around–we keep the money going, they can't find it. They shut the wires down, the money is supposed to stop. But it doesn't. It leaks. Every beam of light is a leak."

I interrupted with a yawn. "Yeah, but– why did you have to wake us up?"

"Because, while I am floating in ballast, I am still on phone. I am coordinating, yes? No.The wires are shut down, remember? But I listen to Line chatter. Why? Because I am nosy, da?Yes, I am–but also because in my business, it is a good idea to listen. So I listen to Line chatter. And I hear. What do I hear?" He opened his palms in a free‑fall shrug. "I hear about paladins. Do you know what paladins are, Charles?"

I shook my head.

"Bounty hunters. Freelance marshals. They specialize in extradition. They track you down, they catch you, they bring you back where you don't want to go. This is why I ride in ballast. I always make my own travel plans. Is much safer, because suddenly–I can't imagine why, can you?–people at Geostationary want to talk to Alexei. About business? Probably, but maybe I don't want to talk about business. Certainly not mybusiness. So after I deliver you to passenger cabin, I go to cargo bay. As soon as car is on its way, I think we are all safe, but I am wrong. I listen to Line chatter, what do I hear? I hear about paladins at Farpoint waiting for cars to arrive. Maybe they are looking for me? I am disappointed. Only a little. Mostly they are looking for dingalings. Four dingalings and a monkey. Award money is substantial. You are very valuable to somebody, Douglas and Charles and little stinking one. And Mickey too.

"So, I float in tank, I think–I think I cannot let them catch Din‑gillians. Why? Because some of my companies are in your names and until I can get where I can rearrange the money‑flow, I do not want you in that pipeline. Also because I owe you. So, I think–and da,I can do it. I come and get you. I wake Mickey and Douglas. They grab you and Stinky. We all come back here. We bundle up warm."

"But–so what?" I asked. "If we're not in our cabin, they'll search the rest of the cars. They'll still catch us."

"I don't think so," Alexei laughed. Something went thumpjust outside the cargo bay. "Because we are getting off here."

FALLING

Then something else went clank and thunkand finally bumpf.Alexei held up a hand for silence, as if he were counting off something in his head. "Wait– da!"He gestured excitedly. "Feel that?"

"No–what?" It sort of felt like we were moving sideways. It was hard to tell in microgravity.

"We are off of track. Swinging around into launch bay."

"Launch bay–?"

"Not to worry, little frightened one. Is not the first time a Lunatic has done this. Is first time that Alexei Krislovhas done this, yes–but is because this is first time I have need to."

"Do what–?" I demanded. Even Douglas looked worried.

Something outside the car made a noise that sounded like un‑clank–and then everything was abruptly silent. All the background noises of the Line and the elevator car were gone. The effect was terrifying.I'd never heard so much silence in my life before.

"We are on our way to moon," Alexei said. "We cheat the bounty marshals. We ride with cargo. In four hours, elevator arrives at Whirl‑away. Marshals show warrants, they go to cabin, they open door–but Dingillian family is nowhere, da? Da."

Ahorrible cold feeling was creeping up my spine. "Where are we?" I demanded. "What did you do?"

"We have jumped off Line. We go to moon. We ride with cargo."

" We're off the Line–?"

" Da."

The cold feeling turned into a churning one. "Douglas–!" I wailed.

The emptiness outside the walls pressed in on me like a nightmare. I couldn't escape. It was even worse because there were no windows! It was down in all directions–we were falling into the dark!

I started flailing in panic– "I don't want to do this! We've gotta go back. Make him take us back! I can't do this, Douglas! We've gotta go back–"

Douglas grabbed me, held me tight in the same kind of bear hug that I always used on Stinky. He pushed me up against something, a tank or a tube, and anchored himself on the webbing to hold us both steady. "Chigger–don't go crazy on me!"

"I can't do this, Douglas. I can't!" I started blubbering. "I'm scared! There's nothing to hold on to out here!"

"Hold on to me–just hold on. I'm right here." He held me tight in one arm, his face close to mine. He touched my face with his free hand. "Look at me, Charles. I'm just as scared as you. But we're not going to die. Nothing bad is going to happen to us. I've got you right here. And you've got me. We've got air, we've got water. We'll be three days getting there–"

" No, Doug, please–" I started to come apart. "I can't do this, not for three days. There's gotta be a way to get back–"

"Charles, you know better than that. & There isn't any way back.The pod has been flung off the line. We're going to the moon. There's no way to stop it. There's no way to turn around.

"I can't, I can't–I can't do this!"

"Yes you can. Listen to me. Look at me. We're very comfortable here. It's just a few days. We have air, we have water, we have food, we'll keep warm. You've got your music. It'll be just like armstrong and Borman and Collins. We'll pretend we're in an Apollo capsule. Like pioneers."

"An Apollo capsule? Like Lovell and–and–? Whatever their names were?"

"Swigert and Haise." That was Douglas. Even in the middle of a crisis, he had to be accurate. "We can do this, Charles. We have to. We're all we have. And Stinky needs you to be brave for him. I can't do it. He listens to you, not me."

In my head I knew he was right, but that didn't stop me from being so scared I couldn't speak. My helplessness just came bubbling out. Douglas held on to me and let me sob like a baby into his shoulder. I was so afraid. It was everything.Mom and her slap. Dad and his lies. Douglas and Mickey. Stinky. Not knowing where we were going. Everything out of control. It had been bad enough being stuck on a high‑tension line, caught between everyone and everything–now my worst fear of all had just come true. We were helplessly falling forever. We were a million klicks from nowhere and getting farther away every second.

So I held on to Douglas and cried, because he was all there was to hang on to–even though he was falling just as fast and just as far as I was.

But you can only cry for so long … and then after that, it's boring. Even worse, it's silly …

I sniffed and wiped my nose unashamedly on Doug's shoulder.

He backed off a bit so he could look me in the eye. "Are you all right?"

"No," I admitted.

"Can you hold it together?"

"I don't know."

"Because I don't want to have to sedate you."

"Like Stinky?"

"Yeah," he admitted. "And I hated doing it."

I didn't answer. I could see the logic of it. Who needs an hysterical eight‑year‑old? Especially if you've already got a crazy thirteen‑year‑old?

He asked again, even more serious this time. "Chigger–can you hold it together?"

"I'll try." I was thinking about the tranquilizer. It might not be such a bad idea after all. But if I was going to die, I wanted to be awake for it. And wasn't that a stupid thought? Wouldn't it be better to be asleep, so you wouldn't know when it happened?

"Listen–" His voice got very quiet, very serious. "All we have is each other."

"Yeah, I know."

For a moment, we just studied each other. He was wondering if I could be trusted–and I was wondering the same thing. I needed him to be strong for me, and he needed me to be strong for Bobby. I didn't know if I could do it. I'd spent so many years shutting them out I didn't know how to let them back in. I didn't know what to say. And even if I did, I didn't have any words–Finally, I blurted, "I don't have anything to hang on to."

"Nobody does," he said. "Ever." Like that was supposed to reassure me. The funny thing was, it sort of did.

I let go of him. "I think I'll be okay now."

"You're sure?"

I was starting to feel embarrassed. "Yeah," I said, and pushed past him back to the others. Mickey and Alexei looked at me with concerned eyes. "I'm fine," I said. "I just have this–fear of cramped spaces. And heights. And falling. And the dark … "

"Wow," said Alexei. "Is triple whammy. Not a good combination for space travel, da?"

Mickey gave him a shut‑up‑stupid look, then reached over and put his hand on my shoulder, ostensibly to steady me, but he was slow in taking his hand away, and I knew he meant it as moral support too. Douglas settled in next to him, and the two exchanged grown‑up glances; Mickey's had a question mark, Douglas's had a reassuring period.

Mickey's look to Alexei hadn't worked. Alexei kept talking. "I don't understand this fear," he said. "Where I grow up, you fall slow, you have time to turn yourself so you land on your feet. You bounce, you don't hurt yourself. So why be afraid?"

Douglas said bluntly, "Try it in Earth gravity sometime."

"Earth?" He made a face, shook his head. "I do not think anyone will go to Earth for a long time. I certainly will not. I have Luna muscles, Luna bones. I have no desire to be toothpick‑man on planet of crazy dirtsiders. You haven't heard latest news, have you? Ecuador has nationalized the Line. Armed troops have seized Terminus."

Mickey didn't look as surprised as I thought he would. "How'd they get access?"

"According to Line chatter, hurricane relief teams came in to use Terminus as a base. Troops came in with teams, to help prevent looting–but then they started arresting Line personnel. The situation is still … how you say, very fluid? Traffic is running again, but most cars up are carrying troops. They have already seized One‑Hour. Maybe there will be fighting at Geostationary. The U.N. is in uproar, of course–"

Mickey looked worried and upset. His mom was still at Geostationary.

Alexei was still talking. "We are lucky to get away. Who knows what will happen next?" He gestured dramatically. "But one thing I am sure, Luna will finally prove what I have been saying all along–Luna doesn't need Earth anymore. We are self‑sufficient. We will be new center of human consciousness. Not Earth."

Douglas and Mickey exchanged another glance. This time, Douglas had the question mark. Mickey answered, "Yes, Alexei is militant in his Lunacy."

Alexei didn't bristle; he wore his madness like a badge. "The laugh is on you, Mikhail.If not for my paranoid Lunacy"–he tapped his head with his fingertips–"you would be in custody very shortly. In another four hours. At the end of the line, how you say, literally. And whose custody would you be in? Up for the highest bidder, I think. And if we are all at war, who knows? Bad accidents happen in war. No, my Lunacy is saving your life. Again. No, no, you can thank me later. The money I have made today is all the gratitude I need."

FLOATING

Alexei settled us at the far end of the pod, in the little bit of space between the cargo containers and the hull. He tucked us and our gear into the orange webbing on the aft bulkhead, spacing us around so that our mutual center of gravity was congruent to the central axis of the pod.

If we wanted to go anywhere in the pod, we'd have to squeeze around pipes and cables and supporting rods–and big green glops of hardened foam that looked like industrial‑strength boogers. But there was no place to go anyway, so we just stayed where we were, wrapped in our plastic blankets and looking at the ominous round wall of cargo containers in front of us. It was like being a bug at the bottom of a piston.

The crates were all big wedge‑shaped things, four to a circle, each anchored firmly in place by plastic clamps and foam boogers. Mickey explained that the thick foam pads were how the cargo engineers kept the containers from breaking loose and rattling around in transit. I didn't see how the crates would have much chance to rattle or break loose; we would be in free fall the whole way, wouldn't we? But there was a lot I didn't understand.

"The accommodations aren't pretty," Mickey admitted, "but we won't be uncomfortable. Cargo pods are designed for supercargo. Sometimes Line engineers have to ride with supplies, so there's mandated life support for at least five people at a time."

Alexei grinned. "Is very convenient, no?" He showed us the arrangements. "See those blue tanks all around? They hold water. Many liters. Microdiaphragm pumps move it around for balance. Water is very convenient that way. Green tanks have oxygen. Brown cabinets hold food–well, MREs."

"MREs?"

"Meals Ready to Eat. Three lies in as many words, no? Be sure to drink much water. MREs make lumps like concrete in bowel. With no gravity, lumps get even harder. Very much pain. Learn the hard way, yes? Very hard. That is the problem. Too hard even to work out with pencil. Not to worry–if you don't like MRE, you are not hungry enough. Starvation is not as painful, but takes too much longer."

He pointed toward the other end of the pod–I thought of it as the front, because that was where we'd entered. "Use that end for bathroom. Use plastic bags, like this? See. Put waste in yellow containers with biohazard symbol. Be very careful. Is possible to make very bad stink in here. Very unpleasant. See those little fans everywhere to keep air moving? They don't make stink go away; only spread it around equally. Don't worry, I teach you how to be careful. Any questions?"

Mickey and Douglas seemed to be okay with the arrangements, and I figured I'd learn as we went along–and we'd all take turns trying to explain it to Stinky when he woke up. Maybe we could keep him from wetting or soiling himself for three days.

But there was something else that was bothering me.

"Um–"

"What?" That was Douglas.

"You agreed to this?"

"Mickey and I did, yes."

Mickey said, "We didn't have a lot of time to talk about it, Charles. We had fifteen minutes to decide before the capsule was launched."

"You took Alexei's word for it that there were marshals waiting for us–?"

"Alexei might be a lunatic, but he's an honest one." Mickey held up a headset. "You want to hear the playback? You want to listen to the Line chatter?"

I did, but that wasn't the question. "But the marshals will figure it out, won't they? When the elevator arrives at Farpoint and we're not in the cabin, they'll just phone ahead to Luna. There are marshals on Luna, aren't there? They'll just catch us in the cargo pod."

Alexei nodded. "Very good, Charles. But Luna is not Line. Very much not. On Line, you are always known. Always under camera eye. Not on moon. I will get you down safely, and you will see. Things disappear very easily. Luna is beautiful that way. You will love moon. Especially fresh food. Is big promise. I am hungry already, thinking of salad. Sweet corn, ripe tomatoes, fresh peas … "

Maybe it was me, maybe it was the lack of sleep, but everything was happening just too fast here.

"Excuse me–? Did I miss something? This is a cargo pod, isn't it? They know where we're going to land, don't they?"

"No," said Alexei. "They know where we're supposedto land."

I didn't like the sound of that. Even before I asked the next question, I knew the answer was only going to make things worse.

Alexei said, "Now you want to know wherewe will land, don't you?"

"Uh–okay, where?"

Alexei grinned through his scraggly beard. "We will come down where they can't go. Not easily. Very bad area. The maps are not accurate. Not the official ones. From there we go to land of tall mountains and deep ice mines. Is very beautiful. A little dangerous. But not too much–not to worry. You will like. By the time they get to cargo pod, we will all be somewhere else."

"But they can track us, can't they? As soon as they figure out we're in one of the cargo pods, they'll–"

Alexei's PITA*[Personal Information Telecommunications Assistant] beeped; he glanced at his wrist. "Ah, there it is now. Time for first orbital correction. Everybody brace yourselves. Hang on to the webbing. This won't be too bad." Mickey reached over and grabbed the still‑sleeping Stinky.

"Is just a little one–" Alexei started to say, but he was abruptly interrupted by a deep‑throated rumble that rattled the whole cabin like an El Paso windstorm. It was loud and bumpy, and we were all shoved sideways up against the hull so hard it was almost impossible to breathe. It felt like we were hanging upside down in a cement mixer. I wanted to scream–but didn't have the air for it. And just when I was making up my mind that I was going to scream anyway, it stopped, and that spooky eternal silence closed in again.

"Is that it?" Douglas asked.

"Oh, no," said Alexei. "We have maybe fourteen or fifteen more. All the way out." He looked back over to me. "What was question again, Charles? That they will track us? Yes, they will. That is the point of the course changes."

"Fourteen or fifteen more? All like that–?"

"It's done with solid‑fuel chips, Chigger," Douglas started to explain. "They burn unevenly and that rattles everything–"

" I know how they burn!"I almost said a whole bunch of other stuff too, except I was too busy concentrating on my next breath. "And why so many course corrections anyway? Can't they aim this thing–?" I looked to Alexei.

"Not course corrections. Course changes.Is very precisely aimed," Alexei said, "and we are making serious alteration in trajectory. Is not unheard of. Sometimes cargo gets preempted from one location to another."

"But they're still tracking us, aren't they?" Douglas asked. "Chig‑ger's right. This thing broadcasts a locater signal–they'll know where we are as soon as they figure it out, won't they?"

"Eventually, yes, they'll figure it out. The key word is eventually.So our job is to make eventually later than sooner." Alexei continued proudly. "First, this is not only pod to launch. Do you remember five others? All of those pods have been preempted too. Some rich new Luna company bought them in transit–I cannot imagine who, can you? All the pods have been retargeted for different places. Whoever tracks pods thinking we are in one of them will have to send marshals to six different landing sites, all of them difficult, except two."

"Oh," Douglas said. "And–?"

"And?" Alexei looked puzzled.

"You said first,as if there was a second."

"Oh. Yes, well secondis much more subtle. This is why we have fourteen course changes on each pod. So that no one who is tracking can predict final orbit and landing site until we are already on track. All those changes–we will look like we can land anywhere on Luna. The last burn will not happen until we are on final approach, and that will bounce us off the screens for many long minutes. Whoever tracks will have to spend long minutes projecting–guessing probable touchdown sites. Your lunatic Russian friend is very clever, yes?"

"Yes, very clever," agreed Mickey. He'd been very quiet up to this moment. Now his tone of voice had gone all strange, and he asked, "Just where areyou bringing us down?"

Alexei grinned. "This is cleverest part. I show you. We started out in Earth equatorial plane, yes? Each of our course changes pushes us more and more up. We go toward north pole of moon–they think we are aiming for North Heinlein, approach pattern is perfect for that–but no, as we come into Lunar orbit, we go three times around and make extra burns. Last change puts us in crazy‑mouse orbit. You know crazy‑mouse orbit? Near polar, but not quite; elliptical with lots of wibble‑wobble. Great fun. We can come down anywhere we want from crazy‑mouse, but no one knows where until last minute. Other pods do same thing too, we make them all crazy."

"But what do we do?" Mickey asked.

"We will be in crazy‑mouse just long enough for people tracking us to say, 'Oh, shit.' We loop overtop of moon, come down around far‑side, aim for ground, brake very suddenly, and bounce down in southern hemisphere."

" Bouncedown … ?" I asked.

"Yes, is very easy. Great fun. You will laugh much. Like rollering coaster." And then he looked honestly puzzled. "Do you not know how these things work?"

I looked to Douglas, accusingly. He had that constipated weasel expression–the one that says, said no, I didn't tell you the worst of it.

CHANGES

I pulled myself out of the pocket of the orange webbing that Alexei had stuffed me into. I grabbed Douglas by the leg and pulled him down away from Mickey and Alexei, so I could talk to him privately. If I'd been scared before, now I was beyond scared. There wasn't a word for it. I couldn't believe I was still rational. I should have been gibbering.

Douglas's first words were, "I didn't know myself, Chigger, I didn't have time to ask. I'm sorry–but we still would have had to come this way. Think about it."

"I have been!" I lowered my voice so he wouldn't hear the sob in my throat. I was terrified. "This is real stupid, Douglas."

"Yeah, I know–but we didn't have any choice."

"We could get killed."

"I don't think so. Mickey isn't stupid. And Alexei–"

"Alexei's a lunatic who doesn't have enough sense to be afraid of gravity. Why didn't we just stay on the elevator and deal with the marshals at Farpoint? We didn't do anything wrong. They can't arrest us."

Douglas shook his head. "Chigger, you've already seen how these people work. They throw lawyers at you. And they keep throwing lawyers until one of them finds something that sticks. And even if they can't find anything, they still keep you stuck in the courtroom. Either way, you're stopped, which is all they want to do anyway–stop us long enough to get their hands on the monkey."

"So why don't we just give it to them? We didn't make the deal to smuggle it. Dad did. We don't even know who's supposed to collect it on the other end. Or where the other end is. And besides, there isn't anything in it anyway–just a couple of bars of industrial memory, filled with decoy code."

"We don't know that. We don't know what's in it. Maybe it's the real stuff. Maybe they lied to Dad too–"

"Who?"

"Whoever. I don't know. But you heard what Dad said to fat Senor Doctor Hidalgo. We don't sell what doesn't belong to us. Maybe he suspected something."

"Oh, great. So that means if there really is something in the monkey, then we could be arrested for smuggling it–?"

"Yeah. Probably." Douglas looked at me gravely. "I just didn't think we should take any more chances."

"You panicked, didn't you?"

He didn't answer immediately. I was right. And I wished I wasn't. I'd always believed that Douglas was infallible.

He held up a hand. "Let's not have this argument. Please, Chigger?" He said it just like Dad. "We're on our way now. We can't go back. Whatever else, this is our ride."

He was right about that much, despite the way he said it, so I shut up. For a moment anyway. But this still wasn't settled. I turned back to him. "Okay, but you gotta promise me something."

"What?"

"That you won't do this anymore–make decisions without asking me. That's what Mom and Dad used to do. And we always hated it. Remember what you said before? You said 'if this is going to work, I need your help.' We're in this together, aren't we?"

Douglas put his arms around me and pulled me close. "You're right, Chigger. I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking. I mean, I wasn't thinking about that."

"No, you were thinking–but you were thinking about the logic stuff, not the people stuff, because that's the way you are." And then I realized, "I'm not too good at it either, am I?"

He ran his hand over the top of my bald head. It was an eerie feeling. I still wasn't used to it–even though we'd all shaved ourselves smooth two days ago. Everyone who lives in space does, for cleanliness reasons. Douglas sighed sadly. "Yeah, I guess social skills was another of those lessons that got dropped out in the divorce." He kissed me– something he'd never done before, at least I couldn't remember ever being kissed by my big brother. He said, "Okay, Chig. I promise. No more family decisions unless everyone in the family is part of them. Even Stinky."

"Pinky promise?"

"Pinky promise." We hooked little fingers and shook on it.

There was one more thing I had to ask. "Douglas?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you and Mickey … you know? Gonna get married?"

"I don't know. We haven't really talked about it yet. Does it bother you?"

"I just want to know. Will he be part of our family too? Is he going to help make decisions?"

"Um, Chig … He is part of it. We have to include him."

"But we just met him two days ago."

"Three."

"Whatever. It's just–how can you make that kind of a decision so quickly? It's not logical."

"Oh, look who's talking about logic now."

"You know what I mean," I said.

"Yeah, I do. And yeah, you're right. It's not logical. But … I've never had anybody love me before. Not like this. And I don't want to lose it. It's very confusing. Maybe it'll happen to you someday. And then you'll understand."

I couldn't imagine it. So I didn't say anything. I didn't even make a face.

Douglas ran his hand over the top of my head again. He took a deep breath. "There isa decision that we do have to make very soon, Chig. All of us. What colony are we going to head out to? We'd better start thinking about that now. Because that willbe a one‑way trip."

CARGO

If I'd thought the trip up the elevator was boring, the cargo pod was even worse. At least the elevator had all the cable channels, ha‑ha. We could have had some video reception if we'd linked to either an Earth or a Lunar station–but if we started downloading, then our presence on this pod would be obvious to anyone with access to the tracking software. And the whole point of this trick was that they wouldn't know whichpod we were in.

Alexei spent an hour explaining to us how the pods were built and how they worked. That was sort of interesting for a while–but it wasn't really his purpose to entertain us. He said it was essential to our survival that we understood what kind of vehicle we were in.

"Is only a cargo pod, nota real spaceship," he said. "Is idea to have efficient and cheap way to send supplies and equipment to Luna or Mars or asteroid belt or anywhere else. You put stuff in box, you give box a push–you fling it off Line, da?Eventually, it arrives. Cost for fuel is negligible. You are already out of gravity well, so you only need fuel for course corrections along the way and a little bit more for braking at destination. Is very convenient, if you are not in hurry."

Then he showed us how the pods were built. "You see all these polycarbonate rods lining the shell? That is the skeleton of the pod. Very light, very strong. You put framework together like Tinker Toy, you clamp cargo wedges into frame, then you attach outer bulkheads all around. Polycarbonate shells–all prefab, all the same. Stamped from injection molds. Because they make only one trip, reusability is no concern–you think, da? Nyet.The shells are product too. Open up pod, take out cargo, close up pod, turn it into house. Very goodhouse."

Alexei pounded on the bulkhead with his fist. "This is why you find windows and plumbing and wiring in walls–not just because World Space Agency mandates every pod must have basic life support, but because every pod shipped will expand living space at destination. Very clever, yes? We have transport, we have life support, we have new home." He pounded a crate. "Is tradition on Luna, at least one of these crates always contains furnishings, yes. We live in most expensive shipping boxes in solar system. Very nice, da?"

I shrugged. Maybe Alexei thought this was exciting, but I didn't. We'd grown up in a tube‑town–which is really just a polite way of saying we lived in a giant sewer. No kidding. Any tube that failed the structural integrity tests for piping sewage was still considered strong enough for housing. They all came out of the same factory. So I didn't see that a used shipping box was all that much of an improvement, especially not one with 450,000 kilometers on it.

On the other hand, if you had to live in a used shipping box, you could do a lot worse than a Lunar cargo pod. Alexei showed us how the hull of the pod was made out of six simple pieces: four identical curved hull sections, each describing a 90‑degree arc, and two identical circular end pieces. Each piece was designed to fit into every other piece, and each panel had its own hatch and window.

Also, each hull unit had two survival cabinets, one at each end. Each cabinet contained the minimum basic life‑support supplies necessary for one person for three days; so the pod had eight total. Alexei showed us how each of the survival cabinets held food, water for drinking and ballast, oxygen‑recyclers, self‑heating blanket‑ponchos, first‑aid kits, plastic toilet bags, and personal survival bubbles because you can't pack space suits in enough different sizes. And please read the instructions before opening anything.

Mickey explained that the pods were essentially the spacegoing version of an Antarctic explorer's travel‑hut. A onetime pod doesn't need the same kind of precision machinery as a reusable vehicle, and it's unnecessary to build a whole lander for the delivery of cargo, so the steering and braking systems were the cheapest brute‑force method possible.

"Is the engines that are most clever," Alexei said, glancing at his wrist. "Nyet–not to worry. We are fine for another ninety minutes. Time enough for lesson. I explain fuel rods. Is really quite simple. How do you fire rocket in space? No oxygen in vacuum, da?So you put oxygen in fuel mix. Make whole thing one solid tube of fuel. Ignite at one end, it burns until fuel is gone. Is very efficient booster system. But one big problem with solid‑fuel booster. Timing. Once burn starts, you cannot turn it off. So is not good for precision burns, da? Nyet,we find a way. Is much simpler than you think–we use Palmer tubes. Invented by engineer with too much time on hands. Name of John Palmer. Playing with his poker chips at Las Vegas. Very famous story, I share with you.

"Dr. John Palmer, famous engineer, sits at roulette table, thinks of mathematics of chaos and order. How good luck, bad luck both run in streaks. How random numbers cluster up. Thinks about composition of solid‑fuel boosters. Meanwhile, he stacks chips, red and black, red and black, red and black. Then he runs out of blacks, so he stacks two red, one black, two red, one black. Suddenly light goes on in head. He pushes everything onto double zero and gets up from table. Wins eleventy‑thousand plastic‑dollars anyway–almost forgets to collect winnings, he is so excited.

"He rushes back to laboratory and invents Palmer tube. I explain. He slices solid‑fuel rod of metallized hydrogen into little flat poker chips. Very thin. In between, he puts little polycarbonate separators, even thinner. Separating disks are made of several layers, perforated and corrugated and shaped to be strong on one side but weak on the other; crisscrossed with grooves so that weak side looks like business side of nail file. Strong side looks like mirror. Very clever, da?

"Then Palmer gets even more clever idea. When he makes separator chips, he paints circumference with liquid conductor. When he makes rod, he glues insulatedwires down each side. He makes whole thing in polyceramic tube, holds fuel rod like gun barrel.

"Works like this. Turn on current, juice goes down wires, da?All the way to end of tube, to bare ends of wires–last separator in line has shiny side out, grooved side in. Conductive ring around separator chip completes circuit, ignites fuel chip in front of it. Creates ring‑shaped ignition. Most efficient explosion. Fuel slice vaporizes, separator vaporizes– bing!Next separating disk in line is shiny side out, strong enough to protect next fuel slice–remember, separator only weak on grooved side, not shiny side; so when force of explosion hitsshiny side, next separator works like back wall of combustion chamber for just that moment. Da?So you get one little poof of thrust. Only one.

"But explosion also heats ignition wires, melts insulation off–enough so that bare wires now touch next separator disk. If there is still current, that disk completes circuit and ignites fuel slice behind it–and whole process happens again. Fuel slice explodes and vaporizes separator disk that ignites it, but does not ignite nextdisk again. And just like before, next separator is back wall of combustion chamber and you get next little poof of thrust. And process starts again. Wires melt a little more, and if there is still current, next disk goes bingtoo. Everything happens very fast– bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing–like so.

"As long as current flows through wire, disks blow off the end of the tube, one after other. Is like packing whole bunch of bullets in same barrel, but no bullets, only charges. When you burn enough fuel, you turn off current. Explosions stop. Thrust stops. Is beautiful clever, da? Da?

"But firing tubes like this– bing, bing, bing, bing, bing–makes very unpleasant pulsing effect. Not a fun ride. Like sitting on machine gun. Not a problem. You bundle tubes together. Tubes not work in sync, all the little bing‑bingsaverage out. Instead of machine‑gun feeling, you get corrugated road. More tubes, more average, more smooth–but smooth not needed for cargo, packages don't complain, so is still rough ride, but tolerable, da?Never mind. We get there. Palmer bundles guarantee delivery. Is simple brute‑force brilliant. If one tube in bundle fails, no problem; others make up difference. Thrust monitor in bundle manages everything. You need this much thrust? Fire tubes until. Da!

"Here is more brilliance. Palmer tubes can be any size. As thin as paper clip, as thick as elephant leg–we have elephant on Luna, you know, baby female; you must come to our zoo, see baby elephant bounce–much funny. Anyway, Palmer tubes and Palmer bundles can be made all sizes. Use different size bundles of tubes for all different purposes. Heavy lifting, braking, steering, attitude adjustment, lots of useful boost. Launch to orbit from Luna or Mars. Very efficient. Bring asteroids home for mining. Deliver cargo pods anywhere. Fling them off Line, steer them to destination, brake to match orbit.

"This is why Palmer tube is so brilliant. Volume manufacture makes space travel cheap. Palmer tubes as easy to make as pencils. Put in red goop here, blue goop there, black goop over there, run the machine, stack the firing tubes here. Bundle together, plug in timing caps and thrust monitor. Da?Very cheap. You can put three sets of boosters and a thrust monitor on a pod for less than a thousand plastic‑dollars. And whatever part of tubes are left over at destination can be used for other things.

"You know story of Crazyman Tucker? He lived in old cargo pod. Very nice pod too. Much fancy. He collected unburned ends of tubes for years, he finally bundle them into big cluster, launch his pod into Lunar orbit. Another cluster of tubes sends him off to rendezvous with Whirlaway rock. He almost makes it too. What some people won't do to avoid export taxes, da?But rescue costs more than taxes. So he lose entire fortune anyway. He should have used Palmer tubes for more mining. Get more rich. But he say, 'What good is money on Luna? Nothing to do but throw rocks at tin cans. And you have to bring your own rocks.' Is very forbidding planet. But you will like, I promise. I teach you to fly at Heinlein Dome. You will have so much fun, you will never want to leave."

At that, Douglas spoke up. "Thank you, Alexei. but we're going out to a colony."

"I know that, gospodin,"said Alexei. "But if you don't get a bid, you are welcome on Luna. I promise."

"We have an insured contract for a colony placement," said Mickey. "And with all the money you say we've earned, we should be able to buy our way onto the next outbound ship."

Alexei grinned. "I will miss you, Mikhail.And if you change mind and decide not to go, I will enjoy not missing you even more." His PITA beeped then. "Oops–here we go. Everybody hold on tight, please."

CHOICES

Mickey knew a lot about the colonies; working as an elevator attendant, he'd met a lot of outbound colonists. And Alexei knew most of the starship crews; he knew all the best gossip about the different worlds.

"You stay away from both Rand and Hubbard," Alexei warned. "Not very happy worlds. Not at all. The sociometrics don't work. Not like promised. The Randies had to turn themselves into a cult. The Hubbers had to invoke totalitarian control–or was it the other way around?" He scratched his head. "No matter. I tell you how bad it is–the brightliner crews won't go dirtside anymore."

"I heard they weren't allowed to," said Mickey. "It's prohibited now. So they can't report back."

"That too," agreed Alexei. "The smart thing is, stay away from colonies founded on political or religious ideology."

Douglas nodded. "I'd already figured that out." He turned his clipboard around so we could all see it. Half the names on it were already crossed out.

We'd taken time to sleep and eat and give ourselves deodorant sponge baths before we got too smelly. I helped wash Stinky when he finally woke up, and even he smelled tolerable when we were done.

I told Stinky that we were in the cargo pod, but apparently it didn't sink in, because midway through the breakfast, he started complaining. "How come we don't have a real bathroom? How come we can't go to the restaurant to eat? When are we gonna get there? I thought you said we'd be there when we woke up. How come we don't have any real beds?"

Oops.

So Douglas and I told him that we were hiding in the baggage compartment, because we were playing hide‑and‑seek, so Howard‑The‑Lawyer wouldn't find us. That he understood immediately. And it was a lot easier than trying to explain Whirlaway to him.

We endured two more course changes–Stinky thought they were fun–and then we finally settled down for a family meeting about where we were going.

Very quickly, we decided that if any one of us had a strong objection to a specific world, we'd take it off the list. Mickey immediately vetoed Promised Land, New Canaan, and Allah. "They're all orthodox," he explained. "You can immigrate only if you convert."

Douglas was already checking them off the list. "The sociometrics for religious colonies aren't good anyway. Long‑term instability, almost always leading to schisms, holy wars, revolutions, and pogroms."

"So let's just eliminate all of the ones with sociometric liabilities," I said.

"They all have sociometric liabilities," said Mickey. "We have to consider them each on their own merits and then decide what set of problems we're willing to take on."

Douglas agreed. "You want to do this alphabetically?"

"Urn, wait a minute–please?" They both looked at me. "Maybe we should make a list of things that we want. That way we'll have something to measure each planet against. Then we can give each colony a score, and that way we can–what's the word?–prioritize them."

Mickey and Douglas exchanged glances, nodded. "Sounds like a plan."

Douglas said, "You start, Chig. What do you want?"

The picture in my head was Mexico. The Baja coast. Our one short day at the beach. A bright blue sky over a wide emerald sea. Yellow sand and tall green forests. And wind–breezes that smelled good. Real flowers.

But first things first. "Normal gravity," I said.

"That's good thinking," said Mickey. "Most people don't think about gravity enough. Most people can handle a ten or fifteen percent boost. It's like gaining five or ten kilos. But it's extra stress on the heart, on the feet, on the bones; there's a higher risk of injury; and you age faster, you sag more. Also, your life expectancy is reduced."

Douglas made a note. "Gravity, that's important. We'll give that one a lot of weight." And then he added, "Not just gravity, we have to think about the whole planet. What kind of star does it circle? What color is the light? How long is the year? How severe are the seasons? What's the atmosphere like, what kind of weather does it have? How long are the days? Is the air breathable? Or will it be someday? What kind of terraforming is possible?"

And as he said that, all my visions of a tropical beach disappeared. We weren't going to Hawaii. We were going to Mars. Barren red rock, stretching off in all directions. Clusters of domes hiding beneath angling solar panels. Antennas sprouting like needles. Storage tanks huddling against the ground to withstand the enormous winds and dust storms. Agriculture domes. Tubes snaking from one place to the other because the atmosphere was too thin to breathe. Long ugly days. Cold dark nights.

Tube‑town again.

Only this time, uglier than ever. Because there wouldn't be anyplace elseto go.

I knew what kind of planet we had jumped off. I was just beginning to realize what we might have to jump onto …

Douglas must have seen the look on my face. He asked, "Chigger?"

"I want a colony that has an outdoors,"I said. "Breathable air. I want to go outside."

"Mmm," said Mickey, frowning. "That does limit our options."

"I don't care," I said. "I don't want to live in a tube anymore."

"Nobody does. But sometimes that's all there is."

"I don't care. That's what I want."

"Would you accept a world that had garden domes? I hear some of them can be very nice."

Alexei spoke up then. "We have garden domes on Luna. Very pretty. We put a dome over a crater and fill it with air. We bring in manure and water, seeds and insects, pretty soon we have garden. Well, not pretty soon. Sometimes it takes twenty years to get garden dome going. But for much people, garden dome is all the outdoors they need."

I shook my head. "Maybe that's okay for Loonies. It's not okay for me. I want a real sky."

Douglas made a note on his clipboard. "Outdoors. Very important."

Mickey didn't look happy about that, but he didn't argue it either. He said, "There are a couple of other things we need to consider. Where we can live, what kind of work we'll have to do, what kinds of laws there are–y'know, every colony has its own idea of the way things should be. What you can believe, where you can live, who can marry who … Stuff like that."

Douglas looked up. "I hadn't thought about that."

"Well, we have to." He added, "There are some places that won't let us keep custody of Bobby. You'd better put that at the top of your list. In fact, we'd better limit ourselves to places that recognize 'full faith and credit' of other places' laws. Otherwise, Judge Griffith's custody rulings could be set aside by anyone who chooses to file a 'writ of common interest.' "

Douglas frowned, but wrote. He stopped, looked across at Mickey. "You're trying to make a point, aren't you?"

"Uh‑huh."

"Go on."

"I think we should limit ourselves to signatories to the Covenant of Rights."

Douglas didn't say anything to that. I could tell he was thinking it over. He didn't like the idea, I knew that much, but he could see the point.

It wasn't that we disagreed with the U.N. Covenant of Rights. Not in principle, at least. But back home, there were a lot of people who said the Covenant was a recipe for anarchy or totalitarianism–or both at the same time. So we had never ratified it.

The Covenant recognized the basic rights of all people–that every human being was entitled to equal access to opportunity and equal protection under the law. That all people were entitled to freedom of belief, freedom of expression, freedom of spirit. That all people were entitled to access to food and water and air, access to education, access to justice. And most important, that all people were entitled to equal representation in their government. And that no government had the right, authority, or power to restrict or infringe or deny those freedoms. And so on. It was pretty dangerous stuff.

Some of the folks back in tube‑town said that the only way all those freedoms could be guaranteed equally would be to establish a totalitarian dictatorship. Then no one would have any freedom, but we would all be equal. Other people said that if we signed the Covenant, it would mean we'd have to repeal half our laws, and our civilization would break down. They said that men and women would have to share the same toilets and that rich people would have to sleep under bridges with poor people and everybody would have to share all their property so nobody had more than anybody else. And besides, only the One‑Worlders wanted us to sign it because that would be another step toward ceding our independence to the U.N. And once there was a world government in place, the rest of the world would loot our economy. And so on.

But the way it looked now, it didn't really matter after all. The last news we'd heard, nobodyhad an economy anymore.

Douglas said, "I know you mean well, Mickey, but I'm not comfortable with the Covenant of Rights. It sounds like collectivism."

Mickey looked at him expectantly. So did Alexei.

"I mean, you can't just let people have rights without controls. You get a breakdown of society. You get corruption and immorality and fraud. The system breaks down, a little bit at a time. You get multi‑generation welfare families, and parasites feeding at the public trough. You get teener‑gangs and disaffected subcultures and dysfunctionals of all kinds. You get riots and crime and … and immorality. All kinds of degeneracy. You have to have some limits on what people can do; otherwise, it all erodes away and eventually falls apart." He gestured vaguely behind himself. "I mean, all you have to do is look at what's happening back there on Earth."

Mickey replied, "I could just as easily argue the opposite side of it, Doug–that the meltdown is a result of too many oppressive controls."

"I don't think so–"

"Well, then let me put it to you another way. Do you want a place where you and I can stay together? Only a Covenant world will guarantee that. None of the others. If they haven't signed the Covenant, there's no evidence that they're committed to anyone's rights."

Douglas sighed in exasperation. "Y'know, back in Texas, that kind of talk would be subversive."

There was a long uncomfortable silence at that. Mickey and Alexei exchanged a glance, waiting.

Douglas looked from one to the other. I could see he was struggling with it, trying to wrap his head around a whole new idea. Finally, he said, "Things reallyare different out here, aren't they?"

"Yeah," said Mickey. "They are."

Douglas sighed. He hated losing arguments. "All right." He scribbled something on his clipboard. "Mickey wants a Covenant world. Very important."

MONKEYS

There was a lot more than that too. I never realized there was so much stuff to consider.

Like language, f'rinstance. What if the perfect colony was one where no one spoke Spanglish? We'd have to spend six months just learning to speak French or some other weird tongue, before we could begin to function like real people.

And skin color. We didn't think of ourselves as racist, or anything like that, but we all wanted to go to a place where we looked pretty much like everybody else, because we wanted to fit in.

And food. That one was realimportant–especially after eating a few of those damn MREs. On some worlds, they grew their protein in big vats of slime. On others, they farmed insects. By comparison, even pickled mongoose sounded appetizing.

Both Douglas and Mickey had a lot of information in their clipboards about all the different colony worlds, so we spent a lot of time talking about each one and scoring it on all the different things that were important to us. We crossed off some colonies immediately, with almost no discussion at all. Others, we talked about for an hour or more. I hadn't realized there were so many different kindsof colony worlds.

Other than that, we napped and crapped–and got slapped into the aft bulkhead every time there was a course change. I can't say I ever got used to them; they were all uncomfortable; but at least I got smart enough to take a lot of deep breaths whenever Alexei's PITA beeped.

Every so often, we'd climb around to one side or the other, to peek out one of the little windows, hoping to catch sight of either the Earth or the moon. We never did get a real good look at the moon; we were angled wrong, coming around behind the dark side, trying to catch up to it; but once we got a spectacular view of the crescent Earth. It was the size of a basketball held at arm's length–and it looked so big and so small, both at the same time, it was scary. And it was so bright it made my eyes water. It gave me a funny feeling inside to know that we would never go back.

We'd never see Mom or Dad again either. And that felt strange too. Because I didn't feel anything for them, just gray inside. Like I didn't know what to feel. Maybe I'd feel it later. I just didn't know. I wondered if Douglas felt the same way–or if he was still so confused about his feelings for Mickey that he didn't have room for any other kind of feelings.

But with so much other stuff happening, I didn't get a chance to talk to him about it. I also had to take care of Stinky.

Stinky thought free fall was fun. He wanted to go bouncing and careening around the cargo pod, except there really wasn't much room for that, except for the little bit of open space at each end. I'd started thinking of our nest at the aft end as the top. The bottom was the space we used as the bathroom, although a couple of times, Mickey and Douglas went up there when they wanted some privacy.

Alexei busied himself with eavesdropping on the various news channels. I could see his fingers twitching when he did. He said he wanted to get on the phone and start calling. He could make a lot of money with just a few phone calls–but any unusual traffic from this pod would certainly alert whoever was watching that this was the occupied one, so he resisted the temptation. He said he was part of a web of money‑surfers who took care of each other's business when any one of them was in transit or had to go underground for a while. That way, the money was never where anyone might be looking for it. Just the same, he worried about the opportunities passing by.

So it was left for me to entertain Stinky whenever he got bored, which was almost constantly. Fortunately, we had the monkey to play with, so the two of us started teaching it things and making up games. The monkey was pretty smart–smarter than I would have guessed for a kid's toy. Smart enough not to draw to an inside straight.Smart enough to play an aggressive game of chess. Even smart enough to hold its nose whenever Stinky farted.

I shouldn't have been surprised by its ability to play chess or poker. It was, after all, a toy–and even Douglas could write a chess or a poker program, the logic wasn't that hard to chart. Simulating intelligence is so easy, even Stinky can do it.

But every so often, I caught the monkey studying me thoughtfully–or maybe it was just my imagination. Maybe that was part of the way it had learned to interact with its human hosts. But it made me wonder. What if the monkey really was watching us? Recording everything? What if the monkey was some kind of a spy? Maybe the monkey's job was to travel with us and monitor … that was the part I couldn't figure out. That was where I ran out of paranoia.

"I wish you could talk to me," I said to it. "I wish I could just order you to explain yourself. That would make everything so much simpler."

The monkey just cocked its head and looked at me curiously, as if waiting for me to give the order. Yeah, right.

Some people thought robots were fun. I didn't. I thought most of them were a damn nuisance. Because they did exactly what they were told. They didn't do what you meant,they did what you said. Which was kind of funny if you were a kid, but it was frustrating too. I never had the patience for it, but Stinky did. And so did Douglas. They had the logic genes. I guess they got that from Mom. I got the music, and not much else, from Dad. I didn't resent it, not really, but sometimes I wished I could understand things the way other people did. It would make life a lot easier. I wouldn't have to work so hard at everything.

It was halfway through the second waking period–I couldn't think of them as "days" when nothing really changed–when Stinky finally figured it out. It.

We had gone up to the front window to look at the moon, which was still a crescent, but starting to fill out enough that we could see the sharp edges of craters all along the terminator line. When we got bored with that, we started making up songs about bouncing elephants, and then we decided to teach the monkey how to dance, which is hard enough in gravity, but in free fall it's impossible–so it was silly enough to start Stinky giggling, which is sort of good most of the time, because once he starts giggling he just keeps on going; but it isn't always a good idea because sometimes he giggles so hard he pees in his pants.

But this time, he and the monkey started imitating each other, and it was hard to tell which of them was funnier–and which of them was more amused by the other. They really did look a lot like twins.

–Until in the middle of everything Stinky asked thequestion. The one I'd been hoping he wouldn't. "Chigger, who's going to meet us on the moon? Mommy or Daddy?"

I knew that he wasn't simply asking who was going to meet us. He was asking if we would ever see them again. And I honestly didn't know what to say to him. For one of the first times in my life, I felt sorry for the little monster because there just wasn't any way to soften this blow. And … even though I didn't like thinking this thought, maybe it hadbeen a mistake for Douglas and me to insist on keeping him with us. Maybe he would have been better with Mom. Or even Dad.

Except–I knew he wouldn't have been. And I knew if I'd had to choose at his age, I'd have chosen to leave instead of stay, even if I didn't understand all the reasons why. Or maybe I wouldn't have chosen to leave, maybe I'd have been too scared to, but wouldn't have been better off staying. But Stinky didn't know that–because he wasn't thirteen or eighteen, and he didn't know any better. All he knew was that his Mommy and Daddy weren't here. And he missed them.

And he was looking to me to give him an answer.

So I told him the truth. As best as I could.

Which means, I weaseled like an adult.

"I don't know, kiddo. Remember, Dad promised us a trip to the moon, and this is our vacation. And Judge Griffith said he could go too. So I'm sure he's going to try to meet us when we get where we're going–he just doesn't know that we're taking the long way around."

"And what about Mom?"

I thought about fat SenorDoctor Hidalgo, who had flown Mom and her friend up on an expensive shuttle flight for the emergency custody hearing. Would he shuttle her to the moon and try to head us off there? If he thought he could get his hands on the monkey, he would. It seemed to me he was trying to get off the Earth anyway. So whatever game he was playing, bringing Mom along might be part of it.

"I think she might get to the moon too, I didn't have a chance to ask her before we left. We had to leave in a hurry, remember?"

He shook his head. I didn't expect him to remember anything. Mickey had drugged his ice cream and that had kept him pretty drowsy for half a day.

But whatever else he was, Stinky wasn't stupid. "We're not going to see them anymore, are we? We're going on the brightliner by ourselves."

"Well, Mickey will be with us–I think. Do you like Mickey?"

"Douglas likes him." Which was his way of saying no. Because if he really liked Mickey, he would have said so. Maybe he resented Mickey for the same reasons I did. Or maybe he was just jealous that Douglas was spending so much time with him. Or maybe he just didn't like Mickey for no reason at all.

"Do you miss Mom?" I asked.

"Uh‑huh, don't you?"

"Um … I don't miss the yelling."

That must have been answer enough, because he changed the subject. "I'm hungry. Do we have anything to eat besides those awful em‑ maries?"

"Not till we get to the moon, kiddo. Sorry."

"Okay. I'll wait."

FINAL APPROACH

After seven or eight more course changes, each one more painful than the last, we finally got a good look at the bright side of the moon. Well, part of it anyway, as we came around the northern edge of the terminator. We still had three more burns to put us into a near‑polar orbit, what Alexei called the crazy‑mouse orbit, so that meant we'd actually orbit the moon a couple of times–down the front and up the back–before finally heading in.

The second time we came around the bright side, it filled the window, but it was hard to tell how close we were; Douglas said that's because the moon has a fractal surface; there's so many craters of so many different sizes that a close view looks a lot like a high view, and vice versa.

But the landscape below us was moving slowly, so I took that as an indication that we were still fairly high–and when I pressed my face close to the window, I could see the horizon, and it was still curved. So that meant we were at least a‑hundred klicks high, if I had done the math right. Probably not. Math was not my best subject.

The dark side of the moon was hard to see clearly; there was some light reflected from the crescent Earth, but not enough, so everything looked all gloomy gray. And the bright side, when we crossed the terminator again, was almost too bright to look at directly. Douglas said that the Lunar surface reflects more light back at you when you look at it head‑on, and that's why a full moon is noticeably brighter than a half‑moon, it's something to do with refraction and the way the Lunar dust scatters light.

Alexei joined us at the window. He took one glance and grunted. "We are coming in very fast. Good."

I took another look. He was right. The ground below us was moving noticeably faster.

"We are looping over top of moon in a few seconds. Look for north pole; there it is–" He pointed toward the horizon. "See those lights near terminator edge? That is north station. Biggest ice mine on Luna. Be sure to wave at the Rock Father."

"The Rock Father?" Stinky asked. "Who's he?"

"You don't know the Rock Father? Shame on you. Is Lunar legend. Lost Russian spaceman, freezes every Lunar night, wakes up every Lunar day. Is immortal. Lives at Lunar North Pole, like Father Christmas, except he has no reindeer, no elves. Rock Father is everyone's Crazy Uncle Loonie. Plays pranks on ice miners. Steals supplies. Rearranges markers. Hides in shadows where no one can see. One time Rock Father even puts up black featureless monolith in Clavius crater. Proportions one by four by nine. Standing on edge. No footprints anywhere around. Make American explorers much crazy. Rock Father laugh forever."

"But why is he called the Rock Father?" That was me.

"Because he is father of all Loonies. The Rock Father answers all prayers. Mostly, the answer is no. But sometimes not. Rock Father is there once in every life. He answers most important prayer–he knows, even if you don't."

"Do we have to make a wish?" Stinky asked.

"Prayers are not wishes," Alexei said. "But most terries don't know the difference. This is why Rock Father hardly ever listens to terries."

He glanced out the window again. "Hokay, enough." He began herding us back to the other end of the pod. "Is now time for everyone to strap in and get ready for landing. I am afraid landing will be rougher than expected. We are coming in faster than I planned. Not too much faster, but enough. This will be more crunch‑down than bounce‑down. We will rattle a little, but if we precaution properly, we will all be safe–" His PITA beeped, and he shouted, "Whoops–hang on!"

This course change was the longest and roughest one yet. Everything rattled and roared and shook. The monkey slipped out of my grasp and was thrown somewhere down below. I was pinned flat against the top of one of the cargo crates. I didn't see where anyone else was, but when it finally stopped Stinky was crying and Douglas was holding him tight. Mickey had a nosebleed, and even Alexei looked a little shaken; he was a skinny undermuscled Loonie; he probably hurt worse than any of us. But I didn't feel too much sympathy for him, because this had been his idea from the beginning. And he'd suckered the rest of us into joining him.

The monkey came climbing up from below–I was thinking of it as below now–and wrapped itself around me. Absentmindedly, I patted its head. When even the robots get scared, you know you're having a rough time.

"We are fine, we are fine," Alexei assured us, a little too quickly. "Mickey, help me please. We must make sure cabin is ready for bounce‑down. I will inflate interior balloons manually. I start at bottom and work my way up. You will please secure dingalings in web? Space everybody carefully."

I didn't like the sound of that. I was still worrying about the words crunch‑down.And Alexei didn't sound all that confident himself.

Mickey started strapping in Stinky. There were elastic belts set into the bulkhead at various places. He pulled several of them across Stinky's chest to form an X‑harness with a latch at the center.

"See this button?" Mickey explained. "That's the emergency safety release. Don't press it until after we're down and afterwe stop bouncing and rolling. It might take a few minutes. There'll be an all‑clear bell. If you don't hear it, don't press the button. Do you understand, Bobby? You wait until we come and get you. Promise?"

"I promise," Stinky said. He said it thatway, and I already knew how that promise was going to get kept–with him getting loose and bouncing all over the pod as soon as he felt like it. No, Mickey didn't know who he was talking to.

I pulled myself over and faced the devil child squarely. "Listen to me. This is a realpromise, Bobby–not a pretend one. Not one where you say you promise and then do what you want anyway. If you don't keep this promise, you could get hurt. Real badly.You don't want to get hurt, do you?"

"Nuh‑uh."

"Then you absolutely must not under any circumstances whatever, no matter what you think, no matter what happens, press that button–not until Mickey comes and tells you it's okay to press it. Okay?"

"Okay," he said.

"Promise?"

"Promise."

"Pinky promise?"

"Pinky promise." We hooked pinkies and shook.

I turned to Mickey. "Is there some way to disable that button or put it where he can't reach it?"

Mickey shook his head. "That would defeat the purpose of the emergency release–"

"He's not going to keep his promise," I said.

" Will too!"Stinky shouted at me.

"Will not," I snapped right back.

" Liar! You big liar! I'll show you!"

"I'll bet you a million dollars–"

"I'll bet you a hundred million zillion dollars!"

"Okay, it's a bet. If you push that button without permission, you owe me a hundred million zillion dollars and your monkey."

" Not my monkey!Douglas!"

"Then don't push the button," I said. "Not ever. Not unless Mickey says you can."

Douglas moved between us then. He pushed me back away from Stinky. "Chigger," he whispered. "Was that necessary?"

I whispered right back. "You want him to stay in the harness, no matter what? We're talking about Stinky. Logic and promises won't do it. He'll only do it if he can spite someone."

Douglas got it. "Y'know, he's a lot like you."

"Yeah, I know–that's how I know he'll push the button. Because I would."

Douglas didn't want to argue. There wasn't time anyway. He pulled himself back toward Mickey and whispered something in his ear. Mickey nodded.

Douglas came back to me. "Come on, Charles. It's time to buckle you in. We'll put you in this harness, close to Bobby." He pulled me into position and began pulling straps down, the same way Mickey had strapped in Stinky. "I'll be on the other side. Mickey will be up there, and Alexei will be down there. That should balance the weight fairly evenly."

He struggled with the latches for a bit–he couldn't get the X‑harness centered on my chest–until Mickey came over to help. He loosened two of the belts, pushed me sideways, then tightened them again. He leaned in and whispered to me, "You're very convincing, you know that? Douglas thinks we should tranquilize Bobby again. It's safer. It'll make things harder on the ground, someone will have to carry him. But if you really think he can't be trusted–"

I thought about all the times someone had told him not to do something–and how quickly he'd done exactlywhat he'd been forbidden to do. Like running down into the Barringer Meteor Crater. Like calling Mom from One‑Hour station after Dad had told him not to. He did this stuff deliberately–as if to prove that no one could control him. No one.

Mickey saw it in my face. "I really hate to do it to a little kid like that … "

"He's nota little kid," I said. "His middle name is Caligula."

Mickey sighed. "All right. Do you want a sedative too? This could get pretty rough."

I considered it. I thought about all the burns we'd already been through. It was very tempting. But … I shook my head. "I'd better not."

"You sure?"

"No. Yes. You said it's going to be hard enough to carry Stinky. Who's going to carry me?"

"Good point." He finished securing me in the webbing. "I was hoping you would say that, but Douglas asked me to make the offer. That's pretty courageous of you, Charles. Here, put this O‑mask over your face."

"Oxygen–?"

"Just a precaution, to make sure you have an air supply after we blow the inflatables. Whoops–you have company." He was talking about the monkey, it was just climbing its way back up to me–pulling itself hand over hand through the webbing. I was glad I'd programmed it to home in on me. I would never have been able to find it otherwise, not in the mess of this cluttered cargo pod.

"I'll strap it in with you," Mickey said, tucking it into the webbing and pulling a safety belt around to secure it. To the monkey, he said, "Don't push this button, unless Chigger tells you. Do you understand?"

The monkey made a face at him–crossing its eyes and curling both its lips back. Neither of us had any idea what the expression meant.

Alexei came back then and helped Mickey strap in Douglas. We must have been running out of time, they both were pretty urgent in their movements. When they finished, Alexei double‑checked Stinky, then went to his own landing station and webbed in as quickly as he could. "Are you secured, Mikhail?" he called.

"I'm good," said Mickey.

"Hokay!" hollered the mad Russian lunatic. "Get ready for bubbles–" He snapped a code word to his PITA, and a second later, the inflatables began filling the cargo pod–hundreds of self‑inflating balloons. They came bubbling up from the other end of the cargo pod, filling every available space so tightly it would have been impossible to move, even if we weren't webbed in. The bubbles pressed up against my face like someone holding a pillow over my nose. I was grateful for the O‑mask. The packing bubbles would have suffocated me.

It made me uneasy to be so completely immobilized. All I could see was bubbles–the bluish light of the pod was fractured like a hall of mirrors; it was like looking into shattered winter. And it was cold in the pod too. We'd had to turn off our blankets for the bounce‑down.

"Stand by!" hollered Alexei. His voice came muffled through the bubbles. "We begin braking now. It will be rough–"

BOUNCE‑DOWN

I think I passed out. I wasn't sure. One moment I was trying to scream and the next moment everything was eerily silent. "What's happening now?" I called. I don't think anybody heard me.

But a moment later, Alexei's voice came muffled through the cabin. "We burn off speed. We have come around very fast. Must burn off more speed. Twice more speed. Aim at surface, dive to landing site, then brake hard for last kilometer down. Is very nasty maneuver, but only way to get to safe house. Very safe house."

I couldn't believe he was conscious. Of all of us, Alexei seemed the weakest. He was tall and gangly and skinny–he didn't have the muscles for Earth gravity, and I'd assumed he didn't have the endurance either. Living so long in lesser gravity, his bones should have softened, his heart should have shrunk.

It made me wonder if he had been working out in the high‑gee levels at Geostationary. Despite all his disclaimers, he must have been; he was handling the heavy gees better than any of us. Maybe he'd been preparing for this kind of escape for a long time. Just how much illegal stuff was he involved in anyway?

"What next?" I shouted.

Alexei had explained the operation to all of us, more than once, but I still wanted to hear him confirm the successful completion of each phase of it.

"More braking–"

"I'm already broken," Douglas gasped.

I was glad that Stinky was tranquilized. I don't think I could have stood it if he were screaming and crying and I couldn't get to him. That business at the meteor crater had been bad enough–I still had nightmares. Even so, I thought I could hear him whimpering in his sleep. The poor little kid, I almost felt sorry for him–everything he was going through. It had to be worse on him than any of the rest of ?s.

Alexei's PITA beeped. I started gasping for as much breath as I could before the rockets kicked in–

–this time I did pass out. I woke up to the sound of Alexei's PITA beeping again. I was beginning to hate the sound of that thing. I had just enough time to say, "Oh, sh–" and then the rockets fired again.

I didn't remember waking up after the next one. I was just awake and cussing, spewing every dreadful word that I'd ever gotten my mouth washed out for using. The third time I repeated myself, I stopped to take a breath.

"Is impressive. For a thirteen‑year‑old."

I ignored him. "Is anyone else alive?" I called.

"Yo," said Mickey.

"I'd ask if you're all right," called Douglas, "but nobody who's seriously hurt cusses that enthusiastically."

"What about Bobby?"

"He's not making any noises," called Mickey.

"He is fine," said Alexei. "I am certain."

"Can you see him?"

"Please not to worry. Little stinking one is fine."

" Don't call him Stinky!"I said. And wondered where that came from. There was a sound from Douglas. Laughter? Probably. But only family members had the right to call him Stinky. No one else. And only when he really deserved it.

"We will be down soon," Alexei said. "You will see for yourself, everyone is fine."

"Where are we now?"

"We have broken orbit. We have fired twice to dive in toward bounce target. Only one more burn–the last one. We brake hard to burn off speed. And then we bounce."

"You hope–" But I said it under my breath. I was saving most of my air for breathing.

Alexei heard it anyway. "You will like Luna, Charles. I promise. No bad weather. No weather at all–"

And then his damn PITA went off again.

This was the worst one of all–at least the worst one that I was conscious for. The noise was unbearable. Even if I could have stuffed my fingers into my ears, it wouldn't have done any good, the whole pod was roaring and shaking and rattling. Whose good idea was this anyway?

And this time, I had a very clear idea of the direction of down.It was directly in front of me. All the packing bubbles were pushing up against us–we were hanging from the top of the cargo pod, while several hundred tons of widgets and whatnots trembled ominously only three meters away. Those crates were achingto break free of the violent deceleration and smash upward into our faces. Just how strong were those foam dollops anyway?

And finally when I was convinced that the incredible noise would never end, it did.

We were in free fall again.

But only for a few seconds.

Something went bangon the outside of the cargo pod. A whole bunch of things went bang.The "Lunar parachutes." The external in‑flatables. Alexei had explained this too. We were landing on balloons. A whole cluster of them. Very strong, very flexible. From the outside, the cargo pod would look like a plastic raspberry.

Depending on our angle and speed, and the kind of terrain we were landing on, we could bounce for five or ten klicks. Alexei said that usually, you try to undershoot the target and bounce the rest of the way to your final destination. He said that some pods had bounced over fifteen kilometers from their initial touch‑down points, but that those kinds of bounce‑downs were carefully planned. The pods had come in very fast, and at a very shallow angle–and they were aimed down a long slope or something like that.

But we wouldn't have that kind of ride, for which I was very grateful. The target zone had a lot of rough terrain, and Alexei wanted to minimize our bouncing–so as soon as it was safe, the pod was programmed to deflate the balloons and let us just crunch in. I wondered what Alexei's definition of safewas. I hoped that Armstrong was telling the truth when he said, "It's soft and powdery. I can kick it with my foot."

And then we hit– bumped–something. The impact came from the side, and it was hard enough to knock the breath out of me with an audible Oof!I heard Alexei say something that sounded like "Gohvno!"I got the sense that gohvnowas something I didn't want to step in.

And then we were in free fall again–or maybe not. But we were still airborne–except there isn't any air on Luna, and we weren't being borne by anything–we were just up.

And then down. We bounced again–this time from the other side and even harder than before. The whole pod went crunch!

And then we were up again–floating for a long agonizing moment–until crunchbang!We bounced again. I couldn't believe the balloons were working. This hurt!

Floated and bounced, bounced, bounced–and then abruptly crunched to a stop–was that it? Were we down? We were hanging sideways and upside down in the webbing–

I fumbled for the release. It was hard to move; we were still pinned by the packing bubbles. They smelled of canned air.

"Don't anyone move–" shouted Alexei. "We're not done yet."

We waited in silence for a moment.

Nothing happened.

"Douglas?"

No answer.

"Mickey?"

I called louder.

"Ymf," said Mickey.

"What's happening?"

"Wait," said Alexei.

The cargo pod lurched.Sideways. "Is the balloons. Rearranging selves. Everybody wait."

"Douglas? Douglas–?" Where was Douglas!I had this sudden nightmare knowledge that he had died in the crash. Then I would be really alone.

"Is not to worry. Nobody is dead," said Alexei. "Everybody wait! Pod must settle itself!" The pod continued to shudder and jerk and bump. Slowly, it began to hump itself upright. The pod was pumping air from balloon to balloon, pushing itself up with plastic muscles.

"Everybody stay still," said Alexei. Like we had a choice.

I was still worried about Douglas. "Mickey? Can you see Douglas? Is he all right?"

After a moment, Mickey called back. "He's fine. He's groaning."

The pressure on my chest began to ease. The packing bubbles were starting to wilt, slowly deflating. I guessed they were timed or something.

Finally, the cargo pod groaned and settled itself. "Please to wait–" cautioned Alexei. It bumped and lurched one more time, then sagged into an exhausted upright position. We were hanging from the webbing at the top. The only good news was the Lunar gravity. One‑sixth Earth normal. It felt … strange and easy at the same time.

As soon as he decided it was safe–and not soon enough for me–Alexei unbuckled himself and began climbing around the webbing like a human spider. He unbuckled Mickey first. Mickey's face was covered with blood. He held a soggy red handkerchief over his nose. He must have had a nosebleed all the way down.

"I go find first‑aid kit," said Alexei. "You take care of dingalings." He dropped down between two of the crates, and we heard the packing bubbles squeak and squeal and pop as he pushed his way through. It was a funny noise. It sounded like someone with water in his boots, squelching through a sewer. The canned air smell got stronger.

Mickey lowered himself to a crate, standing knee deep in squooshy balloons. He picked his way over to stand beneath me. Still holding his head back, still holding the hanky over his nose, he called up to me. "Can you free yourself, Charles?"

"I think so."

"You'll have to help me with Douglas. We'll lower him to the top of the crates. All right?"

"All right." I fumbled around with the latch for a moment–it wasn't hard to unbuckle, but my hands were shaking so badly from the landing that I couldn't coordinate. Finally, I managed to free myself–

I was never very good at gymnastics, but in Lunar gravity, everything was so surprisingly easy that I wished we could have had gym class on the moon, it was a lot more fun. I hung from the webbing without any effort at all. I did the math in my head; I weighed nine kilos.

Mickey pointed and I went hand over hand to Douglas. He looked pale, but he was breathing steadily into his O‑mask. I wondered if he'd passed out during braking or if he'd bumped himself unconscious during landing, a concussion would be very bad news, but we wouldn't know until we got him out of the webbing.

Mickey stood just below me, still holding his hanky to his nose. He gave me careful instructions, step by step, how to lower Douglas without dropping him. Even though falling three meters in Lunar gravity is no worse than falling half a meter on Earth, we still didn't want to take any chances. People had broken noses, arms, legs, and hips by underestimating Lunar gravity–especially after prolonged free fall. And we were all very shaky from the bounce‑down.

"Lower him feet first, Charles. Grab him under his arms and hold him till I get his legs. I know it's awkward, but he should be light enough that you can handle him. All right, ready?" Mickey started to take his handkerchief away from his nose, but it was still bleeding too badly.

"Maybe we should wait until Alexei gets back. Let him do it."

"I can manage. We'll do it quickly. Wait a minute." He wiped at his nose for a second, then looked up. "Okay, ready?"

"Ready." I unbuckled Douglas with one hand, then reached and grabbed him before he could fall out of the webbing. He started to slip out of my grasp, but I caught him by the collar and held on. That was enough. Mickey grabbed his legs and lowered him.

Still hanging from the webbing, I scrambled over to check on Stinky. He was sleeping like a baby, and almost as cute. "Leave him there for now," called Mickey. "Let's take care of Douglas first."

I let go of the webbing and dropped down to the top of the crates. I dropped impossibly slow. It was amazing.We really were on the moon! I hit a little harder than I expected, and I bounced almost all the way back up, laughing with delight. Mickey gave me a nasty look. "There'll be time enough for that later." He put his hand back to his nose.

Alexei came climbing back then and yanked me out of the air. "Learn to walk before you fly," he said. He popped open the first‑aid kit and began pawing through it. "Here, this will stop nosebleed very fast." He held up a tiny spray bottle, and Mickey tilted his head back.

While they did that, I went rummaging in the kit for old‑fashioned smelling salts. I found a little flat packet of ammonia, cracked its spine, and held it under Douglas's nose–he didn't react. I waved it under his nose again– come on, Douglas!I was ready to jam it up his nostril when he suddenly flinched and said, "Stop it, Charles!" He made a terrible face and pushed me away with both hands.

He sat up, still wrinkling his nose in disgust as he looked around. He blinked in surprise. "What happened to you, Mickey?"

"Ahhh," said Alexei, turning around. "The dead have come back to life. Welcome to Luna! My home sweet home!"

STEPPING OUT

Mickey finally gave up and put cotton up each nostril and a clip on his nose to pin his nostrils together. He'd just have to breathe through his mouth for a while.

The funny thing was, he'd been trained in all kinds of safety procedures on the Line, so he was practically a space doctor. Alexei was equally well trained, so you'd have thought between the two of them they could have figured something out–but apparently the low air pressure in the pod, combined with the lighter gravity and everything else, made this particular nosebleed slow to heal. But we couldn't sit around waiting for Mickey to stop dripping. Alexei was certain about that. We'd lose the advantage of our landing.

The two of them pulled a variety of instruments out of the first‑aid kit and began checking everyone out. Ears, eyes, nose, blood pressure, blood gas, adrenaline, blood‑sugar levels, I didn't know what else. Except for a lot of residual jitters, we all checked out normal. As normal as possible under these conditions.

Finally, Douglas and Alexei bounced up to the webbing and brought Stinky down, and Mickey checked him out too. He was fine, but he'd be asleep for several hours longer. I whistled a few notes from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony–what I called the Johnny‑One‑Note theme; it wouldn't sound like a melody to anyone who didn't recognize the theme, just some vague tuneless whistling–but it was a clear signal to the monkey. It came bouncing down to join us. It squatted next to Stinky and pretended to take his pulse. Or maybe it wasn't pretending–I remembered reading in the instructions that it was supposed to be a pretty good baby monitor. It would howl for help if a baby stopped breathing or had a temperature or something like that. But if it was seriously checking Stinky, then it wasn't finding anything wrong with him. It sat back on its haunches and waited patiently:

For a damn stupid toy, it sure had a terrific repertoire. And it was smart enough to know when to stay out of the way. Maybe it listened to stress levels in human voices. Or maybe it just sniffed for fear. Douglas might know. Maybe I'd remember to ask him later.

"All right," said Alexei, looking at his PITA. "We have not a lot of time. We must get moving quickly. Is everybody ready for nice walk? Everybody go to bathroom, whether you have to go or not. I mean it. You are constipated from free fall. Once you start bouncing on the moon, everything shakes down. Is not fun bouncing with pants full of poop." He practically stood over each of us to make sure we complied.

Once that business was taken care of, he started snapping out orders in Russian to his PITA. It projected a map of the local terrain on the bulkhead. "We are lucky childrens. We have not got too far to go. Here, see? Da?We go here to Prospector's Station. We change clothes, we look like ice miners. We catch train, we go to Gagarin City. Much good food. You like borscht? With cabbage and lamb, one bowl is whole meal. I am hungry already. Come, climb down now to bottom of cabin. Bring everything useful. We will not be coming back. Grab food and water, all you can carry. Mickey, bring first‑aid kit too. Waste not, want not." He disappeared between the crates again, but his voice came floating up, issuing a long string of orders. The packing bubbles began squelching again.

"Can you take Bobby down?" Douglas asked Mickey. Mickey nodded. I looked to Douglas, concerned. He wouldn't have asked that unless he still felt pretty bad.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"I'll be fine. I just need a little time."

I whistled for the monkey– "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf!"–and it jumped onto my shoulders for a piggyback ride. I followed Mickey and Douglas down through the crates and webbing, down through the big foam plugs and the still‑deflating bubbles. This sure wasn't space travel the way we saw it on TV.

When we got to the bottom of the pod, the footing was uneasy and squishy because of all the collapsed packing bubbles. I tried to peek out the windows, but there was nothing to see–only the sides of the landing balloons, plastered hard against the glass.

Alexei was pulling orange webbing off the walls. "Everybody carries his own luggage here. No robots, no porters. Luckily, we have portable pockets." He turned around, lengths of netting drifting from his hands. "Who is to carry littlest dingaling?"

"I will," said Douglas.

Mickey looked to him. "Are you sure you can handle it?"

Douglas wasn't all that certain about it, but he nodded anyway. "I'd better carry him. When he wakes up, he'll feel safer with me."

"Good point."

Alexei was rigging harnesses out of the webbing–apparently it had been designed for this purpose too. Douglas took off his blanket‑poncho, and Alexei began hanging webbing on him. Mickey made sure that Stinky's blanket was turned on again, and as soon as Alexei was done, he secured Stinky in the improvised harness on Douglas's back. Then they started packing oxygen bottles, rebreathers, food, and water, into the webbing on his front. Also some medical supplies. Probably more sedatives. Finally, Mickey pulled a pair of goggles down onto Douglas's head and fitted them carefully over his eyes; then he helped Douglas put his poncho back on so it covered everything. With Stinky on his back, he looked like a fat shiny beetle.

That done, Alexei and Mickey began sorting everything else into equal packages of supplies. Everyone had to carry his own air, food, and water. I picked up one of the packs to test the weight and was astonished (again) by how light it felt.

"You are still thinking Earth gravity," said Alexei. "But you will get used to Luna very quickly. Take off your blanket now."

Mickey secured one pack on my back and another on my front. The one on my front had two oxygen bottles and a rebreather. He put goggles on me just like Douglas's–they completely covered my eyes and were held on by a thick elastic band; the elastic had padded cups that closed over my ears like expensive headphones. Finally, Mickey pulled the blanket‑poncho back over my head, fastened it, and turned it on–I hadn't even realized how cold I was getting. I thought all my shivering was still from the shock of landing. The monkey bounced onto my shoulders and settled itself happily. I barely noticed its weight.

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 insidethis 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 andthe 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 werehere–I wished I had someone to share this with.

Wowwas 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 wasfunny.

"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 separatedfrom everything else. I was aloneon the moon.

I still had my hands in the gloves of the bubble suit. I went down on one knee and reached out to touchthe ground. Armstrong had been right–it wassoft 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 bluein 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.

"What's Alexei doing?" I asked.

"I am disconnecting airlock," he called.

"But why? What if we have to get back in the pod?"

"We are not coming back to pod. It won't be here anyway. But if we did need to reenter, is another airlock package here by outside hatch." He slapped the hull of the pod.

Alexei pushed the bubble up against the cargo hull to force as much air into the main part of the inflatable as he could, collapsing and sealing each section of the tube in turn. When the tube was folded back into itself and all three connections were secure, he turned to the hatch of the cargo pod. He reached up and down at the same time and grabbed two levers matching the ones on the inside of the pod. He yanked them sideways and the slot in the hatch ring widened, releasing its grip on the circular ring of the airlock.

Then he worked the ring loose carefully. Once it was clear, he pushed it up against the wall of the inflatable, securing it with Velcro patches. The airlock sat alone on the barren Lunar soil, a big bulbous blob of air–like a single drop of water perched on a waxy leaf. We didn't have to worry about it blowing away, of course, but the ground wasn't very level, and if it started rolling downhill, it might start bouncing, and it coiuld go quite a distance. It might even rip or puncture.

But Alexei turned around, grinning. "Who wants to hold leash? Charles? Is good job for you, da?"

"Huh?"

"We take airlock with us. You never know when you might need a roomful of air. Waste not, want not, da?"

I was beginning to hate that. I wanted to waste something, just for spite.

He bounded over to me in that peculiar Lunar hop‑skip of his. He trailed a length of flat ribbon, which he slapped onto one of the Velcro pads on the outside of my bubble suit. "There. You will bring plastic house. Is everybody ready to go? Hokay, we practice Luna walk. Pay attention, dingalings. Bounce on balls of feet like this, da?Not too high. Cannot walk in bubble, have to hop‑skip, have to bounce. Looks easy, da?Is not. Is tricky. Alternate feet–bounce on one, bounce on other–hop‑skip. No, Charles–keep hands in gloves. Helps keep bubble upside up. See bottom side? Extra thick–heavy on bottom to keep bottom side down. Bounce on padding, less risk to rip or puncture. Hold bubble upright by keeping hands in front gloves and bounce, hop‑skip–watch, now!"

He came bounding toward me. He looked like a silver beetle trapped inside a glass onion. But he made very good time, bouncing and skipping across the dark silvery dust.

"You will learn quickly. But try not to fall down. You don't want to dust your bubble."

"Why not?"

"Because then everybody will know you are clumsy dingaling. They will know you are just arrive here." He turned away to see how Douglas and Mickey were doing. "Yes, just like that," he called. They were bouncing slightly on the balls of their feet, testing their weight in the soft Lunar gravity. They moved in slow motion–almost like dancers. I thought of Tchaikovsky and the "Waltz of the Flowers."No, the other one–the "Waltz of the Snowflakes."Only these snowflakes were silvery and danced inside giant transparent Christmas tree ornaments. We must have looked very silly, but at the same time beautiful in a Lunar kind of way.

"All right, everybody ready? Let us go. Take small steps first. Get used to Lunatic‑walking. Learn to walk before learning to bounce. Follow me. Holler if I go too fast." He pointed southward and went bounding off. Douglas followed, little steps first, then as he felt more comfortable, he began taking bigger hops. Mickey looked back to me. "Come on, Charles–"

I took one last look at the bright blue marble of the Earth. It was directly behind us. And then I followed. The inflatable airlock came bouncing after me like an oversize balloon.

A WALK IN THE DARK

We didn't get very far–just to the top of the first hill. And it wasn't much of a hill. Alexei made us stop so he could check our re‑breathers and our air supplies again. We were all fine, but if any of us had needed personal attention, he would have taken us into the inflatable so he could open our bubbles. Even if we didn't have the inflatable with us, he could have still joined any two bubbles together at their openings. But nobody needed immediate attention, and I was glad about that.

Once that was finished, Alexei turned and faced the distant cargo pod. From here it looked pitifully small in a very large landscape. Despite the nearness of the horizon, once you gained a little height, the moon could be a very large place.

As Alexei had told us, there were no footprints leading away from the pod–just occasional soft dimples in the Lunar dust where we'd bounced along. A skilled tracker would be able to follow the trail of depressions, but only if the dust was thick enough and the shadows were right.

"Might want to shield eyes," Alexei said, and did something to his PITA.

"Huh? Why?" That was Douglas.

"Watch." He pointed.

In the distance, the cargo pod shuddered. It jerked upright–then a flare of dazzling white appeared underneath it, and the cargo pod lifted away from the gray plain.

"What are you doing, Alexei?"

"I hide the evidence." The bright flame of the pod sputtered in the sky and went out. "It will come down again, thirty or forty klicks west of here. In darkest shadow, very rough terrain, very uneven. Hard to find, harder to get to. When trackers come looking for pod, maybe they will look in wrong place first, lose valuable time, da?"

I couldn't see the pod anymore. Either the skin of the bubble was too blurry, or the pod was too dark, or the sky was too black. Without the flame, it was gone.

I wondered if we'd feel the crash, or if it would bounce down again. Either way … we were truly aloneon the moon now. I shuddered–and it wasn't just from the cold seeping up through my feet.

Mickey must have seen how scared I was. He took a half skip toward me, close enough to press his bubble against mine. He grabbed my hand and gave it a quick squeeze. Then he whispered, "Are you going to be okay, Charles?"

"Yes."

"You sure?"

"This isn't like the pod. We're on solid ground. I'll be fine."

"Do you want me to stay close to you, just in case?"

"Uh–if you want to."

"I'll do that."

"Okay."

"Thank you, Charles."

"You can call me Chigger."

Behind the goggles, under the silver poncho, it was hard to see what anyone was thinking, but Mickey's sudden bright smile was clear. "Thanks, kiddo."

"Hokay," said Alexei. "We go. Everybody, on the bounce–come, we must hurry–"

"How far is it?" I asked. "How long will it take to get there? Where are we going–?"

"Thirty klicks, give or take some. Six hours, maybe. We go catch train. No more talk. Use up oxygen. Follow me, this way–"

It wasn't that hard to hop‑skip across the Lunar surface. It just took a little practice to find the right rhythm. After a bit, Douglas and I were just as good as Alexei and Mickey. The four of us bounced along like a bunch of Happy Flubbies from that god‑awful kid show that Stinky used to like so much. For a while, Douglas and I were even shouting, "Boinng! Boinnnnng! Ba‑boing‑boinnngg!" with every bounce–at least, until Mickey started singing. "It's a small world, after all..." and Alexei threatened to puncture all of us.

But it was exhilarating great fun–it was kind of like skipping and kind of like hopping and kind of like flying, but mostly like nothing I'd ever done before. The feeling of speed and power and strength–it made me feel like Superman, like there was nothing I couldn't do. I started laughing and shrieking and giggling–so hard, I couldn't stop–

That's when Alexei called the first rest break, and the first thing he did was check my oxygen balance to see if I was getting too much or too little, or what. "You are too light‑headed." He looked surprised to find that my rebreather settings were all fine, even allowing for the increased exertion of bouncing.

"I'm laughing because it's fun," I said. "You remember fun, don't you?"

"We have six hours to go, little dingaling." He frowned. "Will you still have laughter thirty klicks from now?"

"I bet I will," I promised. "You were right–I like Luna."

"Do not get overconfident!" he snapped at me. "Overconfidence kills. You will not make very pretty corpse–and I have no intention of dragging you across Luna for burial." Alexei was suddenly very unhappy and very grumpy. None of us had ever seen him this way before. Had he heard something on his radio?

He seemed to realize it himself; he turned back to me, and spoke in a gentler tone. "Just concentrate on being safe. Is too dangerous to have fun here. Hokay, break over. Pay attention–see tall rock to left, with head sticking up into sun? We head toward notch, just to right. We stay in shadow. Let's go–on the bounce."

After that, it wasn't as much fun. After the novelty wore off, it was just something to do. But there was a lot to see–and I wished we could just stop and look at stuff sometimes. Some of the rocks glittered, and I wanted to pick them up and take them with me, but we didn't have sample bags, and the first time I stopped, Alexei yelled at me again, so I didn't do that anymore.

To say that the scenery on the moon looks different is an understatement–kind of like saying the Titanichad a rough crossing. Everythingon the moon is different. But it's the kinds of differences that are surprising. There's no wind or water erosion on the moon, so all the rocks look scruffier and the ground looks harder. It's hard to explain. You have to see it in person. Even pictures don't work.

Mostly we were in shadow. To the east, the sun was lurking just beneath the edge of a long broken rill. A couple of times we had to dart through streaks of sunlight, and once in a while, if we bounced too high, the sudden sideways glare felt like a hammer blast. A couple of times, Alexei said, "Gohvno!"and once he said, "Chyort!"which sounded even worse. I assumed it was in reaction to the intensity of the sunlight, but I didn't ask. It could have been anything. His dark mood was headed toward pure black.

Every fifteen minutes we stopped to rest for five, no matter where we were–unless it was in sunlight. I didn't ask why; it wasn't too hard to figure out. Our silvery ponchos could keep us warm against the cold Lunar night and they could reflect away some of the intermittent sunlight that hit us, but they couldn't cool us off in the direct glare of the sun.

Every time we stopped, Alexei checked my rebreather, and Mickey checked Douglas's. I protested that I could look at my own numbers, but both of them cut me off at the same time. Safety demanded that everyone check everyone else's settings.

By the time of our fourth rest break, it was pretty much routine. Mickey had taught Douglas and me how to read the rebreather displays, so now all four of us were checking each other at every stop. Alexei even showed us how to share our air in an emergency. The rebreathers had tubes that could connect directly through special valves on the front of the bubble suit. If someone needed air in a hurry, you could just plug right in. But you had to make sure the connection was secure or you could explosively evacuate your rebreather. "Useful only if you want to become a self‑propelled object."

So far, our oxygen use was just about what Alexei had expected. We would have enough to get where we were going–if we didn't make any wrong turns, and if we didn't have to double back to go around something.

The problem was, the ground was getting rougher. We were approaching a place where two craters overlapped; the wall of one was broken by the wall of the other. The only way to get to where we were going would be to cross some very uneven terrain. But we had to do it. We had to get out of the crater we were in and onto the plain beyond.

Alexei finally admitted he was worried. But we already knew that. The more he studied the display on his PITA, the worse his language got. I asked Mickey if he knew what Alexei was saying, but all he would translate was, "Your mother was a hamster," which didn't make any sense at all.

Mickey stayed close to Douglas; I think he was worried about Stinky, but Douglas could reach back and squeeze Stinky's arm or his leg and report, "He's still warm. He's still breathing," and that was as good as we could hope for right now.

What we really hoped was that he wouldn't wake up until we got to where we were going. The train station, or whatever it was, Alexei had picked out.

For some reason, I wasn't scared anymore. I felt like I should have been, but I wasn't. We were off the Line, off the map, very far from anywhere safe, about as alone as we could be–and I felt fine.

I wondered if other people felt this same way on Luna–alone and free at the same time. The only sound was the sound of my breathing, and the distant noises of everyone else grunting across the ground playing through my earphones. The bitter cold of the ground tried to seep through the bottom of the bubble, but the poncho kept radiating, and the air in the bubble stayed just warm enough. The light from beyond the rill was bothersome, but my goggles adjusted themselves to block the worst of it. I felt fine.

I thought about that.

I should have been worried. I should have been scared. But I wasn't. Why not?

Because I was safe with Douglas? Maybe. That was part of it, I'm sure. But maybe it was more because there wasn't anyone else around to tell me what to do or where to go or who to be. It wasn't the silence outsidethat was so wonderful. It was the silence inside–the freedom from all those voices that weren't mine.

It was like when I used to go up in the hills away from the tube‑town, so I could listen to my music. It wasn't just the music. It was the silence.

This was such a sudden realization, I stopped in mid‑bounce. Wherever we finally ended up, it had to be a place where I could have silence every day. A place where I could listen to my own thoughts.

CLIMBING THE WALL

At the sixth rest stop, Alexei made us all eat half an MRE–the red one marked high‑energy pack.It was made with lots and lots of high‑energy stuff–like hydrogen, kerosene, Palmer‑chips, and plutonium. It tasted exactly like its list of ingredients, only not as good.

At the seventh rest stop, Alexei tied us all together with a nylon cord. There was a loop on the front and back of each bubble, and he secured the line through both loops. He put himself in the lead, me directly behind, then Douglas, then Mickey bringing up the rear. The inflatable airlock bounced along behind Mickey.

We were heading uphill now, and the slope was getting steeper and trickier, He didn't want anyone slipping and bouncing away. "If you roll downhill and get big puncture and lose all your air," he told me as he secured the cord, "I will be very unhappy. It will ruin my whole day. So I keep you close. We go slowly now. No more bouncing. Just tiny hop‑steps. Very careful."

I took his warnings to heart and stayed close behind him. A couple times, I stopped to look back–to see how Douglas was doing–and each time, he yanked me forward. I got the feeling he didn't want me to see how much trouble Douglas was having, climbing up the hill with Stinky on his back. Stinky couldn't have weighed more than four kilos, five at the most. But even five kilos starts to get heavy after a couple of hours. And Douglas had to carry supplies for both of them. I didn't think he was used to this kind of sustained exertion. But he didn't have much choice in the matter. Alexei couldn't do it–obviously. And Mickey's strength was questionable because of all the time he spent outof Earth's gravity. And besides, Stinky was ourresponsibility, not theirs.

But even with the frequent rests, I could see that Douglas's endurance was wearing thin. And we hadn't even gone a third of the way yet.

Halfway up the slope, it stopped being a slope and became a wall. Even worse, it was a wall in sunlight.

"Oh, chyort!"I said. "Why didn't we go around?"

"This isaround," said Alexei. "Is not so bad as it looks. If you are fast." He was fumbling with a tool he had hung outsidehis bubble. I hadn't paid much attention before, but he had several pieces of external equipment hanging off his back. The one he selected now looked like a miniature harpoon gun–because that's exactly what it was.

It had a windup spring, and it fired a dart with an unfolding plastic grapple. A long lightweight cord hung from the dart in a flimsy‑looking roll. Alexei studied the wall above, then hesitated and turned back to the display on his PITA. He zoomed in on the Lunological map and grumbled at the numbers. I could see him turning them over in his head–and coming to the conclusion that we really didn't have a choice in the matter anyway, we'd come this far, we didn't have the air to go back down and try another way, so it really didn't matter after all, did it?

"Hokay," he announced. "Let's see if Alexei is as clever as he brags." He hefted the dart gun and turned on its laser sight. Because there was no atmosphere, there was no dust to highlight the beam, so he had to track the red target dot up the wall above us and dance it around his aiming point. He was aiming at a broken shelf in the shadow of a tall outcrop. Above it was the sunlit portion of the wall. The range finder said the shelf was only fifteen meters up, but it looked a lot farther.

"Is not too bad," Alexei decided. "We will do this in two steps. First stop is shelf. Map says it is wide enough for all of us, and we will still be safe in shadow. Second stop will be harder. Longer climb, all in sunlight." He began winding up the spring in the dart gun. "But this will work," he said slowly, "if everybody follows direction. So pay good attention. We use first climb for practice. Learn to climb. We go up to first shelf, all of us. We catch breath, then we go– bing, bing, bing, bing–up to top and over, back into shadow quickly. You will have to move fast, very fast. Is longer climb, so you must keep moving. No time to admire view unless you wear sunblock two million. Any question?"

We all shook our heads.

"Douglas?" That was Mickey. "Do you want me to take Bobby? We can transfer him here–"

"No. I'll take him over the top. The other side is downhill, isn't it, Alexei?"

"Yes, other side is downhill. We go back to Lunar plain. Downhill, uphill, but nothing like this. Nothing too serious."

Something about the way he said that last part. "Nothing too serious … ?"

"Nothing you can't handle, little dingaling. Get past this part first, please?" He turned back to the wall. It was harder to take a range sighting on the top of the ridge because it was blazing bright and the laser dot was invisible in the glare. Finally, Alexei gave up in disgust. "Never mind. I know how high from Lunar survey. I do this by ear."

He sighted carefully and fired the dart gun–the dart soared lazily up, unfolding its long grappling prongs as it went. It rose out of shadow and blazed in the hard light of the sun. The line followed it up in silence, uncurling and turning bright as it went. At the apex of its flight, the dart hung motionless in space for a long moment–then it began drifting back with a deliberate slow grace, arcing over and down–it disappeared out of view behind the glare of the wall above us. The line went looping after it, flying across space in lazy swirls.

Eventually, the line began to settle and fall back. After what seemed like forever, it finally went slack. Alexei waited until it was hanging like a bright yellow streak against the wall; he held up the display on the base of the dart gun so I could see. It showed a row of green ready signals. According to the readouts on the butt of the pistol, the grapple‑dart had landed somewhere over the wall of rock and the grapples had securely deployed. We hadn't heard anything, of course, so we had to depend on the signal sent back through the line. Alexei punched a couple of buttons, and two more green signals appeared. "Grapple has tested itself," he announced. "It will hold us." He locked the safety and hung the gun on the back of his balloon.

"Hokay. Now pay attention. I teach dingalings to do this. Is not too hard–even a dingaling can learn. First, take hands out of gloves. Now put gloves away, please. You do not want them sticking out and catching on something. Here, I'll help. Now reach below and switch to other gloves–big red gloves under regular ones. Put your hands in– da,feel that? See how glove is molded around big castanet‑claw? That's your grabber. Close glove, feel how it clicks shut? Make sure you feel click. That click means grabber has closed very tight around cord or tool or anything else you reach for–holds very very tight, so don't put anything tender inside. Especially not anything you are attached to."

"How do you unclick it?" Douglas asked.

"Is good question. Squeeze again, also press with thumb and middle finger–feel little click? That is grabber releasing grip. Very easy. Click, unclick. Grabber holds you up even if hands get tired. Pay attention to this, Charles dingaling. Make sure grabber goes click. If it doesn't go click, you have no grip. Very bad news. You don't want that. Do not try to hold cord without grip. You will risk slipping. If you slip, maybe you cut or rip glove. Very bad news if that happen. I have to write letter to manufacturer of bubble and ask for refund. So don't slip. Instead, make sure grabber goes click. Practice now. Click, unclick. See?"

He made me do it over and over again until he was sure I had it right. "Hokay, good. Now this is how you will pull self up, hand over hand. Slowly. Grab, click, pull–unclick other grabber, grab, click, pull–unclick first grabber, grab, click, pull. Understand? If no click, stop and try again. Don't unclick one until the other is clicked. Don't go to next step until you check that previous step is success."

"What if the clicker breaks?"

"I will write letter and get refund."

"I mean–what happens to me?"

"You will not have to worry about letter. I will."

"Oh, good. I hate writing letters."

"All right, watch me now. I will go first. To show you how it is done. Pay attention to feet. Watch what I do. Do you know how to rap‑pel?"

"Rappel?"

"Down mountainside. Kick, slide, kick, slide–? You have seen pictures, da?We are going to rappel. But not down– up.You do not want to scrape bubble against rock, do you? Nyet.Hook feet in loops there. Pull knees up. Brace yourself against wall. Kick away from wall. Then pull self up. Lift knees again and brace self to come back. Hold self against wall, kick and pull. Brace, hold, kick and pull. Understand? Watch. I will go first. I will make it look easy. Then you will follow. You will make it look clumsy. We will all laugh at you. But you will get to top without mishap, because you will be slow and careful. And we will all pat you on back, and say, 'good job, well‑done, little dingaling.' And you will have great adventure to tell grandchildren about someday. Unless you are like Mickey and Douglas. Then you will have to tell someone else's grandchildren. Not to worry, I will lend you some of mine. They will not believe that senile old Lunatic smuggled crazy terries across Lunnaya zhopa.Bottom of moon. Moon's rectum. Place where sun never shines. Truthfully, it neverdoes. We will be there soon. The priamaya kishka.You will tell them you were crazy terrie. They will believe. Hokay? Watch now, here I go."

Was he serious? Or was he saying all that stuff to distract me? Either way, it worked. I was distracted.

Alexei pulled himself up the cliff wall in a series of three fast bounces. His movements were quick, but they were also deliberate and careful. He'd done this before and his experience showed. He stretched his right arm as high as he could, grabbed and clicked. He kicked away from the wall, pulled himself up as high as he could, grabbed and clicked. His feet came back to the wall and he braced himself. He looked down at me and grinned, unclicked his lower hand, reached up, grabbed, clicked, kicked away from the wall, and pulled.

Once more and he was at the top. He kicked away from the wall and pulled sharply at the same time–he floated over the edge of the shelf and disappeared from view for a moment. He popped back into view and waved down at us. "Hokay, dingaling! Your turn."

"It's Dingillian," I corrected.

"If you can get to top, I will learn new pronunciation. Until you get up, you are still dingaling."

Douglas moved up beside me. "You okay, Chigger?"

"Yeah, I can do it. Can you?"

He nodded. "I'm getting tired, but I can do it. Let's get this over with."

I closed my eyes and visualized the steps–what they would feel like. I took a deep breath. I reached up with my right hand. I grabbed. I squeezed. The glove went click. "Remember to kick!" Alexei shouted. I had almost forgotten. I kicked and pulled at the same time–I was a little heavier than I expected, but a lot lighter than I was used to. I bounced up and away from the wall. I reached as high as I could with my left hand, grabbed, and clicked. "Pull your knees up–" I had plenty of time to brace, everything was slow motion. My feet hit the wall. "Don't look down–" Too late. I was already looking.

I was higher than I thought. But I wasn't scared. I'd been this high when I did the rope climb in gym class. As long as I didn't look back to see the rest of the slope we'd climbed–

I took a breath, visualized what I had to do next. And did it. This time it was easier. Unclicked the right hand. Kicked away. Swung up. Grabbed. Clicked. Pulled up knees. Braced. Looked up. Alexei waved. He was closer than I expected.

"Is good. One more. Da?

" Da."Closed eyes. Took a breath. Opened eyes. Unclicked, kicked, swung, pulled, grabbed, clicked, braced. It was easier to do than describe.

Alexei was almost close enough to reach out and pull me up. "Kick and pull sharply up," he said. I did, and he grabbed my arm–both arms–and swung me over the top, setting me down firmly on a slab of Lunar rock. He reached over and slapped the top of my head. "Is good job, little dingaling. Not as clumsy as I expected."

The monkey patted my head too. I'd almost forgotten it was there.

"I thought you said you weren't going to call me dingaling anymore."

He pointed to the wall above us, where it turned into blazing sunlit rock. "I said when we get to top!"

TO THE TOP

Douglas came up the wall next. Despite the weight of Stinky on his back, he came up easily. At least, it looked easy to me. He was only a little bit out of breath when he bounced onto the shelf. Mickey came right after; he pulled the inflatable airlock up after himself.

We took a rest break then. We weren't catching our breath so much as cooling off. Alexei wanted us to turn off our heaters and radiate away some of our heat. I don't know how much good he thought that would do, I was already cold, and it scared me to think of the kind of heat we'd be experiencing in a few minutes. But he kept saying, "Not to worry. Is just an extra precaution. Bubbles are insulated both ways."

When we checked each other's air, Alexei advised each of us to release a few seconds of oxygen into our bubbles from the spare tanks we carried. "And put rebreather tube in mouth for climb up, please?" I was beginning to think this was far more dangerous than he was letting on.

To the east, the hills were outlined by an edge of light. Sunrise. We were just below the edge of their shadow. Just how bright was the full force of the sun in hard vacuum? We were about to find out–one good bounce upward and we'd know.

I reached up and touched the monkey on my head. "Why don't you swing down and climb into the harness on my back?" I said. To my surprise, it understood exactly what I wanted. It bounced down, climbed up under the poncho, and secured itself in the harness on my back, just like Stinky was secured on Douglas's back. "Thank you," I said to it. I bounced lightly on my feet, testing my balance.

"Hokay," said Alexei. "Anybody ready? I go now. Watch please?" He grabbed the cord. "Here I go–" He bounced up into the light. His bubble glittered with reflections. And then he was up and up and up and over the top and gone.

A second later his voice came loud in our ears. "I am fine, thank you for worrying." He added, "Is not as hard as it looks. Is nice view from up here. Charles dingaling, is your turn."

Douglas gave me a good luck slap on top of the head, and I clicked onto the rope. I closed my eyes, visualized, and leapt–

The sudden bright wash of light from the east felt like a hammer‑blow. Even my goggles weren't enough to keep me from being dazzled. I felt like I'd opened a furnace door, just from the glare alone. The whole inside of the bubble sparkled with reflections that wouldn't quit.

–and grabbed the rope and clicked. Released, kicked, and pulled. Suddenly my goggles were blurry, with hot tears streaming from my eyes. From the light. Grabbed for the rope, missed–clicked anyway, and swung around out of control for a moment, turning first away from the sun, and then right back into the full force of it–I unclicked my empty hand, looked up for the rope, found it, grabbed, clicked, remembered to test, banged the wall, I'd forgotten to bring my knees up, bounced and hung for a moment, and said, "Oh, chyort!"The tears were real now. Tears of frustration.

"Keep coming!" cried Alexei from above. "Don't stop!" shouted Douglas and Mickey from below.

I swallowed hard, visualized–was it getting hot in here or was it my imagination? Had I scraped my bubble? Did I hear something hissing? Was I losing air?–visualized again and unclicked, kicked, and climbed. I fumbled again–but this time grabbed the cord anyway, clicked, and hung, braced myself against the wall. I couldn't see. The tears were a torrent. The light was awful. If I could just see–

"Only three more and you are here, dingaling! Keep coming!"

Visualized, unclicked, kicked, grabbed, clicked and pulled–okay, I could do this. Two more times. Took a breath, did it all again on the other side. Once more–except I couldn't see a thing. My goggles were wet, my eyes were flowing. I pulled my hand out of the lower glove and pushed my goggles up, tried to wipe my eyes with my wrist. That was a mistake. My goggles fell off my head and bounced away somewhere below me. I felt them hit the floor of the bubble. Even with my eyes closed, the light was an orange blast. I said some of those words that mom hated so much.

"What just happened?" Douglas demanded.

"He dropped his goggles," Alexei said. "Not to worry. Is easy enough, we do it with eyes closed. Come up, dingaling. You are almost here."

It wasgetting hot in here. It wasn't my imagination. The sweat was dripping from my armpits. If I could just see–I squinted up. The rope was a blurry line. Maybe if I could get the goggles. I pulled my knees up, bringing the floor of the bubble almost up within reach. I reached around, fumbling for the goggles. If I could just find the goggles–my hand scrabbled frantically.

"Charles!" That was Douglas. "Don't stop! Keep climbing!"

"I just want to grab my goggles. I can't see!"

"Forget stupid goggles! You are close enough to do without."

And then I swung around just a little bit and my view widened beyond the bubble to the scenery outside.

I was hanging on the inside wall of a Lunar crater. It was big, round, and deep. The pod had come down on the far side and we'd crossed the rubble‑strewn floor, always keeping to the shadow until we'd finally climbed its steepening slopes–until we'd finally had to pull ourselves up the wall. From this perspective, it looked bigger and deeper than the Barringer Crater in Arizona, only it was painted in hard colors of black and silver and bright.

And I was hanging halfway up the inner wall.

In a bubble of air. Baking in the sun. Surrounded by vacuum and dark. And nothing below me and nothing above me, hanging only by a single arm. My arm was getting tired. And no one anywhere could save me.

I knew the distances weren't the same here on the moon. I knew the gravity wasn't the same. I knew my weight was lighter. But my eyes told me distance and my brain remembered Earth. And my stomach clenched.

"Please, little Dingillian. Put hand back in glove. Reach up. I will pull you, but you will have to kick away from wall. Hokay?"

For a moment, I forgot everything–even the light. I could hear myself thinking– This is a really stupid way to die.And then the other side of my brain argued– No it isn't. This is really dramatic.

And then I got annoyed, and said, "You're both wrong–"

"What's that, dingaling?"

I didn't answer. Somehow I got my hand back into the glove. I ignored the light and heat and unclicked. I kicked away from the wall, swung myself up, grabbed, and clicked, braced against the wall, unclicked, kicked, swung, grabbed, clicked, braced–"Now!"–and kicked straight down, bounced up–and Alexei grabbed my arm and pulled me over the top, pushing me into the shadow of a looming crag.

I flopped down cross‑legged on the broken Lunar rocks and let the tears flood out of me. My eyes were dazzled so badly, I could hardly see.

"Is he all right? Is he all right?"That was Douglas.

"He is fine. He is just shaked and baked a little. Wait–" Alexei hovered over me, checking air and temperature and everything else he could think. He looked all over my bubble for leaks, but the pressure meter said it was fine.

"Can you sit here quietly, Charles? I bring your brother up?"

I managed to nod, and Alexei moved back into the light, and started calling instructions down to Douglas.

I wiped my eyes with my hands, again and again. Suddenly, someone was handing me an alcohol‑wipe. The monkey. The package was already open, but my hand was shaking so bad I couldn't take it. So the monkey reached up and began gently washing my face. I had to laugh at the absurdity of it. When the monkey finished, it held up my missing goggles. It wiped them off carefully and dried them, then made a big show of inspecting them with a harsh monkey squint. Finally, it handed them over, and I managed to get them back on and my poncho adjusted.

"Okay, you," I said. "On my head again." The monkey did it in a single bounce.

I stood up and turned around. Alexei was just swinging Douglas over the edge, pushing him into the shadow next to me. He grabbed my arms. "Are you all right?" His tone was beyond concerned. It was scared.

I nodded. But I still felt jittery. He stood there, watching me, waiting for me to say something, but I was caught in another one of those terrible churning wunderstorms,realizing a thousand things at once. Not just the ordinary stuff about how dangerous adventures were–but the extraordinary stuff about how much I loved my brothers and how lost I'd feel without them–and how much it would hurt them if they lost me. I didn't want to hurt them anymore.

And there were a bunch of other thoughts in that wunderstormtoo–about Mickey and Alexei and the monkey. But I couldn't say any of it right now. I couldn't say anything. It would all have to wait.

SUMMIT

After Mickey pulled himself up, he and Alexei checked me over again. Then they checked Douglas. Then Douglas checked them. It was a little crowded in the shadow of the crag, but it was safe enough for the moment.

Alexei insisted that we each drink some water and take a few bites of high‑energy pack. He wanted us rested before we started down the other side. There was probably a lot that we all wanted to say. I knew that Douglas was angry–he probably wanted to know why Alexei was putting us all in such danger and why Mickey had agreed to this. Mickey should have known better. I could almost hear the argument–it sounded a lot like Mom and Dad.

But Douglas was smart enough not to raise the subject here. We weren't exactly out of danger, and our first priority had to be getting to safety. And after we got to safety, then the argument wouldn't matter anymore, would it?

For a while we sat in silence. Mostly, I was waiting for my eyes to undazzle. All I could see were big purple splotches everywhere. Nobody said anything at all. We just listened to ourselves breathe. We were tired. This wasn't fun anymore. And even though none of us would say so, we were all scared. It was real now–we could die out here.

Alexei had deliberately chosen this landing site because it would be hard to get to. He had chosen this path across the broken Lunar surface because we would be hard to track. We were out of view of any of the Lunosynchronous satellites, and the ones in polar orbit were equally unlikely to spot us.

We were hidden in the shadows, we were masked by the rocks. And even our thermal signatures would be partially lost in the hash of heat and cold. So there wasn't much likelihood of someone finding us. We weren't going to be picked up unless …

Douglas was thinking the same thing. He looked to Mickey. He took a breath. "Mickey … ?"

"What?"

"I'm thinking that, uh … maybe we should call for help."

"Douglas? Are you all right?"

"This is awfully rough. On Charles. On Bobby." He hung his head. "On me too. I almost didn't make it up the wall either. We can't keep taking chances like this–" He looked up, looked across at him. "How do you feel?"

"I'll go along with whatever you decide." And then he added, "I think the safety of you and your brothers comes first."

Alexei was looking down the other side of the wall. He was looking at his PITA. He wasn't looking at us. He said, "I understand your fears. But you are doing all right. Hardest part is past us now. Is all downhill from here. If you choose to go on."

Douglas ignored him. "How long do you think it would take them to get to us?" he asked Mickey.

Mickey shrugged. "We're close enough to Gagarin Station. They could have a boat out here in three hours. But we'd have to climb down to someplace level."

"Yeah, I already figured that out."

"Did you think about the marshals?" Alexei asked.

"What about them? They were waiting for us at Farpoint. We're beyond that now. Aren't we?"

Alexei shrugged.

"Aren't we–?" Douglas repeated.

"Possibly. Possibly not. Probablynot." He took a breath. "Most certainly, I think not. There are bounty marshals on Luna. It takes only a phone call from Farpoint to North Heinlein or Asimov or Armstrong or … Gagarin."

"Gagarin?"

Alexei shrugged. "Is possible." He took his hand out of his glove to scratch his chin. "Is certainly a logical place to start looking for me. Maybe not you. That's why we drop pods everywhere. So they have no way to know which where to start. Remember, they don't know that I am with you. They might figure it out, because I am not at Geosynchronous anymore. But they have no way to know for sure. So Gagarin could look like red herring. Is inconvenient to get there from north. Only one train line. They would have to take transport. They might not do that on a wild‑moose chase. Might check easier targets first. Whole point is to go where it is too inconvenient for marshals. That makes time to keep going, stay ahead of them."

I kept waiting for Douglas to turn to me, to ask me what I was thinking, but he stayed focused on Mickey.

And meanwhile, Alexei nattered on. "But let's play thought experiment game. Say we send signal. Everybody knows we're here. All over news instantly. No secrets on this rock. Rescue boat gets here in three hours. Maybe less, but don't cross fingers before they hatch. Fifteen, maybe thirty minutes to transfer us into boat and get up again. They are in no hurry. They will follow procedures. We take three hours back to Gagarin or wherever else they choose to take us. You figure it out. If Gagarin, that gives marshals six hours from time of distress call to intercept us. Anywhere else, even longer."

"Is six hours good or bad?" I asked.

"If marshals are serious about catching you, they can get to anywhere on Lunar surface within two hours. They have fast transport. Is not impossible. Depends on how many marshals, how desperate they are, how much confusion from big blue marble."

Douglas didn't say anything to that. Neither did Mickey.

"If you want to send distress call, Douglas, I will understand; but I promise, if marshals want you bad enough, then there will be marshals waiting for you. But if you send distress call, I will not wait with you. I will go on without you. We have broken many laws getting here. But they do not know for sure I am here, and I already have many alibis." He sighed. "This is part of why I put you into money‑surfing web. So if something bad happens and you get caught, all the money used to purchase six pods will look like your own. My hands are washed. Lawyers will argue that purchase of all six pods and evasive trajectories was intent to escape legal warrants waiting at Farpoint. They will tie you up in paper." He made a face. "So, no, I do not advise calling for help. It could get very ugly for you."

That almost sounded like blackmail. Like fat SenorDoctor Hidalgo, who'd almost threatened us too. Even behind his goggles, even bundled in his poncho, I could see that Douglas didn't like what Alexei was saying.

He turned back to Mickey. "Say we go back down to the crater floor. How long would that take? Fifteen minutes? Thirty? We could all get into the inflatable and wait for them, couldn't we?"

"Is better to go forward," said Alexei. "Better landing site on this side." No one paid him any attention.

"Is that what you want to do?" Mickey asked Douglas.

"What I want …and what I have to do are two different things. I have to think about Bobby and Charles first."

"Um‑?" I said.

Douglas shook his head, dismissing me. "No, Chigger. I have to make this decision for all of us."

"Well, that didn't take long."

He looked up sharply. "What didn't?"

"For you to break your promise."

"What promise? Oh–"

"Yeah. Thatpromise." To Mickey, I said, "That he wouldn't make any more decisions for all of us without talking to me."

"Chigger." Douglas put on his patient grown‑up voice. It was scary–because for a moment, he wasn't Douglas anymore. He was someone else."I'm really scared here. You nearly got killed. And I nearly didn't make it up either. We're not trained for this. I'm sorry. This was a mistake. I'm sorry for getting you into this. We should stop here–"

"You sound just like Dad," I said angrily. That was who he'd become."Remember when he told us he was leaving. How he wouldn't stop apologizing: 'What I want and what I have to do. We made a mistake. I'm sorry. I have to call it quits before it gets worse. Blah blah blah.' And remember how we all felt? We were so angry, because we wanted him to keep trying, just a little bit more–"

"This isn't the same."

"Yes, it is. It's quitting. Dad taught us how to be quitters. Real good."

"It's surviving."

"Yeah, Dad said that too."

"You have a better idea?"

"Yeah, I do. Let's keep going. We can quit anytime. We have to go down the mountain anyway. Let's go down and see how we feel when we get to the bottom."

Douglas looked to Mickey. Mickey shrugged. "He's right. We have to go down, no matter what. And we have enough air. We don't have to decide here. You want to think about it?"

Douglas looked at me. Even though his eyes were hidden by his dark goggles, I could see he was annoyed. He didn't like being backed into a corner. Not by me, not by Alexei, not by Mickey. But he was always logical, and that was his real strength. So finally, he nodded, and said softly, "All right, we'll wait."

Mickey put his hand on Douglas's bubble, as if to touch his shoulder. "Can you make it down? Or do you want me to take Bobby?"

Even though I couldn't see his expression, even though his body language was hidden by the poncho, I could see he was tired. I could hear it in his voice. "No, I'll take him. But when we get down, we need to rest–maybe even a nap?"

Mickey and Alexei exchanged a glance and nodded to each other.

"Turn heaters back on, please. Everyone take a little fresh air," Alexei said. "And we will start down the other side."

"Wait a minute–" I said. I could finally see clearly again. I stepped out into the sunlight, as close to the edge as I dared. I looked back down into the crater we'd just climbed out of. It was deeper than Barringer–and wider. But I wasn't afraid of it anymore. It was just scenery. It looked like a Bonestell.

I stepped back away from the edge, back into the shadow. "All right, I'm ready."

Alexei reached over and slapped my hands with his. "Good job, Charles Dingillian. We go now. Da?"

" Da."

IN CONTROL

The funny thing, Douglas was right. This was too dangerous for us. This was a mistake. It had been a mistake from the beginning. It was a whole cascade of mistakes–Mom's, Dad's, Mickey's, and all the lawyers and judges who'd stumbled into this with us.

But most of all, it was ourmistake. And everything we were doing now was only making it worse. We were getting farther and farther away from help. Every step we took was only making it harder for someone to find us and rescue us.

And then there was that business with Alexei. The more I thought about what he'd said, the more it pissed me off. He'd threatened to abandon us. He'd gotten us into this and he wasn't going to help us get out–not unless we did it his way. And I didn't like that. And probably neither did Mickey and Douglas. But none of us were talking about it, so maybe that was even more evidence how serious this was.

Or maybe Alexei was right. He was a smuggler and a spy and God knew what else. He knew this stuff. He knew the dangers. And, supposedly, he knew how to avoid them. Maybe it was just an overdose of wunderstormand we were getting panicky.

And then we started down, and there wasn't a lot of time to worry.

The way down didn't look as easy as the way up. Alexei had brought us to a place where the rim walls of two overlapping craters intersected. Most of the slope below us was hidden by long sideways shadows. Even so, we could see that the way down to the floor of the second crater was a broken avalanche of ugly rock. It was a rubble‑strewn slope, gashed by several nasty chasms.

I didn't see how we were going to negotiate it–maybe by jumping from boulder to boulder? But it turned out to be a lot easier than that.

Alexei retrieved the grapple‑dart from where it had secured itself and wound up the cord carefully; then he reloaded the dart gun and sighted down into the rubble and beyond, marking the range to the distant silver plain. He muttered to himself in Russian and I got the feeling he was doing some complex calculations in his head.

Finally, he made a decision. He sighted down into the rubble, tracking the laser dot as far as he could toward some distant landmark. Then he aimed the pistol forty‑five degrees upward, and fired. The grapple‑dart flew up and away, trailing the cord after it in great un‑curling loops. As before, it glittered in the sunlight, yellow against the black sky above.

The dart arced over and down into the gloom below, and as the line fell back into shadow with it, it began blinking out along its length. As before, we had to wait until the butt of the dart‑pistol confirmed that the grapple‑dart had secured itself.

Now Alexei looped the other end around a convenient boulder and began pulling it as tightly as he could. Periodically, he'd turn and look down into the gloomy crater below with his goggles set for light‑enhancement. Then he'd grunt and resume tightening the cord. Mickey helped him. When they were done, we had a Lunar zip line.

"All right, Mikhail,do you want to go first? Or should I?"

"I think you'd better."

Alexei nodded agreement. "I think so too. All right, Dingillians–this part will be easy." From his equipment pack, he produced four little wheels with handles, he handed one to each of us. "Use your grabbers. Click right grabber here, reach up, put wheel on line, click left grabber here. Once you are clicked, you cannot fall off. So enjoy ride. Pick up feet, hold knees as high as you can, ride line all the way down to bottom. Is long way, da!So do not go too fast. Twist handles this way for braking, wheel will slow. Twist other way to release brake. Is good idea to control speed all the way down, especially for beginners. When you get near end, you will see ground getting closer. That is time to go very slow. Even slower than that. Slower than very slow. Do not scrape bubble suit. You will do fine. I promise. Is great fun and best way to go anywhere on moon. Any questions?"

I raised a hand.

"Yes, Charles?"

"Did you do this on purpose?"

"Do what?"

"Choose the bounce‑down sight so far from where we have to go? I mean, couldn't you have brought us down a little closer?"

"I could have, yes. But I wanted the bad guys to look somewhere else. So we hike a little bit and they go to look in six places much farther away. By the time they don't find us, we will be past wherever else they think to look. If I did not think you could handle this, Charles, I would not have used this plan." He added thoughtfully, "I make this plan a long time ago, I am very proud of myself that it works so well. You should be proud too–that you are strong enough to keep up. We are almost on schedule. Wait for my signal. I will call you down as soon as it is safe. Hokay, any other questions? No? I see you all on the bottom." He swung his wheel over the line, clicked onto the handles, kicked off with his feet, and sailed away over the edge.

" Waaaaaaaa‑haaaaa! Hoooo‑hooooooooo‑hooooooooo eeeeeeeyyyy!" He wailed all the way down–or at least as far down as he had the air to shriek. He floated down across the Lunar landscape like something out of a bizarre dream–a silver sprite in a shimmery ball.

And then there was silence. It stretched out for the longest time.

The three of us looked at each other.

"Why doesn't he say something?" I asked.

"Maybe he's concentrating on his landing," Douglas said.

"What if he fell off?"

"He can't fall off."

"What if the bottom of the line is in a jagged rock field and he got punctured before he could warn us? What if it's not safe to go down after him?"

"Charles, stop scaring yourself. Nobody else is going down until Alexei tells us it's safe."

"But if something happened to him–?"

"Nothing happened to him," said Douglas.

We both looked to Mickey.

Mickey was studying the PITA on his wrist. "His signal is clear. His readouts are green. He's alive. He's just not talking. At least, not to us. He might be calling ahead to someone else. Not to worry."

We waited in silence. I looked at the Earth for a while. It hadn't changed its position in the sky. And the terminator line didn't look all that different from before. Most of Africa was still waking up. To another horrible day.We'd only been traveling two hours. We still had a long way to go.

And then, the worst thing of all happened.

Stinky woke up.

And announced, "I gotta go to the bathroom. Where are we?"

Mickey and Douglas and I all groaned at the same time.

"Can you hold it?" said Douglas.

"No," said Stinky. "I gotta go right now!"

"Uh‑oh–" I said. I knew that tone of voice.

And in that same instant, I had a chilling insight about Stinky–and why he was the way he was. I was only angry at Mom and Dad. But Stinky was angry at everyone. It was about control.

Everybody in the family had authority over him. Everybody older had power. He had none. There was only one thing he could say to bring everything else to a stop. There was only one thing he could do to seize control.

And every time he did, everything else came to an immediate stop. At that moment, his single declaration became the ultimate power in the family. Whenever things were totally out of control–there was Stinky demanding, "I gotta go now." If nothing else, he could always be depended on to focus the dilemma on himself.

Without even thinking about it, I stepped over to Douglas. "Stinky! Can you hear me?"

"Yes. Where are you, Chigger?"

"I'm right here." I reached over and pressed against the back of Douglas's bubble, patting the bulge on his back that I assumed was Stinky. "Feel that?"

"Yes. I gotta go!"

"Listen to me. You've got to hold it. If you go now, you'll have to sit in it for six hours, for the rest of the day. And you won't be able to escape the stink. Is that what you want?"

"But I really really gotta go! I mean it!"

"Wait a minute–" That was Douglas. "Maybe I can work something out in here. Bobby, can you wait a minute–I've got a bathroom bag. You'll have to climb down from my back–"

"I'm all tied up, I can't get out. I gotta go."

Mickey said, "Can you turn around, Douglas? I'll invert the gloves and untie him. Or do you want to use the inflatable?"

"Bobby!" I said. "Which do you want to do first? Go to the bathroom or ride the roller coaster?"

"What roller coaster?"

"The one right here. The Lunar roller coaster."

"I can't see it. Douglas has his blanket over me."

"Do you want to go on the roller coaster?"

"Yes!"

"Can you hold it–?"

"Um … "

"'Um' isn't good enough. Can you hold it?"

"I'll try–"

"'I'll try' isn't good enough either. We have to know. Can you hold it for a few minutes more? Yes or no."

"Yes."

Mickey turned to me. "Charles, we can do it here. Douglas can take care of him in the bubble. Or they can go into the inflatable."

"Mickey, he went to the bathroom back in the pod, just before bounce‑down. He doesn't have to go–not as badly as he says he does. He hasn't eaten anything in the last twenty‑four hours, he doesn't like the MREs. And even if he had eaten, he'd be constipated anyway."