Easter Egg Hunt: A Christmas Story

Illustration by Janet Aulisio

The red light on my portaphone blinked not quite in time with the few Christmas lights I’d strung to decorate my spare apartment. I answered, “Yeah?”

“Morgan. This is Capt. Phillips. We have an assignment. A big one. Code one. We need you to report to Command.”

“Oh, c’mon, Mark,” I said. “Cut the official bullshit. I’m a civilian agent now, remember? And it’s Christmas time, for crying out loud. What kind of mission do you need me for?”

“All right, Jake,” he said. “How would you like to spend Christmas in a Christmas card?”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“You’ll find out when you get here.”

“And about that—why me? I’m not on holiday duty. I’m supposed to have this week off,” I protested.

“You’re the best.”

“Horseshit.”

“OK. The best that’s also single. Did you actually have plans this year, Jake?” He knew I didn’t. I never did. He continued. “What do you want me to do—send an agent with a family he could otherwise be with? All you’re going to do is sit on your butt in your apartment and you know it. This will do you good.”

Mark is a great boss and a good man, but he knows me altogether too well. I sighed. “OK. What is it I have to do?”

“You’re going on an Easter egg hunt, and that’s all I’m telling you until you get here,” he said; and he signed off.

I took a hopper over Mare Crisium from Luna City to the High Command complex buried under the mountains on the north end of the mare. The System Patrol had originally had just a landing field out there, but had built on to it and hollowed out tunnels in the hills, and what with the war with the Belt a few years ago, the place had ballooned into a huge underground complex. I’d never followed all of the hallways and corridors, mainly because Mark had his office in the first tunnel in from the landing bays.

I berthed the hopper, went through the usual checks, and was with Mark only one hour after he’d called. He was already at his desk when I arrived and he got right to it.

“Know what this is, Jake?” he said, holding up a chrome shiny egg-shaped and -sized object, swinging gently from a lanyard strung through a small loop on the end.

“An Easter egg?” I ventured.

“That’s right. Or rather, this is a mock-up. The real ones are too dangerous to keep around.”

He handed it to me. I was surprised by its mass—easily four kilos. That wasn’t anything here in Mark’s office—the High Command still keeps the base at normal Moon gravity. But you wouldn’t want to lug the thing around for long if you were in the one g pseudograv field of Luna City.

The device only had two buttons on it and a small indicator display. I played with the buttons. One was for setting times. The other was a scale that went from .5 KT to 12 KT, whatever that meant. I gave Mark a quizzical look.

“It’s a dial-a-yield nuke. Good for half a kiloton to twelve. This is a top-secret commando device. Tell anyone about it and I’ll have to kill you.” He smiled when he said that but he still might have meant it.

I’d never heard of a variable nuke being this small, but I took what he said in stride. “How does it work?”

“Kind of simple, actually. A slurry of fusion fuel, a hypercapacitor, and some nifty work with Dykstra shield technology. A minute fraction of the slurry is flash compressed to fusion and that sets off whatever fraction of the rest you set to have detonated. This ain’t the kind off thing you’d like to lose in your apartment, is it?”

“No,” I said. “So where did we lose one?”

“It was stolen,” Mark said. “One malcontent commando went around the bend and left one on Earth with some folks he just didn’t like. We know who those folks are. We know it’s set to go off some time Christmas morning. That just leaves thousands of square kilometers to search.”

“No problem,” I deadpanned. “What will I do to fill up the rest of the afternoon?”

We got down to details. Mark turned on his wall display and showed me a map of the northeast coast of what used to be the USA. “Right there, Jake. The Republic of Currier and Ives. He left it somewhere down there.”

“Those nuts?” I said. The inhabitants of Currier and Ives were a throwback group, with the most restrictive laws on Earth, enacted in a vain attempt to roll back the clock.

“ ‘Citizens,’ Jake.”

The commando’s name was Manfred Rolff. He’d actually grown up in Currier and Ives, but Mark didn’t know what had made the guy mad enough to leave a nuke hidden down there. We d never find out, either—Rolff had been psychotic, and the other commandoes had been forced to kill him when they tried to bring him in.

I spent the four-hour shuttle trip down to Earth reading up on Currier and Ives. The nation was formed shortly after the Collapse out of the former states of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and parts of Massachusetts. Their philosophy, I discovered in my reading, involved trying to create a society that adhered to the “old US as described by Tocqueville in Democracy in America,” whatever that was. Also, they’d wanted to make a country that actually looked like prints from old Currier and Ives Christmas cards, plates, tins, and whatnot. The theory was that the Currier and Ives prints captured a “spirit of America,” an America that was good and wholesome and worth living in.

To each his own, but I sure as hell wouldn’t have wanted to live under their load of laws and regulations. Visions of a list of “thou shalt nots” a kilometer long rolled through my mind.

Mark had told me that the governor of Currier and Ives would meet me at the spaceport, someone named Joe Wood, and he was the only one who knew why I was coming. He’d insisted on dealing with me himself, and not through some underling.

It didn’t matter much, not as far as I could see. No matter who met me, after landing I’d only have thirty-six hours to find and deactivate the Easter egg before it went off and made the Christmas card look like season’s greetings from Hiroshima.

The shuttle fell slowly out of the sky over the frosty Atlantic Ocean. I’d been born in the desert southwest, so oceans weren’t something I was used to. Besides, that was forty years ago, and I hadn’t been down to Earth in a decade.

Approaching the coast, I could see that Currier and Ives was certainly going to have a white Christmas this year. The land was white from horizon to horizon, though at the moment the sky was crystal blue.

The Patrol shuttle grounded on the large but vacant local pad, and took off again even before I finished walking through the short tunnel and into the reception area. This being the holidays, ordinarily the place should have been packed with tourists—families of sentimentalists showing up and hoping to find the true meaning of Christmas in the manufactured landscape of Currier and Ives. But the place was empty. I assumed that the powers that be had concocted some kind of cover Story to explain why the number one Christmas vacation spot in the Solar System was shut down until after the holidays, but I didn’t know what it was.

The reception area was a large, L-shaped room. I looked out a window and saw rows of empty stables, and outside of each, a sleigh standing ready. There wouldn’t be any sleigh rides this Christmas.

When I said the place was empty, I meant the governor wasn’t there either. That ticked me off. I hoped he’d show up soon since I didn’t have much time. I didn’t know what kind of a nut he was going to be.

I walked toward the back of the room and turned the corner. I found the true meaning of Christmas.

I looked over the elaborate Christmas display erected back there. I had to admit, the place looked like it was supposed to—I’d never seen a more perfectly traditional display in my life. The creche was amply supplied with fake animals—cows, horses, a donkey, pigs, sheep, goats, a few chickens, and the stereotypical Joseph and Mary and manger Jesus, the last complete with a cheery angelic glow. Shepherds and wisemen rounded things out. Also on display was a classic Santa Claus, with a bag full of toys and two elves joining him on the sleigh with the customary eight reindeer poised to leap into the sky. Between the two was a splendidly trimmed Christmas tree, done with remarkable taste—all bright shiny ornaments and tinsel, and just enough strings of solid white lights to fill completely without looking crowded. Holly and ivy and white candles filled out the room, and there was a roaring fire in the fireplace, and a tray of chestnuts at the ready.

I tried to ignore the sentimental feelings welling up inside of me, but it wasn’t easy. These folks knew how to decorate. I kept my mind focused by trying to find flaws in the display. After some minutes, I decided the Christmas tree was leaning just a little bit to the left, but that was the only fault I could find.

I was trying so hard not to get sentimental because it would lead me down a bitter string of memories—of parents divorced when I was young, of a cocaine-addicted mother and an abusive father, and me ultimately sent to a boys’ home at the age of six. Christmas had always been the worst for me. Though the men and women at the—hell, let’s just call it the orphanage—did what they could, presents donated by the local churches just couldn’t match up with the cool stuff the other guys brought to school with them after the holidays.

Silly? Yes. Petty? Yes. But I’d been well into my twenties before I was able to shake off the bitterness of my youth, and every lonely Christmas still found me particularly vulnerable.

“Hey! Morgan? Are you here?” The call came from around the corner back by the entrance. I went back that way and saw a stocky woman who would have looked like the Santa on the sleigh if she’d had a beard.

“Right here. And you are…?”

“Governor Wood.” Oops. “Joe” was actually “Jo.” “Sorry I’m late,” she said, “but one of my horses threw a shoe on the way over, so I had to cut her loose and let her limp home. And a one-horsepower sleigh doesn’t go so fast through unplowed snow.”

“You came in a sleigh?”

“This is Currier and Ives, remember?”

“But time is critical—” I began.

“Sonny, I would have been here to greet you upon your arrival if things had gone right. Anything with a motor can break down, too.”

I had to admit she was right about that, but how the hell did she expect us to search much of the area in a damn sleigh? “OK, fine. You know what we’re up against?”

“Sure. A mini-nuke with variable range yield, and we’ll have to assume it’s set to go off at the high end. At twelve KT that means everyone within a mile radius of where the bomb is will be in for a hell of a bang. Since it’s a pure fusion device, we don’t have to worry about radiation, and the snow will probably help put out whatever fires are lit outside of the range of blast damage. Still, all the way around we’re better off if we find the thing. Where could it be?”

She reeled off that statement almost too fast for me to follow. I guess I’d been expecting the Governor of Currier and Ives to be some backward, ignorant redneck or something, and certainly a man, but Jo Wood was far from fitting my stereotype.

“Now, I don’t want to tell you your job, you being from the System Patrol and all, but as I see it, assuming old Manny actually came to this spot and not another, he couldn’t have gotten more than a few miles from here before someone would have seen him, so that limits the area we have to search. As far as that goes, he used to live two miles down the road, so that might be the best place for us to check first.”

“Old ‘Manny’?” I asked.

“Sure. The son-of-a-bitch, pardon my French, used to live in Currier and Ives. We threw him out four years ago. I personally saw him off right from this terminal.”

“Why was he sent away?”

“ ‘Banished’ is what we call it. He was caught screwing a fifteen-year-old girl.”

“Rape?”

“Technically yes. We could have hung him at the time. No, she gave her consent, but the age for that is sixteen, and then only legal if you get married first.”

“But the age of consent everywhere else in the whole Solar Union is fourteen,” I pointed out.

“But not here. That’s why we sent him out to you folks. Under the circumstances I think we were lenient.”

“But she gave her consent—”

“Yeah, and she looked older than her age, too. So what? Even if she didn’t know better, he was supposed to. He knew what the penalty was if he got caught, and he chose to ignore it. Anyone that reckless and stupid isn’t someone we wanted to have around.”

“But—” I started again, then realized I was on my third “but” and shut up. I wasn’t here to argue with these people about how they lived their lives. “So you think maybe he would have left the bomb at his old house?”

“No. I think he would have just heaved it from the platform out somewhere into the deep snow, if he could do it when no one was looking. But if he did that, we’re never going to find it anyway. Those suckers are stealthed, so a radar scan couldn’t distinguish it from all the rocks out there under the snow.”

That was enough for me. I had to know: “How do you know so much about these little nukes?”

By this time we were on the way to the sleigh. I’d brought a coat from the High Command stores, so I was warm enough, but on the walk through the snow I realized I’d need some other footwear. “I wasn’t always a governor, you know,” Jo said. “I used to design weapons for the Patrol, as a matter of fact.” Then she fixed me with a stare. “You were expecting a backwoods, know-nothing hick, weren’t you? That’s all right. I forgive you. And just to show there’s no hard feelings, I’m even going to give a greenhorn like you my husband’s best pair of boots to wear.”

The sleigh ride was incredibly smooth, or at least it struck me that way. I’m used to flying everywhere, so I guess I’d expected the ride to be bumpy, but we glided along with our one-horsepower (her name was Nellie Sue) motor with barely a jostle.

But it was damn cold.

“Starting to shiver, Jake?” Jo asked after we’d been on our way only a couple of minutes.

“It’s the wet feet,” I said. That, and being used to a controlled environment.

She smiled and then surprised me thoroughly by reaching under the front board, pulling out a small control box, and suddenly the seat was enveloped by a Dykstra shield windscreen bubble and warm air was pouring out from beneath my feet. “I don’t get it,” I said. “This sleigh has a heater? That isn’t authentic.”

“So what? Currier and Ives is supposed to look authentic, but we’re not a bunch of ascetics. We like the pace of sleigh travel in the winter, but who wants to sit in the cold? We like the look and the feel and the heart of the old ways, but it has to be within reason.”

I was beginning to understand how badly I’d misjudged this place. Jo certainly wasn’t a nut. Maybe they had some odd laws, and archaic ways of looking at things, but it was beginning to look like they really could turn the clock back. At least in some ways. At least for a little while.

Until someone decided to blow the place up.

Jo was pointing. “See that homestead over there—that yellow house? It’s copied from a classic old Currier and Ives print. But all of the wood in that house is thoroughly treated. It’s not going to suffer from termites or dry rot.”

I did recognize the house, from a print called “A cold winter morning.” The recognition of the scene did something warm inside me. Before the string of associations could start again, I shut it off with another question.

“Are all the homes in Currier and Ives taken from old prints?”

“No, but they’re all built in the old style. This is the course where we take the tourists around, and the town is made to look authentic, too. But we have a very limited number of people we let in. The waiting list for reservations is years long.”

“What kind of excuse did you use to explain to the business community why you shut down the Christmas tourism business at the hottest time of the year? The businessmen must have gone ballistic.”

“No, I wouldn’t say that. You’re not going to understand this, but what I told them was the truth.”

“You what? But those Easter eggs are classified! And what about the panic—”

“Do you see any panic?”

“Uh. No.”

“That’s right. And as far as classified goes, not in the Republic of Currier and Ives. I told them the exact circumstances of what was up, and they all understood why we had to close down. We don’t have anyone here who has a panic attack every time he hears the word ‘nuke.’ ”

We passed a spot on the side of the road where a sleigh trail came out of the woods. “I live down that way,” Jo said. “The team hasn’t been through yet to plow off the snow. That wouldn’t have mattered if Mary Lou hadn’t thrown that shoe. I could have gone through it easily. I hope she makes it back to the house all right.”

There was another thing I wondered about. “Why you, Jo? Since everybody knows the truth about why I’m here, you didn’t have to be my guide to keep it a secret. Why didn’t you just have one of your aides take me around since it’s the holidays?”

“ ‘Aide’,” Jo said. “I only have one assistant. And Andy has a family, that’s why. A wife and two little ones. He should be home with them. My kids are long gone—one’s in orbit around Venus, and my girl is about seven thousand klicks to the west and three klicks down at Pacifica. And my husband passed on years ago.

“How about you? How’d you get stuck with this chore?”

I just chuckled. “Same reason. Everyone else has family to spend Christmas with.”

“Well, then, I guess you’ll just have to spend it with me,” Jo said. “That is, if we’re still here.”

Ten minutes later we came in view of another farm house. Typically New England in design, but I didn’t recognize it as coming from any Currier and Ives print I’d ever seen.

“This is Buck Black’s place,” Jo said. “This is where Manny was a boarder for awhile. Buck’s daughter is the girl that Manny was caught with, so if Buck had seen him, his body would have been leaning frozen stiff against the barn and waiting for us. I don’t see it, do you?”

I wasn’t sure if Jo was being serious or not, and I didn’t pursue it.

We pulled up to the front porch, but then Buck came out of the barn from behind us. “Hey there, Governor. Merry Christmas. You too, stranger.”

Another stereotype shot to hell. Buck Black was a black man, probably in his fifties, and I could tell he was put together like a tree even through the bulky coat he was wearing. It had just never occurred to me that Currier and Ives would have anyone other than white people living in it, but I couldn’t honestly say what had made me think so.

“This is Jake Morgan, Buck. The man from the Patrol.”

“No, I didn’t see Manfred around here,” Buck said without being asked. “If I did, you would have found his dead, frozen ass leaning against the barn.” Jo gave me a glance at that and a wink. He went on. “Livvy’s a changed girl now, since she’s married and had the baby. No more wild oats to sow in that girl. But I’d never let that bastard come around again.”

“You did tell her that we think he may have planted the bomb around here, didn’t you?” Jo asked. “I know she doesn’t have a TV or even a radio out at her place.”

“ ’Course, Governor. I asked her if he’d been around, and she shuddered, said no, and ran for her Bible. Didn’t actually get to mention the bomb. But I told you, she’s a changed girl. She’s a good girl, now.

“Now, you two want to come in for a cup of coffee?” I could tell by the way he asked that he didn’t want us to accept.

“No. Thanks anyway, Buck. It will be dark by the time we get back to my place as it is, so I guess we’ll just head out.” Black looked relieved and we turned around and headed back the way we came.

Here this was my mission, and I hadn’t even asked the guy a single question myself.

“Buck comes from a very strict Baptist background. He died inside when he caught his little girl with Manny. It was his wife who’d wanted to take in a boarder. I don’t know if he ever forgave her, but once she died the light went out in his soul. At least, until Livvy got married and gave him the granddaughter. Now he’s overprotective, but he’s a good man.”

“Are there a lot of people like him here in the Republic? He seems hostile to the world.”

“I wouldn’t say a lot. Buck just wants to be left alone. The world can go its way, and he’ll go his. Nothing wrong with that.”

The governor’s home was another place out of a print. The inside looked like it came from a print, too; it was all comfortable and warm. The house had a big fireplace and I helped the governor carry in wood from the woodpile, but only after wed gone inside and she got me that pair of boots shed promised me.

Supper was ham and corn and beans and sweet potatoes and baked potatoes, finished off with apple pie à la mode. The governor fixed it all herself, too. Granted, her kitchen did have most of the modern stuff so it took her only fifteen minutes to prepare from a standing start, but the food was Earth-fresh and -grown (it does make a difference!), and by the time we were sitting in front of the fire at seven o’clock (1900 hours, though it was actually 0400 Luna time) sipping hot cider and brandies, I was feeling pretty good about the Republic of Currier and Ives.

It’d be a pity if this particular part of it was blown to hell.

“Tomorrow we’ll go into town and you can talk to some folks who knew him a lot better than me,” Jo said. “Besides, the town is another place he might have wanted to hide the bomb, though no one says they saw him there, either.”

“This is a hopeless pursuit, isn’t it?” I said. “You knew that before I came, too.”

“It’s the nature of the problem,” Jo admitted.

Manfred Rolff had left us with an impossible task. A mini-nuke—leave it anywhere within a kilometer or two of what you want to destroy, and that’s all you need to do. All the commandoes had been able to get out of him was the approximate time it was supposed to go off, and that it was in Currier and Ives (they’d actually caught up with him in Peru). It wasn’t at all certain that Manfred would have even come to this part of the Republic, despite the local connection. If he had wanted to wreak maximum financial havoc, he could better have left the bomb up in the New Hampshire region where the posh ski resorts are, or further up the coast where the bulk of Currier and Ives brand seafood gets processed.

Mark had been honest with me before I left that this mission was likely to be a failure. But as he’d put it, for political reasons, the Patrol had to at least send someone to try.

I wondered about that, though. Had Mark suspected that Jo would have told the entire population what was up? He said he’d have to kill me if I let out the secret of the Easter egg. Mark is a decent man. My guess was that his superiors just wanted him to send someone down to look around. Then they’d wait for the bomb to go off, decry the disaster to the press, deny the real cause, and wait for the furor to go away since, after all, those folks in Currier and Ives were just a bunch of nuts anyway.

Jo and I talked, just talked, about things, her kids, her husband. I even opened up a bit about my past, and I couldn’t even remember how long it had been since I’d done that with anyone. But something about the place made it feel all right to talk about anything, I guess.

Jo turned in by nine o’clock. I told her I had to call Mark to tell him how things had gone today and she showed me to her phone. Despite this being Currier and Ives, it was as modern as any phone in the outside world.

I wanted to wait until 11 o’clock before calling Mark since he’d be at the office by then. I got myself another cider and brandy and tried to think like Manfred Rolff.

I couldn’t. The man had been a commando—one of a select few of a select few to begin with. And then he went renegade. He would have been smarter than me, more highly trained than me, crazier than me. I didn’t have a clue.

I turned out all the lights except those on the Christmas tree and turned my chair around so I could look out the window. A light snow was falling. I had forgotten how bright it is outside even in the night time on a world wrapped in winter. The branches on the trees had become fluffy white wands working magic on the sky…

I sat bolt upright. Had that image come from me?

I glanced at the clock. It was after eleven. I put thoughts about my possible poetic soul on hold and called Mark. It didn’t take long to fill him in on what little I’d discovered so far.

“Well, it’s an impossible mission, anyway,” Mark said. “Just do your best tomorrow. Who knows? Maybe something will turn up. But you’re allowed to interpret ‘Christmas morning’ as rigidly as you want. If you’re on a shuttle out at exactly midnight tomorrow that’s working up to the last minute as far as I’m concerned. Then you’ll still be able to spend Christmas at home.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Mark,” I said and signed off. Christmas at home? I looked out the window again. The clouds had parted and I could see Sirius chasing Orion. I heard a sharp POP from the fireplace and saw a brief blaze flare up, reflected in the window pane. The aroma of supper was still in the air. Earth fresh did make a difference.

I knew I’d be here to watch the sunrise on Christmas morning.

Sans mushroom cloud, I hoped.

The next morning we set off again in the sleigh, this time with both horses pulling (Mary Lou had made it back just fine).

“It’s Christmas Eve morning in Currier and Ives and we’re on an Easter egg hunt,” Jo said. “Do we know how to have fun or what?”

“I’m glad you can keep up your spirits,” I said. “I don’t even live here and I’ll feel terrible if we don’t find that bomb.”

“I won’t be happy if it goes off, either,” Jo said. “But I’m not going to look any harder with low spirits than with high ones. That’s an attitude that comes with living here, Jake. Why do you think I gave up my commission and left the Patrol?”

“I didn’t know you had a commission.”

“Full colonel, sonny. Could have been a general. Could have been getting pimples on my butt from sitting in on too many strategy meetings. That wasn’t for me—not when I could come here.” She swept her hand in an arc for emphasis.

I followed the curve of her swing and noticed the frozen river with a few dozen people in warm-looking, earth-toned, ancient winter gear, happily skating from bank to bank—over here, a father giving his little girl her first skating lesson—over there, teenagers playing crack the whip.

“I’ve seen this print, too,” I muttered.

Jo heard me. “Yeah, but that was Central Park, I think. Hardly matters, does it? Did you ever learn to ice skate, Jake?”

“No,” I said. “No, there was a shortage of natural ice in Phoenix, and the orphanage couldn’t afford to take us down to the arena to learn there. Actually, I doubt if anyone ever even thought of it, that young boys might want to learn to ice skate.”

“When our mission is done I’ll teach you,” Jo said.

“What?” Just then I realized that I’d uttered that last sentence out loud. I’d thought I’d said it to myself.

“How to skate, of course. How else will you ever learn to get around on Mars?” she asked whimsically.

“Heinlein. Red Planet, right? The frozen canals.”

“You’re a good boy, Jake.”

Someone had come off the ice and was waving to us. We pulled up and waited. It was a girl. Very pretty one, too. Long brown hair, brown eyes—she looked about twenty. “Hi, Governor. Mom wanted me to be sure to tell you that the man from the Patrol is welcome for Christmas dinner tomorrow, too.”

She looked at me. “Is that you?”

“Sure is,” Jo said. “Sarah, this is Jake Morgan. Jake, Sarah Proctor.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said.

“Likewise, Mr. Morgan. I hope you’ll have some time to tell me about life on the Moon tomorrow.” She went back to skating.

“Nice girl, Sarah. Unattached,” Jo said slyly.

“I’m way too old for her,” I said.

“Now, Jake. You can decide if she’s too young for you, but only she can decide if you’re too old for her.”

We continued on and the path soon curved away from the river. I could see the steeple of a church rising above the low hills maybe a kilometer ahead of us. Off to my right was another small house set back from the road.

“What about that place,” I asked, pointing. “Anything special there?”

“I doubt it. Manny was gone before Zach and Zane moved in there.”

“ ‘Zach and Zane’? Twins?” I asked.

“Nope. Just buddies as far as I know. Very good friends.”

“They’re homosexuals. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Some suspect. They don’t say and we don’t ask, and they don’t act like it in public.”

I suddenly remembered those restrictive laws. I’d forgotten all about what an intolerant place this was. I ventured a hypothetical question. “What would happen if someone came to you and said he’d looked through their window and seen them making love?”

Jo seemed to think about it for a moment. “Banishment, I’d think,” she finally said.

“You’d actually banish them for something they did in the privacy of their own home, not hurting anybody?”

“Not them,” Jo said. “The jerk that was window peeping. Nothing would happen to Zach and Zane. Who’d take the word of a peeping tom on anything?”

“Oh,” I said. I didn’t know if I was satisfied or disappointed with her answer.

“You took the bait, Jake. That’s why I dropped that hint. I used to think the folks here were a bunch of intolerant, backwards jerks myself. Then I came here on a visit once when I was in the Patrol. We needed the services of a real blacksmith. And don’t ask me why—it’s still classified. Currier and Ives was just starting to roll, then.

“Anyway, what I learned then was to question what it is I think I know about people, or anything, for that matter. You know the old saying, about the problem being ‘what we know that ain’t so’?” She was looking at me like she expected an answer.

“I’ve heard of it,” I said.

“Well, after that visit, I realized that what I thought I knew about Currier and Ives was all based on what other people said. Now that’s fine, but I was assuming that all of them had at least been here or had some reason for knowing what they were talking about. And that’s lots of times just not true. Turned out I loved the place, and my husband and I used to come here on vacation every year before we finally just moved in for good.”

“So you’re telling me that none of the Republic’s bad reputation is earned? That all of it is made up? Why would anyone just make up bad things to say about the place?” I knew that this place wasn’t the intolerant horror I’d expected, but I doubted the reputation was entirely unearned.

“I didn’t say that. Currier and Ives isn’t for everyone, and we make no bones about it. But some people think everyplace should be for everyone, so they don’t like us much. And then they start inventing nonsense about us, like that our law book is as long as an encyclopedia and silly stuff like that. Shoot, our official law code is shorter than the rule book they hand out to people when they move to Luna City.”

We rounded a corner, topped a ridge, then the view opened out beneath us. I could see the steeple of the little town church, and Main Street, gaily decorated in her Christmas best. A little band was out on the sidewalk playing White Christmas. There were bows on the lampposts and a big creche to welcome you into town, and folks were hustling and bustling about with packages. I thought this was a pretty neat display for the tourists, but then I remembered that there weren’t any tourists around, and for that matter, everyone there knew a nuclear bomb was set to go off in less than twenty-four hours.

What the hell was wrong with these people, carrying on like everything was normal?

“We’re going to have our meeting in the church basement,” Jo said, “because the Town Hall is being made ready for the annual whole-town Christmas concert. Besides, we shouldn’t need all that much room. I only asked people to come who grew up with Manny or knew him pretty good before he was booted out. I don’t know if this is going to help you at all, Jake. But at least you’ll get to see the town while its all decorated up for Christmas.”

“How can you be so casual about this? And those people scurrying about? You’re right, there was no panic when you told them about the bomb, but I’ve just never encountered this kind of behavior from people before.”

“Sure you have,” Jo said. “You just haven’t encountered it from a whole lot of people all at the same time. The typical Currier and Ives citizen is pretty level-headed to begin with.”

“But they’re acting like fatalists. ‘Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen.’ ”

“There’s no sense in ‘doing something’ just to do something if it won’t help. You’ll understand better once you talk to some of them at the meeting.”

It had been a beautiful morning, but now as we came down the slope into town I could see a storm front starting to move in. Still, at that moment we were in sunshine and under other circumstances it would have been a glorious glide down to Main Street.

The town was something right out of the 1800s, with wooden sidewalks lining a cobblestone street, the cobblestones betrayed by a few red patches temporarily free of snow. People waved to us; children were playing tag, slipping and sliding about in an empty field; and the stores were busy with last-minute shoppers. Even in Currier and Ives, some people wait until the last minute (but then, they didn’t have a two-month Christmas shopping season like the rest of the Solar Union).

Seeing the kids playing tweaked a part of me, just a twinge in my heart, not of a bad memory from my youth, but of a good one. I complained earlier about Christmas presents at the orphanage not matching up to those that other kids at school had, but Christmas itself had always been a happy time for us, and I, too, had played tag with the other kids (though in Arizona, not in the snow). My mind continued to wander as I thought about growing up, joining the Patrol, doing my twenty years but somehow knowing that was enough. But I didn’t know what else to do with myself so I kept working as an investigator for the Patrol, but as a civilian. I made more money that way, but I was marking time.

We tied up the horses outside the church and went inside. We hung our coats on wooden hangers and proceeded into the basement. There was one folding table set up, surrounded by folding chairs, of which five of the twelve had people sitting in them.

Jo made the introductions. “Everyone, this is Jake Morgan from the System Patrol. You all know why he’s here. Jake, these are the folks who knew Manny the best. That’s Wilma and Mary there on the left.” Two older women nodded their heads at me. “They were his teachers at school. And that young man is Tim. They were on the hockey team together. And these last two are Reverend McMaster and his wife.”

The Reverend rose at that point and came to shake my hand. “We’re so glad to have you join us, Mr. Morgan. We wish it could be under better circumstances. You’re welcome to join us for Christmas services tomorrow morning, um, assuming we’re able to hold them as planned.” He had a firm grip. I liked that.

“Let’s get this going,” Jo said. “We all know how hopeless Jake’s mission is likely to be—no use pretending our chances of finding that bomb are better than one shot out of a thousand. We don’t have enough time, the bomb is small and could be anywhere, and so far, we don’t have anyone who even claims to have seen old Manny around here the past few days.”

I had a few official words I had to say, so I got those out of the way. “What Governor Wood says is correct. I have to convey the deepest regrets of the System Patrol that your community has been put into this danger by someone who wasn’t mentally competent to have access to such weaponry.”

“That’s OK, Mr. Morgan,” Wilma said. “We didn’t know Manny was going to rape anyone until he did it, either.”

“Oh, Wilma, rape is too strong a word,” Mary interrupted. “Olivia went from twelve to twenty in one summer and she’s the one who asked Manny to help her get those eggs from the chicken coop.”

“Yes, but they ‘cracked a few,’ and he should have known bet—”

“I think Jake has already been informed on the circumstances of what led Manfred to be deported from Currier and Ives,” the Reverend said.

Well, yes I had, but not quite at this level of detail.

“That’s right,” I said. “What I’m hoping to learn from you is something that might, just might, help us figure out where Manfred would most likely have left the bomb. He had reason to dislike Buck Black, for instance, though he says neither he nor, uh, Olivia saw him come down their way.”

“And he wouldn’t have had to come all that close with a twelve kiloton yield,” Tim pointed out.

“There is that,” I acknowledged. “But can any of you tell me what Manfred was like? I mean, before he was sent away?”

“Smart boy,” Wilma said. “Very, very bright. He could read before he started kindergarten, and the first day of school he insisted on trying to show me he could count to a thousand. I wouldn’t let him, and I remember he got pretty angry at me. Even as a five-year-old he didn’t like being told ‘no.’ ”

“I’ll have to second the part about him being smart,” Mary added. “His term papers as a seventh grader were better than most of the things I got from my seniors. Clear, logical, few spelling errors. But he was a charming boy, too. Always had lots of girls hanging around him. I think it was those big, blue eyes—”

“Oh, Mary! You and those eyes of his!” Wilma snorted.

“He was the handsomest boy in school in the last ten years,” Mary said, defending herself. “You can’t deny that.”

“Best athlete, too,” Tim added. “Mr. Morgan, you don’t have to wonder how Manny managed to get into the Patrol, and then into the commandoes. He was put together like an Adonis, he was very intelligent, and no one could run faster or throw farther than he could. He was just that sort of one-in-a-million kind of guy that makes it into the elite ranks. But he had his own mind, like Miss Wilma said, and everyone knew you just didn’t want to cross him.”

“Even as a teacher,” Wilma added.

“Why?” I asked. “Did he ever threaten you?”

“ ‘Threaten?’ Oh lordy, no. Oops, sorry, Reverend. No, threats just don’t happen here, Mr. Morgan. But Manny had this way of replying to you when you’d upset him, these ironic retorts, that you really couldn’t say he’d sassed you, but you knew he was being disrespectful.”

“I know what you mean, Wilma,” Mary said. “Manny was real big on irony and sarcasm. He could really wield his tongue like a sword.”

This was all very interesting and revealing, but I wasn’t sure it was getting me any closer to finding that bomb. “Was there any particular place in Currier and Ives that Manny might really have felt animosity toward? Anyplace you can think of that he might really want to make sure he destroyed?”

They all looked at me blankly. Finally, it was Mrs. McMaster who spoke up. “Mr. Morgan, I think the problem we’re all having is that we just can’t believe that Manny would want to destroy anything in Currier and Ives at all. Up until he was exiled, I don’t think anyone thought he’d ever be any trouble. Oh sure, we knew he wanted to leave and see the Solar System, but we never got the impression, or at least, I never did, that he wanted to burn his bridges and not come back.”

“I agree,” Tim said. “He loved it here. He liked to hike along the shore, particularly in the fall. We used to do that a lot as we were growing up. When we were older, he and I and some other friends would camp out by the sea and listen to the surf roll in and watch the stars.

“Something just went wrong inside him, Mr. Morgan. Maybe it was the way his parents died—”

“Now, Tim,” McMaster said.

“But it might matter, Reverend,” Tim protested. “Manny was never the same after that. That’s something I know.”

“OK, so what happened?” I asked. “I think I should be told.”

Jo picked up the story.

“We don’t like to talk about it. Basically, it was a murder-suicide. Manny’s mom Gloria was dying of brain cancer. There was nothing anyone could do about it. Not just here, either, Jake. Anywhere. And Manny’s father had had a stroke a couple years before. He did OK, but everyone knew he wasn’t the same. Anyway, after the disease had progressed far enough so Gloria couldn’t get out of bed anymore, one day Manny went to school and when he got home the neighbors told him they’d heard two gunshots and his folks were both dead.

“It was really no one’s business how a husband and wife decided to draw their lives to a close, but neither of them brought it up to Manny. Some of us think his father was supposed to at least leave a note, but probably forgot.”

“Yeah. Manny was never the same after that,” Tim added. “He didn’t want to live in his house anymore. That’s why he moved in with the Blacks.”

The meeting went on for another hour, but no more useful information came out. The most pertinent thing said in that last hour was by the minister: “Mr. Morgan, regardless of what happens, no one will blame the Patrol.”

That was nice, but hardly helpful.

Tim agreed to take me around Currier and Ives and show me some of the places he and Manny and many of the other boys used to hang out. I doubted it would help, but I wanted time to think, and Jo had some official work to take care of that afternoon, too. (“Gotta play Santa at the old folks’ home,” she said.)

Tim had a one-horse sledge. We set out for a nearby hill. We chatted along the way. He wanted to know about space and life on the Moon, so I filled him in with one part of my brain while the rest tried to figure out what the hell Manfred Rolff had in mind when he’d left the bomb here. If he’d left the bomb here. That was another question. No one had seen him, anywhere. We had no idea where in the thousands of square kilometers of Currier and Ives he might have left the thing, or if he’d just made it all up for the hell of it.

“Now we have to climb, Mr. Morgan,” Tim said, reigning the horse to a stop.

Thank God they kept Luna City at one standard g. The climb was steep and we went up for at least fifty meters. If I’d only been used to Moon gravity and had just done a quick tone-up before coming to Earth, I wouldn’t have made it up a tenth of the way.

It was well worth the climb.

The top of the hill was a large plateau, surprisingly open, with large, flat sheets of rocks broken and scattered about, surrounded by trees and bushes growing up high along the sides, bursting through the snow. You could see the ocean from there, and the town, and at night I’m sure you could see to the end of the Universe.

“Lots of us boys used to come up here just to kill an afternoon. We’d build a fire, play ‘war’ there in the trees, kill game to eat. Talk about girls. You didn’t have a place like this on the Moon when you were growing up, I’ll bet,” Tim said.

“I grew up in Arizona. There were lots of places like this.” But I didn’t get to go to any of them.

How could anyone want to destroy such beauty? Even a small part of it? Even if he was mad at the whole world?

I wanted to find that Easter egg in the worst way.

We went to a few other places after that, but those had really been summer haunts, and weren’t much worth seeing with snow cover. On the ride back to town I thought about what the outside reaction would be when the bomb went off tomorrow morning. By and large, the Solar Union would just ignore it. There would be some who would think “those intolerant bastards probably deserved it anyway.” With shame I realized that I might have been one of them had I been spending Christmas morning by myself when the news broke.

Jo was finished playing Santa Claus by the time Tim brought me back, and we went back to her place.

“Why so glum?” Jo asked. “C’mon—it’s Christmas Eve. You knew this mission was impossible anyway. Look around you.” We were not quite out of town yet. “Do any of these people look like they’re going to let this spoil their holiday?”

“But Jo, there is a nuclear bomb set to go off tomorrow morning—”

“Or so was claimed by a psychotic, since deceased, commando.”

“We still have to take this seriously.”

“We have been taking this seriously, Jake. You’re here. I’ve been taking you around, introducing you to the people most likely to be able to tell you something worthwhile about Manfred Rolff, late of the Republic of Currier and Ives, now just late. Assuming he did come here, though no one has seen him, and set a bomb, even at twelve kilotons, what’s the worst that can happen?”

“Governor—it’s a nuclear bomb,” I said.

“I know. I used to design those things, remember? Radius of total destruction is a few kilometers, at maximum yield. The radius of serious hurt from the prompt radiation is lots less, so we don’t have to worry about that. We might get a little fallout, but the wind blows out to sea around here. If he planted the bomb in one of our towns, then Christmas morning we stand to lose a few hundred people, though probably less than are lost in the typical aircraft disaster. Didn’t Luna City lose ninety or so people when that air main broke a couple years ago?”

“OK, OK, I give up,” I finally said. But I hadn’t. I couldn’t really argue with Jo’s logic, and in the last twenty-four hours, I couldn’t say that I’d gotten any closer to finding the bomb, or even verifying that Manny had really left one here. But even if Jo and the rest of the good citizens of Currier and Ives were willing to wait and see, something wouldn’t stop grinding around in my guts.

“I’m going to a Christmas party tonight. You’re more than welcome to come,” Jo said. “Or, if you wish, you can pack up and leave, though Sarah might be disappointed. Go back to the Moon. You really have done more than anyone could have reasonably asked you to do. It’s not your fault you can’t do the impossible.”

“No,” I answered. “No, I’m not going to.”

“Not going to what? Go to the party or pack up and leave?”

“Sorry. Neither. I decided last night that I’m staying through the morning tomorrow. But I’m not going to the party, either. I’m going to think, real hard, and see if something finally comes to me. I just wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t do that.”

“It’s up to you,” Jo said. “As Governor of Currier and Ives, let me just say, we appreciate it.”

Jo left by six that evening, and I was in front of the fire roaring away in the hearth, sitting snugly in the chair, an eggnog within reach.

It was snowing pretty hard outside by the time Jo left, though not blowing around too much—just coming down thick. Jo’s Christmas tree was the only source of electric light at the moment, apart from the “on” indicator of the entertainment center, which was softly playing Christmas music—“O Holy Night” at the moment.

I started singing along: “…Faaallll on your kneeees. All HEAR the angel voi—”

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. The phone interrupted me.

I answered the call but the screen lit up blank with the “no video” icon. I suppose I should have said “Governor’s residence” or something like that, but instead I just said, “Hello.”

There was a pause, then: “Is the Governor there?”

“No, she went to a party tonight. I know how to reach her. Do you want to leave a message? Is this an emergency?” That struck me as kind of funny, what with a nuclear bomb set to go off in the next few hours in God only knew which part of the Republic.

“This is that Morgan fella, right? The man from the Patrol?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll do, then. This is Buck Black. It’s about Livvy. She did see Manny. Finally ’fessed up and told me and her husband not ten minutes ago.”

I got down to business. Last time I’d met Buck Black, I hadn’t even asked any questions. This time was different. I drilled him for all he knew, got him to put Livvy on the line, and then, though I could tell she was trying to keep from crying, got the story out of her.

Manfred Rolff had indeed been to Currier and Ives, and as best as I could figure out, had been captured in Peru not more than five hours after leaving here. Livvy said he’d known where she lived now, knew her husband wasn’t home, had just let himself in. She’d gone to put the baby down for a nap and there he was at her kitchen table when she’d come back in the room.

Fact was, though, according to her, nothing at all happened. They talked, mostly about how they’d both changed. He didn’t even try anything with her. Then he asked her not to tell anyone he’d been there, and she’d been afraid to say anything anyway because of what others might think even though nothing went on. But then while she, her husband and baby were at Buck’s for Christmas Eve, Buck had brought up the bomb, and she knew she had to tell.

I ended the call thinking how nice it would have been to have had this information yesterday when I’d first arrived.

Manny had almost certainly been nowhere else except on the road connecting the tourist spaceport with Livvy’s place. Somewhere along the way he would have left the bomb.

That was several kilometers of snow-covered terrain. I looked out the window. And getting more snow-covered by the minute. The wind had picked up and was briskly piling up drifts.

I did a little calculating. Almost all of Currier and Ives was now out of danger. If the bomb went off at maximum… Well, the town was safe. Even I was probably safe.

I used the phone again and left a message for the governor, then I called Buck to tell him he’d better get his family into town. Buck said he’d figured that out already and they were already packing. There wasn’t anything else to do. I fixed myself a cider and brandy and sat back down in front of the fire. After a while, I slipped into a fitful sleep.

It wasn’t just that sleeping in the chair was uncomfortable, or even that my feet were just a little too close to the fire. Something in my brain had made a connection, and it was trying to fight its way to the surface. This happens to me a lot, though not always when sleeping. Sometimes the connection will emerge if I hike on the mare outside Luna City. When I was a kid I’d hike in the Arizona hills. Sometimes it comes out while I’m eating. But regardless of when the connection finally shows up in my conscious mind, somehow or other I always know it’s there beforehand.

There was a gyration of images going around in my head. The scenes of Currier and Ives, some real, others no doubt from remembered Christmas cards. Flashes from Christmas movies; the creche down at the spaceport; an erotic image of two people having sex in a shack (Livvy and Manny, though the man didn’t look like Manny, and I had no idea what Livvy looked like). The shiny Easter egg hanging from a lanyard.

A mushroom cloud.

I sat bolt upright, fully awake. It was what Wilma had said. Broke a few eggs. Manny and Livvy had broken a few eggs in the chicken coop.

I remembered the creche, the detail, all the animals carefully emplaced for perfect balanced effect around the manger. There were hens in the back, sitting in their boxes.

This was Currier and Ives. I just knew there were eggs underneath those hens. Manny had loved irony. He’d broken a few eggs in the chicken coop.

Someone would have said that to him. It would have been a local joke. Now he was really going to break some eggs.

I had to get to the spaceport. I looked outside. The wind was howling now, driving the snowfall horizontally. And it was after eleven o’clock already.

I couldn’t wait for Jo to get back with the sleigh, even if the horses could make it through the storm. I put on my coat and borrowed boots.

More than six kilometers to the spaceport, and I had to do it on foot through a snowstorm. What the hell? I made it down to the road without trouble and trudged along. I had a devil of a time keeping on the road. I couldn’t see more than a few meters ahead of me, and to make any headway I had to focus on the snow bank piled up along the side from past plowings.

High gusts raked snow across my face. That would blind me and I’d find the snow bank on my left instead of my right, having wandered across the road. One time it was so bad I thought I might have turned around, but then I found my footprints and knew I hadn’t.

I seemed to walk for hours and I was having trouble catching my breath. It was cold.

“God, how much farther?” I yelled into the night.

Heading out into the storm had been stupid. I’d had no idea what a blizzard could be like, how dangerous it could be.

I knew I was in big trouble when I staggered into a branch and realized I’d wandered dff the road and into the woods. I tried to find my footprints to backtrack, slipped, found myself sliding into a shallow ravine.

“Where am I? Jake, you’re a fool. You’re going to freeze to death on Christmas Eve. Alone.”

Unless the bomb went off soon. Then I might be incinerated.

A man confronts himself at such times. I wondered why I’d never married. I’d known enough women. Some of them might have been open to the permanent thing. Sarah’s face came to mind. What had my problem been? Fears about winding up like my folks? Why? Like I was a slave to my past, with no hope but of repeating their failure?

I kept walking. It occurred to me that the ravine was probably the little frozen creek I’d seen along parts of the road on the way to Jo’s house. I tried to find a place to climb up the bank and look for the road.

At least the wind wasn’t as bad in the woods, even though it was darker than on the road.

I trudged along the bank, slowly, fending off snow in my eyes, then finally came to a low spot and was able to get out. I stumbled from tree to tree, saw a flash, lost it again.

A flash?

I backed up and saw the flash again, then found the spot and fixed on it. A light. I’d found a light.

I didn’t know where the light was coming from, but it implied power, so I knew it had to be by the road or a house or maybe even the spaceport. Where it was didn’t much matter to me just then—I wanted to get out of the snow and cold. My feet had already passed from cold to numb, and my gloves weren’t doing the job that demanded thick mittens.

I kept following the light, letting it be my guide, hoping it would lead me to… well, the manger scene. Even in the miserable cold I smiled at that thought.

I hadn’t found the road after more than ten minutes, but the light was much brighter, forcing the trees to cast shadows, and after a few more minutes I emerged from the woods on the south side of the spaceport. The light was atop a tower near the reception area.

I tried to run across the snow-covered port. I was so worn out and the snow was so deep that I stumbled a dozen times before finally getting to the door.

How to get in?

The door had an old-fashioned doorknob on it, the kind you had to turn. Quaint. I took off my glove and tried to turn the knob, praying it wasn’t locked. This was Currier and Ives—there was a good chance it wouldn’t be.

The knob wouldn’t turn, but then, my hand was so cold it wouldn’t work right anyway. I’d never been that cold, never had my fingers refuse to close at my command. I pulled my other glove off with my teeth and tried locking both hands around the knob. I twisted my whole body.

The knob turned, the door opened, I fell inside.

Glorious warmth and freedom from the wind. It was a struggle to pick myself up off the floor. I just wanted to stay there and rest.

I glanced up at the clock on the wall: 0250. I’d been outside that long? Shit.

I got up and turned on the lights. It looked like a mile to the back of the room. My feet were starting to warm up, and getting prickly. I staggered twice but I didn’t fall down.

Turning the corner, I saw the magnificent Christmas display. Even with the scene’s lights off, it was beautiful.

Past the sheep and the goats, I steadied myself on Joseph’s shoulder, then lunged to the back of the stable and the first chicken in her roost. I lifted her out. Sure enough—eggs!

All four of them were white. I picked up each but they were just plastic. I turned to the other chicken, just cuffed it out of its roost, knocking it on the floor.

Four more eggs, all white, all plastic.

I walked out of the stable and sat down on one of the rocks a shepherd was kneeling beside.

“All for nothing,” I said to him. “I half killed myself out there in the storm—all for nothing. I was so sure.”

Dejected, exhausted, I decided to rest on my rock for awhile before looking for a phone and calling the governor and telling her I’d found nothing. She was probably still at her party. She wouldn’t have wanted to make her horses go out in the storm.

I’d be spending the rest of the night here, I was sure. What a way to celebrate Christmas.

But come to think of it—this was the most meaningful Christmas Eve I’d had in my entire adult life. And this Christmas display was a beautiful place to spend the night. That fake snow bank on the Santa Claus side looked comfortable, right next to the Christmas tree, leaning to the left just a tiny bit more than when I’d first seen it, the only imperfection in the whole display.

“Oh my God!”

No one in Currier and Ives would put up a Christmas tree without making sure it was straight.

I walked up to the tree. White lights, shiny ornaments. Shiny like the Easter egg. I peered deep inside the branches, searching, searching.

The Easter egg’s lanyard was twisted around a branch close to the trunk on the left side. I reached in and even though my hand was still numb, I was able to pull it out.

I looked at the timer. It was set to go off in—let’s see. It was on Luna time. I did a mental calculation.

“Oh my God,” again. I had two minutes to turn it off.

I fumbled the egg in my fingers. My fingers wouldn’t work. I couldn’t get them to push the shut-off code into the two flush buttons.

I kept trying. One minute left.

“Jake? Jake, are you in here?” The governor.

“Jo! Here!” I shouted, barrelling off the display and around the corner. “I have the bomb. I can’t… I can’t get it to shut off.”

Jo met me in the middle of the room. She deftly took the Easter Egg out of my hands, looked at the indicators, entered the code, then nonchalantly swung the egg around on the end of its lanyard. “Twelve seconds to go,” she said. “Hardly even exciting.”

“Maybe not for you,” I sighed. “How the hell did you and the horses get here through the storm?”

“What horses? Jake, the sleigh has a repulsor drive. Emergencies happen. Why didn’t you say where you were going? I spent the last three hours looking for you in the storm until I finally decided to see if you’d come here.” She held out the Easter egg. “Point five KT—lowest setting. And three in the morning. Nice to know Manny didn’t want to hurt anybody, no matter what else he had in mind.”

“We’ll never know what he was thinking.” Jo gestured toward the door and we headed for the sleigh. I told her my story. “I was lucky to even make it here. If it hadn’t been for the spaceport light, I’d still be out there in the woods.”

We stepped outside and Jo gave me a peculiar look. “What light? There aren’t any lights on out here.”

“But it’s right up—” I looked up at the light tower. The light was off. “But it was on, Jo. It was on.”

“Hmph,” she said. “Well, maybe it was a miracle. It’s Christmas, you know.”

“But—”

Jo started laughing. “Oh, Jake. You should see your face! Gotcha! I shut the light off when I came in. It’s on automatic. It always comes on at night unless it’s overridden.”

We climbed onto the sleigh. “I want to go to Christmas dinner with you today,” I said.

I went straight to bed when we got back to Jo’s, but still awoke with first light, fully refreshed and rested. Jo had already contacted the Patrol, but I thought I’d better call Marie’s office and leave him a message before we went to the Christmas service at church and then Sarah’s. But when I called I was routed straight to his home where I could see his wife and two delighted kids in the background playing with toys around a Christmas tree.

“Jake! Great job! And we thought it was hopeless. Finding that bomb was a real Christmas miracle,” Mark said before I could get a word out.

“No, Mark. Just some real good luck and putting the pieces together.”

“You’re too modest, Jake. Want me to send the shuttle for you? We can have you back on Luna by tonight.”

“Nope. I’m on vacation, remember? I’m going to dinner today, and I’ll let you know some time next week when I’m coming back. But I gotta run. Merry Christmas, Mark.”

“Merry Christmas, Jake.”

The storm was over and the Sun was shining when we set out, this time with Mary Lou and Nellie Sue. Jo had added sleigh bells to their harnesses. I thought about the dinner we’d be having soon, the eggnog, and taking Sarah aside to tell her about life on the Moon.

The spaceport light hadn’t been a miracle, nor had been finding the Easter egg at the last minute. Still, a miracle, a small one, had occurred.

I could feel it inside of me.