Shanghaied to the Moon (11 page)

“How many are left?”

“Four.”

No big deal then. He's just being cautious, since a couple are usually spares. We go back to worrying about our real problem. Like two anxious parents after a feeding, we wait for the NavComp to execute the next maneuver—come on, baby, burp.

Beep.
The prompt alerts us to pay attention.

“There she goes.” He checks the sequence off on his printout.

“Burp.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

“Get serious, kid. It's your watch.” He hands me the clipboard, draws his finger down the columns of the mission profile. “Time here. Maneuver sequence here. Verify on monitor two. Check off here.”

I'm glad he thinks I'm goofing off. Mission time is 12:18:16. The first maneuver I have to verify will happen in fifteen minutes. The next one is an hour after that. That gap ought to give me enough time to use the radio. Unless he isn't asleep by then.

“You going to sleep now?”

“Cocktail hour first.” He reaches for the jacket stuffed between the armrest and the bulkhead. Passed out would be even better than asleep. But the bottle is only half-full. I doubt that's enough to do it. He takes a sip, then looks at the clock. Again and again, like one of those water-filled bobbing ducks.

“Wouldn't you be more comfortable in a sock?”

“I'm fine right here, thanks.”

He's going to stay up, make sure I get the first check right. What am I going to do for the next fifteen minutes—watch him drink? I tap the Navcomp with the edge of the clipboard. “Any games in this thing?”

“Solitaire.”

“That's more boring than being bored!”

“You shouldn't be playing games anyway. You should be training.”

“Hey, I'm willing. It's not
my
fault I have to babysit this piece of junk.”

“True enough. I don't have any training routines on the system here. I'll transfer some from the squid later. You're not as good as I expected.”

I shrug. “I always crash a lot.”

“Because you fly it like a computer.”

“That's all I've ever flown! Dad won't—”

“You told me.” His eyes go back to the clock.

“Why do you keep doing that? It'll beep when it's time.”

“I'm not waiting for the maneuver.” He takes a big pull on the straw. “It's a special day for me, too.”

“It's your birthday?!”

He shakes his head. “An anniversary coming up in a minute.”

“You're married?”

“Not that kind.”

“What kind, then?”

“Sorry, kid, that's one of those things I've gotta keep locked in a box.” He drains the bottle with a bubbly slurp, crushing it to get the last drop. He digs out another one and quickly sucks half of it down.

“This isn't exactly a great day for me, either.” Going to the Moon ought to be the best birthday present ever.

“Keep your mind on your job, kid. It'll help.”

Beep.

I verify the maneuver and check it off. Next one in an hour.

“She's all yours now.” He slips the bottle into a holder, then reaches for a pair of blackout eyeshades clipped to the ceiling. “Wake me in four hours.”

“Is that enough?” I don't want him sleep deprived.

“Don't need much sleep these days. A perk of old age.”

“How old
are
you?”

“Hundred twenty-one Earth years. Seventy-six the way spacers figure it.”

“That's a big difference.” He's either traveled super fast, so that relativity effects slowed time, or been out on long, slow trips in cryogenic suspension. Maybe both.

“Been a spacer a long time, kid. Long, long time.” He pauses a moment, thinking something over. “After that trip to Venus, you couldn't drag me back to Earth with a black hole.”

“Hey, Val Thorsten said that in Venus: Inferno Below the Clouds.”

“I know. They stuck to the truth in the early ones.”

“What do you mean? The 3-Vids are docudramas. They're all true.”

“Ah, the innocence of babes …” He shakes his head. “You might find some bits of real history in them, if you look hard enough. But I never chased pirates. Never with Tony. Never with Bob. Never after the Jupiter disaster.”

Oh great! Now he thinks he's Val Thorsten!

He brings the bottle to his lips.

A deadbeat like him, borrowing Val's glory. I'm insulted on Val's behalf. Should I challenge him, or just play along? The more he talks, the more he drinks.

I want him drunk. “So what happened on the way to Jupiter?”

He broods over the straw. His mouth draws into a thin, hard line. Another long pull. “Damned Photrino drive. Trouble from the first. Old Man Lance saved a few nickels and Tony … Tony paid full price.”

His voice softens, apologetic. Tony is Val's chief engineer, and his cheerful face comes clearly to mind from Asteroid Run. I don't remember Old Man Lance in Jupiter Turnabout, but the new Photrino drive
was
skittish. It conked out during the most critical maneuver. That left Val, his crew, and the two hundred colonists with no hope of ever reaching Jupiter.

“No hope of Jupiter. Just one chance to get home. Tony had to fix …”

I can see every detail of the scene where Val talks with Tony about trying a very tricky, very dangerous boomerang maneuver. The drive had to work perfectly. But the fusion bottle collapsed. Tony had to go into the fusion chamber even though the damper fields were unstable.

This guy says the 3-Vid is a fake, but he's describing it exactly like it happened. A chill goes down my spine. Could he really be …

No. He's a fan, like me. He's just retelling the 3-Vid and casting himself as Val Thorsten. I do it all the time myself.

He comes to the part where there are just two repairs left. The damper fields start to fail. Val stands ready to pull Tony out—

“… but nobody could get him out …”

“No! That's not true!”

“Damn it, kid, who're you going to believe?” His hand slams my chest and twists up a fistful of shirt. He pulls me half out of my seat and over the center console that separates us. Our noses almost touch. His angry eyes are the pale blue of pond ice. His breath smells explosive. “Tony
died
in there!”

“That's crazy, I just saw him in Asteroid Run.”

“Lies!” He shoves me away. My shoulder slams the bulkhead. I stiff-arm the center console to stop the rebound, then settle sideways in the seat, back hunched against the hull, knees drawn up against my chest for protection.

Maybe it was a mistake, wanting him drunk. No. It's working. He's sucking on the bottle again.

I just have to be more careful how I react. The idea of Tony dead caught me by surprise, that's all. I just blurted out what I thought. But he gets violent as well as crazy. My karate won't be much good here. So many of the moves depend on gravity.

Some of the whiskey beads at the corner of his mouth and spills into the air. He swipes at his wet lips, clumsy.

He really is a sad old bum.

Slowly, his finger comes toward my forehead. I pull back. The finger stops. “They're alive in that skull of yours, aren't they? Tony. Bob. And me, I'm young …”

He draws his hand away. Jabs his own forehead. The fingernail leaves a deep white crescent in the wrinkled skin. “But the truth is in here.”

The hand moves to open a shutter, revealing the frozen lightning brilliance of a million stars.

“Lot of debris.
Volunteers?
”

I flinch at the snap in his voice, more order than request. I know this scene from Jupiter Turnabout by heart: The motors on the main communication antenna have jammed. Now that Tony's fixed the drive, the antenna needs to be freed up to receive vital course data from Earth. But the disaster surrounded the ship with dangerous debris. Bob Winston, a pilot almost as good as Val and one of my favorite crewmembers, volunteers to go out.

“… he's hit!”

My skin shrinks, remembering the way Bob spun, like a figure skater in a fast twirl, white vapor spiraling around him. A bit of shrapnel no bigger than a fly hit his jet pack, crippled it. Bob's drifted too far from the ship. His oxygen is running out. But he's got just
enough
oxygen. Val jets out to rescue him, heedless of his own danger.

Sunshine flares as the barbecue roll brings the window sunward. We both recoil at the brightness. Slowly, he draws the shutter closed, bows his head.

“If it had been just me and him … I'd have risked everything to go after him.” He looks at me, raw grief on his face. “Two hundred other people were depending on me. I couldn't …”

What's going on in his head? Sounds like he's saying they left Bob out there to die.

“Captain's burden …” His voice sinks and roughens, then damps out entirely. His eyes roll white. The lids flutter, then close. He freezes, draped on the air like a puppet suddenly abandoned. The bottle spins above his right hand.

I hug my knees, pull into a small ball. A stink steams off my sweaty skin. It wasn't the way he says. It wasn't.

He twitches, cries out “Harry!” but doesn't wake up. His head wobbles like it's on a spring. His arms float limply. His troubled breathing trembles on the verge of a snore.

Who's Harry? Another imaginary victim of another disaster? If he's going to live in a fantasy, why does it have to be tragic?

The ship shudders as the NavComp automatically fires a thruster to make some microscopic course adjustment.

NavComp!

I unspring. Rise smack into the button-studded ceiling. Grab a handhold and haul myself face-to-face with the mission clock. Did I miss it? I don't remember hearing a prompt. Where's the clipboard? Adrift behind the seats. I snatch it out of the air, quickly scan the mission profile. It's okay, still a few minutes before the maneuver.

None of this commotion has bothered him one bit.

The instruments murmur, shifting and changing. On middeck, the fan in the beat-up environmental unit squeaks rhythmically. Something twangs in the nose of the ship. This tub is like an old house—creaking, settling, slowly falling apart! And outside, pulling at every square inch of the stressed-out old hull, is vacuum and cold and instant death.

Beep.

The sequence matches exactly. I check it off.

“See?” I flash the clipboard at him, but he's oblivious. His body floats against the slack harness, half out of the seat. His arms hang in the air, like someone doing the dead man's float.

What if something went wrong?

Through the gap between his back and the seat, I see the radio. There's an hour until the next maneuver, then a busy stretch for the rest of the watch. Better do it now. I squeeze into the gap, trying not to touch him. One arm and my head poke out the other side. The radio is only inches from my nose. All the indicators are dark. The power switch … locked out! With an old fashioned key-lock!

“I hate you!”

I struggle backward, elbowing his back, thrusting against his ribs. A little grunt escapes him, but that's all. His eyes skim rapidly beneath their lids. Tension draws his mouth flat and thin.

“I don't care who you think you are, mister, you've had your last drunken fantasy!”

I haul myself over the top of the seat, aiming for the hatch to middeck. Hand over hand, I follow the ladder into the chill darkness until my fingers touch the deck. I grope along the wall for the control panel, feel a row of switches, but then draw back. I don't even know which one works the lights!

I take a few deep breaths and wait for my eyes to adjust to the dim light diffusing through the hatch from flight deck. Things take on a gray flatness. I can just make out the labels next to the switches. Click.

A single bulb comes on. The white beam blazes and, as if granting me permission, shines smack on the duffel. I crawl along the wall over to it, unhook the strap, then sail to the toilet. I yank open the zipper. The bottles spill out like seeds from a pod. I snatch one, break the seal, and squeeze. The plastic gives. The whiskey beads at the tip of the straw. Harder. A blob floats free. Just like my tears before, the liquid quivers and undulates as if something inside is pulling it into shape. Then it settles into a perfect amber bubble. Beautiful.

I turn on the toilet—
vrooooommmmm
—and then turn it off again quick. If that doesn't wake him … Nothing. On again. I touch the end of the urine tube to the bubble of whiskey. Slllurp!

For a long time, I make bubbles and vacuum them away. When the last bottle is empty, I sweep my gaze over the area to make sure I haven't missed one. The faceted surfaces of the bottles reflect the beam into a hundred snips of rainbow.

The light reflects dully off a flat, square surface—one of the award folders. The tie has loosened and they're drifting around. Maybe the truth is in there.

I snag the nearest folder and spread it open. A silver disc the size of a tea saucer glitters in the recessed velvet pocket. The image embossed on the surface shows Venus in the background, the Lance Ramjet in the middle ground, and an astronaut in the foreground, his helmet tucked in the crook of his arm, his pilot's ponytail curled along the rim of the suit's ringed collar like a pet rat. Words circle the image: Alldrives Pilot Achievement Award • Val Thorsten • First Human Reconnaissance of Venus. Val's first mission for them.

This isn't a fan club replica. It's full-size. The metal is pure titiniamite, I can tell by the feel—same slick iciness as the coating on Dad's space suit. I look toward flight deck. How can he have this? Val wouldn't sell any of his medals. Did this guy steal it? Is that what we're really doing out here—running from the law? But that doesn't make sense. Wouldn't you take on a helper
before
the crime?

Reluctantly, I examine the medal again. The face of the astronaut … every detail is microperfect, etched with a laser. It isn't the face of the Val Thorsten I know from thirty-two 3-Vid adventures or from the fan club posters and replica medals—it's the face of the unconscious drunk on flight deck!