Cluster (14 page)

His feet did not get wet, though the hopper made little splashes in the dust that disappeared almost instantly. With no air to hold the substance up, it collapsed without billowing. On the apex of each glide he could see over the Serpentine Wrinkle Ridge, an arm of which approached quite close to the rim of Posidonius. Had he been able to bound high enough, he might have been able to see all the way across the western edge of the Sea of Serenity to where its vast crater wall parted to give access to the even vaster
Mare Imbrium
, the Sea of Rains. His line of sight would give him a glimpse of one of that sea's craters, probably Archimedes. Flint had studied, and therefore had an exact visual memory of, the map of the adjacent geography of Luna. But this would be a narrow line-of-sight view between the encroaching mountain ranges of the Caucasus to the north and the Apennines to the south. Mountains on Earth were named after these—or maybe it was the other way around. There were three craters in that vicinity, so he couldn't be quite certain which one he would see from five hundred miles away. It really didn't matter, since the tight curvature of the moon put the whole area out of sight and he was not going there anyway.

He veered north, changing direction by shifting his weight to make the hopper lean. He skirted Posidonius, now shielded from observation by its rim. Ahead of him was
Lacus Somniorum
, the Lake of Dreams. Primitive that he was, he loved that imagery.
Flint
had dreams—of escape, of freedom, of eventual return to Outworld and his green darling Honeybloom. Pnotl of Sphere Knyfh, that alien transferee from the inner galaxy, had dazzled him into undertaking the mission, but in Sphere Canopus reality had caught up with fancy. He had encountered no high-Kirlian natives there, and had suffered torture and the constant threat of death. The one high-Kirlian entity he had met had turned out to be another transferee. He was unfit for this type of work; the edge was off. He hadn't even been able to complete his mission; the girl transferee had had to bail him out. Let
her
initiate the next mission! The Imps would not search for him long; they would know his suit-air could last no more than a day, so could assume he had perished. There was nothing like dying to avoid being pestered.

But he was not the suicidal type. He had a destination in mind, barely three hundred miles to the north. Burg Crater, where an abandoned mine shaft still had leftover stores of oxygen, water, and food. It was one of a number of craters within reach. By the time they checked them all, if they ever did, he would be gone again. That had little chance to catch up with him.

It was a fair distance. Even with the hopper it would take him about fifteen hours. He had picked a site near the limit of his range, but not
too
near it, so as to make it that much more difficult to locate him quickly. But the marvels of the lunar landscape soon palled. He was traversing a dull, seemingly endless plain, in the confined silence of his suit.

He remembered more of the bits of information the Shaman had given him. Flint had supposed they were mere stories, intended for entertainment or for dealing with immediate needs, such as the hunting of dinosaurs, but now he understood their true relevance.

Before mattermission, Earth had been in desperate need of new sources of supply and living room for its horrendously teeming population. Lifeship colonization had been inadequate and too expensive. So they had tried desperate measures, such as colonization of near space. The first settlers went to Luna, drawing most of the construction substance from its crust. Then space itself was claimed, drawing on what was there: the particles of rock and ice in orbit, the planetoids. It was much easier to collect materials from there than to bring them up out of Earth's gravitational well, and a number of the orbiting rocks were big enough to become homes themselves.

Gardens were planted, within shells of captive air, rotating so that the light of the sun struck them half of every day, Earth-time. Flint had never really understood that concept when the Shaman explained it, but his recent experience on the space shuttle from Earth to Luna had brought it into sharp focus, along with a spot of “spin sickness.” The rotation provided weight in a small craft, but the head was nearer to the center than the feet, and so became slightly lighter. The body reacted to this imbalance by becoming uncomfortably ill. Flint had never been ill before in his life, and it was a horrendous experience. So he had learned about practical centrifugal gravity the hard way.
Knowing
and
comprehending
were different things! Flint had known much, understood little. But he was mastering his background knowledge now, right down into his gut.

The Ministers of Imperial Earth had relied too much on his presumed naiveté, falling into the trap of supposing that ignorance equated to stupidity though they knew better. No one was immune from the know-comprehend dichotomy. They had given him cram courses in the most advanced technology of the galaxy—that of mattermission and transfer—by relying heavily on his eidetic memory. He could now repeat paragraphs of complex formulas whose meaning he would never truly understand. He could now read just enough to get by. In conversation he sounded like a highly educated ignoramus, which he was. But they had also trained him in multiple combat and escape techniques, never supposing that he might ever employ these more practical skills against
them.
It had been child's play to escape the Ministry of Alien Spheres, buy a black-market tourist's pass, switch places with a disgruntled miner on furlough, and land at Posidonius Mine.

One transfer experience sufficed; he was going back home to Honeybloom. The only mountains and depressions he cared to explore were hers. All he had to do was figure out a way to get mattermitted back.

That might require some figuring. It would cost about two trillion dollars postage to jump from Earth to Outworld. But he would have time to mull over that challenge, here on the moon. There had to be
some
way available to a bright primitive.

The barren landscape continued. It was dusk here, with his long sharp shadow extending to the east, leaping far away as he went high, zooming back to meet him as he landed. The shadow was always barely in time for the bounce. Would it ever miscalculate, play it too close, and miss the connection? Flint smiled, half-believing it could happen. Nothing was perfect.

He was well north of Posidonius Crater now, in the Lake of Dreams. Two hundred miles to the east the curve of Luna's surface shrouded the craters in darkness. He had progressed north of small Crater Daniell, coming up parallel to Crater Grove. He could see these only when he was high; the horizon was so much closer than that of Outworld, Earth, or the Canopian slave planet, because Luna was so much smaller. On the other hand there was no atmosphere to cloud vision. But he “saw” as much by means of the picture in his mind as with his eyes. His photographic mental image merged with the reality, greatly extending his perception. As, perhaps, his Kirlian aura extended his perception of life.

He kept going, hour after hour, as a Paleolithic hunter he had developed endurance, but never before had he
hopped
the whole distance. The machine provided the thrust, but the little balancing mechanisms of his body were becoming fatigued. Now he was approaching the ill-defined depressions of Plana and Mason, old, worn craters, perhaps, though what there was there to wear them down? On the map they lay together with the center nipples like the breasts of a woman, but there was no such resemblance now. He was through the Lake of Dreams, traveling a rougher surface. His imagination had ceased to conjure fun-visions of Outworld and Honeybloom, and not even these twin circles could bring them back with any force. Fatigue diminished the enthusiasm of dreams.

His hopper gave a despairing half-thrust, and failed. It was out of power.

Flint came to rest in the crater of Plana, aware that he was in trouble. The hoppers were supposed to be kept fully charged between uses, but they were old machines, not as efficient as when new. This one had taken him about 260 miles, which might have been enough had he been able to proceed directly north from the station. But his jog to the west to get out of Posidonius, and necessary deviations around roughness in the terrain, had left him with still around fifty miles to go.

Well, he would walk it. He had to; there was no other way, and no closer respite. It would enable him to use different muscles, anyway.

Flint progressed vigorously, achieving a kind of running, jumping stride that carried him bounding forward at a speed of six to eight miles per hour. He was light, even with the suit, and strong, but the arms and legs of this thing were not adequately flexible for this, and they chafed.

He continued for an hour, crossing out of Plana and into the great doughnut-shaped plain of
Lacus Mortis
, the Lake of Death. Burg was in the center of it, a small crater compared to its neighbors Hercules and atlas to the east, and Aristoteles and Eudoxus to the west. Oh, he had his mental map right before him, brilliantly clear as if illuminated by the slowly setting sun. Farther to the north was the large, long
Mare Frigoris
, the Sea of Cold. All he had to do was proceed from this point on that map to that point. So easy to
know
, so hard to
do.

He plowed on, his speed slowing as he tired. His elbows and knees were raw from constant abrasion against the rigid joints of the suit. His air tasted bad, though he should still have several hours' margin. Unless it, like the hopper, no longer performed at the original spec. Suit failure—that was all he needed now!

Strange yet fitting, how he had started in such nicely named terrain, the Sea of Serenity, the Lake of Dreams. Now he was in trouble, the dream was turning to nightmare, the Lake of Death. What would have happened had he gone east toward the Sea of Crises, or west to the Ocean of Storms? Better south to the Sea of Tranquility and Sea of Nectar.

But repeating the sweet names could not extract him from the grim reality. There was no longer any doubt: his air was turning foul, and he had not covered half the distance to the station since the hopper failed. He could not even see Burg Crater yet. His presumed demise was about to become an actuality.

And was that so bad? Better to die than be a slave. Someone in Sphere Sol's past had said that. Maybe his hope of escape had been as illusory as the lovely moonscape names. Reality was the darkening airless void.

He fell. His faceplate nudged into moondust, the support straps about his head holding his face clear of the lens. It was not an uncomfortable position. He was prone now, resting, yet panting. The air could no longer sustain him. He had no strength to get up; his vital energy was being drained, as the energy of the galaxy was being drained by the Andromedans. At some point the loss of force from the strong interaction of the local atomic nuclei would diminish their cohesion, and matter as this galaxy knew it would cease to exist.

Those Ministers of Imperial Earth were not such bad sorts. They were only trying to do their job. They didn't like working with a Stone Age man, but they did it graciously. And the Masters of Canopus, slave drivers yet sensible, reversing their eons-long policy of Spherical isolation, to help save the common galaxy. They had set their dream of privacy aside.

That female who had followed him to Canopus—who was she? The Minister of Alien Spheres had claimed to have sent no other agent there, and had affected great surprise at this part of Flint's report. But Flint knew they had a woman with a Kirlian aura intensity near a hundred, and they were surely using her somewhere. So they had to be concealing something from him, and he didn't like that. Too bad he'd never get to meet her, to find out the truth. Could she have transferred on her own, somehow, sensing his need? But she had tried to kill him at first! So she must be from some unknown enemy Sphere. Yet she had an aura very like his own; she was
his kind
.

And his kind would soon be minus one, for here he was, perishing in weakness like one diseased. Not spinsick, but moonstruck.

“Oh hell!” he muttered. “I'm not cut out to die like this. Not in gasping foulness. I've got to fight, to make it swift and clean, like an honest spearthrust. Those damned Andromedans!”

He turned on his suit radio, “Okay, vacation's over, come and get me,” he said clearly just before he passed out.

 

 

 

 

Chapter 5:

Ear of Wheat

 

 

*notice kirlian transfer to sphere spica 200 intensity*

–that's what we've been waiting for resdispatch agent–

*POWER*

–CIVILIZATION–

 

*
 
*
 
*

 

As before, the transition was instant and painless. Flint found himself inhaling water, but not choking. He was in a sea, flushing the liquid out through gills in his shoulder region, though he lacked shoulders.

All right. His transfer identity always seemed basically human. Always these two times, at least. A man in a scuba-diving outfit would have as much to get used to as this. He was sure of that; knowing that the Sphere Spica imperial planet was water-bound, the Ministers had had him trained in scuba, just in case. For a man who had never seen an ocean prior to this first Earth visit, it had been quite an experience.

He flexed his arms and legs and found they were flippers. Excellent for swimming, not as good for manipulating objects. But they did have terminal digits. Man in deep-sea swimming gear: yes, the analogy would do.

“Bopek recovers,” a voice said, very close and clear in the liquid medium. Water was just great for transmitting sound.

“Swim, Bopek!” other voices urged. “Restore your system.”

Flint swam. His powerful flipper arms and legs threshed the water and propelled him forward handsomely. Fresh water passed through his system, revitalizing it. It was a very nice body, in a nice environment. There was some pain, however, and he turned his eyes on the affected part to investigate. It was easy to see, because his eyes were on extensible stalks, highly flexible, able to look anywhere quickly.