Fiction River: Moonscapes (13 page)

But it was the old Catch-22. The nearest service was on Europa, but my comm gear would sure be useful getting there in the first place. And it didn’t help none that the radar dish went missing when some asteroid with a whole lotta attitude swung by and took off with it while I was crossing the Belt. I will admit to being glad it hadn’t decided to go through the cabin along its way just for giggles.

Couldn’t go out to fix it neither. My suit was fine, except I couldn’t find the left glove. Musta left it on Mercury after getting that nice nice all-night sendoff that I got. Wasn’t too clearheaded when I took my leave. Hell, all I’d been good for was to punch in the initial burn and then just sleep the first two days with a smile on my face.

I was past Venus before I missed that glove. And my spare was in the cargo bay, which had no pressure. I wasn’t going out into no pressure, freezin’-your-damn-butt-off-even-in-a-suit kinda cold without my glove, not if I had any interest in living, which I did. And because stupid Earth Comm had ordered such a long jump, I couldn’t afford the air to jazz up the cargo bay for one lousy glove. Not lessen I wanted to be breathing space by the time I hit Jupiter orbit.

So here I was, hanging round the backside of Jupiter, cruising just pretty as could be, but there was no moon awaitin’ for me. This set me a fair problem, other than being alone too long and all. Europa ain’t no little one- or two-click wide space rock. She was number three of the big four around Jupiter. Hell, she ranked in the top twenty in the whole solar system for size including the planets and Mama Sol.

Stories said that old Mister Galileo had spotted this moon hisself all the way from Earth when he thought of using his brand-new telescope to look at heavenly bodies farther away than those in a building across the street. And I was a damn sight closer’n he was. I should be able to see it just fine, but it wasn’t there.

You’d think that losing a heavenly body only a third smaller than the planet Mercury would be a hard thing to do, but space gets awful big and dark especially as you move up-system.
Elsie’s
computer said I was in the right place, but the moon sure wasn’t. But neither could I imagine someone moving Europa to someplace new anytime recent. Even without my radio for the last two months, I woulda known about that. Hell, with all that water in her frozen-over oceans, she was the most valuable piece of property in the system after Earth herself. Nobody’d mess with that anyway, not even if we could figure out how. But the little sucker sure wasn’t showing her face, not that I could see.

Not quite sure what to do about this, I drew myself a beer before settling in to think about things. One thing I did know for sure, I’d better hurry. I knocked the old keg with my foot to test her, this was right near my last beer.

***

Now being out of beer was its own problem.

I didn’t usually figure my stock so close. I always kept plenty aboard to jump Mars to Saturn or something, but Mercury to Jupiter had stretched the old limits. And even after I’d helped them out fixing up their brewing equipment at Mercury, it still wasn’t what you’d call good.

Also, the fees for taking resources off the planet was fierce. Mercury Central kept claiming they didn’t have any water to spare. If you didn’t pee it out, you weren’t supposed to take it back off the god-forsaken rock they called home. So, as I wasn’t headed out to Pluto or Charon, I’d only filled the water tanks to half to keep my costs down. Even with that, I’d been counting on hitting the Europa LaunchPub real soon and getting some of that fine Deep-ice Lager they brew there.

I’d tried cooking beer in transit, but it never worked out. Just a logistical nightmare it was. Some places didn’t want to let go of their hops or wheat. And one bad batch could leave a girl seriously stranded. So, it was easier to stock up at the latest planetfall. Asides, I liked the variety as I worked around the system. But now this girl was heading into a crisis of a more personal nature.

I needed a beer, a man, and a moon, but I wasn’t going to find them in that order.

Thankfully the Mercury brew was lame enough that I couldn’t get too lost in the nostalgia about my send-off and all. That, and I’d worn those memories pretty shiny over the four-month-alone trip out here to where the sun didn’t shine so much. Way past time to get some fresh memories loaded aboard while I was seeing to things. I mean as long as I was makin’ lists and all.

So, no comm, no nav, and no moon. That moon was the real problem. Old Europa was the only one with more than a science station on her, and she was the only one with beer. So even if I could find one of them other moons, it didn’t excite me so much. I was betting none of them others would have a new nav dish or comm gear that I was needing.

Where could a moon like Europa get herself off to? She’s got an orbit just a million-and-a-half kilometers across. And she should be right there a couple thousand clicks off my port bow. But I didn’t have a damn thing excepting my eyeballs to pin her down with. The old nav computer couldn’t get me any closer without a radar image and that wasn’t coming without my left glove and a new radar dish that I didn’t have anyway.

I checked the old port-glass again, but there wasn’t nothing to see out there asides from big Jupiter being all grouchy like she was, a tiny point of the old Sun ’bout the size of the tip of my pinkie-nail held out at arm’s length, and a whole mess of stars. I watched the scenery through that beer and the next without spotting a single thing moving against the background.

***

The old tank sputtered dry when I went for just one more pint. That set me onto a whole other track of thinking. There weren’t a lot of ways to make alcohol with what I had on the ship. I ran through my inventory in my mind and by the time I was done, I’d come up with exactly no ideas.

So I set into thinking of what others had come up with when faced with such dire circumstances. Jen on the
Lucy
had once raided the medical supplies outta her cargo bay. She’d come into Titan drunk as a skunk. As a side benefit, she sure wasn’t going to ever cough again with the amount of syrup she’d slurped up. That didn’t help me none as Earth Engineering had me making this run empty because they was in such an all-fired hurry. Hadn’t even told me what it was. They just said go, so this gal went.

There was Old Johnson, he’d gotten real creative. He’d found a way to crack rocket fuel into alcohol. It wasn’t the safest thing to be doing, but we all gave him points for creativity and daring. Right up ’til he was shifting a big old highly-radioactive asteroid into close-Earth orbit for mining and he accidentally blew hisself up. The explosion had been so spectacular that it had shattered the asteroid. Let’s just say that the chunks coming in had put a real crimp in the viability of New York City for the next thousand or so half-lives of Strontium-90.

Down on Earth they was upset by that something fierce, never mind that the place had emptied out long ago, what with the ocean covering Manhattan since forever. It was just another marine park was all. Now it was a radioactive one with about half as many buildings sticking up out of the waves. Still don’t know what the big deal was.

That wouldn’t work for me anyway. They’d changed fuels since then and nobody, not even a smart gal like me, had come up with a way to recook Gel-fuel into anything other than more Gel-fuel.

Made me think of my old Pap. He was good at two things. He loved his fishing and he loved his still. We was always flat broke, but we ate well and, everyone in the county agreed, we drank well. He made a fine liquor, though I’d grown to prefer beer myself. Hard to program a three-planet slighshot orbit on ’shine. Especially Pap’s. However, you could use his stuff to fire a rocket if you ever needed.

He’d given me a case as a gift when I got the
Elsie
and I’d come right close to putting her nose square on into Luna on my first flight. After that, and finishing the case except for one bottle I’d kept back for medicinal purposes, I’d switched over to beer. Hard for a girl to get drunk on the stuff, the old bladder wouldn’t move it along fast enough, but it loosens things up nice.

Pap and his old ’shine. He was probably down on the river right now, drunk as two skunks and fishing. I checked the clock. I kept it set to Earthtime. The folks down at Earth Engineering, despite all the bees up their behinds, hated being called in the middle of the night. Pap was only a couple hours off from Earth Comm, meaning it was the middle of the night there too. So unless he was fishing by moonshine…

That’s when I started into thinkin’ I just might know where that sneaky little moon Europa had gone. I knocked back the last of my beer and went and peered out the old window again. Had to squint a bit to bring the stars into focus. Seemed to me that moon had to be right in front of me. But if I shifted orbit in one direction and she was in the other, I’d be some kinda screwed finding the extra reaction mass to change my mind.

I was looking toward the sun.

And that old moon was closer to the sun than me, just not in front of her. That meant all the light was a shining on one face of Europa and I was a staring at t’other. I was staring up her backside that was as dark as space hisself. No question ’bout the gender of space as he was always trying to kill your ass.

So that’s why I wasn’t seeing none of the moon. She was shining on the other side.

Now what I had to do was figure how to see her shinin’ face so as I could find her.

***

Jen and the
Lucy
was in as well when I come in. So we was sitting in the back of the Europa LaunchPub, each with our own pitcher of Deep-ice Lager. Smooth and sweet. The place was packed tonight and it was loud. The LP was one of only three bars in space big enough to support a live band. LaunchPub’s band sure weren’t good, but they was loud and their music made your feet want to jiggle about just for the fun of it.

The long plassteel bar was loaded up with just about every kind of space-jock and science geek you could imagine. By starting in early, we’d scored one of the cozy, raised circular booths that offered a grand view of the mayhem. Now it was off-shift for most of the workers. The mob was so tight and so loud that you couldn’t tell if they was dancing or talking or fighting. It was just a glorious throbbing mass of humanity which was a serious relief after four-months in the solitary can climbing up-system.

The best part was the way the men was eying us. Now Jen, she’s a pretty little thing. Tough as nails, but right nice to look at. When she crooked her pinky, they came a-running. Me, well, it would take about three of Jen to make one of me. Not that I let myself go, I was just a big gal and that scared a lot of the men off. Which was fine with me. I wasn’t one to be wantin’ any wimps in my rack. I wanted someone worth a good wrestle, and the LaunchPub had plenty of interesting possibilities. The fact that off-Earth ran about two boys for every girl didn’t hurt my chances neither.

So, for now, we was glad to sit and let them boys watch us while we worked on our beers, caught up on old times, smelled sweat that wasn’t our own, and jiggled the old feet to the cranking music.

“Took me some to figure out what was a-going on,” I shouted at Jen. “I mean there I was only a couple thousand clicks from the nearest pub,” I poured myself a fresh glass. “But I couldn’t see a damn thing.”

“What did you do?” Jen’s brow knitted as much as a girl’s could for being well into her second pitcher of brew.

“I finally figured out what was wrong cause of my old Pap. I’d done a slingshot aero-brake, ducking down around the Jupiter’s backside to bleed off my flight speed, and come around the other side facing into the sun. Problem was, I’d come up right behind Europa.”

With a slight tipping of her glass, Jen pointed out a couple nice-looking boys who were eyeing us from the end of the bar. Damn nice. She glanced over at me and I nodded, knowing I needed to be finishing up my story right quick. A problem I wouldn’t be minding a bit.

Jen crooked her finger the way she does and the two boys lit up like sunshine and began working their way over to our table all casual-like.

“The sun was on the far side of the moon,” I shouted over the music, but was aiming my smile on the bigger guy. Broad-shoulders, big-calloused hands, and powerful arms that said he worked hard for a living. Looked like he played hard too. Just what this girl was needing.

His smile came back hot as a reentry burn. This was gonna be good.

“So I was looking at the backside of the moon, away from the sunlight. No shine of the sun off Europa’s surface ice for me to spot her by.” Around the backside like I’d been, even the glow of Jupiter wasn’t enough to show me where the moon was at.

Jen and me both knew that Europa’s orbit about Jupiter was like eighty-five hours, and that once I had the problem figured, I’d only had to wait about a day for the moon and me to drift around old Lady Jupiter and into the sunlight so as I could spot her. Europa had a nice tight orbit, just like these two boys closing in on our table.

That’s what I’d figured out on the ship.

“So what did you do while you waited?” We shifted in shoulder to shoulder making room for the two boys who was sliding into our booth.

“Well…” The boy offered his hand. Instead I snagged him by the back of the neck and kissed him hard.