April 3: The Middle of Nowhere (32 page)

When Happy woke up it was not to a white hospital room with antiseptic smell. He was laying on a hard table with a corrugated metal ceiling arched overhead, the nasty taste and gunpowder smell of gritty lunar dust that rode in on equipment no matter how carefully you cleaned things, mixed with the sharp smell of vinegar and garlic. He turned his head and Julie was sitting holding an over-stuffed sandwich and taking another bite of a huge dill pickle. She shouldn't do that, he thought. Her suit will smell like garlic in a few days. But damn, it smelled good, flooding his mouth with a rush of saliva.

"Well, welcome back to reality such as it is," she said when she managed to swallow. "You OK? You need a barf bag or anything?" she asked at the look on his face. "I was told to watch the monitor they put on you," she explained.

"Where is Jeff?" Happy croaked, dry mouthed. "I need to kill him," he said matter-of-factly.

"Uh...Maybe you'd like to talk to Heather first? she suggested. "Looking around and realizing she was alone with this old lunatic.

"That's OK," he said sitting up and snatching the pickle out of her hand. "I don't need any help for one witless teenager." He took a big bite and it was just as good as it smelled and masked the nasty dust taste. He offered it back but she waved it away and checked she had a free line of retreat to the door. He was still in his suit with the helmet and gloves off. There was a stick on sensor on the back of his hand and he could feel one under his ear. He peeled them off carefully.

"I thought I heard you," Johnson called from the door. "You gave us a scare. What happened? Have you fainted like this before?"

"No, but I've never had a hole blown in my space craft half its width. The idiot child told me cheerfully that there was a hole blown through the toilet 'one by two' and didn't specify any blessed
unit
of size!
I went back expecting  a hole I couldn't put my fist through and there was a chasm I could jump clean through. No
way
that thing should have flown. It should have busted in two like a rotten stick. I can't believe there were enough connections whole to control it," he explained.

"We made all the control circuits triply redundant," Jeff reminded him from the doorway.

The pickle sailed right through the space where his head had been before he ducked and ran.

"Damn it Happy we don't have much in the way of supplies and you think you can start a food fight?" Julie yelled at him. "I'm going to go get that pickle and wash it off. We have no idea when anybody is going to bring in more food with our neighbors dropping cluster bombs on our field. In the mean time - grow up!" she said in a tone that made both Happy and Johnson cringe back from her. Then she stormed out to rescue the pickle.

"Umm... sorry if I was a little moody," Happy allowed. It wasn't often as the oldest person around anyone reamed him out. He especially hated it when they were right. "Have I missed anything?" he finally asked the embarrassed silence.

"Nah - if you feel steady enough, come on in the other hut," Johnson invited. "They're just looking at the camera run you guys made. You were only out a few minutes."

Happy followed through the tunnel connecting to the moon hut that would be their clinic when they really had one to the administrative hut. There was no lock between them, only a pressure partition that could be sealed. Heather and Jeff were sitting in the fragile looking frame and cloth sling chairs that were designed for lunar gravity. The big screen hanging on the wall behind them had several video frames isolated and displayed already.

Heather looked over her shoulder at them. "You scared the crap out of us Happy. Glad to see you vertical. We have enough other problems right here," she looked at the screen and the cursor drew a circle around one of the frames.

"What am I looking at?" Happy asked. Nothing jumped into any familiar pattern.

"These," she pointed at several elongated dark shapes, "are rovers, well, the shadows from them actually. However we can't imagine why they would send more than one or two if they were sending a military team to run us off. This would be most of their vehicles and it would mean they stopped exploration and most of the scientific work at Armstrong that needs these vehicles. It looks like they are rolling in columns but Jeff here thinks they are towing a line of trailers or something and only the front vehicle is a rover."

"That's still seven rovers," Happy pointed out, looking at the shadows.

"Yeah." Katia considered it thoughtfully. "I go to Armstrong all the time," she explained. "They number their rovers and paint it on the top and smaller on each side. I pretty sure I've seen mid-twenties. Twenty-five or twenty-six, so this would be a quarter or a third of their fleet. Plus stuff like tank trucks, shuttle tow tractors, freight tractors to unload the shuttles and recovery vehicles that aren't numbered because they don't go out in virgin territory. They stick right around the base. I don't think that they would be stupid enough to send all their rovers off in one expedition. If they lost them all they'd be in big trouble."

"What would they need big trailers to haul?" Julie wondered.

"I don't know. Trailers are not that common. They have a few to carry bulky items off a supply shuttle, but most freight that needs pressure comes in containerized and they carry the container on a flatbed to a supply dome and hook it right up to pressure and power. Just like docking a ship. It's like adding a room to the warehouse and they don't have to unload by hand. Some of the living quarters are the same way. Like a travel trailer. They dock it on a common hallway, jack it level and that's it - no hazardous construction work to do in a suit."

"Heather, have you finished looking along the
whole
track we photographed for you, or did you stop when you found this group?" Happy asked.

"We just started at the near end and worked back. This bunch has been rolling for about sixteen hours if they have gone the same speed from the start."

"So they started well before they launched to take out our landing field?"

"Well, sure. But what are you thinking?"

"Humor me please and continue scanning the photo corridor all the way back until we started."

"OK." Heather broke the remaining recording into three time tracks and scrolled them in three windows beside each other. Near the end of the last track they stopped it. If it had been any closer to Armstrong they would have overflown them before the cameras were activated. There were the same indistinct shapes but throwing long dark shadows. Their discipline was obviously different. None of them were in columns so it was obvious each had to be a separate powered vehicle.

Charles, their other pilot, stepped forward from the bunch hanging back and looked closely at the screen.

"I've seen a formation like that before," he informed Heather. "I used to fly anti-armor fan platforms for the USNA. Somebody from Armstrong knows how to disperse an armored column across a plain so they are not bunched up or in any pattern that makes hitting them from the air easy. That's a bunch of vehicles arrayed for battle whatever they are."

"That's nine," Katia counted. "They're nuts to send so many. It didn't leave the base much for just basic housekeeping."

"And how far behind the others are they?" Heather asked.

Jeff noted the time slots and distances. "The first bunch are sixteen hours out and have a bit more than twelve hours to get here. The second group, by checking the first and last frame to determine speed, are about six hours out of Armstrong. They are going a lot faster but will not catch up to the first group until they are well out of the hills on our plain. I'm thinking they are in pursuit. Is that what you are thinking Happy?"

"Damn straight it is. That's why we got bombed. The first bunch is coming here and the others don't want them to. They probably have some crazy idea we are expecting them - maybe even put them up to leaving. They wanted to make sure we couldn't intervene for them."

"Oh - crap..." Heather muttered. "I never pictured anything like this happening."

"How many people with a lunar address did you sell these ranches to Heather? Katia wanted to know.

"Just four. Three from Armstrong and your buddy."

"Well, I'll bet all three from Armstrong are in that front group. And maybe some friends and family. You have any restrictions on how many people can occupy a ranch or how they can use it?"

"No of course not," Heather was indignant. "We have some covenants that you can't shadow your neighbor without permission and you can't excavate in such a way as to make your neighbor's land subside and you can't deny your neighbors the right to over-fly above five hundred meters to gain access to their property. You have to follow flight rules to lift a shuttle off your land giving notice on public channels, but we don't even intend to make people use the port if they want to land on their own property. No stupid needless regulations."

"Then I'm guessing some of your ranches are about to be occupied by rather extended families," Katia said.

"But, we're not ready for them. None of the lot markers are laid out and we have no city services or an air plant or water reserve."

"You better hope they brought what they need for themselves. I'd say about the only service you might start sweating is law enforcement. Because it looks to me like whoever is following them will probably roll in close behind your owners and demand the right to cart them right back to Armstrong. They may even have arrest warrants. You might think about whether you are going to get involved in that or decide it's none of your business. And they are arriving so close to each other you won't have a lot of time to talk to them before the second group gets here. No I take that back. They will catch up with each other out on our plain before they get here to the center and headquarters. If you want to be involved you'll have to ride out to meet them."

"The way they acted, bombing our landing pad, don't be surprised if the bunch chasing them come in shooting instead of talking," Easy predicted.

"We can't wait that long," Heather decided. Katia was startled by the change. Heather's voice had the same ring it did when she ordered Jeff and Happy to lift their ship before the attack.

"Take the rovers out and plow the boundaries of the lots our Armstrong customers bought. Then the Russian gentleman's plot. I'm going to take the Happy Lewis and sit down in front of this first group approaching and find out what the Devil is going on. Johnson, you take your time and don't bust your rover. We have a day and a half and there is no need to hurry and take chances. Julie take the other. Pick your own assistants. Charles and Happy you are our pilots. Happy will land. I saw how slick he did it today."

"No." Happy interrupted.

"What do you mean no? Are you still woozy from your faint? Do you want Charles to take it out?"

"Nobody should take it out. I don't want to hear another word about it until you walk out with me an take a look at it with your own eyes."

"It got here in one piece. How bad can it be? How am I going to contact these people? Do you want to deal with it here when they roll up at our doorstep?" Heather insisted.

"We'll figure out something but the
Happy Lewis
is not going to fly. I'm asking you to have enough respect for my experience to come out and see the damage for yourself."

* * *

"That is pretty ugly," Heather admitted, standing with the floodlights behind her looking at the huge hole.

"You don't know but something vital is cracked and just needs stressed a couple more times before it falls apart and the whole thing could disintegrate in flight. Some vital control could have two paths dead and be running on one connection. All it would take is single stripped wire shifting under high G and shorting out and we'd lose the whole thing," Happy warned her.

"Okay," she sighed. "Let's go brainstorm. There has to be some way to deal with this before we have a small war right here on our mare."

* * *

"If the 'B' rover meets them a four hour drive out from our mare how far behind will the pursuing group be? Heather demanded.

"Assuming  both groups maintained the exact same speed there should still be a good ninety minute separation at that point." Jeff assured her, finger on the map.

"And Home will be in position to talk when we meet them?"

"If not at first within five to ten minutes and again before the second group shows up."

"OK, Jeff, I'd like you to call Jon so he anticipates our call. Tell him we're going out and meet the first bunch and find out what's going on. See if Wiggen has called him again or if he has any other new information. We'll just have to play it by ear. If we have Home for relay maybe we can talk sense to someone. If not, well let's hope it doesn't go past that."

"Happy I'd like you to come along. Your comment about your experience is valid. I'd like the benefit of it. Charles I know you are April's man on site and should be responsible for the scooter, but Jeff is more familiar with its design. I'd appreciate if you'd allow him help you to verify all the critical control paths and do a jury-rig brace job to get it back to Home for repair. I realize I bypassed you when I sent Happy and Jeff to do an emergency lift. I'll be honest with you. I know them and I don't know you as well. Would you have moved as fast as they did for me?"

"Maybe not," he admitted. "I might have insisted on asking a few questions. I never had the impression we were under military discipline so I might have balked. But seeing how dead on your gut feeling was I hope I'd have the sense to jump when you say jump now," he grinned, "and as the old saying goes, ask - how high? - on the way up."

"Thanks for your honesty."

"I'm going out to meet the first group. The buyers have a contract with me and I want to make sure we can get things settled quickly without relaying back and forth through Home. And what I hate to say but must - if the second group is a threat to not just this first bunch driving toward us, but our settlement too, I intend to stop them. That's why I'm taking the 'B' rover with the auto-cannon. Julie can still be marking out the lots in case our buyers are here to move in and against all good judgment I want Johnson to drive us, because if survival dictates speed over good sense, then much as I hate to admit it, he's the best."