There was also a flash oven where Crater supposed he could heat up the paste. A cupboard revealed some cracked plaston cups and dirty dishes. That was it.
Crater sat on the bed and contemplated his plight and the gillie. “What's wrong with you?” he asked. If it was dead, Crater hoped at least it wouldn't stink. Suddenly very tired, he curled up on the bed and slept, waking to the sound of himself singing “Moon Dust Girls.” Except it wasn't him. The gillie stood on the table, though it had no legs, and sang, though it had no mouth, and looked at Crater, though it had no eyes. “Status?”
Crater asked.
Normal
, it replied.
“What happened after the crowhopper took you?”
Show you
, it said.
The gillie projected a view of something blurry, then
Crater saw a spiderwalker ridden by a crowhopper. Then he heard the voice of the giant who'd attacked him. “Take this thing back to the jumpcar,” it said, handing the gillie over.
“And give me your rifle. I'm going to follow the convoy.”
“I'll take that ugly thing but I'm keeping my rifle,” the other crowhopper said.
“I've had a bad day,” the giant growled. “And if you don't do what I say, you'll have a bad one too, and it will be your last.”
The smaller crowhopper took the gillie from the giant and put it in the stowage locker on the spiderwalker. The picture went dark until Crater saw the back of the crowhopper. Then the point of view changed and Crater saw the gillie crawl up the rider's back, then onto its helmet where it began to change color until it was perfectly clear. The gillie grew a tripod of legs, holding what appeared to be a convex lens. A hot spot developed on the back of the helmet, and the crowhopper suddenly jerked, then fell off the walker. The gillie returned to its own view, which was all red. It seemed to swim in a red liquid for a while, then it was in the dust.
“You used the sun to burn a hole in its helmet,” Crater said in awe. “I didn't know you could make shapes like that.”
Hard to do. Made gillie tired. Big sound also required much energy.
Needed to recover so gillie did not move for long time. Fastbug arrived, I crawled inside. Do not like Captain Teller so did not communicate
.
“I'm glad you're back,” Crater said, which caused the gillie to somehow look pleased. “And thank you for saving me with the big noise.”
The gillie did not answer and appeared to be asleep if, in fact, it could sleep. Crater picked it up and gently placed it on the pillow of the bed, then heard someone rap on the hatch.
Bad Haircut, without waiting to be invited, came inside. “I have found enough miners. We will begin in the morning. Do not try to escape. There are guards.” He crawled back through the hatch and slammed it shut.
Sighing fretfully, the convoy getting farther away by the minute, Crater found he couldn't sleep. He got up and took the rifle to the machine shop. He had an idea how to improve it.
He disassembled the receiver and considered its design. It was ingenious in every way except how the flechette was inserted into the chamber. This required a handle and a spring mechanism to push it into place. Crater found a slab of lunasteel and used a milling machine to produce another receiver, this one with a dual spring design that made it semiautomatic, eliminating the need to pull back the handle. Every time he pulled the trigger, a flechette was launched and another one sprung into its place. All a rifleman had to do was keep pulling the trigger until the magazine was empty. Crater also made the magazine bigger, plus turned out a hundred new flechettes made from an iron alloy he found in the bar stock. Satisfied with his work, Crater could finally allow himself to sleep, and he did, managing a couple of hours.
:::
EIGHTEEN
W
hen Crater woke, he made a breakfast of turnip paste, which tasted so putrid he had to choke it down. He then went out into the maintenance shed, disappointed that Bad Haircut and seven other Umlaps were already there. He intended to escape, one way or the other. Based on their smiles, they were not happy to be there either.
On the scrape, Crater gathered the Umlap miners and assigned Bad Haircut as the scraper driver. Consulting a reader that held their names, Crater assigned the other positions, which brought more unhappy smiles.
“We'll say a prayer now,” Crater said, using English for the term. “Who's the oldest man?”
“What is prayer?” Bad Haircut asked while the other miners looked puzzled.
“It is talking to God,” Crater answered. “Asking the Big Miner to keep us safe and that kind of thing.”
“We don't think there is a Big Miner. We think there are many gods that are everywhere, in the dust, in the turnips, and so forth, and every one of them is angry and mean.”
“Well, I'll say a prayer, anyway.” Crater did so, silently asking that everything would go smoothly and safely on the scrape and that he would then be able to escape. Afterward, he said, “Let's go to work.”
Crater showed Bad Haircut how to build up a good tent with the scraper, then showed the shuttle drivers how to properly scoop and load the dust. He showed the scragline pickers how to use a shovel and a hook pick, then walked up to the solar tower and showed the operator how to find the sun and burn out the heel-3. Soon, he was exhausted from all the showing he'd done.
Bad Haircut drove up and announced a problem with the scraper blade. Sure enough, there was a big rock lodged in between the frame and the blade. Crater was a bit surprised.
He'd looked over the scrape that morning and had not seen a rock that big. Still, Bad Haircut had managed to find one.
“Take it out,” Crater told one of the scragline pickers who had wandered over.
“I don't know how,” he said.
Crater grabbed a pry bar and climbed onto the scraper to dislodge the big rock. Bad Haircut chose that moment to make an announcement. “I have asked our leaders to come visit us, and here they come. It will be good for them to see us work.”
Crater popped the rock loose, then picked it up and heaved it off the scraper. “Well, if you want them to see you work, you'd best actually do some.”
Bad Haircut got back on his scraper as Hit Your Face and King Wise Beyond Belief came walking up. “What idiocy is this, boy?” the king growled at Crater. “Why did you insist we come outside to look at the scrape? It is just dust and rocks. Why should I waste my time out here when I could be thinking?”
“I didn't insist on anything,” Crater answered.
“But we received an urgent message from you,” Hit Your Face said. He stopped talking when he noticed the scraper, driven by Bad Haircut, had turned in his and the king's direction and was coming fast with its blade raised. The pair started to run but they didn't run far. Bad Haircut smashed them with the scraper blade, then ran over them. Three times.
Crater was shocked and sickened. He was also wondering if he was going to be next. “Are you the new king?” he asked Bad Haircut after the scraper came trundling back. He figured it wouldn't hurt to ingratiate himself with the murderer, especially since he doubted he could outrun the scraper.
Bad Haircut grimaced from his driver's perch. “I suppose I am. But what shall I do with you?”
“Let me go, of course,” Crater said. “You don't need me anymore.”
“But you are a witness,” Bad Haircut said.
Crater pointed at the other Umlap men who were staring in their direction. “There are many witnesses.”
“One is my partner. Eats Many Turnips, the shuttle driver.
He and I will kill the others later.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because we can then sell Baikal to General Nero, who has been trying to buy it and the scrape. That's what King Wise Beyond Belief was going to do. The difference is we won't have to share the money with anybody. Perhaps I will also kill Eats Many Turnips. I shall think on it.”
“Those are evil ideas, Bad Haircut.”
“It is but life, Crater Trueblood, although I fear your living is at an end.”
Bad Haircut pulled the lever to raise the scraper blade so as to kill Crater, but as he did, the fuel cells within suddenly exploded in a gush of fire and smoke. Bad Haircut was knocked off his seat and thrown into the dust, whereupon the scraper blade fell on top of him. Crater knelt beside Bad Haircut and discovered he was still breathing, though it didn't look like for long. “What happened?” Crater asked.
The new king laughed, his helmet fogging as the suit's ventilation system failed. “I bet your gillie did it.” Then, after a few gurgles, which may have been chuckles, he died, and the fog in his helmet faded away.
Crater stood up and looked at the other Umlaps who stared back at him, then walked toward the Baikal entry hatch. Crater trudged to the maintenance shed, opened the airlock door, and climbed into the fastbug's seat. The gillie was there waiting for him and crawled up on his shoulder. Crater drove into the dust and kept going, leaving Baikal and the Umlaps behind.
As he neared the dustway, Crater said to the gillie, “Did you make the fuel cells explode?”
Yes. I stopped the stirrers through the scraper puter. Heat buildup.
Only a matter of time
.
“How did you know Bad Haircut's plan?”
Tapped into vidcams, do4us, and puter systems. Could see, hear, and read everything
.
“You're not supposed to do anything unless I tell you to do it.”
Gillie helps you
.
“But only when I ask for help.”
Gillie helps Colonel too. You must catch Cycler on time
.
The gillie's response caught Crater by surprise. “How do you know about that?”
Gillie pays attention to all Moontown systems
.
Crater said, “You are a bad gillie.”
The gillie looked sad, although it could look no way at all.
“Let's catch the convoy,” Crater said, then turned onto the dustway and pressed the hammer down.
:::
NINETEEN
T
he convoy would stop for a rest at Aristillus Crater, and that was where Crater hoped to catch it. If not there, the next place might be at the Bessell way station in the great empty
Mare Serenitatis
âthe Sea of Serenityâ which was mostly Russian territory. Crater couldn't imagine driving that far alone. He was more than a little afraid the giant crowhopper might catch him out there too.
He worried over the fuel cell status, then asked the gillie, “Can we make Aristillus?”
Yes, if the fuel cell retains its charge
.
“Well, I knew that,” Crater replied.
Tired
, the gillie replied.
Crater supposed this was an apology. “I didn't know you were so fragile,” he admonished.
Gillie only flesh and blood
.
“I didn't know you had any blood.”
It's a metaphor. My tissue must be occasionally restored
.
Crater drove on until he felt fatigue seeping into his bones.
His tissue had to be occasionally restored too. He pulled over, put up the solar panel, and leaned back for a nap. “Keep track of my suit pressure,” he told the gillie, which responded with a simple chirp. Crater supposed it really was tired if that's all it could do.
When Crater awoke, he climbed out of the fastbug to stretch his legs. He slung the rifle on his shoulder, chose a direction, and walked for a while, then picked a small crater and sat on its lip and contemplated the view, which was a handsome brown plain with some nearby rolling hills.
In the distance he saw some mountains that he presumed were the Caucuses, named after a mountain range on Earth.
He looked around for the Earth and found it high overhead and thought it would be ironic if he could see the Earthly Caucuses that were in western Russia. But all he could see were the Americas, and they were mostly hidden beneath clouds.
Crater tried to imagine what it would be like to live beneath a white shroud. He tried but it was beyond his imagination.
Then he spotted something glittering in the sun. He walked toward it and found an ancient robotic lander. Long ago, people on Earth had sent robots to the moon, and this was one of them. Fascinated, Crater walked around it. It had crashed, that much was clear, as it was a crumpled mess. Its spherical fuel tanks were split, its dish antenna was bent, and everything else was twisted aluminum and steel. Its solar panels were also shattered, their shards glittering in the sun.
Crater spotted a metal plate lying in the dust. There was a symbol engraved on it that he recognized, the hammer and sickle of ancient Russia when it was part of something called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The letters
CCCP were also on the plate, the Cyrillic letters that stood for USSR.
Crater again looked up at the Earth. All the countries there had changed since the smashed robot had flown, but the physics of spaceflight had not changed at all. It still took a lot of energy to move things from the Earth to the moon.