Teller pushed the convoy past Linné, an impact crater that was nearly a perfect circle three miles in diameter. Its bowl was a quarter-mile deep and its ejecta was milk white. Well ahead of the convoy, Crater and Maria had time to climb its lip, marveling at the perfection of the impact.
Then they sat on the lip and scanned the dustway southward. That was when Crater spotted the glint of something metallic in the sky. With the long shadow approaching, the sun was low and the silvery flash was just for an instant. It could have been anything, but he couldn't shake his fear that it might be a jumpcar containing crowhoppers. Maria patted the rifle Crater had given her and said, “We'll fight them off if they come.” Her smile was proud. “Whoever hired them must really hate my grandfather. I imagine those creatures don't come cheap, but we'll get our heel-3 through.”
“I don't think they're after our heel-3,” Crater said. “I think they're assassins.”
“Really? Who are they trying to assassinate?”
“Maybe me.”
Crater half expected Maria to laugh. Instead, she took on a thoughtful expression. When she didn't say anything, Crater became suspicious. “Do you know the real reason I'm on this convoy?”
“Of course. I'm a Medaris. We keep no secrets in our family.
And I think you may be right. The crowhoppers could very well be trying to kill you.”
“How would they know about me?”
“There are spies everywhere.”
“And who hired them? Do you know that?”
Maria hesitated, then said, “There are a number of candidates. General Nero, for instance. He opposes the monorail, but he's not the only one. There are organizations on Earth who'd like to come up here and take over. The monorail would show that we're in charge of our own destiny. It would only be the first one too. Grandfather plans on eventually linking all the towns together with a network of monorails.”
Crater had sudden insight. “That would put him in control of all transportation on the moon!”
Maria shrugged. “Who better?”
Crater thought it over and reached no conclusion except for one. “If the crowhoppers are after me, why doesn't the Colonel send a jumpcar to carry me to Armstrong City? I know his is broken but he could hire another one.”
“You don't understand, Crater.”
“Enlighten me.”
Maria sighed. “Look, two men assigned by my grandfather to pick up the package have already been murdered in Armstrong City. It's impossible to keep you safe there. We think the convoy's still the best place for you to be, even with the crowhoppers around. At least we don't have to worry about an elk sticker in your back. Anyway, we don't know for sure they're onto you. It may be the crowhoppers were hired to keep Moontown's heel-3 off the market. Who knows? We've decided to just keep you where you are.”
“Who's this âwe' you keep talking about?”
“My family, Crater. We need that package to be delivered.”
Crater was beginning to feel like a pawn in a game he was just beginning to understand was being played. “Do you know what I'm to pick up?” he asked.
Maria bit her lip, then said, “Yes, but I don't think you should know. If you were captured . . .”
“If I was captured, they might torture the truth out of me.
Is that it?”
“Yes. I'm sorry, Crater.”
“But don't they already know?”
“We don't know what they know.”
Crater didn't know what to say or do. He'd never been caught up in such a web of lies.
Maria provided a possibility of what to do. “I think it's time we shared a kiss.”
“We're wearing space helmets,” Crater pointed out.
“Remember what we almost did when we raced? Let's give it a try for real this time.”
This they did, pushing their helmets together and kissing the plaston between their lips. “I really like you, Crater,” she said.
“I really like you too,” he replied, wanting to say much more.
“Come on,” she said, laughing. She pushed off the rim, sliding on her backpack all the way down until she ended up beside her fastbug. Crater did the same, the ejecta powder slippery as wax. He spun around and around and slid into her. She laughed, got up, dusted herself off, and jumped into her fastbug, spinning wheels as she drove back onto the dustway.
Crater watched after Maria, his heart singing, then hurried to catch her. But then he stopped and gave everything some thought. He concluded he was in deep scrag. The Medaris family had decided he should be on the convoy, even though they knew he could be killed. Lies of omission had definitely been told, and Maria was probably in on every one of them.
He'd have to think about that. Or maybe he'd get killed before he could think about much of anything.
It worried him, either way.
:::
TWENTY-SEVEN
T
he dustway went past the crater named Bessel, where there was a small inn and way station. Captain Teller called for a brief halt to allow the solar panels to soak up the last rays of the sun before the long shadow claimed its victory for two weeks. To give Pegasus some exercise, Crater had ridden him all day, the warhorse easily keeping up with Maria in her fastbug. Crater even allowed her to ride and was astonished to see how she took to the saddle. “I'm not a moon rube like you, boy,” she said as Pegasus leapt over the small craters that covered the ground at the approaches to Bessel. “I learned to ride when I was but a child and on horses not so polite as Pegasus, but mean little vicious horses anxious to throw their riders off and stomp them to death.”
Crater wasn't certain if Maria was kidding or not although he suspected she was. In any case, she was a good rider and the Peg seemed to enjoy having her in the saddle. His leaps were almost like flying with Maria urging him on. Crater was pleased to be the link between them.
The convoy crossed into the long shadow when it entered the Dorsa Lister hills, a corrugated terrain of low mounds and shallow valleys. Sensing trouble, Crater put Pegasus back into the motorbarn, and he and Maria went back to their fastbugs.
In the darkness, it was excruciating driving for the scouts as they strained their eyes for cracks or boulders in the road.
Crater also tried to watch the sky. He saw occasional lights but they were unidentifiable. Possibly, they were merely the flash of sunlight off the solar panels of satellites or jumpcars traveling out to the heel-3 towns.
The dustway turned east, preparatory to rounding Plinius and going southerly to Plinius Village, the town that rested at its base. If it could safely be reached, the convoy would only have a short run to Armstrong City and the next phase of Crater's journey.
Captain Teller brought up the rear in the chuckwagon, shepherding the trucks and their precious cargo along. He was uncommonly happy. It had been a rough run, but with Plinius Village only a few hours away, he could almost taste the end of perhaps his last convoy. The glow on the horizon told its story, of the town ahead, of a day of rest, of a chance to talk to the Colonel and give him the good news that very soon his heel-3 and the boy would be delivered on time.
And then, there it was, Plinius Village in their sights.
Maria led the way into the parking area with Crater dropping back to run along the length of the convoy, whooping the good news. The drivers whooped with him and the Umlap women trilled their tongues. “Settle down, people,” Teller called on the common freq. “Let's act like we've done this before.”
The trucks were parked, and the maintenance crews from Plinius Village swarmed over them. Crater stayed behind to talk to the mechanics about repairs that needed to be made.
A few hours later, he entered the Plinius Village tubes, which were not tubes at all but big geodesic domes. Beneath the largest dome, there was a park with real trees and flowers and winding bricked paths. Crater had never smelled air so sweet and cool. He walked along the path with the gillie, still silent and still in the holster on his arm.
“So, this is where you're hiding out.” It was Maria walking into the dome. She inhaled deeply. “Oh my! It smells like Earth in here!”
“Is this what Earth really smells like?” Crater asked.
“In those places where nature has its way, yes.”
Maria linked her arm in his. “I have a surprise. I've decided to go aboard the Cycler with you. We'll pick up the package together.”
Crater didn't like the sound of that. “I think it's too dangerous.”
“I doubt seriously the Cycler will be more dangerous than this convoy. Anyway, I'll be your bodyguard.”
Crater shook his head. “Butâ” which was all he got to say, mainly because Maria wrapped her arms around him and kissed him, this time with no plaston between them.
“We'll make it fun,” she said and walked off, waving at him over her shoulder.
The kiss had been like an electric shock to Crater followed by paralysis. Then, to his delight, the gillie crawled out of its holster to lie on his shoulder. It still looked tired and sick, if it could look any way at all, but it stared without eyes at him and the plants and the flowers and the geodesic dome, then crawled back into its holster and went very still.
:::
TWENTY-EIGHT
T
he convoy plunged on into the darkness, Plinius Village miles behind, trillions of stars crowding the sky, the dustway a pale white track through the gray dust of the Ocean of Tranquility. Crater, far ahead on the scout, trundled down the dustway with Arago Crater passing to his right. On its rim blinked the lights of a communications tower.
When the flechettes hit, Crater at first thought it was rocks being thrown up by the wheels of his fastbug. But then a shot burst through the dust shield, just missing him. He wheeled off the dustway, skirted a small crater, then came around again while unholstering his rifle.
He used his helmet starlight scope to look in the direction he thought the flechettes had come and caught sight of a crowhopper dodging through a boulder field. Crater pressed down on the accelerator and chased after him. The crowhopper ran down a small rille and then reappeared on a spiderwalker.
Crater gave chase, but as he did, he saw the flare of two jumpcars landing north of his position. He feared they were attacking the convoy.
Still, he kept chasing the spiderwalker, hoping for a clear shot. When he saw the contraption run down a crack, he took a calculated risk that it would reappear at the other end. He jumped over another crater and cut off the spiderwalker as it came out of the crack, ramming it. The crowhopper was knocked off and Crater, though he tried to avoid it, ran over the creature.
A terrible accident
, the gillie said.
“Gillie!” Crater cried with joy at the sudden communication from the little thing. “Status report!”
Sick
.
“You sound good, anyway,” Crater said, as he walked over and kicked the leg of the crowhopper. There was no response.
Sick
, the gillie said again.
“Stay in your holster. We've got a bumpy ride ahead of us.”
Crater drove back to the convoy, swerving through boulder and crater fields. When he reached a small rise, he saw the convoy had circled up. The muzzles of the crowhoppers' railguns were winking in the darkness, and Crater knew their flechettes had to be beating up the trucks. Winks of light showed that some of the drivers were fighting back with old-fashioned powder guns and a bright flash where Maria was probably shooting back at the attackers with her railgun rifle.
“Gillie!” Crater said, hoping it would wake up. “Can you tell me how many and where the crowhoppers are?”
The gillie crawled to his shoulder.
Gillie hears six crowhoppers
.
Crater switched on the helmet infrared scanner, saw that it was overwhelmed by the flashes of the rifles, and switched to thermal imaging. He saw the signature of the two jumpcars, their engines still warm. Crater headed there.
He worked his way to a jumpcar, sitting upright on its fins.
He climbed up its ladder, crawled inside, and sat down at its controls. He threw the necessary switches, heard the auxiliary power units rev up, then set it on autopilot to blast off in sixty seconds. He emerged and went to the next jumpcar. A crowhopper spotted him as he climbed aboard and came after him on the ladder, trying to grab his legs. Kicking the thing off, Crater climbed to the cockpit, fired up the engines, and twisted the throttle stick. The jumpcar roared aloft, the crowhopper clinging to the ladder. Somehow it managed to climb inside. Crater saw it and threw the bullet-shaped ship into a steep climb, then looped over into a twist, the crowhopper bouncing off the interior until it was thrown out of the hatch and then disappeared.
Switching to his helmet's infrared, Crater rolled the jumpcar on its back so he could get a view of the fighting and saw the flashes from the crowhopper railguns had stopped.
Another scan showed five of them running toward the other jumpcar. They clambered inside just as the timer Crater had set reached zero. The jumpcar blasted off, streaked straight up, then flipped over and plummeted down to crash and burn.