My face became warm. "Moonball's a game. This is for real."
"I know how real it is...and I know you can screw up on an S & R mission even worse than you can playing moonball. But you didn't." He paused, then went on. "Look, if you think you can handle being a Ranger, then I've got your back. Understand?"
If a stray asteroid had crashed through the dome just then, I couldn't have been more shocked. "I understand, yeah. Thanks...I appreciate it."
He nodded, then a wry grin spread across his face. "Just don't screw up, or it's back to calling you 'Crip' again."
I was about to ask him if it was too much trouble if he'd simply call me Jamey when the treatment room door opened. I looked up, thinking I'd see Dr. Rice or another one of the doctors, and instead saw someone I hadn't expected: Hannah.
I had completely forgotten that she'd taken a Colony Service job at Apollo General. Although she was only a nurse's assistant, she wore doctor's scrubs, complete with a stethoscope around her neck. I was still staring at her when she walked over to us.
"Billy?" she asked. "Dr. Rice sent me out to talk to you. Your uncle is going to be fine. His right femur is broken and he has a couple of cracked ribs on his right side, but there was no damage to internal organs."
Billy took a deep breath, slowly let it out. "Good. Great."
"He'll probably have to walk with crutches or a cane for the next several weeks, and the doctor is barring him from EVA until he fully heals, but he'll be okay after that." Hannah looked at me. "By the way, the doctor also sends her compliments for the nice work you and your team did out there. She's impressed with the way you handled your first rescue mission."
"I didn't do..."
"That's just what I was telling Cri...Jamey," Billy said. "For a provo, he showed that he's got what it takes to be a Ranger."
I bit my tongue, remembering that only a few weeks ago Billy had been busting my chops for the way I played moonball. But Hannah's eyes were shining, and there was no mistaking the fact that she was proud of me...and maybe more.
"Can I see him now?" Billy asked.
"Umm...I think so, but let me check first, okay? Be right back." Hannah turned and went back into the treatment room. Billy waited until she was gone, then he turned to me.
"Want some advice?" he murmured. "You're not going to get anywhere with Nicole."
I blinked, wondering if my feelings for Nicole were so obvious that even the guy who'd been my enemy had noticed them. "But Hannah..." Looking away, he shook his head in disgust. "Man, you gotta be blind if you can't see she really likes you."
"We...we're just friends," I stammered. "I mean, she..."
The door swung open again; Hannah was returning to take Billy to see his Uncle Don. I shut up, but Billy had a sly grin on his face. "Don't pass up a good thing," he murmured, then he stood up to let her lead him away.
Hannah gave me one last glance before they disappeared through the door. There was a smile on her face. I wondered if Billy was right.
Even if I'd wanted to see more of Hannah, though, I didn't have much opportunity to do so. Matters back home soon took a turn for the worse, and they would affect everyone living on the Moon.
Demonstrations against President Shapar had become widespread over the past few weeks, occurring almost every day in one American city or another. Some may have been organized by the Resistance, but I suspect most were spontaneous. Not very many people believed the White House's story about President Wilford having been the victim of an assassination plot, and the administration's refusal to allow an independent investigation reeked of a cover-up. The demonstrations were usually broken up by police or National Guard, and scores of protesters being carried off to jail, yet the crackdown did little to prevent them from happening again.
In the meantime, the ISC embargo was beginning to have an effect. It doesn't take a lot of He3 to fuel a fusion reactor, but its scarcity meant that American power plants usually maintained low stockpiles. As reserves began to run low, utilities suddenly realized that it wouldn't be long before they might not be able to provide electricity to all their customers. When government negotiators failed to reach a settlement with the ISC to end the embargo, President Shapar reacted by withdrawing the United States from the consortium. This decision may have pleased the reactionaries in her party who didn't trust "Eurosocialists," but it didn't do anything to solve the looming energy shortage. And since it was now late October, the prospect of a long winter made colder by rolling blackouts didn't do anything to boost her standing in public opinion polls.
The real crunch came in the last week of October when a White House insider came forward to state that President Wilford had died of natural causes: Dr. Owen Edwards, the late president's personal physician, who'd fled the country a few days after Wilford's death. Speaking at a press conference in Germany, Dr. Edwards confirmed Hannah's assertion that her father had suffered from a preexisting condition that had been kept secret from the public. To prove his claim, he released Wilford's private medical records, including a list of medications he'd prescribed to the late president. Other doctors quickly verified that the records were real and hadn't been falsified.
That was the smoking gun. Overnight, Lina Shapar's last shred of credibility vanished. It could no longer be denied that she'd lied to the American people about President Wilford's death. Her claim to the White House was still constitutionally legitimate, but the actions she'd taken--particularly the arrest of ISC officials and others--were a clear abuse of power. On Capitol Hill, key members of her party realized that they couldn't continue to support the president. Within days of the Edwards interview, forty-seven congressmen from all three parties--including her own--cosigned a formal motion calling for her impeachment.
But Lina Shapar wasn't about to go down without a fight. On Halloween night, she went live on the net to declare martial law.
The excuse she used for such an unprecedented action were the demonstrations and the coming energy crisis. Both posed a danger to civil order, she said, and so it was her responsibility to deploy military forces in order to keep the peace. The fact that the Constitution doesn't give the president the authority to impose martial law meant nothing to her. Within hours, trick-or-treaters were being swept indoors by their parents as federal troops moved to enforce the dusk-to-dawn national curfew ordered by the White House; by morning, the entire country was in lockdown, with arrest warrants being issued for known dissidents. Vice President H. P. O'Hanlon, the former New Hampshire senator who'd become Shapar's hatchet man on the Hill, officially dissolved the Senate, and when Speaker of the House Mildred Ferguson refused to do the same, she was detained by federal marshals and taken away from the Capitol in handcuffs.
On the Moon, we saw the president's speech on a netcast transmitted to Apollo. Until then, the problems back home seemed remote. Not that we didn't care what was happening, but 240,000 miles is a long distance; we weren't likely to have federal agents knocking on our doors any time soon. Yet one thing in the president's address was particularly ominous:
"The gravity of the situation demands that we take active measures to insure that all Americans continue to have sufficient electricity for their homes and businesses. Our country's access to vital lunar resources cannot be interrupted, and we must reclaim that which has been taken from us."
The next day at school, during a break between classes, a bunch of us kids discussed the speech. Mr. Lagler had just left, and Mr. Rupley's lit class was next. He was running late, though, so while some guys went outside to stretch their legs with a quick game of hackey-sack--which is amazing in one-sixth gravity, by the way--a few of us chatted about what we'd heard the night before.
"She's going to invade us." Billy leaned against the teacher's desk, arms folded across his chest. "She'll send in the Marines, and they'll take over."
"She wouldn't dare." Nicole shook her head. "The other ISC members wouldn't let her. They'd consider it an act of war."
"Really?" Billy raised an eyebrow. "Do you think Canada, India or Brazil would declare war on the US just because Shapar sent troops up here?"
"They might..."
"No, they won't," said Gabrielle Frontnauc. Along with Greg Thomas, she was the oldest kid in the room. "I hate to say it, but all my country really cares about is whether it receives its helium-3 shipments. So long as America makes a deal with France and the other ISC countries..."
"That's the whole point." As usual, Logan was sitting next to Nicole; I tried to ignore the fact that their hands were almost touching. "That's what this is all about. Shapar's not going to make a deal with anyone. She wants total control of the helium-3 pipeline, because she knows that if she gets it, the US will have a monopoly over most of the global energy supply."
"You're forgetting the PSU," Greg said. "Moon Dragon refines almost as much He3 as Apollo does."
"Yeah, but it all goes to China, Korea, and Taiwan," Logan replied. "They're not going to share what they have with Europe or South America...and especially not with Japan."
"Why not?" Melissa asked. "I mean, they're on the same side of the world, aren't they?"
Gabrielle turned to stare at my sister. "Short of a major earthquake, there is no way China will ever go to Japan's aid." There was just a touch of condescension in her voice. "The two of them have a long-standing distrust of one another. They've even gone to war a few times. We studied that last week in World History...remember?"
Melissa looked down at the floor. Even though she and I been on the Moon for almost nine weeks, MeeMee still hadn't gotten it through her head that Apollo High was a lot more serious than our school back home. She wasn't keeping up with her homework, was goofing off when she should be studying, and she'd sit in the back of the room and daydream when she needed to be paying attention. Occasionally she got away with it--MeeMee had always been good at conning teachers into believing that she was a better student than she really was--but at times like this her negligence became painfully obvious. I almost felt sorry for her, but not quite. If someone like Gabrielle, whose tongue was as sharp as her mind, wanted to come down on her, that was fine with me; I'd given up trying to change my sister's ways.
"Anyway," Melissa said, trying to save face, "I don't think they're going to attack us. Violence never solves anything."
The others regarded her with disbelief, and I wanted to crawl beneath my desk in embarrassment. Hannah was sitting across from me; she gave me a sympathetic smile and I refrained from rolling my eyes. Hannah knew that my sister could be a ditz at times.
"Actually, violence solves a lot of things," Logan said. "It's just messy, that's all."
Everyone laughed at this except Melissa. "I happen to be a pacifist," she replied, an arch tone in her voice.
"Oh, really?" Logan grinned at her. "You know what a cannibal calls a pacifist? Lunch."
That sparked even more laughter. My sister's face went red. "Oh, ha-ha-ha..."
"If you want to claim you're a pacifist," Logan went on, a little more seriously now, "that's your right. But if you were facing a hungry cannibal, I guarantee you'd forget all about being a pacifist and fight tooth and nail to stay alive."
Melissa scowled but didn't come back with anything. Maybe she couldn't. In any case, I decided to take the heat off her. "What do you think?" I asked Hannah. "You know Lina Shapar. What do you think she's going to do?"
Hannah winced, and I immediately regretted the question. She didn't like to discuss the fact that her late father had been president; all she wanted to do, really, was fit in with the other kids. She didn't duck the question, though. "Logan's right. She's a cannibal...I mean, totally ruthless. All she wants is power." She gave Melissa a sympathetic nod. "But you're right, too. There's other ways of staying out of the stew pot than killing the guy who's trying to eat you. You just have to figure out how."
The classroom door opened just then. We looked around, expecting to see Mr. Rupley, but instead Mr. Speci came in, followed by the guys who'd gone out to play. The principal stepped behind the desk and waited until everyone had returned to their seats before he spoke.
"I have an announcement to make," he began. "How many of you saw President Shapar's speech last night?" Almost everyone in the room raised their hands. "Good. Then you know what she said, especially the part about lunar resources. That means us...and it also means that we've got to be prepared for trouble if it comes our way."
He paused, letting his words sink in, then went on. "Several of you belong to the Rangers, even if you're still in training--" his gaze traveled to Logan and me "--while some have Colony Service jobs that are in vital areas of the community, like the hospital." He nodded to Hannah, who said nothing. "In any case, no matter what you do, each and every one of you have essential roles that are going to be important over the next...well, however long it is before this situation is resolved. And as important as your education is, right now you need to be spending more time at your tasks than you do here in the classroom."
Everyone glanced at one another, not quite believing what we were hearing. If Mr. Speci noticed, though, he paid no attention. "I've spent the morning discussing this with the school board and the city manager," he went on, "and we've decided that classes at both Apollo High and Apollo Elementary will be suspended until further notice."
I looked over at Hannah; she was just as surprised as I was. Melissa made a little squeal of delight that she quickly stifled when she realized that no one was sharing her joy. Everyone else was too stunned by what we'd just heard.
"So...well, I guess that's about it." Mr. Speci said. "Rangers, please report immediately to Search and Rescue to begin special training. Everyone else, you're to go to your jobs where you'll receive new assignments. We'll let you know when classes will be resumed."
He seemed to be at a loss for what to do next, so he simply turned and walked out of the room. For a second or two, no one said anything. Melissa jumped up from her seat and practically danced out the door, but the rest of us just stood up and shuffled away. School was out, but there was little reason to celebrate.
Everything had just changed, and not for the better.
Two hours later, the Rangers were assembled in Airlock 7, waiting for the outer door to open. For the first time since I'd joined them, all thirty-six members of Lunar Search and Rescue were in the same place at the same time, from Third Class provos like Logan and me all the way to the First Class pros. Mr. Garcia had called a full muster, but he hadn't yet told us why, only that we were expected to be in our suits and ready to moonwalk at 1200 sharp.
The airlock doors rolled open, and we tramped up the ramp into the lunar late-afternoon. Another long night was coming, and Earth was a silver crescent, shedding little light upon the shadows that had begun to stretch across the grey terrain. By then, I'd gone EVA plenty of times; it no longer felt strange to wear a moonsuit, and Arthur had become a friendly acquaintance, a kindly English gentleman ready to help me when necessary. A few of the First Class guys still treated me like I was a kid, but most had come to accept me as a fellow Ranger, albeit inexperienced. So I was with my crew, ready to take whatever was thrown at me.
We bounced and bunny-hopped out to the vacant field where Logan and I been doing most of our training over the past several weeks. A rover pulling a two-wheeled equipment cart was parked there. About twenty yards away, a row of discarded radiator panels had been erected on vertical stands. Someone had cut sheets of red insulation film into concentric circles and used epoxy goop to attach them to the panels; they looked like targets, and as it turned out, that's exactly what they were.
Once everyone was gathered in a semi-circle, Mr. Garcia stepped in front of us. "Gentlemen, the day has come that I hoped never would," he began. "Until now, our primary function has been to provide emergency services for Apollo. That's still our job, but we now have a new function...serving as the colony's first and last line of defense. Yet our motto remains the same. Let's hear it."
"Failure is not an option," several people said. It came out as a ragged and half-hearted chorus that I barely heard through my communications carrier.
"Sorry, that's not good enough," the Chief Ranger said. "Let me hear it again."
"Failure is not an option!" This time I said it too, along with everyone else.
"I'm still not hearing you!"
"FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION!" It became a determined, full-throated yell that made my ears ache.
"Outstanding...and never forget it." Mr. Garcia turned to a Ranger standing at the right end of the semicircle. "Mikel, will you help me, please?" Mikel Borakov, a First Class who'd been one of my instructors, skipped over to him. "In order to accomplish this, we will need to show most of you how to do something that hasn't been included in regular Search and Rescue training...how to handle lunar-rated firearms. Mikel has had this sort of training, and so have I and a couple of others, but the majority of you haven't. In fact, I don't believe most of you have ever fired a gun in your lives."
He was right. My only previous experience with guns was playing combat games on my pad, and I was sure that didn't count. "Most people here don't know this," Mr. Garcia continued, "but Apollo has a small arsenal, provided to us by the United States in case our friends in the Pacific Socialist Union should ever decide to mount an attack upon us from Moon Dragon." He paused, perhaps wondering if he should mention the ironic fact that we'd be using those same weapons to defend ourselves against our benefactors, then went on. "Mikel, would you show them our guns, please?"
Mikel went over to the trailer and opened its side panel. Stacked inside were dozens of long plastic containers, each with a red caution triangle stamped on its side. "There are thirty-five HK L-11 carbines in this trailer," the Chief Ranger continued, "along with three hundred rounds of ammunition. Fifteen more carbines are in storage, along with another nine thousand, seven hundred rounds of ammo. This, gentlemen and ladies, constitutes the entirety of our small-arms cache."
Through my headset, I heard low whistles and disgusted murmurs. Someone cursed, and someone else told him to shut up. "Obviously, we're a bit short of firearms," Mr. Garcia said, and a few bitter laughs came in response. "However, we also have five shoulder-mounted grenade launchers and two hundred and fifty grenades, sixty short-range mortar rockets...and something else. Turn around and look behind you."
We turned to see that something had moved up behind us while we weren't looking, an enormous vehicle which I first thought was a regolith hauler from the mines. As it came closer, though, I saw that it moved upon caterpillar treads instead of wheels, and upon its flat bed was a long gun mounted on a swivel turret. A driver sat within a transparent dome up front, and laser targeting apparatus stood atop a post beside the canopy.
"This is a..." Mr. Garcia began, and then suddenly yelled, "Incoming!"
I turned around so fast that I almost lost my balance. Even as I struggled to keep from falling over, though, I spotted what he'd seen. Beyond Apollo, rising into the black sky above the Ptolemaeus's western ridge, was a small object that reflected the sunlight and left a reddish-orange trail behind it.
A missile, launched from the other side of the nearby mountains. It reached its apogee, then it turned downward and began to hurtle straight toward Apollo.
For a second or two, no one moved. I think the other Rangers were just as surprised as I was, stunned motionless by the notion that an attack would come so soon from such an unexpected direction.
Then everyone snapped out of it. We began to run in all directions at once, bouncing or bunny-hopping away in a mad scramble to find cover in the open field. A couple of guys leaped behind the trailer, while a few others turned to flee back to the crater. Through my headset, I heard a cacophony of voices:
"Down, down...!"
"Hit the dirt!"
"Where the hell did that...?"
"Rangers! Stand down!" The Chief's voice broke through the panic. "Blitzgewehr...fire!"
I happened to be looking at the tractor when he yelled, so I saw what happened next. The giant gun swiveled about on its turret, moving so fast that it almost seemed to blur. Then a narrow beam the color of a lightning bolt lanced from its barrel. The gun made no sound as it fired, and neither did the missile when it exploded a half-second later.
For a few moments, no one said anything. We all watched as the twisted, blackened pieces of metal that had once been the missile tumbled to the ground, disappearing from sight beyond the crater. I think the other Rangers had caught on to what had just happened; if they didn't, though, Mr. Garcia provided an explanation.
"Gentlemen, ladies...that was a demonstration," he said. "The missile was one of ours. It didn't have a warhead, and it was launched from a site outside Ptolemaeus. Even if my little toy hadn't brought it down, it would have landed about a half-mile east of Apollo. You would have seen it fly overhead just before it crashed."
Mr. Garcia turned toward the gun. "Now that you've been introduced...meet the Blitzgewehr PBW-1, a mobile artillery piece provided to us by our German partners. Its gun fires a neutral-charge particle beam at nearly the speed of light toward whatever its operator targets with his laser sight. Once its fire-control computer is activated, it can automatically track, lock onto, and fire upon several missiles at once. It can take out missiles launched at us from either the ground or the sky, and even defend us from low-orbit spacecraft. Any questions?"
"Sir...?" This from Mahmoud Chawla, a Ranger First Class who'd given me a couple of tips about getting into my suit with a minimum of hassle. "I haven't seen this before, and I don't think anyone else has either. Are we missing something, or has this been kept secret until now?"
"Yes, Mahmoud, it has. The Blitzgewehr was transported here in sections several months ago and secretly assembled in a closed area of the garage. Very few people knew of its existence because we didn't want the PCU to think that we might use it to attack Moon Dragon...although we have little doubt that they have a PBW of their own. But the powers that be don't want to do anything that might provoke the Chinese, so nothing has been said about it."
"Is this the only one?" Nicole asked.
"I hate to say it, Ms. Doyle, but, yes, it is. The Germans have a second Blitzgewehr--incidentally, the name means 'lightning gun,' in case you're interested--on the drawing board, but they haven't yet had a chance to build it, let alone send it here. So we're going to have to make do with just this one. I think that'll be sufficient. Any other questions?"
Mr. Garcia waited a moment. When no one spoke, he went on. "All right, you've seen that the gun works fine. I wish I could say the same for the rest of you. Your response was pathetic. No, worse than pathetic...it was embarrassing. You were slow, and a couple of you--" he turned toward the two men who'd tried to take cover behind the trailer "--were borderline cowards. I realize that most of you have no combat training, but that's not an excuse. If Apollo is attacked, our friends and family will be counting on us to defend them...and since there's only three dozen of us, that means no one can run and hide when trouble comes."
He paused, almost as if daring someone to disagree with him. No one did. Everyone knew what we'd done--or rather, what we hadn't done--during the phony missile attack. I was ashamed of myself, and I'm sure the others were, too.
"That's going to change," Mr. Garcia continued. "From now on, being a Ranger is your first priority...you've been relieved of all other responsibilities. At 0800 each and every morning, we will meet here for drill, which will include special training in small arms and military tactics." He turned toward me. "Mr. Barlowe? You and Mr. Marguiles will continue your Third Class training, with Ms. Doyle and Mr. Tate as your instructors. In two weeks, I want both of you ready to take your walkabouts. No excuses...understand?"
"Yes...yes, sir," I stuttered, and when Logan said that the same thing, I could tell that he was just as stunned as I was. It usually took months of training before a Ranger Third Class was ready for walkabout; Billy had to do it twice before he passed, and he'd been in Lunar Search and Rescue for over a year. It seemed impossible that Logan and I could be ready go solo by the beginning of the next lunar day. Yet the Chief wasn't giving us a choice. We would be ready; failure was not an option.
"Very good." Mr. Garcia pointed toward the trailer. "All right, ladies and gentlemen...gather round Mikel here, and he'll show you how to use a gun."
And that was the beginning of my career as a citizen soldier.
Officially, the Rangers were still a peacetime outfit; Lunar Search and Rescue was supposed to be doing just that, nothing more. Everyone knew better, though. We'd been drafted to fight a war that none of us wanted but which was being thrust upon us anyway: thirty-six men and women, charged with protecting Apollo from a foe which, only a few weeks ago, we would have considered to be our friend. If I still had any illusions that I was never going to have to go into combat, they evaporated as soon as I was given a gun.
At first glance, the HK-11 lunar carbine looked like an ordinary military assault weapon, save that it had only a rudimentary butt. The resemblance pretty much ended there. In fact, it operated on different principles entirely. A round ammo drum that jutted out from below its stock contained thirty rounds of what were called bullets, but which were actually 9mm hollow-point projectiles that were fired by a miniature electromagnetic catapult contained within the barrel. Sort of like having a little magcat of my own. This meant that the gun had virtually no recoil: no gunpowder, no kick. The butt was there only to brace and balance the weapon.
Although a sight was mounted above the barrel, it wasn't meant to be used visually. No one wearing a moonsuit would be able raise the gun high enough to gaze through a normal sight, let alone get a good fix on the target, because his helmet faceplate would get in the way. So the gun used a virtual gunsight instead. Once the carbine was interfaced with my suit computer, all I had to do was raise it to my chest and point it at the desired target, and a translucent red crosshairs would appear within my faceplate. When I moved the gun, the crosshairs would move as well, until I had a dead bead on whatever it was I wanted to shoot. I could select laser, ultraviolet, or infrared for the targeting medium.
Once I was ready to fire, I'd curl my index finger around the trigger and the gun would kick out a bullet. And if I kept pressure upon the trigger for longer than two seconds, the carbine would shift to full-auto mode and keep firing at a rate of thirty rounds per minute, until I either relaxed my finger or ran out of ammo.
In theory, the bullets could penetrate a moonsuit's polymer shell, although in actual practice that meant getting a direct hit at ten feet or less. But helmet faceplates were vulnerable, as were the elastic joints at a suit's shoulders, elbows, wrists, waist, hips, knees, and ankles. We were told to aim for those joints; a head or stomach shot would be instantly fatal, while an arm or leg shot would cripple or immobilize an attacker.
Another target was a suit's life support pack. A direct hit at close range could penetrate the oxygen-nitrogen tanks and cause the suit to lose pressure. However, that would mean shooting someone in the back, and I don't think any of us were bloodthirsty enough to do that. As Mr. Garcia said, few of the Rangers had military experience, so it was hard for most of us to even consider killing another human being. Lunar Search and Rescue was supposed to save lives, not end them. It was particularly difficult for Americans like myself to think that we may have to soon go up against US Marines; their space infantry would probably be the ones sent to the Moon, and I didn't like the idea of shooting someone from my own country.
But Apollo had a couple of things in its favor. Earth lies at the bottom of a deep gravity well, while the Moon is the bottom of a shallow one. This means that any ship that leaves Earth has to climb up an imaginary well before it reaches that place where gravity is no longer an issue. Then it has to fire its engines to order to achieve lunar trajectory, and again to brake for lunar orbital insertion or landing. So a sneak attack was all but impossible; we'd be able to see an assault force coming long before it arrived. The telescopes normally used for astronomical research were aimed at Earth instead, and people were assigned to maintaining a constant vigil.
The other advantage we had was that Ammonius was a natural fortress. Its outer crater wall and dome was virtually impregnable to everything except a missile attack, which the Blitzgewehr was supposed to repel, and once its windows were shuttered and airlocks sealed, a strike force would have a very hard time gaining control of the city.
So the inhabitants could hole up in the crater almost indefinitely; it was the job of the Rangers to make sure that the Marines couldn't get through the airlocks. The fact that there were only thirty-six of us, though, didn't make that task any easier. We could only guess how large an attack force would be, although no one doubted that there would be less than three dozen Marines. No one had ever seriously believed that the Pacific Socialist Union would attack Apollo, and the idea that an ISC country would turn on us was ludicrous. So defense had never been a major priority until now.
Every morning, the Rangers suited up and went outside for combat training. It took several days for most of us to learn how to handle our weapons well enough to even be able to hit the targets set up on our make-shift rifle range. We didn't have a lot of reserve ammunition, though, so our practice sessions were kept short. The rest of the time, we were taught battlefield tactics: how to work as squads, how to mount an assault, how to retreat, how to keep from hitting each other in a firefight. All of which is hard enough to learn in any situation, but even more difficult when you're wearing a moonsuit.
Military training would end around noon, and then we'd return to the crater to replenish our life support packs and tend to the scrapes, cuts, and bruises we'd suffered the past few hours. A quick bite to eat, then it was back in the suits and out the airlock again. Most of the Rangers had been tasked to building temporary fortifications around Apollo--regolith berms, big mounds of moondust plowed into position around the crater and its environs--but Logan and I had our own job: learning everything we needed to know in order to become Second Class as soon as possible.
Here's just a few things I had to master. Celestial navigation, using visible stars and the current positions of Earth and the Sun to figure out where I was. Emergency medical procedures, both in and out of a suit. Repair techniques for all types of pressure suits. How to drive different kinds of rovers in all sorts of lunar terrain. Communication protocols. The proper use of emergency equipment ranging from portable solar cell arrays to life-support tents. How to recharge a life support pack's air tanks while in the field, and how to slow one's breathing in order to preserve air if extra tanks weren't available. What to do if your suit lost power. How to avoid hypothermia, hyperthermia, dehydration, radiation overexposure, blindness, and panic.
In short, how to stay alive on the Moon, as well as preventing someone else from dying. "Failure Is Not An Option" was the Ranger motto, but along with it was an unwritten corollary: the other guy's life is more important than your own. Given a choice between saving your skin and saving someone else's...well, there was no choice. If you had to die gasping for air so that another person could continue breathing for one minute longer, then that's what you'd have to do. If you don't like it, then don't become a Ranger.
I was beginning to wonder if I should have stuck to pushing a broom.
Billy was my instructor, just as Nicole was teaching Logan. The four of us went out together, but then we'd go our separate ways, each pair keeping within sight of the other but otherwise not having much contact. By then, I'd given up on Nicole; we were still friends, but it was obvious that she and Logan were steady. Probably just as well. I didn't have time for a girl, not with the pressure I was under to be ready for my walkabout in just a couple of weeks.
Logan and I had never had that little chat we'd promised each other. Perhaps we should have. Our rivalry over Nicole was over, but there was still some lingering resentment. We still got along well enough to work together, but we'd let things fester for too long. We'd pretty much stopped talking to one another, and it could no longer be said that we were best friends.
It may have been just as well that things worked out that way. After awhile, I noticed that Nicole wasn't pushing Logan very hard. When he screwed up during training, she often let him get away with it, showing him a shortcut that would allow him to get through that particular exercise with a minimum of effort. They didn't seem to be very serious about training; they would return to the airlock while Billy and I were still at work. It was clear that Nicole didn't want to knuckle down on her new boyfriend, and while she might be turning in satisfactory progress reports, I wondered how much he was actually learning.
On the other hand, Billy was relentless. No breaks or easy-way-outs, and any second chances he cared to give me were not to be wasted. If I did well, he'd say, "Not bad...let's see you do that again." But if I made a mistake, he'd snarl, "Stop messing around! Get it right or I'm bagging you!" It was an insulting and demeaning way to get through training, but I knew that if I wanted to keep Billy's respect, I'd have to earn it.
The long lunar night stretched on, and I seldom had a chance to do anything except train, eat, and sleep. But when the light of the rising sun touched the mountain peaks on the east side of Ptolemaeus, I received a brief message from Mr. Garcia: SOLO EVA EXCURSION SCHEDULED FOR 11.16.97. REPORT TO AIRLOCK 7 AT 0800 FOR SUIT-UP AND CHECK-OUT.
In other words, I'd completed my Third Class training. Tomorrow morning, I would take my walkabout.
That was a total surprise. Only yesterday, Billy had busted my chops over my failure at sealing a crack in a suit's lithium hydroxide canister. If you'd heard the way he scolded me, you would've thought that I was the most useless individual to ever set foot on the Moon. Figuring that there must have been a mistake, I went down to the ready-room, expecting another twelve hours of fun and games with Billy.
But he wasn't there. Logan was climbing into his moonsuit while Nicole patiently waited for him. He scowled at me when I walked in, but it was Nicole who spoke first. "Hey, Jamey, congratulations!" she said, raising the faceplate so that she could talk to me. "I hear you're going walkabout tomorrow."
"Yeah, sure, I guess so." I shook my head in confusion. "I got a memo from the Chief telling me that's what I'm supposed to do, but..."
"No one told you that you're through training, right?" She grinned. "No one ever does. That's the way we do it in the Rangers. Everyone passes, because..."
"'Failure is not a option.' Right." I looked over at Logan. "Hear that? I'm going walkabout tomorrow."
"Yeah...good for you." He didn't look at me, but instead concentrated on adjusting his wrist controls. "Have fun."
"When are you...?" I began, then stopped myself. If he'd also received notification from Mr. Garcia that he was going walkabout, he would have told me. But he wasn't ready for that yet, and no one was going to send him out on his own until they were confident in his chances of success.
"Soon enough," Logan murmured. "Good luck."
"Thanks." I didn't know quite what to say. "I'm sure you'll..."
"What are you doing here?" Billy demanded.
I turned around to see him leaning against the ready-room door, holding a half-eaten sandwich he'd brought with him from the commissary. "Didn't you get the Chief's memo?" he asked, regarding me as if I was an unwelcome visitor. "You're doing your walkabout tomorrow. Get out of here."
"Huh?" I blinked, not quite understanding what he'd said. "You mean...?"
"There's nothing more that I can show you." A wry smile. "Well, at least not for now. You're still a provo so far as I'm concerned. But--" an indifferent shrug "--if the Chief says you're ready, who am I to argue? Go home and get some rest. You'll need it."
There didn't seem to be anything else for me to say or do. I would have liked to talk to Logan, but not while Nicole and Billy were around. Besides, he didn't seem to be inclined to speak with me just then.
I'd jumped ahead of him. And he wasn't happy with me about that.
I left the airlock and headed back upstairs. For the first time in months, I was free to do whatever I wanted. No school, no Ranger training; I had a day all to myself. But by the time I got off the elevator, I was already bored.
I hadn't seen much of Melissa in the last couple of weeks, so I decided to head over to Ag Dome 2 and pay her a visit. Over dinner the other night, she'd told me about an experimental crop that was being cultivated in the aeroponics farm: chettuce, a hybrid form of lettuce that tasted a little like cheddar cheese. Meatless hamburgers and tacos were a favorite among loonies, but until now they'd had to do without cheese. There were no cows on the Moon to provide fresh milk, and who puts goat cheese on a taco? Chettuce was a bioengineered solution to this culinary problem.
Perhaps Melissa could let me try some; I was curious to see if it was as disgusting as it sounded. To kill time, I decided to hike across the crater floor instead of taking a bicycle or cutting through the sublevels to the tunnels leading to the ag domes. It had been quite a while since I'd walked through the solarium; although it was late autumn back on Earth, in Apollo it was always summer. Warm sunlight streamed in through the circular window at the top of the dome. Wrens and robins chirped amid the branches of stunted shade trees, while bees and hummingbirds flitted around the cultivated flowerbeds. The solarium was a comfortable oasis, a miniature Earth surrounded by the harsh and airless desolation outside.
There weren't many people in the dome this time of day, so I had the paths all to myself. Or so I thought. I was about halfway across the solarium when someone called out to me. "Hi, Jamey! What are you doing here?"
I looked around, and there was Eddie Hernandez, squatting on his hands and knees beside a row of rose bushes. Sitting on a nearby bench was Nina, a school pad resting in her lap. Eddie raised his hand to wave to me. I waved back, then decided to walk over and say hello. It had been nearly six weeks since I'd seen either him or his sister. Indeed, I'd nearly forgotten all about them.
"Hi, Eddie," I said. "Long time, no see. Hello, Nina."
"Yeah...long time, no see." Eddie wore grubby work overalls and a pair of gardening gloves, and he looked as happy as a kid making mudpies. Nina said nothing; she gave me the protective look she always had when she was with her brother, but I managed to get a smile out of her when I said her name. "How come you're here?" Eddie asked. "Aren't you supposed to be in school?"
"No school for me today...same as for you." I stopped to admire his roses. "I've been in Ranger training lately. I'm...well, I'm taking a day off, so..."
"You're a Ranger now?" Eddie's eyes widened. "Gosh, that's great, Jamey! You're a Ranger!"
I couldn't help but laugh. Eddie's admiration was unpretentious, almost bordering on hero worship. Even Nina seemed to be impressed, and I didn't think anything could get through that thick little shell of hers.
"Yeah, it's pretty good, I guess." I shrugged and changed the subject. "Those roses look really nice. Did you grow them yourself?"
"Uh-huh! They're mine! I planted them here...and here...and here." He pointed to the neat arrangement he'd made alongside the path, proud of his accomplishment, then his smile faded into a worried frown. "But they don't want me to do that anymore," he added. "They want to send me over to the ag domes to do aero...aero..."
"Aeroponics?"
He nodded. "Yeah...aeroponics. But I don't know how to do that, Jamey."
"Colony Service is transferring him to Ag Dome 2," Nina said quietly. "They say they're short-handed over there because they've lost one of the farmers to the Rangers. And since Eddie has been doing so well with this..."
I knew which Ranger she was talking about: Nick Gleason, a Ranger Second Class whose main job was working as an aeroponics engineer. And I knew why Eddie might be nervous. Aeroponics involved growing crops in tanks without soil, with water and nutrients dispensed to them as a fine mist. It was a more delicate procedure than normal gardening; the soil in which Eddie had grown his roses was bioengineered from processed and fertilized regolith, which was suitable for grass, flowers, and small trees, but not food staples.
"I understand," I said. "They must think highly of you, Eddie, if they want you to do that instead." A smile flickered across his face, but he still seemed dubious. A new thought occurred to me. "Hey, look...I'm on my way over there now to see Melissa. She works there. I'll ask her if she can put you on her team. That way, you'll have someone you know who can teach you how it's done."
Eddie's face brightened again. "Melissa, your sister? Gosh, that would be great! I like your sister!" Nina seemed a bit reluctant--she remembered how rude MeeMee had been to her brother when they'd first met--but she nodded anyway.
"No problem," I said. "I'll..."
My wristband beeped just then, signaling an incoming call. "Excuse me," I said, then turned away from the Hernandez kids and raised my hand to my face. "Jamey Barlowe here."
"It's Hannah." Her voice came from the wristband's tiny speaker. "I just heard from Nicole that you're going on walkabout. Is that true?"
Nicole had told Hannah about that? That was a surprise, although it shouldn't have been; the two of them had become friends. "Yeah, it's true. Happens tomorrow."
"Oh...oh, wow." She sounded stunned. "Are you...I mean, are you okay with that? Do you think you're ready?"
"I guess so." I shrugged, forgetting that she couldn't see me. "I'll find out soon enough."
A long pause. For a second, I thought she'd cut the link. Then her voice returned. "I want to see you. Where are you right now?"
"In the solarium, talking to Eddie and Nina. Are you at the hospital?"
"Yeah, but...look, stay there, okay? I'll locate you in the dome." She could use our wristbands to pinpoint my location in Apollo. "Just stay where you are. I'm coming to you."
"Yeah...okay, sure. See you then."
Hannah clicked off. I had a hunch that she wanted to talk to me in private, so I said goodbye to Eddie and Nina, then strolled over to another bench about forty feet away and sat down to wait for her.
About fifteen minutes later, Hannah showed up on a bicycle. She hadn't changed out of her scrubs, but instead had pulled a cardigan sweater over them and left her stethoscope behind. She seemed to be struggling with her emotions when she saw me, her expression flickering between warmth and concern. She climbed off the bike and parked it beside the bench; before I could say anything, though, she spoke first.
"Look," Hannah said as she sat down next to me on the bench, "let me get this out before..." She stopped, took a deep breath. "What you're doing...what you're about to do...has me worried. I know it's something you have to do, but..."
"It's dangerous, sure." I shook my head. "The Chief wouldn't let me go unless he thought I was ready."
"I don't care what he thinks." She looked me straight in the eye. "Do you think you're ready?"
"Yeah, I do," I said, but perhaps I hesitated just a bit before I said that, because her face paled a bit. "No, really," I hastily added. "I can handle myself out there. I promise."
Hannah didn't respond, but her eyes never left mine. In that instant, I realized something that I suppose I'd known all along, but which I hadn't admitted to myself: Hannah really cared for me. All this time, while I had been chasing after Nicole, Hannah had been there, quietly waiting for me to give her as much attention as I'd been giving to another girl.
And with that realization, there came another: I liked her, too.
"Hannah..." My throat was dry, and it was hard to speak. "Look, maybe I should've...I dunno, spent more time with you, but..."
"Yeah, maybe you should have." An uncertain smile flickered on her lips. "When you get back, you can make up for that." She hesitated. "Is a date too much to ask for?"
This was the first time a girl had ever said that she wanted to go out with me. In fact, I didn't even think it usually happened that way. But I didn't care whose idea it was. "Sure. When I get back, we'll...I dunno, but I'll come up with something."
"Do that. It'll give you something to think about while you're..." Her voice trailed off, and the smile was again replaced by the worried frown. "Before you go, I want to give you something."
Unbuttoning the top of her sweater, she reached the front of her scrubs to produce a small medallion that hung around her neck upon a silver chain. I'd seen it before, floating around her neck when we'd been aboard the LTV that had brought us here. Ducking her head, she pulled the chain from around her neck, then she took my hand in hers and gently dropped the medallion into my palm.
"I want you to wear this when you go out tomorrow," she said. "For good luck."
The medallion was about the size of a quarter and was made of sterling silver. Now that it was in my hand, I could see it more clearly. Embossed upon it was a bearded man who had a walking stick in his hands and an infant riding upon his back. Around its rim was an inscription: St. Christopher Protect Us.
"What is this?" I asked.
"It's a medal of St. Christopher's." Hannah leaned closer to me, her hair lightly brushing my shoulder as she traced the medallion's bas-relief image with her finger. "St. Christopher is the patron saint of travelers. Wearing this is...well, it can't hurt." The smile returned, a bit mystical this time. "Catholics have many patron saints, and we put a lot of faith in them."
This was not a good time to tell her that I'd never been to church, so I didn't. But still..."I don't know if I can take this. It looks like it's very valuable to you."
"It is." Again, her eyes met mine. "My mother gave this to me just before I was taken from the White House. She said I'd need it to get me safely to where I was going. It did...so now I'm passing it along to you, to get you back to me."
What could I say to that?
Nothing. I didn't even try. I just kissed her instead, and as I did, I felt her hand close my palm around the medallion and hold it tight so that I'd never let it go.
A hard thump as the Pegasus touched down, then Gordie's voice came through my headset: "Okay, Jamey, we're here. Get moving."
"Where am I?" I asked. I'd made the ride in a windowless cargo module, hanging onto a ceiling strap.
A regretful sigh. "Sorry, kiddo, you know the rules. Can't tell you anything."
All I knew was that the Pegasus had lifted off from Apollo's south landing field twenty-three minutes earlier. The deck had tilted beneath my feet a couple of times, an indication that Gordie had made at least two starboard turns. I didn't know if he'd done that out of necessity, though, or whether he'd simply flown in circles to throw off my sense of direction. I couldn't be sure of anything until I got out.
Letting go of the strap, I walked over to the hatch and cranked it open, then kneeled down to release the loading ramp. The regolith kicked up by the transport's VTOLs was still settling when I hopped down from the Pegasus. I didn't look around, but instead dragged the ramp into place before climbing back into the module to push aside the floor chocks securing the mule.
"Follow me," I said, and the robotic equipment carrier responded by doing just that, silently rolling along on its four wire wheels. I led the mule down the ramp and away from the Pegasus. When we were a safe distance from the transport, I turned around. "Clear."
"Affirmative." I could see Gordie seated in the cockpit, gazing back at me. "You'll get your mission objective as soon as I'm gone, and I'll come to pick you up when you've completed it. Until then...well, you know what to do."
"Uh-huh." I tried not to sound nervous, but I probably did anyway. "I'll see you then."
"And not before, I hope." He raised his left hand to give me a thumbs-up. "Good luck, buddy."
"Thanks, I..."
"Oh, yeah...and say hello to the Old Ranger when you get there."
I had no idea what he meant by that. Was the Chief going to be waiting for me? No one ever called Mr. Garcia the Old Ranger, though, so that didn't sound right. "What do you...?"
A soft click told me that he'd switched off. I raised my hand to wave goodbye as the Pegasus lifted off again, ascending upon a cloud of fine grey dust until it reached 1,000 feet, where it made a port turn and headed back the way it had come...or at least so I presumed. Again, it was possible that Gordie was deliberately altering his course in order to hide the direction in which we'd travelled from Apollo.
I watched the Pegasus until it disappeared beyond a distant mountain range to my left, then I took a deep breath and forced myself to calm down. I was on my own. Until I reached my destination, no one would come to get me. Unless I ran into serious trouble, of course, or simply chickened out, in which case I could radio for help and a Pegasus would be sent to bring me home. If that happened, though, it would mean that I would have failed...and you know the Rangers motto. The only way I'd ever get a second chance would be after going through Third Class training again, and even then I'd have to beg Mr. Garcia for another walkabout.
I was alone on the Moon. Well, not quite. "Hey, Arthur," I said, "are you there?"
"Of course, Jamey. How may I help you?"
I didn't respond at once. Instead, I took a minute to look around. It appeared that Gordie had dropped me within a crater so large that I couldn't see its opposite side. Turning around, I saw steep, high walls looming above me; they curved away to both my left and right until they disappeared beyond the horizon. I was standing on top of a small hillock with two little impact craters, one to my left and one to my right. The ground gently sloped down toward a broad basin strewn with rocks and boulders. On the Moon, it's often difficult to accurately judge size and distance with the naked eye, so I had little idea how big the crater was or how far it was to the other side.
I was about to say something to Arthur when I heard a sharp, repetitive beep. An instant later, a tiny yellow arrowhead appeared upon my faceplate's heads-up display. Blinking in time with the beeps, it lay close to the horizon, pointing downward toward something on the other side of the crater.
"That is your mission objective, Jamey," Arthur said. "It is an automatic beacon which you must reach in order to successfully complete this exercise."
"How far away is it?" I asked.
"31.06 miles."
I hissed between my teeth. Damn, that was a long walk! Of course, I could dump everything off the mule and try to ride the whole way, but that would be dumb. The mule carried four air tanks to replenish the six-hour supply...make that five hours and nineteen minutes...I presently had in my suit, along with the water, food and tent I'd also need. So my legs were in for a workout.
"Where am I?" I asked.
"I can't tell you that," Arthur said, and I could have sworn there was an apologetic tone to his voice. "You'll have to determine your approximate location for yourself before I can show you a map."
Oh, hell. Someone must have reprogrammed Arthur to limit the amount of assistance he could give me; otherwise a translucent map would have immediately appeared within my visor.
"Silence the beacon, please," I asked, and the beeping stopped. At least I wouldn't have that to drive me crazy. "Now show me a compass."
"I cannot do that either. However, if you successfully tell me where you think you are, I can provide you with a map, compass, and direction finder."
So this was my first test: figuring out my position without the aid of either a map or digital direction finder. Of course, I had a set of rolled-up topographic maps among my equipment, but they wouldn't do me much good unless I knew my latitude and longitude. And Earth-type compasses are useless on the Moon because of its almost nonexistent magnetic field. Since Arthur was being uncooperative, I'd have to work out the problem from what I could see with my own two eyes.
All right, then...looking up at the sky, I noted Earth's apparent position from where I stood. On the lunar near side, Earth is always in the same place, depending on the observer's location; although it regularly changes phases, just as the Moon does when seen from Earth, it doesn't rise or set. Since Apollo was just seven degrees south of the equator, Earth perpetually remained almost directly overhead. Here, though, it was slightly closer to the horizon...about twelve to fifteen degrees below zenith, I estimated...which meant that I was still near the equator, but probably a hundred miles or more from Apollo.
Another helpful thing about celestial navigation from the lunar surface is that, because the Moon is rotation-locked with Earth, most of the major constellations are visible from or near the equator. So it was easy to find Draco, a small constellation midway between Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. Most of the time, Draco points toward the lunar North Pole, just as Polaris points toward the North Pole on Earth; the Moon's rotational wobble causes its pole star to periodically change, but for now Draco was the way to find the lunar true-north.
Once I had that direction, I determined the other points of the compass and compared them with Earth's position. That confirmed my belief that I was still south of the equator. I could have reached into the map case and pulled out one of the scrolls, but I didn't have to. I'd learned enough about lunar geography to make a good guess where I was.
"I'm on the west side of Alphonsus crater, Arthur. About...oh, 125 to 150 miles from Apollo. Is that right?"
"Yes, you are correct. Would you like to see a map and compass?"
I let out my breath in relief. "Yes, please."
A topo map of the Alphonsus region was superimposed upon my faceplate; a digital compass synched to Apollo's navigation satellites appeared in the top right corner. The direction finder pinpointed my present location as a tiny green triangle near Alphonsus's west side, and the beacon was a blue triangle near just past the crater's center. Studying the map, I noticed that the beacon was located just beyond Mt. Tobor, an isolated peak in the middle of the crater.
It looked as if I'd have to go around the mountain in order to reach the beacon. "Show me a direct line between my current location and the beacon, Arthur," I said, and he obligingly traced a red line between here and there. Sure enough, the line was 31.06 miles long, and appeared as if it would take me past Mt. Tobor.
Out of curiosity, I asked Arthur to trace another line to Apollo. It lay to the northeast, 155 miles away. Glancing in that direction, I had to smile; this was exactly the way the Pegasus had gone after it had dropped me off. Gordie had been trying to give me a hint. I suspected his comment about "saying hello to the Old Ranger" was another, but I hadn't the foggiest idea what he meant by that.
"Drop map and direction finder, display horizontal compass," I said. The map and direction finder disappeared, to be replaced by a horizontal bar that stretched across the middle of my faceplate. The bar was marked in degrees of longitude, with a red E and the beacon's yellow arrowhead silently glowing straight ahead.
So...I had just a little under thirty hours of air, and just a little more than thirty-one miles to cross before my supply ran out. If I set a pace of about two or three miles per hour, I could reach the beacon in about ten to fifteen hours, give or take an hour or so. But that was only if I didn't stop to rest, and I knew I couldn't do that. Sooner or later, I'd have to get some sleep.
"Is there anything else you want?" Arthur asked.
"Nope. Not a thing." I let out my breath, flexed my arms and legs a little bit. "Follow me," I said to the mule, and then I started walking.