Crater by Homer Hickam

Author:Homer Hickam [Hickam, Homer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Book, ebook, cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9781401686963
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2012-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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NINETEEN

The 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—the Sea of Serenity— 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.

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