Orphanage by Robert Buettner

Author:Robert Buettner [Buettner, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
Publisher: Warner Books
Published: 2011-03-08T23:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-TWO

* * *

I couldn’t speak, so I grabbed Metzger’s hair, pulled his face to the viewport next to mine, and pointed. One speck crawled down a slope toward us, then another and another. The Slugs must have sent out patrols. They were returning. We would be very unpopular.

I turned from the viewport, squeezed past Howard, and reached into a wall-mounted cargo net. We had one more pistol.

Howard shook his head.

I dug in the cargo net for an ammunition magazine. “I’m not just quitting!”

Metzger tuned from the viewport. “No, Jason. It’s okay.”

I knew from Metzger’s tone, after a lifetime together, that it was okay.

Metzger peeled the rubber eye shield from Howard’s binoculars and held them in front of my eyes. I toggled the focus lever and saw a powder blue rectangle. A UN

flag on an EVA suit sleeve. I widened the view field. A half dozen lunar dune buggies bounced toward us, filled with EVA-suited humans.

“What—?”

Howard said, “We couldn’t tell you. If you had been captured, you could have talked.”

My head spun. “We aren’t going to die?”

“Not from being stranded on the moon.” Howard pried the pistol from my fingers and slipped it back in the cargo net.

I pointed at the bouncing buggies. “What are they?”

“Gravity-optimized all-terrain vehicles.” Howard turned to Metzger. “What do we need to take with us? Those GOATs will be here in two minutes.”

I grabbed Howard’s elbow. “How did they get here?”

Metzger stuffed one foot into his EVA suit. “Just the Slug and any instrument readouts you picked up.”

Howard nodded, then turned to me. “Four days overland. We were afraid it would take even longer. GOATs weren’t designed to travel long distances. That’s why I gambled our only Saturn to get us here earlier. Good gamble, too. If we hadn’t gotten here early, those guys”— he pointed out the viewport—“would just be picking up Projectile pieces, like you and I did in Pittsburgh.”

My head spun. “I mean—there are other people on the moon?”

“Long story. We built a base on the dark side of the moon.”

My jaw dropped.

“You’ll see it. That’s where those guys are going to take us.”

An hour later I sat strapped into the front passenger’s seat of a GOAT, jerking slowly toward the dark side of the moon. The GOAT’s tires were springy, porous screen, its frame metal tubes as delicate as a racing bike. Its roof was a solar-cell panel. It might have weighed as much as a car on Earth, but here a man could lift it by one corner like a bed frame.

I looked at my driver. By the chevrons on his sleeve he was a master sergeant. I couldn’t ask him much, except during stops when we could touch helmets. This suit also had a bum radio. It made me wonder how we ever reached the moon in ancient times until I remembered that this suit was seventy years old.

We led the little parade. Howard rode in GOAT two, behind us, with Sluggo strapped across the backseat.

The trip gave time to think.

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