Helium3 - 1 Crater Read online

  “You probably will,” Lonesome Larry replied, hanging up his tube clothes. “That’s why nobody makes much money betting on you.”

  Petro took on a thoughtful expression. “What’re the odds on my competitors?”

  “Only one is given any chance against you at all. The Neroburg entry at ten to one.”

  “Ten to one? One johncredit wins ten? So if a fellow bets on the Neroburg entry and it wins, said fellow would make a pile, would he not?”

  “That’s the way it works, your lowness,” Lonesome Larry said with a shrug, then began to buckle on his bio-girdle. “Say, you’re not thinking of throwing the race, are you?”

  Petro took on a righteous frown. “I’m a prince, Larry, not a charlatan! Shame on you for even thinking such a thing!”

  Most of the other miners on the shift were already outside, so Crater grabbed Petro by his arm and hurried him along. The next dustlock contained the showers that applied the biolastic sheath that acted as a pressure suit and also provided warmth and cooling as required. The acronym used to describe it was BCP, for Biolastic Counter Pressure suit. Before BCPs were used, Moontown miners had worn ECPs, or Elastic Counter Pressure suits, made out of an elastic fabric that could wear blisters on a miner after a long day on the scrapes.

  Crater and Petro drew on silken hoods that covered their faces and necks, then placed their helmets in a preparation unit. Crater unstrapped the gillie’s holster and put it on a lunasteel table, then entered one of the showers. Holding out his arms, he said, “Crater Trueblood. Scrape number eleven north.”

  The dustlock puter confirmed Crater’s size and shape, then turned on the biolastic spray that came out of the nozzles in a silvery mist. The spray had a sharp odor and felt clammy and creepy on his bare skin. It took all of Crater’s will every time it was performed to stand without movement and be coated by what was a cloud of busy microbes, genetically designed to form a pressure film on anything they covered, providing the equivalent of one Earthian atmosphere of pressure, or Moontown standard. They also threw off heat or absorbed it, keeping the body warm or cool, depending on whether the sun beat down on the scrapes or it was the two weeks of the long shadow. The mist finally coalesced into a shimmering film that covered his body up to his neck.

  When the nozzles stopped spraying, Crater stayed very still while the macro lasers did their work, looking for even a molecule-sized hole in the biolastic sheath. Finding none, a green light came on, and Crater stepped out, donned his coveralls and gloves, then pulled on a backpack containing a microbial soup that provided oxygen to a mixture of nitrogen to approximate Earthian atmosphere. He next retrieved his helmet from the prep unit, which had supplied a biolastic ring around its base. Always hungry to join their mates, the microbes in the ring sealed Crater’s helmet to their brethren, thus creating an impermeable joint. The lasers checked the seam and the green light flared again. After clicking the air supply hose to the port on his helmet and latching shut his helmet faceplate, Crater was ready for the next stage required to go into the big suck, as heel-3 miners called outside in the near-vacuum of the moon. He strapped the gillie back to his arm, then pushed Petro, clad also in a helmet, backpack, BCP suit, coveralls, and gloves, into the final airlock chamber.

  Crater pulled the inner hatch of the airlock closed and punched in the proper code on the keypad by the outer hatch.

  An unseen valve opened, and the air inside the airlock was slowly expelled until the pressure reached zero to the third decimal place. A green light came on beside the hatch, and Crater turned the hatch wheel and pushed it open, then stepped outside, followed by Petro.

  “That’s one small step for a prince, one giant leap for a bunch of fools,” Petro said as he made a boot print in the dust atop a thousand others.

  Crater glanced upward, then drew his awed gaze across the river of stars. “Look, Petro. Aren’t they glorious?”

  “They’re just a bunch of stars,” Petro groused, not even bothering to look up.

  “More than can be counted.”

  “So what? Lots of things can’t be counted, like the dust in a scrape or the days you’ve got left in your life. You can’t waste the stars or the dust, Crater, but you can surely waste the days.”

  Crater reluctantly dragged his eyes away from the magnificent stars. “You forgot to close the airlock hatch.”

  “I don’t see why it doesn’t close automatically.”

  Crater walked past Petro and pushed the airlock hatch closed. Since it had built-in resistance springs, it took an effort.

  “You know why,” he said. “We have to use our muscles or lunar gravity will kill us. We may have been born on the moon, but our bodies are still designed for Earth.”

  “As if I don’t use enough muscles with a shovel and pry bar every shift,” Petro retorted.

  Petro’s foul mood was even wearing on Crater, who always tried to see the best in everyone. “Are you done complaining, your graceless?” he demanded.

  “I’ve just started.”

  Any fool can complain, the gillie said, turning a pleasant blue, and most do.

  “Hush now,” Crater said. “You’re not the least bit funny.”

  “I wish you’d get rid of that thing,” Petro said. “It’s an artifact that belongs in a museum.”

  “Maybe I’ll save up enough for a modern do4u someday,”

  Crater answered. “But right now, it works well enough as a communicator. Which,” he said with emphasis, “is all I want you to do, gillie. Do you understand?”

  “It is cheeky,” Petro said when the gillie did not reply.

  “It is only a biological machine,” Crater answered. “With neither feelings nor intelligence.” He felt the gillie stir within its holster. “Don’t argue with me!”

  Crater and Petro walked to the scrape, where they stood in front of the foreman who silently read the notes from the previous shift. The foreman, or blue banger as such were called, was Mrs. Liu Sho Hook, former puter-order bride and now widow of a heel-3 miner who’d gotten run over by a shuttle. She looked up from her reader and briefly pondered her crew. They looked tired, but who wasn’t? It had been three shifts a day, six days a week for months, and the company was still behind on its orders. Besides Crater and Petro in their gray coveralls—gray designating scragline pickers—there were the scraper, loader, and shuttle operators in their navy blues, the red suits of the explosives experts (called devils), orange suits for the mechanics (called orangutans), and yellow suits for the solar furnace operators (called sundancers). Blue bangers such as herself wore navy blue coveralls with broad white stripes on the sleeves. Although there were none in attendance, white suits were for the managers and engineers, and green were for the medics. One glance on the scrapes and it was easy to figure out who did what.

  Mrs. Hook took a final head count, then went over the plan for the shift including the number of heel-3 canisters to be filled. A short safety briefing followed. The week before, she reported, a shuttle driver on another scrape had neglected to depressurize the pneumatics before getting out and removing a chunk of rock from the shovel lift. As soon as she’d levered the rock free with a pry bar, the lift had slammed down on top of her. Her dust was now scattered in a crater north of town, which had been set aside for the remains of the good people of Moontown. “Let’s make sure none of us end up there anytime soon,” she said. “Wait for the pickers if you’ve got rocks stuck in your machines.” She nodded toward the two boys. “Petro and Crater have the tools to get those rocks out, so let them do it. That’s why they make all those johncredits.”

  This earned a laugh from the assembly, including Crater but not Petro. “Sure, laugh at the pickers, why don’t you?” he griped.

  “Safety, safety, safety, people,” Mrs. Hook said.

  The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise, the gillie said, then added, Tacitus.

  “Oh, well said, gillie!” Petro hooted.

  Mrs. Hook looked at the gil
lie, which looked back at her— or would have if it had eyes, which it didn’t. “Gillies are illegal,” she said.

  “It knows that,” Crater answered.

  Mrs. Hook had a brief staring match with the gillie, if staring at a thing with no eyes can be called such, then shrugged and nodded to Montana Bill, the oldest miner on the shift.

  According to Moontown tradition, it was the oldest miner who was always tasked to say the traditional heel-3 mining prayer. He stepped out in front of the others and prayed:

  For those of us who go into the dust,

  Our lives and limbs to Thee we trust.

  But if the scrapes shall kill us today,

  Take our souls, oh Lord, we pray.

  “Amen. Thank you, Bill, and let’s move some dirt,” Mrs.

  Hook said, then she and her shift walked onto their scrape where two murderous giants—asleep for four billion years— were patiently waiting to kill them.

  :::

  TWO

  The sheriff of Moontown was not a handsome man. He was, in fact, a rough cobb. He had a round, red face, a nose so repeatedly broken it was squashed like a cauliflower, tiny brown eyes better suited for an Earthian mole, and an unkempt brush of a moustache that did not hide that he was missing his upper lip, shot off in some long ago and unfortunate brawl. His ominous appearance, however, was pleasing enough for a puter-order bride from Patagonia to fly down to the moon to marry him and present him two children, a boy and a girl, both of whom—and he thanked heaven every day for this—looked more like his wife than him. The sheriff counted himself blessed and, the way he saw it, those blessings had all flowed from Colonel Medaris, which made him very loyal to the great man, indeed.

  The sheriff’s job consisted principally of maintaining order in the little mining town, a job that was not always easy considering the felons who turned up there begging for work. Since there was a severe labor shortage across the moon, Colonel Medaris didn’t much care what a man or woman had done on Earth, only what he or she might do for him and his company on the moon. Usually, they were promptly hired, sent to the Dust Palace to secure a bunk, and put to work on the scragline. It was the sheriff’s sad responsibility to occasionally have to bust the heads of noogies—as new arrivals were called—who got out of line. Surprisingly, this included very few of them, since most were grateful to have escaped whatever crimes they had perpetrated on Earth, or whatever crimes had been perpetrated on them. Usually they quickly settled down, found a spouse, had some kids, and, just like the sheriff, made a whole new life for themselves in Moontown.

  There were, however, always those few miscreants who were still thieves in a place that had little worth stealing, or killers in a place where no one ever did much that deserved killing. It was just their nature and they couldn’t shake it off, even on the moon. The sheriff had two big deputies to help him take into custody those men—and they were nearly always men— who strayed across the border of common decency. There was no jail in Moontown, although the sheriff had a big closet attached to his office that he used when necessary. Criminals were usually tried, convicted, and sentenced by a jury of their peers, meaning the sheriff himself, and the sentence was either bread and water until the sheriff got tired of hearing their chains clink in his closet or, in the worst cases, the sentence was exile: being crammed inside an old-fashioned pressure suit and put outside where they might beg their way aboard a heel-3 convoy or wander down the valley until their suits failed or they fell into an old lava tube. Resources were scarce on the moon and there was nothing to be wasted on thieves and killers.

  Another part of the sheriff’s unwritten job description was solving the Colonel’s problems, whatever they were, and that was why the sheriff—dressed in his finest uniform tunic and polished boots—sat outside the Colonel’s grand office, waiting to be invited in to hear what the latest problem was. It was always pleasant to wait in the Colonel’s reception room. Soft music played, and the perfume of fresh-cut grass was piped into the room. The sheriff also enjoyed the view of the Colonel’s new Earthian assistant, a young, copper-haired lass, pretty as punch, named Diana. The Colonel was a widower, and if he wanted to bring sweet young girls to Moontown, the sheriff surely didn’t mind. Most of them were courted and married off to bachelor miners fairly quickly anyway.

  After he’d cooled his polished boots for a pleasant hour, the assistant turned to the sheriff and said, “You may go in now.” The sheriff rose, made a small bow in her direction, and, hat in hand, entered the Colonel’s sanctum by passing through a massive wooden door with carvings of lunar miners accomplishing their work. The only one like it anywhere on the moon, it had cost a fortune to bring it in from a Brazilian art house but, fortunately, the Colonel had fortunes enough. The Medaris Mining Company was but one of his enterprises, most of them exceedingly profitable.

  The Colonel was at his desk, studying his puter. The sheriff did not approach, waiting to be called. While he had a moment, he studied the Colonel. Though well into his sixties, he was still a handsome fellow, his silver hair and moustache making him more distinguished as the years went by. There was also something in his posture, standing or sitting, that informed the sheriff that here was a very tough man, one who was capable of almost any means to reach his ends. That included getting rid of the sheriff if such proved necessary for any reason. The sheriff always tried to keep that in mind.

  “Ah, Sheriff,” the Colonel said at last, turning in his direction and allowing a brief smile.

  The sheriff squared his shoulders and lowered his chin in respect. When the Colonel beckoned, he approached. The Colonel didn’t ask him to sit down in any of the chairs that faced the desk, which wasn’t surprising. Whatever was on the Colonel’s mind wouldn’t take long. He would have already studied it from every angle, turned it over and looked at it from the bottom, the top, every which way, before calling the sheriff in to fix whatever it was that needed fixing. “I’m looking for a specific kind of man,” the Colonel said without preamble. “You see them all as they come in here, know their records, and so forth. I’d like you to find him for me.”

  “Of course, sir,” the sheriff said, listening carefully and intently as the Colonel explained the kind of man he wanted to find. Unfortunately, as the Colonel listed the attributes of the man, the sheriff knew it was of the type that was in extremely short supply in Moontown. The Colonel wanted an honest man who was above suspicion and also easily manipulated.

  “Most of the men who come up here are refugees from wars,” the sheriff said, “combat vets or refugees of some sort, from prisons and concentration camps and such. Now, a woman, perhaps . . .”

  “No women,” the Colonel declared. “A man is always what he appears to be. A woman can be one thing today, another tomorrow. No, Sheriff, make it a man with the attributes described.”

  It never paid to bandy words with the Colonel. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll start looking today. When do you need him?”

  “The sooner the better. But, Sheriff, are you certain you don’t already know a man who fits the bill?”

  “I honestly don’t, sir. I’m sorry.”

  The Colonel pondered the sheriff’s answer while the sheriff felt a bead of sweat form on his forehead. It was enough to trickle down his forehead on Earth, but in the moon’s light gravity, it just swelled until it hung there, an embarrassing display of the sheriff’s unease.

  For his part, the Colonel was thinking back to the time he’d hired the sheriff. Moontown was growing and was showing it by an increase in petty crime. There were too many fights over at the Earthrise Bar & Grill, miners accusing others of theft, that kind of thing. The sheriff had shown up to work as a miner on the scrapes, but the Colonel saw that he had spent most of his life in law enforcement—although it had been in prison, on the other side of that enforcement. No matter. The Colonel was a savvy judge of a man and offered him the job. He’d been a good sheriff too, doing what he was told, overlooking things when the Colonel wanted the
m overlooked, taking care of company business while knocking in the occasional head to let miscreants know there was law and order in Moontown.

  The Colonel said, “I’m disappointed you don’t know of at least one man in my employ who is honest, naive, and easily manipulated. Although in a way, I suppose it’s good we have such a tough lot.”

  The sheriff wiped the bead of sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. “Indeed, sir. One has to be tough to work the scrapes.”

  “One has to be tough just to get here, Sheriff.”

  “You are correct, sir.”

  “Still, I’m confident you’ll find the man I need. On your way, now, and get back to me as soon as you can.”

  The sheriff quickly exited the ornate office, nodded again to the pretty secretary who ignored him, and headed for his office, which was set along the common corridor next to the company store. Tubewives and tubehusbands out shopping greeted him as he passed but he made no response, his mind elsewhere. He’d never failed the Colonel before on any assignment, large or small, and he wasn’t going to fail this one. He was on a manhunt, though where to start looking, he had not a clue. After reflection, he supposed the personnel records might be the place to begin.

  He passed the deputy sitting in a chair outside his office and sat down at his desk. Hearing the clink of chains from behind the closet door, he recalled his sad prisoner, a miner who’d ordered a puter bride, only to be rejected by her once she’d seen him. Another miner had come along and married her, and that had resulted in a back stabbing. The man locked in the closet was the stabber, but since it appeared the new groom would recover, the sheriff had decided to let his prisoner go in a few more days, probably after knocking him around a little so the bruises would remind him to leave the happy couple alone.

  The sheriff, putting the prisoner and everything else out of his mind to focus on the Colonel’s demand, called up the personnel records on his puter. The first thing he did was reject all married men. Married men had wives who asked too many questions. Besides, what the Colonel had in mind, he suspected, might cause the chosen man to be killed, and widows tended to ask even more questions than wives. A bachelor was therefore required. There were plenty of them, of course, and all of them lived in one place, the Dust Palace run by Q-Bess Mountbatten-Windsor-Jones or whatever her real name was.