Crater Trueblood and the Lunar Rescue Company

  “Nothing else. But the telly’s full of an asteroid hitting the Medaris construction project on the farside.”

  “You think that’s related to Maria?”

  “Who knows? But listen, Crater, this is none of your business. Remember the last two times you rescued Maria? What did that get you?”

  Crater had to admit Petro had a point. Both times all it got him was a kick in the teeth. But he had also saved Maria’s life when no one else could have done it. “Call if you hear anything more,” he said, then hung up. “Gillie, can you give me a visual of the farside?”

  I hate the Awful Thing, it said.

  “Yes, I know, but you birthed it.”

  That was not my fault. I blame it on poor programming by my makers.

  “Then I guess you’re happy they’re out of business. Will you please do as I ask?”

  The gillie glared at Crater, though it had no eyes or face to glare, then illegally stretched itself through a lunar comm-sat and then to a commercial observation sat that watched the farside of the moon. Zeroing in on the haze that still floated electrostatically over the impact, the gillie magnified the picture, and then put the scene up on the vidscreen in the truck cab. Crater was stunned to see the devastation. Debris from the giant construction project was strewn across the dust and, here and there, the bodies of the construction crew.

  “Any signs of life?” Crater asked the gillie.

  The gillie searched the scene and then zoomed in on a jumpcar lying on its side. This wreck is interesting, the gillie said. There are boot prints leading from it. Based on the disturbed dust on which they are imprinted, apparently they were put down after the impact.

  Without realizing it, Crater pushed the truck’s accelerator hard against the floor.

  Trying to keep up in the rental bus, Crescent grumbled to herself. “And so speeds the sour man who doesn’t care a scrag about love.”

  Lady Deepik was standing behind her. “How long have you been in love with him?”

  “Almost from the moment we met. I stabbed him in the leg with a knife that day. He almost bled to death.”

  “And he in turn stabbed you in your heart.”

  “I continue to bleed.”

  “And the woman he loves?”

  “Unworthy. She does not know how to love Crater as he deserves.”

  “Perhaps, in that regard, they are a match.”

  Crescent considered that, then nodded her agreement. “I suppose they are.” She turned to look at Lady Deepik but saw her curled on the couch with Mr. Ajab, exactly as they had been since the drive back to Cleomedes had begun. “I need a vacation,” Crescent concluded, and then pushed the accelerator pedal all the way to the floorboard to catch up with Crater.

  SIX

  Maria woke to darkness and a pale round glow that seemed very far away. At first she recalled nothing, but gradually her story fell into place, fitting together like the puzzle blocks she’d played with as a child. She, Dr. Maria Medaris, chief financial officer of Medaris Enterprises and president of several companies within that structure and leader of thousands of engineers and technicians, was the prisoner of the Trainers. The Trainers were two odd creatures with painted faces who had destroyed the Clyde Tombaugh Telescope project and murdered her workers with what appeared to be a crashed asteroid. Her father was somehow allied with them, and the purpose of all of this was unknown.

  She then recalled her last words to her gillie. Call Crater Trueblood. Why had she done that? Well, she admitted to herself, because he’s rescued me before and also because I still care about that boy and would love to see him. Maria laughed at herself. Here she was, a captive of deadly creatures and her estranged father, and she was thinking about her love life. It reflected who she was, supremely confident that no matter what her situation was, she’d get out of it and then continue her life, which might (or might not) include Crater Trueblood.

  Since she suspected she was being watched, she lay very still while mentally searching her body for damage. She wiggled her toes and moved her fingers, then minutely moved each leg and arm and her head and stretched her back. Everything seemed to work. Her various aches felt like bruises and abused ligaments, nothing more. She shifted her gaze to the pale circular glow and saw it was a porthole too small to belong to a jumpcar. She tried to sit up but discovered she was restrained by straps at her wrists, waist, chest, and ankles. Tendrils of her long, black hair drifted near her face, then slowly wafted away. This meant she was weightless. Her captors had taken her into space.

  Maria studied her surroundings. The porthole was along a curved wall and her cot was strapped to that wall, the deck and ceiling perpendicular to her body. The placement of her cot was not unusual for weightless conditions but was disorienting. Her attempt to figure out the room was interrupted when her father came through the hatch. “Hello, sleepyhead. I see you’re awake! How do you feel? Great landing of the jumpcar, by the way. Both Truvia and Carus were impressed by your skill.”

  “Too bad it didn’t kill them. Why are you with them?”

  “They suit my purpose.”

  “Which is?”

  “We can discuss that later after you’re more settled.”

  “Where are we?”

  “In space.”

  “Yes, Junior, I know that, but where in space?”

  Her father smiled. “You can’t escape, Maria.”

  “Would you unstrap me?”

  “Of course.”

  Her father pushed off, floated across to her, and pulled the tabs to loosen her straps. She immediately pushed away from him, stopping herself by grabbing a handrail on the opposite wall. He watched her benignly. “Well, I must say I’m relieved, sweetheart. You appear healthy.”

  “I’m not your sweetheart!” Maria snapped.

  “Now, kitten . . .”

  “Shut up, you fool, and think! You are at the very least an accessory to mass murder. What you do from this moment on will determine whether you get the death sentence or leniency, so from here on, let me do all the thinking. Maybe I can get us out of this.”

  Junior smiled. “Who’s going to punish me? My marvelous father? His rule over my life is over.”

  “If you believe that, you are as stupid as a rock. Where’s this ship heading, anyway?”

  “You’ll know when we get there.”

  Maria looked through the porthole but saw only stars and galaxies, with no sign of the moon. She pushed herself to the hatch and tested the lever. “Are we locked inside?”

  “You are. I know the code to get out. By the way, where is your gillie?”

  “I dropped it in the dust.”

  “You were never a good liar.”

  “Then I didn’t take after you, did I?”

  “That will be enough of that kind of talk, young lady.”

  A deep well of bitterness boiled up inside Maria. “All my life you have been cruel. I could take it, but Mom—your cruelty and lies killed her.”

  “I am your father and I deserve your respect.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, I don’t have a father.”

  Junior caught a hand strap with one hand and hit her hard across the face with the other. Gasping, she spun back against the wall. When she turned to face him, he hit her again. Blood spurted from her nose in scarlet globules.

  “You are never to speak of your mother to me again,” Junior growled. “You don’t know what happened between us.”

  Maria wiped her nose with the back of her hand and raised her chin. “I know you cheated on her. I know you took every opportunity to tell her she was inadequate. I know she finally reached for a bottle of pills rather than tolerate another day in a world that contained you.”

  Her father balled his fist and ripped a right cross, but Maria dodged it and pushed away, sailing across the room just as Truvia opened the hatch and floated inside. When she saw Maria’s bloody face, she looked puzzled. “She made me do it,” Junior said.

  Maria hung on to a str
ap to stabilize herself. “That’s what all abusers say. ‘She made me do it!’ Face it, Junior. You’re just a common woman beater.” She looked at Truvia. “Be careful. He’ll be abusing you next.”

  Truvia looked amused. “I hardly think so,” she said. “May I examine your face? Oh, he hit you hard, didn’t he? You’ll have a black eye, but we have ways of fixing that.”

  Maria felt a sharp pain in her hip. When she looked down, she saw that Truvia had jabbed her with a syringe. “It will help you sleep, and while you are sleeping, I will restore your face.”

  “I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want my face restored. I just want to go home. Why am I here?”

  “You are here because we need you to be here.”

  “But why?” It was a question that echoed in Maria’s mind even after she’d slid into darkness.

  SEVEN

  Crater raced up the jumpcar ladder but was disappointed to find no one aboard. He checked the clock on the wall. Where was Crescent? And the pilot? Crater had made it clear to the jumpcar dispatcher how urgent his mission was. Didn’t everyone understand how important it was for Maria to be rescued as quickly as possible? Crater considered for just a moment that perhaps no one did understand, that they might not even care if Maria was saved, but he dismissed that possibility. Of course everyone wanted to save Maria. Didn’t they? Crater thought over the situation and why he was doing what he was doing. Was he still in love with Maria? Well, of course he was, no matter how badly she had treated him. He’d been in love with her from the moment he caught sight of her, and that wasn’t going to change. He had a chance to save her—again—and he was going to do it whether anyone liked it or not.

  The sound of boots on the ladder diverted his attention. It was the pilot. After she stepped through the hatch, he was astonished to see who she was. “Riley Bishop! You’re an independent now?”

  Riley’s bright Irish grin flashed across her pretty, freckled face. “Aye, bucko. Got enough of the Colonel’s long hours, short wages, and those underground tubes at Moontown. But what are ye doin’ here? I thought you were mining heel-3 and Thorium at Endless Dust.”

  “A broken leg sent me to the hospital here,” Crater explained. “I decided not to go back. Petro, Crescent, and I run our own company now.”

  “So you’re the Lunar Rescue Company who chartered me!”

  “That’s us. You know about the asteroid impact on the farside? That’s where I want to go. There’s a jumpcar wreck near the impact I want to investigate.”

  “No prob, should be the safest place on the moon. Not likely it’s going to be hit again. How about Petro and Crescent? They coming with us?”

  “Petro’s staying behind to work on our bank account, such as it is. I don’t know about Crescent—oh, here she is!” He turned on her. “I told you every minute counts!”

  Crescent gave Crater a sour look, then sat down and buckled up. “I got here as quickly as I could. Hello, Riley,” she added.

  “Crescent! Good to see you, girl. Your boss seems to be in a hurry.”

  “Does he? I hadn’t noticed.”

  Riley chuckled. “Well, let’s get this show on the road.” She crawled into the cockpit and went through the checks with the jumpcar puter. “Cleomedes Control, Amanda Michelle on the runway,” she called.

  “Roger, Riley. Have a nice jump.”

  “Who’s Amanda Michelle?” Crater asked.

  “Me great-great-great-grandma who was truly great. She was a Broadway star. All right, here we go. Autopilot off. I’ll take her manual. Puter on my mark. Five-four-three . . .”

  Riley counted down and punched the firing button. The jumpcar’s trio of engines burst into life and the suborbital ship surged aloft. Riley expertly kept the ship on the ballistic curve until the Moscow Crater came into view, then hovered the jumpcar over the asteroid strike. Crater and Crescent moved to the portholes to view the scene. The remnants of the support structure for the giant mirror was spread for miles, glittering shards in the gray and white dust. Bodies were also strewn about. In the center of a big new crater was a slight hump, the only evidence of the asteroid that had caused all the carnage.

  Riley called down from the cockpit. “I have a visual on a wrecked jumpcar. It landed on its side and plowed a furrow about three hundred yards long. Still in one piece, as far as I can tell.”

  “Land as close as you can,” Crater replied.

  Riley backed down to a soft landing. Crater threw open the hatch and saw the wrecked jumpcar. “I’m going over to it,” he told Crescent.

  Crescent nodded. “I’ll have a look around the general area. Be careful. It might be an ambush.”

  “Ambush? You think this asteroid strike was deliberate?”

  “Of course. It landed precisely on the construction site.”

  “Who would do that? And how?”

  “Somebody who doesn’t like the Medarises would be my guess, which means a lot of people. How? Figure that out and you’ll probably figure out who.”

  “You’re right. No wonder I keep you around.”

  “Go find your woman,” Crescent muttered.

  “What? I didn’t hear that.”

  “I said stay alert.”

  “Oh, right.” Crater climbed down the ladder and walked toward the wreck. When he got closer, he saw boot prints. To avoid putting his prints on top of them, he circled around to the jumpcar. Using a tail fin to pull himself onto the fuselage, he walked down it, noting the dents in the skin. Based on their uniform dispersion, he suspected the pits were not a result of the crash but perhaps a spray of rocks and gravel from the asteroid impact. That meant the jumpcar was probably flying nearby when the asteroid struck. The entry hatch was open, so he went inside. After poking around he concluded there was nobody aboard, so he climbed out and studied the boot prints leading away from the wreck. He recognized the tread pattern. Crowhoppers.

  “I’ve found something interesting,” Crescent called. “Landing pad impressions. I’m not certain what kind.”

  Crater, staying to the side of the prints, walked to Crescent, who silently pointed at the indentations in the dust, six deep circles. “A space taxi,” Crater said. “By its landing pad spacing, I think probably from a warpod.”

  “Did you find anything in the jumpcar?”

  “No, but the tracks indicate crowhoppers were in its party.”

  “How could that be? The Legion has been disbanded and my brethren scattered.”

  “It appears they’ve gotten back together again.”

  The gillie stuck its head, although it had no head, from Crater’s chest pocket, then crawled up on his shoulder. The Awful Thing is here!

  “Maria’s gillie? Where?”

  On her.

  Startled, Crescent almost fell over when she saw that a gillie had indeed somehow appeared on her shoulder. “Where did you come from?” she demanded.

  “Get inside your pocket,” Crater ordered his gillie.

  I will kill the Awful Thing.

  “Yes, OK, but later,” Crater said. “Now, do what I told you. You’re scaring it.”

  Muttering something too low for Crater to hear but certain to be filled with curses appropriate for a creature made of slime mold, the gillie crawled into Crater’s chest pocket and closed the flap.

  Is the Superior One gone? the gillie on Crescent’s shoulder asked.

  “For now,” Crater said.

  Maria Medaris is my owner. She was taken away.

  “Yes, I got your message. Who took her away?”

  Her father and some others. Crowhoppers. Two who called themselves Trainers.

  “Tell me everything you saw.”

  The gillie told its story, ending with how it had watched Maria carried aboard a warpod taxi.

  Crater’s gillie poked up from its pocket. Awful Thing, why did you not stay with your owner? You are a poor excuse for a gillie. I want you to die.

  I couldn’t stay with her, Superior One. They would have caught me. r />
  A gillie must be sneaky. Did I not teach you that?

  You never taught me anything. You were too busy trying to kill me from the moment I was birthed.

  If I had truly wanted to kill you, I would have killed you.

  “That’s enough, you two,” Crater admonished. “This is to the gillie on Crescent’s shoulder. You now belong to Crescent.”

  Be a crowhopper’s gillie? I am not certain.

  “Don’t complain,” Crescent said, curling her lips into a frightening grin. “Or I will eat you.”

  Good idea, Crater’s gillie said.

  I will stay with you if you will not eat me, Crescent’s new gillie conceded.

  “Fine,” Crater said. “Now we’re all one big, happy family.”

  Riley came walking up. “Any idea on what happened here?”

  “I think Maria’s alive,” Crater answered. “But I’m afraid she’s been taken aboard a warpod.”

  Riley whistled. “In that case, she could be anywhere between here and Mars. By the way, Petro called. He said some Umlap woman named Perpetually Hopeful has news on Maria and requests you visit her as soon as possible.”

  Crater brightened. “Perpetually Hopeful is General Nero’s wife! They’ve got a lot of spies. We need to go to Endless Dust right away!”

  “It’s your nickel,” Riley said, but Crater was already running to the jumpcar.

  Riley looked at Crescent sympathetically. “Maria just won’t get out of his head, will she?”

  “I guess she’s the only thing he ever wanted that he couldn’t have.”

  “Men are idiots even when they think they’re being noble.”

  “Especially then,” Crescent agreed.

  Riley and Crescent walked at a deliberate pace toward the jumpcar. Crater was on its ladder urgently waving at them to hurry up.

  “I had me cap set for that boy when I first met him,” Riley said. “But it didn’t take long to see Maria’s the only one for him, poor creature that he is.”

  “I suppose we can’t blame him for wanting to rescue her,” Crescent replied with a sigh. “Even though I bet she won’t appreciate it.”

  “Looks like this time his girl’s got herself in a real bind. I wasn’t kidding about she might be anywhere from here to Mars.”