There was no way to know if I had.
Next highpoint, I did the same. I paused after sending off my dust signal at the third highpoint. While my solar collectors drank in what they could of the setting sun, I searched ahead of me. It didn’t look like they were where they would have been if they’d just kept walking. About where they might have been if they changed direction on my second signal, I picked up a long line of dragged feet down a hillock. The line pointed right at me. I took a bearing and floored it. D-4 bucked and shuddered under me, but she went.
“How long?”
“Maybe a half hour,” came from Jer and Rescue control.
“How long before someone else with oxygen gets here?”
Jer shrugged. Rescue didn’t answer.
They were a dusty, bedraggled group that D-4 rolled up to thirty minutes later. A slim figure in a pink spacesuit did an excited jump, hands clapping, followed by a slow landing. I hoped someday I’d get to meet her. They stared at D-4 like it was something out of a dream. D-4 had never been designed to be ridden. Maybe I’d just lead them back.
However, D-4 did have to be worked on, so there was a plug-in for a diagnostic computer. Pink spacesuit had not ditched her pet computer, but plugged it right in.
Her “Is anyone there?” was plaintive.
“The whole world, honey.”
“Daddy!”
“You didn’t think I wouldn’t be?”
“Daddy, we’re low on oxygen and these suits are hot.”
“People are coming. They’ll be there real soon. How long have you got, baby ducks?”
“Forty-five minutes. Maybe an hour.”
I glanced at Jer. He’d started tracking rescue assets. He had them arrayed on a screen as green triangles. They looked awfully far off. He looked up at my Dad. The two of them shook their heads. “Two hours, hour and a half at best,” Dad said.
A shudder went through me. These people were going to die. I would sit here safe in my Mom and Dad’s home and listen to a girl my age gasp for air while her Dad, who loved her as much as mine, had to listen helpless. This was not why I wanted a job on the Moon.
“Baby, that machine that found you. You could ride it. It would bring you closer to the rescue teams.”
There as a quick shake of the pink helmet. “Dad, the pilot died getting us down. I watched a passenger die, too. We are not separating. This is not one of those times when having your name makes me special. It’s all of us, or none of us.”
Behind her, three standard-issue spacesuits had their helmets together, talking. Pink suit backed away. “I won’t. It’s all of us, or none. I’ll run away. You can’t make me.”
“Enough of this horse-pucky,” I shouted in what I hoped was a grown up voice. “This is Rocket Woman, and I run this track you’re hanging around. All four of you pile on.”
I checked the sun. It was down for the next two weeks; all we had was earthlight and stars. “You can rip off the solar cells, or ride on top of them. They ain’t gonna do us any more good this trip. Baby ducks, you ride in the hopper. Doubt if you’ll unbalance me much. Come on, get a move on.”
I guess I did sound grown up. They moved. I started powering down everything I didn’t need: head lamps, running lights, rear camera, side ones, too. Any diagnostic that wasn’t a showstopper, off. Jer helped. Only those that gave me a feel for the ride were kept on.
Under the weight of four people, D-4 drooped. I put her in gear slowly. My skateboard waddled. Relying on only the front wheels to give me a feel for the bumps, I turned off the rear system. It had to move to get juice now.
I followed my trail back. That made things easier since I was three-quarters blind. My eyes kept flitting to the larger map. Where was I? How close was a rescue team? One was pulling ahead of the other. Probably had a driver as crazy as me. Or maybe they’d been ordered to push now and ride home with someone else. I didn’t hear the message. I didn’t need to know.
I concentrated on “feeling” D-4 and what lay ahead of us.
“Listen, Rocket Woman or whoever you are, I’ve got to talk to my daughter.” It was pink suit’s dad.
“Mister, I’ve turned off everything that doesn’t make my tracks go down and up. That includes voice radio. Do you want to see her again, or talk to her now?” I couldn’t believe I said that.
Dad rested a hand on my shoulder, squeezed. Mom was crying.
If I didn’t pull this off, I’d try to save enough juice to let them talk at the end.
We topped a rise. It was dark. A long downhill run was ahead of us. I could power it, or…. I popped on one headlight and eased up on the throttle. With all the extra weight, D-4 picked up speed fast as it headed downhill.
“You’re gonna need axle travel,” Jer whispered.
“Give it to me.”
He started tapping. My seat began to bounce under me. Speed built up. Jer cut in the rear axle feedback. “Give me more lights.” He did.
Coming up this hill I’d zigged and zagged around small craters. At this speed, with this load, zigging was out of the question and if I hit one of those craters, D-4 and four people would be rolled up into one big mess. If I hit the brake, this was all for nothing. I raised the lights, focused the camera further out and let the seat of my pants pick a new path down full of gentle curves.
“Am I really saving any electricity?”
“You’re on the plus side, Nikki,” Dad answered. “Jer can run you the numbers when this is over. Trust your gut.”
Dads can be wonderful.
I reached the bottom of the hill, feeling like I was five years old again and on my first skateboard. Rolling on and on, I “S” curved around rocks and craters as I slowed. I killed first one lamp, then another. Jer took the axle feedbacks off line. D-4 and I lumbered around several hillocks and began the long trudge up the next ridge.
“You’ve used thirty minutes,” Dad said. “You’ve got one, maybe two, valleys to go.”
It took forever to reach the crown of the next ridge. As I crested it, there was a beep in my ear. “Battery low,” a computer voice told me.
“Kill that warning, and its readout from D-4.”
Jer did.
We started to roll downhill. I limited myself to one light, and only the front-axle feedback. There was a thump, thump in the right tread, and D-4 was edging that way. Poor old girl was coming in lame. I gritted my teeth and steered for the valley, curving round rocks and craters as gently as I could. Not all of them, I bounced through a two-foot-across pothole, then managed to straddle a rock I didn’t see until too late.
Steering got rough. Without my asking, Jer activated the rear axle system. Left side didn’t come on. I swallowed hard, and kept going.
“Rescue Four is over the crest. Can you see her lights?” Rescue Center wanted to know.
“We’re a tad busy at the moment,” Dad answered for me. “Suggest they look for her lights.”
“Rescue Four has D-4 in sight. Can you steer for them?”
“Which direction?” I got out through clenched teeth.
“Left, ten degrees,” Jer said.
I turned left a bit.
“A bit more.”
I did.
“That’s good.”
All I could see was a splash of light on a gray careening surface. I raised the headlamp, risking close in to avoid what was far out. I dodged a crater I hardly saw. A rock took D-4 full on the front, I hoped it missed Pink Suit.