"Oxygen–?"
"Just a precaution, to make sure you have an air supply after we blow the inflatables. Whoops–you have company." He was talking about the monkey, it was just climbing its way back up to me–pulling itself hand over hand through the webbing. I was glad I'd programmed it to home in on me. I would never have been able to find it otherwise, not in the mess of this cluttered cargo pod.
"I'll strap it in with you," Mickey said, tucking it into the webbing and pulling a safety belt around to secure it. To the monkey, he said, "Don't push this button, unless Chigger tells you. Do you understand?"
The monkey made a face at him–crossing its eyes and curling both its lips back. Neither of us had any idea what the expression meant.
Alexei came back then and helped Mickey strap in Douglas. We must have been running out of time, they both were pretty urgent in their movements. When they finished, Alexei double‑checked Stinky, then went to his own landing station and webbed in as quickly as he could. "Are you secured, Mikhail?" he called.
"I'm good," said Mickey.
"Hokay!" hollered the mad Russian lunatic. "Get ready for bubbles–" He snapped a code word to his PITA, and a second later, the inflatables began filling the cargo pod–hundreds of self‑inflating balloons. They came bubbling up from the other end of the cargo pod, filling every available space so tightly it would have been impossible to move, even if we weren't webbed in. The bubbles pressed up against my face like someone holding a pillow over my nose. I was grateful for the O‑mask. The packing bubbles would have suffocated me.
It made me uneasy to be so completely immobilized. All I could see was bubbles–the bluish light of the pod was fractured like a hall of mirrors; it was like looking into shattered winter. And it was cold in the pod too. We'd had to turn off our blankets for the bounce‑down.
"Stand by!" hollered Alexei. His voice came muffled through the bubbles. "We begin braking now. It will be rough–"
BOUNCE‑DOWN
I think I passed out. I wasn't sure. One moment I was trying to scream and the next moment everything was eerily silent. "What's happening now?" I called. I don't think anybody heard me.
But a moment later, Alexei's voice came muffled through the cabin. "We burn off speed. We have come around very fast. Must burn off more speed. Twice more speed. Aim at surface, dive to landing site, then brake hard for last kilometer down. Is very nasty maneuver, but only way to get to safe house. Very safe house."
I couldn't believe he was conscious. Of all of us, Alexei seemed the weakest. He was tall and gangly and skinny–he didn't have the muscles for Earth gravity, and I'd assumed he didn't have the endurance either. Living so long in lesser gravity, his bones should have softened, his heart should have shrunk.
It made me wonder if he had been working out in the high‑gee levels at Geostationary. Despite all his disclaimers, he must have been; he was handling the heavy gees better than any of us. Maybe he'd been preparing for this kind of escape for a long time. Just how much illegal stuff was he involved in anyway?
"What next?" I shouted.
Alexei had explained the operation to all of us, more than once, but I still wanted to hear him confirm the successful completion of each phase of it.
"More braking–"
"I'm already broken," Douglas gasped.
I was glad that Stinky was tranquilized. I don't think I could have stood it if he were screaming and crying and I couldn't get to him. That business at the meteor crater had been bad enough–I still had nightmares. Even so, I thought I could hear him whimpering in his sleep. The poor little kid, I almost felt sorry for him–everything he was going through. It had to be worse on him than any of the rest of ?s.
Alexei's PITA beeped. I started gasping for as much breath as I could before the rockets kicked in–
–this time I did pass out. I woke up to the sound of Alexei's PITA beeping again. I was beginning to hate the sound of that thing. I had just enough time to say, "Oh, sh–" and then the rockets fired again.
I didn't remember waking up after the next one. I was just awake and cussing, spewing every dreadful word that I'd ever gotten my mouth washed out for using. The third time I repeated myself, I stopped to take a breath.
"Is impressive. For a thirteen‑year‑old."
I ignored him. "Is anyone else alive?" I called.
"Yo," said Mickey.
"I'd ask if you're all right," called Douglas, "but nobody who's seriously hurt cusses that enthusiastically."
"What about Bobby?"
"He's not making any noises," called Mickey.
"He is fine," said Alexei. "I am certain."
"Can you see him?"
"Please not to worry. Little stinking one is fine."
" Don't call him Stinky!"I said. And wondered where that came from. There was a sound from Douglas. Laughter? Probably. But only family members had the right to call him Stinky. No one else. And only when he really deserved it.
"We will be down soon," Alexei said. "You will see for yourself, everyone is fine."
"Where are we now?"
"We have broken orbit. We have fired twice to dive in toward bounce target. Only one more burn–the last one. We brake hard to burn off speed. And then we bounce."
"You hope–" But I said it under my breath. I was saving most of my air for breathing.
Alexei heard it anyway. "You will like Luna, Charles. I promise. No bad weather. No weather at all–"
And then his damn PITA went off again.
This was the worst one of all–at least the worst one that I was conscious for. The noise was unbearable. Even if I could have stuffed my fingers into my ears, it wouldn't have done any good, the whole pod was roaring and shaking and rattling. Whose good idea was this anyway?
And this time, I had a very clear idea of the direction of down.It was directly in front of me. All the packing bubbles were pushing up against us–we were hanging from the top of the cargo pod, while several hundred tons of widgets and whatnots trembled ominously only three meters away. Those crates were achingto break free of the violent deceleration and smash upward into our faces. Just how strong were those foam dollops anyway?
And finally when I was convinced that the incredible noise would never end, it did.
We were in free fall again.
But only for a few seconds.
Something went bangon the outside of the cargo pod. A whole bunch of things went bang.The "Lunar parachutes." The external in‑flatables. Alexei had explained this too. We were landing on balloons. A whole cluster of them. Very strong, very flexible. From the outside, the cargo pod would look like a plastic raspberry.
Depending on our angle and speed, and the kind of terrain we were landing on, we could bounce for five or ten klicks. Alexei said that usually, you try to undershoot the target and bounce the rest of the way to your final destination. He said that some pods had bounced over fifteen kilometers from their initial touch‑down points, but that those kinds of bounce‑downs were carefully planned. The pods had come in very fast, and at a very shallow angle–and they were aimed down a long slope or something like that.
But we wouldn't have that kind of ride, for which I was very grateful. The target zone had a lot of rough terrain, and Alexei wanted to minimize our bouncing–so as soon as it was safe, the pod was programmed to deflate the balloons and let us just crunch in. I wondered what Alexei's definition of safewas. I hoped that Armstrong was telling the truth when he said, "It's soft and powdery. I can kick it with my foot."