"This isn't like the pod. We're on solid ground. I'll be fine."
"Do you want me to stay close to you, just in case?"
"Uh–if you want to."
"I'll do that."
"Okay."
"Thank you, Charles."
"You can call me Chigger."
Behind the goggles, under the silver poncho, it was hard to see what anyone was thinking, but Mickey's sudden bright smile was clear. "Thanks, kiddo."
"Hokay," said Alexei. "We go. Everybody, on the bounce–come, we must hurry–"
"How far is it?" I asked. "How long will it take to get there? Where are we going–?"
"Thirty klicks, give or take some. Six hours, maybe. We go catch train. No more talk. Use up oxygen. Follow me, this way–"
It wasn't that hard to hop‑skip across the Lunar surface. It just took a little practice to find the right rhythm. After a bit, Douglas and I were just as good as Alexei and Mickey. The four of us bounced along like a bunch of Happy Flubbies from that god‑awful kid show that Stinky used to like so much. For a while, Douglas and I were even shouting, "Boinng! Boinnnnng! Ba‑boing‑boinnngg!" with every bounce–at least, until Mickey started singing. "It's a small world, after all..." and Alexei threatened to puncture all of us.
But it was exhilarating great fun–it was kind of like skipping and kind of like hopping and kind of like flying, but mostly like nothing I'd ever done before. The feeling of speed and power and strength–it made me feel like Superman, like there was nothing I couldn't do. I started laughing and shrieking and giggling–so hard, I couldn't stop–
That's when Alexei called the first rest break, and the first thing he did was check my oxygen balance to see if I was getting too much or too little, or what. "You are too light‑headed." He looked surprised to find that my rebreather settings were all fine, even allowing for the increased exertion of bouncing.
"I'm laughing because it's fun," I said. "You remember fun, don't you?"
"We have six hours to go, little dingaling." He frowned. "Will you still have laughter thirty klicks from now?"
"I bet I will," I promised. "You were right–I like Luna."
"Do not get overconfident!" he snapped at me. "Overconfidence kills. You will not make very pretty corpse–and I have no intention of dragging you across Luna for burial." Alexei was suddenly very unhappy and very grumpy. None of us had ever seen him this way before. Had he heard something on his radio?
He seemed to realize it himself; he turned back to me, and spoke in a gentler tone. "Just concentrate on being safe. Is too dangerous to have fun here. Hokay, break over. Pay attention–see tall rock to left, with head sticking up into sun? We head toward notch, just to right. We stay in shadow. Let's go–on the bounce."
After that, it wasn't as much fun. After the novelty wore off, it was just something to do. But there was a lot to see–and I wished we could just stop and look at stuff sometimes. Some of the rocks glittered, and I wanted to pick them up and take them with me, but we didn't have sample bags, and the first time I stopped, Alexei yelled at me again, so I didn't do that anymore.
To say that the scenery on the moon looks different is an understatement–kind of like saying the Titanichad a rough crossing. Everythingon the moon is different. But it's the kinds of differences that are surprising. There's no wind or water erosion on the moon, so all the rocks look scruffier and the ground looks harder. It's hard to explain. You have to see it in person. Even pictures don't work.
Mostly we were in shadow. To the east, the sun was lurking just beneath the edge of a long broken rill. A couple of times we had to dart through streaks of sunlight, and once in a while, if we bounced too high, the sudden sideways glare felt like a hammer blast. A couple of times, Alexei said, "Gohvno!"and once he said, "Chyort!"which sounded even worse. I assumed it was in reaction to the intensity of the sunlight, but I didn't ask. It could have been anything. His dark mood was headed toward pure black.
Every fifteen minutes we stopped to rest for five, no matter where we were–unless it was in sunlight. I didn't ask why; it wasn't too hard to figure out. Our silvery ponchos could keep us warm against the cold Lunar night and they could reflect away some of the intermittent sunlight that hit us, but they couldn't cool us off in the direct glare of the sun.
Every time we stopped, Alexei checked my rebreather, and Mickey checked Douglas's. I protested that I could look at my own numbers, but both of them cut me off at the same time. Safety demanded that everyone check everyone else's settings.
By the time of our fourth rest break, it was pretty much routine. Mickey had taught Douglas and me how to read the rebreather displays, so now all four of us were checking each other at every stop. Alexei even showed us how to share our air in an emergency. The rebreathers had tubes that could connect directly through special valves on the front of the bubble suit. If someone needed air in a hurry, you could just plug right in. But you had to make sure the connection was secure or you could explosively evacuate your rebreather. "Useful only if you want to become a self‑propelled object."
So far, our oxygen use was just about what Alexei had expected. We would have enough to get where we were going–if we didn't make any wrong turns, and if we didn't have to double back to go around something.
The problem was, the ground was getting rougher. We were approaching a place where two craters overlapped; the wall of one was broken by the wall of the other. The only way to get to where we were going would be to cross some very uneven terrain. But we had to do it. We had to get out of the crater we were in and onto the plain beyond.
Alexei finally admitted he was worried. But we already knew that. The more he studied the display on his PITA, the worse his language got. I asked Mickey if he knew what Alexei was saying, but all he would translate was, "Your mother was a hamster," which didn't make any sense at all.
Mickey stayed close to Douglas; I think he was worried about Stinky, but Douglas could reach back and squeeze Stinky's arm or his leg and report, "He's still warm. He's still breathing," and that was as good as we could hope for right now.
What we really hoped was that he wouldn't wake up until we got to where we were going. The train station, or whatever it was, Alexei had picked out.
For some reason, I wasn't scared anymore. I felt like I should have been, but I wasn't. We were off the Line, off the map, very far from anywhere safe, about as alone as we could be–and I felt fine.
I wondered if other people felt this same way on Luna–alone and free at the same time. The only sound was the sound of my breathing, and the distant noises of everyone else grunting across the ground playing through my earphones. The bitter cold of the ground tried to seep through the bottom of the bubble, but the poncho kept radiating, and the air in the bubble stayed just warm enough. The light from beyond the rill was bothersome, but my goggles adjusted themselves to block the worst of it. I felt fine.
I thought about that.
I should have been worried. I should have been scared. But I wasn't. Why not?
Because I was safe with Douglas? Maybe. That was part of it, I'm sure. But maybe it was more because there wasn't anyone else around to tell me what to do or where to go or who to be. It wasn't the silence outsidethat was so wonderful. It was the silence inside–the freedom from all those voices that weren't mine.
It was like when I used to go up in the hills away from the tube‑town, so I could listen to my music. It wasn't just the music. It was the silence.