And every so often, I cursed the monkey. I'd been assuming that the monkey was a good safety monitor. Obviously, it wasn't. It was supposed to beep or scream or run for help if a life was in danger–but it hadn't alerted me that I was running low on air. So obviously, it didn't include an oxygen meter–and it hadn't been paying any attention to my rate of breathing. I was already gasping for breath when Mickey figured out there was something wrong and came back to check my air. If it hadn't been for Stinky, I'd have junked the monkey right there. Except I was still wondering about those memory bars.
"Look, there it is," said Mickey.
We stopped to look. He pointed toward the horizon. It was hard to see. The dark slope downward was outlined with bright highlights–places where outcroppings stuck up into the sunlight, or worse, places where the shadows dipped away altogether, leaving patches of Lunar soil painted with a hard actinic glare. We had to squint to see anything. Even Stinky, who was still groggy from the tranquilizer, stuck his head out of Douglas's poncho and demanded to know what we were looking at.
"It's hard to make out–" Mickey admitted. "Look for a reddish glow."
"Oh, I've got it," said Douglas. "Chigger, can you see it?"
"No–" The brightness made my eyes water. We were looking at a vast downhill slope, and the horizon was farther away than I had gotten used to. And there was a lot of sunlight being reflected back at us. And … I didn't want to say it aloud, but there was something moving out there.
But if there was something there, I had to tell them. And if there wasn't anything there and I was seeing things, then I had to say something about that too. Didn't I?
"Mickey?"
"Yes, Chigger?"
"Are there mirages on the moon?"
"Well, not mirages. Not like on Earth. You need an atmosphere for those kinds of mirages. But sometimes you get optical illusions. Or even psychological illusions. Your eyes will play tricks on you. Or your mind. Why? Do you see something?"
"I thought I did."
"Where?"
"Just to the left of the reflector. Something black, running and bouncing across the bright part. Didn't you see it?"
"No. Is it still there?"
"No."
"Did it look like a bubble?"
"No. It was too thin. I only caught a quick glimpse. I don't know what it was."
"Which way was it going?"
"It was coming toward us. Almost head‑on."
That brought both Mickey and Douglas to attention. They scanned the distance for long moments, punctuated only by one of them asking, "Do you see it?" And the other replying, "No, do you?"
Finally, Mickey said, "Well, if it's out there, it's in the shadows now and we're missing it. But just to be on the safe side–" He came over and checked my air again.
I started to protest that I was fine, but then I realized that Mickey was only doing what he had to do, so I shut up and waited until he finished. Douglas asked, "Is he all right?"
Mickey nodded. "As far as I can tell." To me, he said, "I'm not saying you didn't see anything, Chigger. You were right to ask. But it's not unusual after you've had hypoxia to experience visual or auditory illusions."
"Hallucinations, you mean."
"Yeah," he admitted.
For a moment, none of us said anything. We were all thinking the same thing. Was the kid with the monkey on his head going crazy? And if not–then what was out there?
"All right," said Mickey. "Let's keep going. Let's get to the reflector. Douglas?"
Douglas started hop‑skipping again. I followed. Mickey brought up the rear. Douglas hadn't said much, he'd been concentrating on Stinky most of the time. But now he said, "Mickey?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you think Alexei abandoned us?"
Mickey didn't answer for several bounces. I had begun to think he wasn't going to answer at all, when he said, "The thought had crossed my mind, yeah."
"You know him better than we do–"
"I don't know him that well. For all his talk, there's a lot he doesn't say. 'I make big deal, I make lots of money, I am embarrassed I make so much money, you will pick up check, da?All my money is tied up in cash, da?'" Mickey mimicked his Russian friend perfectly. "He's always got a deal going somewhere. But nobody ever knows what his deals are. I suppose that's a good thing. What you don't know you can't tell the marshals."
We bounced and skipped in silence for a while, punctuated only by occasional soft grunts. After a while, Mickey added, "But it's not like Alexei to endanger someone's life. Loonies don't do that. They believe that life is sacred everywhere. The greatest crime on Luna is to disrespect life. And Alexei is completely Loonie. He wouldn't do it. He couldn't."
More silence, more bouncing. I checked my readouts. They were green. I checked them again. This time I looked at the numbers. I checked them a third time and mouthed the numbers as I read them–reminding myself what was optimal. Pay intention.
Douglas broke the silence. "So you think he's dead."
"We didn't find a body."
"You didn't answer the question."
"I don't know." And then he added, "But it's the only thing I can think of that makes sense … "
I disagreed. I could think of something else that made sense. But I didn't want to say it aloud. Not yet. I needed to think some more. As long as I didn't get distracted again–
I could see the reflector clearly now. It was a big silvery ball on a short spindly tripod. The whole thing had been dropped in from orbit and there were fragments of the landing pod around the base. But what caught my attention was the way the reflector had a sparkly‑flickery look–all different colors. It was even more spooky because the whole thing was in shadow, so where were the flickers coming from?
I pointed it out to Mickey. He explained, "Lasers from all over the system. Everyone tunes their beams to a different color, that's why it looks like a rainbow, and everyone targets on Luna. It's a convenient landmark, and there's no atmosphere to distort the beams. It's kind of like Greenwich mean time, you know what that is? It's a reference point against which all other clocks are set. Well, Luna is like that too. It's the surveyor's post for everyone in the solar system to measure distances from. Accurate computations of distance are essential for space travel."
"Oh, yeah. That makes sense."
"We're almost there. Do you want to take a meal break? We can even go in the inflatable for a bit." It was still bouncing along behind him.
I opened my mouth to say yes, then stopped. "What's that–?" I pointed.
"What's what?" And then he saw it too.
It was a bubble suit, like ours. An emptybubble suit. Half‑inflated. As if the person wearing it had taken it off and skipped away into the arid dark.
It was Alexei'sbubble suit.
REFLECTIONS
My first thought was, so that answers that question.
My second thought was, No, it doesn't. Where's the body?
How do you get out of a bubble suit and just walk away?
You don't.
So where was Alexei?
The question was more puzzling than ever.
And why was his suit here?How did it get here from there?Who else was here? I glanced around nervously. There could be an entire army hiding just behind the horizon. We'd have no way of knowing.
Mickey and Douglas were just as disconcerted as I was. Maybe even more so. Because they knew all the stuff I hadn't even thought of–so they probably had even more questions.