"MREs?"
"Meals Ready to Eat. Three lies in as many words, no? Be sure to drink much water. MREs make lumps like concrete in bowel. With no gravity, lumps get even harder. Very much pain. Learn the hard way, yes? Very hard. That is the problem. Too hard even to work out with pencil. Not to worry–if you don't like MRE, you are not hungry enough. Starvation is not as painful, but takes too much longer."
He pointed toward the other end of the pod–I thought of it as the front, because that was where we'd entered. "Use that end for bathroom. Use plastic bags, like this? See. Put waste in yellow containers with biohazard symbol. Be very careful. Is possible to make very bad stink in here. Very unpleasant. See those little fans everywhere to keep air moving? They don't make stink go away; only spread it around equally. Don't worry, I teach you how to be careful. Any questions?"
Mickey and Douglas seemed to be okay with the arrangements, and I figured I'd learn as we went along–and we'd all take turns trying to explain it to Stinky when he woke up. Maybe we could keep him from wetting or soiling himself for three days.
But there was something else that was bothering me.
"Um–"
"What?" That was Douglas.
"You agreed to this?"
"Mickey and I did, yes."
Mickey said, "We didn't have a lot of time to talk about it, Charles. We had fifteen minutes to decide before the capsule was launched."
"You took Alexei's word for it that there were marshals waiting for us–?"
"Alexei might be a lunatic, but he's an honest one." Mickey held up a headset. "You want to hear the playback? You want to listen to the Line chatter?"
I did, but that wasn't the question. "But the marshals will figure it out, won't they? When the elevator arrives at Farpoint and we're not in the cabin, they'll just phone ahead to Luna. There are marshals on Luna, aren't there? They'll just catch us in the cargo pod."
Alexei nodded. "Very good, Charles. But Luna is not Line. Very much not. On Line, you are always known. Always under camera eye. Not on moon. I will get you down safely, and you will see. Things disappear very easily. Luna is beautiful that way. You will love moon. Especially fresh food. Is big promise. I am hungry already, thinking of salad. Sweet corn, ripe tomatoes, fresh peas … "
Maybe it was me, maybe it was the lack of sleep, but everything was happening just too fast here.
"Excuse me–? Did I miss something? This is a cargo pod, isn't it? They know where we're going to land, don't they?"
"No," said Alexei. "They know where we're supposedto land."
I didn't like the sound of that. Even before I asked the next question, I knew the answer was only going to make things worse.
Alexei said, "Now you want to know wherewe will land, don't you?"
"Uh–okay, where?"
Alexei grinned through his scraggly beard. "We will come down where they can't go. Not easily. Very bad area. The maps are not accurate. Not the official ones. From there we go to land of tall mountains and deep ice mines. Is very beautiful. A little dangerous. But not too much–not to worry. You will like. By the time they get to cargo pod, we will all be somewhere else."
"But they can track us, can't they? As soon as they figure out we're in one of the cargo pods, they'll–"
Alexei's PITA*[Personal Information Telecommunications Assistant] beeped; he glanced at his wrist. "Ah, there it is now. Time for first orbital correction. Everybody brace yourselves. Hang on to the webbing. This won't be too bad." Mickey reached over and grabbed the still‑sleeping Stinky.
"Is just a little one–" Alexei started to say, but he was abruptly interrupted by a deep‑throated rumble that rattled the whole cabin like an El Paso windstorm. It was loud and bumpy, and we were all shoved sideways up against the hull so hard it was almost impossible to breathe. It felt like we were hanging upside down in a cement mixer. I wanted to scream–but didn't have the air for it. And just when I was making up my mind that I was going to scream anyway, it stopped, and that spooky eternal silence closed in again.
"Is that it?" Douglas asked.
"Oh, no," said Alexei. "We have maybe fourteen or fifteen more. All the way out." He looked back over to me. "What was question again, Charles? That they will track us? Yes, they will. That is the point of the course changes."
"Fourteen or fifteen more? All like that–?"
"It's done with solid‑fuel chips, Chigger," Douglas started to explain. "They burn unevenly and that rattles everything–"
" I know how they burn!"I almost said a whole bunch of other stuff too, except I was too busy concentrating on my next breath. "And why so many course corrections anyway? Can't they aim this thing–?" I looked to Alexei.
"Not course corrections. Course changes.Is very precisely aimed," Alexei said, "and we are making serious alteration in trajectory. Is not unheard of. Sometimes cargo gets preempted from one location to another."
"But they're still tracking us, aren't they?" Douglas asked. "Chig‑ger's right. This thing broadcasts a locater signal–they'll know where we are as soon as they figure it out, won't they?"
"Eventually, yes, they'll figure it out. The key word is eventually.So our job is to make eventually later than sooner." Alexei continued proudly. "First, this is not only pod to launch. Do you remember five others? All of those pods have been preempted too. Some rich new Luna company bought them in transit–I cannot imagine who, can you? All the pods have been retargeted for different places. Whoever tracks pods thinking we are in one of them will have to send marshals to six different landing sites, all of them difficult, except two."
"Oh," Douglas said. "And–?"
"And?" Alexei looked puzzled.
"You said first,as if there was a second."
"Oh. Yes, well secondis much more subtle. This is why we have fourteen course changes on each pod. So that no one who is tracking can predict final orbit and landing site until we are already on track. All those changes–we will look like we can land anywhere on Luna. The last burn will not happen until we are on final approach, and that will bounce us off the screens for many long minutes. Whoever tracks will have to spend long minutes projecting–guessing probable touchdown sites. Your lunatic Russian friend is very clever, yes?"
"Yes, very clever," agreed Mickey. He'd been very quiet up to this moment. Now his tone of voice had gone all strange, and he asked, "Just where areyou bringing us down?"
Alexei grinned. "This is cleverest part. I show you. We started out in Earth equatorial plane, yes? Each of our course changes pushes us more and more up. We go toward north pole of moon–they think we are aiming for North Heinlein, approach pattern is perfect for that–but no, as we come into Lunar orbit, we go three times around and make extra burns. Last change puts us in crazy‑mouse orbit. You know crazy‑mouse orbit? Near polar, but not quite; elliptical with lots of wibble‑wobble. Great fun. We can come down anywhere we want from crazy‑mouse, but no one knows where until last minute. Other pods do same thing too, we make them all crazy."
"But what do we do?" Mickey asked.
"We will be in crazy‑mouse just long enough for people tracking us to say, 'Oh, shit.' We loop overtop of moon, come down around far‑side, aim for ground, brake very suddenly, and bounce down in southern hemisphere."
" Bouncedown … ?" I asked.