"Normally, Weil, it would be. A demo jock isn't 'just a tech on retainer,' as you so quaintly put it; those government licenses aren't easy to get. And you may not be aware of it, but you have very poor efficiency ratings to begin with. Lots of potential, no follow-through. Frankly, you've been a disappointment. However, lucky for you, this Izmailova dame humiliated Don Sakai, and he's let us know that we're under no particular pressure to accommodate her."
"Izmailova humiliated Sakai?"
Hamilton stared at him. "Weil, you're oblivious, you know that?"
Then he remembered Izmailova's rant on nuclear energy. "Right, okay. I got it now."
"So here's your choice. I can write up a reprimand, and it goes into your permanent file, along with Izmailova's complaint. Or you can take a lateral Earthside, and I'll see to it that these little things aren't logged into the corporate system."
It wasn't much of a choice. But he put a good face on it. "In that case it looks like you're stuck with me."
"For the moment, Weil. For the moment."
He was back on the surface the next two days running. The first day he was once again hauling fuel rods to Chatterjee C. This time he kept to the road, and the reactor was refueled exactly on schedule. The second day he went all the way out to Triesnecker to pick up some old rods that had been in temporary storage for six months while the Kerr-McGee people argued over whether they should be reprocessed or dumped. Not a bad deal for him, because although the sunspot cycle was on the wane, there was a surface advisory in effect and he was drawing hazardous duty pay.
When he got there, a tech rep telepresenced in from somewhere in France to tell him to forget it. There'd been another meeting, and the decision had once again been delayed. He started back to Bootstrap with the new a capella version of the Threepenny Opera playing in his head. It sounded awfully sweet and reedy for his tastes, but that was what they were listening to up home.
Fifteen kilometers down the road, the UV meter on the dash jumped.
Gunther reached out to tap the meter with his finger. It did not respond. With a freezing sensation at the back of his neck, he glanced up at the roof of the cab and whispered, "Oh, no."
"The Radiation Forecast Facility has just intensified its surface warning to a Most Drastic status," the truck said calmly. "This is due to an unanticipated flare storm, onset immediately. Everyone currently on the surface is to proceed with all haste to shelter. Repeat: Proceed immediately to shelter."
"I'm eighty kilometers from--"
The truck was slowing to a stop. "Because this unit is not hardened, excessive fortuitous radiation may cause it to malfunction. To ensure the continued safe operation of this vehicle, all controls will be frozen in manual mode and this unit will now shut off."
With the release of the truck's masking functions, Gunther's head filled with overlapping voices. Static washed through them, making nonsense of what they were trying to say:
**astic Status***epeat: We******his is Beth. The****hail******yo****ere?*C Su**ace adv***ry *as*******ve jus**issued****ost*** om**on**good**uddy****ven up*******to Most**rast rastic ad*isory**Get*off me a**oot***Miko, Sabra*ic Sta**s. All unit* and the surfac*****ddamn**ou, Kangmei******your asse** personn*l are to find sh are you list***ng? Find undergrou***right now*** elter immediately. Maxim shelter. Don*t try to ge don't want*to hear you'*um exposure twenty minut t back to Bootstrap. Too stayed behind to turn of es. Repeat: Maximum exp far, it'll fry you. List f the lights. Who else os*re twenty m*nutes. Fi* en, ther* are thr*e facto is out*ther*? Come in ri ****helter im***iatel****ries no****r from***ur pr ght n*w**Ev**yone! Anybo Th*******h***eco*ded*voi **ent**ocat*on***Are***u dy k*ow w**re*Mikhail isce of t***Radiati***Fore li***ning**y***goofoff******C*mon, Misha***on't yocast Fa**lity. Due**o an* Weisskopf*AG*is one, Niss ***et coy on us***ound u unpre**c*ed solar flar********and**unar**acrostruct **your voice, hea***We g th***urfa***adviso****as ural***Weil******me kn*****ot word Ezra's dug**nt** *****upgrad******Most Dr if****'re listeni*****ome a factory out Chladn****
"Beth! The nearest shelter is back at Weisskopf--that's half an hour at top speed and I've got an advisory here of twenty minutes. Tell me what to do!"
But the first sleet of hard particles was coming in too hard to make out anything more. A hand, his apparently, floated forward and flicked off the radio relay. The voices in his head died.
The crackling static went on and on. The truck sat motionless, half an hour from nowhere, invisible death sizzling and popping down through the cab roof. He put his helmet and gloves on, doublechecked their seals, and unlatched the door.
It slammed open. Pages from the op manual flew away, and a glove went tumbling gaily across the surface, chasing the pink fuzzy-dice that Eurydice had given him that last night in Sweden. A handful of wheat biscuits in an open tin on the dash turned to powder and were gone, drawing the tin after them. Explosive decompression. He'd forgotten to depressurize. Gunther froze in dismayed astonishment at having made so basic--so dangerous--a mistake.
Then he was on the surface, head tilted back, staring up at the sun. It was angry with sunspots, and one enormous and unpredicted solar flare.
I'm going to die, he thought.
For a long, paralyzing instant, he tasted the chill certainty of that thought. He was going to die. He knew that for a fact, knew it more surely than he had ever known anything before.
In his mind, he could see Death sweeping across the lunar plain toward him. Death was a black wall, featureless, that stretched to infinity in every direction. It sliced the universe in half. On this side were life, warmth, craters and flowers, dreams, mining robots, thought, everything that Gunther knew or could imagine. On the other side ... Something? Nothing? The wall gave no hint. It was unreadable, enigmatic, absolute. But it was bearing down on him. It was so close now that he could almost reach out and touch it. Soon it would be here. He would pass through, and then he would know.
With a start he broke free of that thought, and jumped for the cab. He scrabbled up its side. His trance chip hissing, rattling and crackling, he yanked the magnetic straps holding Siegfried in place, grabbed the spool and control pad, and jumped over the edge.
He landed jarringly, fell to his knees, and rolled under the trailer. There was enough shielding wrapped around the fuel rods to stop any amount of hard radiation--no matter what its source. It would shelter him as well from the sun as from his cargo. The trance chip fell silent, and he felt his jaws relaxing from a clenched tension.
Safe.
It was dark beneath the trailer, and he had time to think. Even kicking his rebreather up to full, and offlining all his suit peripherals, he didn't have enough oxygen to sit out the storm. So okay. He had to get to a shelter. Weisskopf was closest, only fifteen kilometers away and there was a shelter in the G5 assembly plant there. That would be his goal.
Working by feel, he found the steel supporting struts, and used Siegfried's magnetic straps to attach himself to the underside of the trailer. It was clumsy, difficult work, but at last he hung face-down over the road. He fingered the walker's controls, and sat Siegfried up.
Twelve excruciating minutes later, he finally managed to get Siegfried down from the roof unbroken. The interior wasn't intended to hold anything half so big. To get the walker in he had first to cut the door free, and then rip the chair out of the cab. Discarding both items by the roadside, he squeezed Siegfried in. The walker bent over double, reconfigured, reconfigured again, and finally managed to fit itself into the space. Gently, delicately, Siegfried took the controls and shifted into first.