“It seemed too fantastic for me to believe at first, but then I did some checking around.
Everything I learned seemed to back up what the man from CAPRICORN had told me. I decided to hold onto the statuette and see what happened. As time passed, I began to sense that the cult was getting desperate to find its talisman. Apparently, they were under some sort of time constraint… something to do with one of their prophecies. It seems they had a preset date for when their plan was to be carried out. I never found out the exact date, but I knew it had to be soon.”
Ching rubbed her eyes. I was trying not to feel guilty.
“Do you think the cult would’ve gone through with its plans without the statuette?”
Ching’s eyes were closed. “I don’t know. Probably.”
She began to breathe deeply. I let her sleep, feeling a little less responsible. Then I got out my seat and grabbed the bottle of whiskey. After taking a few sips, I lit another cigarette and looked out into the great vacuum.
This whole scenario reminded me of my religious beliefs, or lack thereof. I’d never really thought much about God, or life after death, but occasionally I’d ask myself, what if? I now found myself wondering the same thing about the cult. It didn’t seem plausible to me that some group would actually have the power to take over the world, but what if they did? And if so, what chance did Ching and I have of stopping them?
Here we were, flying toward the moon with no plan, no idea of what we would find. I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. For all I knew, the fate of the world rested on the shoulders of an out-of-work PI, a fence, and two thugs. I drifted into an uneasy sleep.
When I woke, Ching and her henchmen were breaking their fast with some kind of brightly colored snack cake. I opted for the PI brunch. We still had another twenty hours to go. The time passed slowly, but it gave me a chance to find some redemptive qualities in Lou and Felipe. Ching’s henchmen weren’t the brightest guys I’d ever met, but Lou, the one who’d smacked me around, turned out to be a talker and kept me entertained unintentionally with a steady stream of malapropisms, mixed metaphors, and unbelivably creative profanity. Felipe, the more cerebral of the two, actually came up with the occasional four-syllable word, and almost floored me when he whipped out a cribbage board and a deck of cards.
Cribbage, of course, was the greatest two-played game ever invented. My mom had taught me to play right after teaching me how to go pee-pee by myself. Since Ching didn’t play and had no desire to, and Lou had yet to master Go Fish, Felipe was as happy to find a fellow player as I was.
Voorman didn’t join us once throughout the flight. Instead, he sat in the cockpit and read. Ching spent most of the time staring out a window, interrupting her meditations intermittently to clean one of the many firearms she’d brought along. I didn’t ask how she’d gotten them through the spaceport security. Lou kept himself amused with a Robet E. Howard paperback and a bag of pork rinds. Every few seconds, he’d silently sound out a word, then shake his head. At one point, I timed the length between page turns.
Eight minutes.
Felipe and I, meanwhile, played a couple games of cribbage, feeling each other out tentatively, he like a mediocre boxer, me like a python with a cornered gerbil. Felipe cut a few lucky cards and eked out a victory in the second game, after which he suggested that we play for money. I casually suggested a dime a point — a quarter past the skunk line — and my unsuspecting opponent agreed. Calculating the length of the flight and the number of games we could get in, I figured I could pocket about four hundred bucks.
I owed Felipe a little more than two hundred dollars when Voorman emerged from the cockpit. He took a seat by Ching and removed a cigar from his mouth. “We’re about an hour out. I figured we should discuss what you want to do when we arrive.”
Ching filled Vorrman in briefly on what we knew about GRS and asked if he had any idea what they would be doing on the moon. Voorman thought it over for a moment.
“I’ve heard that there’s some kind of research facility up here. I don’t know where it is, but you can probably find the way there through the operation center. I’ll get you in, but what you do after that is your problem. I just agreed to get you there.”
Ching nodded. “Once we get in, how many people will we have to get past?”
Voorman shrugged. “The complex is pretty much fully automated. There aren’t more than a dozen people running the whole place.”
Voorman pulled out a piece of paper and unfolded it. I moved to get a better look and saw what appeared to be a diagrammed layout of the complex. From what I could tell, it was comprised of six or seven domed biospheres, all connected by some type of subway system. Voorman pointed to one of the domes. “This is the op-center. We’ll land here.
I’ve made deliveries before and shouldn’t have any trouble getting in. After we land, I’m staying in the shuttle, and you’ll have eight hours. I need to leave after that. If you’re not back by then, I’ll leave you behind. We clear on that?”
Ching said she understood, and Voorman returned to the cockpit, leaving the diagram for us to examine. We crowded around while Ching formulated a strategy. We would all be armed to the teeth and would hopefully catch the people in the op-center by surprise.
After subduing any resistance, we would split up and search the complex. Ching had brought along communication devices and rebreathers, which would allow us to leave the biospheres if it became necessary. Then she passed out the equipment, and we waited anxiously to land.
Looking out the window, I could see the moon getting larger by the minute. A short while later, I heard Voorman’s voice through the partially open cockpit door. He was repeatedly asking for permission to land, but there seemed to be no response. After several minutes, he poked his head through the door. “For some reason, they’re not answering. Looks like I’ll have to set the shuttle down outside the op-center.”
Ching looked at me, a concerned expression on her face. “I’m not sure if this is good news or not.”
Twenty minutes later, the shuttle came to rest and powered down. Ordinarily, Ching informed me, we would have landed in an air lock. But since no one was responding in the op-center, we had to touch down on the moon’s surface and would have to walk.
Through the window, I saw a massive structure that resembled a metal bowl turned upside down. To the right, I could see two others in the distance. We bundled ourselves into space suits, strapped on our rebreathers, and checked to make sure they were working correctly. Voorman came in and opened the hatch for us. We climbed single-file out of the shuttle and down the ladder.
For the first time, I stepped onto the dusty surface of the moon. Immediately, I felt the effects of minimal gravity. I turned and bounced along after Ching in the direction of the op-center. We reached the dome and began to move clockwise around the perimeter. A minute later, we came to a sealed door built into the curved surface. Ching tried the door, but it didn’t open. She motioned for us to stand back, then leveled a large gun at it, and pulled the trigger.
The blast left a hole the size of a basketball where the door handle had been. Lou stepped up and reached inside. With a mighty tug, the door swung open, and we followed the big man into the dome.