Artemis – The Fra Mauro Job

By Brandon W. Nichols

Map of Artemis – Credit Andy Weir

Disclaimer: This is a fan fiction story based off of Andy Weir’s book Artemis. I make no claim to any of the concepts or characters used in that work, nor in the map shown above. Please note that the following work contains some language and content that may not be suitable for younger readers.

Even without the crappy lunar GPS, you can always tell when you’re getting close to Artemis because the ground gets so much smoother.  I’m used to driving where no one has been before, which means rocks, ridges, boulders, and even the occasional hole in the ground, but around Artemis, every rock has been picked up, and every patch of dirt has been driven over a hundred times.  It’s the smoothest spot on the Moon, I can assure you.

I looked up from the chess game I had going on the forward monitor.  I switched off Sirius’s autopilot and yawned.  That was when the pings started.  Whenever I reach one of the outer markers for the city, Sirius’s connections download all the messages I got while I was away.  It’s a fun way to mark the end of a long trip.  The staccato of pings echoed through the cockpit.  I counted seven all told.  That was about average considering I’d only been gone for six days this time.

I pulled my Gizmo out of the charger it had been sitting in for the last 3 days.  For a moment, nothing happened.  I’d lost line-of-sight from the outer marker.  But the connection would be restored when I was able to see the city’s antennae again. 

There was a low escarpment to swing around, and then I spotted it in the distance.  Conrad Bubble, named for my third favorite astronaut.  Well, maybe fourth.  Buzz needs a little love too.  For me it’s Lovell, Bean, and then maybe a running tie between Buzz and Pete Conrad.  They’re all such cool guys though.  I love Lovell because he seemed like such a decent guy who flew all these interesting missions.  Al Bean is a no brainer because he’s the first real artist that was sent up, even if he really only painted cool stuff after he got back.  Buzz was a brilliant engineer, so I’ve got to have a special place for him.  But Pete Conrad is just fun.  He was a wild man from beginning to end.  Had the first pinpoint landing on the Moon, brought a Saturn V up through a lightning storm, saved Skylab from being a piece of space debris.  Man, what a life he had.  Anyways, sorry, I love old stories about the original Apollos.  Those guys are my heroes. 

I brought Sirius around a big, gentle curve and Conrad Bubble was a few hundred yards away.  It just stood there, towering over the landscape, like a black and white photo of a beach ball in the sand.  It was flanked by the bubbles for Aldrin and Bean.  Bean is my neighborhood.  Suburban, not too fancy, but by no means low-rent. 

Now that I was back in visual range it was time to reestablish contact. 

“Port of Entry Airlock, this is Rover Sirius, registration US-12, coming in from the North-Northwest, requesting permission to enter and park in space twelve, over.”

The radio crackled a little and I heard a feminine voice reply, “Sirius, Port of Entry, can you confirm where you’re coming in from?  We do not have you on today’s traffic report.”

No surprise.  My schedule varies wildly.  Must have been someone new talking to me, “Port, Sirius.  This was a long-range scouting and survey mission.  This is rover Sirius, under US flag, owned and operated by the Smithsonian Institution and NASA.”

“I don’t need your rover’s resume, Sirius.  Just tell me why I don’t have you down for activity today.”

Does she think I’m a space invader or something?  “With long-range drives, arrival times can vary wildly.  I have special authorization.  Call the NASA office down on space agency row.  They can give you my credentials.”

There was a pause.  I was nearing Conrad Bubble.  I’d need to make the turn towards Aldrin soon.

Another voice came over the radio.  This one was familiar, “Tom!  Glad you’re back.  How was the Sea of Vapors?”

“Magnificent desolation, as always.  Is that you, Sarah?”

“You know it,” she said.  Sarah Gottlieb was one of the EVA masters.  We’d done our EVA training together years ago when we first came up to Artemis.  I didn’t see much of her these days.  We ran in different circles.  Sarah continued, “What was it this time?  An old Russian Lunakhod?”

“Nope.  This was a JAXA lander.  Came down in 2032 at a bad angle.  I found the problem.  Damn landing leg snapped in two on a boulder.  Poor little guy never had a chance.  Thank God it was unmanned.”

“The Moon is a harsh mistress,” Sarah said.

“Amen to that, Heinlein.  Can I get a go to come on around and park?  I’ve been stuck in this rover for the better part of a week now.  Really looking forward to that shower.”

The other girl came back on the line, “Copy you, Sirius.  Going to have to ask you to hold for a few minutes.  We have the train getting ready to depart for the Visitor’s Center and a convoy of construction gear with the right-of-way.  You’ll have to wait your turn.”

Annoying, but not unexpected.  It’d give me time to check my messages.

“Copy that, Port of Entry, I’ll wait for your signal.  Try not to forget about me.”

I put Sirius in park and looked out to see if I could spot the train heading out.  Nothing for the moment.  It always took a while to pile the tourists in.  With nothing to do but wait, I pulled up my Gizmo and checked my messages. 

I had an email from the bank, just a confirmation of my direct deposit.  The Smithsonian putting the usual two-hundred thousand slugs in my account for last month.  I take all my payments in Artemis currency.  I’m never going back to Earth and I’m basically living my retirement plan anyways.  I was on the back end of my career when I came up here.  If I was still on Earth, I’d be eligible for Social Security by now. 

I hit a few buttons and routed fifty-two thousand slugs to the KSC through the bill-pay app.  Now I was good for another month in my condo in Bean.  I’d deal with the other bills later.

Rent is a whole thing up here.  KSC isn’t wild about anyone owning territory, so everything in Artemis is a rental.  At least for the moment, there’s talk about that changing soon. 

Next up was an automated message from Doc Roussel telling me to pick up my prescriptions at the next possible convenience.  Doc Roussel kept me alive up here.  I took pills to keep my cholesterol down, my blood pressure where it was supposed to be, and to keep my immune system from attacking my lungs.  My grandfather died young because he was fat and lived on Earth before they had good medication.  My dad lived about twenty years longer because he had decent medication.  With me, I get even better meds and I’m in one-sixth gravity, so my heart has a lot less strain on it.  If I don’t fuck something up, I could live to be a hundred, assuming something else doesn’t kill me in the meantime.  I set an alarm in my Gizmo, reminding me to swing by and pick up my meds in an hour.  Hopefully that would time out about right.

The next message was a form letter email from the Administrator’s office.  Ngugi had rejected the last two requests I’d made for a thirty-minute meeting and this time was no different.  I’d been wanting to float an idea for something, but it was hard to get facetime with the woman who ran the Moon.  Oh well.

An attachment was tacked on to the next email.  I opened it without really checking to see what the deal was.  I wasn’t too worried.  It’d be a lot of extra work for a hacker from Earth to screw with me from a quarter-million miles away.

What popped up on my screen was a set of three photos.  They were… let’s just say that the nudity went from tasteful to downright scandalous.  I checked the sender.  Sure enough, it was Jennifer. 

“Whoa-hoa Jenny.  Not on company time, okay?” I said to myself as I closed the file.  She had been trying to get my attention because I hadn’t been to the club in a few weeks.  I assumed that I was one of her more reliable regulars and everyone on the Moon takes customer service pretty seriously.  Still, this wasn’t the kind of thing to get into while I was still technically on the clock. 

Next in the inbox was a cryptic message from that Bashara girl.  It just said, “Wee wee wee all the way home.”  That was how I knew that my Eastern-style Carolina barbecue had been properly smuggled in and was waiting in my fridge.  Forty-five hundred slugs was a lot to pay for half a pound of barbecue, but it was worth it to get a taste of home.  I used a smuggler because otherwise there were eight different forms to fill out and the scanners they used on any unauthorized foodstuffs tended to suck the flavor out of everything.  One day, I’d figure out a way to haul it up in bulk and start up a restaurant or something.  Add that to my long list of pipe dream projects.

I saw a message from Stefan, asking me to swing by the next time I had a chance to take a look at something he’d been working on.  The email also had a link to his latest video post.  Stefan Rolle was a fun guy, but for the life of me, I didn’t know how he managed to stay alive.  When he wasn’t working in a glass shop over in Conrad Bubble, he was making these daredevil videos.  Some of them were dangerous, others were just stupid.  Still, he was only a risk to himself, so I added him to my Gizmo’s calendar.  I’d check on whatever his thing was tomorrow.

Last message was from Mark, telling me to meet him at Moonshots to watch the Cubs game tonight.  I was glad to get that message.  Mark is one of the few guys on the Moon older than me.  We looked out for each other and part of that was just checking in and getting a meal together every once in a while.

In my reading, I had missed seeing the train depart.  No big deal, I’d seen it a dozen times.  The Moonorail, as the tourists call it, shuttles back and forth from Artemis to the Apollo 11 Visitor’s Center.  If you ever come to Artemis, you have to go.  It’s the greatest tourist attraction in the solar system.

Next I watched a convoy of vehicles that were making their way to the new Mitchell Bubble, which was still under construction.  Edgar Mitchell was a pretty out-there kind of guy.  I wonder what he would have thought about the bubble named for him being mostly built to support the fiber optic cable industry.  Then again, he was pretty Zen.  He got back from the Moon and got into noetics and mental focus.  I think there was something about mountaintops and meditation.  Still, beats crawling into a bottle, which happened to more than one of the old astros. 

When the convoy passed, my radio crackled to life.  “Sirius, this is Port of Entry, you are cleared to enter and proceed to parking space twelve.  Welcome back, Mister Nichols.”

I tried not to roll my eyes at the Mister.  I was sure that was only thrown in because of my age.  It’d be nice to have at least one day go by where I could not be reminded that I’m old and fat, but it wasn’t going to be this day.

Sirius could only fit into the Aldrin Port of Entry airlock.  It was a big honkin’ rover and needed a good sized parking spot.  One of the airlock technicians guided me in.  Technically, I could have just used the computer, but some things you just prefer to do yourself.  Sirius has been a faithful companion for years.  I’d have felt terrible if a faulty keystroke sent my big girl into a wall, but I trusted my own hands to do things right. 

I put Sirius in park and went to suit up.  The Port of Entry airlock is kept in vacuum most of the time during working hours, so I had to get into a space suit to get from the rover into the city proper.  Annoying, but no big deal, I’d done it a hundred times.

My suit is an old school model, in three pieces.  I have a rack next to Sirius’s airlock where it sits.  I start out with sliding on the pants and then I just wriggle my way up the torso.  I winced as I bent over to get underneath the midsection.  I get these muscle cramps because of some of my meds.  Doc Roussel says to eat more potassium but do you know how hard it is to get a real banana up here?  Anyways, I know, I know, take the damn vitamins, but meh.

When I got the suit, it was an old NASA surplus, a leftover backup from one of the Jupiter missions.  When I got it, it was all white, which isn’t great for the Moon.  You want to stand out against the landscape.  I gave it some green flashes across the chest and painted the helmet purple, so I look a little like Buzz Lightyear.  It might be silly, but it’s distinctive. 

Stepping outside, I climbed down and did a post-trip check for Sirius.  I take good care of this vehicle.  This rover is the most important thing on the Moon to me.  Without her I couldn’t do my job and I love my job. 

My job is to go out and survey old landing sites, spacecraft wrecks, spent rocket casings, basically anything humanity put on the near side of the Moon.  Officially, I’m an employee of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in coordination with NASA.  I am, as far as I know, humanity’s only operating lunar field archaeologist. 

Because I have to drive away from the city for days on end, the Smithsonian was kind enough to shell out for a really kickass rover for me to drive around in.  I named it Sirius, after Orion’s dog.

There have been dozens of landings on the Moon, even before construction was started on Artemis.  Everyone knows the six Apollo sites, but there were also a bunch of unmanned probes.  NASA sent up soft-landers called Surveyors in the mid-60’s to make sure that an Apollo LEM wouldn’t just sink into the soil.  The Soviets sent rovers and landers of their own.  Decades later you even had private competitions try to land something here.  And beyond that, there have been literal tons of spent rocket stages that intentionally or accidentally landed here.  Sometimes it was done to test seismic sensors.  Sometimes it was just a fuck-up.  Humanity has always had a problem leaving its trash lying around. 

Typically, the satellites in lunar orbit will spot something that looks like debris or wreckage and then I get a request from back on Earth to check it out.  Sometimes it’s a space agency that wants to see what happened to their old probe.  Every once in a while, I’m asked to bring it back so that they can put it in a museum or something.  There are UN treaties that keep Apollo sites off-limits, but there’s still a lot of old wrecks that need to be checked out and surveyed.

This latest trip was to pick up an old lander that the Japanese put down.  Japan’s space program, JAXA, had tried to land this thing, but that didn’t work out, so, at the request of Japan’s Tokorozawa Aviation Museum, it’s going to be headed back to Earth on the next freighter.  The thing was awkward to load up, but Sirius is basically a pickup truck and I was able to slide it up the tailgate ramp and stow it in the cargo bed.  In lunar gravity, it only weighed about fifty pounds.  Not bad for an old man.

Sirius is specially designed for long-haul trips and she’s basically a spacecraft on wheels.  Like I said, she’s shaped like an oversized pickup truck, but there are a lot of special features.  The roof has a thick plate of aluminum for radiation shielding.  I spend a lot of time inside, so it’s important to get as much radiation shielding as possible.  On top of that is a solar panel array that connects to the one of the biggest damn batteries on the whole Moon.  She’s equipped with life support, navigation, and propulsion in the form of wheel hub motors.  It’s even got a water recycling system inside if I have to be gone for more than a week.  At a full battery charge, if I don’t run a lot of unnecessary power, Sirius can drive at twenty-five mph for three straight days without stopping.

Artemis’s EVA Guild has rules about driving alone, EVAs out of sight of Artemis, not approaching crash sites, speed limits – I ignore all of that.  I do things a little differently.  They have to let me because most of my work is done far from the city.  And NASA still has enough sway up here to cut the occasional strip of red tape.

Anyways, I gave Sirius a good once over, just checking the basics.  I’d do a big preflight check again before our next trip.  For now, I was ready to get out of this EVA suit. 

Leaving the Port of Entry, I walked through the Aldrin Arcade.  It’s the most happening place in the city.  Whenever I pass through, I make a point to hit the Arcade.  I gave a wave to Tony, who works the door at the Lassiter Casino.  He gave me a “Welcome back, Tommy,” as I passed by.  Tony is good people.  I didn’t stop to say more though because, now that I was out amongst the general public, I was intensely aware of my own smell.  Sirius has a lot of bells and whistles, but what she lacks is a shower.  I do my best with water and soap, but it’s a losing battle.  I took the long way home through Conrad Bubble since there’s plenty of weird smells floating around over there already. 

BD7-2828.  That’s my address.  Bean Bubble down seven.  If Artemis is a typical town, then Aldrin is the swinging nightclub district, Shepard is luxury homes, Conrad is the gritty industrial sector, and Bean is the quiet, suburban neighborhood.  There’s a lot more to it, but that’s always true in every city.  At any rate, Bean fit my price range.  I went with a condo on one of the lower levels because it’s colder down there and I save on my power bills.  I’ve always preferred it a little colder than usual anyway, so it works out.

I love my little place in Bean.  Not everyone is lucky enough to have their own spot.  Truth be told, this is the smallest home I’ve had since the dorms back in college, but it’s more than enough for a single guy on the Moon.  I’ve got a decent main room with a kitchenette in one corner and a big viewscreen on one wall.  I’ve even got a couch and a couple of chairs.  They aren’t the most comfortable things on this rock, but they do in a pinch.  I even crafted up a chessboard coffee table out of some old 3-D printed crap that the ESA was getting rid of a while back. 

My bedroom was just big enough for a queen bed and a nightstand.  The mattress doesn’t have to be great considering it only has to deal with one-sixth of the weight, but it’s still pretty plush.  I keep an old-school e-reader on the bedside table, along with three different pill bottles and a big jug of water.

What put me firmly into the Artemesian middle-class was the private bathroom. 

Those poor bastards who sleep in the coffins have to deal with communal bathrooms.  The Smithsonian didn’t pay me a king’s ransom, but I made damn sure I had enough to be able to take a crap in peace.  Which was a high priority at the moment after dealing with Sirius’s somewhat substandard plumbing for the last six days.

There’s nothing like the first shower that you get after a long trip.  Grey water showers aren’t exactly the greatest experience, but after six days in that rover, warm water on your skin feels like the height of luxury.

I took my time, knowing that I’d gone over into a full recycle at least two or three times now.  It didn’t matter in the slightest.  I just used a little extra soap and went over everything until I felt as clean as I possibly could.  Even though it was mid-afternoon Artemis time, I wasn’t going to go into the office.  Work was over for the moment and I had a fun night planned. 

I took a long look in the mirror before I went to get dressed.  In my youth, grey hair had led a steady attack against my scalp.  Now it had taken the field entirely.  I swear, in my head I still feel like I’m thirty, but this wrinkled mess of a face stares back at me.  When the hell did I get so old?

***

I’ve always loved sports bars.  With Artemis being seven hours ahead of Eastern Time, the sports schedule is a little weird.  Jack, the manager of Moonshots Bar and Grille, has a server that records and stores the games played last night in America.  Then, when it’s quitting time on Artemis, he gives everyone an hour to get over to the bar before he starts the feeds.  It’s not a perfect system, but as long as you don’t have sports alerts on your Gizmo, you can usually see a game without it getting spoiled first.

I spotted Mark sitting at our usual booth.  He had a potted plant with him.  Some kind of flower I couldn’t have identified.  It was pretty though.  Orange.  Mark loves his plants.

I gave Mark a wave from the door and then sat down across from him.  I’m not a drinker and so I ordered a fruit juice while Mark nursed his beer.  He gave me a slight nod and I asked how he was feeling.

“Same as always,” Mark said.

That meant sore and lonely.  His arthritis is lessened up here, but not gone.  Mark’s a widower and Artemis’s geriatric population can be counted on two hands.  I try to check in with him at least once a week.  It helps that we’re both Cubs fans.

The screen across from our booth started playing the Cubs versus the Knights.  It always gave me a wistful feeling to see the green grass at Wrigley, even through a monitor.  Mark was less phased.  He worked as the groundskeeper for Aldrin Park and grass was something he dealt with every day. 

We ordered a couple of burgers.  I got fries and Mark got a salad.  By the end of the first, the Cubs were down by two.  The waiter messed up and brought fries for both of us.  Mark made a face that I can only describe as crotchety.  He dumped his fries on to my plate and called for the waiter.  Mark doesn’t eat potatoes. 

We spent a lovely evening yelling at the Cubs middle relief and lamenting the fact that the National League had caved to popular pressure and instituted the designated hitter.  Mark called me a truck driver.  I called him a gardener.  We made fun of Doc Roussel, who was the only reason both of us were still alive.  It was a fun night for the Artemis branch of the AARP.  

Our boys in Chicago rallied back in the seventh, but Charlotte’s first baseman put one over the wall in the top of the ninth and the Cubs went down in order.  Mark and I traded shrugs and simple “good nights”.  This wasn’t our first time watching the Cubs lose a game together and, hopefully, it wouldn’t be the last.

I considered going back to my condo.  It was late and an extra hour of sleep would help out a lot tomorrow, but I just wasn’t feeling it.  I’d been cooped up in Sirius for the past six days.  I wanted some action. 

I checked my Gizmo to see if the most recent deposit had been processed.  It was silly of me to worry, but I’m a little paranoid when it comes to money.  The latest paycheck was right where it was supposed to be, which meant I had a little pile of slugs burning a hole in my pocket… and I knew right where to spend them.

Aldrin Bubble is home to the best tourist traps in the city.  Along the Arcade, you can find VR houses, casinos, and some of the finest prostitutes in the solar system.  I’m too old for VR to be fun, and while I do love Texas Hold’em, I wasn’t in a gambling mood at the moment.  Instead, I made my way past the Lassiter Casino to Angels; Artemis’s second-best strip club.

Look, don’t judge me, okay.  My wife left me three decades ago after realizing she was a lesbian.  I’ve got no kids and no one I’m responsible for other than myself.  I’m not the creepy old guy at the club.  I treat these dancers with respect.  A skilled stripper is like a skilled filmmaker.  They weave you into a world where almost anything is possible.  Like a woman less than half my age being interested in me. 

I swiped my Gizmo over the receptionist’s desk and checked my reflection in the steel door.  My clothes were acceptable in any office on Earth, so I figured I would be fine inside.  I don’t understand the guys who show up in big groups wearing bad t-shirts.  That’s like carrying a neon sign that says you’re immature and don’t have any money.  It’s weird to me that young men see the opportunity to look at nude women as something that should be a group experience.  My brain works differently. 

I knew the drill well enough at this point.  I found a chair near the stage, but not in the front row.  Then I just sat back.  The seats were comfy as long as you didn’t think about anyone else who had sat on them.  I waved off a waitress in a ludicrously sexy black outfit who was trying to get me to order a bottle.  That was never my vice.  Once she was gone, I could focus on Natalie, who was gracefully descending the pole in a slow motion that only lunar gravity could provide, at least until they started making strip clubs in the Asteroid Belt.

Something about being on the Moon changes your thinking.  People come up with new insights, explore new ideas; challenge outmoded ways of doing things.  This was a perfect example.  Natalie found a way to twirl and glide in a somersault that I’m going to call “acrobatically sexy.”  The beauty of her body was matched only by the intricate fluidity of her maneuvers as she made her way towards a safe landing.  A single hand on the pole was enough to arrest her descent before she made contact with the stage.  I nearly applauded at the exhibition.  You’d never see anything quite like that on Earth.  I’ve checked.

While I was ensorcelled by this poetry in slow motion, I completely missed Jennifer’s approach.  She somehow had made her way behind my chair and the shock of her sudden appearance was almost enough to startle me.

“Jenny!” I said, holding my arms out and catching her as she slid into them. 

“Tommy!” she said, hugging me back.

In heels, Jenny is taller than I am.  Her blonde hair and classically lined face are what I picture when I think about Helen of Troy.  Her body is exactly what you’re thinking, but honestly, I like hanging out with her because she’s been around long enough to be funny and she’s gotten comfortable enough with me that we can skip all the pseudoseduction crap and just be honest.  Yeah, I’m friends with a stripper. 

“How are you?” I asked.  This wasn’t banter.  I genuinely cared.

“I’m great!  I’ve been getting more shifts in lately.  I’ve missed you,” she said.

“I’ve missed you too.  It gets boring out on those long hauls.  I’ll have to take you with me some time,” I said, with a bit of a laugh.

“If you want to pay for it, Sugar, we can do that and a lot more,” she said, with a wink and a giggle.

Jenny and I caught up about what we’d been up to for the last couple of weeks.  Me with my survey of an old Japanese lunar probe and her about the pair of Chinese tourist Johns that she had taken for about a hundred thousand slugs.  Apparently the mattresses at the Canton were better than at the Ritz Carlton and her Mandarin was coming along nicely.

I transferred ten thousand slugs to her Gizmo and we went to the VIP room for a bit.  The only difference in the conversation was the fact that she was naked and she liked to interrupt me by putting her breasts in my face.  She was pricy, but worth it.  It was nice to pretend for a moment that I was young again.  And whatever your problems are, they tend to disappear when you have a beautiful woman demanding your attention.

A yawn came to me right around the time Jenny was downing her third tequila.  My tab had covered her drinks and we bought one for Natalie as well, who was almost as happy to see me.  I’m sure the girls thought of me as an easy mark, but, I got to be very close to them while they thought that, so I’m not complaining.

Natalie had spotted a young man with good shoes and she went off to hunt.  That was another thing I enjoyed: watching these women work.  Young men with too much money and not enough imagination were easy targets.  Their slugs were better off with the girls. 

Jenny put a finger on my chest after I had signaled for my tab to be closed out.  I had a guess what was coming.

“This isn’t the night,” I said.

“Why not?” she said, stifling a pout.

“I just got back, for one thing,” I said.  “And I still don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“I’m not going to think less of you,” she said.  Her accent was trained mid-Atlantic and it belonged in an old Hollywood masterpiece.

“You say that,” I said.

“I mean that,” she countered.

“I know it’s a lot of money for you,” I said.

“I just think you’re putting too much pressure on yourself,” she said.  “God knows I’ve had plenty of others who’ve been way worse.”

I winced.  I needed to get home.

“I’d rather you look forward to seeing me.  I’d rather you not have a mental image of me disappointing you in bed.”

“That’s what the money is for,” she said, with a smirk that just slayed me.

“Nice,” I said, signing for the bill.

“Seriously,” she started again.

“I’d like to.  I really would.  And I’m sure you’re incredible.  But if it went badly, I wouldn’t be able to look you in the eye anymore and I like doing that.”

“You realize I want you to buy a night with me because you’re one of the few guys who does look me in the eye, right?”

That got me.  She was good at her job.

“Have a good night, Jenny,” I said.

She put her hands behind my neck and I got lost in her eyes for the thousandth time.

“It’s just sex,” she said.

“Goods and services.  Flow of the economy,” I said, trying to keep smiling.

She nodded and her eyes somehow got deeper.  It defied all logic.

“I swear to you, I’ll think about it,” I said.

“I know you will,” she grinned.  “But wait until morning.  Jenny’s orders,” she said.  The smirk was back.

I gave her my best grin and got out of there.  I was home in twenty minutes and asleep in thirty.    

The next morning, I woke up coughing.  This happens more often than I’d like.  A long time ago, when I was an engineer back on Earth, I worked for a company called Omnispace.  It was a great job.  My team worked on rocket recovery programs.  Refurbishing engines and overhauling fuel tanks. 

After a few years of restoring rockets in New Mexico, I developed a pretty nasty lung condition.  As it turns out, they were using a solvent in some of the valves that wasn’t supposed to be used around people.  They’d gotten away with it for a while, until me and three of my technicians started coughing up blood.

Because big businesses are monsters, they had a bunch of things embedded in our contracts that stopped us from suing their polyester-swaddled asses off.  They paid our medical bills and swept the whole thing under the rug.  I didn’t want to work for Omnispace after that.  My boss felt horrible about the whole thing though, so he set me up with a job at the Smithsonian.   In exchange for a lifetime of random coughing fits, I got a new pair of lungs, and life on the Moon. 

I threw on some work clothes, nothing too fancy, and headed for Armstrong Bubble.  NASA and the ESA were some of Artemis’s first customers.  They still rent space in Armstrong, in a spot called Space Agency Row.  My office is one desk in the corner of NASA’s rental.  I had spent most of my time as a young engineer trying to get a job with NASA, now, I at least got to be in the office.

One of the nice things about Artemis is the fact that it’s so far ahead of DC time.  I can roll in at nine a.m. local and my colleagues are still fast asleep in Arlington.  No one really cares about my schedule as long as the data keeps coming in the way it’s supposed to.  That’s good for me because I’ve always had an issue with clock-punching, no matter what the work was like.    

I had typed up some of my report on the way home, but I took an hour to really polish the paper.  It included maps of the route that I took to the JAXA probe, photos of its landing site, and a rundown of the condition of the probe itself. 

Whenever I go out, I bring back local rocks from the site.  Usually it’s standard issue regolith, but since I was already out there, NASA liked for me to grab anything I saw that looked interesting.  One of the geology lab techs, probably the least important one, is assigned to retrieve my samples from Sirius whenever I come home.  Then the rock hounds check them to see if there’s anything interesting.   I added a few lines of code to my report so that it would link to the geology lab’s analysis of the rocks that I’d brought back.  It might save some grad student twenty minutes of web searches in the future. 

I was in the middle of transferring files from Sirius’s internal navigation software when my console chimed with an alert.  I was being asked to get on a video call after lunch.  That was a little strange.  Videocalls are notoriously slow here.  The speed of light means any realtime conversation can descend into a series of interrupted sentences if either party isn’t careful.  Beyond that, there’s not much that can’t be done through email.  The archives director doesn’t need to see my face, just the photos that I collect and the reports I write.  Usually I’d just upload my report and images and then wait for the next assignment. 

At any rate, I acknowledged the meeting request and then decided to use my lunch hour to go check on Stefan and whatever new project he was trying out this week.  Stefan worked at Apollo Glassworks, a relatively mid-sized factory in Conrad.  But that was just his day job.  Stefan was really a misplaced stuntman.  He had quite a following on the internet, where you could find videos of him bungee jumping, skydiving, and racing cars that usually ended up on fire.  He’d come to Artemis last year in an attempt to up his game.  A few months ago, we’d set up a ramp in Aldrin Park and he had done some crazy skateboarding tricks in the low gravity.  Now it was time for something bigger. 

His workshop, such as it was, was really more of a closet in the back of the glass shop.  Stefan’s boss didn’t mind his tools being used for this sort of thing, as long as it was during off-hours and we didn’t break anything.  I’d never been good at turning wrenches, but I liked hanging out with Stefan and his friends because it made me feel young.  How many septuagenarians can say they’re involved with extreme sports?

I knocked on the hatch door and called out.  He poked his head up from behind a workbench and waved.

“Hey, Tommy, que pasa?” Stefan is Dutch and his accent is thick, but he talks like a Long Beach surfer. 

“Nada mucho,” I said, trying to match his vibe.  “Got your message.  What’s the new trick?”

“Nah, bro.  I’m off skateboards for a while.  Up here, it’s too easy with the low gravity.  The followers need something more intense.”

“We don’t have a lot of elbow room up here for ‘intense’,” I said.

“That’s why you’ve got to get Lovell Stadium up and running,” he said.

I sighed, “The administrator still won’t give me a meeting,” I said.

“Corporate bullshit,” he said, then spat in disgust.  That was weird, but I shared his frustration.

“What’s your new thing?” I asked, not having a ton of time.

“Oh yeah, check this out,” he said, waving me over to a machine under a cloth.  He pulled it off and I saw something I hadn’t seen since I was back on Earth.

It was a dirt bike.

“What in the Evel Kineval?” I said.

“Isn’t that beautiful?” he said.

From an engineering perspective, it kinda was.  I took a closer look.  The engine was all electric (all engines up here are).  It had an old-school chain and gear setup.  Apart from the datapad in the handlebars, it was very retro, but effective and efficient.  The tires were heavy wire mesh, like the ones on my rover, but smaller, of course.  He’d spread a rubber grip strip down the center of them for traction.  The chassis and shocks were custom.  As long as there weren’t material flaws, they should hold up for a jump or two.  It had a standard handlebar set up, throttle on the right hand.  I couldn’t find any glaring flaws, though I’m sure a few existed. 

“Why the chain and gears?  Why not just use a hub motor like we do in the rovers?” I asked.

“They didn’t have an engine that was fast enough for me and small enough for the tires,” Stefan said.

I saw a logo on the side panel.

“Powerthirst?” I asked him, running a finger over the decal.

“They aren’t officially a sponsor, but I’m trying to get them interested.”

“In the meantime, isn’t this just free advertising for them?”

“Well… yeah.  But Powerthirst is awesome.  I drink it all the time,” he said.

I shrugged, “So you’re jumping, right?  That’s what this is for?”

He nodded.

“What are you hoping to jump with this?”

He grinned, “I want to jump the Moonorail.”

I couldn’t hold back a laugh any longer.

“Stefan, believe me, they’ll never let you do that.  The Moonorail is the most essential vehicle Artemis has.  It’s how we get tourist dollars out of tourist pockets.  It’s not something they screw around with.  You and your little Skycycle here won’t be allowed within half a mile of the one and only train that gets people to the Visitor’s Center.  You’d do better asking permission to jump the Berm.”

I had expected to see disappointment, but what I got instead was contemplation.

“That’s… actually better.  I could totally jump the Berm in this thing,” he said.  I could see the gears in his brain spinning.

“Okay, easy there, Icarus.  You’d better let me run the numbers on that,” I said.

“That’s why I asked you to come over,” he said.  He pulled out his Gizmo and tapped a few buttons.  Then looked back at me, “You’ve got the specs now.  Can you take a look and tell me what I’d need to jump over the Berm?”

“You do realize that the Berm is a big giant pile of dirt designed to shield the city in the event the nuclear reactors explode?”

“We’ll call it the Nuke Jump!” he said. 

“You crazy Dutch bastard.  Yeah, I’m in.  I’ll get back to you as soon as I figure it out.  I gotta be getting back.  Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”

“No promises.”

***

Back at the office, I waited for the video call to start.  There was a little countdown clock.  I knew it wouldn’t take long.  Prices for live calls can get ridiculous.  Whatever this was should be short and, hopefully, sweet.

As the clock ticked to zero, I saw Margaret’s ugly face pop up on screen.  She was the beancounter for my department back at the Smithsonian down on Earth.  Not quite my boss, but the higher-ups listen to her.  We’ve had a few run-ins over the years.  She’s kind of a miserable old shrew.  I know, I know, I’m old.  But Margaret was old and crotchety and anal-retentive.  God help the poor bastard who made a typo on one of her official forms.  And what was worse, she didn’t really know or care about space or history or the Moon.  She was just one of those unbearable people who enjoyed bureaucracy and was too annoying to retire. 

“Tom,” she said.

“Margaret,” I replied.  I started in, “Latest report will be submitted in a few hours.  What’s the trouble?”

“We’re cutting the Lunar Archeology and Preservation Program.  Your funding has been cancelled,” she said, sounding particularly smug.

“So, we don’t have money to do more road trips?”

“Not just the road trips.  The entire program.  After the end of next month, we, thankfully, won’t even have the money to keep you employed,” Margaret said.

I felt my chest clench.

She sat there a quarter million miles away with that smirk that only happens when the neighborhood busybody sees your trashcans were left out a day too long. 

“Congress won’t fund everything we want to do at the Institute and your program is expensive,” she said.

“That’s because it’s important.  No one is doing work like this.  Every one of these old relics I find tells us something.  Tells us about the geology up here.  Metal fatigue in long-term exposure.  To say nothing of the value of the returned artifacts.  We actually make money on a lot of those.  Did you even try to fight for it with the committee?” I said, knowing the answer.

“No one is going to bat for you after your little Zond heist,” she said.

“Oh screw you!  You tried to pin that on me with no evidence.  How many times do I have to tell you?  I had nothing to do with that!” I said. 

“So you say,” she said.

“You never had any proof that I was involved!” I said.

“Just because I couldn’t prove what happened, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” she said.

“So you got the committee to axe me and legislate your little revenge fantasy?” I said.

“No, this isn’t revenge.  It’s basic economics.  We. Do. Not. Have. The. Money.  You’re not being fired.  You’re being downsized,” she said.

Not for nothing, but there’s a way to do this kind of thing that would at least be polite.  Margaret had never been one for manners.  Or for anything that didn’t serve her own interests.

“Very comforting,” I said.

“There’s one last run that you’ve been assigned.  IndiaSpace wants you to go out and survey one of their landers.”

“Well, it’s almost nighttime, so I’m not gonna be able to for a couple of weeks,” I said.

“Nighttime?  Isn’t it like two o’clock on Artemis right now?”

I sighed, “It’s almost lunar night.  The sun is going down up here.  It won’t come up again for two weeks.  I can’t drive at night.  It’s too dark.” I said, trying to convey as much condescension as possible.

“Whatever.  This is your official notice.  After the India job you’re done.  We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors,” she said, as snarky as ever.

“You can’t just fire me.  I’m a resident of Artemis now.  I can’t just come back to Earth,” I said.

“The Institution will pay for a one-way ticket back to Earth,” she said.

“That’s not what I mean.  I mean I physically can’t live on Earth,” I said.

“That’s really not our problem,” she said.

“Oh, fuck you, Margaret,” I said.  It killed me to have to wait two seconds to see her face for that.  And it wasn’t satisfying.  She just shook her head and gave an ugly grin.

“You should also know, I convinced the higher-ups that it would be wise to pay for sat-tracking on this trip,” she said.

“What the hell for?” I asked.

“So that I can transmit your termination as soon as you leave the survey site.  I’m not paying you a salary just to sit there and ride all the way back home.”

“Ugh,” I said, then cut the call.  Then I threw a coffee mug across the room.  If I’d been back on Earth, it would have been fun to watch it hit the wall and shatter into a million pieces.  Up here, ceramics are expensive.  The mug was plastic.  It made a dumb, hollow sound, bounced off the wall and fell to the floor, none the worse for wear.

Crap.

This was bad on a variety of levels. 

I took a moment to think about various ways I could have Margaret killed.  That was fun, but it didn’t really get me anywhere.  I’m smart enough to know when I’m getting dumb.  I could feel my rage fogging up some parts of my rational mind.  I took ten minutes, got some water, threw a rubber ball against the wall, and let myself calm down a little. 

I transferred the files over so I could work on this at home.  I waited a couple of minutes for my report on the JAXA probe to finish transmitting, then I packed up my gear and headed home early.  What were they going to do?  Fire me?

***

On the way back to the apartment, I thought about one of the reasons I was in this particular mess.  Around the office, it was politely referred to as “the Zond incident.”

Two years ago, I sold the location of a crashed Soviet rocket casing from the Zond 6 mission to some enterprising young Saudi gentlemen who then proceeded to find the scrap metal and cut it into lovely souvenir keychains which were still available at the Aldrin Gift Shop for about two hundred slugs a piece.  That hadn’t been legal in the strictest sense.  Salvage laws apply up here, but as a government employee, it was a violation to use work resources to line my own pockets. 

Don’t judge.  I’d had a bad night at the tables and I needed to get back to even.  The Saudi guys paid me a hundred and fifty thousand slugs for the location and that’s all I gave them.  Technically, I never made a single slug off the keychains, just the information that they used to get the metal. 

There was an investigation, but everyone who was mad about it was back on Earth, and no one had any interest in saying anything.  I just kept my mouth shut and let the rumors fly.  Margaret made a big stink, but it’s not like she could force the Saudis to talk; so it fizzled. 

Well, she’d gotten her revenge now.  This whole thing really sucked.  For starters, I love my job.  I’ve never been happier.  There’s nothing like living on the Moon.  Literally. 

Bigger issue, without some cash coming in, I couldn’t live up here forever.  I had some money saved up that might last me a few years, but it wasn’t going to be long enough to stay up here forever.  And I needed to stay up here forever.  Remember the thing with my lungs and the gravity and the dying. 

Once I got back home, I sat in my good chair, broke out my big datapad and started to work out my options.

Money.  No matter what world you lived on, it always seemed to come back to money. 

Artemis doesn’t let you stay up here if you’re homeless.  They can’t afford to waste the resources and there’s way more room back down on Earth.  It’s just good policy.

I’ve got a modest amount saved up, but, I don’t think it’s enough to rent my condo, eat, and well… I like strippers and steak.  I’ve gotten used to this lifestyle and I don’t want to give it up.

So, options.

Plan A: Going back to Earth.  With my lungs and my blood pressure, I’d be dead in a year.  It’d be a pretty crappy year too.  With my weight and the fact that I’ve been living in one-sixth gee for so long, I’d be gasping and trying to sit up the whole time.  And I’d be alone.  I’ve got no family ties down there.  There’s just no upside.  If all went well, maybe, and it’s a big maybe, I’d get to see a few ballgames in person, but, more likely, I’d die after eighteen months of daytime television in a hospital bed.  Screw that.

Plan B: Simplify.  I can sell off my furniture and… well… basically all my possessions and live in one of the coffins they have over in Conrad.  They’re cheap enough I could probably do that forever.  But it meant eating gunk for three meals a day.  It meant a communal bathroom and no more nights at Angels.  It meant Jenny would have to find a new regular.

Fuck that.

Plan C: New job.  This is probably what’ll have to happen.  I could try to get hired by one of the new ZAFO companies.  I’d have to learn about fiber optics and I’d probably have to work for some thirty year old kid from Hong Kong, but it was doable.  It’d suck and I’d hate it, but if I could get hired I might be able to keep the condo.  I wrote that down as a possibility.

Since I’m a member of the EVA guild, I’m allowed to run tour groups out at the Apollo 11 site, but there are only so many slots to do that and they fill up fast.  Maybe I could get a job at the port.  I could make some cash doing that and between that and living simpler, I could make it work.  Until my back gave out, or something else went wrong with my lungs.  It’d let me keep my bed for a bit longer.  But, eventually… yeah.

I could call up my black market contacts again. 

I did know a few more places that were technically salvageable.  The problem was that none were within a hundred kilometers of Artemis.  The Zond rocket thing only worked because it was within an hour’s drive of the city.  I wasn’t sure if I had anything that the black market would be able to turn a profit on.  The black market thing wasn’t good enough to be a plan, but it might wind up being necessary if I got into a jam.

Plan D: This one is interesting.  I’ve considered this before.  Usually after a bad night at the tables.  I could offer to buy Sirius from the Smithsonian.  They’re not going to need it once they get rid of me.  Sirius is, essentially, a spaceship on wheels.  I could run an umbilical to the charging station in the spaceport that would supply power and the city is obligated to fill my air tanks.  Even KSC doesn’t charge for oxygen.  It’d be a way around the fact that you can’t buy real estate up here.  I’d essentially be living out of a car, but it’s a really nice car, with a great computer system.  It could work.  If I can get them to sell me the rover.  Not that likely, but possible.

And there was always Plan E: Sell everything I own, head straight to the Lassiter, and bet it all on black.

Nah, just kidding.  I’m not stupid.

I decided to put the lack of a job thing on a backburner and check out my next assignment. 

I pulled up the file.  The request was from IndiaSpace, a private space outfit out of Bangalore.  They   wanted me to survey and photograph an old lander of theirs called Chandra.  Not a retrieval, just get some images and see what kind of shape it was in.

I checked the coordinates. 

3.351 South, 40.541 West.

I plotted the coordinates on my map program.  I have a kickass cartography program.  Every time I go out, I come back with detailed photos of the routes I took.  The geology guys love it.  They take every bit of data I can give them.

To get to Chandra would be a long haul.  Maybe five or six days just to get out there.  I’d be going over virgin terrain, so I couldn’t go very fast.  It’s tedious to drive a thousand miles at slow speed, but it beats cracking open your big shiny rover on a boulder you didn’t see in time. 

Once I made it to Chandra, it’d take a bit to survey the site and then another trip back.  I’d be able to come back a lot faster though, since I’d know the path was clear.

I plotted the course using satellite photos.  It was simple enough.  I could travel mostly in a straight line.  Even mountains on the Moon aren’t all that daunting.  Most aren’t very steep and the ones that are can easily be driven around.  Same with the craters.

I checked the plot line.  Then, I pulled up an overlay that showed other landing sites and points of interest.

That was strange. 

I checked again.  I pulled up an old file to confirm some other coordinates.

Then I broke out my lunar globe and measured with string. 

That was weird.  Just the sheer odds that it’d be that close. 

An idea came to me.  A wicked idea.  A semi-legal idea.  I decided to call it Plan F.

I took some time to work on Plan F before I got too tired.  I went to bed feeling better about the whole thing.  Tomorrow, I’d start working on each plan and see how far I could get.

***

I woke up and fired off a couple of emails. 

The first was to the administrator for Conrad Bubble.  I wanted to get a closer look at one of the coffins, just to see if it was really as bad as I was thinking.  Maybe the simplify plan wouldn’t be too terrible.  I asked for someone to show me an available coffin module.  Hopefully they’d get back to me soon.

The next email was to the Smithsonian itself.  I made it sound as formal as possible and explained that I was interested in purchasing the rover and wanted to know what their asking price would be.  I liked Plan D and so that was one I was hoping to hear back from soon.

After that, I sent a couple of resumes to local businesses that I’d had dealings with in the past.  It felt ludicrous to be applying for jobs.  I hadn’t had to do that in years.  But it was part of the new situation.  You have to deal with what’s in front of you.

The last email was to make an appointment to get some advice about Plan F.  Legal advice.

***

I’ve always had a semi-kidding relationship with the law.  It’s probably because I wasn’t much of a rebellious teen, but I’ve always found that dirty money is more fun than the honest variety.  It’s just how I’m wired.  I don’t loot storefronts or break people’s legs, but I like a scheme as much as the next guy. 

Back in college, I wrote papers for idiot business majors that were failing history courses.  It was fun.  I never cheated myself.  Everything I ever handed in personally was my own work, no one else’s.  But I was fine allowing others to use my work to cheat with.  It kept me in pizza money when times were tight and it beat getting an honest job delivering those pizzas. 

I could have kept it going all the way through senior year too if one of my customers hadn’t turned in a paper without even reading it first.  His professor asked him about an article that was cited and he had no idea what she was talking about.  The little rat named me as his supplier.  My story was that I sold old work that I’d done so that other students could use it as a reference.  It was bullshit, but the dean of the engineering college said that he didn’t care what I did as a side hustle since I wasn’t cheating on my own courses.  I think he liked that I was taking advantage of idiot business majors.  It was a close call.  Just like the Zond thing.

The whole thing taught me a lesson.  And no, that lesson wasn’t “don’t do underhanded stuff.”  The lesson was “double check things when you’re doing underhanded stuff.”  And that was my strategy now.

Any schemer will tell you, if you want to get away with something, a lawyer can be as helpful as a good getaway car.  Unfortunately, in a town of a little over two-thousand people and no formal justice system, we don’t have much call for attorneys.  If nothing else, that made the search pretty simple. 

Benjamin Franklin Graham was a young upstart lawyer who messed up one line on a contract that was over five hundred pages long.  That, in turn, led to a corporation, which will remain nameless, losing out on nearly half a billion dollars’ worth of mineral rights.  That, in turn, led to him leaving the firm and taking any job he could find.  That job happened to be with KSC, where he became Artemis’s town clerk.  He now had a crappy office in Armstrong Bubble, with a computer that looked to be as old as me.  Not exactly Clarence Darrow, but it was what I had.  I swung by his office the next morning.

I’d met Ben when I first came to Artemis.  He helped me get my finances settled when I’d changed out my dollars to slugs.  Not exactly an old friend, but we would nod when we passed each other in the halls.  I sat down in the one chair that he had for guests. 

“So, is this about the meetings you’ve been trying to set up with Administrator Ngugi?”

I was surprised.  Until I remembered that Artemis is a small town and the city government was even smaller.

“Uh, no.  That’s actually a totally different issue,” I said.

“What did you want to talk to her about?” he asked.

“Uh… it was just an idea that I’d been kicking around.  A new bubble for the city.”

“A new bubble?” he said, clearly surprised.

“It’s just a concept.  One hundred, maybe one hundred fifty meters in diameter, or bigger if we could afford it,” I said.

“Used for what?” he asked.

“A massive entertainment complex.  We’d have stadium seating around a floor big enough to hold basketball games, or arena football, or indoor soccer.”

“Fascinating,” Graham said.  I hoped he wasn’t billing me for this part of the conversation. 

“I figured we could invite teams from Earth to play up here and then sell the broadcasts to sports channels back on Earth.  Athletes could move a lot faster and jump a lot higher up here.  I’d love to see what they’d do with low-gravity and some space to play.”

“Not only that.  We could host big events: concerts, plays, orchestras,” Graham said.

“Well, we’ve got the playhouse,” I said, dismissively.

“Sure, but it’s not a dome.  Imagine what a good dance choreographer could do with one-sixth gravity and two hundred feet of headroom.  Hell, think of the chandelier from Phantom.  Imagine Wicked with an actual flying witch, or Renata with the angel,” he said.

“Huh?” I asked.

“It’s from an opera,” he replied. 

I blinked.  In my life I’d never had a single thought about opera.

“Yeah,” I said.

“That’s pretty good,” Graham said. 

“Well, I’m afraid it’s not what brings me here today,” I said. 

“Sure, sorry.  I just love a good opera,” he said, then shifted his tone, “So, you’ve got a problem?

I nodded.

“And you’re looking for counsel and you came to a lawyer, which means you’ve either definitely broken the law, or you’re wondering if you have,” he said.

That broke the tension a bit.  “It’s more that I have an idea that may or may not be legal.”

He sat back and nodded, “Well, for starters, good on you for checking before you do it and not after.  Most criminals don’t bother with that sort of thing.”

“I’m not a criminal.”

“Sounds like that remains to be seen,” he said.

“Do we have attorney-client privilege?” I asked.

“No.  You’d have to put me on retainer to be a client.  Right now we’re just two people talking in an office.”

“What would it take to put you on retainer?”

“Eh, this looks like it’ll take an hour, so, let’s say 2000 slugs.”

I took out my gizmo and he put a hand up, “Actually, slugs are legally specious anywhere outside the city.  Better exchange them for dollars and transfer those.”

“The things we choose to care about,” I said, shaking my head.

“Laws are stubborn things,” he said, shrugging.

I made the exchange and the transfer.  We sat there, staring at each other for about ten seconds while the digital trail made its way through Artemis’s servers, then down to Earth to talk to the banks, then back up here again, then to his Gizmo.  It didn’t lessen the awkwardness of the moment.

His Gizmo pinged and he put it down on the desk, “So.  What’s on your mind?”

I decided not to waste any more of my hour, “In 1971, Alan Shepard hit two golf balls at the end of the Apollo 14 moonwalks,” I said.

“I’ve heard of it.  Every once in a while someone comes up here wanting to play golf or build a course or something crazy.”

“I don’t care about golf.  What’s important is that only one of the balls was officially located,” I said.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“His first shot landed pretty near where it started.  It’s documented.  The second shot went farther.  They didn’t confirm its location,” I said.

“Why not?” he said.

“It was the end of the mission and no one cared,” I said.

“Okay.”

“I’m not a lawyer, but, if someone could find that second golf ball, it’d be essentially abandoned property.  Subject to salvage,” I said.

“Non-governmental?” he said.

“It was Shepard’s personal property.  I think it’s safe to say he abandoned it,” I said.

His eyebrows went up and he tilted his head.

“And you know where it is?” he asked.

“I’ve got a pretty good idea,” I said.

“And you want to go pick it up, bring it back and sell it?”

“That’s the idea,” I said.

“And you’re wondering if all that is legal?”

“And if I’d be able to keep the money from selling it,” I said.

“It won’t work.  All the Apollo sites have a ten-meter protection zone around every footprint and piece of equipment.  You’d have to step inside to get the thing.  That’d be breaking the law,” he said.

“The zones are mapped, based on mission records and satellite photos,” I said.

“Right.”

“Mission records don’t have the ball’s location and satellite photos can’t see anything that small.”

He paused to think about that.

“So, it could be outside the boundary?” he asked.

I nodded.

“That’s interesting,” he said.

“I thought so too,” I said.

“How would you get out there?” he asked.

“My next assignment is going to take me in that direction anyway.  I’d only need a couple hours detour to swing by, find the thing, and come back.”

He wrinkled his mouth, like a bad taste had entered.

“That might be an issue,” he said.

“Why?”

“You’d have to use the rover to get to the site.  And in so doing, you’d be using government resources for a personal venture.  Even if it worked, you’d have to cut in the government as a partner.  That’s the best case scenario.”

“What’s the worst?”

“You’d be charged with piracy and theft of government property.”

“Piracy?  Seriously?”

“Outside of Artemis, maritime law applies.  Your rover is a vessel operated by the United States, just as much as if it was a destroyer in the navy.  You can’t just take it for a joyride.  Stealing a boat and using it for profit?  That’s piracy by basically any stretch of the imagination,” he said.

I sat back in my chair.

“Dang,” I said.

“Now, if you wanted to buy a rover and go out there yourself, it’s still possible that the item is technically covered under the laws of salvage.

“Okay, any other problems?” I said.

“Oh, I can think of at least seven, but I’ll need to look up a few things,” he said.

“I don’t really have a ton of slugs to burn on this if there’s no hope.”

“Sure, I get that.  Send another hundred bucks.  I’ll take a look on my lunch break,” he said.

I nodded and got up from my chair and he offered his hand.  I shook it.

“I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know what I come up with.  But, if I were you, I’d try another scheme.  In a legal battle between you and the United States government…”

“Bet on the favorite?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” he said.

There was a long beat as I processed this.  I must have looked quite dejected.  I think it made him uncomfortable because he broke the silence first.

“Mr. Nichols, can I ask? …Why do you want to do this?  Treasure hunting is kind of a young man’s game.”

I explained to him about the Smithsonian cutting my program and giving me the axe.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.  How long do you have?” he asked.

“One last run after the next sunrise.  They probably won’t even wait for me to get all the way back here,” I said.

He looked puzzled, “What do you mean?” he asked.

“My rover has an Autodrive program.  It’s a safety feature.  Once I get out to the site and do my survey, I don’t really have to drive back.  The program just follows the same route I used to leave the city.”

“Right,” he said. “It’s not like there’s traffic.”

“Exactly.  Once the data has been gathered, they’ll send me a pink slip and have the rover drive me back in.  They’ll have some intern write the last report.  Why waste the money?” I said.  “But I figured, as long as they’re sending me out that way, I might as well take advantage.”

He looked grim on my behalf.  I knew where his thoughts were going so I decided to get out of there.

“Can I trust that this conversation won’t go beyond this office?” I said.

“Attorney client privilege,” he said.  ”I’ll see if I can find you a loophole.”

I nodded.

“I look forward to your call,” I said, getting up.

***

While I waited for Graham to do his thing, I went to take a look at what life would be like if I lost my apartment.  Coffins were the very smallest housing available in Artemis.  They were basically just slots set in a wall.  There was a whole neighborhood of them in the lower levels of Conrad Bubble.  I went down to take a look. 

The admin guy had given me the number and told me how to get there.  He didn’t bother coming down with me.  These things weren’t important enough to leave your desk for.

I looked down the hallway.  There were nine coffins on each wall.  Three by three.  A couple of them were occupied, so I tried not to make noise.  I found the empty one at the far end of the room, closest to the floor.  I got on my knees to take a look.

Yeesh.  The total area was smaller than I’d had on my bunk bed back in college.  This thing was well named.  You had not much more space than an actual coffin.  It had a light and a shelf and enough elbow room to bump your elbow.  Body heat made it warm up fast.  I’ve spent a lot of time in space suits, but I could tell immediately that I’d get claustrophobic in here.  With the airflow, I just don’t think I can deal.  My lungs… this is definitely a last resort option.  I popped the door open and gasped for a second. 

I decided to deep freeze Plan B. 

On the way out of Conrad Bubble, I checked my email.  There was a reply about the offer to buy Sirius.  It was a form letter from the Smithsonian legal office.  It had that big logo of the sun and below that, in a very nice font, the greatest museum in the world said that they’d be willing to sell me the rover… for about eight times the balance in my bank account.  I think it would be cheaper to ship up a new rover from Earth.  Good God.  Where did they come up with that figure?

Then I checked the attachment to the email. 

“I had them figure out the sum of all your paychecks since we hired you.  Then tripled it. – Margaret”

Fucking bitch. 

So much for Plan D.

***

A night’s sleep did me a lot of good.  I woke up the next morning and sent out a few resumes.  I’d have to find some kind of a desk job, but there were a lot of desks in this city.  Maybe someone needed a wise old man for their office.

You can only fill out job applications for so long.  After a couple of hours, I took a break.  The knowledge that your life is about to change for the worse takes the fun out of most entertainment.  Instead of sulking, I pulled up the specs that Stefan had sent me.

I ran some numbers.  It wasn’t encouraging.  He wanted to jump the Berm lengthwise.  The bike was well-built, which meant it had mass that would be hard to launch, even with a good ramp.  The max speed just wouldn’t be enough to get over the Berm.  The Berm is really big.  He needed a more powerful motor.  I ran the numbers with different ramp angles and even under ideal conditions, it wasn’t going to work.  I sent my equations to him immediately.  If he did something stupid, I didn’t want it to be because I hadn’t warned him.

***

Around lunchtime my Gizmo beeped.  The call was from Ben Graham.  I got excited.  He came up on my big viewscreen.  I could see the pale gray of his office wall behind him.

“Mr. Graham, thanks for calling.  What’s the word?” I said.

“So, technically the ball isn’t covered under the umbrella of government property.  At least, I think I could get a judge to believe that if I had to argue it.”

“Okaaay,” I said, intentionally letting my skepticism control my voice.

“If you can get the ball, you would be able to claim it and sell it, assuming you violated no other laws to get it.  I still think it’s immaterial though,” he said.

“Because I can’t use the rover?” I asked.

“Mr. Nichols, please understand, you can’t even detour the rover,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“The rover has an Autodrive program, right?”

“Yeah, it’s programmed to follow the same route back to Artemis that it took to go out.  It’s a safety feature in case something happens to me.  All I have to do is sit there.”

“Well, once they fire you, you said they’ll have you activate that Autodrive program.  You’ll just be a passenger at that point.”

“Sure, but I can turn off the program,” I said.

“No you can’t,” he said.

“Uh, yeah I can, it’s in the control systems,” I said.

“No, that’s not what I mean.  If you turn off Autodrive, you’ll be interfering.  No one will have authorized you to do that.  Which means it’ll be piracy.”

“There’s that word again,” I said.

“Hey, I’m just telling you the same way the prosecutor will,” he said.

“You called just to tell me it’s hopeless?” I asked.

“I called you to tell you not to do anything stupid.  Once you’re fired, if you so much as slow that rover down or tell it to make a left you’ll be breaking the law.  Do not get clever with these people.”

“Don’t get clever,” I repeated.  “That’s always good advice.”

“Legally speaking it is,” Graham said.

“Fair enough.  Thank you for doing the research on this.”

“You can thank me by promptly paying your bill,” he said.

I chuckled, “Will do.  Have a good day, Mr. Graham.”

“And you as well.”

The call ended.

So much for Plan F.

***

While Graham and I were talking, Stefan had sent a message asking me to come by.  I was glad to have the distraction.  I went by the glass shop at the end of his shift.

As soon as I walked in, Stefan wasted no words, “It really won’t jump the Berm?” he said.

I shook my head, “It’s a big pile of dirt and a small bike.  Your thrust to weight ratio is too low.”

“And you looked at all the options?” he asked.

“You saw what I sent.  I tried three different ramp angles.  Forty-five is ideal, but even if you had the distance, your shocks aren’t good enough.  You’d pancake and snap the chassis in half.  Not to mention your spine.”

“How about with a thirty degree ramp, at max speed, with a booster rocket?” he said.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I said.

One of the mechanics, a blonde girl whose name I’d forgotten, brought over a cylinder with a rounded cap on one end and an open flared nozzle on the other.  It was only about a foot long and a couple inches in diameter, but it wasn’t the size that worried me.

“That’s not what I think it is, right?” I said.

“Rocket-assisted jumps, baby!” Stefan said.

I was too shocked to roll my eyes.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“We strap a rocket to the bike and I think I can triple my range,” he said.

“And are you gonna triple the shocks as well?” I asked.

“I can handle the landings.  It’s one-sixth gravity,” he said.

I sighed and let out a breath.  I felt every one of my years right now.

“Okay, let’s do this one thing at a time.  First of all, this room might be fire-safe, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to have a solid rocket booster in here.  Do you have any idea how hot that thing is when you light it?”  I didn’t wait for a response, “Secondly, you’re a small man on a small bike.  Solid rockets can’t be turned off.  If you try that thing and you’re wrong, there’s a non-zero chance that you could end up in orbit.  A very bad orbit, with lithobreaking at the end.  Third, and I saved the best for last, conservation of momentum is still very much a thing up here.  We didn’t leave Isaac Newton back on Earth.  If you launch a jump three times as fast, physics will balance that out, with your crotch as the main point of interest, unless you want to put the bike seat somewhere else.”

“Okay, okay, jeeze.  I thought you’d be excited, old man,” Stefan said.

“How much is that energy drink company going to pay if you end up a greasy spot somewhere on the Sea of Tranquility?”

“So, you’re saying ditch the booster?” he said.

“Well… let me run some numbers first,” I said.

The team laughed.

It’s no fun always being the voice of reason.  I liked to get crazy as much as any reckless 22-year old.  It’d be fun to at least figure out how hard the landings would be; and then see if we could engineer something that would help.

***

When I got home that night I turned off my Gizmo and tried to just relax.  Tried to take my mind off of the problem, the plans, everything.  I love old space movies, so I made a barbecue sandwich and put on Apollo 13.  It’s a classic.  Well-acted.  The CGI holds up.  Even without VR immersion, it’s a great piece of filmmaking.  I love the scene where they make the adapter for the carbon dioxide scrubber.  When you have a problem in space, you have to use every resource you can get your hands on.  And suddenly, I knew what to do.  Plan G. 

***

Ten days went by.  Earth days, that is.  I went on a couple of job interviews.  They didn’t go well.  I sent out about a hundred more applications.  I took my medicine.  Had dinner with Mark again.  Blew a few thousand slugs at Angels.  Studied my new plan about a hundred times.

Eventually, it was time to get ready. 

I had to call Stefan.  Without him, this wasn’t going to work.  I didn’t exactly want to tell him my plan though.  God knows what he would have asked for if he knew how critical his contribution was.

He answered my call pretty quickly, “Tom?  What’s up?”

“I want to borrow your bike,” I said.

He looked surprised, “Seriously?” he said.

“Think of it as a test-drive.  I’m…ah… going over some rugged terrain on my next trip and I may need the bike to reach the survey site.”

“As long as I get it back in one piece.  I hate to ask, but…”

“How about ten thousand slugs as collateral?” I offered.

“Uh…” he said.  I could sense he knew something was up.

“You live down in one of the coffins in Conrad right?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll let you stay in my condo for the next week while I’m gone,” I said.

“You’ve got a rental, my crazy, American friend.  Where should I bring the bike?” he asked.

“Meet me at the Port of Entry Airlock at six tonight.”

***

The next morning, I woke to a bed that was shaking back and forth.  Not in the good way either.  The whole city trembled around me.  I could hear the low rumble through the walls and floor.

There are four types of moonquakes.  Three are fairly rare, and so light that we hardly ever notice them.  The last kind happens when there’s a thermal imbalance.  The kind that we get when one side of the city is heated by the Sun and the other is still in darkness.  They happen, like clockwork, every fourteen Earth days.  They mark the start or end of two weeks’ worth of daylight outside.  And they make for one heck of an alarm clock.

Moonquakes aren’t a huge problem up here.  The city is pretty stable, but the rumbles are still jarring and they can last up to an hour sometimes.  I got up and stretched.  Took a while in the shower because I might not get another.  I set up my front door to recognize Stefan’s Gizmo code for the next two weeks.  I threw some clothes in a gym bag and headed to the Port of Entry Airlock.

With daylight finally here, the airlock was a hive of activity.  There are a lot of jobs on the surface, like mine, that just can’t be done in full darkness, so we take advantage of daylight when we have it. 

I suited up and boarded Sirius.  It took an hour or so to run the pre-trip checks, make sure the food and water were stocked and stored properly.  After everything was completely ready, I got on the radio.

“Port of Entry Airlock Control, this is rover Sirius, registration US-12, requesting permission to depart, over.”

“Sirius, this is Airlock Control, please state your destination and estimated time of travel.”

“Control, Sirius.  Destination is the western rim of Mare Insularum, a little ways north of Kepler C.  Estimated travel time is about ten days, over.”

“Are you serious, Sirius?”

“Yeah, look up my registration.  I’m gonna be out for a while.  There’s a DNR on file.  The EVA Guild and KSC have my charter for this,” I tried to keep the frustration out of my voice.  I always have to do this when they have a new person on Airlock Control.

Whoever it was took a couple of minutes to verify that I wasn’t joking.

“Okay, Sirius, you’re cleared for departure.  We’ll see you in about a week and a half.”

“Thanks!” I said, starting up the motors.  I kept it slow and steady as I left the airlock.  I swung North.  Made a wide turn to get around all the activity at Conrad airlock.  Twenty minutes later, the city was behind me.  I pulled up the rear camera feed to get one last look at Bean Bubble, which had been my home for so long now.

“Sure hope I see you again,” I said, stupidly, to the bubble itself.

***

Sirius’s interior is the size of a small dorm room back on Earth.  It’s got a bed and an awesome computer system.  I can watch old movies on the monitor or play chess against the computer.  I even have a CAD program in there so I can work on special projects when I’m not driving.

When I first came up here, the EVA Guild demanded that I take along someone to act as a safety, in case something happened to me while I was gone.  They assigned a guy, I forget his name, but we had a miserable four-day trip to find Luna 16, this old Russian probe from the 1960’s.  I’m told that I’m not the easiest guy to get along with, but being stuck with that humming little weasel and his crappy synthesizer music was enough to make me want to blow an airlock hatch before we were halfway home.

When I got back, the EVA Guild agreed to allow me to go outside alone, as long as I signed a DNR.  Now, if something happens to me while I’m gone, the EVA Guild has a Do Not Rescue order so they are legally prohibited from coming after me.  It’s basically a piece of paper so that they don’t feel bad for leaving me to die on the Moon.  It doesn’t bother me though.  Sirius has plenty of redundancies and even on two wheels, she could drag us back to Artemis.  As long as I’ve got my big comfy rover, I’m fine.

The trip out to Chandra was fairly uneventful.  Slow going.  I hadn’t been out this way before, no one had, so I had to blaze a new trail.  And up here, that means crawling along at a snail’s pace until you hit some open plains.  Anything that looked unusual, I stopped.  Anything that looked interesting, I took photos of.  I even stopped a few times to gather rock samples.  I tossed them into the back, next to the dirt bike.  It took days, but eventually, I found my way to Chandra. 

***

Chandra had come down just outside of a small crater on the outer shores of the Sea of Islands.  The lander was a testbed, put down to prove the capabilities of IndiaSpace’s pinpoint landing procedures.  It was supposed to be a vanguard, the first of a series of landings that would take place to establish India’s first colony off of the planet Earth.  But the problems of climate change and the economic crisis of 2035 had paired together to kill support for any programs not deemed vital to India’s national interests.  Putting vyomanauts on the surface of the Moon for any extended period didn’t have much draw for a people trying to keep an ocean at bay.  The program was quietly mothballed and the company retasked itself to near-Earth satellite systems.  Now that things were a little more stable on the subcontinent, they wanted to go back and have a look at what had been done before. 

Chandra was an impressive specimen.  A little under five meters tall, it was almost as big as one of the old Apollo lunar modules.  And unlike the six LEM’s still on the surface, Chandra was still intact.  The sides were white, at least they once had been.  Half a century of micrometeor impacts had left grey pockmarks across her surface.  The arm holding up one solar panel was bent, but other than that, Chandra stood proudly, dominating the territory around the landing site.

I drove Sirius completely around the site, using her cameras to take panoramic shots from all sides.  When that was done, I suited up, went outside and did a walk-around.  I took my time, did everything right.  I measured the size of the rocket blast that Chandra made when it came in (10 meter diameter).  I took readings to see how much the footpads of all five legs had buried in the regolith (about an inch and a half for each).  I took some close up photographs of the Indian flag and the IndiaSpace logo on the side of the ship. 

I even tried to interface with the onboard computer.  IndiaSpace had given me frequencies to try some simple commands to do status checks.  None of it worked, but I made notes all the same.  By the time I was done with everything, I knew this place like the back of my hand.  No matter what happened, this would be my last archaeological work and I wanted it to be as perfect as it could be. 

It was late in the day, my day, when I finished the survey.  I wasn’t in a rush to end my career or start heading back, so I returned to Sirius and got a good night’s sleep.  In the morning, I did one last quick walkaround to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything.  Then, I ended my little rendezvous with Chandra and turned East, heading for home.

I had some plans that relied on timing, so, rather than leave anything to chance, I pulled up the Autodrive program and activated it.  Sirius’s internal computers took over quickly, adjusting the rover’s course to follow the tracks it had left in the dirt on the way out here.  I pulled up the mapping program and marked a few coordinates on the route home.  Then, for the eighty-ninth time, I ran through some calculations that I’d done before I left Artemis.  For the eighty-ninth time, everything checked out.

I set an alarm on my Gizmo to wake me in sixteen hours.  Then I took the rest of the day off.  I played chess against the computer.  I downloaded and read the latest Washington Post.  I even watched an old movie.  Recovery Forces, a cheesy sci-fi ghost story from 2028.  No VR immersion for that one either, but I like the old stuff. 

In case the worse happened, I sent off a few emails.  Not goodbyes, but just nice notes.  I wanted people to remember me well.  I sent a note to Jenny, sent her a few hundred slugs as a last tip.  Another email went to Mark.  I transmitted a last will and testament to Ben Graham, along with five thousand slugs to make sure that I had him on retainer.  One last one went to Stefan, thanking him for letting me borrow his bike.  I had made a point to leave a nice chunk of slugs to Stefan in my will.  I’d owe him that much, considering he wouldn’t be getting the bike back.

True to her godawful word, Margaret transmitted my termination papers electronically about an hour after I left the Chandra site.  I looked over the documents.  Made sure I was good and fired.  I gave a wry smirk to the computer monitor.  The plan was coming together perfectly.  I went to bed.  Eight hours until the alarm went off.

***

My Gizmo woke me up right on time.  The first thing I did was check Sirius’s position.  Almost four hundred miles from the Chandra site, and moving at a steady clip of twenty-five mph.  Right on schedule.  I activated a sequence of alarms that I’d preprogrammed into the Gizmo.  The clock was running, just like the old Apollo missions.  This was gonna be fun.

I’d given myself twenty minutes to suit up.  I didn’t need that much time, but considering that I’d be dependent on a clock from here on out, I decided to start easy.

I wondered how many times I’d ever put this suit on again.  If all went well, I wouldn’t have to ever once I got back to the city, but if not, this would likely be how I’d earn my daily bread.  I felt the usual muscle spasms when I crawled up through the torso.  If this went well, I’d miss the rover, but the suit, not so much.

First beep: Airlock

I stepped into the airlock and started the cycle.  It only took a couple of minutes to suck the air out of the closet, and I passed the time by organizing my tool bag a bit, organizing spare parts.  No concerns so far.

The light changed when the air was vented.  I opened the hatch.  I knew the surface would be whipping by outside, but this was the plan.

Whoa.  That’s unsettling.  In the distance I could see a couple of low hills, they went from left to right a lot faster than I had expected.  Sirius was really moving.  I grabbed the handrail tighter than I ever had before.  My breathing was fast and I could feel the burn in my chest.  This wasn’t a panic attack, but it was close.

Just focus.  Don’t look at the surface.  You’re in the airlock.  You’ve got to swing over to the cargo bed.  Swing around and grab it.

The silence was weirdly not helpful.  Obviously there’s no wind up here.  All I could hear was my own breathing.  If I slipped at this point, there wouldn’t be anything I could do.  The rover was going at a pretty good clip and, assuming I survived the fall, I wouldn’t be able to run and catch up.  The last thing I’d see would be it heading off into the distance at 25 mph.

Well, not really.  The last thing I’d see would be a dark haze as my oxygen ran out.  But that would be hours from now, after I’d had a chance to think about how I’d gotten myself killed over a golf ball.

Crap, crap, crap.

I had the tool bag on my shoulder and I realized that wasn’t gonna make this any easier.  I took the bag off and slung it around, keeping a tight grip.  When it started to circle at the end of its arc, I pulled and then let it go.  I couldn’t see around the corner, so I had to assume that it landed in the cargo bed.  That was a safe bet.  The bag was small and the bed was huge.  It was like trying to make a hook shot with a 10-foot diameter rim.  Then it was my turn.

Even without a space suit, this would be awkward.  I had to keep a grip on the airlock handle, swing my body around the back of the rover’s cab, lift my leg enough to clear the lip of the cargo bed, and then land, all without ripping my suit.  If you’ve ever ridden in a pickup truck, it’s like trying to get from the driver’s seat to the bed without going through the back window.  Sirius doesn’t have a back window.  There’s no need with all the cameras.

I made the mistake of looking down.  It was just a gray blur below me.  Sirius wouldn’t stop for anything, not even its passenger falling overboard.

I took a tight grip of the handrail with my right hand, then took a step back and a big jump forward.  My grip held and my feet got heavy as they swung around.  I saw the horizon whirl around me, then the rover came back into view.

SLAM!

I hit the edge of the cargo bed with a thud.  I scrambled to wrap my arms around it.  I’d hit the lip at about the level of my navel.  My legs hung free.  Six feet under me was the surface of the moon.  I kicked empty space, trying to find some purchase.  None came.

I had to fight the urge to scream.  Not that it would help.

The frame of the cargo bed had enough structure that my fingers could grip it.  I could see inside.  There was the tool bag.  That was a good sign.  I pulled myself up and swung my leg out.  The one-sixth gravity was a lot of help.  I had my foot on the edge when I heard the next beep go off.

Dang.  That beep was supposed to be to start setting up the bike.  Already behind schedule.

With a groan, I climbed over the lip of the cargo bed.  I picked myself up and paused for a second, just listening to see if there was any hisses that would indicate a leak.  No damage.  Time to go.

I unwrapped the chain that was holding the dirt bike in place.  I hit the power-up sequence to activate the motors.  The datapad in the handlebars read 100% charge. 

I sat down in the seat and reached over to lower the tailgate.  The tailgate was designed to swing down past horizontal.  Occasionally I had to use it as a ramp.  Just like today.  The edge dropped down to a few inches off the ground. 

Third beep: Launch

I gunned the engine and the bike leapt up.  I leaned forward to keep it from flipping and held on tight as I shot down the ramp.  This thing had a lot more kick than I thought.  I should have driven it around a little when I stopped at Chandra.  What an idiot.  Oh well, no mission goes exactly according to plan.

I slowed and whirled the bike around.  A spray of dust kicked up in an arc.  That probably looked really cool.  At least I hope it did.  I took a second to watch Sirius heading off towards the horizon.  It kept following the tracks, oblivious to the fact that its lone passenger was no longer on board.  Nothing would slow it down or stop it until it reached Artemis. 

So long to my only source of food, water and breathable air. 

I turned the bike.  I had to aim it 35 degrees away from the path Sirius was taking.  That’s not as easy as it sounds.  You’re probably picturing a nice friendly compass silently turning on the top of the suit’s HUD.  Oh, if only.  The moon’s magnetic field isn’t strong enough for a compass to do much of anything.  And Lunar GPS is to Earth GPS what Lunar coffee is to Earth coffee: weak, ineffective, and rare. 

If you’re within a reasonable distance of Artemis, you can guide yourself back in from the beacons on the dome peaks, but Artemis was hundreds of miles away, way beyond the horizon.  My suit’s link to the few GPS sats we have was tenuous.  Just as a backup, I’d practiced back at home trying to turn my body just the right amount.  It was trickier on a bike, but you’d be surprised what you can do when the alternative is dying. 

In about ten seconds, Sirius was out of sight.  I didn’t look back.  That wouldn’t do any good now.  I kept as straight a course as I could.  The geometry was everything.  Ahead were some foothills.  I kept it straight, let the bike do the work.

As I came over the hill, I got some airtime.  The bike arced beautifully.  I leaned back and it came down level.  Woohoo!  Okay.  If I was going to die, I was going to have a little fun first.  The first leg of this trip was a little under 31 miles.  I cranked the bike up to 40 mph.  Straight as an arrow, I rode into a vast grey wasteland.  Forty-five minutes to target.  No turning back.

I had time to think on the way out.  The terrain wasn’t all that interesting.  I tried not to think about dying.  I tried to keep my mind on the bike and the math.  The bike didn’t have cruise control, so I had to watch the throttle.  The clock in the corner of my HUD was counting down to that next beep. 

The ups and downs of the craters and hills were kind of soothing.  Like being on a swing set, or in a rocking chair.  And I’m sure I had some big, dumbass grin from the sheer joy of riding this dirt bike.  I felt like a teenager for the first time since… well… since I’d been to Angels.  Getting old doesn’t make you feel different.  It just makes time do weird things.  But time flies when you’re having fun anyway, so it’s a wash. 

Fourth beep: Arrival

I looked around.  No sign of my destination.  The speed was correct.  If I was wrong, it had to be because of the angle.  Or I’d miscalculated something.  I rode to the crest of the next hill and took a look around. 

Ahead of me, about ten degrees to the right, I saw a glint on the horizon.  My eyes snapped in that direction and locked onto it like a dog with a bone.  I gunned the engine and rode up the side of another hill.  There she was, like a glittering golden treasure chest. 

Antares.  Well, what was left of her, at least.  Al and Ed had needed her top half to get back home, and that bit was now in a million pieces, deliberately crashed into the Moon after her crew was on the way back to Earth.  The descent stage, just like all the other Apollos, was all that was left at the landing site.  The thermal shielding was a gold foil that hadn’t tarnished in more than a century.  It looked like a gold toaster on legs.  A monument to some strange and truncated alien god, left by a species that hadn’t quite figured out this whole space travel thing, but was working on it pretty hard.

Now that I had my bearings, I felt a lot better.  At least I knew exactly where I was and that I was flying over the handlebars.

The bike lurched hard, and I felt the seat bounce under my butt.  Before I knew what was happening, my hands slipped right off the grips.  I felt the front wheel turn underneath me as I flew over it. 

Gravity pulled me in a perfect parabola.  I twisted, totally confused by the moment as I came down on my shoulder.  A dull roar filled my ears.  It was the sound of gritty lunar regolith scraping against the suit and the faceplate of the helmet. 

I skidded to a stop maybe ten yards from where the bike was.  My tool bag had stayed on my shoulder the whole way down. 

I hadn’t really had the time to scream.  What came out was more of a surprised yelp.  Not very manly, but who cared?  My shoulder felt like I’d been sacked by a linebacker.  I pushed myself up, fortunately, an easy task in this gravity.  As I got to my feet, I took a quick survey.

Okay, there’s the bike, it looks basically intact, but it’s on its side.  After I’d been thrown off, it must had augured in, tumbling and flopping on its side.  Wheels look okay, not twisted or bent, thank goodness.  Turning around, I can see Antares up ahead.  Maybe fifty, sixty yards away.  At the angle I was coming from, I’m not nearly close to the ten-meter boundary.  So, do I just leave the bike here and go grab my prize, or what?

I wanted to know what had put me in the dirt.  I walked over and visually retraced the tire tracks in the regolith.  It was easier than a trail of breadcrumbs.  A few yards behind the bike’s crash site was the source of the trouble.  At the edge of the plateau was a hole in the ground.  Not a big one, maybe half a yard wide, but the sides were deep.  Probably a mini crater made by some speck of rock that smacked into the Moon long before the human race was a thing. 

I’d been so busy looking at Antares that I never saw it coming.  The front wheel had dug into that hole and instead of coming straight out again, the angle had caused it to twist.  The pent-up energy caused both the bike and its idiot passenger to go flying into cold black and gritty grey.  

Ugh.  Unbelievable.  I’m here to steal a golf ball and I crash into a divot.  If there is a God, She must be laughing her divine ass off right about now.

Mystery solved, I decided to go grab what I came for. 

I walked the last few yards until I felt like I was at the edge of the ten-meter boundary.  It’s not like there is a railing or anything.  No one’s been here since Al and Ed left back in 1971.  Still, I tried to respect the boundary.  Truthfully, unless someone sent out a team to investigate this, no one would probably ever know, but I love space history about as much as a person can.  I’m not gonna desecrate a historical site …unless it’s for a whole lot of money.  Don’t judge me.  I’m just an old man trying to die with some cash in my pocket and a girl on my arm.  I want what every old man wants.  I just want it a little more than most.

After Antares herself, the most prominent thing in the general area is the big white flag silently signaling surrender to anyone who comes this way.  A hundred years ago, that flag had the beautiful red, white, and blue of Old Glory, but all this time in the Sun had bleached it flat white a long time ago.  It’s no one’s fault.  Nothing lasts forever.  Nothing should. 

The flag was important for me though because it confirmed my view of the layout of the landing site.  I’d studied those photos for hours back at Artemis.  I knew I was in the right place, now I could make sure that I was at the proper angle.  So far so good.  Things were where I was expecting them.

Now to get the dang ball. 

I pulled up the satellite photo on my Gizmo.  I had marks for Antares, the flag, the ALSEP and Cone Crater.  I couldn’t see ALSEP from my position, but it didn’t matter.  The spot that I’d marked for the ball was off to the left.  I adjusted my angle and headed for the red circle on my kludged-up map.

Finding a white ball on a grey landscape isn’t the easiest thing in the world.  It took a few minutes of wandering around.  I kept an eye on the nearest footprints, easily twenty meters away.  I had to circle around a few times.  Suddenly I knew how a dog felt searching for a lost bone.  I was about to recheck my map when I spotted it.  I’d come within about a foot of stepping on it.  There it was.  Stuck in the ultimate sandtrap.

It almost seemed anticlimactic.  In a proper heist, there’d be a guard to subdue, or a safe to crack, or a laser grid.  Dang.  A laser grid would have been really cool.  Remind me to rob the Louvre next time. 

I took a couple of photos with my Gizmo.  Made sure to show Antares in the background.  Guaranteed someone would say this was fake, but I wanted to do as much as I could to document that a) this wasn’t a hoax and b) I hadn’t deliberately broken the law.

With the pictures safely stored, I pulled a plastic bag from my left thigh pocket, and a plastic trowel from the loop on my right leg.  Carefully, I scooped up not just the ball, but the dirt around it.  I left a nice clean little trench, a few inches wide and a couple deep.  When I pulled it up, I had this nice pile of regolith, with the ball on top.  I poured the whole thing into the bag, dust and all.  Dropped the trowel at my feet and sealed up the bag.  So much for the hard part.  Time to go home.

The next beep went off.  That was my departure alarm.  I was behind schedule.  That was it for my alarms.  Okay, back to the bike. 

I bunny hopped over to the machine.  It was still sitting on its side in the dirt.  It took a bit of doing to bend over and haul it up from the ground, but my suit is a lot more flexible than the old Apollo models.  I mounted up and checked my angle. 

Couldn’t be perfectly precise with the way the terrain was undulating, but I checked the star overlay on the suit computer and lined up the front tire with a right angle from the path I’d taken in.  Technically I should have been more scared.  If I was off by even a few degrees, I could miss Sirius by miles and be too far behind to catch up before my air ran out.  Still, there are a lot of bad deaths.  If I’m gonna go out gasping, I’d rather do it on the Moon in a space suit, not in a hospital back on Earth. 

The suit can hold about eight hours of oxygen.  I had a backup tank with thirty minutes worth in my tool bag.  According to the plan, I should be back before I burned through a quarter of the tank. 

I squeezed the bike’s throttle, ready to peel out and make for home.

Nothing happened.

I pulled up the diagnostic on the screen, the engine was drawing power like it was supposed to, but I wasn’t going anywhere. 

I looked down and lifted my right leg.

Behind me, I saw a broken chain in the dirt.  The cold steel blended in really well with the moondust.  What caught my eye was the jagged link that looked like the definition of unrepairable.

Oh c’mon.

Like anyone who works in space, I had a contingency for anything life threatening.  Losing propulsion twenty miles from the nearest oxygen tank certainly qualified.  In my tool bag, I had another chain.  I put the kick stand down and slid off the seat.  I’d get the new chain on and make for home.

I pulled the chain out and opened the clasp.  I took a knee and winced.  Old joints are not meant for fast, emergency work in a space suit.  Ugh, warm bed back home.  All you have to do is get there.  C’mon.  Hunker down, old man.

I threaded the chain through the gear on the wheel and then brought it up to wrap around the motor’s gear.

The motor gear wasn’t there.  Just the stump of an axle where it used to be.

This is really starting to seem unfair.

I didn’t have the time to put in a whole new axle.  Technically I had the means to do it, but by the time I stripped the thing down, put it back together again and drove off, Sirius would be way ahead of me and I’d never catch up. 

What I did have was a metal file, and a spare gear.

Wanna know a cool fact about space?  It’s empty.  Really empty.  Super-duper empty.  Even down here close to the lunar surface.  Not a breath of air to speak of.

Back on Earth, or anywhere with an atmosphere, really, you can’t just hold two pieces of metal together and expect them to stay together, unless you’re Superman.  That’s because, even though you can’t see it, there’s a whole lot of air molecules that separate the two pieces.  The atoms in the two pieces can’t bond with each other because there are other things in the way. 

In space, there’s nothing in the way.  That’s why we have to be really careful about what materials are used and where.  If you bring together two pieces of the same kind of metal in open space, then you might never be able to pull them apart.  It’s called cold welding, and it was gonna save my life. 

It took a couple of minutes to file down the jagged end of the axle to a flat, smooth face.  The gear itself is made from the same material.  I took a beat to line it up as well as I could, if it was off, the chain would break itself before I ever got back to Sirius.

I pressed the gear against the shaft and waited.  There wasn’t really much that I could do.  Technically the process should be fast, but I couldn’t help but wait a long moment.  A different man might have prayed or something.  All that occurred to me was to hit the thing with the butt end of my fist.  I did that a couple of times.  Then I took my hand away.

It held.

I can’t tell you how happy that made me.  Half of me really didn’t expect it to work.  I know what the science says, but still.  A lifetime of breathing in atmospheres means it’s impossible to expect something like that to just work, especially the first time. 

I got the chain threaded through the gear teeth and I was all set. 

I checked the time on my display.  Between the crash, the extra time to walk the last fifty yards or so, the repairs and everything else, I’d lost about twenty-seven minutes in this little fiasco.  If I followed the original plan and left at a right angle from the way I approached, then I’d miss Sirius and be behind her when I crossed her tracks. 

I could try going faster, but with a repaired axle, I wasn’t wild about the odds of it holding up at higher speed.  I was already planning to do forty miles an hour.  That wasn’t dogging it.  The only thing to do would be to change the angle that I left from. 

Never go into space without a backup plan. 

I had run the numbers before I left on potential delays.  No plan survives contact with the enemy, so they say, so it seemed like a good idea to assume that I’d screw up somehow.  I’d assumed it might take me longer to find the ball.  If I’d taken an extra fifteen minutes, I’d have to change the angle by about four degrees.  This had been half an hour, so I’d do eight.  I know it’s not precise, but if I took the bike to forty-five mph and didn’t have any other bad luck, I figured I’d at least be able to spot Sirius and home in on her.  It’d be enough to get close.  This is a crappy way to pull a heist, that’s for sure.

Have you ever tried to measure an angle out in nature, without a protractor?  You could go nuts eyeballing it.  I took a moment to reorient the bike at the last place where I had a view of the tire tracks.  The line went clear to the horizon, which was just over the next hill.  All I could do was hope for the best.  Aiming for ninety-eight degrees isn’t much different than aiming for ninety.  I manhandled the wheel just a little bit farther to the right and gunned it.  Every second I delayed was more I hadn’t taken into account.

Oh man.  No matter what, I’ll never make fun of Stefan and his crazy daredevil tricks again.  Riding a dirt bike on the Moon has got to be the most fun you can have with your space suit on.  Feeling this little beauty bound up and over the slopes, cresting a ridge and jumping five feet in the air, looking out and seeing a boundless horizon of grey wasteland.  Okay, ups and downs, but still, dirt bikes are fun.  And the next hour was pretty uneventful. 

I kept an eye on the display and tried to keep it around forty-five mph.  The hard part was not getting so caught up in the fun of it that I ran too fast. 

No matter what happened, as long as I wasn’t appallingly off with my calculations, I’d encounter the tire tracks from the rover.  Sirius’s Autodrive computer would just retrace the path that we’d made coming out.  It was a great safety feature.  If something happened to me (or I foolishly abandoned the vehicle as part of a get-rich-quick scheme), the rover could get itself back to Artemis because it would follow the tire tracks it had left on the outbound trip.  The tracks don’t fade up here, so every time I leave the city, I make a nice little trail that can be used on the way home. 

To make it easy on myself, on the way out to Chandra, I’d reprogrammed the Autodrive so that, when it came back home, the tracks would be offset by about ten feet.  The reason I did that is so that when I inevitably found the tracks, I’d know whether I was behind the rover, or in front.  If I saw two sets of tracks, then she’d already passed this way again heading home.  If there was only one, then she’d be by directly and all I’d need to do was wait.  It was like that thing my aunt used to say when I was a kid.  Something about Jesus and footprints.  I can’t remember.  Whatever.

The offset could have caused a problem if there was a big boulder or something in the way, but I hadn’t seen anything like that on the way out. 

According to the clock, I should almost be there.  I kept scanning the horizon.  No signs of her.  It had to be close, but with the rolling hills, this could get dicey.  I backed off the throttle and coasted to a stop at the crest of a hill.  I was looking for the rover, but any sign of the tracks would have been enough. 

I had just about given up, when something caught my eye about a hundred yards away.  It was dark grey on light grey.  A line in the sand.  Tracks.  Yes!  I’d found my way home.

The bike kicked up a spray of dirt as I rolled down the hill.  That would have made for a great action movie poster.  I gunned the engine as I came into the valley.  I kept my eyes fixed on the line in the regolith.  The bike skidded to a stop as I came up to it.  Two sets of tracks.  Okay, perfect.  Sirius had beaten me here, but I had a nice trail to follow now. 

Antares was to the south of the trail from Artemis to Chandra, so, I knew I needed to make a right onto the tracks and follow it out.  That’s one of the beautiful things about navigating up here.  Not only can you follow your own tracks home, but there’s hardly ever confusion about the direction. 

I was nervous that I couldn’t see the rover.  The terrain out here was rolling, but not crazy.  Part of the problem was that the horizon was so close and that this bike wasn’t nearly as tall as the rover.  It was a small-scale version of trying to spot the Empire State Building from a fire tower in Kansas. 

No time to waste.  I kicked the throttle and followed the parallel tracks.  Sirius had to be close. I was betting no more than three miles ahead.  That was a little prideful on my part.  With the rough estimations of angles and average speed, not to mention the crash, getting within five miles would have been a heck of a piece of engineering. 

I followed for a few minutes.  With Sirius moving at twenty-five mph and me following at forty, I should be able to close a distance of three miles in about twelve minutes. 

After fifteen minutes, I was starting to get nervous.

Had I made some mistake?  Probably.  I still wasn’t seeing Sirius on the horizon.  The landscape was undulating, and I had to curve around a couple of craters here and there, but still, this was nerve wracking. 

Ahead, I saw that the tracks curved around a crater wall that went up about twenty feet.  I knew that on the way out I tried to keep as straight a path as possible, so now, to save time, I went up instead of around. 

When I was about halfway up the crater wall, I spotted her.  Big as a barn and heading away at that steady twenty-five mile an hour clip.  She was the tortoise; I was the hare.  And nap time was over.  Time to catch up to my old friend.

Coming down the ridge, I picked up the tracks again.  At the base of the hill I felt the shocks pick up and gave a tiny little bounce.  I let out a small “woohoo” of joy now that my target was in sight.

And then I felt a jolt and the bike coasted to a stop.

Oh c’mon!

I looked down and sure enough, the new chain, my backup chain, my “just in case all else fails” chain had failed.  The motor was still turning.  The axle was fine, so was my cold-welded gear.  But the chain had busted, probably on that last dip.  It had gotten me this far, only to give out with half a mile to go. 

Ahead of me, Sirius kept moving away. 

I put down the kick stand and went to grab the chain.  Maybe there was a way to get it back on.  It’d only have to last another few minutes. 

I picked it up and took a quick look.  Then I glanced down at where it had lain.  Three links were still on the ground.  What was left wouldn’t be long enough to run over both gears.  That was it. 

My fist squeezed that chain so tight I almost thought it would rip through my glove.  I didn’t really care at that point.  Dead was dead.  At least with a suit breach it’d be fast. 

My one point of rescue was heading away at almost half a mile a minute.  I was stuck in a situation of my own making.  No one to blame.  No higher purpose.  I was going to die alone, in this magnificent desolation for nothing more noble than money.  Money that I’d never get.  Whatever poor son of a gun found me would be able to bring the ball back and earn a fortune.  If anyone ever learned what I’d done, how far I’d come, there’d probably be a gold rush coming this way from the EVA Guild.

Screw that.  Fucking scavengers.  They’d have to earn it the hard way.  Like I did.

I stood up and tossed the chain away.  I took the bag with the ball out of my suit pocket.  I’d throw the sucker away.  Let them wonder where it was when they came all this way. 

I turned around, trying to find a good direction to chuck it.  As I turned, I saw the bike standing there on its kick stand.  A piece of metal was reflecting the sun.  Minor annoyance.  I was putting the visor down on my helmet when I realized what it was.

The SRB.

The idiot, crazy, daredevil-brained solid rocket booster.  The little butt-bomb that I’d told Stefan was way too dangerous to ever mount on a human-rated ground vehicle.  He’d never taken it off because when you’re twenty-two, nothing bad will ever happen to you.  Now it sat, right where he’d left it, under the seat of the bike, hard welded to the frame. 

I put the golf ball back in my suit pocket.

I didn’t have time for an ironic remark.  Didn’t have the energy to enjoy the ridiculousness.  I mounted the bike again, pulled the kickstand up with my toe, aimed it right down the tire tracks and then I pulled up the main page on the little command pad on the handlebars.

Rocket assist.  Crazy daredevil.  Of course, the display looked like a big red button.  I’m amazed he didn’t put “Go Baby Go” on it.  Then again, if he had, it would have been in Dutch.

I lit that sucker and held on to the handlebars with knuckles that were whiter than the sun.

The old astronauts will tell you that an SRB just feels different from a regular liquid-fueled rocket.  They’re tougher, angrier; like they know they can’t be turned off.  Once you light a solid, you’re going somewhere else, fast.

The bike took off down the blazed trail.  I couldn’t see it, but I’m sure it looked like I was powering the thing with a firebolt from my ass.  I didn’t have time to laugh.

In retrospect, I should have taken a moment.  Should have tried to figure out how long the thing would burn, or how fast it would take me.  All I knew was that it was about a foot long, including the end cap.  It had a cross-section about the size of my palm.  Even knowing all that, I didn’t know what the fuel was or the exact shape of the combustion chamber.  Anything I’d have calculated would have been speculation, and Sirius was getting farther away every second.  When you don’t have time for math, your fallback tends to be luck.

The path ahead was straight.  And my thanks to all the Gods that there wasn’t a hill or a crater to go around.  It only took about twenty seconds for me to spot the rover.  Another twenty seconds later and I could see the ramp dangling in open space.  I was so close now.

With about fifty yards to go the SRB’s fuel ran out.  That was a kindness.  Really more blind chance than anything else.  All my well-laid plans were as busted as the bike chain.  Still, I was closing in.  If the rocket had still been burning when I hit the tailgate ramp, it might have slammed me against the back of the cab.  As it was, the leftover momentum was carrying me right where I needed to go.  The edge of the tailgate ramp was only about half a foot off the ground.  When I got close enough, I yanked as hard as I could on the handlebars.  The bike popped a wheelie and came this close to backflipping.  The momentum rolled me right up to the cargo deck. 

I put the bike into a skid as I reached the bed.  The bike fell on its side again and I slid right along with it.  I felt a bit of pain as the bike landed on my left leg.  Just a quick little jolt that came from around my shin.  Then I hit the back of the cab.  That was a good bump, but I’d had worse from hitting my head on the door to my air shelter back home.  Before I could really think about how lucky I’d been, I heard a hiss and felt my ears pop.

I looked down at the bike.  There was a little puff of white mist coming up from it.  It was my air. 

Suit breach.  Oh shit.

I think what happened was that I snagged the suit on a screw head or something as I skidded up the ramp.  I’ll never know for sure, but let that be a lesson to anyone who wants to go playing around with a dirt bike in the vacuum of space.  Check your landing site.  

With a groan, I lifted the bike off my leg and pushed it over the side of the cargo bed.  Then I grabbed the rip on my suit and clamped it with my fingers.  The hiss went from loud to softer, but it didn’t go away. 

I was sore, exhausted, and, unless I missed my guess, about to be dead in the next thirty seconds.  But if I survived, I’d be rich.  I’d never felt better. 

I have a patch kit with me at all times.  Everyone does.  It’s in the manual.  I had to grab it with my free hand and then, worst part, let go of the rip long enough to slap it down over the tear.  The adhesive held, but the hiss didn’t completely disappear.  The leak had gone from semi-catastrophic, to mild emergency.  I checked my air gauge.  It offered no comfort.  Time to go. 

I had to be careful as I climbed over the bed’s frame.  I swung myself around the side and into the hatch.  Lunar gravity plus adrenaline can make any old man spry. 

When the hatch was shut, the air started to cycle.  As soon as I could, I popped the seal on my helmet, slumped gently to the floor and let out a triumphant howl.  I pulled the ball out of my pocket and held it up to the camera on the wall.  I was too drained to move.  I didn’t get up.  I didn’t take the suit off.  Just wheezed fresh air for a few minutes, trying to let the feeling return to my legs because they felt like jelly.  Exhausted from the drive and the frantic repairs and the almost dying and the daredevil rocket boost I just wanted to sleep.  But there was one last thing to do. 

The Smithsonian had set up satellite tracking because Margaret wanted to keep an eye on me all the way home.  The nice thing about satellite tracking it relays a signal to Artemis.  Unlike my other trips, I could send and receive emails.  I laid on my back on the floor of the rover and opened a draft that I’d typed up the night before.  That was good considering I was wearing my big fat EVA suit gloves now.  And this was probably the most important email I’d ever send. 

Dear Mr. Graham,

At your next convenience, please download and save the attachments that accompany this email.  I am requesting that you retain this information regarding my activities.  The rover logs will prove that I have not interfered in any way with this vehicle’s transit back to Artemis.  The feeds from my helmet cam will serve as a record that I did not violate the Apollo 14 site.  You’ll also have a copy of my termination letter from the Smithsonian.  Please note the timestamp on that document as well. 

-T. Nichols

I hit send and that’s when my body decided it was a good time to pass out. 

***

There’s no sleep like you get on the first night after you become rich.  Between the exhaustion and the release of finally being safe and sound, I slept hard.  No idea for how long, but it felt great.

I’d never woken up in a space suit before.  They aren’t designed for comfort.  I had this twinge in my back after I started to stir.  It kept me on the floor a while.  No need to fight through the pain.  The one thing I had plenty of now was time.  When I finally did get up, I noticed a whole new pain in that left leg.  It had gone through a bike crash, being slightly crunched by said bike, and then exposure to hard vacuum.  I don’t mind admitting it was a little tender.

I pulled my Gizmo out of its slot on the arm of my suit.  It was dead.  Out of battery.  No surprise.  I wiped some drool off my jaw and started to desuit.  My left leg had a pretty nasty bruise and I may have sprained the ankle a bit, but I could move around.

I hadn’t had the energy to clean everything when I got inside, so there was quite a bit of dust, especially on the back of the suit.  I put the Gizmo on its charger, then put on a face mask and cleaned the suit and the floor with a compressed air gun.  That took a while, but I couldn’t let moondust be loose in the cabin.  That stuff is worse for your lungs than cigarette smoke. 

My stomach became the next priority after it started rumbling halfway through the clean-up.  I heated up a pack of sausage biscuits in the microwave.  Then I hard chugged a bottle of water.  As soon as it was empty, I chugged another, and another after that.  Suit work is sweaty.  You get dehydrated fast.

After I ate, I peeled off my cooling suit and tossed it in a storage drawer.  When I got back to the city, I’d have it dry cleaned.  Until then, whatever kept the smell contained was fine.  A deep scrub and some clean clothes and I started to feel like a person again.  I took a minute to stretch and then sat in the driver’s seat and pulled up the navigation screen.

According to the clock, I’d slept about eight hours.  In that time, Sirius had kept on driving.  At the moment, we were about five hundred miles from Artemis.  If all went well, we’d get home in about twenty hours.  Until then, there wasn’t much to worry about. 

My Gizmo was charged up now and I plugged it in to the dashboard so I could use the big screen to check it.  I needed to send a message to the lawyer and let him know that everything was fine.  I also wanted to let Stefan know about his bike.  I’d have to pay for a new one, but I was thinking I could afford it now.

I was kind of glad that my bosses had sprung for an uplink on this trip.  They might be tracking me like a bloodhound, but at least I could check my messages anytime I wanted.  The email app had that little red bubble that indicated I had unread messages.  No surprise with how long I was out.  What was weird was that instead of a little one or two in the bubble, the screen just showed a plus sign.  I opened the app.

There were over eight hundred messages in my inbox.

Uh…

I scrolled.  The most recent had some version of congratulations, which was weird.  There were a few here and there that seemed kind of angry.  I didn’t recognize any of the names.  I filtered out anything that wasn’t from a contact in my system. 

The first message was from Ben Graham, the next was from Stefan.

I pulled up Ben’s message.

Dear Mr. Nichols. 

What were you thinking when you uploaded the video of your little detour to the entire internet?  Attorney-client privilege is useless when the client broadcasts their secrets to the world at large.  The record of your retrieval of the item near Cone Crater has been added to your file, but it has also been uploaded to a number of internet sites by third parties which this office did not authorize! 

For the record, according to the legal analysis of the video recording, you have successfully salvaged the item without breaking any national or international laws.  Should legal action be initiated against you, this office no longer wishes to represent you in this matter but will be happy to refer you to Earth-based council. 

Yours, very unhappily,

-Ben Graham, Esq.

The internet?  This didn’t make any sense.  I opened Stefan’s message. 

Tommo!

Amazing stunt!  We’ve already received over a million hits on the video.  I’ve tripled my number of subscribers since we put everything online.  Don’t even worry about the bike or the rocket.  I’ll make it up with ad buys on the stream.  Come home safe!

-SR

What the?

I checked the email that I’d sent to Ben Graham as soon as I got back.  The one with the video of my big heist and all the assorted misadventures therein.  Then I checked the sent to line.  There it was, Stefan’s email address.  My big dumb fingers had hit the “R” for Rolle, Stefan, instead of the “G” for Graham, Ben. 

Uh-oh.

I pulled up the site where Stefan posts his stuntman videos.  Sure enough, there it was, right on top.  Stefan had put it all online under the title “Crazy Astronaut Stunt”.  The video had the camera feed from my helmet, all the way to Antares and back. 

So much for this little operation being covert.  Stefan must have seen the video, loved it, posted it, and only after he could use it to make money did he bother to forward the email on to its intended recipient. 

I checked the news feeds.  This was a story, all right.  GNN had a little three-hundred word blurb explaining what I did and linking to the video.  The New York Post had an article that described me as an “octogenarian loner,” which was wrong on both counts.  The last paragraph speculated about the price that the ball might fetch.  If it actually got that much, they could call me anything they wanted.

I went back to the messages and started to sort through them.  I swiped anything that looked generic or angry.  There was even a message from Doc Roussel reminding me that my prescription would be ready for pickup when I got back to the city. 

The first message that really got my attention was from Disney.  They wanted to buy the ball.  Apparently, it would be tastefully displayed at EPCOT or something, beside a plaque that would identify me as its discoverer.  Their offer was pretty generous. 

The next bidder was, funnily enough, the Smithsonian, which made perfect sense.  This would be a great piece for the Air and Space Museum.  They had apparently checked with the lawyers because they hadn’t threatened to sue me.  They weren’t offering as much as Disney, but I liked the idea of selling the ball to a proper museum. 

A few other organizations sent requests to speak with me.  Some put down numbers, some didn’t.  The British Museum wanted it.  So did the French.  Not sure why the Brits or the French were interested, but it’s nice to have folks fighting over you. 

My favorite message was from Titleist, the golf ball company.  That got a wry smile from me.  Alan Shepard had never told anyone what brand of ball he hit.  Somebody at Titleist was thinking fast.  They didn’t want the ball for a museum.  They wanted it for an advertisement. 

I checked the details of their message.  They wanted to pay me to issue a statement that the ball was, indeed, a Titleist.  I honestly wasn’t sure if it was or not.  I hadn’t had the chance to examine it and I hadn’t seen any marking on it.  If the label had landed facing up, then it would have been bleached away by the Sun long before I was born.  If the label was buried in the dirt, then maybe, like Neil and Buzz’s flag, it might still have the ink.  Titleist wasn’t taking any chances.  Based on what they asked, I think their plan was to claim the ball was one of theirs either way. 

I looked over to where I had stored the ball and bit my lip.  If everyone on the internet knew what I’d done, then so did everyone in Artemis.  And the citizenry of Artemis takes two things very seriously: money and the Moon. 

I wouldn’t say that I’d desecrated one of the Apollo sites, but I’d understand someone else saying it.  Was I going to face a lynch mob when I pulled into the city tomorrow?  I changed the filter to only show stuff from Artemis addresses.  It took a moment to sort.

Most of what came up were some form of congratulations, but there were a fair bit of “How dare you?!” and “You thieving rat!”  One guy called me a “Cultural vandal.”  I didn’t know about that, but I wanted dibs on the band name. 

Justice sometimes takes the form of a mob in Artemis.  If there were enough of those folks they might beat the crap out of me.  Even if they weren’t angry, all it would take is one good pickpocket and all of this would have been for nothing.  They don’t pay the guy who buys the winning lottery ticket.  They pay the guy who turns it in. 

I leaned back in the chair and left the messages alone for a while.  Hmm.  All of this would be useless if I couldn’t find a way to get the ball safely to whoever was going to pay me.  I had the rest of the day to figure it out.  I was still eighteen hours out from the city.  But when I got there, I’d have to get from my rover to my front door without being beaten or robbed.  And then I’d have to sit there and hope they didn’t tear my door down.  Yeesh, come to think of it, even if I got the money, there was nothing stopping them from beating me up anyway.  I reminded myself to buy an awesome security system if I got my payday.

I looked out the front window.  Same grey, dull, rolling hills that I’d seen on the way out.  A crater here, a hillside there.  Ridges, valleys, and in front of me, a path of tire treads that would lead all the way back home.

Staring at the screen for so long had strained my eyes.  I stepped away and pulled down the little cot that was mounted on the wall.   I think I was out before I had the chance to roll over.  Old people sleep a lot.  Don’t judge me.

A pinging sound pulled me out of my slumber.  I took a minute to orient myself and realized it was coming from my Gizmo.  Someone was trying to call me.  Whoever it was had to be paying a pretty penny to link straight to me through the satellite network.  Probably a bidder who didn’t want to wait for me to get back to Artemis.

I didn’t recognize the number.  It had the code for Earth, the code for America, and I thought the area code was Manhattan, but it had been ages since I’d actually dialed a number, so I wasn’t really sure.

I hadn’t had a live conversation with anyone since I left Artemis, and I had plenty of time, so I accepted the videocall.  What confronted me was a crisp looking woman in glasses and a suit.  The background was an ornate wooden wall.  Whoever this was, she had money behind her.

“Mr. Nichols?  Mr. Thomas Nichols?  Are you receiving me?”

“Yes, this is Tom Nichols.  I can hear you just fine.  Are you hearing me?  To whom am I speaking?”

There was the typical pause.  I saw her expression go from mild confusion to pleasant. 

“Mr. Nichols.  My name is Shenandoah Clarke.  I’m the Vice President of Historical Acquisitions for Sotheby’s Auction House.”

Ooh, this sounded interesting.

“Glad to meet you, Miss Clarke.  How can I help you today?”

“We have been trying to reach you regarding your salvaged item.”

“You’ll have to forgive me.  I have quite a lot of messages to sort through.”

“I can imagine.”

“Sotheby’s would very much like to represent you in an auction for the item in your possession.  We can provide a superior venue for the display and sale of the salvaged treasure.”

“Is there some religious requirement that forbids you from saying ‘golf ball,’ Miss Clarke?”

Her expression went from business to bemused, “How droll.”  She took a beat.  I felt like a bit of a jerk, but I’d get over it.  “Well, my appraisers tell me that your ‘golf ball’ as you put it, may be worth quite a bit of money.”

“That’s the idea,” I said, before realizing that I was talking over her.  There was a delay on both of our parts as we remembered the conversational lag.

She continued, “Trying to sell the piece on your own may lead to a slew of difficulties, both logistical and financial.  Our organization stands ready to deal with those obstacles on your behalf.”

“You have my attention,” I said.

“Upon your acceptance of our proposal, Sotheby’s will dispatch an agent to Artemis on the next flight from Earth.  Our agent will take your item and deliver it to our auction house in Manhattan.  Sotheby’s will take full responsibility for any issues with customs or KSC.  After the item arrives, we will set a date for the auction.  Funds from the sale will be transferred to your KSC account either in Artemesian slugs or U.S. dollars, whichever you prefer.”

“Minus your cut, of course, yes?” I said.

“In light of the extraordinary personal risk that was involved in retrieving the item, Sotheby’s is prepared to accept nine percent of the hammer price in lieu of our usual ten.”

I wrinkled my mouth.  That was pretty good.  This thing was going to burn a hole in my pocket if I didn’t find some way to get it safely back to Earth.  I needed allies.  Nine percent off the top sounded like a decent price to pay.  It was either that or putting my trust in some other runner or smuggler to get the ball back down to Earth. 

Sotheby’s had a reputation to maintain, so I could go to the press if they tried anything funny.  I looked at the wall behind her.  There was an oil painting in one corner.  These folks didn’t need my money.  They’d rather get nine percent than nothing though.  You don’t stay in business for this long if you mess with your suppliers.

“Miss Clarke, that sounds acceptable to me.  I do have an issue though.  Your agent, even if they left this minute, would take at least a week to get to Artemis.  I’m not sure about security between now and then.”

She pondered, “Is it possible to stay in your rover until that time?”

I shook my head, “I don’t actually own this vehicle.  I’m not allowed to delay or alter its course.  Once it brings me back to Artemis, I have to remove myself, lest the government stake a claim to anything I’ve done since they fired me.”

“I see.  Well, I’m afraid, short of hiring guards from the Artemis population, there’s not much I can do for you from here.  I’m happy to make inquiries.  Their payment could be taken from your end of the sale.”

I tried not to roll my eyes.  Sitting in my condo, guarded by a couple of bruisers who would be just as likely to knock me in the head and take my score.  I’d be better off in a jail cell. 

“Actually, Miss Clarke, I don’t think that will be necessary.  But everything else we discussed sounds fine.  If you’ll send along whatever you need me to sign, I think we can get the ball rolling, no pun intended.”

“Very well, Mr. Nichols.  I’ll have my staff draw up the paperwork.  My agent will be in touch.”

“Fantastic.  Can’t wait to hear from you,” I ended the call.

I took one last look at the massive backlog of messages.  It had ballooned up to nine-hundred and twelve since the last time I looked.  I snorted and deleted everything from addresses that weren’t in my contacts list.  Then I went back to my cot.  There’s nothing that makes me quite so restful as knowing exactly how to solve a problem.

No alarms went off while I was out.  Nothing to disturb me.  The dead don’t sleep that good.  After the Sotheby’s call, I quit trying to keep a normal clock.  This whole thing had been so draining.  I checked the rover’s control panel and saw that we were about four hours away from Artemis.  It was also about five p.m. local.  I’d be getting back after quitting time. 

***

“Port of Entry Airlock, this is Rover Sirius, registration US-12, currently approaching Bean about five miles out and coming in from the West, requesting permission to enter and park in space twelve, over.”

“Sirius, this is Airlock Control.  You have permission to enter.  Be advised that we are currently in after-hours status, so you’ll have to wait while we repressurize.  Proceed to the dusting station before entering space twelve, over.”

“Roger.  Copy.”

I did as instructed.  By the time I got to the Port of Entry Airlock, the main door was open for me.  There was no activity inside the port.  After the outer door shut, I drove through the airbath and it cleared away the dust.  Once that was done, I headed for space twelve.  As I maneuvered into the spot, I noticed the inner door opening, one of the ones that led into the city proper.  As it rose up, a small flood of people came bounding in, heading right for me and my rover. 

Well, here’s the mob, come to beat up an old man.  Right on time.  I watched as the group gathered around.  Sirius’s camera feeds showed them surrounding me on all sides.  Had to be at least fifty people around.  I saw a few angry faces.  I could hear a dull roar of shouts and calls.  I think there might have been something of a mixed reception.  Then again, it could just be good old-fashioned jealousy.  Either way, I didn’t want to leave with a swarm of people out there.

“Mr. DuBois, this is Tom Nichols in the rover Sirius,” I said.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Nichols?” he asked.

“I think, based on the current circumstances, I’d like you to arrest me,” I said.

“I’m sorry?” he said.

“You heard me right.  I’ve got a bit of waiting to do and I could use a secure location to do it,” I said.

“Well, you seem to have gone out of your way not to break any laws, Mr. Nichols.  I’m afraid I’d need something to arrest you for,” he said.

“If you go to my apartment in Bean, you’ll find a half a pound of barbecue that was smuggled in without the proper paperwork.  Check the fridge.  It should be on the bottom shelf.”

It took a moment for DuBois to understand what I was going for.  As I waited for a response, the crowd outside kept shouting. 

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.  It was never part of the plan for people to know.  I was supposed to just go home unnoticed.  I’d planned to wait a couple of weeks before I even started to look for buyers.  All that was blown now.  Thanks a lot, Stefan.

It took a bit for DuBois to come back on the line, “Okay, Mr. Nichols.  If you’ll remain right where you are, I’ll come down and arrest you in a few minutes.”

“Fantastic.  Looking forward to it,” I said.

I sat back in the driver’s seat and looked around.  I was going to miss this rover terribly, but I doubt the government would sell it to me now.  I just hoped NASA would take good care of it once the transfer was over.

I took the sample bag with the golf ball and put it into the breast pocket of my windbreaker.  I wiped my files from the computer and looked around.  The government could have my dirty laundry and anything else I’d mistakenly left behind.  I’d have to find some way to get my suit back later.  Worst case, if all went well, I’d buy a new suit.  Hell, I’d buy a new rover.

I saw Rudy DuBois make his way through the crowd.  It parted like the Red Sea.  He presented a fine figure in that Royal Mounted Police uniform.  I heard him knock on the hatch and I patted my breast pocket.  Everything was fine.

I swung the door open and there was a low roar of calls from the crowd.  I shouldn’t have worried so much.  They didn’t seem overly hostile.  There were cheers and someone had a bottle of champagne.  Less of a lynch mob, more like Lindbergh at Le Bourget.

“Mr. Nichols?” DuBois asked. 

“Mr. DuBois, you’ve come to arrest me.  I can’t thank you enough,” I said, smiling.

“You’re under arrest for possession of smuggled items and conspiracy to smuggle contraband.”

“Absolutely,” I replied.  I held out my wrists and he slapped a pair of cuffs on them. 

We made our way through the crowd.  My windbreaker stayed zipped up.  He kept a hand on my shoulder all the way through Aldrin Bubble, until we got back to his office in Armstrong.  Folks followed us, some protesting, some laughing, but no one made a move to stop Rudy.  He was the law, as far as anyone in town was concerned, and you crossed him at your peril.

Once we got back to his office, he opened the air shelter that he used as a jail cell.

“How long do you need to be detained, Mr. Nichols?”

“There’s a representative from Earth who is coming up on the next flight.  Until then, if you’d accommodate me,” I said.

Rudy nodded, “Ten days in a holding cell sounds like a fair punishment for contraband.  Can I get you anything?”

“I think I’m okay.  Could use a charger for my Gizmo.  And if someone could get my medicine.  There’s a couple of bottles in my bathroom at the condo.”

DuBois nodded, “Sure, no problem.  I’ll have someone come and check on you in the morning.  We’ll bring you something to eat.”

“Much obliged, Sherriff,” I said.

The sound of him wrapping a chain over the outer door handle and padlocking it was very soothing.  I had my prize, and I had a locked door between me and anyone who wanted to get it. 

***

Even with a Gizmo, ten days in an air shelter is a little tedious.  I deposited my last Smithsonian paycheck and caught up on my messages, checked the Cubs scores, and tried to relax.  Mostly I spent the time thinking about what I was going to do after the money came in. 

Rudy made sure that I had food and water.  It wasn’t luxurious, but you’d never hear me complain. 

Sotheby’s sent a very nice woman to come and collect the ball.  She was escorted by a pair of men who seemed better suited for work as linebackers.  I was somewhat amazed that they’d fit in the seats on the shuttle up from Kenya.  Still, lovely people.  They gave me a receipt; I gave them the ball.  Rudy signed off as a witness to the transfer. 

After they were gone, Rudy told me I could go.  He offered to walk me back to my condo in Bean, but I told him it wasn’t necessary anymore.  If someone wanted to beat up an old man over a little cultural vandalism, nothing would stop them.  But there was nothing to steal now, so I figured I’d be safe. 

It was lunchtime when I left Rudy’s office in Armstrong.  I headed for home.  No one approached me.  I probably blended into the background.  The story had run its course in the press.  I’d turned down all the requests for interviews.  The video wasn’t trending on any of the big sites anymore.  All quiet on the lunar front.

First thing I did was to shower.  Even with sponge baths, it had been two weeks since I’d been in a proper bathing facility.  I give all the credit in the world to that nice young woman from Sotheby’s for not commenting on it. 

I raided the fridge next.  My barbecue was gone, but I still had ham and cheese and stale bread, so I made myself a sandwich.  I also sent a message to Jazz, asking her to arrange for another shipment.  I told her to double my last order.  She sent a confirmation, adding that she knew I was good for it.  Great customer service in the smuggling industry up here.

I sat down with the sandwich and pulled up another old movie on my big screen.

Felt good to be home.

***

I’m not sure what the best party in the history of Artemis is, but I was determined to give it a run for its money.  Granted, my condo isn’t big, but neither is my list of friends. 

I invited everyone on my contacts list.  Mark, Jenny, Stefan, Doc Roussel, Jazz, Rudy, Ben Graham, everyone.  I invited my neighbors, but that was more of a consolation than an invitation.  Sound travels pretty easily up here, so if you’re having a party, you might as well invite everyone who is going to hear it. 

I told everyone to bring as many people as they liked.  I ordered up a dozen bottles of champagne, as much candy and treats as I could get from the local bakery, and ten pizzas from a place down in Aldrin bubble.  People started coming over about six. 

Jenny brought three girls from the club.  I think the word had gotten around about the auction.  Being rich is kind of cool.  I didn’t get all their names, but I doubt they were using their real names anyway.

Mark didn’t bring anyone, but he really liked the strippers. 

Stefan brought his whole crew.  They really liked Mark’s old stories. 

Jazz came late, but she had her Ukrainian boyfriend in tow. I hadn’t met him before, but we hit it off.  Engineers can talk shop for hours and I think he preferred chatting with me rather than trying to avoid eye contact with Jenny’s friends.  Jazz didn’t notice either way.  She was busy playing with this electric dog that I had bought from a fancy high end place over at the Arcade.  It was the biggest purchase I’d made since I got home.  Cute little thing.  I hadn’t sprung for the model with the fake fur.  Mine was obviously a robot, but it did tricks and could play fetch.  I’d named it Sirius. 

We pulled up a feed of dance music from Earth and I dimmed the lights and just kind of let it flow. 

The next morning, I couldn’t help checking my account balance again.  Between what I’d saved up and what I’d gotten for the sale, (minus Sotheby’s 9%, of course), it shook out to around seven-hundred and eighty-two million slugs and change.  It was just so surreal.  I looked around the condo.  For once, I couldn’t think of anything to spend it on.

I stretched and got a glass of water from the sink.  I really didn’t have a plan for the day.  It was kind of nice.  I was scrambling an egg when my Gizmo buzzed.  I checked the screen.

Incoming call from Lene Landvik.

It took me a second to remember.  Landvik was the head of Landvik Industries.  They owned the smelter outside the city.  There’d been a whole thing about it last year.  I’d missed all the fun because I was on a drive.  Apparently, there had been some potential disaster that had been averted.  I’d never bothered to learn all the details. 

I checked to make sure my shirt was clean (amazingly, it was) and I sent the call to the main screen and stood in front of the camera.

“Hello?”

The young woman on the call was seated.  She had classic Nordic features and wore her hair up. 

“Mr. Nichols,” she said in a clipped accent, “My name is Lene Landvik.  I’m the CEO of Landvik Industries.”

I gave a slight nod of acknowledgment and met her eyes.  “Miss Landvik, very pleased to meet you.  If you’re calling about the auction, I’m afraid that’s already over and done with,” I said.

She seemed to stifle a smirk and I realized my mistake.  This woman had no interest in golf.

“I had a different reason for this call.  A mutual contact of ours told me that you have proposed an interesting project.  I believe she referred to it as Lovell Stadium.

“Uh… yeah.  It’s been a pet concept of mine for a while now, but I could never get anyone interested,” I said.

“I saw some of the plans.  It sounds like it could be quite beneficial for the city.  And it would require a lot of aluminum,” she said, steepling her fingers.

“Right on both counts, Miss Landvik,” I said.

“Tell me more about it.”

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