"But Alexei had the pistol."
"Well, we'll just have to find him."
I was already circling the outcrop, looking for Alexei's body. I wanted to find it–and I didn't. I was morbidly curious–and I was terrified. If Alexei was dead, then where were we … ?
"All right, I've got the grapple‑dart," said Mickey. "I'm coming back down." Two quick bounces and he was beside me again. Above us the line was falling slack. "Did you see anything?"Meaning, did you find Alexei?
"Uh‑uh. It's like he popped off the line and flew away into space."
"Knowing Alexei, I could almost believe that." Mickey bounced up and grabbed the sagging cord above us. He pulled the free end over the rocks and began winding it up. "Even without the pistol, this might be useful. Waste not, want not, remember?" He handed me the line to hold, then circled the promontory, looking for anything I might have missed. He spiraled outward among the boulders, then came back to me. "Nope. He must have jumped off earlier. We could search for days and never find him." After a moment, he added, "And we don't have enough air for that."
We started back toward Douglas and Mickey resumed winding the cord. "You know," he started, thinking aloud. "There was a lot of horizontal slack at this end of the line. He might have had time to slow down, even stop." And then he added, pointedly,"You might have too."
"Yeah, but I didn't know that."
"No, you didn't."
We picked our way back slowly. We took turns gathering up the cord and winding it in loose coils. It looked unnaturally thin to me–but everything on Luna seemed spindly. If they made it only one‑half as strong as it would need to be on Earth, it would still be three times stronger than necessary for Luna.
We spread out and searched from side to side, looking for any sign of Alexei. Even a track on the ground would have been welcome. We searched as carefully as we could–but we were in shadow, there were a lot of boulders, and it would have been easy to miss him in the dark.
Mickey stopped to study his PITA. He whispered something to it, studied the display. "All right," he said, with terrifying finality. "I'm going to call it. You know what that means?"
"You think he's dead."
"It means we can't waste any more oxygen looking for him. If he's dead, we can't help him. And if he's alive, we still can't help him–" He stopped and faced me. "Do you know the first law of Luna?"
"Uh–no," I admitted.
"It's very cold, it's very selfish. Take care of your own well‑being first. Otherwise, you have nothing for anyone else."
"That doesn't sound selfish to me. It sounds like good advice."
"It is. But a lot of dirtsiders don't like it. The equations are too cold for them. You know what that means?"
"Everybody does. Not enough air."
"That's right." He took a breath. "All right. Let's go back and talk to Douglas. It's time to make a decision."
Douglas and Bobby were sitting together inside the inflatable. Bobby was munching an MRE and sipping at a canteen. I checked the time. We'd have to take another bathroom break in an hour. If we waited until he went now, we might manage two hours, two and a half. Maybe.
Mickey and I stopped outside the inflatable. We checked each other's air supply. We were both fine. Mickey told Douglas what we had found–and what we hadn't found. He traced lines in the thin dust. "Here's where we started. Here's where we are now. Here's the closest two train lines. We could have gone to this one, to the east. It's only half the distance, in fact it's still closer, but there are some steep crater walls in the way. And we'd be in sunlight a lot of the time, dodging from shadow to shadow. Experienced Loonies wouldn't have had a problem with it, but it's too risky for beginners. So Alexei had us going the long way, but safer–heading for this other line here. This way, we stay mostly in shadow, and the biggest problem is that one little crater rim–yeah, thatwas a littleone–and a little bit of sunlight, and making sure that we have enough air. He thought we could do it. So did I. I still do."
I couldn't tell what Douglas was thinking. Behind the blurry wall of the inflatable, he was an unreadable silver ghost.
"If we call for help," said Mickey, "we'll probably end up in the custody of bounty marshals. Alexei was my only real connection on Luna. I might be able to make some phone calls, but I can't think of anyone who'd get involved for us. For you. Unless–"
"Unless what?"
"Unless you know who paid your dad to carry the monkey. They'd certainly have an interest in reclaiming their property."
"No, they won't," said Douglas. "It's a decoy. Having us caught by bounty marshals serves them perfectly. It's a public distraction."
For an instant, the monkey tightened its grip on my head, reminding me it was there. For an instant, I wondered again if it was really a decoy. But something told me I didn't want to voice that thought aloud. "So what's our alternative?" I asked. "Without Alexei, can we still get to the train?"
"I think so. My maps are good. Not as good as Alexei's, but he showed me the way, and I think I can get us to Prospector's Station."
"And then what?"
"Then we keep going. We take cargo trains. We zigzag. We avoid interception points. We get to the catapult somehow. Or we sit here and call for help. But we have to decide in the next few minutes, because if we don't start moving soon, the window closes. We won't have enough air."
"How much air?"
"My guess is six hours if we're active, eight if we're resting. We can call for help anytime, Douglas. But if we're going to move, we have to move now."
"What about the closer train?"
Mickey pointed east–toward the harsh glare of the rising sun.
Douglas turned and looked. He didn't like what he saw. I could see that much in his posture. "And the farther one?"
Mickey pointed south, toward the darkness.
Douglas stared into the gloom. "You really think we can do it?"
"Alexei thought so. And he knew the risks better than any of us."
"All right," Douglas said. "Let's do it."
"You want me to take Bobby?"
"No, I promised him he'd stay with me. Let me get packed–"
A HUNCH
We didn't talk about Alexei. Not too much. There wasn't much that either Douglas or I could say–and whatever Mickey was feeling about his friend, he wasn't saying anything to either of us. I got the feeling he was as much angry at Alexei as he was grieving.
After a little bit of discussion, we decided to go for thirty minutes at a time between rest breaks. It was mostly downhill, and we were getting our Luna legs now, and Mickey was worried about my air. He didn't say so, but he checked my readouts a lot. He wanted to get us to Prospector's Station quickly.
For a while, we were moving through boulders, and then just rocks, and finally, we were back on hard rock and thin dust again. That was easiest. We were heading toward a landmark that Alexei and Mickey had identified as our halfway point.
About fifty years ago, in the first days of serious Lunar exploration, the Colonization Authority put down thousands of surveying beacons all over the Lunar surface. These were nothing more than self‑embedding spikes with reflectors on top. The reflectors were dimpled with hundreds of little right‑angle corners so that any beam hitting them would be reflected straight back to its source.
The length of time it took for a beam to return told you how far away you were. By triangulating on several reflectors, you could calculate your position almost to the centimeter. The reflectors also made it possible to make highly accurate surveillance maps of the Lunar surface. The geography of Luna was actually better known than that of Earth–because two‑third's of Earth's geography was underwater.