It was a fair distance. Even with the hopper it would take him about fifteen hours. He had picked a site near the limit of his range—but not too near it—so as to make it that more difficult for them to locate him quickly. But the marvels of the Lunar landscape soon palled. He was traversing a dull, seemingly endless plain, in the confined silence of his suit.
He remembered more of the bits of information the Shaman had given him. Flint had supposed they were mere stories, intended for entertainment or for dealing with immediate needs, such as the hunting of dinosaurs, but now he understood their true relevance.
Before mattermission, Earth had been in desperate need of new sources of supply and living room for its horrendously teeming population. Lifeship colonization had been inadequate and too expensive. So they had tried desperate measures, such as colonization of near space. The first settlers went to Luna, drawing most of the construction substance from its crust. Then space itself was claimed, drawing on what was there: the particles of rock and ice in orbit, the planetoids. It was much easier to collect materials from there than to bring them up out of Earth’s gravitational well, and a number of the orbiting rocks were big enough to become homes themselves.
Gardens were planted, within shells of air, rotating slowly so that the light of the sun struck them half of every day, Earth-time. That same rotation provided gravity via centrifugal force. Flint had never really understood that concept when the Shaman explained it, but his recent experience on the space shuttle from Earth to Luna had brought it into sharp focus, along with a spot of “spin sickness.” The rotation provided weight in a small craft, but the head was nearer to the center than the feet, and so became slightly lighter. The body reacted to this unbalance by becoming uncomfortably ill. Flint had never been ill before in his life, and it was a horrendous experience. So he had learned about practical centrifugal gravity the hard way. Knowing and comprehending were different things! Flint had known much, understood little. But he was mastering his background knowledge now, right down into his gut.
The Ministers of Imperial Earth had relied too much on his presumed naiveté, falling into the trap of supposing that ignorance equated with stupidity, though they knew better. (No one was immune from the know-comprehend dichotomy!) They had given him cram courses in the most advanced technology of the galaxy—that of matter-mission and transfer—by relying heavily on his eidetic memory. He could now repeat paragraphs of complex formulas whose meaning he would never understand. He could now read—just enough to get by. In conversation he sounded like a highly educated ignoramus, which he was. But they had also trained him in multiple combat and escape techniques… and never supposed he might employ these more practical skills against them. It had been child’s play to escape the Ministry of Alien Spheres, buy a black-market tourist’s pass, switch places with a disgruntled miner on furlough, and land at Posidonius Mine.
One transfer experience sufficed; he was going back home to Honeybloom. The only mountains and depressions he cared to explore hereafter were hers. All he had to do was figure out a way to get mattermitted back.
That might take some figuring. It would cost about two trillion dollars postage to jump from Earth to Outworld. But he would have time to mull over that challenge, here on the moon. There had to be some way available to a bright primitive…
The barren landscape continued. It was dusk here, with his long sharp shadow extending to the east, leaping far away as he went high, zooming back to meet him as he landed. The shadow was always barely in time for the bounce. Would it ever miscalculate, play it too close, and miss the connection? Flint smiled, half-believing it could happen. Nothing was perfect!
He was well north of Posidonius Crater now, in the Lake of Dreams. Two hundred miles to the east the curve of Luna’s surface shrouded the craters in darkness. He had progressed north of small Crater Daniell, coming up parallel to Crater Grove. He could see these only when he was high; the horizon was so much closer than that of Outworld, Earth, or the Canopian slave planet, because Luna was so much smaller. On the other hand there was no atmosphere to cloud vision. But he “saw” as much by means of the picture in his mind as with his eyes. His photographic mental image merged with the reality, greatly extending his perception. As, perhaps, his Kirlian aura extended his perception of life.
He kept going, hour after hour. As a Paleolithic hunter he had developed endurance—but never before had he hopped the whole distance. The machine provided the thrust, but the little balancing mechanisms of his body were becoming fatigued. Now he was approaching the ill-defined depressions of Plana and Mason—old, worn craters, perhaps, though what was there to wear them down? On the map they lay together with their center nipples like the breasts of a woman, but there was no such resemblance now. He was through the Lake of Dreams, traversing rougher surface. His imagination had ceased to conjure fun-visions of Outworld and Honeybloom, and not even these twin circles could bring them back with any force. Fatigue diminished the enthusiasm of dreams.
His hopper gave a despairing half-thrust, and failed. It was out of power.
Flint came to rest in the crater of Plana, aware that he was in trouble. The hoppers were supposed to be kept fully charged between uses, but they were old machines, not as efficient as when new. This one had taken him about 260 miles, which might have been enough had he been able to proceed directly north from the station. But his jog to the west to get out of Posidonius, and necessary deviations around roughness La the terrain, had left him with still around fifty miles to go.
Well, he would walk it. He had to; there was no other way, and no closer respite, now. It would enable him to use different muscles, anyway.
Flint progressed vigorously, achieving a kind of running, jumping stride that carried him bounding forward at a speed of six to eight miles per hour. He was light, even with the suit, and strong, but the arms and legs of this thing were not adequately flexible for this, and they chafed.
He continued for an hour, crossing out of Plana and into the great doughnut-shaped plain of Lacus Mortis, the Lake of Death. Burg was in the center of it, a small crater compared to its neighbors Hercules and Atlas to the east, and Aristoteles and Eudoxus to the west. Oh, he had his mental map right before him, brilliantly clear as if illuminated by the slowly setting sun. Farther to the north was the large, long Mare Frigoris, the Sea of Cold. All he had to do was proceed from this point on that map to that point. So easy to know, so hard to do.
He plowed on, his speed slowing as he tired. His elbows and knees were raw from constant abrasion against the rigid joints of the suit. His air tasted bad, though he should still have several hours’ margin—unless it, like the hopper, no longer performed at the original specs. Suit failure—that was all he needed now!
Strange yet fitting, how he had started in such nicely named terrain: the Sea of Serenity, the Lake of Dreams. Now that he was in trouble, the dream was turning to nightmare, the Lake of Death. What would have happened had he gone east toward the Sea of Crises, or west to the Ocean of Storms? Better south to the Sea of Tranquility and Sea of Nectar!
But repeating the sweet names could hot extract him from the grim reality. There was no longer any doubt: his air was turning foul, and he had not covered half the distance to the station since the hopper failed. He could not even see Burg Crater yet. His presumed demise was about to become an actuality.