Smoke blew out the door. Wu and I both jumped back.
Frankie pulled the rope back, charred on one end. There was no tire “I learned the hard way,” he said, “when I tried to pull the dune buggy through myself, before I took the wheels off.”
“Of course!” Wu said. “What a fool I’ve been. I should have known!”
“Should have known what?” Frankie and I both asked at once.
Wu tore a corner off the shopping bag and started scrawling numbers on it with a pencil stub. “Should have known this!” he said, and he handed it to Frankie.
Frankie looked at it, shrugged, and handed it to me:
“So?” I said.
“So, there it is!” Wu said. “As those figures clearly indicate, you can pass through a noncongruent adjacency, but you can’t connect its two aspects. It’s only logical. Imagine the differential energy stored when a quarter of a million miles of space-time is folded to less than a millimeter.”
“Burns right through a rope,” Frankie said.
“Exactly.”
“How about a chain?” I suggested.
“Melts a chain,” said Frankie. “Never tried a cable, though.”
“No substance known to man could withstand that awesome energy differential,” Wu said. “Not even cable. That’s why the tires make that pop. I’ll bet you have to roll them hard or they bounce back, right?”
“Whatever you say,” said Frankie, putting out his cigarette. He was losing interest.
“Guess that means we leave it there,” I said. I had mixed feelings. I hated to lose a third of a million dollars, but I didn’t like the looks of that charred rope. Or the smell. I was even willing to kiss my hundred bucks goodbye.
“Leave it there? No way. We’ll drive it out,” Wu said. “Frankie, do you have some twelve-volt batteries you can loan me? Three, to be exact.”
“Unc’s got some,” said Frankie. “I suspect he’ll want to sell them, though. Unc’s not much of a loaner.”
Why was I not surprised?
Half an hour later we had three twelve-volt batteries in a supermarket shopping cart. The old man had wanted another hundred dollars, but since I was now a partner I did the bargaining, and we got them for twenty bucks apiece, charged and ready to go, with the cart thrown in. Plus three sets of jumper cables, on loan.
Wu rolled the two wire mesh wheels through the shed door. Each went pop and was gone. He put the toolbox into the supermarket cart with the batteries and the jumper cables. He pulled on the rubber gloves, and pulled the wool mittens over them. I did the same.
“Ready, Irv?” Wu said. (I would have said no, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. So I didn’t say anything.) “We won’t be able to talk on the Moon, so here’s the plan. First, we push the cart through. Don’t let it get stuck in the doorway where it connects the two aspects of the adjacency, or it’ll start to heat up. Might even explode. Blow up both worlds. Who knows? Once we’re through, you head down the hill with the cart. I’ll bring the two wheels. When we get to the LRV, you pick up the front end and—”
“Don’t we have a jack?”
“I’m expecting very low gravity. Besides, the LRV is lighter than a golf cart. Only 460 pounds, and that’s here on Earth. You hold it up while I mount the wheels—I have the tools laid out in the tray of the toolbox. Then you hand me the batteries, they go in front, and I’ll connect them with the jumper cables, in series. Then we climb in and—”
“Aren’t you forgetting something, Wu?” I said. “We won’t be able to hold our breath long enough to do all that.”
“Ah so!” Wu grinned and held up the brown bottle with Chinese writing on it. “No problem! I have here the ancient Chinese herbal treatment known as (he said some Chinese words), or ‘Pond Explorer’. Han dynasty sages used it to lie underwater and meditate for hours. I ordered this from Hong Kong, where it is called (more Chinese words), or ‘Mud Turtle Master’ and used by thieves; but no matter, it’s the same stuff. Hand me those cotton balls.”
The bottle was closed with a cork. Wu uncorked it and poured thick brown fluid on a cotton ball; it hissed and steamed.
“Jesus,” I said.
“Pond Explorer not only provides the blood with oxygen, it suppresses the breathing reflex. As a matter of fact, you can’t breathe while it’s under your tongue. Which means you can’t talk. It also contracts the capillaries and slows the heartbeat. It also scours the nitrogen out of the blood so you don’t get the bends.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I was into organic chemistry for several years,” Wu said. “Did my master’s thesis on ancient Oriental herbals. Never finished it, though.”
“Before you studied math?”
“After math, before law. Open up.”
As he prepared to put the cotton ball under my tongue, he said, “Pond Explorer switches your cortex to an ancient respiratory pattern predating the oxygenation of the Earth’s atmosphere. Pretty old stuff, Irv! It will feel perfectly natural, though. Breathe out and empty your lungs. There! When we come out, spit it out immediately so you can breathe and talk. It’s that simple.”
The Pond Explorer tasted bitter. I felt oxygen (or something) flooding my tongue and my cheeks. My mouth tingled. Once I got used to it, it wasn’t so bad; as a matter of fact, it felt great. Except for the taste, which didn’t go away.
Wu put his cotton ball under his tongue, smiled, and corked the bottle. Then, while I watched in alarm, he tore two plastic bags off the roll.
I saw what was coming. I backed away, shaking my head—
I’ll spare you the ensuing interchange. Suffice it to say that, minutes later, we both had plastic bags over our heads, taped around our necks with duct tape. Once I got over my initial panic, it wasn’t so bad. As always, Wu seemed to know what he was doing. And as always, it was no use resisting his plans.
If you’re wondering what Frankie was making of all this, so was I. He had stopped working again. While my bag was being taped on, I saw him sitting on the pile of tires, watching us with those blue-green eyes; looking a little bored, as if he saw such goings-on every day.
It was time. Wu grabbed the front of the supermarket cart and I grabbed the handle. Wu spun his finger and pointed toward the shed door with its tattered shower curtain waving slightly in the ripples of the space-time interface. We were off!
I waved goodbye to Frankie. He lifted one finger in farewell as we ran through.
From the Earth to the Moon—in one long step for mankind (and in particular, Wilson Wu). I heard a crackling, even through the plastic bag, and the supermarket cart shuddered and shook like a lawnmower with a bent blade. Then we were on the other side, and there was only a huge cold empty silence.
Overhead, a million stars. At our feet, gray dust. The door we had come through was a dimly lighted hole under a low cliff behind us. We were looking down a gray slope strewn with tires. The flat area at the bottom of the slope was littered with empty bottles, wrappers, air tanks, a big tripod, and of course, the dune buggy—or LRV—nose down in the dust. There were tracks all around it. Beyond were low hills, gray except for an occasional black stone. Everything seemed close; there was no far away. Except for the tires, the junk, and the tracks around the dune buggy, the landscape was featureless, smooth. Unmarked. Untouched. Lifeless.
The whole scene was half-lit, like dirty snow under a full moon in winter, only brighter. And more green.
Wu was grinning like a mad man. His plastic bag had expanded so that it looked like a space helmet; I realized mine probably looked the same. This made me feel better.
Wu pointed up behind us. I turned, and there was the Earth—hanging in the sky like a blue-green, oversized moon, just like the cover of The Whole Earth Catalog. I hadn’t actually doubted Wu, but I hadn’t actually believed him either, until then. The fifth thing you learn in law school is to be comfortable in that “twilight zone” between belief and doubt.