that ended in a moan. He reached into the darkness and flipped on a light.
The door opened into another huge room filled with more equipment. Unlike the room we had seen, the equipment in this room looked spotless, obviously arranged in an orderly fashion.
Several bots glided about with dust rags as if to demonstrate how carefully the equipment was being cared for.
“This is my good stuff. No one but the folks that deliver and unload the gear I buy even know it’s back here. Been saving it for the time when I can buy a rocket—if and when one becomes available—and make my own way back into space. Earth’s not home anymore. Not with this bum leg. It holds me back. It doesn’t matter in space.”
“What kind of prices are we looking at for the gear we need,” I asked.
He laughed. “The stuffs not for sale. Woe there. Don’t give me those long faces… I do have a proposition to make to you.” He paused a moment and turned to stand directly in front of us. ” I can see from your equipment list that you have something special in mind. You get me back into space and I’ll make it worth your while. Get me to the Moon with enough gear to get set up in an abandoned base, and I’ll supply you with what you need for free.”
Nikki and I stood still, not wanting to betray ourselves. Was this guy on the level?
“Uh. Just a minute. We need to have a conference here,” I pulled Nikki over to one of the spotless corners of the room as a bot scurried out of our way.
“I don’t know about this,” I whispered.. “We should probably get out of here. This guy might not be on the level and he’s already guessed what we were planning.”
“He wouldn’t have admitted knowing what we were planning if he were just going to turn us in. I think he’s serious.”
“But there’s no way we can mount an expedition for all three of us to the Moon. And how do you know that he won’t turn us in?”
“Why would he turn us in?”
I paused. “That is a point. He did get booted out of space. Probably has some real grudges, too…”
“Why not trust him? I bet he’s serious about getting back into space.”
“OK. That’s probably right. But I’m not sure if we have enough lifting power to carry all we need. Let alone another—”
“If we accelerate constantly, the trip could be short and—”
“Can you really lift the three of us and some gear?”
“Sure. Well, almost sure that we can do it. I did the calculations last night for two of us. But I think we could squeeze in three. And I’m sure we can trust him. We could use a little help from someone that knows what’s on the Moon.”
“Well… I doubt that we’ll find anyone else with this much good equipment. OK. But let’s not let him know too much at first.”
Having said that, I spilled my guts. More or less. We didn’t tell him HOW we were getting to the moon. Not at first; I didn’t want to scare him off. But I did admit that we were going. “But our first trip will be without you until we get the hang of things,” I finished up.
He was equally forthcoming. “No way. If you have enough lift to get the gear you’re needing into space, you can take one more hand on board. Either I go or you look somewhere else for your gear. And I can promise you, you aren’t going to find anyone else with this quality of equipment.”
I bit my lip. He was like the kid that owned the bat and gloves and ball; he was the only game in town.
“I tell you what,” I countered. “Let me show you what we’ll be traveling in and you’ll probably want to wait for the second round trip. But you can’t tell anyone what you’ve seen. It can be hazardous to your health.”
Once we’d gained his promise, we drove the van into the barn. He looked at it and then at us as if we were crazy. I smiled as the little wheels started to move in his head. He tilted his head to listen to the constant whirl of the engine. “What the…” He walked around the van. Nikki was driving so I got out.
I motioned to the open door. “Get in.”
He handed me his crutches, backed into the passenger’s seat, and pulled himself into place.
Nikki flew him around the inside of the barn.
“I can’t believe it. I must be dreaming,” was all he said when he settled back on the floor and hopped from the van.
After a moment of thought, he put a huge “Closed” sign on the front door, locked up, and almost without another word we started assembling everything we would be needing for our trip.
We stopped for a quick lunch and then worked well into the night. About every fifteen minutes Jake would say, ” I can’t believe it. I must be dreaming.”
First we made a big pile of everything we needed, then we started figuring the lift potential as well as trying to figure how to store everything in the van. I could see it was going to be one tight fit. At best we’d be like a bunch of soso’s stuffed into a vacuum-packed can. At worst, Jake would have to stay behind. And I wasn’t so sure he would agree to that.
Jake was a big help. He knew a lot of little things that we hadn’t thought of which could easily have gotten us killed before we ever even got to the Moon. Things like the need for a radiant heater as well as a cooling system. And which Moon bases would be easiest for us to settle in without being detected.
By midnight he and Nikki had hammered out the lift potentials and possible rates of acceleration the van could achieve and we’d figured out—more or less—how to fit three people and all the gear they’d need for a short trip through space into the van.
Nikki got the computers out of the van and jacked them into the Net, while Jake got a stack of dusty reference books out; the two of them sat at the table in the small living quarters Jake had set up in a lean-to on the old barn. They started plotting various orbits that might take us to the Moon. Time after time, they came up with too long a trip for the supplies we could carry or which wouldn’t quite get us there. Added to the problems was the fact that the van had to make the first leg of its journey following a rocket flight (to keep us from being detected) even though the van was capable of nearly constant acceleration/deceleration unlike a rocket. I sat at the table a while and then quietly sneaked out when I realized that the conversation was way over my head.
I reentered the barn and studied the van which was in the center of one of the bright spots, looking like an exhibit in a museum. It certainly didn’t look like a space craft. If I had been forced to choose between it and the cow that jumped over the moon, I would have chosen the cow ever time as the most likely candidate. The van looked like the most unlikely way to get into space.
The thought was the proverbial mind boggler.
I also felt… Jealous. Seeing Jake and Nikki hitting it off so well together didn’t seem to go over well with me. Mentally, I didn’t see anything to be jealous about. Emotionally, I felt jealous.
Unfortunately, the heart wins out over the brain when it comes to feelings.
So I moped around in the shadows of the barn thinking I might well be the most childish man on the planet. Finally, I started exploring the barn and ended up in the hay loft. There, I opened an old wooden door leading to the outside and stood staring at the rising Moon, not quite full tonight, as it rose in the East.
“There you are.”
I turned to see Nikki coming up the ladder.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Baying at the Moon.”
Nikki looked at the Moon a moment. ” It’s hard to believe. But I think we’ve figured out a way to really do it. The figures are there and we have the vehicle. All we have to do is go. We might be standing on the lunar surface in a few days.” She looked at my face. “Why do you look so sad?”
“Well, I guess it’s a little bit of a let down, somehow. Part of me is excited and part of me would like to be sitting on a sofa watching the 3V.”
“Even if bag ladies try to zap you?”
“Maybe we could skip that part. Come on, it’s my dream. Don’t throw in your bag ladies.”
Silence for a bit longer. Nikki reached out and gave my hand a squeeze. “Listen, Phil. I know that… Well, don’t rush things. It’s going to be a while before I get over Craig. He may be a mess, but he was my mess. All I ever had. Give me time.”
