“Shotz is dead,” he whispered in graveled tones. “Everything is blown to hell. We don’t know what to do-”
“Yes, he’s dead,” she said, the words ashes on her lips. “But I am alive. I am in charge now. This is all you need to know.”
His eyes locked with hers. The entire world achieved an eerie clarity: She saw every vein, every imperfection in his irises. She knew his mind, knew that he wondered if she was still entirely sane.
She didn’t know either. And frankly, she didn’t much care.
“Jeee-zus,” Scotty whispered. Darla’s eyes were wide as walls, arms folded tightly together. The other gamers were confused, startled, but none of them understood the enormity of what had just happened. No one who had spent time on Luna, or outside the protective envelope of Earth’s atmosphere, who had ever been near a pressure seal failure, let alone an explosive decompression, could feel anything but terror at the sound of that klaxon.
He had seen the fleshy results of mine accidents, construction failures and ignorant tourists. It wasn’t pretty: The human body is 60 percent water, and in vacuum, water boils.
“What happened?” Angelique asked.
“I’m not sure. Let’s make a guess: The pirates mined the doors, and our rescuers triggered a mine.” Scotty said.
“Damn,” Wayne said. “That means-”
“That people died out there. Probably our people. We need to move. The Pirates might be shaken enough to slow them down.”
“What if they aren’t?”
Scotty thought about that for a moment. “Then I really, seriously doubt that they’re in a good mood. We need to move. But only bubble to bubble now. No more moving in the in-betweens. There’s no air out there anymore.”
Fortunately, their path through the G-level bubbles down to H allowed them to move from one sealed environment to another. These were all unfurnished and unpainted Liquid Wall bubbles, none modified for gaming, most of them empty or crammed with crates. Every time Scotty opened a door, they tensed.
“Scotty?” Ali asked. “If the dome is breached, what then?”
“It depends on the size of the opening,” Scotty said. They stood on a sealed catwalk, a bubble used primarily to connect two other bubbles. Here there were no windows, and the walls dampened sound. “If it’s the size of your fist, the dome can heal itself. Some kind of threaded epoxy resin, I think. Larger than that, and if the mechs are operating, they will automatically try to fix it. Then there are work crews from Heinlein. I don’t know what’s going to happen here. We better assume we’re on our own, though.”
When they reached the next door, Scotty turned the manual wheel. It opened with a slight hisss that suggested the pressure level between bubbles wasn’t equalized. The sound made his skin creep, and he was happy when his crew was all in, and they could seal the door behind them.
“This is 100-G,” Darla said, dropping to her knees. “There should be an exit port to H level. From there… well, hold on to your butts, but Mama thinks we can take a shortcut to the end of the game.”
“What was supposed to happen?” Wayne asked.
She narrowed her eyes. “That would be telling…” Then the absurdity of her reply struck her, and she sighed. “Oh, fudge it. There was loads of running and jumping and fighting and climbing. And you would have rescued Professor Cavor from the caves, and then struggled to reach the sphere. You know, the spaceship. And from there… Game over.”
“So what do we face between here and the bottom?”
“I don’t know everything…” Her fingers scratched at the floor, and then she made an ah-hah sound, opened her multitool and pried harder. A popping sound, and the white tile slid up, exposing a steel-plated maintenance door. “But keep your eyes open,” she said. Her fingers found a ring and tugged, and the plate came up. Looking down she said: “Here we go!” and dropped down.
One at a time, they followed.
34
1623 hours
The very first thing Scotty noticed was the moist, cool air against his cheeks. He realized that he had missed that over the last hours: The atmosphere throughout most of the dome and its bubbles had been fairly dry. This was different, and his pulse raced: There was open water nearby, perhaps within a few hundred meters. As Maud brought up the rear Scotty closed the door behind him, glaring at its insufficient lock. The inner side had been retrofitted with a turn-wheel that might have seemed at home on Captain Nemo’s submarine. That, he thought, must have amused the engineers tremendously.
He twisted it back and forth, testing the mechanical works. Yes: The wheel was fully operative. Turning it engaged both bolts and bars. Fantastic, but he wanted more. He looked around for something to brace it with. The door opened onto a grilled metal pathway suspended across a suspiciously vast cavern. Most of the cavern was the sort of fused-wall lava bubble he’d seen and explored so often during his lunar tenure. But a hundred meters farther out the smooth surfaces were disrupted with jagged cone-shaped stalactites and stalagmites. More Dream Park magic, no doubt.
Discarded bits of equipment and material were strewn about. This chamber was meant to be some kind of a workshop. Scotty clawed through the conveniently tumbled debris until his fingers curled around a slender steel bar. He slid the bar into the wheel and tried to bend it. Failed.
Wayne, Angelique and Mickey stepped up to help. Angelique wrapped some of her shirt’s beige fabric around her slender fingers to protect them. The others just grabbed and began to heave. With a slow groan, the bar bent until it was jammed in the spokes. When he tried to revolve the wheel, the bar thumped against part of the rock wall. And there it stuck.
Scotty rubbed his hands together, immensely satisfied. “Great.” He turned to Mickey. “Find something heavy to prop against the door. In fact, just pile up everything you can drag. Should slow the pirates down.”
Maud looked skeptical. “They’ll just blow it open.”
Scotty’s answering laugh was ugly. “Considering their recent experience with vacuum, I’m hoping they might be a bit more… mindful.”
Leaving Mickey to work on the door, Wayne and Angelique led the gamers across a narrow steel bridge through a labyrinth of unweathered rock, into a glittering cavern. The walls curled away into mist. A low fog hugged the ground and wreathed the walls.
Wayne looked up at the ceiling, whistled. “What is this? Stalactites? This looks strange.” He squinted. “Why does this look strange?”
“That’s because there aren’t any stalactites or stalagmites on the Moon,” Scotty said.
“Why?” Sharmela asked. “There are caves…”
“Beside the point, darlin’,” Darla said. “Scotty’s right. The caves are mostly volcanic. Sure as sugar weren’t made by flowin’ water.”
Scotty nodded. “In all likelihood, there never wa s liquid water on the Moon. Ice crystals, yes. But this kind of natural formation is only caused by mineral-rich water dripping from the ceiling.”
“Which means,” Angelique agreed, “that this is more of Xavier’s con. This is Wells’ world. Everything operating as if the Moon had an atmosphere and flowing water. Living creatures.”
