Lunar Descent (19 page)

Joe watched as the work capsule moved closer to the open cargo hatch. A floodlight beam briefly caught the words “Wonder Woman” painted in a bright red slash on the fuselage, just below a hand-painted picture of the comic-book superheroine. He waited a moment, then said, “Annie …”

What, damn it
?

“You're still a bitch,” he finished sweetly.

He heard her sigh over the comlink … but she didn't say anything. Mighty Joe grinned. Noonan caught a lot of flak from him, most of it of the sexist variety, but he had to admit to himself that she was one hell of moondog. If there was a bitch out there next to the
Dreamer
, it was the little work capsule, not the woman who piloted it. It took a special touch to fly the damn things; the reaction control jets were notorious for being overly sensitive, and even with the aid of a virtual-reality control system, operating the remote manipulators was a lot like trying to juggle balls while wearing plaster casts on both arms.

After the
Dreamer
's last payload specialist had completed his contract, and before Annie had come aboard, Mighty Joe and Rusty had flown pickup missions for six weeks without a cargo rat. They had done the grunt work themselves in that period, and by the time Noonan had arrived for duty, the two men were on the verge of having fistfights over whose turn it was to fly the capsule. Noonan had just climbed in, shut the hatch, flown out, and got her first non-simulated Spam-cans transferred and latched down without any sweat.… Then she had climbed out and told them that they were both clumsy jerks and to bathe before the next time they climbed in
her
RWS, if she even let them. “It stinks like a jockstrap in there,” she had said.

“It's a woman's job,” he murmured aloud.

“Say what?” Rusty asked, looking up from his navigation console. He was working out the flight plan for the
Dreamer
's return to Descartes.

“Never mind. Just thinking aloud …”

But I appreciate it
, Annie said. She sounded sincere.
Thanks, Joe
.

“Don't let it go to your head, toots,” he growled back. He watched as Noonan slowly maneuvered the canister toward the starboard cargo hatch; it was a tight fit, and she had to move gradually to keep the blunt forward end from bashing into the tug's fuselage or the hatch doors.

“Five minutes,” Rusty said.

Mighty Joe glanced up again. In the far distance, beyond the edge of the RWS, the farside terminator hove into view as a white-silver crescent, the ragged western edge of Hirayama Crater outlined by the half-light cast by the rising Earth. Once over the Hirayama, he knew from experience, they would again be within range of Descartes' traffic radar; MainOps would be expecting them to make the braking thrust for return and touchdown. If they had to delay, any excuses given for making another orbit might arouse suspicions, and that was the last thing Mighty Joe wanted from the new GM.

“Annie, I don't mean to be an asshole,” he urged softly, “but can you hurry up? It's getting a bit tight, if you know what I mean.”

Why, what's your rush
? she replied breezily. She had the Spam-can almost one third of the way inside.
Five minutes, four minutes, what's the …
?

“Move it, Noonan!” Rusty snapped.

All right, all right
! she yelled back.
Take it easy, I'm coming
. There was a pause, then:
Hang on to something, this could be rough
.

“Annie, what …?” Rusty began.

The elbows of the capsule's manipulators folded against the canister's back end. Joe suddenly realized what Noonan was about to do and managed to grab his armrests just before the RCR jets on the back of the capsule flashed again and the manipulators shot out in the opposite direction. The Spam-can was brutally shoved the rest of the way into the cargo deck; Noonan was obviously counting on the cargo deck's capture-and-support cradle to keep the massive object from breaking something inside. Lights flashed on the dashboard and an annunciator rang as the tug's RCR's fired once, automatically compensating for the shift of inertial mass. Joe's hands darted for the alarm override.

“Goddammit, Annie!” he shouted. “Watch the—!”

Keep your shorts on, Joe. It's okay
. The work capsule was slowly backing away from the hatch, its manipulators disengaged and floating free.
There, see? Nice and neat. The cradle caught it and everything. Now close the hatch and prep the RWS sleeve. I'm coming in
. She paused.
That fast enough for you guys
?

Pilot and co-pilot exchanged a glance; Rusty let out his breath and Joe shut his eyes and let God know he was grateful for not allowing some reckless wench to wreck his ship. “Uh, yeah, that's an affirmative,” Rusty said. “Superlative. Now c'mon in and let's get ready for touchdown.”

“Three and a half minutes till we're over the terminator,” Mighty Joe rumbled. “Good deal.” He closed the cargo deck hatch and started the repressurization cycle, then unbuckled his seat harness and carefully pushed himself out of his chair. He felt the back of his shirt unstick from the upholstery as he moved. Damn, had he been sweating that much? “I'm going below to help Noonan out of the capsule,” he said shortly, hoping Rusty didn't notice.

“Uh-huh. Sure. You want to check out the goodies.” Rusty shook his head as he programmed the autopilot for the return leg of the trip. “Just make sure that if there's a bag of pot in that thing, it has my name written on it.”

“You'll have to arm wrestle me for it, bub.” Legs dangling upwards, Mighty Joe grabbed the recessed floor rungs and pulled himself toward the mid-deck hatch. “I'll let you start taking us down. I'm gonna go see what the lady's done brought home.”

The pirated Spam-can took up most of the space in the mid-deck cargo hold; it hung within the nylon net of the cradle like a huge moth strangled in a spider's web. As Mighty Joe came down the ladder, he glanced once at the open service panel leading to the conduits for the main electrical busbars. When Main Bus A had started acting twitchy, Rusty had taken the precaution of unscrewing this particular service panel and leaving it off, exposing a candy-striped U-bar within the recess. If an emergency arose which could not be controlled from the flight deck, someone could get down here and cut off Main A by throwing the manual circuit breaker. Next to the open panel was a strip of white masking tape, scrawled with the words
DON
'
T TOUCH THIS
!!

Just looking at it made Joe irritated.
Somebody's got to get in here and fix this frigging thing
. He shook his head and pushed off the ladder, gliding across the compartment toward the captured Spam-can. Before Mighty Joe opened it, though, he went to help Noonan out of the RWS where it had docked inside its sleevelike berth. Like the hardsuits the moondogs wore, the RWS was zero-prebreath; Annie didn't have to spend hours in decompression, waiting for differing atmospheric pressures to adjust to each other. By the time Joe reached the berth, Noonan had opened the topside hatch and was pulling herself out, looking like someone emerging from an old-fashioned iron lung.

“Well,
you
certainly were a pain in the ass today,” she complained, giving him a dirty look. She removed her bulky VR helmet, shook out her hair, and tossed the helmet back into the capsule's tiny cockpit before kicking the topside hatch shut. “I was half inclined to accidentally let that thing slip out of my hands.”

“Sorry,” Joe said. “Maybe I got a little carried away there.”

“Yeah, maybe you did.” Annie pulled her communications headset out of her vest pocket and pulled it over her head, then shoved Mighty Joe aside as she pulled herself along the overhead handrail to the Spam-can. “Well, it's aboard at any rate, so let's pop the hatch and see what Santa brought us good little boys and girls.”

Joe cocked an eyebrow. “It's the first week of July, sweetheart.”

“Haven't you ever heard of Christmas in July? Car dealers get a lot of mileage out of it. Now hurry up and open the damn thing.”

“Now you're talking sense.” Mighty Joe pushed himself over the top of the Spam-can and located the recessed valve that unsealed the O-rings which kept the canister sealed and airtight. He twisted it counterclockwise; there was a slight hiss of escaping air, and the long, refrigerator-door-size hatch popped open slightly. One by one, Joe flipped open the three latches, then grabbed the main rung and pulled it up. “Let's see what …”

“Hush!” Annie snapped. “You hear something?”

“Naw, I don't …”

Before he could react, Annie brutally shoved him away from the hatch. As Mighty Joe reflexively grabbed for a ceiling rung, he started to yell at Noonan. And then he heard, from within the open hatch, a tinny electronic
tickatickatickatickaticka
.…

“
Duck
!” she screamed and threw herself backwards.

Mighty Joe barely had time to double up, when there was a sharp, loud
bang
! and something within the Spam-can exploded.

Pieces of ceramic shrapnel and bright blue ink exploded from within the canister. The dye sheeted across Joe's shoulders and forearms and the front of Annie's suit, plastering half of the cargo bay with sticky blue goop, as fragments of the bomb ricocheted off the interior of the cargo bay. Something behind them made a loud
snap
! and …

“GAAAH!” Mighty Joe howled as his shoulders caught the worst of the dye-bomb's discharge. “Fuck!” he screamed. “What the holy fuck was that?”

All at once, alarms started going off in the mid-deck, a harsh, white-noise blare mixed with a high, whining
beep-beep-beep-beep
. Recovering herself, Noonan absently wiped blue dye from her chin and stared into the open Spam-can. She looked up at Joe and started to laugh—the tug pilot looked as if he had walked under a housepainter's ladder just in time to have a bucket of blue paint spill over his head—then caught herself. The air was suddenly tinged with an acrid, ozone-laced odor … and, over that, a faint smell like burning tires.…

She looked at the open service panel at the same time as Mighty Joe, to see blue-green smoke billowing from the lacerated electrical conduits. Unable to control herself, she screamed as Joe launched himself at the fire-extinguisher station.

What the hell's going on down there
? Rusty's voice shouted in their headsets.
Is everyone …
?

“Fire in the hull!” Joe yelled. “Fire in mid-deck! Shut 'er down! Shut 'er down!” He ripped the fire extinguisher from its plastic tie-downs, twisted around in midair, and jammed the nozzle toward the fuming service hatch.

Main A and B down
! Rusty shouted.
Repeat, Main A and B are
…

“I know, I know!” Mighty Joe squeezed the extinguisher's valve within his fist. The nozzle
squonked
and a white blast of carbon dioxide knocked him backwards, his ass slamming into the Spam-can as he struggled to direct the frigid jet against the electrical fire. Crystalline snowflakes spit from the sides of the panel and drifted in the air; the alarm continued to howl as Noonan pushed herself forward, making a grab for the fire extinguisher to steady it in Joe's hands.

I heard an explosion
! Rusty shouted.
Is everyone okay down there
?

“I got it, leggo!” Joe yelled in Annie's face. He pushed himself forward again, directing the nozzle toward the fire. It was almost smothered, but he wasn't about to take any chances. “Get topside now!” he shouted at Annie.

Suddenly the mid-deck lights went out; an instant later the rose-red emergency lights kicked in on their batteries.
Main A and B off-line
, Rusty said. His voice was almost ironic in its calm.
We're on backup. What's
…

“Okay, okay!” Joe shouted back. “Goddammit, Noonan, get up the ladder and lemmee handle this!” He held the nozzle on the frost-blanketed service panel as Noonan scrambled for the ladder. When the fire extinguisher's blast petered out and the pressure-gauge hit the red zone, he tossed it aside, reached into the bin and yanked down the icy circuit-breaker bar, just in case the automatic circuit beakers Rusty had flipped in the flight deck hadn't done the job. He then kicked off the deck and swam for the ladder.

Before he went up, though, he stopped and reached up to the ceiling for the cradle's unlocking lever. One hard yank and the ceiling hooks that held the nylon net unlocked; the Spam-can hung free, still loosely wrapped in the webbing. A necessary precaution, if he was going to do what he already suspected would have to be done.

It took only a sharp heave on the rungs to propel himself up into the flight deck. He almost collided with Annie as he shot through the hatch; she yelled an obscenity which Joe ignored as he pushed her aside and clumsily dove headfirst for his seat. “Get that hatch fastened down!” he shouted back at Annie.

“Calm down,” Rusty murmured. He was bent over the main console, his eyes twitching back and forth over the myriad readouts and dials. The flight deck was dimly lit by the red emergency lights and the blue glow of the dashboard screens, but as Joe buckled into his seat, the compartment was suddenly awash in the bright white glow of sunlight. Glancing up, he saw the Sun rising over the limb of the Moon; they were over the western terminator now. “What's going on down there?” Rusty demanded.

“Dye-bomb in the Spam-can,” Annie said. Her voice was hoarse from shouting. She had shut the mid-deck hatch and dogged it, and was now hauling herself back into her seat. “Banks use 'em to mark cash heisted by bank robbers.…”

“Yeah, except this sumbitch shrapneled and nailed the main busbars. Lucky shot … or whatever you wanna call it.” Joe reached up to pull down the bill of his Gatorama cap, only to find it missing entirely. It must have been knocked off down there. Fire in the mid-deck, dye-bomb in the Spam-can, his ship on auxiliaries, and now, on top of that, he had to lose his lucky cap. Somebody was going to pay for this shit.