Meet Me in the Moon Room (24 page)

“Besides,” he said rubbing his head, “we could use a woman’s touch around here. Aren’t you guys getting tired of pork’n’beans?”

Frank admitted grudgingly that he for one was getting tired of pork’n’beans.

“Arf!” said Spot.

“And I can finally get a cup of coffee,” Doc said.

12.

The lobster men from Alpha Centauri landed on the back side of the moon and scuttled from the sunshine into deep lunar caverns and tunnels they dug as they went along. Soon the moon was infested with lobsters.

“So, what do we do now?” Z’p asked.

“We wait for the women,” Hivekeeper B’b said.

13.

Joe’s hand might have been a creature with a mind of its own as it skulked like a white spider across the back of the spacechair behind Nancy’s head. A few more inches and he could drop his arm around her shoulders.

The moon was huge and bright in the forward viewports.

“Oh, look how big it is,” Nancy said.

“What?” Joe felt his face go red.

Frank chuckled wickedly.

“Arf,” said Spot.

“Get ready to land on the moon, boys,” Doc said.

14.

“What I don’t understand, Worldmaster Jones,” Coordinator Grey said, “is how your secretary got onto a spaceship heading for the moon.”

“If you can’t spot a spy when you see one, Coordinator Grey,” Worldmaster Jones said, “I begin to doubt your abilities.”

15.

Joe, Frank, Doc, and Spot pressed their faces against the glass as they gazed out at the lunar landscape. Nancy jumped and poked and pushed and pinched from behind, trying to squeeze in for a look herself. They’d gotten into the form-fitting spacesuits Doc had designed, and each carried a fishbowl helmet. In fact, Doc carried two, Spot being unable to carry his own.

“Ow,” Frank said when Nancy pinched his ear. He moved away from the viewport and she took his place. “Say, Doc,” he said, “how come you just happened to have a babe suit on hand for Nancy?”

“You think that ‘be prepared’ stuff is just words?” Doc asked.

“Oh, look,” Nancy said.

“What can they be?” Joe asked.

“Moon monsters?” Nancy offered.

“What are you talking about?” Frank asked.

“I don’t think so,” Doc said. “They seem to be wearing life-support systems themselves. If they were native to the moon they wouldn’t need spacesuits.”

“Well, I think we should go out and meet them,” Nancy said. “I could get an interview.”

“So, you’re feeling like a snack?” Joe asked.

“Girls.” Frank rolled his eyes.

“Look,” Nancy said, “they’re waving at us.”

16.

“What are you doing, Hivekeeper?” Z’p was mystified at the strange antics of his leader. The Hivekeeper bounced up and down on his back legs and clicked both of his claws above his head.

“It’s the Intergalactic Babe Call,” the Hivekeeper said. “If there are women in there, they won’t be able to resist this.”

17.

“Me first,” Nancy said, elbowing her way up to the airlock.

“No way!” Frank cried. “If anyone should be the first man on the moon, it should be Doc.”

“Well, even if I go first,” Nancy said, “Doctor Tim can still be the first man on the moon.”

“She does have a point.” Joe pulled Frank aside.

“What point?”

“Well, a point of politeness,” Joe said. “It’s always Ladies First.”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“In your heart you know I’m right, Frank.”

“See? That’s the trouble of having women on board in the first place,” Frank said. “I knew we’d come to a conundrum like this sooner or later.”

Air whooshed out of the cabin.

“Hey!” Frank shouted. “She didn’t do the doors right!”

“Close it!” Joe shouted. “Watch out!” He grabbed Spot by the tail before the spacedog could be blown out onto the lunar surface.

Frank got the airlock door closed. They hurried to the viewport to see what had happened to Nancy.

Nancy, the glass bubble of her helmet reflecting billions and billions of stars, put out her hands in a peaceful gesture and walked toward the line of lobster men.

“Oh, Nancy,” Joe whispered.

When Nancy got to the line of lobster men, they grabbed her and scrambled off like a swarm of cockroaches.

“Come on!” Joe shouted. “We’ve got to get out there and save her.”

18.

The lobster men dragged Nancy deep into the bowels of the moon.

“So, what did you think of Earth when you first saw it?” Nancy was trying to do her job. “Tell me, do you guys have plans for an invasion of the planet itself? What do you do when you’re not waging interstellar wars? Are there any more like you at home?”

The lobster men tossed Nancy into a rock chamber and closed the door behind her. Sitting at a table in the middle of the room were the biggest lobster man yet, and a human being.

“Worldmaster Jones!” Nancy exclaimed.

“Yes, it’s me,” Jones said. “Did you think for a moment that you fooled me by pretending to be my secretary back on Earth? Don’t make me laugh. The moment you walked in, Nancy, I knew you were a perky, gum-snapping, wisecracking girl reporter.”

“So, where do we go from here?” Nancy asked. “I mean just what are you up to? Selling out the human race to these lobster guys? And what happens to me?”

“As for your first question,” Worldmaster Jones said, “you shouldn’t worry your pretty little head over such matters. As for your second question, you can make yourself useful. I’ve been dying to show B’b here what a good cup of coffee is like. You’ll find the proper equipment through that tunnel.”

19.

Frank touched helmets with Joe. “It’s hopeless,” he said. “There are just too many tunnels. We’ll never find her.”

“We’ll keep looking,” Joe said.

“Arf,” Spot said.

“Hey! Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Spot,” Joe said. “I heard Spot. There must be air in here!”

“Arf,” Spot said again, confirming Joe’s speculation.

“So who’s going to take his helmet off first?” Frank asked.

“We could draw straws.”

“Where’s Doc?” Frank asked. “He ought to be here to take his chances with the rest of us.”

“Oh, fiddlesticks. Are we going to have to rescue him. too?”

“We could just pull Spot’s helmet off,” Frank said.

“Arf!” said Spot.

“You really are a rascal aren’t you, Frank.”

“It was a joke.” Frank reached down to Spot, but the spacedog backed away, a little snarl curling his lip.

“Oh well,” Joe said. “Here goes.” He pulled his helmet off and took a deep breath.

Doc came around the corner carrying his helmet under his arm and dragging a sack through the moon dust.

“What you got there, Doc?”

“Bag o’ swords, boys,” he said. “This ought to even out the odds.”

“Yeah!”

“Man oh man!”

The guys spent a few minutes slicing the air with sabers, and then Doc called them back to order. “This way, boys,” he said.

20.

“So.” Worldmaster Jones put his cup of coffee down and looked deep into the many-faceted eyes of the Hivekeeper. “Do we have a deal?”

“Let me get this straight,” Hivekeeper B’b said, “you get the secret of faster-than-light travel, and we get a very large number of Earth women. You wouldn’t be trying to bamboozle the old Hivekeeper would you, Worldmaster?”

“Whatever do you mean, B’b?”

“He means,” Nancy said, “I’m the only woman on the moon, and one is not exactly a very large number.” She reached around the Worldmaster and filled his cup.

“Maybe I didn’t make myself clear,” Worldmaster Jones said. “At this very moment, Coordinator Grey is rounding up boatloads of the most, er . . . well, spirited of our coffee makers, toothsome downtown honeys gleaned from the streets of our major cities, shapely dames from our secretarial pools, beach chicks and housewives—you name it. By the time you whisper in my ear the secret of your faster-than-light drive, the moon will be swarming with women!”

21.

Back to back with Frank, Joe fought his way through a phalanx of clicking and clacking, snapping and biting lobsters. Suddenly, way down the tunnel, he saw Spot run out and bark at him and then run around the bend in the tunnel and a moment later he was back barking again.

“Let’s work our way down that way,” Joe huffed at Frank. The two men chopped their way through the lobster men toward the spacedog. They broke free of the melee and ran. Joe scooped up Spot as they passed into the tunnel. A light gleamed at the far end, and the lobsters seemed reluctant to follow them.

They rushed into a chamber where they saw an Earth man drinking coffee with a huge lobster. Nancy hovered around the table with a silver coffee pot.

“Joe!” she cried.

Joe took three giant steps across the floor and lopped off the head of the huge lobster.

“Oh yuck,” Nancy said, knowing without asking who would be expected to clean up the blue blood splattered everywhere.

“Hold it right there,” Worldmaster Jones said. He produced a spacepistol, like magic, and shot Frank in the shoulder.

“Hey, no fair!” Joe cried. “You said to hold it and we held it. What’s with the shooting?”

“I just wanted you to know I was serious,” Worldmaster Jones said.

Spot waddled over to Frank where he lay on the floor holding his shoulder. The spacedog whined and licked Frank’s face. “So you’re my friend in the end, after all,” Frank said.

“You’ll never get away with this,” Joe told Worldmaster Jones.

“You idiot,” the Worldmaster said. “You don’t even know what I’m trying to get away with. I could tell you before I kill you, but since you’re the only one who doesn’t know what I’m up to, I don’t think I’ll bother. Say your prayers and die puzzled.”

“Nancy?” Joe reached out to her with his eyes. “If a miracle happens, and we somehow get out of this, will you marry me?”

“Oh, Joe,” she said, eyes suddenly moist, face all aglow and out of focus.

Before Worldmaster Jones could shoot Joe down like a dog, Doc rushed into the room with a machine. He put the device on the floor and dropped to his knees in front of it.

Joe used the diversion to slip over to Nancy and put his arm around her shoulders.

Doc’s machine hummed and buzzed. Worldmaster Jones leaped to his feet. Spot tugged at Frank until Frank rolled over and crawled to Joe and Nancy.

“What is it, Doc?” Joe asked.

“The missing sixties,” Doc said.

“Until this very moment,” Joe said, “I’d forgotten they were missing.”

“Shut up, Joe,” Doc said, twisting knobs like crazy. “We’re tuning in.”

“But we don’t understand, Doctor Tim.”

“Please be quiet, Nancy,” Doc said. “We’re turning on.”

“Arf?” Spot said.

“That’s right, Spot,” Doctor Tim said and got to his feet and stretched out his hands to his young friends. “We’re dropping out.”

They linked hands and made a circle around Doc’s machine, and the machine reached through the clouds of cold corporate atomotraps and gotmines regularly tossed like sand into the eyes of the world and spread the curtains of patriotic songs they hadn’t until that moment realized were masking the sounds of pain and protest and waved away the smoke from huddling masses of the formerly invisible homeless and hungry and seized the missing years and pulled them singing and swaying back into existence and the air filled with springtime, and flowers fell like warm rain, and the sun came down into the bowels of the moon, just so it could set again in glorious shades of purple and green.

“Noooooooo!” Worldmaster Jones cried as he went out of phase with everything and faded away.

The lobster men packed up their things and went home.

“So, Nancy,” Joe said. “Now that we’re safe, how about marrying me?”

She slipped a hand into the back pocket of his jeans and squeezed. “Let’s sleep on it,” she said.

Whisper

And then she fired her parting shot. “And not only that,” she said, as if “that” hadn’t been quite enough, “you snore horribly!”

“I do not,” I said. “I definitely do not snore.” I was talking to her back. “You’re making it up!” I was talking to the door. “Someone else would have mentioned it!” I was talking to myself.

Mistakes were made, relationships fell apart, and hurtful things were said. Life was like that.

In the days that followed, I rearranged all the furniture. I threw out everything in the refrigerator. I bought new spices—savory, anise, cumin, cracked black pepper—and packaged macaroni and cheese and powdered soups. Anchovies. Things Joanna didn’t like. I left the toilet seat up all the time and dropped my clothes wherever I took them off. I got a new haircut and collected brochures for a getaway to Panama. I looked at a red convertible but didn’t buy it.

Her crack about me snoring wouldn’t leave me alone, probably because it poked something that had always worried me. My father had snored. I remembered listening to him snore all the way down the hall and around the corner. I always thought it must be awful to be in there with him. Maybe it ran in the family, like baldness or alcoholism.