Mike Moscoe - A Day's Work on the Moon

“I’ve got a hit,” Mom shouted

“We found them,” Jer said, fingers flying over his keyboard. A new window opened up on my heads-up. A pile of rocks filled it, looking nothing like what I’d seen in the background of the girl’s message. As Jer’s fingers clicked on keys, it rotated. There were two eyes on one of them. And yes, the other mountain divided into two peaks.

“You did!” I yelled.

“But where?” Dad and Jer muttered in the same low voice. The mountains settled onto my map, a line extended from them, going longer and longer. I checked. Exit 3L would get me headed that way. I gunned my dozer, moved the tread condition window up where I couldn’t miss it when I looked out, and reangled the solar collectors to correct for my direction. I figured I had five, maybe ten minutes before my new course was noticed.

“Dad, you better call the Moon.”

“I’ve been trying, princess. All the circuits are busy.”

Who else could I call? I punched the number for the woman in Personnel. It was answered almost immediately.

“I’m sorry, I’ll have to call you back.”

“No! This is Rocket Girl and we’ve found the lost lander.”

Her jaw gapped. “You found them?”

“Billionaire’s daughter and all. It was lander 503.”

“Yes. How?”

“We matched rover images from the Moon against the background in her picture.”

“You what? You couldn’t….” She glanced away from the camera, her face a puzzle. “You, and the boy next door. You’d need a lot of video.”

“We’ve got it.”

She was running her finger down something off screen. Her head began to nod. “You probably do. Yes. I’ll get back with you in a few minutes. Stay close.”

“I’m on shift.”

She glanced off screen again. “Not for long.”

I’d been ignoring the clock. Looking at the seconds ticking away made me think of oxygen going stale. Oh lord, I was almost off work. “Please, get back soon.”

She was gone. I concentrated on driving. Now was no time to pitch into one of the little craters or smash a tread on a rock. I upped the magnification on the forward camera, edged the side ones around forward as far as I could.

“Hi,” came the cheerful voice of my replacement. “I’m here. You got a date tonight?”

“A lander’s down. I think I know where. I’ve got to keep working.” I shot back.

“I heard about the lander crash. Have they hauled even the D-4 into the search?” She hadn’t heard me.

“Listen, my boyfriend and I figured out where they are. I’m headed there right now as fast as I can put treads down and pick them up.”

“You’re Rocket Girl.”

“Some people call me that.”

“They told me you were good. Can I come along?”

“Don’t juggle my elbow.” She didn’t answer. Smart girl.

“D-4, you are off your course. Get the hell where we told you to be.”

“This is Rocket Girl, I’ve found the lost lander and I’m going to get them.”

“Oh shit, kid, your shift is over. You’re out of here. I’ll see you fired later. Where’s your replacement?”

“I’m here, sir,” came a timid squeak.

“Take over.”

“She will not take over. This is Rocket Girl’s Dad. I have been monitoring this rescue effort as well as my daughter and her boyfriend’s effort. We have a 95 percent probability of having identified the crash. You pull my daughter off this and you are signing the death warrants for six people.”

Dad didn’t say who. Dad is good when he gets definite mad–so long as it’s not you he won’t let go to a band concert. I dodged a rock, aimed around a slight hillock. My speed was edging into the red on both tread and velocity.

“Wait one while I talk to my boss.” The voice from the Moon cut off. I drove.

“This is Rescue control. I understand I have Rocket Girl and company on line.”

“I’m her father.”

“Personnel just passed me her file. Your kid has accessed a lot of controlled video. Were you aware of that?”

“Not before today. I’ll ground her tomorrow. For now, we got some people to save.”

“Don’t ground them,” Jer and I exchanged a hasty glance at the plural. “Every one of the guys working for me cracked our lock-outs when they were kids. I wouldn’t have hired ’em if they hadn’t. You ran a search on that imagery.”

“Yes. You can check Jerry’s code later. For now, I’m passing you through the results.” Dad waved at Jer; he started tapping. The search results reappeared on my heads up. I passed them up to the Moon.

“Damn, that is the backdrop. Why didn’t I think of the background. Too damn long since I spent some time on a rover. Folks,” he hollered, “turn those rigs around. We’re headed in the wrong direction. Where do you think they are?” he asked in a normal voice.

“Somewhere along that axis,” Dad said.

“But where? I’ll have a satellite overhead in about five minutes. We’ve got it ratcheted down to half meter pixels. Nice picture but not very big. Any suggestions?”

I stared at the picture. The girl would probably have the latest computer stuff. Camera was probably as good as the one on the newest rover. I called up the height of those mountains, gauged their base against that, tried to estimate that against some of the distances I’d driven on the rover–No, on the D-4.

I took a stab at the monitor’s map. “Somewhere around there.” Jer shot him the coordinates.

“That is where we’ll take our picture,” came back.

I kept picking up treads and putting them down. It was time to climb a hill. I took advantage of a shallow valley to put my speed well into the red. D-4 was a good old girl. I could hear her throbbing under me, shaking my seat just a little bit. “That last upgrade’s working real good,” I smiled at Jer. He grinned back. D-4 was a greased skateboard. I was rad. We were one.

My hands were starting to tire, and my back was aching when the photo flashed on my heads up. It was in stereo so I could see the hills and valleys. There was a long streak down a hill, ending with a wide swath where the shuttle had rolled sideways the last hundred yards.

“He ditched it on the downside of a hill,” Dad’s voice held solid admiration.

“That he did,” said Rescue Control. “We make out four sets of footprints walking away. They were here,” a circle appeared on the picture, “when we were overhead. If they keep walking in that direction, you should meet up with them about here.” That was an X.

We were covering two long sides of a triangle. “Would be better if we met in the middle,” I said.

“We can’t raise them.”

“Maybe I could get their attention,” I said. When you work around Moon dust and rock, you learn not to make it fly. The less in the hopper, the less that goes back to the refineries. But when you’re learning, it takes a bit of getting used to. I thought it was kind of cool to make the dust fly until my supervisor pointed out the economics of it.

“Jer, plot me a line of sight to them.”

It took him a minute. “It looks to me that when you top the next real rise, they might be able to see you.” I’d never heard Jer so circumspect. Then, this was the first time lives depended on him. A moment later, “we concur,” came from Rescue Control.

I only wanted a little dust in my hopper, definitely no rocks. I couldn’t slow down to collect it. Little by little, I lowered my front loader. The readout said I picked up a little here, little there. My seat was rocking as I went along. Seat and front-loader cargo load agreed. I lifted the hopper when I had about a kilo of dust. Going up the last few meters to the crest, I gunned it, trying to coordinate putting the loader against its top stop just as I bounced over the ridge crest. With luck, I’d just sent up a dust plume only a blind man would miss.