Larry Niven - The Moon Maze Game

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.”

The chamber glittered in the mist like a field of diamonds. They wandered through a forest of mushrooms, and a few caterpillar creatures that sat, unanimated, observing. Their faceted eyes witnessed without judgment or reaction. What would this chamber have been if the power was running, if all control lights were green? Would it have swarmed with life? Here and there a few critters shuffled in slow circles, trapped in an endless loop.

The pathway ended in a chasm at least thirty meters across. Scotty peeked down. A glowing river of red and black liquid rock oozed below, wafting sulfurous steam. Heat prickled his face. He laughed uncomfortably. “Are we sure that’s just an effect?”

“Your lips to God’s ears,” Angelique said.

Maud peered down, her shoulders slumped. “And here… it ends. We end. We’re finished.” Shaking her head, she knelt down. “What are we supposed to do? Climb down? And then climb up again? I can’t do that. How can they expect me to do this? Did they expect poor Asako to do that?” Scotty was sorry to see her this way: Maud seemed like a confused old woman. He preferred the old Maud, acid tongue and all.

“I’m not sure,” Sharmela put as much comfort into her voice as possible. “But we’ll work something out.”

“There’s alway s a way,” Wayne said, and pointed across the divide. “Look: Notice that the far edge is lower than this one. I think that’s a clue.”

“Clues are good,” Angelique said.

“I think that we need to pay attention to this.”

Scotty knelt down, compared the levels. “It does raise some possibilities. If we could get a line across…”

“Look!” Ali screamed. “Over here!”

The boy was crouched over at the right side, near another collection of alien tools. At a flat area to the side, they found the carcasses of winged beetles, husks curled on their sides, the size of small children. Scotty looked more closely: Their membranous brown “wings” seemed suspiciously well preserved.

Next to the wings were strewn additional heaps of tools and materials. This misty cave was a workshop of some kind, a place where busy (alien?) hands had constructed a pair of rickety-looking, skeletal man-shaped pallets with foot pedals and space for a prone human rider.

“Flying machines?” Scotty asked.

“Similar to Leonardo’s designs. Reasonable that Cavor would have been familiar with them, and tried to replicate them here.”

Scotty raised an eyebrow. “Here?”

Ali gave a wan smile. “Not real here. Game ‘here.’ You know.”

Scotty swatted his head, tickled, and glad to feel a trace of amusement. “And that answers that. We’re supposed to use these to cross the chasm.”

“Without practice?” Maud whined, incredulous. “This is absurd! How could Xavier expect us to do this?”

Wayne crouched down and ran his hands over the device, checking the lines and pedals. “I’m going with Maud on this one. This is insane. How the hell are we supposed to figure this out? How much time were we supposed to have?”

“More than we’ve got, that’s for sure.” Angelique raised her hands. “All right. All right. We have to figure the IFGS signed off on this. You’ve never used one of these?”

“No,” Wayne said. “I mean, the Da Vinci in Vegas has a tourist setup, virtual simulation of how unpowered human flight might feel.”

“And you tried it?”

“Yeah, a couple of times,” Wayne admitted. “But… naw, you’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“That’s all it might have taken for Xavier to get it past the board. Who else?”

Sharmela raised a plump brown hand. She looked uncomfortable. “I have glider experience. And have simulated flight hours.” Her expression, momentarily brightened, dimmed once again. “The 2080 World’s Fair in Ceylon had a winged gliding chamber, but I never went.”

“That answers it then,” Angelique said. “For what it’s worth, I suspect we would have been able to contest this… if it was a game.”

“Big if. I think we have bigger fish to fry,” Scotty said.

“I have.” A quiet, embarrassed voice. Ali’s voice.

“You what?” Angelique asked.

“I have flown. Ceylon in eighty. Simulators. Wingsuits. It was a hobby for a while.”

No one said a word until Wayne cleared his throat. “You again? You just happen to have another skill none of the rest of us possess?”

Ali’s protest was weak. “I and Sharmela.”

Angelique was having none of it. “Sharmela is a happenstance. You, on the other hand, are a pattern. I heard a line once: ‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time, it’s enemy action.’ I’ve overlooked this before, but you are leaning on my last nerve. What in the hell is going on?”

He stammered and stuttered. “I…”

Scotty took the boy’s shoulders. Hard. “Ali. I don’t know what other gamers’ houses or rooms are like, but yours I’ve seen. The walls were covered in images, gear, games… and some of those images popped up in this little adventure. Now why is that?”