Larry Niven: Inconstant Moon

But we were out the door, laughing as we ran. Leslie panted, “We may have—escaped a religious—riot in there!”

I thought of the ten I’d left under my plate. Now it would please nobody. Inside, a prophet was shouting his message of doom to all who would hear. The gray-haired woman with the glowing eyes would find the money and think: They knew it too.

Buildings blocked the moon from the Red Barn’s parking lot. The street lights and the indirect moonglare were pretty much the same color. The night only seemed a bit brighter than usual.

I didn’t understand why Leslie stopped suddenly in the driveway. But I followed her gaze, straight up to where a star burned very brightly just south of the zenith.

“Pretty,” I said.

She gave me a very odd look.

There were no windows in the Red Barn. Dim artificial lighting, far dimmer than the queer cold light outside, showed on dark wood and quietly cheerful customers. Nobody seemed aware that tonight was different from other nights.

The sparse Tuesday night crowd was gathered mostly around the piano bar. A customer had the mike. He was singing some half-familiar song in a wavering weak voice, while the black pianist grinned and played a schmaltzy background.

I ordered two Irish coffees and a Pink Lady. At Leslie’s questioning look I only smiled mysteriously.

How ordinary the Red Barn felt. How relaxed; how happy. We held hands across the table, and I smiled and was afraid to speak. If I broke the spell, if I said the wrong thing…

The drinks arrived. I raised an Irish coffee glass by the stem. Sugar, Irish whiskey, and strong black coffee, with thick whipped cream floating on top. It coursed through me like a magical potion of strength, dark and hot and powerful.

The waitress waved back my money. “See that man in the turtleneck, there at the end of the piano bar? He’s buying, “she said with relish. “He came in two hours ago and handed the bartender a hundred-dollar bill.”

So that was where all the happiness was coming from. Free drinks! I looked over, wondering what the guy celebrating.

A thick-necked, wide-shouldered man in a turtleneck he sat hunched over into himself, with a wide bar glass clutched tight in one hand. The pianist offered him the mike, and he waved it by, the gesture giving me a good look at his face. A square, strong face, now drunk and miserable and scared. He was ready to cry from fear.

So I knew what he was celebrating.

Leslie made a face. “They didn’t make the Pink Lady right.”

There’s one bar in the world that makes a Pink Lady the way Leslie likes it, and it isn’t in Los Angeles. I passed her the other Irish coffee, grinning an I-told-you-so grin. Forcing it: The other man’s fear was contagious. She smiled back lifted her glass and said, “To the blue moonlight.”

I lifted my glass to her, and drank. But it wasn’t the toast I would have chosen.

The man in the turtleneck slid down from his stool. He moved carefully toward the door, his course slow and straight as an ocean liner cruising into dock. He pulled the door wide, and turned around, holding it open, so that the weird blue-white light streamed past his broad black silhouette.

Bastard. He was waiting for someone to figure it out, to shout out the truth to the rest. Fire and doom—

“Shut the door!” someone bellowed.

“Time to go,” I said softly.

“What’s the hurry?”

The hurry? He might speak ! But I couldn’t say that…

Leslie put her hand over mine. “I know. I know . But we can’t run away from it, can we?”

A fist closed hard on my heart. She’d known, and I hadn’t noticed?

The door closed, leaving the Red Barn in reddish dusk. The man who had been buying drinks was gone.

“Oh, God. When did you figure it out?”

“Before you came over,” she said. “But when I tried to check it out, it didn’t work.”

“Check it out?”

“I went out on the balcony and turned the telescope on Jupiter. Mars is below the horizon these nights. If the sun’s gone nova, all the planets ought to be lit up like the moon, right?”

“Right. Damn.” I should have thought of that myself. But Leslie was the stargazer. I knew some astrophysics, but I couldn’t have found Jupiter to save my life.

“But Jupiter wasn’t any brighter than usual. So then I didn’t know what to think.”

“But then—” I felt hope dawning fiery hot. Then I remembered. “That star, just overhead. The one you stared at.”

“Jupiter.”

“All lit up like a fucking neon sign. Well, that tears it.”

“Keep your voice down.”

I had been keeping my voice down. But for a wild moment I wanted to stand up on a table and scream! Fire and doom —What right had they to be ignorant?

Leslie’s hand closed tight on mine. The urge passed. It left me shuddering. “Let’s get out of here. Let ’em think there’s going to be a dawn.”

“There is.” Leslie laughed a bitter, barking laugh like nothing I’d ever heard from her. She walked out while I was reaching for my wallet—and remembering that there was no need.

Poor Leslie. Finding Jupiter its normal self must have looked like a reprieve—until the white spark flared to shining glory an hour and a half late. An hour and a half, for sunlight to reach Earth by way of Jupiter.

When I reached the door Leslie was half-running down Westwood toward Santa Monica. I cursed and ran to catch up, wondering if she’d suddenly gone crazy.

Then I noticed the shadows ahead of us. All along the other side of Santa Monica Boulevard : moon shadows, in horizontal patterns of dark and blue-white bands.

I caught her at the corner.

The moon was setting.

A setting moon always looks tremendous. Tonight it glared at us through the gap of sky beneath the freeway, terribly bright, casting an incredible complexity of lines and shadows. Even the unlighted crescent glowed pearly bright with earthshine.

Which told me all I wanted to know about what was happening on the lighted side of Earth.

And on the moon? The men of Apollo Nineteen must have died in the first few minutes of nova sunlight. Trapped out on a lunar plain, hiding perhaps behind a melting boulder… Or were they on the night side? I couldn’t remember. Hell, they could outlive us all. I felt a stab of envy and hatred.

And pride. We’d put them there. We reached the moon before the nova came. A little longer, we’d have reached the stars.

The disc changed oddly as it set. A dome, a flying saucer, a lens, a line…

Gone.

Gone. Well, that was that. Now we could forget it; now we could walk around outside without being constantly reminded that something was wrong. Moonset had taken all the queer shadows out of the city.

But the clouds had an odd glow to them. As clouds glow after sunset, tonight the clouds shone livid white at their; western edges. And they streamed too quickly across the sky. As if they tried to run…

When I turned to Leslie, there were big tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Oh, damn.” I took her arm. “Now stop it. Stop it.”

“I can’t. You know I can’t stop crying once I get started.”

“This wasn’t what I had in mind. I thought we’d do things we’ve been putting off, things we like. It’s our last chance. Is this the way you want to die, crying on a street corner?”

“I don’t want to die at all!”

“Tough shit!”

“Thanks a lot.” Her face was all red and twisted. Leslie was crying as a baby cries, without regard for dignity or appearance. I felt awful. I felt guilty, and I knew the nova wasn’t my fault, and it made me angry.