Stephen Baxter - Time

“Sorry,” he said. “Nothing gets too hot here.”

The low pressure, she thought. An old NASA-type cliche, but true nonetheless.

“Never would have put you down as an astronaut, Ms. Della.”

“Call me Maura. You’re hardly Flash Gordon yourself.”

“Yeah. But what the heck.” Bill Tybee had been brought to the Moon, along with other parents, to work, in his inexpert way, on the interpretation of the Blues’ activities — and, of course, to be with his kids, as best he could. Anything that might work, help get a handle on the kids.

“Bill, why Tycho? Why did the children run here, from Nevada? I heard the NASA people complaining. We’re away from the lunar equator, so you eat a lot of fuel getting here. And the ground is so rugged it was difficult to make the first landings.”

He grunted. “Those NASA guys have their heads up their asses. You have to remember, Ms. Della — Maura. They’re children. At least they were when they flew up here. So where would a kid pick to go live? How about the most famous crater on the Moon?”

It was as good an answer as she’d heard. “Don’t you think they are children any more?”

“Hell, I don’t know what they are,” he muttered. “Look at that.”

The bus climbed a crest, and once more the landscape was set out before her, the blue of Earth garish against the subtle autumn colors of the Moon. The ground was folded and distorted; she could actually see great frozen waves in the rock, ripples from the aftermath of the great impact that had punched the Tycho complex into the hide of the Moon. But the sheets of rock were themselves punctured with craters, small and large, and strewn with rubble.

Tycho was young for the Moon, but unimaginably old by the standards of Earth.

The ride, on the bus’ big mesh wheels, was dreamy; the bus tipped and rolled languidly as it crawled across the broken ground. She felt light, blown this way and that. It was indeed a remarkable experience.

There were rings of security around Never-Never Land, concentric like the rocky terraces that lined the walls of Tycho.

The bus rolled through a tall wire fence — lunar alloy, spun fine — and drove on to a low regolith-covered dome. A fabric tunnel snaked out to meet the bus, like the walkway from an airport terminal, and it docked on the hull with a delicate clunk. When the door opened a uniformed UN soldier stood there, backed up by armed troops, ready to process them.

As she passed through the hatchway, Maura smelled burning metal where the hull had been exposed to space, and a hint of wood smoke: oxidizing moondust. The exotic reality of the Moon, intruding around this dull Cold War-type bureaucracy and pass checking.

None of the bus’ passengers — not even Bill Tybee — got past that first checkpoint. None save Maura.

The walkway was translucent, a tunnel between black sky and glowing ground. Craning her neck, Maura peered through the fabric walls and glimpsed Never-Never Land itself. It was a dome, shaded silver-gray. Hints of green inside. Something moving, like a swaying tree trunk. Good God, it was a neck.

Just before the entry to the complex, the aide paused and pointed. “The dome itself is polarized. It turns opaque and transparent by turns to simulate an Earthlike day-night cycle. And during the long night there are lights to achieve the same effect. See? There are banks of electric floods on gantries, like a sports stadium.” The aide’s hair was blond, eyes blue, classic Nordic type. Minnesota? But her accent was neutral.

Maura said, “Did I see a giraffe in there?”

The girl laughed. “Maybe. That’s what we think it is.”

“Don’t you know?”

“I only have clearance to violet level.”

“How long have you been up here?”

“Two years, with breaks.”

“Aren’t you curious?”

“We’re not paid to be curious, ma’am.” Then the professional mask slipped a little. “Actually, no. Never-Never is just a tent full of those little Blue-ass monsters. What is there to be curious about? Anyhow you have blue clearance, right?”

“Yes.”

“I guess you’ll see for yourself, whatever you want.”

At the other end of the walkway was another airlock, another security check, where Maura said good-bye to the aide, whose sole purpose seemed to have been to escort Maura all of twenty yards of this quarter-million-mile journey.

The processing here took another hour. Her pass and other credentials were checked several times over; she was body-searched twice, and passed through an X-ray machine and metal detector and other scanners she didn’t recognize. Finally she was asked to strip, and she stood alone under a shower that turned hot and cold and stank of some antiseptic agent. She was distantly pleased that she didn’t sag quite as much as at home. Then there was a pulse of light, a sharp pain. She was left with a fine ash on her exposed skin.

After that she was given a fresh set of clothes: underwear and a coverall. The coverall had no pockets, just a transparent pouch on the outside where she was allowed to carry her blue pass and passport, handkerchief, and other small items.

She was led along one last translucent corridor — one last glimpse of the Moon — and then, escorted by two more soldiers — there must be dozens here, she thought, racking up one hell of an expense — she passed through the curving wall of Never-Never Land itself.

And then there was grass under the soft slippers on her feet, a dome that glowed blue-black over her head, scored by a great diffuse shadow, a shadow cast by Tycho’s rim mountains.

There were a few stands of bushes and a single giant tree, low and squat. The air was cool, crisp, fresh, and it smelled of green growing things, of cut summer lawns. Green grass, growing on the Moon. Who’d have thought she’d live to see this?

A girl was standing before her: aged maybe sixteen, slender, willowy, barefoot, dressed in a smock of simple orange fabric, a bright blue circle stitched to the breast. Her face wasn’t pretty, Maura thought, but it was calm, composed, self-possessed. Centered. She was missing a tooth in her lower jaw.

It was Anna. And she had wings.

“It’s nice to see you again, Ms. Della,” Anna said gravely.

“Call me Maura. You remember me, then.”

“You were always a friend to us.”

Maura sighed. “Child, I tried to have you killed.”

“You did your duty. There are many worse people in the world than you, Maura Della. Why don’t you take your shoes off?”

Maura smiled. “Why don’t I?” She kicked off the slippers and walked forward on the grass. It was cool and moist under her feet. The blades felt oddly stiff, but she knew that was an artifact of the low gravity.

Anna folded her wings and jumped into the air: just bent her legs and leaped up through ten feet or more. She seemed to hover for a long heartbeat. Then she flapped the wings — Maura felt a great downrush of the cool, low-pressure, crystal-sharp air — and Anna shot into the domed sky.

Maura glanced at the two soldiers behind her. One of them, a bull-powerful blond man, was watching the girl’s body with narrow, hard eyes.

Anna swept in for a neat landing, slowing with a couple of running steps, thin legs flashing.

Maura applauded slowly. “I’d like to try that.”

Anna held the wings out. “It’s not as easy as it looks. You have to flap hard enough to support one-sixth of your Earth weight.” She eyed Maura. “Imagine a nine-pound dumbbell in each hand, holding them out from your body … Maybe you should take an air car for today. It’s kind of easier.”

Maura turned to her escort questioningly.

The blond soldier spoke. “We can’t go any farther into the interior, ma’am. But you’re authorized. At your own risk.” He sounded as if he was middle European, German maybe. He pointed upward. Maura saw a football-sized surveillance robot, small and complex and glittering with lenses, gliding noiselessly through the air. “Just shout and we’ll get you out.”