Carl Frederick - The Long Way Around

Adrian hopped the roo away at low throttles. “Best not to go too fast. The ground is rough here.”

“How does it turn?” Victor asked.

“It swings its tail in mid hop.” Adrian executed a change of direction. “Conservation of angular momentum and all that.” He leaned to the side and the roo banked slightly to that side. “And body English helps.” Adrian sat upright again. “It takes some getting used to, though … like turning on a motorcycle. The thing to remember is, turning is hard, but braking is impossible.”

After a few minutes, Adrian hopped to a stop and called to Ralph. “I think things are good here. We’ll go to the furnace now, if it’s okay with you.”

“All right,” said Ralph. “But careful. Our high-point radio relay is down and the furnace isn’t in line of sight with the base. You won’t be able to reach us by radio … not with your low-power spacesuit radios at any rate.”

“Ah, but the roo radio is a high-power unit,” said Adrian. “We should be able to contact you by crater wall bounce if we get into trouble.”

“Good,” said Ralph. “I’d hoped as much.”

Adrian watched as the moon buggy started away, then, with Victor navigating, he hopped the roo toward the furnace. As they progressed, Adrian taught Victor the controls. But suddenly, Adrian hopped the Lunaroo to a halt. “I’m an idiot!”

“If you insist,” said Victor. “But why, in particular?”

“It’s a solar furnace,” said Adrian. “I can’t tell much about it at night.” He shrugged—a purely private gesture in a spacesuit. “When’s sunrise?”

“In a couple of hours.” Victor slapped a gloved hand gently against the roo’s control panel. “Tell you what. Why don’t we go to the telescope first? I have a few adjustments to make on the secondary focus. And the focus is not a nice place to be when the sun is up. After that, we can swing over to the furnace.” He paused. “But SERT’s about twenty-five kilometers away. I wouldn’t want to spend forever getting there and back.”

“No worries,” said Adrian. “Skippy here can go a hell of a lot faster than you might think.”

“Okay,” said Victor, pointing. “The scope’s off that way.”

“Hang on.” Adrian started the roo and pushed the throttles forward. “I saw SERT from the lander. It looked huge.”

“It’s seven hundred meters across … the size of its crater.”

“Impressive!” said Adrian.

“Yeah.” With a short pause each time the roo’s feet hit the lunar surface, Victor went on to describe the telescope. “Something like a sheet of aluminized silk is hung from—a hoop around the rim. The material has varying density so it hangs as a true spherical surface. And with no atmosphere it doesn’t move. Even small meteors can pierce the fabric without disfiguring the mirror.”

“Hmm,” said Adrian, to show he was listening.

“Gregorian secondary optics sit near the focus. They correct for the spherical aberration and allow some pointing. Three cables from the rim hold the secondary and the detector array.”

“Very impressive,” said Adrian, impressed most of all by Victor’s bubbly enthusiasm.

“When the Earth’s below the horizon we do radio astronomy, and when it’s above, it does automated SETI observations.” Victor patted a hand on the roo’s door. “Hey, you know, this hopping is okay.”

“Yeah, it is,” said Adrian, distantly, his eyes drawn to the wonders of the lunar landscape. He’d be happy if the trip went on for hours.

At length, Victor snapped forward. “There it is,” he said. “SERT. At eleven o’clock.”

Adrian turned the roo gently toward the nondescript crater. “Could have used some advanced warning. Roos don’t turn on a dime.”

“Stop there,” said Victor, pointing to a hole in the crater wall. “The service entrance.”

As the crater went by on Victor’s left, he leaned out toward it.

“Don’t lean!” Adrian called out. He leaned in the other direction to keep the roo stable.

“Sorry!” Victor pushed sharply against the roo structure, forcing his body upright. But his sideways motion continued until he was leaning against Adrian.

“Bloody hell!” Adrian tried to sit upright, but couldn’t with Victor pressing against him. The roo also leaned. Adrian tried to turn into the direction of lean, but it was too late. The slow-turning Lunaroo banked awkwardly, landing on but one of its snowshoelike feet. Adrian pulled sharply down on the throttles but not quickly enough. The roo began another hop. It went up and came immediately down—horizontally, landing hard on its side, spinning against the SERT crater and throwing up a spray of rocks and fine powder from the regolith.

Adrian suppressed a grunt of pain as Victor fell on him, twisting his leg under the edge of Victor’s life-support module.

Victor released his harness, crawled off onto the surface, and scrambled to his feet. Adrian clutched his knee and let out a moan.

“What’s wrong?” Victor shouted.

“I hope just a seriously sprained knee,” said Adrian through clenched teeth.

“Jeez!” said Victor. “I’d have thought it impossible to injure oneself in this light gravity.”

“Well, mate, it seems I’ve done the impossible.”

“Hold on. I’ll get you out of there.” Victor released Adrian’s harness and pulled him free. “We’ll have to get you back so Kimberly can look at you.”

“See if you can get Skippy upright,” said Adrian, massaging his knee with heavy gloved hands, “so we can use its radio.”

“Right.” Victor walked to the downed vehicle and managed to raise it to its feet. “Uh-oh,” he said. “One of the antennas has snapped off.”

“Let’s hope it was the dummy,” said Adrian. “One of the antennas is only for show.” Slowly and accompanied by much pain, he straightened his leg. “See if you can fire it up.”

Victor climbed into the roo and threw a switch. “We have power.”

“Great! Now flip the radio switch to Relay.”

Adrian waited anxiously as Victor’s hand hovered over the roo console, and then found the radio controls.

“Damn it,” said Victor. “No carrier. Nothing.”

“Try your suit radio, then. Command it to High Strength.” Adrian would have tried his, but he knew from experience that Baby, NASA’s speech recognition system, sometimes had trouble with Australian accents—not to mention Australian accents under duress.

“Baby,” came Victor’s voice. “Radio gain high. Set.”

“Set radio gain high. Yes, no,” came a synthesized woman’s voice.

“Yes,” said Victor.

“Radio gain high.”

Adrian winced as, even with the suit’s auto-gain-control in operation, the synthesized voice rang almost painfully loud in Adrian’s helmet.

Victor spent the next quarter hour sending an emergency call, waiting a few seconds for an answer, and then trying again. Finally, he commanded the radio gain back to low and looked over at Adrian. “No dice.”

Adrian nodded to himself. “I’m not too crazy about riding a roo with a busted knee. But there doesn’t seem much choice. Take a spin in her. See if the controls all work.”

Victor hit a few buttons and pushed forward a throttle. The roo started hopping vertically. “So far, so good.” He pushed the other throttle, moved it a few more times, and then said, “Not good. Vertical motion works, forward motion doesn’t.”

“Lean with the hops,” said Adrian. “Try body English.”

Victor tried again. The roo hopped but only progressed forward a few inches per hop. “No good,” he said, switching off the power. He stepped out of the roo. “We have a real problem. We’re stuck here.”