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crossing the black sky, directly over his head.
It has to be the Apollo CSM.
He drops the carrier to the dirt and starts jumping up and down, in great big lunar hops, and he waves, as
if he is trying to attract a passing aircraft. 'Hey, Al! Al Pond! Can you hear me?' Even without the LM,
Pond, in the CSM, might be able to pick him up.
His mood changes to something resembling elation. He doesn't know where the hell Apollo has been, but
if it is back, maybe soon so will be the LM, and Slade, and everything. That will suit Bado, right down to
the lunar ground he is standing on. He'll be content to have it all back the way it had been, the way it is
supposed to be, and figure out what has happened to him later.
'Al! It's me, Bado! Can you hear me? Can you...'
There is something wrong.
That light isn't staying steady. It is getting brighter, and it is drifting off its straight line, coming down over
his head.
It isn't the CSM, in orbit. It is some kind of boxy craft, much smaller than a LM, descending towards
him, gleaming in the sunlight.
He picks up his carrier and holds it close to his chest, and he stays close to the Surveyor. As the craft
approaches he feels an unreasoning fear.
His kidneys send him a stab of distress. He stands still and lets go, into the urine collection condom. He
feels shamed; it is like wetting his pants.
The craft is just a box, on four spindly landing legs. It is coming down vertically, standing on a central
rocket. He can see no light from the rocket, of course, but he can see how the downward blast is starting
to kick up some dust. It is going to land maybe fifty yards from the Surveyor, right in the middle of
Wildwood Crater. The whole thing is made of some silvery metal, maybe aluminium. It has a little control
panel, set at the front, and there is someone at the controls. It looks like a man an astronaut, in
fact his face hidden behind a gold-tinted visor.
Bado can see the blue of a NASA logo, and a dust-coated Stars and Stripes, painted on the side of the
craft.
Maybe fifty feet above the ground the rocket cuts out, and the craft begins to drop. The sprays of dust
settle back neatly to the lunar soil. Now little vernier rockets, stuck to the side of the open compartment,
cut in to slow the fall, kicking up their own little sprays.
It is all happening in complete silence.
The craft hits the ground with a solid thump. Bado can see the pilot, the astronaut, flick a few switches,
and then he turns and jumps the couple of feet down off the little platform to the ground.
The astronaut comes giraffe-loping across the sunlit surface towards Bado.
He stops, a few feet from Bado, and stands there, slightly stooped forward, balancing the weight of his
PLSS.
His suit looks pretty much a standard EMU, an Apollo Extravehicular Mobility Unit. There is the usual
gleaming white oversuit the thermal micrometeorite garment with the lower legs and overshoes
scuffed and stained with Tycho dust. Bado can see the PLSS oxygen and water inlets on the chest cover,
and penlight and utility pockets on arms and legs. And there is Old Glory stitched to the left arm.
But Bado doesn't recognize the name stitched over the breast. WILLIAMS. There is no astronaut of that
name in the corps, back in Houston.
Bado's headset crackles to life, startling him.
'I heard you, when the LFU came over the horizon. As soon as I got in line of sight. I could hear you
talking, describing what you were doing. And when I looked down, there you are.'
Bado is astonished. It is a woman's voice. This Williams is a goddamn woman.
Bado can't think of a thing to say.
He didn't find it hard to find himself a place in the community here, to gather a fake id around
himself. Computers were pretty primitive, and there was little cross-checking of records.
Maybe, back home, the development of computers had been forced by the Apollo project, he
speculated.
He couldn't see any way he was going to get home. He was stuck here. But he sure as hell didn't
want to spend his life tuning crummy 1960s-design radios.
He tinkered with the Surveyor camera he'd retrieved from the Moon. It was a much more
lightweight design than anything available here, as far as he could tell. But the manufacturing
techniques required weren't much beyond what was available here.
He started to take camera components to electronic engineering companies.
He took apart his lunar suit. In all this world there was nothing like the suit's miniaturized
telemetry system. He was able to adapt it to be used to transmit EKG data from ambulances to
hospital emergency rooms. He sent samples of the Beta-cloth outer coverall to a fibreglass
company, and showed them how the stuff could be used for fire hoses. Other samples went to
military suppliers to help them put together better insulated blankets. The scratch-proof lens of
the Surveyor camera went to an optical company, to manufacture better safety goggles and other
gear. The miniature, high-performance motors driving the pumps and fans of his PLSS found a
dozen applications.
He was careful to patent everything he 'developed' from his lunar equipment.
Pretty soon, the money started rolling in.
'Maybe I'm dreaming this,' Williams says. 'Dehydration, or something... Uh, I guess I'm pleased to meet
you.'
She has a Tennessee accent, he thinks.
Bado shakes the hand. He can feel it through his own stiff pressure glove. 'I guess you're too solid for a
ghost.'
'Ditto,' she says. 'Besides, I've never met a ghost yet who uses VHF frequencies.'
He releases her hand.
'I don't know how the hell you got here,' she says. 'And I guess you don't understand this any better than
I do.'
'That's for sure.'
She dips her visored head. 'What are you doing here, anyway?'
He holds up the carrier. 'Sampling the Surveyor. I took off its TV camera.'
'Oh. You couldn't get it, though.'
'Sure. Here it is.'
She turns to the Surveyor. 'Look over there.'
The Surveyor is whole again, its TV camera firmly mounted to its struts.
But when he looks down at his carrier, there is the TV camera he's cut away, lying there, decapitated.
'Where's your LM?' she asks.
'Taylor Crater.'
'Where?'
He describes the crater's location.
'Oh. Okay. We're calling that one San Jacinto. Ah, no, your LM isn't there.'
'I know. I walked back. The crater's empty.'
'No, it isn't,' she says, but there is a trace of alarm in her voice. 'That's where my LM is. With my partner,
and the Payload Module.'
Payload Module?
'The hell with it,' she says. 'Let's go see.'
She turns and starts to lope back to her flying craft, rocking from side to side. He stands there and
watches her go.
After a few steps she stops and turns around. 'You want a lift?'
'Can you take two?'
'Sure. Come on. What choice do you have, if you're stuck here without an LM?'
Her voice carries a streak of common sense that somehow comforts him.
Side by side, they bound over the Moon.
They reach Williams's flying machine. It is just an aluminium box sitting squat on its four legs, with vernier
rocket nozzles stuck to the walls like clusters of berries. The pilot has to climb in at the back and stand
over the cover of the main rocket engine, which is about the size of a car engine, Bado supposes. Big
spherical propellant and oxidizer tanks are fixed to the floor. There is an S-band antenna and a VHF
aerial. There is some gear on the floor, hammers and shovels and sample bags and cameras; Williams
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