Steele, Allen - Shepherd Moon (ss)

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2024-11-23 0 0 12.45KB 6 页 5.9玖币

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ALLEN STEELE

SHEPHERD MOON

SHORTLY AFTER THE MONTHLY shuttle from Titan touched down at Herschel Station,

she climbed into her hardsuit and took the elevator up to the surface. She had

made up her mind a couple of weeks earlier-- in fact, she had been rehearsing

the scene in her imagination for many months now, long before she had

consciously reached her decision -- yet there was a moment when the outer

hatch

opened in which she almost backed down.

She loved him. In spite of everything he had put her through, she still loved

him. But if she didn't do it now, it would be another eight months before she

got this chance again, and if she waited until then, she would surely go

insane.

It was now or never.

Nonetheless, she loved him. . . .

She involuntarily took a deep breath, and that was all it took: the taste of

cold, recycled air, scented with old sweat and the vague machine odor of

recirculation pumps. She hadn't smelled fresh air in almost five years, and

short visits to the station's hydroponics bay couldn't match the recollection

an early-morning pine forest in upstate New York just before the summer sun

burned off the fog, and even that memory was quickly fading, She had just

passed

her sixty-eighth birthday: Not quite an old lady yet, but certainly not

getting

any younger, and she didn't want to turn sixty-nine on Mimas.

The ground resembled the cobblestones of an ancient street in Italy, except it

was dirty, gray ice, scored by myriad craters. Ice, dirt, craters; no hills,

atmosphere, no forests.

No life.

She was beginning to consider herself dead. Her husband . . . whether he was

still alive was debatable.

Guide ropes formed aisles that branched away in all directions. The shuttle

stood on the landing pad about a half-kilometer away, two silver barrels

squatting on spindly landing gear. She was tempted to head straight for it,

but

she immediately rejected the notion. She had been married to him for

twenty-six

years now, he deserved more than a note left on their cubicle's datascreen. So

she grasped the ropes and, using them to anchor her against the moon's

negligible gravity, hauled herself step by step down the center aisle.

She didn't want to look at the sky. As much as it was his obsession, it was

her

damnation. She was afraid that if she allowed herself to look upward, she

would

be lured into the trap that had snared him. So she refused to raise her eyes

from the gritty, frozen ground beneath her boots as she pulled herself hand

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Steele, Allen - Shepherd Moon (ss)

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