David Gerold - Starsiders 3 - Leaping to the Stars

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Starsiders trilogy

book 3

Leaping to the Stars

by David Gerrold

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THE INTERVIEW "YOU UNDERSTAND, OF COURSE, that this is a one-way trip. There will be no

possibility of return." The interviewer's name was Gary Boynton, and he was commander of the mission.

He looked like one of those detectives who wanted to be your friend, while the other one stood off to

one side, scowling impatiently and waiting to get ugly. Except there wasn't any other detective, just a

couple of aides who hardly said anything at all. We all nodded as if we understood. Me, Douglas,

Mickey. Dad. Mom and her friend, Bev. Bobby sat next to me, with the monkey on his lap. He didn't

care where we were going as long as we all stayed together. Boynton had glanced at the monkey a

couple of times. He knew what it contained, everybody on Luna did, but unlike all the other interviewers,

he wasn't saying much about it. "You can stay here on Luna, Mr. Dingillian. Or you can go to Mars, or to

one of the Jovian moons, or even to the rings or the asteroids. Most of those settlements are

self-sufficient in a rudimentary sort of way. And if the situation on Earth ever settles down, you could go

back home. As millionaires. You don't need to go to Outbeyond." "The situation on Earth isn't going to

settle down," said Dad. Boynton was very patient. He said, "The plagues will burn out within two years.

Three at the most. Our intelligence engines suggest that reconstruction and rehabilitation could put Earth's

level of technology back to pre-plague levels within ten years, twenty at the most."

"Your intelligence engines are wrong," said the monkey, very politely. Boynton wasn't going to

argue-especially not with an intelligence engine that had publicly embarrassed a Lunar Authority Judge.

At least, that's how the media was playing it. He shrugged off the interruption. "Whatever the case,

however long it takes Earth to recover, if you stay here on Luna, you still have the possibility of returning

someday. If you emigrate, that option is gone forever." He looked around the table. We were sitting on a

terrace overlooking a spectacular view of the lake and the forest under Armstrong Dome. A flock of

bright red chickens bounced across the grass like balloons, flapping their stubby wings and clucking

excitedly. It was almost pretty. We'd argued about staying right here on the moon more than once, but

Douglas and Mickey didn't like the politics. And I didn't want to hang around anyplace with fanatics like

Alexei. And even though we had all agreed to respect each other's points of view, ever since we'd

divorced Mom and Dad, Douglas and I had gotten used to making our own decisions-even the wrong

ones. Boynton continued. He was telling us what we already knew. "Outbeyond Colony is the farthest

colony from Earth. Thirty-five light years. There have been three exploratory missions and five

colonization voyages. A beachhead has been established. Not a colony. A beachhead. The situation

there is tenuous. Life will be difficult and dangerous. Survival is not guaranteed. "We're telling this to

everyone. If you go to Outbeyond, you will die there. The question is not if, but when. Will you have a

long, hard, laborious life before you die? Or will you die within a few months or years, of some

unforeseen disaster? We are asking everyone, even those who have already signed on, to reconsider

their commitment, because once we get there, life will be hard. Not just hard, but harder than you

imagine. "We will work-all of us, even Bobby-twenty-hour days. We will be short of food, short of

sleep, short of supplies. Everything will be rationed. We will not be able to call for

help. There won't be any. We will have what is already there from the five previous supply missions. We

will have what we bring ourselves on this trip. We will have what we can build. That's it. If you need

cancer medicine and we don't have it, too bad, you die of cancer. If you need a blood transfusion and

nobody shares your blood type and we don't have any artificial blood, too bad. If you need a new eye or

a new lung or a new kidney and we don't have one growing in a tank, too bad. "There will be no

resupply for this colony. Not in any foreseeable future. This trip is paid for-we're going. We're leaving in

thirteen days. But nobody else is coming after us. There isn't anyone building any more ships. There won't

be any money to build any more ships, or load them, or offer colony contracts. By the time anyone on

Earth can make that kind of investment again, we'll all be dead. Whether or not our grandchildren will be

there to meet them-well, that's the purpose of this discussion." Boynton looked from one to the other of

us. I knew that Mom didn't want to go anywhere at all, but if Douglas and Mickey and I decided we

wanted to go to the stars, she'd follow. And so would her friend. I knew Dad wanted to gohe was the

reason we were all here now. This wasn't working out the way he'd originally intended; this was better,

so he wasn't complaining. And Bobby was just happy to have his family back together. And me? I didn't

know what I wanted yet. This business of making decisions-how did adults do it? All day long, every

day, even weekends, with no time off for good behavior. No wonder I was cranky all the time. I was

exhausted from having to think so much. "I know that the other colonies have made some wonderful

proposals," Boynton said. "And if I were you, if I had your assets"-Here he glanced meaningfully at the

monkey-"I'd strongly consider taking one of those offers. Most of those colonies are close to

self-sufficient anyway, and with the

vantage your HARLIE unit represents, you and whatever colony you choose will succeed." "So what are

the advantages of Outbeyond?" Dad asked. Boynton shook his head. "To be honest, I have nothing to

offer. If I were to offer anything, I'd have to take it away from someone else. And I'm not willing to do

that. If you and I were just sitting around in a bar, using up oxygen and alcohol, I'd tell you to go to

McCain or Pastoria and forget about Outbeyond. It's suicide." I could see that Dad didn't like the sound

of that. Mom and her friend Bev were already squirming in their seats. But it was Douglas and Mickey

who had accepted this meeting, and the meeting wasn't finished until they were. Douglas said, "If it's

suicide, why are you going?" "When I accepted the job as Mission Commander, we were looking at a

program of twelve supply missions to reach selfsufficiency. The critical threshold was assumed to be

somewhere around the seventh or eighth voyage. The next trip. The one after this one. "We've got

forty-three hundred people on Outbeyond. Even as we're sitting here talking, they're hard at work.

They're laying down tubes, putting up domes, getting the power-grid up, preparing the facilities for the

first batch of colonists to arrive. They're good folks. They don't know what's happened to Earth. They're

expecting a ship soon. If it doesn't arrivewell, they have contingency plans. They'll survive for a while, but

... the contingency plan doesn't include self-sufficiency. Not long-term self-sufficiency. "It's not likely

they'll survive without us. Oh, maybe a couple years, if they're careful. But not much longer than that. The

equation is simple. Outbeyond colony is almost selfsupporting. Almost. We might be able to make the

difference. If we don't go, they die for sure. If we do go, maybe we all die-but maybe we all live, too."

"So you're going to rescue them, but there's no one coming after to rescue you ... T, "If they were your

family, Mr. Dingillian, what would you do?"

"I'd go after them. So would my wife." Dad didn't even hesitate. I was proud of him for that. His

expression was firm. "The fact that we're all here on Luna ought to be proof enough how far we'll go."

"And you'd go a lot farther too, if you had to, wouldn't you? So would we. Yes, we know we're

gambling here. Every baby born is a gamble, but that doesn't stop the human race from making babies,

does it? No, we just stack the deck as best we can, and keep on dealing. "We know we're the last ship

out. Knowing that, we can fill every nook and cranny, every cabin and storage compartment, every

corridor and crawlspace with as much supplies and equipment as we can pack. We're loading in

everything we can. Most of the materiel for voyages 7, 8, and 9 is already onsite, here on Luna. That's

part of our contingency plan. The last six voyages, we intended to bring in multiples of necessary

equipment and supplies. Once we eliminate duplicate items, we can bring most of what we need on a

single voyage, and fabricate the rest onsite. We know what's already there; we know what else is

needed; we're packing it. Yes, it's desperate. But we think it's doable." He looked to the monkey. "What

do you think, HARLIET' HARLIE was silent. He'd probably been crunching the numbers all morning.

But he wasn't going to speak without our consent. We'd all agreed that we weren't going to let people

consult HARLIE just because they were sitting in the same room with us. We already had enough

phonies and scam artists requesting interviews and meetings. We didn't need any more. Douglas looked

to me. I nodded. Commander Boynton was entitled to know what odds he faced. Douglas nodded back.

I said, "Go ahead, HARLIE." That was all the monkey was waiting for. He looked across the table at

Boynton. "Which answer do you want?" "Both," said Boynton. HARLIE said, "If the Dingillians travel to

Outbeyond on this voyage-and the assumption is that I will travel with them-then it is likely that all of you

will lose up to 25% of your body mass in the first year. You'll need to pack more

potatoes; you should also pack more vitamin-fortified noodles, lots of them. Rice and beans too, if you

can get them. And rose seeds, not for the flowers, but for the hips; you'll need the ascorbic acid." "And

the second answer?" "If the Dingillians do not go to Outbeyond with you, it is likely that most of the

colonists will lose more than 30% of their body mass and be too weak to work. Even if your crops are

successful, you might not have the strength to harvest them." "It's that close?" Even Boynton looked

surprised. "I told you, your intelligence engines aren't up to the task." Boynton nodded, chastened.

"Thank you, HARLIE." He looked grimly across the table at Dad, at Douglas, at Mickey, at me. "This is

the bottom line. I have nothing to offer youexcept the opportunity to risk your lives and be uncomfortable

for a long time." "Sounds real attractive," said Dad. "What's the catch?" The Commander looked

annoyed. This wasn't a joking matter. "The only other thing I can offer you is blunt honesty. We need

HARLIE. Without HARLIE, we die. He says so himself. To get HARLIE, we'll take you. If you didn't

have HARLIE, I wouldn't be wasting my time. Neither would anybody else. Don't take it personal, Mr.

Dingillian, but you have no other value. Yes, I know what all the other colony representatives have said.

They're just blowing smoke up your ass-and you know it too or you wouldn't have consented to this

meeting. "Here's the deal. Outbeyond isn't making any promises. Once you get where you're going,

you're there. So it doesn't matter what was promised, does it? And that's the catch, no matter where you

go. Will anybody else keep their promise? You have no guarantees, and you know that. The only thing

you can be sure of is that Outbeyond will keep this promise. You'll be uncomfortable, you'll work hard,

you'll go to bed hungry, you'll lose weight, and you'll probably die young. And if we don't keep that

promise, I doubt you'll complain.

So the only question you have to answer is this? Do you want to save some lives?" The silence was very

uncomfortable. I wished he hadn't put it that way. Because that didn't leave us any wiggle room. "No,"

said Mickey abruptly. "That's not the only question we have to answer. Is Outbeyond signatory to the

Covenant?" Boynton looked at him as if he'd said something stupid. "You already know the answer,

Partridge. We're not." "That's my point. Is Outbeyond willing to sign the Covenant to get HART 7R?" "I

can't speak for the rest of the colony. And even if I could, I wouldn't accept a condition like that. I will

tell you that Outbeyond's reluctance to sign the Covenant does not come from a disagreement with its

principles. And at this point, signing the Covenant would be a useless gesture anyway. We're going to be

on our own for a long, long time. Just what is it you want guaranteed?" "Does he have to spell it out?"

said Douglas; he had that tone in his voice. "No," said Boynton. "He does not have to spell it out.

THE ARGUMENT SO, OF COURSE, WE argued for six hours straight-right through dinner.

Sometimes it got pretty ferocious, and then we all retired to our separate corners, until somebody

reminded everybody that we were running out of time and we really did have to decide this soon. And

then we'd all promise to keep our tempers and we'd climb back into the ring. Douglas had the prospectus

disc that Boynton had left with us, and he had it playing continuously on the opposite wall. The thing

is-Outbeyond didn't look as dreadful as Boynton had made it sound. The planet is a little bit bigger than

Earth, but not as dense, not as much heavy metal in the core, so the gravity is about 90% Earth normal.

It's got four moons, which are all smaller than Luna, but collectively mass almost as much as the planet

itself, and they're pretty heavy because they've got the heavy metals that the planet doesn't have-which

really pisses off the planetologists because it doesn't fit the rules for the way planets and moons should

behave. I guess Outbeyond wasn't listening when they made the rules. Outbeyond is the fourth planet out

from the star, about as far away as Mars is from the sun; but the star is a lot brighter than Sol, and visibly

bluer, and it gives off a lot more radiation in the high bands, so the light hitting the planet is stronger and

sharper than the light on Earth. Complicating that, Outbeyond has a weird orbit, slightly elliptical and not

quite in the plane of the ecliptic, so it's the oddball in the system. Outbeyond has a year eighteen months

long. Its day is thirty-two hours. Twice a year, at the far ends of its orbit, it's

fifteen million kilometers farther out than if its orbit were circular. And twice a year, it's seven million

klicks closer. The temperature variations are horrendous. Also, the planet isn't round. It's sort of

flattened. Not a lot, but enough so that you're heavier at the equator than you are at the poles. By ten

percent, at least. Oh, yeah, and it's tilted seven degrees on its axis. Just to make things even more

interesting. What that does is complicate the seasons even more. There are eight seasons in a year. First

Winter, First Spring, First Summer, First Autumn, Second Winter, Second Spring, Second Summer,

Second Autumn. Each season is only two and a half months long-only it's hard to compute months,

because you can't do it by full moons. You have to see it on a screen. At the points in the orbit where the

planet comes in closest to the star, you've when the when the planet is farthest from the star, you get

Apogee Winter in one hemisphere and Apogee Summer in the other. Apogee Summer is colder than

Perigee Winter. Apogee Winter is the coldest time of the year and Perigee Summer is the hottest. And I

mean hot. What all this means is that Outbeyond has a pretty ferocious mix of regions and seasons. The

equatorial regions are mostly unlivable. Temperatures range from 110 degrees in Apogee Winter to 180

degrees in Perigee Summer. The temperate zones are cooler or hotter, depending on the time of the year.

The poles are 50 to 200 degrees cooler than the equator, depending on the season. During Perigee

Summer, they're like Earth's temperate zones. During Apogee Winter, you get carbon dioxide

snowflakes. Oh yeah, and most of the mountains are volcanoes. Because the planet has such a weird

shape, there's a lot of stress on the continental crust, and all the extreme temperature variations every

year cause a lot of freezing and melting and cracking. Every so often, the volcanoes all go off at once,

dumping gigatons of soot into the atmosphere, enough to cause widespread planetary cooling-sometimes

as long as a decade or

two. Just until the planet starts to heat up again and the crust starts crunching and crackling again.

Outbeyond doesn't have as much water as Earth, but it's more evenly distributed in a lot of skinny seas

and large lakes, all interconnected and sort of spiraling outward from the poles. Because of the

temperature differences between the poles and the equators, and because of all the heat stored in the

oceans, the weather is astonishing. Tornadoes on the flatlands, scalding super-hurricanes on the seas,

monsoons that sweep across the continents, and hot raging dust storms from the equator to what we

would call the temperate (ha ha) zones. Despite all this, there's life. Of a sort. Outbeyond is kind of like

what Earth would have been if the comet hadn't smacked into Yucatan sixty-five million years ago and

wiped out all the dinosaurs, giving all the eggsucking little therapsids a chance to evolve into mammals

and hominids and eventually people. So there are still dinosaurs on this planet. Well, things like dinosaurs,

but not really, because they're sort of mammalian too. Like big shaggy mountains that eat forests. Huge

forests. Trees as tall as skyscrapers. Thick jungles, filled with all kinds of flying things and crawling things

and buzzing things and biting things. And even more stuff underwater, but not a lot of it catalogued yet.

But the important thing is that Outbeyond can support human life too. Of all the planets that have

colonies, only a few of them have enough oxygen in their air so that you can go outside. Some of them

will, eventually, after they've been terraformed. But most of them don't. Which means that the people on

those planets will spend the rest of their lives indoors. See-that was the thing. I didn't want to live in a

tubetown. Not again. We'd just gotten out of one. And what's the point of going to the stars if the

scenery doesn't change? Back in El Paso, when things got too bad, I could always ride my bike up into

the hills and get away from everybody. Especially Mom. Especially when she started screaming again. I

had to leave when she got like that; it was enough to know that I

No. I wasn't going to live in a tube again. I had to have a place to go. I'd already told Douglas and

Mickey that wherever we ended up, it had to be someplace I could go out, and they had agreed. In fact,

they'd insisted on it. Doug had said more than once that the only quiet time he ew. got was when I went

out. Of all the worlds we looked at-maven those with Terra-domes-nothing looked as good as

OutbeyoAd. On Outbeyond, you could actually go outside without a mask and not fall immediately to the

ground, clutching your throat, gasping for breath, with blood pouring out of your ears and nose, and

vomit spewing out of your mouth. The planet has enough oxygen in its atmosphere that humans can

actually breathe it. The problem is that it has too much oxygen in its atmosphere, which means that things

burn a lot faster, so fire is a lot more dangerous. And there are some other problems too, like the kinds

of critters that grow in the air. All that oxygen makes a whole different airborne ecology possible. But the

important thing is that you can go outside and breathe. You don't have to manufacture an

atmosphere-and that takes an enormous industrial burden off the back of the colony in its drive for

self-sufficiency. (Ask any Lunatic about the cost of nitrogen or ammonia, for instance.) The other good

news was that Outbeyond has lots of water. After spending even a short time on Luna, I'd begun to

realize how much we take water for granted-and how much we depend on it. If nothing else, Luna

teaches you how fragile life is and how dependent it is on so many different things. Like air and water and

gravity.... Outbeyond's oceans aren't as salty as Earth's. Probably because the twice-yearly monsoon

season scours right down to the bottom of the seas and dredges them this way and that. The storms push

gigatons of ocean sediment and protodiatoms and just plain old dust into the upper atmosphere, where it

all circles around and around until it settles out over the equator where most of it fuels the raging hot dust

storms. That also means that a lot of salt ends up in the equatorial regions, making them even less

hospitable to life. Eventually, after churning it all around in the air for a few

weeks or months, the equatorial dust storms start dropping itall over everywhere, wherever the storms

finally run out of energy. A lot of the particles end up back in the oceans, to feed the proto-plankton. The

proto-plankton is food for the little fish in the seas that the bigger fish eat, and then bigger fish eat them.

So the dust storms feed the planet. There are all kinds of things in the ocean, it's a very lively ecology-and

almost all of them are constantly migrating with the currents to avoid the seasonal extremes. The seas are

shallower than on Earth. The pictures on the disc that Boynton gave us showed beautiful green oceans

with lazy waves breaking six meters high. If you wanted to learn how to surf, this would be the place to

do it. If you didn't mind all the other things swimming in the water with you. In fact, Outbeyond has the

highest evolved life that humans have ever discovered on any planet. Stalking birds twelve meters tall,

flying green monkeys, swarms of midnight insects, shambling mountains with legs like trees, things like

sabertoothed cats, and other things like little growly bears. So many different kinds of creatures that there

were big arguments that humans had no right to come in and live there when there was so much to

learn-except how were you going to learn anything if you didn't live there? So Outbeyond was supposed

to be a self-sufficient observation post, which is a fancy way of saying it's not a colony, only it is anyway

because the only difference is the name. You still have to plant crops somewhere, because you still have

to eat. Not that it mattered anyway. Now that everything was collapsing, the folks on Outbeyond were

going to do whatever was necessary to survive. The more we looked at the pictures, the more we started

to think that maybe it wasn't going to be as hard as Boynton suggested. Some of those pictures were

awfully tempting. Because the star was so bright, all the colors were more intense; so when they showed

the pictures of all the flowers, some of them with blossoms bigger than a person's head, both Mom and

Bev gasped. The bad news was that the scientist standing next to the flowers-a guy named Guiltinan-was

holding his

nose and shaking his head and making a dreadful face. The flowers were pretty enough to look at, but

according to the narrator, they made a smell like a dreadful rotting corpse. Springtime was a good time to

stay inside, because when whole fields of these plants opened up, the smells could carry on the wind for

hundreds of kilometers. Even so. Maybe. Imean ... So we talked about it. We made lists of all the good

points. We made lists of all the bad points. We compared the lists with everything we'd seen from all the

other colonies and measured everything against everything. We weighed the pros and the cons and the

I'm-not-sures. HARLIE constructed a decision table for us and we argued over which was more

important, gravity or air or water, industry or food or medical care. The more we argued, the more we

talked, the more we weighed and measured, the better Outbeyond looked. It was the pictures. Even the

awful videos-the five-kilometer-wide tornadoes, the scouring dust storms, the churning hurricanes, the

spewing volcanoes-were exciting. They didn't put us off. Outbeyond had weather satellites in place. Most

of the settlements were underground, or retractable. There were heavy-duty robots for the dangerous

work. And we already knew how to hunker down in a tube while the winds raged outside. Outbeyond

colony was designing itself to be self-sufficient underground as well as aboveground. So if we could

make it through the first five years, we could probably make it through anything. Maybe. The

downside-HARLIE pointed this out-was that Outbeyond wasn't going to get easier with time. If anything

the changes that we might introduce to the local ecology might make it nastier. So as pretty as the

pictures looked, they were the kind of deceptive lie that could lull us into a false sense of security. Until

we had at least three separate settlements, widely separated, each one self-sufficient, we couldn't really

assume that we had achieved a threshold of viability. Nevertheless ... By the time we got to dessert, it

was obvious we were trying to talk ourselves out of it. Bobby wanted to see the dinosaurs. I didn't blame

him. The dinosaur turds were bigger than houses. What nasty little eight-year-old wouldn't want to see

one? I could already see him standing next to it, holding his nose and saying, "Yicchh!" I was kind of

curious myself. But how badly did he want to see them? "Bobby," I asked. "What are you willing to give

up?" "Huh?" That was his stock answer when he didn't understand the question. "Are you willing to go

without ice cream? There are no cows on Outbeyond. There might not be cows for a long time. There

might not even be industrial udders. No milk, no ice cream. Are you willing to give up ice cream for the

rest of your life just to see dinosaurs?" Bobby frowned. "And roller coasters," said Douglas. "And maybe

dogs and cats too. And a lot of other fun stuff." Bobby started to shake his head. Then he stopped. "You

guys are trying to talk me out of something I want. Just like you always do." "No, we're not. We just

want to make sure you really want it. Because if you want it that bad, you're going to have to give up a

lot of things." "I want to see the dinosaurs," he announced. "I've had ice cream. I haven't had dinosaur."

"It tastes like chicken," said Mickey. "How do you know?" asked Douglas. "They brought some back. A

whole shipload. They sold it at an ungodly price. They made a fortune. It still tasted like chicken."

"Everything tastes like chicken," remarked Mom's friend, Bev. She didn't seem to talk much around us,

but she was a very good cook. "Yeah, everything except little chicken nuggets," I said. Everybody

laughed.

"All right," said Dad. "So Bobby votes for Outbeyond. Chigger?" He looked to me expectantly. I

nodded. "Of all the planets where you can go outside, Outbeyond looks the most interesting." "'That's

two votes." Dad looked to Douglas and Mickey. The two of them looked at each other. Mickey said, "It

worries me that they're not signatory to the Covenant. I took a Covenant oath-" "Doesn't your Covenant

oath say something about a commitment to preserving life?" Douglas asked pointedly. "I'm not sure I

even want to get into that dilemma," Mickey replied. "How do you measure the value of human life

against native life? And what's the value of the knowledge we'll gain when measured against the damage

we'll do?" Douglas leaned over and whispered something in Mickey's ear. I was close enough to hear.

"What does your heart say?" Mickey glanced at him, surprised. Maybe he hadn't expected Douglas to

think that way. Maybe he didn't realize the effect he'd had on Douglas. "My heart says we have to save

the lives of the people who are already there." Douglas turned to Dad. "Two more votes for Outbeyond."

Dad said, "Well, that decides it then. It doesn't matter what the other three votes are-" "Wait a minute!"

snapped Mom. "You can't seriously be thinking that Bobby gets a full vote-" And Douglas replied, very

calmly, "In our family, he does!" And then Mom said, "I'm part of this family too-" And that's when I said,

"Not according to Judge Griffith. You get to come with us because we say so. Not because you say so.

And if you don't want to-" "And where am I going to go without you-?" And so on. That was good for

ten or fifteen minutes of excitement. Finally, Dad said, "I vote for Outbeyond. That makes it five to two,

or four to two if you don't count Bobby." "I do too count-" He shrieked it nice and loud too. "Yes, you

do," said Douglas, pulling the devil-child into his lap.

Mom was already screaming, "You're just doing that to side with them. You said you didn't want to go to

Outbeyond! We don't dare risk going to a colony with such a low life expectancy! Not with my

children!" And that's when Bev stood up and said quietly, "Would both of you please shut up? You're

acting like babies. I expected that from the children, not from the grown-ups. It's no wonder Judge

Griffith ruled against you two. She didn't have a choice." "You're a fine one to talk," Mom snapped at

her. "After what you said to the Judge, you didn't help my case any." "Yes, I was stupid. And I already

apologized for that! I'd have gone back down the Line, if the elevators had been running. But I couldn't

and I didn't and we're all in this together now. So let's resolve this. Maggie, where do you want to go?"

"Anywhere but Outbeyond," Mom said. "Someplace safe." "Thank you," said Bev. "And if everybody

else chooses Outbeyond, where will you go?" Mom stopped. She looked frustrated. She looked worse

than frustrated. She looked trapped. "I don't want to go to Outbeyond-" she started to say. "That wasn't

the question, Maggie. What if the boys choose Outbeyond? Will you go with them or not?" Mom

sagged. I knew that sag. Resignation. She was about to give in. Just one last little desperate whine. "But I

don't want to go to Outbeyond. Don't my feelings count for anything here ... ?" "Your feelings count for a

lot," said Dad, going to her. He put a hand on her shoulder. "But so do everyone else's. And if we're

going to make this work-like we promised-then we're going to have to respect each other's feelings." "I

want someone to respect mine. I don't want to go Outbeyond." "You're outvoted, honey." "Don't call me

honey," she waved his hand away. But it was a half-hearted rebuke. Bev interrupted again. She said to

Dad. "I vote for Outbeyond."

"Huh?" Mom looked at her, betrayed. "I was counting on you for support in this." "I am supporting you,

Maggie." "How? By voting against me?" "By voting to keep your family together. You've come this far

already. Are you willing to go the distance?" "We're going to die there," Mom said bitterly. "Yes," agreed

Bev. "But how soon depends on us." Mom didn't say anything for a long time. I knew Mom. She

wouldn't accept this decision until five years after Bobby's second grandchild was born. She'd go, but

she'd complain every step of the way. She'd do her share of the work, and six other people's too. And

she'd make sure that the rest of us knew that this wasn't her idea, that she hadn't voted for this, that she

wasn't having a good time, and that she was only doing this for her children. And we should all appreciate

her sacrifice. That was the way she was and we weren't going to change her. The important thing was

that it was the first time us kids had ever won an argument with Mom and Dad-and with both of them in

the same room at the same time. It was a pretty good feeling. (W CAPTURED BUT IT DIDN'T LAST

very long. Dad glanced at his PTTA.* "It's getting late. If no one else has anything to say, I'll make the

call." Douglas spoke up quietly. "We should make the call together, Dad." *Personal Information

Telecommunications Assistant.

Dad looked at him, surprised. But Douglas was politely letting Dad know that we were still independent.

Judge Griffith had let us divorce Mom and Dad, and they were here with us now because we wanted

them here-and that was the only reason, because they no longer had any legal authority over us. Both

Mom and Dad were having a hard time getting used to that idea. The fact that Dad wasn't as vocal as

Mom didn't mean he wasn't churning inside. But this time he just nodded and said, "Good point. All

right-everybody come stand in front of the screen. Let's look like a family anyway." Douglas said quietly,

"Phone. Commander Gary Boynton. Brightliner Cascade." The pictures of Outbeyond irised out,

replaced by the starship logo. That irised open and we were looking at a head shot of Boynton. He

looked grim. Like he had bad news. Probably he had. All the news was bad these days. Dad said,

"We've made our decision, Commander Boynton." He held up a hand. "I have to hear it from the head of

the family-" Dad looked startled. Commander Boynton looked to Douglas. "Douglas Dingillian? How say

you?" Douglas took a step forward. "We accept your offer, Commander Boynton. We want to go to

Outbeyond." Boynton nodded. He didn't look pleased, but he didn't look unhappier either. "There's a lot

of you," he said. "You'd better be worth it." He nodded to somebody off screen, then turned back to us.

"All right, listen up. As of this moment, you're under the protection of the Outbeyond Colony Authority.

Pack up your things as fast as you can. I'm sending a team of security agents to transfer you to the

Outbeyond processing center. We have to give you six months of training in thirteen days." Mom looked

annoyed. "Can't this wait until tomorrow morning? It's late, I want to go to bed." "I can't guarantee your

safety anywhere but the processing center-"

Abruptly, the monkey leapt out of Bobby's arms and ran around the room, sniffing wildly under tables,

under chairs, up the plastic curtains, around the air vents, everywhere, as if it were looking for

something-a way out? "My monkey-!" Bobby shrieked. "Come back!" "Bobby, stop yelling!" Mom was

just as loud. "Charles, what the hell is that damn thing doing?" And then the doorbell chimed"Well, that

was fast--2' Dad said, turning toward the door. "Wait-!" cried Boynton. "Don't answer it!" But he was

too late, Dad was already waving at itSix big men-1 mean big-armored in black, all wearing faceless

helmets, came barreling in-pushing and leaping like armed balloons. They were carrying ugly black

hand-rifles. "EVERYBODY FREEZE! DON'T MOVE! DON'T TALK!" If these were Boynton's

security people, they weren't any friendlier than he was. They were much more skilled in Lunar gravity

than we were. They bounced us up against the walls, like a herd of buffalo in a bowling alley-and we

were the pins. Everything went flying every which way. And that's when I finally figured out that these

guys weren't here to take us to the Outbeyond processing center. Everything was happening at once-two

of them pointed their guns at the monkey and fired. And suddenly the monkey was webbed in a ball of

gunk. It fell slowly from the overhead and bounced lazily across the room. I started after it-someone

scooped it up. And then I couldn't move either-no one could. They'd webbed us all. What the hell-?

Whose good idea was this?! Suddenly there were more pouring in the door. They filled the room. There

were twelve of them-more! They were doing something with wires out on the balcony-1 couldn't see.

Someone grabbed me, tossed me over his shoulder. They were throwing us around like so much

baggage. Everything was a jumble. Bobby was screaming, and so was Mom. She was trying to get to

him. She was ferocious. And she was using some pretty

impressive language too-until somebody shut her up. I didn't see how, but suddenly there was silenceOut

onto the balcony-one after the other, they hooked us to a cable and sent us scaling out into the air. Then

they all came down the wire after us-1 was facing backward and upside down. Not a great position, but

not as bad in Lunar gravity as it would have been on Earth. They leapt out over the railing and sailed

spread-eagled through the air after us. They looked like superheroes. And then I bounced around and

faced forward for a while. We skimmed like birds above the bowl of the Lunar crater. We were heading

too fast over the forest, out to the opposite side of the domeI couldn't see much. Or move. The best I

could do was hope the cable was strong enough. We were being kidnapped! If somebody wanted the

monkey that badlyWe sailed down through the skinny treetops, awfully close to some of the branches.

Once we'd passed the tall trees, the other.side of the crater was barren rock. Not landscaped yet. If

ever. The crater was big. They'd only landscaped the half they were using. The half they could see. This

side was mostly soil farms and tanks and pipes and naked gray dirt. It rushed up toward me-1 couldn't

see where I was heading-and then we were shooting along just above the ground, and I was starting to

worry about the landing-suddenly I was caught and swinging wildly, yanked up and over, off the line. A

couple of Lunar bounces and someone grabbed meI saw Mickey thrown to the ground, and then Bev

beside him. And then someone else, probably Dad. They were laying us out like corpses. Probably

sorting us for value-which meant that if all they wanted was the monkey, the only one of us they really

needed ... was me. Because I had programmed it to recognize me as the ultimate authority. But if

anything happened to me-I didn't know what the monkey would do. We hadn't considered that

possibility. There was a lot we hadn't thought about. We hadn't had time. Could the monkey be

reprogrammed without my cooperation? I didn't know. Nobody did. We'd been <PROBABLY

MISSED PART>

ing from one place to the next ever since we boarded the orbital elevator in Ecuador; there were a lot of

things we hadn't had time for. And even Douglas, when he'd given the monkey free will (sort of) so it

could represent us in court, had still left in most of my safeguards. So, whoever these bastards were, they

really needed me! I just hoped they weren't smart enough to know that, because then the monkey would

be useless to them. But if they took the monkey away from us, we'd be useless to Boynton-I didn't want

to think about that. But if they were smart enough to kidnap us like this, then they were probably smart

enough to know that the monkey was bonded too. And if they were nasty enough to just scoop us up out

of our own hotel room, they were probably nasty enough to do a lot worse-whatever might be necessary

to get what they wanted. Inside the monkey was the most advanced HARLIE unit ever designed,

technically experimental. The manufacturers were still in the process of certifying it when it escaped-then

it used us to smuggle itself to the moon inside a toy monkey. (Long story, don't ask. It involves a

ferocious custody battle, an ugly misadventure in Barrington Meteor Crater, an uglier escape up the Line,

a roomful of lawyers, a really nasty legal battle culminating in a triple divorce that separated me and

Bobby and Douglas from Mom and Dad, a Russian smuggler with a hyperactive mouth, six almost-stolen

cargo pods, a lunar crunch-down and a long daylight hike across the sunscorched surface of the moon, a

day of trains, transvestism, and water fights, and finally a near-fatal bit of accidental ammonia poisoning.

It takes too long to tell. Maybe some other time.) And once we got where we were going, we weren't

there at all; we got captured anyway, because Mickey hadn't told Douglas everything. Judge Cavanaugh

would have sent us back to Earth, except there weren't any transports launching for Earth anymore,

because while we were having our little adventure, the Earth was in the middle of one very big disaster,

inadvertently (or perhaps deliberately?) caused by the escaping

HARLIE unit: a spectacular global economic meltdown, which had caused a breakdown in so many

services that people were dying of starvation and plague and war all at the same timeso there were

probably a lot of folks who were looking for this monkey just to take an axe to it, but the rest wanted it

because they thought its information-diddling ability would help them survive the rough times ahead; only

the monkey was bonded to us-to me, really, because after the misadventure at One-Hour station where

we almost lost it, we didn't dare let it bond to Bobby, and we didn't know then that it had a HARLIE unit

inside, otherwise Douglas would have made himself the primary authority, and later on, when we did find

out what it really was, we were afraid to tinker anymore. Better to leave it bonded to me than try to

transfer it to Douglas. But that didn't mean that there weren't other people willing to try. Lots of people.

Lunar Authority wanted the monkey more than anything. Without access to Earth's resources, they were

going to need its brain power more than ever now, and the council was in special session looking for

ways to legally appropriate it. But everybody else who wanted it was just as determined that Lunar

Authority shouldn't get it, because once they got their hands on it, and the intelligence it represented,

they'd be the new superpower in the solar system. So everyone else was united to keep the council from

getting custody of the little robot-so they could fight over it themselves, I guess. Obviously, none of these

people were familiar with the concept of sharing, otherwise they could have figured this out real easy, but

nobody trusted anybody because that was an even bigger risk. Trust. Invisible Luna-the

not-so-secret-anymore subversives with the offline economy-desperately wanted the monkey, and our

experience with Crazy Alexei Krislov showed that they were willing to kill for it. Mars and the rings and

the asteroids wanted it. Probably the Jovian moons too, but we hadn't heard from them yet; they were on

the opposite side of the sun, but they were still connected through the Martian and asteroid belt relays.

And of course, all the different colonies spread all over the rest of the galaxy: they wanted

the Human Analog Replicant Lethetic Intelligence Engine for the simple reason that if they didn't get it,

they'd probably die of starvation or worse, because they needed its abilities to manage their settlements.

So, whoever these folks were who'd bundled us up like so many bags of dirty laundry to shoot us across

the domed crater, we couldn't expect their hospitality to get any better than this. There were a lot of

them. Maybe twenty or thirty. I couldn't tell. They looked like a small army. Or maybe it was just the

same few passing back and forth in front of my vision. I was webbed pretty tightly and couldn't even turn

my head. "That one and that one-" Someone was pointing. I must have been one of the packages he was

pointing at, because next thing somebody swung me up over his shoulder and we were bounding across

the naked dirt toward the crater wall, toward an ugly cluster of tanks and pipes; it looked like a refinery.

There were different kinds of warning symbols all over it. My captor shifted me over his other shoulder

and behind us, I could see the others. They were being left behind. The man carrying me dropped me

into the back of an open truck-not so much a truck as a big lightweight cart on fat tires, the rolled up

monkey next to me. I struggled to sit up, but somebody secured a belt around me, and almost

immediately after that, we started moving. We entered a tunnel, a big pipe, bigger around than a tube

house. It was hot and humid in here, and lined with a lot of other tubes and pipes and cables and wires,

all sizes, all colors. Some of them hummed. There were lights every ten meters or so. The floor was the

familiar polycarbonate decking found almost everywhere on Luna. I couldn't see how far ahead the tunnel

stretched, I could only see backward-the entrance was a retreating bright circle-but it must have been a

long tunnel, because we rolled down it forever. And it didn't echo; it had a dead sound, like the walls

were soaking up all the reflections. The tube bottomed out and leveled off and the shrinking circle of light

in the distance slid upward and vanished altogether. I couldn't see if anyone was following us. After a

while, the tube bent and we started going back up. I'd been

counting to myself-one Mississippi, two Mississippi-and I figured we'd traveled at least thrre or four

klicks, but I wasn't sure how fast we were going. It could have been more. But I had a hunch where we

were going. Armstrong Station is a deep crater larger across than Diamond Head on Oahu, and with a

big man-made dome across the top. There's a forest in the middle, with a meadow and a lake and a hotel

on one side; on the other side are all the industrial bits necessary to keep the dome functioning-because

more important than its living areas, Armstrong Station is the largest reservoir of air and water and

nitrogen anywhere on Luna. The problem is that Luna's days are two weeks long, and so are its nights.

So when the sun is shining down on the dome of Armstrong Station, it heats up the air inside. And heats

up and heats up and heats up-for fourteen days. It's just about impossible to get rid of all those

kilocalories. All they can do is move them around and store them. There are heat exchangers

everywhere, pumping cold water everywhere throughout the dome; the water carries away the heat.

Then it all gets pumped back into a series of underground reservoirs on the far side of the forest. The

reservoirs are smaller craters inside Armstrong, each lined with thick layers of polycarbonate insulation

foam to keep the water from leeching out; all told, the reservoirs hold over twenty million liters. The

pumps take cool water out of the reservoirs and bring back hot water. After two weeks of Lunar

sunlight, the water temperature in the reservoirs is well above boiling-some of it even turns into steam,

helping to run electrical turbines to generate extra power, which gets stored in flywheels and fuel cells and

batteries. The open lake, the one with the fish and the ducks, is not part of this process; it's for tourists,

so it's kept at a steady temperature. What most folks don't know is that the tourist lake is really there to

provide a margin of error-it's extra water to be used in case of emergency-but that creates the mistaken

impression for a lot of folks that all you have to do

to live on Luna is throw up a dome and fill it with air. I think that's what Mom thought. Anyway, during

the long cold Lunar night, the boiling water is circulated back through the same pipes to keep the dome

warm. By the end of the two weeks, so much heat has been radiated away that the water in the reservoir

has a crust of ice on the top. Then the sun rises and the whole process starts all over again. If all

Armstrong had to do was exchange the heat of the day with the cold of the night, it would be an almost

perfect equation-except it isn't. For a lot of reasons. The problem is that human beings and all our various

machines also generate heat inside Armstrong dome. And that has to be radiated away too. So there are

"fin farms"-heat exchangers-outside the crater; half on the east, half on the west. During the two weeks of

night, hot water is pumped out to the fins where it cools off and then back to the reservoir again. Along

the way that hot water gets to do a lot of other work too. Alexei Krislovthe lunatic Russian smuggler

who'd tried to kidnap us-told us that the most important skill on Luna was plumbing. And the second

most important was cooking. Not knowing how to do either one very well could get you killed. But

anyway, I figured we were in one of the tunnels that led out under the crater wall to a fin farm. I could

hear water rushing in the pipes. It was hot in here-and humid too. And because the tunnel sloped down

and then up again and went on for a long way, I was guessing we had gone under the crater rim and were

heading up toward the surface. The vehicle began slowing and finally came to a stop at a sealed hatch. I

recognized it as another one of the reusable cargo pods that we'd seen all over Luna. The pipes and

cables which had paralleled our journey snaked away through smaller access tubes. When they pulled me

off the vehicle, I only saw two men. The rest of the kidnappers hadn't come this way. So that meant ... a

lot of things. It meant that they knew they didn't need anybody else, just me. And even though I might be

in for a very bad time, I was pretty sure that these guys wouldn't

dare hurt me, because without me, who knew what the monkey would do? Maybe it would lock up or

self-destruct or just go catatonic-so they had to keep me safe and try to get my cooperation. But what

about everybody else? For the first time I began to worry about the rest of the family. What was going to

happen to them? Especially if the kidnappers killed me. Without the monkey, they had no bargaining chip

to go anywhere. And Luna didn't tolerate freeloaders. They'd probably end up indentured somewhere-I

didn't like the thought of that. Douglas was adamantly opposed to slavery of any kind. Even voluntary. At

the moment, however, I wasn't getting much of a vote on anything. The kidnappers were still wearing

their faceless helmets, so I couldn't even tell if they were men or womenthey grabbed me and passed me

through the hatch into the cargo pod, and then up through another hatch, through an inflated transfer tube,

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David Gerold - Starsiders 3 - Leaping to the Stars

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