Mindscan

I wish I could see the Earth: that would give me a place to focus my thoughts when I was thinking about Rebecca. But the Earth was straight down, and looking at the floor didn't fulfill my emotional need. Of course, nothing short of actually seeing her would do that.

Rebecca thinks the universe sends her messages — subtly at first, she says, and then, later, if she doesn't get them, the universe starts whacking her with two-by-fours.

I didn't believe in that sort of thing. I knew the universe was indifferent to me. And yet, perhaps out of respect for Rebecca, I did find myself looking, listening, watching, paying attention: if there was a way out, maybe the universe would give me a clue.

In the meantime, I took another of Brian Hades's suggestions — one I hoped wouldn't leave me feeling quite so sordid afterwards. I decided to try mountain climbing here on the moon. I'd never done much of that sort of thing on Earth — Eastern Canada is not known for its mountains. But it sounded like it might actually be fun, and so I inquired about it at the recreation desk.

Turns out the guy who usually led climbing expeditions was my old traveling buddy Quentin Ashburn, the moonbus-maintenance engineer. No one was allowed on the lunar surface alone; the same common-sense safety rules that applied to scuba diving also applied here. So Quentin was delighted by my request to go climbing.

It used to be, I'm told, that spacesuits had to be custom built for each user, but new adaptive fabrics made that unnecessary: High Eden stocked suits in three sizes for men, and three for women, and it was easy enough to see that the middle male size was the right one for me.

Quentin helped me suit up, making sure all the connections were secure. And then he got some special climbing equipment that was stored on open shelves in the change room. Some of it I recognized — lengths of nylon rope, for instance. Others were things I'd never seen before. The last piece was, well, a piece: a thing that looked like a squat, thick-bodied pistol.

"What's that?" I asked.

"It's a piton gun," he said. "It shoots pitons."

"Well, let's hope we don't run into any of those," I said.

Quentin laughed. "Pitons are metal spikes." He opened the gun's thick chamber, and showed me one. The spike was about ten centimeters long. It had a sharply pointed front and an eye at the other end to which a rope could be fitted. "We shoot them into the rock and use them as footholds or handholds, or to hold our ropes. On Earth. people often drive in pitons by hand, but the rock here is quite hard, and there's too much risk of rupturing your glove and exposing yourself to vacuum. So we use piton guns."

I'd never held a gun of any sort in my life — and, as a Canadian, I was proud of that.

But I took the device, and copied Quentin, who slipped another one of them into a capacious pouch on the side of his right thigh.

Finally, we put on the fishbowl helmets. They were impregnated, Quentin told me, with something similar to electronic ink: any portion of them could become opaque — blocking out sunlight. Then we cycled through the airlock, which happened to be adjacent to the pad where the moon-buses landed.

"Your pride and joy is gone," I said over the intersuit radio, pointing at the empty pad.

"It's been gone for days," replied Quentin. "On its usual run to LS One. But it'll be back tomorrow, to take some passengers to the SETI installation."

The SETI installation. Where they listen for messages from the universe. I tried to listen, too.

We continued on, walking over the lunar soil. Although the suit massed about twenty kilos, I still felt much lighter than I ever had on Earth. The suit air was a bit startling — completely devoid of any odor or flavor — but I quickly got used to it, although—

No, it's gone. I'd thought for a second that another headache was coming on, but the sensation passed almost at once.

The crater wall was far in front of us. As we walked, the sun disappeared behind it, and stars became visible. I kept looking up at the black, black sky for the Earth, but of course it was never visible from here. Still…

"Is that Mars?" I said, pointing at a brilliant point of light that was shaded differently from the others — it was either red or green, but I'd never heard of "the green planet."

"Sure is," said Quentin.

It took us about ten minutes to half-walk, half-hop over to the crater wall, which was craggy and steep, rising far above us. Since we were in shadow, Quentin had turned on a light in the center of his chest, and then he reached over and flipped a switch on my suit, activating a similar light.

"Wow," I said, looking up at the inky wall. "That looks … difficult."

"It is," said Quentin, amiably. "Where would the fun be if it were easy?" He didn't wait for an answer, which was a good thing, because I didn't have one. Instead, he undid the pouch on his thigh, and pulled out his piton gun. "See?" he said, pointing with his other hand. "You aim at a cleft in the rock."

I nodded.