Vengeance 10

Joe Poyer Vengeance 10

For Nick Austin

Epigraph

AXIOM: A “nine days’ wonder”

is taken as a matter of course

on the tenth day.

AXIOM: A “common sense” prediction

is sure to err on the side

of timidity.

AXIOM: The more extravagant

a prediction sounds the more

likely it is to come true.

Robert A. Heinlein, Pandora’s Box

Maps

Prologue

Lunar Apennines 6 May 2009

Now that they were out of the plains and into the foothills, the terrain was becoming rugged. Gently rounded hillocks were giving way to craggy hills, and here and there a rough stretch showed ahead along the route that led up towards the ridge they had selected a few hours previously. The changing lunarscape now provided sufficient reflecting surfaces to relieve the dense, formless shadows which the tractor’s powerful floodlights could do little to resolve.

Douglas Cummings eased the speed down a trifle to feed more torque to the rear tracks. He scratched his jaw, then reached around for a persistent itch beneath his shoulder blade. They were a hundred and five hours out of Armstrong Base at Taurus-Littrow, and he badly needed a bath.

Don Wayne slid into the co-driver’s seat and swivelled so that he did not have to look at the sun-blasted lunarscape. Cummings raised a single eyebrow.

‘A possible. Selenography is good.’ He shrugged. ‘The satellite magnetometer readings are strong and consistent. If there’s iron ore, it should be an extensive deposit.’

‘Should be,’ Cummings echoed. ‘If I had a dollar for every should be…’ He let the thought trail off. ‘All right. This one, then we go home. I’ve had it.’

* * *

Wayne turned to face the rear of the cabin. ‘Flip to see who goes out?’ he asked hopefully.

‘Like hell. I went last time.’

‘Shit.’

‘You wanted to sleep, remember?’

‘Okay, okay.’

* * *

An hour later Cummings eased the big tractor up a narrow gorge that led through sheer, jagged walls. Terrain this rough was unusual short of the mountains, still some ten kilometres distant. The gorge opened out on to a wide, featureless plain that dipped towards the centre to form an irregular bowl. He eased the speed up again and sat contemplating the route ahead, searching for the smoothest way across to the long ridge that was their destination. Fifteen minutes, he judged, and used the intercom to warn his partner to get into his pressure suit.

The airlock display winked red ten minutes later to indicate that Wayne was inside and cycling. Cummings swore under his breath. As many times as he had warned Don against that practice, he persisted. The time saved just wasn’t worth the possibility of a blow-out. He sealed the driving cabin and turned the heater up.

Cummings had begun a sharp turn along a crevice that he hoped would lead to flatter ground, when Don shouted. He slapped the engine switches to cut the power, and as the tractor eased to a stop he caught sight of Wayne sprinting across the surface in long, even bounds. What the hell, he thought, and reached for the transmitter switch.

‘Doug, get your suit on and get out here,’ Don shouted, beating him to it. ‘I saw metal glinting, about ten o’clock and three hundred metres out. It’s either an old Saturn S-IVB stage or that Russian cargo container they lost last month.’

Cummings hooted and snatched his suit from the locker. God damn, he thought. If it was the cargo carrier and if it wasn’t smashed to hell and gone, they might find some vodka, real vodka and not that musty sludge the Chem lab cooked out of the algae-oxygen system.

As he left the tractor he picked up Wayne’s transmission narrating a running commentary for the tapes: ‘.… elongated cylinder split down one side. It seems to have tipped on landing… hard to… yes, it’s crushed across the centre, as if it fell over on landing.’

‘What the devil are you talking about, Don?’ Cummings demanded as he jog-jumped towards the slight irregularity barely visible in the sun glare. ‘Russian cargo carriers are spherical…’

‘It ain’t Russian, Dougie. And it ain’t ours. And it ain’t Indian or the British or the Martians either.’

Cummings reached him a moment later. ‘What do you …. ‘