Moonrise

MT. WASSER

the jump up to the summit was smoother this time. Standing beside Bre

Everyone else was safely tucked inside the shelters. On Bre

Doug knew he should be worried about the radiation he was receiving, especially when they broke out of the shadows of the mountains and into the glaring sunlight. Yet somehow that danger seemed unreal compared to the thrill of flying up to the mountaintop again, the excitement of beating Yamagata to the claim for this rich territory.

This is fun! he told himself. We’re doing something nobody else would do.

Besides, the more sober part of his mind added, I made the rad dose calculations as conservative as I could. The numbers are okay. We’ll make it. We’ll be all right.

Their flimsy craft seemed to hover a hundred meters or so above the mountain’s summit, and Doug marvelled again at Bre

Bre

“That was terrific’ Doug said with genuine awe.

Bre

Doug laughed.

“All right,” said Bre

Doug knocked down the railing on his side and they both bent to untie the astronomical instruments. Within a few minutes Doug was setting up the telescope and spectrometer while Bre

It was clumsy work. Doug felt as if he were wearing thick mittens instead of the most flexible gloves that spacesuit engineers could design. He saw that the radiation patch on his sleeve was a deep orange. Bre

“Ready to power up?” Bre

Doug swallowed hard and nodded inside his helmet ’Ready.”

The tiny display panels on the instruments lit up and the telescope swung automatically to focus on the Sun. Doug had to duck out of the way of its moving tube.

“Okay,” he said. “They’re working. Let’s drag our butts out of here.”

“Get it on tape,” Bre

Fumbling with the vidcam in his hurry, Doug quickly pa

“Okay, got it,” he said, tucking the hand-sized vidcam back into his thigh pouch. “Now let’s get back to the shelter.”

“Wait one tick,” Bre

“Where’re you going?” Doug called, more puzzled than

“Come here, quick!” Bre

Doug tried to imitate Bre

“Down there. Can you see it?”

Doug peered into the inky blackness far below. “See what?” le asked.

“Lights. Like landing lights on a spacecraft.”

Doug stared. Far, far below he thought he saw two tiny gleams of lights, one red, one white. But when he looked directly at them, they disappeared.

“Masterson Aerospace to Yamagata lander,” he heard Bre

That’s the Yamagata lander? Doug wondered. Down there?

“Masterson to Yamagata. Do you read?”

Doug was about to turn back to their hopper when he heard in his earphones, “Yamagata to Masterson. We read you.” The voice was weak, strained.

“We’ve just established legal claim to the mountaintop and we have a working base down at the ice field,” Bre

“We can’t. We crashed on landing. Both injured.”

Doug suddenly heard the pain in the man’s voice.

Bre

“No. Communications impossible in radiation storm.”

“We’ll try to get a team to you as soon as we can,” Bre

“We are protected from radiation, but one of us is badly injured and needs medical attention.”

“We’ll do our best,” said Bre

“That is all we can do.”

Doug grabbed at Bre

“We’ll get help to you as soon as the radiation dies down, Bre

“Thank you.”

Without another word Bre

But the hopper did not move.

Doug slid his boots into the foot loops and grabbed the edge of the console to support himself.

But the hopper did not move.

MT. WASSER

“Christ on a surfboard,” Bre

“What’s wrong?”

Bre

Doug felt cold sweat breaking out on him. , “Damn!” Bre

“What’s wrong?” Doug asked again.

Bre

And he jumped off the hopper’s platform. Doug followed him without questioning. Bre

“Undo the oxy tank,” he commanded. “Get it down on the ground. Fast!”

Doug found the clips that held the bulbous green tank and clicked them open, then rolled the tank off the edge of the platform into his waiting arms. Shocked at how heavy it felt, he let it slip and thump onto the rocky ground. He felt immense gratitude that it didn’t burst apart.

Turning, he saw that Bre

“Get under the platform,” Bre

Doug dropped to his hands and knees and crawled beneath the hopper’s platform, between the oxygen tank and the

“How are we going to fix it from under here?” he asked Bre

“We’re not going to fix it,” the older man said. “We’re going to sit out the storm down here. This is our own little radiation shelter. Cozy, huh?”

“We’re going to stay here?” Doug heard a tinge of fear in his own voice.

“Nothing else we can do,” Bre

“Malf?”

“Malfunction.”