Shanghaied to the Moon (19 page)

“I'm in!”

A strong acceleration surges along my body as the shuttle's main rocket blasts us out of the crash dive. Its power rattles the shuttle, rattles the
Squid,
rattles my head.

The rocket shuts down, leaving a hiss in the sudden quiet.

At first, I think it's just noisy headphones.

Bing bing bing.

The suit alarm. Puncture! That's air! Mine!

“I'm losing air!”

“I read it. Don't panic. It's small. You're just a few feet from the air lock. You'll be fine.”

It's amazing how much more powerful his words are than the sound of the escaping air. Too bad he's wrong. “I'm closer than that.”

“Say again?”

“The
Squid
hit the hatch.” I bite out the words, trying to hold my breath and talk at the same time.

“Hold on.” The controls set in the bulkhead start blinking as Val tries to cycle the hatch. The hatch moves a fraction of an inch and … stops.

“Val, it's jammed!”

A loud pop. Pressure builds painfully against my eardrums. The emergency air reserve floods the suit in a single rush. Buys me some time. Once only.

“Hang in there, kid!” The channel shifts. “Mayday. Mayday. Astronaut in trouble. Suit puncture. Trapped on EVA. I'm coming down.”

Shifting accelerations tug at me. The
Squid
rocks and slides. “It's moving!”

“Get out. I'll dump her!”

“No. You'll lose the core!”

“Forget it. Just get out!”

I swing my legs through the door. Curling my fingers under the hand control boxes, I pull. Gravel slides beneath my shoulder blade. Hurts so much I scream.

“What's going on?”

“Hurt …” I clamp my teeth together. Pull. I pop out, flail to grab hold of the storage tube bracket. Clutch it fiercely.

The
Squid
tilts, rolls me toward the deck. Stops just before it squashes me. Hurry! My glove slips on the cap of the tube holding the VT's NavComp core.

“Are you out?”

“Retrieving … core …” The cap seemed so easy to turn before. The muscles in my arm burn. Need more air. Breathe deep. The air seems so thick.

The cap drops off. The core slips out. Catch it. Snug it under the suit harness. Kick free to fall onto the anchor boom. Arms and legs wrap around it, a fierce clench.

“Clear!”

Vapor from a thruster washes over me. The
Squid
rolls horribly, like a dead fish in an ocean swell. Another blast sends it spilling out of the canister, tumbling toward the surface and destruction. I feel stricken with loss, but Val had to do it, otherwise it might've crushed me rolling around in here.

Good-bye,
Squid.
A gray fog seems to hide it from view as a musty smell fills my suit, like in a cellar; moist and stale. Some kind of bellows puffs near me. It makes a desperate dragging, sucking sound. Someone should fix it so I can hear Val better. Or is that LunaCom?

“—coming too fast!”

“… rockets …”

“Pull up! Go long!”

“No … you won't get the kid in time.”

“… base … soft soil …”

“Kid?”

That's me. Val's talking to me. Wish he'd speak up.

“Stewart! Breathe slower. Stop gulping.”

The noise is me!

“Slow … slower … In. Now out,” Val urges. It's nice to obey him. The grayness clears away. My breathing quiets to soft puffs.

“I … feel … better …”

“Good. You have to work fast. We're going to hit very hard. Get into the shock webbing. Understand?”

The shock webbing hangs at the back of the canister. I focus on it through the pink mist of blood and spittle smearing my visor. I don't want to let go of the boom. “It's … so … far …”

“It's your only chance.”

I pull my interlocked fingers apart to let go of the boom. Sharp pain stabs between my shoulder blades.

“Secure?”

“Just … started …” Grab the first handhold. The next a foot away. Chest heaves. Nothing to breathe. Hurts. Better lie here … rest …

“Thirty seconds until impact.” Val's voice goes flat—calm and professional.

I reach. Another handhold. So many more to go … but then even this present peril cannot save me from the pull of the past …

“We can't confirm gear down!” Tower Control shouts, losing their cool for the only time in the crisis.

I know what that means—no wheels. Everyone else does, too. People start screaming.

“We've spread foam,” Tower Control says. “Good luck.”

“Crash procedures!” Commander Derrick bellows over the noise. Even though he can't see, his voice still snaps with the power of command.

It scares me. Scares the flight attendants, who hop to attention, call out, “Everyone—sit! Get pillows! Get buckled up!”

The attendants don't have to worry about me. I've been a good boy.

I hear the air rushing outside and the faint rumble of thrusters. I listen hard for each different pulse, because Mom is making that happen and the copilot, too, somewhere under the floor.

The seat kicks me. There's a great tear and roar and …

OnelastpullforMom.

Impact.

The shuttle compresses, then springs apart. Heat tiles shoot overhead like missiles. Great geysers flare up from the thrusters. The force of the crash drives me toward the deck. The webbing digs and claws and bites.

Smoke everywhere. People running. I run. Push them. Shove them. Everyone's trying to escape. Not me.

“Mom!”

I grab the emergency handle on the red cockpit door. Skin smokes. A smell like barbecue. Strong hands grab me. Pull me away. Fight them!

“Mom! Mom!”

I'm carried away from her, fast, faster …

“Mom! Mom!”

I call and call and call until there's no air left in my suit to scream with anymore.

22

MISSION TIME

T plus 51:32:22

MY eyes flutter against a harsh light.

A big room. Bare ceiling miles away. White, clean walls. I'm on my back. There's a small control panel on the wall behind my head. Everything's too neat. Too far away. I remember a smaller place, dim and comfortably crowded with old things. The noises are all wrong here. Sharp pulses and beeps and what's that? A sputtering, crackling sound like static, getting louder: rushing, now roaring—

DECOMPRESSION
!

“Val! Val!” My chin rubs against something smooth around my neck. “Val!”

“Shhh. Stewart. Shhh.”

Dad's voice. His face appears close above me, interrupting the light.

“Dad, oh Dad, he's dead.”

“Calm down, he's okay.” Dad sits on the edge of the bed. The room goes all angles as my body tilts toward him. But I can't
feel
the change. He lifts one of my hands into his, but he might as well be picking up a stick.

“I can't feel!”

Dad touches my cheek. “Feel that?”

I nod.

“You're in an Immobilizor. You broke your collarbone.” Dad traces a finger across the white yoke below my chin. The complete rig looks like a chest plate from a suit of medieval armor. “You're one big bruise from head to toe.”

But I'm alive! I strain to see the Immobilizor better. There's a big lump below my nose. Fat lip. If I'm this beat up … “What about Val?”

“Broke his arm falling to the lower deck.” The way Dad says it, you can hear the wish that it was worse. “He panicked and jumped straight from the pilot seat to the air lock to escape the decompression. The old fool forgot he was on the Moon.”

“Val didn't panic.” He rode it out until the last possible moment, then dove through the floor hatch to middeck, just like we'd done a hundred times during the trip. It's the fastest way. Just a little too fast with gravity helping.

Mom rode it out, but she had nowhere to jump. Something around my heart crumples. “All those years, Dad, I thought Mom had screwed up. But I understand now. She rode it out to save me.”

“Ohmygod!” Dad pulls back from me and looks across the room. “He's remembered!”

Someone else is here. I crane my head, catch a glimpse of shimmering light in the corner. Oh no!

“Hello, Stewart.” Mrs. Phillips's voice comes out of the shimmer. It approaches the bed.

“Get away! I won't let you make me forget again!”

But how can I stop them? They can do anything to me while I'm like this.

“Be calm, Stewart. I'm really me this time, not the Counselor.” The shimmer stops at the foot of the bed. It resolves into a hologram of Mrs. Phillips. On Earth, she's in a holochamber, navigating a virtual reality re-creation of this hospital room. “Please, don't worry. That will never be done to you again.”

“Is that true, Dad?” I look at him sitting beside me. He's slumped and far away, paying attention to some private thought. I haven't forgotten anything the Counselor said. Dad's the one who gave permission. “Dad? You're going to undo the mnemonic suppression, aren't you? I'll be able to do AstroNav, won't I?”

“That stupid AstroNav!” Dad jumps up from the bed and keeps going, crashes into the ceiling. The light panel thumps and clatters. For an instant, his feet dangle near my head, then he settles to the floor. Look who forgot about gravity! Moon gravity.

Dad curses, rubbing his head while digging into a pants pocket. He pulls out a piece of paper.

“It's all because of this, isn't it!” Dad waves the application to Space Academy Camp in my face. “Some crazy idea to bring it to me.”

“Your note with the 3-Vid, that pilot you met … you said I should stick to fantasies. I had to do something!”

“That's no excuse! How could you get into a rocket with that man!” There's venom in the way he says “that man.” He really does hate Val.

“I didn't know who he was.”

“Even worse! A drunk! A stranger! He almost killed you!”

My brain shrugs even if my shoulders won't. “The booster problem wasn't his fault.”

“You're protecting him?”

“He didn't do anything wrong.”

Dad stares at me. “He
kidnapped
you!”

“No he didn't.”

Mrs. Phillips comes around the bed. Stands between me and Dad, facing him. “Ted, this is not the approach we discussed.”

“You stay out of this. He needs to understand how dangerous that man is.” Dad steps right through her. “Why did you come to the Moon, Stewart?”

Dad's so wild. I can't imagine what he wants me to say. Out of all the reasons, I pick the one that drove me hardest. “To escape the Counselor.”

“Not this time. The trip with your mother. What were you doing here?”

“I thought it was my birthday trip, because I was six.”

“That was an excuse. You came because of that man! To help him hide his stuff from Alldrives. She set up a secret hideout on the dark side for him to use when he finally got back. Don't you understand, Stewart? He was still millions of miles away—months of travel still to go. But she got that secret message and jumped into action.
Anything
for Val Thorsten. If she'd listened to me, waited awhile, you would never have been on that shuttle. She'd be alive!”

Dad's words come like a dam burst and I'm left grasping at facts, trying to make sense of what he's said. I can't. Except one thing: there's a secret hideout somewhere that Val never used. Mom died before she could tell him about it.

“Val didn't make Mom come to the Moon, you just said it yourself. It was her decision. It's crazy to blame him.” I look past Dad to Mrs. Phillips for help. “Isn't it?”

She stands frozen, observing Dad. The sight jolts me. Dad's her client, too. She isn't here just for me. She says, “This is completely unconstructive. Forget Val for now, Ted. Talk to Stewart. Tell him.”

Her words scare me. I thought I'd remembered the worst already. “Tell me what?”

Dad clams up, turns his back to us.

Mrs. Phillips walks through Dad and comes to stand on the opposite side of my bed.

“I'm sorry I hurt you and then ran away.”

“You were understandably distraught.” She casts a glance over to Dad, then looks down at me with sad, tired eyes. “Many mistakes have been made recently. Ted, please, speak of Margaret. It's time.”

Dad turns. His cheeks are moist with tears. “All these years, I've wanted to tell you so many things, Stewart, but I—”

“Wait. You
wanted
to tell me things? I thought you wanted me to forget!”

Dad sniffs and wipes his tears away with the back of his hand. He bows his head. “You wouldn't heal. You were … stuck … in the accident. Mark and I, we couldn't put your mother to rest.”

“I don't remember any of that. I remember someone pulling me away from the cockpit. I remember screaming for Mom. When I try to look forward from that moment, nothing comes.”

Mrs. Phillips says, “We will … fix that. Recovery of all your memories will not be entirely pleasant. But the good will return with the bad.”

“I'm not afraid. You've got to hang on to memories even if they hurt.”

“But that's how we lost you, Stewart!” Dad says. “You kept reliving the accident. Over and over again. It was horrible.”

“Out there with Val … when he drank, he remembered all the bad stuff. He went on and on. I just wanted him to shut up. Was it like that for you and Mark?”

Dad bites his lower lip. Nods, then looks away. “We wanted to be able to live a normal life. The price to help you this way was high. We had to move. We stuck to the false stories so we wouldn't trigger your memories. Some of the real Margaret … faded with the pretending. But you lost the most.”

“So it's true. The Counselor took away my memory.”