Girl on the Moon (35 page)

The feed’s coverage ended, as did the inmates’ privilege of using the common room to watch. The next day, and for several days after, Conn was invited to watch the Saturn coverage with the warden in her office. The warden was sympathetic to Conn’s plight and acknowledged Conn’s role in planning and executing the Saturn mission. Conn was so grateful, she could barely express it.

Seven days after Conn first saw Saturn in the common room, she was brought to the warden’s office where the
NewsAmerica
Saturn mission feed was playing. The astronauts had landed on Tethys and emerged from their spacecraft.

The feed was showing Grant’s helmet cam. The vid stuttered along an icy surface, with pressure suit arms visible. Grant was dragging himself. Where? Back to their spacecraft, most likely. He was
crawling
. Something catastrophic had happened. Conn’s heart was hammering. She wanted to scream. Grant might already be dead, and Conn wouldn’t know it for an hour and a half.

Conn’s mind reeled. She was utterly powerless. She knew how Peo must have felt when Conn had been stranded on the moon.

The feed reader recapped events so far: The three astronauts landed on Tethys, three hours earlier than originally scheduled. (Conn, unbidden, thought about what poor PR management that was.) All three emerged onto the surface as planned and began their initial reconnaissance. At two hundred fifty meters out—a quarter of a kilometer—one of the male astronauts had time to say, “Brownsville, is this one of your—” before the three were crushed.

Crushed
was the word Dyna-Tech used to describe what happened—they had been crushed like aluminum cans. Grant reported that he had survived only because he had crouched at the last second. Dyna-Tech had released the footage of Grant alive and struggling—at least that probably meant they weren’t about to see him die. Dyna-Tech wouldn’t show that to the world.

In a ragged, panting voice, he described his injuries: his femurs felt like they had separated from his tibiae and fibulae at the knee, his ribs were broken, he had internal injuries he could only guess, his air was leaking, and he could barely see for some dark liquid in his eye that he assumed was blood. Now he was attempting to drag himself back to the spacecraft, which he would then have to seal and pressurize, and get his pressure suit helmet off, before he could evaluate or attempt to treat himself.

Grant had been crawling for at least fifteen minutes.

Conn’s eyes were flowing with tears as she listened to the feed reader’s commentary over a continuous loop of Grant dragging himself along the surface of an alien world. They couldn’t get anybody at Dyna-Tech to talk live on the feed—
good
, Conn thought. She was at once angry and thankful that Dyna-Tech had released this footage in the first place. Even as dire as Grant’s situation was, it gave Conn hope to see him alive. She prayed Dyna-Tech had the discretion not to release the footage of the astronauts getting killed to the public.

She watched the loop of Grant crawling for another half an hour. Then she had to go back to her cell. She protested, begging to be allowed to stay, but it wasn’t possible. A clearly sympathetic warden said her hands were tied, and promised that if anything happened she would let Conn know.

Back in her cell, the rage, fear, guilt, and grief she felt overwhelmed her. She had sent Callie Leporis and Al Claussen to their deaths. Maybe Grant to his. And Grant was suffering much more than the other two had. She remembered every harsh word she’d said to him, every callous thought she’d had.

She would never get to take it all back.

With a heartbreaking keen, she began to cry. She cried for hours.

April 18, 2036

Conn’s eyes were red and raw, and stung in the dry air of her cell. It had been a long night. Dyna-Tech reported that Grant made it to the spacecraft, sealed it, pressurized it, and removed his helmet.

But there would be no happy ending to this story. Grant was still alive, but for how long, no one was willing to speculate. It might have been better for him to die instantly, as Al Claussen and Callie Leporis had.

The world was on a death watch, as surely as Conn had been for Peo the night Peo died. Conn’s innermost heart had convinced her then that Peo would wake up and get better. There was no convincing any part of her now that Grant could survive.

For the time being, it was reported that he was in and out of consciousness, any movement an ordeal. That meant he could barely evaluate his injuries, let alone properly treat them. If he was capable of so much as stabilizing himself, he would then have to summon the strength to lift off from Tethys and set a course for home, precise work meant to be done by three astronauts, as seriously injured as he was. Then he would have to survive without medical attention for more than two years.

A guard came to her cell to get her to authorize a waiting visitor from Dyna-Tech. That seemed highly unusual—Conn would have thought that adding somebody to the short approved visitor’s list would take a week’s worth of paperwork. Conn didn’t recognize his name, Tip Gerniss, or his picture. Whoever he was, he’d convinced the warden that it was extremely urgent that he see Conn.

A guard brought her out to the visiting area, where inmates could sit opposite a visitor with a glass partition between them, and talk to them via a personal intercom unit. She didn’t recognize Tip Gerniss. He had a chubby face with narrow eyes and lips that looked pursed when they probably weren’t, all under a shaggy mat of dark hair. Her heart, unbidden, had a surge of hope—she had been terrified the visitor was bringing bad news about Grant. But surely Skylar Reece or Hunter Valence or somebody she knew would have come to deliver that awful news.

“You do not know me,” the man said.

“No...” Conn said.

“Conn, you are so much brighter than this.
Tip Gerniss.
It’s an anagram for—”

“Persisting!” she whispered. She was inexplicably flooded with relief.

“I thought about calling myself Buzz Aldrin, but I worried that someone here might know who that was.”

“Fifty-fifty. Why are you here? You’ve seen the feeds, about the Saturn mission?”

“We have,” Persisting said. “Your astronaut said, ‘Brownsville, is this one of your...’ What would have been the next word do you think?”

“I have no idea.”

“Let me suggest
aliens.
Or
Pelorians
.” Persisting said. “I fear we must proceed as though the worst has happened.”

“Of course the worst has happened. Those astronauts, out there—”

“Were likely killed by the Aphelials,” Persisting said. At her look of confusion, he added, “There is no direct translation in English. Now, we must remove you from this place. The survival of humankind may depend on it.”

“They won’t let me leave.”

“Can we ask somebody?”

“Can we ask
—
” Conn said sarcastically, but Persisting talked over her.

“The warden,” he said, “seems reasonable. Perhaps you should ask her.”

Conn was confused, but if Persisting could somehow get her out of this place, maybe she could help Grant somehow.

Two and a half hours later, Conn was in Warden Kohler’s office. Asking. Conn acted like she knew exactly what the threat from the Aphelials was, and there was no time to waste explaining.

“I’ve got two dozen inmates like you,” Kohler said, “here for supposed treason for being pro-Pelorian. Not one has been charged, not one is likely to see the light of day anytime soon. This isn’t the country I was raised in. No, wait—yes, it is. It’s not the country my grandmother was raised in. The country it’s supposed to be.” The warden rose and plucked a set of “court clothes” off the hook of the back of her office door—business attire for testifying in court or a similar official errand. She handed them to Conn.

“If you need to go save the world, go with my good wishes. You’ll be identified as escaped within the next couple hours or less, so if you have some kind of zoomy-zoom spaceship or something, now would be a good time to use it.” The warden checked the visitor log. “Your lawyer is here. Visiting someone else, but she’s here. She’ll do,” she said.

She escorted Conn out to the visitor’s area. Conn, as instructed, signed out as Hannah Ryan. The guard that buzzed them out was paying more attention to the warden glowering at him than he was to “Hannah Ryan.” The warden looked on sadly as the door closed behind them.

“You made it out,” Persisting said.

“I asked. Did you do something to her?”

“What do you mean?”

“To the warden. Did you, I don’t know, do some kind of mind trick—”

Persisting’s avatar chuckled. “I should be flattered by how powerful you always seem to think my mind is.”

“That’s not an answer. Never mind. Can we save Grant?”

“I don’t think we should spend energy trying to—”

“We’re going to Tethys and we’re getting him. Don’t you want a first-person account of what happened? Our fifth-dimensional spacecraft isn’t ready yet, but you have God only knows how many. Have them all calculate a fifth-dimensional course for Tethys. We’ll take the one that comes up under three—no, two days.”

“It’s statistically unlikely—”

“Yes, saving Grant is statistically unlikely. Just do it, Persisting. Please.”

The avatar drove them north and west toward San Francisco Bay. As it did so, Persisting was contacting Wrangel Island and the fortress on the moon with what looked like the Pelorian equivalent of Wear. Conn opened her window and stuck her face out far enough to feel the wind as it went by.

After at least twenty minutes, the avatar said, “OK. We have at least a hundred spacecraft calculating a course to Tethys. I had to do some persuading—evidently, there are those among my people that don’t like having war declared against them.” The avatar glanced sidelong at Conn.

“This is perfect PR,” Conn said, eyes shut against the breeze. “This will prove you have a benevolent intent.” She straightened and looked at the avatar. “You have a benevolent intent, don’t you?”

“We have never had anything but. I am concerned that this attempt to save your astronaut will distract you from the far more important issue: the Aphelials may be here, in your solar system already.”

“Tell me about them.”

“They seek out spacefaring races and eradicate them.”

“Eradicate?”

“Arrange matters, by force, so that they are no longer spacefaring.”

“I’d hardly call us spacefaring.”

“You’re close enough.”

“Why?” Conn asked. “Why do they want to get rid of other spacefaring races?”

“For the same reason King Herod slaughtered the innocents. You can see, can’t you? No species will challenge the Aphelials for supremacy if none of them can so much as get off their own planet.”

“You think the Aphelials are already here...based on what? What happened to the Saturn crew?”

“The Aphelials have a technology that you might characterize as a ‘gravity burst.’ They have developed a low-power, portable way to manipulate fifth dimensional tensors, effectively tricking third dimensional space into acting like there is a massive object nearby. It weaponizes the force of gravity. From your feeds, I suspect your Saturn crew encountered this.”

“You don’t need a massive object to have gravity?”

“You do,” Persisting said. “They don’t anymore.”

“We could find out for sure if we could get to Brownsville. Or, wait. Our headquarters here! Brownsville would be able to show us Al and Callie’s helmet cams there.”

“Even the parts they didn’t release to the public?”

“They’ll show me what I tell them to show me.”

“You speak of it as though you still own the company, Conn. My information is otherwise.”

“It doesn’t matter. If we can help Grant, it won’t matter,” Conn said, as much to herself as to Persisting.

April 18, 2036

As they approached the entrance to Dyna-Tech headquarters, Conn asked, “Will your ID work to swipe us through?”

“It may.”

Conn was impressed. “How do you forge this stuff so completely?”

“I didn’t forge it,” Persisting said, his avatar brandishing the Dyna-Tech ID badge. “I stole it. When I came here looking for a way to get to see you.”

“Well then it might not work!” Conn said. “If it was reported stolen—”

“Then you must sign in and call somebody to escort you upstairs. Surely there are dozens of people who know you here.”

“What about you?”

“If I cannot sign in, I will wait. You will return and tell me what the vids show, and I will tell you if the crew was attacked by Aphelials.”

Yongpo was delighted to come down and escort Conn upstairs. She signed in as Hannah Ryan, using Ryan’s driver’s license that had been “returned” to her when she left the prison. She had made no effort to disguise herself, but she looked sickly pale and had probably lost ten pounds. She hoped that was enough to prevent anyone from recognizing her.

As Yongpo approached, Conn gave him a surreptitious
shush
gesture—it wouldn’t do to have him shout her name and ask her how she got out of jail. In the elevator, she caught him up.

“I’ve got to see Al’s and Callie’s helmet cam feeds,” she told him. “I’m going to get Grant one way or the other, but Persisting wants to know if these Aphelials attacked them.”

“And if they did?” They emerged onto the eighteenth floor.

Conn’s voice rose: “I don’t know. Then we’re all in deep shit!” She looked around; several faces were looking at them from their cubicles. “Sorry,” she stage-whispered.

They arrived at Yongpo’s cube. Conn cued his desk fone. “Operations Center, Brownsville,” she said.

Sandy Kearns appeared on the screen. “Conn? Is that you?”

“Sandy,” Conn said, “I want to see what Al’s and Callie’s helmet cams recorded right before they died.”

“Oh my God,” Kearns said. “It’s awful.”

“Show me,” Conn said.

Sandy looked conflicted. Conn couldn’t tell whether she was hesitating to show what Al and Callie saw because it was so terrible, or whether she was working out how to deal with Conn—who, after all, wasn’t the owner of the company anymore. Sandy frowned and typed away at something. Conn hoped she wasn’t asking someone else what she should do. There wasn’t time.