The blowout rattled us, but good. It took awhile for everyone to get over our close escape. Once Gordie put us back on course, though, things calmed down a bit. Then we had to deal with a two-and-a-half-day ride to the Moon.
Imagine being stuck in a metal can about the size of a small bus with six other people just as bored and restless as you are. And that's just the half of it.
For one thing, there's problems with being weightless that you don't often hear about. Because gravity no longer draws your bodily fluids toward your feet, everything rises upward. So you're constantly congested, feeling as if you have a head cold that won't go away. You lose your sense of smell--which was probably for the better, since the head wasn't equipped with a shower stall and we had to clean ourselves as best we could with disinfectant tissues--and also your sense of taste, which was no loss either because our meals came from tubes or plastic wrappers. It was supposed to be beef, chicken, or seafood but only tasted like slightly different flavors of cardboard. Swallowing was difficult at first; it took a deliberate mental effort to choke down whatever was in my mouth. At least I was able to eat; Melissa and Nina were spacesick for the first day or so, and even Logan had moments when it looked as if he was about to barf. Eddie, though, had the appetite of a goat, and he claimed to love the food.
The head was...well, unpleasant. About the size of a small closet, it contained a toilet that consisted of a seat mounted above a hole equipped with a built-in pneumatic suction device. Once you've closed the accordion door, you use wall rungs to turn yourself around until you're in the right position, then strap yourself down with a seat belt. Taking a piss is easy; there's a tube with a unisex cup that you attach to yourself, and all you have to do is let go; the suction pulls your urine away from you and into the septic tank below the toilet.
The other part is a bit more tricky. In theory, the suction is also supposed to remove your feces, but sometimes it doesn't work that way; on occasion it...um, gets stuck. When that happens, there's a wall dispenser from which you pull a plastic glove. You put it on, reach down behind yourself, and finish the job the hard way. I'll spare you the details; they're pretty gross.
Strangely, the only one who didn't have any real problems was Eduardo. After Gordie instructed us how to use the head, Eddie alone got it right the first time and every time after that. Melissa had fits every time she had to use the head, though, and after one really bad accident she had to clean up the mess she'd made.
But we still managed to have fun. Once we folded down the couches, the amount of room doubled. Since we no longer had to worry about the couches or which side was up and which side was down, the LTV became our own little zero-g gym. We could do somersaults and cartwheels that had us spinning from one side of the cabin to the other. I'd never been able to take up diving when I was on the swim team--my bones were too fragile--but I would have won a dozen gold medals from the full-gainers I suddenly found myself able to do. Our first big workout had us bouncing off the walls, laughing like crazy even though we frequently collided with one another. Even Hannah joined the fun for a few minutes, until she sailed into the cockpit and nearly slammed into an instrument panel. After that Gordie lay down some ground rules: no more than two kids could play at a time, and the cockpit was strictly off-limits.
Most of the time, though, we lay in the hammocks Gordie helped us string across the cabin. We'd read or watch movies, but that got to be dull after awhile; I had some novels and vids stored in my pad, but the ones Gordie had aboard were mostly loaded with tech manuals or 20th-century comedies that none of us really liked. We'd sleep, even though it was almost pointless; in zero-g our bodies didn't require as much rest as they did on Earth, so our naps would last only a few hours.
So we spent a lot of time talking. Or at least Logan, Melissa, and I did. Conversations with Eddie were pleasant, and he was really nice once we got to know him better, but it was a little hard to have a meaningful chat with someone who had the mind of a second-grader. Nina was smart as hell, but she didn't seem to like us very much. Melissa was always on the verge of making fun of Eddie, and even after I told MeeMee to knock it off, Nina was constantly defensive of her brother.
As for Hannah...she remained a mystery, quiet, and reserved, only rarely smiling. She avoided both Melissa and Nina, and had as little to do with Logan or me as she could. Yet it seemed that, whenever I looked her way, our eyes would meet for a second and I'd find a warmth there which was both attractive and unsettling. She probably thought that I saved her life, and she may have been right. All I knew was that I wanted to dislike her...but how can you hate the first girl who's ever paid attention to you?
Nonetheless, she was keeping something bottled up inside. At one point, she went to the head and didn't come out for two hours; behind the door, we could hear her crying. She wouldn't tell us what was wrong, though, and no one could get through the wall she'd built up around her.
We were about halfway to the Moon when Gordie made good his promise about showing me how to fly an LTV. At first I was reluctant; after all, the promise had been made while he'd been trying to calm me down. Besides, I had no ambition to become a spacecraft pilot. But Gordie insisted, and I was bored, so while the others slept I went forward to the cockpit, where Gordie had me take his place in the pilot's seat while he hovered behind me.
The flight profile called for a mid-course correction, a routine procedure that has to be done two or three times between Earth and the Moon. In this instance, that entailed firing the reaction-control rockets and main engine in just the right order to keep us on the proper trajectory. "The autopilot can do this on its own," Gordie said, "but no self-respecting pilot lets a computer do a man's job."
Well...not exactly. The computer did most of the work, really. Once I was strapped in, Gordie had me take hold of the pistol-grip hand controller, then pointed to the two small screens directly in front of me. The screen on the left displayed a crosshatch with a tiny square in its middle and a tiny four-pointed diamond just to the right of it; the screen on the right displayed several vertical red and blue bars signifying the LTV's present speed, change of velocity (or delta-V), and rate of fuel consumption. All I had to do was use the hand controller to move the diamond into the middle of the square, and then squeeze the controller's trigger to ignite the main engine.
It seemed simple enough, but getting the diamond into position was harder than it appeared, particularly since it twitched with the slightest move I made. I chewed on my lower lip as I carefully slid the diamond into the square, trying not let it move too far away from the center of the screen. I finally managed to get it there, though, and squeezed the trigger the instant it was lined up. A soft rumble from behind us as the main engine fired, and for a second or two I felt myself being gently pushed back into my seat. I watched the left screen as the little red bar of the fuel gauge inched downward as the little blue bar of the delta-V indicator crept upward. When they met the hash-marks on the side of the screen, I released the trigger.
"And there we go." Gordie reached past me to snap a couple of toggle switches on the dashboard. "Locked and set. Nice work, kiddo. Couldn't have done better myself."
"Yeah, right." Although I was relieved that I hadn't put us on course for the Sun, I thought he was being patronizing.
"Don't believe me? Look for yourself." He pointed toward the window above the dashboard, which he'd told me to ignore while I was watching the screens.
I felt my breath catch in my throat. The last time I'd seen the Moon, it was on the right side of the window. Now it appeared to be almost directly before us. Not only that, but it was many times larger than I'd ever seen it before; it filled the window, sunlight casting dark shadows from its distinct mountains and craters. No longer a small orb in the sky, the Moon had become a vast world toward which our tiny craft was falling.
"You're almost home," Gordie murmured.
Despite the amazing beauty of what I saw, I looked away from the window. "That's not my home. I've never been there before."
"You were born there, weren't you?"
"Yeah, but..."
"Then you're a loony, true blue."
"Sorry, but you're wrong. I grew up in Maryland, not..." I nodded toward the window. "I know nothing about the Moon other than that's where I was born."
Gordie was quiet for a few moments. Thinking that he wanted his seat again, I unbuckled the harness and carefully pushed myself out of it. He took my place without a word, but as I was about to leave the cockpit he looked back at me. "How did that happen, anyway? I mean, being born on the Moon but winding up on Earth."
I'd been asked that question so many times that I'd come up with a pat reply: just worked out that way, I guess. But his interest seemed to be genuine, and considering what he'd done to help me escape the feds, I figured that he deserved an explanation. I grabbed hold of a bulkhead rung and turned toward him again.
"It's a long story..." I began.
"We got plenty of time." He glanced over his shoulder to make sure the others were still asleep, then lowered his voice. "Really. I'd like to hear it."
I hesitated, then went on. "I was born on the Moon, yeah, but it was kind of an accident. I was conceived on Earth, but my mother didn't know she was pregnant until she and Dad went to the Moon."
"Really?" Gordie raised an eyebrow. "She...um, forgive me for saying this, but she must not have been paying a lot of attention."
"Yeah, well...from what I've been told, I guess she was sort of an egghead, kind of like Dad. She'd already had Melissa and Jan, but they were still very little when Dad asked her to come along with him for a three-month stay on the Moon. Apollo was under construction then, and the ISC wanted him up there to help work out the details of the mining operations. And since Mom was a botanist, she could advise them on what sort of crops they'd need to grow for food and air. So they had friends look after my sisters while they went to the Moon, but it wasn't until they'd been there a few weeks that she discovered that she was pregnant."
"And she didn't go home?"
I shook my head. "By then she was well into her first trimester, and the doctors were unsure of how one-sixth gravity would affect my development. There'd been plenty of kids born on the Moon, but they'd never had a case like this before, where a woman is made pregnant on Earth but gives birth up there. The sonograms showed a normal fetus, but no one really knew how I'd turn out. So Mom and Dad talked it over, and in the end they decided that she'd stay on the Moon. If I had LBDS...which seemed pretty likely...she and I would remain in Apollo while Dad went home to pick up Jan and Melissa and sell the house."
"So your whole family was going to relocate to the Moon?"
"That was the plan, yeah." I nodded. "ISC offered Dad a permanent position as assistant general manager and Mom would've had a job in the life support division. They were still living in temporary quarters...one of the inflatable habs...but as soon as Apollo was finished, we would've moved into an apartment that had already been reserved for us. So they had everything figured out. And then..."
My voice trailed off, as it always did when I got to this part of the story. Which was why I usually avoided telling it. "Your mother was killed," Gordie said quietly.
"Yeah." I coughed to clear my throat. "I was about six weeks old when it happened. Mom and I were in the hab when some idiot outside who was messing around with a rover lost control of it. It crashed into the hab and broke the window of the room we were in. The inside doors started to shut, which is what I guess they're supposed to do when there's a blowout like that, and it happened so fast that Mom couldn't make it. But she had just enough time to throw me to someone who was standing just outside before the doors shut, and...well, that was it. She gave up her life to save mine."
"Damn." Gordie had a look on his face that I knew well: he didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry, Jamey. That's tough."
I had no memory of what had happened--hell, I didn't even know my mother--so all I could do was shrug. "Anyway, Dad hadn't yet gone back home to fetch my sisters, and after Mom died...well, that sort of took the wind out of the whole idea of moving my family to Apollo. By then it was clear that I had LBDS and that I'd never be able to walk on my own if I went to Earth, but Dad just didn't want to stay on the Moon. Fortunately, the doctors told him that I was healthy enough to survive the trip, so a couple of weeks later he took me...well, home."
"Uh-huh." Gordie was quiet for a few moments as he gazed out the cockpit window at the immense silver-grey sphere looming before us. "And you've never thought about coming back here? Until now, I mean?"
"No. Why would I?"
"Because you're a loony, that's why." A faint smile. "Maybe that's not how you think of yourself, but you should have seen the look on your face when you got up from your cocoon yesterday." He nodded toward the Moon. "That's your home, kiddo. Earth is just the place where you've been staying."
He was wrong, of course. I'd already pegged him as a hard-core space cadet, though, so I wasn't about to argue with him. "Whatever you say," I murmured. "I just know that Jan should have been aboard the shuttle when we took off. If it hadn't been for Hannah..."
"Leave her alone." Gordie's expression changed; a frown replaced the sympathetic smile. "There's a good reason for her to be here, and your sister did a very brave thing to give up her seat for her." He turned toward the console. "Don't let her sacrifice be for nothing."
I stared at him. "What are you...?"
"Hey, look, I've got work to do." Gordie tapped his fingers against the keypad; diagrams and figures appeared on the right-hand screen. "Go grab a nap, okay?"
He clearly didn't want to talk anymore, so I left the cockpit and floated back into the passenger compartment. As I pulled myself toward my hammock, I moved past the other kids. Everyone else was still asleep, or at least so I thought until I passed Hannah. When I happened to look her way, I caught a glimpse of her face just in time to see her close her eyes.
She had been awake and listening to us.
The next day, we reached the Moon.
Just before the LTV began its primary approach, Gordie had us take down the hammocks and stow them away. We didn't unfold the seats, but instead held onto the ceiling rail. As he strapped himself into the cockpit seat, I positioned myself behind him so I could watch over his shoulder. I'd enjoyed my little taste of what it was like to fly a spacecraft, so it was interesting to watch a pro at work.
Gordie began by firing the reaction control rockets to make a 180 degree roll, turning the LTV end over end until it was traveling backward. That done, he fired the main engine in a succession of controlled bursts to gradually decelerate the craft, while at the same time coaxing the RCRs so that the LTV was on the correct trajectory for low-orbit insertion. Every time he did this, my body swung away from me as if I was a pendulum; my firm grip on the ceiling rail was all that kept me from sailing into the cockpit.
Gordie kept this up for about a half-hour or so until the LTV shed its velocity, then he rolled the craft again, bringing it back around until its bow once more pointed in the right direction. "Okay, you can let go now," he called back to us. "Take a look out the windows. You'll love it."
Logan and Eddie were on the port side, where the passenger windows faced away from the Moon. They immediately pushed themselves over to the starboard side, crowding in next to Melissa and Nina so that they could peer through the oval portholes as well. I barely noticed that Hannah had come up beside me until she grasped my shoulder. Maybe she'd only done this to steady herself, but I couldn't help but notice how close she was. I tried to ignore her--it wasn't easy, but I did my best--as we stared at what lay on the other side of the thick glass.
Until then, we'd seen the Moon only through the cockpit window, and then as a distant sphere that gradually became larger over the course of three long, boring days. Now, all of a sudden, it seemed as if it had become a vast, grey shield, so close that we could almost reach out and touch it.
We'd left Earth on the first night of a full moon. Three days later, the Sun still shined brightly upon the side of the Moon which always faced Earth, but the first thin shadows of the approaching two-week night were beginning to appear upon the mottled terrain slowly moving beneath us. The shadows cast in relief the lunar highlands, the dark grey lowlands of the maria, the dead volcanoes and impact craters scattered randomly across wastelands of rock and dust.
"Wow." Hannah's voice was an awestruck whisper. Her face was close to mine, and when I looked at her, I saw that her eyes were almost as wide as my own. "Just...wow."
"Yeah." My mouth was dry. "We're here. We're really here."
"Altitude 62.13 miles," Gordie said from the cockpit. "You should be able to see the Ptolemaeus crater coming up just about now. That's where Apollo is located."
A couple of seconds later, I spotted a cluster of tiny lights glimmering within a circular depression at the western edge of the highlands just south of the equator. The lights moved away too quickly for me to make out any details, but I knew I'd just had my first glimpse of our destination.
"Hey!" Melissa yelled from the other end of the passenger compartment. "We're going past it! Aren't we supposed to stay here until...y'know, someone picks us up?"
"We need to orbit the Moon first." Logan was hovering beside her. "Hohmann transfer orbit...right, Gordie?"
"Give the kid a star." Gordie sounded pleased with him. "Yeah, we have to swing around the far side and come back around before the ferry can rendezvous with us."
Apollo had already disappeared from sight; the LTV was moving across one of the darkened regions that people once thought were oceans before modern astronomers learned better. "Mare Nubium," Gordie said when I asked him which one this was. "The Sea of Clouds. That's where ISC has its regolith fields. If you look sharp, you might be able to see them from here."
Peering closer, I was able to make out a series of parallel strips running diagonally across the mare west of Ptolemaeus. Although obviously man-made, it was hard to believe that they were the principal source of Earth's energy reserves.
It took about an hour for the LTV to circle the Moon. We quietly gazed out the portholes as our craft's tiny shadow flitted across the vast expanse of Ocean Procellarum, the Ocean of Storms, until it reached cratered badlands east of the D'Alembert Mountains. Just beyond its peaks lay the point beyond which the lunar farside was invisible from Earth. We passed into night shortly after crossing the termination line, and suddenly the Moon was shrouded in darkness, save for a small cruciform of light in the middle of Mare Muscoviense that marked the location of the Lunar Radio Observatory. We had just crowded forward to peer over Gordie's shoulder and watch Earth rise over the limb of the Moon when the pilot clasped a hand to his headset.
"Pipe down," he murmured, then listened for a few moments before tapping his mike wand. "We copy, Cernan. LTV Six-Two on course for rendezvous and docking. See you in a few minutes. Over." Gordie reached forward to disengage the autopilot. "You kids need to go back now. We're on the beam for meeting up with our ferry, the Eugene Cernan."
"We don't need to raise the seats, do we?" I asked.
"No, not at all." Gordie grasped the hand controller. "Just hang tight and...um, stay out of the way when the Rangers come aboard."
The LTV was above Mare Undarum, the Sea of Waves, when the Cernan came into view. The ferry looked like little more than a toy at first, but it quickly grew in size, gaining detail as it came closer. Larger than the LTV, it had an octagonal lower hull from which four multijointed legs protruded around the bell-like nozzle of its nuclear main engine. Mounted atop the lower hull, two drum-shaped passenger modules rested lengthwise within their cradles; between them rose the turret of the command module, its bridge lined with windows. A flanged docking collar was affixed to its top like a weird beanie cap; radar dishes, oxygen tanks, and RCR pods stuck out at odd angles from every remaining space.
The Cernan slowly glided closer, its thrusters flaring now and then as its pilots corrected course. Through the bridge windows, I spotted two crewmen seated on either side of the cockpit, occasionally glancing up to see what we were doing. Gordie was just as busy as they were; constantly muttering into his headset, he guided the LTV in a delicate docking maneuver that brought its dorsal hatch into alignment with the ferry's docking collar. It seemed to take forever, but finally there was a jar and a thump as the collar's flanges grabbed hold of the LTV's dorsal hatch.
"Docking complete, Cernan." Gordie reached up to snap a row of toggle switches. "Putting all systems on standby, waiting for your entry."
One by one, the dashboard lights went out. Gordie re-engaged the autopilot, then unbuckled his harness and pulled himself out of the cockpit. Floating over to the ceiling hatch, he unlatched a recessed bar and cranked it up and down several times, pumping air into the collar. He waited until the light next to it changed from red to green, then banged his fist twice against the inside of the hatch. A minute passed, then two knocks answered him from the other side.
"Stand clear," he said as he reached up to turn the lockwheel counterclockwise. The hatch opened from the inside and Gordie peered through it. "Hey, look who's here...my favorite Ranger!"
"Hi, Gordie!" The voice that came down the hatch was young, enthusiastic, and female. "Long time, no see. Permission to board?"
"Of course...you have to ask?" Gordie pulled himself away from the hatch. "C'mon in. Meet my friends."
A couple of soft bumping sounds, then a girl came head-first through the tunnel formed by the two docked spacecraft. She wore what I'd later learn was called a skinsuit--a form-fitting pressure suit designed for short-term use in orbital conditions, and therefore not as heavy as lunar gear--which showed off a slender figure.
She wasn't wearing a helmet, so the first thing I noticed was her hair: a thin, blonde strip that ran from the top of her forehead back to the nape of her neck, with nothing but bare skin on either side. I'd seen mohawks before, but never on a girl. She was also tall; easily six feet, with maybe an inch or two to spare. At first I thought she was a full-grown woman, but when she turned toward us, I realized that she wasn't any older than Melissa, Logan, or me. And there was a small tattoo on her cheek: a crescent moon framed by a pair of angel's wings, identical to a mission patch sewn on the skinsuit's right shoulder.
Our eyes met, and I felt my heart skip a beat. Mohawk and tattoo notwithstanding, she was one of the prettiest girls I'd ever seen. She smiled back at me, amusement glittering in her pale green eyes.
"What's the matter?" she asked. "Never met a loony before?"
Before I could manage a reply, another voice came through the tunnel. "Clear hatch...I'm coming through."
The girl didn't respond, but instead grabbed hold of the ceiling rail and pulled herself further into the cabin. I tried to make room for her, but my legs drifted upward and got in her way. Her smile faded a little as she pushed me aside. "Guess not," she murmured, answering her own question.
"Allow me to introduce you." Gordie turned toward me and the others. "This is Nicole Doyle, Ranger Second Class, Lunar Search and Rescue." Nicole nodded as he pointed to each of his passengers in turn. "This is Jamey...that's his sister Melissa...over there are Eduardo and Nina, also brother and sister...and that's Logan...and this is Hannah."
Gordie was still naming us when another kid in a skinsuit came through the hatch. He was about the same age as Nicole and also about the same height; his dark hair was cut in an absurd bowl that lacked sideburns and had only a fuzzy fringe at the nape of his neck. He also had the winged moon symbol tattooed above his right eye. No welcoming smile, though. Instead, he regarded us as if he'd just come aboard the LTV and found it filled with rats.
"Great...just excellent." There was no pleasure in his voice as he turned to Gordie. "This is what you've brought us?"
"Billy..." Nicole glared at him.
"William Tate, Ranger Third Class..." Gordie began.
"Second Class." Billy gave Gordie a sour look. "Promoted last month."
"Oh, really? Finally managed to complete your walkabout, did you? Your second try, or your third?"
Billy's face went red, and Eddie laughed out loud even though he couldn't have possibly known what Gordie was talking about any more than I did. Billy's hostile glare told me that he'd just marked Eddie; I'd seen that sort of look before, usually from bullies.
"Glad to meet all of you." Nicole's smile returned; forced, perhaps, but nonetheless it could have thawed an ice cube. She looked at Gordie. "Are you ready?"
Gordie nodded, and I glanced at the hatch. "Are we going to need to put on suits?" I asked.
Yeah, it was a dumb question. I should have known better. Nicole only shook her head, but Billy wasn't nearly as forgiving. "You kidding?" he asked, his mouth curling into a sneer. "You'll never wear a suit...you're too retarded."
The cabin temperature seemed to drop ten degrees, the abrupt silence broken only by Nina's angry hiss. I didn't respond, but only because anything I might have said would have insulted Eddie. But just as Billy had marked me, I marked him.
That's one I owe you, pal, I thought.
Gordie coughed into his fist. "Anyway...let's get aboard the ferry before we lose our landing window. If you will follow me..."
Without another word, he reached into a ceiling net and retrieved his duffel bag, then pulled himself through the hatch. Billy followed him, but Nicole stayed behind to help the passengers. Although I was the closest to the hatch, I lingered in the LTV after I pulled down my bag, letting the others go first. I told myself that I was being courteous, but the truth of the matter was that I wanted to stay with Nicole. Melissa must have figured this out, because she smirked and rolled her eyes as she moved past me. Hannah gave me a sour look, but didn't say anything.
With Nicole bringing up the rear, I pushed myself through the docking collar into the ferry cockpit. Two pilots were seated at wraparound consoles on either side of a floor hatch. The pilot barely looked up at me as I came aboard. "Go on through," he said, waving me to the hatch. "Nicole, close up behind you."
"Aye, skipper." She turned to swing shut the LTV hatch. I pushed myself across the compartment until I was through the floor hatch. On the other side was a vertical access shaft, its walls lined with rungs, leading straight down the center of the turret. At the bottom were two horizontal hatches, one on either side of the shaft. Gordie was hovering in the hatchway of the one to the left, and I saw Billy's legs disappear through the hatch of one to the right.
"In here, Jamey," Gordie said, and I was only too happy to obey; I didn't want to have to ride down with Billy. I followed Gordie through the hatch and found myself in one of the ferry's two passenger modules. Its five fold-down seats were similar to the LTV's; not nearly as well-cushioned, but at least they were equipped with safety harnesses. They faced a pair of rectangular portholes. Nina and Eddie were already strapped in, their bags tucked into ceiling nets above their heads, when I took the seat next to them. Gordie put away his bag and mine, then waited at the hatch, and a minute later Nicole entered the module.
"Saved a place for you, kiddo." Gordie waved her to the seat on the other side of mine. "Did you button up the LTV?"
"Of course." Nicole pulled herself into the seat beside me and fastened its harness. "I also shut the LTV hatch, so don't worry about..."
Three bells rang from a ceiling speaker. Gordie had just enough time to strap himself down next to her before there was a sudden jolt. Eddie yelped in alarm and Nina hastily took his hand to comfort him. Through the portholes, I caught a glimpse of the LTV gliding away.
"You're leaving the LTV here?" I asked. "Aren't you afraid it's going to crash?"
"Nope." Gordie shook his head. "It's in a stable parking orbit...at least for the next nine months or so, which is about how long it'll take gravity to pull it down. But it won't be there that long. By then, it'll be refueled, restocked, and sent back to Earth with another load of passengers." He shrugged. "Maybe even you guys...although I'm not sure I'd count on it."
"You think it's that serious? I mean, what's going on back home?"
Nicole looked at me. "You haven't heard?"
"Heard what? We haven't received any messages since we left."
"My fault," Gordie said. "I was under instructions to maintain radio silence when we rendezvoused with the Cernan. We needed to keep ISC ground control from knowing exactly where we were and who was aboard."
"What's happening back there?" Nina asked.
"A lot." Nicole let out her breath. "President Shapar made a statement saying that President Wilford was murdered by a Chinese assassin who'd managed to sneak into the White House..."
"They're claiming the PSU is behind this?" Gordie asked.
"Uh-huh. She said the Secret Service shot and killed the assassin, but not before he got to the president. She also said that the Secret Service and FBI think he wasn't acting alone, and so she's ordered the military to take control of the Capitol and instructed federal marshals to apprehend anyone who may be involved."
Including my father, I thought, even though I knew that he didn't have anything to do with President Wilford's death. "What about his family?" Gordie asked. "His wife and daughter...did they say anything about them?"
Nicole was quiet for a moment. "They're in protective custody," she said at last. "The Secret Service has taken them to some undisclosed location where they'll be safe."
"That's a lie," Nina said.
I stared at her. Sure, she he was smarter than a girl her age ought to be, but how would she know that? Yet she seemed utterly positive in what she'd just said.
"How do you...?" I began.
"Look at the Moon!" Eddie yelled. "We're falling!"
Through the portholes, the Moon had become a flat landscape slightly curved at its ends, its mountains, rills, and craters rushing toward us. "No, we're not," Nicole said, and a second later we heard the muted rumble of the ferry's main engine. "We're just on primary approach, that's all."
"We won't crash, Eddie." Nina clasped her brother's hand a little more tightly. "See? The rocket's firing. We'll be landing in just a little bit."
"Um...yeah, that's right. Nothing to worry about at all." Nicole glanced at me and silently mouthed a word: slow? It wasn't the word I would have used, but I nodded and she winced. "Sorry about Billy," she said quietly. "What he said, I mean. He can be a jerk sometimes."
Sometimes? So far as I could tell, being a jerk was a full-time job for him. "Hasn't changed since he made Second Class, I see," Gordie murmured, folding his arms across his chest. "I would've thought Luis would've straightened him out by now."
"Yeah, well..." Nicole shrugged. "Mr. Garcia's been working on him. I think that's why he sent Billy and me on this mission...to give us an assignment with some extra responsibility." Then she smiled at me. "You and your friends are in the hands of the Rangers." She pointed to the patch on her shoulder, and I noticed the inscription at the bottom. "'Failure is not an option'...that's our motto."
"The Rangers?"
"That's what they call Lunar Search and Rescue." Gordie said. "They do a lot more than just that, though. Sort of a team of all-purpose troubleshooters...including defense, if it ever becomes necessary."
"If you mean taking on Moon Dragon, that'll never happen." Nicole shook her head. "The PSU isn't bothering us and we aren't bothering them."
She sounded confident, but I wasn't so sure. If President Wilford had been assassinated by a Chinese agent, then it sounded to me like another war with the Pacific Socialist Union was inevitable. The China Sea War was before my time, but I'd learned in history class that it had ended only after the Third Treaty of Saigon brought an end to Taiwan's bid for independence and gave China permanent territorial control of the island. Relations between the PSU and the rest of the world had been frosty ever since, but at least neither side was back to sinking the other guy's ships. Reactionaries like Lina Shapar were aching for a rematch, though, and President Wilford's death might give them the excuse they wanted.
Another prolonged rumble from the main engine caused me to look out the windows again. The Moon was very close; the ferry was no longer gliding above its surface, but appeared to be in vertical descent. "We'll be down soon," Nicole said, then glanced at Nina and Eddie. "You might want to check your harnesses. The pilots usually give us a smooth ride, but the landing might be a little bumpy."
It didn't occur to me until then that, over the past few minutes, I'd been gradually feeling just a little heavier. Not nearly as much as I did on Earth, but nonetheless the weightlessness I'd experienced over the last three days was going away. When I experimentally moved my legs, though, I had no trouble bending my knees or wiggling my feet. Sure, this was only one-sixth Earth gravity, but still...
"You're not going to have any trouble walking." Gordie had noticed what I was doing. "No more than Nicole does, or Billy either."
"Why would he...? Nicole began, and then she stopped to stare at me. "Oh, my God...are you the one? The one who was born here, I mean?"
I nodded. It didn't seem like such a big deal, yet Nicole was astonished. "Oh, man," she breathed. "We'd heard you might be coming up, but I didn't know..."
"Yup. That's him." Gordie's grin couldn't have been any wider. "Jamey Barlowe...the man, the myth, the legend."
My mouth fell open. "Wha-a-a-a-t?"
Anything else Gordie or Nicole might have said was forgotten in the next instant. The ferry's main engine fired, louder and longer than ever before, as a vibration passed through the spacecraft and caused the deck the tremble beneath my feet. Lunar gravity, distinct but not uncomfortable, pulled me into my seat. I gripped the armrests and watched through the windows as the rocky grey terrain rose up from below. A quick, hard jolt, and then the engine noise abruptly ceased.
We had landed on the Moon.
If you go outside on a clear night toward the end of the month, you can see the Man in the Moon. He gapes at you with a wide-eyed expression that can be interpreted any number of ways--surprise, jollity, disbelief--and his mouth is open as if to laugh, scream, or simply say hello. And if you have a good pair of binoculars, you can look to the right side of his mouth and make out a small dimple on his pock-marked face. The mouth is Mare Nubrium, and the dimple is Ptolemaeus crater--pronounced "toll mouse," with a slight ptt sound at the beginning--the remnants of an extinct volcano partially filled by lava flows. In the upper right side of Ptolemaeus is a smaller crater, Ammonius, which was formed by an ancient meteor impact.
That's where Apollo was located.
When NASA sent the first men to the Moon, no one seriously thought they'd find anything other than rocks, rocks, and more rocks. For a while, that seemed to be the case; people thought the Moon was just a big ball of dust and stone, an interesting place to visit but where no one in their right mind would want to live. After the final Apollo expedition in 1972, nobody returned to the Moon for more than fifty years. What was the point of colonizing a dead world?
However, when geologists examined the samples of surface dust--or regolith, to use the technical term, since it's essentially powdered rock that doesn't contain the organic compounds that define soil--brought back by the Apollo astronauts, they discovered that the Moon wasn't as useless as first believed. The regolith contained ilmenite--a compound of iron, titanium, silicon, and oxygen--that could be extracted and used to build a self-sufficient lunar colony. Robotic probes sent in the early 21st century confirmed the presence of thorium and phosphorus; these rare-earth elements had become strategic resources in the 21st century, particularly since the countries in which they were most abundant tended to have dicey relations with the United States. And the discovery of subsurface ice in the south polar craters showed that the Moon had the resources to make inhabitation possible.
But the bonanza was helium-3.
An isotope that comes straight from the Sun itself as a by-product of the fusion reactions that causes the stars to shine, He3 is carried across space by the solar wind. Because most of it burns up in Earth's upper atmosphere before it can reach the ground, it's very rare on our world. There's no air on the Moon, though, so He3 is relatively abundant there, particularly in the equatorial regions where it resides within the regolith as a thin layer.
On one hand, you need to process approximately 275,000 tons of regolith to extract about two pounds of He3. On the other, even such a small amount makes it the perfect fuel for nuclear fusion. Once combined with deuterium and fed into a fusion reactor, two pounds of He3 can generate 100 million kilowatt-hours of electricity while producing virtually no radioactive waste.
At first, few people took lunar helium-3 seriously. That changed when oil reserves began to run low at the same time as global energy consumption was increasing, and the effort of getting what little oil remained carried with it war, terrorism, and environmental destruction. The costs of mining He3 and transporting it to Earth were considered prohibitively high until several countries, led by the United States and the European Union, combined their national space programs to establish a multinational public corporation, the International Space Consortium.
Apollo was the result. A city on the Moon, its main industry the mining and export of helium-3 and other materials, chartered by and belonging to the American, European, and Asian countries that contributed to its construction. The Pacific Socialist Union--China, the United Korean Republic, Vietnam, and Taiwan--followed suit with their own lunar mining colony, Moon Dragon, located in Mare Nectaris. The China Sea War prompted the PSU to go it alone; the United States and its allies still distrusted China, but so long as they stayed in their corner of the Moon, no one minded if they got their share of the goodies.
Lunar He3 helped usher in a new era of global prosperity that brought an end to the years of turmoil that had defined the first decades of the century. But Vice President Shapar--it was still hard to think of her as President Shapar--and her cronies had their own agenda.
Which is why I found myself returning to the place where I was born.
From the north landing field, Apollo looked different than it did from space. It took a little while for the regolith kicked up by the ferry engines to settle, so all we saw through a grey, dusty mist was a vast wall so long that its curved sides disappeared below the visible horizon. About five and half miles in diameter, Ammonius was covered by a shallow dome that resembled an upended saucer; a narrow, band-like atrium stretched around its upper surface. Light gleamed from tiny windows set within the crater walls, the only obvious indication of its enormous size. The place was huge; even the small forest of antennas that stood near the dirt road leading to it were dwarfed.
My first sight of Ammonius was impressive enough to make me forget what Gordie had said to me just before the Cernan touched down. It wasn't enough, though, to make me overlook a small miracle. I unbuckled my seat harness, hesitated for a moment, then took a deep breath and...stood up.
No pain, and my legs didn't give way beneath me. Sure, I'd already done this aboard the LTV, but that was while wearing stickshoes in zero-g; a quadriplegic could have performed the same feat. But this was lunar gravity, one-sixth that of Earth's, and not only was I standing on my own, but...
I carefully took a step forward, then another. Yes. I was able to walk.
I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or join the nearest basketball team. I settled for staring down at my feet and forgetting for a second or two that I was able to do this only because I was 240,000 miles from home. I was still giggling under my breath when Eddie asked, "What's so funny, Jamey?"
"Never mind." Gordie unfastened his harness and stood up to place a hand on my shoulder. "You okay? Not having any problems, are you?"
"No, I...whoops!" I'd turned around too quickly and tripped over my own feet; he caught me before I fell over. Sure, I was able to walk, but the coordination that comes with learning how to walk was something I'd have to work on. In any case, I wasn't ready to try out for the varsity team.
"Take it easy until you get used to it." Gordie made sure I was steady, then looked over at Eddie and Nina. "That goes for you two as well. Until we get some ankle weights, you're going to have to be careful. So look before you step."
Nina quietly nodded, but Eddie didn't understand. "Why?" he asked as he unsnapped his harness and stood up. "I can...ow!"
He'd gotten up a little too fast. His feet left the deck as if he'd jumped, and he banged the top of his head against the low ceiling. He winced and doubled over, and as Nicole darted forward to help, there was an unkind laugh from behind us.
"Yeah, dummy," said Billy, peering in through the hatch. "Watch where you're going."
Despite my own clumsiness, I angrily turned toward him. Nicole beat me to it. "Don't ever call him that again!" she hissed, her eyes narrow with anger as she put an arm protectively around Eddie's shoulders. "Never! Do you understand?"
Billy stopped grinning. He disappeared from the hatch. I caught a brief glimpse of Melissa; she'd been standing behind him and had heard the whole thing, and it was obvious that she was just as shocked as I was. Even she had learned not to make fun of Eddie.
Gordie slowly let out his breath. "Maybe everyone should just sit down and wait until the bus gets here," he murmured.
Good advice, but I wasn't ready to take it. Indeed, I didn't think I'd ever want to sit down again. Careful not to repeat Eddie's mistake, I stepped closer to the portholes. Figures approached the ferry; they wore moonsuits, and two of them dragged a thick hose from a caterpillar-treaded vehicle with a fuel tank at its rear. While they attached the hose to an intake valve on the ferry's lower hull, a third man slowly walked around the spacecraft, helmet visor lowered against the solar glare as he conducted a visual inspection.
I was still watching the ground crew when another vehicle came down the nearby road. Larger than the tanker, it resembled a subway car mounted atop six enormous, overinflated tires. It came to a halt nearby, then slowly began to move backward toward the ferry, with one of the ground crew raising his arms to guide the driver into position. The bus had an accordion-like docking hatch at its rear, and its car slowly elevated until that it was the same height as the Cernan's upper hull. A few moments later there was a muffled thump as the bus mated with the ferry.
"All right, then," Nicole said. "Everyone get their bags and follow me." She stepped over to the compartment hatch and looked through it. "Billy, why don't you go up top and see how the pilots are doing?"
Billy apparently didn't get the hint, because he started to argue with her. Nicole repeated the request, an edge in her voice this time, and a second later I heard Billy's boots clanging up the ladder to the cockpit. Good riddance, I thought as I pulled my bag down from the ceiling net. Billy Tate was someone I hoped I'd seldom see again.
Once the airlock was pressurized, Nicole opened the hatch and led us from the ferry, moving single-file through the short accordion tunnel and into the bus. It was about the same size as the LTV, with padded benches beneath thick-paned windows. A heavy-set guy sat up front in the driver's seat; when he turned around to look back at us, I saw that the name patch on his skinsuit read TOLLEY. Nicole waited until we were seated and had pushed our bags beneath the benches, then Tolley opened an overhead compartment and pulled out a plastic bag filled with what appeared to be thick, padded bracelets.
"Take two of these and fasten them around your ankles," he said, passing the bag to us. "They'll keep you from bouncing around when you walk."
It was hard to tell how much the anklets weighed; I guessed they were about twenty pounds each, although in lunar gravity they were only a fraction of that. I clamped one around each ankle, then experimented by standing up again and taking a couple of steps. It felt strange to have bracelets around my ankles, and when I noticed that Nicole didn't put on a pair, I wondered if I really needed them either. After all, it wasn't as if I'd spent a lifetime walking in Earth-normal gravity. I decided to err on the side of caution, though, or at least until I was sure that I wouldn't make a fool out of myself.
Once everyone had put on their ankle weights, Nicole asked Gordie to close the rear hatch. Once that was done, Tolley retracted the accordion, put the bus in gear, and moved forward, stopping for a minute to lower the bus to its normal position.
Logan was sitting beside me, with Melissa on my other side. "How did you like the ride down?" I asked them as we waited for the bus to start moving again.
"Great," Logan said, "except for Ace Starhunter."
I smiled, catching the allusion to the hero of the space adventure game he and I liked to play. "Yeah, I hear you," I said. "He's got some kind of attitude."
"If you're talking about Billy...really, he's not that bad." Nicole was seated across from us. "Once you get to know him, I mean."
"I hope I don't," Melissa muttered. That surprised me; I would have thought Billy Tate was her type: good-looking, arrogant, full of himself. Apparently he was too rotten even for her. "Please tell me we won't see much of him."
Nicole shook her head. "I can't promise that. There's only a dozen guys our age in the whole colony, and less than forty kids total. So you'll see everyone in school...and more often than that, depending on which Colony Service team you join." I started to ask what she meant by that when the bus started moving again. "I'll explain later," she said. "Me, or someone else. As a matter of fact..."
Nicole abruptly got up and walked to the front of the bus. She bent down to the driver and said something to him. Tolley nodded and Nicole returned to her seat. "We've got about an hour before we're supposed to meet the city manager, so I asked Ed to give us a quick drive around so we can get familiar with this place. Is that okay with you?"
I had no problems with that and neither did anyone else, so when the bus reached the end of the graded dirt road the driver turned to the right. I spotted an intersection sign: North Field Road was the way we'd just come, and now we were on Collins Avenue. To the left was a short road leading straight to the crater, but we didn't go that way but instead headed north.
As the bus trundled up the road, I saw what appeared to be a long row of giant, rectangular mirrors pointed toward Ammonius. They appeared to surround the crater as a ring; each mirror was independently mounted on swivels and elevated about ten feet above the ground, their polished sides pointed toward the top of the crater dome.
"Those are reflectors," Nicole said when I asked her what they were. "During the two-week day, they capture sunlight and point it toward the sun window." She pointed toward the circular window that surrounded the top of the dome. "There's another mirror that bounces the light down into the solarium on the crater floor. The mirrors are set to automatically move during a twenty-four-hour cycle, and that gives us sunrises and sunsets, just like on Earth."
"What about at night?" Logan asked. "That lasts two weeks, too."
"When we don't get any sun, the solarium is lit by florescent ceiling lamps. They operate on a twenty-four-hour cycle, too."
"That's stupid." Melissa was sitting beside Nicole; she gazed at the reflector ring with disbelief. "Why go to all that trouble? They could have just built the dome out of glass and let the sun shine straight in."
"The Moon doesn't have an atmosphere," Nicole said patiently. "That means there's nothing to protect us from cosmic radiation. You don't have to worry about that on Earth, but radiation overexposure can be deadly up here. So the dome is covered by several inches of regolith except for the windows. That shields us while the mirrors collect sunlight from outside. See?"
Melissa scowled and folded her arms across her chest. She didn't like to be made to feel like an idiot, but it served her right; Nicole was her age, but twice as smart and a Ranger as well. I hid my smile behind my hand. I had a feeling that my sister wasn't going to get away with goofing off at school here.
By then the bus had reached the end of Collins Avenue. Another signpost showed the way to Loop Road on the left and Krantz Avenue on the right. Just before the bus turned onto Loop Road, Nicole pointed out the long black rows of the solar farm and the adjacent dome of the fusion reactor, located just off Krantz Avenue. "Two weeks of the month, we get our power from the sun," she said. "The other two weeks, we get it from that little tokamok over there. We've also got hydrogen storage cells under the city to provide us with electricity if either one of those goes down. So energy is the least of our worries."
Loop Road led us back toward Ammonius. Across the road from the crater was a row of large hemispherical domes. A huge tandem rover, twice the length of our bus and with a open-top trailer riding on six balloon-like wheels, was parked near the closest of them. A chute had been lowered from its back end and two workers in moonsuits were using long-handled rakes to push regolith down the chute and through an open door in the dome wall.
"Here's the industrial park," Nicole said. "Each of those domes is a part of a refinery that processes the ore collected from the regolith fields and extracts helium-3, ilmenite, rare earths, even trace amounts of oxygen and hydrogen...everything we can possibly get." She gave us a significant look. "This is Apollo's cash cow. Without it, we wouldn't be here."
"And wouldn't Lina Shapar love to get her hands on that," Logan said softly. Hannah remained quiet, but she nodded in agreement.
"Why are the fields all the way out in Mare Nubium?" I asked. "That's a long way from here, isn't it?"
"About a hundred and sixty miles, yeah. On the other side of the crater walls. There's not quite so much helium-3 here in Ptolemaeus as there is in the mare, though, and we have to go through a lot of regolith to get even just a little He3. But the main reason is that the harvesters kick up a lot of dust, and that's a major problem for us. Regolith may look soft, but it's really abrasive, and it causes a problem when it gets through the airlocks. So putting the mining operations at a distance from the colony helps us keep it under control."
Melissa eyed another truck as it slowly passed us on Loop Road. "So you have sent these things all the way out there just to get a load of dirt? That's..."
"The way things are done." Nicole gave her an annoyed look, and then smiled. "If you have any suggestions, you might take it up with the city manager when you see him. I'm sure he'd love to hear them."
Another patented MeeMee scowl, then Melissa turned her head away. Logan and I shared a grin but said nothing. Jan couldn't have done a better job of making my sister shut up.
The bus continued along Loop Road as it turned south, heading for Apollo's western side. We came upon two domed pits, each a fraction of the size of Ammonius. Near them was an open pit, the horizontal boom of a rotary excavator slowly moving within it. "Those are the agricultural domes," Nicole explained. "The farms, we call 'em. Most of our crops are raised there, and we're building a third one now."
"I thought you farmed in the crater, too," I said.
"Mainly grass and shade trees for oxygen production. We also raise some livestock for meat...goats and chickens, mainly. Apollo is almost entirely self-sufficient. Once Ag Dome 3 is finished, there won't be much we'll still have to import from Earth except for electronics, replacement machines...and, of course, people."
"I think you're well on your way to growing your own people, too," Gordie said, a sly smile upon his face. "You're a native, aren't you?"
"Uh-huh...I'm a loony, born and raised." Nicole hesitated. "But I'd like to visit Earth one day, if I can," she added wistfully.
Until then, it hadn't occurred to me that she might not have ever set foot on the world I called home. Glancing out the window, I saw Earth hovering above Ptolemaeus's southern rim, and wondered if it was as exotic to her as the Moon was to me.
The bus continuing moving east along Loop Road, passing the turn-off for Miner's Road, which Nicole told us led toward the gap the trucks passed through to reach Mare Nubium. A short distance later, we came upon the southern end of Collins Avenue, where the cargo landing field was located. After passing short roads leading to warehouses and depots, once again we found ourselves at the intersection of North Field Road, where we'd begun our tour of Apollo.
The driver turned left and the bus rolled toward Ammonius. It slowed down as it entered a ramp that had been excavated just beneath the crater wall. At the end of the ramp were a pair of large, tiger-striped doors. Tolley brought our vehicle to a halt and waited for the doors to open, then drove into a large room with a grated metal floor and a similar pair of doors at its opposite end. The outer doors closed behind us; the driver shut down the engine, folded his arms across his chest, and waited.
"Why are we stopping?" Eddie asked.
"This is a vehicle airlock," Nicole said. "Before it can be pressurized, we have to be decontaminated...ah, here it comes now."
Through the windows, we watched as massive rollers, much like those in automatic car washes on Earth but covered with hairy black bristles, descended from the ceiling. They silently moved across the top and sides of the bus, dislodging the moon dust that covered the vehicle. As they did, there was a dull roar from outside, like that of a giant vacuum cleaner.
"The scrubbers are magnetized," Gordie said, pointing to the rollers, "but they can't gather all the dust that's settled on the bus. So an exhaust system floods the chamber with nitrogen gas, which picks up the rest and sucks it away."
"We have to do this every time a vehicle enters Apollo," Nicole added. "Same for anyone who goes out on the surface in a pressure suit. There's smaller airlocks for individuals, but they operate on much the same principle."
For a minute or two, it was as if the bus was caught in the middle of a miniature cyclone; we couldn't see much through the windows except a swirling grey cloud. But the artificial dust storm quickly dissipated, and as it did, I heard a roaring sound that gradually increased in volume. Now that the bus was clean, the airlock was being pressurized.
When the pressurization cycle ended, the doors at the far end of the airlock opened. Tolley restarted the bus, and for the first time we could hear the rumble of its tires and the dull squeak of its chassis as it moved into an underground garage. Buses, rovers, and other vehicles I couldn't immediately identify were parked alongside one another, electrical power cables leading from them to recharger units in the walls. Our bus backed into an empty space between two other buses. The driver shut down the engine again, then stood up and turned to us.
"Okay, we're here," he said, the first time he'd spoken to us since we'd come aboard. "That'll be ten lunes, please."
"What are lunes?" I asked, pronouncing the same way he had, as loons.
"The local currency." Gordie stood up from his seat. "Don't mind Squid. He used to be a petty officer in the Navy before he moved here. Those guys are always cheap..."
"Hey!" Tolley gave him a mock scowl. "Watch the mouth, flyboy!"
Gordie ignored him as he headed for the rear hatch. "C'mon, grab your stuff."
I pulled my bag from beneath the seat and followed him to the hatch, the others falling in behind us. The hatch was opened from the outside by a guy wearing a dirty pair of overalls. As I climbed down the stepladder he'd pushed into place, my nose caught a strong, somewhat familiar odor.
I wasn't the only one who noticed. "I smell gunpowder," Nina said. "Did someone light a firecracker?"
"That's moondust." Gordie was waiting for us at the bottom of the ladder. "The scrubbers can't quite get all of it out of here, so don't touch anything. There's strict rules against bringing this stuff into the dome."
Indeed, the garage reeked like the aftermath of a Fourth of July fireworks show. Melissa made an icky face, and Eddie sneezed and rubbed his nose on his shirt sleeve, but I thought it was pretty neat. The Moon smells like gunpowder, I thought. No one ever told me that!
Once everyone disembarked from the bus, Nicole escorted us across to a nearby elevator. She waved a hand across a wall panel; its doors opened, and once we'd all crowded in, she pushed a button marked CR1.
"The city manager is supposed to be meeting us topside," she explained as the doors slid shut and the elevator began to ascend. An exhaust fan beneath the gridded floor activated, sucking away what little regolith had managed to adhere to the soles of our shoes.
"Good." Gordie nodded. "I'm going to need to talk to him about staying here awhile." His mouth narrowed into a tight smile. "I don't think I'm going to be welcome back home any time soon."
Nicole said nothing, but there was a sympathetic look in her eyes. I was still reflecting upon the fact that our pilot was one more person who'd made a sacrifice to get me to safety when the elevator came to a halt.
Its doors opened again, and we walked out into what appeared to be an ordinary airport security area. The wall sign read Customs. A guy in a blue uniform was seated at a desk and a woman in an identical uniform stood behind a nearby counter. Nicole told us to put our bags on the counter, and as the woman began to open them one at a time and sort through our belongings, we lined up at the desk.
Gordie reached into a pocket, pulled out a leather card holder, and flashed something at the customs official. He waved the pilot through without comment, then motioned to me. "Name?" he asked once I'd stepped up.
"Jamey Barlowe...James Y. Barlowe, I mean."
"Age?"
"Sixteen."
"Citizenship?"
"American...USA, I mean."
"Reason for visiting?"
"Umm..." I wasn't sure how to answer that. Before I could say anything, though, Nicole walked around to his side of the desk. Pulling a folded sheet of paper from her pocket, she placed it before him, then bent down to whisper something in his ear. The customs official listened without saying a word; a quick nod of understanding, then he looked at me and the others.
"You're all cleared through on special recognizance," he said. "Your guardians will be required to file immigration requests within the next forty-eight hours. Until then, you're free to go." He turned to his companion and shook his head; she stopped searching our bags and zipped them shut.
Grateful for the rescue, but mystified nonetheless, I picked up my bag and followed Gordie and Nicole through the doorway past the counter. "What was that all about?" I asked when we were out of earshot from the customs officers.
"The city manager's office is aware of your situation." Nicole held up the paper she'd shown the guy at the desk; I didn't have a chance to read it, but it had an official-looking seal and signature at the bottom. "Essentially, the six of you have been granted temporary visas until your immigration status is worked out."
"We're immigrants?" Logan asked.
Gordie nodded as Nicole led us down a short corridor to a pair of glass double-doors. "Yup...and so am I, or at least until I upgrade my residency permit from part-time to permanent."
I nodded, even though I didn't quite believe him. Officially, we might be immigrants, but all the same, I knew better. We were outcasts.