Ship of Fools - Chapter 43
Ship of Fools - Chapter 43
One Small Step
[Start at the beginning of the novel: Prologue.]
[Go to the Table of Contents.]
Welcome back to Ship of Fools, my satire about a science journalist trying to make sense of conspiracy theorists, flat-earthers, moon-landing deniers, New Agers, and more.
Slim encounters CAOS saboteurs, Neil Armstrong’s soiled diapers, and a weird space anomaly.
WHEN the bomb went off, Slim was in his pod trying to learn the ukulele chords to “Streets of Laredo,” his trusty guitar having proved too bulky for SpaceOut’s luggage restrictions. There was no sound, just a jarring vibration that rattled the frame of his bunk, so the blast must have happened outside the base’s main buildings. He leapt to his feet but his comms device chirped before he could even get his boots on.
It was Rogersson, speaking on an open channel to the entire security team. “Explosion at the H/O processor. All security personnel respond ASAP, except for Sutherland and Rockford. You two maintain your positions outside the main building. I want human eyes on the base.”
“Should I check on Luddington, Chief?” Slim asked.
“No, the cam we planted in his room shows him sleeping. Get to the H/O plant and see what you can make out. You’re one of the best trackers we have.”
He was getting better with the fasteners on his environment suit, so in three minutes he was at the airlock, where he found Marie and three other guards waiting to cycle through.
Outside, the security team, about a dozen so far, was bunching up at a spot fifty yards out from the H/O plant, a shed-sized cluster of tanks, pipes, and devices beyond Slim’s ken. The team leader, Wilkins, glassed the plant with binoculars while the bomb team scanned the ground with an explosives detector. Rolland, a Frenchman who had been out patrolling the perimeter, pulled up on his ATV and took up a position on the other side of the plant.
Wilkins’ voice crackled through the radio. “Chief, we don’t see any unusual tracks heading to or from the processor, and there doesn’t seem to be much damage, from what I can tell from here.”
“Our monitors show output is down seventy-five percent since the blast. Get out there and see what’s going on.”
“On it, Chief.” Wilkins pointed to Slim and Marie and motioned for them to circle the processor while another pair went around the other side. They moved off, scanning the ground all around for stray tracks.
“Wild, huh?” Marie said on a private channel. “At least we’re getting some excitement, right?”
“Reckon so, if you call the prospect of steppin’ on a bomb or runnin’ outta oxygen exciting.”
They took up their post thirty yards from the processor. The first thing Slim noticed was a new crater, about five yards across, near the facility. Wilkins and his group had seen it, too, and were approaching it the way you would a coiled rattler.
“Would you look at that,” Marie said.
“Doesn’t look like it busted the processor, more like spread dust all over it.”
“Still could have damaged it, dust in the processors and what have you.”
Wilkins and his group had approached within a few feet of the blast site. One member of the bomb team picked up a shard of metal with a wire sticking out. “Chief,” Wilkins radioed, “it looks like we have one incendiary device in the regolith near the processor, but the unit seems fine as far as I can tell. We’re clear for engineering to check it.”
The engineers took five minutes to arrive and another five to figure out that the processor was fine, or what folks in these parts called “nominal.”
“That can’t be,” Rogersson said when he got the report. “Let me check with life support monitoring again.” In another minute he came back on. “This makes no sense, but all the readings are back to normal. Unless…it’s a distraction! Sutherland, Rockford, what do you see?”
“Everything’s nominal up here by the water mining plant, Chief.”
“What the hell are you doing way out there? I told you to stay close to base.”
“Dr. Morozova messaged us to get over here to check on the water supply. Said you were too busy to tell us yourself.”
“God damnit!” Rogersson’s shout was so loud that Slim had to turn down the volume on his helmet speakers. “Everyone back to the base, and fan out. I want a cordon around the whole thing. I’ll go check on Morozova myself.”
Slim and Marie headed back toward the base, circling it on the east side.
“I never trusted that Moskal bitch,” Marie said.
“I guess I could have questioned her a little harder,” Slim said, feeling abashed. “But she had me plum convinced she wanted to catch the terrorists as much as I did.”
“You Amerykańskis, you’re too trusting, you expect the bad guys to always wear the black hats.”
“Well, often times they do, in my experience.”
They’d circled the base now, and they could see the ATV bay. “That’s strange,” Slim said. “There’s only six quads, and there should be seven, plus the one Rolland’s riding.”
“You’re right. I’ll let Chief know.” She switched back to the group channel and gave the report.
“But the cams show seven sitting there right now!” Rogersson replied.
“Chief, we’re close enough that you should see us on that cam now.” She gave a wave.
“God damnit!” the chief exclaimed again. “What have you done?”
Slim could hear a woman’s laughter in the background. “Would you believe, just a prank?” Judging by the French accent, that was Morozova.
“All right,” said Rogersson, “Rolland, get out to the northern perimeter and patrol it. Slim and Wachowska, you take the south. Find that missing quad and whoever has it!”
“Um, Chief?” came Wilkins’ voice as Slim and Marie hopped on two ATVs. “I hate to say it, but Arpin isn’t here.”
The channel was silent for a moment. When Rogersson spoke, his voice was quiet, the way a cougar was quiet before it leapt for the kill. “You mean you didn’t have everyone check in?”
“He checked in on his radio, said he was on his way, but we were so busy looking for another bomb, I…I didn’t realize he never showed.”
“And so he’s been listening in on what we’ve been doing this whole time. This just keeps getting better and better.” More laughter from Morozova from the background.
An alert came across Slim’s comms display from Rogersson, using a new channel.
“I’ve excluded Arpin from our comms. Now find him.”
“He could be anywhere, couldn’t he?” came Morozova’s amused voice.
Not really, Slim thought. He didn’t notice any stray tracks as they headed around the southern perimeter. Arpin would have to be pretty stupid to head off cross-country — too easy to follow. But there were only so many places he could go while sticking to the usual routes.
He opened a new channel with just Rogersson and Marie. “Chief, I’ve got a hunch. Pesos to picante sauce, he’s headed for the A-11 site.”
“Your space cowboy is smarter than I gave him credit for,” said Morozova in the background.
“What’s Arpin doing there?” said Rogersson. “It’s an irreplaceable part of humanity’s legacy.”
“Is it? Or is it a bunch of space junk left by slovenly Americans?”
“Now listen, you Russian c…”
“I’m French, not Russian, you American swine.”
One thing was for sure, the spirit of international cooperation at the base was wearin’ a mite thin.
“Slim, Marie, get down there and check it out. If he’s there, I’ll send backup, but I don’t want to commit more resources on a hunch and Morozova’s word.”
Traveling thirty miles an hour, riding side by side to avoid each other’s dust, it took them five minutes to reach the historic site. As they approached, Slim saw an ATV parked inside the post-and-cable fencing that cordoned off the area, the cable lying slack between two posts where it had been cut.
Two figures moved around near the lander’s descent stage, one working on the regolith with one of the rakes the soils study teams used, the other filling a trash bag with objects he was picking off the ground.
Slim and his partner dismounted at the fence line without the intruders noticing. “Chief,” said Marie, “I’ve got two subjects inside the perimeter. Arpin’s one of them, and the other is wearing one of those tourist environment suits.”
“Reckon that’s Luddington?” Slim asked.
“But how?” Rogersson asked.
“Roger,” came Morozova’s voice in the background, “have you forgotten my years of experience in programming for life support systems? Hacking your security cams and having them run looped footage was child’s play. As was having the H/O processor give you false readouts.”
“Why, in God’s name?”
“Just a prank, but a very meaningful one.”
“What should we do, Chief?” Marie asked.
“Stop them from doing whatever they’re doing. I’ll get you backup as quick as I can.”
They entered the site, Slim loosening his pistol in its holster and whistling “Streets of Laredo,” earning a sharp rebuke from Marie. The back of the stolen ATV was loaded with the original instruments and cameras that had been sitting on the lunar soil near the lander since 1969, along with a full trash bag with the bleached American flag sticking out the top.
Now the pair near the lander had noticed them, the tourist — Luddington, if Slim had to bet — right next to it and Arpin about fifteen paces away. Arpin dropped his rake and stood at the ready. He bore a flechette pistol just like Slim’s and Marie’s, but he didn’t pull it.
“Have you been practicing at the range, Slim?” his partner asked.
“Sure have, Ms. Marie.”
“Good.” She waved at the other pair, then pointed to her ear and held up three fingers on the other hand. Slim switched to channel three.
“If it isn’t the spice cowboy! But you’re too late, we were just finishing up.”
“What in dabnation are you doin’ here, Kid?”
“Why, cleaning up Neil Armstrong’s shit, of course.” He bent down to pick up an old plastic trash bag, one that the original astronauts had left behind, its formerly white color bleached a dull gray that matched the lunar regolith. It broke as he picked it up, spilling soiled diapers and bags of yellow urine all over the ground. “Looks like the job just got a little harder.” He picked up a conspicuously brown diaper and placed it carefully in his own trash bag.
“But why?” asked Marie. “What’s the point?”
“To erase humanity’s biggest mistake, of course. And this is just the first step to erasing all human presence on the moon, and ending these pointless dreams of colonizing space. This one act will serve as a rallying cry for the millions of Earthers who want our focus back where it should be, on caring for our own planet and all its inhabitants, not fueling billionaires’ dreams of endless growth and expansion.”
“Well, that all sounds mighty high-falutin’, Kid, but the truth is you’ve just violated about five different codes of the International Lunar Treaty, not to mention desecratin’ a spot that’s sacred to a whole lotta people. Now it’s time to bring you in.”
“It’s too bad, if you’d have given us five more minutes, we’d have been done and gone.”
Gone where? Slim wondered.
“Even if you stop us now, we’ve done what we came to do. We’ve erased the first footprints, picked up all the plaques and medallions, and moved the historic instruments from their original locations. Keeping those artifacts in situ is the main goal of historic preservation, so that’s done and dusted.” He paused and Marie took a couple of steps toward him. Slim kept his eye on Arpin. “But you know, we may get away yet.”
That seemed to be Arpin’s cue, because he went for his pistol. He botched it, as Slim had expected, fumbling to get his glove-encased finger through the trigger guard, then trying to shoot from the hip, planting one flechette in the regolith between them, sending a puff of dust into the non-air, and another flying high and wide.
Meanwhile, Slim kept his cool, drawing his pistol in the careful way he’d practiced, getting his finger through the widened trigger guard and siting down the barrel. His shot winged Arpin in the upper arm, as planned.
“Merde!” Arpin exclaimed, dropping his gun and reaching for a sealing patch affixed to the chest pocket of his suit. He slapped it into place as Marie and Slim both stepped toward him, then bent and reached for his pistol.
“Arpin, don’t be a fool, it’s over!” Marie yelled.
Arpin got his gun back in his hand and was raising it as Slim winged him again.
“I can do this all day, pardner, but you’re probably runnin’ outta them patches.”
Arpin dropped his gun again and fell to both knees. “Merde.” He sounded weaker this time.
Slim and Marie ran toward him. “Did I nick your arm? Meant to just put a hole in your space suit.”
The wounded guard nodded, his head bobbing up and down inside his helmet. When they got close enough, Slim could see that his eyes were already going glassy.
“You idiot,” said Marie, slapping another sealant patch on his arm, making him wince. “You’re losing a lot of blood. We’ve got to get you back to base or you’re dead.”
“All right, pardner, let’s go,” Slim said, stooping to hoist Arpin up by his good arm. With one on either side of him, they got him moving toward the ATVs.
That’s when Slim noticed Luddington speeding away on the stolen ATV, already having broken through the slack cordon, his second trash bag now lashed to the back. This deal with the silence of space really was a nuisance.
“I’ve got Arpin,” Marie said. “You go after him. And don’t be afraid to use your gun. Those are precious treasures of humanity.”
Slim wasn’t sure they weren’t just space junk, as Morozova had said, but he did as he was told, bobbing to his ATV as fast as he could, then lighting out after Luddington. He had to circle the perimeter to reach the Kid’s track, which was heading east. The rascal had a good head start, but where was he going?
Distracting his quarry might work. “Just hold up there, amigo. There’s no where to run.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Luddington replied. But he stopped anyway at the top of a low rise, the edge of a crater Slim guessed. He turned and looked back, reaching for something dangling from his chest. The regolith all around lit up with a yellow light.
Slim turned to see a cloud of dust surrounding the descent stage, which looked like something had torn it apart from the inside out. Marie and Arpin lay on the ground near Marie’s quad.
“Marie, are you all right?”
She was moving now. “I’m fine. I just hit the deck out of reflex. And Arpin is as fine as he’s going to be until I get him back to base. Now keep after Luddington!”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Slim,” Luddington said, “I’m glad the Sheila’s all right. We didn’t want anyone to get hurt if we could help it.”
“Yeah, that’s what every bad hombre says.”
As Slim crested the rise where Luddington had stopped, his quarry was already far ahead, climbing the other side of the crater. “Kid, there’s nothing out here! Think about your battery runnin’ down, or your air givin’ out.”
“You should make those same calculations for yourself, mate. I’d hate to see you die chasin’ after me.”
What the heck did that mean? But then a glow in the black of the sky gave him the answer: about a mile away, maybe less, a lander was descending toward the surface. It was a sort he’d never seen before, nothing like the SpaceOut rocket he’d used to get up here, more like the old lander that had just been blown apart.
He switched channels. “Chief, Luddington’s headed for a rendezvous with some sort of lander, east of the A-11 site.”
“We saw that, Slim, but there’s nothing we can do to stop it. We think it dropped from the Russian lunar transfer station while we were preoccupied. You’ve got to stop Luddington before he reaches it.”
Up ahead, Luddington had just crested the far rim of the crater, disappearing over the other side. Slim switched channels just in time to hear his quarry say, “Still there, Spice Cowboy? You should turn back. My ride’s just up ahead.”
“I’m gainin’ on ya. I almost got you in my sights, so there’s no way you’ll get that loot loaded on your spaceship.” It was a lie, but if Luddington turned around to check it out, it would at least slow him down.
“I don’t see… Crikey!” There was a thump, a couple of grunts and groans, then just heavy breathing.
Slim followed Luddington’s track up the crater wall and out onto a stretch of Lunar plain. At the far side was another rise, steeper than the last. Luddington hadn’t made it to the top. His ATV lay upside down at the bottom of the hill, its cargo, feces-filled diapers and all, strewn about on all sides. So much for erasing human presence from the moon. More the opposite. Which was a sad commentary on humanity’s entire predicament, Slim reckoned.
The Kid himself, still hellbent on escape by the look of it, clambered up the rise as Slim approached, then disappeared over the other side. Slim eyed the slope and deemed it the better part of a cowboy’s honor to hoof it instead of risking the kind of accident that had taken out the Kid’s ATV.
He reached the edge, and there was his quarry, just rising to his feet after sliding to the bottom of another crater.
Instead of heading directly across it in the direction of the Russian lander, the Kid stood for a moment, staring at something off to his left, then ran in that direction. “What is that?” he asked no one in particular, his speech slurred. He was probably concussed.
But then Slim noticed what he was moving toward: a shimmering blue rectangle set into the wall of the crater. It looked like something out of one o’ them sci-fi movies.
“Now just a minute,” Slim said, sliding down the near-vertical crater rim. He walked toward Luddington, drawing his pistol but not entirely sure what to do. He’d been told to stop the vandal from getting away with the loot, not from investigating some sort of space oddity.
Luddington reached the blue rectangle and turned toward him.
“Don’t even think it, Kid. You can’t go in there…or through there…or whatever.”
Luddington held his hands out to the sides and shrugged. “What are you going to do, mate, shoot me?” The glow to the east brightened as Luddington’s ride blasted back into space. “See?” he went on. “The jig’s up, as the saying goes. But this…this is interesting.” He turned back to the door and poked a finger in. It shimmered and became almost transparent.
The door was tucked into some sort of overhang of the crater that didn’t look quite natural — but what was natural for a space portal, anyway? “You don’t know what’ll happen if you go in there.”
“Only one way to find out, isn’t there?” He stepped into the rectangle of blue, shimmered into a ghostly outline, then disappeared altogether.
“Well shee-it,” Slim exclaimed, reluctantly resorting to full-blown profanity. For a fella who wanted humans to stick to Earth, Luddington displayed a surprising penchant for steppin’ off into the unknown.
Slim holstered his pistol and approached the portal. He did as Luddington had, poking a finger into the blue light. Even through the glove, which was meant to protect his vulnerable human flesh from X rays, gamma rays, every sorta rays, his skin tingled. He pulled it back out.
“Slim, are you there?” Rogersson radioed. “What’s your situation? Did you stop Luddington?”
“He sorta stopped himself, Chief.”
“Well, bring him back in. Sutherland and Rockford are busy with Arpin.”
“I’ll try, but it could be a while. I’ll get back with you when I have him.”
As Slim stepped through the portal, he couldn’t help but hear Armstrong’s voice in his head: “One small step for man…”
— End of Part IV —
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this chapter, please give it a like, a share, a restack, or a comment. And if you really enjoyed it, I hope you’ll buy me a coffee or upgrade to a paid subscription.
What’s Slim gotten himself into now? And will he end up in the same place as Liz and her companions?
Next up: A Flat-Earth Interlude, in which Jareth Leeman confronts the newcomers to his world and tries to figure out where they really came from.