“Sounds like a great life,” Whitey sighed, “if you don’t mind settling down.”

“And don’t mind being stuck out in the middle of nowhere,” Sam added.

“The planetoid is rather bleak,” Fess admitted.

“ ‘Planetoid’?” Lona frowned. “I thought Maxima was a world.”

“It would be counted a small moon if it orbited a planet,” Fess demurred. “But since it is located in Sinus’s asteroid belt, it can only be counted as one of the larger of those asteroids.”

Whitey frowned. “No atmosphere.”

“No trees or grass,” mused Sam.

“Only rocks and dust,” murmured Dar.

“Only eight point seven light-years from Terra!” caroled Lona.

Dar stared. “You like the sound of the place?”

“It’s practically heaven!” Lona squealed. “Nothing to do but design and build computers, laze around luxury, and hop around the corner to the fleshpots of Terra for the weekend! Where do I sign up?”

“Immigration is completely open,” Fess said slowly, “but very few people choose to go there. It would be miserable for anyone who was poor—and only excellent cyberneticists can make money.”

“I’ll take it!” Lona crowed. “How do I get there?”

“That,” Fess agreed, “is the rub. They will accept you—if you can get there.”

“Grandpa!” Lona whirled around to Whitey. “Got a few royalty checks coming in?”

Whitey shrugged. “You can have the burro-boat when we’re done with it, sweetheart—but first there’s a little matter of saving democracy.”

“Well, let’s get it over with!” Lona whirled back to the console. “I want to get on with the really important things! Found a big liner yet, electro-eyes?”

“I have been tracking the SASE San Martin while we have been conversing,” Fess answered. “It approaches above the plane of the ecliptic, inbound from Ganymede, and will pass us only one hundred thirty-seven kilometers away.”

“Then let’s go!” Lona grabbed her webbing and stretched it across her. “Web in, everybody!”

A chorus of clicks answered her. She grinned down at her console, then frowned at a blinking red light and looked back over her shoulder at Father Marco. “Look, Father, I know you trust in St. Christopher, and all that—but would you please buckle in?”

The monolith of a liner hurtled into eternal morning, its aft hull lost in the total black shadow of its bulging bridge. A tiny speck danced up to it from the asteroid belt, glinting in the sunlight. It swooped up to disappear in shadow under the monster’s belly, where it clung like a pilot fish to a shark by the bulldog magnetic fields of the solenoids in its nose.

Inside, Dar asked, “Couldn’t they spot us by the magnetic fields on their hull?”

“They could.” Lona shrugged. “But why would they look for them?” She switched off the engines.

“It doesn’t quite seem ethical,” Father Marco mused, “hitching a free ride this way.”

“Don’t let it worry you, Father,” Whitey assured him. “I own stock in this shipline.”

 

10

The SASE San Martin drifted down toward its berth in the Mare Serenitatis. As it passed over Darkside, a mite dropped off its belly, falling toward the surface at no higher acceleration than lunar gravity could account for. No glint of light reflected from it to any watching eye in the shadows; and if anyone thought to glance at it on a sensor screen, they would surely think it nothing but another meteorite caught by the moon’s gravity, coming to add one more crater to the ancient, pockmarked satellite.

It fell almost to the surface, so low that it was beneath the sensor-nets, and barreled over the jagged landscape.

Inside the cabin, Lona asked. “Is this what you’d call a ‘stress situation’?”

“Not at all,” Fess assured her. “It is simply a matter of adjusting our trajectory with the attitude jets, according to the irregularities in the landscape indicated by the sensors. At this low a speed, I always have several milliseconds to react.”

“Piece of cake, huh? I think you’d better keep the con for this one.”

“As mademoiselle wishes,” Fess murmured.

He finally brought them to rest when the glittering lights of a spaceport appeared over the horizon. The burro-boat sank to the dust in the shadow of a huge crag, with the weary, thankful groan of engines idling down.

“I detected an airlock hatch in this outcrop,” Fess informed them. “There is an electronics kit in the cabinet below the console; can any of you bypass the telltale on the hatchway, so that Spaceport Security will not know the lock has been opened?”

“Duck soup,” Lona affirmed, “the instant kind. Where’ll you be while we’re gone?”

“In the shadow of a ring-wall, in a remote crater,” Fess answered. “I will move as the shadows move. Next to the electronics kit, you will find a small transmitter of convenient size for a pocket. Press the button on it, and it will send a coded pulse to me. When I receive it, I will determine your location from its vector and amplitude, and bring the boat to you.”

Lona opened the cabinet, pulled out the electronics kit, and flipped the recall unit to Whitey. He caught it and slipped it into a pocket inside his belt. “What’s its range?”

“A thousand kilometers,” Fess answered. “If you call from Serenitatis Spaceport, I will hear you.”

“How about if we have to call you from Terra?”

“You will have to feed the signal through a stronger transmitter.”

“We can’t ask for a complete guarantee.” Father Marco rose and turned toward the companion way. “I think I can remember where I left my pressure suit.”

“There are ten air bottles in the locker with them,” Fess noted.

“Well, thanks for all the help.” Lona shooed the rest of the crew aft. “If anyone knocks while we’re gone…”

“I will not let them in,” Fess assured her.

 

The airlock hatch had a panel with a button inset beside it. Lona pulled out a screwdriver, tightened in the appropriate blade, and set it into the screw. It whined twice, and she lifted the panel away, handing it to Dar. Dar watched her clip a couple of leads in.

Above them, a twelve-foot parabolic dish moaned as it rotated a few degrees, and stopped.

Lona leaped back as though she’d been stabbed. Dar didn’t blame her; it was all he could do to keep from dropping the plate. He wished he had; then he couldn’t have heard the antenna’s moan, since the sound conducted into his suit through the wires holding the plate.

Whitey leaned over, touching his helmet against Lona’s. After a minute, she nodded, then stepped grimly back to the airlock. She took the plate from Dar and replaced it. Then she pressed the button, and the hatch slowly swung open. She gestured to Dar, and he stepped in. The others followed, Lona last. Whitey pressed a plate in the wall, and the hatch swung shut. Dar waited, fidgeting. Finally, the inner hatch opened. He stepped through into darkness, cracked his helmet seal, and tilted it back. He turned as a glow-light lit in Whitey’s hand, saw Lona tilting her helmet back as Father Marco closed the airlock.

“What’re we gonna do about the bypass?” Dar asked.

“Leave it there.” Lona shrugged. “Can’t be helped.”

“Security patrols all the locks regularly,” supplied Sam the bureaucrat. “They’ll find it within a few days.”

“Not exactly what I’d call a cheery thought, but it lightens the conscience. What’d you do to make that microwave dish swing around, Lona?”

“Nothing,” Whitey answered. “That dish was beaming commercial 3DT programming down to the Terran satellites. When it gets done feeding its schedule to one satellite, it rotates to lock onto another one, and starts the whole feed all over again.”

“3DT?” Dar frowned. “Why do they feed it from the moon?”

“Because that’s where they make the programs, innocent!” Sam snorted.