Crescent went inside the bus to help Lady Deepik and Mister Ajab through the complex air/dustlock arrangement. “Pressurize to one Earth atmosphere,” she said to the bus puter, and with a sudden hiss, the artificial air mixture began to be pumped inside. The couple started at the noise. “It’s all right,” Crescent said. “That’s normal.”
“Thank you for helping us,” Lady Deepik said.
“You’re welcome. After we reach pressure, we’ll get you out of your suits, and then I’ll drive you back to Cleomedes while you rest.”
“My helmet failed,” Mr. Ajab said. “I believe I shall sue the rental company.”
“Unfortunately, you can’t sue because there are no laws or courts on the moon, only town rules,” Crescent advised. “In Cleomedes I must tell you the rules are stacked against the tourist, which means if you break any of them, you’ll pay. There will be a fine for us coming out to find you, I’m afraid, but it won’t be much. We’re a bargain, considering what we do. Ah, there we are. One atmosphere.”
Crescent took off her helmet and backpack and placed it in a storage cabinet and then helped the pair out of their helmets and backpacks, giving them paper masks to wear over their mouths and noses to avoid moon dust. “Please remove your boots, coveralls, plaston sanitizers, and, lastly, your biolastic suits,” Crescent said. “There is little room for modesty, I’m afraid, although I can position a divider.”
Crescent pulled a corrugated divider from the bulkhead, and Lady Deepik positioned herself on one side, Mr. Ajab on the other. “Take your suits off carefully to keep the dust down,” Crescent advised. “Put your coveralls, boots, and sanitation units in the marked lockers, then peel off the biolastic suits and put them in the waste bin. The rental ones are only used once and will be dissolved. After that, one at a time if you wish, you can proceed into the next chamber, which you’ll recognize as your shower.”
Lady Deepik and Mr. Ajab followed her instructions, choosing to take their showers separately. After they exited the shower, Crescent entered, washed, drew on a pair of coveralls and slippers taken from a cabinet, and wrapped her long, coarse, black hair in a towel before entering the interior of the bus.
Lady Deepik and Mr. Ajab greeted her by handing her a glass of wine from a bottle of Apollo’s Fire, a ruby red grown from a vineyard beneath the domes of Cleomedes. Raising their glasses, they said, “Cheers! Thank you for helping us!”
Crescent politely sipped the wine, careful to swallow only a little, since her liver did not filter alcohol very well. Crater called her on her do4u. “Crescent, are you about ready?”
“Just a few more minutes.”
“Get a move on. Time is money.”
“He is a harsh man,” Lady Deepik said to Crescent.
“When I asked Lady Deepik to marry me,” Mister Ajab said, “he made no comment other than it was time to leave. What kind of man would not offer congratulations to another man at such a time? It is clear he does not give a scrag for love.”
“I apologize for my boss. May I say on behalf of the Lunar Rescue Company, congratulations. May all your married days ahead be blissful ones.”
Lady Deepik and Mr. Ajab poured themselves another glass of the ruby red wine. “You’ll have to excuse me, my dear,” Lady Deepik said, “but are you not a crowhopper?”
“A former warrior of the Phoenix Legion,” Crescent said proudly.
“I thought all of you were killed in the war.”
“Most of us were, but I was captured by Crater, and his mother took me in. That was in Moontown. I have stayed by his side since.”
Lady Deepik looked thoughtful. “I imagined a crowhopper to be, well, much different.”
“Uglier,” Mr. Ajab said.
“Mr. Ajab!”
“I’m sorry, Lady Deepik. Excuse me, Crescent. It was a thoughtless remark. Wine loosens my tongue.”
“I understand,” Crescent said. “And it’s true. We were designed to look frightening so as to strike fear in the hearts of our enemy.” She touched her face. “Consider the gray skin, flat nose, the heavy brow, the lips pulled back in something of a permanent snarl, all a deliberate construction by the Trainers who manipulated our genetic code to make us look this way.”
“I am certain you are quite beautiful inside,” Lady Deepik said.
“I am just a woman trying to do a job, ma’am,” Crescent answered, then climbed into the driver’s seat of the bus. “Please relax and I’ll have you back in Cleomedes in a few hours.” She called Crater. “We’re ready, boss.”
Crater made a closed fist up and down signal and drove the truck along the dusty tracks, with Crescent driving the bus close behind. Lady Deepik and Mr. Ajab settled on a couch and were soon asleep.
A little over an hour later, they were just rolling past the collapsed rim of the Tralles Crater when Petro called on the Lunar Rescue Company’s private channel. Crater answered while Crescent listened in. Petro said, “Crater, you won’t believe who I just talked to and why.”
“The prime minister of the United Kingdom. He wants you to come back to restore the throne.”
“Very funny,” Petro replied. “No, it was Maria’s gillie, which said to tell you Maria’s been kidnapped.” Petro paused, then added, “Again.”
An astonished Crescent repeated Petro’s added comment, although she made it a question. “Again?”
In the truck, Crater noticed his gillie, which detested the gillie it had procreated, flash a vivid scarlet. The Awful Thing? How dare it still be alive!
“Hush, Gillie!” Crater demanded before asking Petro, “What else did it say?”
“Nothing else. But the telly’s full of an asteroid hitting the Medaris construction project on the farside.”
“You think that’s related to Maria?”
“Who knows? But listen, Crater, this is none of your business. Remember the last two times you rescued Maria? What did that get you?”
Crater had to admit Petro had a point. Both times all it got him was a kick in the teeth. But he had also saved Maria’s life when no one else could have done it. “Call if you hear anything more,” he said, then hung up. “Gillie, can you give me a visual of the farside?”
I hate the Awful Thing, it said.
“Yes, I know, but you birthed it.”
That was not my fault. I blame it on poor programming by my makers.
“Then I guess you’re happy they’re out of business. Will you please do as I ask?”
The gillie glared at Crater, though it had no eyes or face to glare, then illegally stretched itself through a lunar comm-sat and then to a commercial observation sat that watched the farside of the moon. Zeroing in on the haze that still floated electrostatically over the impact, the gillie magnified the picture, and then put the scene up on the vidscreen in the truck cab. Crater was stunned to see the devastation. Debris from the giant construction project was strewn across the dust and, here and there, the bodies of the construction crew.
“Any signs of life?” Crater asked the gillie.
The gillie searched the scene and then zoomed in on a jumpcar lying on its side. This wreck is interesting, the gillie said. There are boot prints leading from it. Based on the disturbed dust on which they are imprinted, apparently they were put down after the impact.
Without realizing it, Crater pushed the truck’s accelerator hard against the floor.
Trying to keep up in the rental bus, Crescent grumbled to herself. “And so speeds the sour man who doesn’t care a scrag about love.”
Lady Deepik was standing behind her. “How long have you been in love with him?”
“Almost from the moment we met. I stabbed him in the leg with a knife that day. He almost bled to death.”
“And he in turn stabbed you in your heart.”
“I continue to bleed.”
“And the woman he loves?”
“Unworthy. She does not know how to love Crater as he deserves.”
“Perhaps, in that regard, they are a match.”
Crescent considered that, then nodded her agreement. “I suppose they are.” She turned to look at Lady Deepik but saw her curled on the couch with Mr. Ajab, exactly as they had been since the drive back to Cleomedes had begun. “I need a vacation,” Crescent concluded, and then pushed the accelerator pedal all the way to the floorboard to catch up with Crater.