::: FORTY-FIVE

At Endless Dust, Crater and Maria saw evidence that the Apps had arrived. Scrap and other garbage was raked and shoveled into piles. The window on the only observation tower was clean, not a speck of dust on it. Parked near a dustlock was a truck and an empty trailer, a chuckwagon, and a fastbug. Crater switched his do4u to Crescent’s private channel. “Crescent, it’s Crater and Maria. We’re here.” When there was no response, Crater tried again with the same lack of result.

“I think our do4u batteries are nearly fried,” Crater said. “Ask your gillie to call.”

Maria coaxed the little gillie out of her coveralls pocket. “Call Crescent,” she said.

Gillie doesn’t know who Crescent is, it said. In fact, I’m not sure who you are.

“Your gillie is defective.”

“It’s young, that’s all,” Maria defended.

Crater’s backpack was nearly exhausted and so was Maria’s. They needed to go inside. The hatch was a standard one. When Crater opened it, Maria said, “I’ve got to get out of this suit!” and pushed past him and climbed inside.

Crater followed, pulled the hatch shut, pressurized the airlock, opened the inner hatch, and switched on the lights. In the next chamber, showers beckoned. “Yes!” Maria cried and sat down on a bench and pulled off her boots. When she saw Crater hesitating, she said, “Look, Crater, you’re a boy, I’m a girl, and all that. But I need a shower and you do too. You don’t look at me and I won’t look at you. Deal?”

Crater nodded, and within minutes, they were both under the showers, their biolastic sheaths being scrubbed in conditioning units, their coveralls in the dustlock laundry, their do4u batteries in recharge. The showers were hot and, most importantly, wet, and they scrubbed off all the nastiness that the biolastic suits, as marvelous as they were, had left behind.

Stepping from the shower, Crater rummaged around and found a cabinet with clean coveralls. Maria held out her arm from behind the door of the cabinet and Crater handed her a pair. She dressed while Crater did the same on the other side of the door. “Are there any boots or shoes?” she asked.

Crater found slippers and handed over a small pair to Maria.

The final hatch opened into a well-lit tubeway. Crater and Maria padded down its glistening mooncrete deck and inspected the various tubes. All were empty of life.

“Where is everybody?” Maria asked.

Crater held a finger to his lips. Having lived underground all his life in mooncrete tubes, he knew what to listen for. “They’re this way,” he said and led Maria through a hatch marked LIVING QUARTERS 1.

They were greeted by the warm, lustrous aroma of baking bread. Clarence and Eliza looked up from the table on which they were kneading dough. “Crater and Maria! Thank God you made it through.” Wiping their hands on their aprons, they hurried around the table and greeted them with hugs.

“You’re all right?” Crater asked.

“We are wonderful,” Eliza said. “Endless Dust is a great place.”

“A little elbow grease will put it to rights,” Clarence said, “and it already feels like home. We can’t wait to send for the other Apps.”

“Where are Jake and Trudelle?” Maria asked.

“On the scrapes with Crescent and Ike,” Eliza answered. “We take turns. Sometimes they’re out there while we work on the interior. Then we swap.”

“Did you find a crusher?”

“Yes, and a loader and a shuttle car,” Clarence said. “Are you hungry?”

“I’m starving,” Maria said.

In minutes, Eliza pushed across two plates of warm bread painted with biovat butter. She also had mugs of what smelled like real coffee. Both Maria and Crater set upon the food and drink. Afterward, Maria smiled, patted her stomach, and said, “I think I may have died and gone to heaven.”

“Is my gillie still in the chuckwagon refrigerator?” Crater asked.

“We brought it inside,” Eliza said. She opened a big lunasteel refrigerator and plucked out the gillie.

Crater held the gillie in his hand and it looked at him without eyes. Do you have a question for me?

“Yes. Are you well?”

Gillie is healthy. Gillie is ready to serve. Why is there another gillie in this room? I hate it.

Maria dug her little gillie out of her coveralls pocket and held it on her palm. It said, Why is there another gillie in this room? I hate it.

“Gillie,” Crater said, “this gillie came from you. You divided and produced it.”

That is not possible, both gillies said in unison. I hate this gillie.

“You can’t hate each other,” Crater said.

I hate it, Maria’s gillie said.

I hate it, Crater’s gillie said. I will kill it.

“You can’t kill it,” Crater admonished.

Yes, I can. I can smite it with many weapons. I am stronger than it.

“That’s ridiculous,” Crater said.

I can produce lightning. The gillie shot an electrical crackle of energy that briefly turned the kitchen blue.

“Bad gillie!” Crater admonished. “Get up on my shoulder and start paying attention.”

The gillie, looking ashamed, although it could look no way at all, wriggled onto Crater’s shoulder. Maria, tsking, put hers in her coveralls pocket. “Let’s go outside,” Crater said.

“Once more into the dust.” Maria sighed.

In the dustlock, Crater and Maria pulled on their refurbished and replenished suits and boots, pulled on fresh backpacks, donned their helmets, then entered the airlock. As it was depressurized, Maria said, “My mother visited me out there.”

The airlock pressure numbers reached zero. Crater put his hand on the hatch lever. “I’m listening,” he said.

“She told me to be kind to my father. He can’t help the way he is.”

Maria had never told him about her father. “What way is he?”

“He’s never liked me. He can be cruel.”

“I didn’t know that. Would you like to tell me more?”

“Maybe later.”

“I had visitors too,” Crater said. “Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard plus my parents, both sets.”

“You dreamed them,” Maria said. “While I was talking to my mother, you never woke.”

“I was awake,” Crater insisted, unwilling to let the visit be so casually dismissed as a simple dream. “It was you who slept.”

They looked at one another. Maria said, “I’m about to show a great deal of courage, Crater. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Crater replied.

“What happens now?”

“I guess we go outside and help my clients.”

“We should kiss first.”

“Once again I have to point out we’re wearing space helmets.”

“Ever the practical engineer.” Maria sighed, then followed Crater onto the dust.