Velocity

Lunar Lotto

What Toad really wanted was to get off the moon entirely. That was why he had begun spending almost half his shares from running supplies across the southern reaches of the Lunar Sea on the Lunar lottery. When he won (there was no if about the lottery with Toad, always when) he would pay off his indenture and go back to Manchester England a wealthy man. England was as crowded as the moon was deserted, but after seventeen years he dreamed of people, he wanted to see millions of them.

He dreamed too, of course, of leaving behind his hated nickname. He was born Reginald Basil Croft, but everyone on the moon called him Toad, due to his appearance and sour temperament. He was a short squat man in his middle forties. Almost completely bald, Toad had only enough hairs left to emphasize the numerous viral warts that circled his scalp. Unkind people whispered that they were tumors, that Toad was too stupid to keep out of the blasting radiation of the lunar day or to see Plethman the surgeon, but in truth they were just warts. To compound matters, one of his eyes was a false one, so that it seemed to move apart from the good one in a disconcerting, lizard-like fashion.

Toad drove his Vox 400 caterpillar at a jolting twenty-five miles an hour across the roadless face of the moon. The impossibly heavy vehicle would have been barely able to crawl on Earth, but with the lighter tug of the moon’s gravity, it was able to trundle along at a surprisingly high speed. Every few miles Toad spotted the tracks of another vehicle, but it was impossible to tell how long ago they had been made, or who had made them. Without wind or rain, tracks were permanent unless marred by a freak meteor strike or run over by someone else. For all Toad knew, he was seeing his own tracks from previous runs.

Overhead the Earth swung like a dim blue-white sun, but the real sun was nowhere to be seen. This part of the moon was dark now, keeping the temperature down. Toad only had six hours left until sunrise, and he had to make it to New Lancaster before daybreak. The venerable Vox 400 wasn’t really up to taking the sun’s unshielded heat and radiation anymore. Inside his pressuresuit he shivered a bit, but was comfortable enough. He was entering the most dangerous part of the run now, and cold drops of nervous sweat were forming one by one between the warts on his scalp and rolling down his cheeks.

Recognizing three peaks nearby know as the Three Brothers, he flicked off the bank of eight halogen headlights and powered-down his green and red running lights as well. This caused an alarm chime to sound in his helmet and a red glowing warning to flash on his dashboard, but he ignored them, grimly steering the Vox in the bluish half-light of the Earth.

Toad hated more about the moon than the nickname that people had given him. The thing he hated worst was how hard it was to get anything that the authorities didn’t want you to have. Smuggling in a cargo across a quarter million miles of space was not as easy as crossing the oceans of Earth. Any kind of drug or alcohol, if not illegal, was strictly controlled. Smoking too, of which Toad was inordinately fond, was highly illegal. Air recycling systems did not take well to smoke. Toad had long ago decided to do his part in the smuggling that inevitably resulted from these restrictions. He felt he was striking a blow for free trade as well as making a healthy profit. His cargo consisted primarily of the heavier items that were not economical to transport by flight.

The frozen, unpressurized interior of the Vox was crammed with oxygen tanks, water tanks, propane tanks and rolls of insulating Aerogel fabric, which though light, was bulky and difficult to load into flyers. Into the nooks and crannies between the steel pressure tanks and the bails of crinkling Aerogel insulation he had shoved the higher profit items: two cases of Jack Daniels, cartons of genuine dried meat without soy, nearly a quart of all-purpose cologne and a selection of fifty popular video disks. Down underneath the Vox, stashed in the spare parts compartments he had hidden six spring-rifles that shot darts just powerfully enough to puncture a man’s vacc-suit. With that was a small store of Turkish tobacco, as highly illegal as the guns themselves.

This run made his twenty-sixth, and he could have easily paid off his indenture by now by saving half his pay each time at the Wang bank, instead of handing it over to the Lunar Lotto, conveniently located next door. But he figured his luck had to change soon, it was bound to turn around and smile his way. The fact that it never had before didn’t dissuade him now.

The nervous sweat on his face itched, and Toad worked his lips in a futile attempt to relieve the condition. For the thousandth time he wished that they would invent vacc-suit helmets that let a man scratch his nose, or rub his neck. Toad was nervous because he was passing by the Jehovah crater, a small geologically new pockmark on the abused lunar surface with tall sharp ridges forming the outer walls. Inside those walls some of the earliest private bases had been built. Although they had been ruptured and depressurized in a reactor leak thirty years before, survivors had hung on, living in terraformed caverns. Hidden away, they lived by melting buried ice to form secret reservoirs and farming patches of lichen and fungus in the dark interiors. To get supplies they could not replace, they never traded with the other bases, as no one had ever found a product that they felt they needed to augment their austere existence. Instead, they preferred to rob prospectors and merchants like Toad, and others who managed to eke out a living through sweat and honest toil.

A few expeditions had been sent out to punish the outlaws, but they had met with no success in either finding their bases or killing more men than they lost. Another hour passed before he reached the closest point on his route to the Teeth, a landmark along the Jehovah crater walls that marked the end of the outlaw territory. As he neared the Teeth, his fear and his enthusiasm for finishing the run reached their peaks simultaneously. His good eye slewed rapidly back and forth, his false eye following it loosely, as he scanned the dark landscape outside, looking for a telltale silhouette, a reflection, a puff of escaping gas.

His claw-like hand was heavy on the power-bar, the rig sped up to thirty, thirty-five, then forty. He knew that this section was relatively clear of obstacles, and figured it was best to push his luck at navigating rather than tempting the outlaws.

Then he saw it. Up from the Teeth themselves, a reddish glint of light that splashed right off the Vox’s dark metal hide. He didn’t think it was a weapon, maybe a targeting device, or more likely an alarm system, designed to detect movement past the Teeth and give warning.

He reached out and flicked the emergency switch, sending out a signal for rescue flyers to home in on him, should they bother, then shoved the power-bar to full throttle. The Vox bounced and bucked like a thing alive, shuddering and flashing computer diagnostic warnings at the seemingly cruel Toad, who kept his hand clamped down.

Toad was by no means unfeeling, although he could only hear the vibrations that came through his buttocks, his feet and the controls in his hands, he could feel the pain the Vox was having. She was an old rig, well-built, but ailing. He imagined each bit of grit that was sucked past her filters to wear down the engine. He felt each rivet as it loosened and finally let a plate go flapping from the treads, sure to be torn off and lost when it hit the fenders. It pained him, but he valued his life more than the venerable Vox.

He soon had his answer about the nature of the red light. It had not been a guidance system, it had been an alarm of some kind. Bounding down the slope from the Teeth, a dozen or so outlaws moved to intercept him at a narrow section ahead between a boulder-strewn gully and the steep rocky slope. Slamming the power-bar the other way, Toad threw on the brakes and made a terrifying turn to the left, before the gully yawned open and forced him to follow the slope. Nimbly, the bounding outlaws changed directions and headed out to follow him on the open plains.

Toad sped up again and the ride became more violent than before, tossing him around the cab while he cursed and determinedly clung to the power-bar. The outlaws were quickly left behind.

Before Toad could begin to gloat, two missiles came flashing down, striking not the Vox, but the ground in front of it. Flame and dust engulfed the caterpillar, wiping out Toad’s vision and forcing him to slow down. Two more missiles exploded closer, the orange flashes burning Toad’s one good retina and leaving twin purple splotches to blink away. It was obvious that they would rather blast him apart than let him get away.

“Damn it all!” he shouted inside his helmet, raging at his misfortune. The fact that he had beaten the odds by making dozens of trips through this section unmolested before didn’t comfort him. He slammed the power-bar to full brake and nearly cracked his helmet open as he was thrown forward. He grunted, snatched up the bundle of still-good lottery tickets from the dashboard and threw open the cab door to consider escape.

Looking out through the dust-clouded vacuum at an endless empty plain of gray rock quelled that idea. It was a good hundred miles to New Lancaster, farther to go back the way he had come. He might lose them in the dust, but he could never carry enough supplies to make it. Besides, daylight with its intense radiation was coming soon and he didn’t trust his suit to shield him. He didn’t wish to arrive in New Lancaster half-baked and full of cancer cells.

Cursing some more, he pulled out one of his spring-rifles and as an afterthought, grabbed his supply of Turkish tobacco as well. Climbing back up the steps molded into the front fenders, he slammed the cab door again, set all the locks and waited for the crazies to show up. He kept the Vox engine idling just in case.

By the time they caught up the dust had just about settled again, keeping its mushroom shape as it sank back down to the surface with that odd unnatural slowness that vacuum caused.

The company, tribe, whatever they were encircled the Vox and carefully used cover as they approached. “Not a trusting lot, are you boys?” Toad chuckled at them. Most of them were in homemade vacc-suits constructed with several layers of Aerogel and coated with shielding. This type of protection was effective and actually allowed greater freedom of movement than a factory-made pressure suit, but it was easily ruptured and generally had poor climate control.

Some of them carried spring-rifles, but most had simple spear guns, designed to rupture suits more than to kill directly. They used an obviously complex set of hand signals and gestures to communicate, maintaining radio silence throughout.

Toad felt like a settler in the old American West, watching as the aborigines cautiously approached his wagon. Seeing the way that they moved, so naturally in the moon environment, he wondered a bit about what kind of people they had become, having been cut off for over thirty years. He yearned for a cigarette.

Finally when he had all his troops set in place, the leader stepped up to the Vox and rapped on the rig’s bulbous nose-section. A ripple of static came across the intercom, as the leader used a low-powered signal.

“Make peace with the gods and abandon your vehicle.”

Gods? thought Toad, pursing his rubbery lips. Obviously, their doctrines had undergone a shift during their long isolation. Then a chill ran through him as he considered the words, which held an ominous suggestion.

“I am the rightful owner of this rig and I will not abandon her. I’ve come to trade with you,” Toad lied.

“This place is a haven of the righteous, and all things that enter it are the property of the priesthood,” the solemn voice said in a slow careful manner, as if explaining the obvious to a child. All the while he spoke, he moved about the Vox, peering into the dark interior, but unable to see Toad because of the heavy tinting. Toad lamented that it was too bad he didn’t have a video unit on the rig, he could sell this to the documentary boys for a fortune. He chuckled.

“You laugh at the priesthood?”

“No, no,” said Toad nervously. “As I say, I wish to trade. I have things of value, and for a good price, they can be yours.”

“As I have explained, all such goods are already the property of the priesthood. There is no need for us to barter for them.”

“Do you feel the vibration in the vehicle?” asked Toad sternly.

“Yes, but this is not relevant. Abandon the vehicle, or you will be expelled.”

“Wait! You should know that any attempt to do this will cause this caterpillar to explode.”

“You would destroy yourself to protect goods? This is against the way of the gods.”

“Never-the-less, I will do so,” said Toad. “In fact, I have no choice, there is an automatic device attached to the Vox to detonate it if violated. It is a policy of my company, I am afraid, to discourage thefts like this one.”

“Then you and your company are the thieves, this vehicle is the property of the priesthood.”

Toad frowned in the sweaty darkness of his helmet. The outlaws indeed seemed unbalanced by their beliefs. This made it difficult to predict their reactions. He could sense that the idea of a booby-trap to thwart them was enraging their righteous indignation, rather than impressing them with fear. He decided to changed tacts.

“I am Reginald Croft. Who are you?”

“I am Jezzeriah, second elder of the Hand,” said the outlaw. He gestured to his band and two more figures bounded up, disappearing to the right and left of the Vox, out of Toad’s sight. Before Jezzeriah could tell him to abandon the Vox again, Toad tried his sales pitch. “So, Jezzeriah, how long has it been since you tasted real Earth whiskey?”

“Your terminology is unfamiliar.”

“Whiskey, spirits, booze,” said Toad, getting a bit exasperated and panicky. “Umm… Wine of the gods.”

“You have wine?” asked the elder, halting his methodical search of the Vox’s exterior and sounding interested for the first time.

“Yes! Strong, good wine, the best for every holiday or religious ceremony.”

“We have tried to make wine, but always the lichen has refused to ferment properly, and the mushrooms have always turned toxic.”

A light blinked on Toad’s dashboard, indicating that the compartments in the Vox’s undercarriage had been violated. Hopping up with sudden inspiration, Toad snatched up a bottle of Jack Daniel’s that he had been saving for his own consumption and opened the cab door. Instantly, a dozen spear guns and spring-rifles were leveled on his chest. He paid them no heed, waving about the bottle and proclaiming the “wine” as the best on Luna. Opening the bottle and sliding the nozzle into his liquid-entry portal, the elder filled his water bladder with whiskey and sucked on the straw inside his helmet. Toad was very thankful that the bottles had been depressurized so they would not explode on the journey, otherwise the elder might have gotten hosed down with booze. After a short bout of coughing, which had Toad’s few remaining hairs standing on end in anxiety, the elder proclaimed the whiskey to be excellent wine.

“But I thought that the color of proper wine was the red of blood,” he questioned.

“Yes,” said Toad glibly. “But I didn’t know of your requirements when I brought this. This is, ah, amber wine. I will most certainly bring the red variety on my next trip.”

“Next trip?” questioned the leader while handing around the bottle for tasting. “But you’re suit is to be ruptured and you are to be dropped into the recycling pits to freshen up the organics.”

“Naturally, but think: if I don’t leave and return, then I will not be able to bring you more wine.”

“Why should you return?” asked the elder suspiciously.

“Ah, and this brings us to another essential element of trade. You must now provide me with some goods that I may transport back to New Lancaster so I might procure more wine.”

After some very light bartering, Toad gracelessly accepted a load of mushrooms caps the size of platters and a generous bag of colorful dried lichens.

“Don’t you grow anything else?” he asked, trying to keep the amazement from his voice.

“Very little,” the elder admitted. “The problem is the lack of proper radiation. We have a few caverns that are lighted with lenses from the surface, but the council frowns on these as they might be found from above. Besides, we have no seeds to plant other things.”

“But you have large, pressurized caverns?”

“Yes, we have ranches that run for miles,” said the elder, a bit of pride swelling in him. The whiskey had brought a slight color into his naturally pallid face.

“Very well,” said Toad, his mind no longer working on the problem of getting away from the outlaws, but now churning busily on the preferred subject of profit. “Next time I will bring more than wine, I will bring seeds for things that can’t be grown anywhere else on Luna. That way your crops will have great value.”

The elder frowned and made a gesture of confusion. “How can we grow anything better than the bases?”

“Because you are outside of their laws, my friend,” said Toad, smiling. Already he could see the huge profits in luna-grown tobacco and other commodities. Fresh vegetables need no longer come exclusively from Earth, as the company monopoly contracts kept it now. Toad ended up spending the next lunar day in the caverns hidden beneath the Teeth and in the walls of the crater. On the long drive home the following day, his eyes were glinting with the light of fantastic profits. He would keep his trade secret as long as possible. He dreamed of the day that people would start to call him Mr. Croft again, daring never to utter the word Toad in his presence. He could even see good reasons for staying on Luna now. His luck had finally turned around, just like he knew it would.

Behind him, dropped in the lunar dust and forgotten, were several hundred losing lottery tickets.