14 MOONLIGHT RIDE

14 MOONLIGHT RIDE Lunar day 217 Afternoon The last time I'd ventured onto the surface of the moon, I'd nearly died. This was because Garth Grisan had been trying to kill me. He'd used the giant robot arm to try to swat me like a bug. In the process, the glass of my own visor had cracked, and I'd come within seconds of suffocating. The thought of going back out again had terrified me ever since. For the first few nights after my near-death experience, I'd had panic dreams where I was back on the surface, racing for safety while my air ran out, after which I'd wake screaming for help in a cold sweat. The dreams had

subsided since then, but I still had them every once in a while. My mother's life was in danger, though. So I did my best to put aside my fears, grabbed the helmet repair kit, found Kira, suited up, and headed back onto the surface. "Can I drive?" Kira asked. Her voice came over my radio headset as we trudged toward the rover garage. "Do you know how?" I asked. I was doing my best to remain calm, to focus on my breathing and not panic. "Would I be asking if I didn't know how? Of course I can drive." I glanced toward her, wondering if this was true. Since self-driving cars had come along, young people didn't need to take driving lessons. It was rare to see a car on earth that even had a steering wheel anymore. And even if that hadn't been the case, Kira was still only twelve. "Where'd you learn?" "My cousins have some old ATVs on their farm. I've driven them before, over all kinds of terrain." "Okay," I agreed. "Sure, you can drive." I was glad Chang had insisted I bring Kira along

with me. Even though she'd been out on the surface with me during the robot attack, she didn't seem to be suffering from any bad memories of it. (Then again, I'd been the one who'd almost died.) In fact, she was thrilled to be out on the surface again, freed from the confines of MBA. She was bounding along, humming cheerfully over the headset, and her high spirits lifted mine. The sun was out, making the lunar surface glow brightly. Meanwhile, since there was no atmosphere, the sky remained jet black above, save for the stars. It was all quite beautiful, and for a few moments, I found myself thinking how lucky I was to be one of the few people who'd ever experienced this in the entire history of mankind. The rover garage wasn't far from the main air lock, so it didn't take us long to get to it. Or at least, what was left of it. The garage had originally been a simple white dome, but when I'd been attacked, the robot arm had torn a gaping hole in the roof. Back on earth, the government probably could have repaired it within a few days, but on the moon, where getting new parts for anything required a rocket mission, it was probably going to be years until it was fixed. In

the meantime, to make sure it didn't collapse, Dad, Chang, and Dr. Balnikov had simply sliced off the top of the dome, making the whole thing look like an igloo with a sunroof. The adults had left the garage door open when they'd taken the remaining big rovers out. Overlapping trails of moon dust led to and from the spots where the big rovers that still worked were normally parked. The wreckage of the third big rover—the one that had been destroyed by the robot —was to the side, where it could be cannibalized for spare parts. The small rover sat tucked in the back of the garage. It was so spindly, it looked as though a kid had built it. The metal bars of the chassis were as thin as my fingers, and the motor seemed like a toy. The only part that looked sturdy was the wheels, which were quite large with extremely thick treads, designed to plow through moon dust and roll over sharp rocks. Kira eagerly slid into the driver's seat and flipped the ignition switch. The engine shuddered to life. "C'mon!" Kira exclaimed. "Let's see how this thing handles!" I buckled myself into the passenger seat. Kira

immediately stomped her foot on the accelerator and let out a whoop. To her dismay, the little rover wasn't nearly as powerful as she'd hoped. Instead of roaring across the lunar surface like a Formula One race car, it puttered along like an anemic golf cart. "What the...?" Kira asked. "How do I make this thing go faster?" "I think this is as fast as it goes," I told her. "Its maximum speed is eight miles an hour." "You're kidding me." Kira steered toward the launchpad. "My grandma can walk faster than this thing." I became aware of some movement out by the blast wall that surrounded the pad. Two of the four Moonies who'd stayed close to base to look for Nina were hurrying back toward the air lock, obviously concerned that their helmets might crack and explode at any moment. I turned and spotted the other two adults rounding the side of the base, hurrying as well. Even though I couldn't see their faces, I could sense their fear. The harsh reality of our mission settled on me. Despite Kira's annoyance over the rover's speed, it was still much faster than walking would have been. It wasn't long before we had cleared the

launchpad and were venturing onto part of the moon I'd never laid eyes on before. The lunar surface around Moon Base Alpha was scarred by human impact; virtually every bit of it was covered with human footprints or rover tracks, and there were piles of construction debris scattered about as well. But beyond the launchpad, most of the moon was still pristine. Except for the well- traveled road between the pad and the site of MBB —a makeshift highway of thousands of rover and robot tracks—everything still looked exactly as it had for the past hundred thousand years. There were wide seas of moon dust, a few islands of rock, and thousands of craters. To our right, a great dune of moon dust rose, a beautiful pure white mountain two hundred feet tall. "Check that out," I said. "It's amazing, isn't it?" "Yeah," Kira agreed. "I wish we could drive on it." I glanced back at her. "But then we'd ruin it forever." "So? It's gonna get ruined sooner or later. We might as well be the ones to do it. If we were the first ones up it, I'll bet we could name it after ourselves." "We could probably name it anyhow," I pointed out.