It was a little disconcerting to depart what had become our Copernicus Base with only the bots left in charge; more and more I was beginning to identify with the sorcerer's apprentice. I could imagine coming back to discover that the whole moon had been converted into gravity rods. But there was no other way; the bots had to be left to their own devices since a huge inventory of rods would be needed for projects we'd been planning for the near future. Nevertheless, it seemed that more and more my future seemed to hang in the balance of how well these simple machines performed.
We took a few precautions to make sure that we weren't discovered: We disabled the homing beacon for our base and Jake painted some very realistic looking biological hazard signs which he mounted all over the outside of the base's domes. It would take a very brave group of people to enter the base if an expedition should arrive from Earth.
We had "air lifted" all of the rovers from the Eratothenes Base by welding gravity rods to them, converting them so they supplied their own power much as my van did. We converted one of the wheeled versions of the rovers further so that we could load it up with odds and ends and take it back to Earth with us. Strangely enough, the hard part wasn't getting the rover into flying form but rather getting it set up to travel on Earth roads once we got back to terra firma; since the rover had wheels, we hoped to tow it behind the van without raising too much interest. The rover was a lot of work but enabled us to carry a huge number of extra rods back to Earth as well as the stuff we'd be needing for the next steps to get the anti-grav technology released to Earth.
Our "Plan A" was a little simplistic and would require us to improvise a lot along the way. We hoped to confront whoever was trying to kill us and bargain to release the secret of the rods in exchange for our secrecy about their trying to silence us. In the shuffle, we hoped to bargain for the possession of our Moon base (though we were going to keep it a secret unless we really thought things were going our way).
Obviously, this would take some fast talking and maybe even the threat of releasing the secret of anti-gravity covertly which would--with any luck at all--wreck the world economy in the process.
Which was Plan B: Release the secret of the rods covertly and probably wreck the order of things. Your basic anarchist, teenager style rebellion against authority.
(While the secret of the anti-grav technology could have made us rich, we figured that if we could continue with our automated mining/rod manufacturing operation on the Moon for a while, money wouldn't be a problem for us anyway.)
While Plan A was a little optimistic perhaps, it would be simpler to do than to try to release the technology as in Plan B. And we knew that Plan B could and most likely would create a major social upheaval that might cause a lot of harm as well as good. And at best it would take forever and a day to carry out successfully without getting us all killed. But if plan A failed, plan B seemed our only alternative.
Either way, we knew it was going to be tough. You don't just walk up to someone that's trying to fill you full of holes and say, "Before you pull the trigger, I'd like to have a few words with your boss."
At least you don't try that twice.
So we were going to have to find a way to talk to the "boss man" without getting killed in the process. And we didn't even know for sure who was out to get us. The world government? The energy cartel? Both? Neither?
We had our work cut out for us as we lifted off from the Moon.
"It's strange," Nikki said, " I'm going to be glad to get back to Earth. But I feel a little sad about leaving."
"Yeah," I said, " I feel that way, too. Guess it's nice and safe here. Seeing the huge stack of anti-gravity rods the bots are churning up day in and day out is kind of exciting, too."
"We're getting enough rods to carry out some fantastic work if we ever get the time and manpower to do it," Jake said. "Before long, we're going to have to consider heading out to the asteroids. One chunk of an icy asteroid would take care of all our water needs on the Moon for some time if we attached rods to it and hauled it back."
"Spoken like a true Spacer," I said with a chuckle.
"The possibilities really are endless," Nikki said.
"If we can get Earth off our backs," Jake said.
"The big 'if' again."
The rover floated behind our van, working in tandem to our controls. We'd rigged up a tow bar between the vehicles which carried messages from our van's computer to the one working computer looted from the Eratothenes Base and now mounted in the rover. This enabled it to follow our maneuvers--we hoped. If it came loose or the packaging came apart, there were enough rods aboard it to take off to the next galaxy. We were towing a lot of potential mayhem and destruction. I tried to think about other things.
We raced around the Moon twice and then started the jump through space. Many hours later, the beautiful blue and white of Earth swelled below our feet. We waited for the scheduled rocket flight that would be dropping into Houston. Our good luck continued as it was close enough to schedule for us to match its downward arch to Texas. After a few teeth wrenching changes of velocity, we were back off Galveston Island, hugging the waves as we skimmed toward land. By driving all night, we reached Jake's surplus shop as the sun was rising. The worst thing that happened to us was that our vehicles picked up a few bullet holes when we had to drive between some feuding motorists. Fortunately no serious damage was done to us or our equipment.
Jake's shop was intact and his nephew, Mark, in one piece. That was a relief. While Jake and Nikki hadn't apparently been worried about anything happening to Mark, after the way the bag lady had found me, I had started to feel like we were facing supernatural foes.
Mark had done a good job. He'd sold off all of Nikki's jewelry and the industrial laser and gotten some good prices for them. Even so, it hadn't been quite enough to get him by so he'd also sold Jake's antique sports car rather than any of the space gear. Though Jake had specifically ordered him to not sell any of the surplus gear (since we might be wanting it), I could see that Jake didn't aim to have his car get less than priority treatment. I thought maybe I could sell tickets to the neighbors to see Jake turn Mark into a human pretzel, but to my disappointment, there was no such show.
After living in low gravity of the Moon for three months, just sitting on Earth was work. Even getting my eyelids back up when blinking took an effort. While we'd exercised in the tiny gym at our base, it didn't take up all the slack for muscles gone soft. We felt like birds with their wings clipped; where before we'd been able to nearly fly over the landscape, now we walked with plodding steps or--in Jake's case--dragged about on crutches.
In addition to physical problems, our mental problem was nearly as overwhelming as the heavy gravity. We had to figure out how to contact whoever was in charge of rubbing us out.
Of course we could have ignored them and lain low.
That had worked for the last three months. But if those who were concerned about the rods found that we were actually manufacturing them again, the search for us would probably be larger and less subtle than before. I didn't care to spend every day of my existence wondering if the trash bots were about to cram me into the garbage truck or if the mail bot was really a hit man in disguise. Life in such a condition would slowly drive me mad.
Without the "slowly."
And if they did locate us... Imagining a screaming fighter plane dropping a few barrels of napalm onto Jake's happy store didn't do much for me either. I had no desire to become a crispy critter.
"So how can we get to them before they get to us?" Nikki asked as we sat around the table munching on a small salad that Mark had prepared for us--apparently with an ax judging from the state of the vegetables in it.
"Perhaps we can turn the tables on them," I said. " It'd be hard, but if we planned it carefully, maybe we could trap whoever comes to get us."
"That might work but it sounds pretty dangerous," Nikki said.
"Yes, it will be that. The last person they sent after us was pretty effective." I shuddered at the thought of the headless bag lady. The Russian salad dressing looked nauseatingly like blood; I decided to use the creamy. "We do have some tricks up our sleeves this time," I finally said. "While they think we're on our own and probably all but out of money, we actually have Jake and quite a few resources thanks to the gear we brought back from the Moon."
"Why don't we get a decoy van set up?" Jake said. "We could buy another old shell like your van and--"
"Put the old numbers on it," Nikki finished. "We could even convert it to anti-grav travel."
"Yeah," I said and munched for a moment on a piece of celery. " If we had two vans instead of one, that would really throw them off." The possibilities were looking like they could be shifted a bit more in our favor.
"Well, anyway, if we can get someone to come after us and then..."
One salad and several hours later, our plan had been pretty well formed. Our first step in this plan was to get a decoy van set up. We had too much equipment wired into the original van to sacrifice it, so we decided to barter for on old van to use as decoy. After trading an industrial laser we'd brought back in the rover, we were able to obtain a van to convert to a nearly identical copy of our old van. After that, Jake--who had a lot of skill at doing body work on cars--cut off the storage area he'd added to the top of our old van and filled in the bullet holes it had picked up on the road. Then we repainted them both so that the new van looked like the old one while my old, original one looked completely different.
In order to avoid attracting attention to Jake's business, we decided to make contact with our enemies far away from Galveston. Since Denver had been the last place we'd been seen by them (we hoped), that seemed like a logical place to begin. We loaded up the two vans with special goodies and we followed a rocket from Houston back into Denver (this time we mimicked its whole ballistic arc by wearing space suits for the short trip into space).
Nikki chose to rode with me. Jake looked pretty disappointed but I didn't feel bad enough to suggest that Nikki ride with him.
From the Denver rocket port, we headed back to Nikki and Craig's condo since that seemed like the most likely spot to strike pay dirt in our search for our enemies.
I knew it was risky since it was entirely possible that the apartment had been booby trapped. We gambled on the fact that the people we were facing seemed to be interested in doing things so that they appeared to be accidental or so that the person would vanish without a trace. That took the personal touch of someone like the "bag lady" pro we'd faced last time I'd been in the apartment. Too, since I'd been free so long, we figured that they would be concerned about interrogating me to be sure their weren't other new loose ends they needed to cut off.
Nikki and I left the decoy van on the street where I'd parked before and went up to her place. Jake--who was our ace in the hole--waited on the street in my original van that we hoped would now go unnoticed by our enemies.
After taking the elevator up, we stood in the doorway of her condo a moment then I gritted my teeth and had Nikki use her thumb print to dilate the door open. I tossed in my suitcase and stepped back. Nothing exploded so I stepped in and waited a moment, half expecting something or someone to cut me to ribbons. Still nothing; it looked like it was safe.
Nikki entered behind me and closed the door. We cautiously advanced through the living room into the hall and entered the kitchen to be sure it was safe. Satisfied that there were no hidden assailants, we put our bags down on the kitchen.
"Nice to see that someone cleaned up the decapitated bag lady we left behind," Nikki said.
"Yes, she'd be pretty ripe by now. Looks like everything else is as we left it. Now all we need to do is--"
Jake's voice crackled over the ear radio I was wearing, "Got a bag lady nosing around your van."
"Rats," I said into my throat microphone. " I'd hoped for a bit more time. OK, we'll get ready here."
Nikki and I hurried with our jobs. I popped open the suitcase I'd brought in and removed the industrial spray coater we'd brought back from the Moon. I started spraying a plastic cover over all the air vents in the apartment then shut off the climate computer so that it wouldn't burn itself out trying to adjust the temperature in the rooms. That done, I sealed off the doors to the other rooms except for the kitchen and the hallway connecting the living room and kitchen area.
Nikki pushed the couch and chair back into the floor so that the living room was all carpet, then started getting the suitcases in the kitchen ready for our upcoming confrontation.
Jake's voice came on again, "The bag lady's either talking to herself or over a radio mike. I'm still not sure this is one of the ones we're wanting. She really looks like a bag lady--I mean a real one."
"Just keep an eye on her," I said. "Let us know if she heads for the building."
"Sorry but she's headed your way now," Jake said. "She took something out of her bag as she entered the front. Good luck you two. Holler if you need help."
We'll be needing the luck for sure, I thought, as I made a hole from the living room wall into the kitchen with a screwdriver blade. I hoped we wouldn't be needing more help than Jake could give us since we'd be in hot water long before he could get to us. The real kicker was that this new bag lady hadn't given us enough time to get everything done we'd hoped to do.
I inspected the tiny peep hole I'd made as Nikki got the 3V going. I turned to see a complex pattern of pulsating green circles which slowly turned blue as they rose out of the floor. The circles grew into spheres and blinked from one color to another. They grew into overlapping patterns filling every bit of space in a three dimensional polka dot pattern that continued to flash to different hues with the gonging music that throbbed with them. Up and down no longer seemed to be in the right places as the spheres started circling the room rapidly, then tilted off on a plain all their own.
"Good grief, Nikki, does anyone enjoy watching that kind of stuff? It makes me feel sick."
"That's my favorite 3V disc! You can apologize later." She leaned over and turned off the sound, then took me by the hand to keep me from walking in circles. I closed my eyes to the dizzying display and let her lead me.
She got me into the kitchen just as the front door gave us a warning beep and dilated open. I peeked through the hole in the wall that I'd made. A bag lady, identical to the one we'd fought before, stepped in. The thing Jake had seen her pull out of her bag was a bullpup combat shotgun.