by the  public-somewhere  or  other  I've  got  a
parchment  from  some  civic  organization  commending  me  for
excellence in journalism for one of them--was it the Kiwanis or
the Elks?--but the ground had been prepared for over a year  by
the  P.R. firm Walter had hired at his own expense. By the time
of Silvio's assassination sentiment was growing  for  a  public
display.  You  couldn't call it a celebration, it hadn't been a
proud day in human history. It had to include  a  memorial  for
the  billions  of dead, that was certain. The tone of the thing
should be one of sadness and resolve, all seemed to  agree.  If
you  asked them what was being resolved--the recapture of Earth
and extermination of the Invaders, is  that  what  you  had  in
mind?--you  got an uncomfortable shrug in reply, but dammit, we
ought to be resolute! Hell, why not?  Resolution  doesn't  cost
anything.
     But  the  commemoration  was going to. It kept snowballing
with nary a voice raised against it (Walter's fine hand again),
until by the time the Great Day arrived every  pisspot  enclave
in Luna was holding some kind of shindig.
     Even  in  Texas, where we avoid as much outside news as we
can, they were having a barbecue as big as  Alamo  Day.  I  was
sorry I was going to be missing it, but I'd promised Brenda I'd
go with her, and besides . . . Cricket was going to be there.
     Yes,  dear  hearts,  Hildy  was  in love. Please hold your
applause until I can determine if the feeling is mutual.
     #
     All the Eight Worlds were commemorating the day; Pluto and
Mars had actually created a  permanent  yearly  holiday  to  be
known as Invasion Day, and the betting was that Luna would soon
follow suit. And Luna, being the most populous planet, hated to
follow  any  of  the seven worlds in anything and so, being the
most populous planet and the Refuge of Humanity as well as  the
FrontLine  Planet  and  the Bulwark of the Race--not to mention
the First to Get Our Asses Whipped if the Invaders ever decided
to continue what they started . . . Luna being  all  that,  and
more,  had  determined to put on the biggest and bestest of all
the eight festivals, and King City being the  largest  city  in
Luna  made  it  seem  a  natural  site for the planet-wide Main
Event, and Armstrong Park being over twenty times the  size  of
the  vanished  Walt  Disney  Universe, it just seemed to follow
that the thing ought to be held there, and that was where I was
going that fine Solar Evening when all I really  wanted  to  do
was  stroll  down  Congress  Street, Cricket on my arm, and eat
cotton candy and maybe bob for apples.
     And hey, sure  it  wasn't  a  celebration,  but  what's  a
holiday without fireworks?
     That's  the only reason I'd agreed to go, Brenda's promise
that I could see the whole  thing  a  safe  distance  from  the
madding  crowds.  The  fireworks  themselves didn't scare me; I
liked fireworks, hated crowds of strangers.
     The tube trip almost killed me, though. We'd  deliberately
decided  to  start  out  quite  early to avoid the crush on the
tubes, but what one genius can think up, another can duplicate,
so the trains were already jammed with  people  who'd  had  the
same idea. Worse, these were people planning to rough it on the
surface,  away  from  the eight gigantic temporary domes set up
for the show, so they  had  brought  their  camping  gear.  The
aisles  and  overhead racks were piled high with luggage carts,
beer coolers, inflatable five-room tents, and 3.4 children  per
family.  It got so bad they started hanging small children from
the overhead straps, where they dangled and  giggled.  Then  it
got  worse.  The train stopped taking passengers long before it
arrived at Armstrong. My stop was three short of the park,  and
I soon saw there would be no point in fighting my way out, so I
rode  it  to the end of the line--gaped in horror at the masses
already assembled there--was disgorged by an irresistible human
tide, then re-boarded and rode it  back,  empty,  to  Dionysius
Station.
     Where  I  sat  down  on a bench, my suit and picnic hamper
beside me, and just shook for a  while,  and  watched  about  a
dozen  human sardine cans rumble by in one direction and a like
number return. Then I grabbed my gear and went up the stairs to
the surface.
     After returning from my  frolics  with  the  Alphans,  I'd
found  my  suit on the foot of my bed in my cabin. I don't know
who brought it there. But I didn't  want  it  anymore,  so  one
Saturday  I  took it back to the shop, meaning to have them fix
the faceplate and sell it on consignment. The salesman took one
look at the hole and before I had a chance  to  explain  I  was
being ushered into the manager's office and he promptly fainted
dead  away.  None  of  them  had  ever  seen a broken faceplate
before. So I shut up, and soon found myself  in  possession  of
their  top-of-the-line  model,  plus  five  years  of free air,
courtesy Hamilton's Outdoor Outfitters. I made no  demands  and
was asked to sign no disclaimers; they simply wanted me to have
it.  They're probably still chewing their knuckles, waiting for
the lawsuit.
     I climbed into this engineering wonder, and  that  special
new-suit  aroma  went  a  long  way toward calming me down. I'd
worried it  might  stir  entirely  different  associations--how
about  that cute point-of-view shot of a piece of the faceplate
tumbling away?--but instead the low whirs and hums and the pure
luxurious feel of the thing did wonders. Too bad they won't let
you wear suits in the tube; with this on, I could have  handled
anything.
     Checking  the  pressure seals on the hamper, I walked into
the lock and out onto the surface.
     #
     "You been waiting long?" I asked.
     "Couple hours," Brenda said.
     She was leaning on the side of  her  rental  rover,  which
she'd  driven  all  the  way  from  a  suburb of King City, the
nearest place you could rent one. I  apologized  for  being  so
late,  told her of the nightmare in the train, how I wished I'd
come with her instead of "saving time" by tubing out.
     "Don't worry about it," she said. "I like it out here."
     I could already tell that, mostly by looking at her  suit.
It  was  a  good  one,  had no rental logo on it, and though in
perfect shape, showed signs of use it  couldn't  have  acquired
unless she regularly spent time in it. Also by the easy way she
stood  and  moved  in  it,  something  most Lunarians never get
enough suit time to achieve.
     The rover was a good one, too. It was a pickup model,  two
seats side by side, a flat bed in back where I tossed my hamper
along  with  her  much  bigger pile of things. They have a wide
wheelbase to compensate for being so  top-heavy  with  the  big
solar panel above, which swings to constantly present itself to
the  sun.  The  sun  being almost at the horizon just then, the
vehicle was at its most awkward, with the panel hanging out  to
the  right  side,  perpendicular  to the ground. I had to crawl
over Brenda's seat to get to mine because the panel blocked the
door.
     "I forget," I said, as I settled myself in the open  seat.
"Will we be going into the sun to get there?"
     "Nope.  South  for a while, then we'll have the sun at our
backs."
     "Good." I hated riding behind the panel. It's not  that  I
didn't  trust  the  autopilot;  I just liked to see where I was
going.
     She told the rover to giddyup, and it did, right along the
broad, smooth highway.  Which  is  why  we'd  chosen  Dionysius
Station  in  the  first place, because it's right on one of the
scarce surface roads on Luna, which is not a  place  where  the
wheeled  vehicle  was  ever a primary mode of transport. People
move on elevators, escalators,  beltways,  maglev/tube  trains,
the  occasional  hoverbus.  Goods  go  by  the  same ways, plus
pneumomail tubes, linac free-trajectory, and  rocket.  Recently
there'd been something of a fad in wheeled surface rovers, two-
and  four-wheeled,  but they were all-terrain and quite rugged,
no roads needed.
     The road we were on was a relic from  a  mining  operation
abandoned  before  I  was born. From time to time we passed the
derelict hulks of ore carriers at the side of the road, mammoth
things, not looking much different from  the  day  they'd  been
stripped  and  left there. Some economic vagary of the time had
made it a better idea to actually smooth out a road surface for
them. Then the road had been used for another half  century  as
the  conduit  between King City and its primary dumping ground.
It was still glass-smooth, and quite a novel way to travel.
     "This sucker moves right along, doesn't it?" I said.
     "It'll reach three  hundred  kay  on  the  straightaways,"
Brenda  said.  "But  it's  gotta  slow way down for the curves,
especially ones to the left."  That  was  because  the  rover's
center  of gravity was at its worst at sunrise and sunset, with
the big panel canted on its  side,  she  explained.  Also,  the
banking  of  the road was not great, and since we were going to
be staying out after dark, she'd had to  carry  ten  batteries,
which  added a lot to our inertia and could easily make us skid
off the road, since the tire traction wasn't as much  as  she'd
prefer. She told me all this with the air of someone who'd done
this  many  times  before,  someone  who  knew  her  machine. I
wondered if she could drive it.
     I got my answer when we turned off the road, and she asked
if I minded. Actually, I did--we're not  used  to  putting  our
lives   in  other  people's  hands,  only  into  the  hands  of
machines--but I said I didn't. And I needn't have worried.  She
drove  with  a  sure  hand,  never  did  anything stupid, never
overcontrolled. We took off across the plains toward the rising
rim of Delambre, just becoming visible over the horizon.
     When we reached the bottom of  the  slope  a  Black  Maria
landed  in front of us, blue lights flashing. A cop got out and
came over to us. He must have been bored, since he  could  have
used his radio, or simply interrogated our computer.
     "You're entering a restricted area, ma'am," he said.
     Brenda  showed  him  the  pass  Liz  had  given her and he
examined it, then her.
     "Didn't I see you on the tube?" he asked, and she said  he
might  have,  and  he  said sure, you were on the such-and-such
show, now how about that? He said he'd loved it  and  she  said
aw,  shucks,  and  by  the  time he finally let us go he'd been
flirting so outrageously I'm convinced  we  hadn't  needed  the
pass  at  all.  He  actually  asked  for her autograph, and she
actually gave it.
     "I thought he was going to ask for  your  phone  code,"  I
said, when he'd finally lifted off.
     "I  thought  I was going to give it to him," she said, and
grinned at me. "I keep thinking I ought to give guys a try."
     "You could do better than that."
     "Not since you Changed." She jammed in the throttle and we
sprayed dust behind us as we charged up the rounded rim of  the
crater.
     #
     Delambre isn't a huge crater like Clavius or Pythagoras or
any number  of  celestial bullet holes on the farside, but it's
big enough. When you're standing on the rim you can't  see  the
other side. That's plenty big for me.
     Still, it would look just like a hundred others except for
one thing: the junkyard.
     We  re-cycle  a lot of things on Luna. We have to; our own
natural  resources  are  fairly  meager.  But  we're  still   a
civilization  driven  by  a market economy. Sometimes cheap and
plentiful power and the low cost of boosting bulk raw materials
in slow orbits combine to make it just too  damn  much  trouble
and  not cost-effective to sort through and re-process a lot of
things. Fortunes have been lost when  a  bulk  carrier  arrives
with  X  million  tonnes  of  Whoosisite  from the mines on Io,
having been in secret transit for thirty  years  disguised  and
listed  as  an Oort comet. Suddenly the bottom falls out of the
market for Whoosisite, and before you know it  you  can't  give
the  stuff  away  and  it's being carted out to Delambre by the
hundred-tonne bucketload. To that add the  twenty-thousand-year
half-life   radioactives  in  drums  guaranteed  to  last  five
centuries. Don't forget to throw  in  obsolete  machines,  some
cannibalized  for  this  or that, others still in working order
but hopelessly slow and not worth  taking  apart.  Abandon  all
that  stuff  out  there,  and  salt  in that ceramic horror you
brought home to Mom from school when you were eight, that stack
of holos you kept for seventy years  and  can't  even  remember
who's  in  them,  plus similar treasures from millions of other
people. Top it with all the things you can't  find  a  use  for
from every sewage outflow in Luna, mixed with just enough water
so  it'll  flow through a pipe. Bake on high for fourteen days,
freeze for fourteen more; continue doing that for  two  hundred
years, adding more ingredients to taste, and you've created the
vista that met us from the lip of Delambre.
     The  crater's  not  actually  full, it just looks that way
from the west rim.
     "Over there," Brenda said. "That's where I said  I'd  meet
Liz."
     I saw a speck on the horizon, also sitting on the rim.
     "How about letting me drive?" I asked.
     "You  can drive?" It wasn't an unreasonable question; most
Lunarians can't.
     "In my wild youth, I drove  the  Equatorial  Race.  Eleven
thousand  klicks,  very little of it level." No point in adding
I'd blown the transmission a quarter of the way through.
     "And I was lecturing you on how to  handle  a  rover.  Why
don't you ever shut me up, Hildy?"
     "Then I'd lose half of my amusing stories."
     I  switched  the  controls over to the British side of the
car and took off. It had been many years since I'd  driven.  It
was  lots  of fun. The rover had a good suspension; I only left
the ground two or three times,  and  the  gyros  kept  us  from
turning  over.  When  I  saw  her gripping the dash I throttled
back.
     "You'd never make a race driver. This is smooth."
     "I never wanted to be a race driver. Or a corpse."
     #
     "I feel like a Girl Scout," I told Brenda as I helped  her
spread out the tent.
     "What's   wrong  with  that?  I  earned  all  the  surface
pioneering merit badges."
     "Nothing wrong. I was one, too, but that was ninety  years
ago."
     She  wasn't nearly that far removed from scouting, and she
still took it seriously. Where I'd have  just  pulled  the  rip
cord  and  let  it  go  at that, she was a fanatic about saving
energy, and ran a line from the  rover's  solar  panel  to  the
tent's  power  supply,  as  if  the  reactor  wouldn't  last  a
fortnight on its  own.  When  the  tent  was  arranged  to  her
satisfaction  she  pulled the cord and it shuddered and flopped
as it filled with air, and in ten seconds we had  a  five-meter
transparent hemisphere . . . which promptly frosted up inside.
     She  got  on her knees and crawled into the iglootype lock
and I zipped it behind her to save her  squirming  around,  and
she told me this model had automatic zippers, so there had been
progress  since my childhood. She fiddled with the air controls
while I stacked blankets and pillows and thermoses and the rest
of our gear in the lock-got to get it well-packed,  don't  want
to  waste air by cycling the lock too much--then I stood around
outside while she brought it all in and got the temperature and
pressure and humidity adjusted. When I got in and took  off  my
helmet  it  was  still on the cool side. I wrote my name in the
frost like I remembered doing on  long-ago  camping  trips;  it
soon melted, and the dew was absorbed . . . and the dome seemed
to vanish.
     "It's  been  too  long,"  I said. "I'm glad you brought me
here."
     For once she knew exactly what I meant.  She  stopped  her
fussing  around  and  stood  with  me and we just looked around
without saying anything.
     Any beauty on Luna is going to be a harsh sort of  beauty.
There's  nothing benevolent or comforting to see anywhere--much
like West Texas. This was the best way to see  it,  in  a  tent
invisible  to  our  eyes,  as  if  we  were standing on a black
circular pad of plastic with nothing between us and vacuum.
     It was also the best time of day to see it; the Lunar Day,
I mean. The sun was very close to the horizon, the shadows were
almost infinitely long. Which helped, because  half  our  vista
was  of the biggest garbage dump on the planet. There's a funny
thing about shadows like that. If you've never seen snow, go to
Pennsylvania the next time they've scheduled it and  watch  how
snow  can  transform  the most mundane--even ugly--scene into a
magical landscape. Sunlight on the surface is like  that.  It's
hard and bright as diamond, it blasts everything it touches and
yet  it  does  no  damage; nothing moves, the billion facets of
dark and light make every  ordinary  object  into  a  hardedged
jewel.
     We  didn't  look  west; the light was too dazzling. To the
south we saw the rolling land falling away to  our  right,  the
endless  heaps  of  garbage to the left. East was looking right
out over Delambre, and north was the  hulk  of  the  Robert  A.
Heinlein, almost a mile of derelict might-have-been starship.
     "You  think  they'll  have any trouble finding us?" Brenda
asked.
     "Liz and Cricket? I wouldn't think so. Not  with  the  old
Heinlein over there. How could you miss it?"
     "That's what I thought, too."
     We   set  about  little  domestic  chores,  inflating  the
furniture, spreading a few rugs. She showed me how  to  set  up
the  curtain  that  turned  the  tent into two not-very-private
rooms, how to operate the little campstove. While we were doing
that, the show began. Not to worry; it was going to be  a  long
show.
     I  had  to admit the artistic director had done well. This
was to be a commemoration of the billions dead on Earth, right?
And at the latitude of  Armstrong  Park,  the  Earth  would  be
directly overhead, right? And if you start the show at sundown,
you'll  have a half-Earth in the sky. So why not make the Earth
the center and theme of your sky show?
     By fudging just a little you can begin the show  when  the
old  International  Dateline is facing Luna. Now picture it: as
the Earth turns, one by one the vanished nations of  Old  Earth
emerge  into the sunlight of a new day. And as each one appears
. . .
     We were bathed in  the  red  light  of  the  flag  of  the
Siberian  Republic,  a  rectangle  one hundred kilometers long,
hanging above us at a height sufficient to blot  out  half  the
sky.
     "Wow," Brenda said. Her mouth was hanging open.
     "Double  wow,"  I  said, and closed my own mouth. The flag
hung there almost a minute, burning  brightly,  then  sputtered
out. We hurried to get Brenda's boombox turned on, hung the big
speakers on each side of the tent, and were in time to hear the
opening  strains  of  "God Defend New Zealand" as the Kiwi flag
unfurled above us.
     That's how it was to be for eighteen hours.
     When Liz arrived she told us how it was done. The flag was
a mesh construction stuffed into a big container and blasted up
from one of the pyro bases, in  Baylor-A,  about  forty  klicks
south of us, and Hyapatia and Torricelli, to the east. When the
shell  reached  the right height it burst and rockets spread it
out and it was set afire by radio control. Neat.
     How do fireworks burn in a vacuum? Don't  ask  me.  But  I
know  rocket  fuels  carry  an oxidizer, so I guess it was some
chemical magic like that. However they did it, it  knocked  our
socks  off,  me  and Brenda, no more than fifty clicks from the
big firebase in Baylor, much closer  than  the  poor  hicks  in
Armstrong, who probably thought they were getting one heck of a
show.  And  who  cares  if,  from  our  vantage, the flags were
distorted into trapezoids? I sure didn't.
     Brenda turned out to be a fountain  of  information  about
the show.
     "They  didn't  figure it made sense to give a country like
Vanuatu equal time  with,  say,  Russia,"  she  said  (we  were
looking  at  the ghastly flag of Vanuatu at the time, listening
to its improbable national anthem). "So  the  major  countries,
ones with a lot of history, they'll get more of a pageant. Like
the Siberian Republic used to be part of some other country--"
     "The U.S.S.R.," I supplied.
     "Right.  Says  so  right here." She had a massive souvenir
program spread out before us. "So they'll  do  more  flags  for
that--the Tsarist flag, historical stuff--"
     "--and play the 'Internationale.'"
     "--and folk themes, like what we heard from New Zealand."
     They  were  telling  us  most  of that on a separate radio
channel, giving a  history  of  each  country,  pitched  at  an
illiterate  level.  I turned it off, preferring just the music,
and Brenda didn't object. I'd have turned off  the  television,
too-Brenda  had  pasted  a  big screen to the south side of the
tent--but she seemed  to  enjoy  the  scenes  of  revelry  from
Armstrong and all the other celebrations in all the major Lunar
cities, so what the hell.
     Get  out  an Earth globe and you'll quickly spot the major
flaw in the Earth-rotational program. For the first  six  hours
only  a  few  dozen countries will swing into view. Even if you
give the entire history of China and Japan, there's going to be
some gaps to fill, and how much can you say about Nauru and the
Solomon Islands? On the other hand, when dawn broke over Africa
and Europe the  pyrotechs  were  going  to  be  busier  than  a
onelegged man in an ass-kicking contest.
     Not to worry. When they ran out of flags, that's when they
trotted out the heavy artillery.
     From  the first appearance of that red ensign, the sky was
never dark.
     There were the conventional shells, starbursts in all  the
colors  of the rainbow. Without air to impede their flight they
could be placed with pinpoint  precision--one  thing  Lunarians
understand is ballistics. They were also perfectly symmetrical,
for the same reason.
     You  want  more? In the vacuum, it was possible to produce
effects never seen on Earth. Huge gas canisters could produce a
thin atmosphere, locally, temporarily,  upon  which  tricks  of
ionization   could  be  played.  We  were  treated  to  auroral
curtains, washes of color in which the entire sky  turned  blue
or  red  or  yellow,  then flickered magically. Shrapnel shells
filled the sky with spinning discs no bigger than a coin, which
were then swept by searchlights to twinkle as no stars ever had
on Luna, then exploded by lasers.
     Still not satisfied?  How  about  a  few  nukes?  Brenda's
program  said  there  would be over one hundred special fission
shells, an average of one every ten minutes for the duration of
the show. These were detonated in  orbit  and  used  to  propel
literally  thousands  of regular pyro shells into bursts over a
thousand klicks wide. The first one went off at the end of  the
Vanuatu  National Anthem, and it rattled our teeth, and then it
went on exploding, and exploding, and exploding. Glorious!
     And don't think I didn't  hear  that!  You're  complaining
that  sound  doesn't  travel in a vacuum. Of course it doesn't,
but radio  waves  do,  and  you  obviously  never  listened  to
Brenda's  top-of-theline  boombox  cranked  up  to full volume.
Those poor folks who watch fireworks in an atmosphere  have  to
wait  for  the  sound  to arrive, too, and they get a chance to
brace for it; we got it instantaneously, no warning, a flash of
hurting light and a ka-BOOOOOOOM!
     Sometimes wretched excess is the only thing that will do.
     #
     "They say this place is haunted."
     We'd just been treated to the national anthem of Belau and
its flag had faded from the sky (a big yellow circle on a  blue
field,  if  you're  keeping  score at home), and two things had
dawned on us. One, you need a  breather  from  wretched  excess
from  time to time, or it gets . . . well, wretched. Between us
we'd emitted not even one "wow" at the last three nukes, and  I
was  thinking  of suggesting we switch to Top 40 for an hour or
so. Somehow I thought I could survive missing  the  playing  of
Negara  Ku  (My  Country;  Mayalsia)  and Sanrasoen Phra Barami
("Hail to our King! Blessings on our King! Hearts and minds  we
bow/   To   Your   Majesty   now!"   words   by  H.R.H.  Prince
Narisaranuvadtivongs). And two,  Liz  and  Cricket  were  three
hours late.
     "Who's  they?" I asked, munching on a drumstick of Hildy's
Finest WesTex Fried Chicken. Hunger had overcome the demands of
politeness; Brenda had miked a few pieces, and  the  hell  with
Liz  and  Cricket.  I  was  eyeing the beer cooler as well, but
neither of us wanted to get too much of a head start.
     "You know," she said. "'They.' Your primary news source."
     "Oh, that 'they.'"
     "Seriously, though, I've heard from several people  who've
come  out  to  visit  the  old  Heinlein. They say they've seen
ghosts."
     "Walter put you up to this, didn't he," I said.
     "I've talked to him about it. He thinks  there  may  be  a
story in it."
     "Sure  there  is, but there's no need to come out here and
interview a spook. That kind of story, you  just  make  it  up.
Walter must have told you that."
     "He did. But this isn't your ordinary filler story, Hildy,
I mean it. The people I interviewed, some of them were scared."
     "Give me a break."
     "I've  been  coming out here and bringing a good camera. I
thought I might get a picture."
     "Come on. What do you think the Nipple's photo  department
is for? Dummying up just that kind of pic, that's what."
     She  didn't  say  anything  about  it  for a while, and we
watched several more ghost flags in the  sky.  I  found  myself
eyeing  the  Heinlein.  And  no,  I'm  not  superstitious, just
godawful curious.
     "Is that why you've been camping out so  much?"  I  asked.
"The story's not worth it."
     "Camping  . . . oh, no," and she laughed. "I've camped out
a lot all my life. I find if very . . . peaceful out here."
     Another long silence went by, or as silent as it could  be
with  nukes  exploding outside and her boombox turned down to a
low rumble. At last she got up  and  walked  to  stand  by  the
invisible plastic wall of the tent. She leaned her head against
it.  And  by  the  rockets red glare, she told me something I'd
have been a lot happier not hearing.
     "Ever since I met you," she began, "I've thought  I  could
tell  you  something I've never told anybody else. Not a soul."
She looked at me. "If you don't want to hear it, please say  so
now,  'cause  if  I  get  started I don't think I'll be able to
stop."
     If you could have told her to shut up,  I  don't  want  to
know  you.  I  didn't  need  this, I didn't want it, but when a
friend asks something like that of you, you say yes, that's all
there is to it.
     "Make it march," I said, and glanced at my watch. "I don't
want to miss the Laotian National Anthem."
     She smiled, and looked back out over the landscape.
     "When you first met me . . . well, later, that first  time
I  came out to Texas to see you, you probably noticed something
unusual about me."
     "You're probably referring to your lack of genitalia.  I'm
observant that way."
     "Yes. Did you ever wonder about it."
     Had  I?  Not much actually. "Ah . . . I guess I thought it
was something religious, or cultural,  something  your  parents
believed. I remember thinking it wasn't a nice thing to do to a
child, but not my business."
     "Yes.  Not  a nice thing to do. And it did have to do with
my parents. With my father."
     "I don't know a lot about fathers," I said,  still  hoping
she'd change her mind. "I'm like most; mom never told me who he
was."
     "I  knew  mine. He lived with me and my mother. He started
raping me when I was about six. I've never had the nerve to ask
my mother if she knew about it, I didn't even  know  there  was
anything wrong with it, I thought it was what I was supposed to
do."  Standing  there,  looking  out  at the surface, the words
spilling out of her but calm, calm, no hint of tears. "I  don't
know  how I learned it wasn't something my friends did, maybe I
started  to  talk  about  it  and  picked  up  something,  some
attitude, some beginning of horror, something that made me shut
up about it to this day. But it went on for years and I thought
about  turning him in, I know that's what you're wondering, why
didn't I do it, but he was my father and  he  loved  me  and  I
thought I loved him. But I was ashamed of us, and when I turned
twelve  I  went  and  had  .  .  . it . . . removed, closed up,
eradicated so he couldn't put it in me anymore, and I know  now
the  Minor's  Referee  who let me get it done in spite of dad's
objections had figured out what was going on because  she  kept
saying  I should bring charges, but all I wanted was for him to
stop. And he did, he never touched me from that day on,  hardly
spoke  to  me,  for that matter. So I don't know why it is that
some females prefer the company of other  females,  but  that's
why  for  me, it's because I can't deal with males, only when I
met you, well, not too long after I  met  you,  I  fell  badly,
madly  in  love  with  you. Only you were a boy, which drove me
crazy. Please don't worry about it, Hildy, I've  got  it  under
control,  I know there's things that just can't happen, and you
and me are one of them. I've heard you  talking  about  Cricket
and  I  ought to be jealous because she and I were making love,
but it was just for fun, and besides Cricket's a boy now,  too,
and  I  wish  you  all  the  happiness. So my secret's out, and
another one is I arranged it so you and I would be alone for  a
little  while  out  here,  the place I always come, always came
when I wanted to get away from him. This is rotten and  I  know
it,  but  I've thought about it a long time and I can live with
it. I won't cry and I won't beg, but I'd like to make  love  to
you  just  one time. I know you're hetero, everyone I've talked
to says that about you, but what I'm  hoping  is  it's  just  a
preference, you're a Changer, you've made love to women before,
but  maybe  it's  something you can't do when you're female. Or
maybe you don't want to or think it's a bad  idea,  and  that's
fine,  too.  I just had to ask, that's all. I know I sound real
needy but I'm not, not that way; I'll live either  way,  and  I
hope  we'll  still be friends, either way. There. I didn't know
if I'd have the guts to say it all,  but  I  did,  and  I  feel
better already."
     I  have  a short list of things I never do, and right near
the top is surrendering to emotional blackmail.  If  there's  a
worse  kind of sex than the charity fuck, I haven't heard about
it.  And  her  words  could  be  read  as  the  worst  kind  of
whipped-puppy  appeal and dammit, okay, she did have a right to
act like a whipped puppy but I hate whipped puppies, I want  to
kick  them  for  letting  themselves  be whipped . . . only the
words  didn't  come  out   like   that,   not   out   of   that
straight-backed,  dry-eyed  beanpole  over  there  against  the
blazing sky. She'd grown since I met her, and  I  thought  this
was  part  of  the  growth.  Why she'd picked me to unload on I
don't know, but the way she'd done it flattered me rather  than
obligated me.
     So  I told her no. Or would have, in a perfect world where
I actually follow my short list of things I never  do.  What  I
did  instead  was get up and put my arms around her from behind
and say:
     "You handled that very well.  If  you'd  cried,  I'd  have
kicked your butt all the way to King City."
     "I  won't  cry.  Not about that, not anymore. And not when
it's over."
     And she didn't.
     #
     Brenda had arranged for  our  moment  of  privacy  by  not
telling  me  Cricket had been assigned to cover the festivities
at Armstrong Park. After our little  romantic  interlude--quite
pleasant,  thanks  for asking--she confessed her ruse, and also
that he was going to play hooky after the first few  hours  and
should be arriving any minute, so let's get dressed, okay?
     I  can't  imagine why I worried about getting a head start
on Liz. She got a head start on all of us, drinking on her  way
out to Armstrong and all the way back, as if Cricket needed any
more causes for alarm.
     She  came  barreling across the dunes in a fourwheel Aston
Assbuster, model XJ, with  a  reaction  engine  and  a  bilious
tangerine-flake  paint  job.  This was the baby with four-point
jets for boosting over those little potholes you sometimes find
on Luna--say,  something  about  the  size  of  Copernicus.  It
couldn't actually reach orbit, but it was a near thing. She had
decorated  it  with  her  usual understated British good taste:
holographic flames  belching  from  the  wheel  wells,  a  whip
antenna  with  a  raccoon  tail  on  the  tip,  a chrome-plated
oversize skull sitting out front  whose  red  eyes  blinked  to
indicate turns.
     This  apparition  came  skidding  around  the Heinlein and
headed straight  for  us.  Brenda  stood  and  waved  her  arms
frantically  and  I had time to ponder how thin a soap bubble a
Girl Scout tent really was before Liz hit the brakes and  threw
a spray of powdered green cheese against the tent wall.
     She  was  out  before the fuzzy dice stopped swinging, and
ran around to the left side to unbelt Cricket,  who'd  strapped
himself tight enough to risk gangrene of the pelvis. She picked
him  up and stuffed him in the airlock, where he seemed to come
to his senses. He crawled  inside  the  tent,  but  instead  of
standing  he just hunkered there and I began to be concerned. I
helped him off with his helmet.
     "Cricket's a little under the  weather,"  Liz  said,  over
Cricket's  suit  radio.  "I  thought  I ought to get him inside
quick."
     I realized he was saying something so I put my  ear  close
to  his  lips  and  he was muttering I think I'm gonna be okay,
over and over, like a mantra. Brenda  and  I  got  him  seated,
where he soon regained some color and a passing interest in his
surroundings.
     We  were  getting  a  little  water into him when Liz came
through the lock, pushing a Press-UKennel in front of  her.  At
last  Cricket came alive, springing to his feet and letting fly
with an almost incoherent string of curses. No need  to  quote;
Cricket  wouldn't  be  proud  of  it, he feels curses should be
crafted rather than hurled, but he was too upset for that now.
     "You maniac!" he shouted. "Why the hell wouldn't you  slow
down?"
     "'Cause  you  told  me  you were getting sick. I figured I
better get you here quick as I could."
     "I was sick because you were going so fast!" But then  the
fight  drained  out  of  him and he sat down, shaking his head.
"Fast? Did I say fast? We came all the way from Armstrong,  and
I  think  she  touched ground four times." He explored his head
with his fingers. "No, five times, I count  five  lumps.  She'd
just  look  for  a  steep crater wall and say 'Let's see can we
jump over this sucker,' and the  next  thing  I  knew  we'd  be
flying."
     "We  were  moving along," Liz agreed. "I figure our shadow
ought to be catching up with us about now."
     "'Thank god for the gyros,' I said. You  remember  I  said
that? And you said 'What gyros? Gyros are for old ladies.'"
     "I  took  'em  off,"  Liz  told us. "That way you get more
practice using the steering jets. Come on, Cricket, you--"
     "I'm going back with you guys," Cricket said. "No way  I'm
ever riding with that crazy person again."
     "We only have two seats," Brenda said.
     "Strap  me  to  the  fender,  I don't care. It couldn't be
worse than what I just went through."
     "I think that calls for a drink," Liz said.
     "You think everything calls for a drink."
     "Doesn't it?"
     But before going out to bring in her portable bar she took
the time to release her--what else?-English  bulldog,  Winston,
from  the  kennel.  He  came  lumbering  out,  revising  all my
previous notions of the definition of ugly, and  promptly  fell
in  love with me. More precisely, with my leg, which he started
humping with canine abandon.
     It  could  have  spoiled  the  beginning  of  a  wonderful
relationship--I  like  a  little more courtship, thank you--but
luckily and against all odds he was well-trained, and  a  swift
kick from Liz discouraged him short of consummation. After that
he  just  followed me around, snuffling, mooning at me with his
bloodshot, piggy eyes, going to sleep every time I sat down.  I
must  admit,  I took a shine to him. To prove it, I fed him all
my leftover chicken bones.
     #
     Eighteen hours is a long time for a party, but there is  a
certain type of person with a perverse urge not to be the first
to  call  it quits. All four of us were that type of person. We
were going to stick it  out,  by  god,  right  through  to  the
playing  of  the  Guatemalan National Anthem ("Guatemala, blest
land, home of happy race,/ May thine altars profaned be never;/
No yoke of slavery weigh on thee ever/  Nor  may  tyrants  e'er
spit in thy face!").
     (Yes,  I  looked  at  the globe, too, and if you think the
whole planet was going to stay up six hours  for  the  national
hymn  of  Tonga,  you're crazier than we were. Tonga got in her
licks just after Western Samoa.)
     No one was going to catch up with Liz, but  we  were  soon
matching  her, and after a while Cricket even forgot he was mad
at her. Things got a bit hazy as the  celebration  wore  on.  I
can't actually remember much after the Union Jack blazed in all
its  Britannic  majesty. I remember that one mainly because Liz
had been nodding out, and Brenda got me and  Cricket  to  stand
when "God Save the Queen" began to play, and we sang the second
verse, which goes something like this:
     #

     O Lord our God arise,
     Scatter her enemies,
     And make them fall:
     Confound their politics,
     Frustrate their knavish tricks,
     On Thee our hopes we fix:
     God save us all!

     #

     "God save us all, indeed," Cricket said.
     "That's  the  most  beautiful  thing  I  ever  heard," Liz
sobbed, with the easy tears of the veteran drunk. "And I  think
Winston needs to go wee-wee."
     The  mutt  did  seem in some distress. Liz had given him a
bowl or two of Guinness and I, after the chicken bones  had  no
visible  effect,  had  plied  him  with  everything  from whole
jalapen~os to the bottlecaps from Liz's  home  brew.  I'd  seen
Cricket  slip him a few of the sausages we'd been roasting over
the holographic campfire. All in all,  this  was  a  dog  in  a
hurry.  He  was  running  in  tight  circles  scratching at the
airlock zipper.
     Turned out the monster was perhaps too  well  trained.  He
flatly refused to do his business indoors, according to Liz, so
we all set about stuffing him into his pressure suit.
     Before  long  we  were all reduced to hysterical laughter,
the sort where you actually fall on the floor and  roll  around
and  start  worrying  about your own bladder. Winston wanted to
cooperate, but as soon as we'd get his hind legs into the  suit
he'd start bouncing around in his eagerness and end up with the
whole  thing  bunched around his neck. So Cricket scratched his
back, which made the dog hold still and arch himself  and  lick
his  nose  and  we'd get his front legs in and maybe one of his
back legs, and then he'd start that reflexive back leg  jerking
they  do, and all was lost again. When we did get all four legs
into the right holes he thought it was  time,  and  we  had  to
chase  him  and hold him down to get his air bottle strapped to
his back, and at the last moment  he  took  a  dislike  to  his
helmet  and tried to eat it--this was a dog who made short work
of steel bottlecaps, remember--and we had to  put  on  a  spare
seal and test it before we finally screwed him in tight, shoved
him in the lock, and cycled it.
     Whereupon  we  laughed  even  harder  at  the spectacle of
Winston running from rock to rock lifting a leg  for  a  squirt
here  and  a  dribble there, blissfully unaware that it was all
going into the waste pouch through the hose Liz had fastened to
his doggie dingus with a rubber band. Yes, folks, I said doggie
dingus: that's the level of humor we'd been reduced to.
     #
     Later, I remember that Brenda  and  Liz  were  napping.  I
showed  Cricket  the wondrous curtain that turned the tent into
two rooms. But he didn't get it, and suggested we suit  up  and
take a wal