Flatlander - Larry Niven [138]
A pressure suit lay facedown. It was a hardshell, not a skintight. I was looking at the top of its head.
Corrugated footprints ran away from the body, three and four yards apart. The intruder had been running toward the rim to my right, south-southeast, leaping like a Lunar Olympics runner.
“Still got me, Hecate?”
“Yes, Gil. Your camera’s better than the one on the waldo tug, but I can’t make out any markings on the suit.”
“It’s head-on to me. Okay, I’m setting a relay antenna. Now I’ll get closer.” I started the Mark Twenty-nine rolling into the crater. If the shield around me was glowing, I couldn’t see it from inside.
“I think you were wrong. That isn’t a flatlander’s suit. It’s just old.”
“Gil, we went to some effort to get the ARM involved. That was never a lunie design. It’s too square. The helmet’s wrong. This fishbowl design we’re wearing, we were already using it when we built Luna City!”
“Hecate, how did you find this thing? How long has it been lying here?”
Hesitation. “We don’t send sputniki over Del Rey Crater very often. It’s hard on the instruments. Nobody saw anything odd until the waldo tugs went in, and then we got a nice view through a tug’s camera.”
Even if a few sputniki did cross over Del Rey, the suit wouldn’t contrast with the other silver dots around it. How long had it been here? “Hecate, divert a sputnik or a ship with a camera. We need an overhead view. Do you have the authority, or do I have to play dominance games?”
“I’ll find out.”
“In a minute. These waldo tugs. What are you stockpiling? The moon has helium-three fusion and solar power, too!”
“Those old impact tanks go off to the Helios plants.”
“Why?”
Hecate sighed. “Beats the hell out of me. Maybe you can find out. You’ve got clout.”
I saw a canister broken open and steered wide around it. Invisible death. I couldn’t see any kind of glow around me: no evil blue Cherenkov radiation and nothing from my own shield, either.
What if my wheels broke down? I might trust the Shreveshield, but how careful had Shreve Development been with something as simple, as off-the-shelf as a pair of power wheels? I couldn’t leave the Mark Twenty-nine without frying …
Dumb. I’d just carry it out. Hecate and I had picked it up easily. Why does radiation make people so nervous?
I stopped a little way from the downed suit. There were no tracks nearby, only the marks under the gloves and boots. The deader had clawed at the dust, leaving finger and toe marks. I ran the Mark Twenty-nine in a half circle, helmet camera running. Then I pulled as close as I could get and lowered the stand.
At this moment I still couldn’t testify that that wasn’t an empty suit. The only markings were the usual color-coded arrows, instructions for novices. They seemed faded.
I didn’t much want to step down. Radioactive dust on my boots would be carried inside the Shreveshield. What I could do was lean far over, gripping the belly casing of the Mark Twenty-nine with legs and hands, and reach into the suit with my imaginary arm.
It’s like reaching into water rich with weeds and scum. My fingers trail through varying texture. Yup, there’s someone in there. It seems dehydrated. Corruption isn’t obtrusive, and for this I’m grateful. Maybe the suit leaked. The chest … a woman?
I reach around to touch the face lightly. Dry and ancient. I grimace and reach, trailing phantom fingers through chest and torso and abdomen.
“Gil, are you all right?”
“Sure, Hecate. I’m using my talent to see what I can feel out.”
“It’s just that you didn’t say anything for a while. What talent?”
I never know how someone will react. “Wild talent I’ve got some PK and esper. It amounts to being able to feel around inside a locked box with an imaginary arm and hand. I can pick up things, little things. Okay?”
“Okay. What have you got?”
“She was a woman. Hecate, she’s shorter than I am.”
“Flatlander.”
“Likely. No markings on the suit. Corruption isn’t advanced, but she’s dried out like a mummy. We