Chapter 4.0:
Escape Velocity
Coach told Speed to spend the evening thinking about what it meant to be aggressive, but all Speed planned to do was ride his gravBike through the craters.
To Speed, the next best thing to MoonBall, was riding his gravBike through the rubble and craters of the Moon’s surface. Even MoonBall had become a pain, because Coach was constantly yelling. He had become so angry, his arms folded and his face red, that Speed barely recognized his mentor.
Speed knew that the only way for him to become a great ball player was to listen to his coach, but what did Coach mean with all of his shouting? Was Speed supposed to become an angry, shouting man like Coach? Deep down Coach was a smart guy, Speed knew it.
It was weird. Speed felt like it was only safe for him to be aggressive when he was on his bike, since riding was dangerous. If Speed ever let loose on the court, he surely would have hurt someone, or at least lost track of the ball. The lack of aggression, as Coach described it, turned into restlessness after every game, and even poor grades in school.
Speed always had energy left over after practice. The muscles on his arms were sore, but they vibrated with more energy than he could spend on the court. Speed knew that his body was capable of more. There was nothing like a gravBike ride to take his mind off the frustrating practices with Coach.
Speed wasn’t angry with his mentor. Most of the time, Speed never felt the emotion his mentor described as “anger.” Speed just didn’t know what it meant to be angry that way. It wasn’t that there weren’t any reasons for Speed to be angry, but there wasn’t usually any time for it. School was hard for kids on the moon, since they had to deal with a far more extreme environment than kids on earth had to deal with.
On the GravBike, though, things were different. Speed could look back at MoonBase and see the problems with his school, his friends--and even his small family--as clear as direct sunlight. Then, Speed could wrap these problems in the sound and danger of the ride, and leave them in the dust till the next day.
Speed’s friends and family would still be there, they would always be there.
He could also play music through his gravBike helmet, not possible through his MoonBall training helmet, or through his learning headset. The GoodBots had made sure that learning and recreation were separated by thick, black lines.
There were actually thick, black lines in the cubbies, between the specific headsets. Music had few uses on the moon, after all, and the good of humanity hardly rested on Bach, or the Beetles.
On the GravBike, Speed verbally searched through earth music new and old. He could listen to anything he wanted, and the GoodBot program could even guess what songs he might want to listen to. The program scanned Speed’s past choices, then processed them with the Interlink, the all-knowing GoodBot brain. One day Speed’s GoodBot headset had found a very special song, and Speed had listened to it over and over again. This song set the tone for Speed’s ride from then on, and he loved every second.
“Search Queen,” Speed commanded his bike’s GoodBot program.
“Queen located, Human Speed,” the dispassionate GoodBot voice intoned.
“Find ‘Flash.’ Play.”
“Shortcut ‘Flash’ initiated. GoodBots are here to help.”
The familiar slogan sounded with a tone, fading into music that washed soothingly over Speed’s ears.
Speed loved the beat and the lyrics of this weird song about some obscure earth hero named “Flash.” Speed hadn’t bothered to look up the wiki about Flash. He was afraid it would ruin the song. With guitars strumming to a beat laced with lightning bolts and other fantastic sounds, Speed kicked the accelerator and blue flame pulsed from his bike’s fusion engines.
He was always in direct communication with his mom these outings, because it was not exactly the safest of hobbies.
Some spots which seemed to be solid rock, were actually dangerous pits filled with powdery moon dust. Although his gravBike maintained a specific distance from the center of the moon, under Speed’s control, Speed himself could potentially fall off his bike into one of these treacherous pits. It wasn’t certain death, but death was a possibility. The fact that his mom allowed him to go on these outings was either evidence that they were growing apart, or that mom was playing some new game, trying to get him to see “the bigger picture.” Maybe it was both.
Jets of blue and purple streaked from the exhaust ports of the craft, and Speed turned up his favorite song. It would repeat, over and over. There was nothing quite like racing along the rims of craters with music from the great blue planet blasting at top volume. Briefly, Speed wondered what it was like to go surfing on earth, or to ride a mechanical bicycle on a pavement road.
--A harsh tone sounded in his right ear, three times, indicating that the link to his mother’s communicator had been cut.
Beeep Beeep Beeep
Probably out of range!
Speed couldn’t resist the urge to keep riding, since he finally felt free of his mother’s smothering attention, and Coach’s overbearing ambitions. Ever since Speed’s father had died, his mom had paid him far too much attention, and it was beginning to interfere with everything from school to MoonBall practice. Speed was doing the best he could, what could she possibly want from him?
On his bike such cares washed away. With a breath of freshly recycled air, he turned the music back to high volume and continued to dodge craters.
“Caution, Human Speed, this setting may damage your hearing. You are also exceeding safety distance from Moon Base. Your mother has urged you to use caution.”
Mom trusts me, after all. She said so herself.
The gravBike crested the ridge of what Speed knew was one of the largest craters on the moon, but then Speed slammed on his brakes, because he nearly rode off into a huge, black pit.
This pit was not a common drift of moon dust, but an enormous ravine, apparently stretching for kilometers in every direction. Speed couldn’t even see the other side.
Whoa!
Speed peered over the edge. Where there used to be a crater, there was now a great ravine into… nothingness! Stretching on for miles on either side.
The edges of the enormous hole were strange to Speed. They were not like the edges of any crater he had ever seen. It looked to Speed like the pit had been purposely manufactured, that the pit was something manmade. Speed didn’t remember hearing anything about a huge crater project happening anywhere near Moon Base, even on their side of the moon. But then, this crater was just a big hole in the ground, with shiny edges. No big deal.
It’s no big deal. I’ll just ride along the edge, if I can’t find a way to get around it
No, there’s something there.
Down, into the darkness, a blue glow, like the glow of his gravBike engine, pulsed, like a volcano getting ready to blow. Speed then saw that the edges of the giant hole were not just like his gravBike engine, they were identical, but much, much bigger. The whole crater, Speed realized, was on a scale he had never before seen on the moon.
The biggest fusion engines I’ve ever seen. They’re big enough to move an asteroid. Are they big enough to move… to move the moon?
Speed wondered why anyone would want to create an enormous engine inside the moon. Just then, he saw a pack of robots on his side of the crater heading in the opposite direction. Speed decided to follow them. He supposed that a giant construction project would be simple with GoodBot help, and maybe it wasn’t that big of a deal after all. This could be a great research project for school. None of the other kids had chosen their study projects for engineering.
The three GoodBots he saw were mostly like any other GoodBots Speed had ever seen, except that they were moving faster than the slow, lumbering bots which performed maintenance around the base. Those bots were basically hovering white spheres of metal alloy, which rotated useful devices on either side. The bots on Moon Base were kind and docile, taking time to ensure that everyone
was being taken care of. Throughout the corridors of Moon Base, one could always hear, “GoodBots are here to help.”
These bots, however, were moving at breakneck speed, and carrying dozens of construction components. They were sleek, and aqualine in their construction. Speed had never seen a bot move so fast, certainly not carrying so many parts, and not even once had he seen a GoodBot with that configuration.
They’re losing me!
Speed realized that he could follow their trail to wherever they were going, so it didn’t matter if they were moving faster than his gravBike. The velocity of the robots was confusing, because, as far as Speed knew, his gravBike had the fastest engines of its size-class.
Speed’s helmet beeped again, and he realized that, at that moment, he had a choice: Speed could either go home and apologize to his mother for staying out of range, or find out what those GoodBots were doing, and risk being grounded for weeks. Maybe Speed would have told his mother that he had been working on the school engineering project.
I’ve been grounded before. It took me weeks to catch up in practice.
Speed loved his mother, and decided that the great engine would still be there in the morning, so he turned around. At last, Speed crossed into the range of his mother’s communicator. He expected she would give him a long lecture in her “high-pitched, but exceptionally loud” tone of voice.
He was used to that one, and had practically tuned it out.
Worse, she would sound hurt and upset. It really bothered Speed when his mother was upset with him, or upset at all for that matter. He didn’t remember everything about the years following dad’s death, but he did remember that they sucked, big time...
...but Something was wrong.
Speed had crossed into range, but his helmet was still beeping at him, indicating a severed connection. Just then, the gravBike slammed into something, and was thrown several meters back. Speed floated off the gravBike, then came skidding to a halt in the moon dust. His suit was covered in the stuff.
Speed rolled around onto his back and peered at the gravBike, meters away.
The bike had righted itself, apparently undamaged.
What was that?
Speed walked to the place where he guessed the collision happened, and saw a thick line of depressed dust. Around the line, the dust swirled in strange, little whirlwinds. Immediately, Speed realized where he was.
The Shield!
Moon Base’s magnetic shield had been activated, and this meant that Speed would not be getting home any time soon. Nothing went in or out of the shield, and Speed had been caught outside. He was in big trouble.
Then, with horror, Speed saw the reason for activating a shield. A dark gray and emerald green asteroid, trailing a narrow sky-blue stripe of ice crystals, was headed directly for the human habitat!
Perhaps it was not as big as it looked. Speed thought more carefully, though, and realized that Moon Base would probably be in serious trouble. What was he supposed to do? There had never been any safety drills that covered an impact of this magnitude.
Speed estimated that the gray-green asteroid would hit the colony in seconds--but it seemed to be slowing down, rather than accelerating toward the surface, which meant it could take up to a minute to reach the base.
That might give him time to find a way to contact the base, but the whole situation seemed wrong somehow. The asteroid, which had changed from a speck to a smudge, on his headset’s display, was clearly moving more slowly, still flying toward Moon Base.
Comets don’t slow down. Gravity doesn’t work like that. If anything, it should appear to be moving faster.
Suddenly, his mother’s voice burst through his helmet, crackiling wildly as though through interference. What could possibly be interfering with the signal from Moon Base? The Moon Base communications array was the most powerful for thousands of kilometers.
“Speed! Stay away from base. Get as far away as you can, then activate your emergency beacon. I … love … rememb...”
Speed’s mother’s voice crackled away into silence, as the communicator link was broken once again.
What is going on?
His own mother had told him to get as far away from Moon Base as possible, and to activate his emergency beacon. Strangely, Speed realized that he should be freaking out, but he was strangely calm, as though his actions were being controlled by a computer program. Luckily his gravBike still functioned. So, Speed set a course back to the giant crater. Those new GoodBots had looked so very powerful.
Those GoodBots are supposed to be helping with whatever is going on out there. They sure look like they can handle it. What are they doing?
The GoodBots seemed to be ignoring Speed’s activities along the edge of the crater. He reasoned that they wouldn’t ignore him for long, so he slipped under the edge into the shadow to hide. His space suit automatically adjusted for the change in temperature.
Then, looking out into the dark sky, Speed saw something he couldn’t explain.
An enormous lizard rocketed through space immediately above him. High pitched squeals, like a battery charging up, sounded, right before loud bursts of swift flight. The scaly, red and green lizard reminded Speed of holographic models of a flying reptile. The eyes glowed green through space. It looked like a pterodactyl, but much, much bigger, almost like … a dragon?
Speed had only seen the creature for a second, but he had also seen something like a fusion engine somehow attached to the creature’s torso. That engine must have been what was making the electric sounds, and the trail of exhaust behind the dragon.
Speed knew that no creature would be able to fly in the moon’s atmosphere by simply flapping its wings--he had at least paid that much attention to sixth grade outer space engineering. So, Speed quickly reasoned that this creature would require some kind of artificial...
In the middle of this thought, as Speed sheltered under the rim of the mysterious crater, he heard another sound, unmistakably the ignition of normal, GoodBot fusion engines. It sounded like thirty or forty engines were coming to life, in the base of the crater, and not from these new flying beasts above. Each engine lit up a small blue dot in the darkness of the crater, below the horizon.
Two or three of the dragon-like creatures, all with different colored markings and the same green engine flares behind them, blasted into Speed’s line of sight, from above the crater edge. Small flecks of light flew from their bodies and impacted the surface of the crater, revealing the structure of the huge engine that lay within.
Speed reasoned that the flecks he was seeing must be the flares of rockets or torpedos, accelerating away from the creatures, then causing devastating explosions on the GoodBots below.
Speed wondered whether the GoodBots would finally respond to the horrific, and apparently alien, threat. Where did these creatures come from? Nothing like them even existed in the solar system, as far as he knew, and no earth probes had ever returned signs of alien life.
Then, as though someone flipped the light switch on the whole moon, the unseen hundreds or thousands of GoodBot ships came to life, big gun turrets rose menacingly from platforms around the edge of the crater, and the big engine itself began a grating groan.
It’s igniting! I’ve got to get out of here, or I’ll be burned alive by that thing.
But Speed couldn’t take his eyes off the fight below. He had forgotten all about the possible trouble at Moon Base with the asteroid, and was fascinated with these new creatures, and how the GoodBots would respond.
They’re supposed to protect us, but they’ve never been tested against alien creatures before!
A volley of fire left the muzzles of the huge GoodBot fusion turrets. They were returning fire. Blue spheres of energy rocketed toward the creatures. When the fusion charges met their targets, at least two of the great creatures went down immediately, skidding onto the dusty platforms of the moon engine.
The massive, undulating hulks of the dragons slowly came to a comp
lete stop, and Speed knew that they were dead.
The GoodBots had downed all of the dragon enemies in seconds. Speed had never seen technology like those guns before, and he couldn’t imagine how the GoodBots, or whoever was controlling them, was able to develop those guns in secret, let alone build a huge engine in full view of the earth!
Wasn’t anyone paying attention down there?
After the last of the dragons fell, hundreds of GoodBot space vessels, as sleek as their aqualine GoodBot units, finished their ignition sequence and rocketed in the direction of Moon Base.
Finally helping the people. It’s about time.
Just as Speed thought the GoodBot ships had gone, the last of the clean, white vessels slowed to a stop directly above him. Then the ship revolved around him to land only a few yards away. Moon dust whirled around the white metal craft, highlighted with streaks of blue light.
“Human!” the craft projected in a deep voice, far deeper than the voices of normal GoodBots. “Remain calm.”
Fat chance!
Speed had no idea what would happen next, but he couldn’t imagine that it would be good. Then again, anywhere appeared safer than remaining on the surface of the moon to suffocate, or die of thirst.
At that moment, the top of the craft seemed to separate from the bottom half. In one motion, the bottom half rotated sideways, then swooped around. The ship scooped Speed bodily into the craft. Miraculously, Speed was not hurt, but found himself smoothly pressed against a seat inside the craft.
Then, the g-forces came. Speed thought he would be ill, then his vision began to fade. When Speed came back around, he and the new ship were far above the moon’s surface, flying directly over the huge fusion engine that was now fully operational. In one half of Speed’s viewscreen, he could see the blue glow of the huge engine. When he rotated his head to another viewscreen, he saw a large, green and gray asteroid, like an iceberg. It was hovering directly above Moon Base.
Speed could not see Moon Base, but he saw that the hovering green iceberg was firing down at the city, and the city was not returning fire.
Speed’s ship was just over the horizon from Moon Base. Suddenly the moon’s crust, where Moon Base should have been, burst upwards in a fiery cloud, and Speed was nearly blinded by a huge explosion. The explosion happened exactly where he guessed Moon Base was. He could almost see the base.
No! Mom! How…
All of the emergency training Speed had ever gone through flooded his brain. None of it made any sense any more. Nothing he had ever been told about the safety features of Moon Base was any use now. Moon Base was gone.
What am I supposed to do?
The dragon-like creatures must have hit the main reactor. That blast was the biggest explosion that Speed had ever seen, and he was sure that it had destroyed the entire base.
Speed kept imagining his friends, mom, Coach caught in the explosion. He didn’t want to think about that. How could they have survived that enormous blast, or fought those terrible winged monsters without the GoodBots? Speed was filled with fear, and he didn’t know what to do.
“Am I the only one left?” Speed said aloud, but the GoodBot ship he was in did not respond right away. It must have been calculating something important to their flight. Then again, maybe the newfangled bot was just broken.
Think. Think. What would Coach do? I have to survive. I can’t live in this GoodBot ship forever.
While Speed was trying to figure out a way to get to earth without running into an asteroid, or a frightening dragon-creature for that matter, he was at last interrupted by the ship’s voice.
“Shockwave approaching. Impact in five seconds.”
“What!? Will we be destroyed?” Speed shouted at the GoodBot vessel.
It seemed like the advanced GoodBot mind could at least give him that little nugget of data.
“The shield is at one hundred percent. I estimate that the impact will reduce shield effectiveness by … calculating...”
Just then, the ship rocked, and the GoodBot voice fluctuated like a playful baby was screwing with it’s volume knobs.
There was a deep vibration, and Speed’s helmet crashed to the grav-floor of the ship.
“... ten percent,” the ship finally said in it’s deep, advanced GoodBot voice.
It took Speed a few moments to recover from the impact.
“You mean the ship wasn’t damaged at all?”
“No sir. I am undamaged, and your concern is touching. GoodBots are here to help.”
Speed knew that when the robot’s voice said ‘I,’ it was referring to the combination of the GoodBot and the machinery in which it was installed--in this case, the ship, with Speed in it. Flying a GoodBot vessel was similar to riding a large animal, it was important to gauge the mood of the machine. Some of these craft even had names. Speed would need to think of a name for this ship, but there wasn’t time.
Adrenaline pulsed through Speed’s blood, and his arms were shaking. Speed didn’t feel nervous exactly, or afraid, but he knew that these feelings would come soon. Coach had always said that emotion and sports were one and the same. He had only felt this way once before, when one of his teammates had suddenly punched him in the face during a MoonBall scrimmage.
The event seemed so close in his memory, but very far away in reality. The kid had warned Speed, if he continued to make fun of him, he was going to get it.The actual punch had been quite a surprise, and Speed didn’t know what to make of it. Then the feelings flooded Speed’s skull and he reacted. He reacted until he had to be pulled off of the former team-mate.
Now Speed was vibrating with emotion inside the capsule, in the middle of space, as far away from the MoonBall court as he could have ever imagined.
Then, Speed woke up. For a moment, he thought everything had been a nightmare, but it had been so real. Speed tried to roll out of bed, and float down to the grav-floor below, but he couldn’t get free. He was strapped into a chair in front of a screen showing a very unfamiliar moon before him.
Speed realized darkly that he hadn’t been dreaming. Slowly, Speed felt reality, like a weight crushing down from above.
“What happened?” Speed said allowed, unaware that the ship was listening.
Again, the deep humming voice of the advanced GoodBot flooded the compartment.
“You seem to have fainted, Sir. It appears that your body needed some rest. I am tracking the movement of several organic life forms, flying in formation toward the asteroid belt. We are in pursuit, following your orders.”