Heir Apparent - Digital Science Fiction Anthology 4 Read online

  I pulled him in and slapped the switch to seal and pressurize the cabin, and then I lifted Daddy onto the stretcher from the rear storage locker. I didn’t want to waste any time getting him out of the suit when the pressure reached normal. As soon as the light was green, I pulled off my helmet and gloves, then Daddy’s. He was mumbling half-coherent instructions. I remembered the first aid he taught me, so I knew what he meant to say, but it was a good thing the stretcher’s AI prompted me what to do. I was—I—

  I couldn’t help shouting: “I trained on a simulator. This is Daddy!” It actually calmed me down. I said it, it was done, and I could move on.

  I stuck diagnostic patches to Daddy’s neck and temple, feeding data to the stretcher. Then I went to work on his suit. You have to be able to remove spacesuits piecemeal for emergencies like this, so there are seals and buckles you can undo to separate the sections. They’re not easy to work, because you don’t want them releasing accidentally. It took me nearly five minutes to get the sleeves and vest off: three minutes of fidgeting with seals mixed with two minutes where I just gave up and cried until I got control of myself.

  When I had his upper body free, I stuck another diagnostic patch on his chest. The stretcher extended a transdermal IV, and I slid the cuff around his left wrist and up to his elbow. When the sensors detected good venous access, the stretcher chimed and the cuff constricted, making a complete seal. Medicine started pumping in. I don’t know what it was, but Daddy stopped mumbling, relaxed, and was soon unconscious. His color was still good, so I was sure it was a sedative that put him to sleep and not the blood loss. Pretty sure.

  The stretcher confirmed my diagnosis: the auto-tourney had to go. Following its instructions, I unsealed the left leg of Daddy’s suit but didn’t deactivate the AT yet. Not ‘til the stretcher told me to. I removed the left boot, and attached another transdermal IV. I bet this one contained null plasma to keep the tissue oxygenated below the AT.

  The stretcher popped open a drawer. Inside was a pressure bandage. I read the instructions, just in case I had forgotten how to apply it. Then I turned off the AT. Immediately, blood started oozing from Daddy’s calf. I don’t think I fainted, but I got mighty dizzy for a few seconds. Then as fast as I could, I removed the rest of the suit leg, and I applied and taped down the pressure bandage. The red seemed to stop.

  And that was all I could do, except look at the stretcher readouts. They have a doctor mode, but I couldn’t understand all those numbers. I pushed it to simple mode, and I watched the bars bounce around and the colors shift. Eventually, all of the bars settled into normal ranges—low, but normal—and the indicator lights all went green. I wasn’t in charge of Daddy anymore—the stretcher was.

  We had air; we had immediate medical care. Next item according to LSM was communications. I went to Daddy’s control console and tried to work the communicator. Everything should’ve worked. I wasn’t trained on a system this complex, but it had all the features of a basic comm unit with fairly standard controls. I feared there would be a security lockout that would need Daddy’s passcode, but I think the ship somehow tied the controls into the stretcher system. There were lockouts, but they all seemed to have disengaged. The comm system was active.

  Everything should’ve worked…but it didn’t. I couldn’t pick up anything, either on local or satellite. The local channels were very low power, intended for communications between the crawler and personnel outside. They wouldn’t pick up anything else. And the satellite channels…Well, I got nothing there. Maybe I did something wrong. Maybe there were no satellites in view. I waited a half hour and tried again. Still nothing. Again, I let my frustration out by yelling: “I’m only fourteen! I never called a satellite!”

  And again, yelling put my frustration out where I could handle it. Mom never likes it when we kids yell, but sometimes I just can’t keep stuff in—almost like a sneeze I have to let out. And after a sneeze, you can get back to work.

  So just like one of Daddy’s damned tests, I started to work the problem. The prospecting station had a communications channel…but if I couldn’t figure out the crawler’s, no way could I figure out that.

  I needed to get Daddy to a real doctor. I didn’t know how much medicine and null plasma the stretcher had, and I didn’t know how much oxygen we had or how long the recirculators were good for. A clock was running, but I didn’t know how much time was on it.

  I hadn’t paid attention to where we had driven. Daddy drove and I was enjoying the sights too much. Now I pulled up the nav record. We were maybe seventy kilometers out from Tycho Crater. That was a short distance for the crawler; but try as I might, I couldn’t figure out how to start the crawler engine. If I rode in a crawler twice a year, that was a lot; I never saw anyone start one.

  I couldn’t call for help, and we couldn’t drive to help. What was left? Walking?

  Well, it was still pre-dawn. It would be cold out there, but it would soon get hot when the terminator crossed. The Lunar Survival Manual teaches a technique called Manual Thermal Control. When you’re caught out on the surface for an extended period, you can extend your radiator battery by using light and shadow to regulate your temperature. In basic MTC, you use available shadows from boulders and ejecta to cool you down when you get too hot. In advanced MTC—and I studied this a lot because it seemed like a quintessential explorer skill—you use the terminator itself for regulation. Move into the dark side when you’re too warm, back into the light when you’re too cold. It’s simple in theory, as long as you can keep up the pace; but they don’t even teach advanced MTC until the second year of Lunar Survival School. You really have to understand Luna and your equipment to do it right.

  But I couldn’t see another choice. Maybe a real LSS grad would, but I couldn’t. So I sealed Daddy’s stretcher cover, loaded it up with all the meds and null plasma from storage, and put my suit back on. Then I vacuumed up the compartment air, strapped those bottles and all the spares to the stretcher, and opened the hatch.

  I tugged the stretcher down the ramp and onto the lith. The foot of the stretcher folded out into a sled to slide over regolith. The head of the stretcher folded out into hooks that clamped onto the rear of a suit belt. I hooked up to the stretcher, and with the constellations to guide me, I started the long walk to Tycho.

  “One, two, three, four…”

  “Daddy, we need to talk. I wish you could answer. If ever a girl needed her daddy’s advice, I need yours now.

  “Ah, who’m I kidding? You wouldn’t tell me what to do; you’d make me figure it out for myself. Well, I have.

  “Daddy, we won’t make it with me dragging you. I thought I could, but this is hard! I can’t believe how hard! The terminator caught us. It’s getting warmer, fast.

  “But I think I can make it on my own. I can catch the terminator, stay ahead. Stay ahead all the way to Tycho. And then, Daddy, then I’ll send help back for you. You hear me? I’m gonna send a doctor back for you.

  “I’ll use basic MTC here. I’ll leave you in the shadow of this big boulder, Daddy. The stretcher will keep you warm, and the shadow will keep you cool. The sun won’t hit this shadow for days. And by then—by then—

  “Oh, Daddy, I don’t wanna leave you! But I don’t know what else to do. I wish—

  “That terminator’s not standing still, Daddy. I’ve gotta go catch it.

  “Goodbye, Daddy.

  “Goodbye…”

  I caught the terminator without completely exhausting myself and without my radiator burning out as it bled off my waste heat. And after that, staying ahead of it wasn’t hard. Leaving Daddy behind was the hardest thing I’d ever done, but it made the difference. I was still tired but I wasn’t losing ground.

  Eventually, I could see the walls of Tycho in the shadowy distance—not really the walls themselves, but the crater rim lights. I didn’t expect my suit radio could reach yet, but I called anyway, as much as breath permitted.

  Soon, I saw a blinking light. I could
n’t see Tycho’s central uplift, but that had to be Tycho Traffic Control on the peak. If I had visual contact, I had to be in radio distance. I sat down and started continuous distress messages.

  Soon I heard an answer. I explained where I was, where Daddy was.

  I fell asleep before the hopper landed near me.

  When I woke up, I was staring at knees. Looking up from there, I saw bending over me the tallest looney I’ve ever seen—and we grow ‘em tall! He was unsuited, so we were in pressure. For that matter, I was unsuited too and under a thermal blanket. It was warm, the bed was warm; I was wonderfully warm.

  “Ah, Miss Wall, you’re awake! Don’t move, please, young lady; I need you to stay in the warming bed. I’m Dr. Benjamin Jones, by the way, very pleased to meet you.” He had a great smile and a soothing voice, just what you imagine a doctor should be. But tall! “You don’t really have frostbite from sleeping on frozen regolith, but you came close. I want to keep you warm.”

  With that, I suddenly remembered everything. “My Daddy! You have to—”

  “Shhh. We picked him up before we found you. He’s still pretty weak, but he’s fine. From the stretcher records, I’d say you saved his leg.”

  And then I cried, really cried in relief. When I was done, Dr. Jones handed me a tissue. Then he asked, “And why were you walking to Tycho?”

  And so I told him everything, mixing up my story as I went: time on the lith, time back in Tycho, time in the crawler, all jumbled together. And when I told him how I learned MTC from the Lunar Survival Manual, he nodded.

  “Yes, that does work. It worked this time, and that’s what really counts. But do you know what else we would’ve taught you at LSS?”

  I shook my head. I had made a mistake…I just knew it.

  “We would’ve taught you to stay with your vehicle unless you’re low on consumables. Most Lunar traffic has a schedule on file, including your father’s crawler. When he failed to check in on schedule, we waited a reasonable time and tried to contact him. Then Tycho Rescue sent our squad out looking for him, following his planned route. Imagine our surprise when we found an empty crawler!”

  Now I was sobbing again. He softened his tone further. “But then we saw your tracks and his stretcher tracks. And they were headed straight for Tycho—you’re a pretty good navigator! And so we swung back. We found him first. Before we could find you, Traffic Control sent us your location.”

  “But then I—”

  “You did the best you could do under the circumstances, and that’s what it will say in my report. More than that: since you’re so interested in Lunar Survival School, I’ll write you a letter of recommendation. After all, you just passed your second year practical exam.”

  And with that, he left to do something on his computer. With him out of the way, I could see that Daddy was in the berth next to mine, still in the stretcher but with the cover open. He was haggard, but he was awake and looking at me.

  “Daddy!”

  “You heard the doc: stay right there in that bed, Ellie.”

  “Daddy—”

  “Hush, we’ll talk about it later. Everything’s okay.”

  I settled back. I felt warm, not just from the blanket and the bed. Daddy was safe!

  “Hey, Ellie!” I looked at him again. “You sat on my stretcher! Put a dent in it with your big bottom, I’ll bet! No cookies for you, young lady.”

  “Daaaaad…”

  “Oh, all right. One cookie. You can work it off in Lunar Survival School. You start next month.”

  “Daddy!”

  Also by Digital Science Fiction

  Science Fiction Anthologies

  First Contact –Anthology 1

  Therefore I Am –Anthology 2

  Pressure Suite – Anthology 3

  Heir Apparent – Anthology 4

  Visions Imprint Science Fiction Short Stories

  A Moment of Clarity

  Vintage Imprint Science Fiction Classics

  The Colors of Space

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Information

  Preface

  Floaters

  Persistence of Memory

  To Titan on the Daily

  Ghostbook

  A Lincoln in Time

  Hooked

  My Silent Slayer

  Philosophy

  In the Arms of Lachiga

  Father-Daughter Outing

  Also by Digital Science Fiction