“External coating degradation is at two percent,” my suit announced.

  I pushed harder, fighting the resistance.

  Then something bumped against me. I jerked away, heart hammering, before my proximity sensor showed it was just debris—a piece of conduit or structural support floating in the muck.

  “There’s more debris ahead,” Bill said. “The coolant must have preserved everything that fell into it.”

  That didn’t make sense. It was supposed to be toxic and eat stuff up.

  Then with my helmet lights, I caught glimpses of tools, pieces of equipment, and things I couldn’t identify.

  Then the lights showed an alien EVA suit.

  “A High Polarion?” I asked.

  “That is unknown,” Bill said.

  A gauge showed we’d moved thirty meters through the coolant. According to Bill’s calculations, we needed to go at least sixty to reach the other side.

  “I’m detecting vibrations,” Bill said.

  I felt them too, through the fluid. I wondered if it was a moonquake muffled by the coolant. The liquid around us began to move, currents forming where there had been stillness only seconds ago.

  “What’s happening?” I shouted.

  “The chamber structure may be compromised,” Bill said. “We should increase speed.”

  I pushed harder yet, panting, but the currents got stronger. It seemed that the coolant was draining out.

  “Bill—”

  “I know. Maintain position.”

  Unfortunately, the drain had created a vortex, and we were caught in it. The toxic fluid spun us around, disorienting me. It felt as if I were falling, tumbling, even though I couldn’t see anything but this coolant.

  “Grab onto something!” I shouted, reaching out blindly.

  My glove hit metal—a pipe or beam. I locked my grip as the current tried to tear me away. Through my proximity sensor, I saw Bill had done the same, anchoring himself to what looked like a support strut.

  The coolant drained with increasing violence. My suit groaned under the pressure differential. Then, suddenly, my helmet broke through the surface.

  The coolant had drained into whatever was below, leaving us in a vast empty chamber. No. That wasn’t right. We were in a manufacturing bay two hundred meters across. Assembly lines stretched in all directions, their robotic arms frozen. And hanging from overhead racks like suits at the world’s most terrifying dry cleaner were hundreds of bulky suits.

  As Bill and I dropped to the floor—the low gravity making it a gentle landing—I got a better look. They were more streamlined than our suits. Some were complete, others just frameworks. All of them were dark.

  “I do not see any power cores or control systems,” Bill said. “Otherwise, they appear to be EVA suits.”

  At that point, the bay tilted, and I had to grab an assembly line to keep my balance.

  I waited to see if that happened again. It did as the floor lurched, the tilt more pronounced.

  One of the assembly lines tore free from its moorings, tumbling with dreamlike slowness.

  We moved, heading down again, the incomplete suits swaying like hanging corpses.

  Soon, we angled downward through a corridor at forty-five degrees, the walls lined with conduits that sparked and hissed. My proximity sensors kept pinging warnings.

  “The corridor is compressing, its diameter shrinking millimeters every minute,” Bill said.

  I fired my thrusters. So did Bill.

  Soon, the corridor opened into a spherical chamber filled with monoliths.

  “Those are data cores,” Bill said.

  We reached an exit, a circular portal that led to a shaft with a ladder. Half the rungs were missing, and the rest looked ready to snap.

  “Should we use our thrusters again?” I said.

  “I do not recommend that,” Bill said. “The shaft is too narrow.”

  So we climbed down, testing each rung as we went.

  Halfway down, a massive moonquake hit. The shaft twisted and a rung snapped under my hand.

  Through the bottom of the shaft, I could see another chamber. This one was different, as it appeared to have a functioning energy field.

  “Could that be it?” I said.

  “It would appear to be at the correct depth,” Bill said.

  We pushed off and drifted down, reaching the bottom of the shaft. The chamber beyond appeared pristine. And there sat a storage unit in a pool of blue light, as if waiting.

  -48-

  The storage unit sat in a pool of blue light like an altar. Unfortunately, the unit was sealed with what looked like a magnetic lock. It was a disc about the size of a dinner plate, with no visible seams or controls.

  “I do not see any interface port,” Bill said.

  I pressed my glove with the ring on my hand underneath, pressing it against the lock. The ring grew warm, but the lock didn’t respond.

  “Maybe it’s broken,” I said.

  “Or perhaps it requires a different approach.” Bill placed his hand on the metal disc. “I’m detecting an extremely powerful magnetic field.”

  “Can you override it?”

  “The field strength is beyond my ability to counteract. We’d need an equally powerful opposing force.”

  I looked around. Other storage units lined the walls, most of them open and empty. But in one corner, partially hidden behind a fallen panel, I spotted a device the size of a motorcycle engine. The surface was covered in cooling vanes, and heavy cables ran from it to a coupling in the wall. The cables had been severed, probably during one of the moonquakes.

  I pointed it out.

  “How interesting,” Bill said. “That appears to be a field generator.”

  “Could we use it to counter the magnetic lock?”

  Bill stepped closer and examined the device. “Theoretically, it could. But this generator has been damaged and obviously lacks power.”

  Past the breaks, the cables looked intact. That gave me an idea. I pulled out my suit’s emergency repair kit and found what I needed.

  “What if we splice it and attach it to our suit power?”

  “I do not recommend that,” Bill said, “as that would drain our batteries within minutes. You would not survive.”

  I was about to give up on the idea when the storage unit’s blue light struck me.

  “Bill, what powers the light?”

  He scanned it with a device. “There’s a power source beneath the storage unit.” He looked around. “Not only was this a storage vault, but I suspect a charging station as well.”

  “There’s a gap here,” I said. “If we could move this…”

  We grabbed the platform’s edge and pulled. The low gravity made it thinkable, but the magnetic lock’s field fought us. We found metal splinters as thick as rods and used those to help. Bit by bit, we widened the gap until I could see a power conduit down there.

  Bill stripped the damaged cables while I jury-rigged connections using emergency repair tape and conductive gel from the patch kit.

  Soon, Bill made the final connection, nodding to me.

  I stood and threw the switch. The field generator hummed to life, its cooling vanes glowing almost instantly. The magnetic lock began to vibrate, fighting against the opposing field we were generating.

  “It’s working,” Bill said. “But the generator is overheating.”

  I saw that too, as smoke poured from the cooling vanes. The smell of burning metal filled my helmet—I did a double take. My suit had a breach. I checked my seals and found a tiny puncture where a piece of hot metal had hit me.

  I used suit sealant to repair that.

  “Thirty seconds until generator failure,” Bill said.

  I grabbed one of the thick metal splinters and wedged it into a gap that was forming between the lock and the unit. Bill did the same on the opposite side.

  “On three,” I said. “One, two—”

  The generator exploded, pelting our suits with fragments and blowing us backward with the blast.

  I heard air hissing and smelled burnt electronics. Then I found Bill over me, patching the suit at speed. Luckily, none of the shrapnel had pierced my flesh—or not seriously, anyway. I helped seal punctures as he continued to patch.

  It was a surreal experience that made me lightheaded.

  “Are you well?” Bill asked, perhaps noticing something off.

  “I’m not thinking straight,” I said.

  Bill turned me over and examined the air tubes. He patched a spot, and almost immediately I started thinking straight again, although it hurt between my eyes.

  By that time, the smoke from the generator had cleared. The generator was a melted ruin. But the magnetic lock had been disrupted, as it hung loose, no doubt its field collapsed. The explosion must have done it.

  I climbed to my feet, pulled the lock away, and opened the storage unit.

  Inside was a big old thing with a huge metal helmet with a circular antenna over it and bulky, exotic packs on the back. It had heavy boots and pods on the sides, and the fabric seemed ancient and coarse. It looked stiff, more like the old diving suit I’d mentioned before.

  There was one other part to it I hadn’t seen earlier. It was a round black globe the size of a basketball, part of the pack systems with heavy cables connecting it. The thing vibrated, and vile emanations wafted from it.

  “Do you feel that?” I asked.

  “Feel what?” Bill said.

  I stared at him. “You don’t feel that?”

  “Again, I ask, what do you mean?”

  I held my gloved hands over the black globe. It was weird, but I had the sense it realized I was studying it. The emanations died down until they vanished. The vile feeling was gone. Had I been hallucinating that? I didn’t think so. Could something be alive in the globe, something with intelligence?

  “You didn’t feel anything?” I asked.

  “I did not,” Bill said.

  I tried to sense anything from the globe, but drew a blank. Maybe the pain spiking between my eyes had something to do with it. I might have hallucinated that.

  “This is the T-suit, right?” I said.

  “According to the specs I saw,” Bill said.

  “How do we know if it works or not?”

  “We don’t yet,” Bill said.

  “Right,” I said.

  I reached for the suit. As soon as my gloves touched it, my ring flared with heat. I stared at the globe, checking. I thought to spy a ripple along its surface, but that couldn’t be right.

  “Bill?” I asked. “Did you feel anything now?”

  “I felt nothing,” the android said.

  “Okay,” I said. There were no ripples now. I’d be glad to leave this moon. “Let’s stop screwing around. We’ll take it and get out of here.”

  The suit was big, bulky, and relatively heavy in the low gravity. It took both of us working together to move it out of the storage unit.

  Bill indicated a tunnel, which we took. It was barely wide enough for the two of us to squeeze through with our cargo. The tunnel angled upward, which seemed good, but several sections had partially collapsed, forcing us to clear debris as we went. That took time.

  “Is your suit’s integrity still holding?” Bill asked.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said. “Just focus on navigating us out of here.”

  Fifty yards later, the tunnel opened into what must have once been a transport hub. Tubes that might have carried vehicles or people ran in all directions, but most were severed or crushed.

  “That way,” Bill said, indicating a vertical shaft.

  We started climbing, dragging the suit with us. Halfway up, the shaft opened wide enough that we used our thrusters and ascended faster.

  Then I saw a slice of stars through a crack in the shaft. We were almost at the surface.

  We emerged, but the fortress where we’d entered was gone, torn away. The moonscape had changed as well. Massive chasms had appeared and entire mountains of debris floated everywhere. In the sky, the gas giant loomed impossibly large, its storms reaching for us.

  “Where’s our pod?” I said.

  Bill scanned and pointed. It was there, but between it and us was a mass of floating debris, most tumbling in a slow-motion avalanche.

  “We’ll have to pass through that to reach the pod,” Bill said.

  We timed it, pushed off and fired our thrusters. It got hairy right away. I dodged a car-sized boulder that passed so close I could see crystalline structures in its surface. A section of wall tumbled past next, its edges looking sharp enough to slice through our suits.

  “Watch your six,” Bill said.

  I spun, seeing a massive chunk heading straight for me. I fired my thrusters harder, shooting upward. Debris passed beneath me, close enough that I could read Polarion script on the surface.

  In short, we wove through the debris field, constantly shifting vectors. The T-suit made maneuvering harder, as its weight threw off our center of gravity. Twice I nearly collided with junk because I couldn’t adjust fast enough. Bill nudged or yanked me, saving my butt time and again.

  “Twenty more meters,” Bill said.

  Yup, our pod was there. It looked like we were going to make it.

  We slowed, and bumped against the pod. You have no idea how good that felt. I yanked the hatch open and eased inside, pulling the T-suit after me. Bill followed, shutting the hatch behind him.

  We strapped in. Bill studied the situation and fired the pod’s thrusters, lifting us higher.

  Through the viewport, I watched the breaking moon. It was majestic and terrible, happening faster than seemed reasonable.

  I took a deep breath. Now we just had to get back to the Theron.

  -49-

  With Bill piloting, the pod shot upward from the crumbling moon. It was a zigzag course, the thrusters jerking us one way and then another. Several times, we barely avoided heavy debris.

  “Hang on,” Bill said.

  “I am.”

  He maneuvered harder, burning the thrusters hotter. This was worse than a roller coaster. My stomach started to hurt from clenching it so hard.

  Then Bill began making smoother maneuvers. The worst of it seemed to be over, although there was still debris up there, just not as much and not as thick.

  Through the viewport, I watched the moon fall away—except “fall” wasn’t the right word. Something catastrophic was happening. The moon was dissolving, its solid matter flowing like thick liquid toward the gas giant below. It wasn’t liquid, just rocks and debris crumbling into smaller, finer pieces and flowing faster toward the gas giant. That didn’t seem natural. What had happened to accelerate all this? Alina had calculated it would take six months or more for this to happen. Now, it was happening before our eyes.

  “We’re clear of the debris field,” Bill said. “But we still have a problem.”

  “Let’s hear it,” I said.

  “We burned too much fuel dodging the debris,” Bill said. “We no longer have enough to reach the Theron’s orbit.”

  I rechecked our position. The Theron was three thousand kilometers above, holding station like a distant star.

  “Can the Theron come get us?” I said.

  “I already asked,” Bill said. “Alina says the gravitational distortions have become too severe. There’s something happening on the moon, and it’s hard to tell what. The ship’s mass would make it impossible for them to navigate safely to us.”

  The pod shuddered and a weird sideways pull made my sore stomach lurch. Through the viewport, chunks of moon—some the size of buildings, others like mountains—were suddenly moving in impossible directions. One massive piece was falling toward the gas giant, then suddenly veered left, then up, as if invisible hands were batting it around.

  “This is crazy,” I said. “What’s happening?”

  “I cannot tell why this is happening,” Bill said. “But I can describe what we’re seeing. I would call it a gravity-wave zone. It’s as if the moon’s mass redistribution is creating fluctuating gravitational fields.”

  “That doesn’t make any logical sense,” I said.

  “Perhaps not,” Bill said. “But the phenomenon is happening.”

  “Yeah, I can see that, but no way the moon’s mass redistribution causing this.”

  “What is then?”

  “You tell me,” I said.

  “I’m asking you,” Bill said.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know, but it isn’t the moon.”

  “That is illogical,” Bill said. “For what else is there?”

  I pointed at him. “That’s the question, man. We need to figure it out. There’s something else at work, something hidden.”

  “Our survival is the present priority,” Bill said. “It is immediate and quite problematic.”

  “Right,” I said. “You’re right. We can search for answers later.” I paused, switching mental gears. “You said waves a moment ago.”

  “Gravity waves, yes,” Bill said.

  Waves. I’d spent enough time on California beaches to know how waves worked—timing, rhythm and the way they built and broke. “Could we ride those gravity waves up and away?”

  “The theory is plausible in the abstract. But gravity waves mean using gravitational forces that could tear the pod apart.”

  “What else are we going to do then?”

  “I see your point. If we cannot climb for lack of fuel and the Theron cannot reach us… we will die.”

  “So we surf the gravity waves,” I said.

  Bill made calculations while I studied the debris field.

  “That one,” I pointed at a chunk of rock the size of a 7-Eleven. “Can you match its speed?”

  Bill looked up at me and then at the debris. After a second, he fired thrusters, angling us toward the rock. The pod shook as we pulled alongside the rocky 7-Eleven, matching its speed. For a moment, we moved together through space, two pieces of junk among thousands.

  Then I felt it—the gravity wave catching us.

  It was like catching a swell at Mavericks. The pod accelerated without using fuel, carried along by the weird gravity wave. My stomach lurched as we gained velocity, but there was something beautiful about it too, like dancing with forces beyond human understanding.