Luna: New Moon Read Online Free PDF Page B

with his face so close to another person. Then her eyes, her mouth go wide. She gives a squeak of excitement.
    A figure in a sasuit strides down the ravine. His helmet is under his right arm, his left hand carries his LS pack. His feet are booted and the skin-hugging sasuit is a bright patchwork of logos and hi-visibility strips, navigation lights and race badges. His familiar rezzes, pixel by pixel, as he enters Boa Vista’s network. He sheds dust; a slow-settling trail of silvery black.
    ‘Carlinhos!’
    Carlinhos Corta sees his niece rush to hug him and steps back but she bangs into him, grabs his legs, sends up a huge cloud of dust that settles on her beautiful peony dress like soot.
    Two steps behind Luna comes Rafa. He trades play-punches, knuckle-touches with his kid brother.
    ‘You came cross-surface?’
    Carlinhos holds out his helmet in evidence. In his patchwork sasuit and bearing the spicy, gunpowder smell of moon dust, he’s a pirate at a cocktail party. He dumps his LS pack and snatches a Blue Moon, downs it in one.
    ‘Tell you something, after two hours on a bike, drinking your own piss …’
    Rafa shakes his head in appreciation of lunacy.
    ‘It’s going to kill you, that dumb biking. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but some day the sun’s going to flare and you’ll be out on the surface on a dust-bike five hours from anywhere. And it will fry. Your. Carioca. Ass.’ Each emphasis driven home with a prod to the shoulder.
    ‘And when was the last time you were up on the surface?’ Carlinhos play-punches his brother in the stomach. ‘What’s that I feel? Belly. You’re out of condition, irmão. You need to get surface-fit. You’ve been to too many meetings. We’re helium miners, not accountants.’
    Oldest and youngest Corta boys adore sport. Carlinhos’s passion is dust-biking. He’s a pioneer of the extreme sport. He developed the bikes, the customised suits. He’s cut trails all over the Imbrium Apennines and established the cross-Serenitatis endurance race. Rafa’s sport is safer and more enclosed. He owns an LHL handball team. They’re standing high in the Premier League. Rafa shares the mania with his brother-in-law Jaden Wen Sun, owner of the Tigers of the Sun. They compete with humour and ferocity.
    ‘You staying around after the party?’ Rafa asks,
    ‘I’ve awarded myself a furlough.’ Carlinhos has been out for three lunes on Tranquilitatis, winning helium.
    ‘Come to the game. You should see what we’re doing.’
    ‘Losing, is what I heard,’ Carlinhos says. ‘Where’s moon-run boy? I heard about the Asamoah kid. That was good work. If he ever wants a job on the outside, I could use him.’
    ‘That’s not in Lucas’s life-plan.’
    Two steps behind Carlinhos is a second young man in a sasuit, dark as Carlinhos is fair, with beautiful cheekbones and narrow, hunter eyes.
    ‘Wagner, irmão,’ Rafa says. A second volley of knuckle-touching. Wagner, youngest brother, smiles coyly.
    Luna clings to her Uncle Carlinhos’s leg, smudged and smutted with moon dust.
    ‘Let me see you!’ Ariel declares, arriving with her entourage. ‘Beautiful boys!’ She bends to kiss but does not touch. No smuts on this dress.
    Lucas has arrived, tactically late. He greets Carlinhos politely but routinely. He gives his attention to Wagner. ‘I love parties. All those distant relatives we never see.’
    ‘Wagner’s here as my guest,’ Carlinhos says.
    ‘Of course,’ Lucas says. ‘My house is your house.’
    Naked hatred arcs between Wagner and Lucas, then Carlinhos takes Wagner by the elbow and whirls him away into the party.
    ‘Luna, run on with Madrinha Elis,’ Rafa says.
    ‘We’ll get some of that dirt off you,’ Madrinha Elis says. She is a strong-faced, strong-built Paulistana, a head shorter than the moon-born generations. Earth bodies make strong hosts. The Cortas let none but Brazilians bear their children. She takes sooty little Luna by the hand and leads her