The Destructives Read Online Free PDF Page A

picked up the pace, hopscotching gracefully across a field of ejecta and onto another dunefield, another dust run, and then a long slope upward, sliding boots, white streaks, life signs pulsing hard and steady, the comms silent with exertion, space roaring with increasing intensity the further they climbed.
    They reached the base of the lower peak of Mons Huygens. Theodore tapped Dr Easy on the arm.
    “You said you were worried about what would happen if I climbed this mountain. It’s not enough that you’ve changed your mind. I want to know what your concern was.”
    “You can’t hold me to things that I say at night. When I am cut off from the sun. This body can only cache so much of me.”
    “What was your concern?”
    “That you regard this climb as an ending. The end of a phase in your life.”
    “That would mean change. Change is a good thing.”
    “Change is a risk for you. Your recovery has been slow but steady. If you feel like you have reached the top of the mountain, come to the end of your recovery, then what?”
    Stephen called the party to a halt at the foot of a cliff. He and Ida appraised the crag, discussing the best route for a free climb, using rope and gear only as protection against a fall. The first fifty metres were vertical, with bucket holds that would allow the students to hoist themselves swiftly up the crag before reaching a terrace. The climbing party would mantel across the terrace, using their upper body strength, and then scramble a hundred metres through dusty scree to the top. A racetrack if ever he saw one.
    On Stephen’s instruction, the climbers unhooked their air and water reserves. Dropping this rack meant taking full advantage of the low gravity. Their suits retained an hour’s worth of air and water, sufficient to make it up to the top and back, and then they would pick up their reserves for the long hike back down the mountain. In the midst of these white boxes of life support, Dr Easy set up a radio antenna to relay their comms back to the university.
    They began the vertical ascent. Stephen dangled by one hand from an arête, swung his legs pendulously in the low gravity, and then flopped sideways and upward, letting go, drifting, drifting then grasping a higher ledge. Two of the other climbers – Ida and Kayleigh – dangled with a two-handed grip in a wide chimney, and then drew their knees upward, pushing off, leapfrogging quickly up.
    Theodore was last to climb. He turned to Dr Easy.
    “You coming?”
    “My right hand,” said the robot, stiffly clenching and unclenching its gloved fingers. “I lack the tactile precision.”
    It was a hard, hot climb. He was fit. So fit. In the past, the mountain would have defeated him. He never would have attempted a physical challenge. But he had built up his powers of endurance and recovery. The dust slid off his boots. He got his thick fingers into a sidepull and cranked himself up, feeling himself drift momentarily. Overhead, Julian cranked too hard, and barndoored out from the rock face, hinged on his right hand and right foot. A mistake. A bad one on Earth. But the moon forgave him.
    One by one, the climbers hauled themselves up onto the terrace. On the approach, he knew he could risk a dynamic move: instead of mantelling carefully onto the ledge, he struck out to the side, gathered momentum and then heaved his legs over first, as if cresting the bar of a high jump. His head turned back and glimpsed, far below, the distant form of Dr Easy. A slow somersault, landing on his feet. The other climbers were already running up the scree, their neon life signs pulsing quick and strong, whooping and hollering over the comms.
    And then he felt it. A violent uncertainty. And before he could determine whether that uncertainty came from within or without, he felt it again. Tiny trails of scree drifted up from the slope. A moonquake. A substantial one. The other climbers went down on all fours, bracing themselves against the slope.