Teller was in no mood to be told anything by a driver, even one as respected as Carlos. "You'll do as I say."

Crater had an idea. "Captain?"

Teller cut his eyes toward his scout. "What do you want?"

"I could cut up those wrecked trucks and build some trailers out of them. All I need is a welding rig and a cutter."

Teller gave it some squinty-eyed thought, then said, "There's a welder in the chuckwagon. Cutters too. Get busy."

"I'll need some help. Petro's a fair welder."

Petro looked out from the crowd of drivers and said, "No thank you. I'll help bury Tilly."

Crater went to their private channel. "Why won't you help me?"

"Captain Teller's crazy and you're on his side."

"I'm just doing my job. So is the captain. The drivers were wrong to race."

"That's your opinion," Petro said.

"It's not an opinion. It's a fact."

Petro shrugged. "Good luck on finding someone to do your welding."

It took four hours to convert the truck beds into serviceable trailers, and Crater ended up doing most of the welding. The collected canisters were then strapped aboard. After seeing Tilly properly buried and the plot marked on his puter map- the plan was for her body to be picked up by a return convoy and carried back to Moontown later for proper cremation- Teller came over and inspected Crater's work, then took his scout aside. "You failed this convoy by not reporting that crack, Crater, but I suppose these trailers show you have at least some utility." When Crater made no reply, Teller said, "I'm surprised you didn't blame Maria."

Crater felt like the captain had slapped him in the face.

"Do you really think so little of me?"

Teller's eyes went hard. "Why, yes, son, I do. I think you've got a good heart, which usually hides a host of other weaknesses. Maybe I'll think differently if you give me a reason, but so far you've been mostly a disappointment."

Teller walked away, yelling, "Pull those panels in and let's go, people! Maria, you have the point. And pay attention to the entire road, you hear?"

Maria mounted her fastbug and sped off. Crater, his face hot with embarrassment at the captain's opinion of him, didn't wait for Teller's orders. He climbed in his fastbug and took up station in one of the offside lanes. Teller waved the trucks forward and the convoy lurched ahead. Most of the drivers didn't look at Crater as they passed but Petro did. The look wasn't friendly.

THIRTEEN.

The captain tried to call the Dustway Inn but there was no answer. "Likely their comm terminal is down," he said, then gave the situation some thought. The Dustway Inn was where they hoped to spend the night, but he knew well enough that the little inn wasn't the most efficient place in the wayback. He'd stopped there before without checking first, and he and his drivers had spent half their rest time waiting for beds to be made and food to be cooked. He needed a scout to go ahead and alert them. He started to ask Maria to do it, then decided to give Crater a chance to redeem himself. "Go ahead, Crater, and alert the proprietor of the Dustway Inn that we're coming. Tell him we'll need food, showers, and medical aid for Klum's broken arm."

"And don't get lost," Maria chimed.

Crater ignored her. "On my way, sir," he said and sped off.

Before long, he'd put some miles between himself and the convoy. The track led through craters and low hills, then wound through a series of tight turns and a run up a steep hill and down the other side. It was there he discovered a utility truck parked alongside the road. There were three people inside it, an older man and a woman with a young boy between them. The man waved him down. "Can I help you?"

Crater called.

"S'pose you can, s'pose you can't," the man said. "Operate the Dustway Inn, we do, but we've run from it. There's a creature there scared me and the missus so we says to ourselves let's take the boy, run away, wait for Captain Teller and the convoy. You it?"

"A scout," Crater said. "What kind of creature?"

"Big one, like a giant. Black armor over its pressure suit.

I'm a vet of the Sand War in old Persia. A trooper of the Legion Internationale is what the thing is, crowhoppers is what they're called because of that black armor and how they hops around in battle aboard spiderwalkers. Fights for money and blood and loves to choke their enemies to death. They're a genetic mush, grown in some awful laboratory. This one has itself a rifle that shoots lightning and a slug of some sort. It shot up the ceiling of my bar. Guess that was to get my attention. Then it asked when the convoy was set to come. When I told it I didn't know, the thing puts its boots up on a table, says it'll wait, and starts to drink my best earthshine. For the good of our boy, we evacuated out a hatch we got in a secret place.

Saw where it had blew up our comm antenna, so glad we did."

Crater absorbed all that, then told the gillie to call the convoy. It did with no answer. "If you're thinking about going there," the innkeeper said, "you should think twice. Let Captain Teller deal with that thing."

Crater considered the innkeeper's advice, which he supposed was good advice, indeed. On the other hand, if he was found huddled with the innkeeper and his family, Captain Teller would likely tell him he was soft again and a coward to boot. "I'll just take a look," he heard himself say and drove on, his nerves taut as banjo strings.

A few miles down the road, he reached a mound of yellowish dirt with a sign on it that read Dustway Inn. Below the sign was a hatch and below the hatch were six mooncrete steps leading up from the dust. On the other side of the road, he saw the communications tower that had been knocked down.

Taking a closer look, he could see rough edges at the break in the legs and the discoloration of the lunasteel. An explosive had been used.

A spiderwalker was parked beside the steps. He'd seen such eight-legged contraptions on vidpix but the Colonel had outlawed them in Moontown. The reason, or so Crater had heard, was the Colonel had fought against the bioengineered troops who rode them and was unnerved just by the sight of the things. Crowhoppers, that's what the innkeeper had called the killers who rode spiderwalkers into battle. If a crowhopper lurked with mayhem on its mind, what chance would Crater have against it? On the other hand, Crater considered, maybe he could talk to it. Crowhoppers were still human, even though they'd been genetically altered, and surely they could be reasoned with. If so, maybe he could find out what it was after, then report it to Captain Teller. Maybe the captain would like that Crater had taken such initiative.

All of that thinking led Crater to the conclusion that he had to try.

Reining in his nerves as best he could, Crater climbed the steps and entered the airlock, the gillie ordering the airlock puter to close the hatch behind him, pressurizing the chamber, and opening the first dustlock hatch. Crater hesitated.

"Gillie, any advice?"

The inn is a lava tube. Gillie can hear through dustlock hatch.

Acoustic readings indicate normal equipment noise. No sounds detected of biological creatures.

"Can you see inside?"

The rock is too thick for gillie's visual sensors. Gillie can see through the hatch. View is tube with more hatches inset along its wall.

Crater crept farther inside the dustlock. He found on a hanger rack two ECP suits with the Dustway Inn logo: a wavy line surrounded by small circles-the road going through craters- with the motto "The Dustway Inn, A Bed 4 Your Head" beneath it. Crater decided to keep his suit and helmet on. If he got yelled at by the innkeeper for bringing dust inside the inn, he'd just have to take the guff. In the next dustlock, he found showers, benches to sit on, and a cabinet with clean coveralls, all neatly folded. He also spotted on the deck an odd thin rod, pointed on one end and about four inches long. "Gillie, what is this?" he asked.

This object is a flechette. Sometimes called a dart. It is launched from a railgun.

The components of a railgun were simple: an electrical generator, a pulsed power supply, and an armature to launch a flechette, dart, or slug, the velocity of which could be dialed up or down by a rheostat. Crater was aware of their design but had never heard of one being made small enough to carry around. It seemed someone had managed to invent such a weapon.

"Gillie, what do you see through the dustlock hatch?"

Crater asked.

Nothing moving.

Cautiously, Crater opened the inner dustlock hatch and stepped into the corridor. Its gray irregular walls were rough- not smooth like a Moontown tube-and it took a moment for Crater to recall why. It wasn't made out of mooncrete but was a natural formation, the interior surface of a small lava tube. The tube sloped downward toward a hatch that stood open. Crater eased toward it, then stepped through into what appeared to be the lobby of the inn. It had a desk cut into an alcove on one side that faced a restaurant and a small bar. The mirror behind the bar was broken, and tables and chairs were overturned.

Crater stepped back into the lava tube and peered down the natural corridor it formed where there were more hatches.

Since the inn catered to convoy drivers, Crater supposed they led to rooms for overnight stays. Maybe the crowhopper was in one of the rooms, sleeping off the alcohol the innkeeper said it had drunk. Pleased with himself that he'd at least gone this far, and anticipating a grateful Captain Teller hearing his report, Crater retraced his steps back to the dustlock, planning to go through it into the airlock and outside. There, he'd try to raise the convoy again but, failing that, he'd drive back along the dustway to let the innkeeper know the situation and then wait for the captain.

In the airlock, he said, "Depressurize and open the hatch," and the gillie accomplished it. Crater stepped through.

Unknown biological organism, the gillie warned.

Crater ducked back inside, the gillie commanding the hatch to close and the airlock to repressurize. The air hissed and Crater opened the hatch into the first dustlock, stepped inside, and locked it. That's when he saw the airlock hatch panel light up. Someone had entered the airlock from the outside. "Override the dustlock hatch," he commanded the gillie.

Override. Hatch superlocked.

Crater stood inside the dustlock hatch, his heart pounding even though he was safe for now. With the gillie overriding any commands from the outside, he could wait until the convoy arrived. Crater was thinking along those lines when the hatch blew. It flew off its hinges and ricocheted around the dustlock, followed by the crowhopper.

Crater, backed against the wall, stared helplessly at the terrifying creature. Its legs were like mooncrete pillars, and it was dressed in a black armored suit. Its helmet was also black with just a narrow slit for a view port. It was holding what appeared to be a rifle with a stiff wire butt, a flat, rectangular receiver, and a barrel about a yard long. A railgun. "Who are you?" it asked in a voice that was rough and guttural.

Crater, summoning his courage and doing his best to keep his voice from cracking, said, "I am a scout with a convoy of the Medaris Mining Company. The main body will be here any minute. The drivers are well armed. You'd better run."

"Well armed?" The creature laughed. "With what? Rocks?

I think you're lying."

"They have guns. We heard there were robbers on the dustway."

"Then where's yours?"

"I have an elk sticker," Crater said. "And I know how to use it."

The crowhopper turned its headlamp on, playing it across Crater's face. "Well," it said, "this is a surprise. You are the one."

Crater didn't know what the crowhopper meant. He only knew he was looking down the barrel of its railgun. He therefore tried to change the subject. "Are you a crowhopper?"

"Talked to the innkeeper, did you? Crowhopper is what they call me and the fellows. I'm proud of it, boy, not that it's information you'll ever pass along. Now shut up and let me decide how to kill you. I could shoot you or I could amuse myself by watching you wave around your puny little elk sticker, and then I'd stab you to death and watch your blood drain out of your puny body. It's not a choice I thought I would get."

Then came an explosion of sound, but not from the rifle. It was a noise so loud that Crater was knocked to his knees. The crowhopper was also staggered. It dropped its railgun rifle and threw up its hands to its helmet as if trying to protect its ears. Crater's ears whistled, whined, crackled, and hurt. Still, somehow he heard voices. They sounded like Doom, or maybe it was Headsplitter. Pick up the rifle, Crater. Pick it up!

Crater's head swam, but he did as he was told and reached for the rifle. Kill this fellow, Doom said, except Crater knew it wasn't Doom at all. It was the gillie, somehow inside his head. There was another burst of sound, like a detpak going off, but Crater forced himself to focus on the rifle. The crowhopper leaned back against the lava tube, its head down, then suddenly straightened and ran through the opening of the destroyed dustlock hatch. Crater heard the hiss of air and knew the crowhopper had gone outside.

Crater picked up the rifle. To test it, he aimed at the wall and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. He saw a handle on its side and pulled it back and felt the resistance of an internal spring. When he let it go, something seemed to snap home inside, a flechette ready to be fired. Then, the ringing in his ears subsiding, he cautiously entered the airlock. As he did, the gillie hopped back aboard his shoulder. Can you hear? it asked.

"Yes. What did you do?"

Acoustic burst. Directed toward crowhopper, not you.

"Where is he?" Crater demanded.

Spiderwalker.

Crater ducked through the ragged hole onto the mooncrete steps and saw the crowhopper on the spiderwalker heading across the dust. Crater waited until it had disappeared into a large crater, then walked unsteadily down the steps, keeping the rifle at the ready. He stopped to inspect the dust where the spiderwalker had been parked, hoping that he'd get lucky and find something the crowhopper had dropped. Spiderwalker on collision course, the gillie announced.

Crater looked up, saw the spiderwalker with the big crowhopper on its back running toward him, and raised the rifle.

The crowhopper was a large target and Crater couldn't miss.

Yet he found he couldn't pull the trigger. His finger stroked it, but he didn't pull, but then the rifle fired anyway. The flechette struck the crowhopper, disappearing into its thick armor.

Still, the spiderwalker kept coming. Crater saw the gillie wriggling out of the trigger guard.

Crater dodged the spiderwalker, but one of its legs knocked him down. He rolled, jacking the rifle handle back to recharge it, but before he could get up, he saw the crowhopper slapping at something, then the spiderwalker running and then hopping away.

Crater watched the curious sight, then climbed up on the steps to make certain this time the crowhopper was really gone. He watched the spiderwalker until it disappeared, then sat down on the steps and tried to make sense of what had happened. After a while he realized the gillie was no longer on his shoulder or in its holster. He looked around and then remembered the crowhopper was slapping at something as he rode the spiderwalker off. Crater ran to his fastbug, jumped in, stirred up the fuel cells, and pressed the accelerator to the floor. Across the dustway, wheels spinning, dust flying, Crater steered the fastbug around the craters, large and small, following the spiderwalker's track. Finally, he came to a rille that the contraption had jumped. Crater kept going, soaring across the rille, but didn't make it. The fastbug struck the far side, pitched over, and began to fall. All Crater could do was hang on and pray he'd be alive when it finally hit bottom.

FOURTEEN.

Brother!" Petro was in Crater's dream. "Brother, are you alive? Answer me!"

"What's wrong, Petro? What's wrong with you?" Crater cried.

"What's wrong with me?" Petro suddenly and inexplicably chuckled. "What's wrong with you, you moron! Come on.

Wake up!"

"Is he awake?" The voice was Maria's. She was in Crater's dream too.

"You should kiss him," he heard Petro say.

"Kiss him? I'm dirty, I'm sweaty, and I stink from being in an ECP suit for days. Nobody would want to kiss me!"

"I would," Crater said because it didn't matter. He was dreaming, after all.

"Attaboy, Crater!" Petro said. "Go on, Maria. It's like a reverse Sleeping Beauty. You wake up the prince with a kiss."