Artemis

She turned to the crowd. “Sorry, folks. We’ve got a delay. Get comfortable—it’ll be around fifteen minutes.”

A collective groan arose from the crowd.

“I’m sure as hell not staying late to make up for it,” one worker grumbled to another.

“Sorry about this,” Bob said. “Let me make it up to you: I’ve got three tickets to the Artemis Acrobats show at the Playhouse. They’re yours. Take your husbands out and have a good time.”

Mirza’s face lit up. “Wow! All right then. All is forgiven!”

A ridiculous overpayment, if you ask me. Those tickets cost 3,000 slugs each! Oh well. Bob’s money, not mine.

—

After an eternity of digging and a great many profanities, I finally cleared out the dirt in the hull compartment. I flopped onto my back and wheezed.

“I think you invented new swearwords,” said Dale. “Like…what’s a ‘funt’?”

“I think it’s pretty clear from context,” I said.

He loomed over me. “Get up. We’re way behind and Bob can only delay the train for so long.”

I flipped him off.

He kicked me. “Get up, you lazy fuck.”

I groaned and got back to my feet.

I’d found the compartment’s pressure sensor during the “dig a hole to China” phase of the operation. (Yes, that idiom still applies on the moon. I felt like I’d just dug a 384,000-kilometer hole.)

Our little “fool the pressure sensor” game had worked till now, but as soon as I breached the inner hull, the pressure on our side would go up to Artemis Standard. Then the sensor would say “Holy shit! Twenty-one kPa air! There’s a hole in the inner hull!”

The alarm would go off, people would freak out, and the EVA masters would come take a look, and we’d get caught. Dale and Bob would get drummed out of the guild, but I wouldn’t live long enough to see it, because loyal Sanchez people would have stabbed me in the face.

Oh? You don’t think a bunch of nebbish control-room nerds would do something like that? Think again. Someone at

Sanchez tried to kill me with a harvester, remember?

The sensor itself was a metal cylinder with a couple of wires attached. The wires had a fair bit of play, which was handy. I pulled a steel can with a screw top out of the duffel. I’d modified it earlier for just this purpose by putting a little notch in the lid.

I put the sensor in the can and slid the cabling into the notch. Then I screwed on the lid. After that, I put six layers of duct tape over the point where the wires entered the lid. I didn’t feel great about that part. Only an idiot relies on duct tape to maintain a pressure seal, but I didn’t have a choice. At least the higher pressure would be on the outside so the tape would be pushed against the hole.

“Think that’ll do it?” Dale asked.

“We’ll know in a minute. Take us up to Artemis Standard.”

Dale tapped his arm controls. Of course Bob’s rover could be controlled remotely. If it was a luxury feature, Bob’s rover had it.

Fresh air echoed down the inflatable tunnel, and my ears popped with the slight pressure change.

I watched the can intently. The tape over the hole bowed in slightly, but otherwise held. I pressed my ear to the inner hull wall.

“No alarms,” I said. I called Svoboda back.

“Yo!” said Svoboda. “Criminal Support Team ready and waiting.”

“I’m not sure I like that title,” said Dad.

“I’m about to make the inner hull cut,” I said. “Any last-minute advice, Dad?”