High above the Sea of Tranquility, a ballistic hopper arcs out of the Moon's shadow and into sunlight, en route from Von Braunville to Luna City. Behind it looms the Earth, where billions are preparing to celebrate Christmas, 1985. In the hopper, too, Christmas is being discussed, but in a somewhat different context.
United States Space Marshal Rory Rammer swiveled in his chair and fixed Rex Gorbachev with an outraged glare. "I would have thought some things were beneath even you, Gorbachev," he growled. "Stealing -- "
The red-spacesuited Russian showed no signs of wilting under the lawman's gaze -- possibly because he was tightly strapped into his seat. "Property is theft," he retorted.
"Stealing toys -- "
"Shoddy products of capitalist mass-consumerism."
"Stealing toys on Christmas Eve!" Rammer finished.
"A seasonal orgy of greed and materialistic false consciousness!"
"I don't know how you can look in the mirror to shave in the morning!"
Gorbachev smiled. "As you may have noticed, I have beard."
"It's a figure of speech! How does your conscience let you steal children's toys?"
"I tell conscience black market price for 'Pickle Me Nemo' doll. Conscience shuts up."
An electronic tone put an end to the argument. "Top of the arc," said Rammer. He turned to face the Space Marshals cadet in the right-hand seat. "How long till we land at Luna City, Skip? I want to get Scrooge here into a jail cell for the holidays."
"I protest this slander! Scrooge was archetypal capitalist, I have read Dickens. Do not insult me so again or I will speak to my lawyer."
Cadet Skip Sagan avoided his superior's eye, paging frantically through data on a screen in front of him. "Uh -- that's a funny thing, Rory. We won't," he said.
"We won't what?"
"We're not going to make Luna City. According to the ballistic projector, we're going to land about fifty miles short!"
"How did that happen?"
Sagan quit worrying the instrument panel and looked sheepishly at the marshal. "I think when I was figuring our fuel load, I added in your weight and my weight and Gorbachev's weight. But I forgot to add in the weight of the confiscated toys!"
He glanced at a large canvas bag tethered to the floor by Gorbachev's feet. The Russian laughed and said, "Hey, marshal! If you dump bag, you might have enough fuel to make Luna City."
"Not a chance, Gorbachev," Rammer growled. "Those toys are evidence. You're going down!"
Gorbachev's smirk faded. "So are we all, marshal. At five feet per second per second. Suggest you start looking for flat spot to land."
Gorbachev had kept his mouth blessedly shut during the hopper's dry-tanks landing on the only boulder-free patch of ground in a markedly rugged stretch of lunar terrain. Since the turbo-pumps wound down, though, he had not shut up. "Pity you could not raise anyone at Luna City Traffic Control before we dropped out of line-of-sight. Religious observances probably distracted staff. Doubtless someone is photofaxing image of secretary's backside to Vatican even as we speak."
Rammer wrapped a final strip of plasteel around Gorbachev's wrist and bonded the overlap. "That ought to hold you," he said. "You wait right here while we call a paddy wagon in from Luna City."
The Russian wriggled futilely. "Straps are inhumanly tight," he complained. "Be sure Lunar Civil Liberties Union will hear about this."
"Yeah, you tell 'em all about it, toy-snatcher. After you've finished your sentence and they've dug you out from underneath the courthouse." The marshal backed down the hopper's ladder onto the lunar surface and took the Federal Selenological Survey map his cadet was holding.
"The map shows an ice-miner's shack somewhere here," Skip said, "but I can't see it. This is really rough country!"
"There's a reason for that. Most ice-mines are at the Moon's poles, where the big ice deposits are. But there are some places on the Moon where a comet hit and left a pocket of ice, enough for a one- or two-man outfit to eke out a claim, for a few years anyway. But the impact rips up the countryside."
"Will we be able to get in contact with Luna City?"
"L-City's fifty miles that way. The big Diana Mines facility is seventy miles the other way. I'd be surprised if these guys don't have a connection to the telecom landline between the two. Come on. I think the shack must be on the other side of this rille."
A few minutes scrambling over broken rock and an easy hop up a six-foot escarpment brought their goal into sight, if it was what was marked on the map: A flattened white dome a hundred feet across, with an attached two-vehicle hangar and a greenhouse module stretching out behind.
"Wow!" said Skip. "Some shack!"
Rory's voice was suspicious. "There must be more money in ice-mining than I knew."
Gorbachev's laughter crackled distantly in their ears. "'Ice-mining!' There are many things you two do not know!"
"Pipe down, Gorbachev, or I'll switch your radio frequency and you can listen to Sean Hannity until we get back."
For once, a threat cowed the Russian. "I will be good."
The only visible airlock was set in the end of the hangar. Rammer plugged in an audio lead and pushed the button for the door-buzzer. No response. He tried again. After a few seconds, he leaned on the button until the playing card-sized vidscreen by the door lit up, showing a boy of ten or eleven. "Who's there?" the tiny image said.
"Space Marshals, son. Open up."
"Nah, I can’t do that. I’m not supposed to let anybody in."
"This is official business, kid. Now open up."
"I dunno. Can I see some ID?"
Rammer muttered an unflattering speculation about the consanguinity of the kid's parents, unhooked his badge from his plastron and held it in front of the vidscreen pickup.
"Could you hold it a li-i-ittle closer to the camera? Turn it to the right a little. No, my right. Wow! That’s a real Space Marshals badge, isn’t it?"
"Yes," Rammer rasped. "It is."
"I guess it’s OK, then. Come on in."
The locking bars on the outer airlock door snapped open. An overhead light came on, illuminating a welcome mat in front of the door. COME BACK WITH A WARRANT, it read.
I believe I'll do that, thought Rammer. Just as soon as I get Gorbachev tucked in for the holidays.
The inner door led onto a catwalk down the length of the hangar. The marshal noted that one bay was empty. The other held a sporty two-seat hopper. A revolving-door lock at the end of the 'walk let him into the pressurized living quarters.
Inside, the kid turned out to be even smaller and younger than Rammer had taken him for. He couldn't have been more than ten, tow-headed and dressed in blue-and-white Dr. Dentons. He wouldn't look Rammer in the eye, instead peering around him at the airlock door as if expecting someone much more important than a mere Space Marshal to appear in a moment.
Rammer slid up the faceplate of his helmet, waved his badge at the boy one last time, and said, "Thanks, son. Can I speak to your father?
"Nope. He’s not here."
"Your mother?"
"She’s not here either."
Gee, and this had started out so -- not infuriating, Rammer thought. Skip cycled through the lock behind him. The kid's face fell. Apparently his cadet was an even bigger disappointment then he. "Is there anyone -- "
"Hi."
Another boy had wandered into the room. This one was of an age with the first, but red-headed and wearing brilliant green Dr. Dentons. He was sucking some liquid of a violent purple color out of a mooncup through a straw.
"Er -- Is this your brother?"
"Nah. He’s a friend of mine."
"O-kay. Are his parents here?"
"Nuh-uh. His folks and my folks went off to a Christmas party."
Well, that would explain the empty bay in the hangar. The situation apparently bothered Skip, though. "And they left the two of you here all alone?"
But not Kid No. 1. He shrugged. "No. My Uncle Al’s here."
At last! "Could we speak to 'Uncle Al'?" Rory asked.
From somewhere further back in the dome, there was a guttural, rasping zawp that stretched over long seconds. Only at the very end did Rory realize what it was: a planetary-class snore.
"I don’t think so. He found the cabinet where my dad keeps his liquor."
Damn! Skip was grinning at his superior officer as if this was the funniest thing in three worlds. "Sounds like 'Uncle Al' is incommunicado for the rest of the night."
"I don't care if he's in Santa Monica for Hanukah! Come on. This place has got to have a landline phone and we're going to find it." He and Skip left the two youngsters gazing intently at the airlock.
Ten minutes of searching the dome and attached greenhouse convinced Rammer of four things:
First, there must a lot more money in ice-mining than he'd thought. If ice-mining was actually the household's source of income, that is.
Second, any hypothesized ice-mining equipment must be stored off-site, because there wasn't any to be found.
Third, no phone presented itself to his eyes, either.
The "liquor cabinet" proved to be a compartment behind a hidden panel, approximately the size of Rammer's quarters aboard Space Station J. Edgar Hoover. The concealing panel was slid back halfway, apparently by "Uncle Al," a short, bearded man in a greasy space suit liner who was noisily and impenetrably asleep atop an expensive autodesk. A ring of half-emptied bottles surrounded "Al" like tributary moons, slowly gurgling their expensive contents into the carpeting, supplemented by a thin string of drool from "Al's" mouth which trickled floorward under the weak lunar gravity .
The fourth thing Rammer was convinced of was that he didn't want to lay a paw on "Al" without something more pathogen-resistant than the gauntlets of a U.S. Space Marshal-issue Type 19 pressure suit on his hands. "Al" could wait. Probably until New Year's.
He snagged Skip from the master bedroom, where his cadet was gazing with a look of wild surmise at the mirrored ceiling above the Empress Theodora-size gel bed, and reached the airlock foyer just as a clock beeped midnight.
He'd have to dig the phone's location out of one of the boys anyway. "Son, we want to use your -- "
Too late. The blue-and-white clad boy's feet had gone out from under him. His Dr. Denton-ed rear hit the floor as hard as the feeble gravity would allow and bounced a couple of times. His face squinched up tight and he bawled, "He’s not coming! When we heard you beating on the airlock, we thought it was hi-i-im!"
Kid No. 2 was on the floor, too, kicking his heels and pounding the decking with his fists. "I don’t think he can find us!" he howled.
It took Rammer a few seconds to take the spectacle in and ask, "Exactly who are we talking about here?"
A sobbing, sniffling chorus: "Santa Claus!"
Skip drew the marshal aside while the display continued behind them. "Oh, Rory! This is heartbreaking!"
"It’s affecting my digestion, that’s for sure. We’ve got to get them calmed down or we'll never find the phone."
By the change in his expression, Skip had been struck by an inspiration. "We could give them Santa Claus!"
"I’m not following the trajectory of your thoughts here, Skip."
"He has a beard. And he’s wearing a red spacesuit. And there’s a bag of toys in the back of the hopper."
"Those are evidence." The cadet couldn't be suggesting... "You can’t mean Gorbachev!"
"You’re the one who said we have to calm them down. And it would mean so much to them."
This caterwauling couldn't go on much longer, Rammer thought. His right eyelid was beginning to twitch. "All right. Against my better judgment, we’ll give it a try."
Back at the hopper, Skip snicked through Gorbachev's restraints while Rammer explained the situation and made the Russian a proposition: Play Santa and get a reduction in charges. A small reduction in charges.
Gorbachev pounded circulation back into his arms and legs, stretched until he could touch the vehicle's overhead, did a couple of deep knee-bends -- and sat back down. "Tie me up again," he growled. "I will not do it."
Rammer had not expected this! "It’s in your own best interest, Gorbachev. It’ll go a long way to mitigate the court’s fully justified disgust at the heinousness of your crime."
"It is matter of principle. You wish me to impersonate Christian saint -- "
"Saint Nicholas, yes!"
"Thus injecting religious superstition -- opiate of masses! -- into innocent veins of proletarian children!"
Skip spoke up, "No, no! It’s not like that at all! Santa Claus is totally commercialized. No religious content whatsoever."
An assurance of strict -- if capitalistic -- secularism seemed to mollify the Russian. "Oh, then is all right." He picked up the evidence bag and slung it over his shoulder. "Where are kiddies?"
Back at the "shack," Kid No. 1 and Kid No. 2 were sprawled in pre-pubescent despair on the floor when Rammer cycled through the airlock. Skip followed him and cheerily announced, "Up and at 'em, boys! I want you to meet someone!"
Both boys sprang to their feet as only the Moon-raised can, then took a step back as a six-foot-four bearded figure in a bright red pressure suit, a canvas bag over his shoulder, stepped from the 'lock.
"Ho! Ho-ho!" Gorbachev intoned, giving an appropriately deep if somewhat arrhythmic reading.
Kid No. 2 asked the necessary question. "Are -- Are you the real Santa Claus?"
"I am Cosmic Santa. Spasebo."
Kid No. 1 wasn't convinced. "I dunno. If you’re the real Santa -- what are your reindeers’ names?"
Gorbachev held up a gauntleted hand to shush Sagan. "Wait, wait, I know this one:
Come, Bounder! Come, Blinder!
Now, Agnew and Nixon!
On, Vomit! On, Stupid!
On, Blunder and Shpritzen!
Get under their radar, and let your bombs fall,
Now, dash away, dash away, dash away all!
Good, nyet?"
"I think I hear Clement Moore spinning in his grave from here," Rammer said.
Skip would not be denied. "And? And? The Most Famous Reindeer of Them All?"
"Ach -- of course! Adolph!"
Rammer shook his head. "And Tex Ritter’s in there with him. Now, what did you boys ask Santa to bring you?"
At the prospect of loot, Kid No. 1 gave "Cosmic Santa" his full buy-in. "An 'Arachnid-Man Web-Thrower Gun'!"
"And I want a 'Toby Hogg Meteor Surfer' Video Game!"
Again, Gorbachev cut off Skip to make his own creative explanations. "Sorry. Five Year Plan for 'Arachnid-Man Web-Thrower Guns' was not fulfilled. And Trotskyite saboteurs burned down factory that manufactures 'Toby Hogg Meteor Surfer Video Game.' Nonetheless, here is present for you. And one for you."
Both boys took the pragmatic view that a something in the hand was better than nothing nowhere. "Thank you, Santa!" "Thank you!"
Gorbachev leaned conspiratorially toward the children. "Have you considered asking for tax-free municipal bonds next year?"
The cadet grabbed Gorbachev by the shoulder, pivoting him lightly away from his prospective investors and back toward the airlock. "I think Santa needs to go!"
"Yes, Santa has many more stops to make this night! Many more materialistic fantasies to satiate! If you would hold door for me, Cadet? Thank you." And he was out through the airlock and offstage, out of sight and mind.
Rammer sighed. Back to business. "OK, boys, all better? Now, where’s the phone?"
Kid No. 1 shrugged with his right shoulder, a long strip of gift-wrap film unraveling in his hands. "It's built into my dad's autodesk. Uncle Al is sleeping on top of it."
Rammer stifled a well-earned curse and had made two steps toward the office when the decking vibrated under his feet and a mechanical rumble briefly filled the dome.
"Skip? Is that the sort of sound the roof of the hangar would make rolling back?"
His cadet obviously didn't want to answer that question, but he did. "Yes, Rory. It does."
A red light glowing by the airlock's control panel indicated Gorbachev had blocked it open. There was a muffled Boom! and a sound like a hurricane wind clawing at the wall common to the hangar module.
"And that two-seat jump buggy in the garage? If you started its engine, wouldn’t it make a noise like that?," Rory asked.
"Uh -- yes, Rory."
The roar rose to a momentary crescendo, then faded out.
"And if it took off, wouldn’t it sound like that?"
"Very like that, Rory."
"That’s what I thought." The dome was suddenly very quiet, a silence that stretched for long seconds.
"Twas the night before Christmas --" a childish voice said.
It was the green-clad boy, Rammer could see. He didn't look up at the marshal, but Rammer could tell the little imp was grinning. Damn! They both were!
"Come on, Skip," Rammer growled. "Let's roll Uncle Al off the phone and call Luna City. If Traffic Control can track Gorbachev, we might get him back yet."
High above the Sea of Tranquility, a ballistic hopper arcs out of the Moon's shadow and into sunlight. Behind it looms the Earth, where billions have begun celebrating Christmas. In the hopper, a Russian-accented bass voice booms --
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, as he rode out of sight,
'Your performance appraisal this year’s gonna bite!'"