Analog Science Fiction and Fact - June 2013

other, if unofficial, reason he was here. As often
as he had championed exploration, the
pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, something—typically
farm chores and colicky babies—had
come first.
How much harder would Dana have it on
this excursion for having him along, not
Blake?
Antonio loved her all the more for bringing
him, regardless.
The remote-sensing station was a kludge,
the first among a whole constellation of
kludges. Once Dana had it checked out, they
would hop Endeavour a third of the way
around this little moon and deploy a second
station. Then take another hop, to deliver a
third.
It wasn’t bad enough that Aristophanes, orbiting
so near Dark, precluded siting their sensor
suites where above any rational planet
they belonged: aboard synchronous satellites.
Aristophanes also had an unhelpful rate of rotation;
it didn’t present a constant face to the
world below, as the Moon presented to Earth.
Only with three well-separated stations would
some one of them at all times have the planet
under observation. Each station had to store
its readings until Dark’s rotation, the moon’s
rotation, and the moon’s orbit combined to
provide a line-of-site downlink opportunity to
the settlement.
After finishing on Aristophanes they would
get to reprise the triple deployment on
Aeschylus and again on Euripides. And on occasion,
parts of Dark would still go unmonitored.
Three fascinating little worlds, Antonio
thought, sad that no one shared his fascination.
While Dana, with a multimeter in hand,
fussed over some calibration, Antonio wandered
about gathering rocks for his collection.
As feeble as was Aristophanes’ gravity, not
even a klutz like him could trip off or leap free
of it. He could, if he lost focus, bound high
enough to spend a long while drifting back to
the surface. And so he shuffled, sweeping
aside ancient regolith with his boots, leaving
sloppy troughs in his wake. His tracks shone
paler than the undisturbed surface.
“Almost done here,” Dana called. “How
about you?”
Done scuffing up the surface? Done collect-
DARK SECRET
JUNE 2013
ing rocks? “Ready when you are.”
They remained suited up for the jaunt to
their next landing site, sparing themselves another
round of checkouts. Here they were on
the moon’s night side, with the planet half below
the horizon. Antonio could still see clearly
by—the word tickled him—Darklight.
He helped Dana carry their second station
to an area clear of stony rubble. While she
configured the unit, he resumed pebble collecting.
Here, too, the ruts left by his plodding
gait were paler than the undisturbed surface.
When, with an abrupt sneeze, Dana let fly
the removable clasp of an access panel, he
helped her search for it. When they gave up
the fastener for lost, swallowed by the thick
dust, or hiding in the inky shadow of some
boulder, he scavenged nuts and bolts for her
from ship’s stores. He found a spare thermocouple
when an instrument failed diagnostics;
without accurate temperature readings here,
they could not calibrate long-range readings
they made of Dark. Then, having bagged and
labeled every interesting-looking pebble in the
vicinity, he tried to entertain himself by tracing
geometric shapes in the dust with his boot
tip.
“Ready to move on?” Dana called.
“Sure.”
Their third landing returned them to sunlight
and gave them a line of sight to the settlement.
Dana called down.
“How’s it going, Endeavour?” Blake answered,
yawning. He had gray bags beneath
his bloodshot eyes, and his beard looked overdue
for a trim. Maybe a shearing.
“Everything seems fine on this end,” Dana
said.
“With you, too, Antonio?”
“Indeed. Apart from the inefficiency of it all.”
“Don’t blame me. I didn’t put the moons
there.” Arching an eyebrow, Blake leaned toward
the camera. “What do you two crazy kids
have planned, all unchaperoned?”
Dana and Antonio exchanged glances.
“Looking around a bit,” he said. That sounded
frivolous, even to him. “Survey the . . . area
for useful minerals.”
“Getting finished,” Dana said firmly, “as fast
as we can. Maybe a quick nap before the flight
to Aeschylus.”
“What is this nap thing of which you
speak?” Blake yawned again. “Before you de-
81