Hidden Variables by Charles Sheffield Read Free Book Online Page A

Garry Scanlon's face. "I deserve to go to jail, there's no argument on that."
    "Maybe." Garry's face was a mixture of emotions. "Maybe you do. I won't judge that. But I know this, Len, if anybody ought to go on the lunar trip, it's not me—it's you." His voice was earnest. "You touched dirt, sure you did. Lots of people back in Washington will be happy to crucify you for it. But I just want to say that I'm sorry about it all. If I could give you my place on a trip up to the Lunar Base, I'd do it—gladly."
    "Thanks, Garry." Len's voice was so soft that he was only just audible. "I know how much that means to you. Don't think I don't appreciate it, and the fact that you came here to warn me the way you did.
    "But you know"—he grinned, and suddenly there was a trace of the youth of twenty years earlier in his smile—"you don't need to give up anything for me. They'll come and get me in a week, right? Know where I'll be then?" He jerked a thumb upward, toward the unseen orb of the Moon. "If they want me, they'll have to come and get me. I'm betting that I can keep a move ahead of the posse, all the way out. We'll have full mobility over the lunar surface in another four years. You'll have to develop that if you want to catch me. How long will that take?"
    He raised his glass. "Come on, drink up and we'll get you out of here before you miss that last shuttle. Know what I feel like? In the old days they'd hang a carrot out in front of a donkey to keep it moving along. That's me. As long as I'm out there, you don't need to worry about the health of the space program—they'll have to keep going and catch me."
    "You're right." Garry smiled and picked up his glass. "National pride would never be satisfied to leave you out there. We'll be chasing you."
    "A toast then." Len shrugged. "It's not the one we've always wanted, I know, but there's still time for that. It's a few years yet to 1999. I'm betting we'll still drink that one—and we'll drink it where we've always wanted to. For now, let's just drink to the Space Program."
    "No." Hesitantly at first, then with increasing resolve, Garry raised his own glass. "This time I'm going to propose the toast. The Space Program is fine, but I'll give you something better. Here's to the carrot—and long may it hang out there."

AFTERWORD: THE MAN WHO STOLE THE MOON.
    You might think that a writer knows exactly what is in his or her head when a story goes down on paper. I used to think so, but now I'm far less sure of it. Consider this example.
    Robert Heinlein's classic "The Man Who Sold The Moon" was obviously much in mind when I wrote this story. No surprise there. I had even gone back and re-read the original just before I began, but so far as I knew I had not played any word games within the story beyond the twist on the title itself.
    This story was published. A few months later a reader wrote to tell me that he got a kick out of the way that I had secretly inserted a non-hero figure who was a variation of Heinlein's main character. At that point in his letter I had no idea what he was talking about. I read on.
    Look at Henry B. Delso, he said. "Delso" was a very simple anagram of "Delos", and Harry is an informal version of the name Henry. The man Henry B. Delso was therefore none other than Heinlein's Del(os) D. Harri (man).
    I wanted to write back to him and say, no, not at all, I didn't do what you think I did. I never wrote the letter. You see, after I thought for a while longer I realized that I had done it. I didn't know I'd done it, but that's a different matter entirely.
    Some readers may feel that this story is a piece of preaching about the bureaucratic stifling of initiative in our society, and they may assert that I was trying to sugar a warning by wrapping it in fictional form. Some readers would be quite right.

THE DEIMOS PLAGUE
    On the highland heights above Chryse City, where the thin, dust-filled winds endlessly scour the salmon-pink vault of the Martian sky, a