And of course … if he could do it to someone else, he could just as easily do it to us. If he wanted to.

The Beagle finally reached the bottom of Avalanche Hill—Alexei didn't tell us the name of it until we were safely off of it. Now the truck began winding its way through a very uneven rubble field; it looked like very soon, the road would give out completely.

Instead, we began seeing short bridges of industrial foam, paving the occasional gap in the way. Soon, the bulldozed course gave way entirely to a layer of foam. It sat on top of the jumbled rocks and rubble like a ribbon of fluffy icing. It wound around the larger outcrops like the scenic course in a Disneyland ride. Except here, there weren't any pirates or bears or ghosts to jump out at you.

The drive was a little smoother on the foam. From up on top of it, we looked like we were rolling on a road of whipped cream. Alexei explained how it had been poured and leveled and hardened. It wasn't all foam; there were bits of gravel and crushed rock throughout, so that over the years as the weight of the trucks compressed the foam, they'd make it even harder.

"Foam was greatest invention of twentieth century," Alexei said, launching into another of his interminable peripatetic monologues. "Very silly people. They think foam is weak. They use it for stuffing and toys. With a little bit of seasoning, foam makes houses, roads, domes, spaceships, anything you want. Pour it in molds or build it up in layers. If not for foam, we could not colonize Luna. Certainly not as fast." He pounded the bulkhead. "All these are foam. We order as much cargo as Line can deliver. Yes, we want cargo, but we want pods that cargo arrives in even more. Every pod is a house. We have built whole cities out of these pods—and everything else too. We do it in less than forty years. We have as much living space on Luna now as in all of Moscow—only winters are nicer on Luna. Not as much snow. Not a problem anyway, if we had as much snow on Luna as they do in Moscow, we would all be rich. We would sell it to each other and make water everywhere. We would fill great domes with water and air and everything else. We would have wheat fields to rival the grand steppes of Asia. Someday we will anyway, even without the snow. We will capture comets if we have to. And we will do it with foam. We will match orbit with comet, catch it in a net of foam, harden it into a solid ball, and bring it back to Luna. Or maybe we will build a Lunar beanstalk on far side of moon and just pipe the water down to great Lunar pipeline system. Or we will attach Palmer tubes all over and land it in Pogue Crater and create new Lunar city around it. Put a dome above it. A great adventure. You would be proud to be a part of it. We will build our own great outdoors on Luna. We will have trees as tall as mountains, flowers as big as your head, grass so high you can hide elephants in it. We will have bouncing hippos and leaping bears. We will have monstrous giant fish and butterflies the size of eagles. We will build best outdoors ever, better even than Earth."

"What a grand scheme," Douglas said, with almost no enthusiasm. It was the same voice he used when he was humoring Mom or Dad.

Alexei didn't notice. "I show you plans. We have crater, we have blueprints, we have much financing, we have eager community of people—even many invisibles. We will build Free Luna."

"It sounds like a very expensive Luna," Mickey said dryly.

Alexei ignored the jibe. "For you, Mikhail,we will give big family discount. All you need to do is bring big family." He finished his beer and pushed the empty plastic can into the litter bag. He started to reach for a third, then stopped himself. "No," he said. "I have had enough for now. I am driving soon." He pointed ahead. "Here comes turnoff."

We rolled onto a wide bare dome of rock that pushed its way up through the foam pavement like a breaching whale. The Beagle stopped at the top. On the other side, the road split off in two directions, one curling off toward the light, the other winding back down into blackness—in some places it was visible only by its orange-outlined edges and infrequent illuminated flags.

Alexei swiveled forward and busied himself with his controls, snapping switches, studying screens, flipping up plastic switch covers, unlocking and arming unknown controls. He reached overhead and snap-snap-snapped a row of switches. It was a very techno performance. The truck settled itself and made various switching and gurgling noises. Things clankedunderneath as they locked themselves into position. Was Alexei actually planning to driveacross this jumble?

"Hokay," he said finally. "Everybody please fasten safety harness. Is not to worry. Is not too bumpy, and is very short ride." He waited until we'd all buckled ourselves in, then punched the red button in front of him.

The truck shuddered—I recognized the feeling— Palmer tubes!We were boosting! Shaking like an earthquake, we shot up off the Lunar surface, into painful sunlight. Beyond the windows, the dark ground fell away alarmingly fast. It was a sea of shadow. Occasional islands of bright rocks thrust up out of the gloom.

We tilted slightly forward and began to move. The Beagle throbbed and shook across the Lunar night. I swiveled around and watched as the glimmering thread of the road disappeared behind us. If the booster tubes failed now—we'd never be found.

I swiveled back around. Alexei was watching his screens like money was pouring out of them. I noticed Mickey was watching our course too. A bright green line traced its way across an unreadable map. It zigzagged from one landmark to the next. A yellow dot crept along the line. We were halfway along, but I couldn't see any correlation between the display on the screen and the terrain outside. The glare of the sun was directly ahead and everything was either dazzled out of existence or lost in shadow.

Finally, we hooked around to put the sun behind us and started a steep descent into a broken arroyo. Coming in from the east, we saw a scattering of pods, as if discarded by a thoughtless tourist. They were connected by pipes and wires and lazy tubes that curled around the landscape in courses of convenience. We shuddered down toward a square of four bright orange lights. Here and there, I saw scattered towers with arrays of solar panels at the top. Most of them also had glimmering cables climbing up to huge lens arrays at the top—I recognized them as light-pipes; the lens arrays were called collimation engines.

We sank down into shadow—the glare behind us switched off as suddenly as a power failure. Flurries of dust rose up around us like history. A moment later, we bumped softly down onto the Lunar surface. The vehicle stopped shaking and we were down. The Beagle had landed.

THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE

"Welcome to Invisible Luna," Alexei said. He began shutting down the flight controls, switching off all the things he'd switched on before, switching on all the things he'd switched off. "We are now off the map."

He waved at the junk and detritus beyond the window. "This is abandoned test site Brickner 43-AX92. Not cost-effective for industrial production. Shut down seven years ago. Leased to Lunar Homestead Sites for one dollar a year, paid up one hundred years in advance, with option to purchase. All ice mined from this site must be sold to leasing company. Part of proceeds goes to company store for credit for supplies, part goes toward purchase price, last part you get to keep—only no place to spend it, nothing to do but melt more ice. Is no big deal. The more you melt, faster you earn out, sooner you work for yourself, sooner you make profit. Lunar sharecropping, da?Does that not sound like good deal? It is if you are lunatic. Even better, water prices stay high."