Mickey A. Goes to the Moon

By Ronald D. Ferguson

PLEASED WITH HIMSELF, Mickey Anosognosia announced, “I figured how to stow away on the new moon shuttle. Maybe I’ll find the aliens they been talking about on TV.”

“You’re crazy, Mickey A.,” said Mickey’s best friend Kirk. “They got cameras everywhere. You’ll get in big trouble.”

“Cameras don’t matter.” Mickey grinned. Whenever he used his loveable grin, people made allowances. Mickey liked allowances. “They won’t recognize my face.”

“Huh?”

Mickey tapped his foot. Kirk never caught on quick, but today he was especially slow.

“You gonna wear a mask?” Kirk asked.

“Don’t need no mask, I got invisibility lotion.”

“Where would you get invisibility lotion?”

“Made it myself.” Mickey shook a bottle of liquid to a foam.

“When did you become Mr. Brains? You were lucky to get promoted to tenth grade this fall, and the only chemistry you took last spring was stealing your grandfather’s asthma medicine.”

Mickey ignored the comment. Besides, the medicine had made Mickey light-headed and shouldn’t count as theft. He used a conspiratorial voice. “I got the idea from the invisible ink recipe on the SpyGuy’s Blog.”

“Invisible-divisible. Everyone knows it’s just lemon juice. Heat it to see it.”

“I ain’t gonna let it get hot, Kirk.” Mickey shook his head at Kirk’s stupidity. “It’ll stay invisible.”

“What else did you put in it?”

Mickey sheepishly grinned. “Just lemon juice, but once I smear it on, I’ll be invisible to the camera. They won’t recognize me. I’ll be off to the moon like Flash Gordon.”

“More like Flesh Gordo.” Kirk pointed at Mickey’s stomach.

“Is that a fat remark?”

“Mickey A., you’re five-six and weigh three hundred pounds.”

“Two-seventy-five.” Mickey pushed out his lips. “I ain’t fat. Besides I’ll only weigh forty-six pounds on the moon.”

***

Last spring, Mickey’s math teacher, Mr. Henry, had pulled him aside, handed him chalk, pointed at the board, and said, “If you don’t learn to solve a quadratic equation, Mickey, then you won’t be a sophomore next year.”

Mickey told Mr. Henry, “I can solve a quadratic equation, but today I’m too tired to try.”

On the next day, Mickey was too tense, and on the following day, too distracted. By the end of the semester, Mickey hadn’t run out of excuses.

On the last day of class, Mickey said, “Mr. Henry, besides you, who’s ever gonna want me to solve a quadratic equation?”

Mr. Henry conceded the logic of that, and Mickey got a D+ with the promise of making sophomore. The week that school let out, he decided it was time to take a big risk, and so he asked Linda Eckleworth to the movies. She laughed at him, and so he went with his second idea for the summer: going to the moon.

Still, Kirk seemed convinced that Mickey’s plan wouldn’t work. At home, Mickey decided to camera-test the lemon juice. He stripped naked in his bedroom, and then paused to admire himself in the mirror.

Fat? Kirk was an idiot, Mickey was stocky, not fat. Jiggling the love handles about his waist, he sucked up his stomach. Love handles, yeah, women must like them. That’s why they called them love handles; Mickey’s handles were spectacular ... and he had a double pair on each side.

Turning in front of the mirror, Mickey checked his profile. When he got to the moon, he would weigh just forty-six pounds. That was the most useful thing he had learned in math class. Mr. Henry said the difference in weight was caused by acceleration due to gravity, but Mickey wasn’t sure what his weight had to do with going faster.

He sighed. Back to the camera invisibility test.

He retrieved his digital camera from the closet and checked the battery. Charged. He snapped pictures of his wall pinups to be sure the camera worked. Perfect.

Mickey had half a gallon of concentrated lemon juice. After dousing juice onto his head, he massaged the liquid onto his face. He held up the camera with the lens towards his face.

Juice dripped in his eye, and he squinted. Should the juice dry first? Mickey didn’t think it mattered.

He couldn’t hold the camera far enough away with one hand, so he strapped the camera to his baseball bat. Held at arm’s length, the bat felt heavy. Mickey struggled to hold it steady, but the camera lens drifted about.

Lemon juice seeped into his left eye, and his right eye burned. Mickey wiped his eyes with his free arm. He succeeded in working more juice into both eyes.

He screwed up his face in pain and hurried. Tilting up the bat, he pressed the camera’s time delay button. Now, his left eye unmercifully burned. While the countdown ticked, he extended the bat, blindly flailed the camera about, and impatiently danced on his tip-toes until the camera clicked. The flash penetrated his clenched eyelids.

“Yeowy!”

Mickey dropped the bat and camera. He tripped over his bed and bumbled against the door jamb when he fled to the shower.

Twenty minutes in the shower, and a half-bottle of eye drops later, he undid the camera from the bat. Using the camera’s screen, he reviewed the stored pictures. Mickey flipped back through the half dozen pictures of his pinups until he found a picture of his room—and his face was not in it.

He smiled. The formula worked. The juice made him invisible. Kirk was an idiot.

Goggles. The solution for the burning eyes came in an instant. Wear swim goggles.

Wait, even better! He had enough lemon juice, why not saturate his clothes? He would become completely invisible to the cameras.

He reconsidered the scheme. No good. If his clothes were invisible, then the cameras would see his naked body.

Ah-ha! Skip the clothes. Go naked with lemon juice over his entire body. For the cameras, he would be the Invisible Man.

The Invisible Man? Yeah. Naked. That was the way the Invisible Man did it. What a cool video.

Tomorrow night Mickey A. would hide on the shuttle. The next morning he would go to the moon and trip the light fantastic. He never understood why tripping was a good dance strategy. Shiela Morgan hadn’t liked it at all.

***

Mickey rolled his eyes when Kirk flattened against the warehouse wall. Kirk was a wuss, a numbskull.

“My dad says they found a million-year-old alien artifact on the moon.” Kirk hugged the wall like a confused crab. He scuttled along as if he expected police spotlights. “Pretty spooky, huh?”

"I ain’t scared. Didn’t I tell you about aliens first? Maybe they found rayguns?”

"The government don’t tell nobody nothing, besides, it’s a million years old, probably like dinosaur bones. I don’t see why I had to come with you.”

Mickey dropped his jeans and struggled with the frayed elastic of his underwear. “Take my clothes home for me—Mom gets mad when I lose them ...”

“I remember the last time. Your mom has a temper.”

“I need you to juice my back. I don’t want the camera to see my butt.”

“Nobody wants to see your butt, Mickey A.”

“Is that another fat joke? I told you, I ain’t fat. The doctor says my pants are tight because I have a jean etiquette pre-supposition, but that won’t matter on the moon.”

“What’s the plan?” Kirk rolled Mickey’s jeans into a bundle.

“I told you.” Mickey folded his underwear with his shirt. “I get naked and cover myself with lemon juice.”

“That’s a plan?” Kirk pulled Mickey’s wallet from his jeans. “Ain’t you taking your billfold?”

“All what’s in it is my ID, ten dollars, and my bus pass. Geez, Kirk, you’re TSTL, Too Stupid To Live. I already know who I am, and there ain’t no buses on the moon. Besides, where would I carry a wallet? I’m bare-assed naked.”

“Can I keep the ten bucks? You don’t need money on the moon.”

“Huh? Well, I guess I don’t. Okay, but you owe me a burger when I get back.”

Kirk pocketed the money and took the shirt-underwear package from Mickey. “I don’t get how you can stow away. Just ’cause you’re invisible to the camera don’t mean people can’t see you.”

“It’s the new shuttle for the moon colony.” Mickey donned his swim goggles and doused his head with lemon juice. “Inside the warehouse, I’ll hide in a crate of supplies. They’ll load me in the morning—hey, pour some juice on my back, would you?”

Kirk took the jug of juice. “Mr. Henry says it takes three days to go to the moon, that’s a long time to hide in a box. You brought nothing to eat or drink. I’m not rubbin’ this juice on your butt.”

“I can reach my butt, just be sure my back is covered. I ain’t staying in the box for the whole trip. After the launch, I come out, pretty as you please, and say howdy all.”

“You ain’t that pretty. They’ll put you off, like the bus driver did when you raised the ruckus with Kayla Higginbottom.”

“Naw, stupid, space is different.” Mickey picked up the juice and corked the jug. “They can’t put you on the curb, and they sure won’t turn around and come home.”

“My dad would if he was driving.”

“Your dad’s a geek.” Mickey glared. “My plan is foolproof.”

“What if there’s women on the ship?”

“Huh?” Mickey directed his full attention to Kirk.

“Women, stupid.” Kirk leered. “You’ll still be buck naked.”

“Women? No wait, the crew must be all men on the USS Drone Supply. I looked it up. Drone means male bee.”

***

Based on his state of undress, Mickey decided against hugging Kirk goodbye. With a handshake, Mickey left Kirk in the twilight of the warehouse. He carried the sloshing remains of lemon juice along in case he needed to refresh his disguise.

“See ya,” Kirk whisper-shouted which sounded strange to Mickey ’cause he was supposed to be invisible to the cameras.

Mickey sprinted to the next warehouse, but parts of him flapped in a manner that slowed his pace. Puffing heavily, he shifted to tippy-toes when he approached the corner. Using his best stealth posture, he crept close and peeked about. A hundred yards away, a lone sentry guarded the entrance through the fence encircling the shuttle warehouses.

Something cold nuzzled Mickey’s butt and sniffed.

Mickey turned. A German Shepherd regarded him with the puzzled expression of someone who had encountered a walking lemon pie. The dog growled with an inquisitive whine.

Mickey tensed to run—but to where?

The dogs eyes narrowed, and he sniffed towards Mickey’s groin. Mickey shivered and decided to refresh his disguise. He uncorked the juice and raised it overhead. The dog bared its teeth.

Mickey poured. The liquid cascaded down his belly and formed a waterfall into the shepherd’s eyes.

The dog shook its head. Drool and juice splattered in every direction. The dog yelped, ran a quick circle, and bolted for the gate.

Wide-eyed, Mickey watched.

Howling, the dog raced towards the guard. The guard shined his flashlight in the dog’s direction and drew his pistol, but then he dropped the light and grabbed the charging dog’s collar. The dog snapped and clamped onto the guard’s arm. A tug of war ensued between blinded dog and guard with the guard joining the dog’s howl because of the teeth clenched about his arm.

Using his drawn gun, the guard slapped the dog’s muzzle, and the frenzied animal loosened its grip enough for the guard to yank free. Still blinded by the juice, the shepherd snarled and stalked the guard.

The guard stumbled back and fell against the fence. He dropped his gun. The pistol discharged with a twanging ricochet. The bullet smashed into the overhead video camera, and an alarm klaxon warbled in response.

The dog snapped again, and the guard yelled and ran. Shaking its head, the shepherd followed. Pursued by the yelping dog, the guard ran the length of the fence. Man and dog disappeared into the darkness beyond the perimeter lamps.

Mickey grinned, did a dance, and threw quick shadow punches. The effort left him short of breath. He leaned forward and put hands to knees. After he recovered and with the klaxon still blaring its warning, Mickey straightened and sauntered through the now unguarded gate to the shuttle warehouse.

***

Kirk used his cell phone to search the news. He expected to read “Stupid Kid Caught at Shuttle Warehouse,” but the only story listed declared “Rogue Dog Attacks Guard, Sets Off False Alarm.”

Nothing about Mickey A. Wow! They hadn’t caught him. Kirk wondered whether he should deliver Mickey’s clothes to Mrs. Anosognosia and tell her that her son was on his way to the moon.

Naw. Deny everything until she found out for herself—that always worked best.

***

Mickey easily made room in a shipping crate labeled Moon Colony. After all, how many packages of freeze-dried chipped-turkey did the moon need? At the first rumble of the rockets the next morning, he regretted that he had filled his wait-time by eating five packets of the dehydrated food. Perhaps the turkey would have rested better under acceleration if he’d had some water to compensate for its dryness.

The uneasiness swelled to nausea when the rocket engines shut down. Panicked that he would upchuck, Mickey tried to exit the crate; then the second-stage kicked in and pressed the half-digested turkey against his backbone. Mickey gagged, but his body provided padding against the lumpy packets remaining in the box.

When the second-stage motors cut out, Mickey kicked free of the crate and floated across the storeroom. He flailed and tried to catch hold of any stationary object. None were within reach. After bumping headfirst against a smooth wall, he attempted to grab on. He reflexively shoved hard when his face smashed against the wall.

The rebound propelled him across the storage hold.

The air tasted stale, dry, and unsatisfying. Panic overtook him when he realized that he had trouble breathing. He gasped and flung out his arms when he sailed towards an open passage. While going through, his hand smacked a red button on the side of the hatch door. Mickey could not grab a handhold, and he plunged into the next room. The motion started him in a slow, feet-over-head spin. With each revolution he saw the hatch sliding shut, until with an authoritative clack, it closed.

Mickey drifted towards an instrument panel framed by a window into space. Lights on the panel flickered and fluttered. This must be the ship’s cockpit.

Where was the pilot? Where was the crew?

Why was he dizzy?

He prepared himself for the collision. A pair of heavy handles jutted from the panel. They came within reach, and he grabbed hold to halt his flight and steady himself. In response, the handles moved, and the ship shuddered. Then the handles tugged at Mickey and twisted him about. One handle snapped, tore through the control panel, and left a gaping hole. Outside the window, the stars slowly rotated.

Before Mickey could comprehend his circumstances, his stomach rebelled. He expelled a stream of the partially digested turkey-on-toast. The vomit splattered on the panel and bounced, becoming a storm of sour turkey globules.

Smoke rose from the panel. The air smelled of burnt electrical wiring. The panel sparked and whistled. One group of lights flashed, flickered briefly, and then went dark. Another sputtered and glowed back to life.

Dizziness became vertigo. Mickey lost his grip and the remnants of his dinner. His stomach heaved, but he took no comfort that too little was left to puke.

His breathing difficulty escalated. Where had the air gone? If only he could open a window.

Floating free, Mickey rotated towards the side wall. A vent sprang to life, and a wisp of air refreshed him. Ah, about time someone turned on the air conditioner. He clung to the vent and forced his face into the breeze.

***

Mickey couldn’t re-open the cargo hatch to search for people because the panel next to the hatch demanded he equalize pressure before it would unlock. Mickey thought he could figure out how to equalize pressure, but that was too much effort for now. Instead, he found the monitor that gave views into every cabin onboard. He flicked through them and yelled “halloo” when each room displayed, but no one responded.

Unless they were hiding, no other person was aboard the ship.

The cabin seemed colder since Mickey first arrived. Moving hand over hand along the cabin wall, he searched every drawer and cranny, but could find no clothing, not even a blanket. So far, he only had goose bumps on his arms and legs, but other shivers informed him that he needed to find the restroom. Very soon. Most of his lost lunch had cleared from the air to settle on exposed surfaces. He didn’t want to risk a restroom accident that would re-taint the air.

Mickey tired of floating and pushed himself towards the pilot’s seat. The seat fit him snugly. He wiggled and exhaled to squeeze into the chair, but after he strapped himself down for a nap, the ship lurched.

“Hey!” He farted and clamped his butt to avoid a larger problem than his full bladder. Then, embarrassed, he looked about to be sure no one had heard.

On the panel, a monitor flashed with equations. One line that rolled past looked like something from Mr. Henry’s class. Damn. He hoped he wouldn’t have to solve a quadratic equation before the ship could land. That would be too ironic.

Noticing a switch marked Communications, Mickey leaned forward.

The ship’s rotation smoothed. Somewhere, somehow, someone steered.

“Hello.” Mickey tapped the Communications switch. “Hello. Who’s driving the ship?”

After a brief pause. The monitor flickered, cleared, and displayed three faces peering at Mickey.

“My God,” exclaimed the man on the left. “There’s a kid on board the drone.”

“How did you get on board the shuttle?” the man in the middle asked.

The eyebrows of the woman on the right formed question marks. “Why is he naked?”

Mickey winced at the stubborn message from his bladder and pondered their questions. He pulled out the answer that always got him past any trouble, and he threw in his loveable grin just to be sure it worked.

“I don’t know.”

***

After Dr. Reynolds stopped Mr. Johnson from yelling at Mickey, things went better. The temperature in the cabin rose, and Mickey’s goose bumps went away.

When Dr. Reynolds was alone on the screen, Mickey whispered to him confidential-like. “Where’s the restroom? I really gotta go.”

Dr. Reynolds directed him to a panel at the rear of the cabin. Previously, Mickey had opened the panel, but the small compartment behind didn’t resemble any restroom he had ever seen. Apparently, Dr. Reynolds recognized his confusion.

“Dr. Collins is our expert. She will explain the operation.” Dr. Collins replaced Dr. Reynolds on the monitor screen before Mickey could protest.

She looked him up and down, sighed, and launched a spew of words that sounded like the lectures Mickey had never understood in his biology class. For modesty’s sake, Mickey kept his back to the monitor, but she seemed to have a thorough knowledge of him anyway. She proceeded with a detailed description of what-went-where so graphic that he blushed.

When he realized that she described a procedure like his Uncle Eric used on his dairy farm, Mickey nodded and wedged himself into the closet. The door wouldn’t snap closed with him standing inside the small room, so he held the door partially closed with one hand to keep it from popping open.

The restroom experience took him three botched tries to get it almost right. Now, the cabin smelled like his grandfather’s room at the retirement home. Mickey wondered whether the old geezer still took asthma pills.

Meanwhile, Dr. Reynolds equalized the pressure so that the storeroom hatch opened. Mickey could get water, food, and clothes. Mickey dressed in an oversize bathrobe and ate his fill of beef burgers, no turkey this time. Afterwards, Dr. Reynolds summoned him to the monitor.

“You should sleep, Mickey, while we assess the damage—”

Mickey interrupted. “Call me Mickey A.”

Dr. Reynolds ignored him. “Tomorrow, we’ll formulate a plan to get you home.”

“Plan? Can’t you fly the ship from there?”

“Normally, yes, but some circuits are disabled. We’ll test to see what works.”

Chagrined, Mickey screwed up his lip and suppressed a glance at the residual vomit clinging to the damaged control panel.

“Don’t worry, Mickey,” Dr. Reynolds said. “We’ll figure a way to land this bird.”

***

“Do you understand?” Dr. Reynolds asked for the umpteenth time.

Mickey had slept well and enjoyed a big breakfast. Now, he felt good, so it was easy not to become irritated even though Dr. Reynolds kept repeating the same dumb things. Did they think he was stupid? Still, Dr. Reynolds was not as bad as Mr. Johnson.

“Sure,” Mickey said, “I understand. I watch the screen. When the green light goes red, I pull the handle.”

“When the red light turns green,” Dr. Reynolds said, “the system is ready, and you push the yellow button. That puts you on manual, and we start the countdown. When I say pull the handle, then you pull the handle. Believe me Mickey, if we could control these last two steps from here, we would. But the automatic circuitry and backup for the main engine are fried. You must do this yourself, and must do it on time.”

“You betcha.” He loved the expression that crossed Mr. Johnson’s face whenever Mickey said “you betcha.”

“Okay.” Dr. Reynolds looked exhausted. “Let’s rehearse it again.”

***

Just before bedtime, Kirk used his phone to search for news about Mickey. He found nothing under “kid on the moon,” but an ad for Moonlight Madeline distracted him from his search. Kirk called the number. When Madeline answered, she sounded like Kirk’s cousin Iris, but Madeline had far more interesting things to say.

Madeline did most of the talking: Kirk only said an occasional “Oh, wow.” Because Kirk hadn’t recharged his phone all week, the battery dropped the connection after a thirty-minute monologue. When Kirk recharged his phone, it announced that Moonlight, Inc. had billed one-hundred-seventy-three dollars to the phone’s account.

Oops.

Real trouble, but Kirk had a brilliant idea. When his dad got the bill, Kirk would blame Mickey for the call. They wouldn’t be able to check until Mickey got home. Anyway, who would believe a kid who stowed away to the moon?

In oversize type, the headline “Drama in Space” bannered the phone screen, but Kirk wasn’t interested in soap operas.

***

Early next morning, the ground crew woke Mickey for rehearsal. An hour in, a shrill voice cursed off screen.

“For God’s sake,” Mr. Johnson said. “He’s doing it all wrong!”

“Shut up, Bud,” Dr. Reynolds growled. “We must keep the boy calm for this to work.”

“Work,” Mr. Johnson shouted. “This will never—”

The monitor went blank. The sound cut out.

Mickey frowned. He didn’t like being shut off like that.

Ten minutes later, the monitor flashed, and Dr. Reynolds smiled at him. “Well, Mickey, we took a time-out, but everything’s fine now. Shall we try again?”

Mickey puckered up his lips. Enough was too much.

“Nope,” he said. “I know how to push the button and pull the handle. I can do it whenever I want, but no more practice. Not now. Not until I want to.”

“Please, Mickey,” Dr. Reynolds said. “We only have a half hour, then we go for real. Only one chance, that’s all we get, just one.”

Mickey knew that wasn’t true. Everyone gave him plenty of chances. Sure, they said he had only one chance to take a test, but when he flashed his loveable smile, they always gave him a makeup.

“Restroom break.” He propelled himself from the pilot seat and across the cabin. “Call me when the test is ready.” Mickey tried to slam the panel, but his butt cushioned the door from closing.

Twenty minutes later, they coaxed him back to the pilot’s seat. Mickey kept his lower lip askew because he wanted them to know he was unhappy.

Dr. Reynolds breathed deeply. “Here’s how we do it, Mickey. I’ll coach you through each step like we rehearsed. There’s a few seconds delay in transmission, but we anticipate that down here. No problem if you do the steps when told. Are you ready? We’re uploading the new landing program now. Despite the damage to the circuitry, the new program can handle the landing maneuvers using auxiliary rockets after our timed burn with the big engines. The monitor will show your approach. You can watch the program execute on the monitor. Okay?”

Mickey nodded, and then thought better. Why would he want to watch the program execute?

“Okay?” Dr. Reynolds repeated.

“Okay.” Mickey tried to push out his lower lip, but already it was as far as it could go.

“Upload completed. Okay, then. All right ground crew, listen up, Operation Fledgling on my mark. Ready. All stations confirm go? Green lights across the board. Very well. We are go to execute. Commencing alignment maneuver.”

“What now?” Mickey asked.

“Stay alert,” Dr. Reynolds said. “Remember. Press the yellow button on my command. Not before, not after, but when I say.”

“Okay. I can do that.”

“Of course, you can. You should feel a slight tug now, and the stars will move in the window while we align you for the burn. Once the stars steady in the window, we’ll be ready.”

“The stars quit moving,” Mickey said.

“Not yet, just slowed. Watch the red light. Don’t take your eye off the light. Wait until we confirm alignment. Watch the red light, when the light goes green press the yellow button. In four, three, two, one, press the button.”

The red light blinked green. Mickey pressed the yellow button. The monitor cleared. Dr. Reynolds’ face flashed off then on, then off again when the monitor screen duplicated the window view and labeled the scene forward.

“Good, Mickey.” Dr. Reynolds’ voice continued over the view forward. “Very good. Remember, pull the handle at my command. Ready?”

Another annoyance, Dr. Reynolds did not call him Mickey A. Nevertheless, Mickey rested his hand on the handle.

“Picking up the countdown to burn. Prepare to pull handle in ... eight, seven ...”

The monitor cleared, switched scenes, and labeled the new view aft.

“... six, five ...”

The monitor zoomed on the target and focused.

“Wow!” Mickey yelled.

“... four, three ...”

“Look at the moon,” Mickey said.

“... two, one ...”

“... big as a barn.”

“Pull the handle.”

“Bigger’n my Uncle Eric’s barn, for sure.”

“Pull the handle, Mickey!”

“You can see all the crater thingees plain as day.”

“PULL the handle!”

“How long before I land?”

“MICKEY, PULL THE GODDAMN HANDLE!”

“Huh, oh yeah, I can do that.” Mickey pulled the handle.

The main rocket engine flared and pressed him into the pilot’s seat.

Despite the heavy vibration transmitted through the ship, Mickey heard Mr. Johnson scream, “That little—”

“Turn off the monitor,” Dr. Reynolds said.

“What difference does it make,” Mr. Johnson yelled. “He’s twenty seconds late with the burn. We don’t have time to reprogram. He’ll come in three hundred kilometers short of the base with over fifty kph excess velocity. That bird will crack on those jagged peaks like a raw egg.”

The monitor blinked off.

Mickey thought it just as well. He didn’t like the hysteria. Long experience taught him to stay calm and keep smiling, especially when those near him had sampled too much crazy.

Mickey switched off the communications so he wouldn’t have to listen. That worked better than a pillow over his head when his parents went at it.

***

The lunar surface loomed through the monitor. The surface looked rugged and uneven, and Mickey couldn’t see the colony dome anywhere. The ship seemed to slip sideways while descending. Mickey winced when they skimmed a tall peak and approached a plain nestled among the ragged mountains. The trip was worse than a roller coaster. Mickey didn’t like roller coasters. Despite his loveable smile, the other kids laughed when Mickey filled a double seat. On the other hand, a double seat was roomier than the pilot’s chair.

Weren’t they moving way too fast to be so close?

***

The auto-sentinel woke the alien mind before the USS Drone achieved line-of-sight to the plain. Immediately, the alien accessed the ship’s computers and pumped one-thousand-six-hundred-ninety-seven queries into the computer’s primitive mind, including Where am I? Why am I? Who am I? What is the sine of the square root of two pi divided by e ... and the most important question, Why did my consciousness transfer to a ship hurtling towards a collision? The ship answered nine-hundred-sixty-eight of the alien’s questions before the alien wrested control from the program that manipulated the auxiliary rockets. Time elapsed since waking: one-tenth of a second.

The alien blended his mind with the ship’s computer.

Analysis revealed an inevitable hard landing, so the alien/ship shifted trajectory four degrees towards a familiar meadow of fine dust. The monitor streaked gray where the engines stirred dust clouds from the surface. The hull pinged from the bombardment. The alien/ship felt the tiny impacts like a feathery tickle upon its new body.

The ship/alien pounded towards the ground.

Just as the alien planned, the dusty surface softened beneath the ship. The fine dust retreated before the rocket engine blast so that the ground pillowed out, hollowed, and cushioned the crash. The ship/alien winced when the tail assembly sagged and buckled on impact. The ship’s pain assaulted the alien’s sensibilities. The alien/ship groaned.

The dust swirled from the exhaust. The engines shut down. In slow motion, the ship/alien tilted and sank a few centimeters more. The alien/ship attempted to correct the list, but the engines in the buckled housing wouldn’t respond.

The computer answered the next five-hundred-thirty-nine alien questions. The alien modified and expanded the answers and updated the ship.

The ship/alien dropped a sudden meter, hesitated a moment, then slowly toppled into the dust. The dust billowed up and over the alien/ship’s sensors. Like heavy molasses, the dust supported the ship/alien at a twenty-seven degree angle from the vertical, but only for a moment.

The ship/alien slipped and sank into the dust. A sudden release, and the ship/alien fell until it clanged against a hard surface, tipped over, and slid down an incline. Finally, all lay still.

Instrumentation gathered ship status data. The alien expanded its senses. Minor air loss through the hull. Safety interlocks released. The alien relaxed. Generators cut out and batteries took over. Power consumption dropped.

The alien created a program to analyze damage for repair. Now awake, he wanted a sound receptacle to hold his mind. The ship/alien took seven-tenths of a second to answer the next one-hundred-eighty-nine questions for the alien/ship. With the answers, the alien located its pre-image in decaying hardware buried beneath the lunar surface and constructed a better identity to fit the ship’s parameters. Within minutes, the alien consolidated its personality into the ship’s hardware. The ship became the alien, or the alien became the ship. The new entity wasn’t sure which.

Only one question remained unanswered.

***

The landing jarred Mickey, jolted his back, and sent a sharp pain through his clenched teeth. The window exterior turned dark with dust. Mickey felt nauseated until he realized that the sensation wasn’t an upset stomach, but came from the ship dropping through quicksand.

Mickey straightened in the pilot’s chair. He didn’t like this. Was the ride over? He summoned his loveable smile to influence whoever was in charge, but his mouth refused to cooperate.

The radio filled with static. The fall had shaken cabin objects loose, and the air again smelled of vomit and urine. Lights flickered on the instrument panel, some green, most red.

Mickey searched until he found a switch labeled Outside Lights. He toggled them on, and swords of light pushed back the darkness.

“Wow.” Mickey leaned forward. “Get a load of that.”

***

Kirk read the headlines from his cell phone. Teenager steers spaceship into unexplored region of the moon. Rescue party dispatched.

Kirk shook his head. Leave it to Mickey to wander off the tourists’ path.

Must be time to take Mickey’s clothes to Ms. Anosognosia. She had called three times looking for him, but Kirk told her Mickey was sleeping over. On second thought, if he mailed the clothes with a note, she wouldn’t get to yell at him.

***

The skimmer circled the valley again.

“We can’t land, Sir,” the pilot reported. “The ground looks flat, but it’s like quick sand.”

“You’re sure the signal came from this valley?” asked Moon Base.

“Yes, Sir. I assume the ship sank into the dust. The ship’s signal is faint. You have to be above the valley to receive it. A local, rhythmic static fills the entire valley. Wait. I hear a voice. No picture. The signal’s too weak. I’ll relay.”

“Halloo. Is someone there?”

The pilot said, “Is this Mickey Anossuga ...”

“Call me Mickey A.”

“It’s you,” the pilot said with relief. “We thought ... Are you okay?”

“I bruised my arm, but everything is great. You guys should see what I found.”

“Chin up, Kid,” the pilot said. “We’ve dispatched heavy equipment to dig you out.”

“Cool.” Static punctuated Mickey’s voice. “This cave’s got a whole city in it. Really weird. I bet aliens built it a g’zillion years ago.”

“What did he say?” the moon base asked. “A weird g’zillion?”

“Yeah,” Mickey said. “I’m watching for aliens, but nothing’s moving. They might be hiding. I don’t think anyone has lived here for quite a while. What took you guys so long? I got antsy waiting. I’m gonna check outside.”

With the background static, Mickey talked too fast for the pilot to follow. How could the kid see out of a ship submerged in sand? Clearly, Mickey had done more than bruise an arm, he had whacked his head. “So you can see out the window?”

“Yeah. Look, I gotta go.” The voice faded. “The outside hatch ain’t locked. Now—”

“What’s that he said?” the base asked.

“I think he’s opening the hatch, but I can’t be sure,” the pilot said, “The kid is hysterical. He must think he’s inside the colony dome.”

The pilot waited for the base to respond, but there was only silence.

“You don’t think he would really ...” The pilot’s hand hovered over the control panel, but he couldn’t decide what to do. “He said the hatch wasn’t locked, but he can’t open it under all that sand, can he?”

“Uh ...” The reply was lost to static.

“Base confirm. The kid wants to open the outside hatch.”

“It’s just as well,” the base said. “He’s got air for a day or two, and we can’t dig him out of that quagmire in less than a week. This way he won’t suffer long.”

***

Several dozen meters below the lunar surface, Mickey released the latch on the exit hatch. The hiss of escaping air around the seal expanded to a gasp when the hatch flopped open.

Mickey’s ears popped. He stepped to the hatch threshold and stared into the shadows beyond the ship’s lights. When he tried to take a cleansing breath, he choked and coughed. At last he recovered, and inhaled deeply. The thin, stagnant air trapped in the cavern smelled musty and cold, but bracing like it was spiced with an extra measure of oxygen.

The cluttered ground lay only two meters below the hatch. Mickey exhilarated when he leaped from the threshold, soared like a ballerina, and alighted feather-light with a dainty three-step waltz across the lunar surface.

Success. Neil Armstrong, eat your heart out. Mickey A. has landed. All will be right with the moon.

***

The ship watched the round creature exit the hatch and sail to the moon’s surface. This answered the alien’s last question: Who rescued me from stasis and gave me this new body? The alien/ship signaled its previous home to gather eons of accumulated messages and register a change of address.

In response to its request, beyond the glow of the ship from deep within the silent alien city, a light snapped on.

***

When the light came on in the darkened city, Mickey grinned. “Somebody’s home.”

He cinched up his makeshift robe to make ready for a visit, donned his loveable grin, and then with only forty-six pounds on his twinkle toes, he lightly lofted towards the lingering city light. 

Ronald D. Ferguson is an active member of the SFWA. His short fiction has appeared in "Daily Science Fiction," "Nature," "The Universe Annex," NewMyths.com," and elsewhere. He lives with his wife and a dog near the shadow of the Alamo.