"I've still got to try. Does Wix have any people out at the driver?"

"Not for the past ten days. His whole crew's been inside here, working on the new hardware."

"Do we have anything at all that we can use to spot his tractor, Jinny?"

She humphed. "Crystal ball? Tarot cards…' Suddenly her voice brightened. "Hey! What about Kadar's survey satellite?"

"Is it still functional?"

"We can power it up and see. Lemme check on when it'll swing over Alphonsus again."

"Good. Call me as soon as you can."

"Will do, boss."

Edith asked, "Aren't we over the horizon from Moonbase?"

"We will be in another fifteen minutes," Doug said.

"Then how will you be able to talk with Jinny? Or anyone at the base?"

"Antennas up on top of Mount Yeager," Doug explained. "We can reach more than half of the area within the ringwall, and a considerable amount of territory out on Mare Nubium."

"Then why can't they find Gordetie's tractor?"

"The antennas are for communications, not radar tracking."

"Oh."

"We'll get him."

Edith was worried that he was right.

Doug began to show her how to run the tractor. It wasn't much different from driving a car.

"Not a lot of traffic out here," he said, "but you've got to be on the lookout for craters and rocks that can get you stuck. Stay with the flattest, clearest ground you can find."

"Like you're doing."

"Right."

"Do you know where you're going? I mean, without knowing where his tractor is?"

Doug pointed a gloved finger over the hood of the tractor. "I'm following his trail."

"His trail?"

"Look. The cleat tracks."

She saw a maze of tracks running pretty much in the same direction: out to the mass driver, she supposed.

"His are the brightest," Doug explained. "Nobody's been out here for ten days or so, so Barn's tractor has churned up the newest tracks. Surface dirt is darkened by solar ultraviolet. New bootprints, new tractor marks, they uncover the brighter stuff underneath."

"Shades of the Lone Ranger and his faithful Indian companion," Edith muttered.

"Who?"

He knows so much, Edith thought, and there's so much he doesn't know. She settled back to watching the landscape, trundling by at a frustratingly slow thirty kilometers per hour or so.

"Do you really find this rock pile beautiful?" she asked.

"Don't you?"

"It's so barren! So empty and lifeless. There's not even air to breathe."

It took him a few moments to reply. "It all looks a lot better when there's a full Earth. Fifty times brighter than a full Moon, back Earthside. It's breathtaking. Everything glows like silver out here. And you can watch the Earth, see its clouds and oceans, it never stays the same for very long."

"It's only a sliver now," Edith said, glancing upward at the thin crescent hanging in the starry sky.

"Take a good look," Doug said. "Stare at it for a few minutes."