Luna Marine(36)
“How about you, Doc?” Heyerson said, turning to look at David. “Why’d they send you out?”
“First of all,” David said, nodding at Thornton, “he’s ‘Doc,’ not me. Second, you really should’ve looked at your briefing.”
“I did…sir. Didn’t say much, except that I was to deliver forty soldiers, one Navy corpsman, and one civilian scientist to Picard Crater.”
“Maybe they didn’t want you to know, then.”
“Screw ’em.” His gaze dropped to the garish cloth patch sewn to David’s leather flight jacket. “How about that? Is that classified?”
He touched the patch. “What, this?”
“Yeah. I been wonderin’ about that since we boosted from LEO. T’tell you the truth, I didn’t know at first whether you were civilian or military, wearin’ that rig.”
Temperatures aboard a spacecraft, no matter how good the life-support systems, could vary swiftly from too warm to chilly, depending on the craft’s attitude of the moment with respect to the sun. David was wearing Marine-issue slacks, deck shoes, and orange T-shirt—garb he’d become comfortable with during his long cycler passage back from Mars. Since it was a bit on the chilly side aboard the Clarke now, he’d pulled a flight jacket on over the T-shirt—again, Marine-issue, but with a highly unofficial patch sewn to the left breast.
The stitching was a bit crude, but the elements were all clearly recognizable. The badge was shield-shaped, dark blue with a black border. Two black Advanced Tech Assault Rifles were crossed over a red disk representing Mars; a gold, white, and gray cylinder—a fair representation of a beer can—was superimposed over the ATARs. The legend, gold against dark blue at the top of the device, was HOPS VINCET. Curving all the way across the bottom of the badge, in tiny, carefully stitched gold letters, was the unwieldy line of characters: ATWTMATMUTATB.
“‘Hops vincet?’” Heyerson said, mispronouncing the last word.
“Hops winkit,” David replied, stressing the proper pronunciation. “Latin, sort of. It means ‘beer conquers.’”
“Yeah? Well, I’ll buy that.” Heyerson shook his head. “Some kind of fraternity?”
“You could say that.”
Thornton grinned. “‘Hops’ ain’t the Latin word for ‘beer.’”
“Don’t tell the Marines,” David replied with a chuckle. “It would disillusion them. The poor dears.”
“You two better strap down,” Heyerson warned. “We’re coming up on our final thrust phase, here. I’d hate to deliver the jarheads’ new corpsman with two busted legs.”
Space, of course, was at a claustrophobic premium aboard the Clarke. The ugly little tug had been designed to haul construction materials, fuel, and personnel from LEO to higher orbits—especially to geosynch, and to the construction shacks at L-3, L-4, and L-5. With the addition of a spidery set of landing legs, it could carry heavy cargoes to the Lunar surface; the USAF Transport Command had requisitioned Clarke and three sisters, Asimov, Ecklar, and Viglione for hauling high-priority cargoes to the Moon and back. In fact, the Viglione, with forty more soldiers, was trailing behind the Clarke by a few thousand kilometers, preparing for her own landing maneuvers at Fra Mauro.
Because of the crowding, and his VIP status of Clarke’s sole civilian aboard, David had been allowed to make the trip in one of the cockpit couches; his service with the Marines on Mars had almost automatically meant that he and Thornton had found each other on the first day out from LEO, and the permission had been extended to the Navy man, too.
Cramped as the tug’s cockpit was, it was a lot roomier than the cargo bay, with space-suited soldiers packed into narrow bucket seats like armored eggs in a carton. David hadn’t been at all shy about taking advantage of Heyerson’s offer.
And he found he was enjoying his status as an honorary Marine.
As he strapped himself in, listening to Heyerson warning the troops aft of a delta-v maneuver in another minute, David thought about that. He’d received his patch at a party on Earth, just a month after his return from Mars. Gunnery Sergeant Harold Knox, one of the Marines on the March, had had a source in San Diego make up enough of the unauthorized patches for every Marine who’d been to Mars, with one left over for the civilian who’d endured the grueling, three-week march from Heinlein Station to Mars Prime…and then been on hand to snap the famous flag-raising at Cydonia.
The beer can represented an in joke among the men and women who’d been with the MMEF. “Sands of Mars” Garroway, in the true improvise-adapt-overcome spirit of the Marines, had converted cans of contraband beer into weapons, showering them on UN troops at Cydonia from a hovering Mars lander. The aluminum cans had burst on impact in the thin Martian air, spraying suits and helmet visors with a fast-congealing foam that had immediately frozen, leaving the enemy confused, frightened, and largely blind.