Lunar Colony by Patrick Kinney Page B

and used it to dry his face. As he pulled the sheet back, he was astounded by what he saw.
    “Oh my gosh! It’s the Geiger counter!” Glen exclaimed.
    It was true. Under the cloth was the very instrument Salerno had been looking for.
    “Well done, son,” said Slayton, who had heard Glen over his headset. “That’s a critical find. If you can use it to find that Number Four thing, you should be able to draw Salerno out of hiding.”
    Glen heard Slayton but was already running back through the mining facility to reach his rover outside. He didn’tneed to be told that the Geiger counter could help him lure Salerno from wherever she was. All he needed to do now was find Number Four.
    Slayton said, “I see you’re already on the move. And I also see from your suit’s body readout that your adrenaline is sky-high. You sure must be excited to catch Salerno.”
    “Yes,” Glen responded, “I am excited to find Salerno.” But that wasn’t the only thing he was excited to find.

Number Four
    When Glen first left the mining facility, the Geiger counter made a clicking sound every ten seconds. But now, with that building far behind, the time between clicks was down to five seconds.
    I must be getting close,
Glen thought as he drove. With one hand on the wheel, he grabbed Salerno’s notebook and checked the map.
It looks like I’m headed for the northeast area of the moon.
    He continued driving, listening for the clicks to guide his path. They were now coming every four seconds . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . until at last, Glen couldn’t tell when one ended and another began.
    The trouble was, he didn’t see anything. There was no obelisk, no building, no Salerno. Instead, there was just the barren, rocky grayness of the moon.
    Hearing the space between clicks return to one second, Glen circled back but still saw nothing.
    “It should be right here,” he said as he allowed the rover to slowly drift forward. “Why don’t I—?”
    Just then, Glen felt one of his front tires hit something. He backed up and got out to see what it was.
    It didn’t look like much, just a small triangular rock. But there was something odd about it. Glen grabbed a shovel from the back of his rover and began digging around the rock. After digging several inches down, Glen realized what it was.
    “It’s Number Four!” he shouted. “The rest of it must be underground. But how am I going to dig all the way to its base?” Glen wondered. “It will take me a year with this little shovel.”
    Then Glen got an idea. He’d noticed a winch on the front of his rover and attached its hook to the top of the buried obelisk.
    Getting behind the wheel of his vehicle, hesaid, “Okay, I hope this works.”
    Glen put the rover in reverse and stepped on the accelerator. The wheels spun, kicking up clouds of dust. “Darn! It’s not working,” Glen said. But he didn’t give up. Instead, he pressed the pedal all the way to the floor. The vehicle groaned from the strain, and the metal cord of the winch looked like it could snap any second. “Come on, rover. You can do it,” Glen said.
    Just then, the vehicle began to inch backward, and to Glen’s delight, he saw that it was pulling the obelisk from the ground.
    “Yes! It’s working,” Glen shouted. “I—”
    Snap!
    The cord broke in two, causing the rover to fly backward.
    “Shoot!” Glen said, slamming on the brakes. But then, as the huge cloud of dust began to settle, Glen saw what was happening. Number Four was rising from the ground on its own!
    “I don’t believe it,” Glen said aloud to himself as he watched Number Four climb higher and higher, unassisted. He jumped out of the roverand ran to the obelisk, which now stopped at its full height.
    “I did it!” Glen said, looking up at the towering structure. “I actually found Number Four! But now that I’ve found it, what do I do?”
    Then, as though in answer to Glen’s question, the triangular peak of