Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon by Richard Roberts Page B

kept going. “Are you happy doing this? I mean, can you like things and not like things?”
    Did I want to listen, or shut her out? My decision was made by a spaceship drifting up to one of the moving factory towers. ‘Spaceship’ might be stretching the point. In the dim light, it looked like a frame of copper pipes holding a big rock. It released the rock into the tower, and then flew off on a little puffing jet.
    Asteroid mining. Cool.
    A finger tapped my shoulder. I looked back into Ray’s unmasked, slyly hopeful face. For a second I thought he was about to hit on me, but instead he said, “I checked the side tunnels. There’s nobody else here.”
    “
Is
there anybody else here?” Claire asked. Me and Ray looked over to see the Conqueror orb swivel, as if it were shaking its head.
    Ray swept off his hat and rubbed his fingers over his face. “Check me if I’m right, Dark Mistress. We’re millions of miles from the nearest human. This whole mission will be taking us even farther out, where there is absolutely zero chance of anyone hearing us who would recognize my accent, right?”
    Claire argued, “I’m not really sure it’s your accent. I’ve heard you fake other accents. It’s still you.”
    I was a little more sensitive to his actual point. “You can talk all you want on this mission, Ray. Reviled. We should probably still use our villain names.”
    “YES!” Ray danced around in a circle, pumping one fist. He grabbed me by my shoulders, threw me up in the air, caught me, gave me a painful hug, and set me back on my feet. While I waited for the world to stop spinning, he threw back his head and growled, “You have no idea how sick I am of keeping my mouth shut. Strong and silent stopped being fun after two jobs, tops.” Drawing in a deep breath, he turned and yelled at the ceiling, “AGLAGLAGLAGL! ECHO echo echo echo!”
    A helpless giggle forced its way out of me, but he’d made a thought spark. “That doesn’t mean no one can hear us, but the person who’s listening knows our identities anyway. Right, Spider?”
    “Correct. I was letting you enjoy the moment.” Her voice came from the Orb of the Heavens. That made sense.
    “Spill the beans. What couldn’t you tell us back on Earth?” I demanded, all business, like a serious supervillain leader.
    “For starters, I am keeping the existence of this Ceres facility as secret as possible.” Claire clasped her hands to her mouth and gasped. She hadn’t figured out where we were yet. Ray had. He didn’t react.
    Well, he didn’t react with surprise. He did point out, “Asteroid mining seems a little legit for LA’s godspider of crime.”
    She answered, briskly but in good humor. “Partly, I enjoy playing with the toys I collect, Reviled. Partly, I enjoy low-overhead, regulation-free, competition-free industry.”
    Hmmm. “But the Orb of the Heavens can’t take you all the way to Jupiter?”
    “The Orb of the Heavens has limits. Distance does not seem to be one of them. It makes complicated vector calculations with ease, but it still needs a beacon at the other end to reliably and safely open a portal. I had ways of reaching Jupiter’s moons in mind, but was satisfied with Ceres for the moment… until I received this.”
    A little girl’s staticky voice complained, “You can’t see it w―” The rest of the last word was probably ‘work’, but the beginning and end of the sentence got real quiet. Only the middle had been loud and clear.
    Ray pointed out the window. “Human voice transmission in English from Jupiter?” He blurted it out, too eager to get an answer to even construct a full sentence.
    “Correct, and on an impractically high frequency. It could not possibly be heard on Earth. We picked up the transmission only because it swept momentarily past Ceres. The Orb of the Heavens is always listening.” Mentally, I applauded. Spider had phrased that in the absolute creepiest way possible.
    Glancing back at the window and