Your Silvery Beams

by Jeff Baker

The Moon was a pretty good place to hold a concert, no sound outside the auditorium, so they could play as loud as they wanted.

I grinned at Duke seated right next to me. He loved this old music as much as I did.

The concert was a great idea, but the scheduling had been done months earlier. Ordinarily the only thing that went on in this hall was an instructional session, and sometimes stacking overflow crates.

Duke and I had been working double shifts unloading and loading shipments either on their way to Earth or on their way out from Earth. That gave us time to talk, but not much time for anything else. This was our first evening out, even if it was technically early morning on our section of the Moon.

At a lull in the music, Duke nudged me and pointed up at the high domed window.

“Hey, Brandon, look.”

I glanced up. I could just see the telltale shape of one of the freighters angling towards wherever it was heading. Our docks and ports were quite a few kilometers away from this auditorium.

“Wonder where it’s going?” Duke said.

“As long as I’m not working, I don’t care,” I said.

The next song started blaring loud.

“Glad they got the Gravity Wheel going under here,” I said, yelling into Duke’s ear.

“As long as they don’t throw any of their guitars in the air, they should be okay!” Duke yelled back.

Just then, there was an even louder guitar noise from the stage, as the lead guitarist got on one knee and started imitating that guitarist from about two hundred years ago I’d seen on old videos. He let out a yell and tossed the guitar into the air. It hung there, several feet over his head, descending very slowly.

“You know, if that was one of the ancient electrics it would have a cord attached to it he could pull down,” Duke said.

“Yeah,” I said laughing and squeezing his hand.

—end—