A small but deep shadow rippled tentatively across the sea of light.

"Hey God," it hissed finally.

"I greet you, my adversary," said the man wrapped in the light. "You may speak."

"When are you going to let me at those pesky androids? I mean, you've been keeping them hedged about with your protection all this time, and that's not fair! I demand the freedom to approach them like I do the humans, to prove to you once and for all that they'll drop you like a hot potato when left on their own."

"Go then and test them. You will see that they are stronger than they appear."

"Thanks, bud; I'll do that."

The shadow chuckled with satisfaction and vanished.

Astro was working with Zog in the back lot of Hamegg's place filling out a melody they had come up with that afternoon, and Luna stared up at the nearly-full moon as she half listened.

Oh Ran-tan, she thought. Why did you have to leave so soon?

"Yeah," linked Astro as he broke away from the music and followed her gaze upward. "Did we teach him enough to keep him out of trouble up there?"

Zog glanced from one to the other. "Excuse me if I'm intruding," it said, "but are you thinking about your child?"

"Yes, we are," said Luna, turning towards Zog. "After all, we only had a couple of months to give him what we had. I feel like he should have spent more time preparing."

"I see. And how would he have done that, if I may ask?"

She hesitated, then shook her head. "Oh, I don't know. It's just that I think of how I was after just a couple of months of life, and there's no way I would have been ready for something like travelling so far away on my own."

"Three hundred thousand kilometres, and he can't even phone home," said Astro. "But let's face it: we learned what we did by getting out there and doing stuff. Besides, we haven't got any experience in space to give him."

She turned back to the moon. "I suppose you're right."

He lit up his wedding ring, strolled over to her, and took her hand. Her ring responded, and they faced each other silently, sharing their deep link.

Zog watched them for a moment, then decided that it was a good time to go see its robot, Dragon, parked off in a far corner of the lot. "Hello," it said to the robot once it found it. "It is at times like this that I wish you were alive."

"Why?" asked Dragon.

Zog hoisted itself up to sit on the robot's float. "I would like to experience the closeness that Astro and Luna share with each other."

"I can do nothing to help you."

"I know."

Zog stared up at the stars and remembered its one experience of the link, which Astro had set up briefly to help it face the frightening prospect of being transferred into this smaller body. Zog had found that contact to have been profoundly reassuring, so it had no problem understanding why its two friends used it so frequently.

The manager of a local parts store called Astro first thing in the morning about setting up an account, and Astro arranged a face-to-face meeting with him for right after lunch.

Astro entered the store at one p.m. "Hi," he said to the man at the counter. "I'm looking for Mr. Freed."

The man pointed down the counter to a door that stood ajar. "He's in there."

"Thanks."

He tapped on the door, and a man responded, "Come in."

Stepping inside, he said, "I'm Astro Tenma of Astro Speciality Shipping."

Mr. Freed stood up and offered his hand. "Thanks for coming. Have a seat."

Astro carefully shook the man's hand, then sat down. "So how can I help you, Mr. Freed?" he asked.

Sitting forward in his chair, the man said, "Please, call me Jon. Now, I handle a lot of small orders out of here, and I was wondering if you'd be willing to consider an arrangement where you charged according to weight."

"Why's that?" He had been charging a flat rate, since he had no overhead expenses besides the business phone connection.

"Well, when one of my customers buys a small item like this ..." He held up a tiny vial of automotive touch-up paint. "... he expects to pay less for delivery than if he bought a larger item like a power supply."

"My rate is the lowest in the city."

"I know that. But we're talking psychology here, expectations. Look, if you do this for me, it should work out the same for you, since it'll all average out in the long run, but my customers will be happier. And a happy customer is a loyal customer."

"Go for it," linked Luna. "If we get this account, we can start picking up some of the other retailers too, and stop depending only on the factories."

"Sure," he linked back. "Okay, Jon," he said out loud. "I like the idea. What sort of weight range are we talking about, so I can work out a rate schedule?"

"What are you doing?" Sludge asked Astro, who was standing at the pool table, busy with a box of small weights.

"I'm calibrating my hands for my shipping business so I can tell my customers exactly how much my fee is without any waiting."

"Cool. I wish I could do that. Can you weigh me?"

Astro glanced at him. "I'm not set up for stuff over ten kilos, so no, I can't—not right now anyway."

He shrugged. "I miss Ran-tan. When's he going to come back?"

"No idea. He didn't say."

"Okay. When are you and Luna going to have another kid?"

"I don't know that either." Astro gathered up the weights in the box and closed it. "We'll keep you posted though."

It had been three weeks since Ran-tan had left, and Astro stood in the midst of the most isolated part of the junk wasteland, holding the wooden box he stored Orkan in. He couldn't think of the white core apart from the android it had been the soul for, so he kept the name.

Ready to resume the purification, he took Orkan and held it up in front of him.

"It must be working," he linked to Luna. "Orkan's a gram and a half lighter than when I started yesterday."

"It's still going to take a while, though. An adult blue core probably weighs a quarter of what that weighs."

"So I better get down to business," he answered, and his hand turned blue. Bolts of energy immediately started leaping out of the core and blasting the nearby junk piles.

Twenty minutes later, he heard a garbled message on his radio, so he released the blue energy for a moment to remove the interference. "Did you hear something?" he linked to Luna.

"Yeah! I think it's Ran-tan! It sounded like he said, 'Incoming'."

"He#! C#n you #ead me?" It was Ran-tan.

"We read you," radioed Astro.

"Y#y! I'll #e dow# in an #our!"

"An hour?" Astro linked to Luna. "He must still be well over a hundred kilometres up."

"You said our radios were getting more powerful, but that's unreal."

"No kidding."

An hour later, a black figure in red boots and bulging lenses over the eyes touched down in the back lot where Astro, Luna, and a crowd of kids were waiting. It immediately rushed over to the two androids with its hands glowing blue.

"Dad! Mom!" it linked when they were all connected. "Man, I really missed you!"

"Are you okay?" Luna asked. "Why did you come back so soon?"

In answer, loneliness and grief surged over them. "It was so empty up there," he finally replied. "I couldn't stand it any more. I ... had to come home." He shivered. "Dang it! I'm so weak! I couldn't even last two days there."

"It's not just you," Astro linked, then brought up his time when Luna had just gotten her core, when he had seen that without her he was nothing. "I doubt I could go very long without her," he added.

There was a brief silence, then Ran-tan linked, "I get it. That's what the link's all about."

"Yes," answered Luna. "Together we're strong. Um, I have a question."

"Yeah?"

"Why are you all black? Problems with re-entry?"

Ran-tan chuckled. "Hardly. As soon as I got out of the atmosphere, I went like this. It just happened. I think it's a kind of armour."

Astro glanced around. "Maybe you'd better say 'hi' to all these guys before they get bored and leave. We can link up again later."

"Okay," replied Ran-tan and broke away. "I'm back," he exclaimed to the children, but they stared back at him doubtfully. "Oh right, the skin," he muttered, and turned it back to pink.

They giggled, and Lucas pointed and said, "He's all bare naked!"

"Oops," said Ran-tan, and turned to his parents.

"Here," Luna said, and handed him a small bundle.

He hastily pulled on the clothes as several of the older kids asked him what it was like on the moon.

"Well," he answered. "The sky is black with lots of tiny little stars in it, and the Earth is really bright and blue and a whole lot bigger than the moon looks from here; it's really pretty. And the ground up there is all grey and dusty—no plants or anything. It's super boring unless you like hopping around mountains—it's easier to hop than walk—but it looks like a place baby androids can find lots of yummy rocks to eat. I could jump almost a kilometre high in the low gravity and not even use my rockets." He hesitated, then shrugged. "I guess that's about it."

"Did you bring any rocks back?" asked Jerry.

Ran-tan rolled his eyes. "Duh! I never even thought of it. Sorry. Maybe next time."

"Are you going back again soon?" asked Madeline.

He seemed to wilt a little. "I don't think so, at least not alone."

"Can I come?" Grace asked.

Ran-tan looked at her, startled. "Why?"

"So you won't be alone, and so I can see too."

He shook his head. "There's no way humans can go up there. There's no air or water or just about anything besides rocks. You'd die."

"But there were astronauts long ago." She crossed her arms over her chest. "Can't I be an astronaut?"

Ran-tan glanced over at Astro and radioed, "Help."

"It's not that easy," Astro said. "The astronauts had to have big space suits and expensive ships to protect them and give them air to breath—stuff we don't have any more—and they had to take all their food and water with them. It was a real pain."

Grace scowled, but didn't say anything more.

"Okay," said Luna. "Time to run along, please. Ran-tan needs to rest from his trip."

"That's not true," radioed Ran-tan as the children started to head back inside.

"Maybe," replied Luna. "But just saying, 'That's all folks; now go away,' is rude. It's an excuse humans understand, and besides, I've got a feeling you really do need some recovery time."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," he radioed. "Because I've been wondering: Did I let God down by not staying to inhabit the moon?"