Free Artemis by Andy Weir

tomorrow.”
    —
    Conrad Down 6.
    I drove Trigger down the familiar hallways and tried to ignore the sinking feeling in my gut. I knew every crooked hallway, every shop, and every scratch on every wall. I could close my eyes and tell where I was just from echoes and background noise.
    I rounded the corner to Crafters Row. The best tradesmen in town worked here, but there were no flashing signs or advertisements. They didn’t need to draw in customers. They got their business through reputation.
    I parked in front of CD6-3028, got out, and hesitated at the door. I turned away in a moment of cowardice, steeled myself, then turned back and rang the buzzer.
    A man with a weathered face answered the door. He had a well-trimmed beard and wore a white
taqiyah
(head covering). He stared at me quietly for a moment, then said, “Huh.”
    “
Good evening, Father
,” I said in Arabic.
    “
Are you in trouble?
”
    “
No.
”
    “
Do you need money?
”
    “
No, Father. I am independent now.
”
    He furrowed his brow. “
Then why are you here?
”
    “
Can a daughter not visit her father simply to honor him?
”
    “Cut the crap,” he said in English. “What do you want?”
    “I need to borrow some welding equipment.”
    “Interesting.” He left the door open and walked into the shop. That was as much invitation as I was going to get.
    Not much had changed over the years. The fireproofed workshop was hot and cramped, as they all were. Dad’s meticulously organized equipment hung on the walls. A worktable dominated one corner of the room next to a collection of welding masks.
    “Come on,” he said. I followed him through the back door into the residence. The tiny living room was palatial compared to my humble shithole.
    Dad’s place had two coffin bunks along one wall. Very common among lower-class Artemisians. Not as nice as bedrooms, but they allowed privacy, which was good. I grew up in that house. I did…stuff in that bunk.
    He had a cook nook with an actual flame-based stove. One of the few advantages to living in a fireproofed room. Way better than a microwave. You might think a real stove meant tasty meals, but you’d be wrong. Dad did his best, but Gunk is Gunk. There’s only so much you can do with algae.
    There was one big change, though. Along the back wall a meter-wide sheet of metal ran from the floor to the ceiling—it wasn’t even close to vertical. I’d estimate 20 to 30 degrees off true.
    I pointed to the new feature. “What the hell is that?”
    Dad looked over to it. “It’s an idea I came up with a while ago.”
    “What’s it for?”
    “Work it out.”
    Ugh! If I had a slug for every time he’d said that in my life…Never a straight answer—everything had to be a goddamn learning experience.
    He crossed his arms and watched me like he always did during these little quizzes.
    I walked over and touched the sheet. Very sturdy, of course. He never did anything half-assed. “Two-millimeter sheet aluminum?”
    “Correct.”
    “So it doesn’t need to handle lateral force…” I ran my finger along the intersection of the sheet and the wall. I felt small bumps every twenty centimeters. “Spot welds? That’s not like you.”
    He shrugged. “It might be a stupid idea. I’m not ready to commit.”
    Two hooks jutted out from the top of the sheet, just centimeters from the ceiling. “You’re going to hang something on it.”
    “Correct. But what?”
    I looked it up and down. “This weird angle is the key…got a protractor I could borrow?”
    “I’ll save you the trouble,” he said. “It’s twenty-two point nine degrees from vertical.”
    “Huh…” I said. “Artemis’s longitude is twenty-two point nine…ah. Okay, I got it.” I turned to face him. “It’s for prayers.”
    “Correct,” he said. “I call it a prayer wall.”
    The moon always points the same face toward Earth. So, even though we’re in orbit, from our point of view, Earth doesn’t move. Well,
technically
,