Teller said. Crater was happy to do it, just to get away from Maria and the unhappy glances she kept sending his way. After an hour of driving, he approached a series of craters named after the old states of the original American union. He took them one after the other, Montana, West Virginia, and Texas, then drove down a long straightaway. He opened up the fastbug, just to see what it could do. Sixty miles per hour, the gillie said. Crater let off the accelerator. He could have gone even faster, but he didn’t know the road ahead and feared hitting a hole or a bump. After an hour of steady driving, the captain called him. “Change out with Maria,” he said. Crater did a u-turn and sped back to the convoy, passing Maria who diverted her eyes from him. Crater turned around and began to pace alongside the leading trucks. The gillie had been very quiet as if absorbing all the new things it was seeing but, Crater wondered, were they new? The gillie had crossed the moon, probably near this very track, when he was brought across as a baby by his foster parents.
