Character Spotlight – Jim Ross (Cooter)
The station regular who put the Lunokhod back — and who still knows which conversations belong in Doc’s doorway.
Moon deputy hard science fiction from the trails around Conrad Station.
Del Anderson walks into Doc Keller’s clinic looking for the sheriff’s version of a quiet word. Doc comes out of the next room with a man Del already knows: Jim Ross. Cooter, to anyone who has been here long enough. The first question is not the strike. It is whether Cooter put the Lunokhod back.
He says he did. He also wants to know if the Russians actually wanted it put back. Del’s answer is the whole unofficial inventory of Conrad Station in one line: even if it is from the last century, it still belongs to them.
Who They Are
Cooter is not a prospector in the Nils Carmike mold and not a deputy in the Gen Miller mold. He is the station regular who knows which items were supposed to go back, which conversations belong in Doc’s doorway, and which rumors will still circulate when the official log is blank.
Doc cuts in before the rover talk can become a briefing: she is sure Del did not come down to hear Cooter’s alien conspiracy theories. That is not a joke she invented for the room. Cooter believes it. He will still believe it decades later, standing in a hab full of solar panels and Apollo junk, offering Texas whiskey and a story about a secret base near Hadley.
He lives by an unwritten rule. Put it back if Del tells you to. If the prospectors need you, show up. Do not expect the paperwork to match the work.
Across the Sequence
In The Lunadyne Incident, he is already in the room when the station boils. Miners in a foul mood at Alex’s. Coal Co mercenaries. The name Ninja Cranston, which Cooter knows and Doc does not. Del needs civilians off the site. Cooter is the one who says Gordonville, and the one who will get Carmike, Johnson, Vargas, and the others. When Del needs aces, Cooter is back the next day; the prospectors are ready. The idea he brings — actually one of Nils’s — is shutting down the radiators. Not a speech. A system.
In Mask of the Joyful Moon Gen finally meets him on the surface. Cooterville is a hab, a field of solar panels, crawlers, tools, and pieces that look older than they should. Nils tells her the early-days version: Cooter raided the Apollo 15 site at Hadley because he was sure there was a secret alien base nearby. Some of the junk is from Apollo. The authorities did not arrest him. Prospectors told him to stay away from the other sites and added in a box for emphasis. He is well over two meters, has lost the battle of the belt, and still thinks Hootie Bird is a reasonable answer to a problem.
Thunder Moon Tussle leaves him more in the network than on the page: the name that moves through the bar and the trails with no need for an introduction. By the time Gen needs a bad idea that might work, Cooter is where you go.
The Longer Shadow
Conrad Station inherits two things from him.
One is practical: historical hardware is not decoration. Lunokhod, Apollo, whatever still sits on the surface from the last century — Cooter will touch it, and someone in a badge will have to decide whether putting it back is enough. The other is social. Alien bases, conspiracy, the unofficial inventory. People who last here learn which of Cooter’s sentences to file and which to act on. Del used him as an ace. Nils uses him as a recharge and a ride. Gen uses him because the formal channels have already failed.
He is not the law. He is what the law finds when it walks into the clinic and the next room is already occupied.
Further Reading
- The Lunadyne Incident and Other Stories — “The Lunadyne Incident”
- Thunder Moon Tussle
- Mask of the Joyful Moon
- Related site posts: Character Spotlight – Sheriff Del Anderson, Gordonville, Character Spotlight – Doc Keller, Alex’s Bar
The Joyful Moon is still watching…
and the stories are still being told.
— Torn MacAlester
Still riding the trails with Nils, Gen, and the whole Fabulae Lunae crew
🚀🌕
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StoriesThe stories of Torn MacAlester are science fiction, where the science is well-grounded. I intentionally made any deviations for speculative purposes. To maintain maximum realism, I restrict the scope of these deviations. |
ArticlesI write articles of science fact and science fiction. The articles here span the knowledge of modern science and the speculations of fiction. I try to caveat everything that is an assumption. You will find articles about spaceflight, the possibilities of alien contact, and descriptions of technology used in my stories. |
