51435	----	THE BUSINESS, AS USUAL By JACK SHARKEY Illustrated by TRATTNER [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine August 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Giving Certain Powers the business for a change would be a joy--but it must not backfire--and here at last was the perfect recoilless diddle! In 1962, the United States Air Force found itself possessed of a formidable tool of battle, a radar resistant airplane. While this was the occasion for much rejoicing among the Defense Department members who were cleared for Top Secret, this national-defense solution merely posed a greater problem: What should we do with it? "There must," said the Secretary of Defense, "be some utilization of this new device to demonstrate to 'Certain Powers' that the world can be made safe for Freedom and Democracy!" "'Certain Powers,' my foot," said the President. "Why don't we ever come out and just say it?" "Policy," the Secretary said. "We've always walked softly in our Foreign Policy; especially softly in cases where we didn't have the 'big stick' to carry." "Well," grumbled the President, "we've got the big stick now. What do we do with it?" "We just want to shake it a bit," said the Secretary. "No contusions intended, of course. We just have to let them know we _have_ it, but are too kind-hearted to use it. Unless provoked, naturally." "I can see," said the President, "that this new plane is burning a hole in your pocket. Suppose we do send it flying over Rus--" "_Mister_ President!" said the Secretary of Defense. The President sighed. "All right, all right. Flying over 'Certain Areas,' then. Let's say we get it there. Fine. What do we do with it? Drop leaflets?" "No. That comes under the proselytizing clause in the Geneva Conference of '59." "I don't suppose a small--well, you know." "Aggression," said the Secretary. "We'd lose face in the Middle East." "So?" demanded the President, spreading his hands. "They don't like us anyhow, do they? Or the competition--or each other, for that matter." "That's not the point. We have to _feel_ as though our dollars are buying friends, whether or not it's true." "Well, then, what _can_ we do?" said the President. "No leaflets, no aggression. We couldn't maybe seed their clouds and make it rain on them?" "And get sued by other countries for artificially creating low-pressure conditions that, they could claim, robbed them of their rightful rainfall? We've had it happen right here between our own states." "Maybe we should just forget about it, then?" "Never! It must be demonstrated to the world that--" "We could take a full-page ad in the New York _Times_." "It just isn't done that way," the Secretary protested. "Why not? It'd save money, wouldn't it? A simple ad like, '_Hey, there, Certain Powers! Lookie what we got!_' What'd be wrong with that?" "They'd accuse us of Capitalistic Propaganda, that's what! And to get the egg off our face, we'd have to demonstrate the plane and--" "And be right back where we are now," the President realized aloud, nodding gloomily. "Okay, so what do we do?" The Secretary looked to left and right, although they were alone together in a soundproofed, heavily guarded room, before replying. "We drop an agent!" he whispered. <tb> The President blinked twice before responding. "Have you gone mad? What man in his right mind would volunteer for such a thing? 'Drop an agent,' indeed! Ten minutes after landing, he'd be up against a wall and shot. Wouldn't _that_ be lovely for Freedom and Democracy? We'd have the R--the Certain Powers gloating over the air waves for weeks about nipping a Capitalist Assassination Plot in the bud, not to mention the Mothers of America beating down the White House door because one of Our Boys was sacrificed. You know how our country reacts: If an entire division is wiped out, we bite the bullet and erect statues and make speeches and then forget it. But let a single man get in dutch and the whole populace goes crazy until something is 'done' about it. No, it won't work." "May I finish?" said the Secretary patiently. The President shrugged. "Why not?" "This agent would be something special, sir. One that would not only demonstrate our new aircraft, but which would positively leave the R--damn, you've got _me_ doing it!--Certain Powers tied in knots. In point of fact, our military psychologists think that this agent might be the wedge to split Communism apart in hopeless panic!" "Really?" the President said, with more enthusiasm than he had shown throughout the entire meeting. "I'd like to meet this agent." The Secretary pressed a black button upon the conference table. An instant later, the door opened and the Secretary's personal aide stepped in. "Yes, sir?" "Jenkins, have the corridor cleared and Secret Service men posted at all entrances and exits. When it's safe, bring in Agent X-45." He paused. "And Professor Blake, too." "At once, sir." Jenkins hurried out. "X-45?" said the President. "Has he no name?" The Secretary smiled inscrutably. "Teddy, sir." "Why that smirk?" "You'll see, sir." They sat in fidgety silence for another minute, and then a buzzer sounded, twice. "Ah, that's Jenkins," said the Secretary, and pressed the button once more. Jenkins came in, followed by a tall gray-haired man who carried a large black suitcase. The President arose, and, as Jenkins left the room again, shook hands with the man. "Agent X-45?" he asked. "Professor Charles Blake," the man corrected him calmly. "Agent X-45 is in here." The President stared. "In the _suitcase_? What are we sending? A _dwarf_?" "Hardly," said the Secretary, snapping up the hasps on the suitcase and opening it upon the table. "This," he said, lifting something from under tissue-paper padding, "is Agent X-45." The President's gaze was returned by two shiny black eyes, set on either side of a little brown muzzle with a gentle, stitched-on smile. Agent X-45 was clad in flight helmet, miniature jacket and tiny boots, with a baggy pair of brown canvas trousers belted at the waist with a bandolier holding a dozen small wooden bullets, and dangling a patent-leather holster containing a plastic water pistol. And he wore a small parachute and harness. "But that's a teddy bear!" cried the President. "Precisely," Professor Blake said. <tb> "I think I'll sit down," said the President, and did so, visibly looking like a man who believes he is surrounded by lunatics. "And look here!" said the Secretary, slipping his hand within Teddy's jacket and withdrawing a small oilskin pouch. "It's rather rudimentary, but the Cyrillic lettering is genuine, and our ambassador assures us the layout is correct." The President took the pouch, unfolded it and drew out a small sheet of paper, covered with the inscrutable letterings, and numerous rectangles and curving red lines. "I give up," he said. "What is it?" "A map of the Kremlin," said the Secretary, his eyes dancing. "That big red 'X' is the location of the Politburo Council Chamber." "Perhaps," the President said weakly, "you could explain...?" "Mister President," said Professor Blake, "I am the new Chief of Propaganda for the government." The President nodded, poured himself a glass of water from a pitcher and drained it. "Yes, yes?" he said. "Naturally, I have spent my career studying the psychology of a Certain Power...." The President groaned. "Please, gentlemen, let's name names! It need never go outside this room. _My_ lips are sealed!" The professor and the Secretary exchanged a look, a raising of eyebrows, then a shrug of surrender. "Very well," said Blake. "Russia--" "There," said the President. "That's more like it." Blake cleared his throat and went on. "We know the weak spot in the Russian armor is the mentality of the average Communist official," he explained, while the Secretary, who had heard this all before, fiddled with the straps of Teddy's parachute and hummed softly to himself. "They have a distrust complex. Everything and everybody is under 24-hour-a-day suspicion." "Yes, so I hear," said the President. "What do you suppose would happen to an agent that was caught by the Russians?" asked Blake. "I'd rather not even think about that." "Not the sadistic details, sir. I mean the general train of events, from the time of capture onward." The President pondered this. "After his capture," he said thoughtfully, "he would be questioned. Through various methods--hopelessly at variance with the regulations of the Geneva Convention--they would discover his mission, and then he would be shot, I guess, or imprisoned." Blake nodded grimly. "And what if an agent landed there that could _not_ divulge his mission?" <tb> The Secretary stopped fiddling with the harness and watched the President's face. On the worn features he read first puzzlement, then incredulity, then a flash of sheer amazement. "Good heavens!" said the President. "They'd--they'd have to admit a defeat, I suppose...." "But can they?" Blake leaned forward and slammed his fist upon the tabletop. "Can the Communist mentality ever admit that it's been bested?" "I--I guess not. At least, they never do," said the President. "But this--" he wagged a forefinger at the stuffed thing on the table--"this certainly won't upset them. I mean, after all...." He looked from one to the other for agreement and found none. "But, gentlemen, it's nothing but a stuffed bear!" "It won't upset them?" queried Blake slowly. "Are you sure?" "Of course I'm sure. They'll find the bear, wherever it lands, and they'll--well, they'll _know_ it's a gag and just laugh at us." "_How_ will they know?" Blake persisted. "Well, they'll be _pretty_ well certain!" the President said scathingly: "I mean a stuffed toy--" "Would they give up on something of which they were 'pretty well' certain?" "They'd have to. Teddy, here, certainly couldn't tell them anything. They'd say it was a joke and forget it...." His voice barely sounded the last few words. He no longer believed them. A smile flickered upon his face. "Gentlemen, you don't think they'd--" "The Russians," said Blake, without emotion, "would go off their rockers, sir. To be unable to explain a thing like this would devastate their morale. The Communist is a man who must hold all the aces. He'll shuffle and reshuffle until he gets them, too. Well, we're giving him a cold deck, sir. There are no aces for him to find." "Hmmm," said the President. "As long as there's any doubt in their minds, they'll have to keep plugging at it, won't they! And since there's no solution--" His smile grew calculating. "Yes, yes I begin to see. It's a small thing, to be sure, but I find I must leap at the opportunity to stick a few ants in _their_ pants for a change." "It won't wipe them out," began the Secretary. "But it'll wear them down a little," Blake finished. "Done!" said the President. "How soon can we get Operation Frustration under way?" "The plane is ready to leave right now," said the Secretary, with a small blush. "I--I rather thought you'd see this thing our way." The President frowned at this, then shrugged. "Good enough. Let's get this bear into the air." <tb> "You sure this plane will work?" asked the President, averting his face from the spray of leaves caught up in the shrieking jet stream of the waiting plane. "It's too simple not to," said Blake, clutching the suitcase--on whose side a large red "Top Secret" had been stenciled--to his chest, and shouting over the scream of the plane. "The radar-resistant device is nothing more than a radio-receiver that blankets the structure, making the entire plane a receiver. If it receives the radar impulses, they can't bounce back and make a blip on the enemy radar screens." The President sighed. "You make it sound almost too easy. Very well." He shook the man's hand. "Good luck." "Thank you, sir," said Blake, patting the suitcase. "I'll take good care of Teddy." The President nodded and moved away. Blake boarded the jet, and, minutes later, the President was watching a last fading streamer of the twin exhausts dwindling upon the eastern horizon. "I shan't sleep till he's back," said the Secretary. "Nor I," said the President. "I have the weirdest damned apprehension...." "About what, sir?" asked the Secretary, as they made their way from the field. "About the--" the President looked around, then lowered his voice to a whisper--"the Russians. There's something in their makeup we may have overlooked." "Impossible, sir," said the Secretary of Defense. "Blake is our top psychologist." "I hope you're right. If this fails, I'd hate for it to be traced to us." "It can't be. The jacket was made in Japan, the boots in Mexico, the parachute in--" "I know, I know," said the President. "But if they _should_ trace it to us, we'll be a laughing-stock." "They won't," the Secretary assured him. <tb> Two days later, Blake was back, his manner jovial when he met in secret session once more with the two executives. "Couldn't have gone more perfectly, gentlemen," he said, rubbing his hands together and bouncing on his toes. "We passed directly over Moscow, at a height of ten miles, on the stroke of midnight. The night was overcast and starless. Teddy was dropped through the bomb bay. I saw his parachute open myself. He's down there now, and we're sure to see signs any day now of the little cracks in the Iron Curtain." "You had no trouble with the enemy?" the President asked, though the answer--since Blake was back alive--was obvious. "None," Blake said. "The radar shield performed exactly as specified, sir. Not a blink of a searchlight nor a single ground-to-air rocket did we see. Perhaps, on hearing us pass by, they sent up an investigating plane or two, but we were long gone by then. That's the advantage of moving faster than the sound you make," he added pontifically. "I still feel we've overlooked something," said the President. "In the back of my mind, a small voice keeps trying to remind me of something about the Russians, something that should have made me veto this whole scheme at the start." Blake looked puzzled. "What about them, sir? If it's in regard to their psychology, I can assure you--" "I don't mean their psychology at _all_," said the President. "No, wait--yes, I do, in a minor way. They must pursue this thing, no matter what, but--" A light glimmered, then burned brightly in the President's eyes, and he stood up and smacked his fist into his open palm. "Of course!" he said. "Their methods!" "Methods?" asked Blake, a little nervously. The President's reply was interrupted by a knock at the door. The three men exchanged a look; then the Secretary jabbed the button, and Jenkins came in. "This just came for you, sir," he said, handing the Secretary a small envelope, and making his exit silently. The President waited impatiently as the envelope was torn open and its contents read. Then the Secretary's hands opened limply and the message fell upon the table. "Diplomatic note--Russian--Teddy," he whispered. "What!" yelped the President. He snatched the paper from the table and read it, then sank into his chair once more, his face grim and eyes suspiciously moist. "The dirty, lowdown, rotten...." Blake, hovering at tableside, hesitated a moment, then asked, "What about Teddy? What's happened?" "What we might have expected," said the Secretary dolefully. "You don't mean--" Blake mumbled, horrified. He couldn't continue, just waited for the worst. The President nodded miserably. "He's confessed." 
51256	----	THE COOL WAR by ANDREW FETLER Illustrated by NODEL [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Here's what happens when two Master Spies tangle ... and stay that way! "Nothing, nothing to get upset about," Pashkov said soothingly, taking his friend's arm as they came out of the villa forty miles from Moscow. Pashkov looked like a roly-poly zoo attendant leading a tame bear. "Erase his memory, give him a new name and feed him more patriotism. Very simple." Medvedev raised his hand threateningly. "Don't come howling to me if everybody guesses he is nothing but a robot." Pashkov glanced back at the house. Since the publication of _Dentist Amigovitch_, this house had become known all over the world as Boris Knackenpast's villa. Now the house was guarded by a company of soldiers to keep visitors out. From an open window Pashkov heard the clicking of a typewriter. "It's when they're not like robots that everybody suspects them," he said, climbing into his flier. "Petchareff will send you word when to announce his 'death'." "A question, brother." "No questions." "Who smuggled the manuscript out of Russia?" Pashkov frowned convincingly. "Comrade Petchareff has suspected even me." He took off for Moscow, poking his flier up through the clouds and flying close to them, as was his habit. Then he switched on the radio and got Petchareff's secretary. "Nadezhda?" "I know what you're up to, Seven One Three," Nadezhda Brunhildova said. "Don't try to fool _me_, you confidence man. You are coming in?" "In ten minutes. What have I done now?" "You were supposed to make funeral arrangements for Knackenpast, so what are you doing in Stockholm?" "Stockholm?" "You're lying and I'll kill you. Don't you think I know about Anastina, that she-nurse in the Stockholm National Hospital?" "Darling, why so cruel? Anastina is one of our contacts. Besides, she's cross-eyed and buck-toothed." "Beast!" She switched him to Petchareff. "What's been keeping you, Pashkov?" "Consoling Medvedev. Am I supposed to be in Stockholm?" "Never mind, get here at once. What size hospital gown do you wear?" "Hospital gown?" "Stockholm embassy says you're in the National Hospital there. In a hospital gown. I got through to Anastina. She says it's Colonel James again. He looks like you now." Pashkov grunted. "I'll never understand," said Petchareff, "why all top secret agents have to look like bankers. Anastina says Colonel James was operated on by a Monsieur Fanti. What do you know about him?" "He's a theatrical surgeon." "You're not playing one of your jokes, Pashkov?" "Hardly." "You'd better be in my office in ten minutes. What size hospital gown?" "Short and fat," Pashkov said, and switched off. Most countries wanted to break his neck, and his own Motherland did not always trust him. But he enjoyed his work--enjoyed it as much as his closest professional rival, Colonel James, U.S.A. * * * * * Pashkov landed on the roof of Intelligence in the northeast corner of the Kremlin, hitched up his pants and rode down. In his office, Petchareff removed the cigar from his mouth as Pashkov came in. "Medvedev get my orders?" "He's preparing a new super-patriotic writer to replace Boris Knackenpast," Pashkov reported. "When you give the word, he will call _Izvestia_ and tell them Boris is dead." Petchareff glanced at his calendar. "We have two other state funerals this week. You made it plain, I hope, we want no repetition of Knackenpast's peace nonsense?" "No more Gandhi or Schweitzer influences. The new literature," Pashkov promised, raising a chubby finger, "will be a pearl necklace of government slogans." Nadezhda buzzed the intercom. "The man from the Bolshoi Theater is here, Comrade." "Send him in." A small man hurried into the room. He had a narrow face and the mustache of a mouse and a mousy nose, but his eyes were big rabbit eyes. He bowed twice quickly, placed a package on the desk with trembling forepaws and bowed twice again. Petchareff tore open the package. "You got the real thing? No bad imitation?" "Exactly, exactly," the mouse piped. "No difference, Comrade." He held his paws as in prayer and his pointed mouth quivered. Petchareff held up the hospital gown. On the back of the gown was printed in indelible ink: stockholm national hospital courtesy of Coca-Cola Petchareff tossed the gown to Pashkov. "This is what Colonel James is wearing," he said, dismissing the mouse, who bowed twice and scurried out. "Try and split the allies," Pashkov muttered, reading the legend on the gown. Petchareff blew cigar smoke in his face. "If Colonel James makes a monkey of you once more, you're through, Pashkov. You don't take your job seriously enough. You bungle this and I'll have you transferred to our Cultural Information Center in Chicago." Pashkov winced. "Now, you'll go to Stockholm and switch places with the American colonel and find out what they're up to. Zubov's kidnaping team is there already, at Hotel Reisen. Any questions?" "I thought Zubov was a zoological warfare expert. What is he doing with a kidnaping team?" "His team is more agile. On your way." In the front office, Pashkov stopped to kiss Nadezhda Brunhildova goodby. "I may not return from this dangerous mission. Give me a tender kiss." Nadezhda was a big girl with hefty arms, captain of her local broom brigade. "Monster!" She seized him by the collar. "Is Anastina dangerous?" "Darling!" "Bitter sweetness!" she howled, dropping him. "Go, love. Make me miserable." * * * * * Pashkov spent an hour at Central Intelligence. Nothing unusual going on in Stockholm: an industrial exhibit, the Swedish Academy in session, a sociology seminar on prison reform, a forty-man trade mission from India. An addendum to the Stockholm file listed two Cuban agents operating from Fralsningsarmen's Economy Lodgings. They were buying small arms and ammunition. He thought a moment, impressed the Cubans' address on his memory, and went to his flier. He did not fly to Hotel Reisen at once. Zubov's kidnaping team could wait. Coming slowly over Stockholm he spotted the National Hospital and circled. A line of ambulance fliers was parked on the ground in the ambulance court. On the hospital roof, he noticed, apart from private fliers, stood a flier that resembled his own. He veered away, detoured around Riddarholmen, and five minutes later landed on the roof of Fralsningsarmen's Economy Lodgings--the Salvation Army flophouse. "My Cuban friends," Pashkov inquired in fluent English at the desk on the top floor. "Are they in?" The old desk clerk looked like a stork. "Yu, room six fifteen," he clacked. "Tree floors down. Aer yu Amerikan?" "Brazil." "Ah so? You sprikker goot Inglish laik me." "Very kind of you." He rode down three floors, found room 615, and stopped as he heard voices within. "... _dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete_. By seven o'clock tonight, okay, Gringo?" "What do you expect for seven thousand bucks--service? Look, boys, I'm just a honest businessman. I can't get it for you today. Have a seegar, Pablo." "Tfu!" "All rightie, your cause is my cause. Maybe I can get it for you tonight. But you'll have to pay in advance. What do you say, Francisco?" "I counted the money. It is waiting for you. You deliver, we pay." "But how can I trust you? I like you boys, I know you like me, but business is business. I gotta give something to my jobber, don't I?" "Gringo!" At that moment Pashkov knocked on the door. From within: "Shh! _Alguien llama a la puerta._" Pashkov knocked again and a scuffle ensued within, the crack of a chair on a skull, the dragging of a beefy body into a closet, and the slam of the closet door. "_Yu?_" "_Buenas tardes_," Pashkov said through the door. "_Asuntos muy importantes._" The door opened a crack and two dark eyes in a young bearded face peered out. "Eh?" "_Gospodin Pashkov, para servir a usted._" The door opened enough to admit the roly-poly visitor into the room. The other Cuban, also bearded and wearing a fatigue cap, held a revolver. "No gun-play, caballeros," Pashkov went on in Spanish. "We are in the Salvation Army charity house, not in a two-peso thriller. Besides, I deliver before I ask payment." "Deliver what, senor?" "We favor any disturbance close to the United States. May I sit down?" Between two beds were stacked some dozen crates of explosives. A small table was littered with papers. Sitting down at the table, Pashkov's elbow rested on an invoice, and moments later the invoice was tucked in his pocket. "What kind of ammunition do you need, caballeros?" The Cubans looked at each other. "Thirty-o-six caliber, two-twenty grain. How much can you deliver?" "Two thousand rounds." "Not much." "Maybe three thousand. I'll toss in a box of hand grenades and a can of lysergic acid diethylamide." "You have that? You have LSD-25?" "I have that. When are you leaving Stockholm?" Again the young beards exchanged looks. "Maybe we stay till tomorrow if you have more business. Three thousand rounds is not much. How much payment, senor?" "Two thousand kronor," Pashkov said, taking an envelope on the table and addressing it to Nadezhda Brunhildova, Kremlin, Moscow. No return address. "Do you trust us to send the money?" "It is bad for you if I do not trust you," Pashkov said, smiling up at them. "You can trust us. We shall send the money. Please take a cigar." Pashkov took four Havanas from the box they held out to him, stuck three in his breast pocket, and lit one. "You come again, senor. We make much business." "Why not? Help retire Latin-American dictators to Siberia. More gold in Siberia than in Las Vegas." "Hyi, hyi, that is funny. You come again." On his way up to the roof, Pashkov studied the invoice he had lifted. It was from a manufacturer of sporting arms to Francisco Jesus Maria Gonzales, Salvation Army Economy Lodgings. He tucked the invoice into his inner pocket with a satisfied grunt, climbed into his flier and hopped over to Hotel Reisen, where Zubov's kidnaping team was waiting for him. * * * * * Comrade Zubov, the kidnaping expert, was pacing the roof of Hotel Reisen. As Pashkov eased down in his flier, Zubov's big front tooth flashed with delight. Pashkov felt like tossing him a bone. "Everything in order, Gospodin Pashkov. Constant vigilance maintained at hospital by my two assistants. With your pardon, Comrade Petchareff urges all haste. Colonel James is due to leave the hospital tomorrow." "Comrade Petchareff always urges haste. What else?" Zubov's big tooth settled respectfully over his lower lip. His small eyes were so closely set that he looked cockeyed when he focused them on his superior. "With your pardon, I shall conduct you to our suite. Plans for kidnaping of Colonel James all ready." "Here's a cigar for you." "Gratefully accepted. Reduced unavoidable fatalities to six." Zubov counted on his long hard fingers. "Two watchmen, three nurses, one doctor." In the hotel corridor, Zubov looked before and after, his eyes crossed suspiciously, and peered around corners. They got to their suite without incident, and Pashkov gave him another cigar. "Gratefully accepted. Here is a map of hospital and grounds. Here is a map of twenty-third floor. Here is a map of Colonel James' room. Here is hospital routine between midnight and dawn. With your pardon--" Pashkov picked up the phone, dialed the Soviet embassy, and got the chargé d'affaires. "How is your underdeveloped countries fund?" he asked. "Always depleted, always replenished." "I don't want any Russian brands." "Nothing but foreign," the chargé buzzed. "We got almost everything now through an American surplus outlet in Hamburg. Nationals get caught with American goods, Americans get blamed. Wonderful confusion. What do you need?" "Thirty-o-six two-twenty, three thousand--if you have it." "Most popular. What else?" "Pineapples--one crate." "Only confiscated German potatoes. Will that do?" "Fine. And a small can of sentimental caviar." "Too risky." "It's all right. It will fall to local authorities by tomorrow." Pashkov put down the receiver. Give the Cubans enough to expect more--make sure they stay in town. * * * * * Zubov was cross-checking his kidnaping plans. He said, "With your pardon, do we take Colonel James alive or dead-or-alive?" "Alive." Zubov pulled a long face. "Dead-or-alive would be easier, Gospodin Pashkov. Fast, clean job." Pashkov squinted at Zubov's crossed eyes. "Have you had your eyes examined lately?" "No need," Zubov assured him with a smile. "I see more than most people." Pashkov held up his remaining cigar. "How many cigars in my hand?" "Two." At that moment the door opened and Zubov's kidnaping team lumbered in. They were a couple of big apes dressed in blue canvas shoes, red trousers, yellow jackets, white silk scarves, sport caps and sun glasses. "What are you doing here?" cried Zubov. "Why aren't you observing the hospital?" "Dhh, you said to report ... um ... if something happened," the first ape said in a thick voice. "Well?" "Victim's room lights out," the ape said. "My assistants," Zubov introduced them to Pashkov. "Line up, line up, lads. With your pardon, they are good lads. This is Petya, and this is Kolya. No, _this_ is Kolya and this one is Petya." "Twins?" "Not exactly. Same genetic experiment. Good lads. Stand straight, Petya. Don't curl your feet like that, Kolya, I've told you before. Why didn't you shave your hands today?" Kolya looked guiltily at his hands. "They've made progress," Zubov assured Pashkov, pulling a small whip from his hip pocket. "Straight, lads, straight," he flicked the whip. "We have company." "Are their costumes your own idea?" "With your pardon, for purposes of concealment. What are your orders?" Pashkov told them to pick up the boxes of ammunition at the embassy and deliver them to the Cubans, and then to commandeer a private automobile. "We have autos at the embassy pool," Zubov suggested. "I want a vehicle off the street. Then report back here with your lads." Petya gave Kolya a box on the ear. "Boys, boys!" Zubov cracked the whip. "Out you go. A job for Gospodin Pashkov, lads. They don't get enough exercise," he grinned, backing out after them. "With your pardon, I'll thrash them later." And they were gone. Pashkov turned to the hospital maps and studied them before taking a nap. * * * * * Shortly before dawn, Zubov's team returned, their mission accomplished. "With your pardon, an excellent Mercedes," Zubov reported. Pashkov had changed into the hospital gown with the Coca-Cola legend on the back. He glanced at his watch. It was four o'clock in the morning. He tossed his bundle of clothing to the first ape. "Take my flier back to Moscow, Kolya lad. Give my clothes to Nadezhda Brunhildova, and tell Comrade Petchareff to expect Colonel James today." Clutching the bundle, Kolya stuck his tongue out at Petya and bounded out of the room. They waited at the window until they saw Kolya take off in Pashkov's flier. Then they made their way down the service stairs to the alley, Pashkov dressed only in the hospital gown; got into the stolen Mercedes and drove to the National Hospital, all three leaning forward. In the ambulance court, Zubov and Petya moved quickly to a Red Cross flier. Pashkov dropped the invoice he had lifted from the Cubans on the front seat of the stolen car, and followed. A watchman emerged from his hut, looked idly up at the rising ambulance, and shuffled back to his morning coffee. As Petya brought the flier to a hovering stop against Colonel James' window, Pashkov bounced into the room; Zubov drew his gun and jumped in after. Colonel James awoke, turned on the night lamp, and sat up in the bed, his eyes blinking. Pashkov stood looking at Colonel James. The resemblance between them was remarkable. Zubov's eyes were crossed with astonishment. "My dear Gospodin Pashkov!" Colonel James greeted him in Russian, yawning. "How kind of you to visit me. Do sit down." Not only was his Russian good; his voice was a good imitation of Pashkov's voice. "You're not really sick?" Pashkov asked, sitting down on the bed. "Not physically. But imagine my psychological condition. When I look in the mirror--" The colonel shuddered. "I hope your sacrifice won't be permanent?" Pashkov said. "That would be too much. How is my Russian? The truth, now." "Excellent. Put up your gun, Zubov. Colonel James and I don't get to talk very often." "And a pity we don't. Good manners accomplish more than an opera full of cloaks and daggers. Cigarette?" "Gratefully accepted," Zubov said, slipping his gun into its holster with a flourish. * * * * * "Your treatment is over, then?" Pashkov asked. "You are ready for your assignment?" "Ready." "And that is?" "Delicate, very delicate. I must report to the Palace this morning." "Shall I kidnap him now?" Zubov interrupted, puffing conceitedly on his cigarette. "Mind your language, Zubov. May I ask, Colonel--do you want me to think I am falling into a trap?" "No, no, my friend. I am only doing my best not to show my surprise at seeing you again." The colonel got out of bed and sat down on Pashkov's other side. "Zubov will make your trip to Moscow comfortable. All right, Zubov." Zubov focused his crossed eyes on Pashkov. "Take him straight to Petchareff," Colonel James said to Zubov. "I'll report as soon as I know what these Swedes are up to." Zubov seized Pashkov by the scruff of the neck and dragged him towards the window. "Hold your claws, Zubov lad," Pashkov said. "You have got the wrong man, can't you see? _That_ is Colonel James." "Eh?" "Use your eyes, blockhead. _I_ am Pashkov." Zubov did use his eyes. He looked from one to the other, and back. The more he focused, the more his eyes crossed. "Eh?" Colonel James sat calmly on the bed. He said, "Carry him out." Zubov lifted Pashkov off the floor, crashed with his weight against the wall, but held on, grinned and staggered with Pashkov in his arms to the window. "You miserable idiot," Pashkov shouted. "You'll get a rest cure for this!" Zubov dropped him, pulled his gun and backed off into a corner. "How can I tell you two apart just by looking!" he cried hysterically. "I'm not a learned man." "One small but decisive proof," Pashkov said, unbuttoning his hospital gown. "I have a mole." Zubov yanked the colonel up by an arm. "Send _me_ to rest cures, will you?" Colonel James sighed. "I guess we have to keep up appearances," he muttered, and climbed out the window into the hovering ambulance. Zubov leaped in after, and they were off. * * * * * The suit of clothes hanging in the closet might have been Pashkov's own, identical with the clothes Kolya had taken to Moscow not an hour before. Even the underwear had facsimiles of the Order of Lenin sewn in. Satisfied, he crawled into the bed and fell into a pleasant snooze. He was awakened by the nurse, Anastina Bjorklund--alias Anastasia Semionovna Bezumnaya, formerly of the Stakhanovite Booster's Committee, Moscow Third Worker's District. "Wonderful morning, Colonel James!" Petchareff seldom let one agent know what another was doing. She put a big breakfast tray on Pashkov's lap. "Cloudy, damp, and windy. London stock market caves in, race riots in South Africa, famine in India, earthquake in Japan, floods in the United States, general strike in France, new crisis in Berlin. I ask you, what more can an idealist want?" "Good morning, Miss Bjorklund." The breakfast tray was crammed with a liter of orange juice, four boiled eggs, six slices of bacon, four pancakes, two pork chops, four slices of toast, a tumbler of vodka, a pot of coffee and two cigars. "Ah, Colonel," Anastina said as Pashkov fell to, "why did you let them change your face? It does not become you at all." "Part of my job. Don't you think I am more handsome now?" Anastina laughed shrilly. "That bulbous nose handsome? What woman could fall in love with a nose like that?" "It shows determination. I wish I had this nose permanently." "You mustn't talk like that. But I'll ignore your nose if you tell me more about White Sands Proving Grounds, as you promised." "With pleasure, with pleasure," he said, sinking his teeth into a pork chop, having seasoned the chop with the soft-boiled egg yolk. "But right now I'm in a hurry to get to the Palace. Give my shoes an extra shine, there's a good girl." "Oh, you and your secrets!" An hour later, Pashkov landed on the Palace roof in Colonel James' flier--an exact copy of his own flier. The Palace roof captain stared at him, then smiled nervously. "They are waiting for you in the Gustavus room, Colonel." "Colonel? Do I still look like Colonel James?" "Oh, no, sir." "Do I talk like Colonel James?" "You've changed completely, sir. If I didn't know, I would swear you were the notorious Gospodin Pashkov." "I am Gospodin Pashkov now, Captain. To everybody." "Of course, sir. I'll ring down you are coming." Pashkov glanced at his watch. Colonel James would be landing in Moscow about now and taken to Comrade Petchareff for questioning. A manservant in velvet cutaways, patent leather shoes and white gloves, escorted Pashkov through rooms hung with chandeliers, tapestries, paintings. Pashkov entered the last room and stopped as the door clicked shut behind him. * * * * * In the room were three men, all of whom he recognized: Professor Kristin of the Swedish Academy, a white-haired old man with a kind, intelligent face; the king, Gustavus IX, a thin old man stroking his Vandyke, sitting under a portrait of Frederick the Great; and Monsieur Fanti, the make-up surgeon. Pashkov bowed his head. "Your majesty. Gentlemen." "Extraordinary!" Professor Kristin said. Pashkov turned to the surgeon. "Monsieur, should my face have such a frivolous expression?" M. Fanti raised his eyebrows, but did not answer. "I thought," said Pashkov, "that Gospodin Pashkov's face has a more brutal look." "Propaganda," said the artist. But he came closer and looked at Pashkov's face with sudden interest. Professor Kristin said, "Colonel James, we presume you have studied the problem in detail. I'm afraid we have delayed announcing the Nobel prize for literature much too long. How soon can you bring Boris Knackenpast to Stockholm?" So there it was: Boris Knackenpast a supreme success, as Pashkov had suspected. It would be amusing to tell robotist Medvedev about it. "Delicate, very delicate," Pashkov said. "Everything depends on my not running into Gospodin Pashkov." "We can't wait any longer," Professor Kristin said. "Fortunately, we have an ally in the enemy camp. The robotist, Medvedev, is expecting you at Knackenpast's villa." "Bad show," M. Fanti said suddenly. "No good. His left cheekbone is at least four centimeters too high." The men looked at the surgeon, then at Pashkov. M. Fanti fingered Pashkov's cheekbone. "How could I have made such a mistake! Just look at him. People laugh at such faces." "How much time to correct the error then, Monsieur Fanti?" the king asked. "A week at least. His skin needs a rest. I must rework the whole left side of his face--it's all lopsided." "But we can't spare a week," Professor Kristin said. "With your majesty's permission," Pashkov offered, "I am willing to go as I am. Indeed, my plans call for immediate departure." "It is a good thing you do for us, Colonel James," Gustavus IX said, "and a courageous thing. Please accept our thanks." Professor Kristin saw Pashkov to the door. "One suggestion, Colonel. Your r's are still too soft for a real Russian. Why do you Americans slur them like that? And I beg you, if you value your life, do not fail to watch your fricatives." * * * * * The roof captain saluted as Pashkov stepped out of the lift. His flier was serviced and ready. "What weather in Moscow, Captain?" "Ceiling four thousand. We're having patrols half way out to sea. They are instructed to let you pass." A small incident, the roof captain explained. A Swedish Red Cross flier was missing from the National Hospital. Two Cuban agents had been arrested and a cache of small arms and ammunition was found. But no trace of the ambulance. "I suppose the Cubans deny stealing the ambulance?" Pashkov asked. "They say they've been framed by a fat little Russian. But it's transparent, a clumsy job. Imagine, they left a stolen car in the ambulance court and in it an invoice for six cases of ammunition. It was traced to the Cubans in half an hour." Pashkov climbed into his flier. "Well, it's fashionable to blame the Russians for everything." He waved his chubby hand, and took off. Flying over the Baltic, he set the controls on the Moscow beam. Ten minutes west of Moscow he tuned the communicator in on Petchareff's office. "Seven One Three here, Nadezhda. Tell Petchareff--no, let me talk to him." "Seven One ... but that's impossible! Gospodin Pashkov is in conference with Comrade Petchareff." "Stupid!" Petchareff's voice sounded behind Nadezhda's, and the speaker clicked and went dead. Pashkov dove into the clouds and brought his flier to a hovering stop. Petchareff did not believe he was Pashkov. Colonel James, it was clear, was at that moment in Petchareff's office, impersonating Pashkov. And Zubov was probably getting a rest cure. Pashkov crawled out of the cloud and skimmed northeast to Mir, Boris Knackenpast's villa. "You came fast, sir," the lieutenant of guards welcomed him at Mir. "We did not expect you for another fifteen minutes." Fifteen minutes. The colonel was not wasting time. "Listen carefully, lieutenant." Pashkov described the American agent. "But his left cheekbone is lower than mine--about four centimeters. He may be armed, so be careful." The lieutenant stared. "Shall we kill him?" "No, no. Put him in a cage." As Pashkov ran up the steps to the villa, the curtain in the vestibule window stirred. But when he entered, the vestibule was empty. He looked in the dining room, the music room, the library. Nobody. The house was strangely quiet. He came to the door of the study and listened. Not a sound. He went in and there, behind the large writing desk, sat Boris Knackenpast. The robot was unscrewing screws imbedded in his neck. "My God, sir," said Pashkov, "what are you doing?" * * * * * The robot's eyes, large disks of glittering mirror, flashed as he looked up. "Ah, Colonel James," Boris said in a voice that seemed to come from a deep well. "Excuse the poor welcome, but I understand we have little time. You scared my valet; he thought you were Gospodin Pashkov." The door burst open and Medvedev rushed in, the old valet at his heels. Medvedev stopped, gaped, then seized Pashkov's hand. "Colonel James! What an artist, that Monsieur Fanti. But quick, Boris, Pashkov is on his way." Boris pulled off his head, and crawled out of the robot shell. Pashkov saw Boris as he really was, a tall human with a gaunt, ascetic face. The sad thing about us, thought Pashkov, is that Medvedev could not trust even me. But then I could not trust Medvedev, either. Yes, that's the trouble with us. "I hope you need no luggage, Mister Knackenpast," Pashkov said. "We must be off at once." "Too late!" the old valet said from the window. Colonel James had landed. But as he climbed down from his flier, the guards closed a circle about him. "He'll keep," Pashkov said, hitching up his pants. "Let's be off, Mister Knackenpast. It won't take long for Petchareff to smell us out." "Look!" The guards fell back from the flier and snapped to attention. Chewing on his cigar furiously, out stepped Petchareff. Zubov leaped out next, his big front tooth flashing. Then his two assistants, Petya and Kolya, tumbled out in their coats and hats. Last of all to emerge from the flier was Nadezhda Brunhildova. "Pretend not to know me, will he?" she yelled at Colonel James, picking up a rock. "Hold it, citizenress," Colonel James said. "Citizenress, is it?" The rock flew over his head and felled Zubov. "I warned you both, no kitchen squabbles while on duty," Petchareff roared. He snapped an order to the lieutenants of guards, and the guards surrounded the house. "No alarm, no alarm," Pashkov said, pulling Boris away from the window. "Mister Knackenpast, when you see your way clear to my flier, run for it. But get back into your robot costume." "I can't operate the machine." "I'll be right behind you. The rest of us will go out to Petchareff." As they came out, Petchareff was reviving Zubov by slapping his face. The kidnaping expert lay stretched cold on the ground, and Nadezhda Brunhildova stood by, holding the rock and weeping. Colonel James said, "There he is, the American spy." Petchareff looked up as Pashkov was led forward by the guards. "Not bad," Petchareff said. "We could use Monsieur Fanti. What's his price?" "Don't you know me, chief? Me, Pashkov." "Curse me," Nadezhda said, staring at him. "Another Pashkov." A terrible howl came from Zubov. Petya and Kolya, imitating Petchareff's efforts to revive their master, were battering Zubov's face with their slouched hats. "Stand back!" Kolya screamed, smashing his hat into Zubov's face. "He is trying to say something!" "He's moving!" Petya kicked Zubov and looked up for approval, his hair standing up like spikes. Petchareff slapped Kolya's face and crushed the glowing end of his cigar on Petya's forehead. The apes reeled back to a tree. * * * * * Pashkov whispered to Colonel James. "Capitalist hell and damnation, now I can't tell them apart myself," Petchareff said. "Zubov!" "Hhng?" "Which one's the real Pashkov?" "Hhng?" But Colonel James was running to the flier, throwing Nadezhda's rock at Petchareff and running. "Grenade!" Pashkov yelled, and flung himself to the ground. At the same moment Boris Knackenpast ran from the house to the flier, his robot gear clattering like Don Quixote's armor. The guards scattered and dove for cover. "Down, lads! Grenade!" Pashkov yelled. The two apes took up the cry, "Grenade, grenade!" and flattened themselves behind the tree. Nadezhda and Medvedev collided, digging in behind the valet. Only Petchareff remained standing. "Stop the robot!" Nobody moved. Boris reached the flier, Colonel James pulled him in, the engine hummed, and they were off. A moment later the flier vanished in the clouds towards Stockholm. Petchareff relit his cigar. "Tfui, tastes of monkey hair." Medvedev shambled over. "Was the grenade a dud?" "One of these days I'll catch you, Pashkov," Petchareff spat. "Your deviousness, that's one thing. It could be useful. But your levity--" "Darling!" Nadezhda threw on Pashkov. "Not in public," Pashkov said. "Wait a minute," Petchareff said. "Nadezhda Brunhildova, how do you know he really is Pashkov? If he's actually Colonel James, I can shoot him summarily. He _does_ look like Colonel James to me." "But if you're mistaken?" Medvedev put in nervously. "We all make mistakes," Petchareff said. "What would history be without mistakes?" "I don't trust him either," Nadezhda said. "But I know my Pashkov. If he's not Pashkov, I shall let you know in the morning." 
52784	----	HEAVENLY GIFTS BY AARON L. KOLOM [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of Tomorrow April 1963 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Heartfelt prayers deserve an answer--but it may be in a peculiar way! A blur of silent motion tugged suddenly at the corner of Mrs. Frisbee's eye. She looked up from her knitting. An electric blanket, deep blue with satiny edges, was materializing, neatly folded, in the center of her tiny kitchen table. She closed her eyes briefly for a silent prayer of thanks. At midnight she would send out those thanks, followed by a request for a bicycle for the paper boy. Contentedly she raised herself from her chair. She weighed mentally whether there was time to wrap the blanket as a gift before she had to leave for work. She decided against it. It wasn't as if it were an anniversary or birthday present. It was just something she knew her nice landlady, Mrs. Upjohn, needed but couldn't afford. Mrs. Upjohn was in her room. With an embarrassed dismissal of thanks Mrs. Frisbee presented the blanket to her, then hurried to catch the bus at the corner. The corridor clock showed a few minutes to midnight as Mrs. Frisbee, carrying her mop and pail, entered the control room. At the slight noise Dr. Morrow looked up from his paper-littered desk. A vague smile and wave were directed generally in her direction. With a glance at his watch he sighed and returned to his work. Mrs. Frisbee waited patiently and quietly. A few minutes later Dr. Morrow looked up again, then yawned and stretched luxuriously. "Time for lunch, I guess." He stood up, setting a few dials on the glistening control panel before him. "See you in forty-five minutes," he called cheerily. With the sound of his heels echoing down the hall, Mrs. Frisbee gingerly sat down in his chair. Taking a sheet of paper from her apron, she meticulously marked down the dial settings, exactly as he had left them. Except for the diminishing sound of footsteps, the laboratory building was silent, with the unique quiet of a deserted structure. Through the window she could see the gigantic antenna aiming toward the stars. As always she experienced a momentary thrill of combined excitement and reverential awe. She waited till she heard the closing of the front door of the building. Then with practiced fingers she flicked some switches. The equipment hummed quietly. She swung toward the keyboard and began picking out letters with her forefingers. Finally she took a page from a mail-order catalogue from her purse and slowly typed out the catalogue numbers. She didn't hurry. Dr. Morrow would now be finishing his lunch in his car. Afterwards he would take a stroll around the laboratory grounds. He was a man of regular, dependable habit. * * * * * It had all begun one evening about five months before, when Mrs. Frisbee had attended a revivalist meeting. Simple soul that she was, with her increasing years and the passing of many of her friends, Mrs. Frisbee had begun to experience a desire to make peace with her maker. "You are all sinners," the preacher had thundered, "and you need the most powerful voice in the world to speak for you!" It made quite an impression! It seemed the hand of providence when Mrs. Frisbee learned that a newly completed astronomical-radio station was seeking janitorial personnel. She quickly applied and was hired. It was at first only a vague germ of an idea. Slowly the idea crystallized as she inquired of the technicians just how it was operated. It wasn't really difficult, she learned. An electronic typewriter was used, converting letters and words into mathematical language, then automatically beaming the data out into the vastness of space. It took time, but she even learned what dials and switches to operate so there would be no record of her messages. The station had been established to try to contact intelligences on other planets or star systems. An idiotic waste, the critics complained. Mrs. Frisbee agreed. Except for occasional space static nothing had ever been received. Mrs. Frisbee knew this from hearing the men talk. Still they kept trying, constantly listening, and at regular intervals transmitting basic mathematics, recognizable by any civilization. She had arranged her work so that her midnight break came when she was cleaning the control room. There was only a single scientist on night duty, currently Dr. Morrow, who left the equipment on automatic reception while on his lunch break. Mrs. Frisbee never needed but half the time he was gone. Her first prayer had been a brief one. Gripped with religious fervor Mrs. Frisbee had typed awkwardly, one finger at a time. The whirring of the equipment as it transmitted her words of devotion out to the farthest reaches of space was as balm to her soul. It was a month later that she decided to test her contact with the divine with a simple request, an apron she had seen in a catalogue. It would be an ideal birthday present for Mrs. Upjohn, she thought. Days and weeks passed and Mrs. Frisbee had almost lost faith, when suddenly one evening, as she was quietly sewing, the apron appeared, bright and gay on her small table. She rubbed her eyes. It was truly wondrous. The thanks she gave in that evening's message were profuse. As time passed she asked for other items from the catalogue for gifts for other friends. All were delivered miraculously after a few days. Mrs. Frisbee was at peace--with the world, with herself, and with her maker. Her simple life was full. She had a proven faith, with miracles occurring as she desired them. There was no end to the people she met who needed things, and seemingly no difficulty in having her requests fulfilled. Quite often she was tempted to explain it all to her good friend, Mrs. Upjohn. But something always kept her from telling, a feeling that it might be sacrilegious somehow to discuss it. Only one thing occasionally puzzled Mrs. Frisbee. Though she always ordered the presents from the mail-order catalogue, they seemed superior in quality and workmanship to any purchased articles.... * * * * * The barracks-room language coming from General Collin's office caused his aide to raise his eyebrows. He hadn't heard the General use such terms since Korea. General Collin was even more incredulous than the colonel, the major and the captain had been before him, as each was told. "It's impossible," he exploded into the telephone. "When did you blankety idiots first discover it?" After a brief pause he barked, "Double the guard!" A moment later he barked again, "Damn it, then triple it!" He sat back stunned. What would the chief say? He shuddered at the thought. His eyes narrowed reflectively, and after a moment he reached again for the phone. "Have you contacted any other bases?" His voice was now quiet and low. After a brief pause he added, "Come to my office as soon as possible with everything you have on the situation." He steeled himself for the next call, reluctantly reaching for the special red telephone. His orderly mind presented the facts he had learned as clearly as possible. "I don't know," he answered a question. "No sir, I haven't contacted AEC or State yet. I'd like to check on it further." Then finally, "Complete secrecy, yes, sir. I'm making a thorough security check." An undercurrent of frantic excitement quickly engulfed Washington's top councils, involving even the President. The National Security Council and Chiefs of Staff were called into emergency session. Grim-visaged star-shouldered officers hurried through Pentagon corridors. Newsmen knew only that something quite serious was taking place, something that vitally affected the national security. Whispers of a "secret Russian weapon" began to be heard. From the Pentagon, orders went out to every military base. CIA agents and military scientists were hurriedly called, were asked enigmatic questions and were given grim instructions. A few days later, a call came again to General Collin. He had half-expected it. He reached again for the red phone. "It's happened again!" He bit off his words in his exasperation. "Yes! Right in front of a television monitor. The film is being rushed to Washington." He listened a moment, then nodded. "That's right, just disappeared! Completely dematerialized!" He received a bit of a shock in turn. "Two other bases also? Good God!" Then, "Yes, sir, I'll fly in to-night." At the top level meeting the next morning the Under-Secretary of State interrupted the discussion. "We have just received a peculiar message from the British Embassy," he said. "They are asking about the security of--" He lowered his voice even though the room was sound-proof. Everyone about the table looked soberly at each other. Security Council meetings became continuous around-the-clock sessions. The top civilian scientists of the country were brought in and the situation explained to them. As one they shook their heads. A Nobel prize winner in Physics put it flatly. "It is beyond our comprehension, far beyond the state of our knowledge!" * * * * * Central intelligence reported daily on the political and scientific activities in key spots of the world. A spurt of high-level meetings in Moscow was noticed and duly reported. This ominous news was received with a depression bordering on hysteria. "We have underestimated their technological advancement again," said the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "We must increase our production efforts. We must solve this puzzle--" he spoke slowly, in measured tones of the utmost gravity--"even at the expense of all other research efforts! This must have the highest possible priority!" Orders to this effect were quickly issued. "I don't understand the Soviet mind," puzzled the Secretary of State. "At the diplomatic level they are seemingly going farther than ever before in making concessions and overtures toward peace!" "And while they try to lull us politically," fumed the Secretary of Defense, "they are leaving us practically defenseless with their scientific thievery!" He slammed the table with his fist. "We must be on our guard! We must increase our research efforts! And SAC must be placed on an emergency alert, ready for instant retaliation!" And each day, despite the frenzied increase in mining and refining activity, a report on the dwindling military capabilities of the United States was given the President. The day finally arrived when he gravely addressed the Security Council. "As of today," the President said, "we are unable adequately to defend our country! Our production capabilities cannot keep up with what we are losing. We are left only with our conventional weapons." He paused. "God help us, we are at their mercy!" A worried-looking Under-Secretary rushed into the Council chamber and whispered something into the President's ear. The President's face grew white. He rose slowly. "Gentlemen." His quiet voice reflected a rigid control. "Mr. Khrushchev is placing a personal call to me on a matter, which he says, is of the utmost urgency." He paused. "Please wait until I return." The group of men, carrying on their shoulders the responsibility of the defense of the United States of America and all the free world, sat in quiet dejection, heads bowed. Long minutes passed. No one felt up to meeting the eyes of anyone else about the table. As the President re-entered the chamber, the members of the Security Council rose. The atmosphere was heavy with foreboding. He spoke slowly and clearly, his face expressionless. "Mr. Khrushchev says he desires to establish a true peace with us. He will agree to all our terms: complete inspection, atomic test ban, disarmament, anything of a reasonable nature!" He looked around the shocked room. Relief, puzzlement, suspicion, were mirrored on various faces. "I'm sure I don't understand all this," the President continued. "I doubt if any of you do. But if the Soviet Union is sincere in desiring a true peace--!" His voice became very quiet. "We shall certainly meet them halfway!" * * * * * Veux looked up from the account book with a grunt of approval, then reached for the drink his partner held out. "Well," Tai said. "Didn't I tell you business would be good this period?" Veux nodded and downed his drink. "Excellent, but I see that most of our profit came from native trade!" His eyes narrowed. "It looks illegal! Are you supplying arms for a revolution somewhere?" Tai's smile became contemptuous. "No, it's just local products, native trivia. We drop-chuted survey robots, then called them back and installed a delivery system. The robot picks up samples by dematerialization and I synthesize them." "But so much profit! Aren't there any complaints?" Tai laughed. "On the contrary, I get thanked after each delivery, plus a request for something else. Natives are the same everywhere. Just suckers, waiting to be trimmed!" "I don't want to get into any trouble over this!" Veux looked dubious. Tai refilled the glasses. "Well, our business charter says we must fill and deliver any legitimate order we get!" "If it's legitimate!" Veux studied the deep ruby of his drink. "Which of our colonies is it?" Tai hesitated slightly. "It's not one of our colonies. The orders are from subsystem CQ!" "What!" Veux's eyes flashed. "You know we're not supposed to have any contact at all with them! They're under official observation!" "Don't worry, don't worry." Tai's voice exuded confidence. "No one can prove we've broken a single law." "I don't understand." Tai's expression was one of exaggerated innocence. "Everything is automatic. Radio orders for goods are received, translated and filled, with robot delivery." He winked at his partner. "How can anyone prove I ever bothered to check the source?" "But the profit? What do you trade?" "Aha! I was waiting for you to ask that. I set the robot to detect and take a unit of energy metal each trip!" "Energy metal?" Veux jerked upright. "Yes, but they're running out." Tai sighed. "The robot reports he has had to go clear to the other side of the planet to fill his quota. There's only enough scattered around for a few more trips!" "I guess we can't complain," Veux said. They clinked their glasses. 
52574	----	THIRD PLANET By MURRAY LEINSTER [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of Tomorrow April 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The aliens had lost their lives to nuclear war--but their loss might be the salvation of Earth! I It was, as usual, a decision on which the question of peace or atomic war depended. The Council of the Western Defense Alliance, as usual, had made the decision. And, as usual, the WDA Coordinator had to tell the Com Ambassador that the Coms had won again. The WDA would not risk atomic war over a thirty-mile shift of a national border in southeast Asia. "Perhaps," said the Com Ambassador politely, "it will be easier for you personally if I admit that our Intelligence Service has reported the decision of your Council." He paused, and added, "in detail." The Coordinator asked wearily, "How much detail?" "First," said the Ambassador, "you are to insist that no decision has been reached. You are to play for time. If I do not agree, you are to offer to compromise. If I do not agree, you are to accept the settlement we suggested. But you are to ask urgently for time in which to remove the citizens we might feel ought to be shot. This is not an absolute condition, but you are to use every possible means to persuade me to grant it." The Coordinator ground his teeth. But the Council wouldn't go to war for a few thousand citizens of an Asiatic country--who would probably be killed in the war anyhow. There would be millions killed in Western countries if the war did come. "I have much respect for you," said the Ambassador politely, "so I agree to three days of delay during which you may evacuate disloyal citizens by helicopter. On the fourth day our troops will move up to the new border. It would be unfortunate if there were clashes on the way." "We can't get them out in three days!" protested the Coordinator. "It's impossible! We haven't enough copters!" "With warning to flee," said the Ambassador, "many can reach the new border on foot." The Coordinator ground his teeth again. That would be a public disgrace--and not the first one--for the WDA for not protecting its friends. But the public in the Western nations did not want war. It would not allow its governments to fight over trivial matters. Its alliance could not make threats. On the other hand, the public in the Com nations had no opinions its governments had not decreed. The Com nations could threaten. They could even carry out threats, though made for trivialities. So the WDA found itself yielding upon one point after another. Eventually it would fight, and fight bravely, but too late. The Coordinator said heavily, "You will excuse me, Mr. Ambassador. I have to see about getting as many copters as possible to southeast Asia." * * * * * Some hundreds of light-years away, the Survey ship _Lotus_ floated in space, a discreet number of millions of miles from the local sun. It was on a strictly scientific mission, so it would not be subject to Com suspicion of having undesirable political intentions. At least they hadn't demanded to have an observer on board. Com intelligence reports were notoriously sound, however, and possibly spies had assured their employers that the _Lotus's_ mission was bona fide. Her errand was the mapping and first-examination of a series of sol-type solar systems. This was the ninth such system on the list. The third planet out from the sun, here, lay off to starboard. It was near enough to have a visible disk to the naked eye, and moderate magnification showed ice-caps and permanent surface markings that could be seas and continents. As was to be expected, it was very much like a more familiar third planet out--Earth. The skipper gave Nolan the job of remote inspection while the gross examination of the system went on. Nolan had a knack for such work, and much of it naturally fell to him. "Okay!" he said resignedly, "Another day, another world!" "My private nightmare," said the skipper, with humor, "is bug-eyed monsters. Try not to find 'em here, Nolan. Eh?" He'd said that eight times before on this voyage. Nolan said, "My private nightmare is getting home and finding out that while we've been finding new worlds for men to live on, they've started a war and made Earth a place to die on. Try to arrange that it doesn't happen before we get home. Eh?" He'd said that eight times before on this voyage, too. "I wish us both luck. Nolan," said the skipper. "But that ball out yonder looks plausible as a nest for bug-eyed monsters!" He shook his head and went out. He was still being humorous. Nolan set up his instruments and went to work. As he worked, he tried to thrust away the thoughts that came to everybody on Earth every day. They were as haunting, some light-centuries from Earth, as back at home. There was the base the Coms were building on the moon. The WDA had an observatory there, but the Coms were believed to be mounting many more rockets than telescopes. And there was that unsatisfying agreement made between the Coms and WDA just before the _Lotus_ took off. Each promised solemnly to notify the other of all space take-offs before they happened. The idea was to prevent a mistake by which a Pearl-Harbor-style attack might be inferred when it wasn't really happening. The fact that it could be prepared against was evidence of the kind of tension back on Earth. But the _Lotus_ was far from home. She lay some seventy-odd millions of miles out from the sol-type star Fanuel Alpha, whose third planet Nolan was to look over. He sent off a distance-pulse and took angular measurements of the planet's disk. The ratio of polar to equatorial diameters was informative. The polar flattening said that the day lasted about thirty hours. Almost like Earth's. The equatorial diameter of 8200 miles was much like Earth's. The inclination of the axis of rotation indicated seasons--not exaggerated, but much like the seasons on the third planet of Sol. The size of the ice-caps indicated the overall planetary temperature. There were clouds. In fact, there was a cloudmass in the southern hemisphere that looked just like an Earthly tropic storm undergoing the usual changes as it went away from the equator. This was very much like Earth! And the dark masses which were seas.... * * * * * Nolan frowned. Those mud-colored patches were water. Undoubtedly. A narrow-band light filter proved it. But the areas which were neither sea nor cloud mass? There were three levels of brightness to be seen on the disk outside the polar areas. One was sea-bottom. One was cloud. The other.... Nolan fretted a little. There was something wrong. The solid ground surface of the planet was too light in color. It was such items that a person with a knack for it would notice sooner than a man without the knack. Vegetation should be more nearly midway between sea-bottom and cloud mass in color. Nolan fitted in the chlorophyll filter. On the planet of a sol-type sun, vegetation had to use chlorophyll or else. Through this filter the clouds would show, of course. They were white and reflected all colors of light. But no color that chlorophyll didn't reflect could pass through the filter. The cloud masses showed clearly. Nothing else appeared. The filters would have shown vegetation. It didn't. It said there wasn't any. Nolan stepped up the magnification. He saw other things. He didn't like them. He got some maximum-magnification pictures and interpreted them with increasing grimness. He went to make his report just as the system constants began to reach the skipper. The local sun's mass was 1.3 sols. The solar rotation period was thirty-four days. There were sunspots of perfectly familiar kinds. The Lauriac Laws about the size and distribution of planets in a sol-type system were borne out. One was small, and its sunward side was probably at a low red heat. This was like Mercury. Planet Two, like its analogue Venus in the home system, would be resolutely unoccupiable by man. Planet Four--analogous to Mars--was smaller than Three and had a very thin atmosphere. There were gas-giants in orbits six and seven. Then a novelty Lauriac's laws predicted things about fifth planets, too, but they'd never been verified because fifth planets were unstable. They blew up. Only fragments--asteroids--had so far been noted where fifth planets of sol-type suns ought to be. But there was a fifth planet here, rolling magnificently through emptiness. It matched the Lauriac predictions. It had an atmosphere, which should contain oxygen. It was the first sol-system fifth planet ever observed. There was a babble in the skipper's office as the discoverers of the fifth planet told him about it. Nolan said curtly, "I've something more urgent to report. Planet Three ought to be like Earth. It was. It isn't, any longer. It's dead!" Nobody paid attention. There was a fifth planet! It was unparalleled! All the theories about the absence of fifth planets could now be checked! "I'm telling you," said Nolan sharply, "that the third planet's dead! It was alive, and something happened to it! It has seas and clouds and ice-caps, and they're water! But its land surface is pure desert! Where life can exist, it does. Always! Life did exist here. Now it doesn't." He turned to the skipper, "Maybe bug-eyed monsters killed it, skipper. It looks to me like murder!" Then they stared at him. He spread out his pictures. He pointed out this item and that. They were conclusive. Nobody else might have realized the facts behind them quite so soon, but when put together they fitted. "Familiar, eh?" asked Nolan sardonically. "You recognize the pictures like them before. They weren't made with cameras, like these, but artists drew them from descriptions of what would happen. Here it's happened! I think," he added, looking at the skipper, "that this is more important than fifth planets. I think we'd better go over and get what information we can and take it home. Death like this implies life a lot like men. If non-human creatures can do something as human as this, we'd better get the word back home so something can be done to get ready before we find them--or they find us." The skipper went carefully over the pictures. On one he put his finger on a feature Nolan hadn't mentioned. He seemed to wince. "I think you win, Nolan," he said painfully. "We'll send a drone down. I doubt we can land, but this ought to be checked. Immediately. Maybe I should add--inconspicuously." * * * * * "Confidentially," said the Com Ambassador to the Coordinator of the WDA, "confidentially I agree that it is a trivial matter. But we are a new nation. Our people lack perspective. They rejoice in the strength and vigor of the nation of which they are citizens. They will not allow that nation to display what they consider weakness in any matter. One has to allow for a certain exuberance in the people of a nation newly freed from the tyranny of capitalists and warmongers such as still enslave the people of your countries. We cannot yield in this matter." The Coordinator said: "To be confidential in my turn, we both know that what you just said simply isn't true. Your government decides what its public shall think. It makes sure they don't think anything it doesn't want them to." The Com Ambassador shrugged his shoulders. He was very polite. He did not even pretend to resent being called a liar. "Now, my country intends to move forward in this matter in ten days," he observed. "And it would be deplorable if our soldiers were fired on." II It turned out that it wouldn't have mattered if the _Lotus_ had sent screaming notifications of its presence throughout all nearby space. There were detectors out, of course, but they reported absolutely nothing as the _Lotus_ moved on toward Planet Three. There was static from storms upon the planet. It grew louder as the survey ship approached. But there was no sign of anything alive. The _Lotus_ cruised some two hundred miles above seas and cloud masses and desert, photographing as she followed a search pattern that covered all the sunlit hemisphere. There were mountains in the tropics which by all the rules of meteorology should have had rain forests at their feet. They didn't. There was a river system which ran like the Nile for a thousand miles or more, through deserts like those of Egypt. There should have been at least a ribbon of vegetation along its banks. There wasn't. Where it reached the sea was an enormous delta. A drone went down and reported temperatures and humidity and the composition of the atmosphere, and the radiation background count. One would have thought the records those of Earth. The background count was a trifle high--3.9 instead of 3.6--but there was eighteen per cent of oxygen in the atmosphere. The only oddity, there, was nearly a full per cent of helium. When the drone came up it brought samples of soil and sea water. There was no life in either. The soil was mostly mineral dust, but an electron microscope disclosed abraded fractions of pollen grains and the like. The sea water sample had evidently been picked up by the drone's dredge from some shallow. There were tiny, silicious shells in it. Plankton. They had been alive, but were so no longer. "I think," said Nolan, "that I make a landing. Right?" The skipper said crossly, "Yes. You're the best man for it. You notice things. But I doubt you'll learn very much." He tapped the written report that the radiation background count was 3.9. "It happened a long time ago. A long, long time ago!" Then he said with a totally unsuccessful attempt at humor, "Try and find out that it was bug-eyed monsters, eh? It looks too much like Earth! I'd rather blame monsters than men!" Nolan growled and went to prepare for the landing. Two other men would go with him, of course. The _Lotus_ wouldn't descend. It cost fuel to make landings. Unless there was some remarkable specimen that a drone couldn't handle the ship would stay aloft. So a drone took three of them down to ground, a second drone following with equipment. They had weapons, of course. Men never land anywhere without weapons. They had the material for a foam-house camp. They had a roller-jeep, running on huge inflated bags. It would run efficiently on anything from sand to swamp mud, and float itself across bogs or rivers. They had cameras and communicators. Nolan had picked Crawford for geology and Kelley for communications. They could get other specialists from the ship, if desirable. The ground where they landed was desert: nothing more. There were enormous dunes like gigantic frozen swells of sand. Sometimes there were miles between crests. They landed close to the mud banks northern ice-cap to avoid the deep gorges in which rivers ran farther south. On the first day they set up their camp. Mountains reared to the north of them, covered almost to their bases with ice. These they need not explore. Instruments would do most of the landing-party work, in any case. But they inflated small balloons and sent them skyward, to learn about currents of the upper air, and Crawford took painstaking photographs of dune formations, and they set up a weather radar. They checked the water recovery from the camp's air-conditioner. It would supply their needs. When night drew near, with all instruments recording, they watched the sunset. * * * * * It was amazing how splendid and how magnificent a sunset could be. Not many men see sunsets these days. The three of them, aground at the ice-cap's edge, saw enormous mile-long dunes reaching away as far as it was possible to see. They cast black shadows. Then glories of crimson and gold rose from the western horizon of this dead and empty world. There was ice and snow upon the mountains, and unbelievable tints and blends of colors appeared there. After a long, long time the light faded away. Then there was nothing to see but the stars, and nothing to listen to at all. This world was dead. They went in their camp-house and shut out the dark and the silence. On the second day, Nolan went in search of permafrost. Their instruments faithfully recorded everything they needed except such items as this. Nolan found permanent ice in a valley of the northern mountains. It was perpetually frozen ground which might not have thawed in a thousand thousand years. He dug down through surface ice to the permanently frozen soil beneath it. That soil was not desert sand. And preserved in it Nolan found the blackened roots of plants, and the blackened blades of something like grass, and even some small, indefinite objects which had been seeds or fruit. They hadn't died with the planet. They were far older than that catastrophe. But they were proof that once this world lived and throve. During what was left of the day-light, Nolan and Kelley went south to a river gorge and photographed it for the record. The river had cut a gorge a full two hundred feet deep in the wind-deposited dust which was everywhere. There were now-dry gullies which undercut the dune-sides and at times dumped mud into the slowly flowing liquid of the river. There were no colorings save dust and mud. The river itself was mud. It flowed very, very slowly and without elation. They came back depressed. An airless planet holds no life, but it defies life to establish itself. A methane-ammonia planet fights the intrusion of men with monstrous frigid storms. But this world was designed for life. That it was dead was tragedy. Its rivers flowed sullen, syrupy mud which moved reluctantly toward the lifeless seas. Kelley wouldn't look at the sunset this second night. He went into the camp and turned on music. Crawford watched for a little while only. There were clouds. There were breezes. One knew that here and there rain fell in gentle showers which should have nourished grasses and flowers and filled the air with fragrance. But instead it fell upon impalpable dust and turned it to mud which flowed slowly into gullies and into rivers which were also mud and moved onward, until perhaps after years the soil would become part of a mud-bank in the ocean. Nolan came into the foam-walled house and said shortly, "We'll finish up tomorrow and leave." Kelley said abruptly. "Nobody's made any guess about why everything died, here. But we all know!" Crawford said reflectively, "It must've taken a lot of intelligence to murder this planet. When d'you suppose it happened?" "Ten thousand--twenty thousand years ago," said Nolan. "The whole place must have been radioactive, air and all. But if they used cobalt the background count could be down to 3.9 in ten or twenty thousand years." "We haven't," said Kelley, "seen any craters. Even the pictures from out in space didn't show bomb-craters." "When everything died and turned to dust," said Nolan, "there'd be dust storms. There still must be. They'd cover anything! There was a terrific civilization in part of what's now the Sahara, back on Earth. By pure accident they've found a patch of highway and a post-house. Everything else is covered up. Cities, highways, dams, canals.... And that's heavy sand instead of fine dust! The _Lotus_ found some shadows on a photo. They want us to look and see what cast them. We'll look at it tomorrow and then leave." Crawford said deliberately: "We three have had a preview of what Earth will be like before too long! I wonder if it would do any good on Earth to show them what we've found?" "It's being argued on the ship," said Nolan. "Some say we'd better suppress the whole business." Crawford considered. "The Coms aren't a very believing people," he said slowly. "But our people are. If we report this, our people will believe it. But the Coms can tell their people it is lies. Our people will want peace more than ever if they see what a war will mean. But the big-shot Coms will just take that as a reason to demand some more concessions, and more, and more. Like demanding to build a base on the moon...." "I'm going to bed," said Nolan. He added ironically, "I hope you have pleasant dreams!" * * * * * He did go to bed, but he slept very badly. The others slept no better. All three of them were up before sunrise. They saw it. And to Nolan the coming of the light seemed somehow like an eager arrival of the new day, anxious to see if some tiny thread of green somewhere lifted proudly from brown earth to greet it. But none ever did. Or would. "We should be through by noon," said Nolan. They set out in the jeep. They abandoned the camp. They would abandon the jeep, too, presently, when they went up the ship that waited in orbit. They headed west, and Kelley took over the microwave set that sent a wide-fanning beacon skyward. The _Lotus_ was in orbit now. Every ninety minutes she was overhead. She'd completed the mapping of the planet. Every square foot of its surface had been photographed from aloft. They drove. The ungainly inflated bags which took the place of wheels rolled unweariedly, at first over dew-wetted dust and then over the minor gullies which, so near the ice-cap, were not yet gorges. They went on for twenty miles, and the abomination of desolation was all about them. "We shouldn't tell about this back home," said Kelley abruptly. "If the Com people saw it, they'd know that no--" his tone was ironic--"national aspiration justified the risk of this. But they wouldn't see it. And our people might look at it and decide that anything was better than this. But it isn't." Nolan said nothing. He didn't believe that the discovery of this dead planet could be kept a secret for very long. The mountains drew back to northward and the desert took their place. The _Lotus_ went by overhead, unseen. But it gave a message to Kelley. "We're on course," he reported. "The ship just said so. Ten miles more." In ten miles they came upon a city, or what had been one. It was partly buried in the omnipresent dust. That is, they saw part of a city's remnants showing in the mile wide trough between dunes hundreds of feet high. There were other remnants between two other dunes, and still more in yet other troughs beyond. Structures of stone had existed, and portions of them remained. They had cast shadows the _Lotus_ had discovered from aloft. The stone remains were abraded by the dust-carrying winds of a hundred centuries. Their roofs had been crushed when monster dunes formed over them. They had been reexposed to the sunshine when winds moved the dunes away. There was no metal left. No glass. No artifacts. They had been buried tens or hundreds of times, and uncovered as many. There was nothing left but skeletons of stone which cast angular shadows, though their fragments were rounded by centuries of patient wind erosion. It had been a very great city, but Nolan made the only observation that could tell anything about its occupants. "The builders of this city," he said tonelessly, "used doors about the same size we do." And that was all they could find out. Presently: "New York will be like this eventually," said Crawford. "And Chicago. And everywhere else." Kelley spoke suddenly into the microwave transmitter. He said sharply to the ship, invisibly overhead: "Yes! Send down the drone! We've had it!" * * * * * The Council-member from Brazil made an impassioned speech in the supposedly secret meeting of the Western Defense Alliance. He pointed out with bitter factuality that no past yielding to Com demands had gained anything. Further yielding would be suicidal. He made a fierce demand that the WDA present a united front against this fresh diplomatic pressure. That it refuse, flatly and firmly and with finality, to make a single concession on a single point. It was a good speech. It was an excellent speech. It and others like it should have been made a long time before. The Coordinator of the Western Defensive Alliance nodded at its end. "I agree," he said, "with every word the representative from Brazil has spoken. I think we all agree. The practical thing to do, of course, is to send a combined expeditionary force to maintain the independence of Sierra Leone. This force should be formed of contingents from every Western Defense Alliance nation, and it should have orders to prevent the entry of Com troops into Sierra Leone territory. I do not think that anything less will prevent the extinction of another member nation of the Western Defense Alliance. Will any Council member propose such action for a vote?" There was a pause. Then babblings. It would mean war! It would mean atomic war! Tens or hundreds of millions of human beings would die over a matter affecting less than two hundred thousand! It was ridiculous! Public opinion-- The Council meeting ended with no vote upon the matter. Without even a proposal on which a vote could be taken. Two days later, Com troops from one of the African Com nations moved in and occupied Sierra Leone. A great many of its citizens were shot, some for opposing the new state of affairs, but some seemingly just on general principles. III The _Lotus_ went on toward Planet Five, leaving a world which should have been alive and wasn't, to go to a world which should not exist, but did. On the way there was argument which became embittered. In theory, the discoveries made by a Survey ship became automatically available to all the world. But the discovery of Three in the state it was in would have political results on Earth. It was--and is--a fact that nobody really believes in death until he sees a dead man. And nobody can believe in the destruction of a planet unless he's seen the corpse or color photographs of it. But that was precisely what the _Lotus_ had to carry back to Earth. The WDA nations would see those pictures and read the facts. They would believe in atomic war and the complete sterilization of a world. The Com nations would not see the pictures. They would continue to believe that the West--the WDA--was decadent and enslaved to tyrannical warmongers, and obviously could not resist the splendid armed forces of the Com association. And they wouldn't really believe there could be more than isolated, crazy resistance to their valiant troops. So they'd back their leaders with enthusiasm, and the Western peoples at most would be merely desperate. The _Lotus_ arrived at Planet Four--which by the Lauriac laws should have been similar to Mars. It was almost its twin. It had ice-caps of hoarfrost and its atmosphere was thin and barely contaminated by oxygen. A base could be maintained here, of course, provided one had a source of supply. A base here, incidentally, would have much the value of the Com base on Luna. The _Lotus_ did not find that base. It found no cities or signs of settlement. But it did find a bombcrater, miles across and it seemed miles deep. There was an accumulation of reddish dust at its bottom, trapped from the thin winds that blew over this half-frozen world. The _Lotus_ went on to Planet Five. The sun, so far out, was very small and its warmth was barely perceptible. But there was vegetation. The surface temperature was above freezing. The Lauriac Laws had predicted that the central metallic core would be small, and the greater part of its mass should be stony. The radioactives in Earth's thin rocky crust produce a constant flow of heat from the interior to the surface. It is considered that it is enough heat to melt a fraction of an inch of ice in a year. On this planet, with a crust many hundreds instead of mere scores of miles thickness, the internal heat was greater. The world was not frozen, and life existed here. It was a pallid, unnatural sort of life which had developed to live in starlight with a feeble assist from a very bright nearby star which happened to be its sun. There was a base here, too. Kelley located it when he found a resonant return of certain frequencies from the ground. It was not a reflection, but resonance. And so they found the base. It had been built by engineers the humans on the _Lotus_ could only admire. There were gigantic doors which could admit the _Lotus_ herself. They were rusted shut and had to be opened with explosives. There were galleries and tunnels and laboratories. There were missile launchers and missile-storage chambers. There was a giant dome housing a telescope men had not even dreamed of equalling. It was not an optical telescope. Ultimately they found a mortuary, where the members of the garrison were placed when they died. The _Lotus_ was not equipped for the archeological and technological studies the base called for. Its function was to scout out things for especially qualified expeditions to study. And, of course, there was the political situation back on Earth.... * * * * * On the fourth day after landing, the skipper sent for Nolan. The skipper sweated a little. "Nolan," he said querulously, "we've found something." "A bug-eyed monster?" asked Nolan dourly. "No." The skipper mopped his forehead. "Back yonder, on Three, you took a few looks from twenty million miles and figured out what had happened there. We'd have worked it out eventually, but you saw it at once. You're lucky that way. Now we've found something. It's an--instrument. We're short on time. Come with me and make some guesses." He led the way, explaining jerkily as he went. The thing was in a room by itself, with its own air system and apparently its own food store. It was inside four successive systems of locked doors--all of them inches-thick stainless steel. It was intended that the last door could be opened from inside. It was evidently the very heart of the armed base on Planet Five. Anything sealed up like that would have to be either incredibly valuable or incredibly dangerous. Nolan followed through the shattered doors, and presently the skipper made a helpless gesture. There was the discovery. It looked more like an old-fashioned telescope than anything else. It had a brass barrel, and it was very solidly mounted, and there were micro-micro adjustments to point it with almost infinite exactitude. It had been sealed in a completely air-tight environment, and what moisture was present had combined with other metals. It wasn't rusted. There was an eyepiece, placed in an improbable position, and there was a trigger. It wasn't like a gun-trigger, but it couldn't have any other purpose. There was no porthole for it to fire through. The compartment in which it had been sealed was deep underground. Nolan said uneasily: "It's a weapon, of course." "Of course!" said the skipper. He mopped his forehead. "I--I think we should take it home. It might make a difference to WDA. But we don't know what it does! It could be a mistake...." Nolan walked around it. He saw that it could be aimed in almost any direction. But not quite. There was a direction that stops prevented it from pointing to. Nolan said: "What's in that direction?" The skipper jumped. When Nolan asked the question he began to suspect many answers. He said in a stricken voice, "That's where the missiles were launched--and where the others are stored." Nolan stared at the thing. It looked hateful. It had the savage feel of a frozen snarl. "The power-pile?" The skipper nodded. He mopped his face again. "Right alongside. We figured they wanted to shield the rest of the base from radioactives." Nolan said carefully: "It could be that they wanted to shield the radioactives from something in the base. Maybe something that would act on radioactives is involved." He said painfully, "Men can't change the rate of fission except by building up a critical mass. But maybe--possibly bug-eyed monsters could." The skipper perspired. He'd have worked out the same thing in the long run, but Nolan saw it right away. He went away and got the ship's engineers. They brought an X-ray for finding flaws in metal. They took pictures of the inwards of the brass-barreled instrument in its place. They traced two separate, incomprehensible circuits. But they were separate. * * * * * At long last the skipper nodded permission for Nolan to try the eyepiece, to see what it showed with heavy metal and much soil and vegetation atop it. They taped the trigger so it could not be moved. The controls affecting the eyepiece they left free. The skipper almost dripped sweat as Nolan turned on the eyepiece circuit, peering in. For a long time he saw nothing whatever. Then a tiny disk moved slowly into the eyepiece's field. It was barely larger than a point. Nolan moved one of the eyepiece controls. The disk enlarged. It enlarged again. A tiny red dot appeared in the center of the field of vision. As the disk enlarged, the red dot grew larger and became a tiny red circle. Nolan fumbled. He shifted the position of the instrument with a micro-control. He moved the faintly glowing disk until it was enclosed in the red circle. He enlarged.... Presently the disk was very large, and the red circle ceased to enlarge. It enclosed only a part of the disk. Nolan felt cold chills down his spine. He swallowed and asked for the angular relationship of Planet Four to Three. The skipper sent someone to find it out. But Nolan had found Planet Four before the answer came. The first disk was in some fashion a representation of Planet Three--the Earthlike world which was dead. The second was a representation of Four. There was a bright spot near the equator of Four--the equator being located by the flattening of the poles. It would be just about where a gigantic atom-bomb crater still existed. Nolan drew back and took a deep breath. "Apparently," he said unsteadily, "this eyepiece detects radioactives, converting something that I can't imagine into visible light after it's passed through a few feet of metal and a good many more of dirt. There's a red ring which makes me think of a gun-sight. And there's a trigger. Skipper, would you send half an ounce or so of ship-fuel out to space in a drone? I think we're going to have to pull this trigger." The skipper wrung his hands. He went away. And Nolan stood staring at nothing in particular, appalled and sickened by the thoughts that came to him. Presently the skipper came back and mumbled that a drone was on the way up. Nolan searched for it with the eyepiece. He found it. The sensitivity of the eyepiece was practically beyond belief. What it worked on--what it transmuted and amplified to light--was wholly beyond his imagination. The drone went four thousand miles out. Nolan absently asked for somebody to be posted out of doors, watching the sky. He got the vivid spark that was the half ounce of ship-fuel in the center of the red luminous ring. He turned his eyes away and pulled the trigger. There was no sound. There was no vibration. There was no indication in the underground room that anything at all had happened. There was only a violent flare in the eyepiece, from which Nolan had just drawn back. Someone came shouting from out of doors that there had been an intolerable flash of brilliance in the sky. A few moments later the word came that the drone control board indicated that the drone had ceased to exist. * * * * * The Com Ambassador sighed a little when he saw the expression on the Coordinator's face. Interviews with the titular head of the alliance of all Western nations became increasingly a strain on his politeness. But the Coordinator said grimly: "I think I can guess what you're here to tell me!" The Com Ambassador said politely: "It is painful to--ah--beat around the bush. May I speak plainly?" "Do," said the Coordinator. "Our base on the Moon," said the Ambassador with a fine air of frankness, "some time ago reported military preparations on Earth, among the WDA nations. Those preparations could have no purpose other than an unwarned attack upon us. We felt it necessary, then, to take countermeasures of preparation only. We modified the plans for our moon base to have it contain not only the telescopes and such observational equipment, but to have an adequate armament of missiles. It is now so armed." The Coordinator whitened a little, but he did not look surprised. "Well?" "I have to inform you," said the Com Ambassador, "that any military action directed against any Com nation, or its troops, or the Union of Com Republics, will be met by atomic bombardment from the moon as well as--ah--our standard military establishments. This, of course, does not mean war. To the contrary, we hope that it will end the possibility of war. We trust that all causes of tension between our nations will one by one be removed, and that an era of perpetual peace and prosperity will follow." The Coordinator's lips twisted in an entirely mirthless smile. "Military action against Com troops," he observed, "means resistance to invasion or occupation, doesn't it?" "It would be wiser," said the Ambassador carefully, "to protest than to resist. At least, so it seems to me." The Coordinator of the Western Defense Alliance said: "Tell me something confidentially, Mr. Ambassador. How long before you expect--no. You wouldn't answer that. Ah! How long do you think it will be before I am shot?" The Com Ambassador said politely: "I would hesitate to guess." * * * * * The _Lotus_ started back to Earth with the enigmatic weapon fastened firmly in its cargo hold. Great pains had been taken to keep it from being knocked or shocked or battered in its transfer to the ship. Firmly anchored, Nolan had insisted that the stops, which prevented it from being aimed below the horizon or toward the radioactives in the base, be adjusted so it could not be aimed at the _Lotus's_ own engines or fuel-stores. There were no missiles to worry about, of course. Even this precaution, however, roused doubt and uneasiness, especially among the scientific staff. It was highly probable that when the _Lotus_ reported in from space, the Coms would ask to examine such specimens as she brought back. The request would be expressed as scientific interest, but a refusal would be treated as a concealment of dire designs. There were those on the ship who felt that the weapon should be dismantled and made to seem meaningless, to avoid any chance of a humiliating squabble with the Coms. The skipper roared at them. It was the only time on the voyage when he displayed anger. But he glared at those who proposed the act of discretion. He drove them out of the cabin in which the suggestion was made. He turned to Nolan, who definitely was not a party to it. His manner changed. He said querulously: "Nolan, why do you want that thing mounted so it could be used if necessary?" "That's the way it was mounted on Planet Five. To box it or case it might injure it. To take it apart might mean that it could never be got together in working order again." "Is that the real reason?" demanded the skipper. "It's a good reason, but is it the real one?" "No," admitted Nolan. "It isn't." The skipper fumed to himself. "We might get home," he said fretfully, "and find things just as we left them. Then there'd be no harm in the mounting. We'd at least try to diddle the Coms and get it ashore without their knowing it was important. We might get home and find that war'd broken out and Earth was dead like the Third Planet back yonder, only not all yet turned to desert. Then the mounting wouldn't matter. Nothing would! Or we could find that the Coms had smashed the West and were all cockahoop about what they'd managed to do in a sneak attack. So it had better stay mounted. I covered everything, didn't I?" Nolan wasn't feeling any better than anybody else on the _Lotus_. The jitters that affected everybody but conditioned Coms had been bad when the _Lotus_ went about its business. But when the ship headed for home, nerves got visibly worse. They didn't know what they'd find there. With the third planet of Fanuel Alpha in mind, it was all too easy to believe in disaster. "There's one thing," said Nolan painfully, "that bothers me. I've been trying to think like a Com top brass. The WDA is a well meaning organization, and it's gained time, no doubt. But aside from the Com missiles, ninety-five per cent of the atomic warheads on Earth are in the hands of just one WDA nation. It happens to be ours. It's been bearing most of the load of defense costs for the West. It's the richest country in the world. There's practically no poverty in it." "What has poverty to do with a possible war?" demanded the skipper. "Everything," Nolan said uncomfortably. "The Coms take over a country. They march in. There are rich people and poor people. The Coms start to humiliate and destroy the rich. The poor people hated them. So the Coms are popular long enough to get things going right. But if they tried that in our country--" "It wouldn't work," said the skipper. "Not for a minute." "It wouldn't," agreed Nolan. "Most of our people think of themselves as well to do, and the rest can hope to become so. So the Coms would have to try to govern two hundred million indignant and subversive underground resisters. They couldn't hold down such a country. They wouldn't try!" The skipper blinked. "If you mean they'd leave our country alone--" "I don't," said Nolan. "They'd destroy it. They'd have to. So they might as well destroy it out of hand and destroy most of the fighting potential and a lot of resolution in the West. A well handled atomic-missile bombardment and some luck, and they could take over the rest of the world without trouble. I think that's the practical thing for them to do. I think they'll do it if they can." The skipper grimaced. Then he said, almost ashamedly: "Maybe we're talking nonsense, Nolan. Maybe we've just got bad cases of nerves. Maybe things have gotten better since we left. We could arrive back home and find nobody even dreaming of war any more!" "That," said Nolan, "would scare me to death. That would be the time to make a sneak attack!" Which was pessimism. But nothing else seemed justified. It was not even easy to be hopeful about the value of the fifth-planet weapon to the Western Defensive Alliance. The WDA couldn't use it in a preventive war. Their people wouldn't allow it. The initiative would always remain with the Coms. The _Lotus_ moved Earthward. She carried a more deadly instrument for war than men had ever dreamed of. But the ship's company daily jittered a little more violently. The war might have been fought and be over by now. If it had, the Coms would have won it. * * * * * The Coordinator for the WDA handed the Com Ambassador his passport. "I'm sorry you've been recalled," he said heavily, "Because I think I see the meaning of the move." "I am only called home for conference and instructions," said the Ambassador politely. "I shall miss our friendly chats. We have had a very fine personal relationship, though we have disagreed so often." The Coordinator absently shifted objects on his desk. He said suddenly: "Mr. Ambassador, have I ever lied to you?" The Ambassador raised his eyebrows. Then he smiled. "Never!" he said pleasantly. "I have marveled!" The Coordinator took a quick, sharp breath. "I shall not lie now," he said abruptly. "I hope you will believe me, Mr. Ambassador, when I tell you one of our best-kept military secrets." The Ambassador blinked and then shrugged politely. "You always astonish me," he said mildly. "Your High Command," said the Coordinator grimly, "has decided not to try to take over the nation around us. It is considered impractical. So this nation is to be destroyed, to shatter the backbone of the WDA and make resistance anywhere else unthinkable." The Ambassador said reproachfully: "Ah, but you begin to believe your own propaganda!" "No," said the Coordinator. "I have simply told you the facts you undoubtedly already know. Now I tell you our best-kept military secret. We know that we cannot deal with you. We know that you might be successful in an overwhelming, unwarned attack. We know that if you decide upon war, it will be directed primarily at this nation. So we have set up some very special atomic bombs where it is extremely unlikely that you will find them. They are 'dirty' bombs. They are designed to make the maximum possible amount of radioactive dust--of fallout. Timing mechanisms are set to detonate them. Every day a man goes and sets back the timing mechanism in each place where a bomb is established. On the day that a man fails to do so the bombs will certainly explode." The Coordinator said almost briskly: "We calculate that the bombs will make the atmosphere of the whole Earth lethally radioactive. They will raise the background count on Earth to the point where nothing can live: no plant, no animal, no fish in any sea. This will only happen if this nation is destroyed. It will fight if it is attacked, of course, but your chances of substantial success are good. But if you are successful the Earth will die. I may add that the people of the Com nations will die also, to the last individual." The Ambassador started to his feet. "But you could not do that!" he protested white-lipped. "You cannot!" The Coordinator shrugged and shook his head. "I have not lied to you before, Mr. Ambassador. I do not lie to you now." Then he said formally: "I hope you have a pleasant journey home." IV The _Lotus_ came out of the usual sequence of arrival-hops no more than six light-seconds from Earth. A million miles, more or less; perhaps four times the distance of the Moon. Nolan examined the planet's sunlit face and said steadily: "Nothing's happened yet." There was almost agonized relief. Only the skipper did not seem to relax. He went stolidly to the control-room and got out the scrambler card that matched just one other scrambler card in the world. He put it in the communicator. To speak to Earth by scrambler would be an offense. It would be protested by the Coms. They would insist that a survey ship should have nothing secret to report and that anything secret must be inimical to the Com Association of Nations. The skipper formally reported in, in the clear, and then insisted on completing his report by scrambler. He did complete it, over the agitated protest of the ground. Then there was silence. He mopped his forehead. "Nolan, better get down to the eyepiece. The Coms could send something up to blast us. I'll get the detectors out. You be ready! You're sure you can handle things?" "This is a little bit late to raise the question," said Nolan. "I think I can do it, though." He went down into the hold. He turned on the eyepiece. He saw the distinct, luminous disk which was Earth in the not-at-all-believable field of the impossible instrument. He saw points--not dots--of extremely vivid light. Obviously the size of a radioactive object did not determine the brightness of its report to the weapon from Planet Five of Fanuel Alpha. Something else controlled the brilliance. He saw the groupings of many dimensionless points of light. There were the patterns which meant the silos holding the monster atomic missiles of the West. He could distinguish them from the much more concentrated firing-points of the Com nations. The oceans had few or no bright points at all. There were only so many atomic-powered ocean-going vessels. Nolan could tell well enough which were the Western accumulations of radioactives for defense purposes, and which were the Com stores of warheads. His throat went dry as he realized the power in his hands. Neither he or anyone else could make one blade of grass grow, but he could turn the third planet of this sun into a desert and a dreariness like the third planet of another sun far, far away. The skipper came into the hold. He locked the entrance door behind him. "I got to the Coordinator," he said in a shaking voice. "I started enough trouble by reporting by scrambler. He talked to me. I showed him pictures. He's telling the Coms most of what I reported, saying that if they like they can try to blast us. If they try, and don't succeed, we can try to figure out what to do next." * * * * * The Com premiership was in some ways the equivalent of the office of Coordinator of the Western Defense Alliance. But the men who held the two posts were quite unlike and the amount of authority they could exercise was vastly different. The Com premier read, again, the newly arrived message from the Coordinator. The high officials he'd sent for came streaming into the room. Most of them had flimsies of the message in their hands. The Premier beamed at them. "You have the news," he said humorously. "The WDA Coordinator first threatened to make all Earth's air radioactive if we attacked the--ah--leading member of the WDA and destroyed it. He has evidently decided that this threat is not strong enough. So he assures us that a Western survey ship has come back from an exploring voyage with a cargo of artifacts from a non-human civilization. Among the artifacts there is what he says is the absolute weapon. He says that the skipper who has brought it back claims that it can end the tension between the WDA and us--by ending us!" The Premier chuckled. "He invites us to verify the skipper's claim by attempting to blast the survey ship, whose coordinates of position he gives us. I think he has made a rather substantial error of judgment." His eyes twinkled as he looked from one to another of the high officials he had summoned. "We accepted the invitation," said the Premier. "Naturally! General?" He looked at a tall general officer with twin silver rockets in his lapels. The general said proudly: "Yes, Excellency! Our space-radar located an object at the survey ship's stated position. We sent six rockets with atomic warheads at it. We used satellite-placing rockets for maximum acceleration. They are well on their way now. Of course they can be disarmed or destroyed as well as maneuvered to intercept this survey ship if it attempts to flee. They will reach the target area in just under three hours." The Premier nodded, very humorously. "Since we accepted their invitation, naturally the Western staff concludes that we are disturbed. That we will wait to see what our rockets learn. It would be interesting, but our scientists tell me that the alleged weapon is impossible. Utterly impossible! So it is merely a trick.... And we will not wait for our rockets to arrive. We might be late for our dinners, and we would not like that!" The high officials made sounds of amusement. "So we put our own ending to the comedy," said the Premier blandly. "The circuits are joined?" He asked the question of a craggy-faced service-of-supply colonel. The colonel managed to nod, and was stricken numb by the importance of the gesture. "Then," said the Premier humorously, "we will destroy our enemy." He waddled across the room. He put a pudgy forefinger on a button. He pushed it. Even here, deep underground, there were roaring sounds as rockets took off for the west. All over the Com nations, carefully distributed rocket-firing sites received signals from the one pushbutton. They sent bellowing monsters up into the sky. * * * * * Three Com rockets reached their targets, and Nolan never quite forgave himself for it. They were murderous. They wiped out cities. But that was all. The rest of the rockets went off prematurely. A spread of half a hundred, crossing the North Pole, detonated just out of atmosphere. Others went off over the Atlantic. Not a few made temporary suns above the Pacific. Nolan brought moving specks within the thin red circle of his instrument, and pulled the trigger. The points flamed momentarily and left patches of luminosity behind them. And that was that. But they continued to rise. On Earth they made noises like dragons. There was panic from their starting points. Those first out had not reached their targets! So the Com launching-sites flung more and more missiles skyward. One of them reached a city of the West. A second. A third. The only possible answer was to blast them as they rose. Then to blast them before they rose. Nolan's task became the terribly necessary one of preventing radioactives from moving away from Com territory and into WDA nations--specifically one WDA nation. He did not think of the consequences of his actions except in terms of preventing excessively bright mathematical points of light from getting to the areas where there were so many fewer points of similar light which did not move at all. He tried to stop only those that moved. But three got by him, and he could do nothing but detonate all the radioactives in Com territory. He had to! When that was done, there were six warheads coming up from Earth. He detonated them. There were massed warheads moving toward Earth from the Moon. It seemed that they practically tore space apart that they went off together. Then the moon base began to fire rockets, hysterically, at the _Lotus_, and it was necessary to detonate the radioactives in the moon base. It had been estimated that an atomic war might be over in three hours. But prophecies are usually underestimates. Between the first and last explosions on Earth, in space and on the moon--there was a truly gigantic crater where the Com base had been--some thirty-seven minutes elapsed. Then the war was over. There were some survivors in Com territory, of course. But they couldn't retaliate for the destruction of their nations. Their own bombs had done the destruction. They couldn't even gloat that the rest of Earth shared their catastrophe. It didn't. Most of the bombs exploded high, and over ocean. No less than three-fifths of all fallout landed in the sea and sank immediately. For the rest, the background count on Earth nowhere went above 4.9, and people could be protected against that. The survey ship _Lotus_ came gingerly down to ground. There was no longer any reason for tension. Its crew reported in and scattered to the various places they called home. They were very glad to be back. In the course of time they were all suitably bemedalled and admired and told that their names would live forever. Of course, it was not true. Nolan didn't pay much attention to this. He left the Survey. He went to live in a small town. He married a small-town girl. And he never, never, never took any one of the excursions so many WDA people took to see the result of atomic explosions in Com territory, when their attempt to murder one Western nation backfired. Nolan had caused that backfiring. He very passionately did not want to see its results. He'd seen all he wanted of that sort of thing on the third planet of a sol-type sun, some light-centuries from Earth. 
60303	----	THE BRIDGE BY G. G. REVELLE _His orders were final. And how could these terrified souls know their fate was his own?_ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Two low flying interceptor jets screamed overhead, climbing for much needed altitude as they headed out to sea. The Captain took off his steel helmet and looked up at the thunderous roar just before he leaped from the still moving jeep. When his feet touched the ground he moved quickly, shouting orders at the olive-drab truck convoy he had been leading. He pointed his finger at the side of the road where he wanted the small stuff. The "duce and a half's" he directed to the opposite side of the road. Then he put his helmet back on. He watched as the troops quickly dismounted and assembled. He lighted a cigarette while he waited for his three officers. Only then did he look at the Bridge. The massive steel structure spanning the river was six lanes wide, cantilever style with curved upper and lower cords. The Bridge looked trim and new. It was the Captain's responsibility to see that it stayed that way. He stuck the cigarette in his mouth and reached inside the rear of the jeep and checked his radio set. It was set on K channel, 29.2. He expected no messages, except in an emergency. While he had the time he took a yellow sheet of paper out of his pocket and read the words pasted on it for the fourth time. Somehow they never changed; they always read the same. And each time he got a sinking sensation in his stomach when he read them. Captain Alfred Lowary put the yellow paper away quickly when the three junior officers of the Battery reported. He returned their salutes in a lazy sort of way. He took off his helmet again. "The orders are the same as briefing," he said. "Lieutenant Kastner will take the third platoon across the river to the West side. The second platoon, Lieutenant Tudor, will move North of the entrance on this side and take up position in reserve. Lieutenant Meyers will set up defense on this side." He inhaled on the cigarette and looked at Tudor. "Place your machine guns carefully. I want a cross-fire on that slight bend on the road down there." Tudor nodded. The Captain pinpointed Meyers with his eyes. "You've got the 'hot-spot'.... Just remember.... No one gets on the Bridge!" "But--" Meyers began. "No buts. I said no one. Understand?" Meyers' "Yes, sir," was barely audible. "Any questions?" the Captain asked. They shook their heads negative, except Meyers. He said, "Just one thing, Captain." "What's that, Lieutenant?" Lowary asked. "Are we supposed to shoot our own people?" Lowary's face grew hard. "If we have to, Lieutenant," he said. "If we have to." The tone of his voice told them that he wanted to avoid any discussion on the subject. There was silence. Finally Lowary said, "That's it, then. Let's move." The Officers saluted and began to move off. Tudor took two steps, then halted and returned. "How much time do you think is left, Captain?" he asked. Lowary took in the man's square face, the set of his jaw. Tudor was ex-combat, infantry during the last war. "Who knows, Lieutenant! Minutes ... or hours. It all depends on how strong the enemy is, how fast they're moving, if they are sending a boy to do a man's job." Tudor looked down the river in the direction of the City some thirty miles away. He seemed to have difficulty finding words. Lowary knew what he was thinking and it made him feel weak and inadequate. Lowary said softly, "We knew it would come some day, didn't we, Tudor?" Tudor faced him. "I guess we did ..." he hesitated. "Well?" "I just didn't think I would draw this kind of duty. I don't mind fighting, I've had my share. But I guess I feel as Meyers does. This will be something new for me, shooting my own people." "Perhaps we won't have to," Lowary said. Tudor stepped back a pace and gave him a salute. "You don't believe that any more than I do, Captain." He began to walk away swiftly. Lowary watched him go and he wondered how many men in the Battery were thinking the same thing? It could create a serious psychological block. Damn it. It was bothering him too. But he could do it if he had to. He knew he could. He climbed into his jeep and adjusted the radio squelch button, cutting down on the steady crackling noise. He found himself repeating under his breath. _I can do it because I know I have to. I can do it because...._ He jammed down on the starter and shoved the gearshift into first. He had to force the thoughts from his mind. He had orders to follow; orders left no room for personal feelings. Yet he knew the yellow paper in his pocket was mocking him. * * * * * The jeep was opposite the bridge entrance when he halted it momentarily. Lieutenant Meyers was busy talking to a machine-gunner named Morgan. As Lowary recalled, from what little he had seen during the three weeks he had been commanding the outfit since his transfer from the middle west, Morgan was a conscientious type of soldier. Meyers was making a good choice for such a delicate position. He moved on. The tires made a low singing sound when he rolled on the bridge, heavy tread pounding on steel grating. A sign attached to an upright girder caught his eye. He smiled sardonically and he wondered what the author had in mind when he phrased it. It said: IN EVENT OF AIR ATTACK--DRIVE OFF THE BRIDGE. The Captain shook his head. When he got to the center of the bridge he halted the jeep. He got out and crossed over the lanes to the south railing and looked down at the gray water. It looks muddy, he thought. A wide, muddy snake winding its way down to the City. He looked at the horizon. He couldn't see the City but he knew it was there. He wondered for how long! It will light up like a torch, he thought. One huge sheet of red and orange flame a mile high, like the gates of hell swinging open. Then there would be nothing but a towering mushroom of black smoke to mark the spot of the largest City in the world. He found his hand clutching something in his pocket. He took it out and looked at it. Then, bitterly, he put it away. It was the yellow sheet of paper again. To read it would be torture. Lowary ran the zipper up on his loose fitting green field jacket as a sudden chill took him. He blamed it on the nonexistent wind as he lighted another cigarette. The sound of a motor caused him to look up. He narrowed his eyes, looking at the far end of the bridge. It was Lieutenant Kastner; he could tell by the foot resting carelessly on the outside fender. Kastner drove as though he were resting in an easy chair with his feet nestled on a hassock. Kastner swung out of the jeep loosely, with the grace of a well coordinated athlete. A wide grin split his face. "Just on my way to report to you, Captain. Everything is set up on my side." Lowary smiled. He had been on his way to check Kastner. Lowary took in the blond man's well proportioned body. Kastner looked like the recruit ad on a "wild-blue-yonder" poster. Kastner's eyes left Lowary's face. The Captain followed the other's gaze upward. Two long, white vapor trails were cutting across the blue sky. "They're ours," Kastner said. "They're heading North by East, toward the ocean." He looked at Lowary. "Maybe they can stop it before it starts!" "Maybe," the Captain said softly. In his heart he knew it was only a faint hope. The Air Force never tried to conceal the fact that some of the enemy could be expected to sneak through in the event of attack. "I don't think we'll have much trouble at our end of the bridge, Captain. I don't think anyone will be fighting to go in that direction," he nodded down the river, in the direction of the City. "I guess not," Lowary said absently. "This waiting can be murder," Kastner said. "It just doesn't seem right, waiting to be clobbered. Sitting here until they drop one down our throats before we can fight back." Lowary smiled bitterly. "It's always been that way, Kastner. I suppose it always will be." Lowary squashed the cigarette butt with his heel. "How's Meyers taking all this?" Kastner asked. Lowary raised his eyebrows. "His sister works in the City," Kastner went on. "They're pretty close." "I didn't know," Lowary replied. He thought, perhaps I should change assignments. Kastner wouldn't picture every woman who might try to break through as his sister. It would make it easier on Meyers. "You're from Dakota, aren't you, Captain?" "I was stationed there for three years before this assignment. This is my first trip East." "Married?" "Wife ... son and daughter. The girl is eight, the boy twelve." The picture of blond, thin, lovable little Susan came to his mind. And Ronnie, with the freshly found sense of humor, who wanted to be a writer when he grew up ... if he grew up. He hadn't seen them or Dot since the transfer came unexpectedly. He missed them, badly. He hadn't realized how much until just this minute. "Did you bring your family with you?" Kastner asked. Lowary shook his head. "No. Dot stayed behind to sell some of the furniture, and to let the children finish school. It's no good changing schools in the middle of a semester." "I guess it isn't. I wouldn't know though. I'm single." The sound of rubber pounding on the steel grating caused them both to turn. The Captain expected to see an Army 2-1/2 ton truck. The truck wasn't olive-drab, it was white. BAKERY was stenciled on the side of the closed cabin in red letters. Kastner moved to the opposite lane on a fast run. He waved his arms. "What are you doing on the bridge?" he shouted. "It's closed to civilians." The driver stuck his balding head out of the window. His face was dirty and tired. "The Lieutenant back there said it was O.K." He looked at Lowary. "I'm only going to Kingston, Captain." Lowary turned to Kastner. "Check this guy. I'll be back." He jumped into his jeep and wheeled it around. This time he kept the accelerator to the floor. Meyers was a fool! He found the tall, thin officer leaning on the rail, looking down the river toward the City. He leaped from the jeep, reached Meyers with two strides. "If you have to do that, Lieutenant, do it where the troops can't see you. It's bad for morale," he said bitterly. Meyers spun around quickly. "You had orders to keep this bridge closed, Lieutenant. Why didn't you?" Meyers opened his mouth, then shut it without saying a word. "Speak up," Lowary raised his voice. Meyers' eyes met his. "You wouldn't understand, Captain," Meyers said evenly. "Try me," Lowary fought to keep his voice down. "You seem to forget that these are our people ... not the enemy. He was just a poor working slob who wanted to get home to be with his wife and kids. To him it might be his last day on earth. Who are we to deny that?" Lowary said nothing. Meyers said, "You're not worrying, your family is safe out in the Middle West. We know people around here. They aren't just shadows. We should be helping them." The Captain took off his helmet. He reached for another cigarette. Finally he said, "Do you realize how important this bridge is if there is an attack? It connects one of the routes designated for the relief of the City if it is hit. You were too young for the last war so you probably don't realize what happens when wanderers, escapees hit the road. They can tie it up like a knot so that no one moves. They have other routes they can use. This one is closed. We've got to keep it for emergency use." "What's one truck?" Meyers said. "One truck, loaded with explosives could park in the middle of this huge erector set and blow it sky high. All the Reds aren't in those planes the Coastal Defense sighted. We have some right here, waiting." "But he wasn't a Red. He lives in Kingston!" Meyers protested. "How do you know?" Lowary said simply. He didn't wait for Meyers' answer, he turned and began to walk away. "Captain!" Lowary turned at the sound of Tudor's heavy voice. The stocky officer was waving at him from up the road, pumping his arm with clenched fist up and down, the signal for double time. Lowary took off on the run. He could hear Meyers' feet pounding behind him. Tudor was standing beside a young corporal looking down the steep, rocky embankment at one of the concrete piers supporting the bridge. A small figure was making its way toward it. "It looks like one of our boy's decided to go over the hill," Tudor said tersely. Lowary faced the young corporal. "Unsling that rifle, son, and see if you can pick him off." Lowary felt Tudor's hand on his arm. "There's no need for that, Captain. I'll send a squad down to pick him up." Lowary glanced down at the hand. Tudor removed it. He spoke directly to the corporal, "I said see if you can pick him off!" The soldier hesitated. Lowary knew why. The figure down there was in uniform, probably a friend. The Captain snatched the rifle from the corporal's frozen fingers. He slapped the stock against his own shoulder. "He's probably just a scared, bewildered kid," Meyers cut in quickly. "If I'm wrong, I'll apologize," Lowary said as he sighted down the barrel. He planted his feet firmly and squeezed. The stock slammed him in the shoulder. He cursed, then he squeezed again. This time he remembered to hold his breath. The figure slumped, fell off the concrete, into the water. Lowary juggled the gun once by its balance, then he handed it back to the corporal who was staring dully at the small figure floating and bobbing in the water. "You can send that squad down to get him now, if you want, Lieutenant Tudor," he said before he turned away. * * * * * He walked slowly. He could have explained, but there wasn't time. Decisions had to be made quickly, right or wrong. Perhaps the kid down there _was_ afraid, just running away. But he couldn't take that chance. There was no reason to believe that the military didn't have some subversive elements within; the Reds had infiltered everywhere else. And what better time for the rats to come out of their nests, then now, when the country was on their target list! One man could be as dangerous as a Red Division. Lowary climbed into his jeep conscious of how tired he felt. I'm getting old, he thought. He leaned back and took off his helmet and looked up at the clear blue sky, letting the breeze fan his face. A high, distant speck caught his eye. It was trailed by a four-forked stream of white. He felt his stomach grow cold, as he stared in fascination at the four vapor streams that could only be one thing; a multi-engine bomber. It was coming in from the Northwest, heading for the City. The enemy had slipped one through the defense. He tore his eyes from the sky. Perhaps no one else had seen it. It would be better if they never did. And so it comes, he thought. The end of an age ... back to the sticks and stones for good. He drew in on a new cigarette, thinking of Dorothy and Susan and Ronnie. He became conscious of Meyers standing beside him. He wished he would go away, there was so little time left to daydream. He wanted to be alone. "The guard down the road says there is a pile-up of civilian cars that demand to go across." Lowary looked up. "Send some of the reserve platoon down and force them back. You know the orders!" "Look, Captain. We've got maybe ten ... fifteen minutes left. What harm will it do?" Lowary felt weary. Meyers hadn't failed to see the bomber, neither had the people in the cars. They knew it was the beginning of the end. Meyers and Tudor, and the others were wearing him down. He felt like giving them their damn bridge. It would be easy, so final. He took the yellow paper out of his pocket and glanced at the pasted letters again. When he was finished he knew what he had to do. He had no choice. Lowary handed the paper to Meyers. "I'll take care of things down the road. Perhaps you might like to read this while I'm gone," he said. The Lieutenant looked puzzled when Lowary drove away. * * * * * The traffic was jammed just as Meyers said it was. The Sergeant in command of the squad had set up a small road block. A machine-gunner, Morgan, was sitting behind a .50 Cal. looking down the barrel. Lowary drove past them, up to the lead car. As he threw his legs out over the side of the jeep he looked up quickly. The single multi-engine bomber was overhead, still heading South. In the distance he could see new vapor streams, much smaller, much faster. The Interceptor Command was giving chase. Lowary could see that they would be too late to save the City. "Please let us through, Captain!" a woman near him asked. She was slender, she had been crying. Lowary felt so helpless. He said, "There is nothing I can do. This bridge must be kept open for relief purposes. It is out of my hands." "You're a murderer. You're keeping us here to be killed." "There were other routes open. You should have taken--" The woman flung herself at him, beating at his chest with her thin hands. "I want to go home," she screamed. Lowary took her by the wrists and held her off gently. God give me strength, he prayed. It would be so easy to let her through, along with the others. They would be safe, perhaps. But he would be running the risk of losing the bridge. Everyone in the City wouldn't die, some would survive the hell blast. They would need medical attention, supplies, food and water. They deserved that chance. A man's heavy voice carried above the shouts. "We can get through if we all try it at the same time. He can't shoot us ... he's in the line of fire." Lowary hadn't realized it, but it was true. The machine-gunners were sighting down his back. He shouted above the rising din, "It makes no difference, they'll shoot if they have to." "It's a lie," a woman shouted. Lowary heard the whine of a powerful motor start up. "Well, I'm for giving it a try," he heard someone far back say. Lowary turned and faced the gunners. He could see Morgan's strained face. The kid looked so young, yet he was the only one Lowary felt he could depend on. "If anything moves down here I want you to open fire," he called to Morgan. "Understand?" Morgan's helmet nodded slowly. Lowary turned around. The woman seemed undecided. Lowary spoke softly. "Why don't you get down off the road, into that gully? You'll be safe there." The woman's mouth worked up and down but no words came out. Her face was white and haggard. The radio in Lowary's jeep began a familiar crackling sound as someone on the same frequency pressed a button on a handset. Lowary was afraid to move. He could easily start a stampede if the civilians thought he was making the move just to get out of the line of sight of the machine gunners. Slowly, he raised his hand until it was near the .45 resting in the holster clipped to his web belt. He waited. "LARGO ONE--THIS IS LARGO NINE--OVER." Lowary edged backwards, still facing the crowd. The woman was crying now. Down the line of cars he could hear the high powered motor being gunned as it was being maneuvered out of the line. Soon it would make the attempt of running down Morgan and the others. It wouldn't stand a chance, but the others might succeed in the confusion that would follow. He made the decision then. Deliberately, he turned his back on the crowd and walked to the jeep. "Don't let him turn on that radio," a man's voice called. "He will warn the rest of the troops to be waiting for us." Lowary picked up the hand-mike. "This is Largo One," he said. "THIS IS LARGO NINE," the voice on the radio said. "ALL CLEAR. REPEAT. ALL CLEAR. BOOGIES CLAIM THEY WERE ON A PEACEFUL TRAINING MANEUVER AND GOT OFF COURSE," the sender's low laugh contained no humor. "RESUME TRAFFIC ON THE BRIDGE." Lowary's hand trembled as he laid the 'mike' on the seat. He looked up at the sky. The jet bomber had veered left, was heading out to sea, heavily escorted. Lowary took off his helmet and signaled Morgan to let the civilians through. He knew Meyers and the others had heard on their own sets. The enemy had been testing the defenses, he knew. Another calculated move in the cold war. They were probing, hitting hard with psychology. While everyone was relaxing, enjoying the reprieve, they could very well come back. That would be their way. Lowary was lighting another cigarette when the soldier came up to him, saluted. "Lieutenant Meyers said to give this to you, sir, and to say that he was sorry if he didn't understand before." He handed Lowary the yellow sheet of paper. Lowary opened the wrinkled telegram and read it again for the tenth time since that morning. CHILDREN AND I ARRIVED CITY THIS MORNING--WILL SPEND DAY SHOPPING--SEE YOU TONIGHT DARLING--LOVE--DOT. Lowary put the telegram in his pocket carefully. "Hop in, son. I'll give you a lift," he said to the soldier. He looked over his shoulder, down the river. Then his eyes settled on the bridge. Finally, he said softly, "We're going home." His heart quickened when he said it. 
60443	----	EDDIE BY FRANK RILEY _It's no surprise that the top brass was in a complete swivet; Eddie knew answers to questions that weren't even asked. What's more_, nothing _was a secret with him around!_ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, December 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] _Philip Duncan, the St. Louis attorney and former FBI agent, who wrote the definitive "History of Espionage", observes that in all the records dealing with spies and counterspies there is no more significant case than that of Dr. John O'Hara Smith, an electronics research engineer. Duncan maintains that Dr. Smith, whose rather quixotic name is real and not assumed, contributed more to the advancement of espionage and counter-espionage methods than any one person in history._ _For a period of more than a year, the case of Dr. John O'Hara Smith was known to only a few security and defense officials. The first public reference to it came on November 22, 1956, when an assistant to Secretary of Defense Wilson obliquely commented on it in testimony before the House Military Affairs Committee. Subsequently, more details were leaked to several Washington correspondents, and then vigorously denied. A brief account of the matter appeared on an inside page of the New York Times, but aroused no general interest._ _As a matter of fact, so little is known about the entire case that several of the people who were in on its early phases are still not sure whether Dr. John O'Hara Smith is alive or dead, or whether he was a spy or counterspy._ _However, on the basis of information now declassified, plus two highly technical papers presented to the Institute of Research Engineers, anyone sufficiently interested can reconstruct most of the case._ * * * * * It began at approximately 7:15 P.M., August 11, 1955, when Dr. John O'Hara Smith returned with a bag of groceries to his house trailer in the Mira Mar Trailer Park, overlooking a long blue reach of the Pacific Ocean, some twelve miles south of Los Angeles. He put the groceries on the drainboard beside his spotless two-burner butane stove, carefully flicked away a speck of dust and then stepped eagerly toward the rear of his trailer, where an intricate assembly of tubes and wires occupied what normally would have been the dining area. Dr. Smith flipped on a switch, and then received what he later called, in his precise, pedantic way, a split-second premonition of danger. The Go-NoGo panel light flashed and went out; the transistor looked grey instead of red; the wires to the binary-coded digitizer were crossed; the extra module in the basic assembly had not been there that morning.... Dr. Smith methodically catalogued these details, and he stepped backward, just a breath of a moment before the low hum sharpened to a whine. He tripped, and in falling his left shoulder knocked open the door to the small toilet closet. Instinctively, he writhed the upper part of his body through the narrow doorway. His thick-lensed glasses fell underneath him, leaving him practically blind. His elbows and knees were still making frenzied, primordial crawling movements when the detonation brought a wave of oblivion that almost, but not quite, preceded the pain. * * * * * A squad car from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department turned in the first report: _John O'Hara Smith, male, white, about 45; critically injured by explosion in house trailer; removed by ambulance to General Hospital; explosion occurred at...._ Two days later, the Sheriffs Department apparently closed the case with a one-line addition to its original report: _Explosion believed to have been caused by leaking butane connection._ But, in the interval, other agencies had entered the case. The first was the Industrial Security Office attached to the Western Division of the Air Force's Research and Development Command in the once suburban community of Inglewood, California. When Chief Security Officer Amos Busch received a call at 11:32 the morning after the explosion, he automatically noted the time on his desk pad. The call was from Pacific Electronics, Inc., a subcontracting firm in nearby El Segundo. The president and owner of Pacific Electronics was on the phone. In a tone that betrayed considerable agitation, he identified himself as Wesley Browne. "One of my research engineers--my best engineer, dammit--was nearly killed last night in an explosion ... maybe he's dead now," reported Browne, his words breathlessly treading on each other. "There's something damn funny about this...." Amos Busch wrote: Research engineer ... explosion ... nearly killed. Then he asked judicially: "What do you mean by 'damn funny', Mr. Browne?" "This engineer was working on our vernier actuating cylinder for the Atlas guided missile.... Just two days ago, he--he said he wanted me to know where his files were ... in case anything happened to him...." Amos Busch was a jowly, greying man who gave the appearance of being slow moving. But before the president of Pacific Electronics, Inc., hung up, Busch had already used another phone and the intercom to put in motion a chain reaction that would deliver to his desk the security report on Dr. John O'Hara Smith. There was nothing out of order in the report. There couldn't have been, or Dr. Smith wouldn't have been cleared for the ballistic missile program. According to the report, he had lived aloofly for all of his adult years. Even as a boy, his sole interest had been to tinker with mechanical projects. His grades and IQ were high above the norm, and his attitude towards his classmates varied between impatience and out-right sarcasm. "I always thought John was a lonely boy," a former teacher had recalled to an FBI officer during the security check. "He never had anything in common with other youngsters." After obtaining his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin, he had worked for Allis-Chalmers Research Division in Milwaukee and lived with his mother until her death in 1951, when he bought a house trailer and moved to the coast. He had no close friends, no record of even a remote connection with any communist or communist-front group. Security Officer Busch decided to visit the trailer, or what remained of it. He was not an electronics man, or even a normally incompetent do-it-yourself mechanic, but when he saw the shattered tangle of wires and tubes, along with the obvious remnant of a short-wave receiver, Amos Busch promptly called Major General David Sanders, commander of the USAF's Western Development Division. General Sanders scratched his tanned bald head, and said, "We'd better get the FBI in on this, Amos." The FBI went to work with a thoroughness that made John O'Hara Smith's previous security investigation look like the processing of an application to join the Kiwanis. While agents sifted every detail of his life since the day of his birth, he was moved to a private room at General Hospital and three nurses cleared for security were assigned to care for him. For eight days, Smith was in a coma. On the morning of the ninth day, he groaned, turned to one side and rolled back again. The nurse on duty put down her magazine and moved quickly to his bedside. She moistened a cloth and wiped the perspiration from his high forehead, brushing back the thinning tangle of fine, brown hair. His eyes blinked open, stared at her. He whispered: "Eddie ... what happened ... to Eddie?" Remembering her instructions from the FBI, the nurse turned to make certain the door was closed. "Was Eddie in the trailer with you?" she asked, bending closer to catch his reply. He gave her a look of utter disgust, and tried to moisten his cracked lips with the tip of his tongue. But he drifted off again without replying. This incident was duly recorded in the FBI's growing dossier, along with another conversation that took place in the office of Wesley Browne at Pacific Electronics, Inc. After carefully reviewing John O'Hara Smith's work record, FBI agent Frank Cowles inquired: "Is there anything--anything at all, Mr. Browne--that you would consider out of the ordinary about Smith's recent actions?" There was a trace of uneasiness in Browne's manner, but he tried to cover it by looking annoyed. "I don't know why in the devil you fellows are spending so much time on Smith!... He sure as hell didn't blow himself up!" "Of course not," Cowles said, placatingly. "But we never know where a lead will come from...." He repeated the question. Browne hesitated. "I suppose," he began, shifting his big bulk uncomfortably, "this will sound kind of odd ... but you know we've got the subcontract to produce this actuating cylinder for the Atlas...." The agent nodded. "Well, six months before we were asked to submit specs and bids on such a cylinder, Smith came to me and said he had an idea for something the Air Force might soon be needing...." Agent Cowles maintained his air of polite attention, but his cool grey eyes narrowed. Browne shifted again, and continued: "I told him to go ahead--you never can tell what these research guys will come up with...." "And what did he come up with, Mr. Browne?" "You won't believe this, maybe--but he came up with the design for the complete vernier hydraulic actuating cylinder--including the drive sector gear--at least three months before we had the faintest idea such an item would even be needed!" The FBI man's ball-point pen moved swiftly. "Anything else?" Browne instinctively lowered his voice: "Smith even suggested that the cylinder would help to offset the roll and yaw in an intercontinental ballistic missile!" A brittle edge came into the agent's courteous tone: "Did you report this to security?" In spite of the air-conditioning unit in the window, the president and owner of Pacific Electronics, Inc., seemed to feel that the room was getting very warm. He ran a fat forefinger under his white collar. "No," he admitted. "We got the contract, of course--it was a cinch!--and I just wrote it off as a lucky break.... You can see how I'd feel, can't you?" "Yes," said Cowles, "I can." Bit by bit, a new picture of the meticulous, professorial Dr. Smith began to emerge from the FBI dossier. During the working week, his habit had been to keep his trailer in a small park just off Sepulveda Blvd., a half-mile from the Pacific Electronics plant. After work on Fridays, he invariably left for the weekend, usually for any one of a dozen scenic trailer parks along the coast between San Diego and Santa Barbara. He always went alone. No one had ever seen or met "Eddie". Outside of working hours, Smith's only association with his professional colleagues was through the Institute of Research Engineers. He attended monthly meetings, and occasionally wrote dry, abstract articles on theoretical research for the Institute's quarterly journal. Under microscopic study and chemical analysis, investigators determined that nitro-glycerine had caused the explosion. The fused mass of electronics wreckage in Smith's trailer were identified as parts of a computer assembly. Thousands of dollars had been spent on components over the past three years. Purchases, usually for cash, were traced to various electronic supply companies in the greater Los Angeles area. Dr. Smith's bank account showed a balance of only $263.15. But the big find came from a safety deposit box in the same branch bank. There, along with a birth certificate, his mother's marriage license, an insurance policy, his doctor's degree from the University of Wisconsin and an unused passport, was a duplicate set of computer memory tapes. * * * * * It took the FBI forty-eight hours to play a few selected segments from these tapes, which obviously had been recorded over a period of several years. Two notations made by Agent Cowles indicate the type of material contained on the tapes: "If a deliberate attempt were made to run a thermonuclear test explosion within the frontiers of Russia, in such a way as to avoid detection, it would almost certainly be successful...." "The Soviet Union may soon develop a new ratio of fusion to fission energy in high yield weapons and will require additional data...." FBI agents listening to these playbacks were convinced, almost to a man, that they had stumbled across the hottest espionage trail since the arrest of Klaus Fuchs and the case of the Rosenbergs. A round-the-clock security guard was placed outside the hospital room of John O'Hara Smith, while Federal authorities waited impatiently to see whether he would live or die. Smith would answer, or leave unanswered, a lot of vital questions. * * * * * Security notwithstanding, it was the day after Labor Day before the medical staff of General Hospital would permit the first direct questioning of Dr. Smith. And then the interrogators were instructed: "Only a few minutes." Three men filed quietly into Smith's room as soon as the nurse removed his luncheon tray. They stood in a semi-circle around the foot of his bed. Agent Frank Cowles opened a black leather folder the size of a small billfold and presented his credentials. He introduced General Sanders and Security Officer Busch. It was the first time any of the men had seen John O'Hara Smith. The reports had called him pudgy, but now he had lost twenty pounds and his cheek bones were gaunt under his pallid skin. He wore unusually thick, dark-rimmed glasses that magnified his eyes and gave him an owlish appearance. He returned their scrutiny with a mixture of assurance and impatience, like a professor waiting for his class to come to order. "Good morning, gentlemen," he said tartly. "It's about time someone came to see me about this...." Cowles cleared his throat and suggested cautiously: "Then you're willing to give us a statement, Dr. Smith?" "Don't talk drivel, man! How are you going to know anything about it if I don't make a statement!" Though still weak, Dr. Smith's voice had a high, imperious quality. Clearly, he did not wish to waste time or strength on mere conversation. The three men exchanged glances. Cowles and Amos Busch took out notebooks. "Now, Dr. Smith," Cowles began, "what is your view as to the nature of the explosion in your trailer and the reason for it?" "I'm an electronics research engineer, not an expert in explosives," Smith retorted with some asperity. "But as to the reason, I'm sure they wanted to destroy Eddie and me!" He glared, as if daring anybody to challenge this statement. "Eddie?" ventured Cowles. "I try to speak plainly, Mr. Cowles.... I said 'Eddie and me'!" General David Sanders rested two large hands on the foot of the white iron bedstead and squeezed until his knuckles bulged ominously. A volatile man, he had trouble with his own temper even without being provoked. But his voice was deceptively calm: "Dr. Smith, do I gather that someone else was in the trailer with you at the time of the explosion?" Smith grimaced expressively, and answered as if speaking to an eight-year-old: "No, General Sanders.... I was quite alone." After thirty years in the Air Force, Amos Busch was not used to hearing a Major General spoken to in this way. It violated his sense of propriety. "Dr. Smith," he exploded, "just who or what in the hell is or was Eddie?" With what was remarkably close to an air of incredulity, Smith looked slowly from one to the other. "I gather you gentlemen haven't read my latest article." "Not thoroughly," Cowles admitted. "Then you don't know of my research work with an educatable computer," Smith said accusingly. Seeing that they didn't, he added: "I have named it 'Eddie'!" "What ... what is an educatable computer?" ventured Cowles. It was clear that Dr. Smith welcomed this question. His eyes glowed behind their thick lenses, and his high voice dropped its edge of sharpness. "Eddie is a computer with a capacity to learn," he replied proudly. "It learns from assimilation of information and deductive reasoning--at a rate at least 10,000 times that of the human mind! That's why Eddie comes up with so many answers!... The only problem is, we seldom know what questions the answers answer." His three interrogators had the look of men leaning into a heavy wind. General Sanders recovered first, and demanded: "What the devil was it made for then?" "Eddie was not designed for any specific task--that's why Eddie is so valuable ... and dangerous!" Dr. Smith rolled out this last word as if he relished it. "Do you realize," he went on, with careful emphasis, "that Eddie has solved problems we won't even know exist for another thousand years!" This pronouncement was greeted by a moment of strained silence. General Sanders finally said, "H-m-m-m." He looked at Busch, who looked at Cowles, who asked: "Does Eddie solve any problems closer to our own time, Dr. Smith?" "Of course...." "Did Eddie come up with the idea for that Atlas stabilizing cylinder?" "Certainly." General Sanders moved a step closer to the bed. "Any other ideas like that?" he inquired eagerly. Dr. Smith's smile was neither wholly supercilious nor merely self-assured. It was a little of both, plus a lot of pure satisfaction at being stage center with his favorite subject. He cocked his head back and stared down his stump of a nose. "You're working on a missile defense system for bombers, aren't you?" he challenged General Sanders. "What about it?" hedged the General. "Have you learned how to design a finned missile which can be launched across the bomber's airstream without being thrown off course?" General Sanders ignored a warning glance from Amos Busch. "Do you ... does this Eddie know how to do it?" "Eddie says it doesn't matter!" "What?" "Eddie says what difference does it make if the missile is thrown off course by the airstream--as long as you can reorient it into a compensated trajectory. We were working on a new gyroscope principle that might do the trick...." FBI Agent Cowles was always the personification of courtesy, but he could assert himself when necessary. He did so now. "Excuse me, General," he interrupted, "but first there are some other matters we must go into with Dr. Smith." The General nodded reluctantly. He took out an envelope and made some notes of his own on the back of it. "Now, Dr. Smith," said Cowles, "let's get back to the explosion.... Why do you feel someone wanted to destroy you and Eddie?" "I believe they had copied Eddie's circuit design and wanted to make sure another one wasn't built--at least in the immediate future." "Why not?" Dr. John O'Hara Smith showed a neat flair for timing as he waited just long enough to build suspense, before answering: "Because Eddie knew that our security system for safeguarding the missile program is about as up to date as the horse and buggy!" His words couldn't have been better chosen to startle his audience. Amos Busch took them as a personal affront. "Horse and buggy!" he snorted. "You'd better spell that out, Dr. Smith!" Smith's reply was prompt and precise: "Eddie has concluded that human methods and minds alone are not enough to cope with security issues in an area where even the simplest technical problems must be handled by intricate computing devices...." His owlish eyes moved from one man to another, trying to judge whether they were following him. "You see, Gentlemen," he went on, "the technology we are dealing with is so unbelievably complex that the possibilities for espionage are multiplied infinitely beyond the capacity of a human intellect to grasp and evaluate...." "For example," demanded General Sanders. "For example," Smith retorted with equal sharpness, "what good does it do to surround ballistic missile plants with security regulations if the missile itself can be stolen right out of the air?" "Fantastic!" said General Sanders. "Nuts," said Amos Busch. Agent Cowles said nothing. John O'Hara Smith sank back against his pillow, panting a little. His high forehead glistened with sweat. When he gathered the strength to speak again, he directed his words to General Sanders: "General, these ICBM missiles being fired into the Atlantic Ocean from the coast of Florida.... Are you sure you know what's happened to all of them?" "I think so," the General answered calmly. "And what about your own X-15 project, General?" The question was almost a taunt. General David William Sanders had jumped with his paratroopers into France on a morning in June, 1944. He had risen in rank through the test of battle and the more excruciating ordeal of the Pentagon. He was a rock-jawed, six-foot, two-hundred pound man whom little could shock and nothing could deter. But he had never faced a challenge like the seconds of silence that followed Dr. Smith's mocking question. There was nothing he dared say, yet in saying nothing he was saying everything. FBI Agent Frank Cowles looked at him, then looked quickly away. Security Officer Busch studied his own hands as though discovering them for the first time. The tableau remained frozen and silent until the door opened and a doctor said, "That's all for today, gentlemen." The three men left without a word. Dr. John O'Hara Smith closed his eyes. On his pale lips was the suggestion of a smile. * * * * * When they were alone in the General's staff car, Amos Busch exhaled and said, "I'll be damned." "I gather," observed Cowles drily, "that something called an X-15 has turned up missing." "A week ago," sighed General Sanders. "Somewhere in the Mojave Desert near Lancaster.... It was a very elementary prototype--the actual X-15 won't be ready for another three years...." "Any idea what happened to it?" "It was on a routine test flight and ran out of the tracking screen--headed northwest.... We haven't found a splinter from it! But there's a lot of rough country around there." "Who knows it was lost?" "Just the local base and our headquarters staff. The Pentagon, too, of course." "And Dr. Smith," added Amos Busch, incredulously. The staff car detoured off the freeway to deliver Cowles to the Federal Building. "What do you make of this, Frank?" the General asked him. "I'm just supposed to be gathering information." "Oh, hell! We've been talking and you've been thinking--what?" Cowles grinned. "I've been thinking how lucky it is I don't have to make a decision about Smith!" "So?" "So we'll question him again tomorrow.... As long as he's willing to talk, the more he says, the better." But, next morning, the medical staff again exercised its veto power. John O'Hara Smith had developed an infection and fever during the night. There could be no further questioning for the time being. On the second day, when his fever ebbed, Dr. Smith irascibly ordered a pad of paper and began an interminable series of sketches. The nurse managed to sneak out a few of them, and FBI experts sat up all night vainly trying to figure out what they meant. The following evening, when the last visitor's bell had sounded and the patients were bedded down for the night, Dr. Smith was staring unblinkingly into the dark shadows of his room. He had been given a sleeping pill at 9:30, but had held it under his tongue until the nurse left, and then had put it on the night table behind his thick-rimmed glasses. He seemed to be struggling with a problem. Once he turned on the night light, put on his glasses and made several rapid sketches that vaguely resembled a spider web. A half hour later, his eyes began to droop. He picked up the sleeping pill, rolled it between his thumb and forefinger, then put it back on the table. His breathing became deeper. A sound startled him awake. It was an odd sound, not a part of the subdued hospital noises. It was a persistent, metallic, scraping sound, and it came from outside his window. Dr. John O'Hara Smith grabbed his glasses and rolled out of bed. He bunched up his pillow under the covers and crawled into the deeper darkness of the corner to the left of the window, which was open several inches. He crouched there, knees quivering from weakness. There followed an interval of almost inaudible prying at the screen, broken by periods of silence as someone outside the second-story window apparently paused to listen. Finally, the screen was released with a faint pop. The lower half of the double-hung window eased upwards. Again there was silence, save for the distant clatter of the self-service elevator. Abruptly, a pencil-thin beam of light shot through the room, toward the bed. It focussed on the mound made by the pillow. Short tongues of flame leaped out three times, with soft, spitting sounds. The pillow and the tangle of blankets twitched realistically. The beam of light winked out; the screen plopped back into place. There were a few hasty, sliding noises of retreat, and that was all. John O'Hara Smith's breath came in short, strained gasps, as though he were choked up with asthma. When he got control of himself, he eased back the edge of the drape and looked out the window. It was nearly twenty feet to the ground. A car turned off the boulevard, and came up the side street. The glow of its headlights briefly silhouetted the ladder angled against the side of the hospital. Dr. Smith sat on the edge of the bed to think things over. His left thumb probed the holes in the blanket and pillow. This seemed to make up his mind. He got his clothes from the closet and dressed as quickly as he could force his hands to move and co-ordinate. His trousers hung so loosely that the last hole in his belt made no difference. He pulled the belt tight and knotted it. Next, he carefully folded his sketches and put them in the inside pocket of his coat. As an after-thought, he also put the sleeping pill in his pocket. Then he drank half a glass of water and painfully edged himself out the window. His chest scraped the ledge, and it was all he could do to strangle an out-cry of pain. At the foot of the ladder, he staggered and nearly fell. But after a moment's rest, he squared his shoulders and walked across a corner of the lawn, into the shadows and the night. * * * * * The Los Angeles Mirror-News got further than any other paper with the story of Dr. John O'Hara Smith's mysterious disappearance from General Hospital, leaving behind a bed riddled with three bullets. In fact, the Mirror-News story had cleared the copy desk and was on its way down to the composing room before it was killed by the managing editor "for security reasons". An all-points police bulletin was sent out, but no one was optimistic about immediate results. When you can't admit a man is missing, when you can't publish his photograph, you deprive yourself of the eyes and ears of the public, which turn up seventy-five percent of the leads in missing persons cases. Security considerations posed three alternatives: If Dr. Smith was telling the truth, then it was better to let whoever had twice tried to kill him wonder whether the second attempt had been successful. If Smith had broken with an espionage ring, and had been marked for death by former associates, the various agencies concerned with security wanted a chance to find him first. If Smith was playing some devious game of his own, let him make the next move. As days went by, telephone circuits from Washington to Los Angeles carried messages that grew increasingly uncomplimentary. FBI headquarters hinted that certain field representatives might be transferred from Southern California to southern Kansas if results in the Smith case were not forthcoming promptly. The Air Force suggested that if both Dr. Smith and the X-15 prototype continued to be among the missing, it would not be wise to present the pending promotion of General Sanders to the White House. The General was moodily digesting this thought, while half-listening to a discussion at a morning staff conference, when an aide whispered: "A call from the North American Lancaster plant, Sir. It's urgent--and personal...." General Sanders excused himself and hurried into his adjoining private office. "Sanders," he barked. The high, imperious voice that replied was instantly recognizable: "General Sanders, I suggest you don't try to have this call traced, or we might not be able to finish our conversation!" The General pressed his intercom button and held the connection open, waiting for a chance to use it. "Go ahead, Smith," he said. "I'll come directly to the point," said Smith. "I want two things: A place to work in safety and the funds to build another Eddie!" "And what makes you think you can get them from me?" "Because Eddie can help you find the X-15." The General hunched closer to the intercom, raising his voice. "Smith," he stalled, "why don't you come in and talk things over?" "I do not intend to sit around waiting to be killed while your security bunglers try to decide whether I'm telling the truth!" A Staff Sergeant looked in the door. "Is anything wrong, Sir?" The General motioned for silence, then scrawled on a note pad: "Trace this call!" "Now, Dr. Smith," he said, "if you're telling us the truth, you've got nothing to worry about...." "General," Smith replied acidly, "do you know any better way of convincing you than to let Eddie find the X-15?" "Well, I--" "Goodbye, General. You think it over--and I'll call you later. Your word will be sufficient!" The phone clicked, and General Sanders cursed bitterly. Later, he talked it over with Amos Busch, who nodded agreement to the General's proposal. "Sure," he said. "It's worth a gamble--and we'll have Smith where we want him!" When John O'Hara Smith phoned that afternoon, the General said promptly: "Come on in, Dr. Smith--you've got a deal." The available records on this phase of the case show that a Dr. J. O. Smith and three "assistants" were added to the payroll of a small Pasadena electronics firm on September 17, 1955. They were installed in one wing on the top floor of the building. The entrance to this wing was sealed off with the familiar sign: "Restricted--Permission to enter granted only on a need-to-know basis". Apparently, few needed to know, for Smith and his assistants seldom had visitors. Deliveries of electronics components were received by one of the assistants. The four men arrived together, and left together. They brought their lunch. Dr. Smith, of course, had been interrogated briefly when he had turned himself in at USAF Western Division Headquarters. But only the General and Amos Busch had questioned him this time. "Look, Smith," said Amos, "if we're supposed to protect you, I want to know from what--and why it's necessary...." John O'Hara Smith looked almost embarrassed. "I suppose I made the same error that is so often made in declassifying information...." "How's that?" "When information is declassified, it's done without mathematically computing the infinite number of possible ways such information may be useful to a hostile government.... Of course, you need an Eddie to make such a computation!" "What's this got to do with trying to knock you off?" Busch demanded. "It's quite evident that someone read my article in the Research Engineers' journal more carefully than you did! As a matter of fact, Eddie actually warned me that anyone hostile to the United States could not possibly allow my work to continue!" Amos Busch and General Sanders exchanged wary glances. "All right," said General Sanders, "We'll let that go for the moment--but what made you ask about the X-15 in the first place?" "Eddie suggested that if the ICBM missiles could theoretically be stolen over the mid-Atlantic, it would be vastly less difficult to steal an X-15 over the Mojave Desert!" As the two Air Force men digested this statement, along with the indisputable fact that an X-15 _had_ disappeared, John O'Hara Smith blandly informed them: "Incidentally, gentlemen, you'll have to get Eddie's duplicate tapes for me." Busch reddened, and could not resist asking: "Including those short-wave broadcasts from Moscow Radio?" "Naturally!" Dr. Smith snapped. "I'm sure Eddie extracts a great deal of useful information from them!" This second interrogation, like the previous one in the hospital, ended on a triumphant note for the exasperating Dr. Smith. When they were alone, General Sanders turned to Busch and sighed: "We've got a double security problem, Amos! If word of this deal with Smith gets back to Washington, I'll be laughed right out of the service!" But the General didn't begin to grasp the full implications of his predicament until the afternoon of Oct. 7, when Dr. Smith phoned to say Eddie was completed. "Good," grunted the General. "Get going, then!" "We'll need more information first." "What kind of information?" General Sanders demanded suspiciously. His suspicions were reinforced by Smith's terse dictum: "Eddie must have all the facts on the X-15." "Impossible!" Dr. Smith's sniff indicated he nurtured utter disbelief in the concept of the impossible. "Eddie operates on facts," he reminded the General. General Sanders didn't sleep much that night. Neither did Amos Busch. They talked and argued until three in the morning, when the General poured one last drink and raised his glass. "O.K.," he said grimly. "I've gone this far and I've got to go the rest of the way!" They drank, and he continued: "At least, now I won't have to worry about being laughed out of the service--I'll get court-martialed out!" He jabbed viciously at an ice-cube with his forefinger. "But there's one thing I'll do first," he promised. "What's that, Sir?" "Strangle Smith with my bare hands!" * * * * * General Sanders sat on a metal folding chair in front of Eddie, the educatable computer, and stared belligerently at the roughly-finished aluminum facade. Eddie didn't look like much--certainly nothing like $13,456.12 worth of components paid for out of the General's contingency fund. Speed had been the primary consideration in rebuilding Eddie. The exterior case was unpainted, and rather inexpertly held together with metal screws. There were no knobs on the front panel controls. The vocader grill was open; the input microphone simply rested on the workbench beside the case. The entire assembly measured about three feet long, two feet deep and eighteen inches high. "O.K., what do I do now?" rasped the General. "Just start talking--into the mike." General Sanders took a sheaf of papers from his briefcase. He glared at Smith: "You get the hell out of here! This is classified information!" Dr. Smith smiled mockingly. On his way out of the room, he paused. "The circuits will stay open--take as long as you wish." Feeling like a combination of fool and Benedict Arnold, General Sanders cleared his throat and began to read: "The North American X-15 is one of several projects now nearing the hardware stage that will take living men as well as instruments into the fourth environment of military activity, that of space. "As soon as the satellite project completes preliminary exploration of the massive high energy spectrometer, the X-15's system should be ready to fly within two years. X-15s A, B, and C will explore 3000 mph, 50 mi. up; 4500 mph, 100 mi. up; and 6000 mph and over, 150 mi. up and out...." General Sanders jerked open his tie. His tanned bald head was damp with sweat. He glanced around the empty workroom, set his jaw stubbornly and continued: "Meanwhile, tests are in progress with a pilot model of X-15 to work out an entirely new vehicle system slow enough to maintain laminar flow in the boundary layer and fast enough to maintain control effectiveness at near sea-level environment. Unlike the ICBM which need only remain lethal for a few seconds, both the X-15 and its personnel must return to fly again...." For three hours, General Sanders read steadily from his file material. During the last half hour, his voice grew husky, his throat dry and raw. When he finished, he went to the door and shouted: "All right, Smith.... Come in here and put this damn thing to work!" Smith came in and informed him imperturbably: "Not so fast, General! Eddie will still require a great deal more information." "More? Dammit, I covered everything!" "Everything you know about the X-15," Dr. Smith agreed, "but Eddie is now venturing into a new field and must have more than technical electronics and avionics data. He needs complete reports on the progress of the search to date, as well as the weather, topography, economy, history and current happenings in the entire peripheral area. I have built a supplemental circuit to accommodate this sort of material...." General Sanders groaned. "How the hell do I get into these things?" During the next ten days, Eddie scanned microfilm on all the newspapers published since X-15's disappearance. Also marshalled before the scanner was every pertinent reference work available at public, private and university libraries in California. At length, even John O'Hara Smith seemed satisfied. He shut off the scanner, turned on the selector mechanism and the vocader switch. For two hours, Eddie did nothing, except hum contentedly, like a miniature washing machine. Occasionally, a weird, flickering pattern of multi-colored lights would trace across the scanning screen. At 11:06 A.M., October 19, 1955, a flat, toneless voice came from the vocader grill: "Laminar flow equilibrium temperature at mach 8.0, altitude 150,000 ft., of a point 10 ft. back from the leading edge is 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, assuming skin has 0.85 emissivity." There was a small, whirring noise, and the vocader circuit clicked off. "What the devil does that mean?" demanded the General. "Your aerophysicists might like to know!" came back the tart reply. At 1:34, Eddie clicked into action again: "In flight between two planets, the theory of minimum energy orbit should be discarded in favor of acceleration at reduced speed for calculated periods of time." "By the time we're flying between planets," General Sanders commented bitterly, "the record of my court-martial will be ancient history!" Twenty minutes later, Eddie added: "In the operation of small exploration vehicles, the fuel cell of the 4-H Clubs in Hanford and Bitteroot Creek will compete with the chemical energy of recombination for the prize sweet potato trophy." Even John O'Hara Smith looked startled. But he recovered his aplomb instantly. "Must be a circuit crossover," he explained. "No trouble to adjust it...." While he probed into the interior of Eddie with a glass-handled screwdriver, General Sanders took out a fresh cigarette and shredded it between his fingers. At 2:51, Eddie had this to report: "Just as the basic physical precept of invariancy to reflection is not necessarily true, Newton's laws of motion may not always apply under certain circumstances. This would make it possible to penetrate and misdirect a navigational system based on the concept of inertial guidance." General Sanders had been tilted back in his chair, half dozing. He bounced forward with a jar. "What was that?" Dr. Smith replayed this portion of the output tape. "We talked about that at the hospital," he sternly recalled to the General. "And if the long-range missiles fired from Florida can be taken over in flight, what's to prevent their being guided to a submarine at sea?" The General frowned in deep concentration, then relaxed and shook his head. "Even if something like that would be possible, we've got nothing to worry about. Every missile carries a device which can be used to destroy it if the missile goes off course." John O'Hara Smith shook his head like a teacher confronted with a pupil who was not too bright. "Now, General, if an inertial guidance system can be penetrated, a destructor can be blocked." "That's a mighty big if," the General shot back. Dr. Smith smiled sardonically. "It may not be so big when Eddie tells us what happened to the X-15!" "When!" the General groaned. Then he came back to the problem of intercepted ICBM missiles. Half seriously, half sarcastically, he asked: "What does Eddie think we should do about those missiles?" "Undoubtedly there are other guidance systems that can't be broken so easily ... meanwhile, Eddie suggests booby-trapping the missiles so they'll explode when tampered with." General Sanders closed his eyes again, and tilted back his chair. The frown between his eyes deepened. It was six o'clock, and the early dusk was closing in on the workroom, before another statement came from Eddie. In its characteristic monotone, the educatable computer said: "The existing developmental missile program will not be affected by the rising divorce rate in Bakersfield and Kern County." Dr. John O'Hara Smith pursed his lips in disapproval. "Eddie's not behaving at all well! I'm afraid that new circuit relay will take some working over...." General Sanders climbed slowly to his feet. He picked up his hat. "O.K., Smith," he said, "You sold me a bill of goods, and I bought it! Now I'm turning you and this whole damn mess back to the FBI! Let Cowles go crazy for awhile!" * * * * * As Frank Cowles sat in the General's office and heard what had been going on, he said mildly: "Well, I guess you had to take the gamble." "Thanks," said General Sanders. "I hope the Pentagon will look at it the same way--but I doubt it!" "We've got a problem, too, General," Cowles pointed out. "When everything's said and done, there's absolutely no charge we can file against Smith." "But he just can't walk away--not with all he--or that miserable Eddie--knows about the X-15!" Cowles smiled faintly. "I would imagine that Eddie now belongs to the Air Force." "We'll break the damn thing up for scrap!" The General's intercom buzzed. An aide's voice said apologetically: "That Dr. Smith is calling you again, Sir." "Tell him to go to hell!" A few seconds later, the intercom buzzed again. "Dr. Smith on the line, Sir--He says it's something about the X-15 missile." General Sanders looked as though he wanted to sweep the intercom off his desk. "Why not talk to him," Cowles suggested. "I'd like to hear this." The General picked up his phone, and said with deceptive calm: "All right, Smith ... make it short." "It was the logging truck," Dr. Smith replied, in his most superior manner. "Huh?" "Eddie's circuit is coordinated now. He says that the same afternoon the X-15 disappeared, a passenger car ran into the back of a logging truck northbound on Highway 395, about fifty miles from the Lancaster base. Two people were killed...." "Smith, what kind of pipedream are you peddling now?" "General, the truck was loaded with redwood logs and heading north!" "I don't give a damn where it was going!" "Wait, General!" Dr. Smith's tone was almost a command. "Eddie wants to know why a logging truck was traveling _toward_ the redwood country with a load of logs. He also points out that the X-15 is about the size of a redwood log, and could be concealed perfectly in the middle of a load!" The General seemed to be swallowing something angular and unpleasant. "We'll check that truck," he said, at last. "But remember, Smith, you've had it--you'll never hook me again!" He put down the phone, and said to Cowles: "You get on the merry-go-round this time!" * * * * * The California Highway Patrol in Mojave had the report on the accident. Clearly, it had been the fault of the passenger car. The truck driver was identified in the report as Art Backus, an independent hauler, working out of Eureka, located on the far northern tip of the California coast, about eight hundred miles from the scene of the accident. A routine check by the FBI disclosed that Backus had done time in San Quentin on a morals charge involving a minor girl. He had driven trucks for a dozen lumber companies in northwest California until the past summer, when he had bought a new truck and trailer, for cash, and gone into business for himself. Two FBI agents stepped up to him in a roadside cafe on Highway 1, between Eureka and Trinidad Bay. A gaunt, stooped man, he nearly collapsed when the agents showed him their identifications. He was broken, and ready to talk, even before mention was made of the fact that the penalty for peace-time espionage is death. Backus guided the FBI to an abandoned sawmill, some two miles inland, where the X-15 had been taken apart, minutely photographed, and then sunk in the old log pond. The men who had hired Backus and dismantled the X-15 had left the area several weeks earlier. They were remembered with friendliness by the residents of Trinidad Bay, who described them as "real nice guys and good fishermen, too." They had told Backus they would be back in the late autumn for the steelhead run, and perhaps would have some more hauling business for him at that time. The FBI offered Backus one chance for life. He accepted it, with abject eagerness. * * * * * Beyond this point, there are no more available records on the case of Dr. John O'Hara Smith, and Eddie, the educatable computer. But several items, not apparently related in any way, make interesting speculation. On January 3, 1956, the Air Force reported that a Thor intermediate-range ballistic missile, launched from Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, had been destroyed when it appeared to be wandering off course. About the same date, a Panamanian freighter, riding the gulf-stream toward the West Indies, radioed a report of sighting a massive oil slick and a scattering of debris, some of it bearing Russian insignia. No survivors were found. The U.S. State Department solicitously inquired of the Soviet Union if any of its vessels had been lost in the winter storms of the Caribbean. The Soviet Union testily replied that no Soviet vessels could have been lost, since Soviet vessels, as a matter of sound international principle, confined their operations to their own territorial waters. During Easter Week of 1956, the FBI announced the arrests of four men on charges of espionage: A druggist in Tucson, Arizona; an importer in San Francisco; a retired real-estate operator in Los Angeles; an obscure trucker in northern California. All pleaded guilty in order to escape the gas chamber. The details of the charges against them were not disclosed, except to members of a Federal Grand Jury. Two other published items are worth noting: The May, 1956, issue of the journal published by the Institute of Research Engineers reported that one of its members, Dr. J. O. Smith, had recovered from injuries suffered in the explosion of a butane stove and had accepted a government research position in Washington, D.C. The other item was a paragraph in Aviation Weekly, congratulating Major General David William Sanders on his promotion to Brigadier General. 
60608	----	SATELLITE PASSAGE BY THEODORE L. THOMAS _It had to come sooner or later--the perilous moment when Our satellite crossed the orbit of Theirs...._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The three men bent over the chart and once again computed the orbit. It was quiet in the satellite, a busy quiet broken by the click of seeking microswitches and the gentle purr of smooth-running motors. The deep pulsing throb of the air conditioner had stopped: the satellite was in the Earth's shadow and there was no need for cooling the interior. "Well," said Morgan, "it checks. We'll pass within fifty feet of the other satellite. Too close. Think we ought to move?" Kaufman looked at him and did not speak. McNary glanced up and snorted. Morgan nodded. He said, "That's right. If there's any moving to be done, let them do it." He felt a curious nascent emotion, a blend of anger and exhilaration--very faint now, just strong enough to be recognizable. The pencil snapped in his fingers, and he stared at it, and smiled. Kaufman said, "Any way we can reline this a little? Fifty feet cuts it kind of close." They were silent, and the murmuring of machinery filled the cramped room. "How's this?" said McNary. "Wait till we see the other satellite, take a couple of readings on it, and compute the orbit again. We'd have about five minutes to make the calculations. Morgan here can do it in less than that. Then we'd know if we're on a collision course." Morgan nodded. "We could do it that way." He studied the chart in front of him. "The only thing, those boys on the other satellite will see what we're doing. They'll know we're afraid of a collision. They'll radio it down to Earth, and--you know the Russian mind--we'll lose face." "That so bad?" asked Kaufman. Morgan stared at the chart. He answered softly, "Yes, I think it is. The Russians will milk it dry if we make any move to get our satellite out of the way of theirs. We can't do that to our people." McNary nodded. Kaufman said, "Agree. Just wanted to throw it out. We stay put. We hit, we hit." The other two looked at Kaufman. The abrupt dismissal of a serious problem was characteristic of the little astronomer; Kaufman wasted no time with second guesses. A decision made was a fact accomplished; it was over. Morgan glanced at McNary to see how he was taking it. McNary, now, big as he was, was a worrier. He stood ready to change his mind at any time, whenever some new alternative looked better. Only the soundness of his judgment prevented his being putty in any strong hands. He was a meteorologist, and a good one. "You know," said McNary, "I still can't quite believe it. Two satellites, one pole-to-pole, the other equatorial, both having apogees and perigees of different elevations--yet they wind up on what amounts to a collision course." Morgan said, "That's what regression will do for you. But we haven't got any time for that; we've got to think this out. Let's see, they'll be coming up from below us at passage. Can we make anything of that?" There was silence while the three men considered it. Morgan's mind was focussed on the thing that was about to happen; but wisps of memory intruded. Faintly he could hear the waves, smell the bite in the salt sea air. A man who had sailed a thirty-two-foot ketch alone into every corner of the globe never thereafter quite lost the sound of the sea in his ear. And the struggle, the duel, the strain of outguessing the implacable elements, there was a test of a man.... "Better be outside in any case," said Kaufman. "Suited up and outside. They'll see us, and know we intend to do nothing to avoid collision. Also, we'll be in a better position to cope with anything that comes along, if we're in the suits." Morgan and McNary nodded, and again there was talk. They discussed the desirability of radio communication with the other satellite, and decided against it. To keep their own conversations private, they agreed to use telephone communication instead of radio. When the discussion trailed off, Kaufman said, "Be some picture, if we have the course computed right. We stand there and wave at 'em as they go by." Morgan tried to see it in his mind: three men standing on a long, slim tube, and waving at three men on another. The first rocket passage, and men waving. And then Morgan remembered something, and the image changed. He saw the flimsy, awkward planes sputtering past each other on the morning's mission. The pilots, detached observers, non-combatants really, waved at each other as the rickety planes passed. Kindred souls they were, high above the walks of normal men. So they waved ... for a while. Morgan said, "Do you suppose they'll try anything?" "Like what?" said Kaufman. "Like knocking us out of orbit if they can. Like shooting at us if they have a gun. Like throwing something at us, if they've got nothing better to do." "My God," said McNary, "you think they might have brought a gun up here?" Morgan began examining the interior of the tiny cabin. Slowly he turned his head, looking at one piece of equipment after another, visualizing what was packed away under it and behind it. To the right of the radio was the spacesuit locker, and his glance lingered there. He reached over, opened the door and slipped a hand under the suits packed in the locker. For a moment he fumbled and then he sat back holding an oxygen flask in his hand. He hefted the small steel flask and looked at Kaufman. "Can you think of anything better than this for throwing?" Kaufman took it and hefted it in his turn, and passed it to McNary. McNary did the same and then carefully held it in front of him and took his hand away. The flask remained poised in mid-air, motionless. Kaufman shook his head and said. "I can't think of anything better. It's got good mass, fits the hand well. It'll do." Morgan said, "Another thing. We clip extra flasks to our belts and they look like part of the standard equipment. It won't be obvious that we're carrying something we can throw." McNary gently pushed the flask toward Morgan, who caught it and replaced it. McNary said, "I used to throw a hot pass at Berkeley. I wonder how the old arm is." The discussion went on. At one point the radio came to life and Kaufman had a lengthy conversation with one of the control points on the surface of the planet below. They talked in code. It was agreed that the American satellite should not move to make room for the other, and this information was carefully leaked so the Russians would be aware of the decision. The only difficulty was that the Russians also leaked the information that their satellite would not move, either. A final check of the two orbits revealed no change. Kaufman switched off the set. "That," he said, "is the whole of it." "They're leaving us pretty much on our own," said McNary. "Couldn't be any other way," Morgan answered. "We're the ones at the scene. Besides--" he smiled his tight smile--"they trust us." Kaufman snorted. "Ought to. They went to enough trouble to pick us." McNary looked at the chronometer and said, "Three quarters of an hour to passage. We'd better suit up." * * * * * Morgan nodded and reached again into the suit locker. The top suit was McNary's, and as he worked his way into it, Morgan and Kaufman pressed against the walls to give him room. Kaufman was next, and then Morgan. They sat out the helmets, and while Kaufman and McNary made a final check of the equipment, Morgan took several sights to verify their position. "Luck," said Kaufman, and dropped his helmet over his head. The others followed and they all went through the air-sealing check-off. They passed the telephone wire around, and tested the circuit. Morgan handed out extra oxygen flasks, three for each. Kaufman waved, squeezed into the air lock and pulled the hatch closed behind him. McNary went next, then Morgan. Morgan carefully pulled himself erect alongside the outer hatch and plugged the telephone jack into his helmet. As he straightened, he saw the Earth directly in front of him. It loomed large, visible as a great mass of blackness cutting off the harsh white starshine. The blackness was smudged with irregular patches of orangish light that marked the cities of Earth. Morgan became aware that McNary, beside him, was pointing toward the center of the Earth. Following the line of his finger Morgan could see a slight flicker of light against the blackness; it was so faint that he had to look above it to see it. "Storm," said McNary. "Just below the equator. It must be a pip if we can see the lightning through the clouds from here. I've been watching it develop for the last two days." Morgan stared, and nodded to himself. He knew what it was like down there. The familiar feeling was building up, stronger now as the time to passage drew closer. First the waiting. The sea, restless in expectancy as the waves tossed their hoary manes. The gathering majesty of the elements, reaching, searching, striving.... And if at the height of the contest the screaming wind snatched up and smothered a defiant roar from a mortal throat, there was none to tell of it. Then the time came when the forces waned. A slight let-up at first, then another. Soon the toothed and jagged edge of the waves subsided, the hard side-driven spray and rain assumed a more normal direction. The man looked after the departing storm, and there was pain in his eyes, longing. Almost, the words rose to his lips, "Come back, I am still here, do not leave me, come back." But the silent supplication went unanswered, and the man was left with a taste of glory gone, with an emptiness that drained the soul. The encounter had ended, the man had won. But the winning was bitter. The hard fight was not hard enough. Somewhere there must be a test sufficient to try the mettle of this man. Somewhere there was a crucible hot enough to float any dross. But where? The man searched and searched, but could not find it. Morgan turned his head away from the storm and saw that Kaufman and McNary had walked to the top of the satellite. Carefully he turned his body and began placing one foot in front of the other to join them. Yes, he thought, men must always be on top, even if the top is only a state of mind. Here on the outer surface of the satellite, clinging to the metallic skin with shoes of magnetized alloy, there was no top. One direction was the same as another, as with a fly walking on a chandelier. Yet some primordial impulse drove a man to that position which he considered the top, drove him to stand with his feet pointed toward the Earth and his head toward the outer reaches where the stars moved. Walking under these conditions was difficult, so Morgan moved with care. The feet could easily tread ahead of the man without his knowing it, or they could lag behind. A slight unthinking motion could detach the shoes from the satellite, leaving the man floating free, unable to return. So Morgan moved with care, keeping the telephone line clear with one hand. When he reached the others, Morgan stopped and looked around. The sight always gave him pause. It was not pretty; rather, it was harsh and garish like the raucous illumination of a honkytonk saloon. The black was too black, and the stars burned too white. Everything appeared sharp and hard, with none of the softness seen from the Earth. Morgan stared, and his lips curled back over his teeth. The anticipation inside him grew greater. No sound and fury here; the menace was of a different sort. Looming, quietly foreboding, it was everywhere. Morgan leaned back to look overhead, and his lips curled further. This was where it might come, this was the place. Raw space, where a man moved and breathed in momentary peril, where cosmic debris formed arrow-swift reefs on which to founder, where star-born particles traveled at unthinkable speeds out of the macrocosm seeking some fragile microcosm to shatter. "Sun." Kaufman's voice echoed tinnily inside the helmet. Morgan brought his head down. There, ahead, a tinge of deep red edged a narrow segment of the black Earth. The red brightened rapidly, and broadened. Morgan reached to one side of his helmet and dropped a filter into place; he continued to stare at the sun. * * * * * McNary said, "Ten minutes to passage." Morgan unhooked one of the oxygen cylinders at his belt and said, "We need some practice. We'd better try throwing one of these now; not much time left." He turned sideways and made several throwing motions with his right hand without releasing the cylinder. "Better lean into it more than you would down below. Well, here goes." He pushed the telephone line clear of his right side and leaned back, raising his right arm. He began to lean forward. When it seemed that he must topple, he snapped his arm down and threw the cylinder. The recoil straightened him neatly, and he stood securely upright. The cylinder shot out and down in a straight line and was quickly lost to sight. "Very nice," said McNary. "Good timing. I'll keep mine low too. No sense cluttering the orbits up here with any more junk." Carefully McNary leaned back, leaned forward, and threw. The second cylinder followed the first, and McNary kept his footing. Without speaking Kaufman went through the preliminaries and launched his cylinder. Morgan and McNary watched it speed into the distance. "Shooting stars on Earth tonight," said McNary. "Quick! I'm off." It was Kaufman. [Illustration: "Quick! I'm off!"] Morgan and McNary turned to see Kaufman floating several feet above the satellite, and slowly receding. Morgan stepped toward him and scooped up the telephone wire that ran to Kaufman's helmet. Kaufman swung an arm in a circle so that it became entangled in the wire. Morgan carefully drew the wire taut and checked Kaufman's outward motion. Gently, so as not to snap the wire, he slowly reeled him in. McNary grasped Kaufman's shoulders and turned him so that his feet touched the metal shell of the satellite. McNary chuckled and said, "Why didn't you ride an oxygen cylinder down?" Kaufman grunted and said, "Oh, sure. I'll leave that to the idiots in the movies; that's the only place a man can ride a cylinder in space." He turned to Morgan. "Thanks. Do as much for you some day." "Hope you don't have to," Morgan answered. "Look, any throwing to be done, you better leave it to Mac and me. We can't be fishing anyone back if things get hot." "Right," said Kaufman. "I'll do what I can to fend off anything they throw at us." He sniffed. "Be simpler if we have a collision." Morgan was staring to the left. He lifted a hand and pointed. "That it?" The others squinted in that direction. After a moment they saw the spot of light moving swiftly up and across the black backdrop of the naked sky. "Must be," said Kaufman. "Right time, right place. Must be." Morgan promptly turned his back on the sun and closed his eyes; he would need his best vision shortly now, and he wanted his pupils dilated as much as possible. "Make anything out yet?" he said. "No. Little brighter." Morgan stood without moving. He could feel the heat on his back as his suit seized the radiant energy from the sun and converted it to heat. He grew warm at the back, yet his front remained cold. The sensation was familiar, and Morgan sought to place it. Yes, that was it--a fireplace. He felt as does a man who stands in a cold room with his back toward a roaring fire. One side toasted, the other side frigid. Funny, the homey sensations, even here. "Damn face plate." It was Kaufman. He had scraped the front of his helmet against the outside hatch a week ago. Since then the scratches distracted him every time he wore the helmet. Morgan waited, and the exultation seethed and bubbled and fumed. "Anything?" he said. "It's brighter," said McNary. "But--wait a minute, I can make it out. They're outside, the three of them. I can just see them." It was time. Morgan turned to face the approaching satellite. He raised a hand to shield his face plate from the sun and carefully opened his eyes. He shifted his hand into the proper position and studied the other satellite. It was like their own, even to the three men standing on it, except that the three were spaced further apart. "Any sign of a rifle or gun?" asked McNary. "Not that I see," said Morgan. "They're not close enough to tell." He watched the other satellite grow larger and he tried to judge its course, but it was too far away. Although his eyes were on the satellite, his side vision noted the bright-lit Earth below and the stars beyond. A small part of his mind was amused by his own stubborn egocentricity. Knowing well that he was moving and moving fast, he still felt that he stood motionless while the rest of the universe revolved around him. The great globe seemed to be majestically turning under his rooted feet. The harsh brilliances that were the stars seemed to sweep by overhead. And that oncoming satellite, it seemed not to move so much as merely swell in size as he watched. One of the tiny figures on the other satellite shifted its position toward the others. Sensitive to the smallest detail, Morgan said, "He didn't clear a line when he walked. No telephone. They're on radio. See if we can find the frequency. Mac, take the low. Shorty, the medium. I'll take the high." Morgan reached to his helmet and began turning the channel selector, hunting for the frequency the Russians were using. Kaufman found it. He said, "Got it, I think. One twenty-eight point nine." Morgan set his selector, heard nothing at first. Then hard in his ear burst an unintelligible sentence with the characteristic fruity diphthongs of Russian. "I think that's it," he said. He watched, and the satellite increased in size. "No rifle or any other weapon that I see," said Morgan. "But they _are_ carrying a lot of extra oxygen bottles." Kaufman grunted. McNary asked, "Can you tell if it's a collision course yet? I can't." Morgan stared at the satellite through narrowed eyes, frowning in concentration. "I think not. I think it'll cross our bow twenty or thirty feet out; close but no collision." McNary's breath sounded loud in the helmet. "Good. Then we've nothing but the men to worry about. I wonder how those boys pitch." Another burst of Russian came over the radio, and with it Morgan felt himself slip into the relaxed state he knew so well. No longer was the anticipation rising. He was ready now, in a state of calm, a deadly and efficient calm--ready for the test. This was how it always was with him when the time came, and the time was now. Morgan watched as the other satellite approached. His feet were apart and his head turned sideways over his left shoulder. At a thousand yards, he heard a mutter in Russian and saw the man at the stern start moving rapidly toward the bow. His steps were long. Too long. Morgan saw the gap appear between the man and the surface of the other ship, saw the legs kicking in a futile attempt to establish contact again. The radio was alive with quick, short sentences, and the two men turned and began to work their way swiftly toward the bit of human jetsam that floated near them. "I'll be damned," said Kaufman. "They'll never make it." Morgan had seen that this was true. The gap between floating man and ship widened faster than the gap between men and floating man diminished. Without conscious thought or plan, Morgan leaned forward and pulled the jack on the telephone line from McNary's helmet. He leaned back and did the same to Kaufman, straightened and removed his own. He threw a quick knot and gathered the line, forming a coil in his left hand and one in his right, and leaving a large loop floating near the ship in front of him. He stepped forward to clear Kaufman, and twisted his body far around to the right. There he waited, eyes fixed on the other satellite. He crouched slightly and began to lean forward, far forward. At the proper moment he snapped both his arms around to throw the line, the left hand throwing high, the right low. All his sailor's skill went into that heave. As the other satellite swept past, the line flew true to meet it. The floating man saw it coming and grabbed it and wrapped it around his hand and shouted into the radio. The call was not needed; the lower portion of the line struck one of the walking men. He turned and pulled the line into his arms and hauled it tight. The satellite was barely past when the bit of human jetsam was returning to its metallic haven. The two men became three again, and they turned to face the American satellite. As one man the three raised both arms and waved. Still without thinking, Morgan found himself raising an arm with Kaufman and McNary and waving back. He dropped his arm and watched the satellite shrink in size. The calmness left him, replaced by a small spot of emptiness that grew inside him, and grew and swelled and threatened to engulf him. Passage was ended, but the taste in his mouth was of ashes and not of glory. 
60654	----	Love and Moondogs BY RICHARD MCKENNA "_The true dog, madame, was originally the golden jackal_, Canis aureus.... _He must love and be loved, or he dies._" [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The headline on the newspapers stacked in front of the drugstore read "RUSS DOG REACHES MOON ALIVE." A man in a leather jacket stopped to scan it. Across the street, frost lay crisp on the courthouse lawn, and the white and tan spotted hound put up his forepaws on the kitchen stool as if to warm them. The four women were too busy hauling down the flag to notice. Martha Stonery in the persian lamb coat paid out the halyard. Monica Flint in the reddish muskrat and Paula Hart in the brown fox caught the flag and folded it, careful not to let it touch the wet cement. A postman and the man in the leather jacket stopped on the sidewalk to watch. Martha, plump face grim under pinchnose spectacles, fastened one halyard snap to a metal ring taped and wired to the dog's right hind leg. "Hoist away, girls." Monica, Paula and Abigail Silax in nutria hauled in unison while Martha held the flag. The hound scrabbled with his forepaws and barked frantically. As he went struggle-twisting upward he began to howl in a bell-like voice. The women grunted with effort. People were coming across the lawn and pale faces moved behind the courthouse windows. "Two block," Martha said. "Vast hauling and belay." She pulled the kitchen stool nearer the flagpole and climbed on it to face the small crowd across the shelf of her bosom. Cars were stopping, people streaming in from all sides. Martha patted her piled gray hair and made her thin lips into a parrot beak. "Fellow Americans!" she cried above the howling. "Our leaders are cowards and it is time for the people to act before the Russians come and murder us all in our beds! We, the United Dames of the Dog, hereby protest the Russian crime of putting a trusting, loving dog on the moon to starve and freeze and smother and die of loneliness! This dog above our heads cries out to the world against the Russian breach of faith between dog and man. He will stay there until the Russians bring their dog home safely or make amends for their crime!" "Like hell!" said the man in the leather jacket, moving in. "_Martha!_" Abigail shrieked. "He's taking it down!" Monica pulled at his wrists. Paula slapped and scratched at his face. "You brute! You coward!" they shrilled. Martha jumped off the stool and kicked him. He backed away, bent and holding himself. "Look, ladies," he gasped, "for God's sake--" "Here now, here now, this is county property," said a fat man in shirtsleeves with pink sleeve garters, pushing through the crowd. "What's all this? Take that dog down, somebody!" "Never!" Martha snapped. She put her back against the halyard cleat, unfolded the flag and draped it around herself. A loose strand of gray hair fell across her face. "If you're so big and brave, go bring down the Russian dog," she told the fat man coldly. "Now _listen_, lady," the fat man said. The _Clarion_ press photographer was sprinting across the lawn. * * * * * George Stonery was tall, thin, stooped and anxious in a gray business suit. "I came as soon as I could," he told Sheriff Breen across the scarred, paper-littered wooden desk. "I was away checking one of our warehouses." "You can make bail for her in two minutes, right across the hall," the sheriff said, scratching his jowl. "She wouldn't make it for herself, said we had to lock her in our sputnik." "Where is she now?" "In the sputnik." The desk phone rang and the sheriff growled into it, "Hell you say. State forty-three just past Roy Farm? Right. I s'pose you already heard what we had on the lawn here this morning?" The phone gave forth an excited gobbling. The sheriff's red eyebrows rose in disbelief and his heavy jaw dropped in dismay. He put down the phone. "That was city," he told Stonery. "Complaint about a dog hanging by one leg from a tree just outside city limits. But it's going on all over town too--dogs hanging on trees, out of windows, off clotheslines--every squad car is out. Your old lady sure started something!" "What did she _do_?" Stonery asked in anguish. The sheriff told him. "Kicked a big fat deputy where it hurts, too. Maybe we ought to hold her after all. She says she's president of the United Dogs of something." "United Dames of the Dog," the thin man corrected. "They hold meetings and things. She started it when the Russians put up their second sputnik." "Well, I hope none of them dames lives out in the county," the sheriff said, rising. "You fix up bail, Mr. Stonery. I got to send out a deputy." Walking past the flagpole with her husband, Martha Stonery wore an exalted look. "All over America dogs will cry out in protest against the Russian crime," she said. "I have kindled a flame, George, that will sweep away the Kremlin. I, a weak woman...." She insisted on driving herself home in her new station wagon. * * * * * Sirening police cars passed Stonery three times as he drove home in the evening. Outside the tan stucco ranch-style house on Euclid Avenue, cars blocked the driveway and a crowd milled on the lawn. Stonery parked under the oak tree at the curb and got out. Martha stood in the living room by the picture window and harangued the crowd through a screened side panel. Centered in the window her spaniel Fiffalo writhed, hanging by a hind leg from the massive gilt floor lamp and yipping piteously. Martha had on her suit of gray Harris tweed and her diamond brooch. "... moral pressure the Russians simply _cannot_ resist," Stonery heard her shouting as he joined the crowd. "The men talk, but the United Dames of the Dog are not afraid to act. Putting a dear little dog on the moon to die of heart-break!" Several young men near the window scribbled on white pads. "How many members do you have, Mrs. Stonery?" one asked. "The U.D.D. is bigger than you think, young man. Bigger than the Russians think, for all their spies and traitors!" Stonery sidled in and tried the front door. "She locked it," one of the reporters told him. "The cops went back for a warrant. Say! You're Stonery!" "Yes," the thin man said, flushing. A press camera flashed and he put up his hands too late to shield his face. "Give us a statement, Mr. Stonery, before the cops come back," the reporters clamored. Stonery backed off, waving his hands. "Please, please," he said. "She cracked?" a reporter asked. "When did you first notice?" "Please," Stonery said. "Yes, she's upset. Her oldest son went into the state penitentiary in California last week. She's very upset about it." "He kill somebody?" the same reporter asked. "No, oh no ... just armed robbery ... please don't print that, boys." "Here come the cops back!" someone shouted. Two policemen crossed the lawn, one waving a paper. "Here is our warrant of forcible entry, Mrs. Stonery," he called out. He began reading it aloud. "The U.D.D. will not shrink from any extremes of police brutality," Martha cried sharply. Fiffalo struggled and yelped louder. The second policeman smashed the lock with a ten-pound sledge. The reporters swept Stonery into the house with them. One policeman untied Fiffalo and held him in his arms. He strained his head back and away from the spaniel's whimpering kisses. Martha glared selflessly while flash bulbs popped. Stonery pulled gently at the other policeman's sleeve. "May I come along, officer?" he asked. "I'm her husband. I'll have to arrange bail." "Not taking her," the policeman said. "No room left in the pokey. Since two o'clock we been arresting the dogs." * * * * * The bellboy put down the silver bucket of ice cubes, pocketed the quarter and went out. The skinny secretary put a bottle of whisky beside it and turned to that fat adjutant sprawled shoeless on the bed. "Looks like Governor Bob'll be a while yet, Sam," the secretary said. "Shall we drink without him?" "Hell yes, I need one, Dave," the adjutant said in his frog voice, wiggling his toes. "Bob must be having himself a time with that Stonery dame." He chuckled and slapped his belly. The secretary tore wrappers off two tumblers and clinked ice into them. His rabbit face with its spectacles framed in clear plastic expressed a rabbity concern. "It ain't for laughs, Sam," he said. "It's like the dancing mania of the Middle Ages, ever hear of it?" "No. D'they string up dogs by a hind leg too?" "No, only danced. But it was catching, like this is. My God, Sam, it's all over the state now, U.D.D. women running in packs at night, singing, hanging up every dog they can catch. Sam, it _scares_ me." He splashed whisky into the two glasses. The adjutant belched, sat up in a creaking of bed springs, and scratched his heavy jaw. "You're thinking they might start hanging up us poor sons of bitches, ain't you?" he asked. "Hell, call out the Guard. Clamp on a curfew." He reached for a glass. "Yes, and the Russians'll fake pictures of your boys sticking old women with bayonets," the secretary said. "Governor Bob couldn't get reelected as dogcatcher, even." The adjutant drained his glass, lipping back the ice, and whistled his breath out through pouting lips. "Good! Needed that," he grunted. "Dave, Bob's got that Stonery dame by the short hairs, he'll swing her into line. Just that about her boy in the state pen out in California is enough. Brown would do Bob a favor and spring him. Or the papers here would splash it. Either way." "I know, I know," the secretary said, sipping at his drink. "We'll see, when Bob gets here. Meanwhile, as of yesterday we had thirty-three thousand seven hundred twenty-six dogs in protective custody and God knows how many more under house arrest. Sixteen thousand bucks a day it's costing us--" He broke off as a knock sounded on the door. He hastily tore the wrapper off another glass and splashed it full of ice and bourbon. The adjutant padded to the door and opened it. The governor, a stout, florid man in a gray sports coat, came in and sat stiffly on the edge of the bed. The secretary handed him the drink and he gulped half of it before speaking. "No smoke, boys," he said finally. "She give it to me just like she does to the papers. We got to go to the moon, or make the Russians do it, and bring that poor, dear, sweet, trusting, cuddly little dog back to Earth again." "How about her kid out on the coast?" the adjutant asked. "She spit in my eye, Sam. Said she was just as brave to be a martyr as the dogs they string up. Why, she even told me about another boy of hers, living in sin with a black woman down in Cuba, and dared me to give that to the papers too." "She sounds tough as she looks." "She's tougher," the governor groaned. "Like blue granite. I felt like I was back in the third grade." He handed his empty glass to the secretary. "What did you finally do?" the secretary asked. "What the hell _could_ I do? I want that U.D.D. vote, it must be a whopper. I wagged my tail and barked for her and said I had an idea." "And now I got to think up the idea," the secretary said, still holding the empty glass. "No, I thought it up on my way back," the governor said. "I'm going to fly to Washington this afternoon." "Not the army, for God's sake," pleaded the adjutant. "No, I'm going to dump it on the Russian embassy. Damn their black hearts, they started this. Hurry up with that drink!" "Watch out you don't lose your donkey for sure and all," the adjutant said. "Them Russians are smart cookies." "They'll have to be," the governor said, reaching for the fresh drink. "They sure ... as ... _hell_ ... will have to be!" * * * * * All the folding chairs were taken. Extra women stood in the aisles and along the side of the hall. Martha Stonery bulged over the rostrum in blue knitted wool and a pearl necklace. Seated around a half-circle of chairs behind her, pack leaders and committee chairwomen smoothed at their skirts. Monica Flint in dove gray sat at the organ. Martha pounded with her gavel so hard that her pearls rattled. "Everyone will please stand while we sing our hymn," she said into the resultant hush. She nodded to Monica, who began to play. "_I did not raise my dog to ride a sputnik, I will not let him wander to the moon...._" The song was a shrill thundering. Martha beamed across her bosom as the crowd settled itself again. "I have a most thrilling announcement to make before we adjourn, girls," she said, "but first we will have committee reports. Paula Hart, will you begin?" She yielded the rostrum. All the reports were favorable. The U.D.D. was getting four times as many column-inches in the state press as the Russian moonship. It was on TV and radio. A _Life_ team was coming. Changes were recommended. Vigilante packs were not to carry hat pins any more. Two policemen had lost eyes and the police were being ugly about it. A bar of soap in a man's sock was to be substituted. More practice on the clove hitch was needed. Too often, in their excitement, the pack ladies were only putting two half hitches around the leg and the dog could struggle out of it. Martha came back to the rostrum to read the honor roll of those whom dogs had bitten or policemen had insulted. Each heroine came forward amid cheers and clapping to receive a certificate exchangeable for the Bleeding Heart medal as soon as the honors committee could agree on a design and have a supply made up. Martha shook the hands, some of them bandaged, and wept a few tears. "And now, fellow U.D.D. members," she said, "I will tell you my surprise. Tomorrow morning I have an appointment with someone coming from Washington!" A sighing murmur swept through the hall. "No, not _Eisenhower_," Martha said scornfully. "A man from the Russian embassy, a Mr. Cherkassov." Applause crashed shrilly. Women wept and hugged each other. "They want to make peace," Martha shouted ringingly into the tumult. "We've won, girls! Sally out tonight and don't come in until the last dog is hung! We'll show them what it means to challenge the massed U.D.D.-ers of America!" * * * * * The state police cordon kept the 2200 block of Euclid Avenue free of reporters and idle gapers. The state car drove up at 10:00 A.M. and parked under the oak tree. Mr. Cherkassov and the two TASS men got out. Mr. Cherkassov was stocky and crop-haired in a blue suit. His broad, high-cheekboned face, with snub nose and an inward tilt about the eyes, managed to seem both alert and impassive. Carrying a pig-skin briefcase, he led the way to the Stonery front door. He stepped on the doormat and pressed the bell. The doormat whirred and writhed under his feet and he stepped back hastily. Martha Stonery, regal in maroon silk, four-inch cameo and piled gray hair, opened the door. "Don't be afraid of the doormat, Mr. Cherkassov--you _are_ Mr. Cherkassov, aren't you?" she asked sweetly. He nodded, looking from her to the doormat. "Your weight presses something and the little brushes spin around and clean your shoes," she explained. "I expect you don't have things like that in Russia. But _do_, please, come in and sit down." The three men stepped carefully across the mat on entering. In the oak-paneled living room, Paula Hart waited in black wool and pearls with Monica Flint, who wore white jade and green jersey. Martha and Mr. Cherkassov made introductions back and forth and the men bowed stiffly. Then Martha sat down flanked by her aides on the gray sofa facing the picture window. The men sat in single chairs and rubbed their polished black shoes uneasily against the deep-pile gray rug. "Madame Stonery, I have come to justify moondog," Mr. Cherkassov said. His voice was deep and controlled. "Two wrongs don't make a right, Mr. Cherkassov," Martha said, raising her head. "You needn't bring up Hiroshima. We already know about those thousands of little black and white spaniels. Besides, I saw a _Life_ picture where you sewed a little dog's head to the side of a big dog's neck." Mr. Cherkassov looked at his stubby fingers and hid them under his briefcase. Paula and Monica nodded accusingly and one TASS man made a note. "We do not believe it is a wrong when a greater value prevails over a lesser," Mr. Cherkassov said. "Moondog sends us information that will hasten the time of safe space-travel for humans." "And who might _you_ be, to say which value is greatest? Space travel is moonshine, just _moonshine_!" "I do not understand your word, madame. If you mean impossible, I must point out that moondog has already crossed space." Martha clasped her hands in her lap. "That's what I mean, grown men and such _silliness_, and the poor little dog has to pay." Mr. Cherkassov spoke earnestly. "Forgive me if my ignorance of your language causes me to misunderstand, madame. We believe because man now has the ability to cross space he therefore has a _duty_ to all life on Earth to help it reach other planets. Earth is overcrowded with men, not to speak of the wild life that soon must all die. We believe that around other suns we will find Earth-like planets where we can plough and harvest and build homes. I cannot agree that it is silly." Martha flung her head back. "Well, it _is_ silly. Who'll go? All the men who do things will run away to them and then where will we be? Oh no, Mr. Cherkassov, that gets you nowhere!" "Your pardon, madame," a TASS man interrupted. "What kind of men will run away?" "The sour-faced men who fix pipes and TV and make A-bombs and electricity and things." "Oh," said Mr. Cherkassov. He drummed on his briefcase. Then, "Perhaps only Russians will go, madame. You could pass a law. I must confess to you, we might have sent a man to the moon, but we feared the propaganda use your country might make of it." Martha made her parrot mouth. "You should have sent a _man_!" She chomped the last word off short. Paula and Monica nodded vigorously. Mr. Cherkassov stroked his briefcase. "Moondog's mistress wished greatly to go. One might say moondog saved her mistress' life. Is not that a value to you?" Martha stared. "Did you dare think of sending a poor weak _woman_ to the ... to the _moon_?" "Russian women are coarse and strong," Mr. Cherkassov said soothingly. "A large number of them, among the scientists, did volunteer." * * * * * Martha sat bolt upright and made her parrot beak again. Her fat cheeks flushed under the powder. "No!" she snapped. "I see where you're trying to lead me and I won't go! You should have sent the hussy! It is _immoral_ to sacrifice a loving little dog just for a careless whim." Her two aides gazed admiringly at their chieftainess. "Think of it, just for a whim!" Paula echoed. Mr. Cherkassov's fingers traced an aimless, intricate pattern on the briefcase and he crossed his ankles. "All dogs are not loving in the same way, madame. Tell me, how do you know when a dog loves you?" "You just know," Martha said. "Take my little Fiffalo--and I just know he's so miserable now away from me in that dreadful concentration camp and it's all your fault, really, Mr. Cherkassov--when I pet Fiffalo he jumps in my lap and kisses me and just _wiggles_ all over. That's real love!" "Ah ... I perhaps understand. What does he do when you speak sharply to him?" "He lies on his back with his paws waving and looks so sad and pitiful and defenseless that my heart melts and I feel good all over. You just _know_ that's love, when it happens to you." Monica dabbed at a tear. Both TASS men scribbled. "I think I may see a way to resolve our differences," Mr. Cherkassov said. He put his feet side by side and leaned slightly forward, gripping the briefcase on his knees. "What do you know of the history of the dog?" he asked. "Well, he's always been man's best friend and the savage Indians used to eat him and ... and...." "The true dog, madame, was domesticated about twenty thousand years ago. He was originally the golden jackal, _Canis aureus_, which still exists in a wild state. Selective breeding for submissiveness and obedience over that long time has resulted in the retention through maturity of many traits normal only to puppyhood. The modern pureline golden jackal dog no longer develops a secret life of his own, with emotional self-sufficiency. He must love and be loved, or he dies." Monica sniffed. "What a beautiful name," Paula murmured. Martha nodded warily. "But, madame, there is also a kind of false dog. Certain Siberian tribes slow to reach civilized status also domesticated the northern wolf, _Canis lupus_. This was many thousands of years later, of course, and in the false dog the effect of long breeding is not so evident. He is loving as a puppy, but when he matures he is aloof and reserves his loyalty to one master. He is intensely loyal and will die for his master, but even to him he will display little outward affection. Perhaps a wag of the tail or a head laid on the knee, not too often. No others except quite young children may pet him at all. To all but his master he displays a kind of tolerant indifference unless he is molested, and then he defends himself." "What a horrible creature, not a dog at all!" Martha exclaimed. "Not culturally, you are quite correct, madame," Mr. Cherkassov agreed, shifting his hold on the briefcase and leaning further forward, "but unfortunately he is a dog biologically. Some wolf blood has crept into most of the jackal-derived breeds, you know. It betrays itself in high cheekbones and slanting eyes and in the _personality_ of the breed. The chow, for instance, has considerable wolf blood." "Chows!" Martha beaked her lips again. "I despise them! No better than cats!" Paula nodded emphatic agreement. "But your little Fiffalo, as you describe him, is probably of pure _Canis aureus_ descent and very highly bred." "I'm sure he is. Blood will tell. Monica, haven't I always said blood will tell?" Monica nodded, her eyes shining. Mr. Cherkassov shifted his position slightly, nearer to the chair edge. "Now moondog, Madame Stonery, is of the _lajka_ breed and has even more wolf blood than the chow. If you brought her back to Earth she would just walk away from you with cold indifference." "Not _really_?" "Madame, you know the wolf traits only as you find them tempered with the loving jackal traits in such dogs as the chow. But a _Russian_ dog! If you were to hand moondog a piece of meat, do you know what she would do?" "No. Tell me." Mr. Cherkassov leaned forward, his slanting gray eyes opening wide, and dropped his voice almost to a whisper. "Madame, she would _bite_ your hand!" "Then she doesn't deserve to be rescued!" Martha said sharply. Mr. Cherkassov straightened up and began stroking his briefcase. "In one sense she is not even a dog," he suggested. "No, she's an old wolf-thing. Like a cat. Dogs are _loving_!" "Perhaps not morally worthy of your campaign?" "No, of _course_ not. Mr. Cherkassov, you have given me a new thought.... I hadn't realized...." Mr. Cherkassov waited attentively, his fingers tracing another pattern. Paula and Monica looked at Martha and held their breaths. "... hadn't realized how that subversive wolf blood has been creeping into our loving dogs all this long time. Why ... why it's miscegenation! It's _bestiality_! Confess it, Mr. Cherkassov--that's one way you Russians have been infiltrating us, now isn't it?" Mr. Cherkassov raised his sandy eyebrows, and a frosty twinkle shone in his tilted eyes. "You must realize that I could hardly admit to such a thing, even if it were true, Madame Stonery," he said judiciously. "It _is_ true! Go back to your Kremlin, Mr. Cherkassov, and shoot every wolf in Russia to the moon. I'm sure the U.D.D. won't mind!" Mr. Cherkassov and the TASS men stood up and bowed. Martha rose and sailed ahead of them to the door. Hand on knob, she turned to face them. "Our meeting will be historic, Mr. Cherkassov," she said. "I have forced you to betray your country's plot to undermine our loving dogs. You may expect from the U.D.D. instant and massive retaliation! An aroused America will move at once, to set up miscegenation and segregation barriers against your despicable wolf blood!" Paula and Monica stood up, each with her hands clasped under her flushed and excited face. Mr. Cherkassov bowed again. Martha opened the door. "Goodbye, Mr. Cherkassov," she said. "You will, no doubt, be liquidated in a few days." Mr. Cherkassov stepped carefully across the doormat. 
60671	----	The Last Days of L.A. BY GEORGE H. SMITH _Murder on a small scale may be illegal and unpleasant, but mass murder can be the most exhilarating thing in the world!_ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] You are having the same recurring dream, the dream that has haunted the whole world since that day in 1945. The dream of the sudden flash in the night, the rising mushroom cloud and then annihilation. You are living the nightmare again but this time it's true, you know it's true. You can't be dreaming. The bombs are actually falling and huge fireballs are sweeping upward while seas of flame spread at supersonic speeds to engulf the city. You feel the blast, the searing heat, you feel your flesh melting away. You try to scream but the sound dies in your throat as your lungs shrivel. Horror makes you try again and somehow you do scream and wake yourself up. Once more, this one more time, it is only a dream. You lie there panting, too weak from terror to move out of the puddle of your own sweat. You lie there and think and your thoughts aren't very pretty. It's a week day and you ought to be down at the office turning out advertising copy by the ton but instead you lie there and think even though you don't like what you're thinking. It's got to be soon. It can't be much longer now, not the way things are going. You finally crawl out of bed around noon and ease your way into the kitchen. You realize that you have a hangover and since you can't remember what you did the night before you suppose you must have been drunk. By the time you finish one of the two quarts of beer you find in the refrigerator you know that isn't what you need, so you put on some clothes and wander out to a bar. After a few quick drinks you walk somewhat unsteadily out into the street again and head toward the place you always think of as The Bar. A wino edges up to you and asks for money to buy a sandwich and a cup of coffee. You give him a dollar but make him promise not to spend it on anything so foolish as food. "Liquor, brother, is the salvation of the race," you tell him. "Believe and be saved!" "Amen!" he says and hurries off. You make the mistake of stopping to read the headlines on the corner so you know you're not drunk enough yet. U. S. REJECTS NEW RUSS NOTE. MOON GUNS CAN DESTROY CITIES: KAGANOVITCH. BURMA LEADER KILLED IN FRESH UPRISING. Just before you get to The Bar you pass an alleyway and as you glance into the darkness, you see a huge rat standing there staring at you with arrogant red eyes. After a moment he walks away, unhurried and cocky. An icy chill runs down your spine. The rats will survive. The rats always survive. Maybe _they_ are the Master Race. Something else tugs at your memory, something you read somewhere. Oh yes, it was a statement by an oceanographer. He said that even if the H-bomb should annihilate every living thing on the surface of the earth, the sea creatures would be able to carry on. The rats and the fish will carry on and build a better world. Your friends are sitting in their usual places when you get to The Bar. John Jones-Very who has the reddest, bushiest and longest beard and also the record for staying drunk the longest, is doing the talking. Listening are Dale Bushman who paints huge canvases which he never finishes, Ian, an out-of-work musician whose last name you don't know, Pat O'Malley the actor and, of course, Anna. Anna is small and thin with deeply tanned skin drawn tightly over high cheekbones. She wears a plain dress and no makeup and her hair is done up in a bun on the nape of her neck. The poetry she writes is a kind of elegant pornography. She is the only one in the group who makes any money and that is because her book FLAME ROSE has been banned all across the country. You like her very much, probably because she is the most irritatingly ugly woman you have ever met. A howling bank of jets hurls across the sky screaming for human blood and you shiver as you squeeze in at the table. You are convinced that the elementals of hell are loose above and the world is in its last stages. All the children born this year will probably have twenty-one teeth and Anti-Christ will walk the land. "Why worry about the next war?" Dale Bushman asks. "It won't last forever." "No," John says. "No war ever has ... yet." "Do you think it's coming?" you ask. "If you read the papers, you'd take to the hills right now," Pat O'Malley says, finishing his bowl of chili and reaching for his drink. "Ah, the hills," Ian says. "But what good? The H-bomb is bad enough but they'll use the C-bomb, the cobalt bomb, and this is the final weapon." "Just the same," you say. "I think we ought to take to the hills." Why not hide yourself way back of nowhere? Hide so deep in the woods and mountains that you won't even know when it happens. You could wrap the silence around you and pull the earth over you. You could bury yourself so deep that ... but of course you won't. You have a job and, like everyone else, at least a thousand other reasons for staying on until the end. "But really," you say, "a man should be able to survive a time of terror by disengaging himself as completely as possible from the rest of the human race. If he were to reduce his needs to a minimum ... a little bread, a few vegetables, a blanket or two, a warm cave and...." "A blonde or two," Pat says. Bushman adds, "A cellar of good Scotch." "And books, lots of books," Jones-Very puts in. "No blondes, no Scotch, no books," you tell them, banging your mug on the table so hard their glasses jump. "Minimum needs ... minimum needs!" "How about plumbing?" Anna demands. "I won't go without plumbing." "We're facing the end of the world," says John, "and you worry about plumbing!" "I'm sorry, but if plumbing isn't going to survive, I'd just as soon not either," Anna says. "I just can't see myself squatting in the bushes." "What difference does it make?" Ian asks. "Everybody dies anyway. From the moment you're born, you start dying." "Yes, but--" "So why bother? Everybody dies. Why prolong it more than you have to? Everybody dies." "Worlds may or may not blow up," O'Malley says, "but it seems to me it's the little indignities of modern life that hurt the most. The constant repetition of the advertising slogans that insult your intelligence, and the women with the pearly teeth and perfect permanent waves, without body odor or souls." "I have body odor," Anna says. "But no soul," Ian says. "No soul at all." "You're just mad because I wouldn't sleep with you last night." "No soul," Ian says. The jukebox offers Tin Pan Alley's solution to the whole thing: OH BABY, OH MY BABY O MY BABY IS MY BABY O MY BABY IS MY BABY O MY BABY LOVES ME O SHE DOES, SHE DOES, SHE DOES O "Our trouble is too much history," John says. "A period without history is a happy one and we've had too much history." "No soul--too much history," Ian hiccups. "Not enough sex--everybody dies." "Everybody is going to die damn fast, unless something happens," you say. "No soul--so sad," Ian mumbles. "No soul and no sex ... everybody dies, nothing happens." "So what?" Anna demands. "What is life anyway? Why try to be like everyone else in this beautiful but messy Brave New World of 1970? Why run searching for a messiah when all the messiahs died a thousand years ago?" This starts you thinking about religion. You've never thought much about it before but a man can change, maybe even accept the old myths as real until they actually begin to seem real. Instead of dwelling on your body being burned to a cinder in an atomic holocaust you could think of your slightly singed soul being wafted to paradise on a mushroom cloud while U-235 atoms sing a heavenly chorus to speed you on your way. The others don't even notice when you get up and walk out to look for a church. * * * * * Churches aren't hard to find in Los Angeles on any day of the week or at any hour of the day. They're behind the blank fronts of painted-over store windows. They're located in big old nineteenth-century houses along Adams; they spring up under tents in vacant lots and in large expensive temples and bank-like buildings in the downtown area. You pass by several likely-looking churches because they are in neighborhoods that have alleyways, and you still remember that rat, that red-eyed rat. Then as you walk through downtown crowds, you remember something else. Some dentist once said that the teeth of the people in the A-bombed Japanese cities hadn't been affected by radiation. This is very funny, it makes you laugh. You picture a world of blistered corpses, none of whose teeth have been affected. You laugh out loud and people turn to look at you. A woman points you out to a policeman and he looks your way. You want to keep on laughing but now you don't dare to. So you just keep on walking, trying to keep the laughter from bubbling out of you. "Hey, bud," the policeman calls to you, "what's the matter with you?" "Nothing--nothing at all, officer," you tell him, and dive into the next church you pass. This one is called the Church of the New Cosmology. Inside, a round-faced little man is talking to a few listless people. "A geologist will never know the rocks until he has seen the Rock of Ages. The botanist will never know plants until he has beheld the Lily of the Valley, the cosmologist will never know the universe until he has listened to the Word of God! "Let us consider for a moment the sun. What do we know about the sun, my friends? What do the so-called scientists know about it? What do they tell us about our heavenly light? They say it's a giant ball of fire millions of miles across and ninety-one million miles away. Now why, I ask you, would that be so? The Bible says that God made the sun to light the world. Now have you ever known the Lord to do anything silly or foolish? Of course you haven't! Then why do they ask us to believe that He would put the sun, which is supposed to light the world, ninety-one million miles away from it? An engineer who did something like that wouldn't be much of a God. The true answer, my friends, is that Jehovah God did nothing so impractical and no matter who tells you different, don't believe it!" The little man's voice dropped to a husky whisper. "I have studied my Bible and I've listened to the scientists and I've talked to God Himself about it and I tell you this is the truth. The sun is our heavenly light, the sure sign of God's love, and right this minute it is just two thousand three hundred miles from Los Angeles! It is not a wasteful million miles across, it is just forty-five and five-tenths miles across ... just the right size to give us our beautiful California sunshine. "How do I know?" The whisper had grown to a hoarse shout. "How do I know? I know because it's the Word of God, my friends! The personal word of God given to me by God Himself. "What else do I know? What else has God told me, to confound the Godless scientists? Why, my friends, the Bible says that this earth upon which we live is flat--as flat as this book!" He brings his hand down with a sharp slap on the Bible. "You ask then how is it possible to circumnavigate the world when it is a flat plane. The answer is that it isn't possible. A ship that seems to go around the world really makes a circle on the flat surface like this." With a stubby forefinger he draws a circle on the book. "Now I know that those scientists up on the moon say that the world is round, but whoever saw or heard of a scientist that wasn't a liar? Can any of you really bring yourselves to believe that this flat earth of ours is traveling through space at the tremendous speed that they say it is? Tell me, do you feel any wind from this great speed? Do you feel anything at all?" No, you have to admit, you don't. You don't feel a thing. Even his own congregation doesn't seem to. This is thirsty work. You have a couple more drinks and then you look for another church. You find one called the Church of Christian Capitalism. The thin old man with the dusty fringe of gray hair has his audience well in hand as you walk in and take a seat. He makes the sign of the cross and the sign of the dollar over their heads as he harangues them. "Blessed are the wealthy for they shall please God," he says. "Christ was the first capitalist, dear friends. He took a loaf and seven fishes and blessed them and made them into enough food to feed a multitude. He walked in poverty but he came to own the world! "God is the Good Capitalist, the Owner and Proprietor of all things on this earth. This country was created by those saints of Capitalism--Morgan, Rockefeller and Gould." Christian Capitalism sends you home to bed by way of another bar. * * * * * You're sitting in a room with people all around you. At first you don't know why you're there and then you remember it's a party. Everyone except you is laughing and drinking and having a good time. You have a strange sense of foreboding, of something about to happen that you can't avoid. You see a girl you know across the room and get up and start to cross the room to her. There's a sudden blinding flash of light outside the house and the windows come crashing in. You see murderous slivers of glass piercing the flesh of those about you and you hurry over to the girl you know only to find her face and neck slashed by the flying glass and blood streaming down over her bare breasts. You try to stop the flow of blood with a handkerchief but it's coming in such strong spurts that you can't. A second shock wave follows the first with an even brighter flash. You're knocked to the floor and the building comes crashing down. You struggle against the falling masonry but it does no good. You feel the crushing weight and scream ... and your screams wake you up. You feel almost as bad awake as you did asleep, only now the crushing weight is on your head instead of your chest and your mouth is filled with the taste of death and decay. You figure you must have been drinking last night but you can't quite remember. You reach out your hand and it locates a bottle that still guggles a little. Without opening your eyes you lift it hurriedly to your mouth and then almost choke trying to spit it out. Mouthwash! You manage to get your eyes open, and remember with thankful heart that today is Sunday and you don't have to go to work. It's been five days since the last dream and that's not so bad, but just the same you'd better get up and get a drink because this one really shook you up. Or maybe you ought to go to church. Perhaps you'd better do both. A tall blond man in a black suit is standing on a platform in the center of a group of forty or fifty intensely quiet people as you enter. "Is there a wall in front of you?" he asks. "Yes, there is a wall in front of us," the people answer. "Can you see the wall in front of you?" "Yes, we can see the wall." "Is there a wall behind you?" "Yes, there is a wall behind us." "Can you see the wall behind you?" They all turn around and look. "Yes, we can see the wall behind us." "Is there a floor beneath your feet?" "Yes, there is a floor beneath our feet." "Are you sure? Feel the floor with your feet." There is a loud shuffling as they do as they are told. "Are you sure the floor is there?" "Yes, we're sure the floor is there." "Now feel your feet with the floor." There is more shuffling and during this you steal quietly out. This one reminds you of the D.T.'s and you want nothing at all to do with that. You get tossed out of the next place you try because the preacher says you're drunk. You're not, but you wish you were, so you head toward The Bar. You stop when you see the sign, "FLYING SAUCER CONVENTION." It's over the door of a large building and underneath in smaller letters it says, "Listen to the words of the Space People. Hear the advice they bring us in these troubled times." Surely, you tell yourself, the Space People will have a solution, surely they can bring peace. You enter and see a young, ordinary-looking fellow addressing a crowd of about three hundred. You take a seat next to a bald man who is writing down what the young man is saying even though it doesn't seem to make much sense. "... member of a small group that has been in touch with the Space People and feel that this world can be saved only through the aid of superior beings. I will now play this tape which I obtained from the captain of a Flying Saucer." He places the tape on the spindle and it begins to whirl. A voice begins to speak in slightly stilted English. "I am Lelan. I am what you people of Earth think of as the head of the government of the planet Nobila. I speak to you across the parsecs in order to bring you good and bad news. The good is that a new age is about to begin for the people of Earth through the aid of we Nobilians. We have already contacted the President of the United States, the Pope of the Catholic Church and all other world leaders. A new age is about to begin for you as soon as we have saved you from the evil influence of the vicious Zenonians from the planet Zeno. All Earth knowledge will become obsolete as we supply you with new information and all good things will be free in the days after we drive the Zenonians from among you. "But first we must warn you that the Zenonians will try to stop us, but you can help avoid this if you are alert. Look around you for persons who seem strange. It is the Zenonians who have made you what you are. It is the Zenonians who cause your wars and your crime with their evil rays. We will use our good Nobil rays to combat their evil Z rays. When we have driven them out, the world will be a better place in which to live. But--beware! They are all about you. Examine the man next to you. Beware! They are all about you. You shall hear from us again." You turn and look at the man next to you; he's looking at you. He _is_ a rather strange-looking guy and you edge away from him just as he edges away from you. You turn to look at the man on the other side of you. He is moving away from you also. Then you hear the stories of the people in the audience. Every one of them who stands up to speak has had a mysterious visitor in the night or had a flying saucer land in his backyard. Most of them have had trips to the moon and elsewhere in flying saucers. Space you think must be as crowded as the Hollywood Freeway at rush hour. Almost all of them have been contacted by superior beings from space because they are the only people in the world who are wise enough to interpret the Space People to the Earth people. You feel pretty good from the drinks you've had, so you stand up and tell them what you think. "The first flying saucers were sighted after the atomic bombs were first exploded," you begin. "And they became very prevalent after the first Earth satellites were put into space and again after the first moon rockets. I therefore think that the Earth is a cosmic madhouse in which the human race has been incarcerated for its own good and that every time we start rattling the bars, the keepers hurry down to take a look." No one seems to care much for your theory, and you are escorted to the door none too politely. No, the Space People don't seem to have the answer. With the headlines you see at every corner chasing you, you head for The Bar and dive gratefully through the door. "So everybody dies," Ian is saying. "We're all dying, just sitting here." "Will you stop that? God damn it, will you stop that?" you yell at him. Ian looks at you owlishly for a few seconds and then back at his drink. Jones-Very and the others go right on with the conversation. "It's merely what I was saying the other night," Jones-Very says. "It's the contagious spread of the madness that is epidemic in our time. No one wants war. But still we are going to have a war. After all, the very zeitgeist of our times is one of complete callousness toward human life. You have only to think of the Russian slave camps, the German gas chambers and our own highway slaughter." "Maybe life itself is just some sort of stupid mistake," Anna says. "Maybe we're a cosmic blunder, a few pimples on the tail of the universe." "That isn't so," you blurt out. "There's purpose--there's got to be purpose. You can't look around you and say there isn't purpose in the universe; that there isn't a reason for our being here." This time they all turn and look at you strangely. Then they look at each other. "I wonder," Jones-Very says, "if I wasn't closer to the truth than I thought when I talked about contagion." "What the hell do you mean by that?" you demand, half rising from your seat. "Nothing ... nothing at all," Jones-Very says, looking at the others. "What this world needs is a moral renovation--a new birth of the spirit," you go on. "Oh, my God," Jones-Very moans, his head in his hands. "Would you listen to that, in this age of space stations and moon guns," Anna says. "John, you're right--you're right! It's got him!" Bushman says. You won't listen to any more of this. You get to your feet and stagger with great dignity to the door. * * * * * You're dressed in high altitude equipment and you're sitting in the nose of a jet bomber listening to the vicious growling of the motors. You have a tremendous feeling of power and you think about how many you'll kill this trip. You think about the big black bombs nestled in the bomb bay and remember there is one for each of the three cities on your list. God, it will be beautiful! You can almost see the glorious colors of the rising mushroom cloud and hear the screaming of the shattered atoms. You can't hear the screaming of the people up here, that's one of the nicest parts of this kind of murder. You can't hear them. This makes you as happy as it must have made Attila and Hitler when they killed their millions. Murder on a small scale may be illegal and unpleasant, but mass murder can be the most exhilarating thing in the world. Then your bombs are gone and you're passing through the most beautiful clouds you've ever seen but somehow they smell of charred flesh and even up here you hear the screams of the people. The sound rips and tears at your brain, destroying what little sanity you have left. You've got to stop them! You've got to, before they drive you completely mad. You tilt the nose of the bomber and dive toward the screams. You've got to stop them! You scream back at them as you dive and again your own screams wake you up. This is the worst one you've ever had and your hangover is almost as bad. You dress and hurry out of your apartment to get away from the terror and the guilt but suddenly you remember that you aren't really the guilty one. Or are you? You look for a bar or a place to buy a bottle and then remember that you haven't any money. You see Pat O'Malley up ahead of you in the crowd and hurry to catch up with him. He hasn't any money either, so you suggest that both of you go to church. "Why not?" he says. "We have only our souls to lose." The two of you enter the first one you come to and the woman on the platform is an amazing sight. She's big and full-bodied and has all the grace and arrogance of a lioness. She's got the Word and she's passing it out in large doses. "That's Dr. Elinda A. Egers, D.C.F.," O'Malley whispers. "Doctor of Complete Faith." You watch fascinated as that lush body of hers moves restlessly around the platform. "In these troubled times the tortured mind of man is hanging in the balance, because he has forgotten his great enemy," Elinda shouts. There's a wildness in her eyes and a sensuousness in the way she moves her body that makes you move forward until you're sitting on the edge of your seat. Any stripper, you muse, would give her G-string to be able to imitate this woman's uninhibited way with her hips. "Why are our asylums filled with millions of the mentally sick? And why are there tens of millions of the physically sick among us? WHY?" she demands at the top of her lungs. "Because the doctors and the psychologists absolutely fail to recognize or blindly refuse to recognize the demoniac origin of these illnesses. They have failed, my dear friends, because they are bound to the unreality of conventional science. They have failed because they did not look into their souls to see what God has written there for all to read. "If we face the truth, we will learn to recognize the presence of demons and only then can we cure the inflicted!" Demons, you think. What a lovely idea. Perhaps you have fallen through a rift in time and come out in the Middle Ages with only wonderful things like witches and demons to worry about. You turn to O'Malley to tell him this, only to find him sound asleep. You've often wondered where he did his sleeping, and now you know. "The battle in the world today is not between nations but between Jesus Christ and the Devil!" She has gone into a kind of bump and grind routine now with her hands on those glorious hips and her body moving back and forth while her legs remain absolutely still. It looks real good from where you sit but you think it might look even better up closer so you leave Pat snoring gently and take a seat further toward the front. "Come to me and the Lord will put out his hand and save you. He has said unto me: 'You shall have the power to cast out demons,' and I have replied that I will do so. If you feel it, say Amen!" There is a lusty chorus of amen's from the winos and bums who fill the auditorium. You have an idea they were attracted here by the same thing that keeps you on the edge of your seat. A man with the jerks of some sort comes down the aisle and the healing starts. Dr. Egers lays one hand on his head and the other at the back of his neck. "Get out of him, you demons! Out! Out! In the name of the Lord, I charge thee--get out!" The man jerks even more violently. "Heal him, Lord, heal him! They're coming out ... the demons are coming out. Can't you feel them leaving you, brother?" The fellow jerks once more and almost falls as an attendant leads him away. "He's cured," Elinda shouts. "Praise God! He'll never have another convulsion." "Praise God! Praise God!" the congregation shouts. Only the still-jerking man seems to have any doubts as to his cure. "The Power of God will save you," she says to the little boy now kneeling before her. "From the top of his head to the bottom of his feet, I charge you, Satan, come out!" She hugs the child against those astonishing breasts of hers. "This can be your cure if you believe, Jimmy. All things are possible if you only believe. Little Jimmy, do you have faith?" The boy nods his head eagerly and his face is so full of faith and belief that you find yourself nodding with him. "Restore him tonight in the name of Jesus Christ!" she shouts, placing her hands on his thin little legs. "This little leg, Lord ... send the Power to restore this little leg. Drive the demon of evil from it!" Her voice grows even louder. "The Power is coming! The Power is coming! The Power is within me now and it will flow from me to you. Do you feel it, Jimmy? Do you feel it? Do you feel it flowing in your legs?" She has lifted him from the floor and is cradling him in her arms. "Do you feel it, Jimmy?" Christ, you can almost feel it yourself. "Don't your legs feel different, Jimmy?" "I think they're tingling a little," he says. "Do you hear that?" she shouts again. "His legs are tingling! The God Power is making them tingle!" She lowers the child to the floor. "You can do it, Lord! Send the Power in the name of Jesus! Send it into this little foot, into this little leg. Try, Jimmy, try it for me, try it now!" Jimmy tries to stand up but wavers and falls. With renewed effort he manages to pull himself erect and stand swaying. "YOU'VE SEEN IT! YOU'VE SEEN IT WITH YOUR OWN EYES!" Elinda screams at them joyously. Sure they've seen it but they don't seem much impressed. In fact, most of them get up and leave after this round. You ease yourself out of your seat and head toward the door, because you need a drink, but you turn before going out to look back at her. She looks tired and disappointment shows in her full sensuous face. You know that she's the most wonderful thing you have ever seen. You've found your religion. You've found something to worship--Elinda Egers, the only real goddess in the world. You'll come here every night and the bomb won't worry you because you have a religion now. Elinda Egers will save you. You head for the nearest bar, singing "Rock of Ages" at the top of your lungs. * * * * * You're running ... running, terror riding you like a jockey using the whip. You're running while a boiling sea of flame rolls over the city. Behind you and close on your heels come breakers of radioactive hell, smashing buildings and lifting cars and people into the air. People are running on all sides of you. A girl in a spangled evening dress, a puffing little man in Bermuda shorts, a woman carrying two children, a man with a golf bag over his shoulder and two men in gray flannel suits followed by a woman in a sack dress that keeps blowing up over her face as she runs. The harder you run, the closer the fire seems to get. You can feel it singeing your back and the fat little man screams as a lashing tongue catches up with him and turns him into a cinder. The woman in the sack dress tramples across the bodies of the two men in gray flannel but the man with the golf club fights her off with his mashie. Then the four of them are eaten up by the hungry flames. You moan and your legs pump harder. There's an underground shelter ahead and you run toward it only to find the entrance jammed with people. You try to fight your way in. You grab hold of a man but his boiled flesh comes away in your hands. Then you see they are all dead, packed together so tightly they can't fall. You're running again and you see the woman with the two children only there's nothing left of them but a charred arm and a hand which she still clutches. The girl in the evening dress falls in front of you and you stumble over her. You see her dress and then her hair burst into flames. She throws her arms around you and you feel the suffocating flames. "Oh Lord--Lord," you moan, and wake up. The bottle of wine on the nightstand is only half empty and you drink from it gratefully and think of going out for more. But you remember your goddess and you know that you have to go to see her. She's in good form tonight as she talks about the Kinsey Report. "If you're listening, say Amen!" She raises both arms as she yells this and you're amazed at the way her big breasts rise with them. "In the Old Testament, God demanded death for the adulteress but Dr. Kinsey in his day tried to make her sins sound normal. But I tell you that this sin is the road to Hell, for the person and for the nation. God has destroyed other cities for this sin and His wrath will fall upon yours as well. "If you're listening, say Amen!" "AMEN!" "Are you really listening? Do you honestly want to hear? Or do you prefer the way Los Angeles and the rest of the nation is going? Do you prefer the way of sex, the way of fornication and adultery? Do you prefer to read about sixteen-year old girls found in love nests with older men? Do you prefer to think of boys and girls in the back seats of cars? Do you prefer to think of some man's hand running over your daughter's body, touching her...." Elinda Egers is swaying back and forth, her body rigid, her breath coming faster and faster. Someone else is breathing heavily and you're not surprised to find it's you. "If this is what you want, say Amen!" "Amen!" you shout before you realize you're not supposed to this time. No one seems to notice. Beads of perspiration are forming on the back of your neck and trickling down your spine. The tabernacle is jammed and there isn't much ventilation. You're dizzy with the wine, lack of food and desire. "Go ahead! Let your kids go to Hell! Let them read comic books and smoke and drink and fornicate in the back seats of jalopies! Let them go to filthy movies, let them listen to dirty jokes on television, let them look at the brazen women with their breasts hanging half out of their dresses." "Oooooh ..." a woman in front of you moans, and you feel like moaning with her. "But if you don't want these things," Elinda shouts, her voice on the verge of breaking, "sing--sing, sing with me! "_Come home, come home, Ye who are weary, Come home._" You are sitting in a metal room with telescreens on the wall and a big red button in front of you. Sweat is standing out on your forehead and trickling down the back of your neck because you know the time is coming, the time when you have to decide whether to push that button and send a dozen ICBM's with hydrogen warheads arcing over the Pole. In the telescreens you see cities ... peaceful scenes of people going about their business. Then the people are running, leaping out of their cars and leaving them on the street, vanishing into buildings and underground shelters. Your hand is poised over the big red button and your muscles are tightened as if your whole hand and arm were turned to wood, and you know that even if you have to, you can't push that button and destroy half the world. Then in one of the telescreens there is a sudden white glare, and the screen goes blank--burned out--and then in another telescreen you see destruction fountaining like dirty white dust boiling out of the streets ... and you see the buildings breaking and falling in rubble, and now you hear the people's screams, a sound that tears through your guts and drives you crazy, and the rubble is falling and sending up more fountains of gray dust--and you know that this is happening to your own country, your own people, and you have to strike back, you have to push the button and avenge them, stop the slaughter by killing the enemy's people and destroying their cities too, but you can't make yourself push the button, your arm won't move and your fingers are paralyzed, and then all the telescreens are glaring white or blowing up in clouds of destruction, and you scream, scream in the metal room until you can't hear anything but your own screaming, and then somehow you force your hand down and push the button. And just as you feel it go down, the walls of the room burst inward in a volcano of noise and terror and the gray dust comes swirling in over you, blotting out your screams.... You wake up and hurry through the streets with this last dream hanging over you more heavily than any of the others. You've got to run--you've got to get out. But look at all the other people. None of them are running. They're going home from work--going into cafes, walking the dog ... oh God, walking the dog at a time like this.... You're scared. The bloody world is coming to a bloody end. You know it just as sure as you're sitting here in the warm sun in MacArthur park with the fifth you've bought and are drinking from in a paper bag. It's close now. You're not sure how close but it's close. The world is coming to an end and you know you can't convince anyone that it is. You feel the way Henny Penny--or was it Chicken Little?--must have felt. The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Hell--you're just one more caterwauling messiah in a city of messiahs. Los Angeles, where every man is his own messiah. Then you know what the trouble is. You've been looking for someone to help you, when what you should have been doing was helping them. Now you realize that you are the _one_, you are the messiah you've been seeking. It's up to you to lead them out to the city into the wilderness. You drink more and you drink it fast and the more you drink the more a feeling of infinite compassion comes over you for your fellow men. You can save them. You can do it. You drain about two-thirds of the bottle and then get up and walk toward a man in that uniform of success, a gray flannel suit. "Wait a minute, friend," you say, shifting the bottle to your left hand so you can take his arm with your right. "What is it? What do you want?" he says, looking at you as though you're drunk. "Have you seen the papers today, friend?" you ask. "Let go of me," he says, pulling away. "If you have seen them, what are you going to do about it?" "I'm going home and eat my dinner." He hurries off. You approach a plump, pretty little blonde pushing a baby carriage. "Miss, can I have a few minutes of your time in which to save your life?" She looks frightened and tries to wheel the buggy around you. "Have you thought about the future of this dear little child of yours?" She breaks into a half trot and soon disappears with the baby carriage bouncing along ahead of her. You sit down for a few minutes and have a few more swallows of the bourbon. When you get up you're surprised to find that you stagger a little. But you've got to tell the people, you've got to make them listen. Your eye lights on a garbage can a short way off and you know you've found the way to do it. You take a stand beside the can and with the bottle tucked safely in your pocket you begin to pound on the can with both hands. "Hey, listen, everybody! I've got to tell you about the Last Days of Los Angeles. Listen to me! I can save you if you'll just listen! You're doomed. The city is doomed!" You pound like mad on the can, but this being L.A. where such things happen every day, only a very few passersby stop. "Come over here and let me tell you about it!" you yell. "Do you know what the power of the H-Bomb can do? Have you heard of the C-Bomb? Do you know what nerve gas is? Have you seen the Sputniks overhead? Do you know how far an ICBM will travel and how fast? Do you know that there is no defense?" You grab a man by the arm, but he shakes you off, so you reach for a gray-haired old lady and get an umbrella in your middle from the dear little thing. "Boy, is he ever soused." Two teen-aged girls are standing in front of you, giggling. "Did you ever see a guy so drunk?" You want to save them and you start toward them with outstretched arms, but they move back into the crowd. This makes you furious and you start to yell again. You grab the nearest person. It's a woman but you shake her anyway. Someone has got to listen. "Let go of me, you masher," the woman screams. "Help, somebody, help!" The crowd closes in on you. A sailor grabs you from behind and a man in working clothes hits you with a lunch bucket. You let go of the woman and hit back at him. "Help! Help!" the woman is still yelping. "Call the cops--a man's trying to rape a girl!" Someone hits you with an umbrella, and you know it's the same dear little old lady. A guy grabs you by the neck and tries to throw you to the ground but you kick him in the groin and trade punches with two others. Then they're all over you. The old lady trips you and you go down. She starts beating you with the umbrella as a man's foot smashes against your head. You see a woman's nylon-clad leg as she raises her spiked heel and brings it ripping down across your cheek. Other feet crash into you. "Let me help you," you're still yelling, but they keep on kicking. Some of the shoes have blood on them, you notice through the haze, but they still keep on kicking. Then it's getting dark and you lie there and think how Henny Penny--or was it Chicken Little?--must have felt. You want to tell someone about it but you don't. You just lie there and wait for the screaming sirens to come and take you away. 
60737	----	To Each His Own By JACK SHARKEY _A world ideal for life will have life on it--but don't expect ideal life!_ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, January 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] On September the 24th, 1965, the Venusian spaceship _Investigator_ floated gently to Earth in Times Square. The sleek metal belly of the ship touched feather-light upon the asphalt "X" of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and stubby stabilizing legs extended from ports along the sides of the hull, bracing the ship's mass against dangerous rolling, leaving it hulking there like some metallic beetle at rest. The sun was almost directly overhead, sending yellow-gold serpentine glints wriggling on the gleaming surface of the ship. After the very slight thumping as the ship settled into place, there was no sound throughout the nearby streets of New York. Absent was the noise of traffic, the hubbub of voices, the hurry-scurry of pedestrians. Nothing but heavy oppressive silence everywhere outside the body of the ship. No apprehensive eye appeared at a window to stare at the visitor from the nearest planet. No telephone was picked up in nervous haste to warn the authorities of the possible menace to the peoples of Earth. Just the silence and the dancing sunlight. Inside the spaceship, there was swift, practiced activity. The Venusians were a picked, trained crew. This, the first contact with the third planet, called for quick reaction, accurate evaluation, and competent decision. Each of the five aboard had a job to do immediately upon landing. With no conversation, they were all at their tasks. It was an operation they'd practiced many times over, back at their home base on Venus. They were sick of the thing even before being sent to Earth. But their training had paid well, for now their motions were automatic, each separate action swift, sure and precise. Gwann, the pilot, his heavy-lidded eyes narrowed with the intensity of concentration, checked and re-checked his instruments and gauges. His nimble three-digited hands, with their long, flat palms, flickered from button to switch to dial. He locked the stabilizing legs into position, once each leg had made its contact securely with the surface outside. He dampered the power of the interplanetary drive, leaving its deadly emanations at a low, and therefore safe, degree of pulsation. He checked the release valves of the individual skimmers, making certain at the same time that, should the atmosphere outside be hostile to Venusian breathing, the tanks were filled and the cockpit seals were tight and break-free. * * * * * Drog, the navigator, used compass, ruler and stylus upon the scant, almost rudimentary Earth map, to determine the exact point of contact with the third planet. Venusian telescopes were able to see--very indistinctly--continental outlines at the twenty-million-mile distance to their neighbor planet. But the foggy overhang that shrouded their home planet had made sharp topographical drawing well-nigh impossible. Volval, as Drog passed him the information, relayed the findings by light-beam back to their home base. The geographical location, coded into the tight beam, sped outward from the surface of Earth toward Venus, where it would not be received for at least a minute and a half. Volval, having transmitted the data, waited impatiently while the Venusian biochemist tested the outside surface against their leaving the ship. Jorik, the biochemist, revolved the small metal "cage" with its quivering, burbling Venusian life-forms on it back into the space over his work-table. The animals seemed unharmed by their exposure to the alien planet, but he began more definitive tests upon the samplings of atmosphere and soil and vegetation brought back by a tiny robo-skimmer that had searched throughout a three-mile radius of the ship immediately after the landing, and had returned by homing beam to its tiny access port in the thick metal side of the ship. While Volval waited in increasing irritation, and Jorik ran his tests, Klendro, the most expendable member of the expedition, studied his speech over and over, his three-valved heart squirting its watery blood through his tiny, hairlike arteries and veins. Klendro was almost a social outcast with these others, these real spacemen, though his job, he felt, was the most important. Klendro was the Venusian ambassador to the governments of Earth. He went over his speech again, hoping that the Earth broadcasts picked up now and then on Venus had been accurate enough for the Venusian linguists to write him a speech that wouldn't embarrass the Earth people by its inane misuses of their tongue. Broadcasts had indicated that the major powers on Earth were the United States--whatever those were--of America and Soviet Russia. The Russian broadcasts, however, being nothing more than a series of eulogies declaring the happiness of life in Russia, had been too lacking in breadth to give the linguists much to work on. They had therefore chosen English as the tongue in which Klendro was to make his speech. He lifted the scroll once more and began reading his speech half aloud, having a bit of trouble, as usual, in controlling the square-tipped surface of his tongue in forming the unfamiliar syllables. "Pipple of Arth," he said, slowly and with much effort, "it is with grett plazzer that we mek this, tha farst contact with arr nebber planet. We are from tha second planet from yer--or mebbe Uh shudd seh _arr_--sun. Tha planet you knaw as Venus. We feel that we can share with arr nebber planet the froots of arr--of arr--" Klendro braced himself, then forced out awkwardly, "moot-yoo-ull sa-yan-tific ri-sarch...." He refolded the long coil of the scroll and stuffed it into his belt-sack. Well, he told himself, for better or worse, I've got to give this speech. He wished he were anywhere but here. * * * * * Some of the broadcasts had indicated a certain belligerency in the inhabitants of this alien planet. He wondered, with a kind of sick fright, if he would ever have the opportunity to deliver the speech, even _badly_. Some of the more esoteric phrasings of the Earth broadcasts had eluded the interpretations of the Venusian linguists. One of the more recurrent phrases was a "slug in the guts." They were not sure exactly what this entailed, but, from the context, the linguists were certain that it was something dire, possibly fatal. Klendro was a very unhappy Venusian. "Volval!" Klendro heard Drog cry out. "Did you send that stuff?" "Yes," the light-beam operator called back. "I'm waiting on Jorik now." "All set here," called Jorik, coming into Volval's compartment, followed by Gwann. "The atmosphere is breathable. A little heavy on the oxygen and light on the carbon dioxide, but that was expected before we took off. If we take deep inhales and periodic radiation, we should be all right." "Fine," said Gwann, the pilot and leader, as Klendro came into the room with the others. "Better keep your guns loose in their holsters, though. You know what they've told us about the Earthmen." "Hot-headed." Volval nodded. "Will we take the skimmers?" asked Jorik. "Or do you think the Earthmen would prefer being met without the barrier-screens around us?" "_They'd_ prefer it, all right!" said Drog. "However, in _my_ opinion--" "We're going to have to chance it sooner or later without the screens," said Gwann. "The batteries in the skimmers won't last forever. We might as well go out there as we are." "Who goes first?" asked Jorik. "Well," Gwann shrugged, "if the crowds look hostile, _I_ should go, as your leader. If they seem merely curious, then it's up to Klendro, as our ambassador, to make his speech." Jorik frowned. "Now, wait, Gwann. Perhaps I ought to tell you. The sight records on the robo-skimmer showed no evidence of Earthmen outside the ship." "That's ridiculous," said Gwann, his eyes flashing. "Venus reports this city is one of the most populous." Jorik smiled wryly. "Then the populace certainly ducked out of sight quickly when they saw the robo-skimmer coming." Gwann seemed on the point of making a sharp retort, and instead turned away toward the exit lock. "Since things seem suspicious, I'd best go first." "Sir," said Volval, laying a hand upon his leader's arm. "Yes?" queried Gwann, pausing. "Good luck, sir," Volval faltered, drawing his hand back. "Thanks," said Gwann, not unkindly. "For Venus," he added. "For Venus," the others echoed. Gwann released the safety lock on the circular metal door and turned the valve handle. Slowly, the door recessed itself in the metal pocket in the ship's wall, and Gwann went out into the yellow glow of the sunlight glittering in Times Square. * * * * * The sun was glowing crimson on the horizon when the five Venusians met once more at the door of their ship. "Nothing--no clue, no people," said Jorik, his face wrinkled with puzzlement. "I can't understand it." "Perhaps some holocaust...?" Volval began weakly. "Or a war?" Drog hinted gravely. "Impossible!" said Gwann, leaning against one of the legs of the gigantic ship. "There is a conspicuous absence of anything that might be construed as a weapon of war. There are no bodies in the buildings or in the streets. No wreckage anywhere." "Perhaps they have been frightened by our appearance and have gone into hiding?" asked Klendro, fingering the edge of his now futile scroll where it protruded from his belt-sack. "Nonsense," said their leader. "From all we've learned of the Earthmen, fright would only make them aggressive. They would not have hidden from us; they'd have tried to shoot us down when we emerged from the ship." "There was _one_ thing...." said Jorik slowly. "I almost did not see it, but its shadow passed close by me on the side of one of the buildings, and I looked up barely in time to get a glimpse of it before it vanished." "What was it like?" asked Gwann quickly. "Some sort of animal, probably carnivorous," said Jorik. "I cannot be _certain_, of course, but I saw a mouth with teeth bespeaking flesh-eating. Quite a--" he repressed a shudder--"quite a large mouth." "Strange," said Gwann. "Exceedingly strange. You saw only the one?" Jorik nodded. "Well," said Gwann, "one carnivore cannot have accounted for a population that runs into the millions. Besides, the Earthmen would be able to deal with mere animal life." * * * * * Klendro remembered the "slug in the guts" and blanched. "What should we do, sir?" asked Volval. "Our orders were to make peaceful contact with the Earthmen. If there _are_ no Earthmen--?" "Calm yourself, Volval." Gwann smiled, patting the younger man upon the shoulder. "If there are Earthmen to contact, we'll make that contact. I have an idea." "What, sir?" asked Drog. "We shall each take one of the skimmers and investigate the surface of the planet. Now, while our maps are incomplete, I feel that Drog can draw us up competent enough maps to guide us over the surface of Earth." "I can try, sir," said Drog. "We'll meet back here at the ship in five days," said Gwann. "All of you take along enough supplies for five days, plus an extra day's rations in case of emergency. The homing beam on our ship will bring you safely back if you get lost." "One thing, sir," said Jorik, his brow creased in a frown. "We'd best all take along extra ammunition for the guns." "The carnivores?" The biochemist nodded. "Where there's one, there are bound to be others. That one I saw was large enough to bite a chunk out of a skimmer." Klendro, pale already, lost more color. * * * * * Each was assigned a continent to check. Of the two extra continents, Drog took one, and Gwann the other, the consensus being that the pilot and navigator could better cover extra territory than the others, who were less used to piloting the sleek skimmers. Volval was to go to the Europe-Asia land mass, Gwann to Africa and Antarctica, Klendro to Australia, Jorik to South America, and Drog to Arctica, after first checking over the North American Continent on which they had landed. "Something exceedingly strange," said Jorik, before they separated, "about the consolidation of their civilization. So much wasted land area." "The sooner I get back to Venus, the happier I'll be," said Gwann, keeping his voice down so that only Jorik, the biochemist, could hear him. "This place is eerie. It's--it's like a ghost planet." "And there's something wrong about the buildings. They are abominably inefficient. I can barely conceive the uses of some of the artifacts." "Maybe," said Gwann suddenly, "we never _will_ know!" "Sir," said Volval, approaching the pilot, "I've discovered some maps." He held out a packet of papers, tinted blue and brown. "Good work, Volval," said Gwann, taking the packet. "Where did you find them?" "In one of those small shops, not far from the ship, sir. I cannot read the designations, of course, but I thought that, by a comparison with the maps from Venus Observatory, we might--" "That's intelligent thinking," said Gwann, nodding. "Their maps are bound to be similar to ours. Klendro! What can you make of these?" The ambassador came over and took the thick packet. The paper of the maps, as he did so, tore apart, and bits and pieces of the soft, pulpy edges dropped in a shower to the street. "Not very substantial material, is it?" he muttered, unfolding the topmost of the maps. He looked over the colored line drawings on the page in some bewilderment. The letters spelling out "Rand McNally" meant nothing to his alien eyes. The map itself was a mercator projection of the globe, the extreme northern and southern continents being somewhat distorted. After a few moments, he shook his head. "I'm sorry. All the Earth broadcasts that we intercepted gave me a working knowledge of the _spoken_ word, sir, but I'm afraid their actual word symbols are beyond me. It would take trained linguists months, perhaps years, to get a correlation between the sound of the word and its written image." "Drog?" said Gwann, turning to the navigator. Drog took the rotting sheet in his hands and studied the configurations of the continents. After a bit, he brightened. "Sir, I think I can figure this out. According to our landing calculations, we are here." He jabbed a digit at one section of the page, and was distressed when it went right through. "The material seems to be falling apart, sir." "Perhaps," Jorik suggested, "it is undergoing some unnatural stress--possibly tied up somehow with whatever it was that depopulated this city?" "A good point, Jorik," said Gwann. * * * * * A long black shadow slid across the pavement near their feet and the five Venusians, very much startled, looked overhead. They were barely in time to see the huge gray form of the carnivore before it vanished behind a sign atop a nearby building which bore the mystifying information "Pepsi-Cola." "There, sir!" cried Jorik. "That's exactly like the one I saw earlier!" "Those _teeth_!" Klendro whimpered. "They could bite one of us in two!" "And what they could do to us, they could do to an Earthman," Gwann said speculatively. "From the sizes of the doorways in these buildings, and the clothing on display in the shop windows, the Earthmen could not have been much larger than us." "Sir," said Drog, holding up the map so that the leader could see it, "look here. This blue section that runs all over the map. You see, it's marked circle-arc-fork-cone-zigzag." "Yes," said Gwann. "I see. What about it?" "Well, sir, it recurs on the map, but each time it has a new group of symbols in front of it. What can it mean?" Gwann frowned and studied the five symbols: O-C-E-A-N. "Seems to suggest a similarity between all of them," said Jorik. "Perhaps the first symbol only means that the section is in a different place." All five Venusians studied A-R-C-T-I-C, A-N-T-A-R-C-T-I-C, I-N-D-I-A-N, and the other symbols that were used in conjunction with the mysterious O-C-E-A-N. "A tribal tabu!" exclaimed Jorik. "What are you talking about, Jorik?" said Gwann impatiently. "You recall I said there seemed something strange about the consolidation of the populace in certain areas? The wasted land space?" "Yes, yes. What about it?" "All these sections marked O-C-E-A-N are the unused areas. There must have been some sort of tribal superstition about dwelling in those areas. That would explain why all the people lived on the higher ground here." "I--I would have expected to find something _blue_ in that area," said Gwann uncertainly. "Or else why is it so marked?" "Sir," said Jorik respectfully, "some sections are colored very oddly--even in red. Yet no such colors were found anywhere on the planet by our telescopes, were they? And none of these large blue areas shows population centers. Tabu areas, obviously--not to be inhabited." Gwann shivered. "The longer I stay here, the less I like it. Come on. Each of you take one of these maps. Drog, you assign us to a specific sector by these maps, rather than by ours. We'll meet back here at the ship in five days." One by one, the Venusians got aboard their skimmers, making sure the protective barriers were working, and then glided off to investigate the ghost planet. * * * * * Drog, sliding in his trim craft over the North American continent, stopped many times, at each large city he discovered, but the story was the same as in New York. Empty buildings, no particular damages except what could be accounted for by decay and long disuse. Every so often--more often than he enjoyed--a flock of the huge carnivores soared above his skimmer, their long, dark shadows slithering over the cockpit in the dancing yellow sunlight. Once, one of them broke away from the group and spiraled down to investigate his craft. Drog jabbed the button of the nose-gun hastily, and a lance of metal sped with a flicker of light into the thick hide of the oncoming monster. A thick spray of blood gushed from the wound, as the great beast writhed in torment before sliding down through the atmosphere toward the distant ground. Its blood hung in a grisly trail over it as it plunged, marking its passage, then began to fall slowly after the beast. Drog was by now almost a mile beyond the point where he had fired at the carnivore, but he wasn't too far away to see its hungry companions swoop down after it and begin rending it even before it reached the ground. He shuddered and looked away. As he soared onward, he determined to keep the barrier on all night long, while he slept. If he _could_ sleep.... North America taken care of, as well as possible in his limited time, Drog headed northward for the continent of Arctica. Nothing but bare land and ocean bottom met his eye. Feeling increasingly queasy, he nosed the skimmer around and set it swishing back toward New York. * * * * * Jorik watched the shadow of his skimmer pacing his own motion over the tops of the tangled jungle trees below. He inclined the nose of the craft downward, and began a shallow glide toward a clearing in the midst of the dense undergrowth. Braking the skimmer gently, he let it settle slowly into the resilient grip of the tall yellow-brown grass in the clearing. Making sure his gun was loaded and the safety catch off, he slid open the cockpit and eased himself out. He was--though of course he didn't know it--deep in the Matto Grosso of South America. Everywhere he looked, violent flares of color peeped at him through the twisted, swaying vines that clung everywhere. Nature had run riot in the jungle. No subtleties of shading or form here. Long, sharp leaves gleamed greenly on all sides of the biochemist. Radiant reds glowed from the shadowy depths of forest beyond the small clearing. Golden streamers hung in profusion from each crooked elbow of the chaotically twisted tree branches all about him. Despite the brilliance and beauty of it, Jorik sensed a hidden menace in the place. He should, at that spot, have been hearing shrieking, roaring, bleating, grunting of animals, the cries of birds and skittering of insects. There was nothing but that all-pervading silence. Jorik moved slowly away from the skimmer and approached the nearest tree, his scientist's eye pondering something not-quite-right-looking about it. As he got to it, and touched it, the thick, corrugated bark fell into powder between his fingers. He pressed, pried, thumped and tugged at the tree. It was dead. Dead and rotting. His heart fluttered annoyingly in his breast. There was something frightening about the way things were going. He could understand a war destroying human life, even civilization, but this--this was primeval territory. The beasts, the plants, the lower forms of life--these should have survived. But they hadn't. Suddenly afraid, he rushed back to his skimmer, slid into the cockpit and took off, rising at a swift vertical angle from the dead jungle. Toward the eastern coast of South America, he saw many fine hotels, with magnificent curves of beaches following the perimeter of the land mass on which the people had lived--already he was thinking of them in the past tense--and Jorik wondered at the absence of the blue O-C-E-A-N that should have bordered those beaches. But as he glided outward from the coast, curving steadily northward toward New York, he saw that the beaches, with their pale silver sands, extended outward and downward toward only more land, soon becoming rocky, then turning at last into mud and ooze, with a sprinkling of blackish-green weeds. But no visible trace of the mysterious O-C-E-A-N. * * * * * Gwann, searching throughout Africa, fared no better. Only the silence, the rotting vegetation, and the absence of landlocked life. Higher in the atmosphere of the ghost planet, he saw many of the carnivores, but also smaller animals, soaring in gloriously colored groups, and seemingly harmless. There were times when he had to pass through literal clouds of these smaller beasts, whizzing and bobbing and gliding past him by the millions, only to vanish in the hazy distance with a blaze of color. Africa having proven fruitless, Gwann directed the skimmer toward the opposite polar region from that which Drog was to investigate. Like Drog, he found only land there, and no continent. The land was ocean bottom. He consulted his map, but there was nothing below his skimmer that corresponded with the cryptic markings: A-N-T-A-R-C-T-I-C O-C-E-A-N. He turned his skimmer around and started back for New York. * * * * * Volval, cruising from the Alps to the steppes and back again, found nothing to explain the disappearance of the Earthmen. Many cities, many lands, hamlets and villages, huts and palaces.... It was the same every place. Silence. Fleeting glimpses of the carnivores and sometimes tinier-but-similar beasts. But no Earthmen. * * * * * Klendro had passed over the surface of Australia fifty times in his five alloted days without discovering life of any sort other than the carnivores. And they, for some reason, were unusually well represented in that region. They had come at his skimmer in grinning swarms, but the barrier held firm, and the unlucky nearer ones spun away with scorched flesh glowing red, to be torn to pieces by their companions. When he decided further investigation was useless, Klendro was very glad to leave that place. A group of the carnivores gave chase, but Klendro spun his ship about long enough to shoot metal darts into two of them. As the others swerved back to begin an impromptu feast on their wounded companions, Klendro turned the skimmer up to full speed and made quick connection with the homing device on the ship, back in New York. * * * * * "I don't understand it," said Gwann, on the night of the fifth day. The Venusians were all back in the ship in Times Square, having a meal together that was partly to satisfy their appetites, partly to celebrate being together again with their friends. "It's incredible, all right," said Jorik. "A whole planet--and of a high degree of civilization, too--wiped out. The very vegetation dying. And that's the frightening part of it: Not _dead_, mind you, _dying_. That means that whatever happened here happened _recently_." "And those constructions in the buildings," said Volval, staring bemusedly at the wall, "the ones marked S-t-a-i-r-w-a-y. I wonder what they were for." "Obviously they were decorations added by the architect," said Drog. "Any fool can see they served no purpose. If anything, they _hindered_ the use of the access slots to the various levels of the buildings." "Well," said Gwann, "our work here is through. We'd better be heading back to Venus." "And your report?" asked Jorik. "Positive," said Gwann. "Favorable for immediate possession and colonization." "It's a good little planet." Jorik nodded. "But why do you suppose the Earthmen all vanished?" "We'll probably never know," Volval sighed. "Not unless," said Klendro, indicating a bale of salvaged Earth materials, "our linguists and archeologists can make some sense out of this junk here." "Let's hope so," Gwann said. "The mysteriousness of this whole thing is going to drive me crazy if they don't." "Well, sir," said Drog, consulting his charts, "if we're going to take advantage of juxtaposition of the two planets--" "Right," said Gwann, turning and making his way toward the pilot's compartment. "We'll depart from Earth in ten minutes. Secure all hatches and loose objects until we get into space." The crew hurried to their tasks. * * * * * Halfway to Venus, Volval, paging idly through one of the rotting books from Earth, gave a shout. "What is it?" said Gwann, coming into the light-beam operator's compartment, stretching to ease the muscle cramps from his long stint in the pilot's cabin. "I've found a picture of the carnivore, sir!" said Volval proudly. "Look, sir." "Hmm," said Gwann, studying the fading illustration. "I believe you're right. Jorik!" The biochemist popped into the compartment, his face curious. "Yes, sir? What is it?" "Isn't this one of your carnivores, Jorik?" asked Gwann, giving him the book. Jorik, reaching for the book, nudged one of the newspapers atop the stack near the cabin wall, and the front page fluttered unnoticed to the floor. Across its surface were spread the incomprehensible--to Venusian eyes--words: LITHIUM BOMB TEST COULD DESTROY WORLD Noted Scientist Declares Danger of Polar Experiment; Melted Polar Caps May Flood Entire Globe Jorik studied the picture carefully, his gills trickling a faint stream of bubbles as he concentrated on the image of the carnivore. "Yes, that's one of them, sure enough. I wish I could read Earth writing. I wonder just what a T-i-g-e-r-s-h-a-r-k is." Volval bobbed up from his place and floated to a port in the ceiling, through which he could see the tiny, glittering ball of Earth, its blue-green surface sparkling like a star against the black backdrop of empty space. "I can't understand what killed them," he said. "Living conditions were ideal." 
60922	----	MURDER BENEATH THE POLAR ICE By HAYDEN HOWARD _The Arctic Sea was deadly in every way--its icy water, crushing ice, avid beasts. Still something there was more lethal than these!_ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Wavelets of cigarette smoke drifted across the comfortably lounging enlisted men in the air-conditioned compartment of the Fleet Ballistic Missile submarine, as they sat watching Barney. Sweat streaming from his swollen-veined forehead, hurried and grotesque in his black rubber diving suit, exploding triumphant curses like underwater demolition charges, Barney finished tightening the control cables of what resembled a torpedo with two open cockpits. "_This_ time the little gal raises her hydroplanes!" At this contrast of men, the Murderer had to grin, but carefully in order not to sweat and ruin the insulating qualities of his three woolen layers of longjohns. The submariners seemed quiet-talking and cooperative, as well adjusted as sardines in a can. The diver, Barney, was foul-mouthed and fiercely individualistic, a wonderful guy--his diving buddy. A legend in his own time, Barney was reputed to have arisen from the mine-strewn waters of the Korean coast at the time of the Wonsan-Inchon landings to give advice to General MacArthur. As an Underwater Demolition Team diver, Barney dated clear back into the Murderer's childhood recollections of World War II, to dim names like Kwajalein and Guam, where former Seabees became combat divers to wire and blast Japanese underwater obstacles and leave welcoming signs for the Marines. Barney was only quiet about two things, his age and his circumference. He still fancied himself a baseball catcher, and his stubby fingers showed the deleterious effects of grabbing at foul tips with a bare hand, but those same fingers could expertly repair a wristwatch and the automatic transmission of an admiral's car and hock one and "borrow" the other. Barney had managed to put his homely younger sister through college and was now maneuvering to marry her off to a lieutenant commander on the staff of Admiral Rickover. And he could expertly joke the fears out of his diving buddy. Winking at his comfortably smoke-filled audience, Barney dumped a sack of non-magnetic tools into the forward cockpit of the minisub he personally had built, and cocked his head. "Murderer, here, is hoping the villain is a sea serpent. Don't laugh, you sea horses. The latest scuttlebutt from Alaska has it that every time a picket buoy goes dead out here under the ice, the last sound it broadcasts is a sort of toothy crunch." * * * * * He pushed the joke a little further. "Turn your periscopes on the blade Murderer's wearing! John Paul Jones used to issue those for cutlasses! Murderer's hoping to fight the sea serpent hand to hand." His grin widening with embarrassment, the Murderer felt called upon to retort. "I'll give you a better suspect for stealing our picket buoys. Santa Claus. These are his territorial waters. Are you aware that in the Middle Ages Santa Claus was the patron saint of thieves?" "Now, Mr. College Boy," Barney began, "you just want to show us you also studied history, not just marine biology. This boy will even tell you a long Latin name for a little something that floats like dandruff in the water." A touch of pride appeared in Barney's voice. "He can tell you its whole life history and what eats it and why it's important and why it will be a lot more important fifty years from now when _your_ kids will need a lot more food from the sea." There was a perceptible slowing, and the weird sound from the atomic submarine's heat-exchanger muted. Barney glanced at his pressure-proof watch. The Murderer tensed. "This college boy may look like a tennis player," Barney went on as if nothing had happened, "but in the water, when Murderer sees something swimming down there, he doesn't care how big it is. We were installing the broadcast aerial from a picket buoy up through ice, and Murderer had just retracted the magnesium flare pole, so I'm half-blinded. I look down. I see something so big I want to get out of there on a bicycle. But down Murderer swims with the magnesium flare in one hand and his cutlass in the other. It's a shark as big as a small whale. The flare hypnotizes it, and round and round they go, with Murderer stabbing away, letting in sea water, until that shark bugs out of there like a bare-bottomed boy from a swarm of bumblebees!" The Murderer studied his depth gauge to cover his embarrassment. The reason the shark had been so big was that it belonged to a species with the whale-like habit of straining the water for minute crustaceans. It was harmless and had winced from his first thrust. Then its shagreen hide had tensed to armor-toughness, and it had been like trying to stab a submarine. It left because it had no reason to stay. "I'm _relieved_," one of the submariners laughed, "that stabbing _fish_ is how he got the name Murderer." "Not only fish," Barney went on enthusiastically. "This boy almost got himself court-martialed. We're working from the icebreaker, out from Point Barrow, diving from a whaleboat, and before the Annapolis ensign can say a word, Murderer's over the side. We put our face-plates in the water. He's bubbling down on a walrus! I swear, he rides it like a bucking horse. You need a long blade in the arctic. And ugly--when we bent a cable to that walrus from the icebreaker, the walrus stalled the winch!" "What about tusks?" a submariner's voice asked. * * * * * The Murderer had been well aware of tusks. For three days he had been studying the walrus herd with fascination. These staring-eyed, noisy mammals were living in icy water that would numb and kill a man in a few minutes. Some of them were diving to clam beds more than two hundred and fifty feet down, where their bodies were subjected to a pressure of more than eight atmospheres. In shallower water, where cockles predominated, he had actually observed them raking the muddy bottom with their tusks and rising with great disintegrating masses of mud and shells between their flippers. Few men had ever seen that. He marveled at the evolutionary process by which some primitive land mammal of the Eocene Period had become the walrus. * * * * * Why he had swum down and attacked a walrus, he did not know. Afterward he felt ashamed, not just because it was a dumb thing to do and he'd had three ribs cracked and should have been killed; not because it was a show-off thing, with sailors urging him to stand in front of its hoisted body so they could take pictures for their girl friends; not because Barney lost his appetite for a couple of days and didn't seem very eager to dive near the herd. What bothered him was the indescribable feeling he'd had as he swam down with his knife to the walrus, a feeling closer than hunger.... "When we get back, I'll show you the photographs," Barney was insisting proudly. "When they assigned this boy as my diving buddy, they sent his name along, Murderer. If it swims. Murderer will go down after it, they said. And they weren't lying." But that was _not_ how the name originated. Sitting there in the drifting cigarette smoke, feeling the sweat soak through his longjohns, the Murderer wished the submarine's commander would hurry up and decide on a position, let them out of the boat, get it over with. Probably by now, even the guys who were in U.D.T. training with him believed he got the name by murdering fish. _They_ gave the name to him, but it was during an orientation meeting with diagrams and graphs and talk of megatons and current-borne radioactivity and a model of an atomic depth charge on the table. An incredulous revulsion had come over him, this mindlessly mechanical can of death that could poison, could make _useless_ two billion struggling years of life, all wasted, single-celled ancestors, diatoms, copepods, wondrous fish. During the discussion, he had kept exclaiming: "It's _murder_! It's _murder_!" This was how he had acquired his name. "Hey, Murderer," one of the submariners laughed. "You should cut off a sea serpent steak for the skipper. I bet he'd go for one." "Speaking of murderers," the Murderer blurted, suddenly detesting the name, raising his clean-cut, angrily intelligent face, flooding his longjohns with angry sweat, "you all are potential murderers--on a big scale. Let's say ten thousand victims apiece. I kill a few fish, so I'm a murderer? But you are all gears and cogs of a mass production murder mechanism called a Fleet Ballistic Missile submarine. An impersonal machine that--" "Not impersonal," the commander's voice said clearly as he came into the compartment. "This boat is just another tool for survival--like a shield or spear. Men make the decisions for it." * * * * * Barney said in an attempt to ease the tension, "You want us to bring you any ice cubes, Commander?" The commander's gray eyes studied Barney's red-veined ones. "Just bring yourselves back, Barney. We'll settle for that." He touched the minisub. "All I can say is we _think_ we're in the sector where the picket buoys shorted out. There've been such meager appropriations for hydrographic surveys in the Arctic Ocean, we haven't a very clear picture of fathometer landmarks even in this sector. So the navigator has depended pretty heavily on his dead reckoning and inertial navigation. What I'm getting at is don't spend too much time looking. Use conservative search patterns. Give yourself plenty of margin to find your way home to us. We'll do our best to hold this position." Slowly, the commander smiled. "We'll keep the coffee hot until you get back." The Murderer watched them roll the minisub along on its cradle and into the chamber. From the stern, the minisub looked less like a torpedo. Instead of the compact round propeller blades associated with high speeds under water, the minisub had long narrow blades which might have looked more appropriate on a Wright Brother's airplane. These would unwind through the water so slowly there would be no cavitation, no tell-tale bubbling sounds. "One last thing," the commander said, including the Murderer in his gray gaze. "No aggressive action. If you should meet--someone--break off contact in a dignified manner and come home." Strangely, the commander smiled again and glanced at his watch. "Right about now, my two kids are waking from their afternoon naps and running out into the backyard in their underpants to swing on the swings. No aggressive action, O.K.?" The Murderer felt thankful he was not the commander--with the responsibility for sixteen hydrogen-warheaded Polaris missiles on his back. Weighted down by his air tanks, the Murderer crawled into the chamber beside the minisub and reached into the stern cockpit. He unreeled a few feet of the red wire and plugged it into the chest socket of his electric suit warmer. Out there, you couldn't search very long without battery heat from the minisub. Automatically checking his full-face mask, he connected with the black wire and tested his throat mike, earplug circuit. "One--two--three--" "Four--shut the door," Barney's voice croaked weirdly. For complicated two-man disassemblies underwater, the traditional hand signals were not enough. The minisub acted as a telephone exchange. * * * * * Turning from the minisub, Barney plugged into the telephone connection in the wall of the chamber, giving them the word. From the way the Arctic Ocean, fire-hosed into the chamber, the Murderer guessed they had at least a hundred feet of water standing on them. This captain had no intention of smashing his periscopes on pack ice. Wryly, the Murderer grinned while the water crept up his body. He knew the limiting factor in their search for a picket buoy, any picket buoy, was the survival time in their air tanks. As for the minisub, it had the capability of keeping their corpses warm for several hours thereafter. With its gyroscope efficiently clicking commands to the rudder, it would maintain a straighter course than any man could steer. If it could eat fish and reproduce itself.... The waterline rose above his glass face-plate. On the curved ceilings of the chamber, the air shrank into a squirming bubble. The pressure had been equalized. There was a cold metallic screech as Barney opened the outer hatch into the Arctic Ocean. Valving an additional hiss of compressed air into the minisub's forward flotation tank, the Murderer gave it a gentle push and rode it out, his hand on the air release valve now to prevent the increasingly buoyant minisub from falling upward against the white-glaring underside of the ice pack. "There's a hell of a current up here," Barney's voice croaked. The Murderer glanced down, and his free arm clutched the cockpit in an anthropoidal fear-reflex of falling. The water was that clear. Down there, the submarine seemed to drift away like a great dirigible in the wind, but the Murderer knew the minisub was actually doing the drifting. "Tinker carefully with your gyroscope, Mr. Navigator," Barney laughed, "and we'll go take a look for your sea serpent." He gave Barney a straight course into the current. The Murderer had had nightmares of being lost under the arctic ice pack. "Keep an eye peeled on the ice," Barney muttered, but the Murderer kept both eyes on the instruments and gave Barney a one-hundred-eighty-degree change of course, trying to determine the speed of the current. "One way's as good as another," Barney laughed. Unfortunately, this had to be a visual search. The drawing-board boys had designed the picket buoys so they would _not_ be detected, and thoughtfully made them self-destroying in case they were. If anywhere near, a submarine would be recorded, and the under-ice warning system had actually worked against their own submarines. But the picket buoys in this sector, one by one, had died without a warning sound except, as scuttlebutt would have it, a toothy crunch. "This pack ice has changed," Barney's voice muttered. Barney and the Murderer had been one of the diving teams out there when a submarine ejected the buoys beneath the polar ice. A buoy would squirt from a torpedo tube. When the non-magnetic float struck the underside of the ice, metal rods clutched upward like the legs of a spider clinging to the ice. A thread-like cable lowered the tiny instrument capsule into the depths. The capsule's small size was intended to foil typical mine detection sonar, while the float was supposed to merge with irregularities of sonic reflection on the underside of the ice. Some admiral had even ordered the floats painted white, but they still cut off light and appeared dark from beneath the ice. * * * * * After the divers had melted a quick hole through two or three feet of pack ice and extended the whip-like aerial into the polar air, headquarters could keep track of the drifting buoy's location. Intermittently, for the classified number of years the batteries were supposed to last, each buoy would broadcast its own identification code, only coming through with a high wattage warning when its instrument capsule in the depths of the Arctic Ocean was awakened. The joker here, the Murderer thought, was that the aerials might be hard to see, but any simple fool could make himself a radio location finder. _Live_ buoys could be hunted from the surface ice. "How dry I am," Barney's voice croaked unmusically, "how dry I be, nobody knows--nobody cares--" Now the white underside of the ice drooped in downward bulges, indicating thicker masses of old ice that had been frozen into the pack. The Murderer saw the gray outline of driftwood entombed in this old ice. "Drift ice from the Siberian rivers," Barney croaked. "When we planted the picket buoys, our sector didn't have any of this." The Murderer looked down at his instruments, preparing to change course. "My God, look!" Barney's voice croaked, and his black rubber arm pointed upward. The Murderer's breathing stopped as he made out something quivering up there. "What is it?" "Animal, vegetable or mineral," Barney wheezed. "If it's animal, I don't want to be around when whatever laid these _eggs_ comes back." Swaying up there on the underside of the ice in a gelatinous mass at least twenty feet across, it resembled a mass of gigantic frog's eggs. But the Murderer decided there was too great a variation in size for them to be eggs. Those nearest the outside of the mass seemed clearer, more transparent, than the surrounding gelatinous substance. The Murderer's excitement began to fade. "They're not eggs," he said disappointedly. "I think they're only bubbles encased in some sort of soft plastic." "Mineral," Barney said with some relief in his voice. "Now I see that dark part in the middle has the shape of a can. The bubbles must be to float a mine or secret mechanism," his voice ended excitedly. Barney wanted nothing to do with live things; he liked mechanical devices that clicked and buzzed and could be taken apart and then put back together. He eased the minisub up toward the gelatinous mass. "Don't bring the minisub too close," the Murderer gasped, imagining a mechanical click as the impersonal gadgetry within the can detected their approach and cocked the lifeless steel prongs of a detonator. Barney laughed in excited contrast. "Even our air tanks are non-magnetic. Or if it's hydrophonic, the noise level to set it off would have to be plenty high, because of all the crunching sounds every day in the ice. I'm going to find out what it is." Barney rose from his cockpit, trailing his green-stained canvas bag of non-magnetic tools. "You're not going to cut into it, are you?" the Murderer cried. "That's what the taxpayers pay me for--to protect them from--you name it. Murderer, you sail the minisub off until all my telephone cable is out. Just like when we practiced disarming our picket buoys, I'll tell you every move I make." "If it's a mine," the Murderer said, "I'll be as flattened as you." "Take notes on your navigational pad. I'll start with a little experimental cut into the jello. We can't go off and leave this thing; we'd never find it again. And it wouldn't be exactly smart to tow it to our submarine until we know what its insides are supposed to do." * * * * * Barney's black rubber arm was sawing vigorously up and down. "This jello's tougher than it looks. Very ingenious. I'll bet this was a compact little bundle when a submarine ejected it into the water. Probably sea water makes it swell--and chemicals fizz inside so that the bubbles appear and float the can up to the underside of the ice. "This is important," Barney's voice croaked on. "I've come to some thin shiny wires. They seem to be all through the jello and to curve back in toward the can." The Murderer clenched his hand. He could feel the tendons and imagine the wonderfully intricate nerves of his living hand. He'd been frightened many times under the sea. Occasionally divers talked about which way they'd rather go. Nitrogen narcosis was popular among the heavy drinkers. Barney's choice--a nice close mine explosion because it would be so quick. They thought the Murderer was crazy when he said he'd rather be eaten by a Great White Shark than smashed by some miserable explosive gadget. "Now I'm spreading two wires apart," Barney said calmly, "but I've left a layer of gelatin around each of them. I will not cut the wires and I'll try not to let them touch each other." Gradually his head and shoulders disappeared up into the gelatinous mass. "Don't snag your tanks or regulator on a wire," the Murderer breathed. "Now I'm cutting within a few inches of the base of the can." Only Barney's kicking legs showed. "My air is filling the cut--and I'm going--to open a--chimney." Bubbles emerged from the side of the swaying mass. "Suppose this thing is atomic," the Murderer said. "It would crush our ballistic missile sub from here." "This is peacetime, boy. Nobody's fool enough to let an atomic mine go drifting around with the ice." The Murderer looked down at the hard metal shell of the minisub. You could blast and smash it, and it would still be metal. You even could vaporize it, and its atomic particles would be somewhere--or changed into energy--but nothing really lost, because it had never been alive. The Murderer thought of the commander's two kids waking from their naps. It had taken life two billion years to get that far, and it all could be lost. Right now, was Barney committing _aggressive_ action? He thought again of that orientation class where they theoretically learned how to disarm an unexploded atomic depth charge. He had expressed his feeling that these atomic charges were _murder_. The fools had laughed and begun calling him Murderer. "The bottom of this can is as blank," Barney said, "as a sailor in one of those modern art museums. I'm going to cut my way along the side of the can and see what I can see." A little fish, perhaps lost from its school, peered into the Murderer's glass face-plate. Its wondrous eye grew inquisitively larger, and he thought of the millions of cooperating cells that made up its eye and optic nerve and receiving brain and the marvel that the individually drifting cells of two billion years ago could have achieved this. There was a contradiction, he thought. He was amazed by life and yet he speared fish. Did he enjoy feeling life wriggle on the end of his spear? "I've reached the top," Barney's voice croaked. "There's a rod here--get this, a vertical rod. It extends up into the ice like with the aerials of our picket buoys. I knew it wasn't a mine. This is how they plan to detect our atomic submarines. This will make a very interesting present for Admiral Rickover--" At this instant there was a darkening slap against the Murderer's mask. His eardrums burst inward. His intestines squeezed up into his chest from the force of the underwater explosion. He blacked out. * * * * * Ice water seared his face. He was drowning. Convulsively, his hand groped for his mask. The glass was intact. His hand dragged the mask back to a proper fit upon his face, and compressed air forced out the sea water. He could feel the telephone cord pulling at his mask. Everything was blinding white, and he realized he was belly up beneath the ice. "Barney?" The telephone wire began to drag him down head first, and he went down it hand over hand toward the slowly sinking minisub. "Barney?" Further down, he saw Barney's black rubber suit spread-eagled and sinking, and he swam clumsily down past the minisub. He clutched Barney's black rubber arm and dragged it toward the minisub. The black rubber suit seemed to have no bones. Everything drooped and swayed as he tried to fit Barney into the stern cockpit. When he wrapped Barney's wires to tie him in, they came face to face. There was no glass in Barney's mask. The glass had burst where the face had been. * * * * * Murderer's eyes narrowed in helpless rage at Barney's death. Dragging himself into Barney's forward cockpit, he valved air into the minisub's forward flotation tank, raising the torpedo-like nose. It was then that he saw them up there, silhouetted small and frog-like against the blinding white ice, two divers. The two silhouettes were looking down at him, and he knew they had been attracted by the explosion of their gelatinous picket buoy. He looked all around for the dim gray outline of their submarine, but there was no sign of their "home," and his gaze concentrated with wide-eyed intensity on their black paddling shapes as his minisub rose from the depths. He saw them exchange hurried hand signals. They began to swim away, side by side, their fins fluttering rapidly now. They were swimming a definite course, and still there was no sign of their submarine as his minisub inexorably gained on them. Now that he had reached their altitude, he noticed they were already tiring. One diver looked back, then swam frantically to catch up with the other. Like a slow fighter plane, the minisub came in on them from behind, and one diver pushed at the other. They again exchanged hand signals, losing yards to the minisub, and one began to swim hard while the other turned back, facing the minisub, raising his hand in what appeared to be a courteous military salute. The minisub kept coming straight at him. Then the diver spread his arms in a gesture of peace. The minisub's torpedo-shaped nose rammed his belly. Unsheathing his long blade, the Murderer struck. As the diver wriggled, the Murderer withdrew the blade and struck again. Air bubbles streamed from the diver's chest with each exhalation of breath as he backwatered. His expression seemed mild surprise as the Murderer struck a third time, driving the blade down between the man's neck and collar bone, pushing him deeper. The next blow smashed the mask. Belatedly, the man's hand flurried, seeming to clutch at his bubbles as he sank. The Murderer looked up. Far off under the ice, the other diver had stopped, was looking down, watching, and the Murderer held up his blade as a signal and turned the minisub upward, after him. This diver took evasive action among the downward bulges of old Siberian ice and suddenly vanished. Although there was no sky glare in the water, the Murderer supposed the diver had found an open lead in the ice and would rather freeze to death, or at least put up a fight from the edge of the ice, than die in the water. * * * * * Valving more air into the minisub's flotation tanks, the Murderer steered it rapidly up into the oddly round, oddly dim lead in the ice pack. At the edge of his mask-vision he glimpsed a longish tubular shape suspended in the water, but the minisub was rising too fast for him to get a good look. The overbuoyant minisub bloomed above the surface and sloshed back, rolling unsteadily while the film of water slid off his mask without freezing and he saw. The white blur became the biggest twin-rotored copter he had ever seen, squatting there on the ice, white except for its glass. Then his eyes were attracted by motion, by the parka-clad men hauling the surviving diver up on the ice. Other darkish figures were simply standing there, some of them beginning to point. Behind them was a smaller helicopter with the loop-shaped aerial of a radio location finder mounted atop its plastic dome. There was something wrong with the sky, and the Murderer realized it was not the sky. It was a vast white canvas dome, dimpling in the polar wind. The unnatural circle in the ice and the equipment grouped around it all were hidden from aerial observation. Pointing at him from the fuselage of the huge helicopter, and so close that his eyes had avoided it, was a metal boom with a hoist cable taut into the water, tethering something below the surface. Some of the men were running toward the huge helicopter now. In front of them at the edge of the ice lay shapeless bundles of what appeared to be black rubberized canvas, and he wondered fleetingly if these contained more of the soon-to-be gelatinous picket buoys. One of the figures was aiming something at him. As the Murderer let air out of the flotation tanks and swiftly sank, he realized it had not been a gun; it had been a camera with a telephoto lens. He passed the tubular shape on the end of the cable. It was an anti-submarine torpedo. When he sank deeper, he passed a cylinder dangling from two black rubber-insulated cables. He valved compressed air back into the flotation tanks and came up under the ice, so hazardously close he had to duck his head as he steered a weaving course among the downward bulges of old Siberian ice. Even though he had been deafened, he felt the sonar pulsing against the ice, searching for him. Then he felt it knocking against the minisub, pinging against his air tanks, thudding accusingly against his bones. It followed him wherever he steered. He smiled blearily. This would be the ultimate if they unleashed the expensively intricate homing torpedo--at one man riding a cheap minisub constructed by a big-handed, happily singing petty officer on his own time. He hoped they _would_ waste the torpedo on him. If he had to be destroyed by a gadget, an infernal machine, at least it was better to be killed as an individual rather than in a group so large he would be nameless in death. Abruptly the sonar left him. They must have decided he was not going to lead them back to his submarine. Now they were hurriedly ranging for it. He cruised on and on with his dead cargo. Then he felt the echo of sonar from the submarine's hull. He must be close. The helicopter, with its sonar system lowered into the water like a fisherman's hook, had caught the Fleet Ballistic Missile submarine. He could feel the submarine's sonar searching frantically. They would be sounding for another submarine. He could imagine horror on the sonar men's faces as they realized they couldn't detect anything at the apparent source of the unidentified sonar that had caught them. The submarine's sonar caught something--him. * * * * * He steered directly into it and found the submarine. Bow into the current, the gray undersea boat was still holding its position. The Murderer guessed the commander had decided that the best move was no move. Valving out air, he brought the minisub down, opened the outer hatch and dragged the minisub into the water-filled chamber. A great weariness had come over him and it was all he could do to lock the hatch. He knocked on the bulkhead, while the persistent sonar pinging went on and on. Someone tapped very gently, although they might as well hammer with a wrench; it wouldn't make any difference now. The Murderer realized they were waiting for him to plug into the telephone socket and give his maximum depth and time spent there and other decompression data he hadn't kept. They intended to decompress him as if this were just another safe-and-sane training exercise. In the chamber lights, Barney's rubber suit had sagged over the side of the minisub like a black rag doll. The Murderer averted his eyes and plugged in. "One--two--three--" he said automatically. "Barney?" "Barney's dead." "This is the commander. There is a submarine out there. For some reason, we can't locate it with our sonar. Have you seen it?" "Commander, it's a helicopter. They have an anti-submarine torpedo in the water." "I'm having difficulty reading you--" "Helicopter. Anti-sub torpedo!" "Did they take any aggressive action against you?" "Depends on how you look at it. Their picket buoys are under here. Barney tried to recover one. It was booby-trapped to destroy itself." "Barney?" the commander's voice persisted. "I told you he's dead! I got one of their divers." "One of their divers? He was attacking you?" "I killed him. He was trying to get away." There was a long pause. Only the persistent knocking of the giant helicopter's sonar reached the Murderer's ear. When the commander spoke again, it was as if murder had been done. "Do they know?" "The other one looked back. Sure they know. They know." "Then they may consider we're the ones who've taken aggressive action," the commander said slowly. "We'll have to wait. If we move off, their commanding officers on the spot may feel committed to local retaliatory action. We'll have to wait while they're radioing for instructions. We'll have to hope their side will decide to take this before an international court." "Court? What sort of court? A murder court?" "Let's hope it's only one murder," the commander's voice came through distantly, "and not one hundred million. We'll have to sit it out." As decompression began, the Murderer sank down beside Barney's body in the water-filled chamber. Superimposed upon the commander's two little kids, swinging on their swings, he saw the surprised face of the diver--and even the little fish, lost from its school, and its wondrous eye--two billion years of evolution waiting for a verdict of life or death. 
61242	----	THE WINNING OF THE MOON BY KRIS NEVILLE The enemy was friendly enough. Trouble was--their friendship was as dangerous as their hate! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] General Finogenov notified Major Winship that the underground blast was scheduled for the following morning. Major Winship, after receiving the message, discussed precautions with the three other Americans. Next morning, before the sunlight exploded, the four of them donned their space suits and went and sat outside the dome, waiting. The sun rose with its bright, silent clap of radiance. Black pools of shadows lay in harsh contrast, their edges drawn with geometric precision. Major Winship attempted unsuccessfully to communicate with Base Gagarin. "Will you please request the general to keep us informed on the progress of the countdown?" "Is Pinov," came the reply. "Help?" "_Nyet_," said Major Winship, exhausting his Russian. "Count down. Progress. When--boom?" "Is Pinov," came the reply. "Boom! Boom!" said Major Winship in exasperation. "Boom!" said Pinov happily. "When?" "Boom--boom!" said Pinov. "Oh, nuts." Major Winship cut out the circuit. "They've got Pinov on emergency watch this morning," he explained to the other Americans. "The one that doesn't speak English." "He's done it deliberately," said Capt. Wilkins, the eldest of the four Americans. "How are we going to know when it's over?" No one bothered to respond. They sat for a while in silence while the shadows evaporated. One by one they clicked on their cooling systems. Ultimately, Lt. Chandler said, "This is a little ridiculous. I'm going to switch over to their channel. Rap if you want me." He sat transfixed for several minutes. "Ah, it's all Russian. Jabbering away. I can't tell a thing that's going on." In the airless void of the moon, the blast itself would be silent. A moth's wing of dust would, perhaps, rise and settle beyond the horizon: no more. "Static?" "Nope." "We'll get static on these things." A small infinity seemed to pass very slowly. Major Winship shifted restlessly. "My reefer's gone on the fritz." Perspiration was trickling down his face. "Let's all go in," said the fourth American, Capt. Lawler. "It's probably over by now." "I'll try again," Major Winship said and switched to the emergency channel. "Base Gagarin? Base Gagarin?" "Is Pinov. Help?" "_Nyet._" "Pinov's still there," Major Winship said. "Tell him, 'Help'," said Capt. Wilkins, "so he'll get somebody we can talk to." "I'll see them all in hell, first," Major Winship said. Five minutes later, the perspiration was rivers across his face. "This is it," he said. "I'm going in." "Let's all--" "No. I've got to cool off." "Hell, Charlie, I feel stupid sitting out here," Capt. Lawler said. "The shot probably went off an hour ago." "The static level hasn't gone up much, if at all." "Maybe," Lt. Chandler said, "it's buried too deep." "Maybe so," Major Winship said. "But we can't have the dome fall down around all our ears." He stood. "Whew! You guys stay put." * * * * * He crossed with the floating moon-motion to the airlock and entered, closing the door behind him. The darkness slowly filled with air, and the temperature inside the suit declined steadily. At the proper moment of pressure, the inner lock slid open and Major Winship stepped into the illuminated central area. His foot was lifted for the second step when the floor beneath him rose and fell gently, pitching him forward, off balance. He stumbled against the table and ended up seated beside the radio equipment. The ground moved again. "Charlie! Charlie!" "I'm okay," Major Winship answered. "Okay! Okay!" "It's--" There was additional surface movement. The movement ceased. "Hey, Les, how's it look?" Capt. Wilkins asked. "Okay from this side. Charlie, you still okay?" "Okay," Major Winship said. "We told them this might happen," he added bitterly. There was a wait during which everyone seemed to be holding their breath. "I guess it's over," said Major Winship, getting to his feet. "Wait a bit more, there may be an after-shock." He switched once again to the emergency channel. "Is Pinov," came the supremely relaxed voice. "Help?" Major Winship whinnied in disgust. "_Nyet!_" he snarled. To the other Americans: "Our comrades seem unconcerned." "Tough." They began to get the static for the first time. It crackled and snapped in their speakers. They made sounds of disapproval at each other. For a minute or two, static blanked out the communications completely. It then abated to something in excess of normal. "Well," Lt. Chandler commented, "even though we didn't build this thing to withstand a moonquake, it seems to have stood up all right." "I guess I was just--" Major Winship began. "Oh, hell! We're losing pressure. Where's the markers?" "By the lug cabinet." "Got 'em," Major Winship said a moment later. He peeled back a marker and let it fall. Air currents whisked it away and plastered it against a riveted seam of the dome. It pulsed as though it were breathing and then it ruptured. Major Winship moved quickly to cut out the emergency air supply which had cut in automatically with the pressure drop. "You guys wait. It's on your right side, midway up. I'll try to sheet it." He moved for the plastic sheeting. "We've lost about three feet of calk out here," Capt. Lawler said. "I can see more ripping loose. You're losing pressure fast at this rate." Major Winship pressed the sheeting over the leak. "How's that?" "Not yet." "I don't think I've got enough pressure left to hold it, now. It's sprung a little, and I can't get it to conform over the rivet heads." There was a splatter of static. "Damn!" Major Winship said, "they should have made these things more flexible." "Still coming out." "Best I can do." Major Winship stepped back. The sheet began slowly to slide downward, then it fell away completely and lay limply on the floor. "Come on in," he said dryly. * * * * * With the four of them inside, it was somewhat cramped. Most of the five hundred square feet was filled with equipment. Electrical cables trailed loosely along the walls and were festooned from the ceiling, radiating from the connections to the outside solar cells. The living space was more restricted than in a submarine, with the bunks jutting out from the walls about six feet from the floor. Lt. Chandler mounted one of the bunks to give them more room. "Well," he said wryly, "it doesn't smell as bad now." "Oops," said Major Winship. "Just a second. They're coming in." He switched over to the emergency channel. It was General Finogenov. "Major Winship! Hello! Hello, hello, hello. You A Okay?" "This is Major Winship." "Oh! Excellent, very good. Any damage, Major?" "Little leak. You?" "Came through without damage." General Finogenov paused a moment. When no comment was forthcoming, he continued: "Perhaps we built a bit more strongly, Major." "You did this deliberately," Major Winship said testily. "No, no. Oh, no, no, no, no. Major Winship, please believe me. I very much regret this. Very much so. I am very distressed. Depressed. After repeatedly assuring you there was no danger of a quake--and then to have something like this happen. Oh, this is very embarrassing to me. Is there anything at all we can do?" "Just leave us alone, thank you," Major Winship said and cut off the communication. "What'd they say?" Capt. Wilkins asked. "Larry, General Finogenov said he was very embarrassed by this." "That's nice," Lt. Chandler said. "I'll be damned surprised," Major Winship said, "if they got any seismic data out of that shot.... Well, to hell with them, let's get this leak fixed. Skip, can you get the calking compound?" "Larry, where's the inventory?" "Les has got it." Lt. Chandler got down from the bunk and Capt. Wilkins mounted. "Larry," Major Winship said, "why don't you get Earth?" "Okay." Capt. Wilkins got down from the bunk and Capt. Lawler ascended. "Got the inventory sheet, Les?" "Right here." Squeezed in front of the massive transmitter, Capt. Wilkins had energized the circuits. There was a puzzled look on his face. He leaned his helmet against the speaker and then shook his head sadly. "We can't hear anything without any air." Major Winship looked at the microphone. "Well, I'll just report and--" He started to pick up the microphone and reconsidered. "Yes," he said. "That's right, isn't it." Capt. Wilkins flicked off the transmitter. "Some days you don't mine at all," he said. "Les, have you found it?" "It's around here somewhere. Supposed to be back here." "Well, _find_ it." Lt. Chandler began moving boxes. "I saw it--" "Skip, help look." Capt. Lawler got down from the bunk and Major Winship mounted. "We haven't got all day." A few minutes later, Lt. Chandler issued the triumphant cry. "Here it is! Dozen tubes. Squeeze tubes. It's the new stuff." Major Winship got down and Capt. Wilkins got up. "Marker showed it over here," Major Winship said, inching over to the wall. He traced the leak with a metallic finger. "How does this stuff work?" Capt. Lawler asked. They huddled over the instruction sheet. "Let's see. Squeeze the tube until the diaphragm at the nozzle ruptures. Extrude paste into seam. Allow to harden one hour before service." Major Winship said dryly, "Never mind. I notice it hardens on contact with air." Capt. Wilkins lay back on the bunk and stared upward. He said, "Now that makes a weird kind of sense, doesn't it?" "How do they possibly think--?" "Gentlemen! It doesn't make any difference," Lt. Chandler said. "Some air must already have leaked into this one. It's hard as a rock. A gorilla couldn't extrude it." "How're the other ones?" asked Major Winship. Lt. Chandler turned and made a quick examination. "Oh, they're all hard, too." "Who was supposed to check?" demanded Capt. Wilkins in exasperation. "The only way you can check is to extrude it," Lt. Chandler said, "and if it does extrude, you've ruined it." "That's that," Major Winship said. "There's nothing for it but to yell help." II Capt. Lawler and Lt. Chandler took the land car to Base Gagarin. The Soviet base was situated some ten miles toward sunset at the bottom of a natural fold in the surface. The route was moderately direct to the tip of the gently rolling ridge. At that point, the best pathway angled left and made an S-shaped descent to the basin. It was a one-way trip of approximately thirty exhausting minutes. Major Winship, with his deficient reefer, remained behind. Capt. Wilkins stayed for company. "I want a cigarette in the worst way," Capt. Wilkins said. "So do I, Larry. Shouldn't be more than a couple of hours. Unless something else goes wrong." "As long as they'll loan us the calking compound," Capt. Wilkins said. "Yeah, yeah," Major Winship said. "Let's eat." "You got any concentrate? I'm empty." "I'll load you," Capt. Wilkins volunteered wearily. It was an awkward operation that took several minutes. Capt. Wilkins cursed twice during the operation. "I'd hate to live in this thing for any period." "I think these suits are one thing we've got over the Russians," Major Winship said. "I don't see how they can manipulate those bulky pieces of junk around." They ate. "Really horrible stuff." "Nutritious." After the meal, Major Winship said reflectively, "Now I'd like a cup of hot tea. I'm cooled off." Capt. Wilkins raised eyebrows. "What brought this on?" "I was just thinking.... They really got it made, Larry. They've got better than three thousand square feet in the main dome and better than twelve hundred square feet in each of the two little ones. And there's only seven of them right now. That's living." "They've been here six years longer, after all." "Finogenov had a _clay_ samovar sent up. Lemon and nutmeg, too. Real, by God, fresh lemons for the tea, the last time I was there. His own office is about ten by ten. Think of that. One hundred square feet. And a wooden desk. A _wooden_ desk. And a chair. A wooden chair. Everything big and heavy. Everything. Weight, hell. Fifty pounds more or less--" "They've got the power-plants for it." "Do you think he did that deliberately?" Major Winship asked. "I think he's trying to force us off. I think he hoped for the quake. Gagarin's built to take it, I'll say that. Looks like it, anyhow. You don't suppose they planned this all along? Even if they didn't, they sure got the jump on us again, didn't they? I told you what he told me?" "You told me," Capt. Wilkins said. * * * * * After a moment, Major Winship said bitterly, "To hell with the Russian engineer." "If you've got all that power...." "That's the thing. That's the thing that gripes me, know what I mean? It's just insane to send up a heavy wooden desk. That's showing off. Like a little kid." "Maybe they don't make aluminum desks." "They've--got--aluminum. Half of everything on the whole planet is aluminum. You know they're just showing off." "Let me wire you up," Capt. Wilkins said. "We ought to report." "That's going to take awhile." "It's something to do while we wait." "I guess we ought to." Major Winship came down from the bunk and sat with his back toward the transmitter. Capt. Wilkins slewed the equipment around until the emergency jacks were accessible. He unearthed the appropriate cable and began unscrewing the exterior plate to the small transmitter-receiver set on Major Winship's back. Eventually, trailing wires, Major Winship was coupled into the network. "Okay?" "Okay," Major Winship gestured. They roused Earth. "This is Major Charles Winship, Commanding Officer, Freedom 19, the American moonbase." At this point, Major Winship observed for the first time that he was now on emergency air. He started to ask Capt. Wilkins to change his air bottle, but then he realized his communications were cut off. He reached over and rapped Capt. Wilkins' helmet. "This is the Cape. Come in, Major Winship." "Just a moment." "Is everything all right?" Major Winship was squirming nervously, obviously perturbed. "A-Okay," he said. "Just a moment." "What's wrong?" came the worried question. In the background, he heard someone say, "I think there's something wrong." Capt. Wilkins peered intently. Major Winship contorted his face in a savage grimace. Capt. Wilkins raised his eyebrows in alarm. They were face to face through their helmets, close together. Each face appeared monstrously large to the other. Major Winship made a strangling motion and reached for his throat. One arm tangled a cable and jerked the speaker jack loose. Major Winship could no longer hear the alarmed expressions from the Cape. The effort was not entirely subvocal, since he emitted a little gasping cry in involuntary realism. This, in the course of some 90 seconds, was transmitted to Earth. Capt. Wilkins's lips were desperately forming the word "Leak?" Air, Major Winship said silently. Leak? Bottle! Bottle! Bottle! It was a frog-like, unvocal expletive. * * * * * Comprehension dawned. Capt. Wilkins nodded and started to turn away. Major Winship caught his arm and nodded his head toward the loose jack. Oh. Capt. Wilkins nodded and smiled. He reached across and plugged the speaker in again. "... Freedom 19! Hello, Freedom 19! Come in!" "We're here," Major Winship said. "All right? Are you all right?" "We're all right. A-Okay." Major Winship, mindful of the extent of his potential audience, took a deep breath. "Earlier this morning, the Soviet Union fired an underground atomic device for the _ostensible_ purpose of investigating the composition of the lunar mass by means of seismic analysis of the resultant shock waves. This was done in spite of American warnings that such a disturbance might release accumulated stresses in the long undisturbed satellite, and was done in the face of vigorous American protests." Capt. Wilkins tapped his helmet and gestured for him to swivel around. The turn was uncomfortably tight and complicated by the restraining cables. Capt. Wilkins began replacement of the air bottle. "These protests have proved well founded," Major Winship continued. "Immediately following the detonation, Freedom 19 was called on to withstand a moderately severe shifting of the Lunar surface. No personnel were injured and there was no equipment damage." Capt. Wilkins tapped his shoulder to indicate the new air bottle was being inserted. Another tap indicated it was seated. Major Winship flicked the appropriate chest button and nodded in appreciation. "However," he continued, "we did experience a minor leak in the dome, which is presently being repaired." "The Soviet Union," came the reply, "has reported the disturbance and has tendered their official apology. You want it?" "It can wait until later. Send it by mail for all I care. Vacuum has destroyed our organic air reconditioner. We have approximately three weeks of emergency air. However, Base Gagarin reports no damage, so that, in the event we exhaust our air, we will be able to obtain the necessary replacement." The wait of a little better than three seconds for the response gave the conversation a tone of deliberation. A new voice came on. "We tried to contact you earlier, Major. We will be able to deliver replacements in about ten days." "I will forward a coded report on the occurrence," Major Winship said. "Let us hear from you again in ... about three hours. Is the leak repaired?" "The leak has not yet been repaired. Over and out." He nodded to Capt. Wilkins and leaned back. Methodically, Capt. Wilkins set about disconnecting the major from the transmitter. "Wow!" said Major Winship when he was once more in communication. "For a moment there, I thought...." "What?" Capt. Wilkins asked with interest. "I could see myself asking them to ask the Russians to ask Finogenov to get on the emergency channel to ask you to charge the air bottle. I never felt so ... idiotic is not quite strong enough ... there for a minute in my whole life. I didn't know how much emergency air was left, and I thought, my God, I'll never live this down. All the hams in the world listening, while I try to explain the situation. I could see the nickname being entered in my files: aka. The Airless Idiot. I tell you, that was rough." III Capt. Lawler and Lt. Chandler returned with the calking compound. It occupied the rear section of the land car. Lt. Chandler sat atop it. It was a fifty-five gallon drum. The airlock to Freedom 19 was open. "What is _that_?" asked Major Winship, squinting out into the glaring sunlight. "That," said Capt. Lawler, "is the calking compound." "You're kidding," said Capt. Wilkins. "I am not kidding." Capt. Lawler and Lt. Chandler came inside. Capt. Wilkins mounted a bunk. "Why didn't you just borrow a cupful?" Major Winship said sarcastically. "It's this way," Lt. Chandler said. "They didn't have anything but 55-gallon drums of it." "Oh, my," said Capt. Wilkins. "I suppose it's a steel drum. Those things must weigh...." "Actually, I think you guys have got the general wrong," Capt. Lawler said. "He was out, himself, to greet us. I think he was really quite upset by the quake. Probably because his people had misfigured so bad." "He's too damned suspicious," Major Winship said. "You know and I know why they set that blast off. I tried to tell him. Hell. He looks at me like an emasculated owl and wants to know our ulterior motive in trying to prevent a purely scientific experiment, the results of which will be published in the technical press for the good of everybody. I'll bet!" "About this drum," Capt. Wilkins said. "Well, like I said, it's this way," Lt. Chandler resumed. "I told him we needed about a pint. Maybe a quart. But this stuff you have to mix up. He only had these drums. There's two parts to it, and you have to combine them in just the right proportion. He told me to take a little scale--" "A little scale?" asked Capt. Wilkins, rolling his eyes at the dome. "That's what I told him. We don't have any little scale." "Yeah," said Captain Lawler, "and he looked at us with that mute, surprised look, like everybody, everywhere has dozens of little scales." "Well, anyway," Lt. Chandler continued, "he told us just to mix up the whole fifty-five gallon drum. There's a little bucket of stuff that goes in, and it's measured just right. We can throw away what we don't need." "Somehow, that sounds like him," Major Winship said. "He had five or six of them." "Jesus!" said Capt. Wilkins. "That must be _three thousand pounds_ of calking compound. Those people are insane." "The question is," Capt. Lawler said, "'How are we going to mix it?' It's supposed to be mixed thoroughly." They thought over the problem for a while. "That will be a man-sized job," Major Winship said. "Let's see, Charlie. Maybe not too bad," said Capt. Wilkins. "If I took the compressor motor, we could make up a shaft and ... let's see ... if we could...." * * * * * It took the better part of an hour to rig up the electric mixer. Capt. Wilkins was profusely congratulated. "Now," Major Winship said, "we can either bring the drum inside or take the mixer out there." "We're going to have to bring the drum in," Capt. Wilkins said. "Well," said Capt. Lawler, "that will make it nice and cozy." It took the four of them to roll the drum inside, rocking it back and forth through the airlock. At that time, it was apparent the table was interposing itself. Lt. Chandler tried to dismantle the table. "Damn these suits," he said. "You've got it stuck between the bunk post." "I _know_ that." "I don't think this is the way to do it," Major Winship said. "Let's back the drum out." Reluctantly, they backed the drum out and deposited it. With the aid of Capt. Lawler, Lt. Chandler got the table unstuck. They passed it over to Major Winship, who handed it out to Capt. Wilkins. Captain Wilkins carried it around the drum of calking compound and set it down. It rested uneasily on the uneven surface. "Now, let's go," said Major Winship. Eventually, they accomplished the moving. They wedged the drum between the main air-supply tank and the transmitter. They were all perspiring. "It's not the weight, it's the mass," said Capt. Wilkins brightly. "The hell it isn't the weight," said Lt. Chandler. "That's heavy." "With my reefer out," said Major Winship, "I'm the one it's rough on." He shook perspiration out of his eyes. "They should figure a way to get a mop in here, or a towel, or a sponge, or something. I'll bet you've forgotten how much sweat stings in the eyes." "It's the salt." "Speaking of salt. I wish I had some salt tablets," Major Winship said. "I've never sweat so much since basic." "Want to bet Finogenov hasn't got a bushel of them?" "No!" Major Winship snapped. * * * * * With the drum of calking compound inside, both Capt. Lawler and Lt. Chandler retreated to the bunks. Capt. Wilkins maneuvered the mixing attachment. "I feel crowded," he said. "Cozy's the word." "Watch it! Watch it! You almost hit me in the face plate with that!" "Sorry." At length the mixer was in operation in the drum. "Works perfectly," said Capt. Wilkins proudly. "Now what, Skip? The instructions aren't in English." "You're supposed to dump the bucket of stuff in. Then clean the area thoroughly around the leak." "With what?" asked Major Winship. "Sandpaper, I guess." "With sandpaper?" Major Winship said, emptying the bucket of fluid into the drum. "We don't have any sandpaper." "It's been a long day," Capt. Wilkins said. "Mix it thoroughly," Lt. Chandler mused. "I guess that means let it mix for about ten minutes or so. Then you apply it. It sets for service in just a little bit, Finogenov said. An hour or so, maybe." "I hope this doesn't set on exposure to air." "No," Capt. Lawler said. "It sets by some kind of chemical action. General Finogenov wasn't sure of the English name for it. Some kind of plastic." "Let's come back to how we're going to clean around the leak," Major Winship said. "Say, I--" interrupted Capt. Wilkins. There was a trace of concern in his voice. "This is a hell of a time for this to occur to me. I just wasn't thinking, before. _You don't suppose it's a room-temperature-curing epoxy resin, do you?_" "Larry," said Major Winship, "I wouldn't know a room-temperature-curing epoxy resin from--" "Hey!" exclaimed Capt. Wilkins. "The mixer's stopped." He bent forward and touched the drum. He jerked back. "Ye Gods! that's hot! And it's harder than a rock! It _is_ an epoxy! Let's get out of here." "Huh?" "Out! Out!" Major Winship, Lt. Chandler, and Capt. Lawler, recognizing the sense of urgency, simultaneously glanced at the drum. It was glowing cherry red. "Let's go!" Capt. Wilkins said. He and the Major reached the airlock at the same time and became temporarily engaged with each other. Movement was somewhat ungainly in the space suits under the best of conditions, and now, with the necessity for speed, was doubly so. The other two crashed into them from behind, and they spewed forth from the dome in a tangle of arms and legs. At the table, they separated, two going to the left, two to the right. The table remained untouched. When they halted, Capt. Wilkins said, "Get to one side, it may go off like shrapnel." They obeyed. "What--what--what?" Capt. Lawler stuttered. They were still separated, two on one side of the airlock, two on the other. "I'm going to try to look," Capt. Wilkins said. "Let me go." He lumbered directly away from the dome for a distance of about fifteen feet, then turned and positioned himself, some five feet behind the table, on a line of sight with the airlock. "I can see it," he said. "It's getting redder. It's ... it's ... melting, yes. Melting down at the bottom a little. Now it's falling over to one side and laying on the air tank. The air tank is getting red, too. I'm afraid ... it's weakening it.... Redder. Oh, oh." "What?" said Capt. Lawler. "Watch out! There. _There!_" Capt. Wilkins leaped from his position. He was still floating toward the ground when there was an incredibly bright flare from inside the dome, and a great, silent tongue of flame lashed through the airlock and rolled across the lunar surface. The table was sent tumbling. The flame was gone almost instantly. "There went the air," Capt. Lawler commented. "We got T-Trouble," said Lt. Chandler. IV During the fifteen-minute wait before they dared venture back, Capt. Wilkins, interrupted once by what appeared to be a moderately mild after-shock from the previous moonquake, explained the phenomena they had just observed. "A room-temperature-curing epoxy liberates heat during its curing reaction. And the hotter it is when you mix it, the faster it reacts. The drum had been absorbing heat out here for several hours much faster than it could radiate it away. It may have been forty or fifty degrees C when we stirred in the curing agent. At that temperature, a pound mass will normally kick over in five or ten minutes. But here, the only way it can lose the reaction heat is by the slow process of radiation. And that means as the heat builds up, the epoxy goes faster and faster, building up even more heat. And furthermore, we're not talking about a pound, which can maybe get up to 250 C. in air. We're talking about 500 pounds, liberating five hundred times as much heat as one pound, and getting God knows how hot--" "I sure wish you'd have told me this a little bit earlier," Major Winship said. "I certainly wish you'd told me." Capt. Wilkins said, "Honest, it never occurred to me Finogenov would be dumb enough to tell us to mix a whole drum of epoxy." Major Winship began to curse mechanically. "I don't think he did it deliberately, Charlie. I really don't," Captain Lawler said. "I don't think he knew any better. Maybe he was showing off by giving us a whole drum. Hell, I know he was showing off. But something like that could kill somebody, and I don't think he'd go that far." "Think it's safe, yet?" Major Winship asked. He was perspiring freely again. "I need some thermal protection. What'll we do? You know damned well. We'll have to go _live_ with them. And that sticks in my craw, gentlemen. That--sticks--in my--craw."' "There's nothing for it," Capt. Wilkins said helpfully. "Let me go in and survey the damage," Lt. Chandler said. "That's my job," Major Winship said. "I've got to go in anyway." He lumbered through the airlock and stepped into the total darkness through the razor-edge curtain. "I see it glowing, still," he said. "It's almost as bad in here as out there, now. I guess it's okay. Come on. Let's bumble around finding the air bottles for the suits and get over there before I'm a boiled lobster. Not only is my reefer out, so's my light." "Coming." An air of urgency began to accumulate. "What are we going to do with him? It's a half-hour run over there." "Think you can make it, Charlie?" "I'm damned well hot." "Charlie, come out here. In the car. Skip, you get the bottles. You drive." Major Winship came out. "Lay down in back," Capt. Wilkins said. "Les, you lay down beside him. I'll lay on top of him. I think we can shield him pretty good that way." "That's good thinking," Capt. Lawler said from inside. The operation was not easily executed. Lt. Chandler got in first, and then Major Winship squeezed beside him. "Careful, there," he said as Capt. Wilkins came aboard. Capt. Wilkins's foot rolled off one of Major Winship's thighs. "Watch it!" "I am." "Oops!" "Ufff! I felt that. Ugh. Thank God for the way these are built." "How's that?" Capt. Wilkins asked. "I guess.... It's okay, I guess." "Cooler?" "It's too soon to tell. Man, I'll bet we look silly." Capt. Lawler came out with the bottles and studied his companions for a moment. "See if we can get up and over a little more, Les." "This okay?" "Better. How's it feel, Charlie?" "Okay." Cant. Lawler deposited the air bottles. "Everyone got enough air?" "I guess we're all okay," Capt. Wilkins said. "Don't we look silly?" Major Winship asked plaintively. "I can't possibly describe my emotions at this minute." "You look all right," Capt. Lawler said. "Still hot?" Major Winship grunted. He said nothing. "I'll get there as fast as I can." * * * * * After about ten minutes jarring across the lunar surface, Major Winship said, "I'm not appreciably cooler; but then I'm not appreciably hotter, either." "Shut up, Charlie. You're a thirty-year man," Lt. Chandler said. "Old soldiers never die, they just become desiccated." "I'd like a beer," Major Winship said. "A cold, frosty, foamy beer. Big collar. Gimme a beer, a little shaker of salt--" "Finogenov's probably got eight or ten cases." "For once, I hope you're right. Try to bounce a little easier, Larry." "Russians don't drink beer," Lt. Chandler said. "You sure?" "Vodka," Capt Lawler grunted. "They drink champagne, you idiots," Capt. Wilkins said. "Beggars can't be choosers," Major Winship said. "Champagne is okay by me. If it's just cold." "Finogenov will have a few hundred pounds of ice." "Cut it out," Major Winship said. "Boy, you wait till we get you back to Earth. When it comes time to reup, I'm going to be there. I'm going to remind you of this one." "You're a thirty-year man, too, Les," Major Winship said. "Not me," Lt. Chandler said. "I've had it, dad. I'm going to sell my life story to the movies and spend the rest of my life eating popcorn and watching what an idiot I was. A man can get hurt up here." "So you want to be a civilian?" "You're damned right I do," Lt. Chandler said. "We're about there," Capt. Lawler cut in. "You still okay, Charlie?" "Fine." "Here's the little ridge, then. Hold on, we're taking the angle up. You riding okay, Charlie?" "Fine, Skip." After a moment, Capt. Lawler said, "I see the base now. The top. Hey!" He slammed on the brakes. "Oh, _no_! Those ... those fools! Those idiots." "What's wrong?" Major Winship demanded. "Skip--_what's wrong?_" "The second little dome is down. It wasn't that way a couple of hours ago. And they've block-and-tackled a drum of calking compound up on the main dome." "_We've got to stop them!_" Major Winship cried. "Skip! Skip!" "Charlie, there's nothing we can do. The drum's just starting to turn red." There was silence for a while. "It's melting through, now. There it goes. Down through the dome. Out of sight." After a moment, Capt. Lawler continued. "Funny how things fall so slowly under this low gravity. It floated through their dome just like a feather. You should have seen it." Eventually, Lt. Chandler said, "Boys, this is my last hitch." There was more silence. Capt. Wilkins mused, "I guess they didn't have a little scale either." Someone was breathing loudly. At length, Major Winship said reflectively, "Why do you suppose they would try to calk it from the outside?" Again silence. Major Winship asked the question. "Okay. Let's have it. How's the other little dome?" "Other one? Oh, sorry," Capt. Lawler said. "It looks all right." "It better _be_ all right," Lt. Chandler said. * * * * * In the end, the eleven of them were crowded into the one remaining operational structure of the four available on the moon at sunrise. For perhaps the tenth time, General Finogenov offered his apologies. He and Major Winship were huddled side by side in a corner. They were drinking vodka. "Plenty of everything," General Finogenov said. "Don't concern yourself, Major. Air, food, water, we have more than enough for a prolonged siege." "Accidents will happen." "Exactly," said General Finogenov, pouring more vodka for himself. "Glad you understand." He put the empty bottle down. "We will have another one next week. In the meantime--I very much regret the inconvenience. Plenty of food, water, air, though. Pinov! Pinov! Vodka!" Pinov answered in Russian. General Finogenov frowned. "Dear, dear," he said. "I'm afraid this must be our last one, Major. You see, while we have plenty of everything else, we are, you see.... The truth of the matter is, we didn't foresee visitors. Unfortunately, we have no more vodka." "No more vodka," said General Finogenov. He stared morosely into the inky distance. "Major Winship, I have a confession. Oh, that second one was a beauty. You didn't feel it?" "Our leak sprang on the first one. The second was quite mild, we thought." "We were right on the fault line," General Finogenov said. "As you Americans say, it was a beauty. I have a confession. One must admit one's mistakes." "Yes?" "We used much too large a bomb," he said. "I'm with you," Lt. Chandler chimed in from somewhere out of the darkness. "But when do you think you're going to get the lights fixed?" 
61374	----	COUNTDOWN BY JULIAN F. GROW The moment is at hand--the fingers are poised--this is what comes next! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] 10 years of uneasy peace, since the Hour of Tragedy ... ten apprehensive, uneasy years pungent with fear, with hatred, distrust ... ten years like ten thousand in the past of man ... ten units out of the infinite, out of time the eternal, immutable, nonexistent dimension.... * * * * * 9 planets spinning ... nine spawn of the sun, one of them nascent, a hairsbreadth from its heritage. But which heritage? It could choose. The fertile warmth of the parent star ... or the star's pure fire? * * * * * 8 periods, in the gibberish of the sifters of chaos ... eight: Pre-Cambrian to Triassic--while flame cooled and became stone and lay latent, lambent, pent awaiting release--before from the fetid Jurassic darknesses the beasts of warm blood crawled. * * * * * 7 seas, once the womb of life, then too long its caul ... the common birthplace, then a strangling wall between. (Once too, briefly a high road for the courageous, now a new kind of night for marauders, shadowed shapes armed with pieces of the sun.) * * * * * 6 masses of land, cradles for the genesis of a myriad species ... and one of them Man. Man the Creator, the Protector, the Destroyer: builder of shrines, burner of saints, good father, good soldier, good killer.... Man, the creature of choice. * * * * * 5 nations remaining, sparse ruddy fruit of a thousand wars, nurtured by a billion dead. Five, the bloody consequence of union into pack, into tribe, into fief, to kingdom, empire and nation. The threads of history gathered finally into five flags, entwined in alliance at this point in time by a searing wind: Pan-American, Sino-Russian, Afro-Arabian ... racial armies, sons of the first beast to kill from anger, fathers of the unborn. Armies in the terrible truce of the fusion bomb ... waiting. * * * * * 4 farflung networks: metal wire and machines, and vacuum. Interlinked webs of detection and retaliation or attack, within the webs bombs ... within the bombs targets, mapped and doomed by a spark. Each alliance a network of aimed and armed missiles, in deserts, on mountaintops, hidden deep and in the surrounding seas. Each alliance a pattern of targets, always an instant from obliteration. (Such had come to Britain in its Hour of Tragedy when the last savage hope of Empire Regained dissolved into vapor, and the Isles became slag. There the fourth network corroded under a shroud of ash; but the surviving three ceaselessly hummed.) * * * * * 3 men, of one species but riven somehow at this point in time by pigment, tongue and details of dress: a man from Brownsville, a man from Vladivostok, a man from Khartoum ... buried deep in the hearts of the networks, each already entombed, and so safe from death. Each chosen by his masters to be the nock of the arrow, the final factor; yet not an arrow, for each network of course was aimed at both the others. A moment's trust is fatal once the truce is broken, the masters reasoned, and so the bombs and the men were trained. * * * * * 2 buttons, a choice under the fingers of each of these men: one, red, to loose deliberately the double pronged torrent of bombs if the masters so decreed. The other, white, to cancel the launching command broadcast automatically if massive radiation spewed across the homeland ... a vast, vicious death reflex. Each man, then, if the detectors tolled, had the decision: error or attack. Fail or be unable to press the white instantly, and the counter-attack, if such it was, began. This, then, was the masters' last concession to the human factor, their grudging one to humanity. And like most of the masters' concessions to the masses, it was false. Identically, in each network, the white button was a dummy. The real choice was as it always was--red button, kill ... or wait yet a while more. The men in the tombs, unknowing, knew this was the choice. * * * * * 1 man's brain, whosoever, however carefully masters may mold it, is a fragile thing. Ten thousand years have not fitted man to live with himself; could a single man live with the lives of two billion? The choice, distillate of a hundred centuries of pain, the weariness of a species with race: blame them, blame all. One of the men sitting in a cold tomb sweated. His finger hovered over the red button, trembled ... and fell. 
43235	----	FIRST on the MOON by JEFF SUTTON ACE BOOKS, INC. 1120 Avenue of the Americas New York 36, N.Y. FIRST ON THE MOON Copyright ©, 1958, by Ace Books, Inc. All Rights Reserved Printed in U. S. A. TO SANDY SUICIDE RACE TO LUNA The four men had been scrutinized, watched, investigated, and intensively trained for more than a year. They were the best men to be found for that first, all-important flight to the Moon--the pioneer manned rocket that would give either the East or the West control over the Earth. Yet when the race started, Adam Crag found that he had a saboteur among his crew ... a traitor! Such a man could give the Reds possession of Luna, and thereby dominate the world it circled. Any one of the other three could be the hidden enemy, and if he didn't discover the agent soon--even while they were roaring on rocket jets through outer space--then Adam Crag, his expedition, and his country would be destroyed! PROLOGUE One of the rockets was silver; three were ashen gray. Each nested in a different spot on the great Western Desert. All were long, tapered, sisters except for color. In a way they represented the first, and last, of an era, with exotic propellants, a high mass ratio and three-stage design. Yet they were not quite alike. One of the sisters had within her the artifacts the human kind needed for life--a space cabin high in the nose. The remaining sisters were drones, beasts of burden, but beasts which carried scant payloads considering their bulk. One thing they had in common--destination. They rested on their launch pads, with scaffolds almost cleared, heads high and proud. Soon they would flash skyward, one by one, seeking a relatively small haven on a strange bleak world. The world was the moon; the bleak place was called Arzachel, a crater--stark, alien, with tall cliffs brooding over an ashy plain. Out on the West Coast a successor to the sisters was shaping up--a great ship of a new age, with nuclear drive and a single stage. But the sisters could not wait for their successor. Time was running out. CHAPTER I The room was like a prison--at least to Adam Crag. It was a square with a narrow bunk, a battered desk, two straight-back chairs and little else. Its one small window overlooked the myriad quonsets and buildings of Burning Sands Base from the second floor of a nearly empty dormitory. There was a sentry at the front of the building, another at the rear. Silent alert men who never spoke to Crag--seldom acknowledged his movements to and from the building--yet never let a stranger approach the weathered dorm without sharp challenge. Night and day they were there. From his window he could see the distant launch site and, by night, the batteries of floodlights illumining the metal monster on the pad. But now he wasn't thinking of the rocket. He was fretting; fuming because of a call from Colonel Michael Gotch. "Don't stir from the room," Gotch had crisply ordered on the phone. He had hung up without explanation. That had been two hours before. Crag had finished dressing--he had a date--idly wondering what was in the Colonel's mind. The fretting had only set in when, after more than an hour, Gotch had failed to show. Greg's liberty had been restricted to one night a month. One measly night, he thought. Now he was wasting it, tossing away the precious hours. Waiting. Waiting for what? "I'm a slave," he told himself viciously; "slave to a damned bird colonel." His date wouldn't wait--wasn't the waiting kind. But he couldn't leave. He stopped pacing long enough to look at himself in the cracked mirror above his desk. The face that stared back was lean, hard, unlined--skin that told of wind and sun, not brown nor bronze but more of a mahogany red. Just now the face was frowning. The eyes were wide-spaced, hazel, the nose arrogant and hawkish. A thin white scar ran over one cheek ending. His mind registered movement behind him. He swiveled around, flexing his body, balanced on his toes, then relaxed, slightly mortified. Gotch--Colonel Michael Gotch--stood just inside the door eyeing him tolerantly. A flush crept over Crag's face. Damn Gotch and his velvet feet, he thought. But he kept the thought concealed. The expression on Gotch's face was replaced by a wooden mask. He studied the lean man by the mirror for a moment, then flipped his cap on the bed and sat down without switching his eyes. He said succinctly. "You're it." "I've got it?" Crag gave an audible sigh of relief. Gotch nodded without speaking. "What about Temple?" "Killed last night--flattened by a truck that came over the center-line. On an almost deserted highway just outside the base," Gotch added. He spoke casually but his eyes were not casual. They were unfathomable black pools. Opaque and hard. Crag wrinkled his brow inquiringly. "Accident?" "You know better than that. The truck was hot, a semi with bum plates, and no driver when the cops got there." His voice turned harsh. "No ... it was no accident." "I'm sorry," Crag said quietly. He hadn't known Temple personally. He had been just a name--a whispered name. One of three names, to be exact: Romer, Temple, Crag. Each had been hand-picked as possible pilots of the Aztec, a modified missile being rushed to completion in a last ditch effort to beat the Eastern World in the race for the moon. They had been separately indoctrinated, tested, trained; each had virtually lived in one of the scale-size simulators of the Aztec's space cabin, and had been rigorously schooled for the operation secretly referred to as "Step One." But they had been kept carefully apart. There had been a time when no one--unless it were the grim-faced Gotch--knew which of the three was first choice. Romer had died first--killed as a bystander in a brawl. So the police said. Crag had suspected differently. Now Temple. The choice, after all, had not been the swarthy Colonel's to make. Somehow the knowledge pleased him. Gotch interrupted his thoughts. "Things are happening. The chips are down. Time has run out, Adam." While he clipped the words out he weighed Crag, as if seeking some clue to his thoughts. His face said that everything now depended upon the lean man with the hairline scar across his cheek. His eyes momentarily wondered if the lean man could perform what man never before had done. But his lips didn't voice the doubt. After a moment he said: "We know the East is behind us in developing an atomic spaceship. Quite a bit behind. We picked up a lot from some of our atomic sub work--that and our big missiles. But maybe the knowledge made us lax." He added stridently: "Now ... they're ready to launch." "Now?" "Now!" "I didn't think they were that close." "Intelligence tells us they've modified a couple of T-3's--the big ICBM model. We just got a line on it ... almost too late." Gotch smiled bleakly. "So we've jumped our schedule, at great risk. It's your baby," he added. Crag said simply; "I'm glad of the chance." "You should be. You've hung around long enough," Gotch said dryly. His eyes probed Crag. "I only hope you've learned enough ... are ready." "Plenty ready," snapped Crag. "I hope so." Gotch got to his feet, a square fiftyish man with cropped iron-gray hair, thick shoulders and weather-roughened skin. Clearly he wasn't a desk colonel. "You've got a job, Adam." His voice was unexpectedly soft but he continued to weigh Crag for a long moment before he picked up his cap and turned toward the door. "Wait," he said. He paused, listening for a moment before he opened it, then slipped quietly into the hall, closing the door carefully behind him. He's like a cat, Crag thought for the thousandth time, watching the closed door. He was a man who seemed forever listening; a heavy hulking man who walked on velvet feet; a man with opaque eyes who saw everything and told nothing. Gotch would return. Despite the fact the grizzled Colonel had been his mentor for over a year he felt he hardly knew the man. He was high up in the missile program--missile security, Crag had supposed--yet he seemed to hold power far greater than that of a security officer. He seemed, in fact, to have full charge of the Aztec project--Step One--even though Dr. Kenneth Walmsbelt was its official director. The difference was, the nation knew Walmsbelt. He talked with congressmen, pleaded for money, carried his program to the newspapers and was a familiar figure on the country's TV screens. He was the leading exponent of the space-can't-wait philosophy. But few people knew Gotch; and fewer yet his connections. He was capable, competent, and to Crag's way of thinking, a tough monkey, which pretty well summarized his knowledge of the man. He felt the elation welling inside him, growing until it was almost a painful pleasure. It had been born of months and months of hope, over a year during which he had scarcely dared hope. Now, because a man had died.... He sat looking at the ceiling, thinking, trying to still the inner tumult. Only outwardly was he calm. He heard footsteps returning. Gotch opened the door and entered, followed by a second man. Crag started involuntarily, half-rising from his chair. He was looking at himself! "Crag, meet Adam Crag." The Colonel's voice and face were expressionless. Crag extended his hand, feeling a little silly. "Glad to know you." The newcomer acknowledged the introduction with a grin--the same kind of lopsided grin the real Crag wore. More startling was the selfsame hairline scar traversing his cheek; the same touch of cockiness in the set of his face. Gotch said, "I just wanted you to get a good look at yourself. Crag here"--he motioned his hand toward the newcomer--"is your official double. What were you planning for tonight, your last night on earth?" "I have a date with Ann. Or had," he added sourly. He twisted his head toward Gotch as the Colonel's words sunk home. "Last night?" Gotch disregarded the question. "For what?" "Supper and dancing at the Blue Door." "Then?" "Take her home, if it's any of your damned business," snapped Crag. "I wasn't planning on staying, if that's what you mean." "I know ... I know, we have you on a chart," Gotch said amiably. "We know every move you've made since you wet your first diapers. Like that curvy little brunette secretary out in San Diego, or that blonde night club warbler you were rushing in Las Vegas." Crag flushed. The Colonel eyed him tolerantly. "And plenty more," he added. He glanced at Crag's double. "I'm sure your twin will be happy to fill in for you tonight." "Like hell he will," gritted Crag. The room was quiet for a moment. "As I said, he'll fill in for you." Crag grinned crookedly. "Ann won't go for it. She's used to the real article." "We're not giving her a chance to snafu the works," Gotch said grimly. "She's in protective custody. We have a double for her, too." "Mind explaining?" "Not a bit. Let's face the facts and admit both Romer and Temple were murdered. That leaves only you. The enemy isn't about to let us get the Aztec into space. You're the only pilot left who's been trained for the big jump--the only man with the specialized know-how. That's why you're on someone's list. Perhaps, even, someone here at the Base ... or on the highway ... or in town. I don't know when or how but I do know this: You're a marked monkey." Gotch added flatly: "I don't propose to let you get murdered." "How about him?" Crag nodded toward his double. The man smiled faintly. "That's what he's paid for," Gotch said unfeelingly. His lips curled sardonically. "All the heroes aren't in space." Crag flushed. Gotch had a way of making him uncomfortable as no other man ever had. The gentle needle. But it was true. The Aztec was his baby. Gotch's role was to see that he lived long enough to get it into space. The rest was up to him. Something about the situation struck him as humorous. He looked at his double with a wry grin. "Home and to bed early," he cautioned. "Don't forget you've got my reputation to uphold." "Go to hell," his double said amiably. "Okay, let's get down to business," Gotch growled. "I've got a little to say." * * * * * Long after they left Crag stood at the small window, looking out over the desert. Somewhere out there was the Aztec, a silver arrow crouched in its cradle, its nose pointed toward the stars. He drew the picture in his mind. She stood on her tail fins; a six-story-tall needle braced by metal catwalks and guard rails; a cousin twice-removed to the great nuclear weapons which guarded Fortress America. He had seen her at night, under the batteries of floor lights, agleam with a milky radiance; a virgin looking skyward, which, in fact, she was. Midway along her length her diameter tapered abruptly, tapered again beyond the three-quarters point. Her nose looked slender compared with her body, yet it contained a space cabin with all the panoply needed to sustain life beyond the atmosphere. His thoughts were reverent, if not loving. Save for occasional too-brief intervals with Ann, the ship had dominated his life for over a year. He knew her more intimately, he thought, than a long-married man knows his wife. He had never ceased to marvel at the Aztec's complexity. Everything about the rocket spoke of the future. She was clearly designed to perform in a time not yet come, at a place not yet known. She would fly, watching the stars, continuously measuring the angle between them, computing her way through the abyss of space. Like a woman she would understand the deep currents within her, the introspective sensing of every force which had an effect upon her life. She would measure gravitation, acceleration and angular velocity with infinite precision. She would count these as units of time, perform complex mathematical equations, translate them into course data, and find her way unerringly across the purple-black night which separated her from her assignation with destiny. She would move with the certainty of a woman fleeing to her lover. Yes, he thought, he would put his life in the lady's hands. He would ride with her on swift wings. But he would be her master. * * * * * His mood changed. He turned from the window thinking it was a hell of a way to spend his last night. Last night on earth, he corrected wryly. He couldn't leave the room, couldn't budge, didn't know where Ann was. No telephone. He went to bed wondering how he'd ever let himself get snookered into the deal. Here he was, young, with a zest for life and a stacked-up gal on the string. And what was he doing about it? Going to the moon, that's what. Going to some damned hell-hole called Arzachel, all because a smooth bird colonel had pitched him a few soft words. Sucker! His lips twisted in a crooked grin. Gotch had seduced him by describing his mission as an "out-of-this-world opportunity." Those had been Gotch's words. Well, that was Arzachel. And pretty quick it would be Adam Crag. Out-of-this-world Crag. Just now the thought wasn't so appealing. * * * * * Sleep didn't come easy. At Gotch's orders he had turned in early, at the unheard hour of seven. Getting to sleep was another matter. It's strange, he thought, he didn't have any of the feelings Doc Weldon, the psychiatrist, had warned him of. He wasn't nervous, wasn't afraid. Yet before another sun had set he'd be driving the Aztec up from earth, into the loneliness of space, to a bleak crater named Arzachel. He would face the dangers of intense cosmic radiation, chance meteor swarms, and human errors in calculation which could spell disaster. It would be the first step in the world race for control of the Solar System--a crucial race with the small nations of the world watching for the winner. Watching and waiting to see which way to lean. He was already cut off from mankind, imprisoned in a small room with the momentous zero hour drawing steadily nearer. Strange, he thought, there had been a time when his career had seemed ended, washed up, finished, the magic of the stratosphere behind him for good. Sure, he'd resigned from the Air Force at his own free will, even if his C. O. had made the pointed suggestion. Because he hadn't blindly followed orders. Because he'd believed in making his own decisions when the chips were down. "Lack of _esprit de corps_," his C. O. had termed it. He'd been surprised that night--it was over a year ago now--that Colonel Gotch had contacted him. (Just when he was wondering where he might get a job. He hadn't liked the prosaic prospects of pushing passengers around the country in some jet job.) Sure, he'd jumped at the offer. But the question had never left his mind. _Why had Gotch selected him?_ The Aztec, a silver needle plunging through space followed by her drones, all in his tender care. He was planning the step-by-step procedure of take-off when sleep came. CHAPTER 2 Crag woke with a start, sensing he was not alone. The sound came again--a key being fitted into a lock. He started from bed as the door swung open. "Easy. It's me--Gotch." Crag relaxed. A square solid figure took form. "Don't turn on the light." "Okay. What gives?" "One moment." Gotch turned back toward the door and beckoned. Another figure glided into the room--a shadow in the dim light. Crag caught the glint of a uniform. Air Force officer, he thought. Gotch said crisply; "Out of bed." He climbed out, standing alongside the bed in his shorts, wondering at the Colonel's cloak-and-dagger approach. "Okay, Major, it's your turn," Gotch said. The newcomer--Crag saw he was a major--methodically stripped down to his shorts and got into bed without a word. Crag grinned, wondering how the Major liked his part in Step One. It was scarcely a lead role. Gotch cut into his thoughts. "Get dressed." He indicated the Major's uniform. Crag donned the garments silently. When he had finished the Colonel walked around him in the dark, studying him from all angles. "Seems to fit very well," he said finally. "All right, let's go." Crag followed him from the room wondering what the unknown Major must be thinking. He wanted to ask about his double but refrained. Long ago he had learned there was a time to talk, and a time to keep quiet. This was the quiet time. At the outer door four soldiers sprang from the darkness and boxed them in. A chauffeur jumped from a waiting car and opened the rear door. At the last moment Crag stepped aside and made a mock bow. "After you, Colonel." His voice held a touch of sarcasm. Gotch grunted and climbed into the rear seat and he followed. The chauffeur blinked his lights twice before starting the engine. Somewhere ahead a car pulled away from the curb. They followed, leaving the four soldiers behind. Crag twisted his body and looked curiously out the rear window. Another car dogged their wake. Precautions, always precautions, he thought. Gotch had entered with an Air Force officer and had ostensibly left with one; ergo, it must be the same officer. He chuckled, thinking he had more doubles than a movie star. They sped through the night with the escorts fore and aft. Gotch was a silent hulking form on the seat beside him. It's his zero hour, too, Crag thought. The Colonel had tossed the dice. Now he was waiting for their fall, with his career in the pot. After a while Gotch said conversationally: "You'll report in at Albrook, Major. I imagine you'll be getting in a bit of flying from here on out." Talking for the chauffeur's benefit, Crag thought. Good Lord, did every move have to be cloak and dagger? Aloud he said: "Be good to get back in the air again. Perhaps anti-sub patrol, eh?" "Very likely." They fell silent again. The car skimmed west on Highway 80, leaving the silver rocket farther behind with every mile. Where to and what next? He gave up trying to figure the Colonel's strategy. One thing he was sure of. The hard-faced man next to him knew exactly what he was doing. If it was secret agent stuff, then that's the way it had to be played. * * * * * He leaned back and thought of the task ahead--the rocket he had lived with for over a year. Now the marriage would be consummated. Every detail of the Aztec was vivid in his mind. Like the three great motors tucked triangularly between her tail fins, each a tank equipped with a flaring nozzle to feed in hot gases under pressure. He pictured the fuel tanks just forward of the engines; the way the fuels were mixed, vaporized, forced into the fireports where they would ignite and react explosively, generating the enormous volumes of flaming hot gas to drive out through the jet tubes and provide the tremendous thrust needed to boost her into the skies. Between the engines and fuel tanks was a maze of machinery--fuel lines, speed controllers, electric motors. He let his mind rove over the rocket thinking that before many hours had passed he would need every morsel of the knowledge he had so carefully gathered. Midway where the hull tapered was a joint, the separation point between the first and second stages. The second stage had one engine fed by two tanks. The exterior of the second stage was smooth, finless, for it was designed to operate at the fringe of space where the air molecules were widely spaced; but it could be steered by small deflectors mounted in its blast stream. The third stage was little more than a space cabin riding between the tapered nose cone and a single relatively low-thrust engine. Between the engine and tanks was a maze of turbines, pumps, meters, motors, wires. A generator provided electricity for the ship's electric and electronic equipment; this in turn was spun by a turbine driven by the explosive decomposition of hydrogen peroxide. Forward of this was the Brain, a complex guidance mechanism which monitored engine performance, kept track of speed, computed course. All that was needed was the human hand. His hand. * * * * * They traveled several hours with only occasional words, purring across the flat sandy wastes at a steady seventy. The cars boxing them in kept at a steady distance. Crag watched the yellow headlights sweep across the sage lining the highway, giving an odd illusion of movement. Light and shadow danced in eerie patterns. The chauffeur turned onto a two-lane road heading north. Alpine Base, Crag thought. He had been stationed there several years before. Now it was reputed to be the launch site of one of the three drones slated to cross the gulfs of space. The chauffeur drove past a housing area and turned in the direction he knew the strip to be. * * * * * Somewhere in the darkness ahead a drone brooded on its pad, one of the children of the silver missile they'd left behind. But why the drone? The question bothered him. They were stopped several times in the next half mile. Each time Gotch gave his name and rank and extended his credentials. Each time they were waved on by silent sharp-eyed sentries, but only after an exacting scrutiny. Crag was groping for answers when the chauffeur pulled to one side of the road and stopped. He leaped out and opened the rear door, standing silently to one side. When they emerged, he got back into the car and drove away. No word had been spoken. Figures moved toward them, coming out of the blackness. "Stand where you are and be recognized." The figures took shape--soldiers with leveled rifles. They stood very still until one wearing a captain's bars approached, flashing a light in their faces. "Identity?" Crag's companion extended his credentials. "Colonel Michael Gotch," he monotoned. The Captain turned the light on Gotch's face to compare it with the picture on the identification card. He paid scant attention to Crag. Finally he looked up. "Proceed, Sir." It was evident the Colonel's guest was very much expected. Gotch struck off through the darkness with Crag at his heels. The stars shone with icy brilliance. Overhead Antares stared down from its lair in Scorpio, blinking with fearful venom. The smell of sage filled the air, and some sweet elusive odor Crag couldn't identify. A warmth stole upward as the furnace of the desert gave up its stored heat. He strained his eyes into the darkness; stars, the black desert ... and the hulking form of Gotch, moving with certain steps. He saw the rocket with startling suddenness--a great black silhouette blotting out a segment of the stars. It stood gigantic, towering, graceful, a taper-nosed monster crouched to spring, its finned haunches squatted against the launch pad. They were stopped, challenged, allowed to proceed. Crag pondered the reason for their visit to the drone. Gotch, he knew, had a good reason for every move he made. They drew nearer and he saw that most of the catwalks, guardrails and metal supports had been removed--a certain sign that the giant before them was near its zero hour. Another sentry gave challenge at the base of the behemoth. Crag whistled to himself. This one wore the silver leaf of a lieutenant colonel! The ritual of identification was exacting before the sentry moved aside. A ladder zigzagged upward through what skeletal framework still remained. Crag lifted his eyes. It terminated high up, near the nose. This was the Aztec! The real Aztec! The truth came in a rush. The huge silver ship at Burning Sands, which bore the name Aztec, was merely a fake, a subterfuge, a pawn in the complex game of agents and counter-agents. He knew he was right. "After you," Gotch said. He indicated the ladder and stepped aside. Crag started up. He paused at the third platform. The floor of the desert was a sea of darkness. Off in the distance the lights of Alpine Base gleamed, stark against the night. Gotch reached his level and laid a restraining hand on his arm. Crag turned and waited. The Colonel's massive form was a black shadow interposed between him and the lights of Alpine Base. "This is the Aztec," he said simply. "So I guessed. And the silver job at Burning Sands?" "Drone Able," Gotch explained. "The deception was necessary--a part of the cat and mouse game we've been playing the last couple of decades. We couldn't take a single chance." Crag remained silent. The Colonel turned toward the lights of the Base. He had become quiet, reflective. When he spoke, his voice was soft, almost like a man talking to himself. "Out there are hundreds of men who have given a large part of their lives to the dream of space flight. Now we are at the eve of making that dream live. If we gain the moon, we gain the planets. That's the destiny of Man. The Aztec is the first step." He turned back and faced Crag. "This is but one base. There are many others. Beyond them are the factories, laboratories, colleges, scientists and engineers, right down to Joe the Riveter. Every one of them has had a part in the dream. You're another part, Adam, but you happen to have the lead role." He swiveled around and looked silently at the distant lights. The moment was solemn. A slight shiver ran through Crag's body. "You know and I know that the Aztec is a development from the ICBM's guarding Fortress America. You also know, or have heard, that out in San Diego the first atom-powered spaceship is nearing completion." He looked sharply at Crag. "I've heard," Crag said noncommittally. Gotch eyed him steadily. "That's the point. So have others. Our space program is no secret. But we've suspected--feared--that the first stab at deep space would be made before the atom job was completed. Not satellites but deep space rockets. That's why the Aztec was pushed through so fast." He fell silent. Crag waited. "Well, the worst has happened. The enemy is ready to launch--may have launched this very night. That's how close it is. Fortunately our gamble with the Aztec is paying off. We're ready, too, Adam. "We're going to get that moon. Get it now!" He reached into a pocket and extracted his pipe, then thought better of lighting it. Crag waited. The Colonel was in a rare introspective mood, a quiet moment in which he mentally tied together and weighed his Nation's prospects in the frightening days ahead. Finally he spoke: "We put a rocket around the moon, Adam." He smiled faintly, noting Crag's involuntary start of surprise. "Naturally it was fully instrumented. There's uranium there--one big load located in the most inaccessible spot imaginable." "Arzachel," Crag said simply. "The south side of Arzachel, to be exact. That's why we didn't pick a soft touch like Mare Imbrium, in case you've wondered." "I've wondered." "Adam," the Colonel hesitated a long moment, "does the name Pickering mean anything to you?" "Ken Pickering who--" "What have you heard?" snapped Gotch. His eyes became sharp drills. Crag spoke slowly: "Nothing ... for a long time. He just seemed to drop out of sight after he broke the altitude record in the X-34." He looked up questioningly. "Frankly, I've always wondered why he hadn't been selected for this job. I thought he was a better pilot than I am," he added almost humbly. Gotch said bluntly: "You're right. He is better." He smiled tolerantly. "We picked our men for particular jobs," he said finally. "Pickering ... we hope ... will be in orbit before the Aztec blasts off." "Satelloid?" "The first true satelloid," the Colonel agreed. "One that can ride the fringes of space around the earth. A satelloid with fantastic altitude and speed. I'm telling you this because he'll be a link in Step One, a communication and observation link. He won't be up long, of course, but long enough--we hope." Silence fell between them. Crag looked past the Colonel's shoulder. All at once the lights of Alpine Base seemed warm and near, almost personal. Gotch lifted his eyes skyward, symbolic of his dreams. The light of distant stars reflected off his brow. "We don't know whether the Aztec can make it," he said humbly. "We don't know whether our space-lift system will work, whether the drones can be monitored down to such a precise point on the moon, or the dangers of meteorite bombardment. We don't know whether our safeguards for human life are adequate. We don't know whether the opposition can stop us.... "We don't know lots of things, Adam. All we know is that we need the moon. It's a matter of survival of Western Man, his culture, his way of life, his political integrity. We need the moon to conquer the planets ... and some day the stars." His voice became a harsh clang. "So does the enemy. That's why we have to establish a proprietory ownership, a claim that the U.N. will recognize. The little nations represent the balance of power, Adam. But they sway with the political winds. They are the reeds of power politics ... swaying between the Sputniks and Explorers, riding with the ebb and flow of power ... always trying to anticipate the ultimate winner. Right now they're watching to see where that power lies. The nation that wins the moon will tilt the balance in its favor. At a critical time, I might add. That's why we have to protect ourselves every inch of the way." He tapped his cold pipe moodily against his hand. "We won't be here to see the end results, of course. That won't be in our time. But we're the starters. The Aztec is the pioneer ship. And in the future our economy can use that load of uranium up there." He smiled faintly at Crag. "When you step through the hatch you've left earth, perhaps for all time. That's your part in the plan. Step One is your baby and I have confidence in you." He gripped Crag's arm warmly. It was the closest he had ever come to showing his feelings toward the man he was sending into space. "Come on, let's go." Crag started upward. Gotch followed more slowly, climbing like a man bearing a heavy weight. * * * * * The Aztec's crew, Max Prochaska, Gordon Nagel and Martin Larkwell, came aboard the rocket in the last hour before take-off. Gotch escorted them up the ladder and introduced them to their new Commander. Prochaska acknowledged the introduction with a cheerful smile. "Glad to know you, Skipper." His thin warm face said he was glad to be there. Gordon Nagel gave a perfunctory handshake, taking in the space cabin with quick ferret-like head movements. Martin Larkwell smiled genially, pumping Crag's hand. "I've been looking forward to this." Crag said dryly. "We all have." He acknowledged the introductions with the distinct feeling that he already knew each member of his crew. It was the odd feeling of meeting old acquaintances after long years of separation. As part of his indoctrination he had studied the personnel records of the men he might be so dependent on. Now, seeing them in the flesh, was merely an act of giving life to those selfsame records. He studied them with casual eyes while Gotch rambled toward an awkward farewell. Max Prochaska, his electronics chief, was a slender man with sparse brown hair, a thin acquiline nose and pointed jaw. His pale blue eyes, thin lips and alabaster skin gave him a delicate look--one belied by his record. His chief asset--if one was to believe the record--was that he was a genius in electronics. Gordon Nagel, too, was, thin-faced and pallid skinned. His black hair, normally long and wavy, had been close-cropped. His eyes were small, shifting, agate-black, giving Crag the feeling that he was uneasy--an impression he was to hold. His record had described him as nervous in manner but his psychograph was smooth. He was an expert in oxygen systems. Martin Larkwell, the mechanical maintenance and construction boss, in many ways appeared the antithesis of his two companions. He was moon-faced, dark, with short brown hair and a deceptively sleepy look. His round body was well-muscled, his hands big and square. Crag thought of a sleek drowsy cat, until he saw his eyes. They were sparkling brown pools, glittering, moving with some strange inner fire. They were the eyes of a dreamer ... or a fanatic, he thought. In the cabin's soft light they glowed, flickered. No, there was nothing sleepy about him, he decided. All of the men were short, light, in their early thirties. In contrast Crag, at 5' 10" and 165 pounds, seemed a veritable giant. A small physique, he knew, was almost an essential in space, where every ounce was bought at tremendous added weight in fuel. His own weight had been a serious strike against him. Colonel Gotch made one final trip to the space cabin. This time he brought the _Moon Code Manual_ (stamped TOP SECRET), the crew personnel records (Crag wondered why) and a newly printed pamphlet titled "Moon Survival." Crag grinned when he saw it. "Does it tell us how to get there, too?" "We'll write that chapter later," Gotch grunted. He shook each man's hand and gruffly wished them luck before turning abruptly toward the hatch. He started down the ladder. A moment later his head reappeared. He looked sharply at Crag and said, "By the way, that twosome at the Blue Door got it last night." "You mean...?" "Burp gun. No finesse. Just sheer desperation. Well, I just wanted to let you know we weren't altogether crazy." "I didn't think you were." The Colonel's lips wrinkled in a curious smile. "No?" He looked at Crag for a long moment. "Good luck." His head disappeared from view and Crag heard his footsteps descending the ladder. Then they were alone, four men alone. Crag turned toward his companions. CHAPTER 3 The great red sun was just breaking over the desert horizon when Crag got his last good look at earth. Its rays slanted upward, shadows fled from the sage; the obsidian sky with its strewn diamonds became slate gray and, in moments, a pale washed blue. Daybreak over the desert became a thunder of light. Tiny ants had removed the last of the metal framework encompassing the rocket. Other ants were visible making last minute cheeks. He returned his attention to the space cabin. Despite long months of training in the cabin simulator--an exact replica of the Aztec quarters--he was appalled at the lack of outside vision. One narrow rectangular quartz window above the control panel, a circular port on each side bulkhead and one on the floor--he had to look between his knees to see through it when seated at the controls--provided the sole visual access to the outside world. A single large radarscope, a radar altimeter and other electronic equipment provided analogs of the outside world; the reconstruction of the exterior environment painted on the scopes by electromagnetic impulses. The cabin was little more than a long flat-floored cylinder with most of the instrumentation in the nose section. With the rocket in launch position, what normally was the rear wall formed the floor. The seats had been swiveled out to operational position. Now they were seated, strapped down, waiting. It was, Crag thought, like sitting in a large automobile which had been balanced on its rear bumper. During launch and climb their backs would be horizontal to the earth's surface. He was thankful they were not required to wear their heavy pressure suits until well into the moon's gravisphere. Normally pressure suits and helmets were the order of the day. He was used to stratospheric flight where heavy pressure suits and helmets were standard equipment; gear to protect the fragile human form until the lower oxygen-rich regions of the air ocean could be reached in event of trouble. But the Aztec was an all-or-nothing affair. There were no escape provisions, no ejection seats, for ejection would be impossible at the rocket's speeds during its critical climb through the atmosphere. Either everything went according to the book or ... or else, he concluded grimly. But it had one good aspect. Aside from the heavy safety harnessing, he would be free of the intolerably clumsy suit until moonfall. If anything went wrong, well ... He bit the thought off, feeling the tension building inside him. He had never considered himself the hero type. He had prided himself that his ability to handle hot planes was a reflection of his competence rather than courage. Courage, to him, meant capable performance in the face of fear. He had never known fear in any type of aircraft, hence never before had courage been a requisite of his job. It was that simple to him. His thorough knowledge of the Aztec's theoretical flight characteristics had given him extreme confidence, thus the feeling of tension was distracting. He held his hand out. It seemed steady enough. Prochaska caught the gesture and said, "I'm a little shaky myself." Crag grinned. "They tell me the first thousand miles are the hardest." "Amen. After that I won't worry." The countdown had begun. Crag looked out the side port. Tiny figures were withdrawing from the base of the rocket. The engine of a fuel truck sounded faintly, then died away. Everything seemed unhurried, routine. He found himself admiring the men who went so matter-of-factly about the job of hurling a rocket into the gulfs between planets. Once, during his indoctrination, he had watched a Thor firing ... had seen the missile climb into the sky, building up to orbital speed. Its launchers had been the same sort of men--unhurried, methodical, checking the minutiae that went into such an effort. Only this time there was a difference. The missile contained men. Off to one side he saw the launch crew moving into an instrumented dugout. Colonel Gotch would be there, puffing on his pipe, his face expressionless, watching the work of many years come to ... what? He looked around the cabin for the hundredth time. Larkwell and Nagel were strapped in their seats, backs horizontal to the floor, looking up at him. The tremendous forces of acceleration applied at right angles to the spine--transverse g--was far more tolerable than in any other position. Or so the space medicine men said. He hoped they were right, that in this position the body could withstand the hell ahead. He gave a last look at the two men behind him. Larkwell wore an owlish expression. His teeth were clamped tight, cording his jaws. Nagel's face was intent, its lines rigid. It gave Crag the odd impression of an alabaster sculpture. Prochaska, who occupied the seat next to him facing the control panels, was testing his safety belts. Crag gave him a quick sidelong glance. Prochaska's job was in many respects as difficult as his own. Perhaps more so. The sallow-faced electronics chief bore the responsibility of monitoring the drones--shepherding, first Drone Able, then its sisters to follow--across the vacuum gulfs and, finally, into Arzachel, a pinpoint cavity in the rocky wastelands of the moon. In addition, he was charged with monitoring, repairing and installing all the communication and electronic equipment, no small job in itself. Yes, a lot depended on the almost fragile man sitting alongside him. He looked at his own harnessing, testing its fit. Colonel Gotch came on the communicator. "Pickering's in orbit," he said briefly. "No details yet." Crag sighed in relief. Somehow Pickering's success augured well for their own attempt. He gave a last check of the communication gear. The main speaker was set just above the instrument panel, between him and Prochaska. In addition, both he and the Chief--the title he had conferred on Prochaska as his special assistant--were supplied with insert earphones and lip microphones for use during high noise spectrums, or when privacy was desired. Crag, as Commander, could limit all communications to his own personal headgear by merely flipping a switch. Gotch had been the architect of that one. He was a man who liked private lines. "Five minutes to zero, Commander." Commander! Crag liked that. He struggled against his harnessing to glance back over his shoulder. Nagel's body, scrunched deep into his bucket seat, seemed pitifully thin under the heavy harnessing. His face was bloodless, taut. Crag momentarily wondered what strange course of events had brought him to the rocket. He didn't look like Crag's picture of a spaceman. Not at all. But then, none of them looked like supermen. Still, courage wasn't a matter of looks, he told himself. It was a matter of action. He swiveled his head around farther. Larkwell reclined next to Nagel with eyes closed. Only the fast rise and fall of his chest told of his inner tensions--that and the hawk-like grip of his fingers around the arm rests. Worried, Crag thought. But we're all worried. He cast a sidelong glance at Prochaska. The man's face held enormous calm. He reached over and picked up the console mike, then sat for what seemed an eternity before the countdown reached minus one minute. He plugged in his ear-insert microphone. "Thirty seconds...." The voice over the speaker boomed. Prochaska suddenly became busy checking his instruments. Jittery despite his seeming calm, Crag thought. "Twenty seconds...." He caught himself checking his controls, as if he could gain some last moment's knowledge from the banks of levers and dials and knobs. "Ten ... nine ... eight...." He experimentally pulled at his harnessing, feeling somewhat hypnotized by the magic of the numbers coming over the communicator. "Three ... two...." Crag said, "Ready on one." He punched a button. A muted roar drifted up from the stem. He listened for a moment. Satisfied, he moved the cut-in switch. The roar increased, becoming almost deafening in the cabin despite its soundproofing. He tested the radio and steering rockets and gave a last sidelong glance at Prochaska. The Chief winked. The act made him feel better. I should be nervous, he thought, or just plain damned scared. But things were happening too fast. He adjusted his lip mike and reached for the controls, studying his hand as he did so. Still steady. He stirred the controls a bit and the roar became hellish. He chewed his lip and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. He said, "Off to the moon." Prochaska nodded. Crag moved the controls. The cabin seemed to bob, wobble, vibrate. A high hum came from somewhere. He glanced downward through the side port. The Aztec seemed to be hanging in mid-air just above the desert floor. Off to one side he could see the concrete controls dugout. The tiny figures had vanished. He thought: _Gotch is sweating it out now_. In the past rockets had burned on the pad ... blown up in mid-air ... plunged off course and had to be destroyed. The idea brought his head up with a snap. Was there a safety officer down there with a finger on a button ... prepared to destroy the Aztec if it wavered in flight? He cut the thought off and moved the main power switch, bringing the control full over. The ship bucked, and the desert dropped away with a suddenness that brought a siege of nausea. He tightened his stomach muscles like the space medicine doctors had instructed. The first moment was bad. There was unbelievable thunder, a fraction of a second when his brain seemed to blank, a quick surge of fear. Up ... up. The Aztec's rate of acceleration climbed sharply. At a prescribed point in time the nose of the rocket moved slightly toward the east. It climbed at an impossibly steep slant, rushing up from the earth. Crag swept his eyes over the banks of instruments, noted the positions of the controls, tried to follow what the faint voice in his earphone was telling him. Dials with wavering needles ... knobs with blurry numerals ... a cacophony of noise, light and movement--all this and more was crowded into seconds. The rocket hurtled upward, driven by the tidal kinetic energy generated by the combustion of high velocity exhaust, born in an inferno of thousands of degrees. Behind him giant thrust chambers hungrily consumed the volatile fuel, spewing the high-pressure gases forth at more than nine thousand miles per hour. The crushing increased, driving him against the back of his seat. His heart began laboring ... became a sledge hammer inside his chest wall. He lost all sense of motion. Only the almost unendurable weight crushing his body downward mattered. He managed a glimpse of the desert through the side port. It lay far below, its salient details erased. The roar of the giant motors became muted. There was a singing in his ears, a high whine he didn't like. The Aztec began to tilt, falling off to the right. He cast a quick glance at the engine instruments. A red light blinked. Number three was delivering slightly less thrust than the others. Somewhere in the complex of machinery a mechanical sensing device reacted. Engines one and two were throttled back and the rocket straightened. A second device shifted the mix on engine three, bringing thrust into balance. All three engines resumed full power. "Twenty-five thousand feet," Prochaska chattered. His voice was tinny over the small insert earphone provided for communications, especially for those first few hellish moments when the whole universe seemed collapsed into one huge noise spectrum. Noise and pressure. "Forty-five thousand...." They were moving up fast now--three g, four g, five g. Crag's body weight was equal to 680 pounds. The dense reaches of the troposphere--the weather belt where storms are born--dropped below them. They hurtled through the rarefied, bitterly cold and utterly calm stratosphere. "Eighty thousand feet...." Crag struggled to move his body. His hand was leaden on the controls, as if all life had been choked from it. A hot metal ball filled his chest. He couldn't breathe. Panic ... until he remembered to breathe at the top of his lungs. At eighteen miles a gale of wind drove west. Rudders on the Aztec compensated, she leaned slightly into the blast, negating its drift. The winds ceased ... rudders shifted ... the rocket slanted skyward. Faster ... faster. Prochaska called off altitudes almost continuously, the chattering gone from his voice. Crag was still struggling against the pinning weight when it decreased, vanished. The firestream from the tail pipe gave a burst of smoke and died. _Brennschluss_--burnout. The Aztec hurtled toward the cosmic-ray laden ionosphere, driven only by the inertial forces generated in the now silent thrust chambers. The hard components of cosmic rays--fast mesons, high energy protons and neutrons--would rip through the ship. _If dogs and monkeys can take it, so can man._ That's what Gotch had said. He hoped Gotch was right. Somewhere, now, the first stage would fall away. It would follow them, at ever greater distances, until finally its trajectory would send it plunging homeward. "Cut in." Prochaska's voice was a loud boom in the silence. A strident voice from the communicator was trying to tell them they were right on the button. Crag moved a second switch. The resultant acceleration drove him against the back of his seat, violently expelling the air from his lungs. He fought against the increasing gravities, conscious of pressure and noise in his ears; pressure and noise mixed with fragments of voice. His lips pulled tight against his teeth. The thudding was his heart. He tightened his stomach muscles, trying to ease the weight on his chest. A mighty hand was gripped around his lungs, squeezing out the air. But it wasn't as bad as the first time. They were piercing the thermosphere where the outside temperature gradient would zoom upward toward the 2,000 degree mark. Prochaska spoke matter-of-factly into his lip mike, "Fifty miles." Crag marveled at his control ... his calm. No, he didn't have to worry about the Chief. The little runt had it. Crag tried to grin. The effort was a pain. The Aztec gave a lurch, altering the direction of forces on their bodies again as a servo control kicked the ship into the long shallow spiral of escape. It moved upward and more easterly, its nose slanted toward the stars, seeking its new course. Crag became momentarily dizzy. His vision blurred ... the instrument panel became a kaleidoscope of dancing, merging patterns. Then it was past, all except the three g force nailing him to the seat. He spoke into the communicator. "How we doing?" "Fine, Commander, just fine," Gotch rasped. "The toughest part's over." Over like hell, Crag thought. A one-way rocket to the moon and he tells me the toughest part's over. Lord, I should work in a drugstore! "Seventy-five miles and two hundred miles east," the Chief intoned. Crag made a visual instrument check. Everything looked okay. No red lights. Just greens. Wonderful greens that meant everything was hunky-dory. He liked green. He wanted to see how Larkwell and Nagel were making out but couldn't turn his head. It's rougher on them, he thought. They can't see the instruments, can't hear the small voice from Alpine. They just have to sit and take it. Sit and feel the unearthly pressures and weights and hope everything's okay. "Ninety-six miles ... speed 3.1 miles per second," Prochaska chanted a short while later. It's as easy as that, Crag thought. Years and years of planning and training; then you just step in and go. Not that they were there yet. He remembered the rockets that had burned ... exploded ... the drifting hulks that still orbited around the earth. No, it wasn't over yet. Not by a long shot. The quiet came again. The earth, seen through the side port, seemed tremendously far away. It was a study in greens and yellow-browns and whitish ragged areas where the eye was blocked by cloud formations. Straight out the sky was black, starry. Prochaska reached up and swung the glare shield over the forward port. The sun, looked at even indirectly, was a blinding orb, intolerable to the unprotected eye. Night above ... day below. A sun that blazed without breaking the ebon skies. Strange, Crag mused. He had been prepared for this, prepared by long hours of instruction. But now, confronted with a day that was night, he could only wonder. For a moment he felt small, insignificant, and wondered at brazen man. Who dared come here? I dared, he thought. A feeling of pride grew within him. I dared. The stars are mine. * * * * * Stage three was easy by comparison. It began with the muted roar of thrust chambers almost behind them, a noise spectrum almost solely confined to the interior of the rocket. Outside there was no longer sufficient air molecules to convey even a whisper of sound. Nor was there a pressure build-up. The stage three engine was designed for extremely low thrust extended over a correspondingly longer time. It would drive them through the escape spiral--an orbital path around the earth during which time they would slowly increase both altitude and speed. Crag's body felt light; not total weightlessness, but extremely light. His instruments told him they were breaching the exosphere, where molecular matter had almost ceased to exist. The atoms of the exosphere were lonely, uncrowded, isolated particles. It was the top of the air ocean where, heretofore, only monkeys, dogs and smaller test animals had gone. It was the realm of Sputniks ... Explorers ... Vanguards--all the test rockets which had made the Aztec possible. They still sped their silent orbits, borne on the space tides of velocity; eternal tombs of dogs and monkeys. And after monkey--man. The communicator gave a burp. A voice came through the static. Drone Able was aloft. It had blasted off from its blasting pad at Burning Sands just moments after the Aztec. Prochaska bent over the radarscope and fiddled with some knobs. The tube glowed and dimmed, then it was there--a tiny pip. Alpine came in with more data. They watched its course. Somewhere far below them and hundreds of miles to the west human minds were guiding the drone by telemeter control, vectoring it through space to meet the Aztec. It was, Crag thought, applied mathematics. He marveled at the science which enabled them to do it. One moment the drone was just a pip on the scope, climbing up from the sere earth, riding a firestream to the skies; the next it was tons of metal scorching through space, cutting into their flight path--a giant screaming up from its cradle. It was Prochaska's turn to sweat. The job of taking it over was his. He bent over his instruments, ears tuned to the communicator fingers nervous on the drone controls. The drone hurtled toward them at a frightening speed. Crag kept his fingers on the steering controls just in case, his mind following the Chief's hands. They began moving more certainly. Prochaska tossed his head impatiently, bending lower over the instrument console. Crag strained against his harnessing to see out of the side port. The drone was visible now, a silver shaft growing larger with appalling rapidity. A thin skein of vapor trailed from its trail, fluffing into nothingness. _If angle of closure remains constant, you're on collision course._ The words from the Flying Safety Manual popped into his mind. He studied the drone. Angle of closure was constant! Crag hesitated. Even a touch on the steering rockets could be bad. Very bad. The slightest change in course at their present speed would impose tremendous g forces on their bodies, perhaps greater than they could stand. He looked at the Chief and licked his lips. The man was intent on his instruments, seemingly lost to the world. His fingers had ceased all random movement. Every motion had precise meaning. He was hooked onto Drone Able's steering rockets now, manipulating the controls with extreme precision. He was a concert pianist playing the strident music of space, an overture written in metal and flaming gas. Tiny corrections occurred in the Drone's flight path. "Got her lined up," Prochaska announced without moving his eyes from the scope. He gradually narrowed the distance between the rockets until they were hurtling through space on parallel courses scant miles apart. He gave a final check and looked at Crag. They simultaneously emitted big sighs. "Had me worried for a moment," Crag confessed. "Me, too." The Chief looked out of the side port "Man, it looks like a battle wagon." Crag squinted through the port. Drone Able was a silver bullet in space, a twin of the Aztec except in color. A drone with view ports. He smiled thoughtfully. Every exterior of the drone had been planned to make it appear like a manned vehicle. Gotch was the architect of that bit of deception, he thought. The Colonel hadn't missed a bet. He looked at the earth. It was a behemoth in space; a huge curved surface falling away in all directions; a mosaic of grays punctuated by swaths of blue-green tints and splotches of white where fleecy clouds rode the top of the troposphere. His momentary elation vanished, replaced by an odd depression. The world was far away, retreating into the cosmic mists. The aftermath, he thought. A chill presentiment crept into his mind--a premonition of impending disaster. CHAPTER 4 The communicator came to life with data on Pickering. The satelloid was moving higher, faster than the Aztec, riding the rim of the exosphere where the atmosphere is indistinguishable from absolute space. Crag felt thankful he hadn't been tabbed for the job. The satelloid was a fragile thing compared to the Aztec--a moth compared to a hawk. It was a relative handful of light metals and delicate electronic components, yet it moved at frightful speeds over the course the armchair astronauts had dubbed "Sputnik Avenue." It was a piloted vehicle, a mite with small stubby wings to enable it to glide through the air ocean to safe sanctuary after orbiting the earth. Pickering would be crouched in its scant belly, a space hardly larger than his body, cramped in a pressure suit that made movement all but impossible. His smallest misjudgment would spell instant death. Crag marveled at Pickering's audacity. Clearly he had the roughest mission. While he thought about it, he kept one part of his mind centered on the communicator absorbing the data on the satelloid's position and speed. The Northern tip of Africa came up fast. The Dark Continent of history seen from the borders of space was a yellow-green splotch hemmed by blue. The satelloid was still beyond the Aztec's radar range but a data link analog painted in the relationship between the two space vehicles. The instrument's automatic grid measured the distance between them in hundreds of miles. Pickering, aloft before them, had fled into the east and already was beginning to overtake them from the west. The ships were seen on the analog as two pips, two mites aloft in the air ocean. Crag marveled at the satelloid's tremendous speed. It was a ray of metal flashing along the fringes of space, a rapier coming out of the west. The Middle East passed under them, receding, a mass of yellow-green and occasional smoke-blue splotches. The earth was a giant curvature, not yet an orb, passing into the shadow of night. It was a night of fantastic shortness, broken by daylight over the Pacific. The ocean was an incredible blue, blue-black he decided. The harsh sound of the communicator came to life. Someone wanted a confab with Crag. A private confab. Prochaska wrinkled his brow questioningly. Crag switched to his ear insert phone and acknowledged. "A moment," a voice said. He waited. "Commander, we've bad news for you." It was Gotch's voice, a rasp coming over a great distance. "The S-two reports a rocket being tracked by radar. ComSoPac's picked it up. It's on intercept course." Crag's thoughts raced. The S-two was the satelloid's code name. "Any idea what kind?" "Probably a sub-launched missile--riding a beam right to you. Or the drone," he added. He was silent for a second. "Well, we sort of expected this might happen, Commander. It's a tough complication." A helluva lot of good that does, Crag thought. What next? Another set of pilots, more indoctrination, new rockets, another zero hour. Gotch would win the moon if he had to use the whole Air Force. He said, "Well, it's been a nice trip, so far." "Get Prochaska on the scope." "He's on and ... hold it." The Chief was making motions toward the scope. "No, it's the satelloid. He's--" Gotch broke in with more data. Then it was there. "He's got it," Crag announced. Gotch was silent. He watched the analog. All three pips were visible. The satelloid was still above them, rushing in, fast. The interceptor was lower to the northwest, cutting into their path. He thought it was the Drone Able story all over again. Only this time it wasn't a supply rocket. It was a warhead, a situation they couldn't control. _Couldn't control? Or could they?_ He debated the question, then quickly briefed Prochaska and cut him in on the com circuit. "We can use Drone Able as an intercept," he told Gotch. "No!" The word came explosively. Crag snapped, "Drone Able won't be a damn bit of good without the Aztec." "No, this is ground control, Commander." Gotch abruptly cut off. Crag cursed. "Calling Step One.... Calling Step One. S-two calling Step One. Are you receiving? Over." The voice came faint over the communicator, rising and falling. "Step One," Crag said, adjusting his lip mike. He acknowledged the code call while his mind registered the fact it wasn't Alpine Base. There was a burst of static. He waited a moment, puzzled. "S-two calling...." Pickering! He had been slow in recognizing the satelloid's code call. The voice faded--was lost. His thought raced. Pickering was up there in the satelloid moving higher, faster than the Aztec, hurtling along the rim of space in a great circle around the earth. The stubby-winged rocket ship was a minute particle in infinity, yet it represented a part in the great adventure. It was the hand of Michael Gotch reaching toward them. For the instant, the knowledge gave him a ray of hope--hope as quickly dashed. The S-two was just a high-speed observation and relay platform; a manned vehicle traveling the communication orbit established by the Army's earlier Explorer missiles. He turned back to Prochaska and sketched in his plan of using Drone Able as an intercept. "Could be." The Chief bit his lip reflectively. "We could control her through her steering rockets, but we'd have to be plenty sharp. We'd only get one crack." "Chances are the intercept is working on a proximity fuse," Crag reasoned. "All we'd have to do is work the drone into its flight path. We could use our own steering rockets to give us a bigger margin of safety." "What would the loss of Able mean?" Crag shrugged. "I'm more concerned with what the loss of the Aztec would mean." "Might work." The Chief looked sharply at him. "What does Alpine say?" "They say nuts." Crag looked at the scope. The intercept was much nearer. So was the S-two. Pickering's probably coming in for an eye-witness report, he thought sourly. Probably got an automatic camera so Gotch can watch the show. He looked quizzically at Prochaska. The Chief wore a frozen mask. He got back on the communicator and repeated his request. When he finished, there was a dead silence in the void. The Colonel's answer was unprintable. He looked thoughtfully at Prochaska. Last time he'd broken ground orders he'd been invited to leave the Air Force. But Gotch had taken him despite that. He glanced over his shoulder trying to formulate a plan. Larkwell was lying back in his seat, eyes closed. Lucky dog, he thought. He doesn't know what he's in for. He twisted his head further. Nagel watched him with a narrow look. He pushed the oxygen man from his mind and turned back to the analog. The pip that was Pickering had moved a long way across the grid. The altitude needle tied into the grid showed that the satelloid was dropping fast. The intercept was nearer, too. Much nearer. Prochaska watched the scene on his radarscope. "She's coming fast," he murmured. His face had paled. "Too fast," Crag gritted. He got on the communicator and called Alpine. Gotch came on immediately. Crag said defiantly. "We're going to use Drone Able as an intercept. It's the only chance." "Commander, I ordered ground control." The Colonel's voice was icy, biting. "Ground has no control over this situation," Crag snapped angrily. "I said ground control, Commander. That's final." "I'm using Drone Able." "Commander Crag, you'll wind up cleaning the heads at Alpine," Gotch raged. "Don't move that Drone." For a moment the situation struck him as humorous. Just now he'd like to be guaranteed the chance to clear the heads at Alpine Base. It sounded good--real good. There was another burst of static. Pickering's voice came in--louder, clearer, a snap through the ether. "Don't sacrifice the drone, Commander!" "Do you know a better way?" Pickering's voice dropped to a laconic drawl. "Reckon so." Crag glanced at the analog and gave a visible start. The satelloid was lower, moving in faster along a course which would take it obliquely through the space path being traversed by the Aztec. If there was such a thing as a wake in space, that's where the satelloid would chop through, cutting down toward the intercept. He's using his power, he thought, the scant amount of fuel he would need for landing. But if he used it up.... He slashed the thought off and swung to the communicator. "Step One to S-two ... Step One to S-two ..." "S-two." Pickering came in immediately. Crag barked, "You can't--" "That's my job," Pickering cut in. "You gotta get that bucket to the moon." Crag looked thoughtfully at the communicator. "Okay," he said finally. "Thanks, fellow." "Don't mention it. The Air Force is always ready to serve," Pickering said. "Adios." He cut off. Crag stared at the analog, biting his lip, feeling the emotion surge inside him. It grew to a tumult. "Skipper!" Prochaska's voice was startled. "For God's sake ... look!" Crag swung his eyes to the scope. The blip representing Pickering had cut their flight path, slicing obliquely through their wake. At its tremendous speed only the almost total absence of air molecules kept the satelloid from turning into a blazing torch. Down ... down ... plunging to meet the death roaring up from the Pacific. They followed it silently. A brief flare showed on the scope. They looked at the screen for a long moment. "He was a brave man," Prochaska said simply. "A pile of guts." Crag got on the communicator. Gotch listened. When he had finished, Gotch said: "After this, Commander, follow ground orders. You damned near fouled up the works. I don't want to see that happen again." "Yes, Sir, but I couldn't have expected that move." "What do you think Pickering was up there for?" Gotch asked softly. "He knew what he was doing. That was his job. Just like the couple that got bumped at the Blue Door. It's tough, Commander, but some people have to die. A lot have, already, and there'll be a lot more." He added brusquely, "You'll get your chance." The communicator was silent for a moment. "Well, carry on." "Aye, aye, Sir," Crag said. He glanced over his shoulder. Larkwell was leaning over in his seat, twisting his body to see out the side port. His face was filled with the wonder of space. Nagel didn't stir. His eyes were big saucers in his white, thin face. Crag half expected to see his lips quiver, and wondered briefly at the courage it must have taken for him to volunteer. He didn't seem at all like the hero type. Still, look at Napoleon. You could never tell what a man had until the chips were down. Well, the chips _were_ down. Nagel better have it. He turned reflectively back to the forward port thinking that the next two days would be humdrum. Nothing would ever seem tough again. Not after what they had just been through. Prochaska fell into the routine of calling out altitude and speed. Crag listened with one part of his mind occupied with Pickering's sacrifice. Would he have had the courage to drive the satelloid into the warhead? Did it take more guts to do that than to double for a man slated to be murdered? He mulled the questions. Plainly, Step One was jammed with heroes. "Altitude, 1,000 miles, speed, 22,300." Prochaska whispered the words, awe in his voice. They looked at each other wordlessly. "We've made it," Crag exulted. "We're on that old moon trajectory." The Chiefs face reflected his wonder. Crag studied his instruments. Speed slightly over 22,300 miles per hour. The radar altimeter showed the Aztec slightly more than one thousand miles above the earth's surface. He hesitated, then cut off the third stage engine. The fuel gauge indicated a bare few gallons left. This small amount, he knew, represented error in the precise computations of escape. Well, the extra weight was negligible. At the same time, they couldn't afford added acceleration. He became aware that the last vestige of weight had vanished. He moved his hand. No effort. No effort at all. Space, he thought, the first successful manned space ship. Elation swept him. He, Adam Crag, was in space. Not just the top of the atmosphere but absolute space--the big vacuum that surrounded the world. This had been the aim ... the dream ... the goal. And so quick! He flicked his mind back. It seemed almost no time at all since the Germans had electrified the world with the V-2, a primitive rocket that scarcely reached seventy miles above the earth, creeping at a mere 3,000 miles per hour. The Americans had strapped a second stage to the German prototype, creating the two-stage V-2-Wac Corporal and sending it 250 miles into the tall blue at speeds better than 5,000 miles per hour. It had been a battle even then, he thought, remembering the dark day the Russians beat the West with Sputnik I ... seemingly demolished it with Sputnik II--until the U. S. Army came through with Explorer I. That had been the real beginning. IRBM's and ICBM's had been born. Missiles and counter-missiles. Dogs, monkeys and mice had ridden the fringes of space. But never man. A deep sense of satisfaction flooded him. The Aztec had been the first. The Aztec under Commander Adam Crag. The full sense of the accomplishment was just beginning to strike him. We've beaten the enemy, he thought. We've won. It had been a grim battle waged on a technological front; a battle between nations in which, ironically, each victory by either side took mankind a step nearer emancipation from the world. Man could look forward now, to a bright shiny path leading to the stars. This was the final step. The Big Step. The step that would tie together two worlds. In a few short days the Aztec would reach her lonely destination, Arzachel, a bleak spot in the universe. Adam Crag, the Man in the Moon. He hoped. He turned toward the others, trying to wipe the smug look from his face. The oddity of weightlessness was totally unlike anything he had expected despite the fact its symptoms had been carefully explained during the indoctrination program. He was sitting in the pilot's seat, yet he wasn't. He felt no sense of pressure against the seat, or against anything else, for that matter. It was, he thought, like sitting on air, as light as a mote of dust drifting in a breeze. Sure, he'd experienced weightlessness before, when pushing a research stratojet through a high-speed trajectory to counter the pull of gravity, for example. But those occasions had lasted only brief moments. He moved his hand experimentally upward--a move that ended like the strike of a snake. Yeah, it was going to take some doing to learn control of his movements. He looked at Prochaska. The Chief was feeding data to Alpine Base. He finished and grinned broadly at Crag. His eyes were elated. "Sort of startling, isn't it?" "Amen," Crag agreed. "I'm almost afraid to loosen my harnessing. "Alpine says we're right on the button--schedule, course and speed. There's a gal operator on now." "That's good. That means we're back to routine." Crag loosened his harnesses and twisted around in his seat. Larkwell was moving his hands experimentally. He saw Crag and grinned foolishly. Nagel looked ill. His face was pinched, bloodless, his eyes red-rimmed. He caught Crag's look and nodded, without expression. "Pretty rough," Crag said sympathetically. His voice, in the new-born silence, possessed a curious muffled effect. "We're past the worst." Nagel's lips twisted derisively. "Yeah?" The querulous tone grated Crag and he turned back to the controls. _Every minor irritant will assume major proportions._ That's what Doc Weldon had warned. Well, damnit, he wouldn't let Nagel get him down. Besides, what was his gripe? They were all in the same boat. He turned to the instrument console, checking the myriad of dials, gauges and scopes. Everything seemed normal, if there was such a thing as normalcy in space. He said reflectively, speaking to no one in particular: "Maybe I should have been more truthful with the Colonel before taking on this damned job of moon pilot. There's something I didn't tell him." "What?" Prochaska's face was startled. "I've never been to the moon before." CHAPTER 5 "Alpine wants a private confab," Prochaska said. His voice was ominous. "Probably another stinker." "Again?" Crag plugged in his ear insert microphone thinking he wasn't going to like what he'd hear. Just when things had started looking smooth too. He cut Prochaska out of the system and acknowledged. "Crag?" Gotch's voice was brittle, hard. He looked sideways at Prochaska, who was studiously examining one of the instruments, trying to give him the privacy demanded. He shifted his head. Larkwell was standing at the side port with his back toward him. Nagel lay back in his seat, eyes closed. Crag answered softly. "Shoot." "More bad news," Gotch reported somberly. "Burning Sands picked a package out of Drone Able just before launch time. It's just been identified." "Check," he replied, trying to assimilate what Gotch was telling him. Gotch stated flatly. "It was a time bomb. Here's a description. Bomb was packaged in a flat black plastic case about one by four inches. Probably not big enough to wreck the drone but big enough to destroy the controls. It was found tucked in the wiring of the main panel. Got that?" "Check." "The bomb squad hasn't come through with full details yet. If you find a mate, don't try to disarm it. Dump it, pronto!" "Can't. It'll stay with us." "It's size indicates it wouldn't be fatal if it exploded outside the hull," Gotch rasped. "It was designed to wreck controls. If you find one, dump it. That's an order." The earphones were silent. Crag was swiveling toward Prochaska when they came to life again. "One other thing." Gotch was silent for a moment. Crag pictured him carefully framing his words. "It means that the situation is worse than we thought," he said finally. "They haven't left anything to chance. If you have a bomb, it was carried there after the final security check. Do you follow me?" "Yeah," Crag answered thoughtfully. He sat for a moment, debating what to do. Prochaska didn't ask any questions. Gotch was telling him that the Aztec might be mined. Wait, what else had he said? _The bomb was carried there after the security check._ That spelled traitor. The Aztec had been shaken down too often and too thoroughly for Intelligence to have muffed. It would have to have been planted at the last moment. If there was a bomb, he'd better keep quiet until Gotch's suspicions were proven false--or verified. He turned toward Prochaska, keeping his voice low. "Search the console panels--every inch of them." He looked around. Nagel and Larkwell were back in their seats. Nagel seemed asleep, but Larkwell's face was speculative. Crag's eyes swept the cabin. Spare oxygen tanks, packaged pressure suits, water vents, chemical commode, the algae chamber and spare chemicals to absorb carbon dioxide in case the algae system failed--these and more items filled every wall, cupboard, occupied every cubic inch of space beyond the bare room needed for human movement. Where was the most sensitive spot? The controls. He sighed and turned back to the panels. Prochaska was methodically running his hands through the complex of wiring under the instrument panels. His face was a question, the face of a man who didn't know what he was looking for. He decided not to tell him ... yet. His earphones gave a burst of static followed by the Colonel's hurried voice. "Burning Sands reports packaged timed for 0815," he snapped. "That's eight minutes away. Get on the ball. If you've got one there, it's probably a twin." "Okay," Crag acknowledged. "Adios, we've got work to do." He swung toward Nagel. "Break out the pressure suits," he barked. "Lend him a hand, Larkwell." Nagel's eyes opened. "Pressure suits?" "Check. We may need them in a couple of minutes." "But--" "Get to it," Crag rasped. "It may be a matter of life or death." He turned. Prochaska was still examining the wiring. No time to search the rest of the cabin, he thought. It might be anywhere. It would have to be the panels or nothing. Besides, that was the most logical place. He went to the Chief's assistance, searching the panels on his side of the board, pushing his fingers gently between the maze of wiring. Nothing below the analog, the engine instruments, the radar altimeter. He glanced at the chronometer and began to sweat. The hands on the dial seemed to be racing. Prochaska finished his side of the console and looked sideways at him. Better tell him, Crag thought. He said calmly, "Time bomb. Burning Sands says, if we have one, it may blow in--" he glanced hurriedly at the chronometer--"five minutes." Prochaska looked hurriedly at the array of gear lining the bulkheads. "Probably in the controls, if we have one." Crag finished the panels on his side without any luck. Prochaska hastily started re-examining the wiring. Crag followed after him. A moment later his fingers found it, a smooth flat case deeply imbedded between the wiring. Prochaska had gone over that panel a moment before! The thought struck him even as he moved it out, handling it gingerly. Prochaska showed his surprise. Crag glanced at Nagel and Larkwell. They had the suits free. He laid the bomb on the console. Larkwell saw it. His face showed understanding. He heaved one of the suits to Prochaska and a second one to Crag. They hurriedly donned them. Space limitations made it an awkward task. Crag kept his eyes on the chronometer. The hand seemed to whiz across the dial. He began to sweat, conscious that he was breathing heavily. "Short exposure," he rapped out. "Minimum pressure." He slipped on his helmet, secured it to the neck ring and snapped on the face plate. He turned the oxygen valve and felt the pressure build up within the suit and helmet. The chronometer showed two minutes to go. He snapped a glance around. Nagel peered at him through his thick face plate with a worried expression. Larkwell's lips were compressed against his teeth. His jaws worked spasmodically. Both were waiting, tense, watching him. Prochaska was the last to finish. Crag waited impatiently for him to switch on his oxygen valve before picking up the bomb. He motioned the others to stand back and began opening the dogs which secured the escape hatch. He hesitated on the last one. The escaping air could whisk him into space in a flash. The same thing had happened to crewmen riding in bubbles that broke at high altitude. Whoosh! He'd be gone! Conceivably, it could suck the cabin clean. Fortunately their gear had been secured as protection against the high g forces of escape. Too late to lash himself with the seat harnessing. Time was running out. Panic touched his mind. Calm down, Crag, he told himself. Play it cool, boy. Prochaska saw his dilemma at the same instant. He squatted on the deck and thrust his legs straight out from the hips, straddling one of the seat supports. Larkwell and Nagel hurriedly followed suit. Crag cast a backward glance at the chronometer--a minute and ten seconds to go! He threw himself to one side of the hatch, squatted and hooked an arm into a panel console, hoping it was strong enough. He laid the bomb on the deck next to the hatch and reached up with his free hand, held his breath, hesitated, and jarred the last dog loose. The hatch exploded open. A giant claw seemed to grab his body, pulling him toward the opening. It passed as quickly as it came, leaving him weak, breathless. The bomb had been whisked into space. He got to his feet and grasped the hatch combing, looking out. It was a giddy, vertiginous moment. Before him yawned a great purple-black maw, a blacker purple than that seen through the view ports. It was studded with unbelievably brilliant stars agleam with the hard luster of diamonds--white diamonds and blue sapphires. _Something bright blinked in space._ He hesitated. The cold was already coming through his suit. He remembered he hadn't turned on either the heating element or interphone system. He drew the hatch shut and dogged it down, then switched both on. The others saw his movements and followed suit. "See anything?" Prochaska was the first to ask. His voice sounded tinny and far away. Crag adjusted his amplifier and said grimly: "It blew." "How ... how did it get here?" He identified the voice as Nagel's. He snapped brusquely, "That's what I'm going to find out." Larkwell was silent. Nagel began fiddling with the oxygen valves. They waited, quietly, each absorbed in his thoughts until Nagel indicated it was safe to remove their suits. Crag's thoughts raced while he shucked the heavy garments. It's past, he thought, but the saboteur's still here. Who? He flicked his eyes over the men. Who? That's what he had to find out--soon! When the suit was off, he hurriedly put through a call to Gotch, reporting what had happened. The Colonel listened without comment. When Crag finished, he was silent for a moment. Finally he replied: "Here's where we stand. We will immediately comb the record of every intelligence agent involved in the last shakedown. We'll also recomb the records of the Aztec crew, including yours. I've got to tell you this because it's serious. If there's a saboteur aboard--and I think there is--then the whole operation's in jeopardy. It'll be up to you to keep your eyes open and analyze your men. We've tried to be careful. We've checked everyone involved back to birth. But there's always the sleeper. It's happened before." "Check," Crag said. "I only hope you don't catch up with all my early peccadillos." "This is no time to be funny. Now, some more news for you. Washington reports that the enemy launched another missile this morning." "Another one?" Crag sighed softly. This time there would be no satelloid, no Pickering to give his life. The Colonel continued grimly. "Radar indicates this is a different kind of rocket. Its rate of climb ... its trajectory ... indicates it's manned. Now it's a race." Crag thought a moment. "Any sign of a drone with it?" "No, that's the surprising part, if this is a full-scale attempt at establishing a moon base. And we believe it is." Crag asked sharply. "It couldn't be their atom-powered job?" The possibility filled him with alarm. "Positively not. We've got our finger squarely on that one and it's a good year from launch-date. No, this is a conventional rocket ... perhaps more advanced than we had believed...." His voice dropped off. "We'll keep you posted," he added after a minute. "Roger." Crag sighed. He removed the earphone reflectively. He wouldn't tell the others yet. Now that they were in space maybe ... just maybe ... he could find time to catch his breath. Damn, they hadn't anticipated all this during indoctrination. The intercept-missile ... time bomb ... possible traitor in the crew. What more could go wrong? For just a second he felt an intense hostility toward Gotch. An Air Force full of pilots and he had to pick him--and he wasn't even in the Air Force at the time. Lord, he should have contented himself with jockeying a jet airliner on some nice quiet hop. Like between L. A. and Pearl ... with a girl at each end of the run. He thought wistfully about the prospect while he made a routine check of the instruments. Cabin pressure normal ... temperature 78 degrees F. ... nothing alarming in the radiation and meteor impact readings. Carbon dioxide content normal. Things might get routine after all, he thought moodily. Except for one thing. The new rocket flashing skyward from east of the Caspian. One thing he was sure of. It spelled trouble. CHAPTER 6 The U. S. Navy's Space Scan Radar Station No. 5 picked up the new rocket before it was fairly into space. It clung to it with an electromagnetic train, bleeding it of data. The information was fed into computers, digested, analyzed and transferred to Alpine Base, and thence telemetered to the Aztec where it appeared as a pip on the analog display. The grid had automatically adjusted to a 500-mile scale with the positions of the intruder and Aztec separated by almost the width of the instrument face. The Aztec seemed to have a clear edge in the race for the moon. Prochaska became aware of the newcomer but refrained from questions, nor did Crag volunteer any information. Just now he wasn't worrying about the East World rocket. Not at this point. With Drone Able riding to starboard, the Aztec was moving at an ever slower rate of speed. It would continue to decelerate, slowed by the earth's pull as it moved outward, traveling on inertial force since the silencing of its engines. By the time it reached the neutral zone where the moon and earth gravispheres canceled each other, the Aztec would have just enough speed left to coast into the moon's field of influence. Then it would accelerate again, picking up speed until slowed by its braking rockets. That was the hour that occupied his thoughts--a time when he would be called upon for split-second decisions coming in waves. He tried to anticipate every contingency. The mass ratio necessary to inject the Aztec into its moon trajectory had precluded fuel beyond the absolute minimum needed. The rocket would approach the moon in an elliptical path, correct its heading to a north-south line relative to the planet and decelerate in a tight spiral. At a precise point in space he would have to start using the braking rockets, slow the ship until they occupied an exact point in the infinite space-time continuum, then let down into cliff-brimmed Arzachel, a bleak, airless, utterly alien wasteland with but one virtue: Uranium. That and the fact that it represented the gateway to the Solar System. He mentally reviewed the scene a hundred times. He would do this and this and that. He rehearsed each step, each operation, each fleeting second in which all the long years of planning would summate in victory or disaster. He was the X in the equation in which the Y-scale was represented by the radar altimeter. He would juggle speed, deceleration, altitude, mass and a dozen other variables, keeping them in delicate balance. Nor could he forget for one second the hostile architecture of their destination. For all practical purposes Arzachel was a huge hole sunk in the moon--a vast depression undoubtedly broken by rocks, rills, rough lava outcrops. The task struck him as similar to trying to land a high-speed jet in a well shaft. Well, almost as bad. He tried to anticipate possible contingencies, formulating his responses to each. He was, he thought, like an actor preparing for his first night. Only this time there would be no repeat performance. The critics were the gods of chance in a strictly one-night stand. Gotch was the man who had placed him here. But the responsibility was all his. Gotch! All he gave a damn about was the moon--a chunk of real estate scorned by its Maker. Crag bit his lip ruefully. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, boy, he thought. You asked for it--practically begged for it. Now you've got it. * * * * * By the end of the second day the novelty of space had worn off. Crag and Prochaska routinely checked the myriad of instruments jammed into the faces of the consoles: Meteorite impact counters, erosion counters, radiation counters--counters of all kinds. Little numbers on dials and gauges that told man how he was faring in the wastelands of the universe. Nagel kept a special watch on the oxygen pressure gauge. Meteorite damage had been one of Gotch's fears. A hole the size of a pinhead could mean eventual death through oxygen loss, hence Nagel seldom let a half-hour pass without checking the readings. Crag and Prochaska spelled each other in brief catnaps. Larkwell, with no duties to perform, was restless. At first he had passed long hours at the viewports, uttering exclamations of surprise and delight from time to time. But sight of the ebony sky with its fields of strewn jewels had, in the end, tended to make him moody. He spent most of the second day dozing. Nagel kept busy prowling through the oxygen gear, testing connections and making minor adjustments. His seeming concern with the equipment bothered Crag. The narrow escape with the time bomb had robbed him of his confidence in the crew. He told himself the bomb could have been planted during the last security shakedown. But a "sleeper" in security seemed highly unlikely. So did a "sleeper" in the Aztec. Everyone of them, he knew, had been scanned under the finest security microscope almost from birth to the moment each had climbed the tall ladder leading to the space cabin. He covertly watched Nagel, wondering if his prowling was a form of escape, an effort to forget his fears. He was beginning to understand the stark reality of Nagel's terror. It had been mirrored in his face, a naked, horrible dread, during the recent emergency. No ... he wasn't the saboteur type. Larkwell, maybe. Perhaps Prochaska. But not Nagel. A saboteur would have iron nerves, a cold, icy fanaticism that never considered danger. But supposing the man were a consummate actor, his fear a mask to conceal his purpose? He debated the pros and cons. In the end he decided it would not be politic to forbid Nagel to handle the gear during flight. He was, after all, their oxygen equipment specialist. He contented himself with keeping a sharp watch on Nagel's activities--a situation Nagel seemed unmindful of. He seemed to have lost some of his earlier fear. His face was alert, almost cheerful at times; yet it held the attitude of watchful waiting. Despite his liking for Prochaska, Crag couldn't forget that he had failed to find the time bomb in a panel he had twice searched. Still, the console's complex maze of wiring and tubes had made an excellent hiding place. He had to admit he was lucky to have found it himself. He tried to push his suspicions from his mind without relaxing his vigilance. It was a hard job. By the third day the enemy missile had become a prime factor in the things he found to worry about. The intruder rocket had drawn closer. Alpine warned that the race was neck and neck. It had either escaped earth at a higher speed or had continued to accelerate beyond the escape point. Crag regarded the reason as purely academic. The hard fact was that it would eventually overtake the still decelerating Aztec. Just now it was a pip on the analog, a pip which before long would loom as large as Drone Able, perhaps as close. He tried to assess its meaning, vexed that Alpine seemed to be doing so little to help in the matter. Later Larkwell spotted the pip made by the East's rocket on the scope. That let the cat out of the bag as far as Crag was concerned. Soberly he informed them of its origin. Larkwell bit his lip thoughtfully. Nagel furrowed his brow, seemingly lost in contemplation. Prochaska's expression never changed. Crag assessed each reaction. In fairness, he also assessed his own feeling toward each of the men. He felt a positive dislike of Nagel and a positive liking for Prochaska. Larkwell was a neutral. He seemed to be a congenial, open-faced man who wore his feelings in plain sight. But there was a quality about him which, try as he would, he could not put his finger on. Nagel, he told himself, must have plenty on the ball. After all, he had passed through a tough selection board. Just because the man's personality conflicted with his own was no grounds for suspicion. But the same reasoning could apply to the others. The fact remained--at least Gotch seemed certain--that his crew numbered a ringer among them. He was mulling it over when the communicator came to life. The message was in moon code. It came slowly, widely spaced, as if Gotch realized Crag's limitations in handling the intricate cipher system evolved especially for this one operation. Learning it had caused him many a sleepless night. He copied the message letter by letter, his understanding blanked by the effort to decipher it. He finished, then quickly read the two scant lines: "_Blank channel to Alp unless survival need._" He studied the message for a long moment. Gotch was telling him not to contact Alpine Base unless it were a life or death matter. Not that everything connected with the operation wasn't a life or death matter, he thought grimly. He decided the message was connected with the presence of the rocket now riding astern and to one side of the Aztec and her drone. He guessed the Moon Code had been used to prevent possible pickup by the intruder rather than any secrecy involving his own crew. He quietly passed the information to Prochaska. The Chief listened, nodding, his eyes going to the analog. According to his computations, the enemy rocket--Prochaska had dubbed it Bandit--would pass abeam of Drone Able slightly after they entered the moon's gravitational field, about 24,000 miles above the planet's surface. Then what? He pursed his lips vexedly. Bandit was a factor that had to be considered, but just how he didn't know. One thing was certain. The East knew about the load of uranium in Crater Arzachel. That, then, was the destination of the other rocket. Among the many X unknowns he had to solve, a new X had been added; the rocket from behind the Iron Curtain. Something told him this would be the biggest X of all. CHAPTER 7 If Colonel Michael Gotch were worried, he didn't show it. He puffed complacently on his black briar pipe watching and listening to the leathery-faced man across from him. His visitor was angular, about sixty, with gray-black hair and hard-squinted eyes. A livid scar bit deep into his forehead; his mouth was a cold thin slash in his face. He wore the uniform of a Major General in the United States Air Force. The uniform did not denote the fact that its wearer was M.I.--Military Intelligence. His name was Leonard Telford. "So that's the way it looks," General Telford was saying. "The enemy is out to get Arzachel at all costs. Failing that, they'll act to keep us from it." "They wouldn't risk war," Gotch stated calmly. "No, but neither would we. That's the damnable part of it," the General agreed. "The next war spells total annihilation. But for that very reason they can engage in sabotage and hostile acts with security of knowledge that we won't go to war. Look at them now--the missile attack on the Aztec, the time bomb plant, the way they operate their networks right in our midst. Pure audacity. Hell, they've even got an agent _en route_ to the moon. On our rocket at that." The Colonel nodded uncomfortably. The presence of a saboteur on the Aztec represented a bungle in his department. The General was telling him so in a not too gentle way. "I seem to recall I was in Astrakhan myself a few years back," he reminded. "Oh, sure, we build pretty fair networks ourselves," the General said blandly. He looked at Gotch and a rare smile crossed his face. "How did you like the dancing girls in Gorik's, over by the shore?" Gotch looked startled, then grinned. "Didn't know you'd ever been that far in, General." "Uh-huh, same time you were." "Well, I'll be damned," Gotch breathed softly. There was a note of respect in his voice. The General was silent for a moment. "But the Caspian's hot now." "Meaning?" "Warheads--with the name Arzachel writ large across the nose cones." He eyed Gotch obliquely. "If we secure Arzachel first, they'll blow it off the face of the moon." They looked at each other silently. Outside a jet engine roared to life. * * * * * The moon filled the sky. It was gigantic, breath-taking, a monstrous sphere of cratered rock moving in the eternal silence of space with ghostly-radiance, heedless that a minute mote bearing alien life had entered its gravitational field. It moved in majesty along its orbit some 2,300 miles every hour, alternately approaching to within 222,000 miles of its Earth Mother, retreating to over 252,000 miles measuring its strides by some strange cosmic clock. The Apennines, a rugged mountain range jutting 20,000 feet above the planet's surface, was clearly visible. It rose near the Crater Eratosthenes, running northwest some 200 miles to form the southwest boundary of Mare Imbrium. The towering Leibnitz and Dorfel Mountains were visible near the edge of the disc. South along the terminator, the border between night and day, lay Ptolemaeus, Alphons, and Arzachel. Crag and Prochaska studied its surface, picking out the flat areas which early astronomers had mistaken for seas and which still bore the names of seas. The giant enclosure Clavius, the lagoon-like Plato and ash-strewn Copernicus held their attention. Crag studied the north-south line along which Arzachel lay, wondering again if they could seek out such a relatively small area in the jumbled, broken, twisted land beneath them. At some 210,000 miles from earth the Aztec had decelerated to a little over 300 miles per hour. Shortly after entering the moon's gravisphere it began to accelerate again. Crag studied the enemy rocket riding astern. It would be almost abreast them in short time, off to one side of the silver drone. It, too, was accelerating. "Going to be nip and tuck," he told Prochaska. The Chief nodded. "Don't like the looks of that stinker," he grunted. Crag watched the analog a moment longer before turning to the quartz viewport. His eyes filled with wonder. For untold ages lovers had sung of the moon, philosophers had pondered its mysteries, astronomers had scanned and mapped every visible mile of its surface until selenography had achieved an exactness comparable to earth cartography. Scientists had proved beyond doubt that the moon wasn't made of green cheese. But no human eye had ever beheld its surface as Crag was doing now--Crag, Prochaska, Larkwell and Nagel. The latter two were peering through the side ports. Prochaska and Crag shared the forward panel. It was a tribute to the event that no word was spoken. Aside from the Chief's occasional checks on Drone Able and Bandit--the name stuck--the four pairs of eyes seldom left the satellite's surface. The landing plan called for circling the moon during which they were to maneuver Drone Able into independent orbit. It was Crag's job to bring the Aztec down at a precise point in Crater Arzachel and the Chief's job to handle the drone landings, a task as ticklish as landing the Aztec itself. The spot chosen for landing was in an area where the Crater's floor was broken by a series of rills--wide, shallow cracks the earth scientists hoped would give protection against the fall of meteorites. Due to lack of atmosphere the particles in space, ranging from dust grains to huge chunks of rock, were more lethal than bullets. They were another unknown in the gamble for the moon. A direct hit by even a grain-sized particle could puncture a space suit and bring instant death. A large one could utterly destroy the rocket itself. Larkwell's job was to construct an airlock in one of the rills from durable lightweight prefabricated plastiblocks carried in the drones. Such an airlock would protect them from all but vertically falling meteorites. Crag felt almost humble in the face of the task they were undertaking. He knew his mind alone could grasp but a minute part of the knowledge that went into making the expedition possible. Their saving lay in the fact they were but agents, protoplasmic extensions of a complex of computers, scientists, plans which had taken years to formulate, and a man named Michael Gotch who had said: "_You will land on Arzachel._" He initiated the zero phase by ordering the crew into their pressure suits. Prochaska took over while he donned his own bulky garment, grimacing as he pulled the heavy helmet over his shoulders. Later, in the last moments of descent, he would snap down the face plate and pressurize the suit. Until then he wanted all the freedom the bulky garments would allow. "Might as well get used to it." Prochaska grinned. He flexed his arms experimentally. Larkwell grunted. "Wait till they're pressurized. You'll think rigor mortis has set in." Crag grinned. "That's a condition I'm opposed to." "Amen." Larkwell gave a weak experimental jump and promptly smacked his head against the low overhead. He was smiling foolishly when Nagel snapped at him: "One more of those and you'll be walking around the moon without a pressure suit." He peevishly insisted on examining the top of the helmet for damage. Crag fervently hoped they wouldn't need the suits for landing. Any damage that would allow the Aztec's oxygen to escape would in itself be a death sentence, even though death might be dragged over the long period of time it would take to die for lack of food. An intact space cabin represented the only haven in which they could escape from the cumbersome garments long enough to tend their biological needs. Imperceptibly the sensation of weight returned, but it was not the body weight of earth. Even on the moon's surface they would weigh but one-sixth their normal weight. "Skipper, look." Prochaska's startled exclamation drew Crag's eyes to the radarscope. Bandit had made minute corrections in its course. "They're using steering rockets," Crag mused, trying to assess its meaning. "Doesn't make sense," said Prochaska. "They can't have that kind of power to spare. They'll need every bit they have for landing." "What's up?" Larkwell peered over their shoulders, eyeing the radarscope. Crag bit off an angry retort. Larkwell sensed the rebuff and returned away. They kept their eyes glued to the scope. Bandit maneuvered to a position slightly behind and to one side of the silver drone. Crag looked out the side port. Bandit was clearly visible, a monstrous cylinder boring through the void with cold precision. There was something ominous about it. He felt the hair prickle at the nape of his neck. Larkwell moved alongside him. Bandit made another minute correction. White vapor shot from its tail and it began to move ahead. "Using rocket power," Crag grunted. "Damn if I can figure that one out." "Looks crazy to me. I should think--" Prochaska's voice froze. A minute pip broke off from Bandit, boring through space toward the silver drone. "Warhead!" Crag roared the word with cold anger. Prochaska cursed softly. One second Drone Able was there, riding serenely through space. The next it disintegrated, blasted apart by internal explosions. Seconds later only fragments of the drone were visible. Prochaska stared at Crag, his face bleak. Crag's brain reeled. He mentally examined what had happened, culling his thoughts until one cold fact remained. "Mistaken identity," he said softly. "They thought it was the Aztec." "Now what?" "Now we hope they haven't any more warheads." Crag mulled the possibility. "Considering weight factors, I'd guess they haven't. Besides, there's no profit in wasting a warhead on a drone." "We hope." Prochaska studied Bandit through the port, and licked his lips nervously. "Think we ought to contact Alpine?" Crag weighed the question. Despite the tight beam, any communication could be a dead giveaway. On the other hand, Bandit either had the capacity to destroy them or it didn't. If it did, well, there wasn't much they could do about it. He reached a decision and nodded to Prochaska, then began coding his thoughts. He had trouble getting through on the communicator. Finally he got a weak return signal, then sent a brief report. Alpine acknowledged and cut off the air. "What now?" Prochaska asked, when Crag had finished. He shrugged and turned to the side port without answering. Bandit loomed large, a long thick rocket with an oddly blunted nose. A monster that was as deadly as it looked. "Big," he surmised. "Much bigger than this chunk of hardware." "Yeah, a regular battleship," Prochaska assented. He grinned crookedly. "In more ways than one." Crag sensed movement at his shoulder and turned his head. Nagel was studying the radarscope over his shoulder. Surprise lit his narrow face. "The drone?" "Destroyed," Crag said bruskly. "Bandit had a warhead." Nagel looked startled, then retreated to his seat without a word. Crag returned his attention to the enemy rocket. "What do you think?" he asked Prochaska. His answer was solemn. "It spells trouble." CHAPTER 8 At a precise point in space spelled out by the Alpine computers Crag applied the first braking rockets. He realized that the act had been an immediate tip-off to the occupants of the other rocket. No matter, he thought. Sooner or later they had to discover it was the drone they had destroyed. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, their headlong flight was slowed. He nursed the rockets with care. There was no fuel to spare, no energy to waste, no room for error. Everything had been worked out long beforehand; he was merely the agent of execution. The sensation of weight gradually increased. He ordered Larkwell and Nagel into their seats in strapdown position. He and Prochaska shortly followed, but he left his shoulder harnessing loose to give his arms the vital freedom he needed for the intricate maneuvers ahead. The moon rushed toward them at an appalling rate. Its surface was a harsh grille work of black and white, a nightmarish scape of pocks and twisted mountains of rock rimming the flat lunar plains. It was, he thought, the geometry of a maniac. There was no softness, no blend of light and shadow, only terrible cleavages between black and white. Yet there was a beauty that gripped his imagination; the raw, stark beauty of a nature undefiled by life. No eye had ever seen the canopy of the heavens from the bleak surface below; no flower had ever wafted in a lunar breeze. Prochaska nudged his arm and indicated the scope. Bandit was almost abreast them. Crag nodded understandingly. "No more warheads." "Guess we're just loaded with luck," Prochaska agreed wryly. They watched ... waited ... mindless of time. Crag felt the tension building inside him. Occasionally he glanced at the chronometer, itching for action. The wait seemed interminable. Minutes or hours? He lost track of time. All at once his hands and mind were busy with the braking rockets, dials, meters. First the moon had been a pallid giant in the sky; next it filled the horizon. The effect was startling. The limb of the moon, seen as a shallow curved horizon, no longer was smooth. It appeared as a rugged saw-toothed arc, somehow reminding him of the Devil's Golf Course in California's Death Valley. It was weird and wonderful, and slightly terrifying. Prochaska manned the automatic camera to record the orbital and landing phases. He spotted the Crater of Ptolemaeus first, near the center-line of the disc. Crag made a minute correction with the steering rockets. The enemy rocket followed suit. Prochaska gave a short harsh laugh without humor. "Looks like we're piloting them in. Jeepers, you'd think they could do their own navigation." "Shows the confidence they have in us," Crag retorted. They flashed high above Ptolemaeus, a crater ninety miles in diameter rimmed by walls three thousand feet high. The crater fled by below them. South lay Alphons; and farther south, Arzachel, with walls ten thousand feet high rimming its vast depressed interior. Prochaska observed quietly: "Nice rugged spot. It's going to take some doing." "Amen." "I'm beginning to get that what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here feeling." "I've had it right along," Crag confided. They caught only a fleeting look at Arzachel before it rushed into the background. Crag touched the braking rockets from time to time, gently, precisely, keeping his eyes moving between the radar altimeter and speed indicator while the Chief fed him the course data. The back side of the moon was spinning into view--the side of the moon never before seen by human eyes. Prochaska whistled softly. A huge mountain range interlaced with valleys and chasms pushed some thirty thousand feet into the lunar skies. Long streaks of ochre and brown marked its sides, the first color they had seen on the moon. Flat highland plains crested between the peaks were dotted with strange monolithic structures almost geometrical in their distribution. Prochaska was shooting the scene with the automatic camera. Crag twisted around several times to nod reassuringly to Nagel and Larkwell but each time they were occupied with the side ports, oblivious of his gesture. To his surprise Nagel's face was rapt, almost dreamy, completely absorbed by the stark lands below. Larkwell, too, was quiet with wonder. The jagged mountains fell away to a great sea, larger even than Mare Imbrium, and like Mare Imbrium, devoid of life. A huge crater rose from its center, towering over twenty thousand feet. Beyond lay more mountains. The land between was a wild tangle of rock, a place of unutterable desolation. Crag was fascinated and depressed at the same time. The Aztec was closing around the moon in a tight spiral. The alien landscape drew visibly nearer. He switched his attention between the braking rockets and instruments, trying to manage a quick glance at the scope. Prochaska caught his look. "Bandit's up on us," he confirmed. Crag uttered a vile epithet and Prochaska grinned. He liked to hear him growl, taking it as a good sign. Crag glanced worriedly at the radar altimeter and hit the braking rockets harder. The quick deceleration gave the impression of added weight, pushing them hard against their chest harnesses. He found it difficult to make the precise hand movements required. The Aztec was dropping with frightening rapidity. They crossed more mountains, seas, craters, great chasms. Time had become meaningless--had ceased to exist. The sheer bleakness of the face of the moon gripped his imagination. He saw it as the supreme challenge, the magnitude of which took his breath. He was Cortez scanning the land of the Aztecs. More, for this stark lonely terrain had never felt the stir of life. No benevolent Maker had created this chaos. It was an inferno without fire--a hell of a kind never known on earth. It was the handiwork of a nature on a rampage--a maddened nature whose molding clay had been molten lava. He stirred the controls, moved them further, holding hard. The braking rockets shook the ship, coming through the bulkheads as a faint roar. The ground came up fast. Still the landscape fled by--fled past for seeming days. Prochaska announced wonderingly. "We've cleared the back side. You're on the landing run, Skipper." Crag nodded grimly, thinking it was going to be rough. Each second, each split second had to be considered. There was no margin for error. No second chance. He checked and re-checked his instruments, juggling speed against altitude. Ninety-mile wide Ptolemaeus was coming around again--fast. He caught a glimpse through the floor port. It was a huge saucer, level at the bottom, rimmed by low cliffs which looked as though they had been carved from obsidian. The floor was split by irregular chasms, punctuated by sharp high pinnacles. It receded and Alphons rushed to meet them. The Aztec was dropping fast. Too fast? Crag looked worriedly at the radar altimeter and hit the braking rockets harder. Alphons passed more slowly. They fled south, a slim needle in the lunar skies. "Arzachel...." He breathed the name almost reverently. Prochaska glanced out the side port before hurriedly consulting the instruments. Thirty thousand feet! He glanced worriedly at Crag. The ground passed below them at a fantastic speed. They seemed to be dropping faster. The stark face of the planet hurtled to meet them. "Fifteen thousand feet," Prochaska half-whispered. Crag nodded. "Twelve thousand ... ten ... eight...." The Chief continued to chant the altitude readings in a strained voice. Up until then the face of the moon had seemed to rush toward the Aztec. All at once it changed. Now it was the Aztec that rushed across the hostile land--rushing and dropping. "Three thousand ... two thousand...." They flashed high above a great cliff which fell away for some ten thousand feet. At its base began the plain of Arzachel. Out of the corner of his eye Crag saw that Bandit was leading them. But higher ... much higher. Now it was needling into the purple-black--straight up. He gave a quick, automatic instrument check. The braking rockets were blasting hard. He switched one hand to the steering rockets. Zero minute was coming up. Bandit was ahead, but higher. It could, he thought, be a photo finish. Suddenly he remembered his face plate and snapped it shut, opening the oxygen valve. The suit grew rigid on his body and hampered his arms. He cursed softly and looked sideways at Prochaska. He was having the same difficulty. Crag managed a quick over-the-shoulder glance at Larkwell and Nagel. Everything seemed okay. He took a deep breath and applied full deceleration with the braking jets and simultaneously began manipulating the steering rockets. The ship vibrated from stem to stern. The forward port moved upward; the face of the moon swished past and disappeared. Bandit was lost to sight. The ship trembled, shuddered and gave a violent wrench. Crag was thrown forward. The Aztec began letting down, tail first. It was a sickening moment. The braking rockets astern, heavy with smoke, thundered through the hull. The smoke blanketed out the ports. The cabin vibrated. He straightened the nose with the steering rockets, letting the ship fall in a vertical attitude, tail first. He snapped a glance at the radar altimeter and punched a button. A servo mechanism somewhere in the ship started a small motor. A tubular spidery metal framework was projected out from the tail, extending some twenty feet before it locked into position. It was a failing device intended to absorb the energy generated by the landing impact. Prochaska looked worriedly out the side port. Crag followed his eyes. Small details on the plain of Arzachel loomed large--pits, cracks, low ridges of rock. Suddenly the plain was an appalling reality. Rocky fingers reached to grip them. He twisted his head until he caught sight of Bandit. It was moving down, tail first, but it was still high in the sky. Too high, he thought. He took a fast look at the radar altimeter and punched the full battery of braking rockets again. The force on his body seemed unbearable. Blood was forced into his head, blurring his vision. His ears buzzed and his spine seemed to be supporting some gigantic weight. The pressure eased and the ground began moving up more slowly. The rockets were blasting steadily. For a split-second the ship seemed to hang in mid-air followed by a violent shock. The cabin teetered, then smashed onto the plain, swaying as the framework projecting from the tail crumpled. The shock drove them hard into their seats. They sat for a moment before full realization dawned. They were down--alive! Crag and Prochaska simultaneously began shucking their safety belts. Crag was first. He sprang to the side port just in time to see the last seconds of Bandit's landing. It came down fast, a perpendicular needle stabbing toward the lunar surface. Flame spewed from its braking rockets; white smoke enveloped its nose. Fast ... too fast, he thought. Suddenly the flame licked out. Fuel error. The thought flashed through his mind. The fuel Bandit had wasted in space maneuvering to destroy the drone had left it short. The rocket seemed to hang in the sky for a scant second before it plummeted straight down, smashing into the stark lunar landscape. The Chief had reached his side just in time to witness the crash. "That's all for them," he said. "Can't say I'm sorry." "Serves 'em damn well right," growled Crag. He became conscious of Nagel and Larkwell crowding to get a look and obligingly moved to one side without taking his eyes from the scene. He tried to judge Bandit's distance. "Little over two miles," he estimated aloud. "You can't tell in this vacuum," Prochaska advised. "Your eyes play you tricks. Wait'll I try the scope." A moment later he turned admiringly from the instrument. "Closer to three miles. Pretty good for a green hand." Crag laughed, a quiet laugh of self-satisfaction, and said, "I could use a little elbow room. Any volunteers?" "Liberty call," Prochaska sang out. "All ashore who's going ashore. The gals are waiting." "I'm a little tired of this sardine can, myself," Larkwell put in. "Let's get on our Sunday duds and blow. I'd like to do the town." There was a murmur of assent. Nagel, who was monitoring the oxygen pressure gauge, spoke affirmatively. "No leaks." "Good," Crag said with relief. He took a moment off to feel exultant but the mood quickly vanished. There was work ahead--sheer drudgery. "Check suit pressure," he ordered. They waited a moment longer while they tested pressure, the interphones, and adjusted to the lack of body weight before Crag moved toward the hatch. Prochaska prompted them to actuate their temperature controls: "It's going to be hot out there." Crag nodded, checked his temperature dial and started to open the hatch. The lock-lever resisted his efforts for a moment. He tested the dogs securing the door. Several of them appeared jammed. Panic touched his mind. He braced his body, moving against one of the lock levers with all his strength. It gave, then another. He loosened the last lock braced against the blast of escaping air. The hatch exploded open. He stood for a moment looking at the ground, some twenty feet below. The metal framework now crumpled below the tail had done its work. It had struck, failing, and in doing so had absorbed a large amount of impact energy which otherwise would have been absorbed by the body of the rocket with possible damage to the space cabin. The Aztec's tail fins were buried in what appeared to be a powdery ash. The rocket was canted slightly but, he thought, not dangerously so. Larkwell broke out the rope ladder provided for descent and was looking busy. Now it was his turn to shine. He hooked the ladder over two pegs and let the other end fall to the ground. He tested it then straightened up and turned to Crag. "You may depart, Sire." Crag grinned and started down the ladder. It was clumsy work. The bulk and rigidity of his suit made his movements uncertain, difficult. He descended slowly, testing each step. He hesitated at the last rung, thinking: _This is it!_ He let his foot dangle above the surface for a moment before plunging it down into the soft ash mantle, then walked a few feet, ankle deep in a fine gray powder. First human foot to touch the moon, he thought. The first human foot ever to step beyond the world. Yeah, the human race was on the way--led by Adam Philip Crag. He felt good. It occurred to him then that he was not the real victor. That honor belonged to a man 240,000 miles away. Gotch had won the moon. It had been the opaque-eyed Colonel who had directed the conquest. He, Crag, was merely a foot soldier. Just one of the troops. All at once he felt humble. Prochaska came down next, followed by Nagel. Larkwell was last. They stood in a half-circle looking at each other, awed by the thing they had done. No one spoke. They shifted their eyes outward, hungrily over the plain, marveling at the world they had inherited. It was a bleak, hostile world encompassed in a bowl whose vast depressed interior alternately was burned and frozen by turn. To their north the rim of Arzachel towered ten thousand feet, falling away as it curved over the horizon to the east and west. The plain to the south was a flat expanse of gray punctuated by occasional rocky knolls and weird, needle-sharp pinnacles, some of which towered to awesome heights. Southeast a long narrow spur of rock rose and crawled over the floor of the crater for several miles before it dipped again into its ashy bed. Crag calculated that a beeline to Bandit would just about skirt the southeast end of the spur. Another rock formation dominated the middle-expanse of the plain to the south. It rose, curving over the crater floor like the spinal column of some gigantic lizard--a great crescent with its horns pointed toward their present position. Prochaska promptly dubbed it "Backbone Ridge," a name that stuck. Crag suddenly remembered what he had to do, and coughed meaningfully into his lip mike. The group fell silent. He faced the distant northern cliffs and began to speak: "I, Adam Crag, by the authority vested in me by the Government of the United States of America, do hereby claim this land, and all the lands of the moon, as legal territory of the United States of America, to be a dominion of the United States of America, subject to its Government and laws." When he finished, he was quiet for a minute. "For the record, this is Pickering Field. I think he'd like that," he added. There was a lump in his throat. Prochaska said quietly, "Gotch will like it, too. Hadn't we better record that and transmit it to Alpine?" "It's already recorded." Crag grinned. "All but the Pickering Field part. Gotch wrote it out himself." "Confident bastard." Larkwell smiled. "He had a lot more faith than I did." "Especially the way you brought that stovepipe down," Nagel interjected. There was a moment of startled silence. Prochaska said coldly. "I hope you do your job as well." Nagel looked provocatively at him but didn't reply. Larkwell had been studying the terrain. "Wish Able had made it," he said wistfully. "I'd like to get started on that airlock. It's going to be a honey to build." "Amen." Crag swept his eyes over the ashy surface. "The scientists figure that falling meteorites may be our biggest hazard." "Not if we follow the plan of building our airlock in a rill," Larkwell interjected. "Then the only danger would be from stuff coming straight down." "Agreed. But the fact remains that we lost Able. We'll have to chance living in the Aztec until Drone Baker arrives." "If it makes it." "It'll make it," Crag answered with certainty. Their safe landing had boosted his confidence. They'd land Baker and Charlie, in that order, he thought. They'd locate a shallow rill; then they'd build an airlock to protect them against chance meteorites. That's the way they'd do it; one ... two ... three.... "We've got it whipped," Prochaska observed, but his voice didn't hold the certainty of his words. Crag said, "I was wondering if we couldn't assess the danger. It might not be so great...." "How?" Prochaska asked curiously. "No wind, no air, no external forces to disturb the ash mantle, except for meteorites. Any strike would leave a trace. We might smooth off a given area and check for hits after a couple of days. That would give some idea of the danger." He faced Prochaska. "What do you think?" "But the ash itself is meteorite dust," he protested. "We could at least chart the big hits--those large enough to damage the rocket." "We'll know if any hit," Larkwell prophesied grimly. "Maybe not;" Nagel cut in. "Supposing it's pinhole size? The air could seep out and we wouldn't know it until too late." Crag said decisively. "That means we'll have to maintain a watch over the pressure gauge." "That won't help if it's a big chunk." Prochaska scraped his toe through the ash. "The possibility's sort of disconcerting." "Too damned many occupational hazards for me," Larkwell ventured. "I must have had rocks in my head when I volunteered for this one." "All brawn and no brain." Crag gave a wry smile. "That's the kind of fodder that's needed for deep space." Prochaska said, "We ought to let Gotch know he's just acquired a few more acres." "Right." Crag hesitated a moment. "Then we'll check out on Bandit." "Why?" Larkwell asked. "There might be some survivors." "Let them rot," Nagel growled. "That's for me to decide," Crag said coldly. He stared hard at the oxygen man. "We're still human." Nagel snapped, "They're damned murderers." "That's no reason we should be." Crag turned back toward the ladder. When he reached it, he paused and looked skyward. The sun was a precise circle of intolerable white light set amid the ebony of space. The stars seemed very close. The space cabin was a vacuum. At Nagel's suggestion they kept pressure to a minimum to preserve oxygen. When they were out of their suits, Prochaska got on the radio. He had difficulty raising Alpine Base, working for several minutes before he got an answering signal. When the connection was made, Crag moved into Prochaska's place and switched to his ear insert microphone. He listened to the faint slightly metallic voice for a moment before he identified it as Gotch's. He thought: _The Old Man must be living in the radio shack._ He adjusted his headset and sent a lengthy report. If Gotch were jubilant over the fruition of his dream, he carefully concealed it. He congratulated Crag and the crew, speaking in precise formal terms, and almost immediately launched into a barrage of questions regarding their next step. The Colonel's reaction nettled him. Lord, he should be jubilant ... jumping with joy ... waltzing the telephone gal. Instead he was speaking with a business-as-usual manner. Gotch left it up to Crag on whether or not to attempt a rescue expedition. "But not if it endangers the expedition in any way," he added. He informed him that Drone Baker had been launched without mishap. "Just be ready for her," he cautioned. "And again--congratulations, Commander." There was a pause.... "I think Pickering Field is a fitting name." The voice in the earphones died away and Crag found himself listening to the static of space. He pulled the sets off and turned to Nagel. "How much oxygen would a man need for a round trip to Bandit, assuming a total distance of seven miles." "It's not that far," Prochaska reminded. "There might be detours." Nagel calculated rapidly. "An extra cylinder would do it." "Okay, Larkwell and I'll go. You and Prochaska stand by." Crag caught the surprised look on the Chief's face. "There might be communication problems," he explained. Privately, he had decided that no man would be left alone until the mystery of the time bomb was cleared up. Prochaska nodded. The arrangement made sense. Nagel appeared pleased that he didn't have to make the long trek. Larkwell, on the other hand, seemed glad to have been chosen. CHAPTER 9 There is no dawn on the moon, no dusk, no atmosphere to catch and spread the light of the sun. When the lunar night ends--a night two earth weeks long--the sun simply pops over the horizon, bringing its intolerable heat. But the sky remains black--black and sprinkled with stars agleam with a light unknown on earth. At night the temperature is 250 degrees below zero; by day it is the heat of boiling water. Yet the sun is but an intense circle of white aloft in a nigrescent sky. It was a world such as Crag had scarcely dreamed of--alien, hostile, fantastic in its architecture--a bizarre world spawned by a nature in revolt. Crag stopped to adjust the temperature control on his suit. He started to mop his brow before he remembered the helmet. Larkwell saw the gesture, and behind his thick face plate his lips wrinkled in a grin. "Go on, scratch it," he challenged. "This moon's going to take a lot of getting used to." Crag swept his eyes over the bleak plain. "And they send four men to conquer this." "It ain't conquered yet," Larkwell spat. Crag's answer was a sober reflection. "No, it isn't," he said quietly. He contemplated the soot-filled sky, its magic lanterns, then looked down again at the plain. "Let's get moving." * * * * * It was dawn--dawn in the sense that the sun had climbed above the horizon. The landing had been planned for sunup--the line which divided night from day--to give them the benefit of a two-week day before another instantaneous onslaught of night. They moved slowly across the ashy floor of the crater, occasionally circling small knolls or jagged rock outcroppings. Despite the cumbersome suits and the burden of the extra oxygen cylinder each carried, they made good time. Crag led the way with Larkwell close behind, threading his way toward the spot where the enemy rocket had fallen from the sky. They had to stop several times to rest and regulate their temperature controls. Despite the protective garments they were soon sweating and panting, gasping for breath with the feeling of suffocation. Crag felt the water trickling down his body in rivulets and began to itch, a sensation that was almost a pain. "It's not going to be a picnic," Larkwell complained. His voice sounded exhausted in the earphones. Crag grunted without answering. His feet ploughed up little spurts of dust which fell as quickly as they rose. Like water dropping, he thought. He wondered how long they would be able to endure the heat. Could they possibly adapt their bodies to such an environment? What of the cold of night? The questions bothered him. He tried to visualize what it would be like to plunge from boiling day to the bitterly cold night within the space of moments. Would they be able to take it? He grinned to himself. They'd find out! At the next halt they looked back at the Aztec. "We don't seem to be getting anywhere," Larkwell observed. Crag contemplated the rocket. He was right. The ship seemed almost as large and clear as ever. "Your eyes trick you," he said. "It's just another thing we'll have to get used to." He let his eyes linger on the plain. It was washed with a brilliant light which even their glare shields didn't diminish. Each rock, each outcrop cast long black shadows--black silhouettes against the white ash. There were no grays, no intermediate shades. Everything was either black or white. His eyes began to ache and he turned them from the scene. He nodded at Larkwell and resumed his trek. He was trudging head down when he suddenly stopped. A chasm yawned at his feet. "Mighty wide," Larkwell observed, coming up. "Yeah," said Crag, indecisively. The rift was about twenty feet wide, its bottom lost in black shadows. Larkwell studied the chasm carefully. "Might be just the rill we need for an airlock. If it's not too deep," he added. He picked up a boulder and dropped it over the edge, waiting expectantly. Crag chuckled. The construction man had forgotten that sound couldn't be transmitted through a vacuum. Larkwell caught the laugh in his earphones and smiled weakly. He said sheepishly, "Something else to learn." "We've plenty to learn." Crag looked both ways. To the right the chasm seemed to narrow and, although he wasn't sure, end. "Let's try it," he suggested. Larkwell nodded agreement. They trudged along the edge of the fissure, walking slowly to conserve their energy. The plain became more uneven. Small outcroppings of black glassy rock punctured the ash, becoming more numerous as they progressed. Occasional saw-toothed needles pierced the sky. Several times they stopped and looked back at the Aztec. It was a black cylinder, smaller yet seemingly close. Crag's guess was right. The chasm narrowed abruptly and terminated at the base of a small knoll. Both rockets were now hidden by intervening rocks. He hesitated before striking out, keeping Backbone Ridge to his right. The ground became progressively more uneven. They trudged onward for over a mile before he caught sight of the Aztec again. He paused, with the feeling something was wrong. Larkwell put it into words. "Lost." "Not lost, but off course." Crag took a moment to get his bearings and then struck out again thinking their oxygen supply couldn't stand many of these mistakes. "How you doing, Skipper?" Crag gave a start before remembering that Prochaska and Nagel were cut into their intercom. "Lousy," he told them. He gave a brief run-down. "Just happened to think that I could help guide you. I'll work you with the scope," Prochaska said. "Of course," Crag exclaimed, wondering why they hadn't thought of it before. One thing was certain: they'd have to start remembering a lot of things. Thereafter, they checked with Prochaska every few minutes. The ground constantly changed as they progressed. One moment it was level, dusty with ash; the next it was broken by low rocky ridges and interlacing chasms. Minutes extended into seeming hours and they had to stop for rest from time to time. Crag was leading the way across a small ravine when Larkwell's voice brought him up short: "Commander, we're forgetting something." "What?" "Radcounters. Mine's whispering a tune I didn't like." "Not a thing to worry about," Crag assured him. "The raw ores aren't that potent." Nevertheless he unhooked his counter and studied it. Larkwell was right. They were on hot ground but the count was low. "Won't bother us a bit," he affirmed cheerfully. Larkwell's answer was a grunt. Crag checked the instrument several times thinking that before long--when they were settled--they would mark off the boundaries of the lode. Gotch would want that. The count rose slightly. Once he caught Larkwell nervously consulting his meter. Clearly the construction boss wasn't too happy over their position. Crag wanted to tell him he had been reading too many Sunday supplements but didn't. Prochaska broke in, "You're getting close." His voice was a faint whisper over the phones. "Maybe you'd better make a cautious approach." Crag remembered the fate of Drone Able and silently agreed. Thereafter he kept his eyes peeled. They climbed a small knoll and saw Bandit. He abruptly halted, waiting until Larkwell reached his side. The rocket lay at the base of the slope, which fell away before them. It was careened at a crazy angle with its base crumpled. A wide cleft running half way to its nose was visible. Crag studied the rocket carefully. "Might still be oxygen in the space cabin," he ventured finally. "The break in the hull might not reach that far." "It does," Larkwell corrected. His eyes, trained in construction work, had noted small cracks in the metal extending up alongside the hatch. "No survivors in there," he grunted. Crag said thoughtfully: "Might be, if they had on their pressure suits. And they would have," he added. He hesitated before striking across the clearing, then began moving down the slope. Larkwell followed slowly. As he neared the rocket Crag saw that it lacked any type of failing device to absorb the landing impact. That, at least, had been one secret kept, he thought. He was wondering how to get into the space cabin when Larkwell solved the problem. He drew a thin hemp line from a leg pocket and began uncoiling it. Crag smiled approval. "Never without one in the construction business," he explained. He studied Bandit. "Maybe I can hook it over the top of that busted tail fin, then work my way up the break in the hull." "Let me try," Crag offered. The climb looked hazardous. "This is my province." Larkwell snorted. He ran his eye over the ship before casting the line. He looked surprised when it shot high above the intended target point. "Keep forgetting the low gravity," he apologized. He tried again. On the third throw he hooked the line over the torn tailfin. He rubbed his hands against his suit then started upward, climbing clumsily, each movement exaggerated by the bulky suit. He progressed slowly, testing each step. Crag held his breath. Larkwell gripped the line with his body swung outward, his feet planted against the vertical metal, reminding Crag of a human fly. He stopped to rest just below the level of the space cabin. "Thought a man was supposed to be able to jump thirty feet on the moon," he panted. "You can if you peel those duds off," Crag replied cheerfully. He ran his eye over the break noting the splintered metal. "Be careful of your suit." Larkwell didn't answer. He was busy again trying to pull his body upward, using the break in the hull to obtain finger grips. Only the moon's low gravity allowed him to perform what looked like an impossible task. He finally reached a point alongside the hatch and paused, breathing heavily. He rested a moment, then carefully inserted his hand into the break in the hull. After a moment he withdrew it, and fumbled in his leg pocket withdrawing a switchblade knife. "Got to cut through the lining," he explained. He worked the knife around inside the break for several minutes, then closed the blade and reinserted his hand, feeling around until he located the lockbar. He tugged. It didn't give. He braced his body and exerted all of his strength. This time it moved. He rested a moment then turned his attention to the remaining doglocks. In short time he had the hatch open. Carefully, then, he pulled his body across to the black rectangle and disappeared inside. "See anything?" Crag shifted his feet restlessly. "Dead men." Larkwell's voice sounded relieved over the phones. "Smashed face plates." There was a long moment of silence. Crag waited impatiently. "Just a second," he finally reported. "Looks like a live one." There was another interval of silence while Crag stewed. Finally he appeared in the opening with a hemp ladder. "Knew they had to have some way of getting out of this trap," he announced triumphantly. He knelt and secured one end to the hatch combing and let the other end drop to the ground. Crag climbed to meet him. Larkwell extended a hand and helped him through the hatch. One glance at the interior of the cabin told him that any life left was little short of a miracle. The man in the pilot's seat lay with his faceplate smashed against the instrument panel. The top of his fiberglass helmet had shattered and the top of his head was a bloody mess. A second crewman was sprawled over the communication console with his face smashed into the radarscope. His suit had been ripped from shoulder to waist and one leg was twisted at a crazy angle. Crag turned his eyes away. "Here," Larkwell grunted. He was bent over the third and last crewman, who had been strapped in a bucket seat immediately behind the pilot. Crag moved to his side and looked down at the recumbent figure. The man's suit seemed to have withstood the terrible impact. His helmet looked intact, and his faceplate was clouded. Prochaska nodded affirmatively. "Breathing," he said. Crag knelt and checked the unconscious man as best he could before finally getting back to his feet. "It's going to be a helluva job getting him back." Larkwell's eyes opened with surprise. "You mean we're going to lug that bastard back to the Aztec?" "We are." Larkwell didn't reply. Crag loosened the unconscious man from his harnessing. Larkwell watched for a while before stooping to help. When the last straps were free they pulled him close to the edge of the hatch opening. Crag made a mental inventory of the cabin while Larkwell unscrewed two metal strips from a bulkhead and laced straps from the safety harnessing between them, making a crude stretcher. Crag opened a narrow panel built into the rear bulkhead and involuntarily whistled into his lip mike. It contained two short-barreled automatic rifles and a supply of ammunition. Larkwell eyed the arms speculatively. "Looks like they expected good hunting," he observed. "Yeah," Crag grimly agreed. He slammed the metal panel shut and looked distastefully at the unconscious man. "I've a damned good notion to leave him here." "That's what I was thinking." Crag debated, and finally shrugged his shoulders. "Guess we're elected as angels of mercy. Well, let's go." "Yeah, Florence Nightingale Larkwell," the construction boss spat. He looped a line under the unconscious man's arms and rolled him to the brink of the opening. "Ought to shove him out and let him bounce a while," he growled. Crag didn't answer. He ran the other end of the line around a metal stanchion and signaled Larkwell to edge the inert figure through the hatch. Crag let the line out slowly until it became slack. Larkwell straightened up and leaned against the hatch combing with a foolish look on his face. Crag took one look at his gaping expression. "Oxygen," he snapped. Larkwell looked blank. He seized the extra cylinder from his belt and hooked it into Larkwell's suit, turning the valve. Larkwell started to sway, and almost fell through the hatch combing before Crag managed to pull him to safety. Within moments comprehension dawned on Larkwell's face. Crag quickly checked his own oxygen. It was low. Too low. The time they had lost taking the wrong route ... the time taken to open Bandit's hatch ... had upset Nagel's oxygen calculations. It was something else to remember in the future. He switched cylinders, then made a rapid calculation. It was evident they couldn't carry the injured man back with the amount of oxygen remaining. He got on the interphones and outlined the problem to Nagel. "Try one of Bandit's cylinders," he suggested. "They just might fit." "No go. I've already looked them over." He kicked the problem around in his mind. "Here's the routine," he told him. "You start out to meet us with a couple of extra cylinders. We'll take along a couple of Bandit's spares to last this critter until you can modify the valves on his suit to fit our equipment. Prochaska can guide the works. Okay?" "Roger," Prochaska cut in. Nagel gave an affirmative grunt. Crag lowered two of Bandit's cylinders and the stretcher to the floor of the crater, then took a last look around the cabin. Gotch, he knew, would ask him a thousand technical questions regarding the rocket's construction, equipment, and provisioning. He filed the mental pictures away for later analysis and turned to Larkwell. "Let's go." They descended to the plain and rolled the unconscious crewman onto the stretcher. Crag grunted as he hoisted his end. It wasn't going to be easy. The return trip proved a nightmare. Despite the moon's low surface gravity--one-sixth that of earth--the stretcher seemed an intolerable weight pulling at their arms. They trudged slowly toward the Aztec with Crag in the lead, their feet kicking up little fountains of dust. Before they had gone half a mile, they were sweating profusely and their arms and shoulders ached under their burden. Larkwell walked silently, steadily, but his breath was becoming a hoarse pant in Crag's earphones. The thought came to Crag that they wouldn't make it if, by any chance, Nagel failed to meet them. But he can't fail--not with Prochaska guiding them, he thought. They reached the end of the rill and stopped to rest. Crag checked his oxygen meter. Not good. Not good at all, but he didn't say anything to Larkwell. The construction boss swung his eyes morosely over the plain and cursed. "Nine planets and thirty-one satellites in the Solar System and we had to pick this dog," he grumbled. "Gotch must be near-sighted." Crag sighed and picked up his end of the stretcher. When Larkwell had followed suit they resumed their trek. They were moving around the base of a small knoll when Larkwell's foot struck a pothole in the ash and he stumbled. He dropped the end of the stretcher in trying to regain his balance. It struck hard against the ground, transmitting the jolt to Crag's aching shoulders. He lowered his end of the stretcher, fearful the plow had damaged the injured man's helmet. Larkwell watched unsympathetically while he examined it. "Won't make much difference," he said. Crag managed a weak grin. "Remember, we're angels of mercy." "Yeah, carrying Lucifer." The helmet proved intact. Crag sighed and signaled to move on. They hoisted the stretcher and resumed their slow trek toward the Aztec. Crag's body itched from perspiration. His face was hot, flushed and his heart thudded in his ears. Larkwell's breathing became a harsh rasp in the interphones. Occasionally Prochaska checked their progress. Crag thought Nagel was making damned poor time. He looked at his oxygen meter several times, finally beginning to worry. Larkwell put his fears into words. "We'd better drop this character and light out for the Aztec," he growled. "We're not going to make it this way." "Nagel should reach us soon." "Soon won't be soon enough." "Nagel! Get on the ball," Crag snapped curtly into the interphones. "Moving right along." The oxygen man's voice was a flat imperturbed twang. Crag fought to keep his temper under control. Nagel's calm was maddening. But it was their necks that were in danger. He repressed his anger, wondering again at the wisdom of trying to save the enemy crewman. If he lived? In short time Larkwell was grumbling again. He was on the point of telling him to shut up when Nagel appeared in the distance. He was moving slowly, stooped under the weight of the spare oxygen cylinders. He appeared somewhat like an ungainly robot, moving with mechanical steps--the movements of a machine rather than a man. Crag kept his eyes on him. Nagel never faltered, never changed pace. His figure grew steadily nearer, a dark mechanical blob against the gray ash. Crag suddenly realized that Nagel wasn't stalling; he simply lacked the strength for what was expected of him. Somehow the knowledge added to his despair. They met a short time later. Nagel dropped his burden in the ash and squirmed to straighten his body. He looked curiously at the figure in the stretcher, then at Crag. "Doesn't make much sense to me," he said critically. "Where are we going to get the oxygen to keep this bird alive?" "That's my worry," Crag snapped shortly. "Seems to me it's mine," Nagel pointed out. "I'm the oxygen man." Crag probed the voice for defiance. There was none. Nagel was merely stating a fact--an honest worry. His temper was subsiding when Larkwell spoke. "He's right. This bird's a parasite. We ought to heave him in the rill. Hell, we've got worries enough without...." "Knock it off," Crag snarled harshly. There was a short silence during which the others looked defiantly at him. "Stop the bickering and let's get going," Crag ordered. He felt on the verge of an explosion, wanted to lash out. Take it easy, he told himself. With fresh oxygen and three men the remainder of the trip was easier. Prochaska was waiting for them. He helped haul the Bandit crewman to the safety of the space cabin. When it was pressurized they removed their suits and Crag began to strip the heavy space garments from the injured man's body. He finished and stepped back, letting him lie on the deck. They stood in a tight half-circle, silently studying the inert figure. It was that of an extremely short man, about five feet, Crag judged, and thin. A thinness without emaciation. His face was pale, haggard and, like the Aztec crewmen's, covered with stubbly beard. He appeared in his late thirties or early forties but Crag surmised he was much younger. His chest rose and fell irregularly and his breathing was harsh. Crag knelt and checked his pulse. It was shallow, fast. "I don't know." He got to his feet. "He may have internal injuries ... or just a bad concussion." "To hell with him," spat Larkwell. Prochaska said, "He'll either live or die. In either case there's not much we can do about it." His voice wasn't callous, just matter-of-fact. Crag nodded agreement. The Chief turned his back. Crag was brooding over the possible complications of having an enemy in their midst when his nostrils caught a familiar whiff. He turned, startled. The Chief was holding a pot of coffee. "I did smuggle one small helping," he confessed. Crag looked thoughtfully at the pot. "I should cite you for a court-martial. However ..." He reached for the cup the Chief was extending. They drank the coffee slowly, savoring each drop, while Larkwell outlined their next step. It was one Crag had been worrying about. "As you know, the plans call for living in the Aztec until we can get a sheltered airlock into operation," Larkwell explained. "To do that we gotta lower this baby to the horizontal so I can loosen the afterburner section and clear out the gunk. Then we can get the prime airlock installed and working. That should give us ample quarters until we can build the permanent lock--maybe in that rill we passed." "We got to rush that," Nagel cut in. "Right now we lose total cabin pressure every time we stir out of this trap. We can't keep it up for long." Crag nodded. Nagel was right. The airlock had to be the first order of business. The plans called for just such a move and, accordingly, the rocket had been designed with such a conversion in mind. Only it had been planned as a short-term stopgap--one to be used only until a below-surface airlock could be constructed. Now that Drone Able had been lost-- "Golly, what'll we do with all the room?" Prochaska broke in humorously. He flicked his eyes around the cabin. "Just imagine, we'll be able to sleep stretched out instead of doubled up in a bucket seat." Larkwell took up the conversation and they listened while he outlined the step-by-step procedure. It was his show and they gave him full stage. He suggested they might be able to use one of Aztec's now useless servo motors in the task. When he finished, Crag glanced down at the Bandit crewman. Pale blue eyes stared back at him. Ice-blue, calm, yet tinged with mockery. They exchanged a long look. "Feel better?" Crag finally asked, wondering if by any chance he spoke English. "Yes, thank you." The voice held the barest suggestion of an accent. "We brought you to our ship ..." Crag stopped, wondering how to proceed. After all the man was an enemy. A dangerous one at that. "So I see." The voice was laconic. "Why?" "We're human," snapped Crag brutally. The pale blue eyes regarded him intently. "I'm Adam Crag, Commander," he added. The Bandit crewman tried to push himself up on his elbow. His face blanched and he fell back. "I seem to be a trifle weak," he apologized. He looked at the circle of faces before his eyes settled back on Crag. "My name is Richter. Otto Richter." Prochaska said, "That's a German name." "I am German." "On an Iron Curtain rocket?" Nagel asked sarcastically. Richter gave the oxygen man a long cool look. "That seems to be the case," he said finally. The group fell silent. It was Crag's move. He hesitated. When he spoke his tone was decisive. "We're stuck with you. For the time being you may regard yourself as confined. You will not be allowed any freedom ... until we decide what to do with you." "I understand." "As soon as we modify the valves on your suit to fit our cylinders we're going to move you outside." He instructed Nagel to get busy on the valves, then turned to Larkwell. "Let's get along with lowering this baby." CHAPTER 10 "Gordon Nagel?" The professor turned the name over in his mind. "Yes, I believe I recall him. Let's see, that would have been about...." He paused, looking thoughtfully into space. The agent said, "Graduated in '55. One of your honor students." "Ah, yes, how could I have forgotten?" The Professor folded his hands across his plump stomach and settled back in his chair. "I seem to recall him as sort of an intense, nervous type," he said at last. "Sort of withdrawn but, as you mentioned, quite brilliant. Now that I think of it--" He abruptly stopped speaking and looked at the agent with a startled face. "You mean the man in the moon?" he blurted. "Yes, that's the one." "Ah, no wonder the name sounded so familiar. But, of course, we have so many famous alumni. Ruthill University prides itself--" "Of course," the agent cut in. The professor gave him a hurt look before he began talking again. He rambled at length. Every word he uttered was taped on the agent's pocket recorder. * * * * * "Gordon Nagel, the young man on the moon flight? Why certainly I recall young Nagel," the high school principal said. "A fine student ... one of the best." He looked archly at the agent down a long thin nose. "Braxton High School is extremely proud of Gordon Nagel. Extremely proud. If I say so myself he has set a mark for other young men to strive for." "Of course," the agent agreed. "This is a case which well vindicates the stress we've put on the physical and life sciences," the principal continued. "It is the objective of Braxton High School to give every qualified student the groundwork he needs for later academic success. That is, students with sufficiently high I.Q.," he added. "Certainly, but about Gordon Nagel...?" "Yes, of course." The principal began to speak again. The agent relaxed, listening. He didn't give a damn about the moon but he was extremely interested in the thirty some years of Nagel's life preceding that trip. Very much so. He left the school thinking that Nagel owed quite a lot to Braxton High. At least the principal had inferred as much. * * * * * "Yes, I did go with Gordon for a while," Mrs. LeRoy Farwell said. "But of course it was never serious. Just an occasional school dance or something. He might be famous but, well, frankly he wasn't my type. He was an awful drip." Her eyes brushed the agent's face meaningfully. "I like 'em live, if you know what I mean." "Certainly, Mrs. Farwell," the agent said gravely. "But about Nagel...?" There were many people representing three decades of contact with Gordon Nagel. Some of them recalled him only fleetingly. Others rambled at length. Odd little entries came to life to fit into the dossier. Photographs and records were exhumed. Gordon Nagel ... Gordon Nagel.... The file on Gordon Nagel grew. * * * * * Colonel Michael Gotch didn't like the idea of an addition to the Aztec crew. Didn't like it at all. He informed Crag that the rescue had been entirely unnecessary. Unrealistic, was the word he had used. He was extremely interested in the fact that Bandit housed an arsenal. He suggested, in view of Drone Able's loss, they shouldn't overlook Bandit's supplies. "Especially as you have another mouth to feed," he said blandly. Crag agreed. He didn't say so but he had already planned just such a move. The Colonel immediately launched into a barrage of questions concerning the crashed rocket. He seemed grieved when Crag couldn't supply answers down to the last detail. "Look," Crag finally exploded, "give us time ... time. We just got here. Remember?" "Yes ... yes, I know. But the information is vital," Gotch said firmly. "I would appreciate it if you would try...." Crag cursed and snapped the communicator off. "What's wrong? The bird colonel heckling you?" "Hounding is the word," Crag corrected. He fixed the Chief with a baleful eye and uttered an epithet with regard to the Colonel's ancestry. Prochaska chuckled. Larkwell quickly demonstrated that he knew the Aztec inside and out far better than did any of the others. Aside from several large cables supplied expressly for the purpose of lowering the rocket, he obtained the rest of the equipment needed from the ship. Under his direction two winches were set up about thirty yards from the ship and a cable run to each to form a V-line. A second line ran from each winch to a nearby shallow gully. Heavy weights--now useless parts of the ship's engines--were fastened to these and buried. The lines were intended to anchor the winches during the critical period of lowering the rocket. Finally Larkwell ran a guide line from the Aztec's nose to a third winch. This one was powered by an electric motor which was powered by the ship's batteries. While Larkwell and Nagel prepared to lower the rocket Crag smoothed off an area of the plain's surface and marked off a twenty-foot square. He finished and looked at his handiwork with satisfaction. Richter's eyes were filled with interest. "Using it to chart the frequency of meteorite falls," Crag explained. "We'd like to get an idea of the hazard." "Plenty," Richter said succinctly. He started to add more and stopped. Crag felt the urge to pump him but refrained. The least he became involved the better, he thought. It didn't escape him that the German seemed to have recovered to a remarkable extent. Well, that was something else to remember. Richter injured was one thing. But Richter recovered ... He snapped the thought off and turned toward the base of the rocket, indicating that the German should follow. Larkwell was testing the winches and checking the cables when they arrived. "About ready," he told Crag. "Then let her go." The construction boss nodded and barked a command to Prochaska and Nagel, who were manning the restraining winches. When they acknowledged they were ready he strode to the power winch. "Okay." His voice was a terse crack in the interphones. The Aztec shuddered on its base, teetering, then its nose began to cant downward. It moved slowly in an arc across the sky. "Take up," Larkwell barked into the mike. The guide lines tautened. "Okay." This time Prochaska and Nagel fed line through the winches more slowly. The nose of the rocket had passed through sixty degrees of arc when its tail began to inch backward, biting into the plain. "Hold up!" Larkwell circled the rocket and approached the tailfins from one side. He looked up at the body of the ship, then back at the base. Satisfied it would hold he ordered the winches started. The nose moved slowly toward the ground, swaying slightly from side to side. In another moment it lay on its belly on the plain. "Now the real work begins," Larkwell told Crag. "We gotta clean everything out of that stovepipe and get the airlock rigged." His voice was complaining but his face indicated the importance he attached to the job. "How long do you figure it'll take?" Larkwell rubbed his faceplate thoughtfully. "About two days, with some catnaps and some help." "Good." Crag looked thoughtfully at Richter. "Any reason you can't help?" he asked sharply. "None at all," Richter answered solemnly. While Larkwell and Nagel labored in the tail section, Crag and Prochaska rearranged the space cabin. The chemical commode was placed in one corner and a nylon curtain rigged around it--their one concession to civilization. Crag was conscious of Richter's eyes following them--weighing, analyzing, speculating. He caught himself swiveling around at odd times to check on him, but Richter seemed unconcerned. Electric power from the batteries was limited. For the most part they would be living on space rations--food concentrates supplemented with vitamin pills--and a square of chocolate daily per man. Later, when the airlock was installed in the area now occupied by the afterburners and machinery, they would be able to appreciably extend their living quarters. Until then, Crag thought wryly, they would live like sardines--with an enemy in their midst. An enemy and a saboteur, he mentally corrected. Aside from that there was the constant danger from meteorite falls. He shook his head despairingly. Life on the moon wasn't all it could be. Not by a damn sight. Nagel was becoming perturbed over their oxygen consumption. He had set up the small tanks containing algae in a nutrient solution, tending them like a mother hen. In time, if the cultivation were successful, the small algae farm would convert the carbon dioxide from their respiration into oxygen. At the present time the carbon dioxide was being absorbed by chemical means. As things stood, it was necessary for the entire crew to don spacesuits every time one of them left the cabin. Each time the cabin air was lost in the vacuum of the moon. Crag pointed out there was no alternative until the airlock was completed, a fact which didn't keep Nagel from complaining. * * * * * Otto Richter recovered fast. Before another day had passed--the Aztec continued to operate by earth clock--he seemed to have completely recovered. It was evident that concussion and shock had been the extent of his injuries. Crag didn't know whether to be sorry or glad, he didn't, in fact, know what to do with the man. He gave firm orders that Richter was never to be left alone--not for a moment. He told him: "You will not be allowed in the area of any of the electronic equipment. First time you do ..." He looked meaningfully at him. "I understand," the German said. Thereafter, except for occasional trips to the commode, or to help with work, he kept to the corner of the space cabin allotted him. Larkwell came up for the evening meal wearing a grim look. He extended his hand toward Crag, holding a jagged chunk of rock nearly the size of a baseball. Crag took the hunk and hefted it thoughtfully. "Meteorite?" The others clustered around. "Yeah. I saw a hole in that cleared off section and reached down. There she was, big as life." "If that had hit this pipe we'd be dead ducks," Prochaska observed. "But it didn't hit," Crag corrected, trying to allay any gathering nervousness. "It just means that we're going to have to get going on the rill airlock as soon as possible." "How will loss of Able affect that?" Nagel asked curiously. "Only in the matter of size," Crag explained. "The possible loss of a drone was taken into account. The plastiblocks are constructed to make any size shelter possible. We'll start immediately when Baker lands." He looked thoughtfully at the men. "Let's not borrow any trouble." "Yeah, there's plenty without borrowing any more," Prochaska agreed. He smiled cheerfully. "I vote we all stop worrying and eat." Another complication arose. Drone Baker would be in orbit the following morning. Prochaska had to be prepared to bring it down. He was busy moving his equipment into one compact corner opposite the commode. He rigged a curtain around it, partly for privacy but mainly to mark off a definite area prohibited to Richter. The communicator was becoming another problem that harried Crag. A government geologist wanted a complete description of Arzachel's rock structure. A space medicine doctor had a lot of questions about the working of the oxygen-carbon dioxide exchange system. Someone else--Crag was never quite sure who--wanted an exact description of how the Aztec had handled during letdown. In the end he got on the communicator and curtly asked for Gotch. "Keep these people off our backs until we land Drone Baker," he told him. "It's not headquarters for some damned quiz program." "You're big news," Gotch placated. "What you tell us will help with future rockets." "Like a mineral description of the terrain?" "Even that. But cheer up, Commander. The worst is yet to come." He broke off before Crag could snap a reply. Prochaska grinned at his discomfiture. "That's what comes of being famous," he said. "We're wheels." "A wheel on the moon." Crag looked questioningly at him. "Is that good?" "Damned if I know. I haven't been here long enough." * * * * * Crag was surprised to see how rapidly work in the tail section was progressing. Larkwell had loosened the giant engines and fuel tanks and pulled them from the ship with power from one of the rocket's servo motors. They lay on the dusty floor of the plain, incongruous in their new setting. He thought it a harbinger of things to come. A rocket garage on the floor of barren Arzachel. Four men attempting to build an empire from the hull of a space ship. In time it would be replaced by an airlock in a rill ... a military base ... a domed city. Pickering Field would become a transportation center, perhaps the hub of the Solar System's transportation empire. First single freighters, then ore trains, would travel the highways of space between earth mother and her long separated child. He sighed. The ore trains were a long way in the future. Larkwell crawled out from the cavern he had hollowed in the hull and stretched. "Time for chow," he grunted. His voice over the interphones sounded tired. Nagel followed him looking morose. He didn't acknowledge Crag's presence. At evening by earth clock they ate their scant fare. They were unusually silent. The Chief seemed weary from his long vigil on the scope. Larkwell's face was sweaty, smudged with grease. He ate quickly, with the air of a man preoccupied with weighty problems. Nagel was clearly bushed. Larkwell's fast pace had been too much for him. He wore a cross, irritable expression and avoided all conversation. Richter sat alone, seemingly unconcerned that he was a virtual prisoner, confined to one small corner of the cabin barely large enough to provide sleeping space. Crag had no feelings where he was concerned, neither resentment nor sympathy. The German was just a happenstance, a castaway in the war for Arzachel. Or, more probable, he thought, the war for the moon. After chow the men took turns shaving with the single razor. It had been supplied only because of the need to keep the oxygen ports in the helmets free and to keep the lip mikes clear. "Pure luxury," Prochaska said when his turn came. "Nothing's too good for the spaceman." "Amen," Crag agreed. "I hope the next crew is going to get a bar of soap." "For their sake I hope they pick something better than this crummy planet," Larkwell grunted. * * * * * Drone Baker had entered the moon's gravisphere at the precise time spelled out by the earth computers. Its speed had dropped to a mere two hundred miles per hour. It began to accelerate, pulled by the moon, moving in a vast trajectory calculated to put it into a closing orbit around the barren satellite. Prochaska picked it up and followed it on the scope. Telemeter control from Alpine fired the first braking rockets. The blast countered the moon's pull. Drone Baker was still a speck on the scope--a solitary traveler rushing toward them through the void. "Seems incredible it took us that long," Crag mused, studying the instrument panel. He reached over and activated the analog. Back on earth saucers with faces lifted to the skies were tracking the drone's flight. Their information was channeled into computer batteries, integrated, analyzed, and sent back into space. The wave train ended in a gridded scope--the analog Crag was viewing. "Seemed a damned lot shorter when we were up there," he speculated aloud. "That's one experience that really telescopes time," the Chief agreed. "I'd hate to have to sweat it out again." "When do we take over?" Prochaska glanced at the master chrono. "Not till 0810, give or take a few minutes. It depends on the final computations from Alpine." "Better catch some sleep," Crag suggested. "It's going to be touchy once we get hold of it." "We'll be damn lucky if we get it down in Arzachel." "We'd better." Crag grinned. "Muff this and we might as well take out lunar citizenship." "No thanks. Not interested." "What's the matter, Max, no pioneer spirit?" "Go to hell," Prochaska answered amiably. "Now, Mr. Prochaska, that's no way to speak to your commanding officer," Crag reproved with mock severity. "Okay. Go to hell, Sir," he joked. Richter was a problem. Someone had to be awake at all times. Crag decided to break the crew into watches, and laid out a tentative schedule. He would take the first watch, Larkwell would relieve him at midnight, and Nagel would take over at 0300. That way Prochaska would get a full night's sleep. He would need steady nerves come morning. He outlined the schedule to the crew. Neither Larkwell nor Nagel appeared enthusiastic over the prospect of initiating a watch regime, but neither protested openly. When the others were asleep, Crag cut off the light to preserve battery power. He studied the lunar landscape out the port, thinking it must be the bleakest spot in the universe. He twisted his head and looked starward. The sky was a grab bag of suns. Off to one side giant Orion looked across the gulf of space at Taurus and the Pleiades, the seven daughters of Atlas. CHAPTER 11 "Commander!" Crag came to with a start Prochaska was leaning over him. Urgency was written across his face. "Come quick!" The Chief stepped back and motioned with his head toward the instrument corner. Crag sprang to his feet with a sense of alarm. Richter and Larkwell were still asleep. He glanced at the master chrono, 0610, and followed him into the electronics corner. Nagel was standing by the scope, a frightened look on his face. "What's up?" "Nagel woke me at six. I came in to get ready for Drone Baker ...." "Get to the point," Crag snapped irritably. "Sabotage." He indicated under the panel. "All the wiring under the main console's been slashed." Crag felt a sense of dread. "How long will it take to make repairs?" "I don't know--don't know the full extent of the damage." "Find out," Crag barked. "How about the communicator?" "Haven't tried it," Prochaska admitted. "I woke you up as soon as I found what had happened." He reached over and turned a knob. After a few seconds a hum came from the console. "Works," he said. "See how quickly you can make repairs," Crag ordered. "We've got to hook onto the drone pretty quick." He swung impatiently toward Nagel. "Was anyone up during your watch? Did anyone go to the commode?" Nagel said defensively: "No, and I was awake all the time." Too defensive, Crag thought. But no one had stirred during his watch. Therefore, the sabotage had occurred between midnight and the time Nagel wakened Prochaska. But, wait ... Prochaska could have done the sabotage in the few moments he was at the console after Nagel woke him. It would have taken just one quick slash--the work of seconds. That left him in the same spot he'd been in with regard to the time bomb. He grated harshly at Nagel: "Wake Larkwell and get on with the airlock. And don't chatter about what's happened," he added. "I won't," Nagel promised nervously. He retreated as if glad to be rid of Crag's scrutiny. "A lousy mess," Prochaska grunted. Crag didn't answer. "If we don't solve this, we're going to wind up dead," he pursued. Crag turned and faced him. "It could be anybody. You ... me." "Yeah, I know." The Chief's face got a hard tight look. "Only it isn't ... it isn't me." "I don't know that," Crag countered. Prochaska said bitterly: "You'd better find out." "I will," Crag said shortly. He got on the communicator. It took several minutes to raise Alpine. He wasn't surprised when Gotch answered, and briefly related what had happened. "Is there any possibility of telemetering her all the way in?" He knew there wasn't, but he asked anyway. "Impossible." "Okay, well try and make it from here." The Colonel added a few comments. They were colorful but definitely not complimentary. He got the distinct impression the Colonel wasn't pleased with events on the moon. When his cold voice faded from the communicator, Crag tried the analog. The grid scope came to life but it was blank. Of course, he thought, Drone Baker was cut off from earth by the body of the moon. It could not be simulated on the analog until it came from behind the blind side where the earth saucers could track its flight. "Morning," Larkwell said, sticking his head around the curtain. "How about climbing into your suits so we can get out of this can?" Crag studied his face. It seemed void of any guile. Nagel stood nervously behind him. "Okay," Crag said shortly. He hated to have Prochaska lose the precious moments. They hurriedly donned their suits and Nagel decompressed the cabin, Larkwell opened the hatch and they left. Crag closed it after them and released fresh oxygen into the cabin. Richter took off his suit and returned to his corner. His eyes were bright with interest. He knows, Crag thought. At 0630 the communicator came to life. A voice at the other end gave Drone Baker's position and velocity as if nothing had happened. The drone, on the far side of the moon, was decelerating, dropping as servo mechanisms operating on timers activated its blasters. It was guided solely by the radio controlled servos, following a flight path previously determined by banks of computers. Everything was in apple-pie order, except for the snafu in Arzachel, Crag thought bitterly. Prochaska worked silently, swiftly. Crag watched with a helpless feeling. There wasn't room for both of them to work at one time. The Chief's head and arms literally filled the opening of the sabotaged console. Once he snapped for more light and Crag beamed a torch over his shoulder, fretting from the inaction. Sounds came through the rear bulkhead where Larkwell and Nagel were working in the tail section. Strange, Crag thought, to all appearances each crew member was a dedicated man. But one was a traitor. Which one? That's what he had to find out. Richter would have been the logical suspect were it not for the episode of the time bomb. No, it hadn't been the German. It was either the competent Prochaska, the sullen Nagel or the somehow cheerful but inscrutable Larkwell. But there should be a clue. If only he knew what to look for. Well, he'd find it. When he did ... He clenched his fists savagely. At 0715 Alpine simulated the drone on the analog. Fifteen minutes later Prochaska pulled his head from the console and asked Crag to try the scope. It worked. "Now if I can get those damn wires that control the steering and braking rockets ..." He dived back into the console. Crag looked at the chrono, then swung his eyes to the instruments. Drone Baker was coming in fast. The minutes ticked off. The communicator came to life with more data. Baker was approaching Ptolemaeus on its final leg. The voice cut off and Gotch came on. "We're ready to transfer control." Prochaska shook his head negatively without looking up. "What's the maximum deadline?" Crag asked. "0812, exactly three minutes, ten seconds," Gotch rasped. Prochaska moved his head to indicate maybe. The communicator was silent. Crag watched the master chrono. At 0812 Prochaska was still buried in the panel. Crag's dismay grew--dismay and a sense of guilt over the sabotage. Gotch had warned him against the possibility innumerable times. Now it had happened. The loss of Drone Able had been a bad blow; the loss of Baker could be fatal, not only to the success of their mission but to their survival. Survival meant an airlock and the ability to live on their scant supplies until Arzachel was equipped to handle incoming rockets on a better-than-chance basis. Well, one thing at a time, he thought. He suppressed the worry nagging at his mind. Just now it was Drone Baker's turn at bat. At 0813 Prochaska sprang to his feet and nodded. Crag barked an okay into the communicator while the Chief got his bearings on the instruments. Crag hoped the lost minute wouldn't be fatal. By 0814 Prochaska had the drone under control. It was 90,000 feet over Alphons traveling at slightly better than a thousand miles per hour. He hit the braking rockets hard. "We're not going to make it," he gritted. He squinted his eyes. His face was set, grim. "Hold it with full braking power." "Not sufficient fuel allowance." "Then crash it as close as possible." Prochaska nodded and moved a control full over. The drone's braking rockets were blasting continuously. Crag studied the instruments. It was going to be close. By the instrument data they couldn't make it. Drone Baker seemed doomed. It was too high, moving too fast despite the lavish waste of braking power. His hand clenched the back of Prochaska's seat. He couldn't tear his eyes from the scope. Baker thundered down. Suddenly the drone was on them. It cleared the north rim of Arzachel at 3,000 feet. Too high, Crag half-whispered. The difference lay in the lost minute. Prochaska pushed and held the controls. Crag pictured the rocket, bucking, vibrating, torn by the conflict of energies within its fragile body. Prochaska fingered the steering rockets and pushed the drone's nose upward. Crag saw it through the port. It rushed through space in a skidding fashion before it began to move upward from the face of the moon. Prochaska hit the braking jets with full power. Crag craned his head to follow its flight. Out of one corner of his eye he saw Nagel and Larkwell on the plain, their helmeted heads turned skyward. He scrunched his face hard against the port and caught the drone at the top of its climb. It was a slender needle with light glinting on its tail--the Sword of Damocles hanging above their heads. It hung ... suspended in space ... then began backing down, dropping stern first with flame and white vapor pouring from its tail jets. It came fast. Occasional spurts from radial jets around its nose kept its body perpendicular to the plain. Vapor from the trail fluffed out hiding the body of the rocket. The flame licked out while the rocket was still over a hundred feet in the air. Prochaska cursed softly. The rocket seemed riveted to the black sky for a fraction of a second before it began to fall. Faster ... faster. It smashed into the lunar surface, lost from sight. "Exit Baker," Prochaska said woodenly. Quietly Crag got on the communicator and reported to Gotch. There was a brief silence when he had finished. Finally Gotch said, "Drone Charlie will be launched on schedule. We'll have to reassess our logistics, though. Maybe we'd better knock off the idea of the airlock-in-the-gully idea and shoot along extra oxygen and supplies instead. How does the meteorite problem look?" "Lousy," said Crag irritably. "We've had a scary near miss. I wouldn't bet on being able to survive too long in the open. Again there was a silence. "You'll have to," Gotch said slowly, "unless you can salvage Baker's cargo." "We'll check that." "You might investigate the possibility of covering the Aztec with ash." "Sure ... sure," Crag broke in. "Good idea. I'll have the boys break out the road grader immediately." "Don't be facetious," Gotch reprimanded. "We have a problem to work out." "You're telling me!" "In the meantime, try and clean up that other situation." By "other situation" Crag knew he was referring to the sabotage. Sure, be an engineer, intelligence agent, spaceman and superman, all rolled into one. He wrinkled his face bitterly. Still he had to admire the Colonel's tenacity. He was a man determined to conquer the moon. "Will do," Crag said finally. "In the meantime we'll look Baker over. There might be some salvage." "Do that," the Colonel said crisply. He cut off. CHAPTER 12 "Max Prochaska was a real well-liked boy," Mrs. Arthur Bingham said firmly, "friendly with everyone in town. Of course, Vista was just a small place then," she added reminiscently. "Not like now, especially since the helicopter factory moved in. I do declare, a soul wouldn't recognize the place any longer, with all the housing tracts and the new supermarket--" "Certainly," the agent interjected, "but about Max Prochaska." "Yes, of course." Mrs. Bingham bit her lip reflectively. "My husband always said Max would go places. I wish he could have lived to see it." For just a moment her eyes brimmed wetly, then she blew her nose, wiping them in the process. The agent waited until she had composed herself. "Little Max--I always think of him as Little Max," she explained--"was smart and pleasant, real well liked at school. And he _always_ attended church." She stressed the word always. "Just think, now they say he's on the moon." Her eyes fixed the agent with interest "You'd think he'd get dizzy." * * * * * The agent almost enjoyed tracing Max Prochaska's history, it was a neat, wrapped-up job, one that moved through a regular sequence. Teacher ... minister ... family doctor ... druggist ... scoutmaster ... athletic director--all the ties a small-town boy makes and retains. Everything was clear-cut, compact. Records, deeds, acquaintances--all in one handy package. The memory of a man who grew up in a small town persisted, borne in the minds of people whose worlds were small. The Vista paper had obligingly carried Prochaska's biography, right on the front page, under the headline: VISTAN LANDS ON MOON. The leading local drugstore was featuring a Prochaska sundae and the Mayor of the town had proclaimed MAX PROCHASKA week. Clearly, Vista was proud of its native son, but not nearly as proud as the elderly couple who still tended a chicken ranch on the outskirts of town. "Max is a good boy," Mrs. Prochaska said simply. Her husband beamed agreement. On the surface, Prochaska's record seemed clean--a good student, well-liked, the usual array of girls, and nothing much in the way of peccadillos you could hang a hat on. The agent's last view of the town was a sign at the city limits: VISTA--THE HOME OF MAX PROCHASKA. * * * * * Drone Baker looked a complete loss. It had smashed tail down onto the ash covered plain about four miles to the southeast of the Aztec, off the eastern lip of the curved crescent Prochaska had dubbed "Backbone Ridge." Crag calculated that the positions of Bandit, the drone and their own rocket roughly formed an equilateral triangle on the floor of the crater. The lower section of the rocket was crushed, its hull split lengthwise. Crag and Larkwell studied the scene from a small knoll. The drone lay in a comparatively level area about thirty feet from the edge of a deep fissure, careened at a steep angle from the vertical. Only its tail imbedded into the ground kept it from toppling. "Might as well have a closer look," Larkwell said finally. Crag nodded and beckoned Richter, who was waiting at the bottom of the knoll. Since the sabotage incident he had split the crew into two sections which varied according to task. Richter was used by either section as needed. It wasn't an arrangement that Crag liked but he didn't feel it wise, or safe, to allow anyone the privilege of privacy. Richter circled the base of the knoll and met them. When they reached the rocket, Larkwell circled it several times, studying it from all angles. "We might come out pretty well," he said finally. His voice carried a dubious note. He lifted his head and contemplated the rocket again. "Maybe some of the cargo rode through." "We hope," Crag said. "I wouldn't bank too much on it." "Think we might get inside?" Larkwell said decisively: "Not this boy. Not until we pull the nose down. This baby's ready to topple." They were discussing their next move when Prochaska came in on the interphone: "Alpine wants the dope on Baker." Damn Alpine, Crag thought moodily. He contemplated the rocket. "Tell 'em it's still here." All at once he felt depressed. Strain, he told himself. Since blast-off his life had been a succession of climaxes, each a little rougher than the one preceding. Not that he was alone in his reactions. His mind switched to Nagel. The oxygen man had become sullen, irritable, almost completely withdrawn from the group. He was, Crag thought, a lonely, miserable man. Even Larkwell was beginning to show the affects of their struggle to survive. His normal easygoing manner was broken by periods of surliness. Only Prochaska had managed to maintain his calm approach to life, but the effects were telling physically. His face was a mask of parchment drawn tightly over bone, accentuating his tired hollow eyes. But Richter seemed to be thriving. Why not? He was a doomed man given a fresh reprieve on life, with no responsibilities to burden his existence. He was on a gravy train for the time being. Still, Richter was in an unenviable spot. Nagel was openly hostile toward him. His demeanor and looks were calculated to tell the German he was an undesirable intruder. Larkwell's attitude was one of avoidance. He simply acted as if the German were not on the moon. When in the course of work it became necessary to give Richter an order, he did it with a short surly bark. Prochaska concealed whatever feeling he had toward the German. No, he thought, Richter's lot wasn't easy. He tried to push the mood aside. It wouldn't push. He checked his oxygen, and decided to swing over to Bandit before returning. The sooner they got started on the salvage job, the better. He communicated his plan to the others. Larkwell protested, "Getting ready to open this baby's more important. We'll never get started on the airlock fooling around this god forsaken desert." "Well get to that, too," Crag promised, fighting to keep his temper under control. "By going from here we'll save a couple of miles over having to make a special trip." "Suit yourself," the construction boss said truculently. Crag nodded stiffly and started toward the enemy rocket, now lost to view behind intervening rock formations. By unspoken agreement Larkwell fell in at the rear, leaving Richter sandwiched between them. The German lived constantly under the scrutiny of one or another of the crew. Crag intended to keep it that way. The trip was more difficult than he had anticipated. Twice they were forced to detour around deep fissures. Before they had gone very far Crag's radiation counter came to life. He made a note of the spot thinking that later they would map the boundaries of the radioactive area. Once or twice he checked his course with Prochaska. His oxygen meter told him they would have to hurry when they topped a low knoll of glazed rock and came upon the ship. He stopped and turned, watching Richter. If he had expected any show of emotion he was disappointed. His face was impassive. It gave Crag the feeling that he wasn't really seeing the rocket--that he was looking far beyond, into nothingness. His eyes behind the face plate were vacuous pools. "We didn't have time to bury your companions," Crag said matter-of-factly. He indicated the rocket with a motion of his head and his voice turned cruel: "They're still in there." Richter's expression remained unchanged. "It doesn't make much difference here," he said finally. He turned and faced Crag. "One thing you should understand. They," he swept his arm toward Bandit, "were the military." "And you?" Richter said stiffly: "I am a scientist." "Who destroyed our drone thinking it was us." They faced each other across the bleak lunar desert. The German's eyes had become blue fires--azure coals leaping into flame. "It makes no difference what you think," he said after a moment. "My conscience is clear." "Nuts." Larkwell spat the word with disgust. Richter shrugged and turned back toward the rocket. Crag looked at him with varying emotions. One thing was sure, he thought. Richter was a cool customer. He had seen new depths in his blue eyes when they had faced each other. They were hard eyes, ablaze with ice ... the eyes of a fanatic--or a saint. He pushed the thought aside. Prochaska came in on the phones to inquire about their oxygen. Crag checked, chagrined to find that it was too low to spend more than a few minutes at the rocket. He opened the arms locker, thinking he would have to get rid of the weapons. They could be dangerous in the wrong hands. He had been unable to carry them back the first trip. Then he had regarded them as something totally useless on the moon. Now he wasn't so sure. He hurriedly studied the space cabin, seeking the information Gotch had requested. The floor and walls were heavily padded with some foam material--standard procedure to absorb vibration and attenuate noise. Aside from the controls, there were no projecting metal surfaces or hard corners ... the view ports were larger ... acceleration pads smaller, thicker. All in all, the cabins of the two rockets were quite similar. He was examining the contents of the supply cabinets when Larkwell reminded him of their diminishing oxygen supply. They hurriedly plundered Bandit of six oxygen cylinders and started back across Arzachel's desolate plain. * * * * * Crag arbitrarily broke the lunar day into twenty-four hour periods to correspond with earth time. Twelve hours were considered as "day," the remaining time as "night." He set up regular communication periods in order to schedule their activities. Under the arrangement Alpine came in promptly at exactly a half-hour before breakfast--0500 by earth clock--and again following the evening meal. Prochaska monitored the channel during the workday to cover possible urgent messages. The schedule allowed a twelve-hour work period during the day and a three-hour work period following the evening meal, from 7:00 to 10:00. The communication periods quickly deteriorated into routine sessions--a good omen to Crag--but Gotch kept his finger in the pie. Crag had the satisfaction of knowing he was available around the clock. Consequently, when the communicator came to life midway through the regular twelve-hour work period, he knew something was brewing--something he wasn't going to like. So did Prochaska. His voice, when he called Crag to the communicator, spelled trouble. Crag used the ear microphones for privacy and acknowledged the call with a distinct feeling of unease. As he had expected, the caller was Gotch. "Drone Charlie was launched at 0600," he told Crag. "We'll feed you the data on the regular channels." There was a brief silence. "This one's got to make it," he added significantly. Crag said stonily: "We'll do our best." "I know you will, Commander. I have absolutely no fear on that score. How's everything going?" The twangy voice across the abyss of space took on a solicitous tone that set his nerves on edge. Something's wrong--something bad, he thought. The Colonel sounded like a doctor asking a dying patient how he felt. "Okay, everything seems in hand. We've got the ship in good shape and Larkwell thinks we might fare pretty well with the drone. It might be in better shape than we first thought." "Good, good, glad to hear it. We need a silver lining once in a while, eh?" "Yeah, but I'm fairly certain you didn't call just to cheer me up," Crag said dryly. "What's on your mind?" The silence came again, a little longer this time. CHAPTER 13 "You're in trouble." Gotch spoke like a man carefully choosing his words. "Intelligence informs us that another rocket's been fired from east of the Caspian. BuNav's got a track on it." Crag waited. "There are two possibilities," Gotch continued. "The first and most logical assumption is that it's manned. We surmise that from the fact that their first manned rocket was successful--that is, as far as reaching the moon is concerned. The assumption is further borne out by its trajectory and rate of acceleration." His voice fell off. "And the second possibility?" Crag prompted. "Warhead," Gotch said succinctly. "Intelligence informs us that the enemy is prepared to blow Arzachel off the face of the moon if they fail to take it over. And they have failed--so far." Crag tossed the idea around in his mind. He said fretfully, "I doubt if they could put a warhead down on Arzachel. That takes some doing. Hell, it's tough enough to monitor one in from here, let alone smack from earth." "I think you're right, but they can try." Gotch's voice became brisk. "Here's the dope as we see it. We think the rocket contains a landing party for the purpose of establishing a moon base. In Arzachel, naturally, because that's where the lode is." "More to the point, you expect an attack on Pickering Base," Crag interjected. "Well, yes, I think that is a reasonable assumption...." Crag weighed the information. Gotch was probably right. A nuclear explosion on the moon would be detected on earth. That was the dangerous course--the shot that could usher in World War III and perhaps a new cave era. Attack by a landing party seemed more logical. They batted ideas back and forth. The Colonel suggested that just before the landing phase of Red Dog--the code name assigned the new rocket--Crag post armed guards at some point covering the Aztec. "Might as well get some use out of Bandit's automatic weapons," Gotch dryly concluded. Crag disagreed. He didn't think it likely that any attack would take the form of a simple armed assault. "That would give us time to get off a message," he argued. "They can't afford that." Gotch pointed out that neither could they launch a missile while still in space. "A homing weapon couldn't differentiate between Aztec, Baker and Bandit," he said. "But they'd still have to have some sure fire quick-kill method," Crag insisted. "You may be right. Have you a better plan?" Crag did, and outlined it in some detail. Gotch listened without comment until he had finished. "Could work," he said finally. "However, it's going to shoot your schedule, even if you could do it." "Why can't we?" "You're not supermen, Commander," he said tersely. "The psychiatrists here inform us that your crew--as individuals--should be near the breaking point. We know the cumulative strain. To be truthful with you, we've been getting gray hair over that prospect." "Nuts to the psychiatrists," Crag declared with a certainty he didn't feel. "Men don't break when their survival depends on their sanity." "No?" The single word came across the void, soft and low. "We can do it," Crag persisted. "All right, I agree with the plan. I think you're wrong but you're the Commander in the field." His voice was flat. "Good luck." He cut off abruptly. Crag looked at the silent panel for a moment. Another problem, another solution required. Maybe Gotch was right. Maybe they'd all wind up as candidates for the laughing academy--if they lived long enough. The thought didn't cheer him. Well, he'd better get moving. There was a lot to be done. He looked up and saw the question in Prochaska's eyes. Might as well tell him, he thought. He repeated the information Gotch had given, together with his plan. Prochaska listened quietly, nodding from time to time. When he finished, they discussed the pros and cons of Crag's proposed course of action. Prochaska thought it would work. In the end they decided to pursue the plan without telling the others the full story. It might be the breaking point, especially for Nagel, and they would be needing a good oxygen man in the coming days. Crag got on the interphone and called Larkwell, who was working in the tail section with the others. "Judging from what you've seen of Bandit, how long would it take to make it livable as crew quarters?" "Why?" he asked querulously. "I haven't time to go into that now," Crag said evenly. "Just give me your best estimate." "You can't make it livable. It's hot." "Not that hot. You've just got the radiation creeps. Let's have the estimate." Larkwell considered a moment. "There's quite a weld job on the hull, assuming we could get the necessary patch metal from Bandit. We'd have to haul one helluva lot of gear across that damned desert--" "How long?" Crag cut in. "Well, three days, at least. But that's a minimum figure." "That's the figure you'll have to meet," Crag promised grimly. "Start now. Use Nagel and Richter. Load up the gear you'll need and get in a trip before chow." "Now?" Larkwell's voice was incredulous. "What about winding up this job first? The airlock is damned important." "Drop it," Crag said briefly. There was silence at the other end of the interphone. "Okay," the construction boss grumbled finally. Crag suggested that Prochaska make the first trip with them to look over Bandit's electronic gear. He would need to know what repairs and modifications would be necessary to make it usable. The Chief was delighted. It would mark the first time he'd been out of the space cabin since the day of their landing. * * * * * Crag watched them leave through the port. It was impossible to tell the crew members apart in their bulky garments. The extra oxygen and the tools Larkwell had selected gave them an odd shambling gait, despite the low gravity. They plodded in single file, winding slowly across the plain. The thought struck him that they resembled grotesque life forms from some alien planet. For just a moment he felt sorry, and a trifle guilty, over assigning Nagel to the trip. The oxygen man was already in a state of perpetual fatigue. Still, he couldn't allow anyone the luxury of rest. Work was in the cards--grueling, slavish toil if they were to survive. It struck Crag that this was a moment of great risk. Of the four figures plodding toward Bandit, one was an enemy ... one a saboteur. Yet, what could either accomplish by striking now? Nothing! _Not while I live_, he thought. Strangely enough, Richter bothered him more than the saboteur. There was a quality about the man he couldn't decipher, an armor he couldn't penetrate. It occurred to him that, outwardly at least, Richter was much like Prochaska--quiet, calm, steady. He performed the tasks assigned him without question ... evinced no hostility, no resentment. He was seemingly oblivious to Nagel's barbs and Larkwell's occasional surly rebuffs. On the face of the record he was an asset--a work horse who performed far more labor than Nagel. He decided he couldn't write the German off as a factor to be continually weighed--weighed and watched. He was no ordinary man. Of that he was sure. Richter's presence on the enemy's first moon rocket was ample testimony of his stature. What were his thoughts? His plans? What fires burned behind his placid countenance? Crag wished he knew. One thing was certain. He could never lower his guard. Not for a second. He sighed and turned away from the viewport. A lot of data had piled up. He'd give Alpine a little work to do to get Gotch off his neck. He reached for the communicator thinking of Ann. Probably got someone else lined up by now, he thought sourly. * * * * * Work on Bandit progressed slowly. Nagel dragged through each successive work shift on the verge of exhaustion. Crag expected him to collapse momentarily. His disintegration took him further and further from the group. He ate silently, with eyes averted. He didn't protest the arduous hours, but the amount of work he performed was negligible. Larkwell maintained his stamina but had become more quiet in the process. He seldom smiled ... never joked. Occasionally he was truculent or derisive, referring to Bandit as the "Commander's hot box." Richter remained impersonal and aloof, but performed his assigned tasks without apparent resentment. Crag noticed that he stayed as far from Larkwell as possible, perhaps fearing violence from the burly construction boss. Prochaska, alone, maintained a cheerful exterior--for which Crag was thankful. He was watching them now--the evening of the last day of Larkwell's three-day estimate--returning from the Bandit. The four figures were strung out over half a mile. He regarded that as a bad omen. They no longer worked as a crew, but as separate individuals, each in his separate world, with exception of Prochaska. He turned away from the port with the familiar feeling that time was running out, and mentally reviewed what remained to be done. Making Bandit habitable was a must. There still remained the arduous task of transferring their belongings and gear to Bandit. Drone Baker had to be toppled and her cargo salvaged. Then there was Drone Charlie, at present just a minute speck somewhere in the great void between earth and her moon; but in somewhat less than forty-eight hours it would represent tons of metal hurtling over the rim of Arzachel. This time they couldn't fumble the ball. The building of the airlock in the rill loomed in the immediate future--an oppressive shadow that caused him no end of worry. There were other problems, too--like the item of Red Dog ... the possible battle for control of the moon. Red Dog, in particular, had become the prime shadow darkening Arzachel's ashy plains. He thought about the emotional deterioration which had laid an iron grip over the expedition and wondered if they could hang on through the rough days ahead. All in all, the task of colonizing the moon appeared an extremely formidable one. He shook off his apprehensions and began planning his next step. * * * * * That evening Crag knocked off the usual three hour work period following evening chow. Nagel tumbled onto his pad and was asleep almost instantly. His breathing was a harsh rasp. At Crag's suggestion Prochaska took the watch until midnight. Crag stood guard the remainder of the night to allow Nagel and Larkwell a full night's rest. While the others slept, Crag brooded at the port. Once he ran his hand over his face, surprised at the hardness. All bone and no flesh, he thought. He looked toward the north wall of Arzachel. In a few short hours Drone Charlie would come blazing over the rim, and Red Dog snapping at its heels. CHAPTER 14 "Adam Crag was not a God-fearing man," the minister stated. His tone implied that Crag had been just the opposite. "Not a bit like his parents. The best family guidance in the world, yet he quit Sunday school almost before he got started. I doubt that he's ever been to church since." He looked archly at the agent. "Perhaps a godless world like the moon is just retribution." A garage mechanic, a junk dealer and the proprietor of a tool shop had a lot to say about Adam Crag. So did the owner of a small private airport. They remembered him as a boy with an insatiable appetite for tearing cars apart and converting them to what the junk dealer termed "supersonic jalopies." Many people in El Cajon remembered Adam Crag. Strangely enough, his teachers all the way back through grade school had little difficulty in recalling his antics and attitudes. An elementary teacher explained it by saying, "He was that kind of a boy." The family doctor had the most to say about Adam. He had long since retired, a placid seventyish man who had elected to pass his last years in the same house, in an older section of the town, in which he'd been born. He sat swinging and talking, reminiscing about "the growing up of young Adam," as he put it. The agent had made himself at home on the front steps, listening. The doctor's comments were little short of being an eulogy. He finished and was silent, tapping a black briar pipe against his hand while he contemplated the agent with eyes which had long since ceased to see. "One other thing," he added finally. "Adam was sure a heller with the girls." The agent started to comment that Crag's dossier looked like the roll call of a girl's dormitory but refrained. He didn't want to prejudice the testimony. * * * * * Zero hour on the plains of Arzachel. The sun, an intolerably brilliant ball pasted against the ebony sky, had started its drop toward the horizon. The shadows on the plain were lengthening, harbingers of the bitter two-weeks-long night to come. They crept out from the sheer wall of the crater, reaching to engulf Pickering Base with icy fingers. Crag and Prochaska were alone, now, in the stripped cabin of the Aztec. Nagel and Richter, under Larkwell's command, had departed for Bandit an hour earlier with the last of their supplies. Crag disliked splitting the crew but saw no alternative. He had to gamble. The element of certainty, the ability to predict, the expectations of logic--all these had vanished, swept away by the vagaries of chance. They could do only so much. Beyond that their fate was pawn to the chaotic cross fires of human elements pitted against the architecture of the cosmos. They were puppets in the last lottery of probability. Prochaska broke the silence: "It's going to be close." Crag's eyes remained riveted to the instruments. Drone Charlie and Red Dog were plunging through space separated by a scant half-hour's flight time. Despite the drone's long launch lead, the gap between the two rockets had been narrowed to a perilous point. Drone Charlie was decelerating rapidly, her braking rockets flaring spasmodically to slow her headlong flight. "We'd better get into our suits," Crag said finally. "We want to get out of this baby the second Charlie lets down." Prochaska nodded. They left their suits unpressurized for the time being to allow full mobility. In the moments ahead Prochaska, in particular, couldn't afford to be hampered by the rigidity the suit possessed when under pressure. They turned back to the control panel. Charlie was hurtling over Alphons, dropping toward the bleak lunar landscape with incredible speed. The mechanical voice from Alpine droned a stream of data. There was a rapid exchange of information between Prochaska and Alpine. At its conclusion he began taking over control of the drone. Crag watched tensely. Prochaska's fingers, even though encased in the heavy suit material, moved with certainty. In a little while he spoke without looking up. "Got it," he said laconically. He studied the instruments, then his fingers sought the buttons controlling Charlie's forward braking rockets. Crag thought: _This is it._ Within scant moments the drone had covered the sky over the tangled land lying between Alphons and Arzachel. It swept over the brimming cliffs at a scant two thousand feet. He saw the rocket through the forward ports. White vapor flared from its nose rockets. The Chief had it under full deceleration. The cloud of vapor covered its body. Prochaska moved the steering control and the rocket slanted upward at ever-increasing angle of climb. Crag strained his neck to keep it in sight. He thought its rate of climb was too rapid but Prochaska seemed unperturbed. His calm approach to the problem of landing the drone gave Crag renewed confidence. All at once, it seemed, Drone Charlie was hanging high in the sky, a tapered needle miraculously suspended in the heavens. Then it began dropping ... dropping. Bursts of smoke and white vapor shot from its tail jets, becoming continuous as the rocket hurtled toward the plain. The drone was lost to sight in its own clouds, but he charted its progress by the vapor spurts at its lower edge. Prochaska was draining the tail braking jets of every ounce of energy. Suddenly the rocket gave the illusion of hanging in mid-air. The gap between it and the stark terrain below seemed to have stopped closing. Crag half expected the blasting stern tubes to begin pushing the drone back into the sky. But ... no! It was moving down again, slowly. Prochaska moved another control. A servo-mechanism within the rocket stirred to life and a spidery metal network moved out from its tail housing. The drone dropped steadily, ever slower, and finally settled. The shock-absorbing frame folded, was crushed. At the same instant Prochaska silenced its rockets. It settled down, its tail tubes pushed into the plain's powdery ash scarcely a mile from the Aztec. "Perfect." Prochaska sounded pleased with himself. His thin face broke into a satisfied smile. "Nice going," Crag agreed. "Now let's get out of this trap." His eyes lingered for an instant on the analog. Red Dog had already cleared Ptolemaeus. He snapped his face plate shut, clicked on the interphone and turned the oxygen valve. His suit began to swell and grow rigid against his body. When they were pressurized, he opened the hatch and they clambered out onto the plain. He closed the hatch behind them and struck off in the direction of Bandit with the Chief at his heels. They moved as rapidly as possible. Their feet in the heavy insulated space boots kicked up small fountains of dust which dropped as quickly as they rose. From time to time Crag looked back toward the brimming cliffs. Prochaska plodded head down. His quickened breathing in the interphones sounded harsh to Crag. Plainly the long hours of monitoring the Aztec's instruments had made him soft. The microphone in his helmet came to life. It was Larkwell. "Red Dog's cleared the rim," he told them. Crag glanced back. His eyes caught the wispish trail of white vapor high above the cliffs before he saw the rocket itself. It was already in vertical attitude, letting down amid a cloud of white vapor from its stern braking rockets. "All hands disconnect their interphones," he commanded. "From here on out we operate in silence." The Red Dog interphone system might or might not be on the same band they used. He wasn't about to take that risk. "Okay," Larkwell acknowledged. "We're shutting off." Crag remembered that the German's interphones were still connected. Slip one. He decided to leave his own open--at least he'd be forewarned if anyone tried to alert the Red Dog crew. He turned back toward the rocket. Red Dog was dropping about two or three miles from the Aztec in the direction of the wrecked Baker. White smoke and flame poured from its stern tubes. It slowed visibly as it neared the lunar surface. He thought that a plumb bob dropped through the long axis of the rocket would form a right angle with the surface of Arzachel. Pilot's good, he thought. He watched until it touched down teetering on its stern tubes for a moment before coming to rest; then he turned and hurried to overtake Prochaska. The Chief's face behind his mask was covered with perspiration. He panted heavily. Crag beckoned him to follow and moved behind a low swale of rock where they would be safe from detection. The nose of Bandit jutted into the sky about a mile ahead of them. He motioned toward it, gesturing for Prochaska to go on. The Chief nodded understanding and struck off. Crag turned and began climbing a low rocky ridge that now lay between him and Red Dog. He stopped just below its crest and searched for a safe vantage point. To his right a serrated rock structure extended up over the backbone of the ridge. He angled toward it, then followed the outcropping to a point where he could see the plain beyond. Red Dog had its tail planted in the ash about three miles distant. Minute figures milled at its base, small blobs of movement against the crater floor. No sounds broke the silence of Crag's open interphones. He took this as a sign that the Red Dog sets operated on a different band. But he couldn't be sure. The tremendous advantage of having communication with his own men must be discarded. His vigil was rewarded a few moments later when the blobs around Red Dog's base began moving in the direction of the Aztec. It struck him that they couldn't see the rocket from their present position due to small intervening hillocks, although both Baker and Charlie were clearly visible. He decided the Aztec's horizontal position had tipped them to its identity while they were still space-borne. One of the Red Dog crewmen, obviously the leader, drew ahead of his companions. The other two seemed to be struggling with some object they carried between them. They moved close together, halting from time to time. He returned his gaze to the rocket, conjecturing that another crewman would have remained behind. If so, he was in the space cabin. The ship seemed lifeless. The landing party approached a small ridge overlooking the Aztec, bringing them closer to his lookout. He saw that the two men following the leader were having difficulty with their burden. They walked slowly, uncertainly, pausing from time to time. The lead man started up the rocky knoll overlooking the Aztec. His movements were slow, wary. He crouched near the top of the ridge, scanning the plain beyond before waving to his companions to follow. The gesture told Crag that their interphones were disconnected. The crewmen near the base of the knoll started climbing, moving with extreme difficulty. He watched them, wondering, until they reached the leader. They stood for a moment scouting the plain, then two of the men crouched over the burden they had lugged up the knoll. A weapon, Crag guessed. He tried to discern its shape but failed. A few moments later one of the men stepped back. A puff of white rose from the knoll. A trail of vapor shot toward the Aztec. A portable rocket launcher! His eyes tracked the missile's flight. The vapor trail terminated at its target. An instant later the Aztec disintegrated. Black chunks of the rocket hurtled into the lunar skies, becoming lost to sight. Within seconds only a jagged few feet of broken torn metal marked the site of man's first successful landing on the moon. _Wow, what a weapon_, he thought. It didn't merely push a hole in the Aztec. It disintegrated it, completely. That was one for Gotch. He filed the thought away and watched. The figures on the knoll searched the scene for a long time. Finally they turned and started back, carrying the rocket launcher with them. The act of saving the weapon told him that Red Dog carried more rockets than just the single shot fired--a disconcerting thought. He cautiously withdrew from his post and picked his way down the ridge toward Bandit, moving as rapidly as the rough terrain permitted. Everything now depended on the next move of the Red Dog's crew, he thought. One thing was certain--there would be no quarter shown. The ruthless destruction of the Aztec had set the pattern for the coming battle of Arzachel. It was a declaration of war with all rules of human warfare discarded. Well, that was okay with him. He was breathing heavily by the time he reached a spot overlooking Bandit. Nagel had decompressed the cabin and they were waiting for him with the hatch open. He crossed the clearing and a moment later was in the space cabin. He watched the gauge until it was safe to cut off his suit pressure and open his face plate. He looked at Richter; his face was blank. Tersely, then, he related what had happened. "I sort of expected that," Prochaska said quietly when he had finished. "It was the logical way." "Logical to attempt to murder men?" Nagel asked bitterly. "Entirely logical," Crag interjected. "The stakes are too big for a few human lives to matter. At least we've been warned." He turned to Prochaska. "Disconnect Richter's mikes until this show's over." The Chief nodded. Richter stood quietly by while his lip microphone was disconnected and withdrawn from the helmet. Nagel's face showed satisfaction at the act, but Larkwell's expression was wooden. Crag said, "Defense of Bandit will be under Prochaska's command." He looked grimly at his second-in-command. "Your fort has one automatic rifle. Make it count if you have to use it." The Chief nodded. Larkwell spoke up, "How about you?" "I'll be scouting with the other automatic rifle. Stay in your suits and keep ready. If they start to bring up the rocket launcher I'll signal. If that happens you'll have to get out of here, pronto. You'd better check your oxygen," he added as an afterthought. "If they think we're dead ducks they won't be toting the launcher," Prochaska said. "We hope." Crag exchanged his oxygen cylinder for a fresh one, then checked one of the automatic rifles, slipping two extra clips in his belt. On second thought he hooked a spare oxygen cylinder to the back straps. He nodded to Nagel, snapped his face plate shut and pressurized his suit. When the cabin was decompressed, he opened the hatch, scanning the knoll carefully before descending to the plain. He struck off toward the ridge overlooking Red Dog. The ground on this side of the spur was fairly flat and he made good time, but was panting heavily by the time he reached his lookout point on the crest. CHAPTER 15 Crag sighted the Red Dog party immediately--three figures plodding in single file toward Drone Baker. He saw with satisfaction that they had discarded the rocket launcher. He took that as a sign they believed the Aztec crew dead. He found a halfway comfortable sitting position, and settled back to await developments. The distant figures moved across the plain with maddening slowness. From time to time he returned his eyes to the enemy rocket. It showed no signs of life. Once he debated taking the gamble of trying to reach it, but as quickly discarded the idea. Caught on the open plain and he'd be a gone gosling. He waited. After what seemed a long while, the invaders reached a point overlooking Drone Baker. One of the figures remained on a small rise overlooking the drone while the other two separated and approached it from different directions. The tactic disquieted him. It indicated that the newcomers were not entirely convinced that they were alone in Crater Arzachel. After another interminably long time, the two figures approaching the rocket met at its base. They walked around the rocket several times, then struck out, this time toward Drone Charlie. Their companion left his lookout point and cut across the plain to join them. Crag squirmed uncomfortably. He was tired and hungry; his muscles ached from the constriction of the suit. His body was hot and clammy, and perspiration from his brow stung his eyes. He sighed, wishing he had a cigarette. Strange, he hadn't smoked in over a year but all at once the need for tobacco seemed overwhelming. He pushed the thought aside. The invaders were strung out in single file, moving in a direction which brought them closer to his position. He shifted to a point below the crest, moving slowly to avoid detection. Their path crossed his field of vision at a distance of about half a mile. At the closest point he saw they carried rifles in shoulder slings. He took this as another indication they suspected the presence of survivors. The invaders stopped and rested at a point almost opposite him. He fidgeted, trying to get his body into a more comfortable position. Finally they resumed their trek. Before they reached the drone they halted. One man remained in the cover of a spur of rock while the other two separated and advanced on the drone from different directions. Crag cursed under his breath. They certainly weren't going to be sitting ducks. Perhaps it was just a precaution. Simply good infantry tactics, he told himself, but it still raised a complication. He waited. The two invaders closed on the drone, meeting at its base. They evidently decided it was abandoned, for they left within a few minutes walking to join their waiting companion. After a short huddle they struck out in the direction of Bandit. This was the move he had waited for. He withdrew to the lee side of the ridge and picked his way toward Bandit as rapidly as possible, taking care not to brush against the sharp slivers of rock. He drew near the rocket, thinking that the open hatch would be a dead giveaway. Still, there was no alternative. A fort without a gunport was no fort at all. He climbed to a spot close to the crest of the ridge and peered back in the direction of the invaders, startled to find they were nearer than he had supposed. He hastily withdrew his head, deciding it was too late to warn the others to abandon the rocket. If the invaders climbed straight up the opposite side of the ridge, they conceivably could catch his crew on the open plain. That made another complication. He scanned the ridge. Off to his right a series of granite spurs jutted from the base rock in finger formation. He picked his way toward them, then descended until he found shelter between two rock outcroppings which gave him a clear view of Bandit. He checked his automatic rifle, moving the control lever to the semi-automatic position. The black rectangle that marked Bandit's hatch seemed lifeless. He waited. Long minutes passed. He cursed the eternal silence of the moon which robbed him of the use of his ears. A cannon could fire within an inch of his back and he'd never know it, he thought. He moved his head slightly forward from time to time in an effort to see the slope behind him. Nothing happened. His body itched intolerably from perspiration. He readjusted the suit temperature setting, gaining a slight respite from the heat. All at once he caught movement out of the corner of his face plate and involuntarily jerked his head back. He waited a moment, aware that his heart was pounding heavily, then cautiously moved forward. One of the invaders was picking his way down the slope in a path that would take him within thirty yards of his position. The man moved slowly, half-crouched, keeping his rifle cradled across his arm. They know, he thought. The open hatch was the giveaway. He anxiously searched Bandit. No sign of life was visible. He gave silent thanks that the invaders had not lugged their rocket launcher with them. Prochaska, he knew, would be watching, crouched in the shadow of the hatch opening behind the heavy automatic rifle. He estimated the distance between the base of the slope and the rocket at 400 yards--close enough for Prochaska to pick off anyone who ventured onto the plain. He waited while the invader passed abreast of him and descended to the base of the plain, taking cover in the rocks. He halted there and looked back. A few moments later Crag saw the second of the invaders moving down the slope about a hundred yards beyond his companion. He, too, stopped near the base of the rocks. Where was the third man? The same technique they used before, Crag decided. He would be covering his companions' advance from the ridge. That made it more difficult. He studied the two men at the edge of the plain. It looked like a stalemate. They either had to advance or retreat. Their time was governed by oxygen. If they advanced, they'd be dead pigeons. Prochaska couldn't miss if they chose to cross the clearing. As it was, neither side could get a clear shot at the distance separating them, although the invaders could pour a stream of shells into the open hatch. But Prochaska would be aware of that danger and would have taken refuge to one side of the opening, he decided. There was another complication. The shells were heavy enough to perforate the rocket. Well, he'd worry about that later. He moved his head for a better view of the invaders. The man nearest him had gotten into a prone position and was doing something with the end of his rifle. Crag watched, puzzled. Suddenly the man brought the rifle to his shoulder, and he saw that the end of the muzzle was bulged. Rifle grenade! Damn, they'd brought a regular arsenal. If he managed to place one in the open hatch, the Bandit crew was doomed. Heedless of the other two Red Dog crewmen, he stepped out between the shoulders of rock to gain freedom of movement and snapped his own weapon to his shoulder. He had trouble fitting his finger into the trigger guard. The enemy was spraddled on his stomach, legs apart, adjusting his body to steady his weapon. Crag moved his weapon up, bringing the prone man squarely into his sights. He squeezed the trigger, feeling the weapon jump against his padded shoulder, and leaped back into the protective cover of rock. Something struck his face plate. Splinter of rock, he thought. The watcher on the ridge hadn't been asleep. He dropped to his knees and crawled between the rock spurs to gain a new position. The sharp needle fragments under his hands and knees troubled him. One small rip and he'd be the late Adam Crag. He finally reached a place where he could see the lower end of the ridge. The man he'd shot was a motionless blob on the rocky floor, his arms and legs pulled up in a grotesque fetal position. The vulnerability of human life on the moon struck Crag forcibly. A bullet hole anywhere meant sudden violent death. A hit on the finger was as fatal as a shot through the heart. Once air pressure in a suit was lost a man was dead--horribly dying within seconds. A pinhole in the suit was enough to do it. His eyes searched for the dead man's companions. The ridge and plain seemed utterly lifeless. Bandit was a black canted monolith rising above the plain, seeming to symbolize the utter desolation and silence of Crater Arzachel. For a moment he was fascinated. The very scene portended death. It was an eery feeling. He shook it off and waited. He was finally rewarded by movement. A portion of rock near the edge of the plain seemed to rise--took shape. The dead man's companion had risen to a kneeling position, holding his rifle to his shoulder. Crag raised his gun, wondering if he could hold the man in his sights. A hundred and fifty yards to a rifleman clothed in a cumbersome space suit seemed a long way. Before he could pull the trigger, the man flung his arms outward, clawing at his throat for an instant before slumping to the rocks. It took Crag a second to comprehend what had happened. Prochaska had been ready. A figure suddenly filled the dark rectangle of Bandit, pointing toward the ridge behind Crag. He apparently was trying to tell him something. Crag scanned the ridge. It seemed deserted. He turned toward Bandit and motioned toward his faceplate. The other understood. His interphones crackled to life. Prochaska's voice was welcome. "I see him," he broke in. "He's moving up the slope to your right, trying to reach the top of the ridge. Too far for a shot," he added. Crag scrambled into a clearing and scanned the ridge, just in time to see a figure disappear over the skyline. He started up the slope in a beeline for the crest. If he could reach it in time, he might prevent the sniper from crossing the open plain which lay between the ridge and Red Dog. Cops and robbers, he thought. Another childhood game had suddenly been recreated, this time on the bleak plain of an airless alien crater 240,000 miles from the sunny Southern California lands of his youth. Crag reached the ridge. The plain on the other side seemed devoid of life. In the distance the squat needle that was Red Dog jutted above the ashy plain, an incongruous human artifact lost on the wastelands of the moon. Only its symmetry distinguished it from the jagged monolithic structures that dotted this end of the crater floor. He searched the slope. Movement far down the knoll to his right caught his eye. The fugitive was trying to reach a point beyond range of Crag's weapon before cutting across the plain. He studied the terrain. Far ahead and to the left of the invader the crater floor became broken by bizarre rock formations of Backbone Ridge--a great half-circle which arced back toward Red Dog. He guessed that the fantastic land ahead was the fugitive's goal. He cut recklessly down the opposite slope and gained the floor of the crater before turning in the direction he had last seen the invader. He cursed himself for having lost sight of him. Momentarily, he slowed his pace, thinking he was ripe for a bushwhacking job. His eyes roved the terrain. No movement, no sign of his quarry. He moved quickly, but warily, attempting to search every inch of the twisted rock formations covering the slope ahead. His eye detected movement off to one side. At the same instant a warning sounded in his brain and he flung himself downward and to the side, hitting the rough ground with a sickening thud. He sensed that the action had saved his life. He crawled between some rock outcroppings, hugging the ground until he reached a vantage point overlooking the area ahead. He waited, trying to search the slope without exposing his position. Minutes passed. He tossed his head restlessly. His eyes roved the plain, searching, attempting to discern movement. No movement--only a world of still life-forms. The plain--its rocks and rills--stretched before him, barren and endless. Strange, he thought, there should be vultures in the sky. And on the plain creosote bushes, purple sage, cactus ... coyotes and rattlesnakes. But ... no! This was an other-world desert, one spawned in the fires of hell--a never-never land of scalding heat and unbelievable cold. He thought it was like a painting by some mad artist. First he had sketched in the plain with infinite care--a white-black, monotonous, unbroken expanse. Afterward he had splashed in the rocks, painting with wild abandon, heedless of design, form or structure, until the plain was a hodgepodge of bizarre formations. They towered, squatted, pierced the sky, crawled along the plain like giant serpents--an orgy in rock without rhyme or reason. Somewhere in the lithic jungle his quarry waited. He would flush him out. He thought that the sniper must be getting low on oxygen. He couldn't afford to waste time. He had to reach Red Dog soon--if he were to live. Crag checked his oxygen meter and began moving forward, conscious that the chase would be governed by his oxygen supply. He'd have to remember that. He reached a clearing on the slope just as the sniper disappeared into the rock shadows on the opposite side. He hesitated. Would the pursued man be waiting ... covering the trail behind him? He decided not to chance crossing it and began skirting around its edge, fretting at the minutes wasted. His earphones crackled and Prochaska's voice came, a warning through the vacuum: "Nagel says your oxygen must be low." He glanced at the indicator on his cylinder. Still safe. He studied the rocks ahead and told Prochaska: "I've got to keep this baby from reaching Red Dog." "Watch yourself. Don't go beyond the point of no return." Prochaska's voice held concern. "Stop worrying." Crag pushed around the edge of the clearing with reckless haste. It was hard going and he was panting heavily long before he reached the spot where he had last seen the sniper. He paused to catch his breath. The slope fell away beneath him, a miniature kingdom of jagged needle-sharp rock. There was no sign of the fugitive. The plain, too, was devoid of life. He descended to the edge of the clearing and picked his way through the debris of some eon-old geologic catastrophe. Ahead and to the left of the ridge, the plain was broken by shallow rills and weird rock outcroppings. Farther out Backbone Ridge began as low mounds of stone, becoming twisted black stalagmites hunched incongruously against the floor of the crater, ending as jagged sharp needles of rock curving over the plain in a huge arc. A moment later he caught sight of his quarry. The invader had cut down to the edge of the plain, abandoning the protection of the ridge, making a beeline for the nearest rock extrusion on the floor of the crater. Too far away for a shot. Crag cursed and made a quick judgment, deciding to risk the open terrain in hopes of gaining shelter before the sniper was aware of his strategy. He abandoned the protection of the slope and struck out in a straight line toward the distant mounds on the floor of the crater, keeping his eyes on the fugitive. They raced across the clearing in parallel paths, several hundred yards apart. The sniper had almost reached the first rocks when he glanced back. He saw Crag and put on an extra burst of speed, reaching the first rocks while Crag was still a hundred yards from the nearest mound. Crag dropped to the ground, thankful that it was slightly uneven. At best he'd make a poor target. He crawled, keeping his body low, tossing his head in an effort to shake the perspiration from his eyes. "How you doing, skipper?" It was Prochaska. Lousy, Crag thought. He briefed him without slowing his pace. The ashy plain just in front of him spurted in little fountains of white dust. He dropped flat on his belly with a gasp. "You all right?" "Okay," Crag gritted. "This boy's just using me for target practice." Prochaska's voice became alarmed. He urged him to retreat. "We can get them some other way," he said. "Not if they once get that launcher in operation. I'm moving on." There was a moment of silence. "Okay, skipper, but watch yourself." His voice was reluctant. "And watch your oxygen." "Roger." He checked his gauge and hurriedly switched to the second cylinder. Now he was on the last one. The trick would be to stretch his oxygen out until the chase was ended--until the man ahead was a corpse. He clung to the floor of the crater, searching for shelter. The ground rose slightly to his right. He crawled toward the rise, noting that the terrain crested high enough to cut his view of the base of the rocks. Satisfied that he was no longer visible, he began inching his way toward the nearest mounds. CHAPTER 16 Crag studied the scene. He lay at one end of the great crescent of rock forming Backbone Ridge, the other end of which ended about half a mile from Red Dog. The floor of the crater between the rocket and the nearest rock formations was fairly level and unbroken. The arced formation itself was a veritable jungle of rocks of every type--gnarled, twisted rock that hugged the ground, jutting black pinnacles piercing the sky, bizarre bubble formations which appeared like weird ebony eskimo cities, and great fantastic ledges which extruded from the earth at varying angles, forming black caves against their bases. Whole armies could hide there, he thought. Only the fugitive couldn't hide. Oxygen was still the paramount issue. He'd have to thread his way through the terrible rock jungle to the distant tip of the crescent, then plunge across the open plain to the rocket if he hoped to survive. The distance between the horns of the crescent appeared about three miles. He pondered it thoughtfully, then got on the interphones and outlined his plan to Prochaska. "Okay, I know better than to argue," the Chief said dolefully when he had finished. "But watch your oxygen." Damn the oxygen, Crag thought irritably. He studied the labyrinth of rock into which his quarry had vanished, then rose and started across the plain in a direct line for the opposite tip of the crescent. The first moments were the hardest. After that he knew he must be almost out of range of the sniper's weapon. Perhaps, even, the other had not seen his maneuver. He forced himself into a slow trot, his breath whistling in his ears and his body sodden inside his suit. Perspiration stung his eyes, his leg muscles ached almost intolerably, and every movement seemed made on sheer will power. The whimsical thought crossed his mind that Gotch had never painted this side of the picture. Nor was it mentioned in the manual of space survival. He was thankful that the plain between the two tips of the crescent was fairly even. He moved quickly, but it was a long time before he reached the further tip of the crescent. He wondered if he had been observed from Red Dog. Well, no matter, he thought. He had cut the sniper's sole avenue of escape. Victory over his quarry was just a matter of time, a matter of waiting for him to appear. He picked a vantage point, a high rocky ledge which commanded all approaches to his position. After briefing Prochaska, he settled back to wait, thinking that the fugitive must be extremely low on oxygen. Long minutes passed. Once or twice he thought he saw movement among the rocks and started to lift his rifle; but there was no movement. Illusions, he told himself. His eyes were playing him tricks. The bizarre sea of rocks confronting him was a study in black and white--the intolerable light of sun-struck surfaces contrasting with the stygian blackness of the shadows. His eyes began to ache and he shifted them from time to time to shut out the glare. He was sweating again and there was a dull ache at the back of his head. Precious time was fleeing. He'd have to resolve the chase--soon. All at once he saw movement that was not an illusion. He half rose, raising his rifle when dust spurted from the ground a few feet to his left. He cursed and threw himself to the ground, rolling until he was well below the ridge. One thing was certain: the sniper had the ridge well under control. The Red Dog watcher must have warned him, he thought. He looked around. Off to one side a small rill cut through the rocks running in the sniper's general direction. He looked back toward the ridge, hesitated, then decided to gamble on the rill. He moved crablike along the side of the slope until he reached its edge and peered over. The bottom was a pool of darkness. He lowered himself over the edge with some misgivings, searching for holds with his hands and feet. His boot unexpectedly touched bottom. Crag stood for a moment on the floor of the rill. His body was clothed in black velvet shadows but it was shallow enough to leave his head in the sunlight. He moved cautiously forward, half expecting the sniper to appear in front of him. His nerves were taut, edgy. _Relax, boy, you're strung like a violin_, he told himself. _Take it easy._ A bend in the rill cut off the sun leaving him in a well of blackness. He hadn't counted on that. Before he'd moved another dozen steps he realized the rill wasn't the answer. He'd have to chance getting back into the open. More time was lost. He felt the steep sides until he located a series of breaks in the wall, then slung his rifle over his shoulder and inched upward until his head cleared the edge. The sun's sudden glare blinded him. Involuntarily he jerked his head sideways, almost losing his hold in the process. He clung to the wall for a moment before laboriously pulling his body over the edge. He lay prone against the rocks, half-expecting to be greeted by a hail of bullets. He waited quietly, without moving, then carefully raised his head. Off to one side was a series of mounds. He crawled toward them without moving his belly from the ground. When he reached the first one, he half rose and scuttled forward until he found a view of the twisted rocks where he had last seen the sniper. The scene ahead was a still-life painting. It seemed incongruous that somewhere among the quiet rocks death moved in the form of a man. He decided against penetrating further into the tangle of rocks. He'd wait. He settled back, conscious that time was fleeing. "Skipper, are you checking your oxygen?" The Chief's voice rattled against his eardrums. It was filled with alarm. "Listen, I have no time--" Crag started to growl. His words were clipped short as his eyes involuntarily took the reading of his oxygen gauge. Low ... low. He calculated quickly. He was well past the point of no return--too low to make the long trip back to Bandit. He was done, gone, a plucked gosling. He had bought himself a coffin and he'd rest there for all eternity--boxed in by the weird tombstones of Crater Arzachel. Adam Crag--the Man in the Moon. He grinned wryly. Well, at least his quarry was going with him. He wouldn't greet his Maker empty handed. He tersely informed Prochaska of his predicament, then recklessly moved to a high vantage point and scanned the rocks beyond. He had to make every second count. Light and shadow ... light and shadow. Somewhere in the crisscross of light and shadow was a man-form, a blob of protoplasm like himself, a living thing that had to be stamped out before the last of his precious oxygen was gone. He was the executioner. Somewhere ahead a doomed man waited in the docks ... waited for him to come. They were two men from opposite sides of the world, battling to death in Hell's own backyard. Only he'd win ... win before he died. He was scanning the rocky tableau when the sniper moved into his field of vision, far to one side of Crag's position. He was running with short choppy steps, threading between the rocks toward Red Dog. His haste and apparent disregard of exposing himself puzzled Crag for a moment, then he smiled grimly. Almost out of oxygen, he thought. Well, that makes two of us. But he still had to make sure his quarry died. The thought spurred him to action. He turned and scrambled back toward the tip of Backbone Ridge to cut the sniper's escape route. He reached the end rocks and waited. A few moments later he sighted a figure scrambling toward him. He raised his rifle thinking it was too far for a shot, then lowered it again. The sniper began moving more slowly and cautiously, then became lost to sight in a maze of rock outcroppings. Crag waited impatiently, aware that precious moments were fleeing. He was afraid to look at his gauge, plagued by the sense of vanishing moments. Time was running out and eternity was drawing near--near to Adam Crag as well as the sniper. The rocks extended before him, a kaleidoscopic pattern of black and white. Somewhere in the tortuous labyrinth was the man he had to kill before he himself died. He watched nervously, trying to suppress the tension pulling at his muscles. A nerve in his cheek twitched and he shook his head without removing his eyes from the rocks ahead. Still there was no sign of the other. Who was the stalker and who was the stalked? The question bothered him. Perhaps even at that instant the sniper was drawing bead. Then he'd be free to reach Red Dog--safety. Crag decided he couldn't wait. He'd have to seek the other out, somehow flush him from cover. He looked around. Off to one side a shelf of black rock angled incongruously into the sky. Its sides were steep but its top would command all approaches to the tip of the crescent. He made his way to the base of the shelf and began scrambling up its steep sides, finding it difficult to manage toe and hand holds. He slipped from time to time, hanging desperately on to keep himself from rolling back to the rocks below. Just below the top he rested, panting, fighting for breath, conscious of his heart thudding in his ears. He had to hurry! Slowly, laboriously he pulled himself up the last few feet and lay panting atop the shelf, none too soon. The sniper scrambled out of the rocks a scant hundred yards from Crag's position. He raised his rifle, then hesitated. The Red Dog crewman had fallen to his hands and knees and was fighting to rise. He pushed his hands against the plain in an attempt to get his feet under him. Crag lowered his rifle and watched curiously. The sniper finally succeeded in getting to his feet. He stood for a moment, weaving, before moving toward Crag's shelf with a faltering zigzag gait. Crag raised the rifle and tried to line the sights. He had difficulty holding the weapon steady. He started to pull the trigger when the man fell again. Crag hesitated. The sniper floundered in the ash, managed to pull himself half-erect. He weaved with a few faltering steps and plunged forward on his face. Crag watched for a moment. There was no movement. The black blob of the suit lay with the stillness of the rocks in the brazen heat of the crater. So that's the way a man dies when his oxygen runs out, he thought. He just plops down, jerks a little and departs, with as little ceremony as that. He grinned crookedly, thinking he had just watched a rehearsal of his own demise. He watched for a moment longer before turning his face back toward the plain. Red Dog was a bare half-mile away--a clear level half-mile from the tip of Backbone Ridge. That's how close the sniper had come to living. He mulled the thought with a momentary surge of hope. Red Dog? Why not? If he could shoot his way into the space cabin he'd live ... live. The thought galvanized him to action. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and scrambled down the slope heedless of the danger of ripping his suit. He could make it. He had to make it! He gained the bottom and paused to catch his breath before starting toward the rocket. A glance at his oxygen meter told him that the race was futile. Still, he forced his legs into a run, threading through the rocks toward the floor of the crater. He reached the tip of the crescent panting heavily and plunged across the level floor of the plain. His legs were leaden, his lungs burned and sweat filled his eyes, stinging and blurring his vision. Still he ran. The rocket rose from the crater floor, growing larger, larger. He tried to keep in a straight path, aware that he was moving in a crazy zigzag course. The rocket loomed bigger ... bigger. It appeared immense. Caution, he told himself, there's an hombre up there with a rifle. He halted, feeling his body weave, and tried to steady himself. High up in the nose of Red Dog the hatch was a dancing black shadow--black with movement. He pulled the rifle from his shoulder and moved the control to full automatic, falling to his knees as he did so. Strange, the ashy floor of the crater was erupting in small fountains just to his side. Danger, he thought, take cover. The warning bells were still ringing in his brain as he slid forward on his stomach and tried to steady his weapon. Dust spurted across his face plate. The black rectangle of the hatch danced crazily in his sights. He pulled back on the trigger, feeling the heavy weapon buck against his shoulder, firing until the clip was empty. His fingers hurriedly searched his belt for the spare clips. Gone. Somehow he'd lost them. He'd have to rush the rocket. He got to his feet, weaving dizzily, and forced his legs to move. Once or twice he fell, regaining his feet with difficulty. He heard a voice. It took him a minute to realize it was his own. He was babbling to Prochaska, trying to tell him ... The sky was black. No, it was white, dazzling white, white with heat, red with flame. He saw Red Dog with difficulty. The rocket was a hotel, complete with room clerk. He laughed inanely. A Single, please. No, I'll only be staying for the night. He fell again. This time it took him longer to regain his feet. He stumbled ... walked ... stumbled. His eyes sought the rocket. It was weaving, swaying back and forth. Foolish, he thought, there was no wind in Crater Arzachel. No air, no wind, no nothing. Nothing but death. Wait, there was someone sitting on top of the rocket--a giant of a man with a long white beard. He watched Crag and smiled. He reached out a hand and beckoned. Crag ran. The sky exploded within his brain, his legs buckled and he felt his face plate smash against the ashy floor. For all eternity, he thought. The blackness came. * * * * * Adam Crag opened his eyes. He was lying on his back. Above him the dome of the sky formed a great black canopy sprinkled with brilliant stars. His thoughts, chaotic memories, gradually stabilized and he remembered his mad flight toward Red Dog. This couldn't be death, he thought. Spirits didn't wear space suits. He sensed movement and twisted his head to one side. Gordon Nagel! The oxygen man's face behind the heavy plate was thin, gaunt, but he was smiling. Crag thought that he had never seen such a wonderful smile. Nagel's lips crinkled into speech: "I was beginning to wonder when you'd make it." Even his voice was different, Crag thought. The nasal twang was gone. It was soft, mellow, deep with concern. He thought it was the most wonderful sound he had ever heard. "Thanks, Gordon," he said simply. He spoke the words thinking it was the first time he'd ever addressed the other by his first name. "How'd you ever locate me?" "Started early," Nagel said. "I was pretty sure you'd push yourself past the point of no return. You seemed pretty set on getting that critter." "It's a wonder you located me." He managed to push himself to a sitting position. "Prochaska didn't think I could. But I did. Matter of fact, I was pretty close to you when you broke from the rocks heading for Red Dog." Red Dog! Crag twisted his head and looked toward the rocket. "He's lying at the base of the rocket," Nagel said, in answer to his unspoken question. "Your last volley sprayed him." "Skipper!" Prochaska's voice broke impatiently into his earphones. "Still alive," Crag answered. "Yeah--just." Prochaska's voice was peevish. "You were lucky with that last burst of fire." "Thanks to my good marksmanship," Crag quipped weakly. "I wish you'd quit acting like a company of Marines and get back here." "Okay, Colonel." Prochaska cursed and Crag grinned happily. It was good to be alive, even in Crater Arzachel. Nagel helped him to his feet and Crag stood for a moment, feeling the strength surge back into his body. He breathed deeply, luxuriating in the plentiful oxygen. Fresh oxygen. Fresh as a maiden's kiss, he thought Oxygen was gold. More than gold. It was life. "Ready, now?" "Ready as I ever will be," Crag answered. "Lead on, Gordon." They had almost reached Bandit when Crag broke the silence. "Why did you come ... to the moon, Gordon?" Nagel slowed his steps, then stopped and turned. "Why did you come, Commander?" "Because ... because ..." Crag floundered. "Because someone had to come," he blurted. "Because I was supposed to be good in my field." His eyes met Nagel's. The oxygen man was smiling, faintly. "I'm good in mine, too," he said. He chewed at his bottom lip for a moment. "I could give the same reasons as you," he said finally. "Truthfully, though, there's more to it." He looked at Crag defiantly. "I was a misfit on earth, Commander. A square peg in a round hole. I had dreams ... dreams, but they were not the dreams of earth. They were dreams of places in which there were no people." He gave an odd half-smile. "Of course I didn't tell the psych doctors that." "There's plenty I didn't tell 'em, myself," Crag said. "Commander, you might not understand this but ... I like the moon." He looked away, staring into the bleakness of Arzachel. Crag's eyes followed his. The plain beyond was an ash-filled bowl broken by weird ledges, spires, grotesque rocks. In the distance Backbone Ridge crawled along the floor of the basin, forming its fantastic labyrinths. Yet ... yet there was something fascinating, almost beautiful about the crater. It was the kind of a place a man might cross the gulfs of space to see. Nagel had crossed those gulfs. Yes, he could understand. "I'll never return to earth," he said, almost dreamily. "Nonsense." "Not nonsense, Commander. But I'm not unhappy at the prospect. Do you remember the lines: _Under the wide and starry sky Oh, dig the grave and let me lie ..._ Well, that's the way I feel about the moon." "You'll be happy enough to get back to earth," Crag predicted. "I won't get back, Commander. Don't want to get back." He turned broodingly toward Bandit. "Maybe we'd better move on," Crag said gently. "I crave to get out of this suit." CHAPTER 17 "Martin Larkwell was a good boy," the superintendent said reminiscently, "and of course we're highly pleased he's made his mark in the world." He looked at the agent and beamed. "Or should I say the moon?" The agent smiled dutifully. "Young Martin was particularly good with his hands. Not that he wasn't smart," he added hurriedly. "He was very bright, in fact, but he was fortunate in that he coupled it with an almost uncanny knack of using his hands." The superintendent rambled at length. The agent listened, thinking it was the same old story. The men in the moon were all great men. They had been fine, upstanding boys, all bright with spotless records. Well, of course that was to be expected in view of the rigorous weeding out program which had resulted in their selections. Only one of them was a traitor. Which one? The question drummed against his mind. "Martin wasn't just a study drudge," the superintendent was saying. "He was a fine athlete. The star forward of the Maple Hill Orphanage basketball team for three years," he added proudly. He leaned forward and lowered his voice as if taking the agent into his confidence. "We're conducting a drive to build the orphanage a new gym. Maybe you can guess the name we've selected for it?" "The Martin Larkwell Gymnasium," the agent said drily. "Right." The superintendent beamed. "That's how much we think of Martin Larkwell." As it turned out, the superintendent wasn't the only one who remembered Martin Larkwell with fondness. A druggist, a grocer, a gas station operator and a little gray lady who ran a pet shop remembered the orphan boy with surprising affection. They and many others. That's the way the chips fall, the agent thought philosophically. Let a man become famous and the whole world remembers him. Well, his job was to separate the wheat from the chaff. In the days to follow he painstakingly traced Martin Larkwell's trail from the Maple Hill Orphanage to New York, to various construction jobs along the East Coast and, finally, through other agents, to a two-year stint in Argentina as construction boss for an American equipment firm. Later the trail led back to America and, finally, to construction foreman on Project Step One. His selection as a member of the Aztec Crew stemmed from his excellent work and construction ability displayed during building of the drones. All in all, the agent thought, the record was clear and shiny bright. Martin Larkwell, Gordon Nagel, Max Prochaska, Adam Crag--four eager scrub-faced American boys, each outstanding in his field. There was only one hitch. Who was the traitor? * * * * * Crag filled Gotch in on the latest developments in Crater Arzachel. The Colonel listened without interruption until he was through, then retaliated with a barrage of questions. What was the extent of the radioactive field? What were the dimensions of Red Dog? Had any progress been made toward salvaging the cargo of Drone Baker? How was the airlock in the rill progressing? Would he please describe the rocket launcher the enemy had used to destroy the Aztec? Crag gritted his teeth to keep from exploding, barely managing civil replies. Finally he could hold it no longer. "Listen," he grated, "this is a four-man crew, not a damn army." "Certainly," Gotch interrupted, "I appreciate your difficulties. I was just--in a manner of speaking--outlining what has to be done." "As if I didn't know." The Colonel pressed for his future plans. Crag told him what he thought in no uncertain terms. When he finished he thought he heard a soft chuckle over the earphones. Damn Gotch, he thought, the man is a sadist. The Colonel gave him another morsel of information--a tidbit that mollified him. Pickering Field, Gotch informed him, was now the official name of the landing site in Crater Arzachel. Furthermore, the Air Force was petitioning the Joint Chiefs to make it an official part of the U.S. Air Force defense system. A fact which had been announced to the world. Furthermore, the United States had petitioned the U.N. to recognize its sovereignty over the moon. Before cutting off he added one last bit of information, switching to moon code to give it. "_Atom job near completion_," he spelled out. For the moment Crag felt jubilant. An atom-powered space ship spelled complete victory over the Eastern World. It also meant Venus ... Mars ... magical names in his mind. Man was on his way to the stars. MAN--the peripatetic quester. For just an instant he felt a pang of jealousy. He'd be pinned to his vacuum while men were conquering the planets. Or would he? But the mood passed. Pickering Field, he realized, would play an important role in the future of space flight. If it weren't the stars, at least it was the jump-off. In time it would be a vast Air Force Base housing rockets instead of stratojets. Pickering Base--the jump-off--the road to the stars. Pretty soon the place would be filled with rank so high that the bird colonels would be doing mess duty. But right now, he was Mr. Pickering Field, the Man with the Brass Eyeballs. While the others caught up on their sleep, Crag and Prochaska reviewed their homework, as the Chief had dubbed their planning sessions. The area in which Bandit rested was too far from the nearest rill to use as a base of operation, and it was also vulnerable to meteorite damage. Bandit had to be abandoned, and soon. Red Dog would be their next home. There was also the problem of salvaging the contents of Drone Baker and removing the contents of Drone Charlie. Last, there was the problem of building the airlock in one of the rills. When they had laid out the problems, they exchanged quizzical glances. The Chief smiled weakly. "Seems like a pretty big order." "A very big order," Crag amended. "The first move is to secure Red Dog." They talked about it until Crag found his eyelids growing heavy. Prochaska, although tired, volunteered to take the watch. Crag nodded gratefully--a little sleep was something he could use. * * * * * Red Dog was squat, ebony, taper-nosed, distinguishable from the lithic structures dotting this section of Crater Arzachel only by its symmetry. The grotesque rock ledges, needle-sharp pinnacles and twisted formations of the plain clearly were the handiwork of a nature in the throes of birth, when volcanoes burst and the floor of the crater was an uneasy sea of white-hot magmatic rock. Red Dog was just as clearly the creation of some other-world artificer, a creature born of the intelligence and patience of man, structured to cross the planetary voids. Yet it seemed a part of the plain, as ancient as the brooding dolomites and diorites which made the floor of Arzachel a lithic wonderland. The tail of Red Dog was buried in the ash of the plain. Its body reached upward, canted slightly from the vertical, as if it were ready to spring again to the stars. The rocket launcher had been removed. Now it stood on the plain off to one side of the rocket, small and portable, like some deadly insect. The launcher bothered Crag. He wanted to destroy it--or the single missile that remained--but was deterred by its possible use if the enemy should land another manned ship. In the end he left it where it was. One of the numerous rills which crisscrossed the floor of the crater cut near the base of the rocket at a distance of about ten yards. It was a shallow rill, about twelve feet wide and ten feet deep, with a bottom of soft ash. Adam Crag studied the rocket and rill in turn, a plan gradually forming in his mind. The rocket could be toppled, its engines removed and an airlock installed in the tail section, as had been done with the Aztec. It could be lowered into the rill and its body, all except the airlock, covered with ash. Materials salvaged from the drones could be used to construct extensions running along the floor of the rill and these, in turn, covered with ash. This, then, would be the first moonlock, a place where man could live, safe from the constant danger of destruction by chance meteorites. He looked thoughtfully at the sun. It was an unbearable circle of white light hanging in the purple-black sky just above the horizon. Giant black shadows crept out from the towering walls of the crater. Within another twenty-four hours they would engulf the rocket. During the lunar night--two weeks long--the crater floor would be gripped in the cold of absolute space; the rocket would lie in a stygian night broken only by the brilliance of the stars and the reflected light of an earth which would seem to fill the sky. But they couldn't wait for the advent of a new day. They would have to get started immediately. Larkwell opposed the idea of working through the long lunar night. He argued that the suits would not offer sufficient protection against the cold, they needed light to work, and that the slow progress they would make wouldn't warrant the risks and discomfort they would have to undergo. Nagel unexpectedly sided with Crag. He cited the waste of oxygen which resulted by having to decompress Bandit every time someone left or entered the ship. "We need an airlock, and soon," he said. Crag listened and weighed the arguments. Larkwell was right. The space suits weren't made to withstand prolonged exposure during the bitter hours of the lunar night. But Nagel was right, too. "I doubt if we could live cooped up in Bandit for two weeks without murdering one another," Prochaska observed quietly. "I vote we go ahead." "Sure, you sit on your fanny and monitor the radio," Larkwell growled. "I'm the guy who has to carry the load." Prochaska reddened and started to answer when Crag cut in: "Cut the damned bickering," he snapped. "Max handles the communication because that's his job." He looked sharply at Larkwell. The construction boss grunted but didn't reply. * * * * * Night and bitter cold came to Crater Arzachel with a staggering blow. Instantly the plain became a black pit lighted only by the stars and the enormous crescent of the earth--an airless pit in which the temperature plunged until metal became as brittle as glass and the materials of the space suits stiffened until Crag feared they would crack. Larkwell warned against continuing their work. "One misstep in lowering Red Dog and it'll shatter like an egg." Crag realized he was right. Lowering the rocket in the bitter cold and blackness would be a superhuman job. Loss of the rocket would be disastrous. Against this was the necessity of obtaining shelter from the meteor falls. His determination was fortified by the discovery that a stray meteorite had smashed the nose of Drone Charlie. He decided to go on. The cold seeped through their suits, chilled their bones, touched their arms and legs like a thousand pin pricks and lay like needles in their lungs until every movement was sheer agony. Yet their survival depended upon movement, hence every moment away from Bandit was filled with forced activity. But even the space cabin of Bandit was more like an outsized icebox than a place designed for human habitation. The rocket's insulated walls were ice to the touch, their breaths were frosty streams--sleep was possible only because of utter fatigue. At the end of each work shift the body simply rebelled against the task of retaining consciousness. Thus a few hours of merciful respite against the cold was obtained. Crag assigned Prochaska the task of monitoring the radio despite his plea to share in the more arduous work. The knowledge that one of his crew was a saboteur lay constantly in his mind. He had risked leaving Prochaska alone before, he could risk it again, but he wasn't willing to risk leaving any of the others alone in Bandit. Yet, Prochaska hadn't found the bomb! Larkwell had worked superhumanly at the task of rebuilding the Aztec--Nagel had saved his life when he could just as easily have let him die. Neither seemed the work of a saboteur. Yet the cold fact remained--there was a saboteur! Richter, too, preyed on his mind. The self-styled Eastern scientist was noncommittal, speaking only when spoken to. Yet he performed his assigned duties without hesitation. He had, in fact, made himself so useful that he almost seemed one of the crew. That, Crag told himself, was the danger. The tendency was to stop watching Richter, to trust him farther and farther. Was he planning, biding his time, preparing to strike? How? When? He wished he knew. * * * * * They toppled Red Dog in the dark of the moon. Larkwell had run two cables to manually operated winches set about twenty-five yards from the rocket. A second line extended from each winch to the ravine. The ends of these were weighted with rocks. They served to anchor the winches during the lowering of the rocket. Finally a guide line ran from the nose of the rocket to a third winch. Richter and Nagel manned the lowering winches while Larkwell worked with the guide line, with only small hand torches to aid them. It was approximately the same setup used on the Aztec--they were getting good at it. Crag helped until the moment came to lower the rocket, then there was little for him to do. He contented himself with watching the operation, playing his torch over the scene as he felt it was needed. It was an eery feeling. The rocket was a black monster bathed in the puny yellow rays of their hand torches. The pale light gave the illusion of movement until the rocket, the rocks, and the very floor of the crater seemed to writhe and squirm, playing tricks on the eyes. It was, he knew, a dangerous moment, one ripe for a saboteur to strike--or ripe for Richter. It was dark. Not an ebony dark but one, rather, with the odd color of milky velvet. The earth was almost full, a gigantic globe whose reflected light washed out the brilliance of the stars and gave a milky sheen to Crater Arzachel. It was a light in which the eye detected form as if it were looking through a murky sea. It detected form but missed detail. Only the gross structures of the plain were visible: the blackness of the rocket reaching upward into the night; fantastic twisted rocks which blotted out segments of the stars; the black blobs of men moving in heavy space suits, dark shadows against the still darker night. The eery almost futile beams of the hand torches seemed worse than useless. "All set." Larkwell's voice was grim. "Let her come." Crag fastened his eyes on the nose of Red Dog, a tapered indistinct silhouette. "Start letting out line at the count of three." There was a pause before Larkwell began the countdown. "One ... two ... three...." The nose moved, swinging slowly across the sky, then began falling. "Slack off!" The lines jerked, snapped taut, and the nose hung suspended in space, then began swinging to one side. "Take up on your line, Richter." The sideward movement stopped, leaving the rocket canted at an angle of about forty-five degrees. "Okay...." The nose moved down again, slower this time. Crag began to breathe easier. Suddenly the nose skidded to the rear, falling, then the rocket was a motionless blob on the plain. "That did it." Larkwell's voice was ominous, yet tinged with disgust. "What happened?" Crag found himself shouting into the lip mike. "The tail slipped. That's what we get for trying to lower it under these conditions," Larkwell snarled. "The damn thing's probably smashed." Crag didn't answer. He moved slowly toward the rocket, playing his torch over its hull in an attempt to discern its details. He was conscious that the others had come up and were doing the same thing, but even when he stood next to it Red Dog was no more than a black shadow. "Feel it," Larkwell barked, "that's the only way to tell. The torches are useless." They followed his advice. Crag walked alongside the rocket, moving his hand over the smooth surface. He had reached the tail and started back on the opposite side when Larkwell's voice rang in his ears. "Smashed!" "Where?" "The under side--where she hit the deck. Looks like she came down on a rock." Crag hurried back around the rocket, nearly stumbling over Larkwell's legs. The construction boss was lying on his stomach. "Under here." Crag dropped to his knees, then to his stomach and moved alongside Larkwell, playing his beam over the hull. He saw the break immediately, a ragged, gaping hole where the metal had shattered against a small rock outcropping. Too big for a weld? Larkwell answered his unspoken thought. "You'll play hell getting that welded." "It might be possible." "There may be more breaks." They lay there for a moment playing their beams along the visible underside of Red Dog until they were satisfied that, in this section at least, there was no more damage. "What now?" Larkwell asked, when they had crawled back from under the rocket. "The plans haven't changed," Crag said stonily. "We repair it ... fix it up ... move in. That's all there is to it." "You can't fix it by just saying so," Larkwell growled. "First it's got to be fixable. It looks like a cooked duck, to me." "We gotta start back," Nagel said urgently, "oxygen's getting low." Crag looked at his gauge. Nagel was right. They'd have to get moving. He was about to give the signal to return to Bandit when Richter spoke up. "It can be repaired." For a moment there was a startled silence. "How?" "The inside of the cabin is lined with foam rubber, the same as in Bandit--a self-sealing type designed for protection against meteorite damage." "So...?" Larkwell asked belligerently. Richter explained, "It's not porous. If the break were covered with metal and lined with the foam, it would do a pretty good job of sealing the cabin." "You can't patch a leak that big with rubber and expect it to hold," Larkwell argued. "Hell, the pressure would blow right through." "Not if you lined the break with metal first," Richter persisted. The suggestion startled Crag, coming as it did from a man whom he regarded as an enemy. For a moment he wondered if the German's instinct for survival were greater than his patriotism. But the plan sounded plausible. He asked Larkwell: "What do you think?" "Could be," he replied noncommittally. He didn't seem pleased that Richter was intruding in a sphere which he considered his own. Crag gave a last look at the silhouette of the fallen giant on the plain and announced: "We'll try it." "If it doesn't work, we're in the soup," Larkwell insisted. "Suppose there are more breaks?" "We'll patch those, too," Crag snapped. He felt an unreasonable surge of anger toward the construction boss. He sucked his lip, vexedly, then turned his torch on his oxygen meter. "We'd better get moving." CHAPTER 18 Colonel Michael Gotch looked at the agent across the narrow expanse of his battered desk, then his eyes fell again to the dockets. Four dockets, four small sheaves of paper, each the capsuled story of a man's life. The names on the dockets were literally burned into his mind: Adam Philip Crag, Martin LeRoy Larkwell, Gordon Wells Nagel, Max Edward Prochaska. Four names, four men, four separate egos who, by the magic of man, had been transported to a bleak haven on another world. Four men whose task was to survive an alien hell until the U.N. officially recognized the United States' claim to sovereignty over the stark lands of the moon. But one of the men was a saboteur, an agent whose task was to destroy the Western claim to ownership by destroying its occupancy of the moon. That would leave the East free to claim at least equal sovereignty on the basis that it, too, had established occupancy in a lunar base. The agent broke into his thoughts. "I'd almost stake my professional reputation he's your man." He reached over and tapped one of the dockets significantly. "The word, the single word, that's what you used to tell me to watch for. Well, the single word is there--the word that spells traitor. I'd gone over his record a dozen times before I stumbled on it." He ceased speaking and watched the Colonel. "You may be right," Gotch said at last. "That's the kind of slip I'd pounce on myself." He hesitated. "Go on," the agent said, as if reading his thoughts. "There's one thing I didn't tell you because I didn't want to prejudice your thinking. The psychiatrists agree with you." "The psychiatrists?" The agent's brow furrowed in a question. "They've restudied the records exhaustively, ever since we first knew there was a saboteur in the crew. "They've weighed their egos, dissected their personalities, analyzed their capabilities, literally taken them apart and put them together again. I got their report just this morning." Gotch looked speculatively at the agent. "Your suspect is also their choice. Only there is no traitor." "No traitor?" The agent started visibly. "I don't get you." "No traitor," Gotch echoed. "This is a tougher nut than that. The personality profile of one man shows a distinct break." He looked expectantly at the agent. "A plant." The agent muttered, the words thoughtfully. "A ringer--a spy who has adopted the life role of another. That indicates careful planning, long preparation." He muttered the words aloud, talking to himself. "He would have had to cover every contingency--friends, relatives, acquaintances, skills, hobbies--then, at an exact time and place, our man was whisked away and he merely stepped in." He shook his head. "That's the kind of nut that's really tough to crack." "Crack it," Gotch said. The agent got to his feet "I'll dig him out," he promised savagely. * * * * * The drive to rehabilitate Red Dog became a frenzy in Crag's mind. He drove his crew mercilessly, beset by a terrible sense of urgency. Nor did he spare himself. They rigged lines in the dark of the moon and rotated the rocket on its long axis until the break in the hull was accessible. Crag viewed it with dismay. It was far longer than he had feared--a splintered jagged hole whose raw torn edges were bent into the belly of the ship. They finally solved the problem by using the hatch door of Drone Charlie as a seal, lining it with sheets of foam from Bandit, whose interior temperature immediately plummeted to a point where it was scarcely livable. Prochaska bore the brunt of this new discomfort. Confined as he was to the cabin and with little opportunity for physical activity, he nearly froze until he took to living in his space suit. Crag began planning the provisioning of Red Dog even before he knew it could be repaired. During each trip from Bandit he burdened the men with supplies. Between times he managed to remove the spare oxygen cylinders carried in Drone Charlie. There was still a scant supply in Drone Baker, but he decided to leave those until later. The problems confronting him gnawed at his mind until each small difficulty assumed giant proportions. Each time he managed to fit the work into a proper mental perspective a new problem or disaster cropped up. He grew nervous and irritable. In his frantic haste to complete the work on Red Dog he found himself begrudging the crew the few hours they took off each day for sleep. _Take it easy_, he finally told himself. _Slow down_, Adam. Yet despite his almost hourly resolves to slow down, he found himself pushing at an ever faster pace. Complete Red Dog ... complete Red Dog ... became a refrain in his mind. Larkwell grew sullen and surly, snapping at Richter at the slightest provocation. Nagel became completely indifferent, and in the process, completely ineffectual. Crag had long realized that the oxygen man had reached his physical limits. Now, he knew, Nagel had passed them. Maybe he was right ... maybe he wouldn't leave the moon. When the break in Red Dog was repaired, Crag waited, tense and jittery, while Nagel entered the rocket and pressurized it. It'll work, he told himself. It's got to work. The short period Nagel remained in the rocket seemed to extend into hours before he opened the hatch. "One or two small leaks," he reported wearily. He looked disconsolately at Crag. "Maybe we can locate them--with a little time." "Good." Crag nodded, relieved. Another crisis past. He ordered Larkwell to start pulling the engines. If things went right.... The work didn't progress nearly as fast as he had hoped. For one thing, the engines weren't designed for removal. They were welded fast against cross beams spread between the hull. Consequently, the metal sides of the ship were punctured numerous times before the job was completed. Each hole required another weld, another patch, and increased the danger of later disaster. Crag grew steadily moodier. Larkwell seemed to take a vicious satisfaction out of each successive disaster. He had adopted an I-told-you-so attitude that grated Crag's nerves raw. Surprisingly enough, Richter proved to be a steadying influence, at least to Crag. He worked quietly, efficiently, seeming to anticipate problems and find solutions before even Crag recognized them. Despite the fact that he found himself depending on the German more and more, he was determined never to relax his surveillance over the man. Richter was an enemy--a man to be watched. Larkwell and Nagel were lackadaisically beginning work on the ship's airlock when Prochaska came on the interphones with an emergency call. "Gotch calling," he told Crag. "He's hot to get you on the line." Crag hesitated. "Tell him to go to hell," he said finally. "I'll call him on the regular hour." "He said you'd say that," Prochaska informed him amiably, "but he wants you now." Another emergency--another hair-raiser. _Gotch is a damn ulcer-maker_, Crag thought savagely. "Okay, I'm on my way," he said wearily. "Anything to keep him off my back." "Can I tell him that?" "Tell him anything you want," Crag snapped. He debated taking the crew with him but finally decided against it. They couldn't afford the time. Reluctantly he put the work party in Larkwell's charge and started back across the bowl of the crater, each step a deliberate weighted effort. So much to do. So little time. He trudged through the night, cursing the fate that had made him Gotch's pawn. Gotch was crisp and to the point. "Another rocket was launched from east of the Caspian this morning," he told him. "Jesus, we need a company of Marines." "Not this time, Adam." "Oh ..." Crag muttered the word. "That's right ... a warhead," Gotch confirmed. Crag kicked the information around in his mind for a moment. "What do the computers say?" "Too early to say for sure, but it looks like it's on the right track." "Unless it's a direct hit it's no go. We got ten thousand foot walls rimming this hell-hole." The Colonel was silent for a moment. "It's not quite that pat," he said finally. "Why not?" "Because of the low gravity. Thousands of tons of rock will be lifted. Some will escape but the majority will fall back like rain. They'll smash down over a tremendously large area, Adam. At least that's what the scientists tell us." "Okay, in four days we'll be underground," he said with exaggerated cheerfulness, "as safe as bunnies in their burrows." "Can you make it that fast?" "We'll have to. That means well have to use Prochaska. That'll keep you off the lines except for the regular broadcast hour," he said with satisfaction. Gotch snorted: "Go to hell." "Been on the verge of it ever since we left earth." "One other thing," Gotch said. "Baby's almost ready to try its wings." The atomic spaceship! Crag suppressed his excitement with difficulty. He held down his voice. "About time," he said laconically. "Don't give me that blasé crap," the Colonel said cheerfully. "I know exactly how you feel." He informed him that the enemy was proclaiming to the world they had established a colony on the moon, and had formally requested the United Nations to recognize their sovereignty over the lunar world. "How's that for a stack of hogwash?" he ended. "Pretty good," Crag agreed. "What are we claiming?" "The same thing. Only we happen to be telling the truth." "How will the U.N. know that?" "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, Adam. Just keep alive and let us worry about the U.N." "I'm not going to commit suicide if that's what you're thinking." "You can--if you don't keep on your toes." "Meaning...?" "The saboteur...." His voice fell off for a moment. "I've been wanting to talk with you about that, Adam. We have a lead. I can't name the man yet because it's pretty thin evidence. Just keep on your toes." "I am. I'm a grown boy, remember?" "More than usual," Gotch persisted. "The enemy is making an all-out drive to destroy Pickering Base. You can be sure the saboteur will do his share. The stage is set, Adam." "For what?" "For murder." "Not this lad." "Don't be too cocky. Remember the Blue Door episode? You're the key man ... and that makes you the key target. Without you the rest would be a cinch." "I'll be careful," Crag promised. "Doubly careful," Gotch cautioned. "Don't be a sitting duck. I think maybe we'll have a report for you before long," he added enigmatically. "If the warhead doesn't get us," Crag reminded him. "And thanks for all the good news." He laughed mirthlessly. They exchanged a few more words and cut off. He turned to Prochaska, weighing his gaunt face. "You get your wish, Max. Climb into your spaceman duds and I'll take you for a stroll. As of now you're a working man." "Yippee," Prochaska clowned, "I've joined the international ranks of workers." Crag's answering grin was bleak. "You'll be sorry," he said quietly. CHAPTER 19 The earth was no longer a round full ball. It was a gibbous mass of milk-white light, humpbacked, a twisted giant in the sky whose reflected radiance swept the lunar night and dimmed even the brightest of the stars. Its beacon swept out through space, falling in Crater Arzachel with a soft creamy sheen, outlining the structures of the plain with its dim glow. Larkwell and Nagel had finished the airlock. The rocket had been tested and, despite a few minute leaks they had failed to locate, the space cabin was sufficiently airtight to serve their purpose. But the rocket had still to be lowered into the rill. Larkwell favored waiting for the coming sun. "It's only a few more days," he told Crag. "We can't wait." "We smashed this baby once by not waiting." "Well have to risk it," Crag said firmly. "Why? We're not that short of oxygen." Crag debated. Sooner or later the others would have to be told about the new threat from the sides. That morning Gotch had given him ominous news. The computers indicated it was going to be close. Very close. He looked around. They were watching him, waiting for him to give answer to Larkwell's question. He said softly: "Okay, I'll tell you why. There's a rocket homing in with the name Arzachel on its nose." "More visitors?" The plaintive query came from Nagel. Crag shook his head negatively. "We've got arms," Prochaska broke in confidently. He grinned "We'll elect you Commander of the First Arzachel Infantry Company." "This rocket isn't manned." "No?" "It's a warhead," Crag said grimly, "a nuclear warhead. If we're not underground when it hits...." He left the sentence dangling and looked around. The masked faces were blank, expressionless. It was a moment of silence, of weighing, before Larkwell spoke. "Okay," he said, "we drop her into the hole." He turned back and gazed at Red Dog. Nagel didn't move. He kept his eyes on Crag, seemingly rooted to the spot until Prochaska touched his arm. "Come on, Gordon," he said kindly. "We've got work to do." Only then did the oxygen man turn away. Crag had the feeling he was in a daze. They worked four hours beyond the regular shift before Crag gave the signal to stop. The cables had been fastened to Red Dog--the winches set. Now it was poised on the brink of the rill, ready for lowering into the black depths. Crag was impatient to push ahead but he knew the men were too tired. Even the iron-bodied Larkwell was faltering. It would be too risky. Yet he only reluctantly gave the signal to start back toward Bandit. They trudged across the plain--five black blobs, five shadows plodding through a midnight pit. Crag led the way. The earth overhead gleamed with a yellow-green light. The stars against the purple-black sky were washed to a million glimmering pinpoints. The sky, the crater, the black shadows etched against the blacker night bespoke the alienage of the universe. Arzachel was the forgotten world. More, a world that never was. It was solid matter created of nothingness, floating in nothingness, a minute speck adrift in the terrible emptiness of the cosmos. He shivered. It was an eery feeling. He reached Bandit and waited for the others to arrive. Prochaska, fresher than the others, was first on the scene. He threw a mock salute to Crag and started up the ladder. Larkwell and Richter arrived moments later. He watched them approach. They seemed stooped--like old men, he thought--but they gave him a short nod before climbing to the space cabin. He was beginning to worry before Nagel finally appeared. The oxygen man was staggering with weariness, barely able to stand erect. Crag stepped aside. "After you, Gordon." "Thanks, Skipper." Crag anxiously watched while Gordon pulled his way up the rope ladder. He paused halfway and rested his head on his arms. After a moment he resumed the climb. Crag waited until he reached the cabin before following. Could Nagel hold out? Could a man die of sheer exhaustion? The worry nibbled at his mind. Maybe he should give him a day's rest--let him monitor the communicator. Or just sleep. As it was his contribution to their work was nil. He did little more than go through the motions. Crag debated the problem while they pressurized the cabin and removed their suits. What would Gotch do? Gotch would drive him till he died. That's what Gotch would expect him to do. No, he couldn't be soft. Even Nagel's slight contribution might make the difference between success or failure. Life or death. He would have to ride it out. Crag set his lips grimly. He had felt kinder toward the oxygen man since that brief period when Nagel had let him peer into his mind. Now ... now he felt like his executioner. Just when he was beginning to understand the vistas of Nagel's being. But understanding and sympathizing with Nagel made his task all the more difficult. Impatiently he pushed the problem from his mind. There were other, bigger things he had to consider. Like the warhead. Larkwell was getting out their rations when Prochaska slumped wordlessly to the floor. Crag leaped to his side. The Chief's face was white, drawn, twisted in a curious way. Crag felt bewildered. Odd but his brain refused to function. He was struggling to make himself think when he saw Nagel leap for his pressure suit. Understanding came. He shouted to the others and grabbed for his own garments. He fought a wave of dizziness while he struggled to get them on. His fingers were heavy, awkward. He fumbled with the face plate for long precious seconds before he managed to pull it shut and snap on the oxygen. Nagel had finished and was trying to dress Prochaska. Crag sprang to help him. Together they managed to get him into his suit and turn on his oxygen. Only then did he speak. "How did we lose oxygen, Gordon?" "I don't know." He sounded frightened. "A slow leak." He got out his test equipment and fumbled with it. The others watched, waiting nervously until he finally spoke. "A very slow leak. Must have been a meteorite strike." "Can you locate it?" Nagel shrugged in his suit "It'll take time--and cost some oxygen." Crag looked at him and decided he was past the point of work. Past, even, the point of caring. "We'll take care of it," he said gently. "Get a little rest, Gordon." "Thanks, Skipper." Nagel slumped down in one of the seats and buried his head in his arms. Before long Prochaska began to stir. He opened his eyes and looked blankly at Crag for a long moment before comprehension came to his face. "Oxygen?" "Probably a meteorite strike. But it's okay ... now." Prochaska struggled to his feet "Well, I needed the rest," he joked feebly. The leak put an end to all thoughts of rations. They would have to remain in their suits until it was found and repaired. At Crag's suggestion Nagel and Larkwell went to sleep. More properly, they simply collapsed in their suits. Richter, however, insisted on helping search for the break in the hull. Crag didn't protest; he was, in fact, thankful. It was Prochaska who found it--a small rupture hardly larger than a pea in one corner of the cabin. "Meteorite," he affirmed, examining the hole. "We're lucky it hasn't happened before." They patched the break and repressurized the cabin, then tested it. Pressure remained constant. Crag gave a sigh of relief and started to shuck his suit. Richter followed his example but Prochaska hesitated, standing uncertainly. "Makes you leery," he said. "The chances of another strike are fairly low," Crag encouraged. "I feel the same way but we can't live in these duds." He finished peeling off his garments and Prochaska followed suit. Despite his fatigue sleep didn't come easy to Crag. He tossed restlessly, trying to push the problems out of his mind. Just before he finally fell asleep thought of the saboteur popped into his mind. I'll be a sitting duck, he told himself. He was trying to pull himself back to wakefulness when his body rebelled. He slept. * * * * * They prepared to lower Red Dog into the rill. Earth was humpbacked in the sky, almost a crescent, with a bright cone of zodiacal light in the east. The light was a herald of the coming sun, a sun whose rays would not reach the depths of Crater Arzachel for another forty-eight hours. In the black pit of the crater the yellow torches of the work crew played over the body of the rocket, making it appear like some gargantuan monster pulled from the depths of the sea. It was poised on the brink of the rill with cables encircling its body, running to winches anchored nearby. The cables would be let out, slowly, allowing the rocket to descend into the depths of the crevice. Larkwell on the opposite side of the rill manned a power winch rigged to pull the rocket over the lip of the crevice. "Ready on winch one?" His voice was a brittle bark, edgy with strain. Nagel spoke up. "Ready on winch one." "Ready on winch two?" "Ready on winch two," Prochaska answered. "Here we go." The line from Red Dog to Larkwell's winch tautened, jerked, then tautened once more. Red Dog seemed to quiver, and began rolling slowly toward the brink of the rill. Crag watched from a nearby spur of rock. He smiled wryly. Lowering rockets on the moon was getting to be an old story. The cables and winches all seemed familiar. Well, this would be the last one they'd have to lower. He hoped. Richter stood beside him, silent. The rocket hung on the lip of the crevice for a moment before starting over. "Take up slack." The lines to the anchor winches became taut and the rocket hung, half-suspended in space. "Okay." Larkwell's line tightened again and the rocket jerked clear of the edge, held in space by the anchor winches. "Lower away--slowly." Crag moved to the edge of the rill, conscious of Richter at his heels. The man's constant presence jarred him; yet, he was there by his orders. He played his torch over the rocket. It was moving into the rill in a series of jerks. Its tail struck the ashy floor. In another moment it rested at the bottom of the crevice. They would make it. A wave of exultation swept him. The biggest problems could be whipped if you just got aboard and rode them. Well, he'd ridden this one--ridden it through a night of Stygian blackness and unbelievable cold. Ridden it to victory despite damnable odds. He felt jubilant. But they would have to hurry if they were to get all their supplies and gear moved from Bandit before the warhead struck. They still had to cover Red Dog, burying it beneath a thick coat of ash. Would that be enough? It was designed to protect them from the dangers of meteorite dust, but would it withstand the rain of hell to come when the warhead struck? Wearily he pushed the thought from his mind. When the others had secured their gear, he gave the signal to return to Bandit. They struck out, trudging through the blackness in single file, following a serpentine path between the occasional rills and knolls scattered between the two ships. Crag swung his arms in an effort to keep warm. Tiny needles of pain stabbed at his hands and feet, and the cold in his lungs was an agony. Even in the darkness the path between the rockets had become a familiar thing. Despite the discomfort and weariness he rather liked the long trek between the rockets. It gave him time to think and plan, a time when nothing was demanded of him except that he follow a reasonably straight course. There was no warhead, no East World menace, no Gotch. There was only the blackness and the solitude of Crater Arzachel. He even liked the blackness of the lunar night, despite its attendant cold. The mantle of darkness hid the crater's ugliness, erasing its menacing profile and softening its features. He turned his eyes skyward as he walked. The earth was huge, many times the size of the full moon as seen from its mother planet, yet it seemed fragile, delicate, a pale ethereal wanderer of the heavens. Crag did not think of himself as an imaginative man. Yet when he beheld the earth something stirred deep within him. The earth became not a thing of rock and sea water and air, but a living being. He thought of Earth as _she_. At times she was a ghost treading among the stars, a waif lost in the immensity of the universe. And at times she was a wanton woman, walking in solitary splendor, her head high and proud. The stars were her lovers. Crag walked through the night, head up, wondering if ever again he would answer her call. He had almost reached Bandit when Nagel's voice broke excitedly into his earphones. "Something's wrong with Prochaska!" Crag stopped in his tracks, gripped by a sudden fear. "What?" "He was somewhere ahead of me. I just caught up to him...." "What's wrong with him?" Crag snapped irritably. Damn, wouldn't the man stop beating around the bush? "He's collapsed." "Coming," Crag said. He hurried back through the darkness, cursing himself for having let the party get strung out. "Too late, Commander." It was Richter's voice. "His suit's deflated. Must have been a meteorite strike." "Stay there," Crag ordered. "Larkwell...?" "I'm backtracking too...." They were all there when he arrived, gathered around Prochaska's huddled form. The yellow lights of their torches pinned his body against the ashy plain. Larkwell, on his knees, was running his hands over the electronic chief's body. Crag dropped to his side. "Here it is!" Larkwell's fingers had found the hole, a tiny rip just under the shoulder. Crag examined it, conscious that something was wrong. It didn't look like the kind of hole a meteorite would make. It looked, he thought, like, a small rip. The kind of a rip a knife point might make. He stared up at Larkwell. The construction boss's eyes met his and he nodded his head affirmatively. Crag got to his feet and faced the German. "Where were you when this happened?" "Ahead of him," Richter answered. "We were strung out. I think I was next in line behind you." Larkwell said softly: "You got here before I did. That would put you behind me." "I was ahead of you when we started." The German contemplated Larkwell calmly. "I didn't see you pass me." Crag turned to Nagel. "Where were you, Gordon?" "At the rear, as usual." His voice was bitter. "How far was Prochaska ahead of you?" "I wouldn't know." He looked away into the blackness, then back to Crag. "Would you expect me to?" Crag debated. Clearly he wasn't getting anywhere with the interrogation. He looked at Nagel. The man seemed on the verge of collapse. "We'll carry Max back. Lend a hand, Richter." His voice turned cold. "I want to examine that rip in the light." The German nodded calmly. "Stay together," Crag barked. "No stringing out Larkwell, you lead the way." "Okay." The construction boss started toward Bandit. Nagel fell in at his heels. Crag and Richter, carrying Prochaska's body between them, brought up at the rear. It took the last of Crag's strength before they managed to get the body into the space cabin. The men were silent while he conducted his examination. He removed the dead man's space suit, then stripped the clothing from the upper portion of his body, examining the flesh in the area where the suit had been punctured. The skin was unmarked. He studied the rip carefully. It was a clean slit. "No meteorite," he said, getting to his feet. His voice was cold, dangerously low. Larkwell's face was grim. Nagel wore a dazed, almost uncomprehending expression. Richter looked thoughtful. Crag's face was an icy mask but his thoughts were chaotic. Fear crept into his mind. This was the danger Gotch had warned him of. Richter? The saboteur? His eyes swung from man to man, coming finally to rest on the German. While he weighed the problem, one part of his mind told him a warhead was scorching down from the sides. Time was running out. He came to a decision. He ordered Larkwell and Richter to strip the pressure gear from Prochaska's body and carry it down to the plain. "Well bury him later--after the warhead." "If we're here," Larkwell observed. "I have every intention of being here," Crag said evenly. CHAPTER 20 The day of the warhead arrived. The earth was a thin crescent in the sky whose light no longer paled the stars. They gleamed, hard and brittle against the purple-black of space, the reds and yellows and brilliant hot blues of suns lying at unimaginable distances in the vast box of the universe. Night still gripped Crater Arzachel with its intolerable cold, but a zodiacal light in the sky whispered of a lunar dawn to come. Measured against the incalculable scale of space distances the rocket had but a relative inch to cross. That inch was almost crossed. The rocket's speed had dropped to a mere crawl before it entered the moon's gravitational field; then it had picked up again, moving ever faster toward its rendezvous with destruction. Now it was storming down into the face of the land. They buried Red Dog. Larkwell had improvised a crude scraper made of metal strips from the interior of Drone Baker to aid in the task. He attached loops of cable to pull it. Crag, Larkwell and Richter wearily dragged the scraper across the plain, heaping the ash into piles, while Nagel handled the easier job of pushing them over the edge of the rill. The unevenness of the plain and occasional rock outcroppings made the work exasperatingly slow. Crag fumed but there was little he could do to rectify the situation. It took the better part of eight hours before the rill was filled level with the plain, with only the extreme end of the tail containing the airlock being left accessible. "Won't do a damn bit of good if anything big comes down," Larkwell observed when they had finished. "There's not much chance of a major hit," Crag conjectured. "It's the small stuff that worries me." "Bandit would be just as safe," Larkwell persisted. "Perhaps." He turned away from the construction boss. Richter was swinging his arms and stamping his feet in an effort to keep warm. Nagel sat dejectedly on a rock, head buried in his arms. Crag felt a momentary pity for him--a pity tinged with resentment. Nagel was the weak link in their armor--a threat to their safety. For all practical purposes two men--he didn't include Richter--were doing the work of three. Yet, he thought, he couldn't exclude the German. The oxygen and supplies he consumed were less than those they had obtained from Bandit and Red Dog. And Richter worked--worked with a calm, relentless purpose--more than made up for Nagel's inability to shoulder his share. Maybe Richter was a blessing in disguise. He smiled grimly at the thought. But we're all shot, he told himself--all damned tired. Someone had to be the first to cave in. So why not Nagel? He looked skyward. The stars reminded him of glittering chunks of ice in some celestial freezebox. He moved his arms vigorously, conscious of the bitter cold gnawing at his bones--sharp needles stabbing his arms and legs. He was cold, yet his body felt clammy. He became conscious of a dull ache at the nape of his neck. Thought of the warhead stirred him to action. "We gotta fill this baby," he said, speaking to no one in particular. "Oxygen ... food ... gear. There's not much time left." Larkwell snickered. "You can say that again." Crag said thinly: "Well make it." He looked sympathetically at Nagel. "Come on, Gordon. We gotta move." Crag kept the men close together, in single file, with Larkwell leading. He was followed by Nagel. Crag brought up at the rear. Memory of Prochaska's fate burned in his mind and he kept his attention riveted on the men ahead of him. They trudged through the night, slowly; wearily following the serpentine path toward Bandit. He occasionally flicked on his torch, splaying it over the column, checking the positions of the men ahead of him. They rounded the end of a rill, half-circled the base of a small knoll, winding their way toward Bandit. Overhead Altair formed a great triangle with Deneb and Vega. Antares gleamed red from the heart of Scorpius. Off to one side lay Sagittarius, the Archer. He thought that the giant hollow of Arzachel must be the loneliest spot in all the universe. He felt numbed, drained of all motion. "Commander." The single imperative call snapped him to attention. "Come quick. Something's wrong with Nagel!" Crag leaped ahead, flashing his torch. He saw Richter's form bent over a recumbent figure while his mind registered the fact that it was the German's voice he had heard. He leaped to his side, keeping his eyes pinned on Richter until he saw the man's hands were empty. He knelt by Nagel--his suit was inflated! Crag breathed easier. He said briefly: "Exhaustion." Richter nodded. An odd rumble sounded in Crag's earphones, rising and falling. It took him a moment to realize it was Nagel snoring. He rose, in a secret sweat of mingled relief and apprehension, and looked down at the recumbent form, thankful they were near Bandit. Larkwell grunted, "Gets tougher all the time." It took the three of them to get Nagel back to the rocket. Crag pressurized the cabin and opened the sleeping man's face plate. He continued to snore, his lips vibrating with each exhalation. While he slept they gulped down food and freshened up. When they were ready to start transferring oxygen to Red Dog, Nagel was still out. Crag hesitated, reluctant to leave him alone. The move could be fatal--if Nagel were the saboteur. But if it were Larkwell, he might find himself pitted against two men. The outlook wasn't encouraging. He cast one more glance at the recumbent figure and made up his mind. "He'll be out for a long time," Larkwell commented, as if reading his mind. "Yeah." Crag replaced Nagel's oxygen cylinder with a fresh one, closed his face plate and opened the pressure valve on his suit He waited until the others were ready and depressurized the cabin. He climbed down the ladder thinking he would have to return before the oxygen in Nagel's cylinder was exhausted. Each man carried three cylinders. When they reached Red Dog, Larkwell scrambled down into the rill and moved the oxygen cylinders, which Crag and Richter lowered, into the rocket through the new airlock. They increased the load to four cylinders each on the following trip, a decision Crag regretted long before they reached Red Dog. It was a nightmarish, body-breaking trek that left him staggering with sheer fatigue. He marveled at Larkwell and Richter. Both were small men physically. Small but tough, he thought. Tough and durable. Nagel was awake, waiting for them when they returned for another load. He greeted them with a slightly sheepish look. "Guess I caved in." "That you did," Crag affirmed. "Not that I can blame you. I'm just about at that point myself." Nagel spoke listlessly. "Alpine sent a message." "Oh?" Crag waited expectantly. "Colonel Gotch. He said the latest figures indicated the rocket would strike south of Alphons at 1350 hours." South of Alphons? How far south? It would be close, Crag thought Maybe too close. Maybe by south of Alphons Gotch meant Arzachel. Well, in that case his worries would be over. He looked at the master chrono. Time for two more trips--if they hurried. * * * * * They were making their last trip to Bandit. Larkwell led the way with Crag bringing up the rear. They trudged slowly, tiredly, haunted by the shortness of time, yet they had pushed themselves to their limit. They simply couldn't move faster. Strange, Crag thought, there's a rocket in the sky--a warhead, a nuclear bomb hurtling down from the vastness of space--slanting in on its target The target: Adam Crag and crew. If we survive this ... what next? The question haunted him. How much could they take? Specifically, how much could _he_ take? He shook the mood off. He'd take what he had to take. He thought: _One more load and we'll hole up._ The prospect of ending their toil perked up his spirits. During the time of the bomb they'd sleep--sleep. Sleep and eat and rest and sleep some more. Halfway to Bandit he suddenly sensed something wrong. Richter's form, ahead, was a black shadow. Beyond him, Nagel was a blob of movement. He flicked his torch on, shooting its beams into the darkness beyond the oxygen man. Larkwell--there was no sign of Larkwell. He quickened his pace, weaving the light back and forth on both sides of their path. "Larkwell?" His voice was imperative. No answer. "Larkwell?" Silence mocked him. Richter stopped short. Nagel turned, coming toward him in the night. "Where's Larkwell?" "He was ahead of me." It was Nagel. Richter shrugged. "Can't see that far ahead." Crag's thoughts came in a jumbled train. Had Larkwell been hit by a meteorite? No, they would have seen him fall. "Must have drawn ahead," Richter observed quietly. There was something in his voice that disturbed Crag. "Why doesn't he answer?" Nagel cut in. "Why? why?" "Larkwell! Larkwell, answer me!" Silence. A great silence. A suspicion struck his mind. Crag caught his breath, horrified at the thought. "Let's get moving--fast." He struck out in the direction of Bandit, forcing his tired legs into a trot. His boots struck against the plain, shooting needles of pain up his legs. His body grew sweaty and clammy, hot and cold by turn. A chill foreboding gripped him. He tried to light the way with his torch. The rocks made elusive shadows--shadows that danced, receded, grew and shortened by turn, until he couldn't discriminate between shadow and rock. He stumbled--fell heavily--holding his breath fearfully until he was re-assured his suit hadn't ripped. After that he slowed his pace, moving more carefully. His torch was a yellow eye preceding him across the plain. Bandit rose before him, jutting against the stars, an ominous black shadow. He moved his light, playing it over the plain. Larkwell--where was Larkwell? The yellow beam caressed the rocket, wandering over its base. Something was wrong--dreadfully wrong. It took him an instant to realize that the rope ladder had vanished. He swung the torch upward. Its yellow beams framed Larkwell's body against the hatch. "Larkwell." Crag called imperiously. The figure in the hatch didn't move. Richter came up and stood beside him. Crag cast a helpless glance at him. The German was silent, motionless, his face turned upward toward the space cabin as if he were lost in contemplation. Crag called again, anger in his voice. There was a moment of silence before a voice tinkled in his earphones. "Larkwell? There's no Larkwell here." The words were spoken slowly, tauntingly. Crag snapped wrathfully: "This is no time to be joking. Toss that ladder down and make it quick." The silence mocked him for a long moment before Larkwell answered. "I'm not joking, Mister Crag." He emphasized the word _Mister_. "There is no Larkwell. At least, not here." A fearful premonition came to Crag. He turned toward Richter. The German hadn't moved. He touched his arm and began edging back until he was well clear of the base of the rocket. Nagel stood off to one side, seeming helpless and forlorn in the drama being enacted. Crag marshaled his thoughts. "Larkwell?" "My name is Malin ... if it interest you, Mister Crag. Igor Malin." The words were spoken in a jeer. Crag felt the anger well inside him. All the pent-up emotion he had suppressed since leaving earth boiled volcanically until his body shook like a leaf. The scar on his face tingled, burned, and he involuntarily reached to rub it before remembering his helmet. He waited until the first tremors had passed, then spoke, trying to keep his voice calm. "You're disturbed, Larkwell. You don't know what you're doing." "No? You think not?" Crag bit his lip vexedly. He spoke again: "So, you're our saboteur?" "Call me that, if you wish." "And a damned traitor!" "Not a traitor, Mister Crag. To the contrary, I have been very faithful to my country." "You're a traitor," Crag stated coldly. "Come, be reasonable. A traitor is one who betrays his country. You work for your side ... I work for mine. It's as simple as that." He spoke languidly but Crag knew he was laughing at him. He made an effort to control his his temper. "You were born in the United States," Crag pursued. "Wrong again." "Raised in the Maple Hill Orphanage. I have your personnel record." "Ah, that _was_ your Martin Larkwell." The voice taunted. "But I became Martin Larkwell one sunny day in Buenos Aires. Part of, shall we say, a well planned tactic? No, I am not your Martin Larkwell, Mister Crag. And I'm happy enough to be able to shed his miserable identity." "What do you expect to gain?" Crag asked. He kept his voice reasonable, hedging for time. "Come, now, Mister Crag, you know the stakes. The moon goes to the country whose living representative is based here when the U.N. makes its decision--which should be soon. Note that I said _living_." "Most of the supplies are in Red Dog," Crag pointed out. "There's enough here for one man." The voice was maddeningly bland in Crag's earphones. "You won't live through the rockstorm," Crag promised savagely. "The chances of a direct hit are pretty remote. You said that yourself." "Maybe...." "That's good enough for me." "Damn you, Larkwell, you can't do this. Throw that ladder down." It was Nagel. Again the scream came over the earphones: "Throw it down, I say." "You've made a mistake," Crag cut in calmly. "We can survive. There's enough oxygen in Red Dog." "I opened each cylinder you handed down," the man in the hatch stated matter-of-factly. "In fact, I opened all of the cylinders in Red Dog. Sorry, Mister Crag, but the oxygen's all gone. Soon you'll follow Prochaska." "You did that?" Crag's voice was a savage growl. "This is war, Mister Crag. Prochaska was an enemy." He spoke almost conversationally. Crag had the feeling that everyone was crazy. It was a fantastic mixed-up dream, a nightmare. Soon he'd awaken.... "Coward!" Nagel screamed. "Coward--damned coward!" The figure in the hatch vanished into the rocket. He's armed! Crag's mind seized on die knowledge that two automatic rifles were still in Bandit. He ordered the men back, alarmed. Nagel stood his ground screaming maledictions. "Come back, Gordon," Crag snapped. Malin reappeared a few seconds later holding a rifle. Crag snapped his torch off, leaving the plain in darkness. "Move back," he ordered again. "I won't. I'm going to get into that rocket," Nagel babbled. He lunged forward and was lost in the darkness before Crag could stop him. "Nagel, get back here! That's an order." "I won't ... I won't!" His scream was painful in Crag's ears. A yellow beam flashed down from the hatch and ran over the ground at the base of the rocket. It stopped, pinning Nagel in a circle of light. His face was turned up. He was cursing wildly, violently. "Nagel!" Crag shouted a warning. Nagel shook his fist toward the hatch still screaming. Flame spurted from the black rectangle and he fell, crumpled on the plain. "Move further back," Richter said quietly. Crag stood indecisively. Richter spoke more imperatively. "He's gone. Move back--while you can." "Happy dreams, Mister Crag ... and a long sleep." The hatch closed. CHAPTER 21 Nagel was dead. He lay sprawled in the ash, a pitifully small limp bundle in a deflated suit. He had gotten his wish--he would never see earth again. _Under the wide and starry sky_ ... Now he was asleep with his dream. Asleep in the fantastically bizarre world he had come to love. But the fact still remained: Nagel had been murdered. Murdered in cold blood. Murdered by the killer of little Max Prochaska. And now the killer was in command! Crag looked down at the crumpled body, reliving the scene, feeling it burn in his brain. Finally he rose, filled with a terrible cold anger. "There's one thing he forgot...." "What?" Richter asked. "The cylinders in Drone Baker. We didn't move them." He looked at his oxygen gauge. Low. Baker lay almost four miles to the east on a trail seldom used. They had never traversed it by night. Baker, in fact, had become the forgotten drone. He probed his mind. There was a spur of intervening rock ... rills ... a twisty trail threading between lofty pinnacles.... "Well have to hurry," Richter urged. "Let's move...." They started toward the east, walking silently, side by side, their former relationship forgotten. Crag accepted the fact that their survival, the success of his mission--Gotch's well-laid plans--could very well depend upon what Richter did. Or didn't do. He had suddenly become an integral part in the complex machine labeled STEP ONE. They reached the ridge which lay between them and the drone and started upward, climbing slowly, silently, measuring distance against time in which time represented life-sustaining oxygen. The climb over the ridge proved extremely hazardous. Despite their torches they more than once brushed sharp needles of rock and stumbled over low jagged extrusions. They were panting heavily before they reached the crest and started down the opposite side. They reached the plain and Crag checked his oxygen gauge. The reading alarmed him. He didn't say anything to Richter but speeded his pace. The German's breath became a hoarse rumble in the earphones. "Stop!" There was consternation in Richter's warning cry. Crag simultaneously saw the chasm yawning almost at their feet. Richter said quietly: "Which way?" "Damned if I know." Crag flashed his torch into the rill. It was wide and deep, a cleft with almost vertical sides. They would have to go around it. He flashed the light in both directions along the plain. There was no visible end to the fissure. He studied the stars briefly and said, "East is to our right. We'll have to work along the rill and gamble that it ends soon." It did. They rounded its end and resumed their way toward the east. Crag had to stop several times to get his bearings. The shadows danced before the torch beams confusing him, causing odd illusions. He fell to navigating by the stars. It occurred to him that Baker, measured against the expanse of the plain, would be but a speck of dust. Richter's voice broke reflectively into his earphones, "Oxygen's about gone. Looks like this place is going to wind up a graveyard." Crag said stubbornly: "We'll make it." "It better be soon...." "We should be about there." They topped a small rise and dropped back to the plain. The needle of Drone Baker punctuated the sky--blotted out the stars. Oxygen ... oxygen. The word was sweet music. He broke into a run, reached its base and clawed at the ladder leading to its hold. He got inside panting heavily, conscious of a slightly dizzy feeling, and grabbed the first cylinder he saw. He hooked it into his suit system before looking down toward the plain. Richter was not in sight. Filled with alarm he grabbed another cylinder and hurried down the ladder. His torch picked up Richter's form near the base of the rocket. He hooked the cylinder into his suit system and turned the valve, hoping he was in time, then flashed his torch on the German's face. He seemed to be breathing. Crag called experimentally into the earphone, without answer. He finally snapped off the torch to conserve the battery and waited, his mind a jumble of thoughts. "Commander...?" "Good. I was scared for a moment." He flashed the torch down. Richter's eyes were open; he was smiling faintly. "Not a bad way to go," he managed to say. "Nice and easy." "The only place you're going is Red Dog." "I'll be okay in a minute." "Sure you will." Richter struggled to his feet breathing deeply. "I'm okay." "We'd better get some more oxygen--enough to last through the fireworks," Crag suggested. They returned to the drone and procured eight cylinders, lowering them with a piece of line supplied for the purpose. They climbed down to the plain, packed the cylinders and started for Red Dog. "Going to be close but we'll make it," Crag said, thinking of the warhead. Richter answered confidently: "We'll make it." Strange, Crag thought, I wind up fighting with the enemy to keep one of my own crew from murdering me. Enemy? No, he could no longer brand Richter an enemy. He felt a pang of regret over the way he'd mistrusted him. Still, there had been no other course. A thought jolted him. He spoke casually, aware he might be stepping on Richter's toes: "There's one thing I don't understand...." "What?" "Larkwell's an enemy agent...." He hesitated. "And...?" "Why didn't he attempt to solicit your aid?" Crag finished bluntly. "You're a spaceman, Commander, not an intelligence agent." "I don't get the connection." "An agent trusts no one. And a saboteur is the lone wolf of the agents. Trust me? Ha! He'd just as soon trust your good Colonel Gotch. No, Larkwell wouldn't have trusted me. Never." Crag was silent. An agent who couldn't trust a soldier of his own country, even when the chips were down? It was a philosophy he couldn't understand. As for Larkwell! He vowed he'd live long enough to see him dead. More, he'd kill him himself. He was planning how he'd accomplish it when they reached the rill where Red Dog was buried. He switched his torch on and ran it along the edge of the chasm until he located the rope ladder leading down to the airlock. "You lower 'em and I'll pack 'em." Crag ordered. He descended into the rill and began moving the cylinders Richter lowered to him. Finished, he examined the cylinders they had brought earlier. Empty! His lips set in a thin line as he examined the cylinders which the rocket had brought from earth. Empty ... all empty. Larkwell had done a thorough job. He gritted his teeth. Before he was through he'd ram the empty cylinders down Larkwell's throat. Yeah, and that wasn't all. He contemplated the step-by-step procedure. Larkwell would die. Die horribly. He looked toward the hatch wondering what was detaining Richter. He waited a moment, then climbed back to the plain. The German was nowhere in sight. "Richter?" There was no answer. He checked his interphone to make sure it was working and called again. Silence. He swept his torch over the plain. No Richter. The German had vanished ... disappeared into the black maw of the crater. "Richter! Richter, answer me...!" Silence. Apprehension swept him. He called again, desperately: "Richter!" "I'm all right, Commander." Richter's voice was low, seeming to have come from a distance. "You'd better get back into Red Dog." "Where are you?" Crag demanded. "I have a job to do." "Come back." The German didn't answer. Crag was about to start in pursuit when he realized he didn't have the faintest idea what direction Richter had taken. He hesitated, baffled and fearful by turn. Periodically he called his name without receiving an answer. He fumed, wondering what the German had in mind. He couldn't get into Bandit and, besides, he was unarmed. He popped back into Red Dog and looked at the chrono. If Gotch's figures were right the warhead would strike in four minutes. He climbed out of the rill. "Warhead due in less than four minutes," he called into his mike. "Get back into Red Dog, Commander," Richter insisted. Crag snapped irritably: "What the hell are you trying to do." "Commander, many people have crossed the frontier--from East to West. Many others have wanted to." "I don't get you." "I had to come all the way to Arzachel to find my frontier, Commander." "Richter, come back," Crag ordered, his voice level. "There's nothing you can do. You didn't know it but when I landed here I crossed the frontier, Commander. I went from East to West, on the moon." "Richter...?" "Now I am free." "I don't know what you're talking about, but you'd better get back here--and pronto. You'll get massacred if you're on the plain when the rocket hits." Inwardly he was shaken. "There's not a damn thing you can do about Larkwell." "Ah, but there is. He forgot two things, Commander. The oxygen in Baker was only the first." "And the second?" Richter did not answer. Crag called again. No answer. He waited, uncertain what to do next. The ground twisted violently under his feet. The warhead! A series of diminishing quakes rolled the plain in sharp jolts. Missed Arzachel, he thought jubilantly. It missed ... missed. He twisted his head upward. The sky was black, black, a great black spread that reached to infinity, broken only by the brilliance of the stars. Off to one side Betelgeuse was a baleful red eye in the shoulder of Orion. A picture of what was happening flashed through his mind. Somewhere between Alphons and Arzachel thousands of tons of rock were hurtling upward in great ballistic trajectories, parabolic courses which would bring them crashing back onto the lunar surface. Many would escape, would hurtle through space until infinity ended. Some would be caught in the gravisphere of planets, would crash down into strange worlds. But most would smash back on the moon. Rocks ranging in size from grains of dust to giants capable of smashing skyscrapers would fall like rain. "Richter! Richter!" He repeated the call several times. No answer. He swept his torch futilely over the plain. Richter was a dedicated man. If the coming rain of death held any fears for him he failed to show it. He looked up again, fancying that he saw movement against the stars. Somewhere up there mountains were hurtling through the void. He hurriedly descended into the rill, hesitated, then moved into the rocket. He again hesitated before leaving the airlock open. Richter might return. After a while he felt the first thud, a jolt that shook the rocket and traveled through his body like a wave. The floor danced under his feet. He held his breath expectantly, suppressing an instant of panic. The rocket vibrated several times but none of the jolts was as severe as the first. He waited, aware of the stillness, a silence so deep it was like a great thunder. The big stuff must all be down. The thought bolstered his courage. The idea of being squashed like a bug was not appealing. He waited, wondering if Richter had survived. He thought of Larkwell and involuntarily clenched his fists. Larkwell, or Igor Malin--if he lived--would be his first order of business. He remembered Nagel and Prochaska and began planning how he would kill the man in Bandit. He waited a while longer. The absolute silence grated his ears. Now, he thought. He slipped on a fresh oxygen cylinder, and hooked a spare into his belt, then pawed through the supplies until he found fresh batteries for his torch. Finally he got one of the automatic rifles from Red Dog's arsenal. After that he climbed up to the plain. He called Richter's name several times over the phones, with little hope of answer. He looked at the sky, then swept his torch over the moonscape. A feeling of solitude assailed him. For the first time since leaving earth he was totally alone. The last time he had experienced such a feeling was when he'd pushed an experimental rocket ship almost to the edge of space. He shook off the feeling and debated what to do. Richter undoubtedly was dead. Had Larkwell--or was it Malin?--survived the rock storm? Spurred to action, he turned toward Bandit. Nothing seemed changed, he thought, or almost nothing. Here and there the smooth ash was pitted. Once he came to a jagged rock which lay almost astride his path. He was sure it hadn't been there before. He moved more cautiously as he drew near Bandit, remembering that the occupant of the rocket was armed. He climbed a familiar knoll, searching the plain ahead with his torch. He stopped, puzzled, flashing the light to check his bearings. Satisfied he was on the right knoll he played the light ahead again while moving down to the plain. He walked slowly forward. Once he dropped to the ground to see if he could discern the bulk of Bandit against the stars. Finally he walked faster, sweeping the torch over the plain in wide arcs. Suddenly he stopped. Gone! Bandit was gone! It couldn't be. It might be demolished, smashed flat, but it couldn't disappear. He wondered if he were having hallucinations. No, he was sane ... completely sane. He began calling Richter's name. The silence mocked him. Finally he turned back toward Red Dog. Crag slept. He slept with the airlock closed and the cabin flooded with oxygen. He slept the sleep of the dead, a luxurious sleep without thought or dream. When he awakened, he ate and donned the pressure suit, thinking he would have to get more oxygen from the drone. He opened the hatch and scrambled out. The plain was light. The sun was an intolerable circle hanging at the very edge of the horizon. He blinked his eyes to get them used to the glare. He studied the plain for a long time, then hefted the rifle and started toward Bandit before he remembered there was no Bandit. No Bandit? When he reached the top of the knoll, he knew he was right. Bandit unaccountably was gone. He searched the area in wide circles. The question grew in his mind. He found several twisted pieces of metal--a jagged piece of engine. Abruptly he found Richter. He was dead. His suit hung limp, airless against his body. He stared at the object next to Richter. It was a moment before he recognized it as the rocket launcher. "_He forgot two things, Commander...._" Now he understood Richter's words. Now he knew the motive that had driven him onto the plain in the face of the rock storm. Richter had used the launcher to destroy Bandit, to destroy the murderer of Prochaska and Nagel. He marveled that Richter could have carried the heavy weapon. Once, before, he had watched two men struggle under its weight Richter must have mustered every ounce of his strength. He looked at the fallen form for a long time. Richter had crossed his frontier. At last he turned and started toward Red Dog. Adam Crag, the Man in the Moon. Now he was really the Man in the Moon. The only Man. Colonel Crag, Commanding Officer, Pickering Field. General Crag of the First Moon expeditionary Force. Adam Crag, Emperor of Luna. He laughed--a mirthless laugh. Damned if he couldn't be anything he wanted to be--on the Moon. * * * * * The sun climbed above the rim of Arzachel transforming the vast depressed interior of the crater into a caldron of heat and glare. In the morning of the lunar day the rock structures rising from the plain cast lengthy black shadows over the ashy floor--a mosaic in black and white. Crag kept busy. He stripped the drones of their scant amount of usable supplies--mainly oxygen cylinders from Baker--and set up a new communication post in Red Dog. In the first hours of the new morning Gotch named the saboteur. Crag listened, wearily. Just then he wasn't interested in the fact that an alert intelligence agent had doubted that a man of 5' 5" could have been a star basketball player, as the Superintendent of the Maple Hill Orphanage had said. He expressed his feelings by shutting off the communicator in the middle of the Colonel's explanation. The sun climbed, slowly, until it hung overhead, ending a morning which had lasted seven earth days in length. At midday the shadows had all but vanished. He finished marking the last of three crosses and stepped back to survey his work. He read the names at the head of the mounds: Max Prochaska, Gordon Nagel, Otto Richter. Each was followed by a date. Out on the plain were other graves, those of the crewmen of Bandit and Red Dog. He had marked each mound with a small pile of stones. Later it struck him that someday there might be peace. Someday, someone might want to look at one of those piles of stone. He returned and added a notation to each. * * * * * The sun moved imperceptibly across the sky. It seemed to hover above the horizon for a long while before slipping beyond the rim. Night seemed eternal. Crag worked and slept and waited. He measured his oxygen, rationed his food, and planned. He was tough. He'd survive. If only to read Gotch off, he promised himself savagely. The sun came up again. In time it set. Rose and set. Crag waited. * * * * * He watched the silvery ship let down. It backed down slowly, gracefully, coming to rest on the ashy plain with scarcely a jar. Somehow he didn't feel jubilant. He waited, gravely, watching the figures that came from the ship. He wasn't surprised that the first one was Colonel Michael Gotch. * * * * * Later they gathered in the small crew room of the Astronaut, the name of the first atom-powered spaceship. They waited solemnly--Gotch and Crag, the pilot, and two crewmen--waiting for the thin man to speak. Just now he was sitting at the small pulldown chow table peering at some papers, records of the moon expedition. Finally he looked up. "It seems to me that your Nation's claim to the Moon is justified," he said. The words were fateful. The thin man's name was Fredrick Gunter. He was also Secretary-General of the United Nations. * * * * * Jeff Sutton, although experienced in journalistic and technical writings, has only recently turned his hand to novels with the result that _First on the Moon_ is also his first novel. A native Californian, and a Marine veteran, he is presently employed as a research engineer for Convair-San Diego, specializing appropriately enough for this novel in problems of high altitude survival. He says of himself: "I have long been a science-fiction reader (a common ailment among scientists and engineers). On the personal side, a number of factors have coalesced to pin me to the typewriter. I am living in--and working in--a world of missiles, rockets, and far-reaching dreams. In many areas the border between science-fiction and science suddenly has become a lace curtain. It is a world I have some acquaintance with--and fits very nicely into my desire to write." * * * * * SCIENCE-FICTION AT ITS BEST Luna Was The Goal, Earth The Prize It was a top secret, and yet the enemy knew. They knew that the Americans were about to send a manned rocket to the moon and thereby claim it for Old Glory. They knew also that whoever held the moon would command the Earth ... and they were determined to stop us at all costs! When assassination and sabotage failed to stop the take-off, they'd have to use even more drastic measures. There might be an H-bomb loaded rocket missile, there could be a Red spaceship with a suicide crew, and there was always the possibility of their placing a spy aboard the U.S. rocket. FIRST ON THE MOON is a thrilling adventure of the very near future. Written with up-to-the-minute accuracy by a professional aviation research engineer, it is a top-notch novel that is science-fiction only by the thinnest margin! AN ACE BOOK