Andre Norton (ed) (12 page)

"We're
coming over the crest," announced Johnny. "Louise, you better hold
him in case I hit a few bumps."

Hansen
relaxed with a sigh as he felt her hands tighten against him.

"Hold tight, Honey!" he whispered
as he closed his eyes against the lights in the tractor. T . . . I'm a little
tired."

UST-RED
deserts
cover
the
long-dead
planet
of
Mars.
Here civilization
once
might
have
ruled,
but
it
has
long
since vanished.
However,
there
are
native
sons
of
Terra
who
have not
altogether
lost
contact
with
that
life
of
wilderness
and raw
nature
which
first
molded
Mankind.
Joe
Whiteskunk, Indian,
in
his
own
way
met
the
challenge
of
Mars—and
won.

RAYMOND
Z.
GALLUN

My twin brother Frank and I were just back on
the ranch from college. Dad was dead, leaving us free. Magazines were full of
diagrams of space-ships and living quarters for other worlds. There was recruiting
ballyhoo on the television. At night we could sometimes see the fire-trails of
rockets, outward bound from nearby White Sands, New Mexico. It became like
drums beating in our blood.

"They need lots of young engineers like
us, Dave," Frank said to me. He was leaning against the corner of the
house. It was evening. "On the moon now—then gosh knows where."

"Sure,"
I answered, feeling both excited and sad. "The only question is
,
what do we do with Joe?"

Just then Joe Whiteskunk was fixing a fence
not a hundred yards off.
With the deliberation of a rivulet
washing away a mountain—as usual.
Joe, who had come
from Oklahoma with our Dad long ago.
Joe, who might
have made an oil-fortune if a slicker hadn't cheated him of his claim.
Joe, who resembled gnarled mahogany. Sixty-five years old, he was, if a day. He
didn't know exactly himself.

Frank
is no guy to beat around the bush. "Got to tell him what we mean to
do," he said.

So we did. I began it with,
"Look, Joe . . ."

For awhile he didn't seem to have heard. He
just kept on working at that fence. But at last he said, "I go too."

I
won't say that I was exactly surprised. I figured I knew Joe. Maybe he thought
the Moon was something like Texas or California.

"You've got to know something special,
Joe," I said patiently. "Like Dave, here. He knows all about
air-conditioning."

Joe's
face remained as deadpan as if he were a wooden Indian rather than a real one.
"I know plenty special," he answered after a moment.
"Hunt—track—new place—good.
Plenty game."

Something
in the glint of his black eyes told me that he was way back in his youth.

Frank
busted out laughing. So did
I
. But there was a faint
lump in my throat, made up of all my memories of Joe White-skunk. Teaching me
to ride and to shoot, not by long-winded explanations but by example—or perhaps
more by letting me be part of him. It's kind of hard to explain.

So I
didn't want to say good-by to Joe. I knew that my brother didn't, either. We
wanted to postpone it as long as possible. Besides we were a little worried
about what might happen to him, left alone.

Combine all this with a certain residual
kid-prankishness. We weren't above hazing Joe—letting his abysmal innocence
lead him on—in this case toward the inevitable moment when his own ignorance
must put a harmless and disgruntling end to his sudden urge to go where we
went.

My
brother Frank winked at me—such a wink as one Katzen-jammer kid might give to
the other. "Sure, Joe," he said, sober as a judge, "you come
along with us. You hunt and track while we dig holes in all those
mountains."

Joe seemed not even to
realize that he was being kidded.

So the next morning we drove into White Sands
with him. There, in the offices of Unified Lunar Enterprizes, Frank and I knew
beforehand just about what we'd have to write of ourselves in the application
blanks they gave us. We had our specialties. My fine was minerals and mining.

We were sure of ourselves. We were in step
with the exciting imperialistic rhythm that had seized the world.
The outward thrusting, the adventure, the military significance,
the dangerous industries that could be developed on the Moon, far away from the
densely populated Earth.

Yep,
to Frank and me they gave the glad eye. A big burly official grinned at us.
"Pass your physicals, fellas," he said, "and we'll ship you out
tonight."

About Joe?
Well—you know. He got a look as if he was at least a little loopy—the hopeless
sort of character that keeps popping up all the time, asking foolish questions.
Like the guy ninety years old who tried to enlist in the Army.

"Come
back in fifty years," he was told indulgently. "Maybe by then the Moon
will be changed enough by science so that there are woods and game on it."

Joe
looked a little puzzled. That was all. Of course this wasn't funny now for
Frank and me. What could you do? Life consists of living and learning.

I'm
sentimental. Halfway I wanted to stay behind with old Joe Whiteskunk. Frank is
different. "Well, Dave," he said, "this is it. So let's do what
the man says. We can phone Dad's lawyer to see that the ranch is looked after.
Nothing much there anyway.
We won't even have to take the
car home."

"Sure—you fellas
go," Joe told us. "I come too, pretty soon."

So,
that night, strapped to chairs in a cabin that looked like the inside of a bus,
Frank and I were sick as dogs in the absence of gravity as the sharp stars of
space blossomed beyond the window-ports around us. Facing the prospect of
living on the Moon—an idea somehow out of tune with the instincts in human
entrails, even when you're an enlightened young man—we were scared half to
death.

"Good
thing Joe couldn't come," Frank grunted. "He wouldn't understand
anything. He'd die—just as if he'd suddenly found himself in an unnamed
hell."

Right then we weren't very inspiring symbols
of the pioneering urges of the human race.

Had we known that at that
very moment old Joe Whiteskunk

r

was
huddled in the darkest corner of the dark
baggage compartment of our spaceship we would really have blown our tops.
Because in such a place during a
Lunar
hop a man could
freeze to death or suffocate easily.
Even if he were a
trained scientist, who knew how to protect himself.

We were in space for better than seventy
hours. I was too ill to pay much attention to the landing. But it was
accomplished in a manner that was almost exactly the reverse of the takeoff.

Balanced
by whirling gyroscopes, we came down sternward toward Camp Copernicus, our
flaming jets gradually reducing speed. During the last few feet before we
touched the ashy ground we hung almost motionless, swinging in the seats that
adjusted automatically to the proper up-down direction of any gravitational
attraction.

Then
we were on the moon. Taking orders—fumbling our way into space-armor—looking at
harsh sunlight and black shadows and jagged mountains that have driven many a
man nuts with homesickness. Filing in a column across the ash to a large pressurized
shelter of magnesium alloy that had been brought prefabricated from Earth.

This
proved to be the entrance to a labyrinth of tunnels, newly excavated
underground. This was Camp Copernicus, built in the bottom of the great lunar
crater of the same name.

All of us greenhorn arrivals looked pretty
awful. I felt like a foolish romantic, led into a death-trap by my own
romanticism. God, how I wanted to go homel

While quarters and bunks were being assigned
the cry of "Stowaway!" arose. Right away I had a premonition that put
my heart in my mouth.

Then they carried Joe in, tucked into a suit
of space-armor. The story of what he had done came out, mixed with curses, from
the mouths of the baggage-handlers. Right then Joe was a very frost-bitten,
very
disoriented Indian, whose swollen face nonetheless
showed a flash of truculence.

How
he'd managed to survive in that space-chilled compartment, breathing only the
air that was locked in with
him,
might,

I think, have baffled a Houdini. He must just
have followed some animal instinct when he bundled himself in paper wrappings
torn from bundles and packages.

By
the same instinct he must have relaxed and breathed shal-lowly to consume less
oxygen. Something about how he must have done it all reminded me somehow of a
stowaway rat—surviving not so much by intelligence as by some wisdom engrained
into its whole cussed carcass.

"Joel"
I gasped.
"Joe!"
Into my voice was poured all my concern
about him—when he must finally realize in some measure where he was, how
inconceivably far he had blundered from anything he could call familiar. He
would just wither then, I was sure. He was a simple ranch Indian, who had
trouble writing his own name and could never understand other worlds.

Someone growled in my ears, "Oh, you
know this fella, eh?" The tone was as official as the gold-braid that went
with it—we civilian experts were under military direction, too. The tone bore a
heavy load of contemptuous disgust. It blamed me, a greenhorn, for Joe's
supergreenhorn presence. I was responsible.

"Yes, sir," I
said. "Joe Whiteskunk worked for my Dad."

Well, that officer took my words as if they
constituted an admission of mortal sin. "Oh—so?" he said with
poisonous gentleness. "And what do you think
we
can do with him, here? Why didn't you bring a sick baby along? It would
be less trouble.

"Why
didn't you bring an enemy spy? Then we could just shoot him. Back he goes with
the first return rocket and you'll pay his passage!
Every
last cent of it if I have to take it out of your hide!"

He
said a lot more. He had me wanting to crawl into my space boots until a little
glimmer of hope came. I looked at Frank, who hadn't said anything. Right then I
didn't want any more of the Moon. Maybe Joe was our ticket back home—our way
out of a signed contract.

"Sir,"
I told the officer. "With your permission
111
personally conduct this man back to Earth."

Yeah,
but that was where Joe entered the conversation. He looked kind of sore but he
sounded both obstinate and gentle.