Jeff Sutton

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!

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 Califomian,
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:

1
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."

_{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

To
Sandy

Printed in U. S. A.

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 then-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.

"Accidentf"

"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
dipped 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 weVe
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
quietiy 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
Wahnsbelt was its official director. The difference was
,
the
nation knew Wahnsbelt. He talked with congressmen, plead-
ed 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 bom 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,
hell 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 flady: "I don't propose to let you get murdered."

"How about him?"
Crag nodded toward his double. The man
smiled faintiy.

"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 gende needle.
But it was true. The Aztec was his
baby. Goteh'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. Suckerl

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.