Jeff Sutton (22 page)

"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 impatiendy 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
weak-

ly-

"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 NageTs. The oxygen man was smiling, f
ain
tly.

"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 defiandy.

"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 a-bout 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.

"Ill 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
rermniscently, "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 die 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 Lark-well'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, Cordon 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 radioative
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 Procbaska 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
r
unnin
g
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
He 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.