The Best of Bova: Volume 1 (46 page)

FIFTEEN MILES

* * *

SEN. ANDERSON:
Does that mean that man’s mobility

on the moon will be severely limited?

MR. WEBB:
Yes, sir; it is going to be severely limited, Mr. Chairman.

The moon is a rather hostile place.

U.S. Senate Hearings on National Space Goals,

23 August 1965

“Any word from him yet?”

“Huh? No, nothing.”

Kinsman swore to himself as he stood on the open platform of the little lunar rocket-jumper.

“Say, where are you now?” The astronomer’s voice sounded gritty with static in Kinsman’s helmet earphones.

“Up on the rim. He must’ve gone inside the damned crater.”

“The rim? How’d you get . . . ?”

“Found a flat spot for the jumper. Don’t think I walked this far, do you? I’m not as nutty as the priest.”

“But you’re supposed to stay down here on the plain! The crater’s off limits.”

“Tell it to our holy friar. He’s the one who marched up here. I’m just following the seismic rigs he’s been planting every three-four miles.”

He could sense Bok shaking his head. “Kinsman, if there’re twenty officially approved ways to do a job, I swear you’ll pick the twenty-second.”

“If the first twenty-one are lousy.”

“You’re not going inside the crater, are you? It’s too risky.”

Kinsman almost laughed. “You think sitting in that aluminum casket of ours is safe?”

The earphones went silent. With a scowl, Kinsman wished for the tenth time in an hour that he could scratch his twelve-day beard. Get zipped into the suit and the itches start. He didn’t need a mirror to know that his face was haggard, sleepless, and his black beard was mean-looking.

He stepped down from the jumper—a rocket motor with a railed platform and some equipment on it, nothing more—and planted his boots on the solid rock of the ringwall’s crest. With a twist of his shoulders to settle the weight of the pressure suit’s bulky backpack, he shambled over to the packet of seismic instruments and fluorescent marker that the priest had left there.

“He came right up to the top, and now he’s off on the yellow brick road, playing moon explorer. Stupid bastard.”

Reluctantly, he looked into the crater Alphonsus. The brutally short horizon cut across its middle, but the central peak stuck its worn head up among the solemn stars. Beyond it was nothing but dizzying blackness, an abrupt end to the solid world and the beginning of infinity.

Damn the priest! God’s gift to geology . . . and I’ve got to play guardian angel for him.

“Any sign of him?”

Kinsman turned back and looked outward from the crater. He could see the lighted radio mast and squat return rocket, far below on the plain. He even convinced himself that he saw the mound of rubble marking their buried base shelter, where Bok lay curled safely in his bunk. It was two days before sunrise, but the Earthlight lit the plain well enough.

“Sure,” Kinsman answered. “He left me a big map with an
X
to mark the treasure.”

“Don’t get sore at me!”

“Why not? You’re sitting inside. I’ve got to find our fearless geologist.”

“Regulations say one man’s got to be in the base at all times.”

But not the same one man,
Kinsman flashed silently.

“Anyway,” Bok went on, “he’s got a few hours’ oxygen left. Let him putter around inside the crater for a while. He’ll come back.”

“Not before his air runs out. Besides, he’s officially missing. Missed two check-in calls. I’m supposed to scout his last known position. Another of those sweet regs.”

Silence again. Bok didn’t like being alone in the base, Kinsman knew.

“Why don’t you come on back,” the astronomer’s voice returned, “until he calls in. Then you can get him with the jumper. You’ll be running out of air yourself before you can find him inside the crater.”

“I’m supposed to try.”

“But why? You sure don’t think much of him. You’ve been tripping all over yourself trying to stay clear of him when he’s inside the base.”

Kinsman suddenly shuddered.
So it shows! If you’re not careful you’ll tip them both off.

Aloud he said, “I’m going to look around. Give me an hour. Better call Earthside and tell them what’s going on. Stay in the shelter until I come back.”
Or until the relief crew shows up.

“You’re wasting your time. And taking an unnecessary chance.”

“Wish me luck,” Kinsman answered.

“Good luck. I’ll sit tight here.”

Despite himself, Kinsman grinned. Shutting off the radio, he said to himself, “I know damned well you’ll sit tight. Two scientific adventurers. One goes over the hill and the other stays in his bunk two weeks straight.”

He gazed out at the bleak landscape, surrounded by starry emptiness. Something caught at his memory:

“They can’t scare me with their empty spaces,” he muttered. There was more to the verse but he couldn’t recall it.

“Can’t scare me,” he repeated softly, shuffling to the inner rim. He walked very carefully and tried, from inside the cumbersome helmet, to see exactly where he was placing his feet.

The barren slopes fell away in gently terraced steps until, more than half a mile below, they melted into the crater floor.
Looks easy . . . too easy.

With a shrug that was weighted down by the pressure suit, Kinsman started to descend into the crater.

He picked his way across the gravelly terraces and crawled feet first down the breaks between them. The bare rocks were slippery and sometimes sharp. Kinsman went slowly, step by step, trying to make certain he didn’t puncture the aluminized fabric of his suit.

His world was cut off now and circled by the dark rocks. The only sounds he knew were the creakings of the suit’s joints, the electrical hum of its motor, the faint whir of the helmet’s air blower, and his own heavy breathing. Alone, all alone. A solitary microcosm. One living creature in the one universe.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars—on stars where no human race is.

There was still more to it: the tag line that he couldn’t remember.

Finally he had to stop. The suit was heating up too much from his exertion. He took a marker-beacon from the backpack and planted it on the broken ground. The moon’s soil, churned by meteors and whipped into a frozen froth, had an unfinished look about it, as though somebody had been blacktopping the place but stopped before he could apply the final smoothing touches.

From a pouch on his belt Kinsman took a small spool of wire. Plugging one end into the radio outlet on his helmet, he held the spool at arm’s length and released the catch. He couldn’t see it in the dim light, but he felt the spring fire the wire antenna a hundred yards or so upward and out into the crater.

“Father Lemoyne,” he called as the antenna drifted in the moon’s easy gravity. “Father Lemoyne, can you hear me? This is Kinsman.”

No answer.

Okay. Down another flight.

After two more stops and nearly an hour of sweaty descent, Kinsman got his answer.

“Here . . . I’m here . . .”

“Where?” Kinsman snapped. “Do something. Make a light.”

“ . . . can’t . . .” The voice faded out.

Kinsman reeled in the antenna and fired it out again. “Where the hell are you?”

A cough, with pain behind it. “Shouldn’t have done it. Disobeyed. And no water, nothing . . .”

Great!
Kinsman frowned.
He’s either hysterical or delirious. Or both.

After firing the spool antenna again, Kinsman flicked on the lamp atop his helmet and looked at the radio direction-finder dial on his forearm. The priest had his suit radio open and the carrier beam was coming through even though he was not talking. The gauges alongside the radio-finder reminded Kinsman that he was about halfway down on his oxygen, and more than an hour had elapsed since he had spoken to Bok.

“I’m trying to zero in on you,” Kinsman said. “Are you hurt? Can you—”

“Don’t, don’t, don’t. I disobeyed and now I’ve got to pay for it. Don’t trap yourself too.” The heavy, reproachful voice lapsed into a mumble that Kinsman couldn’t understand.

Trapped. Kinsman could picture it. The priest was using a canister-suit: a one-man walking cabin, a big, plexidomed rigid can with flexible arms and legs sticking out of it. You could live in it for days at a time—but it was too clumsy for climbing. Which is why the crater was off limits.

He must’ve fallen and now he’s stuck.

“The sin of pride,” he heard the priest babbling. “God forgive us our pride. I wanted to find water; the greatest discovery a man can make on the moon . . . Pride, nothing but pride . . .”

Kinsman walked slowly, shifting his eyes from the direction-finder to the roiled, pocked ground underfoot. He jumped across an eight-foot drop between terraces.

The finder’s needle snapped to zero.

“Your radio still on?”

“No use . . . go back . . .”

The needle stayed fixed.
Either I busted it or I’m right on top of him.

He turned full circle, scanning the rough ground as far as his light could reach. No sign of the canister. Kinsman stepped to the terrace-edge. Kneeling with deliberate care, so that his backpack wouldn’t unbalance and send him sprawling down the tumbled rocks, he peered over.

In a zigzag fissure a few yards below him was the priest, a giant, armored insect gleaming white in the glare of the lamp, feebly waving its one free arm.

“Can you get up?” Kinsman saw that all the weight of the cumbersome suit was on the pinned arm.
Banged up his backpack, too.

The priest was mumbling again. It sounded like Latin.

“Can you get up?” Kinsman repeated.

“Trying to find the secrets of natural creation . . . storming heaven with rockets. We say we’re seeking knowledge, but we’re really after is our own glory . . .”

Kinsman frowned. He couldn’t see the older man’s face, behind the canister’s heavily tinted window.

“I’ll have to get the jumper down here.”

The priest rambled on, coughing spasmodically. Kinsman started back across the terrace.

“Pride leads to death,” he heard in his earphones. “You know that, Kinsman. It’s pride that makes us murderers.”

The shock boggled Kinsman’s knees. He turned, trembling. “What . . . did you say?”

“It’s hidden. The water is here, hidden . . . frozen in fissures. Strike the rock and bring forth water, like Moses. Not even God himself was going to hide this secret from me . . .”

“What did you say,” Kinsman whispered, completely cold inside, “about murder?”

“I know you, Kinsman . . . anger and pride. Destroy not my soul with men of blood . . . whose right hands are . . . are . . .”

Kinsman ran away. He fought back toward the crater’s rim, storming the terraces blindly, scrabbling up the inclines with four-yard-high jumps. Twice he had to turn up the air blower in his helmet to clear the sweaty fog from his faceplate. He didn’t dare stop. He raced on, breath racking his lungs, heart pounding until he could hear nothing else.

But in his mind he still saw those savage few minutes in orbit, when he had been with the Air Force, when he had become a killer. He had won a medal for that secret mission; a medal and a conscience that never slept.

Finally he reached the crest. Collapsing on the deck of the jumper, he forced himself to breathe normally again, forced himself to sound normal as he called Bok.

The astronomer said guardedly, “It sounds as though he’s dying.”

“I think his regenerator’s shot. His air must be pretty foul by now.”

“No sense going back for him, I guess.”

Kinsman hesitated. “Maybe I can get the jumper down close to him.”
He found out about me.

“You’ll never get him back in time. And you’re not supposed to take the jumper near the crater, let alone inside of it. It’s too dangerous.”

“You want to just let him die?”
He’s hysterical. If he babbles about me where Bok can hear it . . .

“Listen,” the astronomer said, his voice rising, “you can’t leave me stuck here with both of you gone! I know the regulations, Kinsman. You’re not allowed to risk yourself or the third man on the team in an effort to help a man in trouble.”

“I know. I know.”
But it wouldn’t look right for me to start minding regulations now. Even Bok doesn’t expect me to.

“You don’t have enough oxygen in your suit to get down there and back again,” Bok insisted.

“I can tap some from the jumper’s propellant tank.”

“But that’s crazy! You’ll get yourself stranded!”

“Maybe.”
It’s an Air Force secret. No discharge: just transferred to the space agency. If they find out about it now, I’ll be finished. Everybody’ll know. No place to hide . . . newspapers, TV, everybody!

“You’re going to kill yourself over that priest. And you’ll be killing me, too!”

“He’s probably dead by now,” Kinsman said. “I’ll just put a marker beacon there, so another crew can get him when the time comes. I won’t be long.”

“But the regulations . . .”

“They were written Earthside. The brass never planned on something like this. I’ve got to go back, just to make sure.”

He flew the jumper back down the crater’s inner slope, leaning over the platform railing to see his marker-beacons as well as listening to their tinny radio beeping. In a few minutes, he was easing the spraddle-legged platform down on the last terrace before the helpless priest.

“Father Lemoyne.”

Kinsman stepped off the jumper and made it to the edge of the fissure in four lunar strides. The white shell was inert, the lone arm unmoving.

“Father Lemoyne!”

Kinsman held his breath and listened. Nothing . . . wait:

the faintest, faintest breathing. More like gasping. Quick, shallow, desperate.

“You’re dead,” Kinsman heard himself mutter. “Give it up, you’re finished. Even if I got you out of here, you’d be dead before I could get you back to the base.”

The priest’s faceplate was opaque to him; he only saw the reflected spot of his own helmet lamp. But his mind filled with the shocked face he once saw in another visor, a face that had just realized it was dead.