Assignment Moon Girl (18 page)

“You are an illusion, Professor Ouspanaya.”

The man smiled. “Touch me. I am real.”

Durell did so. There was solid flesh under the silver
spacesuit. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“To prove something to you,” Ouspanaya said.

“About Tanya?”

“Naturally.”

“Listen, where was the space port? I know we were in the
desert—”

 
“That was last
week."

“Last week?”

“Do not worry about it. You will he returned safely to
earth. Otherwise—” Professor Ouspanaya smiled wryly through his plastic helmet
visor. “Otherwise, I would hardly have agreed to go along, would I?”

“But things just don’t happen like this in space programs—”

“Ah, you have much to learn about Soviet science

“Then you were with Tanya on her trip? She said you were
with her.”

“I was beside her, just as I am with you. Now I must ask you
not to interfere with my work, for a time. I have much to do.”

Durell counted the rivets in the capsule’s plates. He
counted the dials, he read the Russian printing on their faces, he considered
the food packages in their slots, the oxygen bottles, the air scrubber, the
waste disposers. Ouspanaya kept muttering reports into his microphone and
listening to the dry, matter-of-fact figure that came back to him from earth.
All at once, Durell began unbuckling the belts that kept him strapped to his
seat.

“What are you doing?” Ouspanaya asked.

“I’m getting out of here.”

“Are you mad? We are weightless—”

“It’s an illusion,” Durell said.

“Weightless!” Ouspanaya shouted. “Be careful—”

Durell drifted from his padded seat, crashed into the
instrument panel, caromed floating upside down, caught his chair again,
and tried to pull his feet back where they belonged. He was stunned. He was
completely astonished.

“Here, take one of these,” Ouspanaya said.

“What is it?”

“A pill, what does it look like? It will help.”

He swallowed it and managed to buckle himself back into his
seat. For a long time afterward, he' stared in dismay at the slowly changing
dials, at the receding ball of earth. He could not doubt the evidence of his
senses.

He slept, awoke, ate liquid food squeezed into his mouth as
if he were a helpless infant. Ouspanaya spoke a technical jargon of their
duties which was difficult to comprehend. The Russian seemed to know what he was
doing. Durell sweated. His heart pounded. He took no comfort from the technical
gobbledegook
that came over the space radio. Well, he
thought dreamily, it’s progress. You could get into space, beyond the
atmosphere, in less time than it took to go by taxi crosstown in Manhattan.
Progress brought you cars that poisoned the air, humiliation in crowded buses,
a barrage of kitchen soaps and insulting commercials, nerve-shattering sonic
booms and airports where you missed your jets because you were hung up in
traffic half a mile away, breathing poison. Maybe it was better up here, after
all. He went to sleep again, thinking about it.

Smog, slums, sewage, supermarkets, supersonics; suburban
sprawl and
slurbs
; computers, concrete, and
consensus; obsolescence and excrescence; pot, population, proliferation, and
LSD.

Yankee-go-home. He wished he could.

In his dream, he was in a small, tight plastic dome,
surrounded by machinery that whined, whirred, blinked, and buzzed. Ouspanaya
was manipulating handles and staring intently at dials. Durell sat up. He
looked out of the dome and saw a moonscape.

It was a vast, pale vista of nightmare rocks and pinnacles
that stretched to a jagged horizon. The sky was the blackest black he had ever
seen, with stars as brilliant as headlights and as big as his fist.
Sailing above the volcanic horizon was the most beautiful sight of all, the
great blue-green orb of earth, misty, edged with gold, soft and effulgent. He
drew in a long, deep breath.

“How did I get here?” he whispered.

“I had to give you medication. You were in a dangerous state
of mind.”

“I still an. How did you handle me?”

“You obeyed my orders. Don’t trouble yourself about it. Are
you hungry‘? We have everything we need for a stay of one week, if necessary.”

“Is this the same dome you and Tanya used on your
first trip?”

“Yes, In some respects, it is like the scientific
bases the various nations have set up on the Antarctic ice
 
cap. We ran tests on this down there. We have
everything necessary for life-support systems, as you see. We are perfectly
safe. There is a routine of experiments I must conduct, and which you may
observe. Our vehicle is parked in orbit. Over there” —the Russian pointed
outward through the dome-“is our ‘commuter module.’ ”

Just over a slight rise in the dusty plain was a small
capsule resembling a fat spider, with sprawling, articulated legs. Durell
stared at it for a long time. His gaze then swept as much of the horizon as he
could see, While Ouspanaya returned to his technical tasks. He could not doubt the
evidence he saw. He checked the oxygen cylinders and air scrubbers, rapped on
the plastic dome wall the gesture made Ouspanaya give him a quick,
condescending smile—and then he said, “What is there for me to do?”

“Routine tasks.
l’ll
brief you
presently. Relax. We’re friends. You don’t scoff about it anymore?” “It doesn’t
make sense. Where was the spaceport? How did I get here? I last saw you on the
Caspian shore.”

“It will all be explained.”

“Why not start now?”

“There are important tasks to be done. Can you operate a
simple computer? Yes? Here is the data that must be fed into it to relay home.
At 1700 hours we must attempt a television transmission to Moscow. There is
much to be done. True, we are safe, but our safety depends on hard work. There
will be little time for me to rest or sleep.”

Durell gestured to the moonscape. “Can I go out there?”

“No. Although we have suits, our supplies are naturally
limited. Unfortunate. But until the moon base is enlarged and permanently
stalled, there is no time for casual sightseeing.” Ouspanaya regarded him
stiffly.

“Why do you stare at me like that, Sam?”

“Why did you bring me along on this trip?”

“To convince you about Tanya. I told them there were easier
ways, but it was decided that this is best.”

“What’s to stop me from slugging you and taking command
here?” Durell asked.

Ouspanaya laughed. “It would be suicide. Would you know how
to survive, what to do?”

“No.” Durell was stubborn. “But I don’t believe any of this
is really happening.”

“Pinch yourself. It is real enough.”

Time moved in sudden starts and stops. He wondered if there
was a drug in the food Ouspanaya rationed out to him. But the Russian ate from
the same tubes, drank the same water. Sometimes it seemed as if he had slept
far less than the chronometer indicated. At other times, after staring for what
seemed a day in hypnotic fascination at the view outside—it changed slowly,
growing shadows as inky as night, which moved inexorably down the volcano’s
sides and slid along the boulders that strewed the plain-at such times he
checked the chronometer and found that only minutes had passed. He could not
understand himself. Nothing felt right. Once, a mad cunning possessed him and
he studied the air-lock on the tiny dome—it seemed to get smaller as the “days”
passed—and wondered if he could open it with a sudden rush that would take
Ouspanaya by surprise. The more he thought about it, the more attractive it
seemed. He had to get out of the dome. He had to step out onto that sterile,
hostile plain that reached to the inky horizon. It was important. He did not
know why it was important, but he had to quit the endless, mindless chores
Ouspanaya gave him, the eternal chatter of the earth-to-moon radio, the drone
of the computers. They collected specimens of soil, samples of rock, with long
metal tongs, shovels,
snippers
, and tweezers extruded
from the dome. They observed the stars, studied the earth, measured the light
intensity on various planes of the surface, measured the shadows that crept
toward them, mapped, charted, drew plots and diagrams, took endless
photographs, analyzed surface dust, ate, drank, and slept.

He had to get out.

It did not occur to him that it would be suicide to open the
air-lock, despite Ouspanaya’s warning. He waited until Ouspanaya might be
off-guard, madness in him, a lunatic gift from Luna herself. At last he decided
to do it.

But the moment he jumped for the controls, Ouspanaya looked
up and gave a great shout. “No, Sam!”

He had his fingers on the lugs that fastened the metal
frame to the plastic dome. Ouspanaya threw something at him, shouted again, and
then there was a hissing, a sudden tingling in his nostrils and throat, a
searing pain in his lungs. He seemed to go blind. Everything faded away,
rushing from him in a choking nothingness.

With the last of his strength, he opened the air-lock and
fell through it.

When he opened his eyes, he knew he had traveled far and
fast. Sunlight blinded him. He
ached
as if he had
been bruised without mercy. He was aware of hard earth under him, of a
familiar, fetid odor that clogged his nostrils. He turned his head slowly to
keep the burning sun from his eyes. It shone high above, visible through a
circle like the end of a huge telescope. At first he thought he was still
with Ouspanaya, perhaps in the spacecraft. Then he knew this could not be.
There was sand under him and sand between his teeth, a coagulated blood on his
gums. He was bathed in sweat.

And he was naked.

His hand explored his chest, belly, legs. After a long time,
listening to the erratic thump of his heart, hating the raw thirst in him, he
raised himself to one elbow.

He knew the place at once.

He was in the pit, at Har-Buri’s place in the desert of
Dasht-i-Kavir.

The tiger cub stared at him from where it sprawled, panting
in the heat, in the shade of its cave entrance.

Tanya sat opposite him, her eyes as steadily fixed as
the tiger's, watching. It was as if nothing had changed tom that moment so many
days
  
or was it weeks ago?—when he
first found her in this place. Everything had come full circle again,
except for one thing.

He spoke to the girl with an effort.

"
MynamezsSamDurellandI’vebeenonthemoon
,”
he said.

Chapter Fifteen

SHE tossed her head, and her pale hair swung like a lazy
fall of honey about her sun-browned oval face. Only the tilt of her eyes
betrayed her mother’s Oriental ancestry. She regarded him with scientific
detachment. This time she wore a ragged-edged pair of shorts, a halter bra,
leather sandals. Incongruously enough, she had adorned herself with the jewels
he had glimpsed during his previous visit here, from the chests far back in the
tiger’s cave. Heavy strands of gold and bangles hung about her neck, and there
were heavy bracelets on her arms and rings on her fingers. She looked
like a child who had raided a costume jewelry shop and loaded herself without
discrimination.

“Come here,” she said in Russian. “Sit by me. You must get
out of the sun, or it will kill you.”

“How long have I been here?”

She smiled. She did not part her lips when she did so. It
was a stretching of the mouth, a dimpling of chin. ”Since you got back from the
moon,” she then said.

“Oh.”

“Do you know this place?”

“I remember it.”

“You did not kill the tiger.”

“So I see.”

He looked at the beast. Its great green eyes were baleful,
unwinking. The long tongue came out in a yawn and the cub licked his chops. It
lay m a favored spot where a faint current of air moved the thick fur on its
neck. That would be from the entrance far back on the other side of the
mountain, the gateway by which he had rescued Tanya long ago. Durell drew a
sighing breath. The sun, shining down through the mouth of the pit above him,
was like a great weight upon his sprawled body. He didn’t think he could move.
Tanya called him again, warning of the sun, and he rolled over on his stomach
and pushed himself up with his
an
-ns and crawled
across the sand toward her. She moved slightly, to make room for him in the
tiny arc of shade she possessed.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

“Yes. Thirsty, too.”

“Mahmoud will be here before sundown.”

“Good old: Mahmoud.”

“He is careful now, how he feeds the animals in his zoo.”

“Who is he, anyway?”

“A servant of Har-Buri‘s, I suppose.”

“Have you seen your father? Do you know that he’s here,
somewhere, too?”

“I have not seen him,” Tanya said.

The effort to talk, even to think of questions, was too
great. He rested, conscious of his aches and pains, of the strange dullness in
his body and his mind. He wondered what kind of drugs had been used on him. The
whole process of what he had endured was neither magical nor miraculous. He
told himself there had to be logical explanations for everything.

“Do not move,” Tanya said quietly. “Let the tiger smell
you.”

The big cub stood, stretched, and came padding toward them
across the pit, his powerful head swinging low, his glowing eyes suspicious. He
smelled even worse than before. He stood over Durell for a long minute, so
close that he could count each whisker on the great muzzle. Durell looked
around the pit for a weapon. But there was nothing, not even a stone or pebble.
The animal grunted, swung his massive head to regard Tanya, and then padded
back to his lair.

“You learn quickly,” Tanya said wryly.