Jeff Sutton (25 page)

CHAPTER 19

The earth
was no longer a round full ball
It
was a gibbous mass of milk-white- light, humpbacked, a
twisted giant in the sky whose reflected radiance swept the mnar night and
dimmed even the brightest of the stars. Its beacon swept out through space,
falling in Crater Arzachel with a soft creamy sheen, outlining the structures
of the plain with its dim glow.

Larkwell
and Nagel had finished the airlock. The rocket had been tested and, despite a
few minute leaks they had failed to locate, die space cabin was sufficiendy
airtight to serve their purpose. But the rocket had still to be lowered into
the rill. Larkwell favored waiting for the coming sun.

"It's only a few more
days," he told Crag.

"We can't wait."

"We smashed this baby
once by not waiting."

"Well have to risk
it," Crag said firmly.

"Why? We're not that
short of oxygen."

Crag
debated. Sooner or later the others would have to be told about the new threat
from the skies. That morning Cotch had given him ominous news. The computers
indicated it was going to be close. Very close. He looked around. They were
watching him, waiting for him to gfve answer to Lark-well's question.

He
said sofdy: "Okay, Til tell you why. There's a rocket homing in with the
name Arzachel on its nose."

"More visitors?"
The plaintive query came from Nagel. Crag shook his head negatively.

"We've got arms," Prochaska broke
in confidendy. He

grinned
,
"Well elect you Commander of the First Arzachel Infantry Company."

This rocket isn't
manned."

"No?"

"It's a warhead," Crag said grimly,
"a nuclear warhead. If we're not underground when it
hits
,
." He left the sentence dangling and looked around. The masked
faces were blank, expressionless. It was a moment of silence, of weighing,
before LarkweD spoke.

"Okay," he said,
"we drop her into the hole."

He
turned back and gazed at Red Dog. Nagel didn't move. He kept his eyes on Crag,
seemingly rooted to the spot until Prochaska touched his arm.

"Come
on, Gordon," he said kindly. "We've got work to do." Only then
did the oxygen man turn away. Crag had the feeling he was in a daze.

They
worked four hours beyond the regular shift before Crag gave the signal to stop.
The cables had been fastened to Red Dog—the winches set
Now
it was poised on the brink of the rill, ready for lowering into the black
depths. Crag was impatient to push ahead but he knew the men were too tired.
Even the iron-bodied Larkwell was faltering. It would be too risky. Yet he only
reluctantly gave the signal to start back toward Bandit.

They
trudged across the plain—five black blobs, five shadows plodding through a
midnight pit. Crag led the way. The earth overhead gleamed with a yellow-green
light. The stars against the purple-black sky were washed to a million
glimmering pinpoints. The sky, the crater, the black shadows etched against the
blacker night bespoke the alienage of the universe. Arzachel was the forgotten
world. More, a world that never was. It was solid matter created of
nothingness, floating in nothingness, a minute speck a-drift in the terrible
emptiness of the cosmos. He shivered. It was an eery feeling.

He reached Bandit and waited for the others
to arrive. Procbaska, fresher than the others, was first on the scene. He threw
a mock salute to Crag and started up the ladder. Larkwell and Richter arrived moments
later. He watched them approach. They seemed stooped—like old men, he
thought—but they gave him a short nod before climbing to the space cabin. He
was beginning to worry before Nagel finally appeared. The oxygen man was
staggering with weariness, barely able to stand erect. Crag stepped aside.

"After you, Gordon.*'

"Thanks,
Skipper."

Crag
anxiously watched while Gordon pulled his way up the rope ladder. He paused
halfway and rested his head on his arms. After a moment he resumed the climb.
Crag waited until he reached the cabin before following. Could Nagel hold out?
Could a man die of sheer exhaustion? The worry nibbled at his mind. Maybe he
should give him a day's rest—let him monitor the communicator. Or just sleep.
As it was his contribution to their work was nil. He did little more than go
through the motions.

Crag
debated the problem while they pressurized the cabin and removed their suits.
What would Gotch do? Gotch would drive him till he died. That's what Gotch
would expect him to do. No, he couldn't be soft Even Nagel's slight
contribution might make the difference between success
or
failure.
Life or death.
He would have to ride it out
Crag set bis lips grimly. He had felt kinder toward the oxygen man since that
brief period when Nagel had let him peer into his mind. Now . . . now he felt
like his executioner. Just when he was beginning to understand the vistas of
Nagel's being. But understanding and sympathizing with Nagel made his task all
the more difficult. Impatiently he pushed the problem from his mind. There
were other, bigger things he had to consider. Like the warhead.

Larkwell was getting out their rations when
Prochaska slumped wordlessly to the floor. Crag leaped to his side. The Chief s
face was white, drawn, twisted in a curious way. Crag felt bewildered. Odd but
his brain refused to function. He was struggling to make himself think when he
saw Nagel leap for his pressure suit. Understanding came. He shouted to the
others and grabbed for his own garments. He fought a wave of dizziness while he
struggled to get them on. His fingers were heavy, awkward. He fumbled with the
face plate for long precious seconds before he managed to pull it- shut and
snap on the oxygen.

Nagel
had finished and was trying to dress Frochaska. Crag sprang to help him.
Together they managed to get him into his suit and turn on his oxygen. Only
then did he speak.

"How did we lose oxygen, Gordon?"

"I
don't know." He sounded frightened.
"A slow
leak."
He got out his test equipment and fumbled with it. The others
watched
,
waiting nervously until he finally spoke.

"A very slow- leak.
Must have been a meteorite
strike."

"Can you locate it?"

Nagel
shrugged in his suit "It'll take time—and cost some oxygen."

Crag
looked at him and decided he was past the point of work. Past, even, the point
of caring.

"Well
take care of it," he said gendy. "Get a little rest, Gordon."

"Thanks,
Skipper." Nagel slumped down in one of the seats and buried his head in
his arms.
Before long Prochaska began to stir.
He opened
his eyes and looked blankly at Crag for a long moment before comprehension came
to his face.

"Oxygen?"

"Probably a meteorite strike.
But it's okay
   
. .
now
."
Prochaska struggled to his feet "Well, I needed the rest," he joked
feebly.

The leak put an end to all thoughts of
rations. They would have to remain in their suits until it was found and
repaired. At Crags suggestion Nagel and Larkwell went to sleep. More properly,
they simply collapsed in their suits. Richter, however, insisted on helping search
for the break in the hull. Crag didn't protest; he was, in fact, thankful.

It
was Prochaska who found it—a small rupture hardly larger than a pea in one
comer of the cabin.

"Meteorite,"
he affirmed,
CTamining
the hole. "We're lucky
it hasn't happened before."

They
patched the break and repressurized the cabin, then tested it. Pressure
remained constant Crag gave a sigh of relief and started to shuck his suit.
Richter followed his example but Prochaska hesitated, standing uncertainly.

"Makes you
leery," he said.

"The
chances of another strike are fairly low," Crag encouraged. "I feel
the same way but we can't live in these duds." He finished peeling off his
garments and Prochaska followed suit

Despite
his fatigue sleep didn't come easy to Crag. He tossed resdessly, trying to push
the problems out of his mind. Just before he finally fell asleep thought of the
saboteur popped into his mind. 111 be a sitting duck, he told himself. He was
trying to pull himself back to wakefulness when his body rebelled.

He slept.

They prepared to lower Red Dog into the rilL
Earth was humpbacked in the sky, almost a crescent, with a bright cone of
zodiacal light in the east The light was a herald of the coming sun, a sun
whose rays would not reach the depths of Crater Arzachel for another
forty-eight hours.

In
the black pit of the crater the yellow torches of the work crew played over the
body of the rocket, making it appear like some gargantuan monster pulled from
the depths of the sea. It was poised on the brink of the rill with cables
encircling its body, running to winches anchored nearby. The cables would be
let out, slowly, allowing the rocket to descend into the depths of the crevice.
Larkwell on the opposite side of the rill manned a power winch rigged to pull
the rocket over the lip of the crevice.

"Ready
on winch one?" His voice was a brittle bark, edgy with strain. Nagel spoke
up.

"Ready on winch
one."

"Ready on winch
two?"

"Ready on winch
two," Prochaska answered.

"Here
we go." The line from Red Dog to Larkwell's winch tautened, jerked,
then
tautened once more. Red Dog seemed to quiver, and began
rolling slowly toward the brink of the rill. Crag watched from a nearby spur of
rock. He smiled wryly. Lowering rockets on the moon was getting to be an old
story. The cables and winches all seemed familiar. Well, this would be the last
one they'd have to lower. He hoped. Richter stood beside him, silent. The
rocket hung on the lip of the crevice for a moment before starting over.

"Take
up slack." The lines to the anchor winches became taut and the rocket
hung, half-suspended in space.

"Okay."
Larkwell's line tightened again and the rocket jerked clear of the edge, held
in space by the anchor winches.

"Lower away—slowly."

Crag
moved to the edge of the rill, conscious of Richter at his heels. The man's
constant presence jarred him; yet, he was there by his orders. He played his
torch over the rocket. It was moving into the rill in a series of jerks. Its
tail struck the ashy floor. In another moment it rested at the bottom of the
crevice. They would make
it
A
wave of exultation swept him. The biggest problems could be whipped if you just
got aboard and rode them. Well, he'd ridden this one—ridden it through a night
of
Stygian
blackness and unbelievable cold.
Ridden it to victory despite damnable odds.
He felt
jubilant.

But
they would have to hurry if they were to get all their supplies and gear moved
from Bandit before the warhead struck. They still had to cover Red Dog,
burying it beneath a thick coat of ash. Would that be enough? It was designed
to protect them from the dangers of meteorite dust, but would it withstand the
rain of hell to come when the warhead struck? Wearily he pushed the thought
from his mind.

When
the others had secured their gear, he gave the signal to return to Bandit. They
struck out, trudging through the blackness in single file, following a
serpentine path between the occasional rills and knolls scattered between the
two ships. Crag swung his arms in an effort to keep warm. Tiny needles of pain
stabbed at his hands and feet, and the cold in his lungs was an agony. Even in
the darkness the path between the rockets had become a familiar thing.

Despite
the discomfort and weariness he rather liked the long trek between the rockets.
It gave him time to think and plan, a time when nothing was demanded of him
except that he
follow
a reasonably straight course.
There was no warhead, no East World menace, no Cotch. There was only the
blackness and the solitude of Crater ArzacheL He even liked the blackness of
the lunar night, despite its attendant cold. The mantle of darkness hid the
crater'* ugliness, erasing its menacing profile and softening its features. He
turned his eyes skyward as he walked. The earth was huge, many times the size
of the full moon as seen from its mother planet, yet it seemed fragile,
delicate, a pale ethereal wanderer of the heavens.

Crag
did not think of himself as an imaginative man. Yet when he beheld the earth
something stirred deep within him. The earth became not a thing of rock and sea
water and air, but a living being. He thought of Earth as she. At times she was
a ghost treading among the stars, a waif lost in the immensity of the universe.
And at times she was a wanton woman, walking in solitary splendor, her head
high and proud. The stars were her lovers. Crag walked through the night, head
up, wondering if ever again he would answer her call.

He
had almost reached Bandit when. Nagel's voice broke excitedly into his
earphones.

"Something's wrong
with Prochaskal"

Crag stopped in his tracks,
gripped by a sudden fear.

"Whatf"

"He
was somewhere ahead of me. I just caught up to him . . ."

"What's wrong with him?" Crag
snapped irritably. Damn, wouldn't the man stop beating around the bush?
"He's collapsed."

"Coming,"
Crag said. He hurried back through the darkness, cursing himself for having
let the party get strung out.

"Too late,
Commander."
It
was Richter's voice. "His
suit's
deflated.
Must have been a meteorite strike."
"Stay
there," Crag ordered. "Larkwell . .
   
?" "I'm backtracking too . . ."