space suit. Where there was a rise in the ground, he came smoothly up
from behind it, the glaring sun glowing on his space armor. Extending
one leg in what might pass as a version of a choreographer's arabesque,
he came down on the extended foot and stepped on it, floating gently
upward and forward swiftly in a continued series of seeming flights.
He went through winding passes where the sledge trail was plain in
the dust below him, he soared across preposterous areas strewn with
boulders the size of apartment houses. Once, going through a narrow gap
in the wall of an unnamed crater--a very small one, barely two miles
across--he passed a spot which showed that the two men had changed
places. The one in advance had gone to the rear, and the one who'd been
behind now led the way.
It was just beyond the farther wall of the crater that he saw the
second air tank, dropped in the trail.
It could not possibly be an accident. A moon sledge has racks for
carrying air tanks. It was conceivable that a tank could have slid out
and been lost unnoticed. But it was starkly inconceivable that it could
have happened twice.
McCauley raged suddenly. He knew what had happened, he knew why it
had happened, he knew who was involved. He flipped the base-frequency
switch.
"Holmes! Kent! Come in!" he snapped. "Grimaldi Base, come in! Holmes!
Kent! Come in! Grimaldi Base, come in!"
He did not try to pick up the second air tank. Instead, he increased
his speed over the fantastic landscape of riven stone and upthrust
rock. He went faster, floating twenty and thirty yards at a bound and
calling angrily into the eternal silence about him. This higher speed
was not particularly safe. A stumble on any of his landings could have
meant a nasty crash and possibly a smashed helmet plate. But he raged
on. He'd just traveled nearly a quarter of the way around the moon
to try to effect the quiet and nonspectacular prevention of a murder.
Now he found his trouble wasted, his precautions nullified, and the
operation of his base imperiled. Moreover, the welfare of the men on
Farside was threatened drastically. They might have to go through an
entire lunar night, two weeks long, without any contact with other
human beings.
Long, long minutes of speeded-up moon gait went by, the suit radio
sending out snapped calls for Holmes and Kent to answer or, failing
them, for Grimaldi Base to reply.
He was less than five miles from the base when he got an answer to
his call. He'd climbed gradually to a high plateau which now dropped
downward again so that what seemed an infinity of explosion-scarred
desolation lay before him. He was in line of sight of Grimaldi.
"Grimaldi answers," said a voice in his helmet phones. "Grimaldi
answers. Over."
Words fairly burst from McCauley's lips, though the rhythm of his
twenty- and thirty-yard leaps remained unbroken.
"How in the blistering Gehenna," he rasped, "did Holmes and Kent get
out of the base together? What fool sent them off?"
The voice in his headphones jerked a little.
"Why--it was your order, sir! A relay from Earth came in. Holmes was on
monitor duty. He wrote down the order, sir. You ordered him and Kent
to take the sledge with the relay unit for Repeater Two and set it up
where it belonged, sir."
McCauley almost strangled in his wrath.
"Have they got there yet?"
"No, sir. They should use it to report that it's operating, sir. They
haven't."
"When they do," rasped McCauley, "tell them that I specifically order
them to stay in communication with you until I get there! Absolutely
no excuse will be accepted for failure! I'm less than five miles off.
I should get there in a quarter of an hour--twenty minutes at the
outside. They think they're smart, but they've slipped up this time!
Tell them that!"
"Y-yes, sir."
The headphone clicked.
McCauley uttered some profane words in the close confines of his space
helmet. Back at Lunar Base he'd laid the matter of Holmes and Kent
before the commanding officer, who was the ranking officer on the
moon. Kent was an able young officer, transferred to Space Service
from the Air Force. Holmes was also an able young officer, who'd been
a submariner before he transferred to the equally confining Space
Service. They'd known each other back on Earth and somehow--nobody knew
how--a bitter and inveterate enmity had sprung up between them. Perhaps
a girl was at the root of it, but if so, neither of them won her.
Perhaps, by this time, the initial cause of their hatred had nearly or
completely ceased to matter. Enmity does not often last unless things
occur that can feed and strengthen it. It is normal for two young men
to quarrel furiously and be ready to kill each other. But if they are
separated long enough, their hatred usually dies away to acute dislike.
In time the dislike fades to mere aversion or they may forget their
anger altogether. But this happens when there is nothing to sustain and
increase the quarrel.
On the other hand, if they come across each other often enough, and
more especially if they try to harm each other, what could have
begun as mere indignation and contempt can build up into a blind and
murderous fury at the mere sight or thought of each other. How it
started does not matter then. McCauley suspected that this was the case
with Kent and Holmes.
Swinging up and soaring ahead, touching ground with precision at each
landing and swinging up again to strange, wingless flight, McCauley
muttered to himself.
They'd been assigned to his command. Not knowing--then--he'd introduced
them. They spoke with great politeness but did not shake hands.
Settling down to the routine and tedium of a six-man base, it became
evident that there was something wrong. There was no overt trouble, but
there was strain. It showed in a thousand trivial ways. When a party
went out on an errand which required traveling for days in roasting
sunlight, cased in space suits that were almost as confining as strait
jackets, under conditions which rasped the nerves and tried the
tempers of everybody, Holmes and Kent very nearly caused disasters.
Hatred blazed between them. When their records arrived at Grimaldi
Base, McCauley realized that the beginning of this hatred could not
matter any more. They'd hated each other so long and so bitterly that
if they were asked the reason they'd have panted about something done
yesterday or last month or last year--and perhaps never have gotten
back to the beginning. They might even have forgotten it. But there
was a strangeness in their enmity. They did not simply want disaster
and misfortune to befall each other. They hungered to be disaster,
they thirsted to be misfortune, each for the other. And somehow there
was a demoniac pride involved. In the days of the duello there would
have been a simple and normal solution. They would have met in stately
fashion with swords or pistols, and they would have fought to the death
under the eyes of seconds and witnesses, and somehow it would have been
appropriate.
But such things were impossible now. The code of the duello was
outmoded. So when McCauley read the records and reports on the two
men--because a commanding officer needs to know the men who serve under
him, and the more dangerous the service the better he needs to know
them--he knew that the first case of murder on the moon was in the
making. Since they couldn't fight formally, as in olden times, what
must happen would amount to murder.
There'd been an automobile accident at Earth Base of the Space Service.
It looked very much as if it were deliberate, as if Holmes and Kent
had contrived it by agreement between themselves so that one was
bound to be killed. Both were hurt. Neither died. Then there was the
time when Kent was found with a rifle in his hand and a bullet wound
in his shoulder, ignoring the wound and passionately pursuing a hunt
for--so he said--a deer. He explained that the wound was an accident.
The records showed that Holmes was hunting in the same area at the
same time. They showed that he had a slight flesh wound--made by a
bullet. Both Holmes and Kent gave totally unconvincing accounts of
their wounds, and each denied that he had been wounded by the other.
Their stories did not satisfy their commanding officer. He transferred
them to other units, and in his confidential comment on their
records--comment they would never see--he said that he believed they'd
arranged a duel in deer-hunting country with big-game rifles, contrived
so the one who was killed would seem to be the victim of a hunting
accident. It could not be proved, but he believed it.
There were other memos. Neither Holmes nor Kent had a mark against
him except in connection with the other man. Yet no commanding
officer--certainly none on the moon--would want either man in his base
after having read the records. The moon is too small for men who carry
their enmities with them into space.
And McCauley had both men--able men, capable men, desirable men except
for their mutual hatred. He'd traveled a quarter way around the moon to
have one or both of them transferred out of Grimaldi Base before they
could arrange another covered-up duel which would leave one dead and
the other a murderer. But his effort had been futile. They couldn't be
transferred out immediately. They couldn't be gotten out, for it was
too close to sunset. They couldn't be gotten away at all during the
lunar night. And now they were out on Farside where there could be no
witnesses and the grave of a murdered man could never be found.
McCauley arrived, raging mad, at the small, grubby, dust-insulated
dome that was Grimaldi Base. No report had come in from Kent or
Holmes. McCauley was bitterly sure that they'd gone out to the blasted
moonscape firmly resolved that only one of them would return. Somehow,
in the illimitable emptiness of which the fiftieth part had never
been seen by men, somehow, under the black, star-studded sky with the
setting sun casting mile-long shadows of utter blackness and absolute
cold, McCauley knew that they would have some sort of fight in which
one must die.
But they were Space Service officers. Before they had that fight they
would set up the relay that would give Farside Base a connection to
Grimaldi, and so to Earth, and so by Earth Relay to every other human
being on the moon. They would do their duty as Space Service officers
before they did murder.
Stooping, McCauley came out of the air lock into the base.
"I want all the facts about Kent and Holmes!" he snapped.
"No word from them yet, sir," said the communications officer. "But
we've picked up clickings, sir, which might be the unit being put into
operation. But Holmes and Kent have two beams to align, sir, besides
the all-direction antennae. They may be checking with Farside, sir, to
make sure the relay beam is pointed right to that base."
McCauley stripped off his space suit.
"They're in more trouble than they know," he growled. "They lost two
air tanks off their sledge."
The communications officer's mouth dropped open.
"But Colonel, sir.... They couldn't! They need those tanks to get back
with!"
"Exactly," McCauley snapped. "Route the relay's local-antenna and
suit-radio frequencies in to me. I'll take the messages."
He stamped through the cramped and shabby little base to the minute
compartment set aside for the Base Commander's office. It was
approximately four feet by six. He settled down in the one chair,
glowering. Automatically he glanced at the dials that reported
conditions at the base. Outside temperature facing sun, 198°. Shadow
temperature, minus 205°. Inside barometric pressure, 30.02 inches.
Inside temperature, 72°. Carbon monoxide, 28 parts per million. Carbon
dioxide, 1.8%. Oxygen, 21.2%.
The physical state of the base was good. But there were two men out on
Farside who lacked two tanks of air they needed to get back. Although
it was their intention that only one of them should return, they'd
outsmarted themselves. Neither could get back, now.
A clicking from a loud-speaker. A wavery voice:
"Calling Grimaldi Base! Calling Grimaldi! Call...."
"Calling Repeater Two," said McCauley. He was very grim. "Calling
Repeater Two!"
"... rimaldi Ba...." Silence, then suddenly: "Hello!"
It was Holmes' voice. McCauley recognized it.
"Holmes!" he said curtly. "You two fools have committed suicide! You
dropped one air tank off the sledge. Remember? That meant that only
one of you could get back, and you and Kent could decide later which
one it would be. But Kent kicked an air tank off, too! Now who's coming
back?"
There was a startled silence.
"You heard me!" said McCauley savagely. "There were three tanks on that
sledge. They'd bring you both back with air to spare. But you threw one
away, and Kent threw one away, and so there's one left. It's six hours'
travel back to here, and you've air for two men for four and a half!"
Again silence. McCauley could envision the scene at Repeater Two,
to which his voice was transmitted by precisely the system of beam
relay used on Earth to carry telephone messages across continents
without wires. There would be two bulky, space-suited figures atop an
irregularly level space from which the ground fell away on every side,
a drop of thousands of feet. They would be in glaring sunlight from the
lowest of low-hanging suns. Where it struck the metal of their space
armor they would glitter blindingly. Where there was shadow, there
would be the blackness of the pit. Overhead there stretched a black
sky with a thousand million stars, and around and below them there
would be long, angular, parallel ribbons of shadow with sharply defined
sides and with beginnings but no ends. And there would be the moon
sledge with the relay built solidly upon it, its runners chocked with
stony debris so it would not slide or topple. There would be the two
bowl-shaped beam reflectors, one pointing back to Repeater One--itself
a moon sledge wedged in place upon a mountain--and the other to
remoteness and to wildness and to night.
"You could come back as you went," said McCauley. "You could bring back
the sledge, breathing air from its tanks on the trip. But if you did
that, Farside would be out of communication during the coming night.
That would have to be explained."
Again it seemed that he could see the faraway, motionless figures of
the two men listening over their suit radios to the voice twice relayed
before it could reach their ears.
"I would have to explain," said McCauley grimly, "that Lieutenants Kent
and Holmes intended to murder each other, and each one threw away an
air tank he expected the other man to use--but he expected to have
plenty of air for himself! I would have to explain that Farside was
isolated because two would-be murderers had outsmarted themselves and
didn't have the guts to face the consequences!"
Kent's voice came from a speaker. He spoke from that distant mountain
peak toward which darkness crept steadily.
"Look here, sir." His tone was defiant.
"If that sledge is brought back," said McCauley angrily, "I'll
court-martial whoever comes back with it, even the two of you! If one
of you comes back, there'll be a court of inquiry. Maybe you've worked
out a pretty story of an accident for the survivor to tell. But you
can't use it now, because I found the air tanks you threw away! If one
of you comes back, the inquiry will end in a court-martial and a murder
verdict!"
Holmes' voice, stiff and steady, was as defiant as Kent's had been.
"I take it, sir, that you're advising neither of us to come back. Very
well, sir! We've a little matter to settle between us. We can settle
that and the one who's left...."
"If neither of you comes back," rasped McCauley, "the inquiry into
your deaths will inform an interested world that two officers--and
supposedly gentlemen--of the Space Service were actually two smart,
snide, shabby killers who overreached themselves! The Service will be
proud to have it known that its officers try to murder each other by
throwing away each other's air tanks. The Service will be very, very
proud!"
The irony of the last words was corrosive.
"Sir...." The two voices spoke together, outraged and despairing.
"Sir," panted Kent's voice, alone. "We'd no idea of anything like that,
sir! We've always hated each other, but...."
His voice ended in a gulp. McCauley growled. A young officer can be
very much of a fool, of course, but he can be desperately solicitous
for the honor of the Service to which he is attached. McCauley spoke
with icy precision.
"I am not concerned with your lives or your hatreds or your intentions.
I am concerned with the good name of the Space Service. I order you
both to come back here. Alive. Together. You will start immediately!"
A dazed silence. Then Kent said:
"But--you don't want us to bring the sledge...."
"And we haven't--" this was Holmes--"we haven't enough air to get back!
How can we do it, sir?"
McCauley relaxed in his small cubbyhole of an office. Very privately he
drew a breath of relief. But his tone remained stern.
"You will head for Repeater One. If you remember, my voice goes from
the base here to Repeater One where it is relayed to Repeater Two. If
I chose the proper frequency it would go on through Three and Four
to Farside. Can you think of any advantage in being at Repeater One
instead of Two?"
A long pause. Then Holmes' voice, dubious:
"It's nearer the base, sir. No more than three hours' travel, if that
much. We could make it on one tank of air apiece, sir, and have the
extra one for margin. We could make it to base from there, sir, if we
were there. But we're not, and it's three hours' travel from here! We'd
get there...."
"You _would_ get there?" demanded McCauley ominously. "Or you _will_
get there?"
"_Will_, sir." But the young officer's voice was bewildered.
"For your information," said McCauley curtly, "the Repeater One relay
unit is exactly like the relay unit at Repeater Two. I may add that
it is in bright sunshine, but will not be so indefinitely."--This was
because McCauley remembered an air tank which had lain in shadow until
its metal shivered brittlely when struck and the air inside it was a
liquid. "It was carried to its position and mounted exactly as the
relay for Repeater Two was. Now figure it out for yourself! If you
still don't understand when you get to it, call me from there. Now get
moving! Sunset's not far away."
He clicked off his microphone, but left the receiving unit on. The
relay at Repeater Two would pick up suit-radio speech and relay it
back, the pickup being from its all-direction antennae. McCauley heard
mumblings. Then, very distinctly, Holmes spoke.
"Understand, I'm going to cooperate with you, getting to Repeater One,
but that doesn't mean I like you any better!"
Kent said resentfully:
"I figured you'd have to fight me for the air to get back with. And you
pulled the same trick on me! But we'll manage eventually...."
More mutterings. Then:
"Cripes! Let's get going!"
There were those peculiar noises which a microphone inside a space suit
picks up and transmits. Breathings. Clankings. Sometimes the squeak of
metal sliding on metal.
McCauley listened. Presently the noises faded and ceased. The two young
space-suited officers had descended the mountain to where they were not
in line of sight of the relay, and consequently it could not pick up
their suit-radio communications to relay back to McCauley.
The communications officer tapped on the office door.
"We're through to Farside Base, sir," he reported. "The relay system's
working splendidly. Farside just asked for an Earth Relay link to Lunar
Base."
"Give it to 'em," said McCauley succinctly.
He waited, listening. He had Repeater One as well as Two set so it
would retransmit any local pickup on helmet-phone frequency, but it was
half an hour before anything but the peculiar singing murmurs of empty
space came from the loud-speaker. Then he heard heavy breathing.
He heard a colloquy between Kent and Holmes, far away in the lunar
mountains. They were evidently climbing somewhere, and part of the
climb necessarily took them through deep shadow, where the temperature
of the rock was down to night temperature. Their space suits could
handle the cold for a certain length of time, but the teeth of one of
the men were chattering before he came out into sunlight at the end of
the climb.
McCauley heard Holmes say sarcastically:
"I needed that last pull. Want me to thank you for it?"
Kent's voice snapped as he answered Holmes.
"I did it solely because McCauley would court-martial me if I came in
alone!"
A pause, then the remote, transmitted sound of space shoes on stone.
Holmes spoke.
"There's a way I can kill you easily. All I need do is get myself
killed."
He laughed without mirth, and Kent said bitterly, "Go ahea--" Then
there was silence.
The communications officer brought McCauley a message from Lunar Base
congratulating Grimaldi Base for completing the communications link
between the two hemispheres of the moon.
"All right. Forget it," McCauley said.
He continued to listen. An hour went by. Then, without warning, there
came an explosive "Look out!" There was a crash and then panting.
Kent's voice rasped, "Have you gotten killed?" Holmes answered through
clenched teeth. "Not yet. But how will I get out of here?" More
clankings; more words, painstakingly devoid of solicitude on the one
hand, or any amiable emotion such as gratitude on the other. McCauley
could visualize exactly what was going on from the words. Holmes had
fallen into a pothole, one of innumerable such mantraps scattered at
random everywhere.
Kent got him out. Holmes grunted to indicate that he could do without
more help. That was that. Minutes later, McCauley heard Kent say dourly:
"Three hours to Repeater One? We're over three hours now. How's your
air?"
"All right," Holmes snapped. "When we get to that level place, we'll
split the extra tank."
McCauley fretted. He could not know how far or how fast the two men
were moving, off in that deadly waste of obstacles. Three hours had
seemed a fair estimate. But plainly they'd had trouble.
Their voices cut off before they reached a spot where they could divide
the air in the tank that had to be shared.
Then silence, for a long, long time. When McCauley heard any sound
again, it was Holmes angrily calling to Kent, demanding that he say
whether he needed help or not. And then for a full half hour McCauley
listened to the sharp-voiced, sometimes abusive exchanges between the
two. Kent had touched the keystone of an unstable rock slope. It gave
way under him and went whirling downward in one of those infrequent,
slow-motion moon avalanches that are unimaginable until one has seen
them. Kent checked himself on the edge of a precipice over which the
rolling stones fell in utter silence until after tens of seconds they
struck and split, still noiselessly.
He could not get away. It was dangerous to help him, lest another
avalanche be started. McCauley, listening, sweated as he glanced at a
clock. But Holmes was helping Kent.
Later--much later--he heard clatterings and Kent's voice said
snappishly:
"Well, here's Repeater One. McCauley said to come here. What do we do
now? I've air for fifteen minutes more."
Holmes tried to speak, but couldn't. There were clankings.
"Doggone you," Kent snarled shrilly, "you cheated on the air! You
didn't split even! Cripes!"
Then he panted, and suddenly there was a hissing sound, and gasps.
McCauley's hands were tightly clenched as the sounds came to him from
both faraway space-suit microphones. But at the hissing sound he
relaxed.
A little later Holmes' voice came, astonished.
"That was it! He said that the relay here was exactly like the relay at
Repeater Two. It's a sledge, and it was brought here by two men--and it
has air tanks that they breathed from while they traveled! Kent, you
hooked me to the air. The pressure's way up! We can refill our suit
tanks and the spare!"
Kent said waspishly:
"So I noticed. Get your tank full-up and let me have my share....
McCauley said to call him from here if we needed to. What say?"
"McCauley can go to blazes!" rumbled Holmes. "It's not two hours from
here to the base. If we fill up on air, we can get there before sunset.
To heck with McCauley!"
In the commanding officer's cubbyhole at Grimaldi Base, McCauley
relaxed again in his chair. His expression went from strain to
contentment. He reached over and flipped off the receiver.
* * * * *