gruel, rich in starches, proteins, fats and vitamins--each meal
differently flavored, up to the number of ten flavors, in a
manufacturer's attempt to mask the sameness. Add water to a powder--heat
and eat. The spaceman's usual diet, while afield...
One of the functions of the moisture-reclaimers was a rough joke, or a
squeamishness. A man's kidneys and bowels functioned, and precious water
molecules couldn't be wasted, here in the dehydrated emptiness. But what
difference did it really make, after the sanitary distillation of a
reclaimer? Accept, adjust...
Decision about employment or activity in the immediate future, was one
thing that couldn't be dismissed. And announcements, beamed from the
Moon, emphasized it:
"Serenitatis Base, seventeenth month-day, sixteenth hour. (There was a
chime) Lunar Projects Placement is here to serve you. Plastics-chemists,
hydroponics specialists, machinists, mechanics, metallurgists, miners,
helpers--all are urgently needed. The tax-free pay will startle you.
Free subsistence and quarters. Here at Serene, at Tycho Station or at a
dozen other expanding sites..."
Charlie Reynolds sat with Frank Nelsen while he listened. "The lady has
a swell voice," said Charlie. "Otherwise, it _sounds_ good, too. But I'm
one that's going farther. To Venus--just being explored. All fresh, and
no man-made booby traps, at least. Maybe they'll even figure out a way
to make it rotate faster, give it a reasonably short day, and a
breathable atmosphere--make a warmer second Earth out of it...
Sometimes, when you jump farther, you jump over a lot of trouble. Better
than going slow, with the faint-hearts. Their muddling misfortunes begin
to stick to you. I'd rather be Mitch, headed for heebie-jeebie Mars, or
the Kuzaks, aiming for the crazy Asteroid Belt."
That was Charlie, talking to him--Frank Nelsen--like an older brother.
It made a sharp doubt in him, again. But then he grinned.
"Maybe I am a slow starter," he said. "The Moon is near and humble, but
some say it's good training--even harsher than space. And I don't want
to bypass and miss anything. Oh, hell, Charlie--I'll get farther, soon,
too! But I really don't even know what I'll do, yet. Got to wait and see
how the cards fall..."
Several hours before the rest of the Bunch curved into a slow orbit a
thousand miles above the Moon, Glen Tiflin set the ionic of his bubb for
full acceleration, and arced away, outward, perhaps toward the Belt.
"So long, all you dumb slobs!" his voice hissed in their helmet-phones.
"Now I get really lost! If you ever cross my path again, watch your
heads..."
Art Kuzak's flare of anger died. "Good riddance," he breathed. "How long
will he last, alone? Without a space-fitness card, the poor idiot
probably imagines himself a big, dangerous renegade, already."
Joe Kuzak's answering tone almost had a shrug in it. "Don't jinx our
luck, twin brother," he said. "For that matter, how long will _we_
last...? Mex, did you toss Tiflin back his shiv?"
"A couple of hours ago," Ramos answered mildly.
Everybody was looking down at the Moon, whose crater-pocked ugliness and
beauty was sparsely dotted with the blue spots of stellene domes, many
of them housing embryo enterprises that were trying to beat the blastoff
cost of necessities brought from Earth, and to supply spacemen and
colonists with their needs, cheaply.
The nine fragile rings were soon in orbit. One worker-recruiting rocket
and several trader-rockets--much less powerful than those needed to
achieve orbit around Earth--because lunar gravity was only one-sixth of
the terrestrial--were floating in their midst. On the Moon it had of
course been known that a fresh Bunch was on the way. Even telescopes
could have spotted them farther off than the distance of their 240,000
mile leap.
Frank Nelsen's tongue tasted of brassy doubt. He didn't know where he'd
be, or what luck, good or bad, he might run into, within the next hour.
The Kuzaks were palavering with the occupants of two heavily-loaded
trader rockets. "Sure we'll buy--if the price is right," Art was saying.
"Flasks of water and oxygen, medicines, rolls of stellene. Spare parts
for Archies, ionics, air-restorers. Food, clothes--anything we can sell,
ourselves..."
The Kuzaks must have at least a few thousand dollars, which they had
probably managed to borrow when they had gone home to Pennsylvania to
say goodbye.
Out here, free of the grip of any large sphere, there was hardly a limit
to the load which their ionics could eventually accelerate sufficiently
to travel tremendous distances. Streamlining, in the vacuum, of course
wasn't necessary, either.
Now a small, sharp-featured man in an Archie, drifted close to Ramos and
Frank, as they floated near their bubbs. "Hello, Ramos, hello, Nelsen,"
he said. "Yes--we know your names. We investigate, beforehand, down on
terra firma. We even have people to snap photographs--often you don't
even notice. We like guys with talent who get out here by their own
efforts. Shows they got guts--seriousness! But now you've arrived. We
are Lunar Projects Placement. We need mechanics, process technicians,
administrative personnel--anything you can name, almost. Any bright lad
with drive enough to learn fast, suits us fine. Five hundred bucks an
Earth-week, to start, meals and lodging thrown in. Quit any time you
want. Plenty of different working sites. Mines, refineries, factories,
construction..."
"Serenitatis Base?" Ramos asked almost too quickly, Frank thought. And
he sounded curiously serious. Was this the Ramos who should be going a
lot farther than the Moon, anyway?
"Hell, yes, fella!" said the job scout.
"Then I'll sign."
"Excellent... You, too, guy?" The scout was looking at Frank. "And your
other friends?"
"I'm thinking about it," Frank answered cagily. "Some of them aren't
stopping on the Moon, as you can see."
Mitch Storey was lashing a few flasks of oxygen and water to the rim of
his bubb, being careful to space them evenly for static balance. He
didn't have the money to buy much more, even here.
The Kuzaks were preparing two huge bundles of supplies, which they
intended to tow. Reynolds was also loading up a few things, with
Two-and-Two helping him.
"I'm all set, Frank!" Two-and-Two shouted. "I'm going along with
Charlie, maybe to crash the Venus exploration party!"
"Good!" Frank shouted back, glad that this large, unsure person had
found himself a leader.
Now he looked at Gimp Hines, riding the spinning rim of his ring with
his good and bad leg dangling, an expectant, quizzical, half-worried
look on his freckled face.
But Dave Lester was more pathetic. He had stopped the rotation of his
bubb. He looked down first at the pitted, jagged face of the Moon, with
an expression in which rapture and terror may have been mingled, glanced
with the hope of desperation toward the job scout, and then distractedly
continued dismantling the rigging of his vehicle, as if to repack it in
the blastoff drum for a landing.
"Hey--hold on, Les!" Two-and-Two shouted. "You gotta know where you're
going, first!"
"Make up your mind, Nelsen," said the job scout, getting impatient. "We
handle just about everything lunar--except in the Tovie areas. Without
us, you're just a lost, fresh punk!"
But another man had approached from another lunar GO rocket, which had
just appeared. He had a thin intellectual face, dark eyes, trap mouth,
white hair, soft speech that was almost shy.
"I'm Xavier Rodan," he said. "I search out my own employees. I do
minerals survey--for gypsum, bauxite--anything. And site survey, for
factories and other future developments. I also have connections with
the Selenographic Institute of the University of Chicago. It is all
interesting work, but in a rather remote region, I'm afraid--the far
side of the Moon. And I can pay only three hundred a week. Of course you
can resign whenever you wish. Perhaps you'd be interested--Mr. Nelsen,
is it?"
Frank had an impulse to jump at the chance--though there was a warning
coming to him from somewhere. But how could you ever know? You would
always have to go down to that devils' wilderness to find out.
"I'll try it, Mr. Rodan," he said.
"Selenography--that's one of my favorite subjects, sir!" David Lester
burst out, making a gingerly leap across the horrible void of spherical
sky--stars in all directions except where the Moon's bulk hung. "Could
I--too?" His trembling mouth looked desperate.
"Very well, boy," Rodan said at last. "A hundred dollars for a week's
work period."
Frank was glad that Lester had a place to go--and furious that he would
probably have to nursemaid him, after all.
Gimp Hines kept riding the rim of his ring like a merry-go-round, his
face trying to show casual humor and indifference over ruefulness and
scare. "Nobody wants me," he said cheerfully. "It's just prejudice and
poor imagination. Well--I don't think I'll even try to prove how good I
am. Of course I could shoot for the asteroids. But I'd like to look
around Serenitatis Base--some, anyway. Will fifty bucks get me and my
rig down?"
"Talk to our pilot, Lame Fella," said the job scout. "But you must be
suicidal nuts to be around here at all."
The others leapt to help Nelsen, Ramos, Gimp and Lester strip and pack
their gear. Ramos' and Gimp's drums were loaded into the job scout's
rocket. Nelsen's and Lester's went into Rodan's.
Gloved hands clasped gloved hands all around. The Bunch, the Planet
Strappers, were breaking up.
"So long, you characters--see you around," said Art Kuzak. "It won't be
ten years, before you all wind up in the Belt."
"Bring back the Mystery of Mars, Mitch!" Frank was saying.
"When you get finished Mooning, come to Venus, Lover Lad," Reynolds told
Ramos. "But good luck!"
"Jeez--I'm gonna get sentimental," Two-and-Two moaned. "Luck everybody.
Come on, Charlie--let's roll! I don't want to slobber!"
"I'll catch up with you all--watch!" Gimp promised.
"So long, Frank..."
"Yeah--over the Milky Way, Frankie!"
"_Hasta luego_, Gang." This was all Ramos, the big mouth, had to say. He
wasn't glum, exactly. But he was sort of preoccupied and impatient.
The five remaining rings--a wonderful sight, Frank thought--began to
move out of orbit. Ships with sails set for far ports. No--mere ships of
the sea were nothing, anymore. But would all of the Bunch survive?
Charlie Reynolds, the cool one, the most likely to succeed, waved
jauntily and carelessly from his rotating, accelerating ring.
Two-and-Two wagged both arms stiffly from his.
Mitch Storey's bubb, lightest loaded, was jumping ahead. But you could
hear him playing _Old Man River_ on his mouth organ, inside his helmet.
The Kuzaks' bubbs, towing massive loads, were accelerating slowest, with
the ex-gridiron twins riding the rigging. But their rings would dwindle
to star specks before long, too.
The job scout's rocket, carrying Ramos and Gimp, began to flame for a
landing at Serene.
In the airtight cabin of Xavier Rodan's vehicle, Frank Nelsen and David
Lester had read and signed their contracts and had received their
copies.
Rodan didn't smile. "Now we'll go down and have a look at the place I'm
investigating," he said.
IV
Frank Nelsen's view of empire-building on the Moon was brief, all
encompassing, and far too sketchy to be very satisfying, as
Rodan--turned about in his universal-gimbaled pilot seat--spiralled his
battered rocket down backwards, with the small nuclear jets firing
forward in jerky, tooth-cracking bursts, to check speed further.
It was necessary to go around the abortive sub-planet that had always
accompanied the Earth, almost once, to reduce velocity enough for a
landing.
Thus, Nelsen glimpsed much territory--the splashed, irregular shape of
Serenitatis, the international base on the mare, the dust sea of the
same name; the radiating threads of trails and embryo highways, the
ever-widening separation of isolated domes and scattered human diggings
and workings faintly scratched in the lunar crust, as, at a still great
height, Frank's gaze swept outward from the greatest center of human
endeavor on the Moon.
It was much the same around Tycho Station, except that this base was
smaller, and was built in a great, white-rayed crater, whose walls were
pierced by tunnels for exit and entry.
The Tovie camp, glimpsed later, and only at the distant horizon, seemed
not very different from the others, except for the misleading patterns
of camouflage. That the Tovies should have an exclusive center of their
own was not even legal, according to U.N. agreements. But facts were
facts, and what did anyone do about them?
Frank was not very concerned with such issues just then, for there was
an impression that was overpowering: The slightness of the intrusion of
his kind on a two thousand-something miles-in-diameter globe of
incredible desert, overlapping ring-walls, craters centered in radiating
streaks of white ash, mountain ranges that sank gradually into dust,
which once, two billion years ago, after probable ejection from
volcanoes, had no doubt floated in a then palpable atmosphere. But now,
to a lone man down there, they would be bleak plains stretching to a
disconcertingly near horizon.
Frank Nelsen's view was one of fascination, behind which was the chilly
thought: This is my choice; here is where I will have to live for a
short while that can seem ages. Space looks tame, now. Can I make it all
right? Worse--_how about Lester?_
Frank looked around him. Like Rodan, Lester and he had both pivoted
around in their gimbaled seats--to which they had safety-strapped
themselves--to face the now forward-pointing stern jets.
Rodan, looking more trap-mouthed than before, had said nothing further
as he guided the craft gingerly lower. Lester was biting his heavy lip.
His narrow chin trembled.
A faint whisper had begun. As far back as the 1940s, astronomers had
begun to suspect that the Moon was, after all, not entirely airless.
There would be traces of heavy gases--argon, neon, xenon, krypton, and
volcanic carbon dioxide. It would be expanded far upward above the
surface, because the feeble lunar gravity could not give it sufficient
weight to compress it very much. So it would thin out much less rapidly
with altitude than does the terrestrial atmosphere. From a density of
perhaps 1/12,000th of Earth's sea level norm at the Moon's surface, it
would thin to perhaps 1/20,000th at a height of eighty miles, being thus
roughly equivalent in density to Earth's gaseous envelope at the same
level! And at this height was the terrestrial zone where meteors flare!
This theory about the lunar atmosphere had proven to be correct. The
tiny density was still sufficient to give the Moon almost as effective
an atmospheric meteor screen as the Earth's. The relatively low velocity
needed to maintain vehicles in circumlunar orbits, made its danger to
such vehicles small. It could help reduce speed for a landing; it caused
that innocuous hiss of passage. But it could sometimes be treacherous.
Frank thought of these things as the long minutes dragged. Perhaps
Rodan, hunched intently over his controls, had reason enough, there, to
be silent...
The actual landing still had to be made in the only way possible on
worlds whose air-covering was so close to a complete vacuum as
this--like a cat climbing down a tree backwards. With flaming jets still
holding it up, and spinning gyros keeping it vertical, the rocket
lowered gradually. The seats swung level, keeping their occupants right
side up. There was a hovering pause, then the faint jolt of contact. The
jet growl stopped; complete silence closed in like a hammer blow.
"Do you men know where you are?" Rodan asked after a moment.
"At the edge of Mare Nova, I think," Frank answered, his eyes combing
the demons' landscape beyond the thick, darkened glass of the cabin's
ports.
The dazzling sun was low--early morning of two weeks of daylight. The
shadows were long, black shafts.
"Yes--there's Tower Rock," Lester quavered. "And the Arabian Range going
down under the dust of the plain."
"Correct," Rodan answered. "We're well over the rim of the Far Side.
You'll never see the Earth from here. The nearest settlement is eight
hundred miles away, and it's Tovie at that. This is a really remote
spot, as I intimated before."
He paused, as if to let this significant information be appreciated. "So
that's settled," he went on. "Now I'll enlighten you about what else you
need to know... Come along."
Frank Nelsen felt the dust crunch under the rubberized boot-soles of his
Archer. There was a brief walk, then a pause.
Rodan pointed to a pit dynamited out of the dust and lava rock, and to
small piles of greyish material beside six-inch borings rectangularly
spaced over a wide area.
"There is an extensive underlying layer of gypsum, here," he said. "The
water-bearing rock. A mile away there's an ample deposit of
graphite--carbon. Thus, there exists a complete local source of
hydrogen, oxygen and carbon, ideal for synthesizing various
hydrocarbonic chemicals or making complicated polyethylene materials
such as stellene, so useful in space. Lead, too, is not very far off.
Silicon is, of course, available everywhere. There'll be a plant
belonging to Hoffman Chemicals here, before too long. I was prospecting
for them, for a site like this. Actually I was very lucky, locating this
spot almost right away--which is fortunate. They think I'm still
looking, and aren't concerned..."
Rodan was quiet for a moment before continuing. The pupils of his eyes
dilated and contracted strangely.
"Because I found something else," he went on. "It was luck beyond
dreams, and it must be my very own. I intend to investigate it
thoroughly, even if it takes years! Come along, again!"
This time the walk was about three hundred yards, past three small
stellene domes, the parabolic mirrors of a solar-power plant, a
sun-energized tractor, and onward almost to the mountain wall, imbedded
in the dust of the mare. There Frank noticed a circular, glassy area.
Strips of magnesium were laid like bridging planks across chunks of
lava, and in the dust all around were countless curious scrabbled marks.
Rodan stood carefully on a magnesium strip, and looked back at Nelsen
and Lester, his brows crinkling as if he was suspicious that he had
already told them too much. Frank Nelsen became more aware of the heavy
automatic pistol at Rodan's hip, and felt a tingling urge to get away
from here and from this man--as if a vast mistake had been made.
"It is necessary for you to be informed about _some_ matters," Rodan
said slowly. "For instance, unless it is otherwise disturbed, a
footprint, or the like, will endure for millions of years on the
Moon--as surely as if impressed in granite--because there is no weather
left to rub it out. You will be working here. I am preserving some of
these markings. So please walk on these strips, which Dutch and I have
laid down."
Rodan indicated a large, Archer-clad man, who also carried an automatic.
He had the face of a playful but dangerous mastiff. He was hunkered down
in a shallow pit, scanning the ground with a watch-sized device probably
intended for locating objects hidden just beneath the surface,
electronically. Beside him was a screen-bottomed container, no doubt
meant for sifting dust.
"Greetings, Novices!" he gruffed with genial contempt. But his pale
eyes, beyond the curve of his helmet, had a masked puzzlement, as if
something from the lunar desolation had gotten into his brain, leaving
the realization of where he was, permanently not altogether clear to
him.
Rodan pulled a shiny object from his thigh pouch, and held it out in a
gloved palm for his new employees to peer at.
"One of the things we found," he remarked. "Incomplete. If we could, for
instance, locate the other parts..."
Frank saw a little cylinder, with grey coils wrapped inside it--a power
chamber, perhaps, to be lined with magnetic force, the only thing that
could contain what amounted to a tiny twenty-million degree piece of a
star's hot heart. It was a familiar principle for releasing and managing
nuclear power. But the device, perhaps part of a small weapon, was
subtly marked by the differences of another technology.
"I believe I have said enough," Rodan stated with a thin smile. "Though
some facts will be unavoidably obvious to you, working here. But at
least I will let you figure them out for yourselves, since you are
well-informed young men, by your own statement." Here Rodan looked hard
at the pale, unsteady Lester. "We will go back, now, so I can show you
the camp, its routine, and your place in it. We have three domes--garden
and living quarters, with a workshop and supply dome between them..."
Quarters proved to be okay--two bunks and the usual compact accessories.
"Leave your Archers in the lockers outside your door--here are your
keys," Rodan suggested. "Helen will have a meal ready for you in the
adjacent dining room. Afterwards, take a helpful tranquilizer, and
sleep. No work until you awaken. I shall leave you, now..."
It was a good meal--steak cultured and grown in a nourishing solution,
on the Moon, perhaps at Serene, much as Dr. Alexis Carrel had long ago
grown and kept for years a living fragment of a chicken's heart.
Potatoes, peas and tomatoes, too--all had become common staples in
hydroponic gardens off the Earth.
"What do you make of what Rodan was talking about, Les?" Frank asked
conversationally.
But David Lester was lost and vague, his food almost untouched. "I--I
don't know!" he stammered.
Scared and embittered further by this bad sign, Frank turned to Helen.
"And how are you?" he asked hopefully.
"I am all right," she answered, without a trace of encouragement.
She was in jeans, maybe she was eighteen, maybe she was Rodan's
daughter. Her face was as reddened as a peasant's. It was hard to tell
that she was a girl at all. She wasn't a girl. It was soon plain that
she was a zombie with about ten words in her vocabulary. How could a
girl have gotten to this impossible region, anyway?
Now Frank tried to delay Lester's inevitable complete crackup by
encouraging his interest in their situation.
"It's big, Les," he said. "It's got to be! An expedition came here to
investigate the Moon--it couldn't be any more recently than sixty
million years ago, if it was from as close as Mars, or the Asteroid
Planet! Two adjacent worlds were competing, then, the scientists know.
Both were smaller than the Earth, cooled faster, bore life sooner. Which
sent the party? I saw where there rocket ship must have stood--a glassy,
spot where the dust was once fused!... From all the markings, they must
have been around for months. Nowhere else on the Moon--that I ever heard
of--is there anything similar left. So maybe they did most of their
survey work by gliding, somehow, above the ground, not disturbing the
dust... I think the little indentations we saw look Martian. That would
be a break! Mars still has weather. Archeological objects wouldn't stay
new there for millions of years, but here they would! Rodan is
right--he's got something that'll make him famous!"
"Yes--I think I'll have a devil-killer and hit the sack, Frank," Lester
said.
"Oh--all right," Frank agreed wearily. "Me, likewise."
Frank awoke naturally from a dreamless slumber. After a breakfast of
eggs that had been a powder, Lester and he were at the diggings,
sifting dust for the dropped and discarded items of an alien visitation.
Thus Frank's job began. In the excitement of a hunt, as if for ancient
treasure, for a long time, through many ten hour shifts, Frank Nelsen
found a perhaps unfortunate Lethe of forgetfulness for his worries, and
for the mind-poisoning effects of the silence and desolation in this
remote part of the Moon.
They found things, thinly scattered in the ten acre area that Rodan
meant tediously to sift. The screws and nuts, bright and new, were
almost Earthly. But would anyone ever know what the little plastic rings
were for? Or the sticks of cellulose, or the curved, wire device with
fuzz at the ends? But then, would an off-Earth being ever guess the use
of--say--a toothbrush or a bobbypin?