"Adam Crag was not a God-fearing man," the minister stated. His tone
implied that Crag had been just the opposite. "Not a bit like his
parents. The best family guidance in the world, yet he quit Sunday
school almost before he got started. I doubt that he's ever been to
church since."
He looked archly at the agent. "Perhaps a godless world like the moon is
just retribution."
A garage mechanic, a junk dealer and the proprietor of a tool shop had a
lot to say about Adam Crag. So did the owner of a small private
airport. They remembered him as a boy with an insatiable appetite for
tearing cars apart and converting them to what the junk dealer termed
"supersonic jalopies."
Many people in El Cajon remembered Adam Crag. Strangely enough, his
teachers all the way back through grade school had little difficulty in
recalling his antics and attitudes. An elementary teacher explained it
by saying, "He was that kind of a boy."
The family doctor had the most to say about Adam. He had long since
retired, a placid seventyish man who had elected to pass his last years
in the same house, in an older section of the town, in which he'd been
born.
He sat swinging and talking, reminiscing about "the growing up of young
Adam," as he put it. The agent had made himself at home on the front
steps, listening. The doctor's comments were little short of being an
eulogy.
He finished and was silent, tapping a black briar pipe against his hand
while he contemplated the agent with eyes which had long since ceased to
see.
"One other thing," he added finally. "Adam was sure a heller with the
girls."
The agent started to comment that Crag's dossier looked like the roll
call of a girl's dormitory but refrained. He didn't want to prejudice
the testimony.
* * * * *
Zero hour on the plains of Arzachel. The sun, an intolerably brilliant
ball pasted against the ebony sky, had started its drop toward the
horizon. The shadows on the plain were lengthening, harbingers of the
bitter two-weeks-long night to come. They crept out from the sheer wall
of the crater, reaching to engulf Pickering Base with icy fingers.
Crag and Prochaska were alone, now, in the stripped cabin of the Aztec.
Nagel and Richter, under Larkwell's command, had departed for Bandit an
hour earlier with the last of their supplies. Crag disliked splitting
the crew but saw no alternative. He had to gamble. The element of
certainty, the ability to predict, the expectations of logic--all these
had vanished, swept away by the vagaries of chance. They could do only
so much. Beyond that their fate was pawn to the chaotic cross fires of
human elements pitted against the architecture of the cosmos. They were
puppets in the last lottery of probability.
Prochaska broke the silence: "It's going to be close."
Crag's eyes remained riveted to the instruments. Drone Charlie and Red
Dog were plunging through space separated by a scant half-hour's flight
time. Despite the drone's long launch lead, the gap between the two
rockets had been narrowed to a perilous point. Drone Charlie was
decelerating rapidly, her braking rockets flaring spasmodically to slow
her headlong flight.
"We'd better get into our suits," Crag said finally. "We want to get out
of this baby the second Charlie lets down."
Prochaska nodded. They left their suits unpressurized for the time being
to allow full mobility. In the moments ahead Prochaska, in particular,
couldn't afford to be hampered by the rigidity the suit possessed when
under pressure.
They turned back to the control panel. Charlie was hurtling over
Alphons, dropping toward the bleak lunar landscape with incredible
speed. The mechanical voice from Alpine droned a stream of data. There
was a rapid exchange of information between Prochaska and Alpine. At its
conclusion he began taking over control of the drone. Crag watched
tensely. Prochaska's fingers, even though encased in the heavy suit
material, moved with certainty. In a little while he spoke without
looking up.
"Got it," he said laconically. He studied the instruments, then his
fingers sought the buttons controlling Charlie's forward braking
rockets.
Crag thought: _This is it._ Within scant moments the drone had covered
the sky over the tangled land lying between Alphons and Arzachel. It
swept over the brimming cliffs at a scant two thousand feet. He saw the
rocket through the forward ports. White vapor flared from its nose
rockets. The Chief had it under full deceleration. The cloud of vapor
covered its body. Prochaska moved the steering control and the rocket
slanted upward at ever-increasing angle of climb. Crag strained his neck
to keep it in sight. He thought its rate of climb was too rapid but
Prochaska seemed unperturbed. His calm approach to the problem of
landing the drone gave Crag renewed confidence.
All at once, it seemed, Drone Charlie was hanging high in the sky, a
tapered needle miraculously suspended in the heavens. Then it began
dropping ... dropping. Bursts of smoke and white vapor shot from its
tail jets, becoming continuous as the rocket hurtled toward the plain.
The drone was lost to sight in its own clouds, but he charted its
progress by the vapor spurts at its lower edge. Prochaska was draining
the tail braking jets of every ounce of energy. Suddenly the rocket gave
the illusion of hanging in mid-air. The gap between it and the stark
terrain below seemed to have stopped closing. Crag half expected the
blasting stern tubes to begin pushing the drone back into the sky.
But ... no! It was moving down again, slowly.
Prochaska moved another control. A servo-mechanism within the rocket
stirred to life and a spidery metal network moved out from its tail
housing. The drone dropped steadily, ever slower, and finally settled.
The shock-absorbing frame folded, was crushed. At the same instant
Prochaska silenced its rockets. It settled down, its tail tubes pushed
into the plain's powdery ash scarcely a mile from the Aztec.
"Perfect." Prochaska sounded pleased with himself. His thin face broke
into a satisfied smile.
"Nice going," Crag agreed. "Now let's get out of this trap."
His eyes lingered for an instant on the analog. Red Dog had already
cleared Ptolemaeus. He snapped his face plate shut, clicked on the
interphone and turned the oxygen valve. His suit began to swell and grow
rigid against his body. When they were pressurized, he opened the hatch
and they clambered out onto the plain. He closed the hatch behind them
and struck off in the direction of Bandit with the Chief at his heels.
They moved as rapidly as possible. Their feet in the heavy insulated
space boots kicked up small fountains of dust which dropped as quickly
as they rose. From time to time Crag looked back toward the brimming
cliffs. Prochaska plodded head down. His quickened breathing in the
interphones sounded harsh to Crag. Plainly the long hours of monitoring
the Aztec's instruments had made him soft. The microphone in his helmet
came to life. It was Larkwell.
"Red Dog's cleared the rim," he told them.
Crag glanced back. His eyes caught the wispish trail of white vapor high
above the cliffs before he saw the rocket itself. It was already in
vertical attitude, letting down amid a cloud of white vapor from its
stern braking rockets.
"All hands disconnect their interphones," he commanded. "From here on
out we operate in silence." The Red Dog interphone system might or might
not be on the same band they used. He wasn't about to take that risk.
"Okay," Larkwell acknowledged. "We're shutting off."
Crag remembered that the German's interphones were still connected. Slip
one. He decided to leave his own open--at least he'd be forewarned if
anyone tried to alert the Red Dog crew. He turned back toward the
rocket. Red Dog was dropping about two or three miles from the Aztec in
the direction of the wrecked Baker.
White smoke and flame poured from its stern tubes. It slowed visibly as
it neared the lunar surface. He thought that a plumb bob dropped through
the long axis of the rocket would form a right angle with the surface
of Arzachel. Pilot's good, he thought. He watched until it touched down
teetering on its stern tubes for a moment before coming to rest; then he
turned and hurried to overtake Prochaska.
The Chief's face behind his mask was covered with perspiration. He
panted heavily. Crag beckoned him to follow and moved behind a low swale
of rock where they would be safe from detection. The nose of Bandit
jutted into the sky about a mile ahead of them. He motioned toward it,
gesturing for Prochaska to go on. The Chief nodded understanding and
struck off.
Crag turned and began climbing a low rocky ridge that now lay between
him and Red Dog. He stopped just below its crest and searched for a safe
vantage point. To his right a serrated rock structure extended up over
the backbone of the ridge. He angled toward it, then followed the
outcropping to a point where he could see the plain beyond. Red Dog had
its tail planted in the ash about three miles distant.
Minute figures milled at its base, small blobs of movement against the
crater floor. No sounds broke the silence of Crag's open interphones. He
took this as a sign that the Red Dog sets operated on a different band.
But he couldn't be sure. The tremendous advantage of having
communication with his own men must be discarded.
His vigil was rewarded a few moments later when the blobs around Red
Dog's base began moving in the direction of the Aztec. It struck him
that they couldn't see the rocket from their present position due to
small intervening hillocks, although both Baker and Charlie were clearly
visible. He decided the Aztec's horizontal position had tipped them to
its identity while they were still space-borne. One of the Red Dog
crewmen, obviously the leader, drew ahead of his companions. The other
two seemed to be struggling with some object they carried between them.
They moved close together, halting from time to time. He returned his
gaze to the rocket, conjecturing that another crewman would have
remained behind. If so, he was in the space cabin. The ship seemed
lifeless. The landing party approached a small ridge overlooking the
Aztec, bringing them closer to his lookout.
He saw that the two men following the leader were having difficulty with
their burden. They walked slowly, uncertainly, pausing from time to
time. The lead man started up the rocky knoll overlooking the Aztec. His
movements were slow, wary. He crouched near the top of the ridge,
scanning the plain beyond before waving to his companions to follow. The
gesture told Crag that their interphones were disconnected. The crewmen
near the base of the knoll started climbing, moving with extreme
difficulty. He watched them, wondering, until they reached the leader.
They stood for a moment scouting the plain, then two of the men crouched
over the burden they had lugged up the knoll.
A weapon, Crag guessed. He tried to discern its shape but failed. A few
moments later one of the men stepped back. A puff of white rose from the
knoll. A trail of vapor shot toward the Aztec. A portable rocket
launcher! His eyes tracked the missile's flight. The vapor trail
terminated at its target. An instant later the Aztec disintegrated.
Black chunks of the rocket hurtled into the lunar skies, becoming lost
to sight. Within seconds only a jagged few feet of broken torn metal
marked the site of man's first successful landing on the moon. _Wow,
what a weapon_, he thought. It didn't merely push a hole in the Aztec.
It disintegrated it, completely. That was one for Gotch. He filed the
thought away and watched.
The figures on the knoll searched the scene for a long time. Finally
they turned and started back, carrying the rocket launcher with them.
The act of saving the weapon told him that Red Dog carried more rockets
than just the single shot fired--a disconcerting thought.
He cautiously withdrew from his post and picked his way down the ridge
toward Bandit, moving as rapidly as the rough terrain permitted.
Everything now depended on the next move of the Red Dog's crew, he
thought. One thing was certain--there would be no quarter shown. The
ruthless destruction of the Aztec had set the pattern for the coming
battle of Arzachel. It was a declaration of war with all rules of human
warfare discarded. Well, that was okay with him.
He was breathing heavily by the time he reached a spot overlooking
Bandit. Nagel had decompressed the cabin and they were waiting for him
with the hatch open. He crossed the clearing and a moment later was in
the space cabin. He watched the gauge until it was safe to cut off his
suit pressure and open his face plate. He looked at Richter; his face
was blank. Tersely, then, he related what had happened.
"I sort of expected that," Prochaska said quietly when he had finished.
"It was the logical way."
"Logical to attempt to murder men?" Nagel asked bitterly.
"Entirely logical," Crag interjected. "The stakes are too big for a few
human lives to matter. At least we've been warned."
He turned to Prochaska. "Disconnect Richter's mikes until this show's
over."
The Chief nodded. Richter stood quietly by while his lip microphone was
disconnected and withdrawn from the helmet. Nagel's face showed
satisfaction at the act, but Larkwell's expression was wooden.
Crag said, "Defense of Bandit will be under Prochaska's command." He
looked grimly at his second-in-command. "Your fort has one automatic
rifle. Make it count if you have to use it." The Chief nodded.
Larkwell spoke up, "How about you?"
"I'll be scouting with the other automatic rifle. Stay in your suits and
keep ready. If they start to bring up the rocket launcher I'll signal.
If that happens you'll have to get out of here, pronto. You'd better
check your oxygen," he added as an afterthought.
"If they think we're dead ducks they won't be toting the launcher,"
Prochaska said.
"We hope." Crag exchanged his oxygen cylinder for a fresh one, then
checked one of the automatic rifles, slipping two extra clips in his
belt. On second thought he hooked a spare oxygen cylinder to the back
straps. He nodded to Nagel, snapped his face plate shut and pressurized
his suit. When the cabin was decompressed, he opened the hatch, scanning
the knoll carefully before descending to the plain. He struck off toward
the ridge overlooking Red Dog. The ground on this side of the spur was
fairly flat and he made good time, but was panting heavily by the time
he reached his lookout point on the crest.