Jeff Sutton (16 page)

Suddenly
the drone was on them. It cleared the north rim of ^rzachel at 3,000 feet. Too
high, Crag half-whispered. The difference lay in the lost minute. Prochaska
pushed and held the controls. Crag pictured the rocket, bucking, vibrating,
torn by the conflict of energies within its fragile body.

Prochaska
fingered the steering rockets and pushed the drone's nose upward. Crag saw it
through the port. It rushed through space in a skidding fashion before it began
to move upward from the face of the moon. Prochaska hit the braking jets with
full power. Crag craned his head to follow its flight. Out of one corner of his
eye he saw Nagel and Larkwell on the plain, their helmeted heads turned
skyward. He scrunched his face hard against the port and caught the drone at
the top of its climb.

It
was a slender needle with light glinting on its tail— the Sword of Damocles
hanging above their heads. It hung . . . suspended in
space .
.
then
began backing down, dropping stern first with
flame and white vapor pouring from its tail jets. It came fast. Occasional
spurts from radial jets a-round its nose kept its body perpendicular to the
plain. Vapor from the trail fluffed out hiding the body of the rocket. The
flame licked out while the rocket was still over a hundred feet in the air.

Prochaska cursed softly. The rocket seemed
riveted to the black sky for a fraction of a second before it began to' falL
Faster . . . faster. It smashed into the lunar surface, lost from sight

"Exit Baker," Prochaska said
woodenly. Quiedy Crag got on the communicator and reported to Gotch. There was
a brief silence when he had finished.

Finally
Gotch said, "Drone Charlie will be launched on schedule. Well have to
reassess our logistics, though. Maybe we'd better knock off the idea of the
airlock-in-the-gully idea and shoot along extra oxygen and supplies instead.
How does the meteorite problem look?"

"Lousy,"
said Crag irritably. "We've had a scary near miss. I wouldn't bet on being
able to survive too long in the open. Again there was a silence.

"You'll
have to," Gotch said slowly, "unless you can salvage Baker's
cargo."

"Well check
that."

"You
might investigate the possibiUty of covering the Aztec with ash."

"Sure
. .
sure
," Crag broke
in. "Good idea. Ill have the boys break out the road grader
immediately."

"Don't
be facetious," Gotch reprimanded. "We have a problem to work
out."

"You're telling
mel"

"In the meantime, try
and clean up that other situation."

By
"other situation" Crag knew he was referring to the sabotage. Sure,
be
an engineer, intelligence agent, spaceman and superman,
all rolled into one. He wrinkled his face bitterly. Still he had to admire the
Colonel's tenacity. He was a -man determined to conquer the moon.

"Will
do," Crag said finally. "In the rneantime well
look
Baker over. There might be some salvage."

"Do that," the
Colonel said crisply. He cut off.

CHAPTER
12

"Max Pbochaska
was a real well-liked boy," Mrs Arthur
Bingham said firmly, "friendly with everyone in town. Of course, Vista was
just a small place then," she added rem-Iniscently. "Not like now,
especially since the heUicopter factory moved in. I do declare, a soul
wouldn't recognize the place any longer, with all the housing tracts and the
new supermarket—"

"Certainly," the agent interjected, "but about Max
Pro-chaska."

"Yes,
of course." Mrs. Bingham bit her hp reflectively. "My husband always
said Max would go places. I wish he could have lived to see it" For just a
moment her eyes brimmed ivetly, then she blew her nose, wiping them in the
process. Ibe agent waited until she had composed herself.

"Little
Max—I always think of him as Little Max," she jxplained—"was smart
and pleasant, real well liked at school.
\nd
he
always
attended church." She stressed the word dways.

"Just
think, now they say he's on the moon." Her eyes Ixed the agent with
interest "You'd think he'd get dizzy."

The agent almost enjoyed tracing Max
Prochaska's
history,
t was a neat, wrapped-up job, one
that moved through a egular sequence. Teacher . . .
minister
.
.
family
doctor . .
druggist
. . . scoutmaster . . . athletic director—all the ies a small-town boy makes
and retains. Everything was lear-cut, compact Records, deeds, acquaintances—all
in one
andy
package. The memory of a man who grew up
in a mall town persisted, borne in the minds of people whose rorlds were small.
The Vista paper had obligingly carried
Tochaska
's
biography, right on the front page, under the eadline: VISTAN LANDS ON MOON.
The leading local rugstore was featuring a Prochaska sundae and the Mayor
f
the town had proclaimed MAX PROCHASKA week.

Clearly,
Vista was proud of its native son, but not nearly 1 proud as the elderly couple
who still tended a chicken inch on the outskirts of town.

"Max is a good boy," Mrs. Prochaska
said simply. Her husband beamed agreement

On
the surface, Prochaska's record seemed clean—a good student, well-liked, the
usual array of girls, and nothing much in the way of peccadillos you could hang
a hat on. The agent's last view of the town was a sign at the city limits:
VISTA-THE HOME OF MAX PROCHASKA.

Drone Baker looked a complete loss. It had
smashed tail down onto the ash covered plain about four miles to the southeast
of the Aztec, off the eastern lip -of the curved crescent Prochaska had dubbed
"Backbone Ridge."

Crag
calculated that the positions of Bandit, the drone and their own rocket roughly
formed an equilateral triangle on the floor of the crater. The lower section of
the rocket was crushed, its hull split lengthwise.

Crag
and Larkwell studied the scene from a small knolL
The
drone lay in a comparatively level area about thirty feet from the edge of a
deep fissure, carreened at a steep angle from the vertical. Only its tail
imbedded into the ground kept it from toppling.

"Might
as well have a closer look," Larkwell said finally. Crag nodded and
beckoned Richter, who was waiting at the bottom of the knoll. Since the
sabotage incident he had split the crew into two sections which varied
according to task. Richter was used by either section as needed. It wasn't an
arrangement that Crag liked but he didn't feel it wise, or safe, to allow
anyone the privilege of privacy.

Richter circled the base of the knoll and met
them
When
they reached the rocket, Larkwell circled it
several times, studying it from all angles.

"We might come out pretty well," he
said finally. His voice carried a dubious note. He lifted his head and contemplated
the rocket again. "Maybe some of the cargo rode through."

"We hope," Crag
said.

"I wouldn't bank too
much on it."

"Think we might get
inside?"

Larkwell
said decisively: "Not this boy. Not until we pull the nose down. This
baby's ready to topple."

They
were discussing their next move when Prochaska came in on the interphone:
"Alpine wants the dope on Baker."

Damn
Alpine, Crag thought moodily. He contemplated the rocket. "Tell 'em it's
still here." All at once he felt depressed. Strain, he told himself. Since
blast-off his life had been a succession of climaxes, each a little rougher
than the one preceding. Not that he was alone in his reactions. His mind
switched to Nagel. The oxygen man had become sullen, irritable, almost
completely withdrawn from the group. He
was,
Crag
thought, a lonely, miserable man. Even Larkwell was beginning to show the
affects of their struggle to survive. His normal easygoing manner was broken
by periods of surliness. Only Prochaska had managed to maintain his calm
approach to life, but the effects were telling physically. His face was a mask
of parchment drawn tightly over bone, accentuating his tired hollow eyes.

But Richter
seemed to be thriving. Why not? He was a doomed man given a fresh reprieve on
life, with no responsibilities to burden his existence. He was on a gravy
train for the time being. Still, Richter was in an unenviable spot. Magel was
openly hostile toward him. His demeanor and ooks were calculated to tell the
German he was an undesir-ible intruder. Larkwell's attitude was one of
avoidance. He imply acted as if the German were not on the moon. When n the
course of work it became necessary to give Richter
in
order, he did it with a short surly bark. Prochaska con-ealed whatever
feeling he had toward the German. No, he nought, Richter's lot wasn't easy.

He tried to push the mood aside. It wouldn't
push. He hecked his oxygen, and decided to swing over to Bandit before
returning. The sooner they got started on the salvage job, the better. He
communicated his plan to the others.

Larkwell
protested, "Getting ready to open this baby's more imporant. Well never
get started on the airlock fooling around this god forsaken desert."

"Well
get to that, too," Crag promised, fighting to keep his temper under
control.
"By going from here well save a couple of miles
over having to make a special trip."

"Suit yourself,"
the construction boss said truculendy.

Crag
nodded stiffly and started toward the enemy rocket, now lost to view behind
intervening rock formations. By unspoken agreement Larkwell fell in at the
rear, leaving Richter sandwiched between them. The German lived constantly
under the scrutiny of one or another of the crew. Crag intended to keep it that
way.

The
trip was more difficult than he had anticipated. Twice they were forced- to
detour around deep fissures. Before they had gone very far Crag's radiation
counter came to life. He made a note of the spot thinking that later they would
map the boundaries of the radioactive area. Once or twice he checked his course
with Prochaska. His oxygen meter told him they would have to hurry when they
topped a low knoll of glazed rock and came upon the ship.

He
stopped and turned, watching Richter. If he had expected any show of emotion
he was disappointed. His face was impassive. It gave Crag the feeling that he
wasn't really seeing the rocket—that he was looking far beyond, into
nothingness. His eyes behind the face plate were vacuous pools.

"We didn't have time to bury your
companions," Crag said matter-of-factly. He indicated the rocket with a
motion of his head and his voice turned cruel:

"They're still in there."

Richter's expression remained unchanged.
 
"It doesn't make much difference
here," he said finally. He turned and faced Crag.

"One thing you should understand.
They," he swept his arm toward Bandit, "were the mihtary."
"And you?"

Richter said stiffly:
"I am a scientist."

"Who
destroyed our drone thinking it
was
us." They
faced each other across the bleak lunar desert. The German's eyes had become
blue fires—azure coals leaping into flame.

"It
makes no difference what you think," he said after a moment. "My
conscience is clear."

"Nuts."
LarkweD spat the word with disgust. Richter shrugged and turned back toward the
rocket. Crag looked at him with varying emotions. One thing was sure, he
thought. Richter was a cool customer. He had seen new depths in his blue eyes
when they had faced each other. They were hard eyes, ablaze with
ice .
.
the
eyes of a fanatic—or a
saint He pushed the thought aside.

Prochaska
came in on the phones to inquire about their oxygen. Crag checked, chagrined to
find that it was too low to spend more than a few minutes at the rocket. He
opened the arms locker, thinking he would have to get rid of the weapons. They
could be dangerous in the wrong hands. He had been unable to carry them back
the first trip. Then he had regarded them as something totally useless on the
moon. Now he wasn't so sure.