Jeff Sutton (23 page)

Larkwell
opposed the idea of working through the long lunar night. He argued that the
suits would not offer sufficient protection against the cold, they needed
light to work, and that the slow progress they would make wouldn't warrant the
risks and discomfort they would have to undergo. Nagel unexpectedly sided with
Crag. He cited the waste of oxygen which resulted by having to decompress
Bandit every time someone left or entered the ship.

"We need an airlock,
and soon," he said.

Crag
listened and weighed the arguments. Larkwell was right. The space suits weren't
made to withstand prolonged exposure during the bitter hours of the lunar
night. But Nagel was right, too.

"I
doubt if we could live cooped up in Bandit for two weeks without murdering one
another,'' Prochaska observed quiedy
. "
I vote we
go ahead."

"Sure,
you sit on your fanny and monitor the radio," Larkwell growled. "I'm
the guy who has to carry the load."

Prochaska
reddened and started to answer when Crag cut
in: "Cut the damned bickering," he snapped. "Max handles the
communication because that's his job." He looked sharply at Larkwell. The
construction boss grunted but didn't reply.

Night and bitter cold came to Crater Arzachel
with a staggering blow. Instantly the plain became a black pit lighted only by
the stars and the enormous crescent of the earth—an airless pit in which the
temperature plunged until metal became as brittle as glass and the materials of
the space suits stiffened until Crag feared they would crack.

Larkwell warned against
continuing their work.

"One
misstep in lowering Red Dog and it'll shatter like an egg."

Crag
realized he was right. Lowering the rocket in the bitter cold and blackness
would be a superhuman job. Loss of the rocket would be disastrous. Against this
was the necessity of obtaining shelter from the meteor falls. His determination
was fortified by the discovery that a stray meteorite had smashed the nose of Drone
Charlie. He decided to go on.

The cold seeped through their suits, chilled
their bones
,
touched their arms and legs like a thousand pin pricks and
lay like needles in their lungs until every movement was
sheer agony.-Yet their survival depended upon movement,
hence every moment away from Bandit was filled with forced
activity. But even the space cabin of Bandit was more like
an outsized icebox than a place designed for human habi-
tation. The rocket's insulated walls were ice to the touch
,
their breaths were frosty streams—sleep was possible only
because of utter fatigue. At the end of each work shift the
body simply rebelled against the task of retaining conscious-
ness. Thus a few hours of merciful respite agamst the
cold was obtained.
                                                                           
—

Crag assigned Prochaska the task of
monitoring the radio despite his plea to share in the more arduous work. The
knowledge that one of his crew was a saboteur lay constantly in his mind. He
had risked leaving Prochaska alone before, he could risk it again, but he wasn't
willing to risk leaving any of the others alone in Bandit. Yet, Prochaska
hadn't found the bomb! Larkwell had worked superhumanly at the task of
rebuilding the Aztec—Nagel had saved his life when he could just as easily have
let him die. Neither seemed the work of a saboteur. Yet the cold fact remained
—there was a saboteur!

Richter, too, preyed on his mind. The self-styled
Eastern scientist was noncommittal, speaking only when spoken to. Yet he
performed his assigned duties without hesitation. He had, in fact, made himself
so useful that he almost seemed one of the crew. That, Crag told himself, was
the danger. The tendency was to stop watching Richter, to trust him farther and
farther. Was he planning, biding his time, preparing to strike? How? When? He
wished he knew.

They toppled Red Dog in the
dark of the moon.

Larkwell
had nut two cables to manually operated winches set about twenty-five yards
from the rocket. A second line extended from each winch to the ravine. The ends
of these were weighted with rocks. They served to anchor the winches during the
lowering of the rocket. Finally a guide line ran from the nose of the rocket to
a third winch. Richter and Nagel manned the lowering winches while Larkwell
worked with the guide line, with only small hand torches to aid them. It was
approximately the same setup used on the Aztec—they were getting good at it.
Crag helped until the moment came to lower the rocket,
then
there was litde for him to do. He contented himself with watching the operation,
playing his torch over the scene as he felt it was needed.

It was an eery feeling. The rocket was a
black
monster
bathed in the puny yellow rays of their hand
torches.
The
pale light gave the illusion of movement
until the
rocket,
the rocks, and the very
floor of the crater seemed
to writhe
and
squirm, playing tricks on the eyes. It was,
he knew, a
dangerous moment, one ripe for a saboteur
to strike—or
ripe for Richter.

It
was dark. Not an ebony dark but one,
rather, with
the
odd color of milky velvet. The earth was
almost
full,
a gigantic globe whose reflected light washed
out
the brilliance
of the stars and gave a milky sheen to
Crater Arzachel. It
was a light in which the eye detected form
as if it were
looking through a murky sea. It detected
form but missed
detail. Only the gross structures of the
plain
were visible:
the blackness of the rocket reaching upward
into
the night;
fantastic twisted rocks which blotted out
segments
of
the stars; the black blobs of men moving in
heavy space suits, dark shadows against the still darker night. The eery
almost
futile beams of the hand torches seemed worse than
useless.

"All set."
LarkwelTs voice was grim. "Let her
come."

Crag
fastened his eyes on the nose of Red
Dog,
a
tapered indistinct silhouette.

"Start letting out line at the count of three."
There was a
pause
before Larkwell began the countdown.

"One . . . two . . .
three . . ."

The nose moved, swinging slowly across
the sky, then
began falling. "Slack offl"

The
lines jerked, snapped taut, and the nose hung
suspend
ed in space, then began swinging to one side.

"Take
up on your line, Richter." The
sideward movement
stopped, leaving the rocket canted at an
angle of about
forty-five degrees.

"Okay
. .
The nose moved down
again, slower this
time. Crag began to breathe easier. Suddenly
the
nose skidded
to the rear, falling,
then
the rocket was a motionless blob on the plain.

That
did it." Larkwell's voice was ominous, yet tinged with disgust.

"What
happened?" Crag found himself shouting into the lip mike.

"The
tail slipped. That's what we get for trying to lower it under these
conditions," Larkwell snarled. "The damn thing's probably
smashed."

Crag
didn't answer. He moved slowly toward the rocket, playing his torch over its
hull in an attempt to discern its details. He was conscious that the others had
come up and were doing the same thing, but even when he stood next to ft Red
Dog was no more than a black shadow.

"Feel
it," Larkwell barked, "that's the only way to tell. The torches are
useless." They followed his advice. Crag walked alongside the rocket,
moving his hand over the smooth surface. He had reached the tail and started
back on the opposite side when Larkwell's voice rang in his ears.

"Smashed!"

"Where?"

"The under side—where she hit the deck.
Looks like she came down
on a rock."

Crag
hurried back around^ the rocket, nearly stumbling over Larkwell's legs. The
construction boss was lying on his stomach.

"Under
here." Crag dropped to his knees, then to his stomach and moved alongside
Larkwell, playing his beam over the hull. He saw the break immediately, a
ragged, gaping hole where the metal had shattered against a small rock
outcropping.
Too big for a weld?
Larkwell answered his
unspoken thought.

"You'll play hell
getting that welded."

"It might be
possible."

There may be more breaks." They lay
there for a mo
merit
playing their beams along the visible underside
of Red
Dog until they were satisfied that, in this section
at
least, there was no more damage.

"What
now?" Larkwell
asked,
when they had
crawled
back from under the rocket.

"The
plans haven't changed," Crag said
stonily. "We
repair it
...
fix it up . . .
move in. That's all
there
is
to it."

"You
can't fix it by just saying so," Larkwell
growled.
"First it's got to be fixable. It looks
like a cooked
duck,
to me. .

"We
gotta start back," Nagel said urgently,
"oxygen
's getting low."

Crag
looked at his gauge. Nagel was right. They
'd
have to get moving. He was about to give the signal to return to Bandit
when Richter spoke up.

•
"It can be repaired." For a moment there was a startled silence.
' "
How?"

"The
inside of the cabin is lined with foam rubber, the same as in Bandit—a
self-sealing type designed for
pro
tection
against meteorite damage."

"So . . . ?" Larkwell asked
belligerently.

Richter
explained, "It's not porous. If the break
were cov
ered with metal and lined with the foam, it
would
do a pretty
good job of sealing the cabin."

"You
can't patch a leak that big with rubber
and expect
it
to hold," Larkwell argued. "HelL the pressure
would blow
right through,"

"Not
if you lined the break with metal
first," Richter
persisted.

The
suggestion startled Crag, coming as
it did from a
man
whom he regarded as an enemy. For
a moment he
wondered
if
the
German's instinct for survival
were greater
than his patriotism. But the plan sounded
plausible.

He asked Larkwell:
"What do you think?"