by Jerry
This, thought Angel, was a hell of a way to force a guy into something. Who could withdraw now? “I am willing,” he said.
“Splendid,” said the president. “I am happy to see, gentlemen, that you have chosen a brave officer. Here are the despatches.”
ANGEL looked through them quickly and then at the first page of the sheaf, which was a brief summary.
He learned that one Slavinsky, late general of Russia, had finally, forever parted company with his dictator and had declared himself master of Russia and the world. The United States was now addressed in uncompromising fashion by Slavinsky and ordered to do two things.
One, immediately to prepare a land, sea and air attack on Russia—one city in the United States or one city in Russia to pay for the first use of atom bombs by either—in order to secure the government of that nation to Slavinsky. And two, to send instantly a long list of needed supplies by one of the space-ships known to be ready in the United States. Angel knew that he was to be interested in “two.”
“This situation,” said the President, “is unparalleled.” And with that understatement, continued, “Unless we comply we will lose all our cities and still have to obey. We are insufficiently decentralized to avoid these
orders.
“Humiliated or not, we must proceed to save ourselves. Slavinsky holds the Moon and is armed with plentiful atom rockets. And he who holds the Moon, we learn too late, controls all the earth below.
“We are asking you,” he continued, “to take the supplies to the Moon. We have secretly loaded a space-ship with the required items and need only one officer and two men as crew.
“The reason we send you at all is to ensure the arrival of the supplies in case of breakage on the way and, more important, in the hope that Slavinsky will let you go and you can bring back data which, if accurate enough, may possibly aide us to destroy Slavinsky and his men.”
“Mr. President,” said the secretary of state, “we have chosen this man not for valor but for reliability. I think it was our intention that whoever we sent should attempt no heroics which would anger Slavinsky. I think Lieutenant May should be so warned.”
“Yes, yes,” said the President. “This is of the utmost importance. You are only to return if Slavinsky permits it. You are to attempt no heroics. For if you failed in them we would pay the price. Am I understood in that, lieutenant?”
Angel said he was.
“Now then,” said the president, “the space-ship is waiting and, when you have picked your two crewmen and Commander Dawson gives the word, you can leave. These despatches”—and he took up a sheaf of them—“are for General Slavinsky and may be considered important only as routine diplomatic exchanges.”
Angel took the package and stood up. “One thing more,” said the admiral. “You will be carrying a small pilot rocket aboard. You will take the rolls from the automatic recording machines, place them in it just before you reach the Moon and launch the missile back to Earth before landing. If we have enough data, though it is a forlorn hope, we may some day fight Slavinsky.”
“I doubt it,” said the secretary of state, “but I won’t oppose your thirst for data, admiral.”
They shook hands with the President and then Angel found himself back in the Cadillac, rolling through the rush-hour traffic of Washington. Soon they made it to the Fourteenth Street Bridge and went rocketing into Virginia to a secret take-off field.
“Could you get me Master-sergeants Whittaker and Boyd?” said Angel timidly to the general.
“I’ll have them picked up on the way by the barracks,” said the general. “No word of this to anyone though.”
“Yes sir,” said Angel.
When darkness had come at the secret field Commander Dawson turned up with a briefcase full of calculations from the U.S. Naval Observatory and began to check instruments.
‘“Two o’clock,” he told the general.
“Two o’clock,” said the general to Angel.
Angel walked out of the. hangar and joined Whittaker and Boyd.
Whittaker spat reflectively into the dust. “I shore miss the brass band this time, lootenant.”
“And the dames,” said Boyd, “Boy how I’d like me a drink. We got time to go to town, lootenant?”
Angel was walking around in small circles, his beautiful face twisted in thought. Now and then he kicked gravel and swore most unangelically.
THEY were handing Slavinsky the world, that was that. And without a scrap. The slaughter of a Russian war was nothing to anyone compared to the loss of Chicago, Maybe it was logical but it just plain didn’t seem American to be whipped so quick.
Suddenly he stopped, stared hard at Boyd without seeing him and then socked a fist into his palm.
“What’s the matter?” said Boyd.
Angel went into the hangar where the big ship was getting ready to be rolled out on the rails now that her loading was done.
“General,” said Angel, “as long as I may never have the chance again—and being young makes it pretty hard—you might at least let me go to town and buy a couple quarts for the ride up.”
“You know the value of secrecy,” warned the general. And then more kindly, “You can take my car.”
Angel stood not. Some fifty seconds later the Cadillac was heading for town at speeds not touched in all its life before.
Whittaker and Boyd, in the back seat, bounced and applied imaginary brakes.
“Listen you guys,” said Angel. “Your necks are out as much as mine”—he avoided two street cars at a crossing and screamed on up toward F Street—“and I ought to ask your permission.”
“We’re going to take a load of food to Slavinsky on the Moon. Very hush-hush, though the only one we’ve to keep secrets from now is Slavinsky. But I inter o make a try at knocking off that base, are you with me?”
“Why not?” said Whittaker.
“Your party,” said Boyd.
Angel drew up before an apartment house on Connecticut Avenue and rushed out. He was back almost instantly with a grip and considerable lipstick smeared on his cheek.
Boyd thought he heard a feminine voice in the, darkness above calling good-by as they hurtled away. He grinned to himself. This Angel!
Their next stop was before a drug store and Angel dashed in. But he was gone longer this time and seemed, according to a glimpse through the window, to be having trouble convincing the druggist. Angel came out empty-handed and beckoned to his two men.
Whittaker and Boyd walked in. A young pharmacist looked scared. There was no one else in the place.
Angel walked around behind the pharmacist. “Close the door,” said Angel. Three minutes later the pharmacist was bound quite securely in a back closet.
Angel ransacked the shelves and loaded up a ninety-eight-cent bag. They turned out the lights and closed the door softly behind them and went away.
Twenty-one minutes later a young Chemical Warfare classmate of Angel’s was hauled from the bosom of his family and after some argument and several lies from Angel permitted himself to be convinced by SecNav’s Cadillac and went away with them.
They halted at an ordnance depot in Maryland at eight-fifteen and the young chemist opened padlocks and finally, with many words of caution, delivered into Angel’s hands three small flasks.
It was well before two when Angel and his men came back to the field. They alighted with their burdens and whisked them into the ship.
“Find that drink?” said the general indulgently.
“Yes, sir,” said Angel.
“Good-boy!” said the general, chuckling over having been young once himself. He had not missed the lipstick and had applied the school solution.
Commander Dawson was growling and snarling around the ship like a vengeful priest. Behind him came two quartermasters carrying the precious standard chronometer and spyglass.
“Better get aboard,” said Dawson roughly. “And don’t monkey with those instruments. We’re almost ready.” His sc
owl promised that it didn’t matter to him what happened: this time he was going to get that rocket upstairs!
CHAPTER III
Moon Meeting
STARK death was the Moon. No halftones, no softness. Black and white. Knife-edged peaks and sharp rills. Hot enough to fry iron. Cold enough to solidify air. Brutal, savage, dead. Strictly Moussorgsky.
A place you wouldn’t want to go on a honeymoon, Angel decided.
For all of Dawson’s growling they had not hit the target exactly. Slavinsky had drawn a big, lamp-black X below the U.S.S.R, on a plateau near Tycho but the ship had hit nearly eight miles from it.
Hit was the word, for if they had not landed in pumice some thirteen feet thick things would have been dented. The abrasive dust had risen suddenly and drifted down with an unnatural slowness.
For a week they had been lying around in the padded cabin, experiencing space sickness, worn out from accelerations and decelerations, living on K and D and C rations and cursing the engineers who had drawn such a thoroughly uncomfortable design.
Angel had sent off the pilot rocket as ordered, filled with the recording rolls, but he had added a few succinct notes of his own which he hoped the engineers would take to heart. Such things as the way air rarified up front on the take-off and nearly killed Boyd.
Such things as drinking bottles that wouldn’t throw water in your face when you got thirsty. Such things as straps to hold you casually down when your body began to wander around and helmets to keep your head from cracking against the overhead when you got up suddenly and found no gravity.
But for all the travail of the past week the Angel was bright-eyed and expectant. It was balanced off in his mind whether he would kill Slavinsky by slow fire or small knife cuts.
For Angel had very far from enjoyed being cheated of the glory of being the first man to fly to the Moon and he distinctly disliked a man who would make a slave country of the United States. Prejudiced perhaps, but the Angel believed America was a fine country and should stay free.
Boyd raked up three packages, tying a fine and a C ration can, buoy-like, upon it. Whittaker got a port open, inside pane only, and looked at the scenery.
He turned and spat carefully into another can—experience had taught him, this trip—and then put on his space helmet, screwing the Incite dome down tight. He glanced at his companions.
Angel was having some trouble getting into his suit because of his hair, but when he had managed it he led the way to the space port. The three of them crawled over the supplies and entered the chamber, shutting the airtight behind them.
They checked their air supplies and then their communications. Satisfied, they let the outer door open. With a swoosh the air went out and they began their vacuumatic lives.
It was thirty feet down but they didn’t use the built-in rungs. Angel stepped out into space and floated down like a miniature spaceship to plant his ducklike shoes deep into the soft pumice. Boyd followed him. Whittaker, carrying debris in the form of cans and bottles in his hugely gloved hands, came after.
As though on pogo sticks the three small ships bounced around to the rear of the space ship. Boyd threw the three packages down and stamped them into the pumice. Whittaker scattered the debris around the one can which was the real buoy marker.
The discarded objects floated in slow motion into place and lay there in the deathly stillness.
They looked around and their sighs echoed in their earphones; one to the other. No tomb had ever been this dead.
They were landed in a twilight zone, thanks to Dawson. And if their suits—rather, vehicles—had not been so extremely well insulated they would already be feeling the cold.
The sky was ink. The landscape was a study in Old Dutch cleanser and broken basalt. A mountain range thrust startlingly sharp and high to the west. A king-size grand canyon dived away horribly to their south. A great low plain, once miscalled a sea, stretched endlessly toward Tycho.
Two miles away a meteor landed with a crash which made the pumice ripple like waves. A great column of the stuff, stiffly formed in an explosion pattern, almost stroboscopic, stood for some time, having neither gravity nor wind to disperse it.
A few fragments patted down, making new slow motion bursts. But the meteor had landed at ten miles a second and they all winced and looked up into the blackness. Having atmosphere was a subtle blessing. Having none was horrible.
HAVING looked up, Angel saw Earth.
It was bigger than a Japanese Moon and a lot prettier. It had colors, diffused and gentle, below its aura of atmosphere. It looked fairylike and unreal. Angel sighed and thought about his favorite bar.
They snowshoed around the ship again. The last of the sun, half visible like an upended saucer made of pure arc light, came to them through their leaded lucite helmets. That sun was taking a long, long time to set. Hours later it would still be sitting there. Things obviously took their time on the Moon.
Whittaker, unable to spit, was having difficulties. Heroically, he swallowed his chew.
They weren’t on the same wave length with the Russians and the approaching detachment came within a quarter of a mile before they saw it. The group was tearing along, bouncing like a herd of kangaroos, sending up puffs of pumice at each leap. They came alongside the ship in a moment and, without any greeting to the newcomers, scrambled up inside.
The officer came back and peered out at the horizon and then ducked in again. It was very difficult to see through the metal helmets of these people but they looked hungry.
Angel went up and stood in the space door. The Russians had left the inner airtight open and all the atmosphere had rushed from the ship. Like madmen they were ripping at the boxes and stuffing chocolate and biscuit into their capacious bags. This was evidently personal loot and the way they were going at it looked bad for the boys who had stayed behind.
Nobody paid any attention to Angel, not even glancing his way, until the officer motioned Boyd and Whittaker into the ship and then unceremoniously herded the three of them into the forward hold and bolted a door on them.
Through a forward port Angel saw the two tractors approach. They were made of aluminum mostly, and they seemed to run out of a propane type tank. They threw hooks into the skids of the ship and, their huge treads soundlessly clanking, began to yank the ship toward the king-size grand canyon.
After an hour or so of tugging they came to the brink and were snaked around until they fitted on an oblong metal stage which, carrying tractors and all, promptly began to descend.
The ship lurched in the lower blackness and then lights flared up by which the stage could be seen to rise into place above them.
Eager crews of spacesuited men swarmed out of an airtight set in a blank wall and in a few moments a stream of supplies was being shuttled, bucket-brigade fashion, toward the entrance.
It was a weird ballet of monsters in metal. The supplies, so heavy on earth, were tossed lightly from monster to monster which added to the illusion. Big crates of dehydrated sailed along like chips.
The unloading took three hours and eight minutes by Angel’s watch and then the line cleared away. Belatedly somebody thought of the crew and unlocked the door. At pistol point they were rushed out. down the ladder and to the airtight. The gutted ship stood forlornly behind them, their only contact with home, associating now with six other monsters, the Stars and Stripes outnumbered.
In the dank corridor behind the second airtight men were standing around in various stages of relaxation and undress. They kept halting to gloat over the supplies which left one Russian still in helmet but without pack or gloves, another stripped to underwear, a third in pack and all. Nobody glanced at them.
Their guard shoved them into another tunnel and they wound down a gentle grade between basalt walls until they came to another series of airtights. At the end they were shoved into a chamber walled all in metal, a sort of giant strongbox with doors at each of the five sides.
A desk made of packing boxe
s stood in the center. A rubber mattress bed was several feet behind it. A crude hat tree bore the fragments of a space suit. The place was a combination of arsenal, bedroom and office, sealed in, double-bolted, entrenched and triple-guarded.
AT THE desk sat a singularly dirty man, covered with matted black hair, clad in pants, glistening with perspiration and scowling furiously under crew cut bristles.
This was Slavinsky, Vladimir, one-time general of Russia, currently dictator of the world.
The guard had got out of his clumsy space helmet. “The ship crew, Ruler,” he said in English.
Whittaker had taken off his helmet and was biting at a plug of Ole Mule. Boyd was examining his fingernails.
Only Angel was still fully suited and helmeted.
“Who is commander?” barked Slavinsky, black eyes screwing up.
Boyd glanced up.
“I am Lieutenant Cannon Gray,” he said with blue eyes wide.
“Don’t forget the despatches, lootenant,” said Whittaker.
Boyd tossed the packet on the desk. It floated down.
“I am displeased,” said Slavinsky.
“I’m sorry to hear it,” said bogus Gray. “I’ll sure tell the President when I get back.”
“You’re not going back!” said Slavinsky. “You have failed.”
“Looks to me like we brought a lot of supplies,” said Boyd.
“You brought no cigarettes!” said Slavinsky.
“Well, if that ain’t something,” said Boyd. “I tell you them quartermasters ought to be ‘horsewhipped and that’s a fact. Well, well. No cigarettes. You sure you checked the inventory, general?”
“The title of address is ‘Ruler!’ And I’ll have no questioning of our actions. You brought no cigarettes and there’s not a single pack on the Moon.”
“Well, if it’s okay with you,” said Whittaker, “we’ll just trot down and fetch you up a couple cartons.”
“That’s impertinence! Lieutenant, have you no control over your men? Are you certain we have emptied all storage compartments of your ship?”