by Various
Mitch Storey was there ahead of him. Mitch's helmet was off; his dark face was all planes and hollows in the moonlight coming through the thin, transparent walls of the vehicle. "Should we call the U.S.S.F. patrol, Frank?" he asked anxiously. "Have them take him off? 'Cause he sure can't stand another devil-killer."
"We'd better," Frank answered quickly.
But now Tiflin, having deserted his blastoff drum, was coming through the airlock flaps, too. He stepped forward gingerly, along the spinning, ring-shaped tunnel.
"Poor bookworm," he growled in a tone curiously soft for Glen Tiflin. "Think I don't understand how it is? And how do you know if he wants to get sent back?"
Mitch had removed Lester's helmet, too. Tiflin knelt. His arm moved with savage quickness. There was the crack of knuckles, in a rubberized steel-fabric space glove, against Lester's jaw. His hysterical eyes glazed and closed; his face relaxed.
For a second of intolerable fury, Frank wanted to tear Tiflin apart.
But Mitch half-grinned. "That might be an answer," he said.
They plopped where they were, and tried to rest until the orbiting cluster of rings emerged from Earth's shadow into blazing sunshine, again. Then Mitch and Frank returned to their own bubbs to check on the acceleration.
It was soon plain that Joe Kuzak's bubb, towing Tiflin's drum, would lag.
"Hell!" Art Kuzak snapped. "Get that character out here to help us inflate and rig his own equipment! We did enough for him! So if the Force notices that there are ten bubbs instead of nine, the extra is still just our spare... Hey--Tiflin!"
"Nuts--I'm looking after Pantywaist," Tiflin growled back.
"Awright," Art returned. "So we just cast your junk adrift! Come on, boy!" There was no kidding in the dry tone.
Tiflin snarled but obeyed.
Ions jetting from the Earthward hub-ends of the rotating rings, yielded their steady few pounds of thrust. The gradual outward spiral began.
"Cripes--I'm not sure I can even astrogate to the Moon," Two-and-Two was heard to complain.
"I'll check your ionic setting for you, Two-and-Two," Gimp answered him. "After that the acceleration should continue properly without much attention. So how about you and me taking first watch, while the others ease off a little...?"
Frank Nelsen crept carefully back into his own rotating ring, still half afraid that an armored knee or elbow might go right through the thin, yielding stellene. Prone, and with his helmet still sealed, he slipped into the fog which the tranquilizer now induced in his brain, while the universe of stars, Moon, sun and Earth tumbled regularly around him.
He dreamed of yelling in endless fall, and of climbing over metal-veined chunks of a broken world, where once there had been air, sea, desert and forest, and minds not unlike those of men, but in bodies that were far different. Gurgling thickly, he awoke, and snapped on his helmet phone to kill the utter silence.
Someone muttered a prayer in a foreign tongue:
"... Nuestra Dama de Guadalupe--te pido, por favor... Tengo miedo--I'm scared... Pero pienso mas en ella--I think more of her. Mi chula, mi linda... My beautiful Eileen... Keep her--"
The prayer broke off, as if a switch was turned. It had been brash Ramos... Now there were only some fragments of harmonica music...
Frank slipped into the blur, again, awakening at last with Two-and-Two shaking his shoulder. "Hey, Frankie--we're five hours out, by the chronometers--look how small the Earth has got...! We're all gonna have brunch in Ramos' vehicle... Know what that goof ball Mex was doing, before? Stripped down to his shorts, and with the spin stopped for zero-G, he was bouncing back and forth from wall to wall inside his bubb! The sun makes it nice and warm in there. Think I might try it, myself, sometime. Shucks, I feel pretty good, now... Frankie, ain't you hungry?"
Frank felt limp as a rag, but he felt much better than before, and he could stand some nourishment. "Lead on, Two-and-Two," he said.
Ramos' bubb was spinning once more, but he was wearing just dungarees. The Bunch--the Planet Strappers--with only their helmets off, were crouched, evenly spaced, around the circular interior of the ring. Dave Lester was there, too--staring, but fairly calm, now. In this curious place, there was a delicious and improbable aroma of coffee--cooked by mirror-reflected sunlight on a tiny solar stove.
"So that's the way it goes," Charlie Reynolds commented profoundly. "We reach out for strangeness. Then we try to make it as familiar as home."
"Stew, warmed in the cans, too," Ramos declared. "Enough for a light one-time-around. I brought the stew along. Hope you birds remember. Then we're back on dehydrates. Hell, except for that weight problem and consequent cost of stuff from Earth, we'd have it made, Out Here. The Big Vacuum ain't so tough--no storms in it, even, to tear our bubbs apart. I guess we won't ever have a bigger adventure than finding out for ourselves that we can get along with space."
"If we had a beef roast, we'd put it in a sealed container of clear plastic," Gimp laughed. "Set it turning, outside the bubb, on a swiveled tether wire. It would rotate for hours like on a spit--almost no friction. Rig some mirrors to concentrate the sun's heat. Space Force men do things like that."
"Shut up--I'm getting hong-gry!" Art Kuzak roared.
Ramos poured the coffee in the thin magnesium cups that each of the Bunch had brought. Their squeeze bottles, for zero-G drinking, were not necessary, here. Their skimpy portions of stew were spooned on magnesium plates. Knife and fork combinations were brought out. An apple purée which had been powder, followed the stew. Brunch was soon over.
"That's all for now, folks," Ramos said ruefully.
Tiflin snaked a cigarette out from inside the collar of his Archer.
"Hey!" Reynolds said mildly. "Oxygen, remember? Shouldn't you ask our host, first?"
Ramos had eased up on ribbing Tiflin months ago. "It's okay," he said. "The air-restorers are new."
But Tiflin's explosive nerves, under strain for a long time, didn't take it. He threw down the unlighted fag. He snicked his switch blade from a thigh pocket. For an instant it seemed that he would attack Reynolds. Then the knife flew, and penetrated the thin, taut wall, to its handle. There was a frightening hiss, until the sealing gum between the double layers, cut off the leak.
The Kuzaks had Tiflin helpless and snarling, at once.
"Get a patch, somebody--fix up the hole," Joe, the mild one, growled. "Tiflin--me and my brother helped you. Now we're gonna sit on you--just to make sure your funny business doesn't kill us all. Try anything just once, and we'll feed you all that vacuum--without an Archer. If you're a good boy, maybe you'll live to get dumped on the Moon as we pass by."
"Nuts--let's give this sick rat to the Space Force right now." Art Kuzak hissed. "Here comes their patrol bubb."
The glinting, transparent ring with the barred white star was passing at a distance.
"All is well with you novices?" The enquiring voice was a gruff drawl, mingled with crunching sounds of eating--perhaps a candy bar.
"No!" Tiflin whispered, pleading. "I'll watch myself!"
The United Nations patrol was out, too, farther off. Another, darker bubb, with other markings, passed by, quite close. It had foreign lines, more than a bit sinister to the Bunch's first, startled view. It was a Tovie vehicle, representing the other side of the still--for the most part--passively opposed forces, on Earth, and far beyond. But through the darkened transparency of stellene, the armored figures--again somewhat sinister--only raised their hands in greeting.
In a minute, Frank Nelsen emerged from Ramos' ring. Floating free, he stabilized himself, fussed with the radio antenna of his helmet-phone for a moment, making its transmission and reception directional. On the misty, shrinking Earth, North America was visible.
"Frank Nelsen to Paul Hendricks," he said. "Frank Nelsen to Paul Hendricks..."
Paul was waiting, all right. "Hello, Frankie. Some of the guys talked already--said you were asleep."
"Hi, Paul--yeah! Terra still looks big and beau
tiful. We're okay. Amazing, isn't it, how just a few watts of power, beamed out in a thin thread, will reach this far, and lots farther? Hey--will you open and shut your front door? Let's hear the old customer's bell jingle... Best to you, to J. John, to Nance Codiss, Miss Parks--everybody..."
The squeak of hinges and the jingling came through, clear and nostalgically.
"Come on, Frank," Two-and-Two urged. "Other guys would like to talk to Paul... Hey, Paul--maybe you could get my folks down to the store to say hello to me on your transmitter. And I guess Les would appreciate it if you got his mother..."
When the talk got private, Frank went to Mitch Storey's bubb.
"I wanted to show you," Mitch said. "I brought seeds, and these little plastic tubes with holes in them, that you can string around inside a bubb. The weight is next to nothing. Put the seeds in the tubes, and water with plant food in solution. The plants come up through the holes. Hydroponics. Gotta almost do it, if I'm going way out to Mars without much supplies. Maybe, before I get there, I'll have even ripe tomatoes! 'Cause, with sun all the time, the stuff grows like fury, they say. I'll have string beans and onions and flowers, anyhow! Helps keep the air oxygen-fresh, too. Wish I had a few bumble bees! 'Cause now I'll have to pollenate by hand..."
Nope--Mitch couldn't get away from vegetation, even in space.
The Planet Strappers soon established a routine for their journey out as far as the Moon. There were watches, to be sure that none of the bubbs veered, while somebody was asleep or inattentive. Always at hand were loaded rifles, because you never knew what kind of space-soured men--who might once have been as tame as neighbors going for a drive on Sundays with their families--might be around, even here.
Neither Kuzak slept, if the other wasn't awake. They were watching Tiflin, whose bubb rode a little ahead of the others. He was ostracized, more or less.
Everybody took to Ramos' kind of exercise, bouncing around inside a bubb--even Lester, who was calmer, now, but obviously strained by the vast novelty and uncertainty ahead.
"I gave you guys a hard time--I'm sorry," he apologized. "But I hope there won't be any more of that. The Bunch will be breaking up, soon, I guess--going here and there. And if I get a job at Serenitatis Base, I think I'll be okay."
Frank Nelsen hoped that he could escape any further part of Lester, but he wasn't sure that he had the guts to desert him.
It wasn't long before the ionics were shut off. Enough velocity had been attained. Soon, the thrust would be needed in reverse, for braking action, near the end of the sixty hour journey into a circumlunar orbit.
Sleep was a fitful, dream-haunted thing. Food was now mostly a kind of 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?"