The face of the clerk on Earth disappeared. The tricky, preliminary dots of facsimile transmission began. Kenmore turned the communicator to facsimile printing. Arlene Gray appeared, looking for him.
He told her icily of the non-arrival of the fifteen jeeps in which the folk of Civilian City had fled.
"Of course," he said, "if there is a guerrilla fighting force somehow landed on the moon, they might be on the way here now. Or they might be waiting to backtrack a missile base jeep, and locate the bases. But I think it's simpler than that. I think it's traitors in the City. Mike has to make a special trip back to the Lab. Top-urgency coded message."
Arlene hesitated. "I ought to go with him," she said uneasily. "I'm supposed to gather material for Cecile's broadcasts. It would be safe enough for me to go, wouldn't it?"
"Right here," Kenmore told her, "you are in the second least-safe place in the solar system. If there's a first, it's the Laboratory, but I'd say there's not much choice." "Then I'll top my tanks and be ready," said Arlene. "You watch me and see if I don't do it properly."
He watched, and she did. But a suit only carries two hours' air supply; to withstand twenty-five-hundred pounds' pressure a tank has to be heavy even on the moon. Nobody can carry much more.
They went out together, to the vast stillness beyond the City. There seemed to be no change. One day on the moon is equal to fourteen on Earth, and a night is equally long. It had been near midnight when a cliff began to fall on Kenmore's jeep, and still near midnight when he searched for the fallen Earthship on the lava sea. Even now, it was only slightly past the middle of the two-week-long darkness of lunar nighttime. The stars did not seem to have stirred in their places; the shadows of earthlight upon the mountains had not altered.
Only by looking up at the great bright shining Earth could any change be seen; some stars had moved a little, with relation to it. But the continents were no longer where they had been, for the Earth rotates.
Mike's voice came in the helmet headphones, from near the small Shuttle-ship. "Not like that! Easy! I know you haven't got the brains of a gnat, but—"
Pitkin rumbled. He heaved a long tube up for Mike to fasten it in the proper rocket clamp. Naturally a rocket pilot fastened his own rockets in place. Mike fumed and fussed as he made the highly critical adjustments and securing of his drive-elements.
"Arlene's going with you, Mike," said Kenmore through his helmet phone. "She'll gather atmosphere, so that Cecile Ducros can pretend she saw the things herself." Mike Scandia stopped dead, halfway up the slender rocket-ship's hull. "Like hell she does!" he snapped. "I was getting set to mutiny, anyhow! Somebody besides me has to see that gang of eggheads and make a report on them!"
"Why?" demanded Kenmore.
"They're going batty, like I told you!" snapped Mike. "If I ever saw anybody going slaphappy, it's them! They're cracking up! I hoped the message I sent Earth from them would show it, and some of them would be ordered to quit the Lab and get straightened out. But who'd get straightened out in the City now? I tell you, though, they're really going wacky out there! And it needs somebody else's word besides mine!"
Arlene's vacuum-suited figure moved as she looked from one to the other.
"Things are bad!" insisted Mike. "They wouldn't believe me, back on Earth. They might not believe Arlene and me. But—"
"I'll call Earth back," said Kenmore.
He wheeled and went back into the City. When he returned, his headphones picked up Arlene's voice: "Can you use a compass here, Mike?"
"Huh!" said Mike. "No need. Look up at Earth and you got your directions. Well?"
"I'll go with you," said Kenmore. "I left Moreau in charge."
He followed Arlene up the cleat ladder on the ship's fin. She went first into the lock. They settled themselves inside; five minutes later Mike joined them.
"Taking off at two gravities," he said grandly. "Slow enough for you really to see some scenery! Firing five seconds, four, three two—"
He pressed a firing button marked "5-2". There was a roaring and a very great weight. He'd counted down to firing time, because it is desirable to have one's lungs full when such acceleration begins suddenly.
The weight, though, lasted only five seconds. Five-two. Five seconds, two gravities. Then there was no weight at all. There was a great and restful silence; the rocket floated up and up. And there were ports—they would be shielded beyond the shadow of the moon, to keep sunshine out—through which Arlene could see the quite incredible landscape in the earthlight. The silence lasted, and the dusty frozen "sea" reached out and out in the pale twilight, and the mountains dropped down and down.
For ninety-odd seconds the ship floated up, and as it rose ever higher the mountains dropped more slowly. The revelation of ever-new wildernesses of peaks came more gradually, with the disclosure of ever more breathtaking wonders. At twenty-three thousand feet there were thousands of square miles of mountains visible on the one hand, and the downward-curving lunar sea on the other.
Mike said, "This view is kinda pretty, Arlene, even by earthlight. I thought you'd like to see it like this. Now we head around for the Laboratory. Settle back, now. We're blowing off." To Joe, he said crisply, "A six-three, Joe. It'll be neat."
Mike counted according to precedent: "Five, four, three, two, one—"
He pressed the firing button, and the cosmos seemed to explode.
The little ship should have disintegrated. A rocket flamed outside, but it was not a three-gravity acceleration which flung the small spacecraft forward. It was an overwhelming, unbearable thrust which was the equivalent of a continuous explosion. Joe Kenmore was thrust back in the contour chair by a brutal pressure, which held him immovable. He could not lift his hands against it; he could not move at all. He felt his cheeks drawn back, exposing his teeth. He felt the flesh of his body straining to spread out, to flatten, to burst with the weight of blood going to the back part of his body. He fought fiercely to stay conscious, with blood draining from the forepart of his brain. His struggle seemed to last for centuries.
But it ended; he battled back to full awareness, and tried to move. His arms and legs would not obey him at first; they fluttered feebly. He croaked, "Arlene! Arlene! Are you alive?"
There was no answer, and the silence was a horrible stimulus. He reeled up—he was weightless—and a light came on in the cabin. He pulled himself to the chair which held Arlene. Her eyes were barely flickering back to life when he heard Mike Scandia's voice behind him. Mike gasped incoherently; his small body writhed with anguish and with rage. He turned blazing eyes upon Kenmore.
"This was—on purpose!" he panted. "I—checked these rockets! Somebody's been—tampering! To kill us! They switched Earthship rockets for Shuttle ones! Oh . . ." He moaned with the fury that filled him. But Kenmore called again: "Arlene . . ."
She whispered faintly, "I think—I'm all right . . ." And then Kenmore began really to appreciate the crime that had been committed against the City, and the Laboratory, and Arlene and himself. He dragged himself to a port and looked out. The ship was far, very far out from the moon's surface; that did not matter. It was still headed out; that meant little, though its velocity would be of the order of half a mile per second or more. Even that was not necessarily deadly.
But one of the rockets had ben mismarked. Mike himself had chosen the rockets, and bolted them in their proper racks. But instead of a solid-fuel rocket, intended to give the Shuttle-ship three gravities acceleration for six seconds, Mike had mounted and later fired a rocket intended to lift the big ship back toward Earth. A thrust meant for a ship twenty times heavier had been used on the Shuttle; the consequences were bad, but the prospects were worse.
Any or all of the remaining rockets might be absolutely anything. Any of them might be another take-off job for the Earthship, and another would crumple the little Shuttle like an eggshell.
But rockets had to be fired. The ship was rising; it had to be turned back, or it would start the long fall
down to Earth, into whose atmosphere it would plunge like a flaming meteor. And should they turn back toward the moon, it would need to be checked before it crashed on the rocky surface there. Somehow, the Shuttle had to be landed. Each of these maneuvers required the firing of rockets; and any of them might involve the collapse of the ship's structure under the stress of forces it was not designed to endure.
Even more: There would be little use in merely landing on the moon. On the nearside lunar hemisphere, there was the land-surface of a large continent—much more land-surface than on the entire continent of North America. In that vastness, with its mountain ranges miles high, and hundreds of miles long, there were just three guided-missile bases, and four radar-spotting posts, and the abandoned Civilian City. That was the equivalent of four hamlets, and as many trappers' huts, on a continentsized wilderness. And when or if the small ship landed, the people in it would be wearing vacuum suits which held just two hours' supply of air.
The odds against landing the ship as an intact object were great, the odds against surviving a landing were greater. And against landing in the lunar night, within foot-travel distance of shelter, with two hours' air travel on . . .
Survival seemed completely impossible. Appropriately enough for an emergency in space, the odds against success were astronomical.
CHAPTER VIII. THE WRECK
MIKE said brittlely, "If this was a telecast, we'd walk outside the hull with magnet-soled shoes, and do something dramatic, and fix everything. Huh?"
His tone was scornful, but there was despair in his meaning. There was no simple and dramatic answer to the situation they were in. Hull-walking would do no good at all; there wasn't much chance that anything else would. They were, to all intents and purposes, already dead. So Mike watched Kenmore at work, and he had no hope at all—though he would try what Joe was preparing for. The three of them still wore their vacuum suits, save for the helmets; but Kenmore wriggled out of the top half of his armor to be able to use his fingers. He'd ripped a cushion cover to strips. He tested their strength. Now he handed a strip to Mike.
"See if it's strong enough," he commanded. "I'll tear some more. We have to have everything fixed from the beginning, in case the ship loses its air."
Mike took the cloth strip in his clumsily mittened hands. He pulled it. He nodded, his small head looking even smaller in the full-sized neck of his cut-down vacuum suit.
"That'll pull the release," he agreed.
"Is there anything I can do?" asked Arlene quietly.
Kenmore said coldly, as he worked, "Just pray. And you're better at it than we are."
Mike added, "And I'm saying 'Amen' when you finish, Arlene!"
The little Shuttle-ship floated up and up and up. There was no weight in it. Mike still sat before the control board; this was his ship. So Kenmore made loops of torn cloth from a ripped cushion, and fastened them to the manual-release levers of the rockets outside. There were buttons for release, and the manuals were intended for use if the buttons failed. Kenmore tested each strip repeatedly.
It was strange that he could think clearly. There had been sabotage and murder in all stages of the project of which Civilian City was a part. But earlier outrages had been mere snipings—hindrances and obstacles, but no more. This was all-out, desperate assault.
Kenmore's jeep should have been crushed in a rockslide. The Earthship should have crashed hopelessly without a beam to land by. The Shuttle itself ought to have battered itself to scrap metal in the Apennines, on the way from the Laboratory; certainly it should have been wrecked on this take-off, if it survived the earlier landing. And there was the vanishing of all the people of the City. All these disasters should have brought them to gibbering fury or numbed despair. But somehow both reactions were inappropriate—perhaps because nobody could submit to defeat by such means as had been practiced against the City.
The Shuttle-ship's hull was already strained; another blow, no more violent, might crumple it. Two or three, and it would inevitably become a mere tangle of junk in space.
Kenmore finished the job of the loops on the release handles. He went to Arlene, and filled the back of her helmet with stuff from the torn-up cushion, to make a pillow against more violent shocks.
"Seal up your suit," he commanded. "If there's another wrong rocket, this'll help the back of your head. Now put this helmet on, and turn on your suit-talkie." She obeyed and settled herself in the contour chair. She smiled at him. He grimaced back; he couldn't smile. Mike carefully fitted one mittened hand into one of the strips of cloth Kenmore had fastened to a rocket-release handle. He could hold his hand up against two gravities, or three or four. But another impact like the firing of the last rocket—which had so many gravities he didn't want to guess at it—would force his hand down. Then the rocket would be freed.
"Swing the ship around," said Kenmore, taking command without thinking of it. "Aim at the City and count down. We don't make the Laboratory this trip, anyhow." Mike said brittlely, "This ought to be a ten-two job. Five—four—three—two—"
Weight struck, but tolerable weight. It was a ten-two rocket; two gravities for ten seconds. They were pointed back toward the moon. Their velocity away from it was lessened, but by no means canceled.
When the pressure ended, Mike said calmly, "A six-three this time. Five—four—three—"
There was an impact like a pile driver, slamming Kenmore back into his seat. But Mike's hand was forced down by the impact, too. The manual release operated. The super-powerful Earthship's rocket tore away from the Shuttle with an acceleration past computing. It would undoubtedly strike somewhere on the silent, dreary emptiness. which was the moon. The ship was left weightless, its velocity unaffected. The rocket had been freed in time to prevent destruction, but the shock had still been great.
Mike asked savagely, "Anybody living?"
Arlene's voice in the helmet phones was unsteady. "I am."
"And Joe's grinding his teeth. I hear him," growled Scandia. "We're losing air. That jolt started something!" He ripped open his faceplate and snapped into the microphone of the ship's communicator, "You lugs down there in the spotter stations! If you're trying to figure out this radar pip heading out to space, it's us. Me, Mike Scandia, with Joe Kenmore and Arlene Gray aboard the Shuttle. We're blasting to come back in. We might make it. Track us and do what you can!" Then he snapped viciously, "Somebody switched markings on the rockets at the city! Sabotage!"
He snapped his faceplate shut, and Kenmore heard him panting. Air was going fast; the needle on the pressure gauge said six pounds. Five . . . That last bump had strained the plates of the Shuttle. Mike had used the last possible second of air to pant a message directed at anybody in one of the spotter stations whose radars watched for freight-rockets coming unmanned up from Earth. There were four of those stations.
The air-pressure needle hit zero; all air was gone, now. There was no way to talk from a sealed-up suit into a space-phone, or to hear what the space-phone received. There was no way to know if Mike's message had been received. On the whole, it was not likely. Spotter-station men did not usually man their equipment unless a cargo drone was due. There was nothing for them to look for. Mike said venomously through the talkie, when his breathing was easy again, "I shoulda called them before. Not much chance, but I shouldda done it! Hang on to your tonsils! I'm firing another six-three. Five—four-three—two—one—"
Another violent blow. It was like a monstrous fist; it was enough to make anybody black out. But this rocket, too, released itself by the weight of Mike's small fist in a loop to the manual handle the instant it proved its power.
"This don't look good!" said Mike icily. "Ready, Joe? I'm trying what's marked for a four-three. Five—four—" It was a four-three. The rocket pushed valiantly against the momentum that took the Shuttle toward the stars. It burned out. Mike gave warning and fired another rocket; that also was what it should be.
They ceased floating out, three firings later. Another flaming
pusher and another. . . . The Shuttle-ship moved moonward, but it was airless, now. Kenmore said into his helmet phone, "Mike, we're headed back in. I think we'd better take it floating. No more shooting until we're about to touch. The ship's badly strained. It might come apart. But if we can get down in one piece, we can go outside and check the markings and make sure of what's left. We might even be able to lift off again, and land somewhere near the City. But don't risk any more firings until we're close to ground!"
Mike said grudgingly, "That makes sense. I'll spend the time figuring out what to do to the guy who switched those marks!"
The little ship floated downward. They had an indefinite velocity toward the moon, now, which increased as the feeble gravity pulled at them. It had seemed that the gravity was trivial because the rate-of-fall was slow. The ship would hit with only one-sixth the speed, and therefore one-sixth violence, of the same object falling the same distance to Earth. From a height of six yards it would hit no harder than from a fall of one yard on the mother planet; but their height was several times six miles.
There was little for them to do, of course. They could move about, weightless, in the airless cabin. The ship's gyros still ran, and still kept its nose pointed in the direction in which the last rocket had urged it. Kenmore pulled himself to the forward vision port and sighted.
"We'll land somewhere out on a sea, Mike."
Scandia did not answer. Kenmore heard his small teeth grinding in a full-sized rage. Kenmore himself couldn't afford to indulge his feelings, yet. Right now he had to think coolly. Their chances were so few that he couldn't afford to throw away any of them. But he couldn't think of a really good move, at that.
Presently he checked the ship's reserve tanks. He had Arlene top off her suit, then fixed a hose, and had the three of them breathing the ship's reserve air. He watched out the forward port.
"We got a break," he said presently. "I think I'm getting good bearings on a spotter station I know about. We may ground as close as sixty or seventy miles from it!"
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