Moon of Mutiny

by Lester Del Rey

  Fred felt the tension building up tightly in himself. He spotted one of the pairs of binoculars on the desk near him, grabbed them up and began fastening his helmet.

  "Put it on the helmet receivers/' he called as he headed for the air lock. It could be rebroadcast if anything came through, and he would miss nothing by being outside.

  The binoculars had been designed for use from a helmet; nevertheless he expected to find nothing except by accident. The landing jets would be small streaks in the immense area of the sky. He found a place behind a trailer where the shadow gave him better seeing and began searching. Someone was beside him. Sessions, he guessed, but kept sweeping the skies overhead.

  Abruptly sound broke from his helmet phones. It was a harsh clicking of Morse code, followed by coordinate signals, all being transmitted by the automatic sender in the ship.

  It was the ancient distress signal. "SOS! SOS! . . ."

  Fred caught the coordinates and jerked the binoculars up. Then he groaned. The Cosmic Egg had four great-rockets arranged together in the tail; all should have been blasting out. Even at the distance that separated them, Fred could see that there were only two streaks instead of the great wash of flame the four should have made together. Something must have ruined half of the motors of the ship.

  Now he could see other tiny pinpoints of flame above the main jets. The Egg had side rockets as well as gyros for steering, and they were being used too. The main jets seemed to twinkle, first slowly, then with a rising frequency that turned the two jets into a single pattern.

  Wickman was spinning the ship on its axis. It would be rotating like a top by the time he landed. Fred heard himself groaning as he realized the desperate chance the pilot was taking and guessed the reason.

  Suddenly the main flame grew brighter, confirming Fred's guess. One of the motors must have failed, and the pilot had been forced to cut off the opposite one to prevent an unbalanced thrust that would drive the ship at an angle. By spinning it, he could hope the unbalance would be equalized as the rotation carried the off-center force rapidly around the center of the ship. The ship would oscillate a little, but its drive should remain steadily pointed down against the pulling force of grav-ity.

  It meant that Wickman would be spinning about in

  side the control cabin with the ship, totally unable to get a stable fix on the ground below. It was something to be tried only in the hopeless last efforts of a man who knew he could never avoid a crash.

  The streak of flame dropped nearer and nearer the horizon. Then the bright spot vanished, and the radio signals went dead.

  Chapter 14 Mutiny

  beside him, Fred heard a shuddering sigh that was probably an echo of his own. He turned to see Dr. Sessions staring through a pair of binoculars at the place where the ship had vanished. Now the scientist dropped his arms reluctantly. They turned back to the laboratory. If there was any further news, it would have to come from the Station.

  Fred was drained of emotion. He was beginning to realize what Wickman must have been going through. He was a superlative pilot to have managed what he did; such a landing was something no human being had ever considered before.

  Fred tried to sum it up for the others who were waiting inside the trailer. Sessions must have guessed the meaning of what he had seen, but had been unwilling to believe it. Now the leader's face grew even grimmer.

  "Is there any chance they could have landed and lived?" he asked.

  It was the question that was bothering Fred. He shook his head. "I don't know. If Wickman could find a place in spite of the spin, if he could keep the ship upright ... I don't know."

  The seats inside the ship would cushion a twelve gravity deceleration. The ship itself would buckle, giving around the tank section first and collapsing downward to soak up some of the shock. How high a final landing speed could it take, even if everything went perfectly? At most, five hundred miles an hour was the limit; that was only a tiny part of the velocity Wickman had to cancel with his underpowered blast.

  Fred had caught the flow of coordinates, integrating them in his head with the path he had seen the ship taking. He hadn't been aware at the time, but his brain had plotted the course and probable speed of landing. There were too many variables. It came out right at the thin edge between a faint chance and certain disaster.

  Mona had been running through the frequencies, listening for any message. Now she found one, and tuned it in. It was coming from the Station, apparently on a tight beam to the colony, since they could barely hear it through the solar static. At first it was only a slow speed replay from tapes of the coordinates the emergency sender had broadcast. Fred groaned as he listened to the final ones picked up after the ship had passed beyond the horizon from the expedition.

  The coordinates were wrong. The spinning must have upset some delicate mechanism in the detectors and sensors that automatically located the ship in space against certain fixed stars.

  Then a man's voice came on. "We've searched the entire area with the tightest angle of reception we can adjust. There's no response from the ship. Nothing is coming through, Governor Gantry. Absolutely nothing.

  Either the men are dead or the crash destroyed their transmitters."

  There was a long pause, while Gantry answered from Emmett Base. The receiver here had no chance of picking up that side of the conversation. Then the message resumed from the Station:

  "We're checking the landing course, Governor. There are some discrepancies. Something seemed to throw the plotters off there at the end, according to our computations. Better put—which one? Better put Poorhouse on and let us get what we can from his observation."

  It would be Poorhouse, Fred thought bitterly. He was the one pilot with the least sense of an orbit, the one least capable of getting an idea of the course from observation. But it was lucky anyone at Base had seen the landing.

  There were a series of questions then that made no sense at all without the other side of the conversation. They were probably checking their figures with Poorhouse, trying to make sense of the final course of the Cosmic Egg. The radio went dead.

  "This is going to be tough on your father," Erica Neu-feld said softly, touching Fred's arm. "I'm sorry."

  Fred had considered what the wrecking of the Cosmic Egg would mean to Colonel Halpern, but he was helpless to do anything about it—as helpless as he seemed in all other ways.

  The radio came to life again, this time listing the lunar longitude and latitude of the crash area calculated on the basis of all the data the Station could get. "We estimate the probable error as not more than plus or minus fifteen miles. You'll have to search quite a circle, Governor Gantry. I'm afraid both of your tractors will be needed for the search."

  Fred sprang to the lunar map and began checking the area, though he already was sure of what he would find. He circled the spot, and his face must have looked as shocked as he felt.

  "What's the matter?" Dr. Sessions asked him quickly.

  ""They've got the ship in the wrong place. They're over a hundred miles off, not just ten or twenty. It's so far north of where they put it that they'll never find it, no matter how hard Gantry searches."

  "They can't be that far off," Sessions protested. "They've got the best brains and most advanced computers in the world figuring this, Fred."

  Fred shook his head unhappily. "Sure. And they'd be right, if Wickman hadn't got the third tube blasting at the end. They're figuring this on the power of two motors only. That must have been all Poorhouse noticed before it cut below his horizon. They've extrapolated from early coordinates and what Poorhouse saw. Dr. Sessions, was that ship decelerating steadily?"

  "No." Sessions considered it slowly, then spoke more firmly. "No, it wasn't. Its exhaust seemed to flicker and grow stronger, as you described it before."

  "Exactly. Nobody would think Wickman would risk spinning the ship, but he did it—and he got his third tube working. That means he was falling a lot more slowly than they figured.
They can't reach the right spot from those figures."

  He tried to explain the change that would carry the ship farther across the surface before it landed, drawing a rough sketch on a piece of paper. It made enough sense to the others for them to realize he might be right, even though they couldn't follow the mathematics of a landing course easily. Just as their technical geological discussions gave him only the general idea behind the words, so the jargon of plotting was beyond their full understanding. They understood enough to become gravely worried.

  Sessions studied the sketch and finally threw it back on the desk. "I'll back your judgment most of the way on this, Fred. Mona, can you get a signal through to the Station?"

  "With this transmitter?" She snorted. "Unless they put a tight beam antenna on us, we'd be far down under solar noise. Even maser amplifiers can't pull intelligence out of such a mess. . . . Okay, I'll try. I hope Wonder-boy knows what he's talking about."

  Sessions' voice was flat. "I have reason to believe Mr. Halpern's ability saved the Kepler after your repairs on the computer failed, Dr. Williams. I suggest you try calling the Station."

  She obviously didn't approve, but she went to work. Fred had no reason to complain about her efforts. After nearly an hour of steady signaling, there was still no response.

  It wasn't surprising. Their transmitter had been designed for a limited range, unlike the sets in the ships, or the larger installation at Emmett Base. Gantry's rescue party would probably carry a ship transmitter and receiver to keep in touch with the Station, but the expedition hadn't felt it necessary.

  Perhaps it didn't matter. Fred had never fully convinced anyone on the Station of his mental plotting ability, and they'd probably disregard his ideas. The only one who had ever completely accepted the idea had been a psychologist at the Academy, who claimed the talent was not unknown in other fields. Spacemen would hardly consult a psychologist about space orbits and plotting.

  Sessions had been pondering silently during the fitful discussion going on while they tried to contact the Station. He signaled Mona to stop trying.

  "We've got to do whatever we can," he told the group. "I'm afraid that isn't much. There's at least one chain of unknown mountains between us and the location Fred suggests for the crash. We don't even have photos of it to suggest a pass. It looks a lot worse than anything we've come through, and by the time we could get there, it might be dark. I won't risk the men and equipment here on anything less than certainty."

  "I'm certain of where they are," Fred insisted.

  "I'm sure you are—and you may be right. But if you're even twenty miles off, we'd miss them in the dark, and that's a lot smaller error than you claim the Station made. Be reasonable, Fred. I'm admitting you're good, but you plotted that exhaust against a horizon without knowing how much the horizon deviates from its theoretical height. There are dozens of factors that could lead to errors. Do you deny that?"

  "No, sir." He'd thought of all those things himself, and he was still sure he knew where the ship had landed. He was also sure he couldn't convince the others; if he insisted too much, they'd be less likely to believe him than if he seemed reasonable.

  "It's out of the question to attempt a rescue directly," Sessions went on.

  "Maybe a single tractor . . ." Fred began.

  The leader cut him off shortly. "No! A single tractor is taking too much risk if anything goes wrong. I'm not breaking up the group. We can travel light, and we'll travel together."

  "Then you're going to try to make it?" Mike Boland asked.

  The older man shook his head. "No, it's impossible. But we might be able to get back to the area where the Station plotted the crash. We know that trail thoroughly. We can get there as soon as Gantry can make it. We'll start broadcasting to his group, and let them put through a call to the Station with Fred's ideas."

  Surprisingly it was Mona Williams who voiced the first approval. "All right, if we're going to gamble, that makes sense. We can even help investigate the area. If the Station plotting is wrong, we'll be able to prove it. Then they'll have to listen to Halpern's ideas."

  Sessions nodded. It was obvious that the same idea had occurred to him.

  It might make sense, but it wouldn't work, Fred felt. There would be a delay while the expedition was rounded up and made ready; beyond that, there would be wasted time while the tractors and trailers backtracked to the official disaster site, waited for confirmation from the Station, and finally headed toward the real location of the ship. It would probably take eight days or more. That was a long time to expect Wickman and Ramachundra to hold on—too long.

  On the other hand, a single tractor might make off at top speed, taking more risks than a full expedition could afford. With luck, it should find the ship in three days, while there was daylight for scouting around, if necessary. That was still not good, but men could survive for that long under some pretty rough conditions.

  "Dr. Sessions," he asked, "can I see you in the tractor?"

  Sessions glanced at him in surprise, but nodded. The leader was giving orders for striking the camp and picking up the men who were out on projects as far as fifty miles away.

  Ten minutes later, the scientist joined Fred in the tractor. "Well, Fred?"

  It was now or never, Fred realized. If he had proposed his idea in front of the group, they might think he was trying to get credit and looking for glory, as he'd been accused of doing before. His only chance was to present his plan to Sessions alone.

  It was hard to outline the logic of his idea, though he was sure the use of a single tractor was far better than the plan they had agreed on. He drew out the incomplete maps of the area where Wickman must be and began pointing out possible routes, indicating the time it would take.

  Sessions shoved them aside wearily. He looked unhappy and tired, but his voice was firm.

  "No, Fred, it's out of the question. I won't order a man to commit suicide; that wouldn't do Wickman any good. The odds against a single man are too heavy. What would you have done in the dust pit alone? Or Whitley on that ledge? The Moon isn't a one-man proposition."

  "The first landing here was a one-boy operation," Fred told him hotly. He regretted the words as soon as they were out; it was too late to call them back.

  Sessions grinned, seizing on them. "To be sure. So I've heard. And if I remember the story, you came down in the ship all right, then turned over. The ship landed on the air lock, and you couldn't get out. Three men might have dug out, but one couldn't. So you had to wait until a real group expedition arrived. Do you really want to use that as an example?"

  Fred shook his head unhappily. Yet he couldn't give up. "Then send someone like Boland. He's levelheaded. Hell make out if anyone can."

  "No." Sessions stood up and began pacing about the tiny space not filled with supplies. "No, if I were sending anyone, I'd pick you. Surprise you? Well, it's true. You're just fool enough to make it where a sane man might not. No one is going alone. No one! Is that clear?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Sessions snorted. "Don't give me a 'yessir' in that tone of voice, Mr. Halpern. I'm still running this expedition. I think we had a little talk before you joined up. We discussed mutiny then, didn't we? You remember the penalty possible for disobeying my orders?"

  At the moment, Fred didn't care to remember; it had been something about execution for mutiny. That didn't matter to him.

  "Are you refusing me the right to go, sir?" he asked formally.

  Sessions' lips tensed in a straight line. "Do I have to? Use your own judgment for a change," he suggested. "Now, will you get this tractor ready for the trip back?"

  Fred nodded tensely and turned to the controls. The older man hesitated for a moment, then grabbed his shoulder and spun him around.

  "Fred," Sessions said, "I know how important this is. I know how you feel about the colonists, your father, that ship out there. Give me a little credit, too. I feel it just as much as you do. So let's both stop bristling at each other,
shall we? I thought we were friends. How about it?"

  In spite of himself, Fred felt a smile spread over his face. He took the other's outstretched hand, and the smile deepened. "Sorry, Dr. Sessions. I guess I'm still reacting to the whole trouble. I'm not angry."

  Sessions grinned back and clapped him fondly on the shoulder before heading for the air lock. The smile lingered on Fred's face as the older man passed back to the laboratory. Then the boy swung back to study the tractor.

  He really wasn't angry, but he hadn't changed his mind. He had no doubts about what he must do. Maybe Wickman and Ramachundra were dead already. Maybe his father would be broken, whether or not the ship was found. Maybe the World Congress representative couldn't help the colony, even if he survived. None of those things mattered. The simple fact was that two men might be alive and badly injured; he knew where they were and had a chance to rescue them. He had to take the chance.

  Anyone who wanted could call it mutiny and do whatever they chose to him afterward. That was the way it would have to be.

  The tractor was stocked with as much material as it could carry. There was the maximum supply of fuel. The cabin held medical supplies, spare oxygen tanks, food, water, and even a single-man pressure tent of plastic. It was equipped to meet any emergency, and there was little else he could think to take.

  He glanced at the mirror that showed him the rest of the camp. There was no one around the tractor; the two other tractors were not occupied at the moment. Sessions had climbed back into the laboratory. The simplest way to desert was simply to leave—there would never be a better opportunity than he had now.

  He reached for the control levers and jammed full power into the motor. The tractor spun about sharply, turning to face north and east. Then the two treads began whipping around their tracks together, and the machine was driving away from the camp at its top speed.

  There was a sputtering from the radio. Fred reached forward and snapped it off quickly. He had no desire to argue. He tried not to see the men spilling out of the laboratory, making frantic gestures toward him.