"Mystery and beauty," Fred said slowly. They were oddly beautiful in their adaptation to life here, he realized. Once he'd gotten used to their strangeness, their delicacy represented a queer beauty like none men had seen before.
Ramaehundra looked up in mild surprise. "You see it, too? I am so glad, Fred. Yes, very glad. But why are you waiting?"
It was a good question. There was no need to wait, since a single flick of his finger could have snapped the string to release the spores into the bottle. It might be some time before the cold accomplished the same thing. But he shook his head stubbornly.
"These things have a hard enough time managing to live at all here. Let them alone until they're ready. They've earned every minute they can get."
Ramaehundra chuckled softly, and said nothing more. Suddenly the little filament broke, the spore pod snapped forward and open, spraying an incredibly fine dark dust into the bottle. Others were popping as Fred sealed his collection, driving the spores even more forcefully than he had expected. Let them go. He had enough—probably millions—of the spores for all the testing and experimenting biologists could dream of, if anyone ever found the bottle.
He sealed it carefully and placed it in a hamper outside the tractor, where it would remain at the lunar surface temperature, scribbling a quick note in case it was found when he could no longer explain.
It could mean a lot to the Moon. It might mean filling the hopes of colonization and countless expeditions. That would have to remain a project for the future. He had other problems now.
Inside the cave, he reported his find to Wickman tersely. The pilot nodded; he had his own worries, too. He pointed to the reciver.
"Dead. It burned out a few minutes ago. We re out of touch permanently now, unless we can send up smoke signals."
Fred started to shrug, before the words hit him. Then he frowned. It might not work, but . . .
Wickman looked up, realizing the suggestion in his own words. "It might work," he said slowly. "It just might. Help me get my suit on."
"You're staying here. You're in no condition to do anything. Besides, this is a one-man job, and I thought of it first," Fred told him.
Wickman chuckled, and the grin came back to his lips. "Mr. Halpern, it's one-man suicide, if you're thinking what I'm thinking. I'm not in the best shape, but I'm not sure I can't give you the beating you've been asking for since I first knew you. Do I get help with this suit, or do I have to prove to you that I'm not a hopeless cripple?"
Ramachundra ran up to them, making unhappy clucking noises. Then, at the sight of their faces, he hesitated.
A puzzled look came into his eyes and he stepped back, spreading his hands helplessly.
Getting the suit back on Wickman was a slow and painful business. Yet the pilot was right; it was a two-man job, if it were to be done properly. With Ramaehundra hampered by a suit that made even seeing difficult, he was hardly the proper second man and would have to stay in the cave.
The two went out to the tractor together. Inside, Fred bent forward suddenly to help unfasten Wickman's helmet. Using one of the oxygen tanks here was wasteful, but they'd need a chance to confer properly. "I guess you're better at washing me out than I am at eliminating you," Fred said. "But you were always more clever about things than I was."
Wickman shook his head. "I wasn't being clever. I gave you every chance."
"That was the clever part," Fred admitted, putting the tractor into motion and heading toward the ship. "You were too honest for words in front of Commandant Olson. You had him wrapped around your finger with all that honesty. But you didn't report all the needling you did."
"You're wrong. I reported that in detail, Mr. Halpern. I couldn't help reacting to you. You were the most arrogant and offensive student I ever had, with your pose of being a real spaceman among us earthlubbers. I could and did give him the whole background. Unfortunately, I thought you were also a liar and that you'd made that impossibly quick course alteration by wild luck. Otherwise, I'd have reported your insubordination and recommended that you be graduated in spite of it."
It was a small revelation to Fred that he'd probably been just as offensive as Wickman believed. He hud considered himself a spaceman and the others as mere students, including Wickman. He'd seen only insult and cleverness in words which could just as easily have been taken as punctilious honesty. Well, now that he'd learned a little honesty himself, it was too late. He was the man supposed to be sent back to Earth, while Wickman was an accomplished spaceman.
Abruptly Wickman made a gesture of pushing something aside, and there was a touch of shyness to his grin. "My name is Sid," he said quietly. "Maybe we're both a little older, Fred."
"Maybe we are, Moon-boy," Fred acknowledged. Wickman looked startled, then laughed as he looked out at the Moonscape around them.
At the ship, Fred studied his plans again, comparing them with any ideas Wickman might have. They both decided on about the same course, except for one thing.
"Why worry about the ship?" Wickman asked.
"Salvage for the colony, maybe," Fred explained. "If the tractor will tow it, they can use it. Maybe they can patch it up to work and make fuel for it. If not, there's still a lot of material there."
Wickman accepted the idea without comment, and they went about their business.
Some of the monopropellant had dribbled out onto the surface from one of the tubes. It was a minor miracle that the landing shock hadn't broken the tanks while the rockets were still firing. It was safe enough now. Nothing but the heat of its own combustion or the blackened copper mesh used as a catalyst could set it off.
The main tank seemed not to have been ruined. Probably the liquid had acted as a shock absorber and served to protect it. Since the ship had carried fuel enough for a return as well as the trip here, there was a large amount of the material—probably more than they would need.
Fred attacked the side of the ship with the crowbar, battering and tugging at it until he could reach the motorized valves controlling the flow. They were not designed for manual operation; he had to enlarge the hole enough to get half inside the tank compartment and connect a battery directly to the motors. Then, protesting and stiff from being badly bent, the valve began to turn. It wouldn't open fully, but the fuel was moving out.
It ran slowly from one of the tubes, forming a thick river as it found a slight downward slope to the ground. Dark and oily in appearance, it spread under the headlights and began collecting in a pool where the ground dipped. Fred had no idea of how much would be needed. Better too much than too little, he decided.
Wickman drew back, holding the copper catalyst plate he had removed from the tube while Fred worked on the motor. There were probably fumes of the fuel around, since the vacuum caused any liquid to evaporate far more rapidly here than on Earth. He put the catalyst inside the tractor, where it couldn't possibly ignite the fuel and came out to watch as the little river gradually began to run dry while the pool filled.
Finding a way to hitch the tractor to the ship was another problem. Wickman solved it by suggesting they couple onto the twisted rocket tubes. The ship would be harder to drag tail first, but this was the only solution. There was enough cable in the tractor hampers.
The tractor was going to be almost useless, Fred realized, once this was over. The fuel supply was growing dangerously low. Well, it was really useless anyhow, and there was no point in trying to save peroxide now.
The motor growled unhappily as he eased in the clutches, and the treads protested as they tried to take up the load. Here on the Moon, the ship weighed one-sixth of what it would on Earth, but it had just as much inertia as anywhere else. This resistance to change of motion was the chief trouble. He began trying to twist it around, to overcome friction more easily. It seemed to make little difference.
Slowly, however, the great ship began to move behind them. They were probably damaging it a little more, but that couldn't be helped. It picked up speed, until the tractor wa
s moving at almost three miles an hour, under the maximum force of the motor. Fred had wanted to drag it several miles away, but he abandoned the idea now. It should be reasonably safe at a mile from the pool of monopropellant.
He stopped and crawled out to unhitch the ship. The ride back was quicker, but it gave him time enough to go over his plans again, and he needed that.
Smoke signals. Well, they couldn't use smoke. Fire was another matter; the fuel produced one of the brightest, hottest flames possible from chemical reaction. All of it going off at once should be bright enough to light this whole section of the Moon. They were near the rim of the darkness of lunar night, but such a flare should be visible in the telescopes of the Station. It should last long enough for the astronomers to locate the source of the explosion accurately. There was no other way to communicate with the Station. Once the flame was observed, the Station could direct the rescue teams toward the right place. They might think men and ship had blown up together, but they'd come anyhow.
The problem was to time things so that the flare went off when the Station telescopes would probably be pointing at the Moon. With the expedition and Gantry looking for the ship, more than normal attention should be focused here, but the chances of the telescopes being on permanent lookout were not too good, with all the other important work to be done.
He wiped his forehead, trying to think. Days of strain and fatigue were beginning to cloud his judgment. Wickman didn't know enough of the Station schedule to help. All Fred could do was pick a time when the Station would be nearest the Moon in its orbit and hope.
Wickman was waiting beside the huge pool of fuel. His voice came over the radio. "Better put the copper screen in something before you hand it out, Fred. I'd hate to set this off until we get back a way."
"You're coming in to do the driving," Fred told him. "I'm the outside man."
"Nonsense. You're the tractor expert here."
"And I'm the man with an unbroken rib cage, Sid," Fred answered. "Figure it out. I can toss that catalyst twice as far as you can."
Wickman hesitated for a second; the logic of the argument could not be denied. He moved toward the air lock, walking slowly to favor his injured side. Fred helped him through the lock and began going over what little there was to learn about the controls for this operation. He let Wickman guide the tractor back clumsily until they were as far from the fuel as possible for their purpose.
It wasn't far enough, he knew. At the limit of his ability to throw the copper plate accurately, they were not fully outside the blast area. There was no air to carry the shock wave here. However, the exploding fuel would release its own tremendous outpouring of combustion gases, which would strike out savagely before they could be dissipated into the vacuum around them.
It was too late to worry now. He stopped to collect himself, then went out through the lock, to face the little lake of fuel.
He figured the trajectory of the plate more carefully than he'd figured any flight path before. His muscles seemed uncertain as he drew the plate back, but determination took over, sending a sudden spurt of confidence through him.
The plate sailed out of his hand and hurtled through the air, curving and falling slowly. He watched it for a fraction of a second, judging that the throw had been good. Then he darted for the air lock. The outer section came open . . .
A blaze of fire lighted the crater from edge to edge and rose up into the sky. The ground shook under a monstrous thunder of sound that leaped up through the air in his suit. Something like a heavy fist on his back drove Fred forward against the inner wall of the air lock. The tractor lurched under him as the pressure released.
He was half unconscious, dimly aware of a hand grasping and pulling at him. He felt himself being dragged, then dropped. There was a lucid moment when he was surprised that the tractor was moving, apparently undamaged. Then he was unconscious until Wickman's voice penetrated his ears.
"I'm all right," he managed to say. He tasted blood, and realized that his lip must have been bitten in the shock of the blast. His fingers came up to find another wound on his scalp.
He sat up abruptly finding himself in the cave, out of his suit, with Wickman busy attending to his cuts. Across the little room, Ramachundra sat watching, studying this further example of the violence of life here. The two must have dragged him in while he was unconscious.
"I'm all right," he repeated.
Wickman nodded. "Sure. No sign of concussion. You got a nasty blow, all the same, and you're going to rest before you talk any more. You've been dead on your feet for days, man."
Fred made no protest. There was nothing more they could do now, except wait while the oxygen disappeared slowly, and wonder whether their distress signal had been seen.
Chapter 18 Judgment
fred awoke slowly. His head was thick at first, and the air seemed thin, hard to breathe. He groped his way up through a fog until bits of his memory came back.
The little cave was unchanged. Wickman was asleep on one of the beds, and Ramachundra sat cross-legged, writing on a pad that lay on his lap. There was no sign of a rescue party.
"How much longer?" he asked softly.
Ramachundra looked up, smiling faintly. There was no look of worry on the little man's face; instead, he seemed to be at perfect peace with himself. "About three more hours of oxygen, I believe. Our friend is sleeping to use less. And I have been using weak breathing while I wrote. It is a part of an ancient knowledge that needs no sleep. Indeed, yes."
He rose, putting the pad aside, and brought over a plastic plate of food and a cup of bouillon, barely warmed on the electric plate. Fred found that he was ravenously hungry. He felt almost himself again.
Three hours. It was strange and somehow unreal to know that there was so little time left to hope for rescue. The search party should have arrived long before this
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if his signal had been spotted. Either something had delayed them or the explosion had gone unnoticed. Well, the three in the cave couldn't survive much longer. After the oxygen ran a little lower, they might be able to get an extra hour from the remaining peroxide—broken apart into steam and oxygen—which would be pretty horrible here in the cave, but it would give them a few more minutes. Then . . .
"Aren't you afraid?" he asked Ramachundra.
The little man smiled softly. "Of course, Mr. Halpern. Yes, I am afraid. But it is out of my hands. I am glad to have lived and to have seen this. I would rather think of that than fear now. And you?"
Fred wasn't sure. He'd been living with a growing fear from the moment they had realized the Station had plotted the location incorrectly; now it seemed curiously unreal. Maybe he was being fatalistic, too, since there was nothing anyone could do about it.
"I am writing my decision—my vote, you might say," Ramachundra said. "If they do not reach us in time, I wish my colleagues at the World Congress to know and to act. I think they will be very glad to do so. Because I have decided that we must do all we can to help this world, to build a colony here, and to make this a world-nation for all the peoples back there."
While Fred stared at him he squatted and picked up the pad again, signing his name with a flourish.
"It surprises you, no? Ah, yes. And you people surprise me. So much violence. Yet I see you sit patiently before a little plant, giving it a few last moments of existence. That was a beautiful thing to do, my young friend. And I see you and your violent Major Wickman go out to do a violent thing with warm hearts and no hatred. I think—yes, I am sure—that I am beginning to see there are many kinds of violence. It is a new thought to me that sometimes accepting things as they are can be evil and that violence, when it hurts no other man, can be good. I have seen that it has not hurt you. I am very fond of you, Mr. Halpern. Very, yes. I would be proud to have you for a son. A world which does this cannot be a bad world for any people. So I have decided."
Fred felt touched and a little embarrassed. He finished his food under the old m
an's understanding smile.
Ramachundra broke the silence. "The World Congress can do a great deal for the Moon, I think. If the ship out there cannot be repaired, it does not matter. We will replace it for your government and there will be other ships we can buy. I have recommended that efforts be made to obtain and send a uranium power reactor as soon as is feasible. Oh, we can do much here. I am sure we will. Yes, we will."
Everything was going to be just wonderful, Fred thought, and a little bitterness crept into his mind. With the discovery of life here, the approval of the World Congress, plenty of power, and even a ship of their own, the colonists would be sure of their future, provided this cave was ever found.
Unless help came in four hours at the most, it would do none of the three here any good. He had very little idea of what he could do, beyond the peroxide, but he had to try something.
There was a little oxygen in the suit tank; and he began getting into the spacesuit to see what he could do about draining off the tractor fuel. The chemicals used to keep the air clean of water and carbon-dioxide were still working, and they should be able to handle the steam from the peroxide breakdown. Even an hour extra might make a difference.
He stepped through the lock and headed for the tractor. Then he stopped, frozen in his tracks. Words were pouring out of his phones, words in the voice of Dr. Sessions.
"Halpern. Wickman. Ramachundra. Fred, are you . . . ?"
"All here!" Fred choked out, his words thick in his own ears.
"Thank God! We were afraid . . . We'll be there in ten minutes. We can see your light from where we are. Hang on!"
Fred spun about to dash back into the cave and tell the others.
Twenty minutes later, they were sitting in the dormitory trailer, telling their stories and listening to the rescue account while Erica Neufeld hovered over them, trying to force more food and coffee on them. Only Villiers was missing. He'd gone to look at what remained of the plants Fred had found, and to fondle the bottle of spores and dream of new tests for the basic facts of life, protoplasm and cell structure.
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