“So they got a late start today,” he told himself, “or maybe the guy wants to get to work early.”
There was no time for another look at Alice. He moved off a hundred yards, and waited. The operator came on at a springing jog, heading directly for the transmitter hut. Finally he saw Darzek, and waved.
“That you, Sam?”
Darzek waved back and spoke, trying to imitate one of the voices he’d heard. “Come on. Wanna show you something.”
“Can’t,” the operator said. “I gotta sweep out the hut for that goddam VIP.”
“Aw, come on. It won’t take long.”
“Where is it?”
“Not far.”
Darzek turned, started off, and the operator followed him. He looked again for the other two men. One was still seated in the shadow, gazing up at the stars. He could not locate the other, which suited him perfectly. He lengthened his stride.
The operator was hurrying to catch up with him. “I haven’t got all day. What is it? Where is it?”
“Up this way,” Darzek said, veering towards the crater wall and increasing his speed. They jogged on for some time without speaking. The heat in Darzek’s suit had become intolerable, and he was beginning to feel dizzy. He moved along the base of the wall, zigzagging among the fallen rocks. They had covered a considerable distance, and the two huts were only bright mounds in the plain behind them.
“How far are you going?” the operator demanded.
Darzek looked back. The operator had halted, and was looking toward the huts.
“Just a little way,” Darzek said. It was the literal truth. He knew that he was about to have a heat stroke, that his next step might be his last, and there was nothing he could do about it. He staggered into the shadow of an enormous chunk of rock, and sank to his knees.
The operator was walking away. “I’m going back, Sam.”
Darzek did not answer. He heard a muttered, “Now where the hell did he go?” but the operator continued to walk back towards the base. Darzek flopped over as heavily as a hundred and ninety pounds could flop under Moon gravity. This was not what he had planned, but he was unable to so much as lift his throbbing head again. He had done his best, and his best had gained at most an additional thirty minutes for Alice. The rest was up to her.
CHAPTER 20
For a long time Darzek lay motionless, too weak and nauseated to stir himself for a glance in the direction of the base. Perhaps he lost consciousness momentarily. He neither knew nor cared. His next coherent awareness was of an outraged voice screaming angrily in his ears. “Which one of you idiots has been messing with the transmitter?”
A second voice answered immediately. “What’d you say, Perrin?”
“I said—get back here, both of you.”
“Coming. What’s the matter?”
Darzek muttered exultantly, “She got through! She got through!”
“What’d you say, Perrin?”
“I said get back here. Sam? Sam!”
“Maybe he’s out of range of your suit radio. Turn on the relay.”
“Nonsense. I left him over there—”
“He headed out across the crater. I can’t even see him now.”
“I tell you he came back. I just left him. Sam!”
“I don’t see him.”
“He found something over there. Maybe he’s in a cave.”
“There aren’t any caves.”
“Well, he said he found something. Sam!”
Darzek lost interest. The suit had cooled off miraculously, and his perspiration-soaked body was soon shudderingly cold. This time he was able to locate the thermostat and adjust the temperature, and he wondered if there was a loose connection that had somehow been corrected when he flopped down.
Sam returned, angrily protesting that he had been nowhere near the base, had found nothing, had not seen Perrin. All three men went into the transmitter hut. Darzek did a quick review of his position, and decided that he didn’t like it. Once Perrin became convinced that he hadn’t been following Sam, it was only reasonable to assume that he’d be mildly curious to know whom he had followed. The most casual search would lead directly to Darzek.
He weighed his chances carefully, and decided to move. By this time, he thought, the three men would be out of their suits and assessing the damage to the transmitter. The others might even stand around to watch while Perrin went to work on it.
He moved off, keeping close to the curving crater wall and traveling with as much speed as his weakened body and the accumulation of fallen rock permitted. The rock debris was often treacherous underfoot and forced him to follow an exhausting, meandering path, but he did not dare to leave the wall. The rocks also supplied the crater’s only hiding places.
He had reached a point almost directly opposite the base when the three men reappeared. Darzek leaped for cover, ducking behind a rock and moving a few more yards at a crouch to the protection of a cluster of large rocks, but the men did not look in his direction. Perrin, gesticulating excitedly, indicated the precise spot where he had last seen the phantom Moon man. He returned to the hut, and the other two trotted off to investigate. Darzek settled down comfortably behind his rocks, and waited.
The two searchers wandered about aimlessly, grumbling and arguing, not entirely convinced that Perrin had seen anything at all. Time passed. One of them abandoned the search. More time passed. A few minutes? An hour?
A squad of novices filed from the transmitter hut. Perrin had completed his repairs.
“So I’m marooned here,” Darzek thought. “But it could be worse.”
He was perfectly safe. Even if they searched in his direction they would not find him unless they walked up to his cluster of rocks and looked in. If they came after him in numbers he might be able to join the search and pass himself off as one of them. He could not change his position until their midday break, but as long as his air lasted he had nothing to worry about.
Nothing except the zero gauge on the supply capsule’s last reserve tank, and the stolen empty air cylinder that he should have returned, and the full cylinders he had promised but now would be unable to deliver. He felt sick with apprehension. Had Alice got through from Earth—in time? Would they, after all their pious prating about their Code, abandon him on the Moon, to talk his way out of the situation as best he could?
The base seemed to be following its normal routine. One group of novices prowled the area of the phantom Moon man’s disappearance, but the others had advanced as far as lesson five, mountaineering, and were working their way up one of the easier slopes of crater wall. The scientists had packed up their hut and driven off out of sight to stake out a new area of investigation. Darzek explored the available wave lengths on his radio, and listened to a sharp-voiced instructor berate the novices, to some incomprehensible scientific chatter, to the inane remarks of a carefully herded group of VIPs. The midday break arrived without incident. The novices marched in for their return to Earth, and the base appeared deserted.
Darzek cautiously ventured out of his hiding place.
He had not taken a dozen steps when a man came out of the transmitter hut and stood gazing in his direction. “Be natural!” Darzek told himself. “You’re one of them. Be natural!” The man turned abruptly, and stalked off to the other hut. Darzek ducked for cover, wondering who the man thought he’d seen.
He expected him to reappear shortly, with reinforcements, and when he did not Darzek started out once more. This time he recklessly left the crater wall and headed directly for the supply capsule. In his haste he overshot the camouflaged entrance, and had to spend several frenzied minutes searching for it. He turned for a last look at the base, and then he slipped inside, kicked the rocks away, and let the door snap shut behind him.
He opened the inner door, and stumbled over the prostrate form of an alien.
He ripped his way out of the suit, and knelt down. It was Ysaye, apparently dead. Darzek searched for a pulse with a fumbling, in
expert finger, felt for a heart beat, found nothing. There was no sign of breathing, and the alien’s flesh had taken on a faint brownish tint, as though the body were already in an advanced state of decomposition.
Darzek rocked on his heels despairingly. He called out—the door was open at the end of the tunnel—but there was no answer. The air seemed fresh, but he realized that he was breathing with some difficulty.
He searched again for a pulse, a heart beat, wondering if the aliens possessed either. And how could he go about giving artificial respiration to a creature whose lungs were as likely to be located in its ankles as its chest?
He detached the helmet from the space suit, and slipped it over Ysaye’s head. Seconds passed without any response. Darzek began to push roughly on the abdomen and chest, to push, crush with his full weight, and release.
Ysaye jerked and stirred, and began to breathe deeply. The brownish tint faded. Soon he was able to sit up.
“So you have returned, Jan Darzek,” he said, his words muffled by the helmet.
“Take it easy,” Darzek said. “Keep breathing deeply.”
“Alice—”
“I think she got through all right. I couldn’t go back to see.”
“We watched. Your plan worked splendidly. Gwendolyn thought you meant to betray us, but I could not agree with her. But I did not think you meant to return.”
“I took an oath,” Darzek said. “Remember?”
“The others—are they—”
“I haven’t even looked for them. I fell over you as I came out of the air lock.”
He ran up the tunnel to the capsule, and looked inside.
There the air seemed worse, and the three aliens lay in pathetic, browning heaps. Darzek raced back to Ysaye, snatched the helmet from his head, and dragged helmet and suit up to the capsule.
He bent first over Gwendolyn. The helmet was hopelessly small for her enormous head. He attempted unsuccessfully to fit the bottom opening to her face, and finally he leaped to his bin, snatched his penknife, and sliced the air hose. He cupped it to her face with his hands, and pressed his weight upon her body, pressed again and again.
“It is no use, Jan Darzek.” Ysaye had crawled up the tunnel, and he lay in the doorway, looking in. “It is no use. Go back to your people. You must not feel obliged to die with us. You have saved Alice—that is enough.”
“Nonsense. You’re not going to die.”
Gwendolyn was responding. As she stirred and sat up, staring at him uncomprehendingly, Darzek jerked the hose away and went to work on Xerxes. Before he had revived that alien Gwendolyn had collapsed again, and Ysaye lay unconscious at the opening to the tunnel.
“Screwy metabolisms,” Darzek muttered, working frantically on Xerxes. “I’ll have to put them in a circle, and let them take turns.”
In his own weakened condition the effort taxed his strength to the utmost, but he finally got all of them revived and seated so that the hose could be passed from one to the other. Gwendolyn, Xerxes, and Zachary seemed dazed. They acted almost automatically, seizing the hose, gulping at it, handing it along, keeping their eyes always on Darzek. Ysaye was in better shape, perhaps because the air in the tunnel had not given out as soon as the air in the capsule. He passed up several of his turns to argue with Darzek.
“Don’t be silly,” Darzek said. “I can’t run off and leave you to die. I couldn’t leave now if I wanted to. I cut the suit’s air hose.”
“You can repair it. When your oxygen is gone we will die anyway, and you with us. It will not last long, and we are wasting much of it.”
“I suppose we are. Pity there isn’t a more efficient way to use it. Still, it may improve the air to the point where you can breathe that again. Quit arguing, and store up as much reserve as you can before it gives out.”
“Do you not need some yourself?”
“So far I don’t.”
“I forgot. You who live on Earth are accustomed to bad air.”
“We aren’t accustomed to air that’s this bad, but I’ll manage. What’s keeping Alice?”
He went to the viewer for a look at the base. The novices had returned, and some of them were searching through the area where Darzek had last been seen. If he hadn’t been so tired, so utterly exhausted, he would have enjoyed watching. His foot found his discarded strips of clothing, and he dressed himself wearily and went to sit in the tunnel entrance. He leaned back and closed his eyes.
He was awakened by a tug on his leg. “We wish to say good by to you, Jan Darzek,” Ysaye said. “While we are still able.”
They had cast aside the air hose, and the other three sat looking blankly at Darzek, or perhaps at nothing at all. Already they were breathing laboriously.
“Tank empty?” Darzek said. “But you’re able to breathe without it.”
“Yes, a little,” Ysaye said.
“Good. What is keeping Alice?”
“There was not enough time. We knew that when you started.”
“Enough time for what? She’s had hours.”
“We had not the necessary apparatus at our Earth station. We had no use for it, until now. Alice must build it, and when it is built she must—adjust it, which is a delicate process requiring much trial and error.”
“I can imagine,” Darzek said. “It wouldn’t be easy to hit this precise underground spot from the Earth. How much time should it take?”
“We do not know. Alice did not know. She has never before built such apparatus. That is why the others did not consider it—consider your plan—worth the risk.”
“Well, there’s nothing we can do but wait,” Darzek said. “I’m sure she’ll work as fast as she can.”
“Our most earnest wish is that she will finish in time to save you. Since you are able to breathe this bad air, and we—”
“You’re breathing it,” Darzek said. “Better save your breath.”
The aliens were soon taking in great, wracking breaths, their bodies heaving convulsively. Darzek could do nothing but affect calm and optimism and watch them, one by one, topple over. No kind of artificial respiration would have helped them without oxygen, and he had no more oxygen.
Ysaye held out the longest, but finally he, too, slumped to the floor, leaving unanswered Darzek’s question as to whether it would be best to move all of them into the tunnel. Darzek went to investigate himself, and decided that the air there was not discernibly better. He returned to the capsule and stood looking despairingly at the inert, browning bodies of the aliens. There was still time, perhaps, for him to summon help from the base. He could patch up the suit adequately for him to step outside for a few seconds at a time and signal.
But the aliens would prefer death, and in a calmer moment, when he had not anticipated having to watch them die, he had agreed with them. And he had taken an oath.
But he had not, until this moment, realized how badly he had wanted to save them. With a sob he dropped to one knee beside Ysaye, and took the alien’s hand.
A blast of cool, fresh air struck him, and Alice stepped from nowhere to stand beside him.
CHAPTER 21
Alice lifted Ysaye as an adult lifts a child, and was gone, leaving only a swirling of dead air to mark her passage.
She returned before Darzek could comprehend the manner of her going, stepping from a shimmering nothingness, from a mere trickery of optics that played delicately near the ladder. Xerxes followed, and then Zachary, and she had uttered no sound, had not even glanced at Darzek.
Not until she attempted to lift Gwendolyn’s huge form did she falter. Darzek sprang to her assistance, seizing the legs. Gwendolyn seemed ridiculously light, to him, but her weight plainly distressed Alice, who hauled pantingly at the shoulders as she edged her way backwards. Darzek never saw exactly where it was that he went. One instant he was breathing the lifeless air of the capsule; the next instant, in mid-breath, as it were, the air he sucked in became coolly delicious, and Gwendolyn’s weight was staggering.
The l
aboring Alice had sunk to her knees, but even so she allowed Gwendolyn to drop the last few inches to the floor. Darzek slowly lowered the legs, and straightened up to look about him. The shock of recognition left him blinking. The room appeared to be an exact replica of the wrecked Moon base. It had the same curved and glowing walls and ceiling, the same ledges with sleeping pads, the instrument board, the transmitter frame from which he had just stepped.
In his exhausted state the sudden change to Earth’s stronger gravity left him with a frightful sensation of fatigue and weakness, and he needed no further proof to convince himself that he really had returned to Earth.
He seated himself on a ledge, and watched Alice minister to the unconscious aliens. Except for Gwendolyn, they lay on sleeping pads on the opposite ledge, and Alice moved tirelessly from one to another, giving them oxygen through a queerly flat face mask. They revived one by one, and sat up, but continued to gulp greedily at the oxygen when it was offered.
For a long time they spoke in hushed tones among themselves, and seemed to be studiously avoiding so much as a glance in Darzek’s direction. It was Ysaye who finally got to his feet and moved falteringly across the room.
“Well, Jan Darzek—”
His hand clutched Darzek’s arm. His other hand wiped the bubbling saliva from his mouth, wiped it again and again, and Darzek felt an overwhelming, incomprehensible surge of affection for this hideously faced, dry-eyed creature who was thus sobbing out his alien gratitude.
When the others, even Alice and Gwendolyn, began to display the same disconcerting emotional symptoms, the embarrassed Darzek felt constrained to divert their attention to more practical matters. He announced, “I’m hungry.”
The five of them stared at him.
“I can’t remember when I ate last,” he said. “It certainly wasn’t today—now that we’re back on Earth I suppose I can start thinking of time in terms of days. I don’t accuse you of intentionally mistreating me, since you had no advance notice that you were going to have a guest of my gastronomic inclinations, and I don’t doubt that the predigested sawdust you’ve been feeding me contains enough food value to sustain life, but if you have anything on hand that a native of this planet would loosely classify as food, I’d like to see if I still have a stomach.”
All the Colors of Darkness Page 18