Moon Zero Two

by John Burke

  Then I realized that the Bugdozer was still scrabbling aimlessly at the hillside, its wheels spuming as it chewed bits of rock and tried to climb the sheer slope.

  It wasn’t meant as normal transport. Too cumbersome, too slow. But it would have to do.

  Then Clem said: “Those men... those three. They must have had a Moonbug to get here, mustn’t they? They must have left it somewhere.”

  “Somewhere.”

  There was a lot of open space all around us. And if there was a Bug squatting out there someplace, there might be another man in it.

  This one was going to have to do.

  I hauled myself aboard the bucketing, mindlessly champing Bugdozer, and stopped it. Then I examined it

  It wasn’t so good. The temperature was down, and the pressure was low. Our friend in the red suit hadn’t gone through the airlock drill when he chucked himself out of the back, and a lot of air had been wasted. The generator and conditioner were still in working order, but the supply level was down.

  So was the temperature—worse than I’d thought. There were icicles on the control panel. I checked the batteries. More gloom. Someone had put an explosive slug through them, and wrecked half of them. That someone could only have been me.

  I beckoned Clem inside, secured the airlock, and went through the usual procedure.

  She made a move to slide up her faceplate.

  “Leave it on!” I yelled. “You’ll get frostbite.” I explained what had happened, and added: “We’ve got power for about a hundred and fifty miles, but not the heating and cooling as well.”

  “We’ll have to stay in our suits all the way?”

  “Their charges won’t last more than a few hours,” I said, “and we can’t recharge them off the batteries.”

  While we talked I was backing the Bugdozer away from the cliff and swinging it around.

  All at once it dawned on Clem. “A hundred and fifty miles? But it’s two hundred back to Farside Five, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then—”

  “We’re going to have to try a shortcut,” I said.

  This thing was built to go over mountains. Or even through mountains, if they weren’t too hefty. It was going to have to live up to the manufacturer’s specifications, or there’d be trouble. Trouble for Clementine Taplin and William Kemp.

  One failure, and we wouldn’t get back to make a fuss about the guarantee. We’d just go to join Wally and a lot of others in that Moonmine in the sky.

  I headed the Bugdozer out into the freezing, airless night

  Clem pored over the crumpled map. Once or twice I suspected that some of the paths she discovered were in fact just creases in the map. But as long as we kept moving across that sequence of ridges, we stood a chance. A bit of star navigation, a hint from the map, and a bit of guesswork... it added up to a chance.

  But even a highly sophisticated computer couldn’t have predicted the rocks that would get in our way, the boulders, the sliding shale, the gullies that opened up in front of us. The scoop was at work half the time, tossing rubble to one side or the other, gouging its way through a defile just too narrow for us to get through without a lot of smashing and tearing.

  We teetered along a cliff edge, and rumbled down into the treacherous darkness of an unknown valley.

  Clem ventured: “What happens when the heating in our suits runs down—do we just freeze?”

  I had my eyes on the route ahead. As she spoke, I glanced at her, and beyond her head I saw a halo of light. It was the answer to her question. I pointed.

  A tall pinnacle reared up, a dizzy spire way above us. The top was scorched by an intense white light. Below, there was impenetrable blackness.

  “The sun,” whispered Clem.

  “It’ll be down to our level in a few hours.”

  “Oh, good.” She sighed with relief. Then she said: “But... you said it got above boiling point.”

  “It will. About the time”—I checked the panel clock— “the air-conditioning in our suits runs out.”

  I wasn’t being very reassuring. But out here in the wilderness, at a time like this, there wasn’t any point in lying.

  We scuffled on.

  We negotiated a tricky mountain ledge. Rocks and dust crashed down around the headlights and I had to stop. With decent air and wind and weather, that stuff would have been brought down years ago. Here, it just waited for someone to come along and give it a shiver. When I thought the avalanche was over I edged the scoop forward and tipped the rubble off the track.

  Light intensified along the highest cathedral-like spires. We chipped, shoveled, blustered, and rumbled on. Twenty miles, thirty miles, forty. Then a stretch of flat ground—a bonus. I picked up speed.

  Clem rustled her fingers over the map. Rustled... in silence. Her movements and my own seemed remote, unreal, meaningless. Maybe in the end that’s just what they would prove to be.

  She said: “There looks like a canyon—I suppose you’d call it a crevasse—just..

  Our front wheels tipped forward abruptly. I stamped on the brakes. Dust slid away from beneath us, and the Bugdozer rocked slightly from side to side before settling. “I told you there was,” said Clem.

  “Yes, you did.” I took a deep breath. “Almost.”

  I took the map from her and tried to establish our position. It looked as though we’d need to sidestep a good mile or more. I resented every detour, every blockage. But there was nothing else to do.

  We shuffled along until we found a place where the cliff had collapsed down a loosely packed slope. It was steep. All right, so they advertised the Bugdozer as being unstoppable, self-righting, uncapsizable, the lot. I didn’t fancy tipping it over that edge. But we couldn’t waste any more time or any more reserves on more exploration.

  We went over.

  The Bug slid from side to side. It was like skiing and then finding you were right out of control. A wild slide, thrown from side to side by solid rock, slithering over the scree, and finishing up at the bottom in the middle of a pint-sized avalanche.

  But we were still moving. We rolled on.

  Clem juggled the lump of rock in her hand. She was holding on to it as though it had been a talisman. She was relying on it to get us through. St. Wally’s special relic, guaranteed to safeguard Moon travelers. She said: “Is nickel very rare on the Moon?”

  “So-so. You find it, but not just lying around.”

  “But valuable enough to murder a man for?”

  “You can’t cost a murder. People have been killed for their small change.”

  I swerved to avoid a cluster of solid ruts on the floor of the crevasse. We were being pulled off our line, and there was another three miles of this gash to go before we had any chance of scrambling up the opposite wall.

  At last there was a shallow slope of more loose shale. The cliffs dipped. I accelerated, and drove the Bugdozer at the incline. The wheels raced beneath us, and when we were halfway up I felt in my bones that we weren’t going to grip, it was over, we were going to slide all the way back and perhaps be shattered to pieces on the brutal rock at the bottom.

  Then we scrabbled forward, over the top of the cliff, and light hit us. Cruel, livid, screaming light—a savage attack right between the eyes.

  I slammed down the screen darkeners.

  It wouldn’t take the icicles long to melt now.

  They began to drip. Cold water that I couldn’t feel spattered on to my knees and boots; and then, a minute later, it had all evaporated.

  I took my helmet off and nodded to Clem to do the same. I turned the control on her Moon suit. Might as well save the last of the charge: we might just need it.

  The fierce light flung our black shadow across the plain, trundling beside us as we racketed on.

  Eighty miles still to go. It looked as though we’d done the worst bit, except for a big crater wall. Just when we could have used a few mountains for shade, we’d run out of them.

 
On... burning up the miles. And just burning up.

  After twenty minutes, I peeled off my suit. Clem wriggled out of hers.

  “Shall I drive?” she asked.

  The light was beginning to play hell with my eyes. I wanted to go on and show I could do it, but that was stupid: we wanted to get back safely, and I needed a spell.

  There was a plastic water globe in the back of the Bugdozer. Not a lot left, and it wasn’t new and it wasn’t cold, but still it was water. I poured some into a mug and handed it to her as she settled at the controls.

  There was something touching about the grim set of her jaw. She looked so small, so slim, so lost—and yet so determined. I wanted to reach out and touch her. Nobody had affected me that way for a long, long time. And I do mean nobody. Liz... well, Liz was different. That was something else.

  A hell of a time to get ideas like this.

  I said: “What are you going to do now—I mean, now that you won’t be working for your brother? Back to Earth?”

  She sipped at the water. “I hadn’t got as far as thinking that out. But... going back...” Dubiously she shook her head, and looked at me.

  I’d seen that sort of expression before. The Moon got a lot of folk that way—sometimes in a matter of days, sometimes after a long time. It wasn’t often you met a woman, though, who’d been caught in the web of the Moon. Most of them were only too glad to get back to Earth, like that fact-finding commission which had found no facts; or none that added up to what they wanted them to add up to.

  “Any jobs going,” she asked, “for a good space-shipping clerk up here?”

  “Could be.” I nearly said I’d use my influence, but, like I said, it was no use lying out here: and any influence I had was strictly on the wrong side of any sensible person’s balance.

  She said: “Bill... are we going to make it?”

  The meters were low. But if we could have a straight run, with no trouble, we’d make it. It all depended on the crater wall.

  We took another fifteen minutes to get to the wall. By that time the sun was turning the Bugdozer into a mobile oven. We stripped down. I licked salt from my lips until there wasn’t any salt any more.

  I looked at Clem, and tried not to look at her.

  If her underwear was the latest terrestrial fashion, it was all right with me. She had good taste. But the material in between the shreds of fabric was always in fashion.

  More than ever I wanted to reach out and touch her.

  I said: “Right. I’ll take it.”

  As we approached, I was looking for an easy way up the wall. But if there wasn’t one, we’d have to take it the hard way.

  I aimed at a slight dip in the crest of the ridge. The Bugdozer charged. We went up, slid, gripped again, and then nearly lost way wben I had to slither to one side around a spur of rock. It was no time for talk, but I panted: “You can always call your memoirs I Went Mountaineering on the Moon.”

  “And why?” she said. “‘Because it’s there.’”

  “I wouldn’t be climbing if it wasn’t.”

  She looked out of the side window. “I don’t think you are climbing it.”

  She was right. Our wheels were spinning on the slope. Another fifty yards to go, and we just weren’t going to make it.

  I got into my suit. I let myself out of the airlock, and went to the front. Under the scoop was a grapnel. I freed it from its clamp and carried it up the slope, paying out wire cable behind as I did so. It was hard going. The sun on my. helmet was blinding and scorching, and sweat streamed into my eyes.

  At the crest there were some substantial-looking boulders. I tried to shift one, and it wouldn’t budge. When I was sure that it was well sunk into solid ground, I hooked the grapnel to it and then leaned over, waving to Clem. Through the smoked glass I couldn’t see her, but she must have seen the wave. The Bugdozer shuddered and began to crawl upward, winching itself toward the straining grapnel.

  I floundered down the slope.

  At one stage the wheels spun helplessly. I tried to shoulder the Bugdozer on. Excelsior... come on, boy... come on, you lousy bastard...

  It jerked up toward the crest. The boulder cracked suddenly free, and the rocks around it soared out and fell slowly, with deadly grace, over the edge toward me. I threw myself to one side. Clem was battling to hold the truck steady. Then she had wrenched it across the path of a descending shower of rubble, so that I was shielded from the worst of it.

  Her face was turned lovingly, anxiously toward me as I clambered in through the airlock. Yes, lovingly.

  “Are you—”

  “I’m all right. Come on—right over the top, into the shade, if we can find some.”

  We slid down in a mad rush, scattering fragments everywhere, under the cool, dark side of the ridge. The Bugdozer jolted to a stop. I was bruised and battered. And more than that—almost utterly played out. It wasn’t that I could hardly move any more: I just didn’t want to.

  Clem was helping me out of the suit. She said: “Bill, I’m sorry. Sorry I dragged you into all this.”

  “Thanks for dragging me out,” I said weakly.

  I slumped back into my seat. She leaned her cheek against my bare shoulder. She was hot, damp and tired; but against my steaming shoulder her face felt cool.

  “I’m sorry, anyway,” she said.

  “I’m not.”

  Crazy, but I wasn’t. I was touching her now, and that was wonderful. I put my arm around her and she came closer and put up her mouth, and I kissed her.

  Her shoulder moved under my fingertips. Her lips trembled.

  When she drew away she murmured: “I suppose we have to wait here... until things have cooled off a bit.”

  “You might put it that way,” I said.

  We both laughed. A good, shared sort of laugh. And then her mouth came back to mine.

  9

  THE SHADOWS on her body were lovelier than the shadows of the world outside—soft, where the Moonlands were harsh; gently moving, where the Moonlands were dead and petrified. But the shadows grew cold. She shivered in my arms and I knew we couldn’t stay here any longer. It was time for the last dash out across that dazzling brightness. She wouldn’t find it so chilly then.

  “I could stay here forever.” She spoke drowsily, as though seeing no point in moving on, no point in freeing herself from my arms.

  “This is no place to spend forever,” I said as curtly as possible. “We’ve got forty miles to do. All open country.” “It would be a bit silly for... for Bill Kemp to die, wouldn’t it? Here, I mean—just here on the Moon, after the places you’ve been. I mean—”

  I grabbed her, not so lovingly this time. I shook her before she could start to pity herself or me, or to get hysterical. I said:

  “It would be damn silly to die now. Period. So let’s try and not.”

  We trundled out of the shade onto the plain, and the sunlight came right down and clouted us.

  I wouldn’t have thought I’d had any sweat left in me, but it was forced out of every pore. My hands were wet and loose on the controls. My back stuck to the seat. When I tried to wipe sweat from my eyes, the moisture on the backs of my hands only made it worse.

  Light splashed up, savaged up from slanting rocky surfaces. It burned around us and into us.

  Clem passed me a cup of water. It was steaming when it reached me, but I swallowed it down.

  “Bill”—she was trying to keep her voice steady and conversational—“do you really want to go on and explore Mercury and... and Jupiter’s moons, and so on?”

  “Sure. It’s what I’m good at.”

  There was a pause, and then she murmured: “It’s not the only thing you’re good at.”

  I glanced at her. She was flushed and gleaming in the furnace we were toting along with us, and her hair was plastered damply to her scalp; but she was still as good to look at as she had been to hold.

  “Let’s say it’s what I get paid for,” I said.

  “But re
ally... why?”

  Above the darker horizon, away from the blaze of the sun, you could still just see a dusting of stars. If she took a glance out of that window, she’d see the answer.

  “Still because I’m good at it,” I said. “I could do it.”

  And if I didn’t, I’d never be satisfied. Never. I’d hate everything—including myself—if I didn’t get a crack at it. And it wasn’t true that I got paid, and if I did get paid that wouldn’t be what it was about, either.

  It was no time to talk about the stars and the planets. It wasn’t a matter of getting to Mercury: right now, we’d be lucky if we could get to Farside Five.

  The map was sodden. Clem’s brow dripped onto it as she tried to find out where we were.

  On across that plain, that Death Valley in a vacuum— wondering if the Bugdozer would suddenly die on us, and be found later, much later, a death cart with two skeletons in the wasteland.

  I lost track of time and distance. I tried to focus on the far horizon, but it was too bright to study for any length of time. Safer to watch the ground immediately ahead, bumping over it and slogging on and on and on, coping with the next hundred yards rather than the next thirty miles.

  Thirty... twenty... ten...

  “It’s only a few miles now.” Clem fumbled with a bit of blotting paper that had once been a map. “We ought almost to see them.”

  The way my eyes were, anything we saw now would most likely be a mirage. I reached for the radio switch. We might be able to raise a signal from this distance.

  I switched on. And the radio blew up in a puff of smoke and brief red flame.

  It had shorted. And the supply meters were twitching near zero, and the heating gauges were well into the red. Any minute now there would be silence. And suffocation... or a kind of incineration.

  “There!” Clem let out a shout “There it is!”

  Ahead, just over the sun-blanched rim of the horizon, were the domes of Farside Five.

  I accelerated. There was a fierce crackle and a stammer of explosions from under the floor, and the Bugdozer shuddered to a halt.

  The motor coils had overheated. It wasn’t surprising. Not surprising—and not helpful. I sat back, mopped my brow, and then saw the pressure gauge. It was dropping, and dropping fast.