by Ben Bova
Automatically, Harry opened the oxy tank valve again. It was the only thing he could think to do as the ponderous steel girder swung down on him like the arm of an avenging god. He felt the tank spurt briefly, then the shadow of the girder blotted out everything and Marta was screaming behind him and then he could feel his leg crush like a berry bursting between his teeth and the pain hit so hard that he felt like he was being roasted alive and he had one last glimpse of the mammoth storm down on Earth before everything went black.
When Harry woke he was pretty sure he was dead. But if this was the next world, he slowly realized, it smells an awful lot like a hospital. Then he heard the faint, regular beeps of monitors and saw that he was in a hospital, or at least the habitat’s infirmary. Must be the infirmary, Harry decided, once he recognized that he was floating without support, tethered only by a light cord tied around his waist.
And his left leg was gone.
His leg ended halfway down the thigh. Just a bandaged stump there. His right leg was heavily bandaged, too, but it was all there, down to his toes.
Harry Sixtoes now, he said to himself. For the first time since his mother had died he felt like crying. But he didn’t. He felt like screaming or pounding the walls. But he didn’t do that, either. He just lay there, floating in the middle of the antiseptic white cubicle, and listened to the beeping of the monitors that were keeping watch over him.
He drifted into sleep, and when he awoke the supervisor was standing beside him, feet encased in the floor loops, his wiry body bobbing slightly, the expression on his face grim.
Harry blinked several times. “Hi, chief.”
“That was a damned fool thing you did,” the super said quietly.
“Yeah. Guess so.”
“You saved Marta’s life. The frickin’ rescue team took half an hour to get outside. She’d a’ been gone by then.”
“My leg . . .”
The super shook his head. “Mashed to a pulp. No way to save it.”
Harry let out a long, weary breath.
“They got therapies back Earthside,” the super said. “Stem cells and stuff. Maybe they can grow the leg back again.”
“Workman’s insurance cover that?”
The super didn’t answer for a moment. Then, “We’ll take up a collection for you, Harry. I’ll raise whatever it takes.”
“No,” Harry said. “No charity.”
“It’s not charity, it’s—”
“Besides, a guy doesn’t need his legs up here. I can get around just as well without it.”
“You can’t stay here!”
“Why not?” Harry said. “I can still work. I don’t need the leg.”
“Company rules,” the super mumbled.
Harry was about to say, “Fuck the company rules.” Instead, he heard himself say, “Change ’em.”
The super stared at him.
Hours after the supervisor left, a young doctor in a white jacket came into Harry’s cubicle.
“We did a routine tox screen on your blood sample,” he said.
Harry said nothing. He knew what was coming.
“You had some pretty fancy stuff in you,” said the doctor, smiling.
“Guess so.”
The doctor pursed his lips, as if he were trying to come to a decision. At last he said, “Your blood-work report is going to get lost, Harry. We’ll detox you here before we release you. All off the record.”
That’s when it hit Harry.
“You’re Liza’s friend.”
“I’m not doing this for Liza. I’m doing it for you. You’re a hero, Harry. You saved a life.”
“Then I can stay?” Harry asked hopefully.
“Nobody’s going to throw you out because of drugs,” said the doctor. “And if you can prove you can still work, even with only one leg, I’ll recommend you be allowed to stay.”
And the legend began. One-legged Harry Twelvetoes. He never returned to Earth. When the habitat was finished, he joined a new crew that worked on the next habitat. And he started working on a dream, as well. As the years turned into decades and the legend of Harry Twelve-toes spread all across the orbital construction sites, even out to the cities that were being built on the Moon, Harry worked on his dream until it started to come true.
He lived long enough to see the start of construction for a habitat for his own people, a man-man world where his tribe could live in their own way, in their own desert environment, safe from encroachment, free to live as they chose to live.
He buried his great-uncle there, and the tribal elders named the habitat after him: Cloud Eagle.
Harry never quite figured out what the monster was that he was supposed to slay. But he knew he had somehow found his path, and he lived a long life in harmony with the great world around him. When his great-grandchildren laid him to rest beside Cloud Eagle, he was at peace.
And his legend lived long after him.
This is one of my earliest short stories, written in the mid-1960s, when the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Russia was at its most dangerous.
Strictly speaking, the “historical” background of this story does not match the general background of the Grand Tour, but Chet Kinsman’s struggle to carry a fellow astronaut to safety gives a realistic picture, I believe, of what it’s like to travel across the barren, airless surface of the Moon.
And some emotional kick, as well.
FIFTEEN MILES
Sen. Anderson: Does that mean that man’s mobility on the moon will be severely limited
Mr. Webb: Yes, sir; it is going to be severely limited, Mr. Chairman. The moon is a rather hostile place.
U.S. Senate Hearings on National Space Goals August 23, 1965
Any word from him yet?”
“Huh? No, nothing.”
Kinsman swore to himself as he stood on the open platform of the little lunar rocket-jumper.
“Say, where are you now?” The astronomer’s voice sounded gritty with static in Kinsman’s helmet earphones.
“Up on the rim. He must’ve gone inside the damned crater.”
“The rim? How’d you get—”
“Found a flat spot for the jumper. Don’t think I walked this far, do you? I’m not as nutty as the priest.”
“But you’re supposed to stay down here on the plain! The crater’s off limits!”
“Tell it to our holy friar. He’s the one who marched up here. I’m just following the seismic rigs he’s been planting every three-four miles.”
He could sense Bok shaking his head. “Kinsman, if there’re twenty officially approved ways to do a job, I swear you’ll pick the twenty-second.”
“If the first twenty-one are lousy.”
“You’re not going inside the crater, are you? It’s too risky.”
Kinsman almost laughed. “You think sitting in that aluminum casket of ours is safe?”
The earphones went silent. With a scowl, Kinsman wished for the tenth time in the past hour that he could scratch his twelve-day beard. Get zipped up in the suit and the itches start. He didn’t need a mirror to know that his face was haggard, sleepless, and his black beard was mean-looking.
He stepped down from the jumper—a rocket motor with a railed platform and some equipment on it, nothing more—and planted his boots on the dust-covered rock of the ringwall’s crest. With a twist of his shoulders to settle the weight of the spacesuit’s bulky backpack, he shambled over to the packet of seismic instruments and fluorescent marker that the priest had left there.
“He came right up to the top and now he’s off on the yellow brick road, playing moon explorer. Stupid bastard.”
Reluctantly, he looked into the mammoth crater Alphonsus. The brutally short horizon cut across its middle, but the central peak stuck its worn head up among the solemn stars. Beyond it was nothing but dizzying blackness, an abrupt end to the solid world and the beginning of infinity.
Damn the priest! God’s gift to geology . . . and I’ve got to play g
uardian angel for him.
“Any sign of him?”
Kinsman turned back and looked outward from the crater, across the broad dark basalt plain of the Mare Nubium. The Sea of Clouds, he thought. There hasn’t been a cloud or a drop of water here in four billion years or more. He could see the lighted radio mast and their squat return rocket, far below on the plain. He even convinced himself he could see the mound of rubble marking their buried base shelter, where Bok lay curled safely in his bunk. It was two days before sunrise, but the Earth-light lit the plain well enough.
“Sure,” Kinsman answered. “He left me a big map with an X to mark the treasure.”
“Don’t get sore at me!”
“Why not? You’re sitting inside. I’ve got to find our fearless geologist.”
“Regulations say one man’s got to be in the base at all times.”
But not the same one man, Kinsman flashed silently.
“Anyway,” Bok went on, “he’s got a few hours’ oxygen left. Let him putter around inside the crater for a while. He’ll come back.”
“Not before his air runs out. Besides, he’s officially missing. Missed two check-in calls. I’m supposed to scout his last known position. Another of those sweet regs.”
Silence again. Bok didn’t like being alone in the base, Kinsman knew.
“Why don’t you come on back,” the astronomer’s voice returned, “until he calls in. Then you can get him with the jumper. You’ll be running out of air yourself before you can find him inside the crater.”
“I’m supposed to try.”
“But why? You sure don’t think much of him. You’ve been tripping all over yourself trying to stay clear of him when he’s inside the base.”
Kinsman suddenly shuddered. It shows! If you’re not careful you’ll tip them both off.
Aloud, he said, “I’m going to look around. Give me an hour. Better call Earthside and tell them what’s going on. Stay in the shelter until I come back.” Or until the relief crew shows up.
“You’re wasting your time. And taking an unnecessary chance.”
“Wish me luck,” Kinsman answered.
“Good luck. I’ll sit tight here.”
Despite himself, Kinsman grinned. Shutting off the radio, he said to himself, “I know damned well you’ll sit tight. Two scientific adventurers. One goes over the hill and the other stays in his bunk two weeks straight.”
He gazed out at the bleak landscape, surrounded by starry emptiness. Something caught at his memory.
“They can’t scare me with their empty spaces,” he muttered. There was more to the verse but he couldn’t recall it.
“Can’t scare me,” he repeated softly, shuffling to the inner rim. He walked very carefully and tried, from inside the cumbersome helmet, to see exactly where he was placing his feet.
The barren slopes fell gently away in terraced steps until, more than half a mile below, they melted into the crater floor. Looks easy . . . too easy. With a shrug that was weighted down by the space suit, Kinsman started to descend into the crater.
He picked his way across the gravelly terraces and crawled, booted feet first, down the breaks between them. The dust-covered rocks were slippery, although sometimes sharp. Kinsman went slowly, step by step, careful not to puncture the aluminized fabric of his suit.
His world was cut off now by the dark rocks. The only sounds he knew were the creakings of the suit’s joints, the electrical hum of its pump motor, the faint whir of the helmet’s air blower, and his own labored breathing. Alone, all alone. A solitary microcosm. One living creature in the one universe.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars—on stars where no human race is.
There was still more to it: the tag line that he couldn’t remember.
Finally he had to stop. The suit was heating up too much from his exertion. He took a marker beacon from the backpack and planted it on the broken ground. The Moon’s soil, churned by meteorites and whipped into a frozen froth, had an unfinished look to it, as though somebody had been black-topping the place but stopped before he could apply the final smoothing touches.
From a pouch on his belt Kinsman took a small spool of wire. Plugging one end into the radio outlet on his helmet, he held the spool at arm’s length and released the catch. He couldn’t see it in the dim light, but he felt the spring fire the wire antenna a hundred yards or so upward and out into the crater.
“Father Lemoyne,” he called as the antenna drifted in the moon’s easy gravity. “Father Lemoyne, can you hear me? This is Kinsman.”
No answer.
Okay. Down another flight.
After two more stops and nearly an hour of sweaty descent, Kinsman got his answer.
“Here . . . I’m here . . .”
“Where?” Kinsman snapped. “Do something. Make a light.”
“. . . can’t . . .” The voice faded out.
Kinsman reeled in the antenna and fired it out again. “Where in hell are you?”
A cough, with pain behind it. “Shouldn’t have done it. Disobeyed. And no water. Nothing.”
Great! Kinsman frowned. He’s either hysterical or delirious. Or both.
After firing the spool antenna again, Kinsman flicked on the lamp atop his helmet and looked at the radio direction-finder dial on his forearm. The priest had his suit radio open and the carrier beam was coming through even though he was not talking. The gauges alongside the direction-finder reminded Kinsman that he was almost halfway down on his oxygen, and more than an hour had elapsed since he had spoken to Bok.
“I’m trying to zero in on you,” Kinsman said. “Are you hurt? Can you—”
“Don’t, don’t, don’t. I disobeyed and now I’ve got to pay for it. Don’t trap yourself too . . .” The heavy, reproachful voice lapsed into a mumble that Kinsman couldn’t understand.
Trapped. Kinsman could picture it. The priest was using a canister-suit: a one-man walking cabin, a big, plexidomed rigid can with flexible arms and legs sticking out of it. You could live in it for days at a time—but it was too clumsy for climbing. Which is why the crater was off limits.
He must’ve fallen and now he’s stuck.
“The sin of pride,” he heard the priest babbling. “God forgive us our pride. I wanted to find water, the greatest discovery a man can make on the moon. . . . Pride, nothing but pride . . .”
Kinsman walked slowly, shifting his eyes from the direction-finder to the roiled, pocked ground underfoot. He jumped across an eight-foot drop between terraces. The finder’s needle snapped to zero.
“Your radio still on?”
“No use . . . go back . . .”
The needle stayed fixed. Either I busted it or I’m right on top of him.
He turned full circle, scanning the rough ground as far as his light could reach. No sign of the canister. Kinsman stepped to the terrace edge. Kneeling with deliberate care, so that his backpack wouldn’t unbalance him and send him sprawling down the tumbled rocks, he peered over.
In a zigzag fissure a few yards below him was the priest, a giant, armored insect gleaming white in the glare of the lamp, feebly waving its one free arm.
“Can you get up?” Kinsman saw that all the weight of the cumbersome suit was on the pinned arm. Banged up his backpack, too.
The priest was mumbling again. It sounded like Latin.
“Can you get up?” Kinsman repeated.
“Trying to find the secrets of natural creation . . . storming heaven with rockets. . . . We say we’re seeking knowledge, but what we’re really after is our own glory.”
Kinsman frowned. He couldn’t make out the older man’s face behind the canister’s heavily tinted dome.
“I’ll have to get the jumper down here.”
The priest rambled on, coughing spasmodically. Kinsman started back across the terrace.
“Pride leads to death,” he heard in his earphones. “You know that, Kinsman. It’s pride that makes us murderers.”
The shock boggled Kinsman’s knees. He turned, trembling. “What . . . did you say?”
“It’s hidden. The water’s here, hidden . . . frozen in fissures. Strike the rock and bring forth water . . . like Moses. Not even God himself was going to hide this secret from me.”
“What did you say,” Kinsman whispered, completely cold inside, “about murder?”
“I know you, Kinsman . . . anger and pride. . . . Destroy not my soul with men of blood . . . whose right hands are . . . are . . .”
Kinsman ran away. He fought back toward the crater’s rim, storming the rock terraces blindly, scrabbling up inclines with twelve-foot-high jumps. Twice he had to turn up the air blower in his helmet to clear away the sweaty fog from his faceplate. He didn’t dare stop. He raced on, breath racking his lungs, heart pounding until he could hear nothing else.
But in his mind he still saw those savage few minutes in orbit, when he had been with the Air Force, when he became a killer. He had won a medal for the secret mission, a medal and a conscience that never slept.
Finally he reached the crest. Collapsing on the deck of the jumper, he forced himself to breathe normally again, forced himself to sound normal as he called Bok.
The astronomer said guardedly, “It sounds as though he’s dying.”
“I think his regenerator’s shot. His air must be pretty foul by now.”
“No sense going back for him, I guess.”
Kinsman hesitated. “Maybe I can get the jumper down close to him.” He found out about me!
“You’ll never get him back in time. And you’re not supposed to take the jumper near the crater, let alone inside it. It’s too dangerous.”
“You want to just let him die?” He’s hysterical. If he babbles about me where Bok can hear it . . .
“Listen,” said the astronomer, his voice rising, “you can’t leave me stuck here with both of you gone! I know the regulations, Kinsman. You’re not allowed to risk yourself or the third man on the team in an effort to help a man in trouble.”
“I know. I know.” But it wouldn’t look right for me to start minding regulations now. Even Bok doesn’t expect me to.
“You don’t have enough oxygen in your suit to get down there and back again,” Bok insisted.