Assignment Moon Girl

by Edward S. Aarons

  “You are with Mahmoud?” she whispered.

  “No. I’ve come to take you home, Tanya.”

  “Home? But I don’t know where I am.”

  “I do.” He spoke in Russian. “Come with me.”

  She shrank from his extended hand. “No. My name is Tanya Ouspanaya and I have been on the moon.”

  “I know that. You can trust me.”

  “How did—how did you get in here?”

  “There is a gate. I opened it. We’d better use it before your Mahmoud shuts us both in.” He took her hand before she could withdraw again. “We can’t stay here.”

  “That is true,” she said.

  He had one good look at the pit before returning to the cave. He was revolted by what the girl must have endured as a prisoner here. The great tiger cub was twitching, about to revive. He stepped to it, retrieved the rope she had twisted about its sleek neck, and coiled it in his left hand. Everything had suddenly gone silent. The cave was cool and shadowed, smelling of the cat’s lair. In the gloom, he made out strange and antique carvings on the wall, reliefs that depicted bowmen and spearmen marching endlessly through time.

  He’d had no chance to look about when he first plunged in to answer the girl’s screams. Now he saw the small chambers that opened on either side. The first contained open chests of carved fruitwood, heaped with jewels that glimmered with ruby and emerald facets. Pearls glowed in heaps and strings, and rings and bracelets of gold shone in abandonment.

  “What is this place?” he whispered to Tanya.

  “I do not know.”

  “Ali Baba’s Cave of the Forty Thieves?”

  “Perhaps. It is—confusing. You are American, are you not? Your accent—you speak Russian well, but there is an accent—”

  “No matter.” He paused at a chest, reached for thin silks and striped robes, tossed them to the naked girl. “Here. The sun will kill you, without these. What happened to your own outfit?”

  “I do not remember.”

  “You had a spacesuit, didn’t you?”

  “Part of the time. But we did not need it, on the moon. The dome, you see, provided a life-environment, without suits.”

  He stared curiously, watched her shrug into a gold-embroidered silken sheath of ancient design. He regretted it, a little. Her body was magnificent. Then he took her hand again.

  “Come along. We haven’t any time to spare.”

  The gate at the far end of the cave was still open. He shoved the steel bars back into place, locking it from the outside as he had found it. Whoever operated this strange place might be briefly puzzled. He put on his sunglasses again as they stepped warily into the glare of daylight. Something thudded with a flat mechanical rhythm, echoing back and forth in the little valley. But he saw nothing astir. The sound came from a diesel engine. A generator, he reflected. That meant oil, fuel for the motor, which in turn meant deliveries, access by truck across the desert. There would be a road of some kind. But he didn’t think it would be safe to take it.

  He headed back down the pinnacle to where he had hidden the half-track. The girl had found some pearl-embroidered sandals in the treasure chests, which helped her across the hot, pebbly slopes they scaled. In her thin robe, she looked like a princess from a tale of Scheherazade. Durell shook his head and concentrated on the task at hand.

  “How did you get into that tiger pit?” he asked.

  “It is—confused. Everyone was chasing me. I ran. There were roads, and towns, and strange men who took me with them. I was afraid of everyone.” She turned her lovely eyes toward him. “And I am afraid of you, too.”

  “No need to be. Did these men put you in the pit?”

  “It was a punishment, because I refused to answer their questions. So many questions! I told them nothing, so they thought to frighten me with the tiger.”

  “But if you’re valuable to these people who captured you, and if you’d told them nothing yet, why did they risk your life with that animal?”

  “I told you, it was only to frighten me. And it was not such a risk, as long as the beast was well fed, He got accustomed to me quickly. I gave him some of my food, too. I think they knew the tiger wouldn‘t trouble me as long as he was fed, but they hoped I’d be terrified into telling them all they wanted to know.” She smiled wanly. “I do not think I could have stood it much longer. That’s why I tried to strangle the cat. And then you showed up—like a miracle.”

  He helped her climb the walls of the little valley. The silence was ominous. There should have been an alarm, noise, and pursuit. But he had seen nothing but the cave, the pit, the tiger, and the girl. He pushed her back with a strong but gentle hand as they reached the outer rim of the little green valley. Far down the pinnacle’s slope was the desert, the boulders, and his half-track. He raised his head carefully to peer over the edge—

  Something stung his face, and dust clouded his sunglasses as gravel was kicked up by a whining bullet. The vicious crack of the gun came an instant later.

  There came a wild howl, and a giant, flapping shadow launched itself at him. A long knife gleamed. Durell rolled aside, hooked out a leg, felt and heard the hiss as the blade went through his shirt-sleeve. The other’s face was burned almost black from the desert sun. The eyes glared wildly. The mouth was an open hole, shrieking triumph to unseen allies. Durell smashed his gun at the face, and the yells bubbled away. His shoulder knocked the girl aside as he rolled down the Slope with his assailant. The man kicked and clawed in a frenzy. Durell drove stiff fingers into his throat. He felt the smelly body jerk under him, and let it go, flapping and floundering down toward the gate of the cave.

  “Durell?” the girl called.

  He looked up at her. The blind look in her eyes was temporarily gone. She looked cool and competent.

  “Others are coming. They have your vehicle.”

  “Damn.”

  He caught her wrist and pulled her away from the lip of the precipice. Stumbling and sliding, they worked toward the north end of the hollow cup of stone held in the intolerable glare of the morning sun. Dim shouts came up after them. He looked to right and left, wiped dust from his glasses. A narrow cleft in the precipice rim offered brief hope. A shoulder of the mountain hid them from the desert floor below. He could see the car, however, surrounded by a dozen men in a kind of robed, paramilitary uniform. They were all armed with what seemed like automatic weapons. A single figure waved commanding arms at them, urging them up the slope.

  “Where can we go?” the girl gasped.

  “Any place but here.”

  “It is useless. They will put us in the pit.”

  “We’ll see.”

  He helped her up through the cleft. Long ago, goats had made a narrow path along the steep slope of the mountain. He held the girl’s hand as they clambered down. Shots rang out behind them. Men yelled. They passed into the shadow of the mountain‘s shoulder. The trail led downward. Once the girl stumbled and fell, her long legs flashing. Durell caught her, helped her up. For the first time, her mouth quivered in a faint smile.

  “You could go faster without me.”

  “What would be the use?”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “I came here for you. I’ll get out with you.”

  To the west, the desert was shaped by rock ledges, with here and there a long comber of sand. Far beyond was higher ground, barren and ochrous, but with a faint glimmer and flash of something. Maybe a village. But it was a long, long way off.

  “What can we do without the car?” Tanya asked.

  “We’ll walk,” he said.

  “In the sun?”

  “We’ll wait for night.”

  “How can we hide?”

  “We’ll manage.”

  “I do not know why you are so confident.”

  “I have to be,” he said.

  Pursuit was some hundred yards behind them. But they were hidden from the men who slipped and stumbled in their flapping robes, guns uplifted,
shooting wildly. Durell led the girl downhill, moving sidewise to keep his balance. Dust spurted from under his desert shoes. Too fast. He had to slow their pace to keep from marking their position. They were almost to the desert floor now. He wondered if he could circle back and retrieve the half-track. But it would be guarded now. He heard a strange whooping sound, like a ship’s general-quarters siren. It was loud enough to start up vultures from a cleft in the rock. Their wings flapped, they stretched their long red necks and watched them with angry yellow eyes. He turned to where the birds had risen. A tumble of ancient, carved stones barred their way. He scrambled over them, pulling the girl with him. Her robe had torn, and she was almost as naked again as when he first saw her. Sweat and dust stained her face.

  He laughed softly. “In here, Tanya.”

  “It is useless”.

  “No. We’ll wait them out.”

  The place smelled of the carrion birds, but it was deep and shadowed, sheltered from the pitiless sun. He settled the girl, then turned and heaved against the carved pediments that pictured the glories of kings long dust. It did not take long to block up the entrance to the cleft where they were hidden. A dozen men shrieked and yelled along the path they had taken, running out on the empty desert below.

  Durell watched for long minutes. Not one had spotted their foul hiding place. A few pointed to the vultures in the blinding sky. But it misled them, drew them farther away in search of what they thought was the birds’ potential prey.

  After an hour, silence returned. And he felt the heat, thick and suffocating and merciless.

  With the heat came their first desperate thirst. Durell shook his water canteen, glad he had thought to take it when he left his vehicle. The canteen was almost full. He allowed the girl a few small sips, took one himself, and they settled down to wait, side by side, panting in the shadows of the long, tortured afternoon.

  The girl watched him with unblinking eyes. He thought she still looked like a Persian princess straight out of a tale of the Arabian Nights. Sleep weighted his mind. He’d been gone a long time—was it two days now?—since he’d left the civilized streets of Geneva. It was a world away, beyond reach. Durell sighed. His business was often like this. He wished he could rest. But the unblinking stare of the girl made him uneasy. He was not sure she had all of her senses.

  She spoke suddenly, with quiet vehemence.

  “You are my enemy, Mr. Durell.”

  He smiled at her. “How so?”

  “You are American, you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you are an imperialist agent and spy.”

  “You know better than to mouth stupidities like that. The time for such political invective is past. The world must change. Your government and mine—”

  “You are not here to save me for my government.”

  “But perhaps I am.”

  She leaned forward, her full breasts straining against her thin, tattered robe. “I will tell you nothing.”

  “Tanya, we could both be dead by nightfall.”

  “Perhaps you will be. Not I. I understand a little better what has happened. Not all of it—there are strange gaps. I have always prided myself—I know I am intelligent, capable. Otherwise I would not have been chosen for the moon expedition.” She grinned maliciously. “Your people knew nothing of it, eh? We managed to keep that a secret from you.”

  “If you've been on the moon.” he said quietly.

  She flared angrily. “Do you doubt it?”

  “There is no proof.”

  “I am the proof!” she said sharply. “I came back, did I not?”

  “How did you manage it?” he asked simply.

  She started to reply, then closed her mouth tightly and looked away. “Everyone wants me. Those Chinese in—in Teheran, I think it was. The British. The Iranians. And now—you. Why is that? I—I have been ill, I think. But I know what I know! I have been on the moon!”

  “For how long?”

  “Two weeks. In the dome.”

  “Alone?”

  “No, there was Papa—and Georgi—” She paused, as if a totally new idea had just come to her. “Where are they’? What happened to them?”

  “Your co-astronauts? No one has heard from them.”

  “They cannot be dead! Not Papa—”

  “Maybe they are. When you crashed—”

  “But there was no—no crash! I—I don’t remember one, anyway.”

  “You might have been hurt, gotten temporary amnesia, Tanya.” He spoke gently. “Your government has maintained total silence about you. Why? You need help. Doctors, a hospital, rest. You’ve been like a nomad woman, wandering without sense or reason, for more than a week, through this country. Fortunately, you babbled enough so that official word came to us about you. But you moved too quickly for us to find you. I was lucky to get here at all.”

  She covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders convulsed, then she conquered her emotions and sat still, huddled against the dark rock in the vultures’ nest. Her fingers dug into the loose shale. Durell glanced at the sky. The birds still circled patiently up there. But there was no sign of those who hunted them in the area. He looked down at the desert below. The sun was going down. But a miasma of heat made the horizon dance before his eyes. He chose landmarks by which to guide himself in the night hours to come. After a time he turned his head to look at the girl. Her eyes were unnaturally wide, watching him. But they did not seem to be as hostile as before.

  “What was it like on the moon, Tanya?” he asked casually.

  “Like this, mostly.” She waved a negligent hand.

  “Desert? Rocks? No artifacts?”

  “Barren. Hideous.” She shuddered. “It was very—very difficult to endure.” '

  “It’s strange no one monitored your radio signals. Surely you sent back tapes and television records—”

  “Oh, yes. That was routine. But some of our equipment was smashed by the landing. Papa—Papa tried very hard to fix it.”

  “I knew your father, Tanya. Professor Alexei Ouspanaya? We met once, at a technical convention.”

  “You know him?” Her eyes widened even more.

  “But you are not a physicist or astro-engineer.”

  ”No.”

  “You are a spy. You mean only trouble for me.”

  “All I want is to see you safely home. Maybe a few interviews before that, so that international cooperation m these matters can be proved to work. But there’s trouble in the way. Some others want to use you for private ends. Local politics being what it is, you’re a tidy object for ransom and blackmail. When did you last see your father?”

  “I—I can’t remember.”

  “Or your mother?”

  “Oh, she is in Peking. But I’m a Soviet citizen, of course.”

  “And Peking wants you back. A local troublemaker named Har-Buri would like to trade you to them for arms and aid in getting power over the Shah. And there are others. It’s involved. My only goal is to get you to the American embassy in Teheran.”

  “Why not the Soviet embassy?” she challenged.

  He shrugged. “Those are my orders.”

  “Then you would kidnap me, too,” she snapped.

  “It’s not like that. We only want to help you."

  “I need no help,” she said. “I promise nothing.”

  When it was dark, before the moon rose, he led the girl Out of their hiding place and climbed down to the desert plain. They moved with care, but now and then a stone rattled underfoot with abominable noise. They froze then, listening and watching. Once, they heard voices, carried clearly on the cold air. The girl shivered in her thin robe, and Durell gave her his khaki shirt. She returned a mechanical smile and shrugged into it. He left her then, to scout for the car, but it was gone. It had been moved during the long afternoon while they had been forced to hide.

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll walk out.”

  She looked at him curiously. “Either you are a stub
born fool, or a brave man.”

  “Maybe a bit of both,” he suggested.

  They walked side by side, in silence, as quickly as they could before the moon rose. It was like crawling on an endless belt and getting nowhere. The dark pinnacle seemed to get no further behind them. His first landmark, a ridge of gravely dunes, seemed far ahead.

  A cold wind came up. The stars reeled overhead. He had not eaten since breakfast of the day before. He was thirsty, too, but did not want to use the water in his canteen too soon. From Beele’s chart of the Dasht-i-Kavir, he estimated they had to walk about twenty miles before striking any settlement. It was a tight gamble.

  They stumbled on more sand-blown ruins, buried in the barren ridge they suddenly reached. He ordered the girl to rest. She sat down obediently, knees hunched under her chin, and stared at him. He talked idly of the ruins, the carved friezes, the legends on stone tablets, the carefully sculptured beasts and staircases and graceful columns of which only traces now remained. The moon shone on an empty desert. There had been no pursuit, but he felt uneasy. It had been too simple. The girl’s captors wouldn’t give up so readily.

  “Persepolis was completed half a century before the Acropolis in Athens, did you know that?” he said.

  “Cyrus the Great started it, designing the shrines and palaces and his tomb nearby, at Pasargadae. But Darius did most of the building, and Xerxes and others added to it. Have you ever been to Persepolis?”

  “No,” she said.

  “You should see the Grand Staircase at Apidana. Its carved facade is a history of the ancient world.”

  “We of a socialized state are trained to look forward, not back into the cruel and bloody past.”

  “But humanity can learn from the past.”

  “Only evil things. We must make the world bright and new, as it has never been before.”