Assignment Moon Girl

by Edward S. Aarons

  He slept, awoke, ate liquid food squeezed into his mouth as if he were a helpless infant. Ouspanaya spoke a technical jargon of their duties which was difficult to comprehend. The Russian seemed to know what he was doing. Durell sweated. His heart pounded. He took no comfort from the technical gobbledegook that came over the space radio. Well, he thought dreamily, it’s progress. You could get into space, beyond the atmosphere, in less time than it took to go by taxi crosstown in Manhattan. Progress brought you cars that poisoned the air, humiliation in crowded buses, a barrage of kitchen soaps and insulting commercials, nerve-shattering sonic booms and airports where you missed your jets because you were hung up in traffic half a mile away, breathing poison. Maybe it was better up here, after all. He went to sleep again, thinking about it.

  Smog, slums, sewage, supermarkets, supersonics; suburban sprawl and slurbs; computers, concrete, and consensus; obsolescence and excrescence; pot, population, proliferation, and LSD.

  Yankee-go-home. He wished he could.

  In his dream, he was in a small, tight plastic dome, surrounded by machinery that whined, whirred, blinked, and buzzed. Ouspanaya was manipulating handles and staring intently at dials. Durell sat up. He looked out of the dome and saw a moonscape.

  It was a vast, pale vista of nightmare rocks and pinnacles that stretched to a jagged horizon. The sky was the blackest black he had ever seen, with stars as brilliant as headlights and as big as his fist. Sailing above the volcanic horizon was the most beautiful sight of all, the great blue-green orb of earth, misty, edged with gold, soft and effulgent. He drew in a long, deep breath.

  “How did I get here?” he whispered.

  “I had to give you medication. You were in a dangerous state of mind.”

  “I still an. How did you handle me?”

  “You obeyed my orders. Don’t trouble yourself about it. Are you hungry‘? We have everything we need for a stay of one week, if necessary.”

  “Is this the same dome you and Tanya used on your first trip?”

  “Yes, In some respects, it is like the scientific bases the various nations have set up on the Antarctic ice cap. We ran tests on this down there. We have everything necessary for life-support systems, as you see. We are perfectly safe. There is a routine of experiments I must conduct, and which you may observe. Our vehicle is parked in orbit. Over there” —the Russian pointed outward through the dome-“is our ‘commuter module.’ ”

  Just over a slight rise in the dusty plain was a small capsule resembling a fat spider, with sprawling, articulated legs. Durell stared at it for a long time. His gaze then swept as much of the horizon as he could see, While Ouspanaya returned to his technical tasks. He could not doubt the evidence he saw. He checked the oxygen cylinders and air scrubbers, rapped on the plastic dome wall the gesture made Ouspanaya give him a quick, condescending smile—and then he said, “What is there for me to do?”

  “Routine tasks. l’ll brief you presently. Relax. We’re friends. You don’t scoff about it anymore?” “It doesn’t make sense. Where was the spaceport? How did I get here? I last saw you on the Caspian shore.”

  “It will all be explained.”

  “Why not start now?”

  “There are important tasks to be done. Can you operate a simple computer? Yes? Here is the data that must be fed into it to relay home. At 1700 hours we must attempt a television transmission to Moscow. There is much to be done. True, we are safe, but our safety depends on hard work. There will be little time for me to rest or sleep.”

  Durell gestured to the moonscape. “Can I go out there?”

  “No. Although we have suits, our supplies are naturally limited. Unfortunate. But until the moon base is enlarged and permanently stalled, there is no time for casual sightseeing.” Ouspanaya regarded him stiffly.

  “Why do you stare at me like that, Sam?”

  “Why did you bring me along on this trip?”

  “To convince you about Tanya. I told them there were easier ways, but it was decided that this is best.”

  “What’s to stop me from slugging you and taking command here?” Durell asked.

  Ouspanaya laughed. “It would be suicide. Would you know how to survive, what to do?”

  “No.” Durell was stubborn. “But I don’t believe any of this is really happening.”

  “Pinch yourself. It is real enough.”

  Time moved in sudden starts and stops. He wondered if there was a drug in the food Ouspanaya rationed out to him. But the Russian ate from the same tubes, drank the same water. Sometimes it seemed as if he had slept far less than the chronometer indicated. At other times, after staring for what seemed a day in hypnotic fascination at the view outside—it changed slowly, growing shadows as inky as night, which moved inexorably down the volcano’s sides and slid along the boulders that strewed the plain-at such times he checked the chronometer and found that only minutes had passed. He could not understand himself. Nothing felt right. Once, a mad cunning possessed him and he studied the air-lock on the tiny dome—it seemed to get smaller as the “days” passed—and wondered if he could open it with a sudden rush that would take Ouspanaya by surprise. The more he thought about it, the more attractive it seemed. He had to get out of the dome. He had to step out onto that sterile, hostile plain that reached to the inky horizon. It was important. He did not know why it was important, but he had to quit the endless, mindless chores Ouspanaya gave him, the eternal chatter of the earth-to-moon radio, the drone of the computers. They collected specimens of soil, samples of rock, with long metal tongs, shovels, snippers, and tweezers extruded from the dome. They observed the stars, studied the earth, measured the light intensity on various planes of the surface, measured the shadows that crept toward them, mapped, charted, drew plots and diagrams, took endless photographs, analyzed surface dust, ate, drank, and slept.

  He had to get out.

  It did not occur to him that it would be suicide to open the air-lock, despite Ouspanaya’s warning. He waited until Ouspanaya might be off-guard, madness in him, a lunatic gift from Luna herself. At last he decided to do it.

  But the moment he jumped for the controls, Ouspanaya looked up and gave a great shout. “No, Sam!”

  He had his fingers on the lugs that fastened the metal frame to the plastic dome. Ouspanaya threw something at him, shouted again, and then there was a hissing, a sudden tingling in his nostrils and throat, a searing pain in his lungs. He seemed to go blind. Everything faded away, rushing from him in a choking nothingness.

  With the last of his strength, he opened the air-lock and fell through it.

  When he opened his eyes, he knew he had traveled far and fast. Sunlight blinded him. He ached as if he had been bruised without mercy. He was aware of hard earth under him, of a familiar, fetid odor that clogged his nostrils. He turned his head slowly to keep the burning sun from his eyes. It shone high above, visible through a circle like the end of a huge telescope. At first he thought he was still with Ouspanaya, perhaps in the spacecraft. Then he knew this could not be. There was sand under him and sand between his teeth, a coagulated blood on his gums. He was bathed in sweat.

  And he was naked.

  His hand explored his chest, belly, legs. After a long time, listening to the erratic thump of his heart, hating the raw thirst in him, he raised himself to one elbow.

  He knew the place at once.

  He was in the pit, at Har-Buri’s place in the desert of Dasht-i-Kavir.

  The tiger cub stared at him from where it sprawled, panting in the heat, in the shade of its cave entrance.

  Tanya sat opposite him, her eyes as steadily fixed as the tiger's, watching. It was as if nothing had changed tom that moment so many days or was it weeks ago?—when he first found her in this place. Everything had come full circle again, except for one thing.

  He spoke to the girl with an effort.

  "MynamezsSamDurellandI’vebeenonthemoon,” he said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  SHE tossed her head,
and her pale hair swung like a lazy fall of honey about her sun-browned oval face. Only the tilt of her eyes betrayed her mother’s Oriental ancestry. She regarded him with scientific detachment. This time she wore a ragged-edged pair of shorts, a halter bra, leather sandals. Incongruously enough, she had adorned herself with the jewels he had glimpsed during his previous visit here, from the chests far back in the tiger’s cave. Heavy strands of gold and bangles hung about her neck, and there were heavy bracelets on her arms and rings on her fingers. She looked like a child who had raided a costume jewelry shop and loaded herself without discrimination.

  “Come here,” she said in Russian. “Sit by me. You must get out of the sun, or it will kill you.”

  “How long have I been here?”

  She smiled. She did not part her lips when she did so. It was a stretching of the mouth, a dimpling of chin. ”Since you got back from the moon,” she then said.

  “Oh.”

  “Do you know this place?”

  “I remember it.”

  “You did not kill the tiger.”

  “So I see.”

  He looked at the beast. Its great green eyes were baleful, unwinking. The long tongue came out in a yawn and the cub licked his chops. It lay m a favored spot where a faint current of air moved the thick fur on its neck. That would be from the entrance far back on the other side of the mountain, the gateway by which he had rescued Tanya long ago. Durell drew a sighing breath. The sun, shining down through the mouth of the pit above him, was like a great weight upon his sprawled body. He didn’t think he could move. Tanya called him again, warning of the sun, and he rolled over on his stomach and pushed himself up with his an-ns and crawled across the sand toward her. She moved slightly, to make room for him in the tiny arc of shade she possessed.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  “Yes. Thirsty, too.”

  “Mahmoud will be here before sundown.”

  “Good old: Mahmoud.”

  “He is careful now, how he feeds the animals in his zoo.”

  “Who is he, anyway?”

  “A servant of Har-Buri‘s, I suppose.”

  “Have you seen your father? Do you know that he’s here, somewhere, too?”

  “I have not seen him,” Tanya said.

  The effort to talk, even to think of questions, was too great. He rested, conscious of his aches and pains, of the strange dullness in his body and his mind. He wondered what kind of drugs had been used on him. The whole process of what he had endured was neither magical nor miraculous. He told himself there had to be logical explanations for everything.

  “Do not move,” Tanya said quietly. “Let the tiger smell you.”

  The big cub stood, stretched, and came padding toward them across the pit, his powerful head swinging low, his glowing eyes suspicious. He smelled even worse than before. He stood over Durell for a long minute, so close that he could count each whisker on the great muzzle. Durell looked around the pit for a weapon. But there was nothing, not even a stone or pebble. The animal grunted, swung his massive head to regard Tanya, and then padded back to his lair.

  “You learn quickly,” Tanya said wryly.

  “A question of Pavlov’s dog?”

  “Something like that.”

  “But you’re too valuable to be put in danger like this,” Durell said. “Why do they treat you this way?”

  “I think it is to teach me to cooperate.”

  “Is Har-Buri so desperate for you to talk?”

  “He wants me to cooperate,” she said again.

  “At the risk of your life, here with this beast?”

  “I have survived," she said simply. “I think the danger would always be averted at the last moment.”

  He pointed to the top of the pit. “What’s up there?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been up there.”

  “How did they get you back?”

  “Ah, you are so curious. You must be very strong, in body and mind.” She studied his physique clinically. And then she gave him her close-mouthed smile again. There was nothing friendly in it. “I did the best I could. I know you followed me, when I hid in the Farsi’s truck. It had guns in it. Then I got out at an oasis village and stole a nomad woman’s clothes and was taken by a Kurdish caravan to the north. I knew you and the others were chasing me. I thought I was safe, for a time. But yesterday, they sold me. As a slave. In a socialist society, such primitive savagery would be unthinkable. They sold me back to Har-Buri—and here I am. It was all quite a useless effort, as you see. But my father will come for me. I am sure the Soviet embassy will find me and rescue me.”

  “You don’t want to go to Peking?”

  She shook her head. “No. They are our enemies.”

  Including your mother, Madame Hung?”

  She gave a small shudder, despite the heat. “I would rather die than return to her.”

  “You seem different," he said, after a moment.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Quite calm and rational.”

  “Was I not that way before?”

  “You seemed to be out of your mind, actually.”

  “Because I insisted I had been on the moon?”

  “Yes.”

  “But now you, too, know the truth.”

  "MynameisSamDurellandlhavebeenonthemoon,” he said.

  Tanya smiled. “Ah, that’s very good.”

  She did not speak to him anymore. The heat drained their energy until it took all their strength simply to breathe and exist. He lay with his back to the curved wall of the pit and regarded the slice of dazzling sunlight that cut arcs of black shadow on the circular floor of the pit. He could remember nothing of what had happened after his struggle with Ouspanaya in the moon dome. He was pleased with this, because it confirmed what he thought of it. But it left a curious vacuum within him, as if something had been stolen from his essence and he was not complete anymore. He mourned this more than anything else. When he tried to think rationally of the space flight, the moon dome, and all of it, he felt a peculiar lethargy, a desire to accept it without question. He made several efforts to restore to his memory the images that must be there, striving for detail, item by item, of equipment and technique. He wished Tanya would compare notes with him, but she had removed herself from him, even though she sat close by him in the shade at the bottom of the pit. In every gesture and posture, she let him know she still regarded him as an enemy.

  He thought of Lotus, the little Chinese handmaiden to Madame Hung. Quite a difference, there. Had she managed to find Hannigan? That diplomatic party at Ramsur Sepah’s villa was a long way in the past. He tried to estimate how much time had actually gone by since then. At least a week, he decided. More likely two. Hannigan should have found him by now. But then he had a thought that turned him cold. How could Hannigan have found him, if he’d been on the moon?

  Toward evening, when he thought he could endure his thirst no more, the tiger came out of the cave and paced restlessly in a circle around the walls of the pit. Tanya, who had been asleep, also awoke and began to move about. They were conditioned to a fine point, Durell thought. At this moment, watching the handsome girl and the satiny tiger, he felt there was little difference in their behavior.

  “Tanya,” he said.

  She looked at him reluctantly. “Yes?”

  “Who brought me here?”

  “Mahmoud, of course.”

  “How did he manage it?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Did he carry me through the cave? Or did he lower me from the top of the pit?”

  She hesitated. “Through the cave.”

  “That’s good,” he said.

  “But the animal will not let you in there.”

  Durell regarded the pacing tiger. “Thank you.”

  “It is almost time to eat,” Tanya said.

  “So I notice. Is Mahmoud late?”

  “No. I—the tiger and I—we’re only impatient.”

 
; When the shadow of the setting sun was halfway up the curved wall, a head appeared over the top edge. The tiger growled. The girl stopped and sat down dutifully to one side. Durell did not move. The head up there did not move, either. All he could see was the circle of darkening sky and the round, rag-swaddled head peering down at him.

  Then there came a giggling laugh.

  “Hey, Amerikani.”

  “Hello, Mahmoud.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “A bit.”

  “You want some water, too?"

  “That would be very hospitable.”

  “Ho ho. Very funny Amerikani. So polite.”

  “Feed us or fake out,” Durell said.

  “Ah, you are of strong morale, eh?”

  “And tell Ramsur Sepah I want to see him.”

  “Hey?”

  “Har-Buri, then.”

  “In good time, in good time.”

  "I will tell him all he wants to know.”

  “He knows all, he is next to Allah, he is godly and beneficent. But you would not understand.”

  “Just tell him.”

  "Ho ho.”

  Durell watched to see how Mahmoud would lower the food and water. The tiger growled, pacing faster now. It was no time to annoy him. He judged The depth of the pit, or cistern, to be at least forty feet. Now that the blazing sunlight was gone, he could see that it had been cunningly made by ancient artisans, built of curved and fitted blocks of sandstone worn smooth by time. There came the clatter of a chain, and then a bucket came down, lowered hand over hand by Mahmoud. The tiger stopped in the middle of the pit and looked up, eyes blazing. The chain was solid and substantial. Durell did not expect that he could jump for it, as Tanya had taken the rope on their first escape. But it seemed as if Mahmoud had not learned his lesson. The bucket came lower, swinging erratically. Now and then it struck the sides of the cistern and the soft stone crumbled a bit, letting down a small shower of sand and dust to the bottom. Durell tried to Show no interest. He had only his hands, and no hope of a tool. . . .