The Best of Bova: Volume 1

by Ben Bova

  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 solid rock of the ringwall’s crest. With a twist of his shoulders to settle the weight of the pressure suit’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 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 guardian angel for him.

  “Any sign of him?”

  Kinsman turned back and looked outward from the crater. He could see the lighted radio mast and squat return rocket, far below on the plain. He even convinced himself that he saw 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 Earthlight 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. So 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 away in gently 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 pressure suit, Kinsman started to descend into the crater.

  He picked his way across the gravelly terraces and crawled feet first down the breaks between them. The bare rocks were slippery and sometimes sharp. Kinsman went slowly, step by step, trying to make certain he didn’t puncture the aluminized fabric of his suit.

  His world was cut off now and circled by the dark rocks. The only sounds he knew were the creakings of the suit’s joints, the electrical hum of its motor, the faint whir of the helmet’s air blower, and his own heavy 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 meteors and whipped into a frozen froth, had an unfinished look about it, as though somebody had been blacktopping 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 the 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 radio-finder reminded Kinsman that he was about 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 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 we’re really after is our own glory . . .”

  Kinsman frowned. He couldn’t see the older man’s face, behind the canister’s heavily tinted window.

  “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 is 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 terraces blindly, scrabbling up the inclines with four-yard-high jumps. Twice he had to turn up the air blower in his helmet to clear 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 had become a killer. He had won a medal for that 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 of 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,” the astronomer said, 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.

  “I can tap some from the jumper’s propellant tank.”

  “But that’s crazy! You’ll get yourself stranded!”

  “Maybe.” It’s an Air Force secret. No discharge: just transferred to the space agency. If they find out about it now, I’ll be finished. Everybody’ll know. No place to hide . . . newspapers, TV, everybody!

  “You’re going to kill yourself over that priest. And you’ll be killing me, too!”

  “He’s probably dead by now,” Kinsman said. “I’ll just put a marker beacon there, so another crew can get him when the time comes. I won’t be long.”

  “But the regulations . . .”

  “They were written Earthside. The brass never planned on something like this. I’ve got to go back, just to make sure.”

  He flew the jumper back down the crater’s inner slope, leaning over the platform railing to see his marker-beacons as well as listening to their tinny radio beeping. In a few minutes, he was easing the spraddle-legged platform down on the last terrace before the helpless priest.

  “Father Lemoyne.”

  Kinsman stepped off the jumper and made it to the edge of the fissure in four lunar strides. The white shell was inert, the lone arm unmoving.

  “Father Lemoyne!”

  Kinsman held his breath and listened. Nothing . . . wait:

  the faintest, faintest breathing. More like gasping. Quick, shallow, desperate.

  “You’re dead,” Kinsman heard himself mutter. “Give it up, you’re finished. Even if I got you out of here, you’d be dead before I could get you back to the base.”

  The priest’s faceplate was opaque to him; he only saw the reflected spot of his own helmet lamp. But his mind filled with the shocked face he once saw in another visor, a face that had just realized it was dead.

  He looked away, out to the too-close horizon and the uncompromising stars beyond. Then he remembered the rest of it:

  They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

  Between stars—on stars where no human race is.

  I have it in me so much nearer home

  To scare myself with my own desert places.

  Like an automaton, Kinsman turned back to the jumper. His mind was blank now. Without thought, without even feeling, he rigged a line from the jumper’s tiny winch to the metal lugs in the canister-suit’s chest. Then he took apart the platform railing and wedged three rejoined sections into the fissure above the fallen man, to form a hoisting angle. Looping the line over the projecting arm, he started the winch.

  He climbed down into the fissure and set himself as solidly as he could on the bare, scoured-smooth rock. He grabbed the priest’s armored shoulders, and guided the oversized canister up from the crevice, while the winch strained silently.

  The railing arm gave way when the priest was only partway up, and Kinsman felt the full weight of the monstrous suit crush down on him. He sank to his knees, gritting his teeth to keep from crying out.

  Then the winch took up the slack. Grunting, fumbling, pushing, he scrabbled up the rocky slope with his arms wrapped halfway round the big canister’s middle. He let the winch drag them to the jumper’s edge, then reached out and shut the motor.

  With only a hard breath’s pause, Kinsman snapped down the suit’s supporting legs, so the priest could stay upright even though unconscious. Then he clambered onto the platform and took the oxygen line from the rocket tankage. Kneeling at the bulbous suit’s shoulders, he plugged the line into its emergency air tank.

  The older man coughed once. That was all.

  Kinsman leaned back on his heels. His faceplate was fogging over again, or was it fatigue blurring his sight?

  The regenerator was hopelessly smashed, he saw. The old bird must’ve been breathing his own juices.

  When the emergency tank registered full, he disconnected the oxygen line and plugged it into a special fitting below the regenerator.

  “If you’re dead, this is probably going to kill me, too,” Kinsman said. He purged the entire suit, forcing the contaminating fumes out and replacing them with the oxygen that the jumper’s rocket needed to get them back to the base.

  He was close enough now to see through the canister’s tinted visor. The priest’s face was grizzled, eyes closed. Its usual smile was gone; the mouth hung open limply.

  Kinsman hauled him up onto the railess platform and strapped him down on the deck. Then he went to the controls and inched the throttle forward just enough to give them the barest minimum of lift.

  The jumper almost made it to the crest before its rocket died and bumped them gently on one of the terraces. There was a small emergency tank of oxygen that could have carried them a little farther, Kinsman knew. But he and the priest would need it for breathing.

  “Wonder how many Jesuits have been carried home on their shields?” he asked himself as he unbolted the section of decking that the priest was lying on. By threading the winch line through the bolt holes, he made a sort of sled, which he carefully lowered to the ground. Then he took down the emergency o
xygen tank and strapped it to the deck section, too.

  Kinsman wrapped the line around his fists and leaned against the burden. Even in the moon’s light gravity, it was like trying to haul a truck.

  “Down to less than one horsepower,” he grunted, straining forward.

  For once he was glad that the scoured rocks had been smoothed clean by micrometeors. He would climb a few steps, wedge himself as firmly as he could, and drag the sled up to him. It took a painful half-hour to reach the ringwall crest.

  He could see the base again, tiny and remote as a dream. “All downhill from here,” he mumbled.

  He thought he heard a groan.

  “That’s it,” he said, pushing the sled over the crest, down the gentle outward slope. “That’s it. Stay with it. Don’t you die on me. Don’t put me through this for nothing!”

  “Kinsman!” Bok’s voice. “Are you all right?”

  The sled skidded against a yard-high rock. Scrambling after it, Kinsman answered, “I’m bringing him in. Just shut up and leave us alone. I think he’s alive. Now stop wasting my breath.”

  Pull it free. Push to get it started downhill again. Strain to hold it back . . . don’t let it get away from you. Haul it out of craterlets. Watch your step, don’t fall.

  “Too damned much uphill in this downhill.”

  Once he sprawled flat and knocked his helmet against the edge of the improvised sled. He must have blacked out for a moment. Weakly, he dragged himself up to the oxygen tank and refilled his suit’s supply. Then he checked the priest’s suit and topped off his tank.

  “Can’t do that again,” he said to the silent priest. “Don’t know if we’ll make it. Maybe we can. If neither one of us has sprung a leak. Maybe . . . maybe . . .”

  Time slid away from him. The past and future dissolved into an endless now, a forever of pain and struggle, with the heat of his toil welling up in Kinsman drenchingly.

  “Why don’t you say something?” Kinsman panted at the priest. “You can’t die. Understand me? You can’t die! I’ve got to explain it to you. I didn’t mean to kill her. I didn’t even know she was a girl. You can’t tell, can’t even see a face until you’re too close. She must’ve been just as scared as I was. She tried to kill me. I was inspecting their satellite . . . how’d I know their cosmonaut was a scared kid. I could’ve pushed her off, didn’t have to kill her. But the first thing I knew I was ripping her air lines open. I didn’t know she was a girl, not until it was too late. It doesn’t make any difference, but I didn’t know it, I didn’t know . . .”