Space Pioneers Page 8

  He found he could not climb the first seven-foot ledge he came to, and had to walk along it to a lower spot.

  "No time, no time," he muttered against the delay. "You're on your last tankful now ... in fact, well into it. You get up there . . . now ... or not ever."

  He found a long lateral slope and followed it up several hundred yards. He was cold and sluggish, and it seemed that his heating batteries were close to exhausted.

  The ache across his back seemed normal. Even the dull misery of his legs, chafed, cut, rubbed raw, and the sogginess of his bleeding feet had come to be merely part of his general limpness.

  He found himself finishing the last few yards of the slope on hands and knees.

  "Funny," he croaked. "Don' remember fallin'."

  He reached out for an outcropping of rock to pull himself up. The broken spring twisted in the mangled spot on the back of his thigh as he tried to rise. Getting both hands on the rock, he inched upward little by little.

  It took him all of five minutes before he was on his feet again. At first, he thought he was dreaming again. The rock seemed to move under him.

  Then he saw, peering blearily upward, that it was part of an old landslide. One slip on his part now might set it off again, and send him crashing down to the bottom of the ringwall again. Hansen groaned and stepped away as carefully as he could.

  He was faced by a forty-five degree slope. If he could negotiate it for about thirty feet, he would reach another ramp. He looked down, and wondered if it would be easier to slide down to a lower terrace which would eventually lead higher than his present position.

  "No time," he said dazedly.

  He began to scrabble his way up the incline, not one too difficult to climb on Luna. The sun-powdered rock flaked off beneath his hands, elbows, knees, and feet. He slid back about as fast as he climbed.

  With a sob, he lunged for a projection the size of a man's head and got one mitten on it. The rock cracked off and he slid to the foot of the incline.

  "Oh, God! It's too much!"

  His face twisted up and he expected to feel tears running down his face. Apparently, however, he was too dried out for that.

  He sat there dully, staring at the lower ramp and trying to tell himself he could always try that. He knew better.

  "This is the end of the line," he told himself. "Last stop . . . you're done."

  Even his conscience did not twitch at his surrender. He only wished he could see Earth and look at North America again where it was centered on the globe once more. It was too much effort to turn around.

  "Wonder if they'll find me," he mumbled. "Dunno if I want to get buried or not. . ."

  Something moved to his left. A light.

  "I'm seeing things," he muttered. "Not long now."

  But the light swung up and down, it lit the slope below him, and it kept moving.

  Nothing looked like that but a tractor.

  But it would pass a hundred yards below him. The driver would have his eyes glued to the ground ahead, watching for holes or cracks.

  Hansen started to laugh and managed to catch himself.

  "The chance after the last chancel" he thought he said aloud, although his lips barely moved.

  The effort of pulling himself to his knees brought out sweat he did not know he had left.

  He waited for the tractor to reach a point below him. Waited . . . lifting the head-sized rock in both hands.

  The tiny weight tired him, and he lowered the stone to his knees. The tractor lumbered along, heading down the slope into the plain.

  Hansen swayed where he knelt, but concentrated everything upon estimating the distance.

  With a grunt, he raised the rock and thrust it away from his chest, outward over the slope on which he sprawled with the motion.

  He raised himself on his elbows and looked to see what happened. The tractor had slid to an abrupt halt.

  Dimly, he could see the shattered pieces of his missile bouncing in and out of patches of earthlight below the vehicle. The driver could not have missed it crossing his path.

  "Gotta get up . . . up!" Hansen thought desperately.

  He did not realize that his air was turning foul, but the simple feat of getting his feet under him left his heart pounding wildly.

  He planted his feet somehow until the light swept up the slope as those in the tractor searched for a possible slide.

  Brightness filled his helmet. He was dazzled, and felt himself falling.

  "Paul, try to help!"

  "Paul, can't you get some grip when I shove you in? I can't keep you from sliding out the airlock. Paul!" The voice was young and desperate.

  When the other man backed away, parting the contact of their helmets, Hansen saw the features of Joey, the radio operator, through the other faceplate.

  He stirred feebly.

  "That's it, Paul," said the faraway voice as Joey bent to lift him again. "Just a little bit of help till I get you inside the airlock."

  Something clanged, leaving him in blackness.

  The next thing he knew, he was gulping in sobbing breaths of fresh, oxygen-rich air. His head ached, but he felt better.

  Someone was mopping his sweaty face with a wet handkerchief. The handkerchief dripped, and the drops were salty.

  He could not see Louise, because she held his head cradled against her breast, but Joey was looking at him wide-eyed over the back of another seat.

  "How long ago did you start?" asked someone else, and Hansen saw that Johnny Pierce was driving.

  "Right after we got to Plato," said Hansen. "Everything but me and a tank of oxygen went down in a slide."

  "Musta been nearly twenty-four hours ago!" exclaimed Joey.

  "Gol-darn!" said Pierce primly. "Three hundred miles, give or take a few!"

  "You ain't human, Paul!" said Joey.

  "Do you want your suit off now?" asked Louise. "We could only get your helmet loose in this space."

  Without seeing her face, he could tell that she had been crying.

  "Just leave it on," said Hansen. "Wait till we're in, and I can go right from the suit to a bath."

  "We're coming over the crest," announced Johnny. "Louise, you better hold him in case I hit a few bumps."

  Hansen relaxed with a sigh as he felt her hands tighten against him.

  "Hold tight, Honey!" he whispered as he closed his eyes against the lights in the tractor. T . . . I'm a little tired."

  UST-RED deserts cover the long-dead planet of Mars. Here civilization once might have ruled, but it has long since vanished. However, there are native sons of Terra who have not altogether lost contact with that life of wilderness and raw nature which first molded Mankind. Joe Whiteskunk, Indian, in his own way met the challenge of Mars—and won.

  RAYMOND Z. GALLUN

  My twin brother Frank and I were just back on the ranch from college. Dad was dead, leaving us free. Magazines were full of diagrams of space-ships and living quarters for other worlds. There was recruiting ballyhoo on the television. At night we could sometimes see the fire-trails of rockets, outward bound from nearby White Sands, New Mexico. It became like drums beating in our blood.

  "They need lots of young engineers like us, Dave," Frank said to me. He was leaning against the corner of the house. It was evening. "On the moon now—then gosh knows where."

  "Sure," I answered, feeling both excited and sad. "The only question is, what do we do with Joe?"

  Just then Joe Whiteskunk was fixing a fence not a hundred yards off. With the deliberation of a rivulet washing away a mountain—as usual. Joe, who had come from Oklahoma with our Dad long ago. Joe, who might have made an oil-fortune if a slicker hadn't cheated him of his claim. Joe, who resembled gnarled mahogany. Sixty-five years old, he was, if a day. He didn't know exactly himself.

  Frank is no guy to beat around the bush. "Got to tell him what we mean to do," he said.

  So we did. I began it with, "Look, Joe . . ."

  For awhile he didn't seem
to have heard. He just kept on working at that fence. But at last he said, "I go too."

  I won't say that I was exactly surprised. I figured I knew Joe. Maybe he thought the Moon was something like Texas or California.

  "You've got to know something special, Joe," I said patiently. "Like Dave, here. He knows all about air-conditioning."

  Joe's face remained as deadpan as if he were a wooden Indian rather than a real one. "I know plenty special," he answered after a moment. "Hunt—track—new place—good. Plenty game."

  Something in the glint of his black eyes told me that he was way back in his youth.

  Frank busted out laughing. So did I. But there was a faint lump in my throat, made up of all my memories of Joe White-skunk. Teaching me to ride and to shoot, not by long-winded explanations but by example—or perhaps more by letting me be part of him. It's kind of hard to explain.

  So I didn't want to say good-by to Joe. I knew that my brother didn't, either. We wanted to postpone it as long as possible. Besides we were a little worried about what might happen to him, left alone.

  Combine all this with a certain residual kid-prankishness. We weren't above hazing Joe—letting his abysmal innocence lead him on—in this case toward the inevitable moment when his own ignorance must put a harmless and disgruntling end to his sudden urge to go where we went.

  My brother Frank winked at me—such a wink as one Katzen-jammer kid might give to the other. "Sure, Joe," he said, sober as a judge, "you come along with us. You hunt and track while we dig holes in all those mountains."

  Joe seemed not even to realize that he was being kidded.

  So the next morning we drove into White Sands with him. There, in the offices of Unified Lunar Enterprizes, Frank and I knew beforehand just about what we'd have to write of ourselves in the application blanks they gave us. We had our specialties. My fine was minerals and mining.

  We were sure of ourselves. We were in step with the exciting imperialistic rhythm that had seized the world. The outward thrusting, the adventure, the military significance, the dangerous industries that could be developed on the Moon, far away from the densely populated Earth.

  Yep, to Frank and me they gave the glad eye. A big burly official grinned at us. "Pass your physicals, fellas," he said, "and we'll ship you out tonight."

  About Joe? Well—you know. He got a look as if he was at least a little loopy—the hopeless sort of character that keeps popping up all the time, asking foolish questions. Like the guy ninety years old who tried to enlist in the Army.

  "Come back in fifty years," he was told indulgently. "Maybe by then the Moon will be changed enough by science so that there are woods and game on it."

  Joe looked a little puzzled. That was all. Of course this wasn't funny now for Frank and me. What could you do? Life consists of living and learning.

  I'm sentimental. Halfway I wanted to stay behind with old Joe Whiteskunk. Frank is different. "Well, Dave," he said, "this is it. So let's do what the man says. We can phone Dad's lawyer to see that the ranch is looked after. Nothing much there anyway. We won't even have to take the car home."

  "Sure—you fellas go," Joe told us. "I come too, pretty soon."

  So, that night, strapped to chairs in a cabin that looked like the inside of a bus, Frank and I were sick as dogs in the absence of gravity as the sharp stars of space blossomed beyond the window-ports around us. Facing the prospect of living on the Moon—an idea somehow out of tune with the instincts in human entrails, even when you're an enlightened young man—we were scared half to death.

  "Good thing Joe couldn't come," Frank grunted. "He wouldn't understand anything. He'd die—just as if he'd suddenly found himself in an unnamed hell."

  Right then we weren't very inspiring symbols of the pioneering urges of the human race.

  Had we known that at that very moment old Joe Whiteskunk

  r

  was huddled in the darkest corner of the dark baggage compartment of our spaceship we would really have blown our tops. Because in such a place during a Lunar hop a man could freeze to death or suffocate easily. Even if he were a trained scientist, who knew how to protect himself.

  We were in space for better than seventy hours. I was too ill to pay much attention to the landing. But it was accomplished in a manner that was almost exactly the reverse of the takeoff.

  Balanced by whirling gyroscopes, we came down sternward toward Camp Copernicus, our flaming jets gradually reducing speed. During the last few feet before we touched the ashy ground we hung almost motionless, swinging in the seats that adjusted automatically to the proper up-down direction of any gravitational attraction.

  Then we were on the moon. Taking orders—fumbling our way into space-armor—looking at harsh sunlight and black shadows and jagged mountains that have driven many a man nuts with homesickness. Filing in a column across the ash to a large pressurized shelter of magnesium alloy that had been brought prefabricated from Earth.

  This proved to be the entrance to a labyrinth of tunnels, newly excavated underground. This was Camp Copernicus, built in the bottom of the great lunar crater of the same name.

  All of us greenhorn arrivals looked pretty awful. I felt like a foolish romantic, led into a death-trap by my own romanticism. God, how I wanted to go homel

  While quarters and bunks were being assigned the cry of "Stowaway!" arose. Right away I had a premonition that put my heart in my mouth.

  Then they carried Joe in, tucked into a suit of space-armor. The story of what he had done came out, mixed with curses, from the mouths of the baggage-handlers. Right then Joe was a very frost-bitten, very disoriented Indian, whose swollen face nonetheless showed a flash of truculence.

  How he'd managed to survive in that space-chilled compartment, breathing only the air that was locked in with him, might,

  I think, have baffled a Houdini. He must just have followed some animal instinct when he bundled himself in paper wrappings torn from bundles and packages.

  By the same instinct he must have relaxed and breathed shal-lowly to consume less oxygen. Something about how he must have done it all reminded me somehow of a stowaway rat—surviving not so much by intelligence as by some wisdom engrained into its whole cussed carcass.

  "Joel" I gasped. "Joe!" Into my voice was poured all my concern about him—when he must finally realize in some measure where he was, how inconceivably far he had blundered from anything he could call familiar. He would just wither then, I was sure. He was a simple ranch Indian, who had trouble writing his own name and could never understand other worlds.

  Someone growled in my ears, "Oh, you know this fella, eh?" The tone was as official as the gold-braid that went with it—we civilian experts were under military direction, too. The tone bore a heavy load of contemptuous disgust. It blamed me, a greenhorn, for Joe's supergreenhorn presence. I was responsible.

  "Yes, sir," I said. "Joe Whiteskunk worked for my Dad."

  Well, that officer took my words as if they constituted an admission of mortal sin. "Oh—so?" he said with poisonous gentleness. "And what do you think we can do with him, here? Why didn't you bring a sick baby along? It would be less trouble.

  "Why didn't you bring an enemy spy? Then we could just shoot him. Back he goes with the first return rocket and you'll pay his passage! Every last cent of it if I have to take it out of your hide!"

  He said a lot more. He had me wanting to crawl into my space boots until a little glimmer of hope came. I looked at Frank, who hadn't said anything. Right then I didn't want any more of the Moon. Maybe Joe was our ticket back home—our way out of a signed contract.

  "Sir," I told the officer. "With your permission 111 personally conduct this man back to Earth."

  Yeah, but that was where Joe entered the conversation. He looked kind of sore but he sounded both obstinate and gentle.

  "I no go back, Dave," he said. "I come—I stay. You and Frank stay too. No be scared. Sure! You big boys now. Strong—smart. I smart, too. The Big Man back in
White Sands tell big fib. He say no job for tracker here. Just now, outside, I see plenty tracks."

  It burned me up. Joe was patronizing me—treating me as if I were a frightened child who had to be soothed. Treating me the way he had once when a gila monster had scared me out of my wits.

  And he was rattling on with that crazy illusion of his. "Yeah, I see plenty tracks—old tracks. No wind here. No man tracks. No coyote tracks. Devil tracks."

  Joe didn't even look awed. But in his black eyes, beyond the opened view-window of his oxygen helmet, gleamed something from the lore of his forefathers. It seemed to satisfy a question in his mind better than all our scientific sophistication could do for us. What I mean is that it enabled him to adjust better than we did to complete strangeness.

  Right then something happened to our officer friend's face-presently I was to find out that his name was Colonel Richard Kopplin. He looked sober, puzzled, less grouchy—as if something that had been bothering him for a long time found support in Joe Whiteskunk's words.

  "Hum-mm—devil tracks," he muttered.

  No, I won't say that Kopplin didn't have plenty of other worries to make him grumpy and officious. Maybe his own nerves were a bit twisted just by his being on the Moon. Then he had a lot of responsibility—handling scared and inexperienced dopes who could go batty easily and throw everything out of kilter. Getting more tunnels dug, more apparatus set up to draw the constituents of air and water out of rocks, riding herd on experts to get mineral tests made.

  And it was his job too to see that the astronomical observatory was finished and the Army fortress. Moreover, he had to deal with civilian interests. Mining companies and their prospecting and planning—companies who wanted to set up huge atomic piles and spaceship factories on the Moon or conduct immense