Jeff Sutton (18 page)

Making
Bandit habitable was a must There still remained the arduous task of
transferring their belongings and gear to Bandit. Drone Baker had to be toppled
and her cargo salvaged. Then there was Drone Charlie, at present just a minute
speck somewhere in the great void between earth and her moon; but in somewhat
less than forty-eight hours it would represent tons of metal hurtling over the
rim of Arzachel. This time they couldn't fumble the balk
The
building of the airlock in the rill loomed in the immediate future —an
oppressive shadow that caused him no end of worry. There were other problems,
too—like the item of Red
Dog .
.
the
possible battle for control of the moon.

Red
Dog, in particular, had become the prime shadow darkening Arzachei's ashy
plains. He thought about the emotional deterioration which had laid an iron
grip over the expedition and wondered if they could hang on through the rough
days ahead. All in all, the task of colonizing the moon appeared an extremely
formidable one. He shook off his apprehensions and began planning his next
step.

That evening Crag knocked off the usual three
hour work period following evening chow. Nagel tumbled onto his pad and was
asleep almost instantly. His breathing was a harsh rasp. At Crag's suggestion
Prochaska took the watch until midnight. Crag stood guard the remainder of the
night to allow Nagel and Larkwell a full night's rest.

While
the others slept, Crag brooded at the port. Once he ran his hand over his face,
surprised at the hardness. All bone and no flesh, he thought. He looked toward
the north wall of Arzachel.

In a
few short hours Drone Charlie would come blazing over the rim, and Red Dog
snapping at its heels.

CHAPTER 14

"Adam Crag
was not a Cod-fearing man," the minister
stated. His tone implied that Crag had been just the opposite. "Not a bit
like his parents. The best family guidance in the world, yet he quit Sunday school
almost before he got started. I doubt that he's-ever been to church
since."

'He
looked archly at the agent. "Perhaps a godless world like the moon is just
retribution.''

A
garage mechanic, a junk dealer and the proprietor of a tool shop had a lot to
say about Adam-Crag. So did the owner of a small private airport. They
remembered him as a boy with an insatiable appetite for tearing cars apart and
converting them to what the junk dealer termed "supersonic
jalopies."

Many
people in El Cajon remembered Adam Crag. Strangely enough, his teachers all
the way back through grade school had little difficulty in recalling his antics
and attitudes. An elementary teacher explained it by saying, "He was that
kind of a boy."

The
family doctor had the most to say about Adam. He had long since retired, a
placid seventyish man who had elected to pass his last years in the same house,
in an older section of the town, in which he'd been born.

He
sat swinging and talking, reminiscing about "the growing up of young
Adam," as he put it. The agent had made himself at home on the front
steps, listening. The doctor's comments were little short of being
an
eulogy.

He
finished and was silent, tapping a black briar pipe against his hand while he
contemplated the agent with eyes which had long since ceased to see.

"One
other thing," he added finally. "Adam was sure a heller with the
girls."

The
agent started to comment that Crag's dossier looked like the roll call of a
girl's dormitory but refrained. He didn't want to prejudice the testimony.

Zero hour on the plains of ArzacheL The sun,
an intolerably brilliant ball pasted against the ebony sky, had started its
drop toward the horizon. The shadows on the plain were lengthening, harbingers
of the bitter two-weeks-long night to come. They crept out from the sheer wall
of the crater^reaching to engulf Pickering Base with icy fingers.

Crag
and Prochaska were alone, now, in the stripped cabin of the Aztec. Nagel and
Richter, under Larkwell's command, had departed for Bandit an hour earlier with
the last of their supplies. Crag disliked splitting the crew but saw no
alternative. He had to gamble. The element of certainty, the ability to
predict, the expectations of logic—all these had vanished, swept away by the
vagaries of chance. They could do only so much. Beyond that their fate was pawn
to the chaotic cross fires of human elements pitted against the architecture of
the cosmos. They were puppets in the last lottery of probability.

Frochaska broke the
silence: It's going to be close."

Crag's
eyes remained, riveted to the instruments. Drone Charlie and Red Dog were
plunging through space separated by a scant half-hour's flight rime. Despite
the drone's long launch lead, the gap between the two rockets had been narrowed
to a perilous point Drone Charlie was decelerating rapidly, her braking rockets
flaring spasmodically to slow her headlong flight

"We'd
better get into our suits," Crag said finally. "We want to get out of
this baby the second Charlie lets down."

Frochaska
nodded. They left their suits unpressurized for the time being to allow full
mobility. In the moments ahead Frochaska, in particular, couldn't afford to be
hampered by the rigidity the suit possessed when under pressure.

They
turned back to the control panel. Charlie was hurtling over Alphons, dropping
toward the bleak lunar landscape with incredible speed. The mechanical voice
from Alpine droned a stream of data. There was a rapid exchange of information
between Prochaska and Alpine. At its conclusion he began taking over control of
the drone. Crag watched tensely. Prochaska's fingers, even though encased in
the heavy suit material, moved with certainty. In a little while he spoke
without looking up.

"Got
it," he said laconically. He studied the instruments,
then
his fingers sought the buttons controlling Charlie's forward braking rockets.

Crag thought:
This is it.
Within scant moments the drone
had covered the sky over the tangled land
lying between
Al-
phons and Arzachel. It swept over the
brimming cliffs
at a
scant two thousand feet. He
saw the rocket through the
for
ward
ports. White vapor flared from its nose rockets.
The
Chief had it under full deceleration. The cloud
of vapor
covered its body. Prochaska moved the
steering
control
and
the rocket slanted
upward at ever-increasing angle
of climb.
Crag
strained his neck to keep it in sight. He
thought its
rate of climb was too rapid but Prochaska
seemed
unper
turbed. His calm approach to the problem of
landing the drone gave Crag renewed confidence.

All
at once, it seemed, Drone Charlie was hanging high in the sky, a tapered needle
miraculously suspended
in
the heavens. Then it began dropping . . .
dropping.
Bursts
of smoke and white vapor
shot from its tail jets, becoming continuous as the rocket hurtled toward the
plain.
The
drone was lost to sight in its own clouds,
but he charted
its
-progress by the vapor spurts at its lower
edge.
Prochaska
was draining the tail braking jets of every
ounce of
energy.
Suddenly the rocket gave
the illusion of hanging
in
mid-air.
The
gap between it and the stark terrain below
seemed to
have stopped closing. Crag half expected the
blasting
stem
tubes to begin pushing the
drone back into the sky.
But . . .
nol
It
was moving down again, slowly.

Prochaska
moved another control. A servo-mechanism
with
in
the rocket stirred to life and a spidery metal
network
moved out from its tail housing. The
drone
dropped
steadily,
ever slower, and finally
settled. The shock-absorbing
frame
folded,
was crushed. At the same instant Prochaska
silenced
its rockets. It settled down, its tail tubes
pushed
into the
plain's powdery ash scarcely a mile from the
Aztec.

"Perfect."
Prochaska sounded pleased with himself.
His
thin
face broke into a satisfied smile.

"Nice
going," Crag agreed. "Now let's get out of
this
trap."

His eyes lingered for an instant on the
analog. Red Dog had already cleared Ptolemaeus. He snapped his face plate shut,
clicked on the interphone and turned the oxygen valve. His suit began to swell
and grow rigid against his body. When they were pressurized, he opened the
hatch and they clambered out onto the plain. He closed the hatch behind them
and struck off in the direction of Bandit with the Chief at his heels.

They
moved as rapidly as possible. Their feet in the heavy insulated space boots
kicked up small fountains of dust which dropped as quickly as they rose. From
time to time Crag looked back toward the brimming cliffs. Frochaska plodded
head down. His quickened breathing in the interphones sounded harsh to Crag.
Plainly the long hours of monitoring the Aztec's instruments had made him soft
The
microphone in his helmet came to life. It was Larkwell.

"Red Dog's cleared the
rim,'' he told them.

Crag
glanced back. His eyes caught the wispish trail of white vapor high above the
cliffs before he saw the rocket itself. It was already in vertical attitude,
letting down amid a cloud of white vapor from its stem braking rockets.

"All
hands disconnect their interphones," he commanded. "From here on out
we operate in silence." The Red Dog interphone system might or might not
be on the same band they used. He wasn't about to take that risk.

"Okay," Larkwell
acknowledged. "We're shutting off."

Crag
remembered mat the German's interphones were still connected. Slip one
..
He decided to leave his own open—at least he'd be
forewarned if anyone tried to alert the Red Dog crew. He turned back toward the
rocket Red Dog was dropping about two or three miles from the Aztec in the
direction of the wrecked Baker.

White
smoke and flame poured from its stem tubes. It slowed visibly as it neared the
lunar surface. He thought that a plumb bob dropped through the long axis of the
rocket would form aright angle with the
surface of Arzachel. Pilot's good, he thought. He watched until it touched down
teetering on its stem tubes for a moment before coming to rest; then he turned
and hurried to overtake Prochaska.

The
Chiefs face behind bis mask was covered with perspiration. He panted heavily.
Crag beckoned him to follow and moved behind a low swale of rock where they
would be safe from detection. The nose of Bandit jutted into the sky about a
mile ahead of them. He motioned toward it, gesturing for Prochaska to go on.
The Chief nodded understanding and struck off.

Crag
turned and began climbing a low rocky ridge that now lay between
him
and
Red Dog. He stopped just below its crest and searched for a safe vantage point.
To his right a serrated rock structure extended up over the backbone of the
ridge. He angled toward it, then followed the outcropping to a point where he
could see the plain beyond. Red Dog
had
its
tail planted in the ash about three miles distant.

Minute
figures milled at its base, small blobs of
movement
against the crater floor. No sounds broke the
silence of
Crag's open interphones. He took this as a
sign that
the
Red
Dog sets operated on
a different band. But he couldn
't be
sure.
The tremendous advantage of having
communication
with
his own
men must be discarded.