First on the Moon by Jeff Sutton (thriller books to read .TXT) 📗

had reached his side just in time to witness the crash.

"That's all for them," he said. "Can't say I'm sorry."

"Serves 'em damn well right," growled Crag. He became conscious of Nagel and Larkwell crowding to get a look and obligingly moved to one side without taking his eyes from the scene. He tried to judge Bandit's distance.

"Little over two miles," he estimated aloud.

"You can't tell in this vacuum," Prochaska advised. "Your eyes play you tricks. Wait'll I try the scope." A moment later he turned admiringly from the instrument.

"Closer to three miles. Pretty good for a green hand."

Crag laughed, a quiet laugh of self-satisfaction, and said, "I could use a little elbow room. Any volunteers?"

"Liberty call," Prochaska sang out. "All ashore who's going ashore. The gals are waiting."

"I'm a little tired of this sardine can, myself," Larkwell put in. "Let's get on our Sunday duds and blow. I'd like to do the town." There was a murmur of assent. Nagel, who was monitoring the oxygen pressure gauge, spoke affirmatively. "No leaks."

"Good," Crag said with relief. He took a moment off to feel exultant but the mood quickly vanished. There was work ahead—sheer drudgery.

"Check suit pressure," he ordered.

They waited a moment longer while they tested pressure, the interphones, and adjusted to the lack of body weight before Crag moved toward the hatch. Prochaska prompted them to actuate their temperature controls:

"It's going to be hot out there."

Crag nodded, checked his temperature dial and started to open the hatch. The lock-lever resisted his efforts for a moment. He tested the dogs securing the door. Several of them appeared jammed. Panic touched his mind. He braced his body, moving against one of the lock levers with all his strength. It gave, then another. He loosened the last lock braced against the blast of escaping air. The hatch exploded open.

He stood for a moment looking at the ground, some twenty feet below. The metal framework now crumpled below the tail had done its work. It had struck, failing, and in doing so had absorbed a large amount of impact energy which otherwise would have been absorbed by the body of the rocket with possible damage to the space cabin.

The Aztec's tail fins were buried in what appeared to be a powdery ash. The rocket was canted slightly but, he thought, not dangerously so. Larkwell broke out the rope ladder provided for descent and was looking busy. Now it was his turn to shine. He hooked the ladder over two pegs and let the other end fall to the ground. He tested it then straightened up and turned to Crag.

"You may depart, Sire."

Crag grinned and started down the ladder. It was clumsy work. The bulk and rigidity of his suit made his movements uncertain, difficult. He descended slowly, testing each step. He hesitated at the last rung, thinking: This is it! He let his foot dangle above the surface for a moment before plunging it down into the soft ash mantle, then walked a few feet, ankle deep in a fine gray powder. First human foot to touch the moon, he thought. The first human foot ever to step beyond the world. Yeah, the human race was on the way—led by Adam Philip Crag. He felt good.

It occurred to him then that he was not the real victor. That honor belonged to a man 240,000 miles away. Gotch had won the moon. It had been the opaque-eyed Colonel who had directed the conquest. He, Crag, was merely a foot soldier. Just one of the troops. All at once he felt humble.

Prochaska came down next, followed by Nagel. Larkwell was last. They stood in a half-circle looking at each other, awed by the thing they had done. No one spoke. They shifted their eyes outward, hungrily over the plain, marveling at the world they had inherited. It was a bleak, hostile world encompassed in a bowl whose vast depressed interior alternately was burned and frozen by turn. To their north the rim of Arzachel towered ten thousand feet, falling away as it curved over the horizon to the east and west. The plain to the south was a flat expanse of gray punctuated by occasional rocky knolls and weird, needle-sharp pinnacles, some of which towered to awesome heights.

Southeast a long narrow spur of rock rose and crawled over the floor of the crater for several miles before it dipped again into its ashy bed. Crag calculated that a beeline to Bandit would just about skirt the southeast end of the spur. Another rock formation dominated the middle-expanse of the plain to the south. It rose, curving over the crater floor like the spinal column of some gigantic lizard—a great crescent with its horns pointed toward their present position. Prochaska promptly dubbed it "Backbone Ridge," a name that stuck.

Crag suddenly remembered what he had to do, and coughed meaningfully into his lip mike. The group fell silent. He faced the distant northern cliffs and began to speak:

"I, Adam Crag, by the authority vested in me by the Government of the United States of America, do hereby claim this land, and all the lands of the moon, as legal territory of the United States of America, to be a dominion of the United States of America, subject to its Government and laws."

When he finished, he was quiet for a minute. "For the record, this is Pickering Field. I think he'd like that," he added. There was a lump in his throat.

Prochaska said quietly, "Gotch will like it, too. Hadn't we better record that and transmit it to Alpine?"

"It's already recorded." Crag grinned. "All but the Pickering Field part. Gotch wrote it out himself."

"Confident bastard." Larkwell smiled. "He had a lot more faith than I did."

"Especially the way you brought that stovepipe down," Nagel interjected. There was a moment of startled silence.

Prochaska said coldly. "I hope you do your job as well."

Nagel looked provocatively at him but didn't reply.

Larkwell had been studying the terrain. "Wish Able had made it," he said wistfully. "I'd like to get started on that airlock. It's going to be a honey to build."

"Amen." Crag swept his eyes over the ashy surface. "The scientists figure that falling meteorites may be our biggest hazard."

"Not if we follow the plan of building our airlock in a rill," Larkwell interjected. "Then the only danger would be from stuff coming straight down."

"Agreed. But the fact remains that we lost Able. We'll have to chance living in the Aztec until Drone Baker arrives."

"If it makes it."

"It'll make it," Crag answered with certainty. Their safe landing had boosted his confidence. They'd land Baker and Charlie, in that order, he thought. They'd locate a shallow rill; then they'd build an airlock to protect them against chance meteorites. That's the way they'd do it; one ... two ... three....

"We've got it whipped," Prochaska observed, but his voice didn't hold the certainty of his words.

Crag said, "I was wondering if we couldn't assess the danger. It might not be so great...."

"How?" Prochaska asked curiously.

"No wind, no air, no external forces to disturb the ash mantle, except for meteorites. Any strike would leave a trace. We might smooth off a given area and check for hits after a couple of days. That would give some idea of the danger." He faced Prochaska.

"What do you think?"

"But the ash itself is meteorite dust," he protested.

"We could at least chart the big hits—those large enough to damage the rocket."

"We'll know if any hit," Larkwell prophesied grimly.

"Maybe not;" Nagel cut in. "Supposing it's pinhole size? The air could seep out and we wouldn't know it until too late."

Crag said decisively. "That means we'll have to maintain a watch over the pressure gauge."

"That won't help if it's a big chunk." Prochaska scraped his toe through the ash. "The possibility's sort of disconcerting."

"Too damned many occupational hazards for me," Larkwell ventured. "I must have had rocks in my head when I volunteered for this one."

"All brawn and no brain." Crag gave a wry smile. "That's the kind of fodder that's needed for deep space."

Prochaska said, "We ought to let Gotch know he's just acquired a few more acres."

"Right." Crag hesitated a moment. "Then we'll check out on Bandit."

"Why?" Larkwell asked.

"There might be some survivors."

"Let them rot," Nagel growled.

"That's for me to decide," Crag said coldly. He stared hard at the oxygen man. "We're still human."

Nagel snapped, "They're damned murderers."

"That's no reason we should be." Crag turned back toward the ladder. When he reached it, he paused and looked skyward. The sun was a precise circle of intolerable white light set amid the ebony of space. The stars seemed very close.

The space cabin was a vacuum. At Nagel's suggestion they kept pressure to a minimum to preserve oxygen. When they were out of their suits, Prochaska got on the radio. He had difficulty raising Alpine Base, working for several minutes before he got an answering signal. When the connection was made, Crag moved into Prochaska's place and switched to his ear insert microphone. He listened to the faint slightly metallic voice for a moment before he identified it as Gotch's. He thought: The Old Man must be living in the radio shack. He adjusted his headset and sent a lengthy report.

If Gotch were jubilant over the fruition of his dream, he carefully concealed it. He congratulated Crag and the crew, speaking in precise formal terms, and almost immediately launched into a barrage of questions regarding their next step. The Colonel's reaction nettled him. Lord, he should be jubilant ... jumping with joy ... waltzing the telephone gal. Instead he was speaking with a business-as-usual manner. Gotch left it up to Crag on whether or not to attempt a rescue expedition.

"But not if it endangers the expedition in any way," he added. He informed him that Drone Baker had been launched without mishap. "Just be ready for her," he cautioned. "And again—congratulations, Commander." There was a pause....

"I think Pickering Field is a fitting name." The voice in the earphones died away and Crag found himself listening to the static of space. He pulled the sets off and turned to Nagel.

"How much oxygen would a man need for a round trip to Bandit, assuming a total distance of seven miles."

"It's not that far," Prochaska reminded.

"There might be detours."

Nagel calculated rapidly. "An extra cylinder would do it."

"Okay, Larkwell and I'll go. You and Prochaska stand by." Crag caught the surprised look on the Chief's face.

"There might be communication problems," he explained. Privately, he had decided that no man would be left alone until the mystery of the time bomb was cleared up.

Prochaska nodded. The arrangement made sense. Nagel appeared pleased that he didn't have to make the long trek. Larkwell, on the other hand, seemed glad to have been chosen.

CHAPTER 9

There is no dawn on the moon, no dusk, no atmosphere to catch and spread the light of the sun. When the lunar night ends—a night two earth weeks long—the sun simply pops over the horizon, bringing its intolerable heat. But the sky remains black—black and sprinkled with stars agleam with a light unknown on earth. At night the temperature is 250 degrees below zero; by day it is the heat of boiling water. Yet the sun is but an intense circle of white aloft in a nigrescent sky. It was a world such as Crag had scarcely dreamed of—alien, hostile, fantastic in its architecture—a bizarre world spawned by a nature in revolt.

Crag stopped to adjust the temperature control on his suit. He started to mop his brow before he remembered the helmet. Larkwell saw the gesture, and behind his thick face plate his lips wrinkled in a grin. "Go on, scratch it," he challenged.

"This moon's going to take a lot of getting used to." Crag swept his eyes over the bleak plain. "And they send four men to conquer this."

"It ain't conquered yet," Larkwell spat.

Crag's answer was a sober reflection. "No, it isn't," he said quietly. He contemplated the soot-filled sky, its magic lanterns, then looked down again at the plain.

"Let's get moving."

It was dawn—dawn in the sense that the sun had climbed above the horizon. The landing had been planned for sunup—the line which divided night from day—to give them the benefit of a two-week day before another instantaneous onslaught of night.

They moved slowly across the ashy floor of the crater, occasionally circling small knolls or jagged rock outcroppings. Despite the cumbersome suits and the burden of the extra oxygen cylinder each carried, they made good time. Crag led the way with Larkwell close behind, threading his way toward the spot where the enemy rocket had fallen from the sky. They had to stop several times to rest and regulate their temperature controls. Despite the protective garments they were soon sweating and panting, gasping for breath with the feeling of suffocation. Crag felt