The Reluctant Heroes by Frank M. Robinson (beautiful books to read txt) 📗
- Author: Frank M. Robinson
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"I like the feel of it," he said simply.
Chapman cut off a single blade with his fingernail and put it between his lips. It had been years since he had seen grass and had the luxury of walking on it and lying on its cool thickness during those sultry summer nights when it was too hot to sleep indoors.
Williams blushed. "I thought we could spare a little water for it and maybe use the ultraviolet lamp on it some of the time. Couldn't help but bring it along; it seemed sort of like a symbol...." He looked embarrassed.
Chapman sympathized. If he had had any sense, he'd have tried to smuggle something like that up to the Moon instead of his phonograph.
"That's valuable grass," Dahl said sharply. "Do you realize that at current freight rates up here, it's worth about ten dollars a blade?"
Williams looked stricken and somebody said, "Oh, shut up, Dahl."
One of the men separated from the group and came over to Chapman. He held out his hand and said, "My name's Eberlein. Captain of the relief ship. I understand you're in charge here?"
Chapman nodded and shook hands. They hadn't had a captain on the First ship. Just a pilot and crew. Eberlein looked every inch a captain, too. Craggy face, gray hair, the firm chin of a man who was sure of himself.
"You might say I'm in charge here," Chapman said.
"Well, look, Mr. Chapman, is there any place where we can talk together privately?"
They walked over to one corner of the bunker. "This is about as private as we can get, captain," Chapman said. "What's on your mind?"
Eberlein found a packing crate and made himself comfortable. He looked at Chapman.
"I've always wanted to meet the man who's spent more time here than anybody else," he began.
"I'm sure you wanted to see me for more reasons than just curiosity."
Eberlein took out a pack of cigarets. "Mind if I smoke?"
Chapman jerked a thumb toward Dahl. "Ask him. He's in charge now."
The captain didn't bother. He put the pack away. "You know we have big plans for the station," he said.
"I hadn't heard of them."
"Oh, yes, big plans. They're working on unmanned, open-side rockets now that could carry cargo and sheet steel for more bunkers like this. Enable us to enlarge the unit, have a series of bunkers all linked together. Make good laboratories and living quarters for you people." His eyes swept the room. "Have a little privacy for a change."
Chapman nodded. "They could use a little privacy up here."
The captain noticed the pronoun. "Well, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you, Chapman. The Commission talked it over and they'd like to see you stay. They feel if they're going to enlarge it, add more bunkers and have more men up here, that a man of practical experience should be running things. They figure that you're the only man who's capable and who's had the experience."
The captain vaguely felt the approach was all wrong.
"Is that all?"
Eberlein was ill at ease. "Naturally you'd be paid well. I don't imagine any man would like being here all the time. They're prepared to double your salary—maybe even a bonus in addition—and let you have full charge. You'd be Director of the Luna Laboratories."
All this and a title too, Chapman thought.
"That's it?" Chapman asked.
Eberlein frowned. "Well, the Commission said they'd be willing to consider anything else you had in mind, if it was more money or...."
"The answer is no," Chapman said. "I'm not interested in more money for staying because I'm not interested in staying. Money can't buy it, captain. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that you'd have to stay up here to appreciate that.
"Bob Dahl is staying for stopover. If there's something important about the project or impending changes, perhaps you'd better tell him before you go."
He walked away.
Chapman held the letter in both hands, but the paper still shook. The others had left the bunker, the men of the Second taking those of the Third in hand to show them the machinery and apparatus that was outside, point out the deadly blisters underneath the pumice covering, and show them how to keep out of the Sun and how to watch their air supply.
He was glad he was alone. He felt something trickle down his face and tasted salt on his lips.
The mail had been distributed and he had saved his latest letter until the others had left so he could read it in privacy. It was a short letter, very short.
It started: "Dear Joel: This isn't going to be a nice letter, but I thought it best that you should know before you came home."
There was more to it, but he hadn't even needed to read it to know what it said. It wasn't original, of course. Women who change their minds weren't exactly an innovation, either.
He crumpled the paper and held a match to it and watched it burn on the steel floor.
Three years had been a long time. It was too long a time to keep loving a man who was a quarter of a million miles away. She could look up in the night sky when she was out with somebody else now and tell him how she had once been engaged to the Man in the Moon.
It would make good conversation. It would be funny. A joke.
He got up and walked over to his phonograph and put the record on. The somewhat scratchy voice sang as if nothing had happened
Way Back Home by Al Lewis.
The record caught and started repeating the last line.
He hadn't actually wanted to play it. It had been an automatic response. He had played it lots of times before when he had thought of Earth. Of going home.
He crossed over and threw the record across the bunker and watched it shatter on the steel wall and the pieces fall to the floor.
The others came back in the bunker and the men of the Second started grabbing their bags and few belongings and getting ready to leave. Dahl sat in a corner, a peculiar expression on his face. He looked as if he wanted to cry and yet still felt that the occasion was one for rejoicing.
Chapman walked over to him. "Get your stuff and leave with the others, Dahl." His voice was quiet and hard.
Dahl looked up, opened his mouth to say something, and then shut up. Donley and Bening and Dowden were already in the airlock, ready to leave. Klein caught the conversation and came over. He gripped Chapman's arm.
"What the hell's going on, Chap? Get your bag and let's go. I know just the bistro to throw a whing-ding when we get—"
"I'm not going back," Chapman said.
Klein looked annoyed, not believing him. "Come on, what's the matter with you? You suddenly decide you don't like the blue sky and trees and stuff? Let's go!"
The men in the lock were looking at them questioningly. Some members of the Third looked embarrassed, like outsiders caught in a family argument.
"Look, Julius, I'm not going back," Chapman repeated dully. "I haven't anything to go back for."
"You're doing a much braver thing than you may think," a voice cut in. It belonged to Eberlein.
Chapman looked at him. Eberlein flushed, then turned and walked-stiffly to the lock to join the others.
Just before the inner door of the lock shut, they could hear Chapman, his hands on his hips, breaking in the Third on how to be happy and stay healthy on the Moon. His voice was ragged and strained and sounded like a top-sergeant's.
Dahl and Eberlein stood in the outer port of the relief ship, staring back at the research bunker. It was half hidden in the shadows of a rocky overhang that protected it from meteorites.
"They kidded him a lot this morning," Dahl said. "They said he had found a home on the Moon."
"If we had stayed an hour or so more, he might have changed his mind and left, after all," Eberlein mused, his face a thoughtful mask behind his air helmet.
"I offered him money," Dahl said painfully. "I was a coward and I offered him money to stay in my place." His face was bitter and full of disgust for himself.
Eberlein turned to him quickly and automatically told him the right thing.
"We're all cowards once in a while," he said earnestly. "But your offer of money had nothing to do with his staying. He stayed because he had to stay, because we made him stay."
"I don't understand," Dahl said.
"Chapman had a lot to go home for. He was engaged to be married." Dahl winced. "We got her to write him a letter breaking it off. We knew it meant that he lost one of his main reasons for wanting to go back. I think, perhaps, that he still would have left if we had stayed and argued him into going. But we left before he could change his mind."
"That—was a lousy thing to do!"
"We had no choice. We didn't use it except as a last resort."
"I don't know of any girl who would have done such a thing, no matter what your reasons, if she was in love with a guy like Chapman," Dahl said.
"There was only one who would have," Eberlein agreed. "Ginny Dixon. She understood what we were trying to tell her. She had to; her brother had died up here."
"Why was Chapman so important?" Dahl burst out. "What could he have done that I couldn't have done—would have done if I had had any guts?"
"Perhaps you could have," Eberlein said. "But I doubt it. I don't think there were many men who could have. And we couldn't take the chance. Chapman knows how to live on the Moon. He's like a trapper who's spent all his time in the forests and knows it like the palm of his hand. He never makes mistakes, he never fails to check things. And he isn't a scientist. He would never become so preoccupied with research that he'd fail to make checks. And he can watch out for those who do make mistakes. Ginny understood that all too well."
"How did you know all this about Chapman?" Dahl asked.
"The men in the First told us some of it. And we had our own observer with you here. Bening kept us pretty well informed."
Eberlein stared at the bunker thoughtfully.
"It costs a lot of money to send ships up here and establish a colony. It will cost a lot to expand it. And with that kind of investment, you don't take chances. You have to have the best men for the job. You get them even if they don't want to do it."
He gestured at the small, blotchy globe of blue and green that was the Earth, riding high in the black sky.
"You remember what it was like five years ago, Dahl? Nations at each other's throats, re-arming to the teeth? It isn't that way now. We've got the one lead that nobody can duplicate or catch up on. Nobody has our technical background. I know, this isn't a military base. But it could become one."
He paused.
"But these aren't even the most important reasons, Dahl. We're at the beginnings of space travel, the first bare, feeble start. If this base on the Moon succeeds, the whole human race will be Outward Bound." He waved at the stars. "You have your choice—a frontier that lies in the stars, or a psychotic little world that tries and fails and spends its time and talents trying to find better methods of suicide.
"With a choice like that, Dahl, you can't let it fail. And personal lives and viewpoints are expendable. But it's got to be that way. There's too much at stake."
Eberlein hesitated a moment and when he started again, it was on a different track. "You're an odd bunch of guys, you and the others in the groups, Dahl. Damn few of you come up for the glamor, I know. None of you like it and none of you are really enthusiastic about it. You were all reluctant to come in the first place, for the most part. You're a bunch of pretty reluctant heroes, Dahl."
The captain nodded soberly at the bunker. "I, personally, don't feel happy about that. I don't like having to mess up other people's lives. I hope I won't have to again. Maybe somehow, someway, this one can be patched up. We'll try to."
He started the mechanism that closed the port of the rocket. His face was a study of regret and
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