The pictures in the papers showed Slavinsky to be a big, powerful man, meticulously uniformed, always smoking cigarettes. Typical corporal-made-good, Slavinsky had been Moscow’s favorite peasant. About as cultured as a bull, he was quite proud of his refinement. And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia’s most trusted post, the moonbase.
It was here that dictatorship displayed its weakness. Bred by force out of starvation, the Russian state had very scant background of tradition. And trustworthy military forces are trustworthy only by their tradition. Slavinsky owed no debt to anyone but the Russian dictator. The Russian people would not know one dictator from another.
It developed, when Slavinsky was well dug in, that he had been a Trotskyite since boyhood and the murder of his ideal in Mexico had left him festering very privately. At least that was a fine excuse.
Once there Slavinsky began to make certain demands on Moscow. Moscow was beginning to be acrimonious about it. The dictator had ordered Slavinsky home and Slavinsky had told the dictator where he could stuff Moscow. Moscow was now threatening to withhold needed supplies.
US Naval Intelligence and the State Department were very interested and rumors flew amongst the personnel of the US moon expedition that something was about to break.
Angel lay on his back, feet against the wallpaper and gloomed. When a knock came on the door he supposed it was another load of papers and sadly said, “Come in.”
But it was a colonel who stood there and Angel very hastily bounced up to sharp attention.
“We’re having callers, son,” said the colonel. “Be down in the court in five minutes.”
Disinterestedly, Angel got himself into a blouse and wandered out. He wondered if he would ever feel human and normal again. All his life he had been a somewhat notorious but really rather unimportant runt and the big chance to be otherwise had passed, it seemed, forever.
He hardly noticed his fellow officers as he lined up in the court. Most of them were of the moon gang, destined to go, once upon a time, in various capacities on the abandoned expedition. None of them looked very cheerful.
There was hardly a ripple or a glance when the big Cadillac drew up at the curb. Their senior barked attention and the officers drew up. Only then, when ordered to see nothing and be a robot, did Angel note that the car had the SECNAV’s flag on it.
Four civilians, namely the secretary of state, the secretaries of defense, war and the Navy, alighted, followed by a five-star admiral and a five-star general. They were a dispirited group and they cast wilted glances over the lines of young officers.
The colonel in command of the detachment fell in with them behind the secretary of state and proceeded with this strange inspection.
Finally the group drew off and stood beside the Cadillac talking in low tones until they nodded agreement and then waited.
The colonel sang out, “Lieutenant Gray!”
Angel started from his trance, came to attention, paced front and center and automatically saluted the group. The colonel looked baffled as he came forward.
In a voice the others could not overhear, the colonel said, “I have no idea why they chose you, Angel. They were looking specifically for the tamest officer here. God knows how or why, but you won. They couldn’t have looked at the records!”
“Thank you, sir,” said Angel.
The colonel gave him a hard look and led him off to the car.
They didn’t say anything to him. Angel got in beside the driver, and, when the doors had shut behind the rest, they moved off at a dispirited speed.
Nothing was said until they arrived in the driveway of the White House and then the general told Angel to follow them.
The abashed lieutenant alighted on the gravel, looked up at the big hanging lantern and the door, then quickly went after his superiors. This was all very deflating stuff to him. The closest he had ever come to the president was leaving his card in the box for the purpose in the Pentagon Building—and he doubted that the president ever read the cards dropped by officers newly come to station or passing through.
He hardly saw the hall and was still dazed when the general again asked his name, sotto voce.
“Mr. President,” said the five star, “may I introduce First Lieutenant Cannon Gray.”
Angel shook the offered hand and then dizzily found a chair like the rest. All eyes were on him. Nobody was very sure of him, that was a fact. Nobody liked what he was doing.
“Lieutenant Fay—” began the president.
“Gray, sir.”
“Oh yes, of course. Lieutenant Gray, we have brought you here to ask you to perform a mission of vital importance to your country. You may withdraw now without stigma to yourself when I tell you that you may not return from this voyage.
“We considered it useless to ask for volunteers since then we would have had to explain a thing which I believe we all agree is the most humiliating thing this country has ever had to do. We are not prepared just now for publicity. You may withdraw.”
This, thought Angel, was a hell of a way to force a guy into something. Who could withdraw now? “I am willing,” he said.
“Splendid,” said the president. “I am happy to see, gentlemen, that you have chosen a brave officer. Here are the dispatches.”
Angel looked through them quickly and then at the first page of the sheaf, which was a brief summary.
He learned that one Slavinsky, late general of Russia, had finally forever parted company with his dictator and had declared himself master of Russia and the world. The United States was now addressed in uncompromising fashion by Slavinsky and ordered to do two things.
One, immediately to prepare a land, sea and air attack on Russia—one city in the United States or one city in Russia to pay for the first use of atom bombs by either—in order to secure the government of that nation to Slavinsky. And two, to send instantly a long list of needed supplies by one of the spaceships known to be ready in the United States. Angel knew that he was to be interested in “two.”
“This situation,” said the president, “is unparalleled.” And with that understatement, continued, “Unless we comply we will lose all our cities and still have to obey. We are insufficiently decentralized to avoid these orders.
“Humiliated or not, we must proceed to save ourselves. Slavinsky holds the moon and is armed with plentiful atom rockets. And he who holds the moon, we learn too late, controls all the Earth below.
“We are asking you,” he continued, “to take the supplies to the moon. We have secretly loaded a spaceship with the required items and need only one officer and two men as crew.
“The reason we send you at all is to ensure the arrival of the supplies in case of breakage on the way and, more important, in the hope that Slavinsky will let you go and you can bring back data which, if accurate enough, may possibly aide us to destroy Slavinsky and his men.”
“Mr. President,” said the secretary of state, “we have chosen this man not for valor but for reliability. I think it was our intention that whoever we sent should attempt no heroics which would anger Slavinsky. I think Lieutenant May should be so warned.”
“Yes, yes,” said the president. “This is of the utmost importance. You are only to return if Slavinsky permits it. You are to attempt no heroics. For if you failed in them we would pay the price. Am I understood in that, Lieutenant?”
Angel said he was.
“Now then,” said the president, “the spaceship is waiting and, when you have picked your two crewmen and Commander Dawson gives the word, you can leave. These dispatches”—and he took up a sheaf of them—“are for General Slavinsky and may be considered important only as routine diplomatic exchanges.”
Angel took the package and stood up.
“One thing more,” said the admiral. “You will be carrying a small pilot rocket aboard. You will
take the rolls from the automatic recording machines, place them in it just before you reach the moon and launch the missile back to Earth before landing. If we have enough data, though it is a forlorn hope, we may someday fight Slavinsky.”
“I doubt it,” said the secretary of state, “but I won’t oppose your thirst for data, admiral.”
They shook hands with the president and then Angel found himself back in the Cadillac, rolling through the rush-hour traffic of Washington. Soon they made it to the Fourteenth Street Bridge and went rocketing into Virginia to a secret takeoff field.
“Could you get me master sergeants Whittaker and Boyd?” said Angel timidly to the general.
“I’ll have them picked up on the way by the barracks,” said the general. “No word of this to anyone though.”
“Yes, sir,” said Angel.
When darkness had come at the secret field Commander Dawson turned up with a briefcase full of calculations from the US Naval Observatory and began to check instruments.
“Two o’clock,” he told the general.
“Two o’clock,” said the general to Angel.
Angel walked out of the hangar and joined Whittaker and Boyd.
Whittaker spat reflectively into the dust. “I shore miss the brass band this time, Lootenant.”
“And the dames,” said Boyd. “Boy, how I’d like me a drink. We got time to go to town, Lootenant?”
Angel was walking around in small circles, his beautiful face twisted in thought. Now and then he kicked gravel and swore most unangelically.
They were handing Slavinsky the world, that was that. And without a scrap. The slaughter of a Russian war was nothing to anyone compared to the loss of Chicago. Maybe it was logical but it just plain didn’t seem American to be whipped so quick.
Suddenly he stopped, stared hard at Boyd without seeing him and then socked a fist into his palm.
“What’s the matter?” said Boyd.
Angel went into the hangar where the big ship was getting ready to be rolled out on the rails now that her loading was done.
“General,” said Angel, “as long as I may never have the chance again—and being young makes it pretty hard—you might at least let me go to town and buy a couple quarts for the ride up.”
“You know the value of secrecy,” warned the general. And then more kindly, “You can take my car.”
Angel stood not. Some fifty seconds later the Cadillac was heading for town at speeds not touched in all its life before.
Whittaker and Boyd, in the back seat, bounced and applied imaginary brakes.
“Listen, you guys,” said Angel. “Your necks are out as much as mine”—he avoided two streetcars at a crossing and screamed on up toward “F” Street—“and I ought to ask your permission.”
“We’re going to take a load of food to Slavinsky on the moon. Very hush-hush, though the only one we’ve to keep secrets from now is Slavinsky. But I intend to make a try at knocking off that base. Are you with me?”
“Why not?” said Whittaker.
“Your party,” said Boyd.
Angel drew up before an apartment house on Connecticut Avenue and rushed out. He was back almost instantly with a grip and considerable lipstick smeared on his cheek.
Boyd thought he heard a feminine voice in the darkness above calling goodbye as they hurtled away. He grinned to himself. This Angel!
Their next stop was before a drug store and Angel dashed in. But he was gone longer this time and seemed, according to a glimpse through the window, to be having trouble convincing the druggist. Angel came out empty-handed and beckoned to his two men.
Whittaker and Boyd walked in. A young pharmacist looked scared. There was no one else in the place.
Angel walked around behind the pharmacist. “Close the door,” said Angel. Three minutes later the pharmacist was bound quite securely in a back closet.
Angel ransacked the shelves and loaded up a ninety-eight-cent bag. They turned out the lights and closed the door softly behind them and went away.
Twenty-one minutes later a young chemical warfare classmate of Angel’s was hauled from the bosom of his family and after some argument and several lies from Angel permitted himself to be convinced by SECNAV’s Cadillac and went away with them.
They halted at an ordnance depot in Maryland at eight-fifteen and the young chemist opened padlocks and finally, with many words of caution, delivered into Angel’s hands three small flasks.
It was well before two when Angel and his men came back to the field. They alighted with their burdens and whisked them into the ship.
“Find that drink?” said the general indulgently.
“Yes, sir,” said Angel.
“Good boy!” said the general, chuckling over having been young once himself. He had not missed the lipstick and had applied the school solution.
Commander Dawson was growling and snarling around the ship like a vengeful priest. Behind him came two quartermasters carrying the precious standard chronometer and spyglass.
“Better get aboard,” said Dawson roughly. “And don’t monkey with those instruments. We’re almost ready.” His scowl promised that it didn’t matter to him what happened: this time he was going to get that rocket upstairs!
CHAPTER THREE
Moon Meeting
STARK death was the moon. No halftones, no softness. Black and white. Knife-edged peaks and sharp rills. Hot enough to fry iron. Cold enough to solidify air. Brutal, savage, dead. Strictly Mussorgsky.
A place you wouldn’t want to go on a honeymoon, Angel decided.
For all of Dawson’s growling they had not hit the target exactly. Slavinsky had drawn a big lampblack X below the USSR on a plateau near Tycho but the ship had hit nearly eight miles from it.
Hit was the word, for if they had not landed in pumice some thirteen feet thick things would have been dented. The abrasive dust had risen suddenly and drifted down with an unnatural slowness.
For a week they had been lying around in the padded cabin, experiencing spacesickness, worn out from accelerations and decelerations, living on K and D and C rations and cursing the engineers who had drawn such a thoroughly uncomfortable design.
Angel had sent off the pilot rocket as ordered, filled with the recording rolls, but he had added a few succinct notes of his own which he hoped the engineers would take to heart. Such things as the way air rarefied up front on the takeoff and nearly killed Boyd.
Such things as drinking bottles that wouldn’t throw water in your face when you got thirsty. Such things as straps to hold you casually down when your body began to wander around and helmets to keep your head from cracking against the overhead when you got up suddenly and found no gravity.
But for all the travail of the past week the Angel was bright-eyed and expectant. It was balanced off in his mind whether he would kill Slavinsky by slow fire or small knife cuts.
For Angel had very far from enjoyed being cheated of the glory of being the first man to fly to the moon and he distinctly disliked a man who would make a slave country of the United States. Prejudiced perhaps, but the Angel believed America was a fine country and should stay free.
Boyd raked up three packages, tying a line and a C-ration can, buoy-like, upon it. Whittaker got a port open, inside pane only, and looked at the scenery.
He turned and spat carefully into another can—experience had taught him, this trip—and then put on his space helmet, screwing the lucite dome down tight. He glanced at his companions.
Angel was having some trouble getting into his suit because of his hair, but when he had managed it he led the way to the space port. The three of them crawled over the supplies and entered the chamber, shutting the airtight behind them.
They checked their air supplies and then their communications. Satisfied, they let the outer door open. With a swoosh the air we
nt out and they began their vacuumatic lives.
It was thirty feet down but they didn’t use the built-in rungs. Angel stepped out into space and floated down like a miniature spaceship to plant his ducklike shoes deep into the soft pumice. Boyd followed him. Whittaker, carrying debris in the form of cans and bottles in his hugely gloved hands, came after.
As though on pogo sticks the three small ships bounced around to the rear of the spaceship. Boyd threw the three packages down and stamped them into the pumice. Whittaker scattered the debris around the one can which was the real buoy marker.
The discarded objects floated in slow motion into place and lay there in the deathly stillness.
They looked around and their sighs echoed in their earphones, one to the other. No tomb had ever been this dead.
They were landed in a twilight zone, thanks to Dawson. And if their suits—rather, vehicles—had not been so extremely well insulated they would already be feeling the cold.
The sky was ink. The landscape was a study in Old Dutch cleanser and broken basalt. A mountain range thrust startlingly sharp and high to the west. A king-size grand canyon dived away horribly to their south. A great low plain, once miscalled a sea, stretched endlessly toward Tycho.
Two miles away a meteor landed with a crash which made the pumice ripple like waves. A great column of the stuff, stiffly formed in an explosion pattern, almost stroboscopic, stood for some time, having neither gravity nor wind to disperse it.
A few fragments patted down, making new slow-motion bursts. But the meteor had landed at ten miles a second and they all winced and looked up into the blackness. Having atmosphere was a subtle blessing. Having none was horrible.
Looking up, Angel saw Earth. It was bigger than a Japanese moon and a lot prettier. It had colors, diffused and gentle, below its aura of atmosphere. It looked fairylike and unreal. Angel sighed and thought about his favorite bar.
They snowshoed around the ship again. The last of the sun, half visible like an upended saucer made of pure arc light, came to them through their leaded lucite helmets. That sun was taking a long, long time to set. Hours later it would still be sitting there. Things obviously took their time on the moon.