“I have some idea.”
(“Children! Children!”)
“I’m sorry, Peewee.”
“So am I. I’m edgy. I wish we were there.”
“So do I. Let me figure the course.” I counted degrees using Earth as a yardstick. I marked a place by eye, then tried again judging fifty-three degrees as a proportion of ninety. The results didn’t agree, so I tried to spot some stars to help me. They say you can see stars from the Moon even when the Sun is in the sky. Well, you can—but not easily. I had the Sun over my shoulder but was facing Earth, almost three-quarters full, and had the dazzling ground glare as well. The polarizer cut down the glare—and cut out the stars, too.
So I split my guesses and marked the spot. “Peewee? See that sharp peak with sort of a chin on its left profile? That ought to be the course, pretty near.”
“Let me check.” She tried it by compass, then touched helmets. “Nice going, Kip. Three degrees to the right and you’ve got it.”
I felt smug. “Shall we get moving?”
“Right. We go through the pass, then Tombaugh Station is due west.”
It was about ten miles to the mountains; we made short work of it. You can make time on the Moon—if it is flat and you can keep your balance. Peewee kept stepping it up until we were almost flying, long low strides that covered ground like an ostrich—and, do you know, it’s easier fast than slow. The only hazard, after I got the hang of it, was landing on a rock or hole or something and tripping. But that was hazard enough because I couldn’t pick my footing at that speed. I wasn’t afraid of falling; I felt certain that Oscar could take the punishment. But suppose I landed on my back? Probably smash the Mother Thing to jelly.
I was worried about Peewee, too. That cut-rate tourist suit wasn’t as rugged as Oscar. I’ve read about explosive decompression—I never want to see it. Especially not a little girl. But I didn’t dare use radio to warn her even though we were probably shielded from Wormface—and if I tugged on my leash I might make her fall.
The plain started to rise and Peewee let it slow us down. Presently we were walking, then we were climbing a scree slope. I stumbled but landed on my hands and got up—one-sixth gravity has advantages as well as hazards. We reached the top and Peewee led us into a pocket in the rocks. She stopped and touched helmets. “Anybody home? You two all right?”
(“All right, dear.”)
“Sure,” I agreed. “A little winded, maybe.” That was an understatement but if Peewee could take it, I could.
“We can rest,” she answered, “and take it easy from here on. I wanted to get us out of the open as fast as possible. They’ll never find us here.”
I thought she was right. A wormface ship flying over might spot us, if they could see down as well as up—probably just a matter of touching a control. But our chances were better now. “This is the time to recharge your empty bottle.”
“Okay.”
None too soon—the bottle which had been almost full had dropped by a third, more like half. She couldn’t make it to Tombaugh Station on that—simple arithmetic. So I crossed my fingers and got to work. “Partner, will you untie this cat’s cradle?”
While Peewee fumbled at knots, I started to take a drink—then stopped, ashamed of myself. Peewee must be chewing her tongue to work up saliva by now—and I hadn’t been able to think of any way to get water to her. The tank was inside my helmet and there was no way to reach it without making me—and Mother Thing—dead in the process.
If I ever lived to be an engineer I’d correct that!
I decided that it was idiotic not to drink because she couldn’t; the lives of all of us might depend on my staying in the best condition I could manage. So I drank and ate three malted milk tablets and a salt tablet, then had another drink. It helped a lot but I hoped Peewee hadn’t noticed. She was busy unwinding clothesline—anyhow it was hard to see into a helmet.
I took Peewee’s empty bottle off her back, making darn sure to close her outside stop valve first—there’s supposed to be a one-way valve where an air hose enters a helmet but I no longer trusted her suit; it might have more cost-saving shortcomings. I laid the empty on the ground by a full one, looked at, straightened up and touched helmets. “Peewee, disconnect the bottle on the left side of my back.”
“Why, Kip?”
“Who’s doing this job?” I had a reason but was afraid she might argue. My lefthand bottle held pure oxygen; the others were oxy-helium. It was full, except for a few minutes of fiddling last night in Centerville. Since I couldn’t possibly give her bottle a full charge, the next best thing was to give her a half-charge of straight oxygen.
She shut up and removed it.
I set about trying to transfer pressure between bottles whose connections didn’t match. There was no way to do it properly, short of tools a quarter of a million miles away—or over in Tombaugh Station which was just as bad. But I did have adhesive tape.
Oscar’s manual called for two first-aid kits. I didn’t know what was supposed to be in them; the manual had simply given USAF stock numbers. I hadn’t been able to guess what would be useful in an outside kit—a hypodermic needle, maybe, sharp enough to stab through and give a man morphine when he needed it terribly. But since I didn’t know, I had stocked inside and outside with bandage, dressings, and a spool of surgical tape.
I was betting on the tape.
I butted the mismatched hose connections together, tore off a scrap of bandage and wrapped it around the junction—I didn’t want sticky stuff on the joint; it could foul the operation on a suit. Then I taped the junction, wrapping tightly, working very painstakingly and taping three inches on each side as well as around the joint—if tape could restrain that pressure a few moments, there would still be one deuce of a force trying to drag that joint apart. I didn’t want it to pull apart at the first jolt. I used the entire roll.
I motioned Peewee to touch helmets. “I’m about to open the full bottle. The valve on the empty is already open. When you see me start to close the valve on the full one, you close the other one—fast! Got it?”
“Close the valve when you do, quickly. Roger.”
“Stand by. Get your hand on the valve.” I grabbed that lump of bandaged joint in one fist, squeezed as hard as I could, and put my other hand on the valve. If that joint let go, maybe my hand would go with it—but if the stunt failed, little Peewee didn’t have long to live. So I really gripped.
Watching both gauges, I barely cracked the valve. The hose quivered; the needle gauge that read “empty” twitched. I opened the valve wide.
One needle swung left, the other right. Quickly they approached half-charge. “Now!” I yelled uselessly and started closing the valve.
And felt that patchwork joint start to give.
The hoses squeezed out of my fist but we lost only a fraction of gas. I found that I was trying to close a valve that was closed tight. Peewee had hers closed. The gauges each showed just short of half full—there was air for Peewee.
I sighed and found I had been holding my breath.
Peewee put her helmet against mine and said very soberly, “Thanks, Kip.”
“Charton Drugs service, ma’am—no tip necessary. Let me tidy this mess, you can tie me and we’ll go.”
“You won’t have to carry but one extra bottle now.”
“Wrong, Peewee. We may do this stunt five or six times until there’s only a whisper left”—or until the tape wears out, I added to myself. The first thing I did was to re-wrap the tape on its spool—and if you think that is easy, wearing gloves and with the adhesive drying out as fast as you wind it, try it.
In spite of the bandage, sticky stuff had smeared the connections when the hoses parted. But it dried so hard that it chipped off the bayonet-and-snap joint easily. I didn’t worry about the screw-thread joint; I didn’t expect to use it on a suit. We mounted Peewee’s recharged bottle and I warned her that it was straight oxygen. “Cut your pressure and feed from both bottles. W
hat’s your blood color reading?”
“I’ve been carrying it low on purpose.”
“Idiot! You want to keel over? Kick your chin valve! Get into normal range!”
We mounted one bottle I had swiped on my back, tied the other and the oxy bottle on my front, and were on our way.
Earth mountains are predictable; lunar mountains aren’t, they’ve never been shaped by water. We came to a hole too steep to go down other than by rope and a wall beyond I wasn’t sure we could climb. With pitons and snap rings and no space suits it wouldn’t have been hard in the Rockies—but not the way we were. Peewee reluctantly led us back. The scree slope was worse going down—I backed down on hands and knees, with Peewee belaying the line above me. I wanted to be a hero and belay for her—we had a brisk argument. “Oh, quit being big and male and gallantly stupid, Kip! You’ve got four big bottles and the Mother Thing and you’re topheavy and I climb like a goat.”
I shut up.
At the bottom she touched helmets. “Kip,” she said worriedly, “I don’t know what to do.”
“What’s the trouble?”
“I kept a little south of where the crawler came through. I wanted to avoid crossing right where the crawler crossed. But I’m beginning to think there isn’t any other way.”
“I wish you had told me before.”
“But I didn’t want them to find us! The way the crawler came is the first place they’ll look.”
“Mmm…yes.” I looked up at the range that blocked us. In pictures, the mountains of the Moon look high and sharp and rugged; framed by the lens of a space suit they look simply impossible.
I touched helmets again. “We might find another way—if we had time and air and the resources of a major expedition. We’ve got to take the route the crawler did. Which way?”
“A little way north… I think.”
We tried to work north along the foothills but it was slow and difficult. Finally we backed off to the edge of the plain. It made us jumpy but it was a chance we had to take. We walked, briskly but not running, for we didn’t dare miss the crawler’s tracks. I counted paces and when I reached a thousand I tugged the line; Peewee stopped and we touched helmets. “We’ve come half a mile. How much farther do you think it is? Or could it possibly be behind us?”
Peewee looked up at the mountains. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Everything looks different.”
“We’re lost?”
“Uh…it ought to be ahead somewhere. But we’ve come pretty far. Do you want to turn around?”
“Peewee, I don’t even know the way to the post office.”
“But what should we do?”
“I think we ought to keep going until you are absolutely certain the pass can’t be any farther. You watch for the pass and I’ll watch for crawler tracks. Then, when you’re certain that we’ve come too far, we’ll turn back. We can’t afford to make short casts like a dog trying to pick up a rabbit’s scent.”
“All right.”
I had counted two thousand more paces, another mile, when Peewee stopped. “Kip? It can’t be ahead of us. The mountains are higher and solider than ever.”
“You’re sure? Think hard. Better to go another five miles than to stop too short.”
She hesitated. She had her face pushed up close to her lens while we touched helmets and I could see her frown. Finally she said, “It’s not up ahead, Kip.”
“That settles it. To the rear, march! ‘Lay on, Macduff, and curs’d be him who first cries, “Hold, enough!”’”
“King Lear.”
“Macbeth. Want to bet?”
Those tracks were only half a mile behind us—I had missed them. They were on bare rock with only the lightest covering of dust; the Sun had been over my shoulder when we first crossed them, and the caterpillar-tread marks hardly showed—I almost missed them going back.
They led off the plain and straight up into the mountains.
We couldn’t possibly have crossed those mountains without following the crawler’s trail; Peewee had had the optimism of a child. It wasn’t a road; it was just something a crawler on caterpillar treads could travel. We saw places that even a crawler hadn’t been able to go until whoever pioneered it set a whopping big blast, backed off and waited for a chunk of mountain to get out of the way. I doubt if Skinny and Fatty carved that goat’s path; they didn’t look fond of hard work. Probably one of the exploration parties. If Peewee and I had attempted to break a new trail, we’d be there yet, relics for tourists of future generations.
But where a tread vehicle can go, a man can climb. It was no picnic; it was trudge, trudge, trudge, up and up and up—watch for loose rock and mind where you put your feet. Sometimes we belayed with the line. Nevertheless it was mostly just tedious.
When Peewee had used that half-charge of oxygen, we stopped and I equalized pressures again, this time being able to give her only a quarter-charge—like Achilles and the tortoise, I could go on indefinitely giving her half of what was left—if the tape held out. It was in bad shape but the pressure was only half as great and I managed to keep the hoses together until we closed valves.
I should say that I had it fairly easy. I had water, food pills, dexedrine. The last was enormous help, any time I felt fagged I borrowed energy with a pep-pill. Poor Peewee had nothing but air and courage.
She didn’t even have the cooling I had. Since she was on a richer mix, one bottle being pure oxygen, it did not take as much flow to keep up her blood-color index—and I warned her not to use a bit more than necessary; she could not afford air for cooling, she had to save it to breathe.
“I know, Kip,” she answered pettishly. “I’ve got the needle jiggling the red light right now. Think I’m a fool?”
“I just want to keep you alive.”
“All right, but quit treating me as a child. You put one foot in front of the other. I’ll make it.”
“Sure you will!”
As for Mother Thing she always said she was all right and she was breathing the air I had (a trifle used), but I didn’t know what was hardship to her. Hanging by his heels all day would kill a man; to a bat it is a nice rest—yet bats are our cousins.
I talked with her as we climbed. It didn’t matter what; her songs had the effect on me that it has to have your own gang cheering. Poor Peewee didn’t even have that comfort, except when we stopped and touched helmets—we still weren’t using radio; even in the mountains we were fearful of attracting attention.
We stopped again and I gave Peewee one-eighth of a charge. The tape was in very poor shape afterwards; I doubted if it would serve again. I said, “Peewee, why don’t you run your oxy-helium bottle dry while I carry this one? It’ll save your strength.”
“I’m all right.”
“Well, you won’t use air so fast with a lighter load.”
“You have to have your arms free. Suppose you slip?”
“Peewee, I won’t carry it in my arms. My righthand backpack bottle is empty; I’ll chuck it. Help me make the change and I’ll still be carrying only four—just balanced evenly.”
“Sure, I’ll help. But I’ll carry two bottles. Honest, Kip, the weight isn’t anything. But if I run the oxy-helium bottle dry, what would I breathe while you’re giving me my next charge?”
I didn’t want to tell her that I had doubts about another charge, even in those ever smaller amounts. “Okay, Peewee.”
She changed bottles for me; we threw the dead one down a black hole and went on. I don’t know how far we climbed nor how long; I know that it seemed like days—though it couldn’t have been, not on that much air. During mile after mile of trail we climbed at least eight thousand feet. Heights are hard to guess—but I’ve seen mountains I knew the heights of. Look it up yourself—the first range east of Tombaugh Station.
That’s a lot of climbing, even at one-sixth gee.
It seemed endless because I didn’t know how far it was nor how long it had been. We both had watches—under our suits. A
helmet ought to have a built-in watch. I should have read Greenwich time from the face of Earth. But I had no experience and most of the time I couldn’t see Earth because we were deep in mountains—anyhow I didn’t know what time it had been when we left the ship.
Another thing space suits should have is rear-view mirrors. While you are at it, add a window at the chin so that you can see where you step. But of the two, I would take a rear-view mirror. You can’t glance behind you; you have to turn your entire body. Every few seconds I wanted to see if they were following us—and I couldn’t spare the effort. All that nightmare trek I kept imagining them on my heels, expecting a wormy hand on my shoulder. I listened for footsteps which couldn’t be heard in vacuum anyhow.
When you buy a space suit, make them equip it with a rear-view mirror. You won’t have Wormface on your trail but it’s upsetting to have even your best friend sneak up behind you. Yes, and if you are coming to Moon, bring a sunshade. Oscar was doing his best and York had done an honest job on the air conditioning—but the untempered Sun is hotter than you would believe and I didn’t dare use air just for cooling, any more than Peewee could.
It got hot and stayed hot and sweat ran down and I itched all over and couldn’t scratch and sweat got into my eyes and burned. Peewee must have been parboiled. Even when the trail wound through deep gorges lighted only by reflection off the far wall, so dark that we turned on headlamps, I still was hot—and when we curved back into naked sunshine, it was almost unbearable. The temptation to kick the chin valve, let air pour in and cool me, was almost too much. The desire to be cool seemed more important than the need to breathe an hour hence.
If I had been alone, I might have done it and died. But Peewee was worse off than I was. If she could stand it, I had to.
I had wondered how we could be so lost so close to human habitation—and how crawly monsters could hide a base only forty miles from Tombaugh Station. Well, I had time to think and could figure it out because I could see the Moon around me.
Compared with the Moon the Arctic is swarming with people. The Moon’s area is about equal to Asia—with fewer people than Centerville. It might be a century before anyone explored that plain where Wormface was based. A rocket ship passing over wouldn’t notice anything even if camouflage hadn’t been used; a man in a space suit would never go there; a man in a crawler would find their base only by accident even if he took the pass we were in and ranged around that plain. The lunar mapping satellite could photograph it and re-photograph, then a technician in London might note a tiny difference on two films. Maybe. Years later somebody might check up—if there wasn’t something more urgent to do in a pioneer outpost where everything is new and urgent.