First on the Moon

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...

At a precise point in space spelled out by the Alpine computers Crag applied the first braking rockets. He realized that the act had been an immediate tip-off to the occupants o...

The great red sun was just breaking over the desert horizon when Crag got his last good look at earth. Its rays slanted upward, shadows fled from the sage; the obsidian sky with...

Nagel was dead. He lay sprawled in the ash, a pitifully small limp bundle in a deflated suit. He had gotten his wish--he would never see earth again. _Under the wide and starry...

"Martin Larkwell was a good boy," the superintendent said reminiscently, "and of course we're highly pleased he's made his mark in the world." He looked at the agent and beamed....

"One moment." Gotch turned back toward the door and beckoned. Another figure glided into the room--a shadow in the dim light. Crag caught the glint of a uniform. Air Force offic...

Crag studied the scene. He lay at one end of the great crescent of rock forming Backbone Ridge, the other end of which ended about half a mile from Red Dog. The floor of the cra...

Crag sighted the Red Dog party immediately--three figures plodding in single file toward Drone Baker. He saw with satisfaction that they had discarded the rocket launcher. He to...

"Gordon Nagel?" The professor turned the name over in his mind. "Yes, I believe I recall him. Let's see, that would have been about...." He paused, looking thoughtfully into space.

The earth was no longer a round full ball. It was a gibbous mass of milk-white light, humpbacked, a twisted giant in the sky whose reflected radiance swept the lunar night and d...

The communicator came to life with data on Pickering. The satelloid was moving higher, faster than the Aztec, riding the rim of the exosphere where the atmosphere is indistingui...

The earth was a thin crescent in the sky whose light no longer paled the stars. They gleamed, hard and brittle against the purple-black of space, the reds and yellows and brilli...

The room was like a prison--at least to Adam Crag. It was a square with a narrow bunk, a battered desk, two straight-back chairs and little else. Its one small window overlooked...

"Adam Crag was not a God-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 w...

"Again?" Crag plugged in his ear insert microphone thinking he wasn't going to like what he'd hear. Just when things had started looking smooth too. He cut Prochaska out of the...

"Max Prochaska was a real well-liked boy," Mrs. Arthur Bingham said firmly, "friendly with everyone in town. Of course, Vista was just a small place then," she added reminiscent...

Colonel Michael Gotch looked at the agent across the narrow expanse of his battered desk, then his eyes fell again to the dockets. Four dockets, four small sheaves of paper, eac...

If Colonel Michael Gotch were worried, he didn't show it. He puffed complacently on his black briar pipe watching and listening to the leathery-faced man across from him. His vi...

"Come quick!" The Chief stepped back and motioned with his head toward the instrument corner. Crag sprang to his feet with a sense of alarm. Richter and Larkwell were still asle...

"You're in trouble." Gotch spoke like a man carefully choosing his words. "Intelligence informs us that another rocket's been fired from east of the Caspian. BuNav's got a track...

The U. S. Navy's Space Scan Radar Station No. 5 picked up the new rocket before it was fairly into space. It clung to it with an electromagnetic train, bleeding it of data. The...