Part 7

He threw the rope. Because they were rotating, the first cast was wild. Sammy Breen wasn't where he threw the rope when it got to him. It had McCauley's own speed of rotation, so it did not go where he aimed. It took half a dozen attempts to get the rope to where the younger man could catch the squirming line in the stiff gauntlet of his space suit.

"Now, fasten your reamer to the rope," commanded McCauley. "Tie on your other tools. Give me every bit of equipment you've got except your air tanks."

"Y-yes, sir," said Sammy's voice in the helmet phones.

Spinning as they were, the universe of stars and sun and the vast, unfamiliar, brilliantly lighted object which was Earth seemed to be engaged in a monstrous saraband. Now Sammy was a glaringly bright object with full, blazing sunshine hitting his space suit. Again he was lighted from the side with the brightness of Earth behind him, racing past his body with all its features blurred. Yet again the stars seemed not points of light but streaks, and there were moments when the sun itself was a flashing band of intolerable brightness. But somehow this vast and silent motion of the cosmos seemed unreal. It was like a hallucination. It was like a nightmare in which absolutely nothing was true; in which there was no actual sun or Earth or stars, because in reality those things did not swing in lunatic sweeps around anybody, anywhere.

While the younger man blindly obeyed McCauley, they continued to drift away toward infinity. Curiously enough, the centrifugal force caused by their spinning gave McCauley the only sensation of weight that he'd had since his arrival at the orbit of the Platform.

Randy's voice came in McCauley's headphones.

"Ed! My God!"

His tone was anguished and hopeless.

"Randy," said McCauley in clipped tones. "You can be useful. When we're in line with you, say 'tip.' Say it again. Keep it up."

Almost instantly Randy said, "Tip." Then, "Tip." Then, "Tip" again. Sammy Breen said hoarsely:

"All my equipment, sir, is fastened to your space rope. Everything but my air tanks."

"Right. Now let go of it," commanded McCauley. "Randy, how fast are we drifting away?"

Randy's voice came hoarse and harsh.

"I don't know. Slowly, but you're a good hundred and fifty feet off. A trifle more."

McCauley calculated aloud, for his own comfort as well as the information of Randy and Sammy Breen.

"We've been drifting maybe half a minute. Those 'tips' of yours were about one second apart. We're spinning once in two seconds at the ends of a thirty-foot rope. Each of us has an angular velocity of something over forty feet per second. Forty-five or better. Our joint speed away from the Platform--a hundred and fifty feet in thirty seconds.... Somewhere around five feet per second. Not much more, anyhow! We're practically crawling away, but we're spinning like blazes."

Randy said, dry-throated:

"Even if we had rope, Ed, I couldn't get it to you."

"I know," said McCauley curtly. "Lieutenant?"

"Yes, sir," said Sammy Breen's voice, quite steady now. "I've thought of something, sir. If we act fast and I cut the rope at just the right instant, sir...."

"Keep quiet!" snapped McCauley. "That's an order! Right now I want you to push that equipment at the end of my rope away from you as hard as you can, in the direction we're spinning. The way we're spinning! You've got too much angular velocity. Understand?"

"Yes, sir," said Sammy. "I'm glad, sir...."

"Keep quiet!" snapped McCauley again. "Push!"

The cumbersome and weighty mass of equipment, which on Earth would have weighed nearly as much as Sammy Breen, swung away from him. It went around until it was behind McCauley. There was now a system of three weights on a string. The middle one, which was McCauley, did not spin around. He only rotated. The others swung in a wide circle about him.

"Get set, Randy," he said sharply, "and have your rope ready."

"What...." Then Randy understood. He swore.

McCauley let go of Sammy Breen's space rope at an instant when in his circle around McCauley he moved toward the Platform. At that instant, of course, McCauley still moved away. But he let go. The result was that he sent Sammy Breen floating back toward the spidery metal framework, and he himself moved away faster. In effect, he'd taken to himself a large part of Sammy's momentum toward destruction. But not quite all. There was still Sammy's equipment, which formed a new two-weight system of masses spinning about a common center of gravity. Yet it did look as if he'd seen the possibility of saving one of the two of them, and had taken the action which gave that chance at life to Lieutenant Sammy Breen.

"Major!" Sammy cried out desperately. "This is all wrong! It was my fault! I should have cut the rope! I protest, sir...."

"Shut up!" rasped McCauley. "Within a minute or two you'll float to the Platform. It's not likely you'll strike a beam direct. Get ready to throw your rope to Captain Hall so he can pull you in!"

Now he cut his own space rope and held its end. With Sammy Breen gone away toward life, he and the mass of equipment at the rope's other end still had a spinning motion. But it was a slow one. Yet he could repeat the same trick he'd worked with Sammy, though not with the same effectiveness. He could sacrifice the weight at the end of his rope, just as before he'd sacrificed himself. If he chose the moment when in their spinning the heavy objects were moving fastest toward the stars, that would be the moment when his own motion toward annihilation was least.

He let go. The awkward clump of tethered space equipment went swiftly toward nowhere. McCauley seemed to cease to drift away from where Sammy Breen, floating steadily, made bubbling noises to himself as if he were sobbing in shame that McCauley had given him life at the expense of his own. McCauley was now a good six hundred feet off in emptiness from the lacework of silvery bars.

"How am I doing, Randy?" asked McCauley curtly. "You want to catch Sammy when he comes through the framework. Get to where you can help him. But when you have time, make an estimate on me."

There was silence. The Platform hurtled on around Earth. The changing, distorted patterns of land and sea seemed to writhe as they went past in the intolerably brilliant sunshine. But over at the very edge of the bright disk a little trace of blackness appeared. That would be the night line on Earth. The Platform and its company moved separately yet together toward that darkness. Presently it would cover half the disk of Earth, and then it would sweep on until only a swiftly thinning crescent of light remained, and then the Platform would plunge into utter darkness, where most of the cosmos was only shining stars and a pallid moon, the rest the blackness of the Pit. And of course, in this darkness the building satellite's unprotected substance would--like McCauley--drop to a temperature of two hundred and twenty-odd degrees below zero.

"Throw your rope to Captain Hall!" McCauley snapped to Sammy Breen. "I know you'll turn somersaults. But throw it!"

Silence again. McCauley made his own estimate. It was not good. He did not drift swiftly away into the emptiness which would presently be blackness and cold and death. But he had not lost all his velocity away from the Platform.

He took the wrench with which he fastened together the frame members of the unlikely object which he left with such deadly deliberation. He drew up his feet below him. He placed the wrench under them. At a carefully chosen instant he thrust it violently away.

He pushed the wrench toward nothingness. Its mass may have been ten pounds on Earth. His own mass, with his space suit and air tanks and the like, was probably thirty times as much. If he thrust the wrench away at thirty feet per second--and he did--he would change his own velocity by one foot per second. This might mean a slowing of his motion away, or it might mean a terribly slow drift back to the Platform and a chance for life.

He took his space knife. It might weigh a pound. He threw it. Systematically and unhurriedly he denuded his belt of the tools hanging to it. A mass of possibly sixty pounds, thrown violently away, changed his velocity by as much as six or--considering that he had less mass with each bit of mass he discarded--probably seven feet per second.

"I've got Sammy," said Randy's voice, hoarse and strained. "He's all right.... You don't seem to be going away any more, Ed. You're no farther than you were. Maybe I can knot ropes.... No. There aren't enough."

"Right," said McCauley with an odd calm. "There wouldn't be time, anyhow. We're heading for eclipse. I've got to get back on my own--and fast. The storybooks say rockets are used by men in space to go bobbing around in their space suits. We know better. But I'm going to use one air tank."

He writhed in the harness outside his space suit. He managed to detach one of his two air tanks. He aimed its pipe carefully.

Air poured out with a rush when he opened the stop-cock. There was two thousand pounds pressure to begin with. The tank had been in unshielded sunshine for more than an hour. The effective pressure of the air had tripled, at least, because of its rise in temperature. It made a rocket jet of gas. McCauley could feel its quick, sharp tug at him.

It went empty.

He put it under his feet and gave it the most violent of thrusts toward the Milky Way. Now he could see that he had given the discarded things all the momentum that had carried him away from the Platform, plus all he had taken from Sammy Breen. He was moving toward the Platform. It no longer dwindled as time went by. It grew in size with an intolerable, incredible slowness. But that slowness amounted to doom.

"You're headed back," said Randy's agonized voice in his helmet phones. "But it's slow, Ed! It's desperately slow!"

The blackness, which was Earth's own shadow cast upon its night-side surface, was now fully halfway from the rim of the world toward that halfway point which was the middle of the space that Earth occupied within the cosmos.

"There's about fifteen minutes left before totality," said McCauley with deliberation. "I've one more thing I can throw away. But I need to steer with it too, and I can't be accurate at this distance. I don't dare to use it from so far away. I've no space rope left to throw for you to catch. I have to throw that last thing away at the very last instant."

He heard confused sounds. Sammy Breen, back at the Platform, made incoherent noises. He probably gesticulated, because Randy understood.

"Yes," said Randy's voice harshly. "Make it quick. But take care! More than your own life depends on your being careful now!"

Sammy Breen gulped. McCauley heard him. Then silence again.

It was necessary to wait. McCauley was a tiny, glistening object in emptiness, a desperately long way from the equally glistening Platform. He turned slowly, foolishly, as he floated. Away off against a background of stars--but the sun moved momentarily nearer its edge--there was a shape that now was not quite half of a circle of brilliant light, and more than half of a circle of darkness like that of the Abyss. It did not look like Earth. It had not the least appearance of a world in which human beings lived and moved and breathed and loved and died. It was a monstrosity whose details changed their shape as half minutes and quarter minutes went by. And continually and implacably the darkness spread over more of it.

Randy's voice came desperately.

"Hurry, Sammy! Give it to me and get back into the cabin. We won't have time to wait our turns at the air lock.... Right! Now get back in the cabin!"

"How am I doing now, Randy?" McCauley asked calmly. "How's my line of motion?"

"I don't like it!" said Randy fiercely. "It's off to one side! Sammy just brought me all the extra space ropes. He tied them together inside. I'm checking them now. There are four of them."

McCauley said:

"I hate to seem overanxious, but how much will I miss the Platform by?"

"Too much," answered Randy bitterly. "What have you got left that you can throw away to steer by?"

"Eighty pounds of mass," said McCauley with composure. "But I have to wait until the last second."

Silence again. Darkness covered three-quarters of the Earth's strange disk. It was not the darkness of a night on Earth, with trees and plants and men as darker shapes against starlit or moonlit ground or sea. It was the blackness of nothingness, of annihilation.

"You can't stay out much longer, Randy," McCauley said. "I'll have to try it."

"There's the moon," said Randy hoarsely. "I can see by that, ... maybe."

Again silence. The shape which was Earth became the thinnest of crescents. The sun blazed fiercely almost at its outer rim.

The sun turned orange, crimson, ruby-red. It ceased to be a circle. One edge blacked out. It was half blacked out. It was gone.

McCauley wriggled in the harness outside his space suit. He spoke deliberately.

"I'm going to take all the deep breaths I can, Randy. I'll even let a little extra pressure into my suit. Then I'll take off my last air tank and try to steady myself with its jet of air. Then I'll put it under my feet and jump against it, toward you. Now listen! If anything goes wrong, it won't be your fault! Understand? Don't take any crazy risks. If I go on past the Platform, get into the cabin fast before the cold comes! That is my order! I expect you to obey it!"

"Cripes, Ed!" Randy's voice broke.

McCauley bled air into his suit. He breathed deeply and fast, saturating his lungs with oxygen. He removed the tank and then spent precious seconds stripping away the harness that had held tools and extra equipment to his suit.

He jetted away the air. In the utter silence that was the universe, the whistle of escaping compression was conducted to his gloved hands and so to the remaining air inside his space suit. He used the jet with infinite care. The tank tugged briefly and his random body rotation stopped. He saw the Platform, almost incredibly dim in the moonlight.

He jumped against the mass of the air tank and harness together. In seconds he could see that he was moving closer toward the silvery, spidery framework in the moonshine. He kept himself still. Nothing he could do now would add anything to his chance for life, and exertion would lessen the time left before he suffocated for lack of air.

He relaxed by an iron effort of will. He had gambled. He could win or he could lose. But he must keep the calmness of a man who sees the stakes down and waits for the outcome.

The Platform was no more than a hundred and fifty yards away. No more than a hundred.

He would miss it. He would pass sixty feet or more beyond its outermost edge. Randy would undoubtedly try to throw him the space ropes he'd tied together. The odds were enormously against his being able to catch them.

He said nothing. If Randy thought that he'd run out of air before he reached the point nearest the Platform, he would reproach himself less; he'd believe he couldn't have done anything, anyhow.

Fifty yards. Twenty. He saw glittering metal only sixty feet away. But there was no conceivable action he could take to move himself that sixty feet.

Then something dark came toward him. It grew larger. It was Randy, plunging out from the girders with a hundred and twenty feet of space rope trailing behind him, made fast to a firmly bolted beam.

He collided with McCauley. McCauley felt him gripping fiercely. He felt Randy clinging to him savagely against the jerk of the rope which must tighten presently.

The jerk came, violent and abrupt.

Randy gasped in relief. He took away one space-suited arm to haul at the space rope that had checked McCauley's slow drift past to nothingness.

"Very nice work, Randy," said McCauley composedly, "but you took an awful chance."

They bumped against the substance of the Platform--one square metal tube some three inches by five.

"Can you hold on?" demanded Randy, panting. "I'll give you one of my air tanks!"

They were out at the farthermost limit of the framework of the Space Platform. McCauley's faceplate began to frost now, with the loss of heat to the darkness.

"Make it fast," said McCauley. "We want to get in out of the cold."

Fumblings. Clatterings. McCauley heard Randy's teeth chatter, which might be cold or might be reaction from the terror he'd felt on McCauley's account.

"Right!" McCauley said suddenly. He felt air blowing past his face. Randy's extra tank was connected. "I'm all set now. Let's get headed for the cabin."

"Hold it!" said Randy angrily. "You tie a space rope to yourself and loop it around a beam! Do you want to take a chance on slipping away? Maybe there is only one chance in ten thousand of getting lost, but there's no need to take that!"

"Okay, boss," said McCauley. "I shoulda known better."

Hardly more than seconds later he was sliding toward the cabin, Randy following close behind. He came to a joint where three of the beams came together. He unlooped his space rope from the near side, looped it around beyond the joint, crawled over, and slid again.

The cold came fast, but they would make it. Already his mind was at work on a matter that bothered him. He was in charge of the building of the Platform. That meant that he had to think about the feelings of the men under him. Randy was all right. He'd done a good job, and he knew it. But Sammy Breen was different. He was a very young officer, and he felt right now that he'd blundered and imperiled a senior officer--practically killed him, in fact--and he'd be in a state of almost hysterical self-abasement. Not a good state for young officers to be in.

When McCauley squirmed out of the air lock, young Sammy Breen looked at him. He was deathly white and utterly ashamed.

"Hm," said McCauley ruefully. "Sammy, I think I'll have to report myself for incompetence. When a second man's standing by while somebody does a tricky job, he ought to be sure that his space rope can't slip. I didn't. I doggone near got you killed, Sammy. I'm sorry."

Sammy Breen made an inarticulate sound. Then Randy came out of the air lock.

"For the love of Heaven, Sammy!" he said, scolding. "It's your trick to fix food! We've got less than an hour for eating before the sun comes back. And you haven't even got the stuff heating up! What kind of a cook are you, anyhow?"

Sammy swallowed. He swallowed again. Neither McCauley nor Randy mentioned the late so nearly complete disaster. Randy was kidding him. McCauley made a joke of it, too.

Sammy put the food on to thaw and heat. He struggled to become worthy of the companionship of men like McCauley and Randy Hall. Presently he swallowed and said accusingly:

"You characters were late for dinner. Don't blame me if it's cold!"

He looked anxiously at them. He hoped....

McCauley grinned at him. Randy laughed. They laughed together. Lieutenant Sammy Breen felt wonderfully good. And he would be very careful hereafter.

_4_

(There was high adventure on the moon when it was first colonized. Men faced various ways of dying--all of them unpleasant--and found that simply staying alive was a great satisfaction and a full-time occupation. Because of this spirit--which is that of true adventure--there came to be bases where hydroponic gardens freshened the air and men took continued living as a matter of course. This, obviously, was not adventure. So problems arose. Men began to be moved by other motives than the zest they'd known at first. But there were still a great many ways of getting killed on the moon. So there came a time when Colonel Ed McCauley had to insist that certain men under his command put first things first, as adventurers do, and not act for the gratification of their problem personalities.)

Traveling at moon gait, which is the standard travel pace on Earth's big moon, McCauley had ten of the last twenty miles behind him when he saw the sledge trail in the dust. He frowned at it and looked over to the west. He saw Earth, blue-green and glamorous, hanging as usual in the lunar sky just above the edges of the ring mountains. But Earth was always just there. He squinted at the sun through the faceplate of his helmet. It was a trifle over ten degrees above the horizon and it moved across the black, star-speckled sky at half a degree per hour. In twenty hours, then, lunar night would fall. And here was the sledge track that said that the relay unit for Repeater Two, carrying word to and from Farside and the rest of the human race, had passed this way en route to be set up; but the lack of returning footprints said that the men with it had not come back.

Repeater One was already in place and ready to operate. Repeaters Three and Four had also been put in position by men from faraway Farside Base. Repeater Two was necessary to bring Farside Base into communication with the rest of the cosmos. Two weeks of lunar night with no word from outside the base and not even Earth to look at in the sky--this would not be good for the men on Farside.

McCauley stopped. He'd been moving in that swooping, semi-flying fashion which the lesser lunar gravity allows. He stared at the trail. No, the men had not come back. Yet he'd ordered a party of two to set up the relay unit. It was to be put into place on the very tip of a mountain that was now away below the horizon. There it would be in line of sight of Repeater One, which was relatively near, and Repeater Three, which was farther away but which in turn could relay signals to Four, which was farthest away of all. From Four, the relayed messages would go on to Farside Base. When all this was accomplished, the Grimaldi Base ten miles distant could communicate with Farside through Repeaters One, Two, Three, and Four, and with Earth by line-of-sight transmission; so Farside could communicate with Earth and through Earth Relay with all the other moon bases--in short, with all humanity. But Two should have been up and in operation by now.

McCauley shook his head impatiently inside his space helmet. He'd been away from his command for thirty hours, during which he'd traveled twenty miles on foot, at moon gait, to Gerritson Bay. It wasn't a bay, of course, but an intrusion of now-frozen lava into the mountainous country here at the edge of the moon's earthside surface. He'd been met by a moon jeep and had traveled seven hundred miles over a _mare_--one of the dark areas that were once thought to be seas but actually were dry and level--to the main lunar base near Hipparchus. He'd had a one-hour conference with the base commander there, trying to work out something to prevent the first murder on Earth's big satellite. The conference was unsatisfactory. He'd come back to Gerritson Bay and now he'd covered ten of the twenty remaining miles to Grimaldi Base. When he reached Grimaldi the excessively irritating problem of a murder in the making was still unsolved, and now in addition there was the failure to complete placing the relay at the site of Repeater Two. The sledge ought to be in its place on the peak which was invisible from here, and the men who'd set it up should have returned. They hadn't.

He flipped on his space radio and said curtly:

"McCauley calling relay placing party. Come in!"