Part 8

There was no answer. He called again and again. Then he called Grimaldi Base. Again no answer. He was out of radio contact with all humanity on the moon--even his own base ten miles away--though by switching frequencies he could raise Earth Relay a quarter million miles farther away. The men with the moon sledge might only be behind a mountain wall or anywhere in any direction below the horizon, but radio communication on the moon is limited to line-of-sight because there is no air and hence no layer of ions to bounce radio signals down behind obstacles or around the moon's curvature.

McCauley started off again, fuming. Moon gait is a highly specialized form of travel. In one-sixth gravity a man can cover ten miles an hour over rough ground if he knows the trick of the gait and the trail is marked. He travels in slow-motion giant steps, with something of the effect of an extremely deliberate ballet. He begins with a leap up and forward, and he rises slowly and deliberately while soaring ahead. At mid-leap he is six feet higher than at take-off. Then he descends slowly and with dignity, touches ground and strides at the same time, and bounds up and ahead once more. There are long seconds between steps and long yards between strides. When a person is used to it, moon gait is almost restful. Some people even find it familiar. They've dreamed of such effortless half flight in their sleep.

Now, though he was disturbed, McCauley made two miles with no other known cause for worry than the lateness of the two men who'd placed the relay and the prospective killing he'd had on his mind before. He passed between precipices and over dust-strewn stone and through winding defiles. The two men should be back....

Then he spotted something. Abruptly he raised his arms and extended both feet before him. He came down to the ground and stopped short. Then--not soaring this time--he walked back to an object on the trail.

It was an air tank, exactly like the two tanks at the back of his own space suit. It had been dropped from the moon sledge. It would hold air for one man for three hours.

Men driving a moon sledge would wear one tank on their space suits for safety, and they'd shed one for lightness. They'd breathe from the much larger tanks on the sledge itself while they traveled. Spare and extra tanks like this would ride on the sledge. It was not easy to imagine that it had dropped. One man would go on ahead of the sledge and one would follow. It was hard to believe that the second man would not notice the loss of an air tank. Air tanks were life. True, a sledge party always had more air than was needed for any expected journey--a good margin for emergency--but this tank could cut the margin for this journey seriously.

McCauley growled to himself. He knew the calculations for placing the relay. The mountain beyond the horizon was an eight-hour journey by sledge--the horizon on the moon is only two miles away instead of eight. Breathing from the sledge, the men would arrive with one tank on their suits untapped, another, also untapped, to be mounted; and an extra tank for good measure. When they'd put the sledge in place and aired its beams and set up the nondirectional auxiliary antennae, they'd start back with two full tanks each and another one for reserve. They'd make better time coming back--six hours, no more. And each man had a full six hours on his back, and there were three additional hours in the extra they'd take turns carrying. It was ample margin. But now the spare tank was left behind. There was no margin.

McCauley tried to lift the tank. But it had lain in the shadow of a boulder, out of the sun's fierce glare--on moon dust, radiating heat away toward the stars. It had cooled off to the temperature of a shadow, two hundred and forty degrees below zero. It was frozen. The air was liquid air. The tank was more brittle than glass was.

It slipped, striking the boulder. It cracked and broke. A glistening liquid poured out and evaporated instantly. Where it fell into shadow, part of it froze and then vanished more quickly than any earthly frost.

McCauley growled again. Air was precious on the moon. But there was no use crying when it was spilt. He turned around and began his journey again. He had good reason to worry now.

He was a singular, slow-motion soaring figure in a polished silvery space suit. Where there was a rise in the ground, he came smoothly up from behind it, the glaring sun glowing on his space armor. Extending one leg in what might pass as a version of a choreographer's arabesque, he came down on the extended foot and stepped on it, floating gently upward and forward swiftly in a continued series of seeming flights. He went through winding passes where the sledge trail was plain in the dust below him, he soared across preposterous areas strewn with boulders the size of apartment houses. Once, going through a narrow gap in the wall of an unnamed crater--a very small one, barely two miles across--he passed a spot which showed that the two men had changed places. The one in advance had gone to the rear, and the one who'd been behind now led the way.

It was just beyond the farther wall of the crater that he saw the second air tank, dropped in the trail.

It could not possibly be an accident. A moon sledge has racks for carrying air tanks. It was conceivable that a tank could have slid out and been lost unnoticed. But it was starkly inconceivable that it could have happened twice.

McCauley raged suddenly. He knew what had happened, he knew why it had happened, he knew who was involved. He flipped the base-frequency switch.

"Holmes! Kent! Come in!" he snapped. "Grimaldi Base, come in! Holmes! Kent! Come in! Grimaldi Base, come in!"

He did not try to pick up the second air tank. Instead, he increased his speed over the fantastic landscape of riven stone and upthrust rock. He went faster, floating twenty and thirty yards at a bound and calling angrily into the eternal silence about him. This higher speed was not particularly safe. A stumble on any of his landings could have meant a nasty crash and possibly a smashed helmet plate. But he raged on. He'd just traveled nearly a quarter of the way around the moon to try to effect the quiet and nonspectacular prevention of a murder. Now he found his trouble wasted, his precautions nullified, and the operation of his base imperiled. Moreover, the welfare of the men on Farside was threatened drastically. They might have to go through an entire lunar night, two weeks long, without any contact with other human beings.

Long, long minutes of speeded-up moon gait went by, the suit radio sending out snapped calls for Holmes and Kent to answer or, failing them, for Grimaldi Base to reply.

He was less than five miles from the base when he got an answer to his call. He'd climbed gradually to a high plateau which now dropped downward again so that what seemed an infinity of explosion-scarred desolation lay before him. He was in line of sight of Grimaldi.

"Grimaldi answers," said a voice in his helmet phones. "Grimaldi answers. Over."

Words fairly burst from McCauley's lips, though the rhythm of his twenty- and thirty-yard leaps remained unbroken.

"How in the blistering Gehenna," he rasped, "did Holmes and Kent get out of the base together? What fool sent them off?"

The voice in his headphones jerked a little.

"Why--it was your order, sir! A relay from Earth came in. Holmes was on monitor duty. He wrote down the order, sir. You ordered him and Kent to take the sledge with the relay unit for Repeater Two and set it up where it belonged, sir."

McCauley almost strangled in his wrath.

"Have they got there yet?"

"No, sir. They should use it to report that it's operating, sir. They haven't."

"When they do," rasped McCauley, "tell them that I specifically order them to stay in communication with you until I get there! Absolutely no excuse will be accepted for failure! I'm less than five miles off. I should get there in a quarter of an hour--twenty minutes at the outside. They think they're smart, but they've slipped up this time! Tell them that!"

"Y-yes, sir."

The headphone clicked.

McCauley uttered some profane words in the close confines of his space helmet. Back at Lunar Base he'd laid the matter of Holmes and Kent before the commanding officer, who was the ranking officer on the moon. Kent was an able young officer, transferred to Space Service from the Air Force. Holmes was also an able young officer, who'd been a submariner before he transferred to the equally confining Space Service. They'd known each other back on Earth and somehow--nobody knew how--a bitter and inveterate enmity had sprung up between them. Perhaps a girl was at the root of it, but if so, neither of them won her. Perhaps, by this time, the initial cause of their hatred had nearly or completely ceased to matter. Enmity does not often last unless things occur that can feed and strengthen it. It is normal for two young men to quarrel furiously and be ready to kill each other. But if they are separated long enough, their hatred usually dies away to acute dislike. In time the dislike fades to mere aversion or they may forget their anger altogether. But this happens when there is nothing to sustain and increase the quarrel.

On the other hand, if they come across each other often enough, and more especially if they try to harm each other, what could have begun as mere indignation and contempt can build up into a blind and murderous fury at the mere sight or thought of each other. How it started does not matter then. McCauley suspected that this was the case with Kent and Holmes.

Swinging up and soaring ahead, touching ground with precision at each landing and swinging up again to strange, wingless flight, McCauley muttered to himself.

They'd been assigned to his command. Not knowing--then--he'd introduced them. They spoke with great politeness but did not shake hands. Settling down to the routine and tedium of a six-man base, it became evident that there was something wrong. There was no overt trouble, but there was strain. It showed in a thousand trivial ways. When a party went out on an errand which required traveling for days in roasting sunlight, cased in space suits that were almost as confining as strait jackets, under conditions which rasped the nerves and tried the tempers of everybody, Holmes and Kent very nearly caused disasters.

Hatred blazed between them. When their records arrived at Grimaldi Base, McCauley realized that the beginning of this hatred could not matter any more. They'd hated each other so long and so bitterly that if they were asked the reason they'd have panted about something done yesterday or last month or last year--and perhaps never have gotten back to the beginning. They might even have forgotten it. But there was a strangeness in their enmity. They did not simply want disaster and misfortune to befall each other. They hungered to be disaster, they thirsted to be misfortune, each for the other. And somehow there was a demoniac pride involved. In the days of the duello there would have been a simple and normal solution. They would have met in stately fashion with swords or pistols, and they would have fought to the death under the eyes of seconds and witnesses, and somehow it would have been appropriate.

But such things were impossible now. The code of the duello was outmoded. So when McCauley read the records and reports on the two men--because a commanding officer needs to know the men who serve under him, and the more dangerous the service the better he needs to know them--he knew that the first case of murder on the moon was in the making. Since they couldn't fight formally, as in olden times, what must happen would amount to murder.

There'd been an automobile accident at Earth Base of the Space Service. It looked very much as if it were deliberate, as if Holmes and Kent had contrived it by agreement between themselves so that one was bound to be killed. Both were hurt. Neither died. Then there was the time when Kent was found with a rifle in his hand and a bullet wound in his shoulder, ignoring the wound and passionately pursuing a hunt for--so he said--a deer. He explained that the wound was an accident. The records showed that Holmes was hunting in the same area at the same time. They showed that he had a slight flesh wound--made by a bullet. Both Holmes and Kent gave totally unconvincing accounts of their wounds, and each denied that he had been wounded by the other. Their stories did not satisfy their commanding officer. He transferred them to other units, and in his confidential comment on their records--comment they would never see--he said that he believed they'd arranged a duel in deer-hunting country with big-game rifles, contrived so the one who was killed would seem to be the victim of a hunting accident. It could not be proved, but he believed it.

There were other memos. Neither Holmes nor Kent had a mark against him except in connection with the other man. Yet no commanding officer--certainly none on the moon--would want either man in his base after having read the records. The moon is too small for men who carry their enmities with them into space.

And McCauley had both men--able men, capable men, desirable men except for their mutual hatred. He'd traveled a quarter way around the moon to have one or both of them transferred out of Grimaldi Base before they could arrange another covered-up duel which would leave one dead and the other a murderer. But his effort had been futile. They couldn't be transferred out immediately. They couldn't be gotten out, for it was too close to sunset. They couldn't be gotten away at all during the lunar night. And now they were out on Farside where there could be no witnesses and the grave of a murdered man could never be found.

McCauley arrived, raging mad, at the small, grubby, dust-insulated dome that was Grimaldi Base. No report had come in from Kent or Holmes. McCauley was bitterly sure that they'd gone out to the blasted moonscape firmly resolved that only one of them would return. Somehow, in the illimitable emptiness of which the fiftieth part had never been seen by men, somehow, under the black, star-studded sky with the setting sun casting mile-long shadows of utter blackness and absolute cold, McCauley knew that they would have some sort of fight in which one must die.

But they were Space Service officers. Before they had that fight they would set up the relay that would give Farside Base a connection to Grimaldi, and so to Earth, and so by Earth Relay to every other human being on the moon. They would do their duty as Space Service officers before they did murder.

Stooping, McCauley came out of the air lock into the base.

"I want all the facts about Kent and Holmes!" he snapped.

"No word from them yet, sir," said the communications officer. "But we've picked up clickings, sir, which might be the unit being put into operation. But Holmes and Kent have two beams to align, sir, besides the all-direction antennae. They may be checking with Farside, sir, to make sure the relay beam is pointed right to that base."

McCauley stripped off his space suit.

"They're in more trouble than they know," he growled. "They lost two air tanks off their sledge."

The communications officer's mouth dropped open.

"But Colonel, sir.... They couldn't! They need those tanks to get back with!"

"Exactly," McCauley snapped. "Route the relay's local-antenna and suit-radio frequencies in to me. I'll take the messages."

He stamped through the cramped and shabby little base to the minute compartment set aside for the Base Commander's office. It was approximately four feet by six. He settled down in the one chair, glowering. Automatically he glanced at the dials that reported conditions at the base. Outside temperature facing sun, 198°. Shadow temperature, minus 205°. Inside barometric pressure, 30.02 inches. Inside temperature, 72°. Carbon monoxide, 28 parts per million. Carbon dioxide, 1.8%. Oxygen, 21.2%.

The physical state of the base was good. But there were two men out on Farside who lacked two tanks of air they needed to get back. Although it was their intention that only one of them should return, they'd outsmarted themselves. Neither could get back, now.

A clicking from a loud-speaker. A wavery voice:

"Calling Grimaldi Base! Calling Grimaldi! Call...."

"Calling Repeater Two," said McCauley. He was very grim. "Calling Repeater Two!"

"... rimaldi Ba...." Silence, then suddenly: "Hello!"

It was Holmes' voice. McCauley recognized it.

"Holmes!" he said curtly. "You two fools have committed suicide! You dropped one air tank off the sledge. Remember? That meant that only one of you could get back, and you and Kent could decide later which one it would be. But Kent kicked an air tank off, too! Now who's coming back?"

There was a startled silence.

"You heard me!" said McCauley savagely. "There were three tanks on that sledge. They'd bring you both back with air to spare. But you threw one away, and Kent threw one away, and so there's one left. It's six hours' travel back to here, and you've air for two men for four and a half!"

Again silence. McCauley could envision the scene at Repeater Two, to which his voice was transmitted by precisely the system of beam relay used on Earth to carry telephone messages across continents without wires. There would be two bulky, space-suited figures atop an irregularly level space from which the ground fell away on every side, a drop of thousands of feet. They would be in glaring sunlight from the lowest of low-hanging suns. Where it struck the metal of their space armor they would glitter blindingly. Where there was shadow, there would be the blackness of the pit. Overhead there stretched a black sky with a thousand million stars, and around and below them there would be long, angular, parallel ribbons of shadow with sharply defined sides and with beginnings but no ends. And there would be the moon sledge with the relay built solidly upon it, its runners chocked with stony debris so it would not slide or topple. There would be the two bowl-shaped beam reflectors, one pointing back to Repeater One--itself a moon sledge wedged in place upon a mountain--and the other to remoteness and to wildness and to night.

"You could come back as you went," said McCauley. "You could bring back the sledge, breathing air from its tanks on the trip. But if you did that, Farside would be out of communication during the coming night. That would have to be explained."

Again it seemed that he could see the faraway, motionless figures of the two men listening over their suit radios to the voice twice relayed before it could reach their ears.

"I would have to explain," said McCauley grimly, "that Lieutenants Kent and Holmes intended to murder each other, and each one threw away an air tank he expected the other man to use--but he expected to have plenty of air for himself! I would have to explain that Farside was isolated because two would-be murderers had outsmarted themselves and didn't have the guts to face the consequences!"

Kent's voice came from a speaker. He spoke from that distant mountain peak toward which darkness crept steadily.

"Look here, sir." His tone was defiant.

"If that sledge is brought back," said McCauley angrily, "I'll court-martial whoever comes back with it, even the two of you! If one of you comes back, there'll be a court of inquiry. Maybe you've worked out a pretty story of an accident for the survivor to tell. But you can't use it now, because I found the air tanks you threw away! If one of you comes back, the inquiry will end in a court-martial and a murder verdict!"

Holmes' voice, stiff and steady, was as defiant as Kent's had been.

"I take it, sir, that you're advising neither of us to come back. Very well, sir! We've a little matter to settle between us. We can settle that and the one who's left...."

"If neither of you comes back," rasped McCauley, "the inquiry into your deaths will inform an interested world that two officers--and supposedly gentlemen--of the Space Service were actually two smart, snide, shabby killers who overreached themselves! The Service will be proud to have it known that its officers try to murder each other by throwing away each other's air tanks. The Service will be very, very proud!"

The irony of the last words was corrosive.

"Sir...." The two voices spoke together, outraged and despairing. "Sir," panted Kent's voice, alone. "We'd no idea of anything like that, sir! We've always hated each other, but...."

His voice ended in a gulp. McCauley growled. A young officer can be very much of a fool, of course, but he can be desperately solicitous for the honor of the Service to which he is attached. McCauley spoke with icy precision.

"I am not concerned with your lives or your hatreds or your intentions. I am concerned with the good name of the Space Service. I order you both to come back here. Alive. Together. You will start immediately!"

A dazed silence. Then Kent said:

"But--you don't want us to bring the sledge...."

"And we haven't--" this was Holmes--"we haven't enough air to get back! How can we do it, sir?"

McCauley relaxed in his small cubbyhole of an office. Very privately he drew a breath of relief. But his tone remained stern.

"You will head for Repeater One. If you remember, my voice goes from the base here to Repeater One where it is relayed to Repeater Two. If I chose the proper frequency it would go on through Three and Four to Farside. Can you think of any advantage in being at Repeater One instead of Two?"

A long pause. Then Holmes' voice, dubious:

"It's nearer the base, sir. No more than three hours' travel, if that much. We could make it on one tank of air apiece, sir, and have the extra one for margin. We could make it to base from there, sir, if we were there. But we're not, and it's three hours' travel from here! We'd get there...."

"You _would_ get there?" demanded McCauley ominously. "Or you _will_ get there?"

"_Will_, sir." But the young officer's voice was bewildered.

"For your information," said McCauley curtly, "the Repeater One relay unit is exactly like the relay unit at Repeater Two. I may add that it is in bright sunshine, but will not be so indefinitely."--This was because McCauley remembered an air tank which had lain in shadow until its metal shivered brittlely when struck and the air inside it was a liquid. "It was carried to its position and mounted exactly as the relay for Repeater Two was. Now figure it out for yourself! If you still don't understand when you get to it, call me from there. Now get moving! Sunset's not far away."

He clicked off his microphone, but left the receiving unit on. The relay at Repeater Two would pick up suit-radio speech and relay it back, the pickup being from its all-direction antennae. McCauley heard mumblings. Then, very distinctly, Holmes spoke.

"Understand, I'm going to cooperate with you, getting to Repeater One, but that doesn't mean I like you any better!"

Kent said resentfully:

"I figured you'd have to fight me for the air to get back with. And you pulled the same trick on me! But we'll manage eventually...."

More mutterings. Then:

"Cripes! Let's get going!"

There were those peculiar noises which a microphone inside a space suit picks up and transmits. Breathings. Clankings. Sometimes the squeak of metal sliding on metal.

McCauley listened. Presently the noises faded and ceased. The two young space-suited officers had descended the mountain to where they were not in line of sight of the relay, and consequently it could not pick up their suit-radio communications to relay back to McCauley.

The communications officer tapped on the office door.