Part 9

"We're through to Farside Base, sir," he reported. "The relay system's working splendidly. Farside just asked for an Earth Relay link to Lunar Base."

"Give it to 'em," said McCauley succinctly.

He waited, listening. He had Repeater One as well as Two set so it would retransmit any local pickup on helmet-phone frequency, but it was half an hour before anything but the peculiar singing murmurs of empty space came from the loud-speaker. Then he heard heavy breathing.

He heard a colloquy between Kent and Holmes, far away in the lunar mountains. They were evidently climbing somewhere, and part of the climb necessarily took them through deep shadow, where the temperature of the rock was down to night temperature. Their space suits could handle the cold for a certain length of time, but the teeth of one of the men were chattering before he came out into sunlight at the end of the climb.

McCauley heard Holmes say sarcastically:

"I needed that last pull. Want me to thank you for it?"

Kent's voice snapped as he answered Holmes.

"I did it solely because McCauley would court-martial me if I came in alone!"

A pause, then the remote, transmitted sound of space shoes on stone. Holmes spoke.

"There's a way I can kill you easily. All I need do is get myself killed."

He laughed without mirth, and Kent said bitterly, "Go ahea--" Then there was silence.

The communications officer brought McCauley a message from Lunar Base congratulating Grimaldi Base for completing the communications link between the two hemispheres of the moon.

"All right. Forget it," McCauley said.

He continued to listen. An hour went by. Then, without warning, there came an explosive "Look out!" There was a crash and then panting. Kent's voice rasped, "Have you gotten killed?" Holmes answered through clenched teeth. "Not yet. But how will I get out of here?" More clankings; more words, painstakingly devoid of solicitude on the one hand, or any amiable emotion such as gratitude on the other. McCauley could visualize exactly what was going on from the words. Holmes had fallen into a pothole, one of innumerable such mantraps scattered at random everywhere.

Kent got him out. Holmes grunted to indicate that he could do without more help. That was that. Minutes later, McCauley heard Kent say dourly:

"Three hours to Repeater One? We're over three hours now. How's your air?"

"All right," Holmes snapped. "When we get to that level place, we'll split the extra tank."

McCauley fretted. He could not know how far or how fast the two men were moving, off in that deadly waste of obstacles. Three hours had seemed a fair estimate. But plainly they'd had trouble.

Their voices cut off before they reached a spot where they could divide the air in the tank that had to be shared.

Then silence, for a long, long time. When McCauley heard any sound again, it was Holmes angrily calling to Kent, demanding that he say whether he needed help or not. And then for a full half hour McCauley listened to the sharp-voiced, sometimes abusive exchanges between the two. Kent had touched the keystone of an unstable rock slope. It gave way under him and went whirling downward in one of those infrequent, slow-motion moon avalanches that are unimaginable until one has seen them. Kent checked himself on the edge of a precipice over which the rolling stones fell in utter silence until after tens of seconds they struck and split, still noiselessly.

He could not get away. It was dangerous to help him, lest another avalanche be started. McCauley, listening, sweated as he glanced at a clock. But Holmes was helping Kent.

Later--much later--he heard clatterings and Kent's voice said snappishly:

"Well, here's Repeater One. McCauley said to come here. What do we do now? I've air for fifteen minutes more."

Holmes tried to speak, but couldn't. There were clankings.

"Doggone you," Kent snarled shrilly, "you cheated on the air! You didn't split even! Cripes!"

Then he panted, and suddenly there was a hissing sound, and gasps. McCauley's hands were tightly clenched as the sounds came to him from both faraway space-suit microphones. But at the hissing sound he relaxed.

A little later Holmes' voice came, astonished.

"That was it! He said that the relay here was exactly like the relay at Repeater Two. It's a sledge, and it was brought here by two men--and it has air tanks that they breathed from while they traveled! Kent, you hooked me to the air. The pressure's way up! We can refill our suit tanks and the spare!"

Kent said waspishly:

"So I noticed. Get your tank full-up and let me have my share.... McCauley said to call him from here if we needed to. What say?"

"McCauley can go to blazes!" rumbled Holmes. "It's not two hours from here to the base. If we fill up on air, we can get there before sunset. To heck with McCauley!"

In the commanding officer's cubbyhole at Grimaldi Base, McCauley relaxed again in his chair. His expression went from strain to contentment. He reached over and flipped off the receiver.

* * * * *

The deep, dark, abysmally black night had fallen. Low down at the western horizon Earth hung, blue-green and glamorous, just above the crests of many ring mountains. It was a little past first quarter, and it gave only the faintest of light to the tortured and splintered rock formations outside Grimaldi Base. When Earth was full, there would be bright earthlight on the moon, and the moon's surface would look much stranger than any painter of fantastic pictures could imagine.

Inside the base, McCauley was going toward his office when a hand touched his arm. It was Kent. He looked forbidding and grim.

"I'd like to speak to you, sir," he said formidably.

McCauley waved him into the tiny office and closed the door.

"What's it all about?" he asked. He touched a switch and a desk light glowed. He touched another, but nothing in particular seemed to happen. "I've forgotten," he said mildly, "any unpleasant things I may have felt it necessary to say a few hours ago."

"It's Holmes, sir," said Kent, his lips tightly pressed together. "He didn't play fair, sir. When we split that extra air tank he cheated on it. He gave me more than he took himself. And when I was stuck with an avalanche ready to finish me any second, he...."

His voice rose shrilly. He complained bitterly that Holmes had saved his life at least four times.

"He had to," McCauley pointed out. "I said I'd court-martial whichever of you came in, if one came in alone."

"That's the devil of it," said Kent bitterly. "He didn't do it that way! He didn't do it grudgingly. Doggone him, he made me ashamed! If it weren't that I'm hanged if I'll ask any man to overlook things like I've done to him--and he's done to me--if I wouldn't be asking him to overlook so much, I'd...."

McCauley waited. But Kent did not finish. Instead he said savagely:

"As a matter of self-respect, sir, I have to report that Holmes ought to be commended officially for several acts beyond the call of duty, sir--and for a man he hates and who has hated him. That's all, sir!"

He turned to go out.

"Hold it!" McCauley spoke sharply. "You will listen to something. This is an order!" He threw a switch and said: "I recorded your recommendation, Kent. But you will listen to this!"

There was that minute whirring noise a tape recorder makes when it's beginning its run. Kent stiffened. A voice came out of a speaker. But it was not Kent's voice, it was Holmes'. And Kent, staring, heard Holmes saying stiltedly and urgently that Kent had behaved in a highly admirable manner that rated official commendation. He'd risked his life for Holmes on several occasions, and if it weren't that he wouldn't ask any man to forgive him things like he'd done to Kent....

McCauley snapped off the recorder. The sound ceased.

"Holmes came in here first," said McCauley dryly. "His and your recommendations will have due attention. And I'm not going to suggest that you go and shake hands with him, but I think he might like it."

Kent's mouth opened and closed.

"B ... but ..." he stammered.

"Get out of my office!" roared McCauley. "I've got work to do!"

_5_

(It seemed there wasn't much left to do in the way of space pioneering. There was a Space Platform, and there were bases on the moon, and drone ships had been out to Mars and sunward past Venus. There were new and better fuels, and the problem involving the Van Allen belts of highly charged atomic particles seemed to have been solved. It looked as if the rest of the job of conquering space would be just plain, slogging hard work of a strictly routine nature. This process would be improved a little, and that would be developed a little further, and progress toward the stars would be made by inches. But things never work out simply. There is always something unexpected and usually disastrous turning up. Just when things looked brightest, somebody worked out the causes of solar flares and devised a way to predict them. It looked like a neat and unimportant triumph of pure theory. But when it was closely examined, it meant that the end of all space travel was approaching.)

They called Colonel Ed McCauley back from the moon when Doctor Bramwell peevishly refused to go along with the Venus shoot unless the assigned crew was fired and replaced by more respectful men. The top brass felt that McCauley might be able to get along with Bramwell and get the job done. It was a highly necessary job. There was a sun-flare maximum coming up, but if the Bramwell-Faraday screen could be improved enough, it might not matter. Men might continue to occupy the Space Platform, and activities at the bases on the moon might continue. All the men now in space might not have to return to Earth to stay until the flares died down--if they ever did. In effect, if the Bramwell-Faraday screen could be built up to adequate strength, man's conquest of space might continue. If the screen couldn't be built up, space travel must stop.

And Doctor Bramwell was the key man in the project. He'd devised the screen in the first place, and was more likely to be able to improve it than anyone else. But he was not an amiable person. So, since he was a civilian and couldn't be given orders, when he said peevishly that he would not go along with the original crew, the men first assigned to the Venus shoot were removed--swearing luridly--and Colonel Ed McCauley came back from the moon to see what he could do.

He had one interview with Bramwell, and was very respectful. Part of the respect was genuine, and part was diplomacy. Bramwell did have one of the two or three best brains on Earth, but his personality gave McCauley reason to be disturbed.

After the interview he consulted higher-ranking officers. He did not think Bramwell was psychologically qualified to take part in the Venus shoot. He thought the scientist would do better work if he stayed home and directed somebody on the ship by tight-beam radio. McCauley spoke forcefully. But Bramwell happened to have a near-monopoly of the kind of brains that were required. And the psychological factor that made McCauley doubtful made the doctor as temperamental as any prima donna. The high brass knew all the reasons for McCauley's protest. But if Bramwell felt himself pushed aside, he'd sulk. If he sulked, he wouldn't do his best work. And his best work was an essential. So McCauley was ordered to make do with Bramwell somehow.

McCauley shrugged dubiously. He asked for Major Randy Hall to be assigned as his second-in-command. Randy gloated when his appointment came through, but McCauley shook his head gloomily.

"There's no reason to feel good about it," he told Randy dourly, in the almost completed Venus ship. "I'll be glad if you go along, but that's not the idea. You're appointed to be the man who'll be fired if Bramwell demands it."

Randy blinked. The cramped, inconvenient, gadget-filled interior of the Venus ship looked glamorous, when you thought of where it was going and what had to be done in it.

"The fact is," said McCauley, "--and the big brass knows it--the fact is that Bramwell's scared. He's terrified at the idea of going out into space. But he's ashamed to admit it. He'd rather die than let anyone know he's in a panic. He's probably trying to keep from admitting it even to himself. So he's making trouble to delay the moment of truth. He's trying to keep from facing the fact that he either has to go or else admit he won't."

"He's afraid of going?" asked Randy incredulously.

"Just as some people are afraid of heights, or spiders, or income-tax forms," said McCauley distastefully. "There's nothing disgraceful about being scared. If he'd only admit it, he could fight it or accept it. In either case he'd be all right. But he insists to himself that he's not only a brainy man but a normally courageous one. So he insists he'll go, and he won't let anybody go in his place, but he can't make himself believe he'll go. So he sets up all sorts of obstacles--crazy ones--ridiculous ones. He doesn't realize it, but he may subconsciously be trying to postpone the shoot until it's too late to make it. If that happens he won't have to face the fact that he's scared."

Randy grimaced.

"And you expect me...."

"To keep him busy," said McCauley. "Try to fix things so that it'll be take-off time before he realizes it. Keep him away from me so he can't pick a quarrel and insist that I be fired. Make yourself the one he'll insist he can't stand, when what he can't stand is the trip."

Randy grimaced again.

"You're a rat," he said resignedly. "But suppose I charm him so he doesn't insist that I be thrown out?"

"Fine!" said McCauley. "There'll be a crew of only two, with him as the third. I'd rather have you than anybody else. But Bramwell's devising excuses for refusing to go. You could be one excuse."

"I'll polish some apples," said Randy, "and fearlessly mixing metaphors, I'll beard him in his den. Maybe I can get so popular he won't want anybody fired."

"Good luck to you," said McCauley skeptically. "You'll need it!"

He plunged into the remaining preparations for the shoot, and Randy went to take over the job of keeping Bramwell from meeting the various people who passionately wanted to have nothing to do with him.

The basic problem the Venus shoot was to attack was at once simple but apparently hopeless. From time to time the sun displays "flares"; these are violent upsurgings of its photosphere, not in the nature of sunspots but somehow associated with them. A flare may begin without obvious warning and in fifteen minutes become monstrously violent, throwing off highly ionized fragments of molecules at the highest speeds material particles can attain. Some of these particles, in time, reach Earth; magnetic storms and auroral displays are the consequences of their arrival. They are harmless to people who live at the bottom of the planet's ocean of air.

But they are not harmless to the crew of a ship in space, or to the staff of that combined way station and observatory which is the Space Platform, or to the occupants of the bases on the moon. The Space Platform itself was set in orbit only three thousand miles out from Earth because of the Van Allen belts of just such particles that have been swung into paths around the earth and form invisible rings more or less resembling the visible rings of Saturn. At three thousand miles out these particles are not deadly. Farther out they are.

It was not until the Bramwell-Faraday screen was devised that it became possible for a man to land upon the moon. With the screen, a man could survive passing through the Van Allen belts in screened ships and set up moon bases. But the margin of safety was not great. It was enough, but barely so.

The Venus shoot was planned because this state of affairs would not last. Astrophysicists had developed a system for predicting solar flares. Then they'd found evidence and, later, proof that the flare frequency was due for an enormous and probably permanent rise. Dense clouds of flare particles would be released. The Van Allen bands would be intensified. Within a year, any man who went beyond Earth's protecting atmosphere could expect to get a fatal dose of radiation burns within an hour's exposure, a flare particle being "radiation" in the same sense as the particles thrown off by radioactive materials. The Bramwell-Faraday screen had to be improved, or else. And the only way to know that it was improved was to try it against stronger and stronger streams of the deadly particles until it failed--or worked. Which meant that somebody had to go out to where flare particles were abundant.

So McCauley labored on the ship that was already nearly set to dive sunward. It would be equipped with the screen that had made Earth-moon travel possible. It would have on board Bramwell, who'd designed the screen to begin with. It would plunge into flare-particle radiation of such intensity that the ship's crew _might_ survive--with the present screen on full--but this was by no means certain. The ship would dive sunward to Venus, swing around that planet, and drift back out to the orbit of Earth. On the way, Bramwell would try to adapt his screen to protect the ship and himself in it. It was a highly melodramatic proceeding, and Bramwell looked very heroic.

But he was a most unpleasant man. Having met him, McCauley estimated his personal attractiveness as much less than one-tenth the personal charm of an irritated skunk.

* * * * *

Ten days after his assignment to the Venus shoot, Randy came to McCauley with a sort of grim humor in his expression.

"I took Bramwell over the ship," he said. "Since he's going to live and work in it, he thought he ought to see it."

"That's reasonable," admitted McCauley.

Randy held up his hand and ticked off on his fingers.

"Item. He drinks a glass of orange juice, a large one, every night before retiring. A supply of orange juice must be provided."

"All right," said McCauley. "Anything else?"

"Item," said Randy. "He is extremely annoyed by noise. He must have a working area that is lined with soundproof material and has a soundproof door so he can have absolute quiet."

McCauley grunted.

"If you can think of anything quieter than space with one's rockets off.... But okay. What else?"

"Item. He suspects he's allergic to the vegetation in the air-freshening system," said Randy. "I promised it would be checked."

"We'll make impressive allergy tests for him," said McCauley. "If that's all...."

"It isn't," said Randy. "He wants a bunk with a hard mattress. He won't use the acceleration chair except for take-off."

McCauley stared.

"But didn't you tell him?..."

"I," said Randy wryly, "am polishing apples. I want to go on this shoot even if he does, which means I want to go very badly. No. I didn't tell him that in free-fall flight with no gravity a steel plate is as comfortable as a down pillow. Why start an argument with a man in a blue funk?... He showed me the reference library he insists he has to take with him. It weighs eight hundred pounds."

"There," said McCauley, "he has to lose! We can't take eight hundred pounds of excess weight. We simply can't do it!"

Randy grinned.

"I showed him a moon-base microfilm reader and offered him the equivalent of four tons of books on half a dozen reels. He couldn't refuse to buy. He only named half a dozen book titles not already on film, and they're being filmed now."

"Anything else?"

"Not so far," said Randy. "He's scared and ashamed of being scared. I don't think he'll actually get up nerve enough to back out, but I'm sure he'll never get the nerve to go. When he finds out the actual take-off time I look for trouble."

"What kind?"

"Maybe hysterics," said Randy. "I'm almost sorry for the guy, but not quite. A man with his brains ought to face the fact that he feels timid, and either fight it or admit it. Especially, a man ought to realize that other people can tell what's the matter with him."

McCauley considered, frowning.

"For your information only," he said, "take-off will be 1400 hours Tuesday, neither plus nor minus. We'll have to stop at the Platform to refuel, and the Platform has a schedule. We'll need to swing very close to Venus for its pull to change our course, and Venus has a schedule. And we'll need to meet Earth farther along in its orbit, and Earth has a schedule. None of them can be changed to humor Bramwell's psychological idiosyncrasies. We take off at 1400 hours Tuesday!"

But Randy shook his head.

"Oh, oh! Friend Ed, we're in trouble!"

"He won't go?"

"He won't go," said Randy. "I'm just learning how to handle him. I believed I could trick him into committing himself so firmly that he'd go, no matter how much something inside of him was screaming that it didn't want to. But Tuesday's too early. I don't think there's a chance to get him either to go or admit he won't. Not by Tuesday."

"That's too bad," said McCauley grimly. "We need him for our crew--him or a reasonable facsimile. Do you know what they used to do when they needed sailors?"

"Pressed them," said Randy. "Press gangs grabbed them. But that was the law then. It isn't now."

"I wasn't thinking of a press gang," said McCauley. "Much more often, a man got shanghaied. We've got to have that souped-up Bramwell screen!"

* * * * *

More days passed. Doctor Bramwell announced firmly that he would not be ready to take off on the Venus shoot on Tuesday at 1400 hours. It was pointed out to him that all the computations for the Venus shoot were based on that time for departure. Doctor Bramwell said firmly that he would not be ready to leave at that time. It was suggested that he name someone who could take his place and work out the improved screen, of course on the basis of his advice and suggestions tight-beamed out to the Venus ship. Doctor Bramwell said indignantly that nobody else was capable of doing his work. But he would not be ready to depart at 1400 hours on Tuesday.

There was a complete impasse. He was immovable. The shoot had to be made at a certain time. He refused to be ready at that time. Preparations for the shoot went on. He calmly and ponderously ignored them.

* * * * *

At 1400 hours on Tuesday a hundred and eighty feet of streamlined, fire-spouting metal plunged skyward from Cape Canaveral. At eighty thousand feet, the first stage dropped off; at seventy miles, the second stage. The third stage, which was the Venus ship, went whipping on out into space. It circled Earth once, gradually overtaking the Space Platform as it floated serenely in emptiness three thousand miles out from the Earth's surface. With tiny, finicky jettings of rocket fuel, and the use of steam-jets for final maneuvering, McCauley brought the Venus ship into contact with the Space Platform.

There was swift and efficient action. Men in space suits swarmed out of the brilliantly sunlit, faceted artificial moon. They connected fuel hoses and topped off the Venus ship's tanks. They floated a second-stage unit out and bolted it in place. They painstakingly got a giant first-stage unit out of the ship lock and set it where it belonged. At the Space Platform, the Venus ship regained the fuel and the ability to accelerate that it had used up getting there.

One and a quarter hours after contact, McCauley reported back to Canaveral that all was well, that Doctor Bramwell was in excellent condition and making no complaints, and that all instruments and equipment had functioned perfectly during the trip from Earth. Then he backed the reenlarged Venus ship away from the Platform.