Part 6

With that, Dr. Shepard clattered back to his seat in the back, leaving Toby with a feeling of being as incompetent as the doctor had said. He stared glumly out the forward port at the wrinkled witch-face of Luna. Her gaping craters were like taunting eyes, and her jagged mountains appeared to wear the twisted grin of a mocking giant. Even nature herself seemed allied against him.

Suddenly he had company again. It was Deb this time. He studied her pretty face closely, wondering if the inscrutable look on it meant that she was one of that majority of disbelievers or whether perhaps....

“Tell me, Deb,” he said to her, “do you believe that accident was my fault?”

She smiled sympathetically, tossing her titian curls. Her large clear eyes were sincere and direct. “Would it make any difference to the examining board if I did believe in you?” she asked.

“No, they’d still lift my license if they wanted to,” he answered, “but it would make a lot of difference to me.”

“You said it wasn’t your fault,” she said softly, “and I believe you, Toby.”

Suddenly Toby didn’t feel quite so lonely. “It helps a lot to know that one person, at least, believes in me,” Toby said gratefully. “Thanks, Deb.”

Dr. Shepard called his daughter back. Toby had half expected Deb to say what she had. She was a swell person. Even since she had been transferred to his school class, he had known her as a quiet girl who couldn’t believe the worst in anybody. Like Lou and himself, she was doing extra summer work in order to earn her space nurse’s rating sooner. Her father was considered one of the best space surgeons. Toby had never been one of his favorites among the fellows who came to see Deb. Toby had heard from Deb that her father regarded him as reckless and too ambitious for his age. The doctor’s own education had been a plodding one, hence his inability to accept the idea of young people still in high school piloting rockets.

The flight continued to be a tense one for Toby as the dragging hours passed. Dr. Shepard kept Deb in the back, leaving Toby with only the cold remote stars for companionship. When Toby slept, he put the rocket on automatic pilot, but he could not completely relax.

On the last leg of the journey, Toby heard a buzz on his radio set and tuned it in. It was Lieutenant Cameron, operations officer at the space station, and Toby’s heart froze with dread as his sobering message came through:

“I’ve been instructed to tell you that this is your last trip as a pilot, Workman, at least for a long time. The investigation of the craft in which you had the accident is nearly completed, and there seems to be no mechanical defect upon which the disaster can be blamed. I’m afraid it boils down simply to a serious error of judgment, Workman. I’m sorry, but the chief says your license will be revoked upon your return to the space station.”

“Yes, sir,” Toby murmured, and signed off numbly.

Although the message was not exactly a surprise, Toby hadn’t known it was going to be so hard to take. It made him feel all empty and hopeless inside. He had a strong urge to get up and walk right out of the ship into the black deeps, there to drift in the weightless vacuum forever. But the fact that he was responsible for his passengers kept him in his seat, told him to stick to his job and see it through, to dare hope even in this grimmest hour.

At last the forward port revealed the bleak wilderness of Luna down below. Toby lined up the tiny space harbor in his landing sights. He placed the rocket flyer on automatic pilot and went back to the rear.

“We’re about to land,” he told his passengers. “Fasten your belts securely.”

He returned to his seat and began sliding shiny floor levers. There was a rumble of smooth gyroscope bearings as the rocket’s outer torpedo-shaped casing did a complete half turn. This brought the rear jets facing the moon so that they were in position to act as brakes as the rocket plunged groundward. The passengers were unaware of this, for the inner shell in which they sat remained in its original position, but they could feel the drag of deceleration as the ship began losing its blazing speed. Toby steeled himself for the agonizing pressure that would come when the ship reached full deceleration.

Suddenly something prompted him to look at the speedometer. What he saw nearly caused his heart to stop beating. The ship was not losing enough speed. The jets were jammed!

He thought how ironical it was for the very same thing to happen to him twice—two cases of jet braking failure—but he might never live to bear the disgrace of this one. Nor would the Shepards, with their precious knowledge and serum. Thinking of them brought Toby up out of his seat.

Toby’s fumbling hand found the lift stick. As the rocket angled up from the frost-bitten ground, he saw a racing blur of Lunar landscape, pumice drifts, and buildings so near he could almost have reached out and touched them. It was such a close call that it left Toby shaking. The rocket scurried off over the barren land like a frightened bird.

Toby heard a clatter down the aisle. He turned and saw Dr. Shepard being flung about like a chip on an ocean. Toby staggered down the passageway after him. Necessarily rough, he shoved the doctor back into the seat from which he had unbuckled himself, and strapped him tightly. Deb was a pale ghost still buckled down beside him, her eyes wide in terror, her body tense as a coiled spring.

“Make him stay put!” Toby ordered and slipped and slid back to the front. As the rugged moonscape swept dazzlingly across the port, Toby headed the rocket’s nose upward again. A nauseating giddiness was threatening to overcome him. Toby shook his head vigorously and hung on.

When the rocket had lifted high over the planet, he began “purging” the jet chambers, a procedure sometimes effective in pulling them out of a state of jamming. The action consisted of alternately giving the tubes a sudden full thrust, followed by a few moments of total inactivity. At each burst, Toby felt as if his head would be snapped off his neck. At last he sensed that the jets were working freely. This was confirmed by a glance at the instrument panel.

Once again he headed the ship in for a landing. He felt the rhythmic jerks of the firestreams in normal braking thrust, and he sighed in relief. Some minutes later the rocket touched down gently on the soil of the moon. They were safe.

Toby helped the bruised and shaken Shepards into space suits and got them outside. He felt pretty badly mauled himself and thought he’d keel over at any moment as he saw the eternal stars of the Lunar sky grow dim before his eyes. Then someone gave him a supporting arm into the waiting room of the spaceport.

It was some time before Toby felt like himself. He found that he and the Shepards, coming to full consciousness themselves, were surrounded by people.

“I’ve been in the space service a long time,” Toby heard someone say, “but that was the slickest landing I’ve ever seen! That young fellow must have superman nerves to do what he did!”

Toby never saw so many grinning faces watching him or so many hands clapping him on the shoulder.

“It was certainly a show of calm judgment and expertness, Workman,” a man in uniform said and stuck out a big palm to him. Toby took it, blinking incredulously, for he faced none other than Commander Jameson, the chief on Luna.

“I thought you’d like to know,” the commander went on, “that I just now got a message from Lieutenant Cameron reporting that, upon re-examination, they found a defective valve that could conceivably have caused your accident last week. After your showing on this landing, I’m sure they’ll agree it wasn’t a case of incompetence.”

“Thank you, sir,” Toby mumbled, bewildered by this sudden reversal of fortune.

“You’ve convinced another person, Toby,” the boy heard beside him and saw a haggard, rarely smiling Dr. Shepard. “I guess I’ve misjudged you young people. It seems you can handle ships with the best of them!”

Toby looked past the doctor and saw Deb regarding him with quiet admiration. Her wordless compliment was the most appreciated of them all. Who could say but that her lone faith had kept him going in that dark moment when he had been ready to give up?

THE PERIL FROM OUTER SPACE

Young Lieutenant Rob Allison rode the escalator down the side of the space ship to the ground. His heartbeat had increased its tempo since he had been ordered from Earth to report to Space Command headquarters on Luna. There had been palpable unrest throughout Earth for several weeks now. No one seemed to know just what it was, but it was frightfully real—that, everyone would admit. And Rob had an uneasy feeling that his trip to Luna was somehow connected with the mystery.

“Have a good ride, sir?” a steward at ground level asked the youth.

“Well enough,” Rob said.

Rob had not yet gotten used to being called “Sir.” It made him feel older—an experienced spaceman—not his mere nineteen years of age. More than that, it gave him a false sense of importance.

The steward saw before him a tall, husky fellow who filled his space suit well. He saw a young man who carried himself confidently, yet in no way pretentiously, despite his unofficial nickname of “the Space Command’s youngest hero.”

Rob’s eyes roved about looking for the jeep which General Forester had said would be here to meet him. He glimpsed the distant Lunar panorama which was the scene of his first interplanetary adventure some years before. He had visited all the planets or their moons since then. There had been perils, defeats, triumphs. It amazed him that he was still alive after it all. Beyond the gaunt stone buildings of the colony, the serrated tops of the Lunary Appenines pricked the black sky where stars almost too many to comprehend lay scattered like self-luminous gems.

“Lieutenant Allison!” came a voice from across the drifts of pumice. “Over here!”

Rob approached the jeep, jogging along with the ease of an elf’s tread in Luna’s light gravity. Rob recognized a circlet of rockets on the driver’s plastic helmet and was both surprised and flattered.

“General Forester!” he said over his suit radio. He saw the officer’s grin within the shadows of his headgear.

“You’re just about the most important person in the world now, Rob,” General Forester said, “and so I thought I’d come for you personally.” His narrow brown mustache thinned to a pencil line as he continued to smile welcomingly.

Rob felt a disturbing jolt within him as he heard the general’s words. What significance lay behind this remark?

“I’m flattered, sir,” Rob said.

“You shouldn’t be,” the general said brusquely, in a strange reversal of manner. It was odd how quickly his sunny expression became grim. “I’m afraid we’re more interested in you for what you can do for us—and Earth—than in your personality.”

Rob felt the uneasy tightening of the noose of suspense. He felt suddenly naked and alone, his confidence shaky. He wanted to ask why he had been chosen to take on an apparently enormous task. The general anticipated him.

“We picked you, Rob, for this biggest of all jobs because you’ve been through all the terror and suspense that the project might entail. Your reputation for courage has caught up with you, Rob, and we’re going to use it for all it’s worth!”

Rob felt his pulse throbbing in his temples as the jeep scurried over the sand dunes toward Space Command headquarters. While his heart could scarcely contain his excitement, his mind was equally frantic for facts. “What is the job, sir?” he asked quietly.

“You’ve noticed, of course, the suppressed terror of the people back home in the past weeks,” the general said. “They know something big is wrong, that their very lives are being menaced. How they found out I don’t know, because the strictest censorship has been held. Maybe it’s a sort of telepathic hysteria that can’t be censored. At any rate it’s there, and there’s already been trouble from it. The Command at home has been getting crank letters demanding that we tell the people what is wrong. This kind of thing can lead to something bad.”

“Then something is wrong?” Rob ventured, watching the officer expertly avoid a treacherous crack in the frost-riven ground.

The general’s face became haggard, and there was a trace of terror in his own eyes. “There is. Something even worse than the people must suspect.”

Rob shuddered. All of a sudden the minus-200-degree temperature outside his space suit seemed to have penetrated inside. He checked the heater and found that it was all right. No, this was a mental chill.

Next came the inevitable question, “What is this—thing?”

“You and your crew will be sworn to strictest secrecy before you blast off from Luna,” General Forester said. “That pledge of secrecy for you begins at this instant. If the people back home got even an inkling of what the trouble is, there would be widespread panic.”

“You have my word, sir,” Rob said.

There followed an electric silence for several moments. It was as if the general himself were rallying courage. “There is a giant radioactive cloud approaching the solar system from outer space at a terrific speed. The cloud covers an area roughly as big as Jupiter. Scientists have been plotting its trajectory with electronic instruments for a long time, and there is no doubt but that it will collide with the system if nothing is done about it. Life, of course, would be wiped out completely.”

Rob felt the horror of the statement clear to the marrow of his bones. It left him shaking and numb. The general noticed the effect on him.

“That’s the way it left me when I first heard about it,” he admitted. “If it affects us two, who are reasonably adjusted to the terrors of space, how do you think it would affect ordinary persons?”

After the shock had lessened somewhat, Rob was able to speak. “But you do have a weapon against this cloud?” he said hopefully.

“We hope we have,” General Forester replied. “It’s called Operation Big Boy.”

There was no more time for discussion. The jeep topped a rise, just below which lay the hub of buildings making up the Space Command. Rob suffered further agony of suspense as they parked and glided over the sands to the general’s office in the main building. Rob was glad to get out of his space suit, for he had been in a cold sweat ever since he had heard the first sobering words about the cosmic terror. Rob and the general locked themselves in the privacy of the latter’s quarters.

“The appearance of the R-cloud, as we call it, has necessitated using our topmost military weapon,” General Forester resumed. “You and no one else except the World Security Commission has known that the Space Command has had for some time a stockpile of cosmic-ray bombs which could literally blow Earth apart. You and your crew will carry a set of these bombs and try to scatter the mass so that it won’t penetrate the solar system. But of course there’s no assurance that the bombs can do this.”

Rob heaved a deep sigh. He knew at last what was in store for him, but this knowledge held little satisfaction. The things spoken between him and the general in the few minutes they had been together had been staggering in concept. It was hard for him to realize that he was part of such a colossal scheme. It was more like a dream.

“Naturally you and your crew will run considerable risk,” General Forester said. “I’ve been told to give you the refusal of the job if you feel that you cannot go through with it. But I pray that you’ll give it considerable thought before you turn it down. I don’t know of a better man in the service to trust with the future of humanity.”

_The future of humanity._ Dependent upon him, an insignificant one of several billions who populated Earth! The idea nearly bowled Rob over. Yet he found himself agreeing to take on the task. He spoke quickly lest he wait too long and find himself withdrawing.

General Forester led him out of the building through a connecting tunnel to a plastic-domed hangar. Here Rob saw a little hundred-foot X-500 Cetus fighter rocket crawling with a ground crew that was obviously readying it for flight. It was quickly evident to Rob that the Cetus was a specially adapted make, for it was unusually deep-bodied.

“This is your ship,” the general explained. “It’s a model that was built especially to carry the C-bomb. There’s one room for a crew of six. The rest of the bulk is for shielding against radiation from the bomb.”

Rob could readily appreciate this latter fact, knowing that cosmic-ray energy was many times more powerful than nuclear fission.

“Is the crew on Luna now, sir?” Rob asked.

“They’ll arrive on the ferry from the space station later today,” the other replied. “Let’s go back.”

As they retraced their way through the tunnel, the general filled in more facts. “We had hoped to let the R-cloud approach closer before launching an attack, but the pressure of public suspicion makes it necessary to get on the job right away. You’ll carry the X-500 to Titan where you’ll pick up the bombs from our Command unit there and get your final instructions. After that, you’re on your own.”

Six men battling the greatest pack of energy ever faced by mankind! It was almost like tempting fate, Rob thought; like facing a mechanized army with only a club for a weapon. But Rob had confidence in the scientists of this day and their devastating brain child, the cosmic ray bomb.

Rob met his crew in the general’s office. He silently studied the young men, selected as the best in their field, who would be entrusted with the lives of three billion people.

General Forester introduced them: Mort Haines, the chubby, burr-headed mechanic; tall, thin-faced Lieutenant Fox, chief pilot; navigator-radiation officer Lieutenant Swenson—big, blond and Swedish; small, prematurely balding Goode, the medic; and lastly the youngest of them all, the one who made the greatest impression on Rob. His name was Clay Gerard, a “sputter” or graduated space cadet without a rating, who would fill in on odd jobs which did not fall under the province of his more experienced companions.

Clay extended a big palm to Rob. His grip crushed Rob’s hand. Rob looked into his expressive blue eyes and thought he detected some amusement in them. Rob marveled at the boy’s muscle-padded shoulders, thinking how well he would fit into somebody’s football backfield. Then it came to him suddenly that Clay had done just that, and exceptionally well.

“Aren’t you last season’s triple-threat star at Space Academy?” Rob asked.

“That’s me,” Clay answered.

“I hear you ran your opponents ragged, Clay,” Rob said. “I hope you help us take care of our present enemy the same way.”

“I’ll do my part,” Clay said. “I don’t like to blow my own horn, but I was champ in every sport I entered. That ought to qualify me for this team, shouldn’t it?” His lips twisted in a bantering grin.

General Forester broke in. “Please observe service courtesy, Cadet Gerard, and address Lieutenant Allison as ‘sir.’”

“Yes, sir,” Clay replied. He looked at Rob. “You and I must be about the same age—sir.”

The subtly prolonged final word did not escape Rob. Something warned him that he might have a mildly rebellious spirit in his crew.

“I believe so,” Rob returned, “and I’m sure both of us will act our ages on this project. The future of our planet depends on it.”

“I know, sir,” Clay answered with unexpected soberness that made Rob hope he had misjudged him.

The crew was briefed in detail on the facts of Operation Big Boy from the moment they would depart from Luna to the final act of guiding the last cosmic missile into their antagonist. After this, the crew was dismissed to attend to their final affairs and get some hours of rest.

Later, Rob heard that a girl by the name of Gerard was working in the communications office, and he went over to see if she were any kin to Clay. Clay had left before he had heard her name spoken, so he couldn’t find out from him.

He found auburn-topped Dulcie Gerard at the transspace radio switchboard handling a communication between a lonely doctor on Mars and his wife back on Earth. When it was over, she switched off and turned to Rob with tears in her brown eyes. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“You’re crying,” Rob said.

She smiled prettily. “It was that conversation I had on the board. It touched me, the way they talked.”

Suddenly the girl stared at him so intently that he found himself blushing.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but aren’t you Lieutenant Allison?”

“Guilty,” he said.

“I’ve heard of all the wonderful things you’ve done,” Dulcie went on, “but I never thought I’d meet you in person.”

Rob shuffled his feet in embarrassment and decided to get down to business. “The information clerk down the hall told me you’re Dulcie Gerard,” he said, “and I wondered if Clay Gerard is your brother?”

At the mention of the name, her face took on a softened, somewhat tragic expression. “I don’t know whether he’s my brother or son, the way I’ve been looking after him since our folks died a few years ago.” She smiled wryly. “We’re close to the same age, but Clay seems to have a strong feeling for family ties. He’s not home much, but he likes to have a home to come to when he’s tired or just wants to and I’ve tried to provide it for him.”

“I just met your brother today, but somehow he didn’t impress me as being that way,” Rob said. “He gives me the impression of being, well—completely independent.”

“Don’t be so polite, lieutenant. Clay’s attitude is painfully superior, but of course I love him in spite of his faults. He’s such a sweet guy otherwise.” Her eyes then began to glow with a deep fear. “Just the same, I’m scared to death about him. Clay is like a powder keg, and some day somebody’s going to light his fuse. He’s going to blow right up and he’ll be in a lot of trouble.”

Rob couldn’t answer because he feared she spoke the truth. Clay Gerard was heading for a fall. Even in this short time, he had detected it.

“What am I going to do, lieutenant?” she asked helplessly.

Rob wished he had an answer for her, because already he had begun to admire this valiant young person. But once again he had no answer, and he told her so.

“Of course you wouldn’t know,” Dulcie said with a sympathetic smile. “He told me he was on your crew that’s leaving on a special mission today. Maybe since you’ve talked to me you’ll be able to understand him on the trip a little better anyway, lieutenant.”

“I’ll try to do that, Miss Gerard,” Rob promised, “but I’m afraid it’ll be mostly up to Clay himself. I wish you’d talk to him and tell him how important it is that he make himself a part of the team on this voyage and not just a triple-threat star. I can’t tell you how vital it is for him to do this.”

“It must be a terribly important flight,” the girl said. “The Space Command has been using its priority wave length more than ever in the past few days.”

“Sorry, but I can’t give out any information,” Rob told her. “All Space Command flights are top secret, you know.”

“I know. But a person can’t help wondering. I mean after all that panic that’s going on back on Earth—”

It would never do for her to find out about Operation Big Boy, Rob thought worriedly, so he decided to end the conversation completely.

He looked at his watch and said, “I’ve got to get back to my quarters now. I’m grateful for what you told me about your brother. If he co-operates with us, we’ll go halfway with him. Just remind him of that.”

Dulcie looked at him intently. “Clay and I are the last of the Gerards, Lieutenant Allison. Our heritage has been a great one, and I guess that’s what’s helped to make Clay like he is. It’s because Clay is the last of our family to carry the name that I want so hard for him to make good.”