Delilah and the Space-Rigger

      SURE, WE HAD TROUBLE building Space Station One-but the trouble was people.

      Not that building a station twenty-two thousand three hundred miles out in space is a breeze. It was an engineering feat bigger than the Panama Canal or the Pyramids-or even the Susquehanna Power Pile. But "Tiny" Larsen built her and a job Tiny tackles gets built.

      I first saw Tiny playing guard on a semi-pro team, working his way through Oppenheimer Tech. He worked summers for me thereafter till he graduated. He stayed in construction and eventually I went to work for him.

      Tiny wouldn't touch a job unless he was satisfied with the engineering. The Station had jobs designed into it that called for six-armed monkeys instead of grown men in space suits. Tiny spotted such boners; not a ton of material went into the sky until the specs and drawings suited him.

      But it was people that gave us the headaches. We bad a sprinkling of married men, but the rest were wild kids, attracted by high pay and adventure. Some were busted spacemen. Some were specialists, like electricians and instrument men. About half were deep-sea divers, used to working in pressure suits. There were sandhogs and riggers and welders and ship fitters and two circus acrobats.

      We fired four of them for being drunk on the job; Tiny had to break one stiff's arm before he would stay fired. What worried us was where did they get it? Turned out a ship fitter had rigged a heatless still, using the vacuum around us. He was making vodka from potatoes swiped from the commissary. I hated to let him go, but he was too smart.

      Since we were falling free in a 24-hour circular orbit, with everything weightless and floating, you'd think that shooting craps was impossible. But a radioman named Peters figured a dodge to substitute steel dice and a magnetic field. He also eliminated the element of chance, so we fired him.

      We planned to ship him back in the next supply ship, the R.S. Half Moon. I was in Tiny's office when she blasted to match our orbit. Tiny swam to the view port "Send for Peters, Dad," he said, "and give him the old heave ho. Who's his relief?"

      "Party named G. Brooks McNye," I told him.

      A line came snaking over from the ship. Tiny said, "I don't believe she's matched." He buzzed the radio shack for the ship's motion relative to the Station. The answer didn't please him and he told them to call the Half Moon.

      Tiny waited until the screen showed the rocket ship.

      C.O. "Good morning, Captain. Why have you placed a line on us?"

      "For cargo, naturally. Get your hopheads over here. I want to blast off before we enter the shadow." The Station spent about an hour and a quarter each day passing through Earth's shadow; we worked two eleven-hour shifts and skipped the dark period, to avoid rigging lights and heating suits.

      Tiny shook his head. "Not until you've matched course and speed with us."

      "I am matched!"

      "Not to specification, by my instruments."

      "Have a heart, Tiny! I'm short on maneuvering fuel. If I juggle this entire ship to make a minor correction on a few lousy tons of cargo, I'll be so late I'll have to put down on a secondary field. I may even have to make a dead-stick landing." In those days all ships had landing wings.

      "Look, Captain," Tiny said sharply, "the only purpose of your lift was to match orbits for those same few lousy tons. I don't care if you land in Little America on a pogo stick. The first load here was placed with loving care in the proper orbit, and I'm making every other load match. Get that covered wagon into the groove."

      "Very well, Superintendent!" Captain Shields said stiffly. "Don't be sore, Don," Tiny said softly. "By the way, you've got a passenger for me?"

      "Oh, yes, so I have!" Shields' face broke out in a grin.

      "Well, keep him aboard until we unload. Maybe we can beat the shadow yet."

      "Fine, fine! After all, why should I add to your troubles?" The skipper switched off, leaving my boss looking puzzled.

      We didn't have time to wonder at his words. Shields whipped his ship around on gyros, blasted a second or two, and put her dead in space with us pronto-and used very little fuel, despite his bellyaching. I grabbed every man we could spare and managed to get the cargo clear before we swung into Earth's shadow. Weightlessness is an unbelievable advantage in handling freight; we gutted the Half Moon-by hand, mind you-in fifty-four minutes.

      The stuff was oxygen tanks, loaded, and aluminum mirrors to shield them, panels of outer skin-sandwich stuff of titanium alloy sheet with foamed glass filling-and cases of jato units to spin the living quarters. Once it was all out and snapped to our cargo line I sent the men back by the same line-I won't let a man work outside without a line no matter how space happy he figures he is. Then I told Shields to send over the passenger and cast off.

      This little guy came out the ship's air lock, and hooked on to the ship's line. Handling himself like he was used to space, he set his feet and dived, straight along the stretched line, his snap hook running free. I hurried back and motioned him to follow me. Tiny, the new man, and I reached the air locks together.

      Besides the usual cargo lock we had three Kwikloks. A Kwiklok is an Iron Maiden without spikes; it fits a man in a suit, leaving just a few pints of air to scavenge, and cycles automatically. A big time saver in changing shifts. I passed through the middle-sized one; Tiny, of course, used the big one. Without hesitation the new man pulled himself into the small one.

      We went into Tiny's office. Tiny strapped down, and pushed his helmet back. "Well, McNye," he said. "Glad to have you with us."

      The new radio tech opened his helmet. I heard a low, pleasant voice answer, "Thank you."

      I stared and didn't say anything. From where I was I could see that the radio tech was wearing a hair ribbon.

      I thought Tiny would explode. He didn't need to see the hair ribbon; with the helmet up it was clear that the new "man" was as female as Venus deMilo. Tiny sputtered, then he was unstrapped and diving for the view port. "Dad!" he yelled. "Get the radio shack. Stop that ship!"

      But the Half Moon was already a ball of fire in the distance. Tiny looked dazed. "Dad," he said, "who else knows about this?"

      "Nobody, so far as I know."

      He thought a bit. "We've got to keep her out of sight.

      That's it-we keep her locked up and out of sight until the next ship matches in." He didn't look at her.

      "What in the world are you talking about?" McNye's voice was higher and no longer pleasant.

      Tiny glared. "You, that's what. What are you-a stowaway?'

      "Don't be silly! I'm G. B. McNye, electronics engineer. Don't you have my papers?"

      Tiny turned to me. "Dad, this is your fault. How in Chr- pardon me, Miss. How did you let them send you a woman? Didn't you even read the advance report on her?"

      "Me?" I said. "Now see here, you big squarehead! Those forms don't show sex; the Fair Employment Commission won't allow it except where it's pertinent to the job."

      "You're telling me it's not pertinent to the job here?"

      "Not by job classification it ain't. There's lots of female radio and radar men, back Earthside."

      "This isn't Earthside." He had something. He was thinking of those two-legged wolves swarming over the job outside. And G. B. McNye was pretty. Maybe eight months of no women at all affected my judgment, but she would pass.

      "I've even heard of female rocket pilots," I added, for spite.

      "I don't care if you've heard of female archangels; I'll have no women here!"

      "Just a minute!" If I was riled, she was plain sore. "You're the construction superintendent, are you not?"

      "Yes," Tiny admitted.

      "Very well, then, how do you know what sex I am?'

      "Are you trying to deny that you are a woman?"

      "Hardly! I'm proud of it. But officially you don't know what sex G. Brooks McNye is. That's why I use 'G' instead of Gloria. I don't ask favors."

      Tiny grunted. "You won't get any. I don't know how you sneaked in, but get this, McNye, or Gloria, or whatever. you're fired. You go back on the next ship. Meanwhile we'll try to keep the men from knowing we've got a woman aboard."

      I could see her count ten. "May I speak," she said finally, "or does your Captain Bligh act extend to that, too?"

      "Say your say."

      "I didn't sneak in. I am on the permanent staff of the Station, Chief Communications Engineer. I took this vacancy myself to get to know the equipment while it was being installed. I'll live here eventually; I see no reason not to start now."

      Tiny waved it away. "There'll be men and women both here some day. Even kids. Right now it's stag and it'll stay that way."

      "We'll see. Anyhow, you can't fire me; radio personnel don't work for you." She had a point; communicators and some other specialists were lent to the contractors, Five Companies, Incorporated, by Harriman Enterprises.

      Tiny snorted. "Maybe I can't fire you; I can send you home. Requisitioned personnel must be satisfactory to the contractor, meaning me. Paragraph Seven, clause M; I wrote that clause myself."

      "Then you know that if requisitioned personnel are refused without cause the contractor bears the replacement cost"

      "I'll risk paying your fare home, but I won't have you here."

      "You are most unreasonable!"

      "Perhaps, but I'll decide what's good for the job. I'd rather have a dope peddler than have a woman sniffing around my boys!"

      She gasped. Tiny knew he had said too much; he added, "Sorry, Miss. But that's it. You'll' stay under cover until I can get rid of you."

      Before she could speak I cut in. "Tiny-look behind you!" Staring in the port was one of the riggers, his eyes bugged out. Three or four more floated up and joined him.

      Then Tiny zoomed up to the port and they scattered like minnows. He scared them almost out of their suits; I thought he was going to shove his fists through the quartz.

      He came back looking whipped. "Miss," he said, pointing, "wait in my room." When she was gone he added, "Dad, what'll we do?"

      I said, "I thought you had made up your mind, Tiny."

      "I have," he answered peevishly. "Ask the Chief Inspector to come in, will you?"

      That showed how far gone he was. The inspection gang belonged to Harriman Enterprises, not to us, and Tiny rated them mere nuisances. Besides, Tiny was an Oppenheimer graduate; Dalrymple was from M.I.T.

      He came in, brash and cheerful. "Good morning, Superintendent. Morning, Mr. Witherspoon. What can I do for you?"

      Glumly, Tiny told the story. Dalrymple looked smug. "She's right, old man. You can send her back and even specify a male relief. But I can hardly endorse 'for proper cause' now, can I?"

      "Damnation. Dalrymple, we can't have a woman around here!"

      "A moot point. Not covered by contract, y'know."

      "If your office hadn't sent us a crooked gambler as her predecessor I wouldn't be in this am!"

      "There, there! Remember the old blood pressure. Suppose we leave the endorsement open and arbitrate the cost. That's fair, eh?"

      "I suppose so. Thanks."

      "Not at all. But consider this: when you rushed Peters off before interviewing the newcomer, you cut yourself down to one operator. Hammond can't stand watch twenty-four hours a day."

      "He can sleep in the shack. The alarm will wake him."

      "I can't accept that. The home office and ships' frequencies must be guarded at all times. Harriman Enterprises has supplied a qualified operator; I am afraid you must use her for the time being."

      Tiny will always cooperate with the inevitable; he said quietly, "Dad, she'll take first shift. Better put the married men on that shift."

      Then he called her in. "Go to the radio shack and start makee-learnee, so that Hammond can go off watch soon. Mind what he tells you. He's a good man."

      "I know," she said briskly. "I trained him."

      Tiny bit his lip. The C.I. said, "The Superintendent doesn't bother with trivia-I'm Robert Dalrymple, Chief Inspector. He probably didn't introduce his assistant either-Mr. Witherspoon."

      "Call me Dad," I said.

      She smiled and said, "Howdy, Dad." I felt warm clear through. She went on to Dalrymple, "Odd that we haven't met before."

      Tiny butted in. "McNye, you'll sleep in my room-"

      She raised her eyebrows; he went on angrily, "Oh, I'll get my stuff out-at once. And get this: keep the door locked, off shift.'

      "You're darn tootin' I will!"

      Tiny blushed.

      I was too busy to see much of Miss Gloria. There was cargo to stow, the new tanks to install and shield. That left the most worrisome task of all: putting spin on the living quarters. Even the optimists didn't expect much interplanetary traffic for some years; nevertheless Harriman Enterprises wanted to get some activities moved in and paying rent against their enormous investment.

      I.T.&T. had leased space for a microwave relay station several million a year from television alone. The Weather Bureau was itching to set up its hemispheric integrating station; Palomar Observatory had a concession (Harriman Enterprises donated that space); the Security Council had, some hush-hush project; Fermi Physical Labs and Kettering Institute each had space-a dozen tenants wanted to move in now, or sooner, even if we never completed accommodations for tourists and travelers.

      There were time bonuses in it for Five Companies, Incorporated-and their help. So we were in a hurry to get spin on the quarters.

      People who have never been out have trouble getting through their heads-at least I had-that there is no feeling of weight, no up and down, in a free orbit in space. There's' Earth, round and beautiful, only twenty-odd thousand miles away, close enough to brush your sleeve. You know it's pulling you towards it. Yet you feel no weight, absolutely none. You float..

      Floating is fine for some types of work, but when it's time to eat, or play cards, or bathe, it's good to feel weight on your feet. Your dinner stays quiet and you feel more natural.

      You've seen pictures of the Station-a huge cylinder, like a bass drum, with ships' nose pockets dimpling its sides. Imagine a snare drum, spinning around inside the bass drum; that's the living quarters, with centrifugal force pinch-hitting for gravity. We could have spun the whole Station but you can't berth a ship against a whirling dervish.

      So we built a spinning part for creature comfort and an outer, stationary part for docking, tanks, storerooms, and the like. You pass from one to the other at the hub. When Miss Gloria joined us the inner part was closed in and pressurized, but the rest was a skeleton of girders.

      Mighty pretty though, a great network of shiny struts and ties against black sky and stars-titanium alloy 1403, light, strong, and non-corrodible. The Station is flimsy compared with a ship, since it doesn't have to take blastoff stresses. That meant we didn't dare put on spin by violent means-which is where jato units come in.

      "Jato"-Jet Assisted Take-Off-rocket units invented to give airplanes a boost. Now we use them wherever a controlled push is needed, say to get a truck out of the mud on a dam job. We mounted four thousand. of them around the frame of the living quarters, each one placed just so. They were wired up and ready to fire when Tiny came to me looking worried. "Dad," he said, "let's drop everything and finish compartment D-ll3."

      "Okay," I said. D-l13 was in the non-spin part.

      "Rig an air lock and stock it with two weeks supplies."

      "That'll change your mass distribution for spin," I suggested.

      "I'll refigure it next dark period. Then we'll shift jatos."

      When Dalrymple heard about it he came charging around. It meant a delay in making rental space available. "What's the idea?"

      Tiny stared at him. They had been cooler than ordinary lately; Dalrymple had been finding excuses to seek out Miss Gloria. He had to pass through Tiny's office to reach her temporary room, and Tiny had finally told him to get out and stay out. "The idea," Tiny said slowly, "is to have a pup tent in case the house burns."

      "What do you mean?"

      "Suppose we fire up the jatos and the structure cracks? Want to hang around in a space suit until a ship happens by?"

      "That's silly. The stresses have been calculated."

      "That's what the man said when the bridge fell. We'll do it my way."

      Dalrymple stormed off.

      Tiny's efforts to keep Gloria fenced up were sort of pitiful. In the first place, the radio tech's biggest job was repairing suit walkie-talkies, done on watch. A rash of such troubles broke out-on her shift. I made some shift transfers and docked a few for costs, too; it's not proper maintenance when a man deliberately busts his aerial.

      There were other symptoms. It became stylish to shave. Men started wearing shirts around quarters and bathing increased to where I thought I would have to rig another water still.

      Came the shift when D-l13 was ready and the jatos readjusted. I don't mind saying I was nervous. All hands were ordered out of the quarters and into suits. They perched around the girders and waited.

      Men in space suits all look alike; we used numbers and colored armbands. Supervisors had two antennas, one for a gang frequency, one for the supervisors' circuit. With Tiny and me the second antenna hooked back through the radio shack and to all the gang frequencies-a broadcast.

      The supervisors had reported their men clear of the fireworks and I was about to give Tiny the word, when this figure came climbing through the girders, inside the danger zone. No safety line. No armband. One antenna.

      Miss Gloria, of course. Tiny hauled her out of the blast zone, and anchored her with his own safety line. I heard his voice, harsh in my helmet: "Who do you think you are? A sidewalk superintendent?"

      And her voice: "What do you expect me to do? Go park on, a star?"

      "I told you to stay away from the job. If you can't obey orders, I'll lock you up."

      I reached him, switched off my radio and touched helmet. "Boss! Boss!" I said. "You're broadcasting!"

      "Oh-" he says, switches off, and touches helmets with her. We could still hear her; she didn't switch off. "Why, you big baboon, I came outside because you sent a search party to clear everybody out," and, "How would I know about a safety line rule? You've kept me penned up." And finally, "We'll see!"

      I dragged him away and he told the boss electrician to go ahead. Then we forgot the row for we were looking at the prettiest fireworks ever seen, a giant St. Catherine's wheel, rockets blasting all over it. Utterly soundless, out there in space-but beautiful beyond compare.

      The blasts died away and there was the living quarters, spinning true as a flywheel-Tiny and I both let out sighs of relief. We all went back inside then to see what weight tasted like.

      It tasted funny. I went through the shaft and started down the ladders, feeling myself gain weight as I neared the rim. I felt seasick, like the first time I experienced no weight. I could hardly walk and my calves cramped.

      We inspected throughout, then went to the office and sat down. It felt good, just right for comfort, one-third gravity at the rim. Tiny rubbed his chair arms and grinned, "Beats being penned up in D-113."

      "Speaking of being penned up," Miss Gloria said, walking in, "may I have a word with you, Mr. Larsen?"

      "Uh? Why, certainly. Matter of fact, I wanted to see you. I owe you an apology, Miss McNye.'I was-"

      "Forget it," she cut in. "You were on edge. But I want to know this: how long are you going to keep up this nonsense, of trying to chaperone me?"

      He studied her. "Not long. Just till your relief arrives."

      "So? Who is the shop steward around here?"

      "A shipfitter named McAndrews. But you can't use him. You're a staff member."

      "Not in the job I'm filling. I am going to talk to him. You're discriminating against me, and in my off time at that."

      "Perhaps, but you will find I have the authority. Legally I'm a ship's captain, while on this job. A captain in space has wide discriminatory powers."

      "Then you should use them with discrimination!" He grinned. "Isn't that what you just said I was doing?" We didn't hear from the shop steward, but Miss Gloria started doing as she pleased. She showed up at the movies, next off shift, with Dalrymple. Tiny left in the middle-good show, too; Lysistrata Goes to Town, relayed up from New York.

      As she was coming back alone he stopped her, having seen to it that I was present. "Umm-Miss McNye. . . ."

      "Yes?"

      "I think you should know, uh, well...Chief Inspector Dalrymple is a married man."

      "Are you suggesting that my conduct has been improper?"

      "No, but-"

      "Then mind your own business!" Before he could answer she added, "It might interest you that he told me about your four children."

      Tiny sputtered. "Why. . . why, I'm not even married!"

      "So? That makes it worse, doesn't it?" She swept out.

      Tiny quit trying to keep her in her room, but told her to notify him whenever she left it. It kept him busy riding herd on her. I refrained from suggesting that he get Dalrymple to spell him.

      But I was surprised when he told me to put through the order dismissing her. I had been pretty sure he was going to drop it.

      "What's the charge?" I asked. "Insubordination!"

      I kept mum. He said, "Well, she won't take orders."

      "She does her work okay. You give her orders you wouldn't give to one of the men and that a man wouldn't take."

      "You disagree with my orders?"

      "That's not the point. You can't prove the charge, Tiny."

      "Well, charge her with being female! I can prove that."

      I didn't say anything. "Dad," he added wheedlingly, "you know how to write it. No personal animus against Miss McNye, but it is felt that as a matter of policy, and so forth and so on."

      I wrote it and gave it to Hammond privately. Radio techs are sworn to secrecy but it didn't surprise me when I was stopped by O'Connor, one of our best metalsmiths. "Look, Dad, is it true that the Old Man is getting rid of Brooksie?"

      "Brooksie?"

      "Brooksie McNye, she says to call her Brooks. Is it true?" I admitted it, then went on, wondering if I should have lied.

      It takes four hours, about, for a ship to lift from Earth. The shift before the Pole Star was due, with Miss Gloria's relief, the timekeeper brought me two separation slips. Two men were nothing; we averaged more each ship. An hour later he reached me by supervisors circuit, and asked me to come to the time office. I was out on the rim inspecting a weld job; I said no. "Please, Mr. Witherspoon," he begged, "you've got to." When one of the boys doesn't call me 'Dad,' it means something. I went.

      There was a queue like mail call outside his door; I went in and he shut the door on them. He handed me a double handful of separation slips. "What in the great depths of night is this?" I asked.

      "There's dozens more I ain't had time to write up yet."

      None of the slips had any reason given-just "own choice." "Look, Jimmie what goes on here?"

      "Can't you dope it out, Dad? Shucks, I'm turning in one, too."

      I told him my guess and he admitted it. So I took the slips, called Tiny and told him for the love of Heaven to come to his office.

      Tiny chewed his lip considerable. "But, Dad, they can't strike. It's a non-strike contract with bonds from every union concerned."

      "It's no strike, Tiny. You can't stop a man from quitting."

      "They'll pay their own fares back, so help me!"

      "Guess again. Most of 'em have worked long enough for the free ride."

      "We'll have to hire others quick, or we'll miss our date."

      "Worse than that, Tiny, we won't finish. By next dark period you won't even have a maintenance crew."

      "I've never had a gang of men quit me. I'll talk to them."

      "No good, Tiny. You're up against something too strong for you."

      "You're against me, Dad?"

      "I'm never against you, Tiny."

      He said, "Dad, you think I'm pig-headed, but I'm right. You can't have one woman among several hundred men. It drives 'em nutty."

      I didn't say it affected him the same way; I said, "Is that bad?"

      "Of course. I can't let the job be ruined to humor one woman."

      "Tiny, have you looked at the progress charts lately?"

      "I've hardly had time to-what about them?"

      I knew why he hadn't had time. "You'll have trouble proving Miss Gloria interfered with the job. We're ahead of schedule."

      "We are?"

      While he was studying the charts I put an arm around his shoulder. "Look, son," I said, "sex has been around our planet a long time. Earthside, they never get away from it, yet some pretty big jobs get built anyhow. Maybe we'll just have to learn to live with it here, too. Matter of fact, you had the answer a minute ago."

      "I did? I sure didn't know it."

      "You said, 'You can't have one woman among several hundred men. Get me?"

      "Huh? No, I don't. Wait a minute! Maybe I do."

      "Ever tried ju jitsu? Sometimes you win by relaxing."

      "Yes. Yes!"

      "When you can't beat 'em, you join 'em."

      He buzzed the radio shack. "Have Hammond relieve you, McNye, and come to my office."

      He did it handsomely, stood up and made a speech-he'd been wrong, taken him a long time to see it, hoped there were no hard feelings, etc. He was instructing the home office to see how many jobs could be filled at once with female help. "Don't forget married couples," I put in mildly, "and better ask for some older women, too."

      "I'll do that," Tiny agreed. "Have I missed anything, Dad?"

      "Guess not. We'll have to rig quarters, but there's time."

      "Okay. I'm telling them to hold the Pole Star, Gloria, so they can send us a few this trip."

      "That's fine" She looked really happy.

      He chewed his lip. "I've a feeling I've missed something. Hmm-I've got it. Dad, tell them to send up a chaplain for the Station, as soon as possible. Under the new policy we may need one anytime." I thought so, too.

Space Jockey

JUST AS THEY WERE LEAVING the telephone called his name. "Don't answer it," she pleaded. "We'll miss the curtain."

      "Who is it?" he called out. The viewplate lighted; he recognized Olga Pierce, and behind her the Colorado Springs office of Trans-Lunar Transit.

      "Calling Mr. Pemberton. Calling-Oh, it's you, Jake. You're on. Flight 27, Supra-New York to Space Terminal. I'll have a copter pick you up in twenty minutes."

      "How come?" he protested. "I'm fourth down on the call board."

      "You were fourth down. Now you are standby pilot to Hicks-and he just got a psycho down-check."

      "Hicks got psychoed? That's silly!"

      "Happens to the best, chum. Be ready. "Bye now."

      His wife was twisting sixteen dollars worth of lace handkerchief to a shapeless mass. "Jake, this is ridiculous. For three months I haven't seen enough of you to know what you look like."

      "Sorry, kid. Take Helen to the show."

      "Oh, Jake, I don't care about the show; I wanted to get you where they couldn't reach you for once."

      "They would have called me at the theater."

      "Oh, no! I wiped out the record you'd left."

      "Phyllis! Are you trying to get me fired?"

      "Don't look at me that way." She waited, hoping that he would speak, regretting the side issue, and wondering how to tell him that her own fretfulness was caused, not by disappointment, but by gnawing worry for his safety every time he went out into space.

      She went on desperately, "You don't have to take this flight, darling; you've been on Earth less than the time limit. Please, Jake!"

      He was peeling off his tux. "I've told you a thousand times: a pilot doesn't get a regular run by playing space-lawyer with the rule book. Wiping out my follow-up message-why did you do it, Phyllis? Trying to ground me?"

      "No, darling, but I thought just this once-"

      "When they offer me a flight I take it." He walked stiffly out of the room.

      He came back ten minutes later, dressed for space and apparently in good humor; he was whistling: "-the caller called Casey at half past four; he kissed his-" He broke off when he saw her face, and set his mouth. "Where's my coverall?"

      "I'll get it. Let me fix you something to eat."

      'You know I can't take high acceleration on a full stomach. And why lose thirty bucks to lift another pound?"

      Dressed as he was, in shorts, singlet, sandals, and pocket belt, he was already good for about minus-fifty pounds in weight bonus; she started to tell him the weight penalty on a sandwich and -a cup of coffee did not matter to them, but it was just one more possible cause for misunderstanding.

      Neither of them said much until the taxicab clumped on the roof. He kissed her goodbye and told her not to come outside. She obeyed-until she heard the helicopter take off. Then she climbed to the roof and watched it out of sight.

      The traveling-public gripes at the lack of direct Earth-to-Moon service, but it takes three types of rocket ships and two space-station changes to make a fiddling quarter-million-mile jump for a good reason: Money.

      The Commerce Commission has set the charges for the present three-stage lift from here to the Moon at thirty dollars a pound. Would direct service be cheaper?  A ship designed to blast off from Earth, make an airless landing on the Moon, return and make an atmosphere landing, would be so cluttered up with heavy special equipment used only once in the trip that it could not show a profit at a thousand dollars a pound! Imagine combining a ferry boat, a subway train, and an express elevator. So Trans-Lunar uses rockets braced for catapulting, and winged for landing on return to Earth to make the terrific lift from Earth to our satellite station Supra-New York. The long middle lap, from there to where Space Terminal circles the Moon, calls for comfort-but no landing gear. The Flying Dutchman and the Philip Nolan never land; they were even assembled in space, and they resemble winged rockets like the Skysprite and the Firefly as little as a Pullman train resembles a parachute.

      The Moonbat and the Gremlin are good only for the jump from Space Terminal down to Luna . . . no wings, cocoon-like acceleration-and-crash hammocks, fractional controls on their enormous jets.

      The change-over points would not have to be more than air-conditioned tanks. Of course Space Terminal is quite a city, what with the Mars and Venus traffic, but even today Supra-New York is still rather primitive, hardly more than a fueling point and a restaurant-waiting room. It has only been the past five years that it has even been equipped to offer the comfort of one-gravity centrifuge service to passengers with queasy stomachs.

      Pemberton weighed in at the spaceport office, then hurried over to where the Skysprite stood cradled in the catapult. He shucked off his coverall, shivered as he handed it to the gateman, and ducked inside. He went to his acceleration hammock and went to sleep; the lift to Supra-New York was not his worry-his job was deep space.

      He woke at the surge of the catapult and the nerve-tingling rush up the face of Pikes Peak. When the Skysprite went into free flight, flung straight up above the Peak, Pemberton held his breath; if the rocket jets failed to fire, the ground-to-space pilot must try to wrestle her into a glide and bring her down, on her wings.

      The rockets roared on time; Jake went back to sleep.

      When the Skysprite locked in with Supra-New York, Pemberton went to the station's stellar navigation room. He was pleased to find Shorty Weinstein, the computer, on duty. Jake trusted Shorty's computations-a good thing when your ship, your passengers, and your own skin depend thereon. Pemberton had to be a better than average mathematician himself in order to be a pilot; his own limited talent made him appreciate the genius of those who computed the orbits.

      "Hot Pilot Pemberton, the Scourge of the Spaceways - Hi!" Weinstein handed him a sheet of paper.

      Jake looked at it, then looked amazed. "Hey, Shorty- you've made a mistake."

      "Huh? Impossible. Mabel can't make mistakes." Weinstein gestured at the giant astrogation computer filling the far wall.

      "You made a mistake. You gave me an easy fix - 'Vega, Antares, Regulus.' You make things easy for the pilot and your guild'll chuck you out." Weinstein looked sheepish but pleased. "I see I don't blast off for seventeen hours. I could have taken the morning freight." Jake's thoughts went back to Phyllis.

      "UN canceled the morning trip."

      "Oh-" Jake shut up, for he knew Weinstein knew as little as he did. Perhaps the flight would have passed too close to an A-bomb rocket, circling the globe like a policeman. The General Staff of the Security Council did not give out information about the top secrets guarding the peace of the planet. Pemberton shrugged. "Well, if I'm asleep, call me three hours minus."

      "Right. Your tape will be ready."

      While he slept, the Flying Dutchman nosed gently into her slip, sealed her airlocks to the Station, discharged passengers and freight from Luna City. When he woke, her holds were filling, her fuel replenished, and passengers boarding. He stopped by the post office radio desk, looking for a letter from Phyllis. Finding none, he told himself that she would have sent it to Terminal. He went on into the restaurant, bought the facsimile Herald-Tribune, and settled down grimly to enjoy the comics and his breakfast.

      A man sat down opposite him and proceeded to plague him with silly questions about rocketry, topping it by misinterpreting the insignia embroidered on Pemberton's singlet and miscalling him "Captain." Jake hurried through breakfast to escape him, then picked up the tape from his automatic pilot, and went aboard the Flying Dutchman.

      After reporting to the Captain he went to the control room, floating and pulling himself along by the handgrips. He buckled himself into the pilot's chair and started his check off.

      Captain Kelly drifted in and took the other chair as Pemberton was finishing his checking runs on the ballistic tracker. "Have a Camel, Jake."

      "I'll take a rain check." He continued. Kelly watched him with a slight frown. Like captains and pilots on Mark Twain's Mississippi-and for the same reasons-a spaceship captain bosses his ship, his crew, his cargo, and his passengers, but the pilot is the final, legal, and unquestioned boss of how the ship is handled from blast-off to the end of the trip. A captain may turn down a given pilot-nothing more. Kelly fingered a slip of paper tucked in his pouch and turned over in his mind the words with which the Company psychiatrist on duty had handed it to him.

      "I'm giving this pilot clearance, Captain, but you need not accept it."

      "Pemberton's a good man. What's wrong?"

      The psychiatrist thought over what he had observed while posing as a silly tourist bothering a stranger at breakfast. "He's a little more anti-social than his past record shows. Something on his mind. Whatever it is, he can tolerate it for the present. We'll keep an eye on him."

      Kelly had answered, "Will you come along with him as pilot?"

      "If you wish."

      "Don't bother-I'll take him. No need to lift a deadhead." Pemberton fed Weinstein's tape into the robot-pilot, then turned to Kelly. "Control ready, sir."

      "Blast when ready, Pilot." Kelly felt relieved when he heard himself make the irrevocable decision.

      Pemberton signaled the Station to cast loose. The great ship was nudged out by an expanding pneumatic ram until she swam in space a thousand feet away, secured by a single line. He then turned the ship to its blast-off direction by causing a flywheel, mounted on gimbals at the ship's center of gravity, to spin rapidly. The ship spun slowly in the opposite direction, by grace of Newton's Third Law of Motion.

      Guided by the tape, the robot-pilot tilted prisms of the pilot's periscope so that Vega, Antares, and Regulus would shine as one image when the ship was headed right; Pemberton nursed the ship to that heading . . . fussily; a mistake of one minute of arc here meant two hundred miles at destination.

      When the three images made a pinpoint, he stopped the flywheels and locked in the gyros. He then checked the heading of his ship by direct observation of each of the stars, just as a salt-water skipper uses a sextant, but with incomparably more accurate instruments. This told him nothing about the correctness of the course Weinstein had ordered-he had to take that as Gospel-but it assured him that the robot and its tape were behaving as planned. Satisfied, he cast off the last line.

      Seven minutes to go-Pemberton flipped the switch permitting the robot-pilot to blast away when its clock told it to. He waited, hands poised over the manual controls, ready to take over if the robot failed, and felt the old, inescapable sick excitement building up inside him.

      Even as adrenaline poured into him, stretching his time sense, throbbing in his ears, his mind kept turning back to Phyllis.

      He admitted she had a kick coming-spacemen shouldn't marry. Not that she'd starve if he messed up a landing, but a gal doesn't want insurance; she wants a husband-minus six minutes. If he got a regular run she could live in Space Terminal.

      No good-idle women at Space Terminal went bad. Oh, Phyllis wouldn't become a tramp or a rum bum; she'd just go bats.

      Five minutes more-he didn't care much for Space Terminal himself. Nor for space! "The Romance of Interplanetary Travel" - it looked well in print, but he knew what it was: A job. Monotony. No scenery. Bursts of work, tedious waits. No home life.

      Why didn't he get an honest job and stay home nights?

      He knew! Because he was a space jockey and too old to change.

      What chance has a thirty-year-old married man, used to important money, to change his racket? (Four minutes) He'd look good trying to sell helicopters on commission, now, wouldn't he?

      Maybe he could buy a piece of irrigated land and - Be your age, chum! You know as much about farming as a cow knows about cube root! No, he had made his bed when he picked rockets during his training hitch. If he had bucked for the electronics branch, or taken a 01 scholarship-too late now. Straight from the service into Harriman's Lunar Exploitations, hopping ore on Luna. That had torn it.

      "How's it going, Doc?" Kelly's voice was edgy.

      "Minus two minutes some seconds." Damnation-Kelly knew better than to talk to the pilot on minus time.

      He caught a last look through the periscope. Antares seemed to have drifted. He unclutched the gyro, tilted and spun the flywheel, braking it savagely to a stop a moment later. The image was again a pinpoint. He could not have explained what he did: it was virtuosity, exact juggling, beyond textbook and classroom.

      Twenty seconds . . . across the chronometer's face beads of light trickled the seconds away while he tensed, ready to fire by hand, or even to disconnect and refuse the trip if his judgment told him to. A too-cautious decision might cause Lloyds' to cancel his bond; a reckless decision could cost his license or even his life-and others.

      But he was not thinking of underwriters and licenses, nor even of lives. In truth he was not thinking at all; he was feeling, feeling his ship, as if his nerve ends extended into every part of her. Five seconds . . . the safety disconnects clicked out. Four seconds . . . three seconds. . . two seconds. . . one-

      He was stabbing at the hand-fire button when the roar hit him.

      Kelly relaxed to the pseudo-gravity of the blast and watched. Pemberton was soberly busy, scanning dials, noting time, checking his progress by radar bounced off Supra-New York. Weinstein's figures, robot-pilot, the ship itself, all were clicking together.

      Minutes later, the critical instant neared when the robot should cut the jets. Pemberton poised a finger over the hand cut-off, while splitting his attention among radarscope, accelerometer, periscope, and chronometer. One instant they were roaring along on the jets; the next split second the ship was in free orbit, plunging silently toward the Moon. So perfectly matched were human and robot that Pemberton himself did not know which had cut the power.

      He glanced again at the board, then unbuckled. "How about that cigarette, Captain? And you can let your passengers unstrap."

      No co-pilot is needed in space and most pilots would rather share a toothbrush than a control room. The pilot works about an hour at blast off, about the same before contact, and loafs during free flight, save for routine checks and corrections. Pemberton prepared to spend one hundred and four hours eating, reading, writing letters, and sleeping-especially sleeping.

      When the alarm woke him, he checked the ship's position, then wrote to his wife. "Phyllis my dear," he began, "I don't blame you for being upset at missing your night out. I was disappointed, too. But bear with me, darling, I should be on a regular run before long. In less than ten years I'll be up for retirement and we'll have a chance to catch up on bridge and golf and things like that. I know it's pretty hard to-"

      The voice circuit cut in "Oh, Jake-put on your company face. I'm bringing a visitor to the control room."

      "No visitors in the control room, Captain."

      "Now, Jake. This lunkhead has a letter from Old Man Harriman himself. 'Every possible courtesy-' and so forth."

      Pemberton thought quickly. He could refuse-but there was no sense in offending the big boss. "Okay, Captain. Make it short."

      The visitor was a man, jovial, oversize-Jake figured him for an eighty pound weight penalty. Behind him a thirteen year-old male counterpart came zipping through the door and lunged for the control console. Pemberton snagged him by the arm and forced himself to speak pleasantly. "Just hang on to that bracket, youngster. I don't want you to bump your head."

      "Leggo me! Pop-make him let go."

      Kelly cut in. "I think he had best hang on, Judge."

      "Umm, uh-very well. Do as the Captain says, Junior."

      "Aw, gee, Pop!"

      "Judge Schacht, this is First Pilot Pemberton," Kelly said rapidly. "He'll show you around."

      "Glad to know you, Pilot. Kind of you, and all that."

      "What would you like to see, Judge?" Jake said carefully.

      "Oh, this and that. It's for the boy-his first trip. I'm an old spacehound myself-probably more hours than half your crew." He laughed. Pemberton did not.

      "There's not much to see in free flight."

      "Quite all right. We'll just make ourselves at home-eh, Captain?"

      "I wanna sit in the control seat," Schacht Junior announced.

      Pemberton winced. Kelly said urgently, "Jake, would you mind outlining the control system for the boy? Then we'll go."

      "He doesn't have to show me anything. I know all about it. I'm a Junior Rocketeer of America-see my button?" The boy shoved himself toward the control desk.

      Pemberton grabbed him, steered him into the pilot's chair, and strapped him in. He then flipped the board's disconnect.

      "Whatcha doing?"

      "I cut off power to the controls so I could explain them."

      "Aintcha gonna fire the jets?"

      "No." Jake started a rapid description of the use and purpose of each button, dial, switch, meter, gimmick, and scope.

      Junior squirmed. "How about meteors?" he demanded.

      "Oh, that-maybe one collision in half a million EarthMoon trips. Meteors are scarce."

      "So what? Say you hit the jackpot? You're in the soup."

      "Not at all. The anti-collision radar guards all directions five hundred miles out. If anything holds a steady bearing for three seconds, a direct hook-up starts the jets. First a warning gong so that everybody can grab something solid, then one second later - Boom! - We get out of there fast."

      "Sounds corny to me. Lookee, I'll show you how Commodore Cartwright did it in The Comet Busters-"

      "Don't touch those controls!"

      "You don't own this ship. My pop says-"

      "Oh, Jake!" Hearing his name; Pemberton twisted, fish-like, to face Kelly.

      "Jake, Judge Schacht would like to know-" From the corner of his eye Jake saw the boy reach for the board. He turned, started to shout-acceleration caught him, while the jets roared in his ear.

      An old spacehand can usually recover, catlike, in an unexpected change from weightlessness to acceleration. But Jake had been grabbing for the boy, instead of for anchorage. He fell back and down, twisted to try to avoid Schacht, banged his head on the frame of the open air-tight door below, and fetched up on the next deck, out cold. - Kelly was shaking him. ".You all right, Jake?"

      He sat up. "Yeah. Sure." He became aware of the thunder, the shivering deckplates. "The jets! Cut the power!"

      He shoved Kelly aside and swarmed up into the control room, jabbed at the cut-off button. In sudden ringing silence, they were again weightless.

      Jake turned, unstrapped Schacht Junior, and hustled him to Kelly. "Captain, please remove this menace from my control room."

      "Leggo! Pop-he's gonna hurt me!"

      The elder Schacht bristled at once. "What's the meaning of this? Let go of my son!"

      "Your precious son cut in the jets."

      "Junior-did you do that?"

      The boy shifted his eyes. "No, Pop. It . . . it was a meteor."

      Schacht looked puzzled. Pemberton snorted. "I had just told him how the radar-guard can blast to miss a meteor. He's lying."

      Schacht ran through the process he called "making up his mind", then answered, "Junior never lies. Shame on you, a grown man, to try to put the blame on a helpless boy. I shall report you, sir. Come, Junior."

      Jake grabbed his arm. "Captain, I want those controls photographed for fingerprints before this man leaves the room. It was not a meteor; the controls were dead, until this boy switched them on. Furthermore the anti-collision circuit sounds an alarm."

      Schacht looked wary. "This is ridiculous. I simply objected to the slur on my son's character. No harm has been done."

      "No harm, eh? How about broken arms-or necks? And wasted fuel, with more to waste before we're back in the groove. Do you know, Mister 'Old Spacehound,' just how precious a little fuel will be when we try to match orbits with Space Terminal-if we haven't got it? We may have to dump cargo to save the ship, cargo at $60,000 a ton on freight charges alone. Fingerprints will show the Commerce Commission whom to nick for it."

      When they were alone again Kelly asked anxiously, "You won't really have to jettison? You've got a maneuvering reserve."

      "Maybe we can't even get to Terminal. How long did she blast?"

      Kelly scratched his head. "I was woozy myself."

      "We'll open the accelerograph and take a look."

      Kelly brightened. "Oh, sure! If the brat didn't waste too much, then we just swing ship and blast back the same length of time."

      Jake shook his head. "You forgot the changed mass-ratio."

      "Oh ... oh, yes!" Kelly looked embarrassed. Mass-ratio under power, the ship lost the weight of fuel burned. The thrust remained constant; the mass it pushed shrank. Getting back to proper position, course, and speed became a complicated problem in the calculus of ballistics. "But you can do it, can't you?"

      "I'll have to. But I sure wish I had Weinstein here."

      Kelly left to see about his passengers; Jake got to work. He checked his situation by astronomical observation and by radar. Radar gave him all three factors quickly but with limited accuracy. Sights taken of Sun, Moon, and Earth gave him position, but told nothing of course and speed, at that time-nor could he afford to wait to take a second group of sights for the purpose.

      Dead reckoning gave him an estimated situation, by adding Weinstein's predictions to the calculated effect of young Schacht's meddling. This checked fairly well with the radar and visual observations, but still he had no notion of whether or not he could get back in the groove and reach his destination; it was now necessary to calculate what it would stake and whether or not the remaining fuel would be enough to brake his speed and match orbits.

      In space, it does no good to reach your journey's end if you flash on past at miles per second, or even crawling along at a few hundred miles per hour. To catch an egg on a plate - don't bump!

      He started doggedly to work to compute how to do it using the least fuel, but his little Marchant electronic calculator was no match for the tons of IBM computer at Supra-New York, nor was he Weinstein. Three hours later he had an answer of sorts. He called Kelly. "Captain? You can start by jettisoning Schacht & Son."

      "I'd like to. No way out, Jake?"

      "I can't promise to get your ship in safely without dumping. Better dump now, before we blast. It's cheaper."

      Kelly hesitated; he would as cheerfully lose a leg. "Give me time to pick out what to dump."

      "Okay." Pemberton returned sadly to his figures, hoping to find a saving mistake, then thought better of it. He called the radio room. "Get me Weinstein at Supra-New York."

      "Out of normal range."

      "I know that. This is the Pilot. Safety priority-urgent. Get a tight beam on them and nurse it."

      "Uh . . . aye aye, sir. I'll try."

      Weinstein was doubtful. "Cripes, Jake, I can't pilot you."

      "Dammit, you can work problems for me!"

      "What good is seven-place accuracy with bum data?"

      "Sure, sure. But you know what instruments I've got; you know about how well I can handle them. Get me a better answer."

      "I'll try." Weinstein called back four hours later. "Jake? Here's the dope: You planned to blast back to match your predicted speed, then made side corrections for position. Orthodox but uneconomical. Instead I had Mabel solve for it as one maneuver."

      "Good!"

      "Not so fast. It saves fuel but not enough. You can't possibly get back in your old groove - and then match T without dumping."

      Pemberton let it sink in, then said, "I'll tell Kelly."

      "Wait a minute, Jake. Try this. Start from scratch."

      "Huh?"

      "Treat it as a brand-new problem. Forget about the orbit on your tape. With your present course, speed, and position compute the cheapest orbit to match with Terminal's. Pick it!, new groove."

      Pemberton felt foolish. "I never thought of that."

      "Of course not. With the ship's little one-lung calculator it'd take you three weeks to solve it. You set to record?"

      "Sure."

      "Here's your data." Weinstein started calling it off. When they had checked it, Jake said, "That'll get me there?"

      "Maybe. If the data you gave me is up to your limit of accuracy; if you can follow instructions as exactly as a robot, if you can blast off and make contact so precisely that you don't need side corrections, then you might squeeze home. Maybe. Good luck, anyhow." The wavering reception muffled their goodbyes.

      Jake signaled Kelly. "Don't jettison, Captain. Have your passengers strap down. Stand by to blast. Minus fourteen minutes."

      "Very well, Pilot."

      The new departure made and checked, he again had time to spare. He took out his unfinished letter, read it, then tore it up.

      "Dearest Phyllis," he started again, "I've been doing some hard thinking this trip and have decided that I've just been stubborn. What am I doing way out here? I like my home. I like to see my wife.

      "Why should I risk my neck and your peace of mind to herd junk through the sky? Why hang around a telephone - waiting to chaperon fatheads to the Moon -numbskulls who couldn't pilot a rowboat and should have stayed at home in the first place?

      "Money, of course. I've been afraid to risk a change. I won't find another job that will pay half as well, but, if you are game, I'll ground myself and we'll start over. All my love,      "Jake"

      He put it away and went to sleep, to dream that an entire troop of Junior Rocketeers had been quartered in his control room.

      The closeup view of the Moon is second only to the spaceside view of the Earth as a tourist attraction; nevertheless Pemberton insisted that all passengers strap down during the swing around to Terminal. With precious little fuel for the matching maneuver, he refused to hobble his movements to please sightseers.

      Around the bulge of the Moon, Terminal came into sight - by radar only, for the ship was tail foremost. After each short braking blast Pemberton caught a new radar fix, then compared his approach with a curve he had plotted from Weinstein's figures-with one eye on the time, another on the 'scope, a third on the plot, and a fourth on his fuel gages.

      "Well, Jake?" Kelly fretted. "Do we make it?"

      "How should I know? You be ready to dump." They had agreed on liquid oxygen as the cargo to dump, since it could be let boil out through the outer valves, without handling.

      "Don't say it, Jake."

      "Damn it-I won't if I don't have to." He was fingering his controls again; the blast chopped off his words. When it stopped, the radio maneuvering circuit was calling him.

      "Flying Dutchman, Pilot speaking," Jake shouted back.

      "Terminal Control-Supro reports you short on fuel."

      "Right."

      "Don't approach. Match speeds outside us. We'll send a transfer ship to refuel you and pick up passengers."

      "I think I can make it."

      "Don't try it. Wait for refueling."

      "Quit telling me how to pilot my ship!" Pemberton switched off the circuit, then stared at the board, whistling morosely. Kelly filled in the words in his mind: "Casey said to the fireman, 'Boy, you better jump, cause two locomotives are agoing to bump!'"

      "You going in the slip anyhow, Jake?"

      "Mmm-no, blast it. I can't take a chance of caving in the side of Terminal, not with passengers aboard. But I'm not going to match speeds fifty miles outside and wait for a piggyback."

      He aimed for a near miss just outside Terminal's orbit, conning by instinct, for Weinstein's figures meant nothing by now. His aim was good; he did not have to waste his hoarded fuel on last minute side corrections to keep from hitting Terminal. When at last he was sure of sliding safely on past if unchecked, he braked once more. Then, as he started to cut off the power, the jets coughed, sputtered, and quit.

      The Flying Dutchman floated in space, five hundred yards outside Terminal, speeds matched.

      Jake switched on the radio. "Terminal-stand by for my line. I'll warp her in."

      He had filed his report, showered, and was headed for the post office to radiostat his letter, when the bullhorn summoned him to the Commodore-Pilot's office. Oh, oh, he told himself, Schacht has kicked the Brass-I wonder just how much stock that bliffy owns? And there's that other matter - getting snotty with Control.

      He reported stiffly. "First Pilot Pemberton, sir."

      Commodore Soames looked up. "Pemberton-oh, yes. You hold two ratings, space-to-space and airless-landing."

      Let's not stall around, Jake told himself. Aloud he said, "I have no excuses for anything this last trip. If the Commodore does not approve the way I run my control room, he may have my resignation."

      "What are you talking about?"

      "I, well-don't you have a passenger complaint on me?"

      "Oh, that!" Soames brushed it aside. "Yes, he's been here. But I have Kelly's report, too-and your chief jetman's, and a special from Supra-New York. That was crack piloting, Pemberton."

      "You mean there's no beef from the Company"

      "When have I failed to back up my pilots? You were perfectly right; I would have stuffed him out the air lock. Let's get down to business: You're on the space-to-space board, but I want to send a special to Luna City. Will you take it, as a favor to me?"

      Pemberton hesitated; Soames went on, "That oxygen you saved is for the Cosmic Research Project. They blew the seals on the north tunnel and lost tons of the stuff. The work is stopped-about $130,000 a day in overhead, wages, and penalties. The Gremlin is here, but no pilot until the Moonbat gets in-except you. Well?"

      "But I-look, Commodore, you can't risk people's necks on a jet landing of mine. I'm rusty; I need a refresher and a checkout."

      "No passengers, no crew, no captain-your neck alone."

      "I'll take her."

      Twenty-eight minutes later, with the ugly, powerful hull of the Gremlin around him, he blasted away. One strong shove to kill her orbital speed and let her fall toward the Moon, then no more worries until it came time to "ride 'er down on her tail".

      He felt good-until he hauled out two letters, the one he had failed to send, and one from Phyllis, delivered at Terminal.

      The letter from Phyllis was affectionate-and superficial. She did not mention his sudden departure; she ignored his profession completely. The letter was a model of correctness, but it worried him.

      He tore up both letters and started another. It said, in part: "-never said so outright, but you resent my job.

      "I have to work to support us. You've got a job, too. It's an old, old job that women have been doing a long time-crossing the plains in covered wagons, waiting for ships to come back from China, or waiting around a mine head after an explosion-kiss him goodbye with a smile, take care of him at home.

      "You married a spaceman, so part of your job is to accept my job cheerfully. I think you can do it, when you realize it. I hope so, for the way things have been going won't do for either of us. Believe me, I love you. Jake"

      He brooded on it until time to bend the ship down for his approach. From twenty miles altitude down to one mile he let the robot brake her, then shifted to manual while still falling slowly. A perfect airless-landing would be the reverse of the take-off of a war rocket-free fall, then one long blast of the jets, ending with the ship stopped dead as she touches the ground. In practice a pilot must feel his way down, not too slowly; a ship could burn all the fuel this side of Venus fighting gravity too long.

      Forty seconds later, falling a little more than 140 miles per hour, he picked up in his periscopes the thousand-foot static towers. At 300 feet he blasted five gravities for more than a second, cut it, and caught her with a one-sixth gravity, Moon-normal blast. Slowly he eased this off, feeling happy.

      The Gremlin hovered, her bright jet splashing the soil of the Moon, then settled with dignity to land without a jar.

      The ground crew took over; a sealed runabout jeeped Pemberton to the tunnel entrance. Inside Luna City, he found himself paged before he finished filing his report. When he took the call, Soames smiled at him from the viewpláte. "I saw that landing from the field pick-up, Pemberton. You don't need a refresher course."

      Jake blushed. "Thank you, sir."

      "Unless you are dead set on space-to-space, I can use you on the regular Luna City run. Quarters here or Luna City? Want it?"

      He heard himself saying, "Luna City. I'll take it."

      He tore up his third letter as he walked into Luna City post office. At the telephone desk he spoke to a blonde in a blue moonsuit. "Get me Mrs. Jake Pemberton, Suburb six-four-oh-three, Dodge City, Kansas, please."

      She looked him over. "You pilots sure spend money."

      "Sometimes phone calls are cheap. Hurry it, will you?"

      Phyllis was trying to phrase the letter she felt she should have written before. It was easier to say in writing that she was not complaining of loneliness nor lack of fun, but that she could not stand the strain of worrying about his safety. But then she found herself quite unable to state the logical conclusion. Was she prepared to face giving him up entirely if he would not give up space? She truly did not know . . . the phone call was a welcome interruption.

      The viewplate stayed blank. "Long distance," came a thin voice. "Luna City calling."

      Fear jerked at her heart. "Phyllis Pemberton speaking."

      An interminable delay-she knew it took nearly three seconds for radio waves to make the Earth-Moon round trip, but she did not remember it and it would not have reassured her. All she could see was a broken home, herself a widow, and Jake, beloved Jake, dead in space. "Mrs. Jake Pemberton?"

      "Yes, yes! Go ahead." Another wait-had she sent him away in a bad temper, reckless, his judgment affected? Had he died out there, remembering only that she fussed at him for leaving her to go to work? Had she failed him when he needed her? She knew that her Jake could not be tied to apron strings; men - grown-up men, not mammas' boys - had to break away from mother's apron strings. Then why had she tried to tie him to hers?  She had known better; her own mother had warned her not to try it.

      She prayed.

      Then another voice, one that weakened her knees with relief: "That you, honey?"

      "Yes, darling, yes! What are you doing on the Moon?"

      "It's a long story. At a dollar a second it will keep. What I want to know is-are you willing to come to Luna City?"

      It was Jake's turn to suffer from the inevitable lag in reply. He wondered if Phyllis were stalling, unable to make up her mind. At last he heard her say, "Of course, darling. When do I leave?"

      "When-say, don't you even want to know why?"

      She started to say that it did not matter, then said, "Yes, tell me." The lag was still present but neither of them cared. He told her the news, then added, "Run over to the Springs and get Olga Pierce to straighten out the red tape for you. Need my help to pack?"

      She thought rapidly. Had he meant to come back anyhow, he would not have asked. "No. I can manage."

      "Good girl. I'll radiostat you a long letter about what to bring and so forth. I love you. 'Bye now!"

      "Oh, I love you, too. Goodbye, darling."

      Pemberton came out of the booth whistling. Good girl, Phyllis. Staunch. He wondered why he had ever doubted her.

Requiem

      On a high hill in Samoa there is a grave. Inscribed on the marker are these words:

            "Under the wide and starry sky

            Dig my grave and let me lie

            Glad did I live and gladly die

            And I lay me down with a will!

            "This be the verse which you grave for me:

            'Here he lies where he longed to be,

            Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

            And the hunter home from the hill.'"

      These lines appear another place -- scrawled on a shipping tag torn from a compressed-air container, and pinned to the ground with a knife.

      It wasn't much of a fair, as fairs go. The trottin' races didn't promise much excitement, even though several entries claimed the blood of the immortal Dan Patch. The tents and concession booths barely covered the circus grounds, and the pitchmen seemed discouraged.

      D.D. Harriman's chauffeur could not see any reason for stopping. They were due in Kansas City for a directors' meeting, that is to say, Harriman was. The chauffeur had private reasons for promptness, reasons involving darktown society on Eighteenth Street. But the Boss not only stopped, but hung around.

      Bunting and a canvas arch made the entrance to a large enclosure beyond the race track. Red and gold letters announced:

            This way to the MOON ROCKET!!!!

                  See it in actual flight!

               Public Demonstration Flights

                     Twice Daily

            This is the ACTUAL TYPE used by the

              First Man to reach the MOON!!!

               YOU can ride in it!! -- $50.OO

      A boy, nine or ten years old, hung around the entrance and stared at the posters.

      "Want to see the ship, son?"

      The kid's eyes shone. "Gee, mister. I sure would."

      "So would I. Come on." Harriman paid out a dollar for two pink tickets which entitled them to enter the enclosure and examine the rocket ship. The kid took his and ran on ahead with the single-mindedness of youth. Harriman looked over the stubby curved lines of the ovoid body. He noted with a professional eye that she was a single-jet type with fractional controls around her midriff. He squinted through his glasses at the name painted in gold on the carnival red of the body, _Care Free_. He paid another quarter to enter the control cabin.

      When his eyes had adjusted to the gloom caused by the strong ray filters of the ports he let them rest lovingly on the keys of the console and the semi-circle of dials above. Each beloved gadget was in its proper place. He knew them, graven in his heart.

      While he mused over the instrument board, with the warm liquid of content soaking through his body, the pilot entered and touched his arm.

      "Sorry, sir. We've got to cast loose for the flight."

      "Eh?" Harriman started, then looked at the speaker. Handsome devil, with a good skull and strong shoulders, reckless eyes and a self-indulgent mouth, but a firm chin. "Oh, excuse me, Captain."

      "Quite all right."

      "Oh, I say, Captain, er, uh. . ."

      "McIntyre."

      "Captain McIntyre, could you take a passenger this trip?" The old man leaned eagerly toward him.

      "Why, yes, if you wish. Come along with me." He ushered Harriman into a shed marked OFFICE which stood near the gate. "Passenger for a check over, doc."

      Harriman looked startled but permitted the medico to run a stethoscope over his thin chest, and to strap a rubber bandage around his arm. Presently he unstrapped it, glanced at McIntyre, and shook his head.

      "No go, doc?"

      "That's right, Captain."

      Harriman looked from face to face. "My heart's all right -- that's just a flutter."

      The physician's brows shot up. "Is it? But it's not just your heart; at your age your bones are brittle, too brittle to risk a take-off."

      "Sorry, sir," added the pilot, "but the Bates County Fair Association pays the doctor here to see to it that I don't take anyone up who might be hurt by the acceleration."

      The old man's shoulders drooped miserably. "I rather expected it."

      "Sorry, sir." McIntyre turned to go, but Harriman followed him out.

      "Excuse me, Captain--"

      "Yes?"

      "Could you and your, uh, engineer have dinner with me after your flight?"

      The pilot looked at him quizzically. "I don't see why not. Thanks."

      "Captain McIntyre, it is difficult for me to see why anyone would quit the Earth-Moon run." Fried chicken and hot biscuits in a private dining room of the best hotel the little town of Butler afforded, three-star Hennessey and Corona-Coronas had produced a friendly atmosphere in which three men could talk freely.

      "Well, I didn't like it."

      "Aw, don't give him that, Mac -- you know damn well it was Rule G that got you." McIntyre's mechanic poured himself another brandy as he spoke.

      McIntyre looked sullen. "Well, what if I did take a couple o' drinks? Anyhow, I could have squared that -- it was the damn persnickety regulations that got me fed up. Who are you to talk? -- Smuggler!"

      "Sure I smuggled! Who wouldn't with all those beautiful rocks just aching to be taken back to Earth. I had a diamond once as big as... But if I hadn't been caught I'd be in Luna City tonight. And so would you, you drunken blaster ... with the boys buying us drinks, and the girls smiling and making suggestions..." He put his face down and began to weep quietly.

      McIntyre shook him. "He's drunk."

      "Never mind." Harriman interposed a hand. "Tell me, are you really satisfied not to be on the run any more?"

      McIntyre chewed his lip. "No, he's right of course. This barnstorming isn't what it's all cracked up to be. We've been hopping junk at every pumpkin doin's up and down the Mississippi valley -- sleeping in tourist camps, and eating at grease burners. Half the time the sheriff has an attachment on the ship, the other half the Society for the Prevention of Something or Other gets an injunction to keep us on the ground. It's no sort of a life for a rocket man."

      "Would it help any for you to get to the Moon?"

      "Well. . . Yes. I couldn't get back on the Earth-Moon run, but if I was in Luna City, I could get a job hopping ore for the Company -- they're always short of rocket pilots for that, and they wouldn't mind my record. If I kept my nose clean, they might even put me back on the run, in time."

      Harriman fiddled with a spoon, then looked up. "Would you young gentlemen be open to a business proposition?"

      "Perhaps. What is it?"

      "You own the _Care Free_?"

      "Yeah. That is, Charlie and I do -- barring a couple of liens against her. What about it?"

      "I want to charter her... for you and Charlie to take me to the Moon!"

      Charlie sat up with a jerk. "D'joo hear what he said, Mac? He wants us to fly that old heap to the Moon!"

      McIntyre shook his head. "Can't do it, Mister Harriman. The old boat's worn out. You couldn't convert to escape fuel. We don't even use standard juice in her -- just gasoline and liquid air. Charlie spends all of his time tinkering with her at that She's going to blow up some day."

      "Say, Mister Harriman," put in Charlie, "what's the matter with getting an excursion permit and going in a Company ship?"

      "No, son," the old man replied, "I can't do that. You know the conditions under which the U. N. granted the Company a monopoly on lunar exploitation -- no one to enter space who was not physically qualified to stand up under it. Company to take full responsibility for the safety and health of all citizens beyond the stratosphere. The official reason for granting the franchise was to avoid unnecessary loss of life during the first few years of space travel."

      "And you can't pass the physical exam?" Harriman shook his head.

      "Well, what the hell -- if you can afford to hire us, why don't you just bribe yourself a brace of Company docs? It's been done before."

      Harriman smiled ruefully. "I know it has, Charlie, but it won't work for me. You see, I'm a tad too prominent. My full name is Delos D. Harriman."

      "What? You are old D.D.? But hell's bells, you own a big slice of the Company yourself -- you practically are the Company; you ought to be able to do anything you like, rules or no rules."

      "That is a not unusual opinion, son, but it is incorrect. Rich men aren't more free than other men; they are less free, a good deal less free. I tried to do what you suggest, but, the other directors would not permit me. They are afraid of losing their franchise. It costs them a good deal in -- uh -- political contact expenses to retain it, as it is."

      "Well, I'll be a-- Can you tie that, Mac? A guy with lots of dough, and he can't spend it the way he wants to." McIntyre did not answer, but waited for Harriman to continue.

      "Captain McIntyre, if you had a ship, would you take me?"

      McIntyre rubbed his chin. "It's against the law."

      "I'd make it worth your while."

      "Sure he would, Mr. Harriman. Of course you would, Mac. Luna City! Oh, baby!"

      "Why do you want to go to the Moon so badly, Mister Harriman?"

      "Captain, it's the one thing I've really wanted to do all my life -- ever since I was a young boy. I don't know whether I can explain it to you, or not. You young fellows have grown up to rocket travel the way I grew up to aviation. I'm a great deal older than you are, at least fifty years older. When I was a kid practically nobody believed that men would ever reach the Moon. You've seen rockets all your lives, and the first to reach the Moon got there before you were a young boy. When I was a boy they laughed at the idea.

      "But I believed -- I believed. I read Verne, and Wells, and Smith, and I believed that we could do it -- that we would do it. I set my heart on being one of the men to walk the surface of the Moon, to see her other side, and to look back on the face of the Earth, hanging in the sky.

      "I used to go without my lunches to pay my dues in the American Rocket Society, because I wanted to believe that I was helping to bring the day nearer when we would reach the Moon. I was already an old man when that day arrived. I've lived longer than I should, but I would not let myself die... I will not! -- until I have set foot on the Moon."

      McIntyre stood up and put out his hand. "You find a ship, Mister Harriman. I'll drive 'er."

      "Atta' boy, Mac! I told you he would, Mister Harriman."

      Harriman mused and dozed during the half-hour run to the north into Kansas City, dozed in the light troubled sleep of old age. Incidents out of a long life ran through his mind in vagrant dreams. There was that time... oh, yes, 1910 ... A little boy on a warm spring night;

      "What's that, Daddy?" -- "That's Halley's comet, Sonny." -- "Where did it come from?" -- "I don't know, Son. From way out in the sky somewhere." -- "It's _beyoootiful_, Daddy. I want to touch it." -- "'Fraid not, Son."

      "Delos, do you mean to stand there and tell me you put the money we had saved for the house into that crazy rocket company?" -- "Now, Charlotte, please! It's not crazy; it's a sound business investment. Someday soon rockets will fill the sky. Ships and trains will be obsolete. Look what happened to the men that had the foresight to invest in Henry Ford." -- "We've been all over this before." -- "Charlotte, the day will come when men will rise up off the Earth and visit the Moon, even the planets. This is the beginning." -- "Must you shout?" -- "I'm sorry, but--" -- "I feel a headache coming on. Please try to be a little quiet when you come to bed."

      He hadn't gone to bed. He had sat out on the veranda all night long, watching the full Moon move across the sky. There would be the devil to pay in the morning, the devil and a thin-lipped silence. But he'd stick by his guns. He'd given in on most things, but not on this. But the night was his. Tonight he'd be alone with his old friend. He searched her face. Where was Mare Crisium? Funny, he couldn't make it out. He used to be able to see it plainly when he was a boy. Probably needed new glasses -- this constant office work wasn't good for his eyes.

      But he didn't need to see, he knew where they all were; Crisium, Mare Fecunditatis, Mare Tranquilitatis -- that one had a satisfying roll! -- the Apennines, the Carpathians, old Tycho with it's mysterious rays.

      Two hundred and forty thousand miles -- ten times around the Earth. Surely men could bridge a little gap like that. Why, he could almost reach out and touch it, nodding there behind the elm trees. Not that he could help. He hadn't the education.

      "Son, I want to have a little serious talk with you." -- "Yes, Mother." -- "I know you had hoped to go to college next year--" (Hoped! He had lived for it. The University of Chicago to study under Moulton, then on to the Yerkes Observatory to work under the eye of Dr. Frost himself) -- "and I had hoped so too. But with your father gone, and the girls growing up, it's harder to make ends meet. You've been a good boy, and worked hard to help out. I know you'll understand." -- "Yes, Mother."

      "Extra! Extra! STRATOSPHERE ROCKET REACHES PARIS. Read aaaaallllll about 't." The the little man in the bifocals snatched at the paper and hurried back to the office. -- "Look at this, George." -- "Huh? Hmm, interesting, but what of it?" -- "Can't you see? The next stage is to the Moon!" -- "God, but you're a sucker, Delos. The trouble with you is, you read too many of those trashy magazines. Now I caught my boy reading one of 'em just last week, _Stunning Stories_, or some such title, and dressed him down proper. Your folks should have done you the same favor." -- Harriman squared his narrow, middle-aged shoulders. "They will so reach the Moon!" -- His partner laughed. "Have it your own way. If baby wants the Moon, papa bring it for him. But you stick to your discounts and commissions; that's where the money is."

      The big car droned down the Paseo, and turned off on Armour Boulevard. Old Harriman stirred uneasily in his sleep and muttered to himself.

      "But Mister Harriman--" The young man with the notebook was plainly perturbed. The old man grunted.

      "You heard me. Sell 'em. I want every share I own realized in cash as rapidly as possible; Spaceways, Spaceways Provisioning Company, Artemis Mines, Luna City Recreations, the whole lot of them."

      "It will depress the market. You won't realize the full value of your holdings."

      "Don't you think I know that? I can afford it."

      "What about the shares you had earmarked for Richardson Observatory, and for the Harriman Scholarships?"

      "Oh, yes. Don't sell those. Set up a trust. Should have done it long ago. Tell young Kamens to draw up the papers. He knows what I want"

      The interoffice visor flashed into life. "The gentlemen are here, Mr. Harriman."

      "Send 'em in. That's all, Ashley. Get busy." Ashley went out as McIntyre and Charlie entered. Harriman got up and trotted forward to greet them.

      "Come in, boys, come in. I'm so glad to see you. Sit down. Sit down. Have a cigar."

      "Mighty pleased to see you, Mr. Harriman," acknowledged Charlie. "In fact, you might say we need to see you."

      "Some trouble, gentlemen?" Harriman glanced from face to face. McIntyre answered him.

      "You still mean that about a job for us, Mr. Harriman?"

      "Mean it? Certainly, I do. You're not backing out on me?"

      "Not at all. We need that job now. You see the _Care Free_ is lying in the middle of the Osage River, with her jet split clear back to the injector."

      "Dear me! You weren't hurt?"

      "No, aside from sprains and bruises. We jumped."

      Charlie chortled. "I caught a catfish with my bare teeth."

      In short order they got down to business. "You two will have to buy a ship for me. I can't do it openly; my colleagues would figure out what I mean to do and stop me. I'll supply you with all the cash you need. You go out and locate some sort of a ship that can be refitted for the trip. Work, up some good story about how you are buying it for some playboy as a stratosphere yacht, or that you plan to establish an arctic-antarctic tourist route. Anything as long as no one suspects that she is being-outfitted for space flight.

      "Then, after the Department of Transport licenses her for strato flight, you move out to a piece of desert out west -- I'll find a likely parcel of land and buy it -- and then I'll join you. Then we'll install the escape-fuel tanks, change the injectors, and timers, and so forth, to fit her for the hop. How about it?"

      McIntyre looked dubious. "It'll take a lot of doing. Charlie, do you think you can accomplish that changeover without a dockyard and shops?"

      "Me? Sure I can -- with your thick-fingered help. Just give me the tools and materials I want, and don't hurry me too much. Of course, it won't be fancy--"

      "Nobody wants it to be fancy. I just want a ship that won't blow when I start slapping the keys. Isotope fuel is no joke."

      "It won't blow, Mac."

      "That's what you thought about the _Care Free_."

      "That ain't fair, Mac. I ask you, Mr. Harriman -- That heap was junk, and we knew it. This'll be different. We're going to spend some dough and do it right. Ain't we, Mr. Harriman?"

      Harriman patted him on the shoulder. "Certainly we are, Charlie. You can have all the money you want. That's the least of our worries. Now do the salaries and bonuses I mentioned suit you? I don't want you to be short."

      "--as you know, my clients are his nearest relatives and have his interests at heart. We contend that Mr. Harriman's conduct for the past several weeks, as shown by the evidence here adduced, gives clear indication that a mind, once brilliant in the world of finance, has become senile. It is, therefore, with the deepest regret that we pray this honorable court, if it pleases, to declare Mr. Harriman incompetent and to assign a conservator to protect his financial interests and those of his future heirs and assigns." The attorney sat down, pleased with himself.

      Mr. Kamens took the floor. "May it please the court, if my esteemed friend is quite through, may I suggest that in his last few words be gave away his entire thesis. '--the financial interests of future heirs and assigns.' It is evident that the petitioners believe that my client should conduct his affairs in such a fashion as to insure that his nieces and nephews, and their issue, will be supported in unearned luxury for the rest of their lives. My client's wife has passed on, he has no children. It is admitted that he has provided generously for his sisters and their children in times past, and that he has established annuities for such near kin as are without means of support.

      "But now like vultures, worse than vultures, for they are not content to let him die in peace, they would prevent my client from enjoying his wealth in whatever manner best suits him for the few remaining years of his life. It is true that he has sold his holdings; is it strange that an elderly man should wish to retire? It is true that he suffered some paper losses in liquidation. 'The value of a thing is what that thing will bring.' He was retiring and demanded cash. Is there anything strange about that?

      "It is admitted that he refused to discuss his actions with his so-loving kinfolk. What law, or principle, requires a man to consult with his nephews on anything?

      "Therefore, we pray that this court will confirm my client in his right to do what he likes with his own, deny this petition, and send these meddlers about their business."

      The judge took off his spectacles .and polished them thoughtfully.

      "Mr. Kamens, this court has as high a regard for individual liberty as you have, and you may rest assured that any action taken will be solely in the interests of your client. Nevertheless, men do grow old, men do become senile, and in such cases must be protected.

      "I shall take this matter under advisement until tomorrow. Court is adjourned."

      From the Kansas City Star:

      "ECCENTRIC MILLIONAIRE DISAPPEARS"

      "--failed to appear for the adjourned hearing. The bailiffs returned from a search of places usually frequented by Harriman with the report that he had not been seen since the previous day. A bench warrant under contempt proceedings has been issued and--"

      A desert sunset is a better stimulant for the appetite than a hot dance orchestra. Charlie testified to this by polishing the last of the ham gravy with a piece of bread. Harriman handed each of the younger men cigars and took one himself.

      "My doctor claims that these weeds are bad for my heart condition," he remarked as he lighted it, "but I've felt so much better since I joined you boys here on the ranch that I am inclined to doubt him." He exhaled a cloud of blue-grey smoke and resumed. "I don't think a man's health depends so much on what he does as on whether he wants to do it. I'm doing what I want to do."

      "That's all a man can ask of life," agreed McIntyre.

      "How does the work look now, boys?"

      "My end's in pretty good shape," Charlie answered. "We finished the second pressure tests on the new tanks and the fuel lines today. The ground tests are all done, except the calibration runs. Those won't take long -- just the four hours to make the runs if I don't run into some bugs. How about you, Mac?"

      McIntyre ticked them off on his fingers. "Food supplies and water on board. Three vacuum suits, a spare, and service kits. Medical supplies. The buggy already had all the standard equipment for strato flight. The late lunar ephemerides haven't arrived as yet."

      "When do you expect them?"

      "Any time -- they should be here now. Not that it matters. This guff about how hard it is to navigate from here to the Moon is hokum to impress the public. After all you can see your destination -- it's not like ocean navigation. Gimme a sextant and a good radar and I'll set you down any place on the Moon you like, without cracking an almanac or a star table, just from a general knowledge of the relative speeds involved."

      "Never mind the personal buildup, Columbus," Charlie told him, "we'll admit you can hit the floor with your hat. The general idea is, you're ready to go now. Is that right?"

      "That's it."

      "That being the case, I could run those tests tonight. I'm getting jumpy -- things have been going too smoothly. If you'll give me a hand, we ought to be in bed by midnight."

      "O.K., when I finish this cigar."

      They smoked in silence for a while, each thinking about the coming trip and what it meant to him. Old Harriman tried to repress the excitement that possessed him at the prospect of immediate realization of his life-long dream.

      "Mr. Harriman--"

      "Eh? What is it, Charlie?"

      "How does a guy go about getting rich, like you did?"

      "Getting rich? I can't say; I never tried to get rich. I never wanted to be rich, or well known, or anything like that."

      "Huh?"

      "No, I just wanted to live a long time and see it all happen. I wasn't unusual; there were lots of boys like me -- radio hams, they were, and telescope builders, and airplane amateurs. We had science clubs, and basement laboratories, and science-fiction leagues -- the kind of boys who thought there was more romance in one issue of the _Electrical Experimenter_ than in all the books Dumas ever wrote. We didn't want to be one of Horatio Alger's Get-Rich heroes either, we wanted to build space ships. Well, some of us did."

      "Jeez, Pop, you make it sound exciting."

      "It was exciting, Charlie. This has been a wonderful, romantic century, for all of its bad points. And it's grown more wonderful and more exciting every year. No, I didn't want to be rich; I just wanted to live long enough to see men rise up to the stars, and, if God was good to me, to go as far as the Moon myself." He carefully deposited an inch of white ash in a saucer. "It has been a good life. I haven't any complaints."

      McIntyre pushed back his chair. "Come on, Charlie, if you're ready."

      They all got up. Harriman started to speak, then grabbed at his chest, his face a dead grey-white. "Catch him, Mac!"

      "Where's his medicine?"

      "In his vest pocket."

      They eased him over to a couch, broke a small glass capsule in a handkerchisf, and held it under his nose. The volatile released by the capsule seemed to bring a little color into his face. They did what little they could for him, then waited for him to regain consciousness.

      Charlie broke the uneasy silence. "Mac, we ain't going through with this."

      "Why not?"

      "It's murder. He'll never stand up under the initial acceleration."

      "Maybe not, but it's what he wants to do. You heard him."

      "But we oughtn't to let him."

      "Why not? It's neither your business, nor the business of this damn paternalistic government, to tell a man not to risk his life doing what he really wants to do."

      "All the same, I don't feel right about it. He's such a swell old duck."

      "Then what d'yuh want to do with him -- send him back to Kansas City so those old harpies can shut him up in a laughing academy till he dies of a broken heart?"

      "N-no-o-o -- not that."

      "Get out there, and make your set-up for those test runs. I'll be along."

      A wide-tired desert runabout rolled in the ranch yard gate the next morning and stopped in front of the house. A heavy-set man with a firm, but kindly, face climbed out and spoke to McIntyre, who approached to meet him.

      "You James Mcintyre?"

      "What about it?"

      "I'm the deputy federal marshal hereabouts. I got a warrant for your arrest."

      "What's the charge?"

      "Conspiracy to violate the Space Precautionary Act."

      Charlie joined the pair. "What's up, Mac?"

      The deputy answered. "You'd be Charles Cummings, I guess. Warrant here for you. Got one for a man named Harriman, too, and a court order to put seals on your space ship."

      "We've no space ship."

      "What d'yuh keep in that big shed?"

      "Strato yacht."

      "So? Well, I'll put seals on her until a space ship comes along. Where's Harriman?"

      "Right in there." Charlie obliged by pointing, ignoring McIntyre's scowl.

      The deputy turned his head. Charlie couldn't have missed the button by a fraction of an inch for the deputy collapsed quietly to the ground. Charlie stood over him, rubbing his knuckles and mourning.

      "Damn it to hell -- that's the finger I broke playing shortstop. I'm always hurting that finger."

      "Get Pop into the cabin," Mac cut him short, "and strap him into his hammock."

      "Aye aye, Skipper."

      They dragged the ship by tractor out of the hangar, turned, and went out the desert plain to find elbow room for the take-off. They climbed in. McIntyre saw the deputy from his starboard conning port. He was staring disconsolately after them.

      Mcintyre fastened his safety belt, settled his corset, and spoke into the engineroom speaking tube. "All set, Charlie?"

      "All set, Skipper. But you can't raise ship yet, Mac -- _She ain't named!_"

      "No time for your superstitions!"

      Harriman's thin voice reached them. "Call her the _Lunatic_ -- It's the only appropriate name!"

      McIntyre settled his head into the pads, punched two keys, then three more in rapid succession, and the _Lunatic_ raised ground.

      "How are you, Pop?"

      Charlie searched the old man's face anxiously. Harriman licked his lips and managed to speak. "Doing fine, son. Couldn't be better."

      "The acceleration is over; it won't be so bad from here on. I'll unstrap you so you can wiggle around a little. But I think you'd better stay in the hammock." He tugged at buckles. Harriman partially repressed a groan.

      "What is it, Pop?"

      "Nothing. Nothing at all. Just go easy on that side."

      Charlie ran his fingers over the old man's side with the sure, delicate touch of a mechanic. "You ain't foolin' me none, Pop. But there isn't much I can do until we ground."

      "Charlie--"

      "Yes, Pop?"

      "Can't I move to a port? I want to watch the Earth."

      "Ain't nothin' to see yet; the ship hides it. As soon as we turn ship, I'll move you. Tell you what; I'll give you a sleepy pill, and then wake you when we do."

      "No!"

      "Huh?"

      "I'll stay awake."

      "Just as you say, Pop."

      Charlie clambered monkey fashion to the nose of the ship, and anchored to the gymbals of the pilot's chair. McIntyre questioned him with his eyes.

      "Yeah, he's alive all right," Charlie told him, "but he's in bad shape."

      "How bad?"

      "Couple of cracked ribs anyhow. I don't know what else. I don't know whether he'll last out the trip, Mac. His heart was pounding something awful."

      "He'll last, Charlie. He's tough."

      "Tough? He's delicate as a canary."

      "I don't mean that. He's tough way down inside where it counts."

      "Just the same you'd better set her down awful easy if you want to ground with a full complement aboard."

      "I will. I'll make one full swing around the Moon and ease her in on an involute approach curve. We've got enough fuel, I think."

      They were now in a free orbit; after McIntyre turned ship, Charlie went back, unslung the hammock, and moved Harriman, hammock and all, to a side port. Mcliityre steadied the ship about a transverse axis so that the tail pointed toward the sun, then gave a short blast on two tangential jets opposed in couple to cause the ship to spin slowly about her longitudinal axis, and thereby create a slight artificial gravity. The initial weightlessness when coasting commenced had knotted the old man with the characteristic nausea of free flight, and the pilot wished to save his passenger as much discomfort as possible.

      But Harriman was not concerned with the condition of his stomach. There it was, all as he had imagined it so many times.

      The Moon swung majestically past the view port, wider than he had ever seen it before, all of her familiar features cameo clear. She gave way to the Earth as the ship continued its slow swing, the Earth itself as he had envisioned her, appearing like a noble moon, many times as wide as the Moon appears to the Earthbound, and more luscious, more sensuously beautiful than the silver Moon could be. It was sunset near the Atlantic seaboard -- the line of shadow cut down the coast line of North America, slashed through Cuba, and obscured all but the west coast of South America. He savored the mellow blue of the Pacific Ocean, felt the texture of the soft green and brown of the continents, admired the blue-white cold of the polar caps. Canada and the northern states were obscured by cloud, a vast low pressure area that spread across the continent. It shone with an even more satisfactory dazzling white than the polar caps.

      As the ship swung slowly, around, Earth would pass from view, and the stars would march across the port the same stars he had always known, but steady, brighter, and unwinking against a screen of perfect, live black. Then the Moon would swim into view again to claim his thoughts.

      He was serenely happy in a fashion not given to most men, even in a long lifetime. He felt as if he were every man who has ever lived, looked up at the stars, and longed.

      As the long hours came and went he watched and dozed and dreamed. At least once he must have fallen into deep sleep, or possibly delirium, for he came to with a start, thinking that his wife, Charlotte, was calling to him. "Delos!" the voice had said. "Delos! Come in from there! You'll catch your death of cold in that night air."

      Poor Charlotte! She had been a good wife to him, a good wife. He was quite sure that her only regret in dying had been her fear that he could not take proper care of himself. It had not been her fault that she had not shared his dream, and his need.

      Charlie rigged the hammock in such a fashion that Harriman could watch from the starboard port when they swung around the far face of the Moon. He picked out the landmarks made familiar to him by a thousand photographs with nostalgic pleasure, as if he were returning to his own country. Mcintyre brought her slowly down as they came back around to the Earthward face, and prepared to land east of Mare Fecunditatis, about ten miles from Luna City.

      It was not a bad landing, all things considered. He had to land without coaching from the ground, and he had no second pilot to watch the radar for him. In his anxiety to make it gentle he missed his destination by some thirty miles, but he did his cold-sober best. But at that it was bumpy. As they grounded and the pumice dust settled around them, Charlie came up to the control station.

      "How's our passenger?" Mac demanded.

      "I'll see, but I wouldn't make any bets. That landing stunk, Mac."

      "Damn it, I did my best."

      "I know you did, Skipper. Forget it."

      But the passenger was alive and conscious although bleeding from the nose and with a pink foam on his lips. He was feebly trying to get himself out of his cocoon. They helped him, working together.

      "Where are the vacuum suits?" was his first remark.

      "Steady, Mr. Harriman. You can't go out there yet. We've got to give you some first aid."

      "_Get me that suit!_ First aid can wait."

      Silently they did as he ordered. His left leg was practically useless, and they had to help him through the lock, one on each side. But with his inconsiderable mass having a lunar weight of only twenty pounds, he was no burden.. They found a place some fifty yards from the ship where they could prop him up and let him look, a chunk of scoria supporting his head.

      Mcintyre put his helmet against the old man's and spoke. "We'll leave you here to enjoy the view while we get ready for the trek into town. It's a forty-miler, pretty near, and we'll have to break out spare air bottles and rations and stuff. We'll be back soon."

      Harriman nodded without answering, and squeezed their gauntlets with a grip that was surprisingly strong.

      He sat very quietly, rubbing his hands against the soil of the Moon and sensing the curiously light pressure of his body against the ground. At long last there was peace in his heart. His hurts had ceased to pain him. He was where he had longed to be -- he had followed his need.

      Over the western horizon hung the Earth at last quarter, a green-blue giant moon. Overhead the Sun shone down from a black and starry sky. And underneath the Moon, the soil of the Moon itself. He was on the Moon!

      He lay back still while a bath of content flowed over him like a tide at flood, and soaked to his very marrow.

      His attention strayed momentarily, and he thought once again that his name was called. Silly, he thought, I'm getting old -- my mind wanders.

      Back in the cabin Charlie and Mac were rigging shoulder yokes on a stretcher. "There. That will do," Mac commented. "We'd better stir Pop out; we ought to be going."

      "I'll get him," Charlie replied. "I'll just pick him up and carry him. He don't weigh nothing."

      Charlie was gone longer than Mcintyre had expected him to be. He returned alone. Mac waited for him to close the lock, and swing back his helmet. "Trouble?"

      "Never mind the stretcher, Skipper. We won't be needin' it.

      "Yeah, I mean it," he continued. "Pop's done for. I did what was necessary."

      Mcintyre bent down without a word and picked up the wide skis necessary to negotiate the powdery ash. Charlie followed his example. Then they swung the spare air bottles over their shoulders, and passed out through the lock.

      They didn't bother to close the outer door of the lock behind them.

The Long Watch

"Nine ships blasted off from Moon Base. Once in space, eight of them formed a globe around the smallest. They held this formation all the way to Earth.

"The small ship displayed the insignia of an admiral-yet there was no living thing of any sort in her. She was not even a passenger ship, but a drone, a robot ship intended for radioactive cargo. This trip she carried nothing but a lead coffin - and a Geiger counter that was never quiet." -from the editorial After Ten Years, film 38, 17 June 2009, Archives of the N.Y. Times

      JOHNNY DAHLQUIST blew smoke at the Geiger counter. He grinned wryly and tried it again. His whole body was radioactive by now. Even his breath, the smoke from his cigarette, could make the Geiger counter scream. How long had he been here? Time doesn't mean much on the Moon. Two days? Three? A week? He let his mind run back: the last clearly marked time in his mind was when the Executive Officer had sent for him, right after breakfast - "Lieutenant Dahlquist, reporting to the Executive Officer."

      Colonel Towers looked up. "Ah, John Ezra. Sit down, Johnny. Cigarette?"

      Johnny sat down, mystified but flattered. He admired Colonel Towers, for his brilliance, his ability to dominate, and for his battle record. Johnny had no battle record; he had been commissioned on completing his doctor's degree in nuclear physics and was now junior bomb officer of Moon Base.

      The Colonel wanted to talk politics; Johnny was puzzled. Finally Towers had come to the point; it was not safe (so he said) to leave control of the world in political hands; power must be held by a scientifically selected group. In short - The Patrol.

      Johnny was startled rather than shocked. As an abstract idea, Towers' notion sounded plausible. The League of Nations had folded up; what would keep the United Nations from breaking up, too, and thus lead to another World War. "And you know how bad such a war would be, Johnny."

      Johnny agreed. Towers said he was glad that Johnny got the point. The senior bomb officer could handle the work, but it was better to have both specialists.

      Johnny sat up with a jerk. "You are going to do something about it?" He had thought the Exec was just talking.

      Towers smiled. "We're not politicians; we don't just talk. We act."

      Johnny whistled. "When does this start?"

      Towers flipped a switch. Johnny was startled to hear his own voice, then identified the recorded conversation as having taken place in the junior officers' messroom. A political argument he remembered, which he had walked out on... a good thing, too! But being spied on annoyed him.

      Towers switched it off. "We have acted," he said. "We know who is safe and who isn't. Take Kelly-" He waved at the loudspeaker. "Kelly is politically unreliable. You noticed he wasn't at breakfast?"

      "Huh? I thought he was on watch."

      "Kelly's watch-standing days are over. Oh, relax; he isn't hurt."

      Johnny thought this over. "Which list am I on?" he asked. "Safe or unsafe?"

      "Your name has a question mark after it. But I have said all along that you could be depended on." He grinned engagingly. "You won't make a liar of me, Johnny?"

      Dahlquist didn't answer; Towers said sharply, "Come now - what do you think of it? Speak up."

      "Well, if you ask me, you've bitten off more than you can chew. While it's true that Moon Base controls the Earth, Moon Base itself is a sitting duck for a ship. One bomb - blooie!"

      Towers picked up a message form and handed it over; it read: I HAVE YOUR CLEAN LAUNDRY-ZACK. "That means every bomb in the Trygve Lie has been put out of commission. I have reports from every ship we need worry about." He stood up. "Think it over and see me after lunch. Major Morgan needs your help right away to change control frequencies on the bombs."

      "The control frequencies?"

      "Naturally. We don't want the bombs jammed before they reach their targets."

      "What? You said the idea was to prevent war."

      Towers brushed it aside. "There won't, be a war-just a psychological demonstration, an unimportant town or two. A little bloodletting to save an all-out war. Simple arithmetic."

      He put a hand on Johnny's shoulder. "You aren't squeamish, or you wouldn't be a bomb officer. Think of it as a surgical operation. And think of your family."

      Johnny Dahlquist had been thinking of his family. "Please, sir, I want to see the Commanding Officer."

      Towers frowned. "The Commodore is not available. As you know, I speak for him. See me again-after lunch."

      The Commodore was decidedly not available; the Commodore was dead. But Johnny did not know that.

      Dahlquist walked back to the messroom, bought cigarettes, sat down and had a smoke. He got up, crushed out the butt, and headed for the Base's west airlock. There he got into his space suit and went to the lockmaster. "Open her up, Smitty."

      The marine looked surprised. "Can't let anyone out on the surface without word from Colonel Towers, sir. Hadn't you heard?"

      "Oh, yes! Give me your order book." Dahlquist took it, wrote a pass for himself, and signed it "by direction of Colonel Towers." He added, "Better call the Executive Officer and check it."

      The lockmaster read it and stuck the book in his pocket. "Oh, no, Lieutenant. Your word's good."

      "Hate to disturb the Executive Officer, eh? Don't blame you." He stepped in, closed the inner door, and waited for the air to be sucked out.

      Out on the Moon's surface he blinked at the light and hurried to the track-rocket terminus; a car was waiting. He squeezed in, pulled down the hood, and punched the starting button. The rocket car flung itself at the hills dived through and came out on a plain studded with projectile rockets, like candles on a cake. Quickly it dived into a second tunnel through more hills. There was a stomach-wrenching deceleration and the car stopped at the underground atom-bomb armory.

      As Dahlquist climbed out he switched on his walkie-talkie. The space-suited guard at the entrance came to port-arms. Dahlquist said, "Morning, Lopez," and walked by him to the airlock. He pulled it open. . .

      The guard motioned him back. "Hey! Nobody goes in without the Executive Officer's say-so." He shifted his gun, fumbled in his pouch and got out a paper. "Read it, Lieutenant."

      Dahlquist waved it away. "I drafted that order myself. You read it; you've misinterpreted it."

      "I don't see how, Lieutenant."

      Dahlquist snatched the paper, glanced at it, then pointed to a line. "See? '-except persons specifically designated by the Executive Officer.' That's the bomb officers, Major Morgan and me."

      The guard looked worried. Dahlquist said, "Damn it, look up 'specifically designated' - it's under 'Bomb Room, Security, Procedure for' in your standing orders. Don't tell me you left them in the barracks!"

      "Oh, no, sir! I've got 'em." The guard reached into his pouch. Dahlquist gave him back the sheet; the guard took it, hesitated, then leaned his weapon against his hip, shifted the paper to his left hand, and dug into his pouch with his right.

      Dahlquist grabbed the gun, shoved it between the guard's legs, and jerked. He threw the weapon away and ducked into the airlock. As he slammed the door he saw the guard struggling to his feet and reaching for his side arm. He dogged the outer door shut and felt a tingle in his fingers as a slug struck the door.

      He flung himself at the inner door, jerked the spill lever, rushed back to the outer door and hung his weight on the handle. At once he could feel it stir. The guard was lifting up; the lieutenant was pulling down, with only his low Moon weight to anchor him. Slowly the handle raised before his eyes.

      Air from the bomb room rushed into the lock through the spill valve. Dahlquist felt his space suit settle on his body as the pressure in the lock began to equal the pressure in the suit. He quit straining and let the guard raise the handle. It did not matter; thirteen tons of air pressure now held the door closed.

      He latched open the inner door to the bomb room, so that it could not swing shut. As long as it was open, the airlock could not operate; no one could enter.

      Before him in the room, one for each projectile rocket, were the atom bombs, spaced in rows far enough apart to defeat any faint possibility of spontaneous chain reaction. They were the deadliest things in the known universe, but they were his babies. He had placed himself between them and anyone who would misuse them.

      But, now that he was here, he had no plan to use his temporary advantage.

      The speaker on the wall sputtered into life. "Hey! Lieutenant! What goes on here? You gone crazy?" Dahlquist did not answer. Let Lopez stay confused-it would take him that much longer to make up his mind what to do. And Johnny Dahlquist needed as many minutes as he could squeeze. Lopez went on protesting. Finally he shut up.

      Johnny had followed a blind urge not to let the bombs - his bombs! - be used for "demonstrations on unimportant towns." But what to do next? Well, Towers couldn't get through the lock. Johnny would sit tight until hell froze over.

      Don't kid yourself, John Ezra! Towers could get in. Some high explosive against the outer door-then the air would whoosh out, our boy Johnny would drown in blood from his burst lungs-and the bombs would be sitting there, unhurt. They were built to stand the jump from Moon to Earth; vacuum would not hurt them at all.

      He decided to stay in his space suit; explosive decompression didn't appeal to him. Come to think about it, death from old age was his choice.

      Or they could drill a hole, let out the air, and open, the door without wrecking the lock. Or Towers might even have a new airlock built outside the old. Not likely, Johnny thought; a coup d'etat depended on speed. Towers was almost sure to take the quickest way-blasting. And Lopez was probably calling the Base right now. Fifteen minutes for Towers to suit up and get here, maybe a short dicker-then whoosh! the party is over.

      Fifteen minutes - In fifteen minutes the bombs might fall back into the hands of the conspirators; in fifteen minutes he must make the bombs unusable.

      An atom bomb is just two or more pieces of fissionable metal, such as plutonium. Separated, they are no more explosive than a pound of butter; slapped together, they explode. The complications lie in the gadgets and circuits and gun used to slap them together in the exact way and at the exact time and place required.

      These circuits, the bomb's "brain," are easily destroyed - but the bomb itself is hard to destroy because of its very simplicity. Johnny decided to smash the "brains" - and quickly!

      The only tools at hand were simple ones used in handling the bombs. Aside from a Geiger counter, the speaker on the walkie-talkie circuit, a television rig to the base, and the bombs themselves, the room was bare. A bomb to be worked on was taken elsewhere-not through fear of explosion, but to reduce radiation exposure for personnel. The radioactive material in a bomb is buried in a "tamper" - in these bombs, gold. Gold stops alpha, beta, and much of the deadly gamma radiation - but not neutrons.

      The slippery, poisonous neutrons which plutonium gives off had to escape, or a chain reaction - explosion! - would result. The room was bathed in an invisible, almost undetectable rain of neutrons. The place was unhealthy; regulations called for staying in it as short a time as possible.

      The Geiger counter clicked off the "background" radiation, cosmic rays, the trace of radioactivity in the Moon's crust, and secondary radioactivity set up all through the room by neutrons. Free neutrons have the nasty trait of infecting what they strike, making it radioactive, whether it be concrete wall or human body. In time the room would have to be abandoned.

      Dahlquist twisted a knob on the Geiger counter; the instrument stopped clicking. He had used a suppressor circuit to cut out noise of "background" radiation at the level then present. It reminded him uncomfortably of the danger of staying here. He took out the radiation exposure film all radiation personnel carry; it was a direct-response type and had been fresh when he arrived. The most sensitive end was faintly darkened already. Half way down the film a red line crossed it. Theoretically, if the wearer was exposed to enough radioactivity in a week to darken the film to that line, he was, as Johnny reminded himself, a "dead duck".

      Off came the cumbersome space suit; what he needed was speed. Do the job and surrender-better to be a prisoner than to linger in a place as "hot" as this.

      He grabbed a ball hammer from the tool rack and got busy, pausing only to switch off the television pick-up. The first bomb bothered him. He started to smash the covet plate of the "brain," then stopped, filled with reluctance. All his life he had prized fine apparatus.

      He nerved himself and swung; glass tinkled, metal creaked. His mood changed; he began to feel a shameful pleasure in destruction. He pushed on with enthusiasm, swinging, smashing, destroying!

      So intent was he that he did not at first hear his name called. "Dahlquist! Answer me! Are you there?"

      He wiped sweat and looked at the TV screen. Towers' perturbed features stared out.

      Johnny was shocked to find that he had wrecked only six bombs. Was he going to be caught before he could finish? Oh, no! He had to finish. Stall, son, stall! "Yes, Colonel? You called me?"

      "I certainly did! What's the meaning of this?"

      "I'm sorry, Colonel."

      Towers' expression relaxed a little. "Turn on your pick-up, Johnny, I can't see you. What was that noise?"

      "The pick-up is on," Johnny lied. "It must be out of order. That noise-uh, to tell the truth, Colonel, I was fixing things so that nobody could get in here."

      Towers hesitated, then said firmly, "I'm going to assume that you are sick and send you to the Medical Officer. But I want you to come out of there, right away. That's an order, Johnny."

      Johnny answered slowly. "I can't just yet, Colonel. I came here to make up my mind and I haven't quite made it up. You said to see you after lunch."

      "I meant you to stay in your quarters."

      "Yes, sir. But I thought I ought to stand watch on the bombs, in case I decided you were wrong."

      "It's not for you to decide, Johnny. I'm your superior officer. You are sworn to obey me."

      "Yes, sir." This was wasting time; the old fox might have a squad on the way now. "But I swore to keep the peace, too. Could you come out here and talk it over with me? I don't want to do the wrong thing."

      Towers smiled. "A good idea, Johnny. You wait there. I'm sure you'll see the light." He switched off.

      "There," said Johnny. "I hope you're convinced that I'm a half-wit-you slimy mistake!" He picked up the hammer, ready to use the minutes gained.

      He stopped almost at once; it dawned on him that wrecking the "brains" was not enough. There were no spare "brains," but there was a well-stocked electronics shop. Morgan could jury-rig control circuits for bombs. Why, he could himself - not a neat job, but one that would work. Damnation! He would have to wreck the bombs themselves - and in the next ten minutes.

      But a bomb was solid chunks of metal, encased in a heavy tamper, all tied in with a big steel gun. It couldn't be done - not in ten minutes.

      Damn!

      Of course, there was one way. He knew the control circuits; he also knew how to beat them. Take this bomb: if he took out the safety bar, unhooked the proximity circuit, shorted the delay circuit, and cut in the arming circuit by hand - then unscrewed that and reached in there, he could, with just a long, stiff wire, set the bomb off.

      Blowing the other bombs and the valley itself to Kingdom Come.

      Also Johnny Dahlquist. That was the rub.

      All this time he was doing what he had thought out, up to the step of actually setting off the bomb. Ready to go, the bomb seemed to threaten, as if crouching to spring. He stood up, sweating.

      He wondered if he had the courage. He did not want to funk - and hoped that he would. He dug into his jacket and took out a picture of Edith and the baby. "Honeychild," he said, "if I get out of this, I'll never even try to beat a red light." He kissed the picture and put it back. There was nothing to do but wait.

      What was keeping Towers? Johnny wanted to make sure that Towers was in blast range. What a joke on the jerk! Me sitting here, ready to throw the switch on him. The idea tickled him; it led to a better: why blow himself up - alive?

      There was another way to rig it - a "dead man" control. Jigger up some way so that the last step, the one that set off the bomb, would not happen as long as he kept his hand on a switch or a lever or something. Then, if they blew open the door, or shot him, or anything - up goes the balloon!

      Better still, if he could hold them off with the threat of it, sooner or later help would come - Johnny was sure that most of the Patrol was not in this stinking conspiracy - and then: Johnny comes marching home! What a reunion! He'd resign and get a teaching job; he'd stood his watch.

      All the while, he was working. Electrical? No, too little time. Make it a simple mechanical linkage. He had it doped out but had hardly begun to build it when the loudspeaker called him. "Johnny?"

      "That you, Colonel?" His hands kept busy.

      "Let me in."

      "Well, now, Colonel, that wasn't in the agreement." Where in blue blazes was something to use as a long lever?

      "I'll come in alone, Johnny, I give you my word. We'll talk face to face."

      His word! "We can talk over the speaker, Colonel." Hey, that was it-a yardstick, hanging on the tool rack.

      "Johnny, I'm warning you. Let me in, or I'll blow the door off."

      A wire-he needed a wire, fairly long and stiff. He tore the antenna from his suit. "You wouldn't do that, Colonel. It would ruin the bombs."

      "Vacuum won't hurt the bombs. Quit stalling."

      "Better check with Major Morgan. Vacuum won't hurt them; explosive decompression would wreck every circuit." The Colonel was not a bomb specialist; he shut up for several minutes. Johnny went on working.

      "Dahlquist," Towers resumed, "that was a clumsy, lie. I checked with Morgan. You have sixty seconds to get into your suit, if you aren't already. I'm going to blast the door."

      "No, you won't," said Johnny. "Ever hear of a 'dead man' switch?" Now for a counterweight-and a sling.

      "Eh? What do you mean?"

      "I've rigged number seventeen to set off by hand. But I put in a gimmick. It won't blow while I hang on to a strap I've got in my hand. But if anything happens to me - up she goes! You are about fifty feet from the blast center. Think it over."

      There was a short silence. "I don't believe you."

      "No? Ask Morgan. He'll believe me. He can inspect it, over the TV pickup." Johnny lashed the belt of his space suit to the end of the yardstick.

      "You said the pick-up was out of order."

      "So I lied. This time I'll prove it. Have Morgan call me."

      Presently Major Morgan's face appeared. "Lieutenant Dahlquist?"

      "Hi, Stinky. Wait a sec." With great care Dahlquist made one last connection while holding down the end of the yardstick. Still careful, he shifted his grip to the belt, sat down on the floor, stretched an arm and switched on the TV pick-up, "Can you see me, Stinky?"

      "I can see you," Morgan answered stiffly. "What is this nonsense?"

      "A little surprise I whipped up." He explained it-what circuits he had cut out, what ones had been shorted, just how the jury-rigged mechanical sequence fitted in.

      Morgan nodded. "But you're bluffing, Dahlquist. I feel sure that you haven't disconnected the 'K' circuit. You don't have the guts to blow yourself up."

      Johnny chuckled. "I sure haven't. But that's the beauty of it. It can't go off, so long as I am alive. If your greasy boss, ex-Colonel Towers, blasts the door, then I'm dead and the bomb goes off. It won't matter to me, but it will to him. Better tell him." He switched off.

      Towers came on over the speaker shortly. "Dahlquist?"

      "I hear you."

      "There's no need to throw away your life. Come out and you will be retired on full pay. You can go home to your family. That's a promise."

      Johnny got mad. "You keep my family out of this!"

      "Think of them, man."

      "Shut up. Get back to your hole. I feel a need to scratch and this whole shebang might just explode in your lap."

2

      JOHNNY SAT UP with a start. He had dozed, his hand hadn't let go the sling, but he had the shakes when he thought about it.

      Maybe he should disarm the bomb and depend on their not daring to dig him out? But Towers' neck was already in hock for treason; Towers might risk it. If he did and the bomb were disarmed, Johnny would be dead and Towers would have the bombs. No, he had gone this far; he wouldn't let his baby girl grow up in a dictatorship just to catch some sleep.

      He heard the Geiger counter clicking and remembered having used the suppressor circuit The radioactivity in the room must be increasing, perhaps from scattering the "brain" circuits-the circuits were sure to be infected; they had lived too long too close to plutonium. He dug out his film.

      The dark area was spreading toward the red line.

      He put it back and said, "Pal, better break this deadlock or you are going to shine like a watch dial." It was a figure of speech; infected animal tissue does not glow-it simply dies, slowly.

      The TV screen lit up; Towers' face appeared. "Dahlquist? I want to talk to you."

      "Go fly a kite."

      "Let's admit you have us inconvenienced."

      "Inconvenienced, hell-I've got you stopped."

      "For the moment I'm arranging to get more bombs-"

      "Liar."

      "-but you are slowing us up. I have a proposition."

      "Not interested."

      "Wait. When this is over I will be chief of the world government. If you cooperate, even now, I will make you my administrative head."

      Johnny told him what to do with it. Towers said, "Don't be stupid. What do you gain by dying?"

      Johnny grunted. "Towers, what a prime stinker you are. You spoke of my family. I'd rather see them dead than living under a two-bit Napoleon like you. Now go away-I've got some thinking to do."

      Towers switched off.

      Johnny got out his film again. It seemed no darker but it reminded, him forcibly that time was running out. He was hungry and thirsty-and he could not stay awake forever. It took four days to get a ship up from Earth; he could not expect rescue any sooner. And he wouldn't last four days-once the darkening spread past the red line he was a goner.

      His only chance was to wreck the bombs beyond repair, and get out-before that film got much darker.

      He thought about ways, then got busy. He hung a weight on the sling, tied a line to it. If Towers blasted the door, he hoped to jerk the rig loose before he died.

      There was a simple, though arduous, way to wreck the bombs beyond any capacity of Moon Base to repair them. The heart of each was two hemispheres of plutonium, their flat surfaces polished smooth to permit perfect contact when slapped together. Anything less would prevent the chain reaction on which atomic explosion depended.

      Johnny started taking apart one of the bombs.

      He had to bash off four lugs, then break the glass envelope around the inner assembly. Aside from that the bomb came apart easily. At last he had in front of him two gleaming, mirror-perfect half globes.

      A blow with the hammer-and one was no longer perfect. Another blow and the second cracked like glass; he had tapped its crystalline structure just right.

      Hours later, dead tired, he went back to the armed bomb. Forcing himself to steady down, with extreme care he disarmed it. Shortly its silvery hemispheres too were useless. There was no longer a usable bomb in the room-but huge fortunes in the most valuable, most poisonous, and most deadly metal in the known world were spread around the floor.

      Johnny looked at the deadly stuff. "Into your suit and out of here, son," he said aloud. "I wonder what Towers will say?"

      He walked toward the rack, intending to hang up the hammer. As he passed, the Geiger counter chattered wildly.

      Plutonium hardly affects a Geiger counter; secondary infection from plutonium does. Johnny looked at the hammer, then held it closer to the Geiger counter. The counter screamed...

      Johnny tossed it hastily away and started back toward his suit.

      As he passed the counter it chattered again. He stopped short.

      He pushed one hand close to the counter. Its clicking picked up to a steady roar. Without moving he reached into his pocket and took out his exposure film.

      It was dead black from end to end.

3

      PLUTONIUM TAKEN into the body moves quickly to bone marrow. Nothing can be done; the victim is finished. Neutrons from it smash through the body, ionizing tissue, transmuting atoms into radioactive isotopes, destroying and killing. The fatal dose is unbelievably small; a mass a tenth the size of a grain of table salt is more than enough-a dose small enough to enter through the tiniest scratch. During the historic "Manhattan Project" immediate high amputation was considered the only possible first-aid measure.

      Johnny knew all this but it no longer disturbed him. He sat on the floor, smoking a hoarded cigarette, and thinking. The events of his long watch were running through his mind.

      He blew a puff of smoke at the Geiger counter and smiled without humor to hear it chatter more loudly. By now even his breath was "hot" carbon-14, he supposed, exhaled from his blood stream as carbon dioxide. It did not matter.

      There was no longer any point in surrendering, nor would he give Towers the satisfaction-he would finish out this watch right here. Besides, by keeping up the bluff that one bomb was ready to blow, he could stop them from capturing the raw material from which bombs were made. That might be important in the long run.

      He accepted, without surprise, the fact that he was not unhappy. There was a sweetness about having no further worries of any sort. He did not hurt, he was not uncomfortable, he was no longer even hungry. Physically he still felt fine and his mind was at peace. He was dead - he knew that he was dead; yet for a time he was able to walk and breathe and see and feel.

      He was not even lonesome. He was not alone; there were comrades with him - the boy with his finger in the dike, Colonel Bowie, too ill to move but insisting that he be carried across the line, the dying Captain of the Chesapeake still with deathless challenge on his lips, Rodger Young peering into the gloom. They gathered about him in the dusky bomb room.

      And of course there was Edith. She was the only one he was aware of. Johnny wished that he could see her face more clearly. Was she angry? Or proud and happy?

      Proud though unhappy - he could see her better now and even feel her hand. He held very still.

      Presently his cigarette burned down to his fingers. He took a final puff, blew it at the Geiger counter, and put it out. It was his last. He gathered several butts and fashioned a roll-your-own with a bit of paper found in a pocket. He lit it carefully and settled back to wait for Edith to show up again. He was very happy.

      He was still propped against the bomb case, the last of his salvaged cigarettes cold at his side, when the speaker called out again. "Johnny? Hey, Johnny! Can you hear me? This is Kelly. It's all over. The Lafayette landed and Towers blew his brains out. Johnny? Answer me."

      When they opened the outer door, the first man in carried a Geiger counter in front of him on the end of a long pole. He stopped at the threshold and backed out hastily. "Hey, chief!" he called. "Better get some handling equipment - uh, and a lead coffin, too."

      "Four days it took the little ship and her escort to reach Earth. Four days while all of Earth's people awaited her arrival. For ninety-eight hours all commercial programs were off television; instead there was an endless dirge - the Dead March from Saul, the Valhalla theme, Going Home, the Patrol's own Landing Orbit.

      "The nine ships landed at Chicago Port. A drone tractor removed the casket from the small ship; the ship was then refueled and blasted off in an escape trajectory, thrown away into outer space, never again to be used for a lesser purpose.

      "The tractor progressed to the Illinois town where Lieutenant Dahlquist had been born, while the dirge continued. There it placed the casket on a pedestal, inside a barrier marking the distance of safe approach. Space marines, arms reversed and heads bowed, stood guard around it; the crowds stayed outside this circle. And still the dirge continued.

      "When enough time had passed, long, long after the heaped flowers had withered, the lead casket was enclosed in marble, just as you see it today."

Gentlemen, Be Seated

      IT TAKES both agoraphobes and claustrophobes to colonize the Moon. Or make it agoraphiles and claustrophiles, for the men who go out into space had better not have phobias. If anything on a planet, in a planet, or in the empty reaches around the planets can frighten a man, he should stick to Mother Earth. A man who would make his living away from terra firma must be willing to be shut up in a cramped spaceship, knowing that it may become his coffin, and yet he must be undismayed by the wide-open spaces of space itself. Spacemen-men who work in space, pilots and jetmen and astrogators and such-are men who like a few million miles of elbow room.

      On the other hand the Moon colonists need to be the sort who feel cozy burrowing around underground like so many pesky moles.

      On my second trip to Luna City I went over to Richardson Observatory both to see the Big Eye and to pick up a story to pay for my vacation. I flashed my Journalists' Guild card, sweet-talked a bit, and ended with the paymaster showing me around. We went out the north tunnel, which was then being bored to the site of the projected coronascope.

      It was a dull trip-climb on a scooter, ride down a completely featureless tunnel, climb off and go through an airlock, get on another scooter and do it all over again. Mr. Knowles filled in with sales talk. "This is temporary," he explained. "When we get the second tunnel dug, we'll cross-connect, take out the airlocks, put a northbound slidewalk in this one, a southbound slidewalk in the other one, and you'll make the trip in less than three minutes. Just like Luna City-or Manhattan."

      "Why not take out the airlocks now?" I asked, as we entered another airlock-about the seventh. "So far, the pressure is the same on each side of each lock."

      Knowles looked at me quizzically. "You wouldn't take advantage of a peculiarity of this planet just to work up a sensational feature story?"

      I was irked. "Look here," I told him. "I'm as reliable as the next word-mechanic, but if something is not kosher about this project let's go back right now and forget it. I won't hold still for censorship."

      "Take it easy, Jack," he said mildly-it was the first time he had used my first name; I noted it and discounted it. "Nobody's going to censor you. We're glad to cooperate with you fellows, but the Moon's had too much bad publicity now-publicity it didn't deserve."

      I didn't say anything.

      "Every engineering job has its own hazards," he insisted, "and its advantages, too. Our men don't get malaria and they don't have to watch out for rattlesnakes. I can show you figures that prove it's safer to be a sandhog in the Moon than it is to be a file clerk in Des Moines-all things considered. For example, we rarely have any broken bones in the Moon; the gravity is so low-while that Des Moines file clerk takes his life in his hands every time he steps in or out of his bathtub."

      "Okay, okay," I interrupted, "so the place is safe. What's the catch?"

      "It is safe. Not company figures, mind you, nor Luna City Chamber of Commerce, but Lloyd's of London."

      "So you keep unnecessary airlocks. Why?"

      He hesitated before he answered, "Quakes."

      Quakes. Earthquakes-moonquakes, I mean. I glanced at the curving walls sliding past and I wished I were in Des Moines. Nobody wants to be buried alive, but to have it happen in the Moon-why, you wouldn't stand a chance. No matter how quick they got to you, your lungs would be ruptured. No air.

      "They don't happen very often," Knowles went on, "but we have to be prepared. Remember, the Earth is eighty times the mass of the Moon, so the tidal stresses here are eighty times as great as the Moon's effect on Earth tides."

      "Come again," I said. "There isn't any water on the Moon. How can there be tides?"

      "You don't have to have water to have tidal stresses. Don't worry about it; just accept it. What you get is unbalanced stresses. They can cause quakes."

      I nodded. "I see. Since everything in the Moon has to be sealed airtight, you've got to watch out for quakes. These airlocks are to confine your losses." I started visualizing myself as one of the losses.

      "Yes and no. The airlocks would limit an accident all right, if there was one-which there won't be-this place is safe. Primarily they let us work on a section of the tunnel at no pressure without disturbing the rest of it. But they are more than that; each one is a temporary expansion joint. You can tie a compact structure together and let it ride out a quake, but a thing as long as this tunnel has to give, or it will spring a leak. A flexible seal is hard to accomplish in the Moon."

      "What's wrong with rubber?" I demanded. I was feeling jumpy enough to be argumentative. "I've got a ground-car back home with two hundred thousand miles on it, yet I've never touched the tires since they were sealed up in Detroit."

      Knowles sighed. "I should have brought one of the engineers along, Jack. The volatiles that keep rubbers soft tend to boil away in vacuum and the stuff gets stiff. Same for the flexible plastics. When you expose them to low temperature as well they get brittle as eggshells."

      The scooter stopped as Knowles was speaking and we got off just in time to meet half a dozen men coming out of the next airlock. They were wearing spacesuits, or, more properly, pressure suits, for they had hose connections instead of oxygen bottles, and no sun visors. Their helmets were thrown back and each man had his head pushed through the opened zipper in the front of his suit, giving him a curiously two headed look. Knowles called out, "Hey, Konski!"

      One of the men turned around. He must have been six feet two and fat for his size. I guessed him at three hundred pounds, earthside. "It's Mr. Knowles," he said happily. "Don't tell me I've gotten a raise."

      "You're making too much money now, Fatso. Shake hands with Jack Arnold. Jack, this is Fatso Konski-the best sandhog in four planets."

      "Only four?" inquired Konski. He slid his right arm out of his suit and stuck his bare hand into mine. I said I was glad to meet him and tried to get my hand back before he mangled It.

      "Jack Arnold wants to see how you seal these tunnels," Knowles went on. "Come along with us."

      Konski stared at the overhead. "Well, now that you mention it, Mr. Knowles, I've just finished my shift."

      Knowles said, "Fatso, you're a money grubber and inhospitable as well. Okay-time-and-a-half." Konski turned and started unsealing the airlock.

      The tunnel beyond looked much the same as the section we had left except that there were no scooter tracks and the lights were temporary, rigged on extensions. A couple of hundred feet away the tunnel was blocked by a bulkhead with a circular door in it. The fat man followed my glance. "That's the movable lock," he explained. "No air beyond it. We excavate just ahead of it."

      "Can I see where you've been digging?"

      "Not without we go back and get you a suit."

      I shook my head. There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel, the size and shape of toy balloons. They seemed to displace exactly their own weight of air; they floated without displaying much tendency to rise or settle. Konski batted one out of his way and answered me before I could ask. "This piece of tunnel was pressurized today," he told me. "These tag-alongs search out stray leaks. They're sticky inside. They get sucked up against a leak, break, and the goo gets sucked in, freezes and seals the leak."

      "Is that a permanent repair?" I wanted to know.

      "Are you kidding? It just shows the follow-up man where to weld."

      "Show him a flexible joint," Knowles directed.

      "Coming up." We paused half-way down the tunnel and Konski pointed to a ring segment that ran completely around the tubular tunnel. "We put in a flex joint every hundred feet. It's glass cloth, gasketed onto the two steel sections it joins. Gives the tunnel a certain amount of springiness."

      "Glass cloth? To make an airtight seal?" I objected.

      "The cloth doesn't seal; it's for strength. You got ten layers of cloth, with a silicone grease spread between the layers. It gradually goes bad, from the outside in, but it'll hold five years or more before you have to put on another coat."

      I asked Konski how he liked his job, thinking I might get some story. He shrugged. "It's all right. Nothing to it. Only one atmosphere of pressure. Now you take when I was working under the Hudson-"

      "And getting paid a tenth of what you get here," put in Knowles.

      "Mr. Knowles, you grieve me," Konski protested. "It ain't the money; it's the art of the matter. Take Venus. They pay as well on Venus and a man has to be on his toes. The muck is so loose you have to freeze it. It takes real caisson men to work there. Half of these punks here are just miners; a case of the bends would scare 'em silly."

      "Tell him why you left Venus, Fatso."

      Konski expressed dignity. "Shall we examine the movable shield, gentlemen?" he asked.

      We puttered around a while longer and I was ready to go back. There wasn't much to see, and the more I saw of the place the less I liked it. Konski was undogging the door of the airlock leading back when something happened.

      I was down on my hands and knees and the place was pitch dark. Maybe I screamed-I don't know. There was a ringing in my ears. I tried to get up and then stayed where I was. It was the darkest dark I ever saw, complete blackness. I thought I was blind.

      A torchlight beam cut through it, picked me out, and then moved on. "What was it?" I shouted. "What happened? Was it a quake?"

      "Stop yelling," Konski's voice answered me casually. "That was no quake, it was some sort of explosion. Mr. Knowles-you all right?"

      "I guess so." He gasped for breath. "What happened?"

      "Dunno. Let's look around a bit." Konski stood up and poked his beam around the tunnel, whistling softly. His light was the sort that has to be pumped; it flickered.

      "Looks tight, but I hear-Oh, oh! Sister!" His beam was focused on a part of the flexible joint, near the floor.

      The "tag-along" balloons were gathering at this spot. Three were already there; others were drifting in slowly. As we watched, one of them burst and collapsed in a sticky mass that marked the leak.

      The hole sucked up the burst balloon and began to hiss. Another rolled onto the spot, joggled about a bit, then it, too, burst. It took a little longer this time for the leak to absorb and swallow the gummy mass.

      Konski passed me the light. "Keep pumping it, kid." He shrugged his right arm out of the suit and placed his bare hand over the spot where, at that moment, a third bladder burst.

      "How about it, Fats?" Mr. Knowles demanded.

      "Couldn't say. Feels like a hole as big as my thumb. Sucks like the devil."

      "How could you get a hole like that?"

      "Search me. Poked through from the outside, maybe."

      "You got the leak checked?"

      "I think so. Go back and check the gage. Jack, give him the light."

      Knowles trotted back to the airlock. Presently he sang out, "Pressure steady!"

      "Can you read the vernier?" Konski called to him.

      "Sure. Steady by the vernier."

      "How much we lose?"

      "Not more than a pound or two. What was the pressure before?"

      "Earth-normal."

      "Lost a pound four tenths, then."

      "Not bad. Keep on going, Mr. Knowles. There's a tool kit just beyond the lock in the next section. Bring me back a number three patch, or bigger."

      "Right." We heard the door open and clang shut, and we were again in total darkness. I must have made some sound for Konski told me to keep my chin up.

      Presently we heard the door, and the blessed light shone out again. "Got it?" said Konski.

      "No, Fatso. No . . ." Knowles' voice was shaking. "There's no air on the other side. The other door wouldn't open."

      "Jammed, maybe?"

      "No, I checked the manometer. There's no pressure in the next section."

      Konski whistled again. "Looks like we'll wait till they come for us. In that case-- Keep the light on me, Mr. Knowles. Jack, help me out of this suit."

      "What are you planning to do?"

      "If I can't get a patch, I got to make one, Mr. Knowles. This suit is the only thing around." I started to help him-a clumsy job since he had to keep his hand on the leak.

      "You can stuff my shirt in the hole," Knowles suggested.

      "I'd as soon bail water with a fork. It's got to be the suit; there's nothing else around that will hold the pressure." When he was free of the suit, he had me smooth out a portion of the back, then, as he snatched his hand away, I slapped the suit down over the leak. Konski promptly sat on it. "There," he said happily, "we've got it corked. Nothing to do but wait."

      I started to ask him why he hadn't just sat down on the leak while wearing the suit; then I realized that the seat of the suit was corrugated with insulation-he needed a smooth piece to seal on to the sticky stuff left by the balloons.

      "Let me see your hand," Knowles demanded.

      "It's nothing much." But Knowles examined it anyway. I looked at it and got a little sick. He had a mark like a stigma on the palm, a bloody, oozing wound. Knowles made a compress of his handkerchief and then used mine to tie it in place.

      "Thank you, gentlemen," Konski told us, then added, "we've got time to kill. How about a little pinochle?"

      "With your cards?" asked Knowles.

      "Why, Mr. Knowles! Well-never mind. It isn't right for paymasters to gamble anyhow. Speaking of paymasters, you realize this is pressure work now, Mr. Knowles?"

      "For a pound and four tenths differential?"

      "I'm sure the union would take that view-in the circumstances."

      "Suppose I sit on the leak?"

      "But the rate applies to helpers, too."

      "Okay, miser-triple-time it is."

      "That's more like your own sweet nature, Mr. Knowles. I hope it's a nice long wait."

      "How long a wait do you think it will be, Fatso?"

      "Well, it shouldn't take them more than an hour, even if they have to come all the way from Richardson."

      "Hmm ... what makes you think they will be looking for us?"

      "Huh? Doesn't your office know where you are?"

      "I'm afraid not. I told them I wouldn't be back today."

      Konski thought about it. "I didn't drop my time card. They'll know I'm still inside."

      "Sure they will-tomorrow, when your card doesn't show up at my office."

      "There's that lunkhead on the gate. He'll know he's got three extra inside."

      "Provided he remembers to tell his relief. And provided he wasn't caught in it, too."

      "Yes, I guess so," Konski said thoughtfully. "Jack-better quit pumping that light. You just use up more oxygen."

      We sat there in the darkness for quite a long time, speculating about what had happened. Konski was sure it was an explosion; Knowles said that it put him in mind of a time when he had seen a freight rocket crash on take off. When the talk started to die out, Konski told some stories. I tried to tell one, but I was so nervous-so afraid, I should say-that I couldn't remember the snapper. I wanted to scream.

      After a long silence Konski said, "Jack, give us the light again. I got something figured out."

      "What is it?" Knowles asked.

      "If we had a patch, you could put on my suit and go for help."

      "There's no oxygen for the suit."

      "That's why I mentioned you. You're the smallest-there'll be enough air in the suit itself to take you through the next section."

      "Well-okay. What are you going to use for a patch?"

      "I'm sitting on it."

      "Huh?"

      "This big broad, round thing I'm sitting on. I'll take my pants off. If I push one of my hams against that hole, I'll guarantee you it'll be sealed tight."

      "But-No, Fats, it won't do. Look what happened to your hand. You'd hemorrhage through your skin and bleed to death before I could get back."

      "I'll give you two to one I wouldn't-for fifty, say."

      "If I win, how do I collect?"

      "You're a cute one, Mr. Knowles. But look-I've got two or three inches of fat padding me. I won't bleed much-a strawberry mark, no more."

      Knowles shook his head. "It's not necessary. If we keep quiet, there's air enough here for several days."

      "It's not the air, Mr. Knowles. Noticed it's getting chilly?"

      I had noticed, but hadn't thought about it. In my misery and funk being cold didn't seem anything more than appropriate. Now I thought about it. When we lost the power line, we lost the heaters, too. It would keep getting colder and colder ... and colder.

      Mr. Knowles saw it, too. "Okay, Fats. Let's get on with it."

      I sat on the suit while Konski got ready. After he got his pants off he snagged one of the tag-alongs, burst it, and smeared the sticky insides on his right buttock. Then he turned to me. "Okay, kid-up off the nest." We made the swap-over fast, without losing much air, though the leak hissed angrily. "Comfortable as an easy chair, folks." He grinned.

      Knowles hurried into the suit and left, taking the light with him. We were in darkness again.

      After a while, I heard Konski's voice. "There a game we can play in the dark, Jack. You play chess?"

      "Why, yes-play at it, that is."

      "A good game. Used to play it in the decompression chamber when I was working under the Hudson. What do you say to twenty on a side, just to make it fun?"

      "Uh? Well, all right." He could have made it a thousand; I didn't care.

      "Fine. King's pawn to king three."

      "Uh-king's pawn to king's four."

      "Conventional, aren't you? Puts me in mind of a girl I knew in Hoboken--" What he told about her bad nothing to do with chess, although it did prove she was conventional, in a manner of speaking. "King's bishop to queen's bishop four. Remind me to tell you about her sister, too. Seems she hadn't always been a redhead, but she wanted people to think so. So she-sorry. Go ahead with your move."

      I tried to think but my head was spinning. "Queen's pawn to queen three."

      "Queen to king's bishop three. Anyhow, she--" He went on in great detail. It wasn't new and I doubt if it ever happened to him, but it cheered me up. I actually smiled, there in the dark. "It's your move," he added.

      "Oh." I couldn't remember the board. I decided to get ready to castle, always fairly safe in the early game. "Queen's knight to queen's bishop three."

      "Queen advances to capture your king's bishop's pawn-checkmate. You owe me twenty, Jack."

      "Huh? Why that can't be!"

      "Want to run over the moves?" He checked them off.

      I managed to visualize them, then said, "Why, I'll be a dirty name! You hooked me with a fool's mate!"

      He chuckled. "You should have kept your eye on my queen instead of on the redhead."

      I laughed out loud. "Know any more stories?"

      "Sure." He told another. But when I urged him to go on, he said, "I think I'll just rest a little while, Jack."

      I got up. "You all right, Fats?" He didn't answer; I felt my way over to him in the dark. His face was cold and he didn't speak when I touched him. I could hear his heart faintly when I pressed an ear to his chest, but his hands and feet were like ice.

      I had to pull him loose; he was frozen to the spot. I could feel the ice, though I knew it must be blood. I started to try to revive him by rubbing him, but the hissing of the leak brought me up short. I tore off my own trousers, had a panicky time before I found the exact spot in the dark, and sat down on it, with my right buttock pressed firmly against the opening.

      It grabbed me like a suction cup, icy cold. Then it was fire spreading through my flesh. After a time I couldn't feel anything at all, except a dull ache and coldness.

      There was a light someplace. It flickered on, then went out again. I heard a door clang. I started to shout.

      "Knowles!" I Screamed. "Mr. Knowles!"

      The light flickered on again. "Coming, Jack--"

      I started to blubber. "Oh, you made it! You made it."

      "I didn't make it, Jack. I couldn't reach the next section. When I got back to the lock I passed out." He stopped to wheeze. "There's a crater--" The light flickered off and fell clanging to the floor. "Help me, Jack," he said querulously. "Can't you see I need help? I tried to--"

      I heard him stumble and fall. I called to him, but he didn't answer.

      I tried to get up, but I was stuck fast, a cork in a bottle . . .

      I came to, lying face down-with a clean sheet under me. "Feeling better?" someone asked. It was Knowles, standing by my bed, dressed in a bathrobe.

      "You're dead," I told him.

      "Not a bit." He grinned. "They got to us in time."

      "What happened?" I stared at him, still not believing my eyes.

      "Just like we thought-a crashed rocket. An unmanned mail rocket got out of control and hit the tunnel."

      "Where's Fats?"

      "Hi!"

      I twisted my head around; it was Konski, face down like myself.

      "You owe me twenty," he said cheerfully.

      "I owe you--" I found I was dripping tears for no good reason. "Okay, I owe you twenty. But you'll have to come to Des Moines to collect it."

The Black Pits of Luna

      THE MORNING after we got to the Moon we went over to Rutherford. Dad and Mr. Latham - Mr. Latham is the man from the Harriman Trust that Dad came to Luna City to see.

      Dad and Mr. Latham had to go anyhow, on business. I got Dad to promise I could go along because it looked like just about my only chance to get out on the surface of the Moon. Luna City is all right, I guess, but I defy you to tell a corridor in Luna City from the sublevels in New York-except that you're light on your feet, of course.

      When Dad came into our hotel suite to say we were ready to leave, I was down on the floor, playing mumblety-peg with my kid brother. Mother was lying down and had asked me to keep the runt quiet. She had been dropsick all the way out from Earth and I guess she didn't feel very good. The runt had been fiddling with the lights, switching them from "dusk" to "desert suntan" and back again. I collared him and sat him down on the floor.

      Of course, I don't play mumblety-peg any more, but, on the Moon, it's a right good game. The knife practically floats and you can do all kinds of things with it. We made up a lot of new rules.

      Dad said, "Switch in plans, my dear. We're leaving for Rutherford right away. Let's pull ourselves together."

      Mother said, "Oh, mercy me-I don't think I'm up to it. You and Dickie run along. Baby Darling and I will just spend a quiet day right here."

      Baby Darling is the runt.

      I could have told her it was the wrong approach. He nearly put my eye out with the knife and said, "Who? What? I'm going too. Let's go!"

      Mother said, "Oh, now, Baby Darling-don't cause Mother Dear any trouble, We'll go to the movies, just you and I."

      The runt is seven years younger than I am, but don't call him "Baby Darling" if you want to get anything out of him. He started to bawl. "You said I could go!" he yelled.

      "No, Baby Darling. I haven't mentioned it to you. I-"

      "Daddy said I could go!"

      "Richard, did you tell Baby he could go?"

      "Why, no, my dear, not that I recall. Perhaps I-"

      The kid cut in fast. "You said I could go anywhere Dickie went. You promised me you promised me you promised me." Sometimes you have to hand it to the runt; he had them jawing about who told him what in nothing flat. Anyhow, that is how twenty minutes later, the four of us were up at the rocket port with Mr. Lathani and climbing into the shuttle for Rutherford.

      The trip only takes about ten minutes and you don't see much, just a glimpse of the Earth while the rocket is still near Luna City and then not even that, since the atom plants where we were going are all on the back side of the Moon, of course. There were maybe a dozen tourists along and most of them were dropsick as soon as we went into free flight. So was Mother. Some people never will get used to rockets.

      But Mother was all right as soon as we grounded and were inside again. Rutherford isn't like Luna City; instead of extending a tube out to the ship, they send a pressurized car out to latch on to the airlock of the rocket, then you jeep back about a mile to the entrance to underground. I liked that and so did the runt. Dad had to go off on business with Mr. Latham, leaving Mother and me and the runt to join up with the party of tourists for the trip through the laboratories.

      It was all right but nothing to get excited about. So far as I can see, one atomics plant looks about like another; Rutherford could just as well have been. the main plant outside Chicago. I mean to say everything that is anything is out of sight, covered up, shielded. All you get to see are some dials and instrument boards and people watching them. Remote control stuff, like Oak Ridge. The guide tells you about the experiments going on and they show you some movies - that's all.

      I liked our guide. He looked like Tom Jeremy in The Space Troopers. I asked him if he was a spaceman and he looked at me kind of funny and said, no, that he was just a Colonial Services ranger. Then he asked me where I went to school and if I belonged to the Scouts. He said he was scoutmaster of Troop One, Rutherford City, Moonbat Patrol.

      I found out there was just the one patrol-not many scouts on the Moon, I suppose.

      Dad and Mr. Latham joined us just as we finished the tour while Mr. Perrin - that's our guide - was announcing the trip outside. "The conducted tour of Rutherford," he said, talking as if it were a transcription, "includes a trip by spacesuit out on the surface of the Moon, without extra charge, to see the Devil's Graveyard and the site of the Great Disaster of 1984. The trip is optional. There is nothing particularly dangerous about it and we've never had any one hurt, but the Commission requires that you sign a separate release for your own safety if you choose to make this trip. The trip takes about one hour. Those preferring to remain behind will find movies and refreshments in the coffee shop."

      Dad was rubbing his hands together. "This is for me," he announced. "Mr. Latham, I'm glad we got back in time. I wouldn't have missed this for the world."

      "You'll enjoy it," Mr. Latham agreed, "and so will you, Mrs. Logan. I'm tempted to come along myself."

      "Why don't you?' Dad asked.

      "No, I want to have the papers ready for you and the Director to sign when you get back and before you leave for Luna City."

      "Why knock yourself out?" Dad urged him. "If a man's word is no good, his signed contract is no better. You can mail the stuff to me at New York."

      Mr. Latham shook his head. "No, really - I've been out on the surface dozens of times. But I'll come along and help you into your spacesuits."

      Mother said, "Oh dear," she didn't think she'd better go; she wasn't sure she could stand the thought of being shut up in a spacesuit and besides glaring sunlight always gave her a headache.

      Dad said, "Don't be silly, my dear; it's the chance of a lifetime," and Mr. Latham told her that the filters on the helmets kept the light from being glaring. Mother always objects and then gives in. I suppose women just don't have any force of character. Like the night before - earth-night, I mean, Luna City time - she had bought a fancy moonsuit to wear to dinner in the Earth-View room at the hotel, then she got cold feet. She complained to Dad that she was too plump to dare to dress like that.

      Well, she did show an awful lot of skin. Dad said, "Nonsense, my dear. You look ravishing." So she wore it and had a swell time, especially when a pilot tried to pick her up.

      It was like that this time. She came along. We went into the outfitting room and I looked around while Mr. Perrin was getting them all herded in and having the releases signed. There was the door to the airlock to the surface at the far end, with a bull's-eye window in it and another one like it in the door beyond. You could peek through and see the surface of the Moon beyond, looking hot and bright and sort of improbable, in spite of the amber glass in the windows. And there was a double row of spacesuits hanging up, looking like empty men. I snooped around until Mr. Perrin got around to our party.

      "We can arrange to leave the youngster in the care of the hostess in the coffee shop," he was telling Mother. He reached down and tousled the runt's hair. The runt tried to bite him and he snatched his hand away in a hurry.

      "Thank you, Mr. Perkins," Mother said, "I suppose that's best-though perhaps I had better stay behind with him."

      "'Perrin' is the name," Mr. Perrin said mildly. "It won't be necessary. The hostess will take good care of him."

      Why do adults talk in front of kids as if they couldn't understand English? They should have just shoved him into the coffee shop. By now the runt knew he was being railroaded. He looked around belligerently. "I go, too," he said loudly. "You promised me."

      "Now Baby Darling," Mother tried to stop him. "Mother Dear didn't tell you-" But she was just whistling to herself; the runt turned on the sound effects.

      "You said I could go where Dickie went; you promised me when I was sick. You promised me you promised me-" and on and on, his voice getting higher and louder all the time.

      Mr. Perrin looked embarrassed. Mother said, "Richard, you'll just have to deal with your child. After all, you were the one who promised him."

      "Me, dear?" Dad looked surprised. "Anyway, I don't see anything so complicated about it. Suppose we did promise him that he could do what Dickie does-we'll simply take him along; that's all."

      Mr. Perrin cleared his throat. "I'm afraid not. I can outfit your older son with a woman's suit; he's tall for his age. But we just don't make any provision for small children."

      Well, we were all tangled up in a mess in no time at all. The runt can always get Mother to go running in circles. Mother has the same effect on Dad. He gets red in the face and starts laying down the law to me. It's sort of a chain reaction, with me on the end and nobody to pass it along to. They came out with a very simple solution - I was to stay behind and take care of Baby Darling brat!

      "But, Dad, you said-" I started in.

      "Never mind!" he cut in. "I won't have this family disrupted in a public squabble. You heard what your mother said."

      I was desperate. "Look, Dad," I said, keeping my voice low, "if I go back to Earth without once having put on a spacesuit and set foot on the surface, you'll just have to find another school to send me to. I won't go back to Lawrenceville; I'd be the joke of the whole place."

      "We'll settle that when we get home."

      "But, Dad, you promised me specifically-"

      "That'll be enough out of you, young man. The matter is closed."

      Mr. Lathain had been standing near by, taking it in but keeping his mouth shut. At this point he cocked an eyebrow at Dad and said very quietly, "Well, R.J., I thought your word was your bond?"

      I wasn't supposed to hear it and nobody else did - a good thing, too, for it doesn't do to let Dad know that you know that he's wrong; it just makes him worse. I changed the subject in a hurry. "Look, Dad, maybe we all can go out. How about that suit over there?" I pointed at a rack that was inside a railing with a locked gate on it. The rack had a couple of dozen suits on it and at the far end, almost out of sight, was a small suit - the boots on it hardly came down to the waist of the suit next to it.

      "Huh?" Dad brightened up. "Why, just the thing! Mr. Perrin! Oh, Mr. Perrin-here a minute! I thought you didn't have any small suits, but here's one that I think will fit."

      Dad was fiddling at the latch of the railing gate. Mr. Perrin stopped him. "We can't use that suit, sir."

      "Uh? Why not?"

      "All the suits inside the railing are private property, not for rent."

      "What? Nonsense-Rutherford is a public enterprise. I want that suit for my child."

      "Well, you can't have it."

      "I'll speak to the Director."

      "I'm afraid you'll have to. That suit was specially built for his daughter."

      And that's just what they did. Mr. Latham got the Director on the line, Dad talked to him, then the Director talked to Mr. Perrin, then he talked to Dad again. The Director didn't mind lending the suit, not to Dad, anyway, but he wouldn't order Mr. Perrin to take a below-age child outside.

      Mr. Perrin was feeling stubborn and I don't blame him, but Dad soothed his feathers down and presently we were all climbing into our suits and getting pressure checks and checking our oxygen supply and switching on our walkie-talkies. Mr. Perrin was calling the roll by radio and reminding us that we were all on the same circuit, so we had better let him do most of the talking and not to make casual remarks or none of us would be able to hear. Then we were in the airlock and he was warning us to stick close together and not try to see how fast we could run or how high we could jump. My heart was rocking around in my chest.

      The outer door of the lock opened and we filed out on the face of the Moon. It was just as wonderful as I dreamed it would be, I guess, but I was so excited that I hardly knew it at the time. The glare of the sun was the brightest thing I ever saw and the shadows so inky black you could hardly see into them. You couldn't hear anything but voices over your radio and you could reach down and switch off that.

      The pumice was soft and kicked up around our feet like smoke, settling slowly, falling in slow motion. Nothing else moved. It was the deadest place you can imagine.

      We stayed on a path, keeping close together for company, except twice when I had to take out after the runt when he found out he could jump twenty feet. I wanted to smack him, but did you ever try to smack anybody wearing a spacesuit? It's no use.

      Mr. Perrin told us to halt presently and started his talk. "You are now in the Devil's Graveyard. The twin spires behind you are five thousand feet above the floor of the plain and have never been scaled. The spires, or monuments, have been named for apocryphal or mythological characters because of the fancied resemblance of this fantastic scene to a giant cemetery. Beelzebub, Thor, Siva, Cain, Set-" He pointed around us. "Lunologists are not agreed as to the origin of the strange shapes. Some claim to see indications of the action of air and water as well as volcanic action. If so, these spires must have been standing for an unthinkably long period, for today, as you see, the Moon-" It was the same sort of stuff you can read any month in Spaceways Magazine, only we were seeing it and that makes a difference, let me tell you.

      The spires reminded me a bit of the rocks below the lodge in the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs when we went there last summer, only these spires were lots bigger and, instead of blue sky, there was just blackness and hard, sharp stars overhead. Spooky.

      Another ranger bad come with us, with a camera. Mr. Perrin tried to say something else, but the runt had started yapping away and I had to switch off his radio before anybody could hear anything. I kept it switched off until Mr. Perrin finished talking.

      He wanted us to line up for a picture with the spires and the black sky behind us for a background. "Push your faces forward in your helmets so that your features will show. Everybody look pretty. There!" he added as the other guy snapped the shot. "Prints will be ready when you return, at ten dollars a copy."

      I thought it over. I certainly needed one for my room at school and I wanted one to give to - anyhow, I needed another one. I had eighteen bucks left from my birthday money; I could sweet-talk Mother for the balance. So I ordered two of them.

      We climbed a long rise and suddenly we were staring out across the crater, the disaster crater, all that was left of the first laboratory. It stretched away from us, twenty miles across, with the floor covered with shiny, bubbly green glass instead of pumice. There was a monument. I read it:

      HERE ABOUT YOU ARE THE MORTAL REMAINS OF

            Kurt Schaeffer

            Maurice Feinstein

            Thomas Dooley

            Hazel Hayakawa

            Cl. Washington Slappey

            Sam Houston Adams

      WHO DIED FOR THE TRUTH THAT MAKES MEN FREE

      On the Eleventh Day of August 1984

      I felt sort of funny and backed away and went to listen to Mr. Perrin. Dad and some of the other men were asking him questions. "They don't know exactly," he was saying. "Nothing was left. Now we telemeter all the data back to Luna City, as it comes off the instruments, but that was before the line-of-sight relays were set up."

      "What would have happened," some man asked, "if this blast had gone off on Earth?"

      "I'd hate to try to tell you-but that's why they put the lab here, back of the Moon." He glanced at his watch. "Time to leave, everybody." They were milling around, heading back down toward the path, when Mother screamed.

      "Baby! Where's Baby Darling?"

      I was startled but I wasn't scared, not yet. The runt is always running around, first here and then there, but he doesn't go far away, because he always wants to have somebody to yap to.

      My father had one arm around Mother; he signaled to me with the other. "Dick," he snapped, his voice sharp in my earphones, "what have you done with your brother?'

      "Me?" I said. "Don't look at me-the last I saw Mother had him by the hand, walking up the hill here."

      "Don't stall around, Dick. Mother sat down to rest when we got here and sent him to you."

      "Well, if she did, he never showed up." At that, Mother started to scream in earnest. Everybody had been listening, of course-they had to; there was just the one radio circuit. Mr. Perrin stepped up and switched off Mother's talkie, making a sudden silence.

      "Take care of your wife, Mr. Logan," he ordered, then added, "When did you see your child last?"

      Dad couldn't help him any; when they tried switching Mother back into the hook-up, they switched her right off again. She couldn't help and she deafened us.  Mr. Perrin addressed the rest of us. "Has anyone seen the small child we had with us? Don't answer unless you have something to contribute. Did anyone see him wander away?"

      Nobody had. I figured he probably ducked out when everybody was looking at the crater and had their backs to him. I told Mr. Perrin so. "Seems likely," he agreed. "Attention, everybody! I'm going to search for the child. Stay right where you are. Don't move away from this spot. I won't be gone more than ten minutes."

      "Why don't we all go?" somebody wanted to know.

      "Because," said Mr. Perrin, "right now I've - only got one lost. I don't want to make it a dozen." Then he left, taking big easy lopes that covered fifty feet at a step.

      Dad started to take out after him, then thought better of it, for Mother suddenly keeled over, collapsing at the knees and floating gently to the ground. Everybody started talking at once. Some idiot wanted to take her helmet off, but Dad isn't crazy. I switched off my radio so I could hear myself think and started looking around, not leaving the crowd but standing up on the lip of the crater and trying to see as much as I could.

      I was looking back the way we had come; there was no sense in looking at the crater-if he had been in there he would have shown up like a fly on a plate.

      Outside the crater was different; you could have hidden a regiment within a block of us, rocks standing up every which way, boulders big as houses with blow holes all through them, spires, gulleys-it was a mess. I could see Mr. Perrin every now and then, casting around like a dog after a rabbit, and making plenty of time. He was practically flying. When he came to a big boulder he would jump right over it, leveling off face down at the top of his jump, so he could see better.

      Then he was heading back toward us and I switched my radio back on. There was still a lot of talk. Somebody was saying, "We've got to find him before sundown," and somebody else answered, "Don't be silly; the sun won't be down for a week. It's his air supply, I tell you. These suits are only good for four hours." The first voice said, "Oh!" then added softly, "like a fish out of water-" It was then I got scared.

      A woman's voice, sounding kind of choked, said, "The poor, poor darling! We've got to find him before he suffocates," and my father's voice cut in sharply, "Shut up talking that way!" I could hear somebody sobbing. It might have been Mother.

      Mr. Perrin was almost up to us and he cut in, "Silence everybody! I've got to call the base," and he added urgently, "Perrin, calling airlock control; Perrin, calling airlock control!"

      A woman's voice answered, "Come in, Perrin." He told her what was wrong and added, "Send out Smythe to take this party back in. I'm staying. I want every ranger who's around and get me volunteers from among any of the experienced Moon hands. Send out a radio direction-finder by the first ones to leave."

      We didn't wait long, for they came swarming toward us like grasshoppers. They must have been running forty or fifty miles an hour. It would have been something to see, if I hadn't been so sick at my stomach.

      Dad put up an argument about going back, but Mr. Perrin shut him up. "If you hadn't been so confounded set on having your own way, we wouldn't be in a mess. If you had kept track of your kid, he wouldn't be lost. I've got kids of my own; I don't let 'em go out on the face of the Moon when they're too young to take care of themselves. You go on back - I can't be burdened by taking care of you, too."

      I think Dad might even have gotten in a fight with him if Mother hadn't gotten faint again. We went on back with the party.

      The next couple of hours were pretty awful. They let us sit just outside the control room where we could hear Mr. Perrin directing the search, over the loudspeaker. I thought at first that they would snag the runt as soon as they started using the radio direction-finder-pick up his power hum, maybe, even if he didn't say anything-but no such luck; they didn't get anything with it. And the searchers didn't find anything either.

      A thing that made it worse was that Mother and Dad didn't even try to blame me. Mother was crying quietly and Dad was consoling her, when he looked over at me with an odd expression. I guess he didn't really see me at all, but I thought he was thinking that if I hadn't insisted on going out on the surface this wouldn't have happened. I said, "Don't go looking at me, Dad. Nobody told me to keep an eye on him. I thought he was with Mother."

      Dad just shook his head without answering. He was looking tired and sort of shrunk up. But Mother, instead of laying in to me and yelling, stopped her crying and managed to smile. "Come here, Dickie," she said, and put her other arm around me. "Nobody blames you, Dickie. Whatever happens, you weren't at fault. Remember that, Dickie."

      So I let her kiss me and then sat with them for a while, but I felt worse than before. I kept thinking about the runt, somewhere out there, and his oxygen running out. Maybe it wasn't my fault, but I could have prevented it and I knew it. I shouldn't have depended on Mother to look out for him; she's no good at that sort of thing. She's the kind of person that would mislay her head if it wasn't knotted on tight - the ornamental sort. Mother's good, you understand, but she's not practical. She would take it pretty hard if the runt didn't come back. And so would Dad-and so would I. The runt is an awful nuisance, but it was going to seem strange not to have him around underfoot. I got to thinking about that remark, "Like a fish out of water." I accidentally busted an aquarium once; I remember yet how they looked. Not pretty. If the runt was going to die like that - I shut myself up and decided I just had to figure out some way to help find him.

      After a while I had myself convinced that I could find him if they would just let me help look. But they wouldn't of course.

      Dr. Evans the Director showed up again-he'd met us when we first came in - and asked if there was anything he could do for us and how was Mrs. Logan feeling? "You know I wouldn't have had this happen for the world," he added. "We're doing all we can. I'm having some ore-detectors shot over from Luna City. We might be able to spot the child by the metal in his suit."

      Mother asked how about bloodhounds and Dr. Evans didn't even laugh at her. Dad suggested helicopters, then corrected himself and made it rockets. Dr. Evans pointed out that it was impossible to examine the ground closely from a rocket.

      I got him aside presently and braced him to let me join the hunt. He was polite but unimpressed, so I insisted. "What makes you think you can find him?", he asked me. "We've got the most experienced Moon men available out there now. I'm afraid, son, that you would get yourself lost or hurt if you tried to keep up with them. In this country, if you once lose sight of landmarks, you can get hopelessly lost."

      "But look, Doctor," I told him, "I know the runt-I mean my kid brother, better than anyone else in the world. I won't get lost-I mean I will get lost but just the way he did. You can send somebody to follow me."

      He thought about it. "It's worth trying," he said suddenly. "I'll go with you. Let's suit up."

      We made a fast trip out, taking thirty-foot strides-the best I could manage even with Dr. Evans hanging on to my belt to keep me from stumbling. Mr. Perrin was expecting us. He seemed dubious about my scheme. "Maybe the old 'lost mule' dodge will work," he admitted, "but I'll keep the regular search going just the same. Here, Shorty, take this flashlight. You'll need it in the shadows."

      I stood on the edge of the crater and tried to imagine I was the runt, feeling bored and maybe a little bit griped at the lack of attention. What would I do next?

      I went skipping down the slope, not going anywhere in particular, the way the runt would have done. Then I stopped and looked back, to see if Mother and Daddy and Dickie had noticed me. I was being followed all right; Dr. Evans and Mr. Perrin were close behind me. I pretended that no one was looking and went on. I was pretty close to the first rock outcroppings by now and I ducked behind the first one I came to. It wasn't high enough to hide me but it would have covered the runt. It felt like what he would do; he loved to play hide-and-go-seek - it made him the center of attention.

      I thought about it. When the runt played that game, his notion of hiding was always to crawl under something, a bed, or a sofa, or an automobile, or even under the sink. I looked around. There were a lot of good places; the rocks were filled with blow holes and overhangs. I started working them over. It seemed hopeless; there must have been a hundred such places right around close.

      Mr. Perrin came up to me as I was crawling out of the fourth tight spot. "The men have shined flashlights around in every one of these places," he told me. "I don't think it's much use, Shorty."

      "Okay," I said, but I kept at it. I knew I could get at spots a grown man couldn't reach; I just hoped the runt hadn't picked a spot I couldn't reach.

      It went on and on and I was getting cold and stiff and terribly tired. The direct sunlight is hot on the Moon, but the second you get in the shade, it's cold. Down inside those rocks it never got warm at all. The suits they gave us tourists are well enough insulated, but the extra insulation is in the gloves and the boots and the seats of the pants-and I had been spending most of my time down on my stomach, wiggling into tight places.

      I was so numb I could hardly move and my whole front felt icy. Besides, it gave me one more thing to worry about - how about the runt? Was he cold, too?

      If it hadn't been for thinking how those fish looked and how, maybe, the runt would be frozen stiff before I could get to him, I would have quit. I was about beat. Besides, it's rather scary down inside those holes-you don't know what you'll come to next.

      Dr. Evans took me by the arm as I came out of one of them, and touched his helmet to mine, so that I got his voice directly. "Might as well give up, son. You're knocking your self out and you haven't covered an acre." I pulled away from him.

      The next place was a little overhang, not a foot off the ground. I flashed a light into it. It was empty and didn't seem to go anywhere. Then I saw there was a turn in it. I got down flat and wiggled in. The turn opened out a little and dropped off. I didn't think it was worthwhile to go any deeper as the runt wouldn't have crawled very far in the dark, but I scrunched ahead a little farther and flashed the light down.

      I saw a boot sticking out.

      That's about all there is to it. I nearly bashed in my helmet getting out of there, but I was dragging the runt after me. He was limp as a cat and his face was funny. Mr. Perrin and Dr. Evans were all over me as I came out, pounding me on the back and shouting. "Is he dead, Mr. Perrin?" I asked, when I could get my breath. "He looks awful bad."

      Mr. Perrin looked him over. "No . . . I can see a pulse in his throat. Shock and exposure, but this suit was specially built-we'll get him back fast." He picked the runt up in his arms and I took out after him.

      Ten minutes later the runt was wrapped in blankets and drinking hot cocoa. I had some, too. Everybody was talking at once and Mother was crying again, but she looked normal and Dad had filled out.

      He tried to write out a check for Mr. Perrin, but he brushed it off. "I don't need any reward; your boy found him.

      "You can do me just one favor-"

      "Yes?" Dad was all honey.

      "Stay off the Moon. You don't belong here; you're not the pioneer type."

      Dad took it. "I've already promised my wife that," he said without batting an eye. "You needn't worry."

      I followed Mr. Perrin as he left and said to him privately, "Mr. Perrin-I just wanted to tell you that I'll be back, if you don't mind."

      He shook hands with me and said, "I know you will, Shorty."