The throne of saturn, p.68
The Throne of Saturn, page 68
But Pete did not respond at first, though Connie began to accompany his words with a gentle, insistent pressure on his friend’s shoulder. So, he tried again.
Petros, he said, and he said it quite sternly. Come on, now. No more of this goldbricking. Got to be up and at ’em. Houston’s waiting, the dear old president’s waiting, the whole wide world is waiting. Everybody’s waiting. I’m waiting. Come on, now. Wake up. We haven’t got all day to stay here talking. We’ve got places to go and people to see and things to do. Come on, Petey. Let’s move, kid. Let’s get with it. Pete.
And finally, there was a movement, very slight at first, then stronger. Pete’s eyes opened, looked into his; at first without focus and then abruptly alive with the knowledge of where he was. A sudden fear came into them, they looked from side to side.
Connie mouthed: he’s dead.
Pete’s eyes relaxed. He managed the smallest shadow of a smile.
Good, Connie told him. At least you’re with me. I was beginning to wonder.
He reached over, gently tried to remove the pick from Pete’s tightly clenched right hand. Pete relaxed his grip, let him have it. Connie held it before Pete’s eyes, pointed off toward the dead Russian, pointed down at his own suit, dragged the pick across Pete’s field of vision in a tearing, ripping motion, pointed down to Pete’s leg.
Pete nodded with a comprehension that suddenly seemed to hold in it something dragging and drowsy again. A cold fear shot through Connie’s heart.
Petros, he said, speaking aloud and very carefully, accompanying his words with the action, I’m going to try to prop the gash closed with the pick, now, so don’t you move. Let it lie there, O.K., and don’t move. I’ve got to get to his rover—and he pointed and made a small rover, one hand crawling over the other—and find whatever is stopping the power—and he pointed up to Adventurer, gleaming and impersonal above—so we can take off. O.K.?
Pete focused again for a moment, slowly mouthed the word Yes, smiled, and closed his eyes. Again, the fear clamped on Connie’s heart.
But the oxygen seemed to have stopped venting, for the moment, or be reduced to so small a trickle that it was no longer visible on the telltale surface; and he could feel Pete’s chest rising and falling, faintly but still rhythmically, when he put his hand upon it. So, he got up ponderously, and said: You lie still now, Petros. I’ll be back just as soon as I can. I’ll get rid of whatever it is and then we’ll take off before you know it. O.K., buddy? You just lie still. Take it easy.
Slowly and carefully, he began the laborious walk to the rover, not looking back: eyes, mind, body, entire being, concentrated now upon the tasks that lay ahead if they were to come safely home.
“This is Mission Control at 106 hours, 31 minutes GET. We still haven’t been able to re-establish signal with either Planetary Fleet One or Adventurer just yet, but everybody here is keeping calm and going about his job and we’re confident we’ll soon have this annoying little problem licked. Everybody is convinced it’s just some temporary anomaly, probably caused by a static disturbance in the lunar atmosphere, and nothing to worry about. We expect to have both craft back on the beam here very shortly now, and as you know, we’re keeping all links open, so you’ll be able to hear acquisition of signal when we do. There’s been a lot of conferring and working with the computers and the equipment here in the last few minutes, but everybody’s keeping calm and nobody’s worried.
“Meanwhile, up there on the Moon, Connie Trasker and Pete Balkis by now should have returned from their trip in the Marsrover and are scheduled to be putting out some scientific instruments near the base of Adventurer as a dry-run for what they’ll do when they reach the Martian surface. After that, they’ll be going in the hut at Tranquility Base to check on some of the Apollo experiments there, and then they’ll be shoving off in Adventurer to rejoin Jazz Weickert and Jayvee Halleck, who are up there in One continuing to orbit the Moon. Things right now are pretty quiet for Jazz and Jayvee because they’re really on stand-by until they get word from Connie and Pete that they want to bring Adventurer up. We expect rendezvous in approximately one and one-half hours from now.
“Meanwhile, everybody here is doing his job and working away calmly to get this little anomaly on loss of signal straightened out. This is Mission Control at 106 hours, 35 minutes into the flight of Planetary Fleet One to Mars.”
They came up again into the light and saw what they had expected to see.
Much closer, probably no more than twenty-five miles behind, Man in the Moon kept them company. They could discern its outlines, now, those of a standard single command module. Through the binoculars they could see that it seemed to possess an unusual array of thrusters and an odd protuberance on one side.
Even as they watched, little puffs of white came suddenly from the rear bank of thrusters.
After that they estimated the gap as no more than 20 miles.
“If Connie and Pete decide to rendezvous on this pass,” Jazz said quietly, “we should be able to see them coming up in about thirty minutes.”
But when thirty minutes had passed they searched the sky and surface and saw no sign.
Once again Planetary Fleet One neared the horizon.
“What if he tries to knock us down on this pass?” Jayvee inquired in the same curiously detached voice he had used throughout.
“What if he does?” Jazz responded sarcastically. “He won’t. He’ll wait until we’re getting ready to rendezvous, if he has any plans. That’s the time to catch us.”
“If we rendezvous,” Jayvee said.
“God damn you,” Jazz said, quite dispassionately. “I don’t want to hear that comment again.”
Piffy One slid over the edge. Behind them came the small bright glow of Man in the Moon, as distinct and well-defined as theirs in the deep velvet blackness of the other side.
Again, he had the nightmare feeling, again time dragged and pulled upon his body as he tried to hurry it across the treacherous surface against the caprices of one-sixth gravity.
And this time it was a nightmare, for he had no way of knowing how much oxygen Pete had lost; whether he would remain still and not dislodge the makeshift suture held together by the pick; whether he would be alive when Connie returned; whether Connie could find the mechanism interrupting Adventurer’s power; whether Adventurer would respond if power were restored, or whether permanent damage had been done; whether he would be able to get Pete up the ladder and through the hatch if Pete were still alive; whether—
He shook his head as he bounced and jumped his way forward, trying to clear it of all these bugaboos that suddenly seemed to close in upon him; succeeded, at least temporarily; put his head down doggedly; and stumbled on.
About ten feet from the rover, he stopped. Cautiously he examined it, thinking at first it might be mined. Then logic said no, if the plan had succeeded the evidence would have been removed and the murderer would have departed. Two dead American astronauts who had foolishly ripped their suits on rocks would be all that remained of this day’s work. Man in the Moon and his buddy would be drinking vodka in Moscow when they were found.
Even so, he proceeded with great caution, stooping to pick up several of the small rocks so beloved of the scientists in Houston, tossing them ahead in an exploratory arc around the vehicle. The dust spurted up, drifted very slowly down again upon the places from which it had arisen: nothing exploded. He stepped cautiously forward, threw several more directly at the rover, its hood, roof, body, tires. The rocks struck, fell off, raised dust, settled: nothing exploded. He moved forward cautiously again. On the seat next to the steering wheel, making it much easier for him than he had anticipated, a small rectangular black metal box pulsated with little lights and gave off a peculiar reddish glow.
At first, he thought he could salvage it, aware of how valuable it would be if he could take it home for study and analysis and eventual breakdown into its component parts and capabilities. Once again, he used a small rock for testing. It bounced off the thing harmlessly. He reached out a tentative hand, touched it, nothing happened. He tried to pick it up with one hand, found that even in one-sixth gravity it was heavy, lifted it with two, turned it over, and examined it carefully. Whatever its mechanism was, it continued working. Lights and glow were undiminished.
There were three buttons at one end. He pushed them, first in sequence, then in all combinations. Each time he said tentatively, “Hello, Houston?” There was no response. The downlinks did not come back on. The power remained off. There was nothing to do but destroy it.
Again, he picked up rocks, found one presently that fitted the cup of his two gloved hands; placed the box on a larger, flatter rock beside the rover; began slowly and intently to pound, concentrating on the lights and buttons as being probably the most vulnerable.
He continued for almost fifteen minutes before he broke through the protective shielding of the lights. The result proved him to have been correct.
The lights went out, the pulsating stopped, the reddish glow died and did not return.
He battered it for another couple of minutes for good measure. Then he ran a test.
Because he was under orders, and because he had a mind trained to consider all eventualities, he could still, even at this desperate and fantastic moment when he and Pete were all alone on the lunar surface 235,000 miles from home, see the president’s argument. This was not going to be easy news to break to the world and it must be done with great thought. Also, it must not be done in any case before they were safely back in Santa Maria and on their way to Earth.
So, he snapped on the transmitter very carefully, made a sudden, abrupt, indecipherable sound, immediately snapped off the transmitter, and snapped on the receiver.
“Hello, Connie?” Stu Yule’s excited voice cried instantly. “Hello, Adventurer? Is that you, Conn? Connie? Is that Adventurer? Connie, is that you, for God’s sake? Connie, is that you? Hello, Adventurer? Hello? Hello?”
But he did not answer the voice of his good friend crying across almost a quarter-million miles, because he did not want to yet. For all the policy reasons, and because the job was not yet done, he did not want to. It took great will power not to call back joyously, “Yes, it’s me!” But great will power was what he had.
It was very good to know, however, that Houston was there when he wanted it.
The fact augured well for Adventurer.
Before he moved out, he tried one other experiment. He snapped on the private link that tied them to Santa Maria.
“Hello, Jazz,” he said cautiously. “Connie here. Hello, Jazz, do you read?”
But there was no answer.
That did not augur well for Piffy One.
He closed the circuit; picked up the box in both hands, hoping he had not battered it beyond analysis, determined now that he would, indeed, get it home; and began his awkward, careful trip back.
Everything appeared to be as he had left it.
The dead Russian lay to one side, Pete lay where he had fallen, Adventurer loomed white, ungainly, and beautiful above.
With a sudden feeling of panic, he put the box down and moved as fast as he could to Pete. He placed his hand on Pete’s chest, felt the rhythmic rise and fall. But it now seemed definitely weaker, and his friend did not stir at his touch.
He looked down at the makeshift patch. The pick had slipped somewhat during his absence and once again the jet of oxygen, smaller than before but dreadfully persistent, was writing its message in the telltale dust.
Hurriedly he readjusted the patch, stopped the terrible flow. Then he snapped on the internal link again, reached over and snapped on Pete’s, spoke softly but insistently. He knew now that neither the world nor Santa Maria would hear but he hoped desperately that Pete might.
“Pete,” he said. “Petros. Hey, buddy. It’s Connie. I’m back. It’s Connie, Pete. How are you doing? Hey, Pete. It’s Connie. Wake up, buddy. Wake up. Come on, pal, wake up. Wake up. Time to move, now. Wake up, Pete. Come on, wake up. Wake up. That’s the boy. Come on, get those eyes open. Get ’em open. That’s it. That’s my pal. Wide open, now, don’t close ’em again. Keep ’em open. That’s it. That’s it … Hi.”
Drowsy from some great dream—probably, Connie thought with a shiver, and tried desperately to deny the thought, the last great dream—Pete finally did open his eyes, managed to keep them open, and managed to smile. But his eyes took a while longer than before to focus and the smile was weak. But he did recognize his friend and after a moment he did reply, his voice a whisper in Connie’s earphones.
“Hi … You … got … back.”
“You’re damned right I got back,” Connie said, his own smile firm, his voice encouraging. “I got the bastard machine that was doing the job, too.”
“Where … is … it?”
“It’s over there. We’re going to take it back with us and let Houston find out what it’s all about.”
Again, Pete smiled with a tired gentleness. His voice was very weak, very slow.
“You’re … going … to … take … it … back … I … won’t … be … going.”
“Now, what the hell kind of talk is that?” Connie demanded loudly. “Of course, you’re going. We’re both going. I can’t leave this place without my best crewmate. Hell, I can’t do it alone. I need you, pal. Come on now. I’m going to help you up and we’re going to get the hell off this Godforsaken Moon and meet Jazz up there. He and Jayvee will be coming over in about an hour, I figure. We’re going to be there.”
“Good … old … Connie … But … you … see … I … can’t … get … my … foot … loose … I … tried.”
“So that’s what happened to the patch,” Connie said severely. “I might have known I couldn’t trust you out of my sight for a minute. That was a hell of a thing to do. Honest to Christ, man!”
“Well …” Pete whispered patiently, “I … figured … if … I … could … get … free … I … could … tend … to … the … patch … myself … until … you … got … back … but … if … I … couldn’t … get … free … then … I … wasn’t … going … anyway … so … it … wouldn’t … matter … And … that’s … what … I … found.”
“O.K.,” Connie ordered, “you lie as limp as you can now, and I’m going to see if I can dislodge these rocks and get that foot out. I’ll do my best not to hurt, but I may. So be brave.”
“I’m … brave … and … so … are … you … but … you … aren’t … brave … enough … for … this … Connie.”
“You let me judge that,” he said harshly. “You let me be the judge of that. Now don’t say anything. Just lie there.”
But though he did his best, tugging and pulling and cursing, the rocks would not yield and the foot would not come out. Very soon Pete fainted, and at first Connie thought this a blessing. Then when he concluded that his efforts were going to be futile, he became alarmed and desperately anxious to bring him around.
This he presently accomplished but it was obvious that Pete was growing steadily weaker. Nonetheless, he again managed a smile as his eyes finally focused on Connie’s.
“It … didn’t … work … did … it?”
“It didn’t work,” Connie said simply.
“I … knew … it … wouldn’t. That’s … why … I … tried … to … dislodge … the … pick … I … wanted … to … be … dead … when … you … got … back … so … you … wouldn’t … have … to … bother … with … me.”
“Bother with you?” Connie demanded and knew he was close to crying. “Bother with you? What kind of a friend do you think I am?”
“The … best,” Pete said, and for a moment the smile went. But it returned. “The … best … I … ever … had.”
“Stop using the past tense, damn it! There’s a way to get you out of this and I’m going to find it!”
“No … there … isn’t … Conn … we … both … know … that. Now … you’d … better … go. Piffy … One … will … be … coming … over … soon. Give … Jazzbo … my … love. Tell … him … I … really … mean … it. Tell … Janie … too … she … knows … I … do.”
“Pete,” Connie said with a desperate calm. “Pete. Listen to me. You did this for me and I’m going to get you out of here if it’s the last thing I do. I mean it.”
The smile came again, and the slow, patient whisper.
“No … you’re … not … and … anyway … I’m … not … going. I’m … going … to … defy … your … orders. How … about … that?… Anyway … I’m … not … worth … risking … your … little … finger … for … Conn. I’m … just … a … Greek … loner … from … Tarpon … Springs … I’m … a … lonesome … freak … from … Cripple … Creek. Connie … you … must … go. You … must … leave … me. It … doesn’t … hurt … I … just … feel … sleepy … and … peaceful. Please … Connie … I … beg … of … you. You … must … go … Please … go … Connie.”
He took Pete’s hands in his and looked around with a wild, unhappy desperation. He saw the Russian, the rover, Adventurer calm and impersonal above, the desolate landscape, the empty sky, Earth so far off, beautiful and serene.
He raised his head and stared straight up and cried out savagely to One he rarely thought about and seldom prayed to.
“God damn you, God!” he shouted. “Help my friend and me!”
But there was no help from that quarter either. He felt the hands in his grow limper and held them tighter with his own. He wanted to cry but discipline and training were too strong.
He turned his tortured eyes back to Pete’s and found them filled with a serenity that told him beyond argument or appeal that their mission together was almost over.
The eyes looked straight into his.
With a great effort his friend returned the pressure of his hands; said the words he had to say, to die at peace; heard Connie’s choked response and understood that Connie accepted and was content with them; smiled and was gone.
