Lester Del Rey - Lunar Landing.txt

13. Lunar Landing

(by Lester del Rey) I

Grey's body was covered with a cold sweat that trickled down from his armpits and collected in little round drops over his body, and he stirred in his bag, crying faintly. The sound of his own voice must have wakened him, for he came out of his dream of falling endlessly, to a growing consciousness. The falling sensation still persisted, and he made an unconscious frantic gesture toward something to stay his fall; then his hands met the loose webbing of the bag, and he grimaced.

Even without the feel of the webbing, the reaction of his motions should have told him where he was, as his body shot back against the opposite surface of the sack; this was space, where gravity had been left far behind, except for the faint fingers of it that were now creeping up from the Moon and pulling him slowly back to the top of the bag. For a few seconds he lay there, grinning slightly at the thought of the stories he'd read in which lack of gravity had set the heart to pounding wildly, or the stomach to retching. Space wasn't like that, he knew now, and should have known before. It was simply like the first few moments of free fall, before the parachute opened;* sort of a peaceful feeling, once you realized fully there was no danger to it. And the heart was freed from some of the effort needed, and adjusted to a calm, easy pumping, while the stomach took it all in stride. It hadn't been absence of gravity, but the shifting of it that made seasickness.

Of course, his ears felt odd?there had been a dizziness that increased slowly as the liquids inside were freed from the downward pull, but the hours in the acclimating chamber had done their work, and it soon passed. Mostly it was a matter of mental adjustment that overcame the old feeling that somewhere had to be down,

and recognized that all six walls were the same. After that, space was an entirely pleasant sort of thing.

With loose easiness of motion necessary here, he reached up and unfastened the zipper above him, then wriggled out of his sleeping sack and pulled himself down to the floor by means of the ropes that were laced along the walls for handholds. The room was small and cramped, heavy with the smell of the human bodies that hung now in other sacks along the sides, and loud with the snores of Wolff and the hiss of the air-conditioning machines.

"Is that you, Grey?" One of the bags opened, and Alice Benson stuck her head out, smiling calmly at him.

Somehow, looking at her, he could never feel the impatience he should; she was too old and fragile to be making such a trip, especially since there seemed neither rhyme nor reason to her presence, and yet the utter normality of her conduct under the conditions was strangely soothing. In the cramped, stinking little cabin of the Lunar Moth, she was still possessed of a mellowed gentility of bearing that concealed the air of urgency he'd sometimes suspected.

"Yes, ma'am." Unconsciously, the few manners he'd learned leaped to the surface around her. "Why aren't you asleep?"

She shook her head slowly, the faintest of grimaces showing in the corners of her mouth. "I couldn't, lad. I've been living too many years with something under me to adjust as well as you youngsters do. But it has its compensations; I've never rested so well, whether I sleep or not. Would you like some coffee?"

He nodded, pulling himself carefully along the ropes that made handholds while she removed a thermos bottle from a locker and replaced the cork with another that had two straws inserted through it. Above her, Wolff went on snoring in a particularly horrible gargling manner, and she glanced up distastefully at his sack but made no mention of it. Grey took the coffee gratefully, drinking slowly through one straw; cups would have been worse than useless here, since liquids refused to pour, but chose to coalesce into rounded blobs, held in shape by surface tension.

"Ralston's already gone out to the engines," she answered his glance at the empty sack. "And June's still in the cockpit. The rest are asleep; I put a sedative in their broth, so they wouldn't be awakened during the landing. I'll take a mild one myself after you start reversing, so you needn't worry about us here."

Grey finished the coffee and handed the bottle back to her, smiling his thanks, then turned down the narrow little shaft that led to the control pit. A pull on the ropes sent him skimming down the shaft,

guided by a hand on the walls, before he checked his momentum at the bottom and squeezed open the little door. Inside, he could see June Correy hunched over the observation window, staring down through the small telescope, making notes in a little book, but he slid in silently without disturbing her and settled himself into the padded control seat, pulling out a cigarette.

She glanced up nervously as the first odor of the smoke reached her, and for a brief moment there was more than mere contempt in her eyes. They were nice eyes, too, or could have been if she'd wanted them to be; he'd seen warmth and courage in them when the grading takeoff had unsettled the others. But for him, there was only a look that reminded him pointedly of his eighty pounds and four-feet-ten height. He grinned at her, raking over her own slender five feet and up to the hair with a hint of auburn in it, mentally conceding her beauty while knowing that she was aware of it, and chose to make the fullest use of it to gain her ends. The fact that he was outwardly immune to her charms added nothing to her liking for him.

Now she turned back with a shrug to the observation window, carefully not noticing the smoke that drifted toward her, though the corners of her nose twitched faintly. She'd been used to a full pack a day, and the five rationed out to them here had probably been smoked within as many hours.

"Smoke, Carrots?"

"I don't chisel, Pipsqueak!" But her eyes turned involuntarily toward the white cylinder he held out.

He tossed it to her. "Landing rations, special to the head pilot. I got a whole pack bonus for the landing, to steady my nerves, if I had any. Technically, you don't rate, but my chivalry won't stand a suffering female. Take it and stop whining."

"Chivalry!" She grunted eloquently, but the cigarette was already glowing, and she settled back, some of the hostility gone from her eyes. "You never found the meaning of the word."

"Maybe not. I never had anything to do with women under sixty before, so I wouldn't know. . . . 'S the truth, don't bug your eyes at me. As long as I can remember, at least, I've been poison to girls, which suits me all right. . . . Nervous?"

"A little." She stared down again through the scope. "The Earth doesn't look so friendly down there from this distance. And I can't help remembering that Swanson must have cracked up. Wonder if he's still alive?"

Grey shook his head. This was both an exploring expedition and a rescue party for Swanson and his two men, if any jemained alive;

but they'd set off the double magnesium-oxygen flare indicating a crack-up almost eighty days before, and their provisions had been good for a month only. "If none of their supplies were injured, perhaps. You can go through a lot of hell if you have to; probably depends on how much faith they had in a rescue whether or not they tried to make out till we reached them. ... I'm going to reverse now. Staying here?"

She nodded, and he reached for the tinny little phone that connected him to the engine hold. "Ralston? Get set, because time's due for a turn. Gyros ready? And power? Okay, strap in." He was already fastening himself down with webbing straps, while Correy came over beside him and began doing likewise. A final glance at the chronometer, and he reached out for the gyro clutches, throwing them in.

Slowly, the Moth heeled, dipping her tail reluctantly, and through the small observation window before him, sighted out along the side of the great rocket tubes, the small ball that was Earth slithered away and out of sight. The seconds ticked by slowly as the tiny gyros reacted, one thousand turns or more to make one half turn for the Moth, since they were in a ratio of a pound per ton of ship. In space, there was no need for any sudden maneuvering, but the saving of weight was immensely important, even with atomic fuel supplying the energy that activated the tube. Then the rough face of Luna began to peek in at the edge of the window, and Grey snapped off all lights in the cockpit, sighting through the now glaring screen of the telescope. He reached for the gyro controls again, edging the great ship slowly about until the mark he had selected was squarely in the crosshairs of the screen. Satisfied, he cut out the clutches.

"Nice work, Half-Pint!" She said it with a grudging tone, but he knew it was justified, and accepted the words at face value. "For delicate work, you're not bad!"

"Mn>hm. Suppose you get on the radio there and call Earth; once I cut in the blast, you won't have a chance, with the field out there fighting your signal. Know what you want to say?"

"After working for the news syndicate five long years? Don't be silly. How long can I take?" "Ten minutes about."

"Mmm. Got any messages to send yourself? Friends, relatives? I'll bug out a few words for you if you like?square the cigarette." She was already pushing the key of the bug back and forth, throwing full power through the bank of tubes and out across space on the ultra-

short waves that would cut down through the Heaviside on a reasonably tight beam.

"No friends, no relatives, no messages. I had a dog once, but he died, so we'll forget him, too." Grey was estimating speeds and distances from the few instruments and the rough guide of the ima...