Rocket to Luna

“That’s what I mean, Baker. The way you said that just now. I didn’t like it. Not one bit.”

“That’s unfortunate, sir.”

“For you, Baker.”

“Sure, for me.” Ted shrugged his shoulders. He was getting terribly weary of listening to Forbes constantly ride him. He heard Forbes expel his breath inside his helmet, and he knew this wasn’t the end of it. He could not see too clearly through Forbes’s face plate, but he could well imagine the look on the lieutenant’s face.

“Let’s shove,” Forbes said.

He picked up the tow line and waited for Ted to pick up his end. They started off in silence, a tense wall between them, a wall intensified by the alien terrain, the sharp rocks, the silent pumice, the winking stars, the knowledge that their lives depended on the success of this trip.

The miles slid by underfoot, and the hands on the helmet chrono pointed to 1143. They kept moving, the night an endless thing ahead of them, the Moon waiting like a field of broken glass, the pointed shards of its rocks jutting out of its surface. It was getting more difficult. The sled seemed heavier somehow, and Ted could feel a fine film of sweat on his forehead, despite the bitter cold outside. For a moment he had the insane desire to rip off his helmet and wipe away the sweat. He kept thinking about it, and the desire grew until he actually raised his gloved hand and passed it over his face plate.

The stars began to annoy him. They watched the two struggling figures with aloof disdain, hanging on the horizon, wheeling overhead, steady, dead-white eyes punched into the sweeping sky. Why didn’t they stop staring? Why were they so steady? Ted longed for them to stop. With every ounce of energy in his body, he willed them to stop, willed just one lone star to go out.

He began to concentrate on the ground in an effort to take his mind off the stars. He watched the pumice rise as he pushed through it, watched it fall back silently. The ground was colored a deathly gray, like a sick old man on a bed of ashes. It flashed by rapidly as they half-ran, half-walked. Ted watched the rocks and the pockmarks, and the sand, and the pumice, and the cracks. His head began to spin.

He lifted his eyes and stared at the luminous dial of the chrono until the hands etched themselves against his retina.

1150.

1152.

1153.

On and on, across the endless wastes, across the blackness of night, on and on.

1155.

1156.

Nothing broke the stillness. Ted longed for the wail of the wind, for the gentle rustling of leaves clinging to a tree, the shrill call of a train whistle in the darkness. There were none of these.

1158.

1159.

1200.

1201.

Ted was getting weary. His neck muscles hurt from supporting the heavy helmet, and his back muscles ached from pulling the sled. His body felt confined, and he longed for the unfettered freedom of an un-space-suited body. It was getting warm inside the suit, too — much too warm for comfort. The heat of his body was adding to the heat of the coils, and the result was a torrid prison of metal and nylon and rubber. He fumbled on the breastplate of his suit, reaching for the thermostat. The fingers inside his gloved hand felt big and clumsy. Awkwardly, he lowered the control and waited for the suit to cool off a bit.

Time was a world of blackness to be crossed. Time was a series of jagged rocks to be counted. Time was a million stars.

Time fled by.

Forbes called another halt. They stopped beside a long cleft in the Moon’s surface, a fissure fully twenty feet long and three feet wide. The large crack was filled with darkness, almost like a long black finger against the gray background.

Forbes squatted on the edge of the cleft, peering down its smooth sides. Ted leaned against a rock, his oxygen cylinder resting against the ragged surface.

“Something down there,” Forbes said softly, almost to himself.

Ted didn’t answer. He closed his eyes against the stars, breathing deeply of the oxygen that flowed into his helmet.

“There’s something down there, Baker!”

There was an undercurrent of excitement in Forbes’s voice that caused Ted’s eyes to pop open quickly.

“What?”

“On the bottom of this fissure. Something... something... green.”

Ted scrambled to his feet and walked rapidly to the edge of the cleft. Forbes was already stretched out on the ground, stomach down, his hands clinging to the cleft as he stared into its murky depth.

“Are you sure?” Ted asked.

“I’m going down there,” Forbes replied.

“Wait a second! You don’t even know how deep it is.”

“I can see the bottom, and there’s something green covering it. I think it’s life, Baker.”

“Life?”

“Life, life!” Forbes uncoiled a spool of wire from his belt. He attached one end to a loop in the belt and swung the other end around a sharply jutting rock near the edge of the cleft. “Hold this end, Baker. I’m going down.”