Danger Moon

1

STEVE TEMPLIN came out of the airlock into Hadley Dome and looked around for someone to blow off steam on. Templin was fighting mad—had been that way for three days now, ever since he was ordered to report for this mysterious mission on the Moon.

Templin stripped off his pressure suit and almost threw it at the attendant. “I’m looking for Ellen Bishop,” he growled. “Where can I find her?”

The attendant said deferentially, “Miss Bishop’s suite is on Level Nine, sir. Just below the solarium.”

“Okay,” groused Templin, walking off.

“Just a second, sir,” the attendant called after him. “You forgot your check. And who shall I say is calling, please?”

Templin took the metal tag and jammed it in the pocket of his tunic. “Say nothing,” he advised over his shoulder. “I’m going to surprise her.”

He stared contemptuously around the ornate lobby of Hadley Dome, then, ignoring the waiting elevator, headed for the wide basalt stairway that led upstairs. With the force of gravity here on the Moon only about one sixth as powerful as on the surface of the Earth, an elevator was a particularly useless and irritating luxury. It was fit, Templin thought only for the kind of washed-out aristocrats who could afford to chase thrills for the five hundred dollars a day it cost them to live in Hadley Dome. Templin, a heavyweight on his home planet, weighed little over thirty-five pounds on the Moon. He bounded up the stairs in great soaring leaps, eight or ten steps at a time.

On the ninth level he paused, not even winded, and scowled about him. All over were the costly trappings of vast wealth. To Templin’s space-hardened mind, Hadley Dome was a festering sore-spot on the face of the Moon. He glowered at the deep-piled Oriental carpet on the floor, the lavish murals that had been painted on the spot by the world’s highest-priced artists.

Someone was coming down the long hall. Templin turned and saw a dark, solidly-built man coming toward him in the peculiar slow-motion walk that went with the Moon’s light gravity. Templin stopped him with a gesture.

“I’m looking for Ellen Bishop,” Templin repeated wearily. “Where’s her room?”

THE DARK man stopped and looked Templin over in leisurely fashion. Judging by the gem-studded belt buckler that adorned his brilliantly colored shorts, he was one of the Dome’s paying guests…which meant that he was a millionaire at the least. He said in a cold, confident voice: “Who the devil are you?”

Templin clamped his jaw down on his temper. Carefully he said, “My name is Templin. Steve Templin. If you know where Ellen Bishop’s room is, tell me; otherwise skip it.”

The dark man said thoughtfully, “Templin. I know that name—oh, yes. You’re that crazy explorer, aren’t you? The one who’s always hopping off to Mercury or Venus or some other planet.”

“That’s right,” said Templin. “Now look, for the last time—”

“What do you want to see Ellen Bishop about?” the dark man interrupted him.

Templin lost control. “Forget it,” he flared. He started to walk past the dark man, but the man held out his arm and stopped him. Templin halted, standing perfectly still. “Look, mister,” he said. “I’ve had a tough day, and you’re making me mad. Take your hand off my arm.”

The dark man said angrily, “By heaven, I’ll have you thrown out of the Dome if you don’t watch your tongue! I’m Joe Olcott!”

Templin deliberately shook the man’s arm off. The dark man growled inarticulately and lunged for him.

Templin side-stepped easily. “I warned you,” he said, and he brought his fist up just hard enough to make a good solid contact with the point of Olrott’s jaw. Olcott grunted and, grotesquely slowly in the light gravity, he collapsed unconscious on the carpeted floor.

A gasp from behind told Templin he had an audience. He whirled; a girl in the green uniform of a maid was frozen in the doorway of one of the rooms, one hand to her mouth in an attitude of shock.

Templin saw her and relaxed, grinning. “Don’t get upset about it,” he told her. “He was asking for it. Now maybe you can tell me where Ellen Bishop’s room is?”

The maid stammered, “Y-yes, sir. The corner suite, at the end of the corridor.”

“Thanks.”

The maid hesitated. “Did you know that that was Mr. Joseph Olcott?” she asked tentatively.

Templin nodded cheerfully. “So he told me.” In a much improved frame of mind he strolled down to the door the maid had indicated. He glanced at it disapprovingly—it was carved of a single massive piece of oak, which was rare treasure on the treeless, airless moon—but shrugged and rapped it with his knuckles.

“Come in,” said a girl’s voice from a concealed loudspeaker beside the door, and the door itself swung open automatically. Steve walked in and discovered that he was in a well-furnished drawing room, the equal of anything on Earth.

From behind a huge desk a girl faced him. She was about twenty, hair black as the lunar night, blue eyes that would have been lovely if they had any warmth.

Templin looked around him comfortably, then took out a cigarette and put it in his lips. The chemically-treated tip of it kindled to a glow as he drew in the first long puff. “I’m Steve Templin,” he said. “What do you want to see me about?”

A TRACE of a smile curved the corners of the girl’s red mouth. “Sit down, Mr. Templin,” she said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Templin nodded and picked out the chair closest to the desk. “I’m not,” he said.

“That’s hardly flattering.”

Steve Templin shrugged. “It isn’t intended to be. I went to work for your father because I liked him and because he gave me a free hand. After he died and you took over, I renewed my contract with the company because it was the only way I saw to keep on with my work on the Inner Planets. Now—I don’t know. What do you want with me here?”

Ellen Bishop sighed. “I don’t know,” she confessed. “Maybe if I knew, I wouldn’t have had to cancel your orders to go back to Mercury. All I know is that we need help here, and it looks like you’re the only one who can provide it.”

Steve asked non-comittally, “What kind of help?”

The girl hesitated. “How long have you been out of touch with what’s going on?” she countered.

“You mean while I was on Mercury? About eleven months; I just get back.”

Ellen nodded. “And has anyone told you about our—trouble here?”

Steve laughed! “Nobody told me anything,” he said flatly. “They didn’t have time, maybe. I came back from Mercury with survey charts that took me six months to make, showing where there are mineral deposits that will make anything here on the Moon look sick. All I wanted to do was turn them over to the company, pick up supplies and start out for Venus. And one of your glorified office boys was waiting for me at Denver skyport with your ether-gram, ordering me to report here. I just about had time for one real Earth meal and a bath before I caught the rocket shuttle to the Moon.”

“Well—” the girl said doubtfully. “Suppose I begin at the beginning, then. You know that my father organized this company, Terralune Projects, to develop uranium deposits here on the Moon. He raised a lot of money, set up the corporation, made plans. He even arranged to finance trips to other planets, like yours to Mercury and Venus, because doing things like that meant more to him than making money. And then he died.”

Her face shadowed. “He died,” she repeated, “and I inherited a controlling interest in Terralune. And then everything went to pot.”

A buzzer sounded on Ellen Bishop’s desk, interrupting her. She said, “Hello,” and a voice-operated switch turned on her communicator.

A man’s voice drawled, “Culver speaking. Shall I come up now?”

Ellen hesitated. Then she said, “Yes,” and flicked off the communicator. “That’s Jim Culver,” she explained. “He’ll be your assistant while you’re here.”

“That’s nice,” Templin said acidly. “Assistant to do what?”

The girl looked surprised. “Oh I didn’t tell you, did I? You’re going to manage the uranium mines at Hyginus Cleft.”

TEMPLIN OPENED his eyes wide and stared at her. “Look, Bishop,” he said, “I can’t do that. What do I know about uranium mines—or any other kind of mines?”

Before the girl could answer, the door opened. A tall, lean man drifted in, looked at Templin with mournful eyes. “Hello,” he said.

Templin nodded at him. “Get back to the question,” he reminded the girl. “What about these mines? I’m no miner.”

The girl said, “I know you aren’t. We’ve had three mining engineers on the project in eight weeks. Things are no better for them—in fact, things are worse; ask Culver.” She waved to the lean man, who was fumbling around his pockets for a cigarette.

Culver found the cigarette and nodded confirmation. “Trouble isn’t ordinary,” he said briefly. “It’s things that are—strange. Like machines breaking down. And tunnels caving in. And pieces of equipment being missing. Nothing that a mining engineer can handle.”

“But maybe something that you can handle.” Ellen Bishop was looking at Templin with real pleading in her eyes, the man from the Inner Planets thought. He said: “Got any ideas on who’s causing it? Do you think it’s just accidental? Or have you been having trouble with some other outfit, or anything of the sort?”

Ellen Bishop bit her lip. “Not real trouble,” she said. “Of course, there’s Joe Olcott…”

Joe Olcott. The name rang a fire-bell in Templin’s mind. Olcott… yes, of course! The chunky dark man in the corridor—the one he had knocked out!

He grinned abruptly. “I met Mr. Olcott,” he acknowledged. “Unpleasant character. But he didn’t seem like much of a menace to me.”

Ellen Bishop shrugged. “Perhaps he isn’t. Oh, you hear stories about him, if you can believe them. They say he has been mixed up in a number of things that were on the other side of the law—that he has committed all sorts of crimes himself. But—I don’t really believe that. Only, it seems funny that we had no trouble at all until Olcott tried to buy a controlling interest in Terralune. We turned him down—it was just a month or so after Dad died—and from then on things have gone from bad to worse.”

Templin stubbed out his cigarette, thinking. Automatically his fingers went to his pocket, took out another, and he blew out a huge cloud of fresh smoke. Then he stood up.

“I think I get the story now,” he said. “The missing pieces I can fill in later. You want me to take charge of the Terralune mines here on the Moon and try to get rid of this jinx, whatever it is. Well, maybe I can do it. The only question is, what do I get out of it?”

Ellen Bishop looked startled. “Get out of it? What do you mean?” she demanded. Then a scornful look came into her ice-blue eyes. “Oh, I see,” she said. “Naturally, you feel that you’ve got us at your mercy. Well—”

Templin interrupted her. “I asked you a question,” he reminded. “What do I get out of it?”

She smouldered. “Name your price,” she said bitterly.

“Uh-uh.” Templin shook his head. “I don’t want money; I want something else.”

“Something else?” she repeated in puzzlement. “What?”

Templin leaned across the desk. “I want to go back,” he said. “I want a whole fleet of rocket ships to go back to Venus with me…lots of them, enough to start a colony. There’s uranium on the Moon, and there are precious metals on Mercury…but on Venus there’s something that’s more important. There’s a raw planet there, a whole world just like the Earth with trees, and jungles, and animals. And there isn’t a human being on it. I want to colonize it—and I want Terralune Projects to pay the bill.”

Ellen Bishop stared at him unbelievingly, and a slow smile crept into her lips. She said, “I beg your pardon…Temp. All right. It’s a bargain.” She grasped his hand impulsively. “If you can make the uranium mines pay out I’ll see that you get your ships. And your colony. And I’ll see that you can take anyone you like on the Terralune payroll along with you to get started.”

“Sold,” said Templin. He released her hand, wandered thoughtfully over to the huge picture window that formed one entire wall of the girl’s room.

AT A TOUCH of his fingers the opaque covering on the window opened up like a huge iris shutter, and he was gazing out on the barren landscape of the Moon. The Dome was on the peak of Mt. Hadley, looking out on a desolate expanse of twisted, but comparatively flat, rock, bathed in a sultry dull red glow of reflected light from the Earth overhead. Beyond the plain was an awesome range of mountains, the needle sharp peaks of them picked out in brilliant sunlight as the Sun advanced slowly on them.

Culver said from behind him, “That’s what they call the Sea of Serenity.”

Templin chuckled. “Mare Serenitatis” he said. “I know. I’ve been here before—fourteen years ago, or so.”

Ellen bishop amplified. “Didn’t you know, Culver? Temp was one of Dad’s crew when the old Astra landed here in 1957. I don’t remember the exact order any more—were you the third man to step on the surface of the Moon, or the fourth?”

Templin grinned. “Third. Your father was fourth. First he sent the two United Nations delegates off to make it all nice and legal; then, being skipper of the ship, he was getting set to touch ground himself. Well, it was his privilege. But he saw me banging around the air lock—I was a green kid then—and he laughed and said, ‘Go ahead, Temp,’ and I didn’t stop to argue.” Templin sobered, and glanced at Ellen Bishop. “I’ve had other jobs offered me,” he said, “and some of them sounded pretty good, but I turned them down. Maybe it isn’t smart to tell you this, but there’s nothing in the world that could make me quit the company your father founded. Even though he’s dead and a debutante is running it now.”

He grinned again at her, and moved toward the door. “Coming, Culver?” he asked abruptly. The tall man nodded and followed him. “So long,” said Templin at the door, and closed it behind him without waiting for an answer.