Rocket to Luna

Chapter 16 Second Chance

Forbes stared at the wrench as if it had slapped him across the face. “It... it just... broke,” he said, surprise raising his voice.

“The cold,” Ted said. “The cold made it brittle, and when you pulled on it...”

Forbes regained his composure immediately. “That’s all right. We’ve got other wrenches.”

He spread the packet on his chest and picked up the wrenches one at a time, holding them alongside the head of the broken wrench. The wrench had snapped close to the head, leaving the open jaws on a short, two-inch stump, hardly enough to grip firmly.

Forbes kept comparing the wrenches while Ted watched. He was beginning to get a little uneasy. They were wasting precious time, and the Sun was probably already up on the Western rim.

“None of these are any good.” Forbes said.

“They’re no good?” Ted asked, realizing how foolish he sounded.

“Too big or too small. This was the only one that was just right.”

Ted allowed the information to penetrate. “Wh-what are we going to do?”

“That’s a problem, all right.”

“We can’t just sit here.”

“No. No, we can’t.”

They stared up at the nut, helpless in the clutches of its stubbornness.

“Are there any more wrenches up there?” Forbes asked.

“No. Only this packet. There was a hammer. Maybe we could jar the nut loose.”

“I’d be afraid to. You saw what happened to the wrench. Suppose we knocked off the nut and bolt?”

“Well, what can we do?”

Forbes thought for a few minutes, and then said, “There was something my dad used to say when I was a kid.”

Ted glanced at Forbes quickly. “Really, Dan, this is no time for...”

“I was pretty young, and I used to pick up the chops from my plate in my fingers and eat them that way. My mother didn’t like the idea. She felt it was barbaric, and she told me so.”

“Dan, what about the nut? What are we...”

“My father always came to my rescue. I realize now he was encouraging my barbarism, but at the time I thought he really hit the nail on the head. He used to say to Mom, ‘Betty, you’ve got to remember one thing: fingers were invented before forks.’”

“What’s that got to do with...”

“Fingers were invented before wrenches, too,” Forbes said.

He reached up for the nut and wrapped his gloved hands around it. He hesitated a moment, and then began applying pressure. Ted could barely see his face through the plexiglass on his helmet. He saw lines of strain appear, though, thick lines that ran from the wings of Forbes’s nose down to his mouth. He could hear Forbes grunting over the suit radio. He wanted to reach up and help, but there was barely enough room for Forbes’s own fingers on the troublesome nut.

“It moved.” Forbes muttered.

He lifted his back from the ground, his arms straining against the unyielding nut.

“Ug-g-g-gh,” he grunted. He tore at the nut again. “Ug-g-gh.”

He kept pulling, his hands tight around the metal, twisting, trying to dislodge it. “Come on,” he said tightly. “Come on, come on, COME ON!”

He tugged again, and again, grunting all the while, wrestling with the tiny piece of metal as if he had a bear for an opponent.

“There... there... there she goes!” he shouted triumphantly.

He lay back for an instant, and Ted was surprised to feel sweat on his own forehead. Forbes got up almost instantly and began turning the nut in the other direction, tightening it on the bolt. “That should hold,” he said. He paused. “Tough old bird, wasn’t it?”

They lost no time now. They kept the tractor moving at a rapid pace. They had lost too much time already, and Forbes wasn’t at all sure his makeshift job on the nut would last until they reached the ship.

They were thankful for the night now, glad that it was still dark.

They didn’t speak.

Forbes drove swiftly, curving around deep holes, steering clear of clefts in the surface, avoiding all the rocks that sprang up in their path. They couldn’t afford another mishap. Time was a precious thing, like a rare jewel. If they could have, they would have locked it in a safe and stood guard over it. They couldn’t. Their rare jewel spilled out of their hands as they sped along, and they knew that the Sun would not wait for them. They had to beat the Sun or suffer the consequences. They could only guess at what those consequences would be like. They were not anxious to taste them.

But behind their haste, there seemed to be a sense of utter resignation. It was almost as if they knew they could not beat the Sun, almost as if they knew it would overtake them in their mad rush. When, after many days of travel, they saw the first rays of the Sun, they were not surprised. It was what they had expected all along.

“Dan!”

“I see it. The Sun is rising.”

“What now?”

“I’m going to try to contact the ship. We can’t be too far off.”

Together, they fiddled with the dials on the breastplates of their suits, trying to get the ship’s frequency.

“Here goes nothing,” Forbes murmured. “Hello, Moon rocket. Forbes calling Moon rocket, come in, Moon rocket, this is Forbes calling Moon rocket, Moon rocket, Moon rocket.”

Ted adjusted the dials of his set until Forbes’s voice reached him clearly.

“Come in, Moon rocket, come in, Moon rocket. Please come in.”

On the horizon, the Sun splashed over the ground, replacing blackness with brilliance, covering darkness with blazing light. No dawn was this. No dawn in the usual sense of the word. No wash of oranges and reds. Just brilliance that flowed like molten gold, filling the shadows, covering the pockmarks with gilt.

“Dan!” the voice erupted. “Is that you?”

“George?”

“Dan, where are you?”

“I don’t know. The Sun is almost on us. I’ll give it a few minutes before it hits us.”

“Are you all right? And Baker?”

“Fine. Look, George, the Sun...”

“Did you say it was almost on you?”

“Yes, George.”

“It hit us a few minutes ago. You can’t be far from the ship.”

“What’ll we do, George?”

“Are you on foot?”

“Tractor.”

“Then drive like blazes. Get started now. Come on, Dan, we need you. We need you like all get-out.”

“I’ll see you,” Forbes said tersely. “We’re coming through.”

The tractor lurched forward in a sudden burst of speed.

At the same instant, the Sun hit them. It splashed into their helmets with feral fury, the brilliance blinding them for an instant. The helmet seemed to grow hot instantly, and Ted groped for the heating controls, turning the unit off at once.

He was immediately covered with sweat. The heat was intolerable. It replaced the cold suddenly, and he could hear his helmet strain against the sudden change in temperature. He knew that in the space of a heartbeat, the temperature had probably ranged some 350 degrees!

The Sun was frightening somehow. This was a different Moon. The Sun somehow added a new face. It cast deep shadows, black against the brilliant ground. The Moon had been an old man before, clothed in deep black garments, clothed in Death. It had crouched silently in a shadow-filled corner, a mourner at its own wake. And now it burst forth like a blazing diamond, still dead, but dead in a different way. There was none of the deep mystery any more. It was as if an all-revealing spotlight had been turned onto a disinterred corpse, exposing its dust-filled mouth, its angular bones, its rotting skin. The Moon, trapped in the glare of the Sun, gave itself willingly, shedding its cloak of darkness instantly, succumbing to the blazing fire of “day” with the meek resignation of habit.

The sunlight was as powerful as a slap in the face. It covered the two completely, an almost physical force that gathered them up in a fiery embrace, planting suffocating kisses on them. Its breath was hot, and it invaded their helmets with the unleashed ferocity of a blowtorch. The ice-covered face plate seemed like something from another world. They had stepped into a roaring blast furnace, a furnace alive with the fires of Hades. Heat licked at them from everywhere. The ground was hot, and their suits were hot, and their helmets were sizzling. Ted longed for a cloud to obscure the Sun, knowing there were no clouds on the Moon. He longed for a rainstorm to cool the baking ground, to ease the stifling pressure of the heat. There could be no rain on the Moon.

Forbes suddenly slumped over the wheel of the tractor, his helmet collapsing onto the spokes. Ted reached for him, trying desperately to keep him erect as the tractor swerved violently to one side. He threw his arm around Forbes, grasping the wheel with his free hand, trying to keep the tractor on a steady course.

He opened his mouth, sucking in great gulps of air. The sweat poured down his face, saturated his clothing. He suddenly remembered that he was wearing several layers of woolen clothing. The thought made him feel hotter.

The steering wheel suddenly became three steering wheels, and Ted blinked his eyes, wondering which one he should grab. The ground sloped over to the left and then hurled itself over in the opposite direction. Ted’s mouth was dry, as if a caterpillar had crawled into it and made a nest there. He blinked his eyes once more, shook his head within the helmet. Everything was a bright yellow. There was no color but yellow. It seared his eyeballs and scorched his brain, and then it burst like a star shell and he knew he was groping for the wheel, knew he was falling, knew his hands were trembling, knew the tractor was spinning out of control, but there was nothing he could do about it.

He was almost relieved when the yellow was replaced by a blackness as deep as space.

Something cool was on his forehead.

It felt good. It felt like a tall glass of lemonade on a sweltering day. It felt very good. Like the breeze from the ocean, like the spray against an upturned face, like a spring shower. Ahhh, it felt wonderful.

Ted opened his eyes.

The first color he saw was cool gray. He took in a deep breath and closed his eyes again. After a little while, he opened them once more and studied the gray color. It curved above him in a clean, sweeping arc, and it was studded with little mounds of metal. Rivets. Gray metal with rivets. Like a rocket ship, Ted thought. Just like a rocket ship. He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

“Now all three of them are unconscious,” the voice said. “I told George he couldn’t leave that couch. I warned him about what might happen. No, he wouldn’t listen.”

“He was nearly frantic with worry,” another voice said. It had a strange accent. German, perhaps. Yes, German. Ted kept his eyes closed and listened to the voices.

“Forbes and Baker should be around soon,” the first voice said. “I hope so.”

“What about Merola?”

“I don’t know. If he’d only have stayed put, as I told him to. There was no reason for him to go running out there. No reason at all. We could have gone, you and I!”

“Yes,” the second voice agreed. “Yes. But there was no holding him. And he did save them. He did bring them back.”

The first voice was solemn. “He’s a good man, Fred. One of the best. I hope...”

“He’ll be all right. Don’t worry.”

“That heat, on top of his wound. I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

Ted opened his eyes. “Dr. Phelps,” he called.

The physician was alongside his couch immediately. “Baker, are you all right? How do you feel?”

“What happened?” Ted asked.

“Heat prostration. You’re lucky that you and Dan weren’t fried out there.”

Ted managed a grin. “It felt as if we were, Doctor.”

“I can imagine. How do you feel now, Baker?”

“All right, I guess. How did we get back?”

“Merola went out the minute he got your radio call. He said you’d need help. He drove the tractor back about ten minutes after he’d left the ship. You couldn’t have been very far away.”

“Is he all right?”

“He’s unconscious. He collapsed right after he carried you and Forbes aboard.”

Ted shook his head, and then sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the couch. “What now?” he asked.

“We’ve got to get out of here, Baker,” Dr. Phelps said, his eyes serious. “Our batteries are just about gone, not to mention food and water. It’s the batteries that count, though. If they go, we won’t be able to start the engines.”

“Dan — is he all right?”

“He should be coming around soon.” Dr. Phelps passed an anxious hand over his wide mouth. “Look, Baker, we’ve got to get started fast. That tractor down there, is it carrying fuel?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Do you know how to load our tanks?”

“I think so.”

“And can you take us to the fuel and supply dump?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ll have to try. We’ve got to blast off and get to the supply dump. It’s now or never, Baker. Our batteries aren’t going to wait much longer.”

Ted exhaled. “I tried to bring the ship down once, and I got us in this jam. Suppose I did it again?”

“You won’t make the same mistake twice,” Dr. Gehardt assured him.

“I don’t know. I just don’t know. Couldn’t we wait for Dan to come around? Dan knows more about...”

“Dan doesn’t know more, and we can’t afford to wait for him to gain consciousness.” Dr. Phelps seized Ted’s shoulders, and Ted could feel the bony pressure of his strong fingers. “Look, Baker, maybe you didn’t understand me. The batteries are beginning to weaken already. Once they die, we’re through. We’re stuck in Mare Crisium. Not just for today, and not just for a week. We’ll be here forever, Baker — or for as long as we can last. Do you understand? We’ve got to get out of here fast. We’ve got to get over to the supply dump.”

“I understand,” Ted said.

“Then you’ll do it?”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Baker,” Dr. Phelps said softly, “many men make mistakes. Not very many men get a chance to rectify those errors, though, no matter how much they would like it. You’re getting a second chance, Baker, a chance to get us to the supply dump and save this expedition.” He paused and cleared his throat. “We need you, Ted. We need you more than we’ve ever needed anyone before.”

Ted sat silently with his hands folded in his lap.

After a long while, he said, “Maybe we’d better start loading the fuel tanks.”