News From Elsewhere (13 page)

“Nuts!” retorted Jackson.

“Nuts and dust,” said Jantz calmly, returning to his calculations.

They had been away from base about twenty minutes. Davis was driving, and the tractor was making a steady twelve miles an hour. Dr. Jackson sat by his side in the pressurized compartment with a sketch pad strapped to his knee. Every now and then he made a few key notes or a diagram, and when he was not doing that he talked to Pegram, back at base, over the radio.

Dr. Holt was outside the tractor, squatting in the crow’s nest with a cine-camera. His only means of contact with the two occupants was his personal radio. The sun beat mercilessly down on his pressure suit and headpiece; but as yet the insulation was doing a good job, and he felt reasonably comfortable.

“Hello, Base One. Hello, Base One,” said Jackson. “We are four miles south of you, heading roughly toward Tycho. The going is comparatively smooth, and the tractor handles well. Tell Professor Jantz that the dust layer gets deeper in some of the ruts and bubbleholes. Very slight evidence of a tendency to drift. Over to you.” “Hello, tractor. Hello, tractor. Professor Jantz has fixed up the seismograph. He requests an exploration when you are about ten miles away. Please inform us before detonation. Over to you.”

“Hello, Base One. We consider it a privilege- to create the first synthetic moonquake. Will let you know when we are ready. Over and out.”

“Personally,” said Davis, “I couldn’t care less. The only thing that would surprise me is if something moved.”

Suddenly Holt’s voice came urgently over the personal radio. “Stop the tractor and come out quick!”

Davis depressed the clutch and slipped into neutral. The motor gave a whine of relief.

“What is it?” called Jackson.

“Come out here and tell me,” came the enigmatic reply. Holt had already clambered out of the crow’s nest and was walking away from the tractor, peering carefully at the ground.

Davis and Jackson reached for their headpieces, screwed them down, tested oxygen and radio, then went into the airlock. A few moments later they joined Holt.

“What do you make of this?” asked Holt with suppressed excitement. He pointed down to the dust layer.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” said Jackson. “Man Friday himself!”

He was staring at a set of clear footprints in the telltale lunar dust. Impulsively he planted his own foot down by one of the strange prints and compared the size. His own was narrower and four inches shorter.

“Now,” said Holt, “follow the line.”

Jackson let his gaze run along the trail until it disappeared in the distance. There were two sets of prints: one coming and one going. They ran in dead straight parallel lines toward the crater Tycho.

“What do we do?” asked Davis. “Radio to base?”

“Don’t be in such a hurry,” said Jackson irritably. “The good Lord placed an ornamental bulge on the end of your neck. Try and use it.”

“I’m going to give it thirty seconds of film,” announced Holt, unslinging his cine-camera. “Looks like Professor Jantz was being a little conservative when he hit on coal as the only evidence of organic life.”

“Something has walked from the direction of Tycho,” said Jackson half to himself. “It came and apparently stood here a bit, then turned around and walked back.

Now why should it do that? It must have had a purpose.”

“Exercise,” suggested Holt flippantly. “The Lunarian idea of a constitutional.”

“I’m not in the mood for schoolboy humor,” said Jackson. “Think up something useful to say, or use less oxygen.”

Davis suddenly pointed behind them. “Do you see what I see?” he asked.

They turned around and followed his gaze. Four miles away the stripped hulk of the moonship, with its personnel sphere catching the sunlight, was clearly visible—like a low-hung star.

“Holy smoke!” said Holt. “A shy welcome committee! He, she, or it must have watched us touch down.”

“What shall we do?” asked Davis. “Follow the tracks?”

“I don’t think so,” said Jackson slowly. “This is something the bright boys didn’t bargain for. I think we’d better hotfoot back to base and have a powwow.”

“It wouldn’t do any harm to follow the tracks for a little of the way,” suggested Holt.

“What for?”

“You never know, we might pick up some more evidence that will give us a better idea of the character who made them.”

“Also,” said Jackson dryly, “we might bump into the aforementioned character. And he might invite us home for coffee and cream cakes. On the other hand, he might not approve of—intruders.”

Captain Harper gazed at the faces of his five companions. “Well, we have heard Dr. Jackson’s story and seen the film of the tracks. We now have to consider what we are going to do about the situation. As you know, nothing like this was envisaged when we left Earth. . . . Any suggestions?”

Professor Jantz stroked his jaw thoughtfully. “The track marks indicate a biped of considerable stature. There is no appreciable atmosphere on the moon; therefore the creature can do without it, or else he provides his own. It would be safe, I think, to assume that he provides his own. This seems to presuppose a somewhat complex or decidedly intelligent being. The point is, would we be correct in assuming that there are many of his kind?”

“The point is, are we going to investigate?” said Dr. Holt. “Or are we going to try to avoid it or them until the next moonship arrives?”

“It or they may decide to investigate us,” observed Captain Harper dryly. “The main problem is, will they be dangerous and will they be hostile? ... I pleaded with the Organization Group to let me have some offensive weapons on this trip. But they carefully pointed out that no organic life could exist here. Silly bastards! They gave me a string of figures showing how many tons of fuel it would take to lift an ultrasonic vibrator unit. And now the whole project may be in danger because some blasted animal doesn’t subscribe to their cockeyed little theories.”

“Don’t worry about weapons, Captain,” said Holt. “The lab is operating now. In twelve hours I can dream up some rocket grenades that’ll take care of considerable opposition.”

“Also,” said Dr. Jackson, “we have enough high explosive to lay a minefield—to be detonated either by contact or radio.”

Captain Harper drummed the edge of the table with his fingers for a few moments before replying. “In any case,” he said finally, “we must have something with which to protect ourselves. My own opinion is that we must postpone action for a few hours until we have a supply of hand and rocket grenades and, perhaps, radio mines.”

“Then what?” asked Dr. Holt.

“Then I think we must send a party to follow the tracks. It is imperative that we discover whether—whether there is any danger. Apart from our own safety, there is the rest of the expedition to consider.”

“When the products of two culture patterns meet,” remarked Jantz thoughtfully, “there is an inevitable conflict. I wonder which will triumph?”

There was a brief silence.

“The moon is barren,” said Holt irrelevantly. “Now what could Friend X possibly have for breakfast?”

Captain Harper decided to go on the reconnaissance himself, taking Jackson and Davis with him. Holt would remain behind, making more grenades and a few radio-controlled land mines. Professor Jantz and Pegram would alternately patrol on the surface and handle radio communications.

A double track in the lunar dust had entirely disrupted the plans of the advance expedition. Psychologically, they had already begun to feel as if they were in a stage of siege. It would not have been so bad if the tracks had been those of a four-footed creature. But a biped suggested power and high evolutionary development. If it was indigenous to the moon, there was no reason why it should not be present in great numbers. And if that was the case, it would probably resent the intruders from space—just as Earthlings would if the situation were reversed.

Harper and his companions took their load of food, water, and grenades through the airlock of their underground base. They climbed up the metal staircase and went out into the blinding sunlight.

The supplies were dumped in the tractor, and everything was checked prior to departure. Davis again took the driver’s seat; and while he started the motor, Dr. Jackson established radio contact with the tiny metal world that was secreted in its deep fissure. Meanwhile, Captain Harper, with four hand grenades, took himself up to the crow’s nest, directly over the driver’s seat.

“Tractor to Base,” said Jackson. “We are on our way. Will make routine checks every quarter of an hour. Over.”

“Base to tractor,” replied Pegram. “Receiving you loud and clear. Good hunting. Over and out.”

The whine of the motor increased, and the tractor began to lurch slowly over the dead lunar plains, following its own previous path.

After half an hour the place where Holt had first seen the alien footprints was reached without incident. This time progress had been more cautious. At one point Captain Harper, keeping a constant watch on the crater Tycho, which lay on the port side, thought he saw movement in the distance. But he eventually put it down to imagination and the fatigue engendered by staring across the bright, arid lava plains. There was nothing—nothing but a silent wilderness. He began to think that the whole thing was some kind of illusion. Until he suddenly caught sight of the tracks. They were so alarmingly distinct that they might have been created only five minutes before.

By common consent the three men left the tractor and took a close look at the almost mathematically spaced indentations.

“Man Friday has a very precise stride, hasn’t he?” said Jackson. “I wonder how far
we
could walk, in a dead straight line, keeping our footsteps evenly spaced.”

“He’s a big devil,” said Harper. “There’s damn
near a yard and a half between each print. . . . Well, let’s get on his tail. The sooner we clear up this mystery and find out just what we’re up against, the better I’ll like it.”

“It may not be very funny if he’s collected a few playmates to sit up and wait for us,” said Jackson quietly.

“We’ve got to take the risk. We can’t just sit down at base and wait till he leaves a visiting card. Can you get the tractor to do twenty-five, Davis?”

“Yes, sir. Providing we don’t have to keep it up for more than fifty miles or so.”

Captain Harper pointed to Tycho. “We won’t. By the time we get there—if we get there—we’ll all need a break.”

“Why don’t you have a spell inside, Captain? I’ll take a watch in the crow’s nest.”

Harper grunted his approval of Jackson’s suggestion, and the three men walked back to the vehicle. Presently it was lurching along the trail at twenty-five miles an hour.

They stopped the tractor about eight hundred yards away, and Jackson came down from the crow’s nest for a hasty consultation. Directly ahead lay the one symmetrical feature in the whole irregular landscape. It was a smooth hemisphere, surfaced apparently with metal, lying flush against the lava beds about five miles from the foothills of Tycho. It rose abruptly from the drab landscape like a giant ostrich egg half buried in sand. It seemed about forty feet high.

“Looks like we’ve found Man Friday’s lair,” said Jackson. “He must be a clever boy to fix himself up with a nice metal hideaway. . . . Wonder if it’s pressurized?”

Captain Harper stared somberly through the thick glass of the tractor’s observation dome. “The more I see, the less I like it,” he announced slowly. “We now have concrete evidence that our friend is pretty civilized, if not 
scientific. I wonder what other pleasant surprises there are in store?”

Jackson remained silent.

“What’s the plan of campaign, sir?” asked Davis. “Do we push on and investigate?”

“We’ve got to do something about it,” said Harper. “We can’t just pack up now and turn back. I suggest we approach slowly until we’re a couple of hundred yards away. Then . . .” He hesitated.

“Then what?” asked Jackson.

“Then one of us will go forward alone to investigate—taking grenades, of course. The others will remain in the tractor to await developments.”

“I’ll go,” said Davis suddenly.

“No,” said Jackson. “This is my job. If Man Friday and his friends prove hostile, engineers become more important than geologists. . . . I’m damn sure I couldn’t fix the tractor if we had a breakdown—and the tractor might make all the difference. Don’t you agree, Captain Harper?”

“Unfortunately, yes. But let’s hope there won’t be any melodrama. Now we’d better start. And I think we all ought to wear headpieces from now on—in case they throw anything.”

The tractor crawled slowly forward until it was two hundred yards from the metal hemisphere. Then it stopped. Without wasting any time Dr. Jackson climbed down from the crow’s nest and walked ahead with a grenade ready in each hand.

The smooth wall of the hemisphere was broken only by an open doorway. As he advanced, Dr. Jackson could see a red glow inside. When he was ten yards away he stopped, peered through the plastiglass visor of his head-piece uncertainly, then covered the remaining distance in one quick bound. The two men in the tractor watched
him 
disappear into the darkness.