One Against the Moon (3 page)

"Red Sands," muttered Robin in a low voice, and was instantly whirled around bodily and given a push. "Up the street and around the corner. The second bus. Run!"

Robin broke into a run, dashed around the corner. In the darkened side street, three buses were warming up, the first already beginning to roll. Robin ran for the second, and just as it was pulling away from the curb, several hands reached out of the door, took hold of Robin's hands, and heaved him aboard.

He found a seat in the back of the crowded bus, kept his head down to avoid having anybody realize he was a stranger, and caught his breath.

The bus gathered speed, roared down the quiet side streets, and turned onto the highway beyond the town. Robin was on his way to the rockets, to the famous White Sands Proving Grounds ... or was he? What was the Red Sands Station anyway?
Red
Sands? Why had he never heard of it?

The bus roared on through the night, its cargo of men now mainly silent, dozing as their vehicle jolted along. The moon, which was full, shed a pale glow over the desolate landscape through which the road ran straight as an arrow. The vehicle had departed from the main highway fairly soon after leaving town, and had gone along another leading out into the wastes which was the government reserve. Robin had caught a momentary glimpse of floodlighted signs warning casual motorists against the use of the road, warning all that it was U.S. property.

The men in the bus talked little. Most of them tired, and some a little the worse for a night's revels, were sleeping. Two or three snored away, unmindful of the hard seats and the jolting along the road. Seated in the back, shoulder to shoulder with several others, Robin kept quiet, watching the scene through the open windows and seeing what could be seen of the terrain without making his observations too obvious.

Thus far the landscape was the familiar desert of New Mexico, desolate and arid flatland with which Robin had become familiar on the trip down. On the horizon he could see the humps of mountains, the peaks that bordered the vast proving grounds.

Near him, a couple of soldiers were conversing in low tones and Robin caught snatches of their conversation. At first it was mainly talk of what they had seen and done that night, their girl friends, and so on. By and by they began to talk a bit about their work. Robin strained his ears.

"I was thinking of asking for a transfer back to White Sands," said one of the men slowly. "Some of that new fuel they're bringing in makes me real uneasy."

"Ahh," said the other, "you're just letting that extra security talk give you nerves. Sure, it's supposed to be atomic stuff, new, maybe even untested as far as I know, but, nuts, you can't get blown up any worse than you can handling that liquid oxygen and peroxide they got at White Sands. In fact, I understand that this stuff isn't half as tricky to pour as the old stuff."

"Yeah, I know. I seen some of it being poured yesterday into that new big fellow they're lining up for tomorrow. But the point is that even if it's easier to pour—none of that fizzing and spitting you get when you leak a drop or two—it's atomic. That's the thing, atomic. What would happen if a White Sands rocket blew ... it'd be a big bang, sure enough, but it wouldn't blow the whole countryside to bits. But take this new stuff ... whew ... we'd all be one Bikini if it went off all at once."

The other soldier was silent a moment. "Well," he said finally, "could be. On the other hand, I heard them say that it is really not half as explosive as the old stuff. That loxygen they use in the original Vikings is really dangerous, will go off quick at any spark. But this new stuff, it won't actually go off until it's touched off after the rocket has gone up a few miles. It's actually hard to blast—and then I understand they ain't sure it'll work."

The other one nodded. "Uh uh, so they say, but you notice where they moved our outfit, didn't you? They don't want to blow the main fields out of existence by accident, just in case they might be a little wrong. So they invented this Red Sands layout. I don't even like the name."

The soldiers fell silent awhile. Robin turned these words over carefully. He had read nothing of any Red Sands operation, and he remembered nothing of any talk about atomic fuels. In fact he'd understood that the problem was still one they had failed to solve—though the idea was intriguing.

Chemical fuels, he knew, had definitely limited drive capacities. The most powerful chemical fuels possible even theoretically were those already in use, and were basically merely liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. And he knew that the main obstacle that always had to be faced by rocket engineers was the tremendous quantities and weights of the fuels to be burned in order to lift even a single pound of cargo.

Atomic power, if liberated, had on the other hand almost unlimited possibilities as fuel. A mere pound or so of atomically liberated material could probably drive a spaceship a million miles with a full pay load too. But how to combine atomic explosions with controlled rocket fire? The problem had never been answered—at least not in the magazine and newspaper stories he had ever read.

He thought about it awhile. Then the bus honked its horn. Robin craned his neck, looked forward. He saw they were paralleling a high wire fence and coming to a lighted area. A large sign on a wide road entrance branching off caught his eye and he read the magic words,
White Sands
.

For a moment he thought the bus was going to enter as the driver slowed down. They came abreast of the gateway but the driver merely honked and waved and passed it by, Robin catching a glimpse of whitewashed barracks and low hangarlike structures beyond the gate. Then they roared on into the moonlit night, on toward the empty reaches of the desert where the mountains loomed dark in the horizon.

Where was Red Sands? How far? Robin speculated on it. He had evidently hit on something more than he'd reckoned. This was a development unknown to the public. This was something that must have combined the special nature of the Los Alamos atomic testing grounds with the rocket grounds. And it was obviously tucked far away from them all.

Suppose they caught him there, would he get off as lightly as he might at White Sands? Where atomics was concerned, secrecy was still enforced, despite the release of much information due to the installation of peaceful atomic plants in various parts of the world. But everyone knew that the world was still merely at the threshold of atomic glories and the nations were still anxiously vying with each other for leadership.

He supposed that perhaps he might be sent to jail. He might perhaps be confined to the Red Sands grounds until such time as what he was to learn had become public property. That might take years! Robin squirmed a little as he thought over this possibility. It didn't appeal to him. Yet, the die was cast and there was now little he could do about it.

He could, he thought, surrender now to the men in the bus. In that way, he'd be stopped from entering the forbidden area at all and might then merely get a bawling out and be released. But something in him absolutely rebelled at the thought. This far he had gone, this far he had moved toward the realization of a dream that had held him from childhood. He would go on, and if he were to pay the penalties for trespassing, he would at least see what he was paying for. Maybe, maybe, he would yet see a rocket go off.

What was it the soldier had said, "that big fellow ... for tomorrow." Then Robin would be in time.

The bus roared on for what seemed at least another hour. Finally it approached another fenced-in area, slowed down, and came to a halt briefly before a guarded gateway. The men stirred in their seats, the sleepers were nudged awake, everyone started to squirm around. The driver exchanged a few words with the guards, the bus shifted gears, rolled slowly through the gate, and came to a stop. Stiffly the men began to climb out.

Robin waited until about half the men had preceded him, then, keeping his head low, followed. As the men jumped down from the bus, they stepped up to an MP standing by and showed him their passes. He examined each with a flashlight, took it, and waved the men on.

Robin's feet hit the ground. Carefully keeping close to the man in front of him, he dug for the pass he'd found in his borrowed jacket. Holding it out, he stepped up to the guard. The pass was seized, scrutinized, and with a tap of the hand, Robin was waved on.

The men were striding off in the direction of a group of low, long buildings of the standard army barracks type. Robin took the same general direction, casting his eyes about trying to estimate where he was and what was around.

The moon was high and its light was strong in the clear desert air. A few dim bulbs showed on posts and one or two lights were flashed in the windows of the barracks. The men were heading directly for their beds—and Robin knew he had to head in the same direction if he did not wish to incur suspicion. It was a ticklish moment, for he did not dare do anything to arouse the suspicion that he was a stranger here.

It was a long walk across the parade grounds and he allowed as much space as possible to drag out between himself and the other men. He came closer to the dark barracks buildings, walked along toward a dark doorway through which another man had gone. Turning his head he saw no one near him who might be watching, and Robin stepped into the dark doorway, then quickly side-stepped, slipped around the side of the building, and walked silently down the dark space between the two adjoining barracks.

At the far end of the structures, remaining hidden in the shadow cast by the moon, he looked outward. He could see, stretching out beyond, the level ground of the desert. He could make out the structures of what looked like hangars and machine shops, and he could see a number of vehicles, trucks, and odd cranes parked around. Far away he caught a glimpse of something white. Was it a rocket?

He crouched in the shadow and waited. After a while he heard no more footsteps, he saw the last lights in the barracks flicker out and silence descend on the station. He glanced at his watch. It was about two in the morning.

Silently he moved out of the barracks' shadow, walked fast and softly to the shadow of the nearest truck. Reaching it, he paused, looked back. Nothing stirred. Proceeding in that fashion, Robin moved from shadow to shadow, keeping as little in the bright moonlight as he could. He reached a building, clearly a tool house. He walked along it, went on beyond, passed through the shadowed side of a long hangar, found a narrow roadway leading out to where the mysterious white object rested. He walked alongside it, half stooping, but feeling sure that no one had seen him. The Red Sands Station was silent.

The white object proved to be a good deal farther away than he'd thought. He knew that distances in the desert were very deceptive, felt himself growing tired. Why, this objective might be two or three miles away, he realized now, but only increased his pace as if in answer to his tiring frame. The cold, dry desert air was bracing, and nothing moved save the occasional scurry of some tiny rat or lizard.

What he had seen was indeed a rocket. It was at first a dot of white. Then it grew into a line of white like a snowy tree. As he neared it he realized its true dimensions. It was a tall giant rocket, as tall as an eight-story building, long and slim, towering in the desert like an obelisk left by some Aztec ruler. It was held by a framework of metal girders, like that of a newly completed building whose outer skeleton had not yet been dismantled. Near it stood a truck on high, thick wheels which bore a long, cranelike apparatus resembling the tentacles of some weird monster-insect. The rocket stood with its four wide-flanged fins jutting out near the base.

Robin stopped at its base and stared up. He studied it, saw that it was apparently segmented, having lines of cleavage that divided it into four parts, the one at the pointed top being the shortest. This was a four-step rocket, he recognized, and knew at that moment that here also was a step beyond what the public knew.

He walked slowly around it, awed and silent. He noticed now that there was a thin metal ladder running up the standing framework. The crane in the truck was for loading the top, he knew, but he could use this ladder himself to climb up without trying to start the truck-driven lift.

He reached the bottom rung of the skeleton ladder, saw a sign attached to the framework. He looked at it, saw a number, apparently the code designation of this rocket. Glancing over it, the moonlight was not strong enough to allow him to read the words. He looked at the parked truck with the crane, walked over to it, looked inside. He found a flashlight in the dashboard compartment, took it. Lying over the seat was a pea jacket. The air was cold and would become colder. Robin borrowed it, shrugged into it. He saw a package lying beneath it, lifted it. A couple of candy bars it was. The driver must have had a sweet tooth. Robin stuffed the candy into the pocket of the jacket, which had other things in it as well.

He returned to the rocket, read the work sheet by his flashlight. Most of it was incomprehensible. He saw that the sheet referred only to the fueling. Steps two, three, and four were fueled. Step one, the big one at the base was still empty and he saw that it was marked for fueling by five that morning. Firing time, he noted, was set for six.

Robin glanced up. Here was a chance to examine the rocket completely. Glancing around again, he swung up the ladder, started the climb. The rocket's sides were welded metal, shiny and painted white. The various fuel sections were numbered in large black letters and the contents listed. He saw that the first and main fuel chamber occupied half of the length. The three upper sections, already loaded, he remembered, were marked in liters. The name of the fuel was meaningless to him. It must be, he thought, the atomic stuff the soldier had mentioned. This rocket could be a huge atomic bomb, he thought, chilled for a moment. But he continued climbing. At the very tip, he saw that two small, circular doors, like the escape hatches of submarines, were set flush in the side. One was closed, the upper and larger one was slightly ajar. He reached it, looked in. He flashed his light, peered around. It was a narrow, closetlike space, filling a section of the uppermost tip, just beneath the point of the top. It was padded and empty.