Great! Kinsman frowned. He’s either hysterical or delirious. Or both.
After firing the spool antenna again, Kinsman flicked on the lamp atop his helmet and looked at the radio direction-finder dial on his forearm. The priest had his suit radio open and the carrier beam was coming through even though he was not talking. The gauges alongside the radio-finder reminded Kinsman that he was about halfway down on his oxygen, and more than an hour had elapsed since he had spoken to Bok.
«I’m trying to zero in on you,» Kinsman said. «Are you hurt? Can you—»
«Don’t, don’t, don’t. I disobeyed and now I’ve got to pay for it. Don’t trap yourself too.» The heavy, reproachful voice lapsed into a mumble that Kinsman couldn’t understand.
Trapped. Kinsman could picture it. The priest was using a canister-suit: a one-man walking cabin, a big, plexidomed rigid can with flexible arms and legs sticking out of it. You could live in it for days at a time—but it was too clumsy for climbing. Which is why the crater was off limits.
He must’ve fallen and now he’s stuck.
«The sin of pride,» he heard the priest babbling. «God forgive us our pride. I wanted to find water; the greatest discovery a man can make on the moon … Pride, nothing but pride …»
Kinsman walked slowly, shifting his eyes from the direction-finder to the roiled, pocked ground underfoot. He jumped across an eight-foot drop between terraces.
The finder’s needle snapped to zero.
«Your radio still on?»
«No use … go back …»
The needle stayed fixed. Either I busted it or I’m right on top of him.
He turned full circle, scanning the rough ground as far as his light could reach. No sign of the canister. Kinsman stepped to the terrace-edge. Kneeling with deliberate care, so that his backpack wouldn’t unbalance and send him sprawling down the tumbled rocks, he peered over.
In a zigzag fissure a few yards below him was the priest, a giant, armored insect gleaming white in the glare of the lamp, feebly waving its one free arm.
«Can you get up?» Kinsman saw that all the weight of the cumbersome suit was on the pinned arm. Banged up his backpack, too.
The priest was mumbling again. It sounded like Latin.
«Can you get up?» Kinsman repeated.
«Trying to find the secrets of natural creation … storming heaven with rockets. We say we’re seeking knowledge, but we’re really after is our own glory …»
Kinsman frowned. He couldn’t see the older man’s face, behind the canister’s heavily tinted window.
«I’ll have to get the jumper down here.»
The priest rambled on, coughing spasmodically. Kinsman started back across the terrace.
«Pride leads to death,» he heard in his earphones. «You know that, Kinsman. It’s pride that makes us murderers.»
The shock boggled Kinsman’s knees. He turned, trembling. «What … did you say?»
«It’s hidden. The water is here, hidden … frozen in fissures. Strike the rock and bring forth water, like Moses. Not even God himself was going to hide this secret from me …»
«What did you say,» Kinsman whispered, completely cold inside, «about murder?»
«I know you, Kinsman … anger and pride. Destroy not my soul with men of blood … whose right hands are … are …»
Kinsman ran away. He fought back toward the crater’s rim, storming the terraces blindly, scrabbling up the inclines with four-yard-high jumps. Twice he had to turn up the air blower in his helmet to clear the sweaty fog from his faceplate. He didn’t dare stop. He raced on, breath racking his lungs, heart pounding until he could hear nothing else.
But in his mind he still saw those savage few minutes in orbit, when he had been with the Air Force, when he had become a killer. He had won a medal for that secret mission; a medal and a conscience that never slept.
Finally he reached the crest. Collapsing on the deck of the jumper, he forced himself to breathe normally again, forced himself to sound normal as he called Bok.
The astronomer said guardedly, «It sounds as though he’s dying.»
«I think his regenerator’s shot. His air must be pretty foul by now.»
«No sense going back for him, I guess.»
Kinsman hesitated. «Maybe I can get the jumper down close to him.» He found out about me.
«You’ll never get him back in time. And you’re not supposed to take the jumper near the crater, let alone inside of it. It’s too dangerous.»
«You want to just let him die?» He’s hysterical. If he babbles about me where Bok can hear it …
«Listen,» the astronomer said, his voice rising, «you can’t leave me stuck here with both of you gone! I know the regulations, Kinsman. You’re not allowed to risk yourself or the third man on the team in an effort to help a man in trouble.»
«I know. I know.» But it wouldn’t look right for me to start minding regulations now. Even Bok doesn’t expect me to.
«You don’t have enough oxygen in your suit to get down there and back again,» Bok insisted.
«I can tap some from the jumper’s propellant tank.»
«But that’s crazy! You’ll get yourself stranded!»
«Maybe.» It’s an Air Force secret. No discharge: just transferred to the space agency. If they find out about it now, I’ll be finished. Everybody’ll know. No place to hide … newspapers, TV, everybody!
«You’re going to kill yourself over that priest. And you’ll be killing me, too!»
«He’s probably dead by now,» Kinsman said. «I’ll just put a marker beacon there, so another crew can get him when the time comes. I won’t be long.»
«But the regulations …»
«They were written Earthside. The brass never planned on something like this. I’ve got to go back, just to make sure.»
He flew the jumper back down the crater’s inner slope, leaning over the platform railing to see his marker-beacons as well as listening to their tinny radio beeping. In a few minutes, he was easing the spraddle-legged platform down on the last terrace before the helpless priest.
«Father Lemoyne.»
Kinsman stepped off the jumper and made it to the edge of the fissure in four lunar strides. The white shell was inert, the lone arm unmoving.
«Father Lemoyne!»
Kinsman held his breath and listened. Nothing … wait:
the faintest, faintest breathing. More like gasping. Quick, shallow, desperate.
«You’re dead,» Kinsman heard himself mutter. «Give it up, you’re finished. Even if I got you out of here, you’d be dead before I could get you back to the base.»
The priest’s faceplate was opaque to him; he only saw the reflected spot of his own helmet lamp. But his mind filled with the shocked face he once saw in another visor, a face that had just realized it was dead.
He looked away, out to the too-close horizon and the uncompromising stars beyond. Then he remembered the rest of it:
Like an automaton, Kinsman turned back to the jumper. His mind was blank now. Without thought, without even feeling, he rigged a line from the jumper’s tiny winch to the metal lugs in the canister-suit’s chest. Then he took apart the platform railing and wedged three rejoined sections into the fissure above the fallen man, to form a hoisting angle. Looping the line over the projecting arm, he started the winch.
He climbed down into the fissure and set himself as solidly as he could on the bare, scoured-smooth rock. He grabbed the priest’s armored shoulders, and guided the oversized canister up from the crevice, while the winch strained silently.