Yes, the take-off had been your biggest-thrill in life up to then, much as it seemed to bore the captain and the three-man crew of the Relief. It was your first take-off and their twentieth or thirtieth. Well, you had one more coming—the return trip to Earth—if you lived until the Relief came back for you. And you’d settle for that—gladly you’d go back to your regular job in the lab of the observatory.
One trip to the Moon and back, with a thirty-nr’ -day stay there should be enough of an adventure for any man who isn’t a spaceman and doesn’t ever expect to become one. And one mess like that you’re in right now should be enough to satisfy anybody for the rest of his life. Only the rest of your life may be a matter of minutes or hours. If the Aliens figured wrong or if you did…
Keep your mind away from that. You’re going to live all right. You’ve beaten them—you hope. It doesn’t do any good to worry about it. You’re doing all you can do, just lying here, trying to be as quiet as you can so you’ll use as little oxygen as possible. They left you barely enough food, barely enough water, but the oxygen is your really tough problem. Not quite barely enough.
Yet you just might make. it if you make no unnecessary move to increase your oxygen consumption. Sleep is best —you use less oxygen when you sleep. But you can’t sleep all the time. In fact, sick and miserable as you are, you can’t manage to sleep much at all.
All you can do is lie quiet and think. Think about anything. Think why you’re here. ..
You’re here because—along with a lot of other observatory technicians—you answered an ad in the Astronomy Journal, an ad that excited you. Wanted, technician, young and in good health,’ to spend between one and two months alone in small observatory dome on the Moon to make series of photographs of Earth for meteorological study. Must know Ogden star camera and use of filters, do own developing of plates. Must be psychologically stable.
It didn’t say—must be able to give poker instruction to alien life forms. But you can’t blame the American Meteorological Society for that. There aren’t any life forms on the Moon—not even human ones on any permanent basis. Nothing here really worth the trouble except a little observatory like this one. Two or twenty years from now, when they have rockets ready to make the try for Mars and Venus, they’ll build bases here, of course, but nothing much has been done yet beyond the surveying stage.
Yes, right now at this moment you are quite possibly the only human being on the Moon. Or if there are any others ‘they are thousands of miles away because the bases are being built in craters near the rim-. And this little dome you are in is located dead center, almost, of the Earthward side.
Well, a fat lot of work you’ve done. You haven’t taken a single picture with the Ogden. Not your fault, of course— the Aliens took the Ogden along with them and you can’t takes pictures without a camera, can you?
Wasting thirty-nine days—two months, really, counting traveling time and training time—and you won’t have a picture to show for it. But if you die they can’t blame you for that. Quit thinking that way—you’re not going to die—you daren’t die.
DON’T think about dying. Think about anything. Think about getting here. About how Captain Thorkelsen of the Relief dropped you off here— how many days ago? Three or thirty? More than three, surely more than three. If only the opaque sliding door of the top of this little dome were open so you could see through the glass you could tell, at least, whether it’s Moon-day or Moon-night.
You could see the Earth and watch it spin around, one Terrestrial day for every spin, and you’d know how long you’d been here and how long there was to go. And Moon-day or Moon-night you could always see it because it would always be directly overhead. But there’d be heat loss, more through the glass alone than through the glass plus the insulated sliding door, so you can’t risk it.
The Aliens left you only a third of your complement of storage batteries, barely enough to see you through. Barely enough of everything, so there’d be no chance that you could—by some chemistry alien to them—change something else into the oxygen of which they didn’t leave you quite enough.
Sure you can open the door at intervals to look out and then close it again before too much heat escapes but that takes physical energy and physical energy and exercise use up oxygen. You can’t risk moving a finger except when you have to.
Captain Thorkelsen shaking your hand, saying, “Well, Mr. Thayer—or maybe I should call you Bob now that the trip’s over and we don’t have to be formal—you’re on your own now. Back for you in thirty-nine days to the hour. And you’ll be plenty ready to go back by then, let me tell you.”
But Thorkelsen hadn’t guessed even remotely how ready he’d be. You grinned at him and said, “I smuggled something, Captain. One pint of the best bonded Bourbon I could get to celebrate my landing on the Moon. How’s about coming into the dome with me for a drink?”
He shook his head regretfully. “Sorry, Bob, but orders are orders. We take off in an hour exactly from time of landing. And that’s enough time for you to get into a spacesuit and get there— we’ll watch through the port until we see you enter the door of the dome. But it isn’t enough time—quite—for: us to get into suits and get there and back and out of the suits again in time to takeoff. You know how schedules are in this business.”’
Yes, you know how schedules are in spaceflying. And that’s how you know— for better and for worse—that the Relief won’t be fifteen minutes early getting here to pick you up, nor will it be fifteen minutes late. Thirty-nine days means thirty-nine days, not thirty-eight or forty.
So you nodded agreement and understanding. You said, “Well, in that case, can’t we open, the pint here and now for a drink around?”
Thorkelsen laughed and said, “I don’t see why not. There’s no rule against taking a drink out here—only a rule against transporting liquor. And if you’ve already violated that…”
For five men, the pint of bonded makes an even two drinks around and they’re helping you into the cumbersome space suit while you’re drinking the second one. And they’re no longer anonymous spacemonkeys to you after three days of close contact en route. They’re Deak, Tommy, Ev and Shorty. But Deak, although you call him that to yourself, you call “Captain,” -even though he calls you Bob now. Somehow “Captain” fits Thorkelsen better than Deak does. Anyway they’re all swell fellows. You wonder if you’ll ever see them again.
BUT YOU pull your mind away from the present and send it back into the past, the distant past that may have, been only a few days ago. You got into the airlock with your luggage, two tremendous cases you could barely have lifted on Earth but that you can carry here quite easily, even cumbered by a spacesuit. And you wave goodbye at them because your face-plate is closed and you can’t talk to them any more. And they wave back and close the inner door of the airlock. Then the air hisses out—although you can’t hear it—and the outer door opens.
And there is the Moon. The hard rock surface is five feet down but no ladder has been rigged. In Moon gravity it isn’t necessary. You throw the suitcases out and down and see them-land lightly without breaking and that gives you the ‘nerve to jump yourself. You land so lightly that you stumble and fall and you know they’re probably watching you through the port and laughing at you but that it’s friendly laughter so you don’t mind.