Part 14 (2/2)
”Oh, I believe I'm okay at last,” Lester replied with startling brightness. ”I was afraid I wouldn't be. I guess I had an inferiority complex, and there was also something to live up to. You see, my dad was here with the original Clifford expedition. We always agreed that I should become a s.p.a.ce-scientist, too. Mom went along with that--until Dad was killed, here... Well, I'm over the hump, now. You see, I'm so interested in everything around me, that the desolation has a cus.h.i.+on of romance that protects me. I don't see just the bleakness. I imagine the Moon as it once was, with volcanoes spitting, and with thundrous sounds in its steamy atmosphere. I see it when the Martians were here--they surely visited Earth, too, though there all evidence weathered away. I even see the Moon as it is, now, noticing details that are easy to miss--the little b.a.l.l.s of ash that got stuck together by raindrops, two billion years ago. And the pulpy, hard-sh.e.l.led plants that you can still find, alive, if you know where to look. There are some up on the ridge, where I often go, when offs.h.i.+ft. Carbon dioxide and a little water vapor must still come out of the deep crack there... Anyhow, they used to say that a lonesome person--with perhaps a touch of schizophrenia--might do better off the Earth than the more usual types.”
Frank Nelsen was surprised as much by this open, self-a.n.a.lytical explanation, and the clearing up of the family history behind him, as by the miracle that had happened. Cripes, was it possible that, in his own way, Lester was more rugged than anybody else of the old Bunch? Of course even Lester was somewhat in wonder, himself, and had to talk it all out to somebody.
”Good for you, Les,” Nelsen enthused, relieved. ”Only--well, skip it, for now.”
Two work periods later, he approached Rodan. ”It will take months to sift all this dust,” he said. ”I may not want to stay that long.”
The pupils of Rodan's eyes flickered again. ”Oh?” he said. ”Per contract, you can quit anytime. But I provide no transportation. Do you want to walk eight hundred miles--to a Tovie station? On the Moon it is difficult to keep hired help. So one must rely on practical counter-circ.u.mstances. Besides, I wouldn't want you to be at Serenitatis Base, or anywhere else, talking about my discovery, Nelsen. I'm afraid you're stuck.”
Now Nelsen had the result of his perhaps incautious test statement. He knew that he was trapped by a dangerous tyrant, such as might spring up in any new, lawless country.
”It was just a thought, sir,” he said, being as placating as he dared, and controlling his rising fury.
For there was something that hardened too quickly in Rodan. He had the fame-and-glory bug, and could be savage about it. If you wanted to get away, you had to scheme by yourself. There wasn't only Rodan to get past; there was Dutch, the big ape with the dangling pistol.
Nelsen decided to work quietly, as before, for a while... There were a few more significant finds--what might have been a nuclear-operated clock, broken, of course, and some diamond drill bits. Though the long lunar day dragged intolerably, there was the paradox of time seeming to escape, too. Daylight ended with the sunset. Two weeks of darkness was no period for any moves. At sunup, a second month was almost finished!
And ten acres of dust was less than half-sifted...
In the shop and supply dome, David Lester had been chemically a.n.a.lyzing the dregs of various Martian containers for Rodan. In spare moments he cla.s.sified those scarce and incredibly hardy lunar growths that he found in the foothills of the Arabian Range. Some had hard, bright-green tendrils, that during daylight, opened out of woody sh.e.l.ls full of spongy hollows as an insulation against the fearsome cold of night. Some were so small that they could only be seen under a microscope. Frank's interest, here, however, palled quickly. And Lester, in his mumbling, studious preoccupation, was no companionable antidote for loneliness.
Frank tried a new approach on Helen, who really was Rodan's daughter.
”Do you like poetry, Helen? I used to memorize Keats, Frost, Shakespeare.”
They were there in the dining room. She brightened a little. ”I remember--some.”
”Do you remember clouds, the sound of water? Trees, gra.s.s...?”
She actually smiled, wistfully. ”Yes. Sunday afternoons. A blue dress.
My mother when she was alive... A dog I had, once...”
Helen Rodan wasn't quite a zombie, after all. Maybe he could win her confidence, if he went slow...
But twenty hours later, at the diggings, when Dutch stumbled over Frank's sifter, she reverted. ”I'll learn you to leave junk in my way, you greenhorn squirt!” Dutch shouted. Then he tossed Frank thirty feet.
Frank came back, kicked him in his thinly armored stomach, knocked him down, and tried to get his gun. But Dutch grabbed him in those big arms.
Helen was also pointing a small pistol at him.
She was trembling. ”Dad will handle this,” she said.
Rodan came over. ”You don't have much choice, do you, Nelsen?” he sneered. ”However, perhaps Dutch was crude. I apologize for him. And I will deduct a hundred dollars from his pay, and give it to you.”
”Much obliged,” Frank said dryly.
After that, everything happened to build his tensions to the breaking point.
At a work period's end, near the lunar noon, he heard a voice in his helmet-phone. ”Frank--this is Two-and-Two...! Why don't you ever call or answer...?”
<script>