eye. A big burly official grinned at us.
"Pass your physicals, fellas," he said, "and we'll ship you out
tonight."
About Joe? Well—you know. He got a look as if he was at least a little loopy—the hopeless
sort of character that keeps popping up all the time, asking foolish questions.
Like the guy ninety years old who tried to enlist in the Army.
"Come
back in fifty years," he was told indulgently. "Maybe by then the Moon
will be changed enough by science so that there are woods and game on it."
Joe
looked a little puzzled. That was all. Of course this wasn't funny now for
Frank and me. What could you do? Life consists of living and learning.
I'm
sentimental. Halfway I wanted to stay behind with old Joe Whiteskunk. Frank is
different. "Well, Dave," he said, "this is it. So let's do what
the man says. We can phone Dad's lawyer to see that the ranch is looked after. Nothing much there anyway. We won't even have to take the
car home."
"Sure—you fellas
go," Joe told us. "I come too, pretty soon."
So,
that night, strapped to chairs in a cabin that looked like the inside of a bus,
Frank and I were sick as dogs in the absence of gravity as the sharp stars of
space blossomed beyond the window-ports around us. Facing the prospect of
living on the Moon—an idea somehow out of tune with the instincts in human
entrails, even when you're an enlightened young man—we were scared half to
death.
"Good
thing Joe couldn't come," Frank grunted. "He wouldn't understand
anything. He'd die—just as if he'd suddenly found himself in an unnamed
hell."
Right then we weren't very inspiring symbols
of the pioneering urges of the human race.
Had we known that at that
very moment old Joe Whiteskunk
r
was huddled in the darkest corner of the dark
baggage compartment of our spaceship we would really have blown our tops.
Because in such a place during a Lunar hop a man could
freeze to death or suffocate easily. Even if he were a
trained scientist, who knew how to protect himself.
We were in space for better than seventy
hours. I was too ill to pay much attention to the landing. But it was
accomplished in a manner that was almost exactly the reverse of the takeoff.
Balanced
by whirling gyroscopes, we came down sternward toward Camp Copernicus, our
flaming jets gradually reducing speed. During the last few feet before we
touched the ashy ground we hung almost motionless, swinging in the seats that
adjusted automatically to the proper up-down direction of any gravitational
attraction.
Then
we were on the moon. Taking orders—fumbling our way into space-armor—looking at
harsh sunlight and black shadows and jagged mountains that have driven many a
man nuts with homesickness. Filing in a column across the ash to a large pressurized
shelter of magnesium alloy that had been brought prefabricated from Earth.
This
proved to be the entrance to a labyrinth of tunnels, newly excavated
underground. This was Camp Copernicus, built in the bottom of the great lunar
crater of the same name.
All of us greenhorn arrivals looked pretty
awful. I felt like a foolish romantic, led into a death-trap by my own
romanticism. God, how I wanted to go homel
While quarters and bunks were being assigned
the cry of "Stowaway!" arose. Right away I had a premonition that put
my heart in my mouth.
Then they carried Joe in, tucked into a suit
of space-armor. The story of what he had done came out, mixed with curses, from
the mouths of the baggage-handlers. Right then Joe was a very frost-bitten, very disoriented Indian, whose swollen face nonetheless
showed a flash of truculence.
How
he'd managed to survive in that space-chilled compartment, breathing only the
air that was locked in with him, might,
I think, have baffled a Houdini. He must just
have followed some animal instinct when he bundled himself in paper wrappings
torn from bundles and packages.
By
the same instinct he must have relaxed and breathed shal-lowly to consume less
oxygen. Something about how he
"Pass your physicals, fellas," he said, "and we'll ship you out
tonight."
About Joe? Well—you know. He got a look as if he was at least a little loopy—the hopeless
sort of character that keeps popping up all the time, asking foolish questions.
Like the guy ninety years old who tried to enlist in the Army.
"Come
back in fifty years," he was told indulgently. "Maybe by then the Moon
will be changed enough by science so that there are woods and game on it."
Joe
looked a little puzzled. That was all. Of course this wasn't funny now for
Frank and me. What could you do? Life consists of living and learning.
I'm
sentimental. Halfway I wanted to stay behind with old Joe Whiteskunk. Frank is
different. "Well, Dave," he said, "this is it. So let's do what
the man says. We can phone Dad's lawyer to see that the ranch is looked after. Nothing much there anyway. We won't even have to take the
car home."
"Sure—you fellas
go," Joe told us. "I come too, pretty soon."
So,
that night, strapped to chairs in a cabin that looked like the inside of a bus,
Frank and I were sick as dogs in the absence of gravity as the sharp stars of
space blossomed beyond the window-ports around us. Facing the prospect of
living on the Moon—an idea somehow out of tune with the instincts in human
entrails, even when you're an enlightened young man—we were scared half to
death.
"Good
thing Joe couldn't come," Frank grunted. "He wouldn't understand
anything. He'd die—just as if he'd suddenly found himself in an unnamed
hell."
Right then we weren't very inspiring symbols
of the pioneering urges of the human race.
Had we known that at that
very moment old Joe Whiteskunk
r
was huddled in the darkest corner of the dark
baggage compartment of our spaceship we would really have blown our tops.
Because in such a place during a Lunar hop a man could
freeze to death or suffocate easily. Even if he were a
trained scientist, who knew how to protect himself.
We were in space for better than seventy
hours. I was too ill to pay much attention to the landing. But it was
accomplished in a manner that was almost exactly the reverse of the takeoff.
Balanced
by whirling gyroscopes, we came down sternward toward Camp Copernicus, our
flaming jets gradually reducing speed. During the last few feet before we
touched the ashy ground we hung almost motionless, swinging in the seats that
adjusted automatically to the proper up-down direction of any gravitational
attraction.
Then
we were on the moon. Taking orders—fumbling our way into space-armor—looking at
harsh sunlight and black shadows and jagged mountains that have driven many a
man nuts with homesickness. Filing in a column across the ash to a large pressurized
shelter of magnesium alloy that had been brought prefabricated from Earth.
This
proved to be the entrance to a labyrinth of tunnels, newly excavated
underground. This was Camp Copernicus, built in the bottom of the great lunar
crater of the same name.
All of us greenhorn arrivals looked pretty
awful. I felt like a foolish romantic, led into a death-trap by my own
romanticism. God, how I wanted to go homel
While quarters and bunks were being assigned
the cry of "Stowaway!" arose. Right away I had a premonition that put
my heart in my mouth.
Then they carried Joe in, tucked into a suit
of space-armor. The story of what he had done came out, mixed with curses, from
the mouths of the baggage-handlers. Right then Joe was a very frost-bitten, very disoriented Indian, whose swollen face nonetheless
showed a flash of truculence.
How
he'd managed to survive in that space-chilled compartment, breathing only the
air that was locked in with him, might,
I think, have baffled a Houdini. He must just
have followed some animal instinct when he bundled himself in paper wrappings
torn from bundles and packages.
By
the same instinct he must have relaxed and breathed shal-lowly to consume less
oxygen. Something about how he
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