Zach Hughes - Tiger in the Stars

said. «And I foresee only one possibility of your avoiding it. That is, if you come up with some concrete results from the tests you're going to run when you take the blink ship into space without official authorization.» He stood. «If word leaks out, my official position is that the service knew nothing of Heath's plans to take out the ship.» Standing in a viewport, Hara watched the ferry lift off. She mused as the drive stirred moon dust and the ship dwindled as it shot upward. She felt an almost overwhelming sadness. She was due for promotion. Her life had been built around the service, and now she could measure her service

life in very small amounts of time. At best she could look forward to a long career as a first officer pushing papers on the moon Base or down below on Earth. She stood, watching the dust settle on the now empty pad. Then she lifted her eyes to the stars, to the great emptiness. Plank was out there somewhere, dead perhaps, but there. «Plank,» she said, her lips moving but the words forming inaudibly. «You're not worth it, you know.» But she knew, even as she said it, that if she were out there and Plank were down here on the moon, he'd be doing exactly what she was doing. Plank was that way. He'd risk everything for her and she, knowing that, could do no less. CHAPTER SIX Earth is never visible from the dark side of the moon. Space is more impressive from the dark side, made to seem larger, more empty by the absence of any near neighbor. The main bulk of moon installations were built in areas situated so that Earthrise and Earthset added dimension. The friendly, glowing ball of home was behind one's shoulder, comforting, endlessly beautiful. On the dark side one looked into infinity and felt the distances. The psychological reassurance of being able to look up and see the home planet was in evidence on the charts. More spare-time explorations had taken place on the Earth side than on the dark side. The working

facilities were on Earth side. On the other side were the experimental labs, the abandoned projects, the scrap heaps, the unexplored areas. Storage is relatively simple on the moon. The vacuum of space allows no oxidation. To protect electronic and mechanical gadgets from the extremes of temperature—a simple process when the energy of the raw sun is used to store energy to provide cooling and heating—a ship can be mothballed for decades without being encased in goos and greases. The last of the blink test vehicles sat behind an unlocked door in a round tank, which resembled an antique oil-storage tank from the planet's history. The moon's population was an elite bunch, against which locked doors were unnecessary. The ship gleamed with newness, just as it had gleamed on the day, years ago, when it was assembled from components flown from Earth. The simple storage cells in the bay along one side of the tank functioned perfectly. There were no moving parts, nothing to go wrong. Relays and thermostats, which had never known the tarnish of oxidation, clicked softly, heating elements glowed during dark periods, cooling air moved during the periods of sunlight. It was necessary to work in LSG. To fill the tank with atmosphere would have required going to Moon Control and would have put an entry into the record, a record that was scrutinized from time to time by anti-space legislators down home. Air was the one thing the moon needed to have to

support life inside the installations, and the expense of that air was not an inconsiderable item in the moon's budget. More than once, air consumption on the moon had been the subject of congressional debate. So, rather than risk having a new drain of air entered into the record, Walker Heath's team went out in LSG and worked in LSG, pumping air

only into the blink vehicle itself. This relatively minute amount of air was padded onto LSG issue, tabbed as recreational exploration. The caution seemed rather silly to Sahara. The moon had long since been self-supporting as far as air was concerned, making oxygen from water pumped up from the interior, breaking down other elements from native rock. However, air consumption was something even the most ignorant Earthling senator could understand, and the moon was saddled with the eternal problem of keeping careful books on air and costs. The vehicle was not perfect, but it was in an amazingly good state. Some of the more delicate electronics were replaced as a matter of precaution, although they tested operative, and some minor failures of components were expected, detected and rectified. Some additional monitoring equipment was installed. Weight was no problem. The power contained in old John Blink's drive was capable of handling many times the mass of the vehicle and all it could carry. Although, as a space officer, Sahara was capable of doing emergency repairs on most ship systems, she was not called upon to assist. She went out «backside» with the initial party, riding in open ground cars, and visually inspected the vehicle. She observed the complicated workings of the blink generator, watched Heath and his men begin the check-out procedures. In the following days, she made a cursory examination of the large control complex, which had been used until no less than ten blink ships had left the moon and disappeared. The complex would not be in use on

this last test of a blink vehicle. Instead, the vehicle would be piggybacked to a powerful Earth-moon shuttle ship and lifted out of the moon's weak gravity to space. Heath cannibalized a portion of the control complex to install monitoring and control mechanisms aboard the shuttle. He was in the midst of final ground tests of the equipment when Matt Webb appeared

on the site. Hara, seated at the pilot's controls in the shuttle ship on its pad outside the tank, saw an approaching ground vehicle and alerted Heath, who was inside the tank with portable monitoring equipment attached to the blink vehicle. He called a halt and waddled outside, stood, hands dangling inside the armor, as the ground car swirled up, kicking up lunar dust, and disgorged one lsg-suited figure. «Aha,» Webb said, «caught you.» Hara recognized the voice immediately. «It's all right,» she said to Heath. «It is not all right,» Heath said. «Did you tell him?» «No,» Hara said. «Come off it, Heath,» Matt Webb said. «Half the moon knows you're out here.» «That's dandy,» Heath said. «Can we expect visits from all of them?» «I can't speak for everyone,» Webb said. «Speak for yourself, then,» Heath said. «Say goodbye and let us get back to work.» Webb chuckled. «I thought I'd watch for a while.» «Nothing to see,» Heath said. «I want to see, especially where I'll be riding during the test,» said Webb. «You'll be riding a desk,» Heath answered gruffly, turning to reenter the tank. «I assume that Sahara is to be the pilot,» Webb said. «I can brush up a bit and qualify as backup.» «Forget it,» Heath said, now out of view. «In fact,» Webb said, «I just took a check ride in a shuttle and passed with honors.» «Good for you.» «And there's one other small fact,» Webb said. «I have orders from the secretary to ride herd on you.» «Matt, that's sneaky,» Sahara said. «Not my idea,» Webb said. «The old boy is getting nervous about the

whole deal. I'd advise you to get into space as quickly as possible before he changes his mind. He's afraid of a leak.» «All right,» Heath said. «Let's activate systems seven and nine.» «Heath,» Webb said plaintively, «have you been listening to me?» «Get on board the shuttle,» Heath said. «If Hara needs help she'll let you know.» Once inside the lock, Webb opened his visor and grinned at Hara. «I just thought you'd like some friendly company to take the edge off that old bear.» «You're all heart,» Hara said. «Since you're here, ride that wave monitor. Commander Heath is about ready to put power to the generator.» Actually. Webb turned out in be a valuable man. The technique of piggybacking a ship was one that all cadets practised. It was standard rescue procedure. Hardware was too expensive to be left in space if it broke down. The method had been used a half-dozen times following breakdowns between the moon and Earth. Hara, however, had never been