The miles slid by underfoot, and the hands on the helmet chrono pointed to 1143. They kept moving, the night an endless thing ahead of them, the Moon waiting like a field of broken glass, the pointed shards of its rocks jutting out of its surface. It was getting more difficult. The sled seemed heavier somehow, and Ted could feel a fine film of sweat on his forehead, despite the bitter cold outside. For a moment he had the insane desire to rip off his helmet and wipe away the sweat. He kept thinking about it, and the desire grew until he actually raised his gloved hand and passed it over his face plate.
The stars began to annoy him. They watched the two struggling figures with aloof disdain, hanging on the horizon, wheeling overhead, steady, dead-white eyes punched into the sweeping sky. Why didn’t they stop staring? Why were they so steady? Ted longed for them to stop. With every ounce of energy in his body, he willed them to stop, willed just one lone star to go out.
He began to concentrate on the ground in an effort to take his mind off the stars. He watched the pumice rise as he pushed through it, watched it fall back silently. The ground was colored a deathly gray, like a sick old man on a bed of ashes. It flashed by rapidly as they half-ran, half-walked. Ted watched the rocks and the pockmarks, and the sand, and the pumice, and the cracks. His head began to spin.
He lifted his eyes and stared at the luminous dial of the chrono until the hands etched themselves against his retina.
1150
1152
1153
On and on, across the endless wastes, across the blackness of night, on and on.
1155
1156
Nothing broke the stillness. Ted longed for the wail of the wind, for the gentle rustling of leaves clinging to a tree, the shrill call of a train whistle in the darkness. There were none of these.
1158
1159
1200
1201
Ted was getting weary. His neck muscles hurt from supporting the heavy helmet, and his back muscles ached from pulling the sled. His body felt confined, and he longed for the unfettered freedom of an un-space-suited body. It was getting warm inside the suit, too-much too warm for comfort. The heat of his body was adding to the heat of the coils, and the result was a torrid prison of metal and nylon and rubber. He fumbled on the breastplate of his suit, reaching for the thermostat. The fingers inside his gloved hand felt big and clumsy. Awkwardly, he lowered the control and waited for the suit to cool off a bit.
Time was a world of blackness to be crossed. Time was a series of jagged rocks to be counted. Time was a million stars.
Time fled by.
Forbes called another halt. They stopped beside a long cleft in the Moon’s surface, a fissure fully twenty feet long and three feet wide. The large crack was filled with darkness, almost like a long black finger against the gray background.
Forbes squatted on the edge of the cleft, peering down its smooth sides. Ted leaned against a rock, his oxygen cylinder resting against the ragged surface.
“Something down there,” Forbes said softly, almost to himself.
Ted didn’t answer. He closed his eyes against the stars, breathing deeply of the oxygen that flowed into his helmet.
“There’s something down there, Baker!”
There was an undercurrent of excitement in Forbes’s voice that caused Ted’s eyes to pop open quickly.
“What?”
“On the bottom of this fissure. Something… something… green.”
Ted scrambled to his feet and walked rapidly to the edge of the cleft. Forbes was already stretched out on the ground, stomach down, his hands clinging to the cleft as he stared into its murky depth.
“Are you sure?” Ted asked.
“I’m going down there,” Forbes replied.
“Wait a second! You don’t even know how deep it is.”
“I can see the bottom, and there’s something green covering it. I think it’s
“Life?”
“Life, life!” Forbes uncoiled a spool of wire from his belt. He attached one end to a loop in the belt and swung the other end around a sharply jutting rock near the edge of the cleft. “Hold this end, Baker. I’m going down.”
Ted pushed the wire through a ring in his own belt as Forbes dropped his legs into the yawning chasm. He clung to the lip with gloved hands as he studied the sides of the cleft for another foothold. He moved his hands then and began moving deeper into the fissure. The blackness swallowed him up instantly.
Ted paid out the wire, watching the top of Forbes’s helmet.
“Bottom,” Forbes called. There was a moment of silence, and then Forbes shouted, “Frost, Baker! There’s frost down here.”
Ted felt his heart lurch against his ribs. “That means water.”
“I’ve found something, Baker. By jumping Jehoshaphat, this is really something!”
“What is it?” Ted swallowed hard, waiting.
“I’m coming up. Give me room. I’m going to try a jump.”