The Ranger Boys in Space

by Hal Clement

  "Do you suppose his radio could have quit?" asked Bart thoughtfully.

  "It could have, but he's had plenty of time to get back here even if it has. I went over to his ship and he wasn't there, and he hasn't come back since then, and I can't see him anywhere on the mountainside."

  "He might be exploring a crevasse."

  "He's been out of touch pretty long for that. We agreed to check in every fifteen minutes at the outside, you remember."

  "That's true. Maybe he had a fall, or got hit by a meteorite."

  "Uncle Jim said we needn't worry about meteorites on the moon, in spite of all the stories you read. The air isn't much, but it stops the grain-of-dust stuff, and we'd have seen the flash of one big enough to reach the ground. He might have had a fall, though; if it were bad enough it might have punctured his suit. We'd better start looking."

  "Hadn't one of us better go up and report to Uncle Jim?" Bart was the more cautious of the two even in a situation like the present.

  "If we do," replied Dart, "he's likely to order us to come up anyway until the station is back overhead. He'll say that either Pete's suit is all right or it isn't; if it is, he can wait, and if it isn't we're too late already. He won't be worrying about us for a while, anyway; it would be better if we looked. Then if we find Pete, we can give a full report and he can stop worrying before he starts."

  Bart was not too stupid to see the flaws in this argument, but he was willing to be persuaded and did not point them out.

  "All right. I'll come over and park beside you, and we'll start looking. At least we know which mountain he was on. We'd better go out together; if there is something on that mountain which got Pete into trouble, we might be able to help each other better if one of us wasn't back baby-sitting over a radio."

  "Right. I'll be outside waiting for you." Ten minutes later the two started up the slope.

  Peter had been quite right in his estimate of the difficulties any searchers would face. While the sun was no lower than it had been half a day before, the shadows were at least as confusing as ever. Both boys carried lights, but even with these it was never possible to be sure from any great distance how deep a particular hole or crack might be. Bart was already tired, and could not make the speed that his brother could; after a few hours they had to return to the ships for food and rest.

  The latter was brief, however, and before long they were back at the job. Neither was watching the earth as Peter had been, and the beginning of the eclipse took them by surprise.

  "For gosh sake!" exclaimed Dart when the facts of the matter became apparent. "What are we going to do now? It's bad enough hunting through all these shadows, but if the sun's going out entirely we won't be able even to travel, let alone hunt."

  "We just wait, I guess," replied Bart. "We'd better get back to the ships while we can, too."

  "Why? Our suits have heaters good enough to keep us going, even if the temperature drops the way the books say it does during an eclipse."

  "I'm not worried about the temperature—the rocks around us are way below zero now, except for the slopes that are getting full sunlight, but if Pete can drop out of sight with the sun shining and him concentrating on travel, we can do the same in the dark while we're concentrating on finding Pete. We'll be wasting our time and our batteries. We're not too far from the ships anyway, and this business will last only a couple of hours at the outside."

  "All right." The two picked their way back to the ships, and each boarded his own—Dart thought briefly of going with his brother, but just as Peter had earlier he decided that he would feel better within reach of the Jabberwock's control panel. He seated himself before it, removed his helmet, and watched the outside landscape through the ports.

  It was changing. The mountains had been standing out sharply against the star-sprinkled background, looking bright in spite of the dark rock which formed their bulks; now they seemed a little softer and dimmer. There was a suspicion of red in their color, rather like that on an afternoon on Earth when a person starts wondering whether he should still use color film or not. In the other direction, it was still impossible to look directly at the sun; but by squinting between close-pressed fingers Dart could see that it was well over half hidden by a great, dark, blurry circle. The eclipse had progressed some distance before the change in sunlight had caught the boys' notice.

  Gradually the scenery grew darker, and tinged with a deeper red. The mountains became less prominent, and the stars peeping over their shoulders seemed to grow brighter as though they were taking charge of the scene previously monopolized by the sun. Earth and sun alike were cut in halves by the horizon, and gradually it became possible to look in that direction without shading the eyes.

  Dart watched in fascination as the last brilliant orange sliver of the sun glowed through miles of the earth's air to reach his eyes. It looked like a burning coal set in a copper ring, for the half circle of the earth still above the horizon could now be seen in its entirety. Light was being filtered all around its rim through the halo of atmosphere, faintest at the left, brightening over the top and culminating at the right-hand edge in the flame of the nearly hidden sun.

  Then the sun was gone, and only the ring remained. For a moment Dart was tempted to go up a little way so as Lo see the whole circle; he had even reached out a hand toward his main power switch when he was interrupted.

  "Dart! What's that?"

  "What's what?"

  "Over there, on the mountain." "I didn't see anything. I've been watching the eclipse."

  "Then look. It must be three or four thousand feet up, but I'd swear it was a light—not very steady— appearing and fading—"

  "I see it. Sort of Northern Lights thing."

  "That's it. Do you suppose that's what it could be —Northern Lights?"

  "I don't know. We're near the north pole, but I don't know whether that means anything on the moon." They fell silent for a moment, while ideas churned within both young brains. Bart was slightly the quicker of the two.

  "That's a searchlight!"

  "You're crazy. No one has a searchlight on the moon, and anyway you couldn't see the beam unless it was pointed right at you. Maybe that mountain was a volcano once, and it's starting to act up again. Maybe that's what got Pete."

  "How could a volcano hurt him without our seeing it, or at least feeling the shock? They don't just open their mouths and snap people up like crocodiles."

  "Maybe the gas........"

  "Pete was wearing a space suit—remember?" Dart did not answer that one, and after a moment Bart went on, "Anyway, I'm going up and see. If it is a searchlight, I'll know."

  "You're going to climb? You'll never make it in this light."

  "No. I'll fly. I'll get up in line with it, and if it's a real light it'll get brighter—say, we're a couple of idiots; Pete had a flashlight."

  "So what? We still couldn't see it like this, even if he had lugged his ship's landing lights up there."

  "You may be right, but we're going to find out. You get a line on that thing; sight along anything in your ship that will serve—clamp a couple of pencils in place —do anything to get a sight on it, and if you move your ship afterward I'll skin you. I'm going up; I'll tell you what I see as soon as I know what it is."

  Bart closed his power switches, nudged the main vernier up to a value just beyond the moon's acceleration of gravity, and drifted away from the surface, keeping his rocket upright with occasional brief shots from his side rockets. He hardly thought about what he was doing with the controls; he had handled his little ship enough by now so that such maneuvers required little more attention than walking. He was watching the flickering light, and hoping that it would not go out before he could get over it.

  It was in the form of a beam, though its shape could not always be distinguished easily. The beam itself was steady in position, but flickered as though different parts of it were changing brightness from time to time. It lasted, however, and was distinct enough for him t
o judge its direction and bring the rocket into line with it. Fortunately, it was not shooting straight upward, so that when he moved into its path he could still see down at a sharp enough angle to spot its source. As he had expected, this looked like a dazzlingly bright star set in the mountainside, and almost without thinking he spoke into his transmitter.

  "That you, Pete?"

  "Sure is." The answer came instantly, in a voice just shaky enough to betray Peter's feelings. "Where are you?

  "About a mile above you. What happened—did you fall down a hole?"

  "Jumped. I'll tell you later. Look, get my position as well as you can; I can't shine this thing much longer. I'm running out of oxygen."

  "What? Are you burning a candle or something?"

  "Tell you later. I'm going to shut off now. Get back on the ground; I'll give you five minutes, then I'll use the light again; you should be down and able to get a line by then. Get up here and pull us out as soon as you can."

  Bart obeyed, and was actually on the ground before he realized fully what Peter had said. The significance of the "pull us out" struck him just as he touched ground; he gave such a yell that Dart ..was almost startled out of getting the sight he had been ordered to make.

  "Dart! He must have Tumble with him! He's using some sort of light that won't last. Just get that bearing."

  I have it.

  "Good. I came down a mile or so from you; that should give us enough angle to pin-point the hole. We'll go up as soon as the eclipse is over."

  Actually it was not quite as simple as that. There was no rope on any of the ships, and it was some time before enough wire could be collected from the repair lockers of the three rockets to reach the trapped boys.

  Tumble was hauled out almost helpless; Peter used the wire as an assist in walking up the side of the hole. The three of them had no trouble in carrying the redhead back down the mountain, since a thirty-pound weight simply helped keep one's balance. Bart went into the Ion first, then Tumble was stuffed into the air lock from the outside by Peter and removed from the inside by Bart, and finally Peter entered his rocket. Dart was already on board his own, and as the door closed behind Peter he took off at two gravities to get out where he could make a report to Bowen at the station while the others took care of their rescue subject.

  Tumble was hungry, dirty, tired, and generally uncomfortable; but he was quite evidently in no danger. He was, in fact, in much better shape than anyone confined in a space suit for five days had any right to be. Peter, once assured of this, turned to Bart.

  "Say, I thought you were a friend of mine!" he said.

  "So did I. What's biting you?"

  "What on Earth—or what on the moon—took you so long to get up to us and pull us out? I wanted to see that eclipse; and now there won't be another for six months!"

  25

  FOUR RANGERS

  TO THE watchers, the four rockets looked almost as though they were fastened together by invisible bars. They stayed side by side, each two hundred feet from its neighbor, while they swept over Niagara from the northern horizon. They nosed up together, and settled as one toward the plain of concrete from which the Polaris had lifted five weeks before. Their landing legs touched the ground within seconds of each other. The roar of their drive units ceased, and the onlookers saw the four cylinders clearly as the dust from the blast-pulverized concrete settled slowly.

  Three of the ships had seen service; their metal hulls were frosted by the sandblasting effect of dust-grain meteors—even their windows were not as clear as they had once been. The fourth was mirror-bright, gleaming as though it had just been towed out to the ramp from the factory.

  On board that new rocket, Tumble Tighe opened his switches and looked uneasily at his passenger. Hardly a word had been spoken during the short trip from the station, and the boy could read nothing from the expression on Bowen's face. In the ten days which had passed since the rescue on the moon, none of the boys had really talked to him; all were decidedly uneasy.

  Tumble felt worst, of course, but Peter knew he himself had been pretty silly to step into a hole without stopping to see whether he could get out, and Bart and Dart could not yet think of any reasonable excuse for not at least calling the station to report why they we’ve staying overtime. All four boys felt that they had pretty well cured Bowen of the idea that they would be good assistants in the exploring business, and none of them even had the comfort of feeling that it was all the fault of the other fellows.

  Tumble was the youngest of the group by at least two years, and when even after what he felt was a very good landing he got no remarks from Bowen, his self-control suddenly gave way.

  "Can't you say something? I know I'm a heel—I know I was a darned fool, and had no business taking a ship, and risking the lives of Pete and your nephews, and half-killing all the men in the station—I know it doesn't do any good to say I'm sorry—I know you can't trust me any more than I once trusted you; but at least say something, even if it's just to bawl me out! I thought when you let me fly you back to Earth, you might be going to say what you wanted, but you haven't said a thing all the way down. What are you going to do with me? And why don't you at least ease up on the other fellows? Everything they did was because of me, and you know it!"

  Bowen looked up, but his expression didn't change.

  "I've been trying to decide what to say—to all of you—and how to say it. I think I know now.

  "The ground crew is outside; help them get my chair down, please. Then tell the boys I want to see them, an hour from now, in the building where they had their ground school. I'll talk to all of you then. Just to give you something to think about in the meantime, Tumble: I didn't let you fly me down."

  "But—but—that's silly—you came with me—"

  "Help move the chair, please." Bowen's face did not soften, and he said no more.

  The end of the hour found the four boys waiting impatiently in the little classroom where they had learned most of what they knew about Phoenix rockets. Uncle Jim was a few minutes late. Tumble had repeated Bowen's last words to the others, and they had spent most of the interval trying to decide what had been meant. The boys had not succeeded when the wheel chair rolled through the door.

  Bowen faced the silent, scared group and looked thoughtfully at them for a moment.

  "I gather," he said at length, "that all of you are pretty well ashamed of yourselves. So you should be. Three of you knew you were being tested for ability to solve one of the most important problems in the world today, and yet you did things which would make anyone who knew of them wonder what you used for common sense—the very last sort of mistakes you should have made. The fourth was in a different situation, since in spite of a lot of evidence he wasn't sure whether we were telling him the whole truth or were simply a group of swindlers and pirates. If he had stolen his rocket and tried to escape to Earth, I would have had nothing to say against his action. But when he went joy riding to the moon, it put him right in the same boat with the rest of you—or more accurately, in the same one you all stepped into later.

  "There were really two parts to the idea which Peter had last spring. One involved the question of whether boys your age could overcome space sickness and learn to operate interplanetary rockets. That one was solved very satisfactorily—you can.

  "The other one was the question of whether boys your age could be trusted to operate rockets, and explore the solar system without adult supervision—an important question, since it seems that such supervision can't be given. How do you think you did on that test?"

  He was silent for a few moments, looking at each in turn.

  "Dr. Bowen." Tumble spoke in a lower tone than any of them had heard him use. "Yes, Tumble?"

  "You're right in saying that I didn't trust you when I took the ship. I should have; I knew when I saw the station that you must be telling mostly the truth. Maybe it doesn't make any difference now, but I want to tell you how I've felt since, and why I felt the way
I did.

  "I never had any folks; one friend looked after me ever since I was too small to remember. He's been good to me. He's given me all I ever had, and it was he who told me all the things I believed when you first caught me. I couldn't believe he was lying to me.

  "I know now that he was either lying, or honestly wrong. I believe the second, because of what he's done for me, but I'll never be able to tell you how I felt when I got back to the station and saw the shape you and the other men were in, and knew it was because of me that you'd done what you did. You had no reason to do anything for me at all, but all of you did. That was enough for me. You were as much friends of mine as —he is.

  "I'm not going to tell you who the person is who had me spying on you, because I still can't believe he meant to do anything really wrong; but I'm done working for him against you. You can kick me out or let me stay—that doesn't matter; I won't tell anything you don't want me to, either way."

  Bowen's features softened a trifle, and something that might have been the beginning of a smile appeared on his face.

  "Good enough, Tumble. How about the rest of you?" Bart answered for the three.

  "What can we say? We can see how silly we were when we look at it now, but it all seemed the right thing to do then. I don't know whether we'd be any different next time, either. Pete saw Tumble and started to get to him without thinking; Dart and I missed Pete, and couldn't see leaving him."

  "And if any one of you had done differently, I'd have disowned him!" The smile was in full evidence now. "Don't misunderstand me; you were a silly bunch of youngsters, and don't think for one moment you did right. Just the same, you showed the courage and willingness to help others even at the risk of your own hides which any explorer has to have, and that's what will probably keep you alive in this business. You're a bunch of silly, insubordinate, unthinking, and impulsive young idiots, and I'll probably have to invent some drastic forms of punishment to keep you in hand for the next few years; but if you are willing to risk it, I certainly am. Are you on?"