There was no reprieve from the death sentence, not hereon the Moon, not with no communications in operation.
Even on Earth there were a few fugitive patches where, without radio handy, a man might die without the hand of his fellow man to help him, without the heart of his fellow man to pity him, without even the eye of his fellow man to discover the corpse. Here on the Moon, there were few spots that were otherwise.
Earthmen knew he was on the Moon, of course. He had been part of a geological expedition-no, selenological expedition! Odd, how his Earth-centered mind insisted on the 'geo-.'
Wearily he drove himself to think, even as he worked. Dying though he was, he still felt that artificially imposed clarity of thought. Anxiously he looked about. There was nothing to see He was in the dark of the eternal shadow of the northern interior of the wall of the crater, a blackness relieved only by the intermittent blink of his flash. He kept that intermittent, partly because he dared not consume its power source before he was through and partly because he dared not take more than the minimum chance that it be seen.
On his left hand, toward the south along the nearby horizon of the Moon, was a crescent of bright white Sunlight. Beyond the horizon, and invisible, was the opposite lip of the crater. The Sun never peered high enough over the lip of his own edge of the crater to illuminate the floor immediately beneath his feet. He was safe from radiation- from that at least.
He dug carefully but clumsily, swathed as he was in his spacesuit. His side ached abominably.
The dust and broken rock did not take up the 'fairy castle' appearance characteristic of those portions of the Moon's surface exposed to the alternation of light and dark, heat and cold. Here, in eternal cold, the slow crumbling of the crater wall had simply piled fine rubble in a heterogeneous mass. It would not be easy to tell there had been digging going on.
He misjudged the unevenness of the dark surface for a moment and spilled a cupped handful of dusty fragments. The particles dropped with the slowness characteristic of the Moon and yet with the appearance of a blinding speed, for there was no air resistance to slow them further still and spread them out into a dusty haze.
Jennings' flash brightened for a moment, and he kicked a jagged rock out of the way. He hadn't much time. He dug deeper into the dust.
A little deeper and he could push the Device into the depression and begin covering it. Strauss must not find it.
Strauss!
The other member of the team. Half-share in the discovery. Half-share in the renown.
If it were merely the whole share of the credit that Strauss had wanted, Jennings might have allowed it. The discovery was more important than any individual credit that might go with it. But what Strauss wanted was something far more, something Jennings would fight to prevent.
One of the few things Jennings was willing to die to prevent. And he was dying.
They had found it together. Actually, Strauss had found the ship or, better, the remains of theship; or, better still, what just conceivably might havebeen the remains of something analogous to a ship.
'Metal,' said Strauss, as he picked up something ragged and nearly amorphous. His eyes and face could just barely be seen through the thick lead glass of the visor, but his rather harsh voice sounded clearly enough through the suit radio.
Jennings came drifting over from his own position half a mile away. He said, 'Odd! There is no free metal on the Moon.'
There shouldn't be. But you know well enough they haven't explored more than one per cent of the
Moon's surface. Who knows what can be found on it?'
Jennings grunted assent and reached out his gauntlet to take the object.
It was true enough that almost anything might be found on the Moon for all anyone really knew. Theirs was the first privately financed selenographic expedition ever to land on the Moon. 'I'll l then, there had been only government-conducted shotgun affairs, with half a dozen ends in view. It was a sign of the advancing space age that the Geological Society could afford to send two men to the Moon for selenological studies only.
Strauss said, 'It looks as though it once had a polished surface.'
'You're right,' said Jennings. 'Maybe there's more about.'
They found three more pieces, two of trifling size and one a jagged object that showed traces of a seam.
'Let's take them to the ship,' said Strauss.
They took the small skim boat back to the mother ship.
They shucked their suits once on board, something Jennings at least was always glad to do. He scratched vigorously at his ribs and rubbed his cheeks till his light skin reddened into welts.
Strauss eschewed such weakness and got to work. The laser beam pock-marked the metal and the vapor recorded itself on the spectrograph. Titanium-steel, essentially, with a hint of cobalt and molybdenum.
That's artificial, all right,' said Strauss. His broad-boned face was as dour and as hard as ever. He showed no elation, although Jennings could feel his own heart begin to race.
It may have been the excitement that trapped Jennings into beginning, 'This is a development against which we must steel ourselves-' with a faint stress on 'steel' to indicate the play on words.
Strauss, however, looked at Jennings with an icy distaste, and the attempted set of puns was choked off. Jennings sighed. He could never swing it, somehow. Never could! He remembered at the University-
Well, never mind. The discovery they had made was worth a far better-pun than any he could construct for all Strauss's calmness.
Jennings wondered if Strauss could possibly miss the significance.
He knew very little about Strauss, as a matter of fact, except by selenological reputation. That is, he had read Strauss's papers and he presumed Strauss had read his. Although their ships might well have passed by night in their University days, they had never happened to meet until after both had volunteered for this expedition and had been accepted.
In the week's voyage, Jennings had grown uncomfortably aware of the other's stocky figure, his sandy hair and china-blue eyes, and the way the muscles over his prominent jawbones worked when he ate. Jennings, himself, much slighter in build, also blue-eyed, but with darker hair, tended to withdraw automatically from the heavy exudation of the other's power and drive.
Jennings said, 'There's no record of any ship ever having landed on this part of the Moon. Certainly none has crashed.'
'If it were a part of a ship,' said Strauss, 'it should be smooth and polished. This is eroded and, without an atmosphere here, that means exposure to micrometeor bombardment over many years.'
Then he did see the significance. Jennings said, with an almost savage jubilation, 'It's a non-human artifact. Creatures not of Earth once visited the Moon. Who knows how long ago?'
'Who knows?' agreed Strauss dryly.
'In the report-'
'Wait,' said Strauss imperiously. Time enough to report when we have something to report. If it was a ship, there will be more to it than what we now have.'
But there was no point in looking further just then. They had been at it for hours, and the next meal and sleep were overdue. Better to tackle the whole job fresh and spend hours at it. They seemed to agree on that without speaking.
The Earth was low on the eastern horizon, almost full in phase, bright and blue-streaked. Jennings looked at it while they ate and experienced, as he always did, a sharp homesickness.
'It looks peaceful enough,' he said, 'but there are six billion people busy on it.'
Strauss looked up from some deep inner life of his own and said, 'Six billion people ruining it!' Jennings frowned. 'You're not an Ultra, are you?'
Strauss said, 'What the hell are you talking about?'
Jennings felt himself flush. A flush always showed against his fair skin, turning it pink at the slightest upset of the even tenor of his emotions. He found it intensely embarrassing. He turned back to his food, without saying anything.