"Hollifield!" Bruce snapped awake. "Let's try you on first aid."
For thirty minutes Bruce demonstrated air tourniquets and emergency suit patches, artificial respiration for a man in a space suit, what to do for Sun stroke, for anoxia, for fractures. "That'll do," the Scoutmaster concluded. "One thing: What do you do if a man cracks his helmet?"
Bruce was puzzled. "Why," he blurted, "you bury him."
"Check," the Scoutmaster agreed. "So be careful. Okay, sports - six hours of sleep. Sam, set the watch."
Sam assigned six boys, including himself. Bruce asked, "Shouldn't I take a watch?"
Mr. Andrews intervened. "No. And take yourself off, Sam. You'll take Bruce on his two - man hike tomorrow; you'll need your sleep."
"Okay, Skipper." He added to Bruce, "There's nothing to it. I'll show you." The Scout on duty watched several instruments, but, as with suits, the important one was the blood - oxygen reading. Stale air was passed through a calcium oxide bath, which precipitated carbon dioxide as calcium carbonate. The purified air continued through dry sodium hydroxide, removing water vapor.
"The kid on watch makes sure the oxygen replacement is okay," Sam went on. "If anything went wrong, he'd wake us and we'd scramble into suits."
Mr. Andrews shooed them to bed. By the time Bruce had taken his turn at the sanitary unit and found a place to lie down, the harmonica was sobbing: "Day is done Gone the Sun..."
It seemed odd to hear Taps when the Sun was still overhead. They couldn't wait a week for sundown, of course. These colonials kept funny hours... bed at what amounted to early evening, up at one in the morning. He'd ask Sam. Sam wasn't a bad guy - a little bit know - it - all. Odd to sleep on a bare floor, too - not that it mattered with low gravity. He was still pondering it when his ears were assaulted by Reveille, played on the harmonica.
Breakfast was scrambled eggs, cooked on the spot. Camp was struck, and the troop was moving in less than an hour. They headed for Base Camp at a lope.
The way wound through passes, skirted craters. They had covered thirty miles and Bruce was getting hungry when the pathfinder called, "Heel and toe!" They converged on an air lock, set in a hillside.
Base Camp had not the slick finish of Luna City, being rough caverns sealed to air tightness, but each troop had its own well - equipped troop room. Air was renewed by hydroponic garden, like Luna City; there was a Sun power plant and accumulators to last through the long, cold nights.
Bruce hurried through lunch; he was eager to start his two - man hike. They outfitted as before, except that reserve air and water replaced packaged grub. Sam fitted a spring - fed clip of hiking rations into the collar of Bruce's suit.
The Scoutmaster inspected them at the lock. "Where to, Sam?"
"We'll head southeast. I'll blaze it."
"Hmm - rough country. Well, back by midnight, and stay out of caves."
"Yes, sir."
Outside Sam sighed, "Whew! I thought he was going to say not to climb."
"We're going to?"
"Sure. You can, can't you?"
"Got my Alpine badge."
"I'll do the hard part, anyhow. Let's go."
Sam led out of the hills and across a baked plain. He hit an eight - mile gait, increased it to a twelve - miler. Bruce swung along, enjoying it. "Swell of you to do this, Sam."
"Nuts. If I weren't here, I'd be helping to seal the gymnasium."
"Just the same, I need this hike for my Mooncraft badge."
Sam let several strides pass. "Look, Bruce - you don't really expect to make Lunar Eagle?"
"Why not? I've got my optional badges. There are only four required ones that are terribly different: camping, Mooncraft, path finding, and pioneering. I've studied like the dickens and now I'm getting experience.
"I don't doubt you've studied. But the Review Board are tough eggs. You've got to be a real Moon hand to get by."
"They won't pass a Scout from Earth?"
"Put it this way. The badges you need add up to one thing, Mooncraft. The examiners are old Moon hands; you won't get by with book answers. They'll know how long you've been here and they'll know you don't know enough."
Bruce thought about it. "It's not fair!"
Sam snorted. "Mooncraft isn't a game; it's the real thing. 'Did you stay alive?' If you make a mistake, you flunk - and they bury you."
Bruce had no answer.
Presently they came to hills; Sam stopped and called Base Camp. "Parsons and Hollifield, Troop One - please take a bearing."
Shortly Base replied, "One one eight. What's your mark?"
"Cairn with a note."
"Roger."
Sam piled up stones, then wrote date, time, and their names on paper torn from a pad in his pouch, and laid it on top. "Now we start up."
The way was rough and unpredictable; this canyon had never been a watercourse. Several times Sam stretched a line before he would let Bruce follow. At intervals he blazed the rock with his hammer. They came to an impasse, five hundred feet of rock, the first hundred of which was vertical and smooth.
Bruce stared. "We're going up that?"
"Sure. Watch your Uncle Samuel." A pillar thrust up above the vertical pitch. Sam clipped two lines together and began casting the bight up toward it. Twice he missed and the line floated down. At last it went over.
Sam drove a piton into the wall, off to one side, clipped a snap ring to it, and snapped on the line. He had Bruce join him in a straight pull on the free end to test the piton. Bruce then anchored to the snap ring with a rope strap; Sam started to climb.
Thirty feet up, he made fast to the line with his legs and drove another piton; to this he fastened a safety line. Twice more he did this. He reached the pillar and called, "Off belay!"
Bruce unlinked the line; it snaked up the cliff. Presently Sam shouted, "On belay!"
Bruce answered, "Testing," and tried unsuccessfully to jerk down the line Sam had lowered.
"Climb," ordered Sam.
"Climbing." One - sixth gravity, Bruce decided, was a mountaineer's heaven. He paused on the way up only to unsnap the safety line.
Bruce wanted to "leapfrog" up the remaining pitches, but Sam insisted on leading. Bruce was soon glad of it; he found three mighty differences between climbing on Earth and climbing here; the first was low gravity, but the others were disadvantages: balance climbing was awkward in a suit, and chimney climbing, or any involving knees and shoulders, was clumsy and carried danger of tearing the suit.
They came out on raw, wild upland surrounded by pinnacles, bright against black sky. "Where to?" asked Bruce.
Sam studied the stars, then pointed southeast. "The photomaps show open country that way."
"Suits me." They trudged away; the country was too rugged to lope. They had been traveling a long time, it seemed to Bruce, when they came out on a higher place from which Earth could be seen. "What time is it?" he asked.
"Almost seventeen," Sam answered, glancing up.
"We're supposed to be back by midnight."
"Well," admitted Sam, "I expected to reach open country before now."
"We're lost?"
"Certainly not! I've blazed it. But I've never been here before. I doubt if anyone has."
"Suppose we keep on for half an hour, then turn back?"
"Fair enough." They continued for at least that; Sam conceded that it was time to turn.
"Let's try that next rise," urged Bruce.
"Okay." Sam reached the top first. "Hey, Bruce - we made it!"