“By the sacred name of the Prophet Mrddl!” the two Corpsmen gasped in unison, struck speechless by what they saw.
“Yes, so now you know,” grated Superlarsh through angry teeth. “But, ha-ha, I’ll bet you never suspected.”
“You!!” Steel insufflated, breaking the frozen silence. “You! You!! YOU!!!”
“Yes, me, I, Colonel von Thorax, Commandant of the CCC. You never suspected me and, ohh, how I laughed at you all of the time.”
“But …” Jax stammered. “Why?”
“Why? The answer is obvious to any but democratic interstellar swine like you. The only thing the larshniks of the galaxy had to fear was something like the CCC, a powerful force impervious to outside bribery or sedition, noble in the cause of righteousness. You could have caused us trouble. Therefore we founded the CCC, and I have long been head of both organizations. Our recruiters bring in the best that the civilized planets can offer, and I see to it that most of them are brutalized, their morale destroyed, bodies wasted, and spirits crushed so they are no longer a danger. Of course, a few always make it through the course no matter how disgusting I make it — every generation has its share of super-masochists, but I see that these are taken care of pretty quickly.”
“Like being sent on suicide missions?” Steel asked ironically.
“That’s a good way.”
“Like the one we were sent on — but it didn’t work! Say your prayers, you filthy larshnik, for you are about to meet your maker!”
“Maker? Prayers? Are you out of your skull? All larshniks are atheists to the end ….”
And then it was the end, in a coruscating puff of vapor, dead with those vile words upon his lips, no less than he deserved.
“Now what?” Steel asked.
“This,” Jax responded, shooting the gun from his hand and imprisoning him instantly with an unbreakable paralysis ray. “No more second best for me — stuck in the engine room with you on the bridge. This is my ball game from here on in.”
“Are you mad!” Steel fluttered through paralyzed lips.
“Sane for the first time in my life. The superlarsh is dead, long live the new superlarsh. It’s mine, the whole galaxy, mine.”
“And what about me?”
“I should kill you, but that would be too easy. And you did share your chocolate bars with me. You will be blamed for this entire debacle. For the death of Colonel von Thorax and for the disaster here at larshnik prime base. Every man’s hand will be against you, and you will be an outcast and will flee for your life to the farflung outposts of the galaxy where you will live in terror.”
“Remember the chocolate bars!”
“I do. All I ever got were the stale ones. Now … GO!”
You want to know my name? Old Sarge is good enough. My story? Too much for your tender ears, boyo. Just top up the glasses, that’s the way, and join me in a toast. At least that much for a poor old man who has seen much in this long lifetime. A toast of bad luck, bad cess I say, may Great Kramddl curse forever the man some know as Gentleman Jax. What, hungry? Not me, no, NO! Not a chocolate bar!!!!!
DOWN TO EARTH
“Gino … Gino … help me! For God’s sake, do something!”
The tiny voice scratched in Gino Lombardi’s earphone, weak against the background roar of solar interference. Gino lay flat in the lunar dust, half-buried by the pumice-fine stuff, arm extended and reaching far down into the cleft in the rock. Through the thick fabric of his suit he felt the edge crumbling and pulled hastily back. The dust and pieces of rock fell instantly, pulled down by the light lunar gravity, unimpeded by any trace of air. A fine mist of dust settled on Glazer’s helmet below, partially obscuring his tortured face.
“Help me, Gino, get me out of here,” he implored, stretching his arm up over his head.
“It’s no good,” Gino answered, putting as much of his weight onto the crumbling lip of rock as he dared, reaching far down. His hand was still a good yard short of the other’s groping glove. “I can’t reach you — and I’ve got nothing here I can let down for you to grab. I’m going back to the Bug.”
“Don’t leave …” Glazer called, but his voice was cut off as Gino slid back from the crevice and scrambled to his feet. Their tiny helmet radios did not have enough power to send a signal through the rock, were good only for line-of-sight communication.
Gino ran as fast as he could, long gliding jumps one after the other back towards the Bug. It did look more like a bug here, a red beetle squatting on the lunar landscape, its four spidery support legs sunk into the dust. He cursed under his breath as he ran: what a hell of an ending for the first Moon flight! A good blast-off and a perfect orbit, the first two stages had dropped on time, the lunar orbit was right, the landing had been perfect. And ten minutes after they had walked out of the Bug, Glazer had to fall into this crevice hidden under the powdery dust. To come all this way, through all the multiple hazards of space, then to fall into a hole … There was just no justice.
At the base of the ship Gino flexed his legs and bounded high up towards the top section of the Bug, grabbing onto the bottom of the still open door of the cabin. He had planned his moves while he ran, the magnetometer would be his best bet. Pulling it from the rack he yanked at its long cable until it came free in his hand, then turned back without wasting a second. It was a long leap back to the surface — in Earth gravitational terms — but he ignored the apparent danger and jumped, sinking knee deep in the dust when he landed. The row of, scuffled tracks stretched out towards the slash of the lunar crevice: he ran all the way, chest heaving in spite of the pure oxygen he was breathing. Throwing himself flat he skidded and wriggled like a snake, back to the crumbling lip.
“Get ready, Glazer,” he shouted, his head ringing inside the helmet with the captive sound of his own voice. “Grab the cable ….”
The crevice was empty. More of the soft rock had crumbled away and Glazer had fallen from sight.
For a long time Major Gino Lombardi lay there, flashing his light into the seemingly bottomless slash in the satellite’s surface, calling on his radio with the power turned full on. His only answer was static, and gradually he became aware of the cold from the eternally chilled rocks that was seeping through the insulation of his suit. Glazer was gone, that was all there was to it.
After this Gino did everything that he was supposed to do in a methodical, disinterested way. He took rock samples, dust samples, meter readings, placed the recording instruments exactly as he had been shown, then fired the test shot in the precisely drilled hole. When this was done he gathered all the records from the instruments and went back to the Bug. When the next orbit of the Apollo spacecraft brought it overhead he turned on the cabin transmitter and sent up a call.
“Come in, Dan … Colonel Danton Coye, can you.hear me…”
“Loud and clear,” the speaker crackled. “Tell me you guys, how does it feel to be walking on the Moon?”
“Glazer is dead. I’m alone. I have all the data and photographs required. Permission requested to cut this stay shorter than planned. I don’t think there is any need to stay down here any longer.”
For long seconds there was just the crackling silence; then Dan’s voice came in, the same controlled, Texas drawl.
“Roger, Gino, stand by for computer signal. I think we can meet in the next orbit.”
The moon takeoff went as smoothly as the rehearsal had gone in the mock-up back on earth; and Gino was too busy doing double duty to have time to think about what had happened. He was strapped in when the computer radio signal fired the engines that burned down into the lower portion of the Bug and lifted the upper half free, blasting it upwards the rendezvous in space with the orbiting mother ship. The joined sections of the Apollo came into sight and Gino realized he would pass in front of it, going too fast: he made the course corrections with a sensation of deepest depression. The computer had not allowed for the reduced mass of the lunar rocket with only one passenger aboard. After this, matching orbits was not too difficult and minutes later he crawled through the entrance of the command module and sealed it behind him. Dan Coye stayed at the controls, not saying anything until the cabin pressure had stabilized and they could remove their helmets.