Ted reached out with his chin, snapping at the trouble-making tube with his teeth. The tube dangled enticingly several inches from his mouth. He stuck out his tongue, tried to wrap it around the tube, succeeded only in feeling the cold blast of ice that covered the face plate.
“I can’t do it,” he said.
“All right, forget it. We’re wasting time. Follow the strap back to the sled. I’ll take your hand when you get here.”
Ted turned and wiggled out of the strap. He grabbed it firmly in his hands and followed it hand over hand back to the sled. He groped like a blind man, the sheet of ice before his face as formidable as blinkers.
He felt Forbes’s hand close over his. He waited.
“I’ll lead you around to the back of the sled. You’ll have to push from now on. I’ll call directions.”
“All right.”
Forbes swung his arm around, and Ted followed it to the back of the sled. He groped around clumsily, finally found the runners and gripped them tightly.
“I’m ready,” he said.
“We’ve got clear sailing for about fifty yards. We turn right then to avoid a high rock. I’ll let you know just when. Let’s go, boy.”
Ted began pushing, bent over double, his arms and shoulders bearing down against the runners. It was a change, that much he could say. His muscles ached from pulling, and now they were pushing. He felt terribly confined within his helmet. A wall of white met his eyes whenever he glanced up. And he knew that each time he exhaled, moisture was being added to that wall, moisture that froze instantly. He kept pushing.
“A little to the right,” Forbes called. “That’s it. Now to your left, just a trifle. That’s the boy. Straight ahead. Fine. Fine.”
The calling went on as the figures fought their way against the night. A crippled man directing a boy with a blanked-out face plate. The halt leading the blind. The Moon no longer found it funny.
The calls stopped suddenly.
Ted jerked the sled to a halt and looked up. “Forbes?”
No answer.
“Forbes?”
“Straight... ahead,” the voice came. It was feeble, weak.
Panic clutched at Ted’s heart. “Forbes!” he shouted. “Are you all right?”
“Straight ahead.” The voice was weaker this time.
“Forbes!” Ted sprang erect and groped his way around the side of the sled. He fell to his knees, clambered to his feet again. He tripped over a sharp rock and fell flat on his stomach, rolling away from the sled. He sat up then and stared around. Tentatively, he reached out with his hands, feeling for the sled. He leaned forward.
Where was the sled? Where had it gone?
He got to his knees, his tongue swollen in his mouth, the taste of dead ashes in his throat. He pawed the ground, pulling his gloved hand back when it contacted a sharp rock.
He was bathed in sweat now, a prisoner within the space suit, a blind man groping for a sled on the face of the Moon. Slowly, carefully, he got to his feet.
He stood stockstill, seeing no farther than the white sheet of ice four inches from his nose.
“Forbes?”
Nothing broke the stillness. Nothing but the sound of his own heart hammering against his ears.
“Dan! Dan, where are you?”
He stretched out his foot, feeling the ground gently. Carefully, he put it down, his arms outstretched. He lifted his other foot, placed that down. He took a third step.
“Dan? Dan, please, where are you?”
He lifted his foot and was about to put it down when the ground disappeared beneath it. He pitched forward slowly, like a balloon falling on the wind. He was rolling over then, and the tubes slithered over his face like a nest of snakes disturbed. He kept rolling, head over heels, down, down, seeing nothing, feeling only the sharp prods of rocks as they scraped against his suit.
Finally he stopped. He was lying flat on his back and the tubes were trailing over his face. He took a deep breath, despair flooding his senses. They’d never make it now, never. All this time wasted. He shook his head, surprised when his chin bumped against one of the tubes.
The tubes!
The fall had rearranged them, tearing some loose from their moorings. He tried to locate the troublesome tube that was blocking the hot-air duct.
He found it, and his heart skipped an anxious beat. It was hanging several inches from his mouth. He wet his lips and then stuck out his tongue. The tip of his tongue nudged the tube, filling his mouth with a rubbery taste. He craned his neck forward and suddenly closed his mouth around the tube. Elation filled him as he yanked back his head. The tube was firmly stuck to the duct.
A new thought sent terror racing through his brain. Suppose the duct had frozen over. Suppose...
Viciously, he yanked at the tube again.
It came free this time, almost pulling the cylinder from the wall of the helmet. Quickly he fumbled with the lever on the breastplate outside his suit. He heard a rush of air into his helmet, felt the blast of warmth as it reached curling fingers for his face.
He watched the heat attack the ice slowly. Impatiently, he turned up the lever to full, watching the ice turn shiny and wet, watching it finally dissolve into big chunks that slithered down the plexiglass and fell against his chest.
He could see a little now. The heat kept steaming up against the ice, boring a path through the whiteness. The face plate was getting clearer. He could make out a few rocks now. And suddenly the remaining ice seemed to crumble completely, like the ice around the freezing unit of a refrigerator when the box is being defrosted. It fell onto his chest and slithered down the length of his body. The face plate was completely clear now.
He saw the sled first, and he ran to it, shaking Forbes.
“Dan, Dan,” he cried.
“Straight ahead.” Forbes mumbled.
Ted stole a quick glance at the chrono. They had been traveling for almost twelve hours, the last few hours in total blindness. He tore his eyes from the luminous dial and looked out through the face plate.
He blinked his eyes, refusing to believe what he saw.
Archimedes!
No, no, it couldn’t be!
But it was, it was! Archimedes! He’d have recognized the crater anywhere. That meant... that meant the supplies! The supplies were only three miles away. Three miles — why he could make that in a matter of minutes. He didn’t bother with the strap this time. He picked up Forbes, getting a firm grip beneath his knees and his shoulders.
He began leaping across the face of the Moon, a weird bullfrog hopping across the night.
The supply rockets sprawled across the pumice like scattered bowling pins. Plaster of Paris dotted the pumice with white brilliance, a marker for the Moon explorers. There were four rockets all told, and Ted raced for the nearest one, prying open the hatch and rummaging inside for the oxygen cylinders he needed so badly. He could hear Forbes’s breath rasping into the suit radio, harsh and uneven. He imagined there was very little air left in Forbes’s suit, and he could begin to feel the strain of breathing the thin oxygen in his own helmet. When he found the stack of cylinders, he almost screamed in glee. He strapped one onto Forbes’s back immediately, adjusted the flow to full, shooting a fast stream into the weakening lieutenant’s helmet.
He put a container onto his own back, and shot a sweet, steady stream into his helmet. He sat back against the bulkhead of the supply rocket, a long sigh escaping his lungs.
After a while he adjusted the flow of Forbes’s oxygen to normal.
Tremulously, he called, “Dan? Dan?”
There was a long time before any answer came. When it did come, it was low and weak.
“Ted?” A pause, and then, “We made it, didn’t we?”