Susan paused. The lieutenant was right-she was only following orders. Taking a suit from a peg, Susan began pulling it on. "Why am I meeting Hyatt at the mining camp?" she asked. "Why not at the ship?"
"Don't talk," the lieutenant said, frowning. She shrugged her shoulders into the upper half of the life-support suit. "Someone might have a parabolic pick-up trained on this airlock."
Susan nodded, and fell silent as she continued to dress.
The room was cramped, which made for slow and uncomfortable work, but the two women finished at almost the same time. The lieutenant pulled the blaster from its holster, attaching it to the appropriate brace on the outside of her suit.
"You're expecting trouble?" Susan asked.
"I hope not, but we have to be ready just in case." She put on her helmet and activated her suit.
Susan put on her own helmet, then activated the suit. She tapped a switch in the helmet with her tongue. FULL, painted a glowing message on the visor, indicating the status of the suit's air tanks.
The lieutenant turned to the controls beside the door and pressed a button. The muffled hiss of air being sucked from the airlock lasted several seconds, then stopped. She pressed another button and the door irised open.
Light slashed out into total darkness beyond as she stepped from the airlock and to her left. The blackness swallowed her. Hesitantly, Susan followed. She felt uneven ground beneath her life-support suit's heavy boots. The door irised closed behind her, and she was suddenly alone in the dark, seemingly cut off from the rest of the universe.
Brilliant overhead lights flared on, and she blinked. She stood in a high-domed chamber carved from the lunar rock. On the far side of the chamber, fifty feet away, stood a large metal door, very much like an Earth-side hangar door. It didn't look air-tight; it was obviously meant to keep intruders out, not air in. Four standard-design, hydrogen powered open crawlers were parked along the wall to her right, their balloon tires giving them an awkward appearance.
The lieutenant stood to the left of the hangar door, her hand still on the light switch. She shuffled to Susan and they touched helmets.
"I don't have to tell you not to activate the radio circuit," Susan heard, muffled, in her helmet. She nodded. The frequency could be monitored. This way, whoever might be listening would not overhear.
"Let's have it," Susan said.
"There isn't time, Captain. And I really don't know anything, anyway. Can you drive one of those things?" She pointed toward the line of crawlers.
Again Susan nodded.
"Fine. Then follow me out. And whatever happens, don't turn on your headlights." She stepped away from Susan and shuffled toward the crawlers.
Susan stood unmoving for several seconds. Her questions remained unanswered. She had meant to ask why she was being taken to the mining camp. Before, Hyatt had been so eager to get off Luna. Now, this delay…Why?
The lieutenant stood beside one of the open crawlers, impatiently signaling Susan to follow. Susan nodded, exaggerating the motion in her helmet, then shuffled to the nearest crawler.
The large hydrogen and oxygen tanks left little room for a suited driver, but with an effort she squeezed in behind the wheel. The seat wasn't padded; she anticipated an uncomfortable ride.
Reaching down to the valves beneath her seat, Susan turned on the hydrogen, then the oxygen. She looked at the gauges on the dash. Both tanks registered nearly full pressure. She pressed the starter button and instantly felt the engine's vibration through the seat and heard it as it was conducted through her suit.
Putting the crawler into reverse with her left foot, she backed away from the wall, then maneuvered to face the hangar door. The lieutenant did the same ten yards ahead.
The overhead lights went out, leaving only the dim glow of the crawler's dash to break the darkness. Susan searched for the switch that controlled the overhead lights and found it beside the one marked door.
When she looked up, she saw a patch of black, star-speckled sky where the door had been only a few seconds before. It grew as she watched, and she could just make out the other crawler going through the opening, silhouetted against the unexpectedly bright field of stars. Shifting into forward gear, she followed the other crawler from the chamber.
She clutched the wheel with both hands and concentrated on driving, and on keeping the other crawler in sight. Without headlights, it would be a rough trip. Although the starlight was sufficient to make out the other crawler ahead if she really worked at it, it wasn't nearly bright enough to reveal every crater and bump. Her crawler lurched and jerked over the rough terrain, throwing her about between the tanks at her back and the steering wheel in front of her. She only hoped her guide knew the way well enough to keep them out of the deeper craters.
Chapter Twenty
They were nearly to the mining camp before Susan saw it.
Something wasn't right. The entire area around the camp should have been bathed in bright light, but it wasn't. There should have been the bustle of work, yet the only indications that the facility was even there were the shadow shapes of buildings blocking out sections of the sky's star field.
She stopped her crawler beside her guide's. She could just make out another vehicle parked ten yards beyond.
Unfastening her seat belt, she struggled from the crawler and started for the dirt-covered Quonset hut living quarters almost invisible fifty yards ahead. Then she stopped. Her escort sat in her crawler, unmoving. Susan shuffled back, bent, touched her helmet to her guide's.
"I have orders to leave you here, Captain," came the other'smuffled voice. "You'll return with director Hyatt."
Susan nodded in her helmet, although she was sure the other could not see it. She no longer felt anger toward her guide. The lieutenant's methods were unconventional, yet she had accomplished the task assigned her. She had delivered Susan safely, with minimum delay.
"Thanks," Susan said. She straightened, then turned and shuffled toward the mining camp's living quarters.
Chapter Twenty-one
The airlock's outer hatch stood open. Susan stepped in, then keyed the helmet chronometer with her tongue. The digits projected on her visor: 0812.
She waited for the outer hatch to close, but nothing happened. Then she realized that only manual airlocks existed when the mining camp was built. This was the oldest still-operating facility on Luna.
Yet the mining camp had been in nearly continuous use since its construction, almost a hundred years ago. It had brought more than its share of wealth to the lunar colony. Wouldn't the facility have been updated in all those years?
And again she wondered at the camp's lack of light and life.
She pulled the outer hatch closed and turned its locking ring. The red airlock light should have come on, casting its customary sight-adjusting glow, but it did not. She tongued her helmet lamp on and blinked in the sudden glare.
Within a few seconds her vision adjusted, and she turned in the small airlock to face the inner hatch. The light that should have glowed green when the airlock attained full pressure was broken-slivers of glass littered the floor, covered with a thin layer of dust. Obviously, the airlock had not been used in some time.
Again she felt the unnaturalness of the place. It seemed as if the camp had been deserted for years.
But that couldn't be. She remembered…
She pushed the thought away and reached to the manual air valve on the wall beside the door. Turning the handle, she waited for the hiss of air rushing into the airlock. For nearly half a minute she stood listening to the rasp of her breath and the pounding of her heart in her ears before she realized the airlock was not working. She turned the inner hatch's locking ring and pushed the heavy door open, then stepped through.