The sight cheered Paul considerably. He straightened his shoulders and his necktie. The little cortege halted fifty feet in front of the gate and he, Margo, and Doc walked forward, preceded by their inky, purple-and-yellow-edged shadows.
A brazen mechanical voice came out of the box over the door, saying, “Stop where you are. You are about to trespass on restricted property of the United States Government. You may not pass this gate. Return the way you came. Thank you.”
“Oh, my sainted aunt!” Doc exploded. Since being relieved of cot-lugging by young Harry McHeath, he’d got his bounce back. “Do you think we’re an advance deputation of little green men?” he shouted at the box. “Can’t you see we’re human beings?”
Paul touched Doc’s arm and shook his head, but continued to advance. He called out in a mellow voice: “I am Paul Hagbolt, 929-CW, JR, accredited PR captain-equivalent of Project Moon. I am asking admission for myself and eleven distressed persons known to me, and requesting transport for the latter.”
A soldier stepped from the darkness of the doorway out into the light of the Wanderer. There was no mistaking he was a soldier, for he had boots on his feet and a helmet on his head; a pistol, knife, and two grenades hung from his belt; his right arm cradled a submachine gun, and tightly harnessed to his back — Paul noted incredulously — were jump rockets.
The soldier was pokerfaced and he stood stiffly, but his right knee was jouncing up and down a little, rapidly and steadily, as if he were about to go into a stamping native dance or, more reasonably, as if he were trying to control a tic and not succeeding.
“CW and JR, eh?” he said to Paul, suspiciously but also respectfully. “Let’s see your ID cards…sir.”
There was a faint, acid odor. Miaow, who had been remarkably calm since the landslide, lifted a little in Margo’s arms, looked straight at the soldier, and hissed like a teakettle.
Handing the soldier the cards, which he had ready, Paul caught a sharp tremor.
As the soldier studied the cards, tipping them forward to catch the Wanderer’s light, his face stayed expressionless, but Doc noticed that his eyes kept jumping away from the cards to the Wanderer.
Doc asked conversationally, “Heard anything about that?”
The soldier looked Doc straight in the eye and barked: “Yes, we know all about that and we’re not intimidated! But we’re not releasing any information, see?”
“Yes, I do,” Doc told him softly.
The soldier looked up from the cards. “Very well, Mr. Hagbolt, sir, I’ll phone your request to the main gate.” He backed off toward the doorway.
“You’re sure you’ve got it right?” Paul asked, repeating and amplifying it and mentioning the names of several officers.
“And Professor Morton Opperly,” Margo put in with strong emphasis.
Paul finished: “And one of our people has had a heart attack. We’ll want to bring her in the tower, where it’s warmer. And we’d like some water.”
“No, you all stay outside,” the soldier said sharply, raising the muzzle of the submachine gun an inch as he continued to back away. “Wait,” he called to Paul. “You come here.” From the darkness inside the tower he handed Paul first a loose blanket, next a half-gallon bottle of water. “But no paper cups!” he added, choking off what might have become a high-pitched laugh. “Don’t ask me for paper cups!” He drew back into the darkness, and there was the sound of dialing.
Paul returned with his booty, handing the blanket to the thin woman. The water was passed around. They drank from the bottle.
“I expect we’ll have to wait a bit,” Paul whispered. “Tm sure he’s O.K., but he’s pretty nervous. He looked all set to stand off the new planet singlehanded.”
Margo said: “Miaow could smell how scared he was.”
“Well,” Doc philosophized softly, “if I’d been all alone when I first saw the thing, but with the hardware handy, I think I’d have switched the lights off and draped myself with the hardware and shook a bit myself. We met the new planet under just about the best circumstances, I’d say — peering around for saucers and talking about hyperspace and all.”
Ann said: “I’d think if you were scared, Mr. Brecht, you’d switch on all the lights you could.”
Doc said, “My wicked idea, young lady, was that I’d be so terrified I wouldn’t want something big, black, and hairy able to see where I was, to grab me.”
Ann laughed appreciatively.
The Little Man said to them all in a small, almost unfeeling, faraway voice: “The moon is swinging behind the new planet. She’s…going away.”
Eyes confirmed what the words had said. A chunk of the moon’s rim was hidden by the purple-and-gold intruder.
Wojtowicz said: “My God…my God.”
The thin woman began to sob shudderingly.
Rama Joan said: “Give us courage.”
Margo’s lips formed the word, “Don,” and she shivered and hugged Miaow to her. Paul put his arm around her shoulders, but she moved away a little, head bowed.
Hunter said: “The moon’s in a very constricted orbit. There can’t be more than three thousand miles between their surfaces.”
The Ramrod thought: Her birth-pangs upon her, the White Virgin shelters in Ispan’s robes.
The Little Man made a cup of his hands and Rama Joan poured a drink for Ragnarok.
Colonel Mabel Wallingford said stridently: “Spike, I’ve been talking with General Vandamme himself and he says that this isn’t a problem. They’ve been letting us handle a lot of it because we were faster on the jump. Your orders have gone out approved-and-relayed.”
Spike Stevens, his eyes fixed on the twin screens showing the moon moving behind the Wanderer, bit off the end of a cigar and snarled: “O. K., tell him to prove it.”
“Jimmy, warm up the inter-HQ screen,” Colonel Mabel ordered.
The General lit his cigar.
A third screen glowed on, showing a smiling, distinguished-looking gentleman with a bald head. The General whipped his cigar out of his mouth and stood up. Colonel Mabel felt a surge of hot joy, watching him play the guilty, dutiful schoolboy.
“Mr. President,” Spike said.
“I’m not part of a simulated crisis, Spike,” the other responded, “though it’s hard to believe that’s been bothering you, considering the masterly way your gang’s been operating.”
“Not masterly at all, sir,” the General said. “I’m afraid we’ve lost Moonbase. Not a word for over an hour.”
The face on the screen grew grave. “We must be prepared for losses. I am now leaving Space HQ to meet the Coast Guard. My word to you is: Carry on!…for the duration of this…” You could sense him reaching for one of his famous polished phrases…"astronomical emergency.”
The screen faded.
Colonel Willard Griswold, his eyes on the astronomic screens, said: “Moonbase? Hell, Spike, we’ve lost the moon.”
Chapter Twelve
Don Merriam had been fifteen minutes in the body of the moon, doing much of it at two miles a second, and now the violet-and-yellow thread, after widening to a ribbon, was staying the same width, which couldn’t be good, but there was nothing to do but bullet toward it through the incredible flaw that split the moon along an almost perfect plane like a diamond tapped just right, and nothing to be but one great piloting eye, and suffer what thoughts to come that would, since he couldn’t spare mind to control them.