Moon of Mutiny Read online

  There wasn't much more to be learned. Apparently Dr. Sessions had somehow gotten to the wounded men and made an almost impossible success of patching up his spacesuit before he died from lack of air. It was an ugly accident.

  For a second, Fred hesitated, looking toward his father's office. Then he sighed and gave up the idea. Maybe this meant that another man could be taken on the expedition. But if so, that man would be Ramachundra. He knew his father well enough to be sure of that.

  He waited until the news came that the injured man was going to live, and then left the rec hall, along with most of the crowd. He was less sleepy than before, however. This time he managed to make a start in the book.

  The speaker in the hallway hooted for attention and began issuing a call. "Fred Halpern. Calling Fred Hal-pern. You're wanted in the Colonel's office, immediately. Report to the Colonel's office immediately."

  Chapter j Unwelcome Guest

  he was running down the hallway before the speaker stopped its clamor, trying to tell himself it meant nothing at all. It might only be that the wounded man needed blood that matched his blood type. He couldn't remember what that was, but they had it on file in the Station. But he didn't believe anything like that. It had to be something else, if the summons was to his father s office.

  There were two men in the office when he entered— his father and Dr. Sessions. Colonel Halpern looked weary, as if he'd skipped sleep again, but the mask was off now. Under the official expression of command was something else.

  Sessions turned toward Fred, and there was nothing of his normal ease about him. "Read that," he suggested.

  It was a typed transcript of a wireless message. The Station's position must be too far from the message station on Earth for voice signals. It was addressed to Dr. Sessions. "Regret inform you Halpern considered unfit for space. Technical skill as pilot excellent. Personal qualities unreliable." It was signed by Commandant Olson.

  "I told you all that, Dr. Sessions," Fred protested.

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  "I know you did. That's why I called Olson about you. I had to know whether you were a skilled pilot or not. This simply confirms your own story." Sessions stared at the boy, analyzing him. "You heard about the accident? Of course, of course. Well, the man was one of my copilots. There isn't another pilot here, and Earth informs me no ship can be fitted and fueled for at least twelve hours. That's too late—I'm cutting it fine enough as it is, without leaving when the Moon isn't in its best position. So I'm desperate."

  He paused for a second, and Colonel Halpem broke in. "Freddy, are you up to a Moon landing if something should happen to the pilot?"

  "Of course I am, Dad." There was no question about that in his mind. He'd managed a fair landing with almost no training and three years at the Academy had fitted him for almost any job in space. "But I don't have a license, and Dr. Sessions can't leave without licensed pilot and co-pilot."

  "I'll issue a temporary license, like those we use for all the taxi pilots," the Colonel told him.

  Dr. Sessions nodded. "Fine. Only I want one thing understood, Fred. You're still an unknown quantity to me, and I'm only taking you out of necessity. I'll expect absolute obedience. In space or on the Moon, I can have a man executed for mutiny if he fails to obey. And I warn you, if you can't take discipline after what I'm saying now, I'll consider you a mutineer sooner than I would anyone else. Under those conditions, do you want to sign on as co-pilot?"

  "When do we leave, sir?" Fred asked.

  Colonel Halpern sighed softly, and one of his rare smiles appeared. "Good man!" he exclaimed. It was the first time he'd ever called Fred a man.

  Sessions still didn't look happy about the arrangement, but he smiled faintly. "Better get to the ship as soon as you can. You'll be on the Kepler. We leave in three hours."

  This was long before the time given out publicly, but that wasn't surprising. Fred had guessed it already from the Moon's position, and had realized that the later time was given out to prevent the passengers becoming nervous in the last hour before take-off.

  Sessions turned and left. Colonel Halpern came around the desk, looking awkward and pleased. He held out his hand. "I won't have a chance to see you off, Fred, so I'll wish you good luck now. You're on your own. Make the most of it."

  "I'll try, Dad," Fred promised him. He gripped his father's hand, then walked quickly to the door. He hesitated with the door half open. Then he blurted out in a rush, "I'll miss you, Dad."

  Halpern looked up quickly, the smile spreading on his face. "Me too," he told Fred. "God bless you, boy."

  Outside the door, Fred stopped at the first corner, bracing himself against the wall until the trembling in his legs stopped. He'd given up all hope, and then this had happened. It was too much to believe at once, and the physical reaction left him momentarily weak. Then it passed, and he headed for his cabin to pack. He had to get to the Kepler in time for briefing.

  The pilot of the Kepler turned out to be Poorhouse, a veteran of the other Moon expeditions. Fred knew him slightly, and it was plain that Poorhouse remembered the boy he had seen first four years before. Pie didn't look happy when he discovered the identity of his copilot.

  "You probably won't have a thing to do," he explained. "But if you do, you'll have to be ready for it. Better memorize all this."

  There were pages of charts, instructions and figures. The course was exactly what Fred had known it must be, and he went through the charts only to satisfy Poorhouse. His eyes were mostly busy studying the two other ships visible through the control port. Since the ships would never operate in an atmosphere, there was no streamlining. They were built of uncovered girders that supported the motors and storage tanks for freight. The passenger compartment was another rounded tank at the front, and the tanks of fuel and oxidizer were huge plastic balloons, fastened on the outside where they could be scuttled when empty. Fred estimated the amount of fuel, then turned back to the manifest showing the amount of supplies they were carrying. It hardly seemed that they could carry it all.

  Abruptly, he remembered that the colony on the Moon finally had managed to get the making of fuel and liquid oxygen into production. The materials were common enough, available in the rocks, and the unshielded sunlight gave them enough power for the chemical operations. Oxygen was something they had to bake and electrolyze out of gypsum for their air, anyhow.

  The ships could carry much more cargo on this expedition, since they were not forced to take along fuel for the return trip. Fuel would be supplied by the colonists in exchange for supplies and equipment left after the expedition was over. Such things were desperately needed by the colony.

  There was a stirring behind him and he looked back to see Poorhouse checking on the seat belts of the eight men and women passengers on the Kepler. In a few minutes, the pilot came forward and took his seat, conferring by radio with the pilots of the other ships.

  When take-off came, there was nothing for Fred to do. He watched Poorhouse maneuver the controls. The man had been piloting for years, yet there was something sloppy about his work. He'd never been one of the best pilots, and he hadn't improved. Yet he seemed confident enough.

  The acceleration was fairly low, since the ships were not designed for the heavy drive needed in the ships that left from Earth. They began pulling away from the Station and spiraling out toward the orbit of the Moon, heading for where the Moon would be five days from now. The blast went on at this low acceleration far longer than would have been necessary for the rise from Earth. Two-thirds of their speed came from the rotational motion they already had around Earth in the Station orbit.

  Finally the blast was cut. Poorhouse had drifted away from the others. Fred began feeding information into the calculator at random, pretending to study the instruments carefully. He was putting in the final figures from the correction his mind had automatically supplied when the radio speaker buzzed.

  "Trim your course, Mr. Poorhouse," the voice of Lee Yeng ordered; he was the chie
f pilot, aboard Dr. Sessions' Copernicus.

  Fred passed over the final figures, tearing off the tape to make it seem that they were the sum of his other figures. Poorhouse grunted in surprise, looked doubtful, and then nodded.

  "I guess the new Academy education must be good for something," he said. "Thanks. But get ready to run a new set if you're off a little."

  He managed the controls somewhat better this time, using only one small blast to correct a tiny error that had crept into his piloting. He waited until the speaker acknowledged that the maneuver was correct. "Pretty good, Halpern. You had it figured dead right. Glad to have you aboard."

  It was a formal statement that should have been made when Fred first entered the ship, but still gratifying. "Thank you, Mr. Poorhouse. Glad to be aboard. Shall I go out and remove the empty tanks?"

  Poorhouse considered it, and nodded. It was a job Fred had read about in accounts of the first expedition. He climbed into his spacesuit, tested his oxygen supply, and dropped down toward the air lock. As he passed through it, he could see Earth, growing smaller. The ship was moving nearly seven miles a second. Since his speed and that of the ship were exactly the same, it felt as if he were standing on a motionless hull. The maze of girders and cables gave him enough handholds as he worked his way around, unlatching the manual releases on the emptied fuel tanks. The full ones would remain, since their contents would be used in landing. There was a small spring in each release that gave a slight outward push to the tanks and sent them drifting off slowly, beyond the path of the ship. It was easy work to anyone used to moving about in space, and completely safe; if he should drift away, there was always the tiny rocket pistol to use for getting back.

  That was the last interesting thing for three days. The ships drifted outward toward the Moon, losing speed gradually as Earth's gravity pulled at them. The men on board ate and slept and talked.

  Most of it was technical talk about the geology—or the selenology—of the Moon, and what they might learn. Fred couldn't follow it. Poorhouse was reading from a small microfilm set of books; they were all mystery stories, and Fred had never learned to like such fiction, even if there had been a spare reader. Space looked unchanging; the emptiness was jet black, and the stars tiny bright points, appearing farther away than when seen from Earth's atmosphere.

  The time seemed endless until they reached the position where the Moon's pull was stronger than that of Earth. Now they began picking up speed again, while the pilots used gyroscopes to turn the ships slowly, pointing the rockets toward the Moon instead of toward Earth.

  It was near the end of the fourth day that Fred discovered trouble. He had been running the landing figures through the computer for want of anything better to do. He already knew the results, of course, and the figures on the tape were a long way off.

  At his signal, Poorhouse bent over and they conferred in low voices, not wanting to disturb the passengers. Poorhouse checked the computer. He was slow and uncertain about it, but his results were even further off.

  "Busted," he agreed. He reached for the microphone.

  Fred stared at the computer doubtfully. "I guess it doesn't matter," he decided. "We know the figures."

  "We've still got to correct for any errors in maneuvers," Poorhouse told him. "A ship without a computer might as well be blind."

  "I can give you the correction figures out of my head," Fred said. "I've done it before in school and . . ."

  "School orbits!" Poorhouse grunted. "I suppose you'd be willing to trust your life to seat-of-the-pants piloting, would you? Nonsense."

  He began reporting the trouble over the radio. Fifteen minutes later there was a thump on the air lock and Fred let in a slim girl in a spacesuit. She shucked it quickly and began pulling tiny instruments out of a number of zip-pered pockets in her shorts.

  "Can you fix it?" Poorhouse asked, as she bent over the computer.

  She snorted. "I can fix the monster we're using for running our sub-surface Moon graphs," she told him. "This thing is easy."

  Fred scowled. Women might be as good as men in space, or even better, as some books claimed. But he didn't trust a girl with machinery—particularly one who considered a repair job too simple. He'd had his personal radio ruined by a repairwoman who scoffed at it as an easy job. But at least he understood why they had someone to repair the machine; an expedition using electronic gadgets in the exploring work would need an expert.

  "There—two transistors burned out. Simple." She wired the tiny things in place with a smoothness that almost convinced Fred and put the cover back.

  Poorhouse laughed. "Better check the transistors in Fred's head, too. We may need them. Oh, Mona Williams, this is Fred Halpern."

  She flashed a grin at Fred, but shook her head at the suggestion until Poorhouse told her of Fred's plan to figure the corrections in his head. Then she began laughing —a laughter in which the other passengers joined quickly, more out of boredom than because they could understand.

  Okay, Fred thought. Next time, maybe he'd keep his mouth shut. He went back to his seat, flushing angrily until Mona had gone. But that wasn't the end of the affair. Ten minutes later, the speaker buzzed. "Mr. Halpern." The voice was Dr. Sessions'.

  "Here, sir."

  "Mr. Halpern, I'm told you suggested landing by mental figuring without using your computer. I want an explanation."

  Fred sighed, realizing there was no sense in telling the whole story. He'd skimmed over that part of his trouble at the Academy, so apparently Sessions hadn't paid any attention to it. "I didn't know the computer could be repaired. I'm good with orbits, and I thought I should offer."

  Sessions seemed uncertain. Finally he grunted. "Okay. In that case, your offer is appreciated. But you'll do your piloting by computer."

  Poorhouse came back to the control seat, tapping his head and making little orbits in the air with one finger. It was a fine joke to him. Fred had a suspicion that the pilot's main trouble was his inability to plot accurate corrections on the computer; thus it wasn't hard to see why he couldn't conceive of anyone with a gift for sensing the complicated vector mathematics involved.

  The Moon was growing bigger and the ships mshing toward the rendezvous when the order came to start decelerating for the landing. At a signal from Lee Yeng, Poorhouse began applying power to slow their fall toward the ugly, pockmarked surface still hundreds of miles away.

  "You're off course, Mr. Poorhouse," Lee's voice rapped out.

  Poorhouse glanced toward Fred, who was already making the computation. It was slower using the computer than figuring it out in his head, but he was following orders. He could do it faster than Poorhouse.

  Then he caught his breath as the answer came out. One half of it was right, but the other half was complete nonsense. Mona had been too sure. She must have fixed the machine, but she hadn't checked thoroughly enough to see that something else was wrong—wrong enough to burn out the new transistors, as it had burned out the old ones. Poorhouse was waiting impatiently—and now there was no other solution.

  Fred rattled off the figures from his head, pretending he was reading them from the tape. Poorhouse nodded, and began setting up the controls. The blast altered slightly, and the Kepler drifted over toward the path of its fellow ships. Again, Fred made motions over the computer, punching it at random, and pretending to read the answer. The new setting brought them into a smooth descent beside the two other ships.

  "You're a first-class computer operator, even if you do have illusions," Poorhouse said in satisfaction. "We make a good team, at that."

  He seemed more confident as he took the later figures Fred supplied. He was not a poor pilot; he was just uncertain of his plotting and that ruined his control. Now his piloting firmed up, as he began to trust the course coordinates Fred gave him. They came rushing down toward the landing area near Emmett Base, now marked out with small radio beacons that made control possible even when the surface was invisible in the glare of the rocket blasts. Fred ne
ver felt the impact as the ship touched down finally and cut off the blast automatically. Only the silence told him they had landed.

  Poorhouse was obviously delighted with the landing. He slapped Fred across the shoulders as he got up with the log to report to Sessions and then to the Base. "You've been here before, Fred. Bring out the others and have them walk around to get the feel of it while I report in."

  Fred took over. It wasn't as difficult as it would have been without the experience the expedition members already had at the Station. This made it easier to adjust to the idea that gravity didn't always pull down with the same force as on Earth, although here it was only one-sixth normal. It took an hour before he could trust his group to begin unloading the first bulky cases from the ship. By that time Poorhouse was back. The pilot touched helmets with him.

  "Governor Gantry wants to see you, Fred," he said. His voice was muffied by the helmet, but the words were understandable. "You'll see a big marker at the base of the cliff there. I'll take over here."

  Fred checked the oxygen in his tank and headed across the glaring, cracked rocky plateau where they'd landed, enjoying the sensation of being on the Moon. And apparently this was one place where he was remembered without dislike. Gantry had never paid much attention

  to him before, but it would be good to see the governor of the colony. He found a crude set of steps, leading downward, hammered out of the cliff. At the bottom, the only light was reflected from the sunlight striking the upper cliff. He slipped the dark visor up inside his helmet until he could make out the Administration sign. It led to an air lock at one end of a small Quonset-type hut. Inside, the light was brighter, and he had to blink before he could make out the huge figure of Gantry.

  Gantry was alone in the hut, and made no effort to get up to greet Fred.

  "So the bad penny turns up again." The voice was low, but the words were clear enough. "And from what I hear, you're the same Freddy Halpern you were four years ago."