Two rocketships bit into lunar dust. Two men—a
Yankee, a Russian—dueled in nightmare shadow and
glare, each eager to destroy the Enemy. What cosmic
joke made them drop their weapons and die laughing?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories January 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The rockets started almost simultaneously. From two widely separatedpoints on the great curving surface of Earth they reached upward andoutward—toward the Moon.
It wasn't really so strange a coincidence. Space navigation is governedby mathematics and logic, not politics. The fact that man-carryingspaceships happened to be developed concurrently on two sides of aniron curtain meant little to the Universe. It happened, that's all. Andthere is a proper time to launch such missiles. When that time came,they were launched.
In a manner of speaking it was a race. A race wherein the prizeswere such things as: "gravity gauge" and "surveillance point" and"impregnable launching sites." The contestants were earnest, capablemen; each certain that the Moon must not fall into the hands ofthe opponent. It made a stirring and patriotic picture, vivid withnationalistic fervor. It was thrilling with its taste of high adventureand self-sacrifice. For each rocket pilot it was a personal crusadeagainst the thing he had been raised to regard as the enemy....
But somehow under the steady, cold scrutiny of the eternal stars,they must have looked a little ridiculous ... perhaps just a tiny bittragic, too.
Harsh was the moon. There was black and there was white. Great jaggedcliffs and razor-backed mountains slashed the pocked surface of thecrater floor, humping themselves at the huge unwinking stars. The sunwas a stark disc of fire, incredibly white, hung in the black sky. Theshadows were bottomless pools. Within them there was nothing. In thesunlight, the pumice soil glared white.
The Russian rocket had crashed on landing. Randick could see the tiny,buckled shape of it high on the mountain. No doubt the pilot was dead,but he had to be sure. The risks were too great for any unsupportedassumptions. He had to go up there and see for himself.
Ponderous in his pressure suit, Randick emerged from the open lock ofthe Anglo-American rocket. He slogged across the pumice of the craterfloor toward the spot where the mountain's sheer talus erupted skyward.If there were no trouble from the Russki, he would return to his ownship and begin setting up the first cell of what would soon be theAnglo-American Moon Base. As soon as he signalled a safe landing andno opposition from the Russian, other rockets would come to add theircells, and presently there would be an atomic rocket pointed dead atthe heart of every Russian population center. A rocket each for Moscow,Leningrad, Kiev, Vladivostok....
Randick frowned. It would be a lot simpler if the crash had finishedthe Russian pilot. He knew the Russians had exactly the same plan forthe Moon. Only the rockets would be aimed at Washington, London, Paris,San Francisco. The slight weight of the one-man bazooka on Randick'sback seemed suddenly very comforting.
Randick knew himself to be on the very edge of known territory. His mapshowed him that he was in the highest part of the Doerfel Mountains.Behind him lay the two great bowls of Bailly and Schickard, and far tothe north he could see, as he climbed higher, the smooth surface of theMare Humorum. He looked up to the spinelike ridge beyond and slightlyabove the wreck of the Russian ship. There was a deep pass that slashedlike a wound into the backbone of the range. H