robot, which had targeted as its first victim the bouncing Sarah as she made her way toward the rest of the men. It took a few seconds for the alien rover to cover the distance. Will braced himself as the front end of the vehicle slammed into the giant’s foot. The robot stumbled, fell to one side, and rolled. Mendenhall bounced over one of its legs and felt a serious blow to the chassis of the solar-powered car. He could feel a harsh grinding through the seat as he pushed the rover to the right. He chanced a look back and saw the robot rise its feet with a look at Altair and the men climbing its ladder. It was as if the robot were memorizing its location. Then it turned and sprinted toward the slowly retreating Will and the damaged lunar rover.
“Well, this was a good idea,” Will muttered, as he reached behind himself and pulled free the line for transferring emergency O from one tank to another. Then he gripped the meteorite and the water bag. He started to knead the plastic-lined nylon. The water inside felt a bit slushy from the zero-degree temperature. He placed the meteorite on the passenger’s seat and tore open the water bag, and then tugged on the stitch-covered air hose. Just as he poured the water onto the rock, the robot slammed its large fist down and into the back of the rover.
Sarah was the last through the air lock. She closed and secured the hatch and was rewarded with a green light and the sight of the others getting into their seats. Ryan disappeared up the ladder to the command deck. Sarah passed the other men as they silently strapped themselves in. She then climbed the ladder and poked her head into the command deck. Ryan was prepping Altair for the launch sequence that would send them back into space.
“Jason?”
“Stay with the others, Lieutenant. I don’t need you here.”
Sarah closed her eyes at Ryan’s hurtful words. She moved slowly down the ladder and to her chair. Without being aware of what she was doing, she reached out and strapped herself in. All the while she couldn’t hold her grief as she looked from face to face of the men that Will Mendenhall had saved.
Will felt the rover flip upward. He didn’t realize at first what had happened. He knew he was airborne for the briefest of moments before the rover came crashing back to the lunar surface. He was upside down and felt like his back had been busted in two. Then he started to feel his legs and arms and knew that he wasn’t dead yet. He did, however, see the killer machine standing over the smashed rover, as if examining its downed prey.
“Yeah, keep looking, asshole,” Will said as he found the oxygen line and pulled on it just as the robot spotted him in the upside-down wreckage. It had just started to reach for him when Mendenhall applied the O to the wet meteorite. He dropped the rock and tried to scramble out into the open. As he fell to the rover’s ceiling, he momentarily wedged himself in tight between the two front seats.
“Shit,” he cursed. He felt the shaking of the vehicle as the giant reached for him. As the three fingers closed around his right leg, the robot’s attention was snatched away by a bright, momentary flash that filled the airless void. Will closed his eyes as he realized that his plan had worked. His friends were free from this nightmare world. As the robot watched, the two upper decks of Altair separated from the first and shot upward like a bullet in a soundless chamber. Will saw a brief image of metal skin as Ryan blasted Altair free of the Moon’s hold on it.
As he watched Altair rise into the black sky, he realized his leg wasn’t being held by the robot. He chanced a quick look to his right and saw that the meteorite was starting to glow a silverish color. He thought about lying there and going up with the chain reaction, but decided that he would rather find some other horrible way to die. Mendenhall began to crawl as fast as he could. He made it clear of the wreckage and turned over onto his back just as the giant metal beast lifted the rover from the lunar surface. Mendenhall could see the chain reaction beginning as the mineral continued to grow hotter.
“Jesus,” he said, and turned over onto his stomach and found himself on the rim of Shackleton’s sister crater, Andromeda. He looked over the edge of the deep hole in the ground and made his decision-the robot could die alone.
The beast saw Will stand up. It lowered the damaged rover and as it did, the small meteorite fell free of the vehicle and landed in the lunar dust at its feet. Mendenhall saw the small flamelike glow and made the leap outward into space. Very soon the limited gravity grabbed hold and he started heading down. Almost at the halfway point in his descent the chain reaction reached its critical stage. The explosion from high above pushed Will with dramatic force toward the opposite wall of the crater. He hit with such force that he felt his right leg snap in two. He screamed and then he landed, sliding down the crater wall. When his slide toward the bottom stopped, he opened his eyes and looked at the star field above him. He was glad he had saved the Altair, and Jason and Sarah. He knew that they would never be able to speak of Will Mendenhall again without choking up.
Will smiled through the pain of his broken leg.
“Yes,” he said aloud as he lay on the side of Andromeda.
He would like that very much.
Hugh Evans was once more sitting with his red eyes glued to the main viewing screen. It had been an hour since the remote telemetry team had ordered John away from the crater after six separate observatories around the world saw one large blast on the surface of the Moon preceded by two smaller ones. He feared the worst as John the Beatle moved northwest from Shackleton in an attempt to verify if Altair ’s landing site was still there, or if had lifted off as they hoped. What worried them at NASA far more than anything was the newly formed crater that John had had to bypass as it struggled to reach the landing site. They surmised that there had been another large detonation on the surface not a hundred yards from where Altair once sat.
As Evans watched he must have missed something, because the others in mission control gave out a collective cheer as the view of the landing area came into focus in John ’s camera eye. There, turned over and crushed on one side, were the four landing struts of Altair. They were sticking up at an angle. Hugh wanted to ask them what they were cheering about when he finally saw. The command and crew decks of Altair were gone. They hadn’t been there when the landing package had been knocked over by the huge explosion.
“Long-range radar, I want a tight scan of anything in orbit around the Moon. Get me evidence that Altair and Magnificent Dragon are both in the sky.”
Mission control jumped back into action. John was turned around to study the effects of the explosion. The Beatle came close to the rim of Andromeda as it made a wide turn. That was when someone on the floor shouted.
Evans looked up and saw what the camera had picked up.
“REMCON, stop John!”
The remote kept traveling and it took two minutes for the rover to make it back to where it was due to the time delay. By that time they were all standing, as a full-view shot of a space suit came into view. As they watched the main view screen, the man inside that suit rolled over. He saw John looking at him and waved his hand, and then lay down again.
“My God, someone was stranded on the Moon,” a tech said.
Hugh Evans slammed his pencil onto his console.
“That man is alive and we’re going to keep him that way until we know for sure if he’s stranded.”
“The only hope we have is to get him air, and hope the Russians make a successful landing,” CAPCOM said from below.
“Yeah, we need that, and we also need the luck that we haven’t had for the past two weeks! Now let’s start with problem one, how to get John to give this man some oxygen.”
On the main view screen, little John the Beatle turned away and started its own rescue operation.
Hugh Evans was damned he was going to lose one more man on this godforsaken mission.
