“Get ready, Glazer,” he shouted, his head ringing inside the helmet with the captive sound of his own voice. “Grab the cable. …”
The crevice was empty. More of the soft rock had crumbled away and Glazer had fallen from sight.
For a long time Major Gino Lombardi lay there, flashing his light into the seemingly bottomless slash in the satellite’s surface, calling on his radio with the power turned full on. His only answer was static, and gradually he became aware of the cold from the eternally chilled rocks that was seeping through the insulation of his suit. Glazer was gone, that was all there was to it.
After this Gino did everything that he was supposed to do in a methodical, disinterested way. He took rock samples, dust samples, meter readings, placed the recording instruments exactly as he had been shown and fired the test shot in the drilled hole. Then he gathered the records from the instruments and when the next orbit of the Apollo spacecraft brought it overhead he turned on the cabin transmitter and sent up a call.
“Come in Dan. … Colonel Danton Coye, can you hear me … ?”
“Loud and clear,” the speaker crackled. “Tell me you guys, how does it feel to be walking on the moon?”
“Glazer is dead. I’m alone. I have all the data and photographs required. Permission requested to cut this stay shorter than planned. No need for a whole day down here.”
For long seconds there was a crackling silence, then Dan’s voice came in, the same controlled, Texas drawl.
“Roger, Gino—stand by for computer signal, I think we can meet in the next orbit.”
The moon takeoff went as smoothly as the rehearsals had gone in the mock-up on Earth, and Gino was too busy doing double duty to have time to think about what had happened. He was strapped in when the computer radio signal fired the engines that burned down into the lower portion of the Bug and lifted the upper half free, blasting it up towards the rendezvous in space with the orbiting mother ship. The joined sections of the Apollo came into sight and Gino realized he would pass in front of it, going too fast: he made the course corrections with a sensation of deepest depression. The computer had not allowed for the reduced mass of the lunar rocket with only one passenger aboard. After this, matching orbits was not too difficult and minutes later Gino was crawling through the entrance of the command module and sealing it behind him. Dan Coye stayed at the controls, not saying anything until the cabin pressure had stabilized and they could remove their helmets.
“What happened down there, Gino?”
“An accident—a crack in the lunar surface, covered lightly, sealed over by dust. Glazer just … fell into the thing. That’s all. I tried to get him out, I couldn’t reach him. I went to the Bug for some wire, but when I came back he had fallen deeper … it was. …”
Gino had his face buried in his hands, and even he didn’t know if he was sobbing or just shaking with fatigue and strain.
“I’ll tell you a secret, I’m not superstitious at all,” Dan said, reaching deep into a zippered pocket of his pressure suit. “Everybody thinks I am, which just goes to show you how wrong everybody can be. Now I got this mascot, because all pilots are supposed to have mascots, and it makes good copy for the reporters when things are dull.” He pulled the little black rubber doll from his pocket, made famous on millions of TV screens, and waved it at Gino. “Everybody knows I always tote my little good-luck mascot with me, but nobody knows just what kind of good luck it has. Now you will find out, Major Gino Lombardi, and be privileged to share my luck. In the first place this bitty doll is not rubber, which might have a deleterious effect on the contents, but is constructed of a neutral plastic.”
In spite of himself, Gino looked up as Dan grabbed the doll’s head and screwed it back.
“Notice the wrist motion as I decapitate my friend, within whose bosom rests the best luck in the world, the kind that can only be brought to you by sour mash one-hundred and fifty proof bourbon. Have a slug.” He reached across and handed the doll to Gino.
“Thanks, Dan.” He raised the thing and squeezed, swallowing twice. He handed it back.
“Here’s to a good pilot and a good joe, Eddie Glazer,” Dan Coye said raising the flask, suddenly serious. “He wanted to get to the moon and he did. It belongs to him now, all of it, by right of occupation.” He squeezed the doll dry and methodically screwed the head back on and replaced it in his pocket. “Now let’s see what we can do about contacting control, putting them in the picture, and start cutting an orbit back towards Earth.”
Gino turned the radio on but did not send out the call yet. While they had talked their orbit had carried them around to the other side of the moon and its bulk successfully blocked any radio communication with Earth. They hurtled their measured arc through the darkness and watched another sunrise over the sharp
