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                             TASK to LUNA

                           by ALFRED COPPEL

            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 separated
points on the great curving surface of Earth they reached upward and
outward--toward the Moon.

It wasn't really so strange a coincidence. Space navigation is governed
by mathematics and logic, not politics. The fact that man-carrying
spaceships happened to be developed concurrently on two sides of an
iron curtain meant little to the Universe. It happened, that's all. And
there 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 prizes
were such things as: "gravity gauge" and "surveillance point" and
"impregnable launching sites." The contestants were earnest, capable
men; each certain that the Moon must not fall into the hands of
the opponent. It made a stirring and patriotic picture, vivid with
nationalistic fervor. It was thrilling with its taste of high adventure
and self-sacrifice. For each rocket pilot it was a personal crusade
against 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 bit
tragic, too.

       *       *       *       *       *

Harsh was the moon. There was black and there was white. Great jagged
cliffs and razor-backed mountains slashed the pocked surface of the
crater floor, humping themselves at the huge unwinking stars. The sun
was a stark disc of fire, incredibly white, hung in the black sky. The
shadows were bottomless pools. Within them there was nothing. In the
sunlight, 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 unsupported
assumptions. He had to go up there and see for himself.

Ponderous in his pressure suit, Randick emerged from the open lock of
the Anglo-American rocket. He slogged across the pumice of the crater
floor toward the spot where the mountain's sheer talus erupted skyward.
If there were no trouble from the Russki, he would return to his own
ship and begin setting up the first cell of what would soon be the
Anglo-American Moon Base. As soon as he signalled a safe landing and
no opposition from the Russian, other rockets would come to add their
cells, and presently there would be an atomic rocket pointed dead at
the 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 finished
the Russian pilot. He knew the Russians had exactly the same plan for
the Moon. Only the rockets would be aimed at Washington, London, Paris,
San Francisco. The slight weight of the one-man bazooka on Randick's
back seemed suddenly very comforting.

Randick knew himself to be on the very edge of known territory. His map
showed 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 to
the north he could see, as he climbed higher, the smooth surface of the
Mare Humorum. He looked up to the spinelike ridge beyond and slightly
above the wreck of the Russian ship. There was a deep pass that slashed
like a wound into the backbone of the range. He felt a slight thrill.
Beyond that cleft lay ... mystery. The other side of the Moon.

The sun's rays beat down brutally. Even through the heavily insulated
suit Randick could feel their searing touch. All around him stretched
a jumbled nightmare of black and white. He was suddenly very glad
that he could not see the Earth in the sky. The homesickness would be
unbearable.

Randick found himself frowning. He had no time for such thoughts.
He was a soldier. He reminded himself that up there in the tangled
wreckage of the Russian spaceship there might be another soldier, ready
to kill him. Two human beings on the Moon. Each eager to kill. Randick
shook his head angrily. He had no right to let his mind dwell on such
things....

He was within a hundred yards of the wreck when a streak of fire and a
soundless blast drove him into the shadows. Pumice showered him from
the starshaped depression where the explosive missile had struck.
Randick cursed heartily. The Russki was very much alive, and there
wasn't a thing wrong with his eyesight. The shot had been uncomfortably
close.

Unslinging his bazooka, Randick began to work his way around behind the
Russian rocket. A slight movement among the wreckage caught his trained
eye and he launched a projectile at it. It flared wickedly, tearing
fragments of metal loose and flinging them fantastic distances down the
sheer slope of the ridge. There was no return fire.

Randick broke out of the shadow and ran for the cover of a large
pumicestone boulder farther up the draw. A sun-bright flash of fire
spattered the loose soil a dozen feet from him. He slid for the
darkness on his belly. That one had been a near thing!

Behind the boulder lay a trench-like depression that sloped away up
the draw toward the pass. Randick dropped into it and began to crawl
laboriously upward. If he could flank the Russki he could finish this
with one good shot. Another explosion rocked the boulder he had just
left. Randick didn't even look back.

He felt his breath rasping in his throat and his body felt hot and
sticky inside the bulky pressure suit. Glancing down and to his right,
he could see the proudly erect shape of his own rocket far below on the
floor of the crater.

It took him almost thirty minutes to reach the edge of the shadow that
spilled from the side of the mountain pass. To his left, not ten feet
away, was the sudden white glare of the pumice floor. He was well above
and almost behind the wreck of the Russian's ship. His flanks were
heaving with the exertion of the climb as he searched the buckled mass
of the crash for his opponent.

There seemed to be a dark shape wedged in between two twisted
bulkheads. It looked like a man. With pounding heart, Randick murmured
a prayer and lifted his bazooka, aimed, and pressed the firing stud.
The shadow vanished in silent white fire.

The return blast almost knocked him down. For a moment Randick was
stunned, wondering foggily where the shot had come from. Then his brain
cleared and he realized that the Russki too had climbed to the pass,
leaving Randick to fire at shadows.

Randick cursed himself for his dangerous stupidity. The other must be
among those shadowy rocks directly across the bright floor of the pass.
He raised his bazooka carefully, searching the Stygian blackness for
some sign of movement. His finger curled around the firing stud....

       *       *       *       *       *

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the flare. The Russian rocket
erupted in a gout of bluish flame and the whole mountain seemed to
rock. Randick stared stupidly at the glowing crater where the ship
had been. For just an instant he thought that perhaps a meteorite had
struck it, but the explosion had been unquestionably ... atomic.

The Russian must have been stunned, too. For he moved out into the
light, empty-handed, his helmet turned woodenly toward the rapidly
cooling lake of magma where his space ship had been.

They both saw the bright arc of fire that raced up from beyond the
ridge and curved down gracefully toward the floor of the crater far
below. Openmouthed, Randick watched his ship vanish into flame and he
felt the vague tremor of the ground under him as the shock rumbled
across the face of the Moon.

The Russian rocket was gone. The Anglo-American rocket was gone.
Moon Base was gone before it had ever been.

The weapon fell from Randick's hand, and he stepped unsteadily into the
light toward the Russian. Suddenly human companionship was very, very
important. Panicky terror was plucking at his throat.

The two men stumbled toward each other across the pass cut deep into
the jagged back of the Doerfel mountains. As one they turned and looked
out across the vast expanse of the Moon's hidden face.

They were soldiers. They knew an invasion base when they saw one. As
far as the eye could see, lines of sleek mammoth spaceships of unknown
design stretched away into the distance. The face of the vast unnamed
_mare_ was covered with them.

[Illustration: Their sides hurt with laughter, tears rolled down their
faces....]

Suddenly Randick felt himself beginning to giggle. He tried to stop,
but the laughter welled up inside of him, echoing wildly within his
confining helmet. He could see that the Russian was laughing too, white
teeth gleaming behind the plexiglass faceplate. They laughed until they
gasped. Their sides hurt with laughter, tears rolled down their faces.
They were arm in arm and still laughing when the third rocket arced
down on them from out of the black and star-flecked sky.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Task To Luna, by Alfred Coppel

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 63949 ***