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.