"He had his walkie-talkie with him?"
"Yes. It worked fine, too. We heard everything that went through his mind at the end."
Klein's face was blank. "What's your real job here, Chap? Why does somebody have to stay for stopover?"
"Hell, lots of reasons, Julius. You can't get a whole relief crew and let them take over cold. They have to know where you left off. They have to know where things are, how things work, what to watch out for. And then, because you've been here a year and a half and know the ropes, you have to watch them to see that they stay alive in spite of themselves. The Moon's a new environment and you have to learn how to live in it. There's a lot of things to learn—and some people just never learn."
"You're nursemaid, then."
"I suppose you could call it that."
Klein said, "You're not a scientist, are you?"
"No, you should know that. I came as the pilot of the first ship. We made the bunker out of parts of the ship so there wasn't anything to go back on. I'm a good mechanic and I made myself useful with the machinery. When it occurred to us that somebody was going to have to stay over, I volunteered. I thought the others were so important that it was better they should take their samples and data back to Earth when the first relief ship came."
"You wouldn't do it again, though, would you?"