"We'll patch those, too," Crag snapped. He felt an unreasonable surge of anger toward the construction boss. He sucked his lip, vexedly, then turned his torch on his oxygen meter. "We'd better get moving."
CHAPTER 18
Colonel Michael Gotch looked at the agent across the narrow expanse of his battered desk, then his eyes fell again to the dockets. Four dockets, four small sheaves of paper, each the capsuled story of a man's life. The names on the dockets were literally burned into his mind: Adam Philip Crag, Martin LeRoy Larkwell, Gordon Wells Nagel, Max Edward Prochaska. Four names, four men, four separate egos who, by the magic of man, had been transported to a bleak haven on another world. Four men whose task was to survive an alien hell until the U.N. officially recognized the United States' claim to sovereignty over the stark lands of the moon.
But one of the men was a saboteur, an agent whose task was to destroy the Western claim to ownership by destroying its occupancy of the moon. That would leave the East free to claim at least equal sovereignty on the basis that it, too, had established occupancy in a lunar base.
The agent broke into his thoughts. "I'd almost stake my professional reputation he's your man." He reached over and tapped one of the dockets significantly.
"The word, the single word, that's what you used to tell me to watch for. Well, the single word is there—the word that spells traitor. I'd gone over his record a dozen times before I stumbled on it." He ceased speaking and watched the Colonel.
"You may be right," Gotch said at last. "That's the kind of slip I'd pounce on myself." He hesitated.
"Go on," the agent said, as if reading his thoughts.
"There's one thing I didn't tell you because I didn't want to prejudice your thinking. The psychiatrists agree with you."