Men into space

by Murray Leinster

Hatred blazed between them. When their records arrived at Grimaldi Base, McCauley realized that the beginning of this hatred could not matter any more. They'd hated each other so long and so bitterly that if they were asked the reason they'd have panted about something done yesterday or last month or last year—and perhaps never have gotten back to the beginning. They might even have forgotten it. But there was a strangeness in their enmity. They did not simply want disaster and misfortune to befall each other. They hungered to be disaster, they thirsted to be misfortune, each for the other. And somehow there was a demoniac pride involved. In the days of the duello there would have been a simple and normal solution. They would have met in stately fashion with swords or pistols, and they would have fought to the death under the eyes of seconds and witnesses, and somehow it would have been appropriate.

But such things were impossible now. The code of the duello was outmoded. So when McCauley read the records and reports on the two men—because a commanding officer needs to know the men who serve under him, and the more dangerous the service the better he needs to know them—he knew that the first case of murder on the moon was in the making. Since they couldn't fight formally, as in olden times, what must happen would amount to murder.

There'd been an automobile accident at Earth Base of the Space Service. It looked very much as if it were deliberate, as if Holmes and Kent had contrived it by agreement between themselves so that one was bound to be killed. Both were hurt. Neither died. Then there was the time when Kent was found with a rifle in his hand and a bullet wound in his shoulder, ignoring the wound and passionately pursuing a hunt for—so he said—a deer. He explained that the wound was an accident. The records showed that Holmes was hunting in the same area at the same time. They showed that he had a slight flesh wound—made by a bullet. Both Holmes and Kent gave totally unconvincing accounts of their wounds, and each denied that he had been wounded by the other. Their stories did not satisfy their commanding officer. He transferred them to other units, and in his confidential comment on their records—comment they would never see—he said that he believed they'd arranged a duel in deer-hunting country with big-game rifles, contrived so the one who was killed would seem to be the victim of a hunting accident. It could not be proved, but he believed it.

There were other memos. Neither Holmes nor Kent had a mark against him except in connection with the other man. Yet no commanding officer—certainly none on the moon—would want either man in his base after having read the records. The moon is too small for men who carry their enmities with them into space.

And McCauley had both men—able men, capable men, desirable men except for their mutual hatred. He'd traveled a quarter way around the moon to have one or both of them transferred out of Grimaldi Base before they could arrange another covered-up duel which would leave one dead and the other a murderer. But his effort had been futile. They couldn't be transferred out immediately. They couldn't be gotten out, for it was too close to sunset. They couldn't be gotten away at all during the lunar night. And now they were out on Farside where there could be no witnesses and the grave of a murdered man could never be found.

McCauley arrived, raging mad, at the small, grubby, dust-insulated dome that was Grimaldi Base. No report had come in from Kent or Holmes. McCauley was bitterly sure that they'd gone out to the blasted moonscape firmly resolved that only one of them would return. Somehow, in the illimitable emptiness of which the fiftieth part had never been seen by men, somehow, under the black, star-studded sky with the setting sun casting mile-long shadows of utter blackness and absolute cold, McCauley knew that they would have some sort of fight in which one must die.

But they were Space Service officers. Before they had that fight they would set up the relay that would give Farside Base a connection to Grimaldi, and so to Earth, and so by Earth Relay to every other human being on the moon. They would do their duty as Space Service officers before they did murder.

Stooping, McCauley came out of the air lock into the base.

"I want all the facts about Kent and Holmes!" he snapped.

"No word from them yet, sir," said the communications officer. "But we've picked up clickings, sir, which might be the unit being put into operation. But Holmes and Kent have two beams to align, sir, besides the all-direction antennae. They may be checking with Farside, sir, to make sure the relay beam is pointed right to that base."