"Rodan made sure," Frank gruffed. "That S.O.B. put us on a real short tether!"
David Lester looked frightened for a minute. Then he seemed to ease.
"Maybe it doesn't make any difference," he said. "Though I'd like to call my mother... But I'm doing things that I like. After a while, when the job is finished, he'll let us go."
"Yeah?" Frank breathed.
There was the big question. Nelsen figured that an old, corny pattern stuck out all over Rodan. Personal glory emphasized [p. 68] to a point where it got beyond sense. And wouldn't that unreason be more likely to get worse in the terrible lunar desert than it ever would on Earth?
Would Rodan ever release them? Wouldn't he fear encroachment on his archeological success, even after all his data had been made public? This was all surmise-prediction, of course, but his extreme precautions, already taken, did not look good. On the Moon there could easily be an arranged accident, killing Lester, and him—Frank Nelsen—and maybe even Dutch. Rodan's pupils had that nervous way of expanding and contracting rapidly, too. Nelsen figured that he might be reading the signs somewhat warpedly himself. Still...?
At the end of another shift, Nelsen took a walk, farther than ever before, up through a twisted pass that penetrated to the other side of the Arabian Mountains. He still had that much freedom. He wanted to think things out. In bitter, frustrating reversal of all his former urges to get off the Earth, he wanted, like a desperate weakling, to be back home.
Up beyond the Arabians, he saw the tread marks of a small tractor vehicle in a patch of dust. There was a single boot print. A short distance farther on, there was another. He examined them with a quizzical excitement. But there weren't any more. For miles, ahead and behind, unimpressable lava rock extended.
Another curious thing happened, only minutes later. A thousand miles overhead, out of reach of his sabotaged transmitter, one of those around the Moon tour bubbs, like the unfortunate Far Side, was passing. He heard the program they were broadcasting. A male voice crooned out what must be a new, popular song. He had heard so few new songs.
"Serene...