THE PERIL FROM OUTER SPACE
Young Lieutenant Rob Allison rode the escalator down the side of the space ship to the ground. His heartbeat had increased its tempo since he had been ordered from Earth to report to Space Command headquarters on Luna. There had been palpable unrest throughout Earth for several weeks now. No one seemed to know just what it was, but it was frightfully real—that, everyone would admit. And Rob had an uneasy feeling that his trip to Luna was somehow connected with the mystery.
“Have a good ride, sir?” a steward at ground level asked the youth.
“Well enough,” Rob said.
Rob had not yet gotten used to being called “Sir.” It made him feel older—an experienced spaceman—not his mere nineteen years of age. More than that, it gave him a false sense of importance.
The steward saw before him a tall, husky fellow who filled his space suit well. He saw a young man who carried himself confidently, yet in no way pretentiously, despite his unofficial nickname of “the Space Command’s youngest hero.”
Rob’s eyes roved about looking for the jeep which General Forester had said would be here to meet him. He glimpsed the distant Lunar panorama which was the scene of his first interplanetary adventure some years before. He had visited all the planets or their moons since then. There had been perils, defeats, triumphs. It amazed him that he was still alive after it all. Beyond the gaunt stone buildings of the colony, the serrated tops of the Lunary Appenines pricked the black sky where stars almost too many to comprehend lay scattered like self-luminous gems.
“Lieutenant Allison!” came a voice from across the drifts of pumice. “Over here!”
Rob approached the jeep, jogging along with the ease of an elf’s tread in Luna’s light gravity. Rob recognized a circlet of rockets on the driver’s plastic helmet and was both surprised and flattered.
“General Forester!” he said over his suit radio. He saw the officer’s grin within the shadows of his headgear.