When the numbing shock of his fall had worn off, Jerry climbed dazedly to his feet and looked up the slope down which he had been thrown.
“Dad!” he cried. He slipped and scrambled up the incline in reckless haste. He found Capt. Welsh sprawled unconscious just below the upper brink of the precipice. Jerry knelt and looked into his face through the clear plastic helmet. His father’s eyes were closed and there was an ugly bruise on his forehead where it must have struck the helmet in his fall.
“What am I going to do?” Jerry groaned aloud.
He himself would have to make the decisions and carry them through if the two of them were to survive. It was a shocking thought. Then it came to him what his father had said about fear: a person need never be ashamed of fear so long as it was not permitted to get the upper hand.
Jerry pulled his father up onto the roadway and tried to bring him around, but without result. Jerry examined the jeep. One side was badly smashed, but the engine still appeared sound. The car was tipped over against the rock column. Jerry was thankful that the jeep was only one-sixth of its Earth-weight on the moon. It was a tremendous effort but he finally righted the car and got it back on the road.
He jumped into the front seat and started the engine. It sputtered, then hummed into activity! Jerry studied the map on the panel. He located their present position by the giant crater, Plato, at his distant right. Then he traced the winding route leading to the geology camp. He was closer to the camp than the observatory, but ahead lay a rugged route, one with which Jerry was totally unfamiliar. He got out and went back to where Capt. Welsh lay.
“Which way should I go, Dad, ahead or back?” he asked helplessly, just as though his father were able to answer him.
Something told him that Capt. Welsh would want him to go ahead—to finish the mail run that had never missed a round in ten years. Jerry got his father into the back seat, then gunned the jeep and struck off into the unknown ahead.
He was thankful for the old worn trail that led the way for him. It presently carried him through a gloomy valley. Jerry switched on his headlights, but the twin spears of brightness gave him little comfort in the spooky place. Grotesque rock columns rose like menacing ghosts on both sides of him.
At last he was out in the open again. The road led him around the steep ledge of a yawning crater, evidently caused by a huge crashing fireball from outer space.