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Nelsen passed through an airlock, where live steam and a special silicone oil accomplished the all-important disinfection of his Archer, his bubb, and the outside of his small, sealed baggage roll. Armor and bubb he left racked with rows of others. It wasn't till he got into the reception dome lounge that he saw Nance Codiss. She didn't rush at him.
Frank Nelsen felt the dust crunch under the rubberized boot-soles of his Archer. There was a brief walk, then a pause. Rodan pointed to a pit dynamited out of the dust and lava rock, and to small piles of greyish material beside six-inch borings rectangularly spaced over a wide area. "There is an extensive underlying layer of gypsum, here," he said. "The water-bearing rock.
Besides, he had read up on the thickets of Mars, watched motion pictures, heard Gimp Hines' stories of his brief visit here. So, at first, he could be almost casual about what he saw in the peek box. There were many ghastly ways for a man to die. Even the thicket plant in the box seemed dead, though Nelsen knew that plant successors to the original Martians had the rugged power of revival.
There were guys of all sizes, mostly young, some armored, some not. One with a pimply face stumbled near. Frank Nelsen choked down his fury at the vandalism. He had a blurred urge to find a certain face, and almost thought he succeeded. But everything, including his head, was a fuzzy jumble. "Hey!" the pimply guy gurgled. "Hey Boss! Our benefactors they're half awake!
Frank Nelsen untied Rodan's and Dutch's feet, and, at pistol point, ordered them to move out ahead. From the charts he knew the bearing straight toward the constellation Cassiopeia, at this hour, across an arm of Mare Nova, then along a pass that cut through the mountains. Eight hundred hopeless miles...! Well, how did he know, really? How much could a human body take? How fast could they go?
It was clear that, with paranoid thoroughness, Rodan had concentrated all capacity to move from the camp's vicinity in himself. He had probably locked up the missing items in the supply dome, and now the exploding dynamite had ruined them. Exploring the plain, Nelsen even found quite a few of the absent parts, all useless. Only one oxygen flask and one water flask remained intact.
"You gotta know where you're going, first!" "Make up your mind, Nelsen," said the job scout, getting impatient. "We handle just about everything lunar except in the Tovie areas. Without us, you're just a lost, fresh punk!" But another man had approached from another lunar GO rocket, which had just appeared.
Frank Nelsen was surprised as much by this open, self-analytical explanation, and the clearing up of the family history behind him, as by the miracle that had happened. Cripes, was it possible that, in his own way, Lester was more rugged than anybody else of the old Bunch? Of course even Lester was somewhat in wonder, himself, and had to talk it all out to somebody.
From the start it was really too late. Nelsen was as hardy and determined as any. He tried to get Nance to the 'copter. Less than halfway, she crumpled. With a savage effort of will he managed to drag her a few yards, before his legs refused to obey him, or support him. His blood carried a virus to his brain about as quickly as it would have carried a cobra's venom.
The instruments showed well, skip it... I'm going into Town to prepare. It'll take quite a while, so I'll have some fun, too." Ramos' eyes twinkled with a secret triumph before the fact. "You don't argue a fighting rooster out of fighting," Nelsen laughed. "Besides, it wouldn't be Destiny or any fun to succeed.
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