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Updated: August 20, 2024
"Do you remember clouds, the sound of water? Trees, grass...?" She actually smiled, wistfully. "Yes. Sunday afternoons. A blue dress. My mother when she was alive... A dog I had, once..." Helen Rodan wasn't quite a zombie, after all. Maybe he could win her confidence, if he went slow... But twenty hours later, at the diggings, when Dutch stumbled over Frank's sifter, she reverted.
They aroused Dave Lester and Helen Rodan, helped them armor up, explained briefly what the situation was, stuffed Xavier Rodan into his Archer, and climbed with him into the sealable cab of the tractor. Here they could all remove their helmets.
Here was a diabolical backfiring of schemes, all around. Returning to Rodan and Dutch, he examined their Archers through their servicing ports. Rodan's was as the manufacturer intended it. But Dutch's was jimmied the same as his and Lester's. Nelsen swung Helen around to face him, and unlatched a port at her Archer's shoulder.
Was Rodan really accountable, or was it the Moon and space, working on people's emotions? Leaving the building, Frank and Gimp found Dave Lester and Helen Rodan entering. They talked for a moment. Then Lester said: "Helen's had lots of trouble. And we're in love. What do we do, guys?" "Dunno get married?" Nelsen answered, shrugging. "It must happen here, too.
"Greetings, Novices!" he gruffed with genial contempt. But his pale eyes, beyond the curve of his helmet, had a masked puzzlement, as if something from the lunar desolation had gotten into his brain, leaving the realization of where he was, permanently not altogether clear to him. Rodan pulled a shiny object from his thigh pouch, and held it out in a gloved palm for his new employees to peer at.
But at least I will let you figure them out for yourselves, since you are well-informed young men, by your own statement." Here Rodan looked hard at the pale, unsteady Lester. "We will go back, now, so I can show you the camp, its routine, and your place in it. We have three domes garden and living quarters, with a workshop and supply dome between them..."
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.
Let's get you all into Archers, for which I have a few spare parts left. Then, after we roll up this sealed, air-conditioned tent of a familiar material, we can be on our way." "Just let's watch Rodan that's all," Frank Nelsen warned. "Sure we'll keep him good and dopey with a tranquilizer..."
Frank Nelsen became more aware of the heavy automatic pistol at Rodan's hip, and felt a tingling urge to get away from here and from this man as if a vast mistake had been made. "It is necessary for you to be informed about some matters," Rodan said slowly.
"I am Helen Rodan," Helen interrupted. "My father, Xavier Rodan, here, is sick. He needs a hospital. I will stay with him. These are our friends. They brought us all the way from Far Side." Within the broad airlock compartment, Lester also got down from the tractor. "I'll stay, too," he said. "Go ahead, Frank. You and Gimp have had enough."
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