Luna Escapade
by H. B. Fyfe
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Orbit volume 1 number2, 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.copyright on this publication was renewed.]
With over an hour to go before he needed to start braking for hislanding on Luna, Pete Dudley sat at the controls of the rocket freighterand tried to think of anything else that needed checking after hisspinning the ship. He drummed absently with the fingers of his righthand upon the buckle of the seat strap which restrained him fromfloating out of the padded acceleration seat.
"Let's see, tail's right out there in front. I got the angle perfect.Guess everything's okay."
He noticed his fingers drumming, and stopped.
"Cut that out!" he told himself. "Get nervous now and Jack'll be sendingsome other vacuum on the next Mars run. There's Ericsson dead center inthe screen, waiting for you to plop down beside the domes. You couldn'tmiss a crater that size if you tried."
He leaned back and stared speculatively at the curving tip of the LunarRockies that ended in one of the largest craters on the far side ofLuna. His eyes squinted slightly and there was a crease between them, asif he spent much time peering into instruments. There were deeper linesbeside his mouth, but the thin lips and pointed chin neutralized thatevidence of frequent smiling.
"Are we nearly there?"
Dudley's brown eyes opened so wide that the whites gleamed in the dimlight from his instruments. Then he shut them tightly and shook his headquickly.
He had thought he heard a woman's voice, and of course he couldn't have.Freight rockets were checked out of Terran spaceports with only a pilotaboard. A lonely job for a man, but it was really only a way of keepingin practice. He made six round trips to Luna a year, but the big one wasthe three-month kick to Mars.
Then he smelled the perfume, so out of place in the machine-crowdedcompartment. He turned around slowly.
She stood with one hand gripping the lead of a computing machine to keepher feet on the deck. Dudley stared her up and down two or three timesbefore he realized his mouth hung open.
Slim and about five-feet-four, she looked like a nice little girl makingher first disastrous experiments with adult make-up. The slack suit ofdeep blue, revealing a soft white blouse at the neck of the jacket, wasin the best of taste, but her heavy application of lipstick was crude.
And her hair isn't naturally ash-blonde, Dudley thought. Yet shelooks like such a kid. Not pretty, but she might be in a few years.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded harshly.
For a second, her eyes were scared. Then the expression was supplantedby a hard, make-believe confidence, leaving him merely with a fadingsense of shame at his tone.
"Same as you," she said boldly. "Going to Luna."
Dudley snorted. "Then relax," he growled, "because I can't stop you now.Where the devil did you spend the last thirty-six hours?"
She tried a grin. "In the little room where the things are that pump theair. I sneaked in the galley once, when you were asleep. Did you missanything?"
"No," he admitted, thinking back.
"See? I'm not enough trouble to be noticed!"
Dudley eyed her sourly. There was trouble behind this somewhere, he waswilling to bet, o