Prochaska fingered the steering rockets and pushed the drone's nose upward. Crag saw it through the port. It rushed through space in a skidding fashion before it began to move upward from the face of the moon. Prochaska hit the braking jets with full power. Crag craned his head to follow its flight. Out of one corner of his eye he saw Nagel and Larkwell on the plain, their helmeted heads turned skyward. He scrunched his face hard against the port and caught the drone at the top of its climb. It was a slender needle with light glinting on its tail--the Sword of Damocles hanging above their heads. It hung ... suspended in space ... then began backing down, dropping stern first with flame and white vapor pouring from its tail jets. It came fast. Occasional spurts from radial jets around its nose kept its body perpendicular to the plain. Vapor from the trail fluffed out hiding the body of the rocket. The flame licked out while the rocket was still over a hundred feet in the air. Prochaska cursed softly. The rocket seemed riveted to the black sky for a fraction of a second before it began to fall. Faster ... faster. It smashed into the lunar surface, lost from sight. "Exit Baker," Prochaska said woodenly. Quietly Crag got on the communicator and reported to Gotch. There was a brief silence when he had finished. Finally Gotch said, "Drone Charlie will be launched on schedule. We'll have to reassess our logistics, though. Maybe we'd better knock off the idea of the airlock-in-the-gully idea and shoot along extra oxygen and supplies instead. How does the meteorite problem look?" "Lousy," said Crag irritably. "We've had a scary near miss. I wouldn't bet on being able to survive too long in the open. Again there was a silence. "You'll have to," Gotch said slowly, "unless you can salvage Baker's cargo." "We'll check that." "You might investigate the possibility of covering the Aztec with ash." "Sure ... sure," Crag broke in. "Good idea. I'll have the boys break out the road grader immediately." "Don't be facetious," Gotch reprimanded. "We have a problem to work out." "You're telling me!" "In the meantime, try and clean up that other situation." By "other situation" Crag knew he was referring to the sabotage. Sure, be an engineer, intelligence agent, spaceman and superman, all rolled into one. He wrinkled his face bitterly. Still he had to admire the Colonel's tenacity. He was a man determined to conquer the moon. "Will do," Crag said finally. "In the meantime we'll look Baker over. There might be some salvage." "Do that," the Colonel said crisply. He cut off. CHAPTER 12 "Max Prochaska was a real well-liked boy," Mrs. Arthur Bingham said firmly, "friendly with everyone in town. Of course, Vista was just a small place then," she added reminiscently. "Not like now, especially since the helicopter factory moved in. I do declare, a soul wouldn't recognize the place any longer, with all the housing tracts and the new supermarket--"