Adventure stories; Cold War -- Fiction; Moon -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space flight to the moon -- Fiction; Spy stories
"There's one thing I didn't tell you because I didn't want to prejudice
your thinking. The psychiatrists agree with you."
"The psychiatrists?" The agent's brow furrowed in a question.
"They've restudied the records exhaustively, ever since we first knew
there was a saboteur in the crew.
"They've weighed their egos, dissected their personalities, analyzed
their capabilities, literally taken them apart and put them together
again. I got their report just this morning." Gotch looked speculatively
at the agent. "Your suspect is also their choice. Only there is no
traitor."
"No traitor?" The agent started visibly. "I don't get you."
"No traitor," Gotch echoed. "This is a tougher nut than that. The
personality profile of one man shows a distinct break." He looked
expectantly at the agent.
"A plant." The agent muttered, the words thoughtfully. "A ringer--a spy
who has adopted the life role of another. That indicates careful
planning, long preparation." He muttered the words aloud, talking to
himself.
"He would have had to cover every contingency--friends, relatives,
acquaintances, skills, hobbies--then, at an exact time and place, our
man was whisked away and he merely stepped in." He shook his head.
"That's the kind of nut that's really tough to crack."
"Crack it," Gotch said.
The agent got to his feet "I'll dig him out," he promised savagely.
* * * * *
The drive to rehabilitate Red Dog became a frenzy in Crag's mind. He
drove his crew mercilessly, beset by a terrible sense of urgency. Nor
did he spare himself. They rigged lines in the dark of the moon and
rotated the rocket on its long axis until the break in the hull was
accessible.
Crag viewed it with dismay. It was far longer than he had feared--a
splintered jagged hole whose raw torn edges were bent into the belly of
the ship. They finally solved the problem by using the hatch door of
Drone Charlie as a seal, lining it with sheets of foam from Bandit,
whose interior temperature immediately plummeted to a point where it was
scarcely livable.
Prochaska bore the brunt of this new discomfort. Confined as he was to
the cabin and with little opportunity for physical activity, he nearly
froze until he took to living in his space suit.
Crag began planning the provisioning of Red Dog even before he knew it
could be repaired. During each trip from Bandit he burdened the men with
supplies. Between times he managed to remove the spare oxygen cylinders
carried in Drone Charlie. There was still a scant supply in Drone Baker,
but he decided to leave those until later.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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