All of which happened back on Earth and a long time ago. It seemed to
Pop that the sight of Sattell had brought back some vague and cloudy
memories. They were not sharp, though, and he hunted up Sattell again to
find out if he was right. And Sattell went into panic when he returned.
Nowadays, by the Big Crack, Pop wasn't so insistent on seeing Sattell,
but he was deeply concerned with the recovery of the memories that
Sattell helped bring back. Pop was a highly conscientious man. He took
good care of his job. There was a warning-bell in the shack, and when a
rocketship from Lunar City got above the horizon and could send a tight
beam, the gong clanged loudly, and Pop got into a vacuum-suit and went
out the air lock. He usually reached the moondozer about the time the
ship began to brake for landing, and he watched it come in.
He saw the silver needle in the sky fighting momentum above a line of
jagged crater-walls. It slowed, and slowed, and curved down as it drew
nearer. The pilot killed all forward motion just above the field and
came steadily and smoothly down to land between the silvery triangles
that marked the landing place.
Instantly the rockets cut off, drums of fuel and air and food came out
of the cargo-hatch and Pop swept forward with the dozer. It was a
miniature tractor with a gigantic scoop in front. He pushed a great
mound of talc-fine dust before him to cover up the cargo. It was
necessary. With freight costing what it did, fuel and air and food came
frozen solid, in containers barely thicker than foil. While they stayed
at space-shadow temperature, the foil would hold anything. And a cover
of insulating moondust with vacuum between the grains kept even air
frozen solid, though in sunlight.
At such times Pop hardly thought of Sattell. He knew he had plenty of
time for that. He'd started to follow Sattell knowing what had happened
to his wife and children, but it was hearsay only. He had no memory of
them at all. But Sattell stirred the lost memories. At first Pop
followed absorbedly from city to city, to recover the years that had
been wiped out by an axe-blow. He did recover a good deal. When Sattell
fled to another continent, Pop followed because he had some distinct
memories of his wife--and the way he'd felt about her--and some fugitive
mental images of his children. When Sattell frenziedly tried to deny
knowledge of the murder in Tangier, Pop had come to remember both his
children and some of the happiness of his married life.
Even when Sattell--whimpering--signed up for Lunar City, Pop tracked
him. By that time he was quite sure that Sattell was the man who'd
killed his family. If so, Sattell had profited by less than two days'
pay for wiping out everything that Pop possessed. But Pop wanted it
back. He couldn't prove Sattell's guilt. There was no evidence. In any
case, he didn't really want Sattell to die. If he did, there'd be no way
to recover more lost memories.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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