Young Readers Science Fiction StoriesElam, Richard M. (Richard Mace)
Science
Young Readers Science Fiction Stories
Elam, Richard M. (Richard Mace)
Children's stories; Science fiction; Space travelers -- Juvenile fiction
The roadway carried them through a narrow pass with a high hill of loose
rock on one side and a sloping embankment on the other. Jerry’s first
warning of trouble came when he was flung suddenly forward. He heard the
sickening drag of the wheels as his father’s boot hit the brakes. Just
ahead of them he saw a cascade of rocks sliding down the hill.
The next moment Jerry felt an even harder blow as the jeep was grazed by
one of the large boulders. The small car was swept out of the roadway
like a toy and rammed against a pillar at the cliff edge.
Jerry screamed in fear as he felt himself being thrown out of the car.
He struck the ground hard and began rolling head over heels down the
precipice.
When the numbing shock of his fall had worn off, Jerry climbed dazedly
to his feet and looked up the slope down which he had been thrown.
“Dad!” he cried. He slipped and scrambled up the incline in reckless
haste. He found Capt. Welsh sprawled unconscious just below the upper
brink of the precipice. Jerry knelt and looked into his face through the
clear plastic helmet. His father’s eyes were closed and there was an
ugly bruise on his forehead where it must have struck the helmet in his
fall.
“What am I going to do?” Jerry groaned aloud.
He himself would have to make the decisions and carry them through if
the two of them were to survive. It was a shocking thought. Then it came
to him what his father had said about fear: a person need never be
ashamed of fear so long as it was not permitted to get the upper hand.
Jerry pulled his father up onto the roadway and tried to bring him
around, but without result. Jerry examined the jeep. One side was badly
smashed, but the engine still appeared sound. The car was tipped over
against the rock column. Jerry was thankful that the jeep was only
one-sixth of its Earth-weight on the moon. It was a tremendous effort
but he finally righted the car and got it back on the road.
He jumped into the front seat and started the engine. It sputtered, then
hummed into activity! Jerry studied the map on the panel. He located
their present position by the giant crater, Plato, at his distant right.
Then he traced the winding route leading to the geology camp. He was
closer to the camp than the observatory, but ahead lay a rugged route,
one with which Jerry was totally unfamiliar. He got out and went back to
where Capt. Welsh lay.
“Which way should I go, Dad, ahead or back?” he asked helplessly, just
as though his father were able to answer him.
Something told him that Capt. Welsh would want him to go ahead—to finish
the mail run that had never missed a round in ten years. Jerry got his
father into the back seat, then gunned the jeep and struck off into the
unknown ahead.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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