Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

smooth.

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Bruce stared. “We’re going up that?”

“Sure. Watch your Uncle Samuel.” A pillar thrust up above the vertical

pitch. Sam clipped two lines together and began casting the bight up toward it.

Twice he missed and the line floated down. At last it went over.

Sam drove a piton into the wall, off to one side, clipped a snap ring to it,

and snapped on the line. He had Bruce join him in a straight pull on the free end to

test the piton. Bruce then anchored to the snap ring with a rope strap; Sam started

to climb.

Thirty feet up, he made fast to the line with his legs and drove another

piton; to this he fastened a safety line. Twice more he did this. He reached the

pillar and called, “Off belay!”

Bruce unlinked the line; it snaked up the cliff. Presently Sam shouted, “On

belay!”

Bruce answered, “Testing,” and tried unsuccessfully to jerk down the line

Sam had lowered.

“Climb,” ordered Sam.

“Climbing.” One-sixth gravity, Bruce decided, was a mountaineer’s heaven. He

paused on the way up only to unsnap the safety line.

Bruce wanted to “leapfrog” up the remaining pitches, but Sam insisted on

leading. Bruce was soon glad of it; he found three mighty differences between

climbing on Earth and climbing here; the first was low gravity, but the others were

disadvantages: balance climbing was awkward in a suit, and chimney climbing, or any

involving knees and shoulders, was clumsy and carried danger of tearing the suit.

They came out on raw, wild upland surrounded by pinnacles, bright against

black sky. “Where to?” asked Bruce.

Sam studied the stars, then pointed southeast. “The photomaps show open

country that way.”

“Suits me.” They trudged away; the country was too rugged to lope. They had

been traveling a long time, it seemed to Bruce, when they came out on a higher place

from which Earth could be seen. “What time is it?” he asked.

“Almost seventeen,” Sam answered, glancing up.

“We’re supposed to be back by midnight.”

“Well,” admitted Sam, “I expected to reach open country before now.”

“We’re lost?”

“Certainly not! I’ve blazed it. But I’ve never been here before. I doubt if

anyone has.”

“Suppose we keep on for half an hour, then turn back?”

“Fair enough.” They continued for at least that; Sam conceded that it was

time to turn.

“Let’s try that next rise,” urged Bruce.

“Okay.” Sam reached the top first. “Hey, Bruce-we made it!”

Bruce joined him. “Golly!” Two thousand feet below stretched a dead lunar

plain. Mountains rimmed it except to the south. Five miles away two small craters

formed a figure eight.

“I know where we are,” Sam announced. “That pair shows up on the photos. We

slide down here, circle south about twenty miles, and back to Base. A cinch- how’s

your air?”

Bruce’s bottle showed fair pressure; Sam’s was down, he having done more

work. They changed both bottles and got ready. Sam drove a piton, snapped on a ring,

fastened a line to his belt and passed it through the ring. The end of the line he

passed between his legs, around a thigh and across his chest, over his shoulder and

to his other hand, forming a rappel seat. He began to “walk” down the cliff, feeding

slack as needed.

He reached a shoulder below Bruce. “Off rappel!” he called, and recovered

his line by pulling it through the ring.

Bruce rigged a rappel seat and joined him. The pitches became steeper;

thereafter Sam sent Bruce down first, while anchoring him above. They came to a last

high sheer drop. Bruce peered over. “Looks like here we roost.”

“Maybe.” Sam bent all four lines together and measured it. Ten feet of line

reached the rubble at the base.

Bruce said, “It’ll reach, but we have to leave the lines behind us.”

Sam scowled. “Glass lines cost money; they’re from Earth.”

“Beats staying here.”

Sam searched the cliff face, then drove a piton. “I’ll lower you. When

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you’re halfway, drive two pitons and hang the strap from one. That’ll give me a

changeover.”

“I’m against it,” protested Bruce.

“If we lost our lines,” Sam argued, “we’ll never hear the last of it. Go