And felt that patchwork joint start to give.
The hoses squeezed out of my fist but we lost only a fraction of gas. I found that I was trying to close a valve that was closed tight. Peewee had hers closed. The gauges each showed just short of half full-there was air for Peewee.
I sighed and found I had been holding my breath.
Peewee put her helmet against mine and said very soberly, “Thanks, Kip.”
“Charton Drugs service, ma’am-no tip necessary. Let me tidy this mess, you can tie me and we’ll go.”
“You won’t have to carry but one extra bottle now.”
“Wrong, Peewee. We may do this stunt five or six times until there’s only a whisper left”-or until the tape wears out, I added to myself. The first thing I did was to rewrap the tape on its spool-and if you think that is easy, wearing gloves and with the adhesive drying out as fast as you wind it, try it.
In spite of the bandage, sticky stuff had smeared the connections when the hoses parted. But it dried so hard that it chipped off the bayonet-and-snap joint easily. I didn’t worry about the screw-thread joint; I didn’t expect to use it on a suit. We mounted Peewee’s recharged bottle and I warned her that it was straight oxygen. “Cut your pressure and feed from both bottles. What’s your blood color reading?”
“I’ve been carrying it low on purpose.”
“Idiot! You want to keel over? Kick your chin valve! Get into normal range!”
We mounted one bottle I had swiped on my back, tied the other and the oxy bottle on my front, and were on our way.
Earth mountains are predictable; lunar mountains aren’t, they’ve never been shaped by water. We came to a hole too steep to go down other than by rope and a wall beyond I wasn’t sure we could climb. With pitons and snap rings and no space suits it wouldn’t have been hard in the Rockies- but not the way we were. Peewee reluctantly led us back. The scree slope was worse going down-I backed down on hands and knees, with Peewee belaying the line above me. I wanted to be a hero and belay for her-we had a brisk argument. “Oh, quit being big and male and gallantly stupid, Kip! You’ve got four big bottles and the Mother Thing and you’re top heavy and I climb like a goat.”
I shut up.
At the bottom she touched helmets. “Kip,” she said worriedly, “I don’t know what to do.”
“What’s the trouble?”
“I kept a little south of where the crawler came through. I wanted to avoid crossing right where the crawler crossed. But I’m beginning to think there isn’t any other way.”
“I wish you had told me before.”
“But I didn’t want them to find us! The way the crawler came is the first place they’ll look.”
“Mmm . . . yes.” I looked up at the range that blocked us. In pictures, the mountains of the Moon look high and sharp and rugged; framed by the lens of a space suit they look simply impossible.
I touched helmets again. “We might find another way-if we had time and air and the resources of a major expedition. We’ve got to take the route the crawler did. Which way?”
“A little way north … I think.”
We tried to work north along the foothills but it was slow and difficult. Finally we backed off to the edge of the plain. It made us jumpy but it was a chance we had to take. We walked, briskly but not running, for we didn’t dare miss the crawler’s tracks. I counted paces and when I reached a thousand I tugged the line; Peewee stopped and we touched helmets. “We’ve come half a mile. How much farther do you think it is? Or could it possibly be behind us?”
Peewee looked up at the mountains. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Everything looks different.”
“We’re lost?”
“Uh … it ought to be ahead somewhere. But we’ve come pretty far. Do you want to turn around?”
“Peewee, I don’t even know the way to the post office.”