"By then he'il be dead for sure."
"But the regulations . . ."
"Were written Earthside," Kinsman snapped. "The brass never planned on anything like this. I've got to go back, just to make sure."
"Kinsman, if you go . . ."
"I'm gone," he said. Then he turned off his suit radio.
He flew the jumper back down the crater's inner slope, leaning over the platform railing to see his marker beacons while listening to their radio peeps. In a few minutes he eased the spraddle-legged platform down on the last terrace before the helpless priest, kicking up a small spray of dust with the rockets.
"Father Lemoyne."
Kinsman stepped off the jumper and made it to the edge of the fissure in two lunar strides. The white shell was inert, the lone arm unmoving.
"Father Lemoyne!"
Kinsman held his breath, listening. Nothing . . . wait . . . the faintest, faintest breathing. More like gasping. Quick, shallow, desperate.
"You're dead," Kinsman heard himself mutter. "Give it up. You're finished. Even if I got you out of here you'd be dead before I could get you back to the base."
The priest's faceplate was opaque to him. He saw only the reflected spot of his own helmet lamp. But his mind filled with the shocked face he had seen in that other visor, the horrified expression when she realized that she was dead.
Kinsman looked away, out at the too-close horizon and the uncompromising stars beyond. Then he remembered the rest of it.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars—on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places.
Like an automaton he turned back to the jumper. His mind was a blank now. Without thought, without even 145 feeling, he rigged a line from the jumper's tiny winch to the metal lugs in the canister suit's chest. Then he took apart the platform railing and wedged three rejoined sections into the fissure above the fallen man, to form a hoisting lever arm. Looping the line over the spindly metal arm, he started the winch.
He climbed down into the fissure as the winch silently took up the slack in the line, and set himself as solidly as he could on the bare, scoured-smooth rock. Grabbing the priest's armored shoulders, he guided the oversized canister up from the crevice while the winch strained steadily.
The railing arm gave way when the priest was only partway up and Kinsman felt the full weight of the monstrous suit crush down on him. He sank to his knees, gritting his teeth to keep from crying out.
Then the winch took up the slack. Grunting, fumbling, pushing, Kinsman scrabbled up the rocky slope with his arms wrapped halfway around the big canister's middle. He let the winch drag them both to the jumper's edge, then reached out and shut off the motor.
With only a hard breath's pause Kinsman snapped down the suit's supporting legs so the priest could stand upright even though unconscious. Then he clambered onto the Jump- er's platform and took the oxygen line from the rocket tankage. Kneeling at the bulbous suit's shoulders, he plugged the line into its emergency air tank.
The older man coughed once. That was all.
