Kinsman leaned back on his heels. His faceplate was fogging over again, or was it fatigue blurring his vision? The regenerator was hopelessly smashed, he saw. The old bird must've been breathing his own juices. Once the emergency tank registered full, he disconnected the oxygen line and plugged it into a special fitting below the regenerator.
"If you're already dead, this is probably going to kill me, too," Kinsman said. He purged the entire suit, forcing the contaminated fumes out and replacing them with oxygen that the jumper's rocket motor needed to get them back to the base.
He was close enough now to see through the canister's tinted visor. The priest's face was grizzled, eyes closed. His 146 usual maddening little smile was gone; his mouth hung open slackly.
Kinsman hauled him up onto the railless platform and strapped him down to the deck. He saw himself, for an absurd moment, as Frankenstein's assistant, strapping the giant monster to the operating table. Then he turned to the control podium and inched the throttle forward just enough to give them the barest minimum of lift. Steady, Igor, he said to himself. We can't use full power now.
The jumper almost made it to the crest before its rocket motor died and bumped them gently onto one of the terraces. There was a small emergency tank of oxygen that couid have carried them a little farther, but Kinsman knew that he and the priest would need it for breathing.
"Wonder how many Jesuits have been carried home on their shields?" he asked himself as he unbolted the section of decking that the priest was lying on. By threading the winch line through the bolt holes he made an improvised sled, which he carefully lowered to the ground. Then he took the emergency oxygen tank and strapped it to the deck section also.
Kinsman wrapped the line around his fists, put his shoulder under it, and leaned against the burden. Even in the Moon's light gravity it was like trying to haul a truck.
"Down to less than one horsepower," he grunted, strain- ing forward.
For once he was glad that the scoured rocks had been smoothed by micrometeors. He would climb a few steps, wedge himself as firmly as he could, then drag the sled to him. It took a painful half-hour to reach the ringwall crest.
He could see the base again, tiny and remote as a dream. "All downhill from here," he mumbled.
He thought he heard a groan.
"That's it," he said, pushing the sled over the crest, down the gentle outward slope. "That's it. Stay with it. Don't you die on me. Don't you put me through all of this for nothing!"
"Kinsman!" Bok's voice. "Are you all right?"
The sled skidded against a meter-high rock. Scrambling after it, Kinsman answered, 'T'm bringing him in. Just shut up and leave us alone. I think he's alive." 147
"Houston says no," Bok answered, his voice strangely calm. "They've calculated that his air went bad on him. He can't possibly be alive. You are ordered to leave him and return to base shelter. Ordered, Kinsman."
"Tell Houston they're wrong. He's still alive. Now stop wasting my breath."
Pull the sled free. Push it to get it started downhill again. Strain to hold it back. Don't let it get away from you. Haul it out of the damned ciaterlets. Watch your step, don't fall.
"Too damned much uphill ... in this downhill."
Once he sprawled flat and knocked his helmet against the edge of the sled. He must have blacked out for a moment. Weakly, he dragged himself to the oxygen tank and refilled his suit's supply. Then he checked the priest's suit and topped off its tank.
"Can't do that again," he said to the silent priest. "Don't know if we'll make it. Maybe we can. If neither one of us has sprung a leak. Maybe ..."
