Age 32
"ANY WORD FROM him yet?"
"Huh? No, nothing."
Kinsman swore to himself as he stood on the open platform of the little lunar rocket jumper. It was his second trip to the Moon and it was not going well.
"Say, where are you now?" Bok's voice sounded gritty with static in Kinsman's helmet earphones.
"Up on the rim. He must've gone inside the damned crater."
"The rim? How'd you get ..."
"Found a flat spot for the jumper. Don't think I walked this far, do you? I'm not as nutty as the priest."
"But you're supposed to stay down here on the plain! The crater's off-limits."
"Tell that to our holy friar. He's the one who marched up here. I'm just following the seismic rigs he's been planting every three, four klicks."
He could sense Bok shaking his head. "Kinsman, if there are twenty officially approved ways to do a job, I swear you'll pick the twenty-second."
"If the first twenty-one are lousy."
"Mission control is going to be damned upset with you. You won't get off with just a reprimand this time."
"I suppose mission control would prefer that we just let the priest stay lost."
"You're not going inside the crater, are you?" Bok's voice edged up half an octave. "It's too risky."
Kinsman almost laughed. "You think sitting inside that aluminum casket you're in is safeT'
The earphones went silent. With a sigh. Kinsman wished for the tenth time that hour that he could scratch his 138 twelve-day-old beard. Get zipped into the suit and the itches start. He did not need a mirror to know that his face was haggard, sleepless, his black beard mean-looking.
He stepped down from the jumper—a rocket motor with a railed platform and some equipment on it, nothing more —and planted his boots on the solid rock of the ringwall's crest. With a twist of his shoulders to settle the weight of his bulky backpack he shambled over to the packet of seismic instruments and the fluorescent marker that the priest had left there.
"He came right up to the top and now he's off on the yellow brick road, playing Moon explorer. Stupid bastard."
Did you really think you'd leave human stupidity behind you? a voice in his head asked. Or human guilt?
Reluctantly he looked into the crater. The brutally short horizon cut across the middle of its floor, but the central peak stuck its worn head up among the solemn stars. Beyond it there was nothing but dizzying blackness, an abrupt end to the solid world and the beginning of infinity.
Damn the priest! God's gift to geology. And I've got to play guardian angel for him.
Kinsman turned back and looked outward from the crater rim. He could see the lighted radio mast and squat return rocket, far below on the plain. He even convinced himself that he saw the mound of rubble marking their buried base shelter, where Bok lay curled safely in his bunk. The Russian base was far over the horizon, almost on the other side of the Mare Nubium. He could talk to the Russians by bouncing a signal off one of the commsats orbiting the Moon. But what good would that do? They were much farther away from the wandering priest than he was.
"Any sign of him?" Bok's voice asked.
"Sure," Kinsman retorted. "He left me a big map with an X to mark the treasure."
