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.
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.
