MAJOR MATT MASON Moon Mission by George S. Elrick

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

1. The "Lunar Robinson Crusoe"
2. Strange Adventure
3. Moonquake
4. Lunar Labyrinth
5. "Uncle Wiggly"
6. A Surprising Development
7. Mason Reports
8. A Protective Cave
9. Squeak Explains
10. A-Okay

CHAPTER 1
THE "LUNAR ROBINSON CRUSOE"

   "If I eat any more of these algae cakes, I'll turn into a green glob," murmured Lieutenant Sanders. He made a wry face, then stretched out on his contour couch in the pressurized space station. "It's great being back on the moon again, but I'd give my Jet Pak for a good salami sandwich."
   Jo Ann Harvey lifted her space helmet from her shoulders and gently hooked it on an aluminum rack. Although her face was drawn and troubled, she forced a wan smile. "Bruce, I'd advise you not to let Captain McAllister hear you complain like that. Those algae cakes are his pride and joy."
   "But they taste like cardboard!", protested Sanders as he pushed a final green crumb into his mouth with the tip of his thumb. "He keeps saying he's worked out a formula that makes `em taste like Italian pizza   but they still taste like cardboard!"
   The girl sat down and expertly removed her weighted space boots. She sighed heavily. "Nothing like space boots to make a young woman psychiatrist resemble a baby elephant! Say, isn't it your turn to go duty as officer of the day?"
   "Right," said the lieutenant, standing up. "However, since none of us is getting any sleep during this first twenty-four-hour period, I'd say we are all acting as officer of the day!"
    " That's because Major Mason wants every Nucleus Two project to be in working order before we go over the rim of the moon and wake up my hibernating brother, " replied Jo Ann.
   " I'm sure he'll be all right," commented Lieutenant Sanders as he zipped up his bulky space suit. But his voice was without conviction. He walked heavily toward the revolving air-locked door that separated the moon's vacuum from the air inside. "Those hibernation pills are good for three months. There's nothing to worry about. You know where he is. He's sleeping like a baby at the bottom of the thermal tube."
   "I hope you're right," mused Jo Ann. She removed a slender gold tube from her blouse pocket and applied a touch of pale lipstick to her mouth. Then she wearily leaned back on the couch, rested her tousled head against the inflated cushion, and closed her eyes. As though they were projected on a movie screen inside her head, the events of the past few months flickered fitfully in her mind as she dozed off.
   Captain Otto Harvey's strong-jawed face glimmered first on her mental screen. Called "Squeak" since his Air Force Academy years as Major Mason's roommate, Otto was now famous throughout the civilized world as the  "Lunar Robinson Crusoe."
   The lovely young flight doctor stirred on the couch. Her fingers twitched with nervous fatigue.
   Captain Harvey had received the nickname because he had volunteered to remain alone on the moon for several months following the space expedition known as Nucleus One. The purpose of that initial lunar probe had been to establish temporary facilities for complicated power plants and pressurized living quarters which would be established when more supplies had been sent from Earth in the follow-up expedition, labeled Nucleus Two.
   Encouraged by Major Mason, who was in charge of all lunar projects, Squeak had had a thermal tube the size of a living room sunk into a protective crevice on the far side of the moon. Here, in a hostile environment characterized by great extremes in temperature, he was to observe the effect of prolonged isolation on his body and mind.
   The thermal tube was cleverly constructed so that the range in temperature would be minimized. A plate-like grid receptor on the upper lip of the wide opening captured fierce solar energy during the month-long lunar days, to be converted into instant warmth during the month-long lunar nights.
   The tube had several other interesting features: Twin holographic television cameras made possible the transmitting of crystal-clear three-dimensional pictures to central control stations on Earth. There was a microwave radio transmitter-receiver that could also operate on laser beams, and a computerized portable decoding device. Of course, there was a generous supply of concentrated food packaged, like toothpaste, in tubes, which themselves were edible.
   Last, but not least, was a reserve supply of Captain Kirk McAllister's famous algae cakes---though  Squeak had swore that he would rather starve than eat them---and a hibernation pill the size of a golf ball, to be used only if the follow-up expedition had to be postponed. The pill would immediately slow down all body functions in order to preserve the precious oxygen supply until the arrival of a space rescue team.
   Jo Ann Harvey moaned softly in her sleep. Despite the lieutenant's words of reassurance, she felt certain that her older brother had perished. Her restless mind continued to churn, and visions of her brother passed before her.

 CHAPTER 2
 STRANGE ADVENTURE

   For the first eight months of confinement in the tube, all had gone well. Squeak had transmitted a daily televised message to Earth, where it was projected three-dimensionally on wall-sized screens. The young captain had made witty comments about the state of his body and mind confessing that he missed hot coffee more than anything else and had explained the progress of his pet project.
   The project was concerned with the decoding of periodic radio signals Squeak claimed to be receiving from intergalactic space somewhere in the vicinity of several rapidly receding quasars. It was his firm belief that the signals came from a weird form of intelligence which was trying to establish contact with him. The computerized decoder had been unable to translate these signals satisfactory, but Squeak had been certain that he would be successful before Major Mason and his trained crew returned to the moon.
   The Nucleus One expedition had orbited a communications satellite from the Satellite Launch. It enabled Squeak to keep in close contact with control stations on Earth.
   During Squeak's period of isolation on the moon, JoAnn Harvey and Major Mason faithfully conversed with him via two-way microwave radio, at the same time watching Squeak's face loom large on a gigantic receiver.
   Then everything went to pieces. Squeak's face gradually became taut. His normally self-confident eyes became remote and frightened. When asked what was wrong, he merely mumbled that he had been hearing strange sounds and feeling odd vibrations. The sounds forced their way from outer space into his earphones, he said, and the vibrations came from the lunar rock and dust surrounding the thermal tube, making the floor tremble.  
   "What do you mean by 'strange' sounds, Squeak?" Major Mason had asked curiously, leaning forward in his bucket seat at Number One control station.
   Captain Otto Harvey had stared at him numbly from the screen, tapped one of his cup-shaped earphones with the tip of his shaking index finger, and muttered, "It sounds like caged lovebirds making loud cooing noises over and over and over ."
   "Take it easy, old man. There aren't any lovebirds on the moon!"
   "I tell you, Matt, I hear cooing sounds! I really do!"
   "Easy, dear." Jo Ann had tried to soothe her stricken brother.
   Major Mason had felt the muscles of his face stiffen. Though  the Nucleus Two blast-off for the moon was not scheduled for another three weeks, the timetable would have to be radically shifted ahead. Otto Harvey must be rescued from his lovely vigil. Without hesitation Major Mason decided that the lift-off would be staged in one week.
   "Steady, Squeak I'll be there in seven days!" Major Mason had promised his former roommate.
   Then it happened.
   "Help! Moon worms! They're coming after me!"
   With a scream Jo Ann Harvey leaped to her feet beside the major and clenched her fist with such force that her fingernails bit into her flesh. The picture on the screen was suddenly topsy-turvy, rocking back and forth as though a gigantic landslide had viciously slammed into the thermal tube outpost. Squeak careened violently against a wall, fell heavily to his knees, and groped toward the screen with his fingers fanned out. Then the picture became a blurry and finally disappeared altogether, leaving the horrified audience staring at a blank wall.
   Amid the commotion that followed, Mason had jerked a microphone from the back of the seat in front of him and had barked into it, "Take your hibernation pill, Squeak! Take the pill!"    
   "Having nightmares again?" It was Major Mason's voice, gently elbowing her dream to one side.
   Jo Ann opened her eyes a slit, then sat up on the comfortable space station couch. "I must have dozed off, Matt! I'm sorry. We've got so much to do. None of us can afford to sleep yet!"   
   Mason nodded grimly as he removed his space helmet and sat down beside her. "Let's rescue your brother immediately," he said, rubbing his strong hands together. "All structural and scientific operations are in motion again. I'm putting Captain McAllister in general command until we get back which should be sometime tomorrow."
   "How will we get there by Space Sled, Space Crawler, or Jet Pac?"
   "Jet Pac. It's the fastest way."
   The girl slipped her small feet into her clumsy space boots and zipped them up. Her mind ranged over the many projects in which Nucleus Two was engaged. They included photographing the other side of the moon from the Recono-jet, boring a shaft toward the moon's center to analyze the specific composition of its core, finding the most favorable sights for building domed cities, and establishing permanent blast-off stations for interplanetary and intergalactic flight.
   "Do you think Captain McAllister can handle everything?" Jo Ann asked.
   "Certainly. He's a fine officer. The only thing he can't do is make tasty algae cakes!"
   Once outside the space station and in the intense glare of the lunar day, they wasted no time in further conversation. Mason made sure that everything was proceeding according to plan. Then he snapped, "Let's go."
   After adjusting the thrust of the rockets in their anti-gravity Jet Propulsion Paks, the tight-lipped twosome skimmed over the bleak lunar landscape. Normally they would have "locked-in" on a laser signal beam, But all signal beams from Squeak's isolation station had been cut off. Now they were guided to the distant thermal tube by means of infrared horizon sensors.
   Nine hours later they crossed the crescent-shaped line of demarcation between lunar light and lunar shadow, instantly passing from a scorching 224 degrees Fahrenheit to a minus 243 degrees Fahrenheit. Because of their temperature-regulated space suits, however, neither felt the slightest discomfort. At this point, both automatically clicked on their bright helmet beacons.
   After a few moments Mason caught Jo Ann's attention with a slight beep from his microwave transmitter. "We're here," he told her, motioning toward a jumble of craggy rocks a thousand yards ahead. Now, if all went well, and Captain Otto Harvey had swallowed his hibernation pill, they would simply slip into the tube, force the helpless man to swallow a "wake-up" pill, and carry him back with them to the space station.
   Flicking on their paired retro-rockets, the pair slowed, descended fifty feet, and hovered over the grid opening of the thermal tube. Slowly they directed their helmet beacons downward.
   Jo Ann Harvey sucked in her breath at the sight. Then she snapped her eyes tightly shut. The interior of the thermal tube was an unbelievable shambles. Her brother was not there.

CHAPTER 3
MOONQUAKE !

                     
   "Stay here," muttered Major Mason. "I'll go down and look inside. He may have left a message of some sort." Depressing a button on the left side of his Jet Pak, he slid into the thermal tube as though riding an invisible elevator. Jo Ann hovered anxiously above.
   "Squeak, Squeak, where are you?" murmured the girl, nervously biting on her lower lip. She slowly pivoted in midair and stared at the distant earth, a hazy blue globe dangling in an ebony sky. Her brother might never walk  on that friendly dirt again. The slender young flight doctor shuttered, despite the controlled warmth of her space suit. There was no friendly soil on the moon nothing but sterile, gray-brown dust, monotonous craters, and saw-toothed mountains the color of rust.

   If Otto Harvey was wandering around somewhere out there in the frigid darkness demented because he had been left alone too long. They might never find what was left of him. He could easily stagger headfirst into a mile-deep crevice, or unknowingly unhinge his helmet and let the air escape from his pressurized suit. Suddenly Jo Ann stopped pivoting. She could have sworn that the boulder had just moved.
   Meanwhile Mason impatiently began sifting through the tumbled debris in the thermal tube in search of a clue as to why his former roommate had vanished. But there were no clues - just a tangle of wires, smashed microcircuits, crushed transistors, and overturned instrument panels. He stopped over and scooped up a round, porous object about the size of a golf ball. It was Squeak's hibernation pill. He obviously hadn't taken it.
   "Major Mason to Captain McAllister.  Major Mason to Captain McAllister, do you read me?" The grim-faced leader of Nucleus Two licked his lips and stared at the left sleeve of his moon suit. The shimmering surface of a card-sized transmission tube broke into wavy lines, then automatically focused. Lieutenant Bruce Sanders' boyish face appeared on the screen.
   "I was calling McAllister, Lieutenant," Mason said gruffly.
   "It's his turn to sleep for four hours, sir. Shall I wake him up?"
   Mason studied the youth's face, and his frown subsided. There were pouches of fatigue under Bruce's eyes. The major realized, with a twinge of remorse, that he had been working his men too hard.
   "No, never mind. Just tell him that Jo Ann and I arrived at the thermal tube and found it empty."
   "You mean Captain Harvey isn't there?"
   "Right. But his sister and I are going to search for him until we find him. We may not be back for several days. Remind the captain that in the meantime he's responsible for everything. And tell him not to spend too much time with those overgrown rabbits of his. They're already the size of baby whales!"
   "Yes, sir."
   Matt Mason erased the picture on the tube, depressed another button on his Jet Pak, and shot immediately upward.
   "Where are you, Jo Ann?" he called out.
   "Over here, Matt." The girl's voice, amplified electronically, signaled him from behind a pock-marked rock. Without their radio communications equipment they would have been unable to converse on the moon, since the waves of normal speech need air for their transmission.
   Mason floated quickly over to her. "Did you find a footprint?"
   "No, But I could swear that this rock moved a few seconds ago!"
   "Moved?" The major's clipped voice was incredulous.
   "Yes look!"
   Two boulders that had been eight inches apart suddenly snapped together like the shears of a scissors. A scattering of pebbles drained down a slight slope, and the lunar surface heaved up and down as though a gigantic mole were squirming just beneath. The major compressed his lips into a tight line. Then he exhaled explosively. "That's no ordinary moonquake. Something alive is down there! Help me push these rocks aside."

CHAPTER 4
LUNAR LABYRINTH

   In the next moments they struggled frantically, hoisting desk-sized rocks with ease because of the moon's low gravity.
  "A hole!" gasped Jo Ann as Matt Mason rolled a final rock down the incline. He watched it a moment as it gathered momentum, and then he twisted around to gape at the monstrous opening.
   Jo Ann was about to speak when the surface around the opening slid back and forth in a prolonged and violent spasm. Clutching each other to maintain their balance, the astonished twosome involuntarily pulled back as a column of bright orange smoke exploded upward out of the hole and dissipated into nothingness. For a split second, Mason thought his earphones had picked up vibrations that sounded like gurgling. Or were they cooing noises? Then all movement ceased, and the vibrations stopped, also.
   "Are you all right, Matt?" The girl's voice was anxious.
   "Yes, though I feel like a heavy- weight  contender who's been flattened with a right hook. And you?"
   "No bones broken. I guess I'm tougher than I think. What'll we do now?"
   "Follow me into the hole. I want to see what's down there!"
   After a final, thoughtful glance at the jumbled surface around them, which was illuminated eerily by the dancing light of their helmet beacons, they adjusted the thrust of their Jet Pak rockets and slipped into the cavity. As they descended, Jo Ann wondered if something would extend squid-like arm out of the darkness and engulf them.
   Nothing seized them, however. The hole was totally unoccupied. "I'd swear we were standing in a subway tunnel back on Earth!" exclaimed Jo Ann, bewildered by the emptiness of it all. Foolishly and unsuccessfully she tried to keep her voice matter-of-fact.
   Absently pounding a gloved fist into the palm of his other hand, Major Mason swiftly calculated the size of the seemingly endless tunnel in which they were standing. "I'd say it's about thirty-five feet in circumference," he ventured.
   "What or who made this tunnel?" queried the girl.
   "Whatever disintegrated in orange smoke a moment ago," replied the major. "Anyway, that's my guess."
   "The walls are perfectly smooth," observed Jo Ann. "In fact, the rock is almost shiny, as though someone had a rubber glove against it."
   "Look here!" exclaimed Matt. He pointed to a spot where the tunnel ended abruptly in a perfect conical point thirty yards to their right.
   "That means we have no choice in direction," said Jo Ann with a deep sigh.
   They soon discovered that they did have a choice, however, for the tunnel eventually forked off in several directions, and each fork similarly branched off.
     "It's like one of the games I used to play in kindergarten," muttered Mason. "We won't get lost down here, will we?" For the first time Jo Ann was unable to control the quaver in her voice.
   "Not a chance. They used to call me `Bloodhound' when I was a Cub Scout, because I could always find my way." Matt was about to add a few more bluff words of assurance when he felt the rock floor tremble beneath his feet, and his sensitive earphones detected faint cooing sounds that seemed to be drawing near a rapid clip. "Hold it a minute, Jo Ann!"
   The girl, however, had already stopped in her tracks. Her feet had tripped over her missing brother's space suit.

CHAPTER 5
"UNCLE WIGGLY"

   "It's time to wake up, Captain," whispered Bruce Sanders, tapping Kirk McAllister gently. The young lieutenant stifled a yawn and removed his heavy space helmet as McAllister sat up on the blue plastic couch and opened a weary eye.
   "Have four hours passed already? It seems as if I just lay down on this couch."
   "They're up, sir, and I have a message from Major Mason for you. When they reached the thermal tube, Captain Harvey wasn't there, so the major and Jo Ann are going to search for him. He told me to advise you not to spend too much time with your giant rabbits."
   McAllister made a wry face. "He keeps forgetting that my two-ton cottontails do have to be feed once in a while!"
   "I think he was only spoofing," ventured Bruce, seating himself on the plastic couch when the captain stood up and flexed his lanky arms. "Besides, the major knows how important your experiments are especially the one you're doing in the crater you call `Uncle Wiggly."
   "I suppose you're right, Lieutenant." Kirk ran his fingertips over the stubble on his bony chin, then tilted his head back and stared through he central opening in the grid-like floor above them. "On your next shift, Bruce, check those hinged solar shields up there. Right now, they're slamming micrometeorites to one side like deflected bullets. Unless you want to wear your space suit indoors all the time, you'll have to make sure those protective shields are pressure-tight."
   The only response from Lieutenant Sanders was a low, rattling snore.
   Outside, aboard the Cat Trac, Kirk McAllister made a routine check of all the activities in progress in the immediate vicinity. He recorded his terse comments on a tape magazine smaller than a cigarette pack, then slipped the metallic container into a slot in the space station wall. Everything appeared to be in order and on schedule, he thought as he steered the Cat Trac toward the nearest Space Crawler.
   Double-walled, inflated plastic buildings were mushrooming in the distance, under the zero-defects guidance of the portable computer. Skilled work crew and a tremendous gantry were expertly positioning aluminum girders, while a special-alloy drill methodically chewed downward through the lunar rock. In a nearby solar power station, water and oxygen were being steadily extracted from crushed stones and stored in torpedo-shaped tanks. Everywhere, color-coded construction equipment lay in precisely spaced piles. Kirk clambered onto the Space Crawler. "Uncle Wiggly, here I come!" he shouted.
   The thought of raising hippo-sized rabbits to be ground into yellow occurred to him
long before Nucleus One and the much heralded "Lunar Robinson Crusoe" affair. He had always wondered why Otto Harvey received more publicity than his own rabbit project, but it hadn't really nettled him. Though hot-tempered, Captain Kirk McAllister was a dedicated biologist and an equally fervid botanist.
   When, after endless experiments, he had succeeded I producing a strain of cottontails four feet high at the spine, he had been justifiably pleased. He had become ecstatic when he succeeded in planting oxygen capsules and temperature-regulating pills under the skin at the base of their ears. He felt that, if all went well, after several generations his overgrown charges would be able to survive on the moon's harsh surface without the protection provided by solar shields or other equipment. Of course, some would be struck down by meteorites. He shrugged. With rabbits, one didn't have to worry about replacements.
   Steered by automatic pilot that fed guidance equations into its electronic "brain," the Space Crawler swiftly rotated its eight cushioned legs over the uneven lunar soil. Periodically, McAllister made a slight mid-course correction with a flick of his thumb, but the machine needed little direction; it knew the exact location of the Uncle Wiggly crater.
   Suddenly McAllister saw an object souring skyward. Like an enormous projectile with ears, one of his two-ton rabbits had just made an unbelievable leap over the ragged upper lip of the crater and had crashed in a four-point landing three hundred yards away. Kirk slammed on the brake with his left foot and gazed in amazement at the flop-eared giant as it twitched its nose and bounded off again, clearing sixty-foot obstacles as though they didn't exist.
   A single thought pounded in McAllister's brain: "Who let the cottontail loose?"
   The Space Crawler zoomed over the top of the crater wall and raced down the crumbling slope on the other side. As it approached the plastic outer wall of the cleverly designed breeding station, the Space Crawler shut itself off. Kirk impatiently leaped out of the soft bucket seat, hurried toward the  air-locked entranceway, and flung himself inside.
   In air-conditioned stalls lining both sides of the hutch, four hundred rhinoceros-sized rabbits placidly munched on piles of powdered carrot pills. Except for the sewed-up incisions at the base of their floppy ears, where the pills and capsules had been inserted, they looked like inflated versions of pet bunnies.
   "All present and accounted for," mumbled McAllister to himself, "except the one that got away." He strode down the wide center aisle of the spotlessly clean hutch to examine the empty stall he saw at the end of the row. He peered critically at the self-healing crack in the double-thick outer wall. The escaped rabbit hadn't made that crack by itself of that he was sure. McAllister was about to return to the Space Crawler when his right foot sank into an opening that had been covered with mounds of sterilized yellow straw.
   "What's this?"  Awkwardly squatting down, he ran his thick, temperature-regulated gloves over the edge of the hole. "It must have been dug by the rabbit before it staged its getaway," McAllister thought to himself. Had he examined the cavity more carefully, he would have realized it wasn't the type of opening fashioned by an animal's forepaws. But the sight of eight newborn offspring each larger than a collie caught his attention, and he left the hole in order to insert oxygen pills under their wrinkled skins.
   "Well, Uncle Wiggly, good-by for today!" Captain McAllister clambered back on the Space Crawler and slipped another punched tape into his memory-and-guidance circuit. Then he headed for the neighboring crater that sheltered his hydroponic gardens as well as a carefully engineered spiderweb of algae tanks. These projects were both vital to the Nucleus Two expedition.
   As the rotating legs of the fast-moving vehicle sidestepped boulders and skipped over cracks in the lunar plain, McAllister permitted the corners of his mouth to curve into a dry grin. In a way he was half-pleased that the rabbit had escaped, for it proved that his gigantic mutations could survive for a time on the moon's grim surface without the benefit of temperature- conditioned walls and solar shields.
   Hydroponic gardens A-1 and A-2 were literally bursting with vitality. Astounding quantities of leafy green vegetables were exploding out of long, elevated gravel beds that periodically sucked up liquid nutrients from a network of plastic pipes beneath them. But hydroponic garden A-3 was a disaster.
   Kirk McAllister looked in amazement at the incredible destruction that that had so recently been an orderly array of hothouse plants. Gravel tanks had been kicked over, and crippled plastic pipes were pouring out quantities of precious fluid. As he frantically twisted the lever that controlled the flow of nutrients, he noted a half-eaten apple at his feet.
   Everyone scoffs at my large cakes, but they're eager to nibble my apples," he muttered. He was about to slam the half-chewed fruit against the nearest solar shield when he froze in position.
   A bony hand had thrust through the lunar dust and grasped him firmly by the ankle.

CHAPTER 6
A SURPRISING DEVELOPMENT

   "This is absolutely impossible," McAllister thought to himself, desperately trying to maintain his senses. "How could a hand reach out of the dust and grab me by the ankle?" He let the half-eaten apple bounce off the toe of his boot as he glanced downward. His eyes widened at the sight. It was a human hand, and the dust-crusted fingers were crawling up the side of his leg like a spider.
   "Hey!" His voice rang hollowly in his space helmet. Lurching to one side with feverish haste, he tripped over a plastic pipe and fell head-long among the roots and leaves of the scattered vegetables.
   The hand flopped back and forth for a moment, then sucked itself back into the hole and disappeared.
   "Oh, no, you don't." Captain McAllister hissed through his teeth. He quickly scrambled forward on his hands and knees and clawed the edges of the hole. "Major Mason will never believe this," he murmured. He was about to add that he really didn't believe it himself, when the lunar crust suddenly splintered and gave way. Kirk tumbled headfirst into the dusty darkness.
   The baffled  biologist sprawled awkwardly on the shiny floor of a tunnel similar to the one Major Mason and Jo Ann Harvey were exploring. Feeling foolish, angry, and bewildered all at the same time, he slowly raised his head and clicked on his helmet beacon, letting light splash upward against the arched ceiling. There was the hole he had crashed through and .He jerked into an upright position, his spine rigid. A shadowy shape had just scrambled out of sight around the bend in the shaft.
   "Come back here!" bellowed McAllister, forgetting that his voice could not be heard unless the other creature was also wearing a headset. He scrambled to his feet and lumbered after the ghostly figure that had plagued him, promptly losing his way in a crisscrossing maze of tunnels.

   While Kirk blindly staggered down one winding shaft after another, Jo Ann Harvey was nervously examining her brother's empty space suit.
   "Matt!" she exclaimed. "It's Squeak's suit, all right, but why isn't he in it?"
   Major Mason glanced briefly at the unzipped suit. His eyes narrowed. "I don't know, Jo Ann, but there are no signs of violence. He apparently took it off on his own free will."
   "But he'll die down here without its protection."
   "I'm not so sure. There's a deadly vacuum on the surface, all right, but we seem to be in a weird type of artificial environment down here. Remember the explosion of bright orange smoke at the hole we entered?"
   The girl nodded dully.
   "Whatever disintegrated in that puff of smoke was able to survive in this tunnel. It went to pieces only when it was unexpectedly exposed to the thin atmosphere where the air had  leaked out he edges of the hole. This means that there must be enough air pressure down here--- locked in by all these heavy rocks--- to keep the vacuum normally at arm's length."
   " What makes the air pressure?"
   Mason grimaced. "We're talking in circles. Whatever disintegrated is what makes air pressure."
   "You mean, there really are living creatures down here?"
   "Do you recall Squeak's shout that moon worm's were after him?"
   "Yes, but " The rest of her sentence was lost. As she felt the floor suddenly tremble beneath her feet, she heard Major Matt Mason calmly state, "Well, that's a moon worm coming around the bend!"
   A dry-skinned leathery shape was undulating toward them, completely clogging the tunnel. Jo Ann's knees buckled underneath her, as she promptly fainted.
   "This is no time to go to pieces," muttered Mason, clasping her by the shoulders and roughly hoisting her into his arms.
   Although the major was famous for his jesting remarks when the going got rough, he didn't feel like making any quips at the present moment. Something about the eyeless shape confronting him was unnerving. Then the worn was cooing like a lovebird.
   "This is enough to make anyone go into orbit," he thought to himself, slowly shuffling backward. "No wonder poor Squeak cracked up!"
   At that moment, the cylindrical shape paused, bunched its segments together, then surged forward, uttering a deafening spate of cooing sounds that made Mason's ears ring in his space helmet.
   The major immediately quickened his backward pace, having no desire to be squashed against the wall by a creature that might possibly be as long as a freight train. The worm didn't seem to be unfriendly, but one could never tell, and he didn't intend to find out.
   As he lurched backward with Jo Ann's limp form sagging in his arms, he made some quick mental notes of the beast's physical characteristics. Its skin seemed to be leathery, dry, and tough. Its color appeared to be a dull rusty yellow, undoubtedly due to the mineral content of the rocks it relied on for nourishment. Its wide mouth was shaped like a manta ray's and, as far as he could discern with his bobbing headlamp, he had flat disks instead of teeth.
   "Hold it, my friend," Mason snapped at the monstrosity as it bunched its segments for another surge. "you'd better quit while you're ahead!" From the marks on the wall to his left, Matt knew that he was standing directly beneath the hole through which he and Jo Ann had entered the tunnel.
   The worm hesitated for a moment, dimly aware that the surrounding atmosphere was too thin to be comfortable. Then it cracked its mouth-slit wide open, cooed excitedly, and extended itself so that its nose nudged one of Jo Ann's dangling feet.
   Matt Mason suddenly staggered backward, shocked by the violent explosion and blinded by the waves of orange smoke that slammed against the walls. Then the rocks ceased to tremble and the smoke disappeared. Once more he and the unconscious girl were alone in the tunnel.
   The commander of Nucleus Two stared in relieved disbelief down the length of the empty tube. "Captain McAllister will never believe this!"
 

CHAPTER 7
MASON REPORTS

   "What happened?" mumbled Jo Ann Harvey as she slowly opened her eyes.
   "You fainted, that's all," snapped Major Mason, trying to keep his voice matter-of-fact.
   "Is that horrible worm still after us?" The girl's face turned ashen as she remembered the strange creature that had undulated toward them.
   "It went up in smoke," answered Mason. "I'm not so sure it was really horrible. I think it was just trying to be friendly. In fact, it was nudging your boot in a rather gentle manner when it exploded."
   "Ugh! I'd rather not hear about it!" pleaded the nerve-shattered space psychiatrist. Her features twisted into an expression of distaste. "I guess I'm not much of a flight doctor. I should be able to take this sort of thing in my stride."
   Matt Mason smiled sympathetically. "I'll let you in on a little secret. It gave me the biggest goose pimples I've had since I was frightened on Halloween at the age of three!"
   "What'll we do now?" Jo Ann asked anxiously. She was standing on her feet again and striving to regain her composure.
   "Continue to search these tunnels for your brother," replied the major. "If we can't find him, I at least want to take his empty space suit back to the space station."
   "Speaking of the space station, Matt, shouldn't you let Captain McAllister or Lieutenant Sanders know where we are?" Even as she uttered the words, the major was rapidly adjusting the card-sized transmission tube on his left sleeve.
   "Major Mason to Captain McAllister. Do you read me?"
   Bruce Sanders' boyish face appeared on the shimmering screen. "This is the lieutenant, sir."
   "I thought it would be your turn to sleep by this time! Where's the captain?"
   "He's disappeared, sir! He apparently fell through a hole in the bottom of hydroponic garden A-three and hasn't been heard from since."
   "Whatever you do," Mason interrupted tersely, "don't follow him into to hole, or there won't be any officers left to run Nucleus Two."
   "Yes, sir. Where are you, sir?"
   "In a series of underground tunnels near Squeak's abandoned thermal tube. I'll try to keep in touch with you every thirty minutes."
   "Yes, sir. By the way, did I tell you about he rabbit?"
   "What rabbit ?"
   "Sergeant Storm claims he saw one leaping over a crevice. It must have escaped from the breeding station in the crater you call `Uncle Wiggly.' What'll we do?"
   "Have the sergeant go after it on an Astro Trac and shoot it with a tranquilizer dart. In the meantime, I''l see if I can find Captain McAllister as well as Squeak."
   "Yes, sir."
   Major Mason erased the picture on the tube and turned to the girl.
"Let's get going," he announced.
The girl immediately moved forward.
"Click on your Jet Pack. We can float a lot faster than we can walk."

While Jo Ann Harvey and the major drifted through the winding labyrinth, Captain McAllister was stumbling on foot through another portion of the same passageway. He would have preferred floating to walking, but he had left his Jet Pak  at the space station.
"That must have been Squeak darting around the corner ahead of me," mused the captain, "but it looked more like a caveman from the early days of the human race."
The thought of Captain Otto Harvey reverting to savagery chilled Kirk through and through. Unaware that the moon's vacuum no longer surrounded him, he wondered how his friend could possibly survive without his space suit, for it seemed to him that the figure he saw had been only half-clothed.
"If only Squeak had worn his Space Shelter Pak!" thought the captain. "Then he would have been able to inflate the shelter until our arrival."
At that moment the weird cooing sound tickled his eardrums within his helmet. He paused in his tracks and cocked his head. The sound soon became a low gurgle which grew louder and louder, as though whatever was making it were advancing toward him. Licking his cracked lips, McAllister flattened himself against the wall and waited nervously. If it was Otto Harvey playing some weird type of game, he would tackle him and shake some sense into his head. If it was something else, he didn't know what he would do.
It was something else.

CHAPTER 8
A PROTECTIVE CAVE

   The enormous worm sensed McAllister's presence as soon as it rounded the corner. The segmented beast opened its wide mouth-slit, gasped with excitement, and surged forward. Kirk grew rigid.
   "Help," groaned the white-faced captain. "Somebody help me!" He slipped sideways along the wall and stumbled down the passageway, his heart throbbing and his lungs burning. The worm was hot on his heels.
   "What a horrible way to die," he moaned through his chattering teeth as he sprawled heavily on his knees, then clumsily floundered forward. He was about to collapse from fatigue when the passageway abruptly forked into three directions. He staggered into the left fork, and the worm momentarily losing his scent surged past him into the center shaft.
   "Anyway, I'm safe for the time being," he said as he backed into the darkness and clicked off his headlamp. He stood in trembling silence, feeling perspiration trickle down his chest. If he ever returned to Earth, he would never go fishing again at least not with earthworms!
   Suddenly it seemed to him that something was tapping him on the left shoulder or was it his imagination? He couldn't be sure. Snapping his eyes shut, he compressed his lips and slowly counted to twenty to clear his senses. Then he jerked in startled surprise. It was real. Something was tapping him on his left shoulder.
   "Is that you, Squeak?" he ventured.
   There was no answer.
   Kirk McAllister slowly pivoted in the darkness and faced whatever it was that had crept up behind him. Briefly he flashed on his helmet beacon.
   What appeared to be a fright mask from a novelty shop leered at him for a split second. Then it blinked its hideous eyes to fend off the blinding glare of the light. It was Captain Otto Harvey, McAllister realized weakly or what had-been the much publicized "Lunar Robinson Crusoe." The figure was wretched-looking. Its shirt and trousers were tattered rags, its feet bare, its cheeks sunken, and its beard a tangled mass. With a grimace, Kirk clicked off the light as the strange figure clutched him by the sleeve and yanked him along the slippery wall.
   "Where are you taking me, Squeak?"
   There was no reply.
   After what seemed to be about five hundred yards, Squeak stopped cautiously.
   "What now, Otto ." McAllister began.
   Instead of responding, Squeak grasped him by the hand and pulled him through a narrow opening in the tunnel wall. In a moment the biologist realized that he was in a small cave that Squeak had laboriously scratched out of the wall as a sanctuary against perpetually roving worms. He sighed with relief as he felt his friend close the entranceway with a flat slab of rock.
   Then his nerves tingled. Squeak was cooing.

CHAPTER 9
SQUEAK EXPLAINS

   "I've had some crazy assignments since I've been on the moon, but I never thought I'd end up chasing a two-ton Easter bunny," growled sandy-haired Sergeant Storm as he zoomed across the lunar landscape on a specially designed Astro Trac. "If Captain McAllister can't keep those flop-eared monsters in their pens, I don't know why I should waste my time playing babysitter."
   He maneuvered the Astro Trac around an outcrop of rock and slammed on the atomic brake. Then he depressed an infrared distant-body sensor in the center of his belt buckle. A series of clicking sounds in his sensitive earphones indicated that his elusive quarry was jumping around somewhere to the left. "When I shoot one of those tranquilizer darts into your body, you won't be doing fancy footwork," muttered the irked sergeant. He angled off again at breakneck speed, at the same time unhooking his electronic gas gun.
   The wandering cottontail, Who was curiously sniffing at a pock-marked rock, recoiled in pain as a micrometeorite streaked down from the sky and burned a red furrow along the edge of one ear. Jerking its huge head to one side, the enormous beast caught sight of the approaching Astro Trac. Immediately it tensed the mighty muscles in its hind legs and bounced off.
   "Oh, no, you don't," snarled  Sergeant Storm, firing from the hip. The tranquilizer dart hissed past the receding animal, missing it by a country mile. Furious with himself for fumbling what should have been an easy shot, the sergeant narrowed his eyes and hurtled forward again.
   He caught up with the wildly leaping rabbit after a thirty-five-mile chase, which ended in the vicinity of Captain McAllister's algae tanks and hydroponic gardens.
   "Gotcha!"
   The tranquilizer dart blasted from his gun and struck the soft underbelly of the animal as it arched overhead.
   The hare tumbled to the ground, flip-flopped four times, and then smashed heavily against the transparent outer shell of hydroponic garden A-3.

   If the biologist had known that one of his prize cottontails was sprawled helplessly on its back, he couldn't have cared less at that particular moment. He was completely and horrifyingly absorbed by Squeak Harvey's strange behavior.
   "Squeak, what happened to you?" Kirk nervously flipped on his helmet beacon again, flooding the tiny man-made cave with blinding light.
   The "Lunar Robinson Crusoe" was cowering against the wall, his gaunt facial muscles jerking spasmodically.
   "I've got to get back to the space station," McAllister thought to himself wildly. His thoughts tumbled over each other. "You've really cracked up. And so will I, if I don't get out of here."
   Otto Harvey staggered forward and viciously slapped himself on the cheek with a calloused palm. With his other hand he frantically clutched Kirk by the sleeve.
   "Stop slapping yourself," bellowed the horrified captain. For an instant it all seemed like a dream.
   In reply, Squeak rolled back his bloodshot eyes and uttered another gush of cooing noises. Then he released his tight grip on Kirk's sleeve, pulled back, and flattened himself against the cold, stony wall, staring at McAllister.
   Kirk spun around and gingerly placed his hands on the flat slab that served to block the narrow entranceway their only protection against the moon worms. "Come on, Squeak, we're getting out of these tunnels, moon worms or no moon worms! Your doctor-sister will take care of you." With a grunt he heaved the heavy slab to one side.

   "Look, Matt, there's another rock that's moving!"
   "You're right, Jo Ann. But why would a moon worm struggle in solid rock when it could effortlessly slide through this smooth passageway?"
   Overcome with curiosity, Major Mason and Jo Ann hovered in midair in front of Squeak's cave, carefully adjusting their Jet Paks so that the rocket thrust was equalized in all directions.
   "Matt, that isn't a worm!"
   "It sure isn't!" called out Captain McAllister, Peering out from the jagged crack in the wall. A broad grin cracked his haggard face when he recognized Jo Ann and Matt.
   "Lieutenant Sanders told me you'd fallen through a hole in the floor of hydroponic garden A-three," Mason said in a disapproving tone. "You can tell me all about it later. In the meantime, have you seen Squeak?"
   "Yes," Jo Ann Harvey asked breathlessly. "Have you seen my brother?"
   "I sure have! I've got him right here in this cave!"
   "Squeak .." Jo Ann's voice quavered and trailed away as she caught sight of her brother. Her eyes widened in disbelief, then brimmed with tears.
   What had once been the jaunty Captain Otto Harvey stumbled slowly into the tunnel on the heels of Kirk McAllister. For a moment he stared foolishly around him. Then he began to slap the side of his head once more, at the same time uttering low gurgling sounds.
   "Help me get him back into his space suit," Mason snapped to the captain. "Without his earphones he can't hear a word we say." The major lowered himself quickly to the floor and approached Captain Harvey.
   Squeak shuffled to one side, his hollow eyes frightened.
   "There, that's right ..hold him!" commanded Matt Mason. McAllister grasped him firmly.
   It took ten minutes of struggling to force Squeak back into the space suit, and five additional strenuous minutes to position his helmet and adjust the delicate earphones.
   Suddenly, Squeak's expression changed form that of a resentful animal to a deeply thankful human being.
   "Old buddy, you have no idea how good it is to see real, live people again and to get rid of this thing that's inside my skull."
   "What is inside your skull, Squeak?" Mason's eyes narrowed into skeptical slits as he studied the man before him.
   "Did you bump into any moon worms?" asked Captain Harvey hesitantly.
   "Two of them. They exploded like firecrackers."
   "Did you hear them cooing, by chance?"
   "Yes and it made my flesh crawl!"
   "Well, I've been cooing, too, I'm afraid!"
   Jo Ann looked intently at her brother. "But why, Squeak?"
   Otto blinked sorrowfully. "Remember the radio signals I thought I was getting from quasars  and the peculiar messages I kept saying I was trying to decode?"
   The girl nodded.
   "I wasn't pulling anyone's leg. I was getting signals!"
   "Form whom or what?" The major's forehead crinkled into a puzzled frown.
   "From an alien, gaslike form of parasitic life that has no actual body of its own, and can survive and reproduce itself only by entering a mind that hasn't enough brainpower to resist it."
   Jo Ann's lower jaw sagged slightly. "You mean, this peculiar type of life has forced its way into the heads of moon worms in order to survive and reproduce itself?"
   "That's the way I see it," replied Captain Harvey. "Worms don't have much intelligence if any and can't put up effective resistance to an invasion of this sort."
   "You might almost call it an infection," mused Mason. "But, tell me, how did one of these things enter your head?"
   "When I became aware that there actually were moon worms around the rocks near my thermal tube, I'm afraid I temporarily lost my resistance, and that's when one of these parasites slipped into my head."
   "Ugh," murmured Jo Ann, making a wry face.
   "But, these `nothing' creatures aren't hostile," continued Squeak. "They don't want to hurt anybody or anything. They just want to live inside others' heads."
   "Why all the crazy cooing?" asked Captain McAllister. "Moon worms warble like lovebirds and so did you a few minutes ago."
   "That's how they communicate," Otto Harvey answered quickly.
   "When I first analyzed the cooing sounds on my decoder, I found that they actually were saying something!"
   "What were they saying and how could other forms of this life send radio signals from outer space?" McAllister was puzzled.
   "The signals didn't come from outer space they came from right here on the moon." Squeak screwed up his face as though he was suffering from a throbbing headache. "Ouch! I feel as if my skull is going to burst into a thousand pieces. The pressure is unbearable!"
   Major Mason narrowed his eyes and turned to Kirk. "The `nothing' creature inside Squeak's head is trying to batter its way out. It doesn't like being in there, now that Squeak's intelligence has returned! We've got to get it out of his tortured brain. Do you think we can deposit it in the head of one of your rabbits?"
   "I guess so," mumbled Captain McAllister.
   "Come on," summoned the major. "Let's get cracking! Squeak and Captain McAllister don't have Jet Paks, it looks as if you and I will have to carry them, Jo Ann."
   The young space psychiatrist was staring down the curving length of the passageway, her eyes widened as the beam from her helmet beacon splashed against a segmented snout quivering with excitement. "Hurry," she pleaded. "Let's not waste any time!"

CHAPTER 10
A-OKAY

   "By this time, old buddy, you should know these worm tunnels like the back of your hand," Major Mason told Otto Harvey as they came to a stop in the passageway. "Where's the nearest breakthrough to the surface?"
   "Let's see," muttered Squeak, his sharp eyes picking out several irregularities in the walls. "We should be near hydroponic garden A-three "
   "Where you grabbed me by the ankle," McAllister reminded him.
   "Sorry about that," Squeak replied with a grin. His sense of humor was returning as his headache subsided. "I was hungry!"
   "You sure made a mess of things up there," muttered the temperamental biologist. "And in my breeding station, as well."
   "Remember, I was out of my mind," snapped Squeak, irritated.

   "Matt," moaned Jo Ann at that moment, "my head hurts."
   Major Mason turned and studied the flight doctor's face, which was dimly visible behind the Plexiglas face shield of her bulky helmet. Her features were contorted, as though in agony. Startled, he looked closely at Squeak's calm but haggard countenance. "Squeak!"
   "What is it, Major?"
   "How does your head feel?"
   "Fine for the first time in many days."
   McAllister, also studying the girl's face, dug his fingers into Matt's shoulder. "Do you hear what I hear? She's starting to coo!"
   Jo Ann Harvey, her eyes tightly shut, had opened her mouth and was warbling like a canary.
   "That means only one thing," groaned Squeak. The `nothing' parasite has left my head and is trying to enter hers." Panic begin to surge through him. He squinted his eyes and called out," There's the opening to hydroponic garden A-three!"
   "Easy does it," snapped Mason, hoisting McAllister up through the hole. Then, pivoting in midair, he extended his muscular arms and guided the other two upward through the same cavity.
   "It sure is a mess!" muttered Kirk with a scowl as he glanced at the overturned vegetable trays.
   "Forget the vegetables," ordered the major. "We've got to get this girl close to one of your rabbit's head."
   "Hold it!" exclaimed Otto Harvey. "Isn't that one of your rabbits out there on the Space Turtle?"
   Major Mason spun on his heels and stared through the transparent wall of the hothouse. "Well, I'll be I'd forgotten about Sergeant Storm and the rabbit that escaped!"
   The sergeant and several of his crew, unaware that they were being observed from the enclosed garden, were positioning the unconscious hare on top of a flat vehicle normally used for hauling rocks between processing stations.
   At that moment, one of the crew tapped Sergeant Storm on the shoulder. "Sergeant, the rabbit is regaining consciousness. I just saw one of its ears move."
   "I'll take care of that!" growled Storm, drawing his gas gun from its holster and aiming at the beast. "Watch this. Just like in the Old West!" He started to squeeze the electronic trigger.
   "Don't pull that trigger!" Major Mason's metallic voice rang loudly in the sergeant's earphones.
   Sergeant Storm lowered the gun and turned around. He stared at the four people who floated toward him. "Why not, sir?"
   "I'll explain it to you later, Sergeant," answered the commander of Nucleus Two. Quickly he propped up Jo Ann against the animal's large head.
   The rabbit suddenly jerked one of its hind legs, knocking the nearest crew member sprawling. Then it opened its eyes, sat up groggily, and switched its nose.
   "Look, Major!" exclaimed Kirk McAllister. "Jo Ann is regaining consciousness!"
   As the girl opened her eyes and slowly shook her head, the rabbit was hesitantly uttering a series of low-pitched sounds that made Sergeant Storm's spine tingle.
In a moment the gigantic animal slid clumsily off the Space Turtle, regained its footing, and made a tremendous leap toward the horizon. Immediately it sprawled awkwardly, then fumbled off again.
   "Well, that takes care of that," murmured Major Mason. Noticing that Jo Ann was now fully conscious, he smiled fondly and added, "Come on , flight doctor, let's go back to the space station and have some coffee pills!"
   Lieutenant Sanders met them at the station. He was bursting with questions.
   "Take it easy," advised Matt Mason. "I'll tell you the whole story as soon as I've televised a report to Central Control on Earth. Meanwhile, see to it that Squeak has something to eat, and lend him some shaving powder so he can get rid of that second-rate beard!"
   "Here, Squeak," interrupted Captain McAllister. "Try one of my new algae cakes!"
   Otto Harvey accepted one of the flattened green cakes and thoughtfully stuffed it into his mouth.
   Kirk studied his face hopefully. "Well?" he ventured.
   "All I can say is, I agree with Lieutenant Sanders. They still taste like cardboard!"