FIRST on the MOON
by JEFF SUTTON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
1120 Avenue of the Americas
New York 36, N.Y.
FIRST ON THE MOON
Copyright ©, 1958, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Printed in U. S. A.
To Sandy
SUICIDE RACE TO LUNA
The four men had been scrutinized, watched, investigated, andintensively trained for more than a year. They were the best men to befound for that first, all-important flight to the Moon—the pioneermanned rocket that would give either the East or the West control overthe Earth.
Yet when the race started, Adam Crag found that he had a saboteur amonghis crew ... a traitor! Such a man could give the Reds possession ofLuna, and thereby dominate the world it circled.
Any one of the other three could be the hidden enemy, and if he didn'tdiscover the agent soon—even while they were roaring on rocket jetsthrough outer space—then Adam Crag, his expedition, and his countrywould be destroyed!
PROLOGUE
One of the rockets was silver; three were ashen gray. Each nested in adifferent spot on the great Western Desert. All were long, tapered,sisters except for color. In a way they represented the first, and last,of an era, with exotic propellants, a high mass ratio and three-stagedesign. Yet they were not quite alike. One of the sisters had within herthe artifacts the human kind needed for life—a space cabin high in thenose. The remaining sisters were drones, beasts of burden, but beastswhich carried scant payloads considering their bulk.
One thing they had in common—destination. They rested on their launchpads, with scaffolds almost cleared, heads high and proud. Soon theywould flash skyward, one by one, seeking a relatively small haven on astrange bleak world. The world was the moon; the bleak place was calledArzachel, a crater—stark, alien, with tall cliffs brooding over an ashyplain.
Out on the West Coast a successor to the sisters was shaping up—a greatship of a new age, with nuclear drive and a single stage. But thesisters could not wait for their successor. Time was running out.
CHAPTER I
The room was like a prison—at least to Adam Crag. It was a square witha narrow bunk, a battered desk, two straight-back chairs and littleelse. Its one small window overlooked the myriad quonsets and buildingsof Burning Sands Base from the second floor of a nearly empty dormitory.
There was a sentry at the front of the building, another at the rear.Silent alert men who never spoke to Crag—seldom acknowledged hismovements to and from the building—yet never let a stranger approachthe weathered dorm without sharp challenge. Night and day they werethere. From his window he could see the distant launch site and, bynight, the batteries of floodlights illumining the metal monster on thepad. But now he wasn't thinking of the rocket. He was fretting; fumingbecause of a call from Colonel Michael Gotch.
"Don't stir from the room," Gotch had crisply ordered on the phone. Hehad hung up without explanation. That had been two hours before.
Crag had finished dressing—he had a date—idly wondering what was inthe Colonel's mind. The fretting had only set in when, after more thanan hour, Gotch had failed to show. Greg's liberty had been restricted toone night a month. One measly night, he thought. Now he was wasting it,tossing away the precious hours. Wait