Shavkun was asleep, breathing hoarsely through his gaping mouth. Captain Zlotnikova was fiddling with the knobs on the receiver—they had more than enough power from their solar panels—looking for the special program that was beamed to them night and day. There was static, a blare of music, then the gentle melody of a balalaika playing an old folk melody. Zlotnikova leaned back, arms behind his head, and hummed a quiet accompaniment. Nartov looked up at the blue and white mottled globe in the black sky and felt a strong desire for a cigarette. Shavkun groaned in his sleep and made smacking noises with his mouth.

“Chess?” Nartov asked, and Zlotnikova laid down the well-worn thin-paper copy of The Collected Works of V.I. Lenin that he had been leafing through. It was the only book aboard—they had planned to read from it when they planted the Soviet flag in Lunar soil—and, while inspiring in other circumstances, bore little relationship to their present condition. Chess was better. The litde pocket set was the most important piece of equipment aboard Vostok IV.

“I’m four games ahead of you,” Nartov said, passing over the board. “You’re white.”

Zlotnikova nodded and played a safe and sane pawn to king four. The colonel was a strong player and he was taking no chances. The sun, pouring down on the Sea of Tranquility outside, hung apparently motionless in the black sky, although it crept closer to the horizon all the time. Even with sunglasses he squinted against the glare, automatically looking for some movement, some change in that ocean of rock and sand, mother-of-pearl, grayish green, lifeless.

“Your move.” He looked back at the board, moved his knight.

“A vacuum, airless… whoever thought it would be this hot?” Zlotnikova said.

“Whoever thought we would be here this long, as I have told you before. As highly polished as this ship is, some radiation still gets through. It hasn’t a hundred percent albedo. So we warm up. We were supposed to be here less than a day, it wasn’t considered important.”

“It is after eleven days. Guard your queen.”

The colonel wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm, looked out at the changeless moonscape, looked back to the board. Shavkun grunted and opened his eyes.

“Too damn hot to sleep,” he mumbled.

“That hasn’t seemed to bother you the last couple of hours,” Zlotnikova said, then castled queenside to get away from the swiftly mounting kingside attack. “Watch your tongue, Captain,” Shavkun said, irritable after the heat-sodden sleep. “I’m a Hero of the Soviet People,” Zlotnikova answered, unimpressed by the reprimand. Rank meant very little now.

Shavkun looked distastefully at the other two, heads bent over the board. He was a really second-rate player himself. The other two beat him so easily that it had been decided to leave him out of the contest. This gave him too much time to think in.

“How long before the oxygen runs out?”

Nartov shrugged, bearlike and fatalistic, without bothering to look up from the board. “Two days, maybe a third. We’ll know better when we have to crack the last cylinder.”

“And then what?”

“And then we will decide about it,” he said with quick irritation. Playing the game had put the unavoidable from his mind for a few minutes; he did not enjoy being dragged back to it. “We have already talked about it. Dying by asphyxiation can be painful. There are a lot simpler ways. We’ll discuss it then.”

Shavkun slid from the bunk and leaned against the viewport, which was canted at a slight angle. They had managed to level off the vessel by digging at the other two legs, but nothing could replace the lost fuel. And there was the Earth, looking so close. He pulled the camera from its clip and squinted through the pentaprism, using their strongest telescopic lens.

“That storm is over. The entire Baltic is clear. I do believe I can even see Leningrad. It’s clear, really clear there with the sun shining…”

“Shut up,” Colonel Nartov said sharply, and he did.

The gray waters of the Baltic hissed along the side of the MS Vitus Bering, breaking into mats of foam that were swept quickly astern. A seagull flapped slowly alongside, an optimistic eye open for any garbage that might be thrown overboard. Arnie stood at the rail, welcoming the sharp morning air after the night in the musty cabin. The sky, still banded with red in the east where the sun was pushing its edge over the horizon, was almost cloudless, its pale blue bowl resting on the heaving plain of the sea. The door creaked open and Nils came on deck, yawning and stretching. He cocked a professional eye out from under the brim of his uniform cap—his Air Force one, not SAS this time—and looked around.

“Looks like good flying weather, Professor Klein.”

“Arnie, if you please, Captain Hansen. As shipmates on this important flight I feel there should be less formality.”

“Nils. You’re right, of course. And, by God, it is important, I’m just beginning to realize that. All the planning is one thing, but the thought that we are leaving for the Moon after breakfast and will be there before lunch… It’s a little hard to accept.” The mention of food reminded him of the vacant space in his great frame. “Come on, let’s get some of that breakfast before it’s all gone.”

There was more than enough left. Hot cereal and cold cereal; Nils had a little of each, sprinkling the uncooked oatmeal over his cornflakes and drowning them both in milk in the Scandinavian manner. This was followed by boiled eggs, four kinds of bread, a platter of cheese, ham, and salami. For those with even better appetites there were three kinds of herring. Arnie, more used to the light Israeli breakfast, settled for some dark bread and butter and a cup of coffee. He looked with fascinated interest as the big pilot had one serving of everything to try it out, then went around again for seconds. Ove came in, poured some coffee, and joined them at the table.

“The three of us are the crew,” he said. “It’s all set. I was up half the night with Admiral Sander-Lange and he finally saw the point”

“What is the point?” Nils asked, talking around a large mouthful of herring and buttered rugbrad. “I’m a pilot, so you must have me, but is there any reason to have two high-powered physicists aboard?”

“No real reason,” Ove answered, ready with the answer after a night of debating the point. “But there are two completely separate devices aboard—the Daleth drive and the fusion generator—and each requires constant skilled attention. It just so happens that we are the only two people for the job, sort of high-paid mechanics, and that is what is important. The physicist part is secondary at this point. If Blaeksprutten is to fly, we are the only ones who can fly her. We’ve come so far now that we can’t turn back. Our risk is really negligible—compared to the certain death facing those cosmonauts on the Moon. And it’s also a matter of honor now. We know we can do it. We have to try.”

“Danish honor,? Nils said gravely, then broke into a wide grin. “This is really going to rock the Russians back on their heels! How many people in their country? Two hundred twenty-six or two hundred twenty-seven million, too many to count. And how many in all of Denmark?”

“Under five million.”

“Correct—a lot less than in Moscow alone. So they have all their parades and rockets and boosters and speeches and politicians, and their thing falls over and all die juice runs out. So we come along and pick up the pieces!”

The ship’s officers at the next table had been silent, listening as Nils’s voice grew louder with enthusiasm. Now they burst out in applause, laughing aloud. This flight appealed to the Danish sense of humor. Small they were, but immensely proud, with a long and fascinating history going back a thousand years. And, like all the Baltic countries, they were always aware of the Soviet Union just across that small, shallow sea. This rescue attempt would be remembered for a long time to come. Ove looked at his watch and stood up.