The Space Mail Run

The way he felt now, Jerry Welsh was almost sorry he had left Earth. The Moonship landing seemed to be crushing the very life out of him, although he lay flat on a couch to ease the strain.

Jerry turned his head toward his father, who was strapped down like himself, and suffering too. The craft was under its own control, for no human could withstand the rocket’s present speed and still be able to steer in for a landing.

Capt. Welsh was on his bi-weekly mail run to Luna, the Moon, and for the first time in ten years of service he had a passenger—his own twelve-year-old son.

At last Jerry felt a hard jolt under him. He knew the rocket’s tail fins had finally touched ground. Jerry unstrapped himself with rubbery fingers and sat up. Then he tried to stand, but flopped down again.

“Wow, I feel giddy!” he groaned.

His father laughed. “You’ll get your bearings presently, Son.”

How long Jerry had waited to make this space mail run with his father! Then finally last year, Capt. Welsh had said that Jerry could go with him when he became twelve, as he was especially husky and strong for his age.

But now that the great moment had come at last, Jerry wasn’t sure he was enjoying it as he had expected, for he had found space so vast, so dark, and so frightening.

“Do you still want to be a spaceman, Jerry?” his dad asked suddenly, as though Jerry had spoken his thoughts aloud.

“I—I think so, Dad,” he replied hesitantly.

“I see you’re doubtful, Jerry,” Capt. Welsh said. “I won’t put you on the spot so early.”

They climbed into space gear—electrically-heated suits and clear plastic helmets fitted with radios. Lastly they donned oxygen tanks and flooded their suits with the life-sustaining gas.

They gathered up the mail sacks and climbed down the ladder to the ground, heading for the largest of a group of buildings which made up Moonhaven, center of Earthmen’s activity on the airless planet.

The stars burned fantastically bright overhead. Traces of frost topped the distant Lunar Alps. It was incredibly cold out here, for the Moon was in its two-week period of night.

Capt. Welsh got a receipt for the largest mail bag, and then he and Jerry went out a rear door of the building carrying the rest. An atom-powered mail car awaited them. It had an open top and huge wheels that looked like saw-toothed gears.

“Climb aboard the Moon jeep, Jerry,” his father said. “We’ve got ten mail deliveries to make.”

Inside, Capt. Welsh pulled down a section of the dash panel revealing a map. “Here’s a map of our route. There aren’t many mail stops on the Moon yet, but they are all important.”

“And the mail must go through!” Jerry added.

Capt. Welsh nodded soberly. “That’s the first law, Jerry.”

As they moved off Jerry saw the big friendly globe of Earth hanging like a green jewel halfway up the jet black sky. He wondered what his mother and baby sister were doing this moment a quarter of a million miles away.

Capt. Welsh showed Jerry how to run the jeep. Jerry found this easy for he had already had a course in mechanics in preparation for his future career as a space man. But sometime later their peaceful ride was interrupted when Capt. Welsh suddenly leaned over and grabbed the wheel.

Jerry was thrown to the side as the car swerved. The vehicle straightened out and slammed to a halt as his father controlled the wheel and applied the brakes.

“What happened?” Jerry breathed, his heart pounding.

His father pointed behind them. “Look.”

Jerry turned and saw the edge of a treacherous ditch running right across the roadway where they would have passed over. The gorge was several feet wide.

“I didn’t even see it,” Jerry murmured, sick with fear at what might have happened.

This wasn’t the first time he’d been shaken on this journey. It made him wonder as he had once before if he had what it took to be a space man, or if this adventure would make him decide never to leave the atmosphere of Earth again.

“Scared?” his father asked. Jerry nodded.

“Don’t worry. I was too for a moment.”

“You were?” Jerry asked with surprise.

“Fear was given to man, so he could save himself from danger, Jerry,” Capt. Welsh said. “Don’t be ashamed of it. Fear is nothing to be ashamed of unless you let it get the best of you. Never forget that.”

They arrived at their first delivery point, an engineering project on a plateau surrounded by mountains. There were the foundations of great buildings to come, constructed of hard Lunar granite.

The space-suited figures came running when they recognized Capt. Welsh and his mail car. Jerry marveled how the formerly stern expressions of the workmen brightened when the foreman handed mail out to them.

“It must be fun bringing mail to men who are so far from their homes and families,” Jerry said when they were on their way again.

“I guess that’s why I’ve put up with the lonely hours of seeing nothing but stardust for the past ten years,” Capt. Welsh answered. “But I love it, Son, and I wouldn’t trade jobs with any man.”

Their next delivery site was a cavern where men were prospecting for uranium. They too were overjoyed at receiving messages from home. The jeep rolled on from there to a huge plain which was being prepared for a future spaceport. Capt. Welsh and his helper dropped off another mail sack and then were on their way again. Some hours later, all but two deliveries had been made.

“Next stop is the astronomy observatory,” Capt. Welsh told Jerry.

They crawled over sandy hills that taxed the gripping power of their spiked wheels, wound in and out of towering buttresses of black basalt, and bored through natural tunnels like a pair of human moles. Then the observatory came into view.

A smiling little scientist with thick glasses signed for the mail at the door. He invited Jerry to come back and visit the place before he returned to Earth.

“You haven’t seen anything until you look through their great telescope,” Capt. Welsh told Jerry as they drove off.

“What’s our last stop?” Jerry wanted to know.

“A geology camp where some scientists are digging into ancient rocks,” his father said. “It’s only about seven miles away, but the going will be a little rough before we get there. It’s a good thing it’s our last stop because we don’t have any too much oxygen left in our shoulder tanks. I usually don’t take this long on a mail run.”

The roadway carried them through a narrow pass with a high hill of loose rock on one side and a sloping embankment on the other. Jerry’s first warning of trouble came when he was flung suddenly forward. He heard the sickening drag of the wheels as his father’s boot hit the brakes. Just ahead of them he saw a cascade of rocks sliding down the hill.