Astounding Science Fiction (British Edition), April 1944 — page 25: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE BEAST The Moon surface itself, except for the protruding craters, was in darkness, a pit- like, mind-shaking darkness. Pendrake shuddered, and leaped down to the first level of the cavern. The beam of light from his headpiece showed the floor was pumice dust. The frightful cold pressed in on him as he dug. Even violent movement wasn’t enough now, as it had been so long as part of the sun shone at him. The cold ate at his strength. The plate Bet slipping from his numbing hand. Like a tired old man he finally lay down in the shallow trench he had scraped in the dust. With a frantic will, he began labori- ously to cover himself. His last physical effort was an attempt to push his arm through the covering dust toward the flashlight switch in his head- piece. Mustn’t use up ee power, he thought vaguely. The curious thing was that he pushed his arm halfway up, paused for a desperately needed rest—and forgot its purpose. There was something, it seemed to him, some- thing. He gave it up, and lay there, his body like a cake of ice, his cheeks curving plates of cold. The conviction came that he was in his grave. But the life force in him was tenacious and unyielding. He grew warmer. The ice went out of his bones, his flesh began to tingle, his numbed hand grew fiery with pain, and his fingers thawed. The animal heat of him spread through the suit, a rich, luxurious force. He couldn’t get as warm as he would have liked. The temperature was too low for that. After a long while it struck him that lying here was no solution to anything. He must get deeper, deeper into the Moon’s pitted interior. It must be warmer farther down. Friction alone, the friction of semiviscid rock and metal, product of the Moon’s own tortuous writhings, would create a special higher temperature which would be held in by the insulating pumice and lava of the surface. There was, of course, the question of food, but— Pendrake was struggling now to get out of his pumice grave; and with a snap of his will he pushed the thought of food out of his mind. Climbing to his feet, he switched on his light, and began to work his way down. The path was a twisted one, as if once the cave might have been the tubular 23 funnel of a live volcano—pulled out of shape by the shifting of the Moon’s crust. Down, down, slantingly down. How many times he sought warmth in a bed of dust Pendrake had no memory. Twice he slept, for how long he had no idea at all. It could have been a minute’s doze; it might have been hours each time. The cave was timeless. A world of night through which the light from his helmet poked at intervals like a thin flame. He had no mercy on himself, but plunged down, often at a dead run, after a brief flicking -on of his light to reveal possible dangers. Other caves began to branch off from the main cavern. Sometimes they were plainly nothing but branches. But when a possibility of confusion existed, Pendrake forced himself to stop, to stand there while the hideous cold ate into him—stand there and clearly mark an arrow to indicate the direction from which he had come. He slept again, and then again. Five days, he thought; and knew that he might be fool- ing himself. A body so subjected to deathly cold must need more sleep than normal to recuperate. All his great strength could not ward off such a reaction of the human system. But five sleeps—five days. Grimly he counted them in full, and added each sleep as one day—six, seven, eight nine— Gradually, it grew warmer. For a long, long time he didn’t notice that. But finally the consciousness penetrated that the inter- vals between those frantic burial parties of his were lengthening. It was still bitterly cold on the tenth “day,” but the chill was a slower pressure, not a biting, tearing thing. The warmth stayed longer inside him. For the first time he could walk along and clearly realize that he was a doomed man. Other thoughts came, too. He ought to start back up again, back toward the sur- face where the sun would soon be shining. And once on the surface he could make a desperate two-weeks’ search for one of the Nazi camps. In a way that purpose seemed silly, stupid. For—the question became a blank wonder in his mind—what would he do if he did find such a camp? There was Eleanor, of course, but— The very vagueness of his plans eroded his will, already long weakened from the pangs of hunger, and by a thirst so terrible that every minute seemed an hour, every second a bit of hell. comiclooks (©