Free A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke

before him.
    ‘Strip down to your underclothes and wriggle into it,’ said Van Kessel. ‘Don’t bother about the biopack—you clamp that on later.’
    ‘I’m in.’ said Cliff presently. ‘What do I do now?’
    ‘You wait twenty minutes—and then we’ll give you the signal to open the air lock and jump.’
    The implications of that word ‘jump’ suddenly penetrated. Cliff looked around the now familiar, comforting little cabin, and then thought of the lonely emptiness between the stars—the unreverberant abyss through which a man could fall until the end of time.
    He had never been in free space; there was no reason why he should. He was just a farmer’s boy with a master’s degree in agronomy, seconded from the Sahara Reclamation Project and trying to grow crops on the Moon. Space was not for him; he belonged to the worlds of soil and rock, of moondust and vacuum-formed pumice.
    ‘I can’t do it,’ he whispered. ‘Isn’t there any other way?’
    ‘There’s not,’ snapped Van Kessel. ‘We’re doing our damnedest to save you, and this is no time to get neurotic. Dozens of men have been in far worse situations—badly injured, trapped in wreckage a million miles from help. But you’re not even scratched, and already you’re squealing! Pull yourself together—or we’ll sign off and leave you to stew in your own juice.’
    Cliff turned slowly red, and it was several seconds before he answered.
    ‘I’m all right,’ he said at last. ‘Let’s go through those instructions again.’
    ‘That’s better,’ said Van Kessel approvingly. ‘Twenty minutes from now, when you’re at apogee, you’ll go into the air lock. From that point, we’ll lose communication; your suit radio has only a ten-mile range. But we’ll be tracking you on radar and we’ll be able to speak to you when you pass over us again. Now, about the controls on your suit…’
    The twenty minutes went quickly enough. At the end of that time, Cliff knew exactly what he had to do. He had even come to believe that it might work.
    ‘Time to bail out,’ said Van Kessel. ‘The capsule’s correctly oriented—the air lock points the way you want to go. But direction isn’t critical. Speed is what matters. Put everything you’ve got into that jump—and good luck!’
    ‘Thanks,’ said Cliff inadequately. ‘Sorry that I…’
    ‘Forget it,’ interrupted Van Kessel. ‘Now get moving!’
    For the last time, Cliff looked around the tiny cabin, wondering if there was anything that he had forgotten. All his personal belongings would have to be abandoned, but they could be replaced easily enough. Then he remembered the little jar of moondust he had promised Brian; this time, he would not let the boy down. The minute mass of the sample—only a few ounces—would make no difference to his fate. He tied a piece of string around the neck of the jar and attached it to the harness of his suit.
    The air lock was so small that there was literally no room to move; he stood sandwiched between inner and outer doors until the automatic pumping sequence was finished. Then the rail slowly opened away from him, and he was facing the stars.
    With his clumsy gloved fingers, he hauled himself out of the air lock and stood upright on the steeply curving hull, bracing himself tightly against it with the safety line. The splendour of the scene held him almost paralysed. He forgot all his fears of vertigo and insecurity as he gazed around him, no longer constrained by the narrow field of vision of the periscope.
    The Moon was a gigantic crescent, the dividing line between night and day a jagged arch sweeping across a quarter of the sky. Down there the sun was setting, at the beginning of the long lunar night, but the summits of isolated peaks were still blazing with the last light of day, defying the darkness that had already encircled them.
    That darkness was not complete. Though the sun had gone from the land below, the almost full Earth flooded it with