A Fall of Moondust

CHAPTER 12

Dr. Lawson's silence, the Chief Engineer decided, had gone on long enough. It was high time to resume communication.

“Everything all right, Doctor?” he asked in his friendliest voice.

There was a short, angry bark, but the anger was directed at the Universe, not at him.

“It won't work”, Lawson answered bitterly. “The heat image is too confused. There are dozens of hot spots, not just the one I was expecting.”

“Stop your ski. I'll come over and have a look.”

Duster Two slid to a halt; Duster One eased up beside it until the two vehicles were almost touching. Moving with surprising ease despite the encumbrance of his space suit, Lawrence swung himself from one to the other and stood, gripping the supports of the overhead canopy, behind Lawson. He peered over the astronomer's shoulder at the image on the infrared converter.

“I see what you mean; it's a mess. But why was it uniform when you took your photos?”

“It must be a sunrise effect. The Sea's warming up, and for some reason it's not heating at the same rate everywhere.”

“Perhaps we can still make sense out of the pattern. I notice that there are some fairly clear areas — there must be an explanation for them. If we understood what's happening, it might help.”

Tom Lawson stirred himself with a great effort. The brittle shell of his self-confidence had been shattered by this unexpected setback, and he was very tired. He had had little sleep in the last two days, he had been hurried from satellite to spaceship to Moon to dust-ski, and after all that, his science had failed him.

“There could be a dozen explanations”, he said dully. “This dust looks uniform, but there may be patches with different conductivities. And it must be deeper in some places than in others; that would alter the heat flow.”

Lawrence was still staring at the pattern on the screen, trying to relate it to the visual scene around him.

“Just a minute”, he said. “I think you've got something.” He called to the pilot. “How deep is the dust around here?”

“Nobody knows; the Sea's never been sounded properly. But it's very shallow in these parts — we're near the northern edge. Sometimes we take out a fan blade on a reef.”

“As shallow as that? Well, there's your answer. If there's rock only a few centimeters below us, anything could happen to the heat pattern. Ten to one you'll find the picture getting simpler again when we're clear of these shoals. This is only a local effect, caused by irregularities just underneath us.”

“Perhaps you're right”, said Tom, reviving slightly. “If Selene has sunk, she must be in an area where the dust's fairly deep. You're sure it's shallow here?”

“Let's find out; there's a twenty-meter probe on my ski.”

A single section of the telescoping rod was enough to prove the point. When Lawrence drove it into the dust, it penetrated less than two meters before hitting an obstruction.

“How many spare fans have we got?” he asked thoughtfully.

“Four — two complete sets”, answered the pilot. “But when we hit a rock, the cotter pin shears through and the fans aren't damaged. Anyway, they're made of rubber; usually they just bend back. I've only lost three in the last year. Selene took out one the other day, and Pat Harris had to go outside and replace it. Gave the passengers some excitement.”

“Right — let's start moving again. Head for the gorge; I've a theory that it continues out underneath the Sea, so the dust will be much deeper there. If it is, your picture should start getting simpler, almost at once.”

Without much hope, Tom watched the patterns of light and shade flow across the screen. The skis were moving quite slowly now, giving him time to analyze the picture. They had traveled about two kilometers when he saw that Lawrence had been perfectly right.

The mottlings and dapplings had begun to disappear; the confused jumble of warmth and coolness was merging into uniformity. The screen was becoming a flat gray as the temperature variations smoothed themselves out. Beyond question, the dust was swiftly deepening beneath them.

The knowledge that his equipment was effective once more should have gratified Tom, but it had almost the opposite result. He could think only of the hidden depths above which he was floating, supported on the most treacherous and unstable of mediums. Beneath him now there might be gulfs reaching far down into the Moon's mysterious heart; at any moment they might swallow the dust-ski, as already they had swallowed Selene.

He felt as if he were tightrope walking across an abyss, or feeling his way along a narrow path through a quaking quicksand. All his life he had been uncertain of himself, and had known security and confidence only through his technical skills — never at the level of personal relations. Now the hazards of his present position were reacting upon those inner fears. He felt a desperate need for solidity, for something firm and stable to which he could cling.

Over there were the mountains, only three kilometers away — massive, eternal, their roots anchored in the Moon. He looked at the sunlit sanctuary of those high peaks as longingly as some Pacific castaway, helpless upon a drifting raft, might have stared at an island passing just beyond his reach.

With all his heart, he wished that Lawrence would leave this treacherous, insubstantial ocean of dust for the safety of the land. “Head for the mountains!” he found himself whispering. “Head for the mountains!”

There is no privacy in a space suit — when the radio is switched on. Fifty meters away, Lawrence heard that whisper and knew exactly what it meant.

One does not become Chief Engineer for half a world without learning as much about men as about machines. I took a calculated risk, thought Lawrence, and it looks as if it hasn't come off. But I won't give in without a fight; perhaps I can still defuse this psychological time bomb before it goes off.

Tom never noticed the approach of the second ski; he was already too lost in his own nightmare. But suddenly he was being violently shaken, so violently that his forehead banged against the lower rim of his helmet. For a moment his vision was blinded by tears of pain; then, with anger — yet at the same time with an inexplicable feeling of relief — he found himself looking straight into the determined eyes of Chief Engineer Lawrence, and listening to his voice reverberate from the suit speakers.

“That's enough of this nonsense”, said the C. E. E. “And I'll trouble you not to be sick in one of our space suits. Every time that happens it costs us five hundred stollars to put it back into commission — and even then it's never quite the same again.”

“I wasn't going to be sick —” Tom managed to mutter. Then he realized that the truth was much worse, and felt grateful to Lawrence for his tact. Before he could add anything more, the other continued, speaking firmly but more gently: “No one else can hear us, Tom — we're on the suit circuit now. So listen to me, and don't get mad. I know a lot about you, and I know you've had a hell of a rough deal from life. But you've got a brain — a damn good brain — so don't waste it by behaving like a scared kid. Sure, we're all scared kids at some time or other, but this isn't the time for it. There are twenty-two lives depending on you. In five minutes, we'll settle this business one way or the other. So keep your eye on that screen, and forget about everything else. I'll get you out of here all right — don't you worry about that.”

Lawrence slapped the suit — gently, this time — without taking his eyes off the young scientist's stricken face. Then, with a vast feeling of relief, he saw Lawson slowly relax.

For a moment the astronomer sat quite motionless, obviously in full control of himself but apparently listening to some inner voice. What was it telling him? wondered Lawrence. Perhaps that he was part of mankind, even though it had condemned him to that unspeakable orphans' home when he was a child. Perhaps that, somewhere in the world, there might be a person who could care for him, and who would break through the ice that had encrusted his heart.

It was a strange little tableau, here on this mirror-smooth plain between the Mountains of Inaccessibility and the rising sun. Like ships becalmed on a dead and stagnant sea, Duster One and Duster Two floated side by side, their pilots playing no part in the conflict of wills that had just taken place, though they were dimly aware of it. No one watching from a distance could have guessed the issues that had been at stake, the lives and destinies that had trembled in the balance; and the two men involved would never talk of it again.

Indeed, they were already concerned with something else. For in the same instant, they had both become aware of a highly ironic situation.

All the time they had been standing there, so intent upon their own affairs that they had never looked at the screen of the infrared scanner, it had been patiently holding the picture they sought.

When Pat and Sue had completed their inventory and emerged from the air-lock galley, the passengers were still far back in Restoration England. Sir Isaac's brief physics lecture had been followed, as might easily have been predicted, by a considerably longer anatomy lesson from Nell Gwyn. The audience was thoroughly enjoying itself, especially as Barrett's English accent was now going full blast.

“'Forsooth, Sir Isaac, you are indeed a man of great knowledge. Yet, methinks there is much that a woman might teach you.'

“'And what is that, my pretty maid?'

“'Mistress' Nell blushed shyly.

“'I fear', she sighed, 'that you have given your life to the things of the mind. You have forgotten, Sir Isaac, that the body, also, has much strange wisdom.'

“'Call me Ike,' said the sage huskily, as his clumsy fingers tugged at the fastenings of her blouse.

“'Not here — in the palace!' Nell protested, making no effort to hold him at bay. 'The King will be back soon!'

“'Do not alarm yourself, my pretty one. Charles is roistering with that scribbler Pepys. We'll see naught of him tonight —'”

If we ever get out of here, thought Pat, we must send a letter of thanks to the seventeen-year-old schoolgirl on Mars who is supposed to have written this nonsense. She's keeping everyone amused, and that's all that matters now.

No; there was someone who was definitely not amused. He became uncomfortably aware that Miss Morley was trying to catch his eye. Recalling his duties as skipper, he turned toward her and gave her a reassuring but rather strained smile.

She did not return it; if anything, her expression became even more forbidding. Slowly and quite deliberately, she looked at Sue Wilkins and then back at him.

There was no need for words. She had said, as clearly as if she had shouted it at the top of her voice: “I know what you've been doing, back there in the air lock.”

Pat felt his face flame with indignation, the righteous indignation of a man who had been unjustly accused. For a moment he sat frozen in his seat, while the blood pounded in his cheeks. Then he muttered to himself: “I'll show the old bitch.”

He rose to his feet, gave Miss Morley a smile of poisonous sweetness, and said just loudly enough for her to hear: “Miss Wilkins! I think we've forgotten something. Will you come back to the air lock?”

As the door closed behind them once more, interrupting the narration of an incident that threw the gravest possible doubts upon the paternity of the Duke of St. Albans, Sue Wilkins looked at him in puzzled surprise.

“Did you see that?” he said, still boiling.

“See what?”

“Miss Morley —”

“Oh”, interrupted Sue, “don't worry about her, poor thing. She's been eying you ever since we left the Base. You know what her trouble is.”

“What?” asked Pat, already uncomfortably sure of the answer.

“I suppose you could call it ingrowing virginity. It's a common complaint, and the symptoms are always the same. There's only one cure for it.”

The ways of love are strange and tortuous. Only ten minutes ago, Pat and Sue had left the air lock together, mutually agreed to remain in a state of chaste affection. But now the improbable combination of Miss Morley and Nell Gwyn, and the feeling that one might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb — as well as, perhaps, the instinctive knowledge of their bodies that, in the long run, love was the only defense against death — had combined to overwhelm them. For a moment they stood motionless in the tiny, cluttered space of the galley; then, neither knowing who moved first, they were in each other's arms.

Sue had time to whisper only one phrase before Pat's lips silenced her.

“Not here”, she whispered, “in the palace!”