A Fall of Moondust

CHAPTER 22

The really unforgettable moments of TV are those which no one expects, and for which neither cameras nor commentators are prepared. For the last thirty minutes, the raft had been the site of feverish but controlled activity — then, without warning, it had erupted.

Impossible though that was, it seemed as if a geyser had spouted from the Sea of Thirst. Automatically, Jules tracked that ascending column of mist as it drove toward the stars (they were visible now; the director had asked for them). As it rose, it expanded like some strange, attenuated plant — or like a thinner, feebler version of the mushroom cloud that had terrorized two generations of mankind.

It lasted only for a few seconds, but in that time it held unknown millions frozen in front of their screens, wondering how a waterspout could possibly have reared itself from this arid sea. Then it collapsed and died, still in the same uncanny silence in which it had been born.

To the men on the raft that geyser of moisture-laden air was equally silent, but they felt its vibration as they struggled to get the last coupling into place. They would have managed, sooner or later, even if Pat had not cut off the flow, for the forces involved were quite trivial. But their “later” might have been too late. Perhaps, indeed, it already was…

“Calling Selene! Calling Selene!” shouted Lawrence. “Can you hear me?”

There was no reply. The cruiser's transmitter was not operating; he could not even hear the sounds her mike should be picking up inside the cabin.

“Connections ready, sir”, said Coleman. “Shall I turn on the oxygen generator?”

It won't do any good, thought Lawrence, if Harris has managed to screw that damned bit back into place. I can only hope he's merely stuffed something into the end of the tube, and that we can blow it out.

“O. K.” he said. “Let her go — all the pressure you can get.”

With a sudden bang, the battered copy of The Orange and the Apple was blasted away from the pipe to which it had been vacuum-clamped. Out of the open orifice gushed an inverted fountain of gas, so cold that its outline was visible in ghostly swirls of condensing water vapor.

For several minutes the oxygen geyser roared without producing any effect. Then Pat Harris slowly stirred, tried to get up, and was knocked back to the ground by the concentrated jet. It was not a particularly powerful jet, but it was stronger than he was in his present state.

He lay with the icy blast playing across his face, enjoying its refreshing coolness almost as much as its breathability. In a few seconds he was completely alert — though he had a splitting headache — and aware of all that had happened in the last half-hour.

He nearly fainted again when he remembered unscrewing the bit, and fighting that gusher of escaping air. But this was no time to worry about past mistakes; all that mattered now was that he was alive — and with any luck would stay so.

He picked up the still-unconscious McKenzie as though he were a limp doll, and laid him beneath the oxygen blast. Its force was much weaker now, as the pressure inside the cruiser rose back to normal; in a few more minutes it would be only a gentle zephyr.

The scientist revived almost at once, and looked vaguely round him.

“Where am I?” he said, not very originally. “Oh — they got through to us. Thank God I can breathe again. What's happened to the lights?”

“Don't worry about that — I'll soon fix them. We must get everyone under this jet as quickly as we can, and flush some oxygen into their lungs. Can you give artificial respiration?”

“I've never tried.”

“It's very simple. Wait until I find the medicine chest.”

When Pat had collected the resuscitator, he demonstrated on the nearest subject, who happened to be Irving Schuster.

“Push the tongue out of the way and slip the tube down the throat. Now squeeze this bulb — slowly. Keep up a natural breathing rhythm. Got the idea?”

“Yes, but how long shall I do it?”

“Five or six deep breaths should be enough, I'd guess. We're not trying to revive them, after all — we just want to get the stale air out of their lungs. You take the front half of the cabin; I'll do the rear.”

“But there's only one resuscitator.”

Pat grinned, without much humor.

“It's not necessary”, he answered, bending over his next patient.

“Oh”, said McKenzie. “I'd forgotten that.”

It was hardly chance that Pat had headed straight to Sue, and was now blowing into her lips in the ancient — and highly effective — mouth-to-mouth method. But to do him justice, he wasted no time on her when he found that she was breathing normally.

He was just starting on his third subject when the radio gave another despairing call.

“Hello, Selene, is there anyone there?”

Pat took a few seconds off to grab the mike.

“Harris calling. We're O. K. We're applying artificial respiration to the passengers. No time to say more — we'll call you later. I'll remain on receive. Tell us what's happening.”

“Thank God you're O. K. — we'd given you up. You gave us a hell of a fright when you unscrewed that drill.”

Listening to the Chief Engineer's voice while he blew into the peacefully sleeping Mr. Radley, Pat had no wish to be reminded of that incident. He knew that, whatever happened, he would never live it down. Yet it had probably been for the best; most of the bad air had been siphoned out of Selene in that hectic minute or so of decompression. It might even have lasted longer than that, for it would have taken two or three minutes for a cabin of this size to lose much of its air, through a tube only four centimeters in diameter.

“Now listen”, continued Lawrence, “because you've been overheating badly, we're letting you have your oxygen just as cold as we think it's safe. Call us back if it gets too chilly, or too dry. In five or ten minutes we'll be sinking the second pipe to you, so that we'll have a complete circuit and can take over your entire air-conditioning load. We'll aim this pipe for the rear of the cabin, just as soon as we've towed the raft a few meters. We're moving now. Call you back in a minute.”

Pat and the Doctor did not relax until they had pumped the foul air from the lungs of all their unconscious companions. Then, very tired, yet feeling the calm joy of men who see some great ordeal approach its triumphant end, they slumped to the floor and waited for the second drill to come through the roof.

Ten minutes later, they heard it bang against the outer hull, just forward of the air lock. When Lawrence called to check its position, Pat confirmed that this time it was clear of obstructions. “And don't worry”, he added. “I won't touch that drill until you tell me.”

It was now so cold that he and McKenzie had put on their outer clothing once more, and had draped blankets over the sleeping passengers. But Pat did not call a halt; as long as they were not in actual distress, the colder the better. They were driving back the deadly heat that had almost cooked them — and, even more important, their own air purifiers would probably start working again, now that the temperature had dropped so drastically.

When that second pipe came through the roof, they would be doubly safeguarded. The men on the raft could keep them supplied with air indefinitely, and they would also have several hours — perhaps a day's — reserve of their own. They might still have a long wait here beneath the dust, but the suspense was over.

Unless, of course, the Moon arranged some fresh surprises.

“Well, Mr. Spenser”, said Captain Anson, “looks as if you've got your story.”

Spenser felt almost as exhausted, after the strain of the last hour, as any of the men out on the raft, two kilometers below him. He could see them there on the monitor, on medium close-up. They were obviously relaxing — as well as men could relax when they were wearing space suits.

Five of them, indeed, appeared to be trying to get some sleep, and were tackling the problem in a startling but sensible manner. They were lying beside the raft, half submerged in the dust, rather like floating rubber dolls. It had not occurred to Spenser that a space suit was much too buoyant to sink in this stuff. By getting off the raft, the five technicians were not only providing themselves with an incomparably luxurious couch; they were leaving a greatly enlarged working space for their companions.

The three remaining members of the team were moving slowly around, adjusting and checking equipment — especially the rectangular bulk of the air purifier and the big lox spheres coupled to it. At maximum optical and electronic zoom, the camera could get within ten meters of all this gear — almost close enough to read the gauges. Even at medium magnification, it was easy to spot the two pipes going over the side and leading down to the invisible Selene.

This relaxed and peaceful scene made a startling contrast with that of an hour ago. But there was nothing more to be done here until the next batch of equipment arrived. Both of the skis had gone back to Port Roris; that was where all the activity would now be taking place, as the engineering staff tested and assembled the gear which, they hoped, would enable them to reach Selene. It would be another day at least before that was ready. Meanwhile, barring accidents, the Sea of Thirst would continue to bask undisturbed in the morning sun, and the camera would have no new scenes to throw across space.

From one and a half light-seconds away, the voice of the program director back on Earth spoke inside Auriga's control cabin.

“Nice work, Maurice, Jules. We'll keep taping the picture in case anything breaks at your end, but we don't expect to carry it live until the oh six hundred news spot.”

“How's it holding up?”

“Supernova rating. And there's a new angle — every crackpot inventor who ever tried to patent a new paper clip is crawling out of the woodwork with ideas. We're rounding up a batch of them at six fifteen. It should be good fun.”

“Who knows — perhaps one of them may have something.”

“Maybe, but I doubt it. The sensible ones won't come near our program when they see the treatment the others are getting.”

“Why — what are you doing to them?”

“Their ideas are being analyzed by your scientist friend Doctor Lawson. We've had a dummy run with him; he skins them alive.”

“Not my friend”, protested Spenser. “I've only met him twice. The first time I got ten words out of him; the second time, he fell asleep on me.”

“Well, he's developed since then, believe it or not. You'll see him in — oh, forty-five minutes.”

“I can wait. Anyway, I'm only interested in what Lawrence plans to do. Has he made a statement? You should be able to get at him, now the pressure's off.”

“He's still furiously busy and won't talk. We don't think the Engineering Department has made up its mind yet, anyhow. They're testing all sorts of gadgets at Port Roris, and ferrying in equipment from all over the Moon. We'll keep you in touch if we learn anything new.”

It was a paradoxical fact, which Spenser took completely for granted, that when you were covering a story like this you often had no idea of the big picture. Even when you were in the center of things, as he was now. He had started the ball rolling, but now he was no longer in control. It was true that he and Jules were providing the most important video coverage — or would be, when the action shifted back here — but the pattern was being shaped at the news centers on Earth and in Clavius City. He almost wished he could leave Jules and hurry back to headquarters.

That was impossible, of course, and even if he did so, he would soon regret it. For this was not only the biggest scoop of his career; it was, he suspected, the last time he would ever be able to cover a story out in the field. By his own success, he would have doomed himself irrevocably to an office chair — or, at best, a comfortable little viewing booth behind the banked monitor screens at Clavius Central.