A Fall of Moondust

CHAPTER 30

The news that Selene was on fire made no difference at all to Lawrence's actions. He could not move any faster than he was doing now; if he attempted it, he might make a mistake, just when the trickiest part of the entire job was coming up. All he could do was to forge ahead, and hope that he would beat the flames.

The apparatus now being lowered down the shaft looked like an overgrown grease gun, or a giant version of those syringes used to put icing on wedding cakes. This one held neither grease nor icing, but an organic silicon compound under great pressure. At the moment it was liquid; it would not remain so for long.

Lawrence's first problem was to get the liquid between the double hull, without letting the dust escape. Using a small rivet gun, he fired seven hollow bolts into Selene's outer skin — one in the center of the exposed circle, the other six evenly spaced around its circumference.

He connected the syringe to the center bolt, and pressed the trigger. There was a slight hiss as the fluid rushed through the hollow bolt, its pressure opening a tiny valve in the bulletshaped nose. Working very swiftly, Lawrence moved from bolt to bolt, shooting equal charges of fluid through each. Now the stuff would have spread out almost evenly between the two hulls, in a ragged pancake more than a meter across. No — not a pancake — a souffle, for it would have started to foam as soon as it escaped from the nozzle.

And a few seconds later, it would have started to set, under the influence of the catalyst injected with it. Lawrence looked at his watch; in five minutes that foam would be rock-hard, though as porous as pumice — which, indeed, it would very closely resemble. There would be no chance of more dust entering this section of the hull; what was already there was frozen in place.

There was nothing he could do to shorten that five minutes; the whole plan depended upon the foam setting to a known consistency. If his timing and positioning had been faulty, or the chemists back at Base had made an error, the people aboard Selene were already as good as dead.

He used the waiting period to tidy up the shaft, sending all the equipment back to the surface. Soon only Lawrence himself was left at the bottom, with no tools at all but his bare hands. If Maurice Spenser could have smuggled his camera into this narrow space — and he would have signed any reasonable contract with the Devil to have done so — his viewers would have been quite unable to guess Lawrence's next move.

They would have been still more baffled when what looked like a child's hoop was slowly lowered down the shaft. But this was no nursery toy; it was the key that would open Selene.

Sue had already marshaled the passengers to the front — and now much higher — end of the cabin. They were all standing there in a tightly packed group, looking anxiously at the ceiling and straining their ears for every encouraging sound.

Encouragement, thought Pat, was what they needed now. And he needed it more than any of them, for he alone knew — unless Hansteen or McKenzie had guessed it — the real magnitude of the danger they were facing.

The fire was bad enough, and could kill them if it broke through into the cabin. But it was slow-moving, and they could fight it, even if only for a while. Against explosion, however, they could do nothing.

For Selene was a bomb, and the fuse was already lit. The stored-up energy in the power cells that drove her motors and all her electrical devices could escape as raw heat, but it could not detonate. That was not true, unfortunately, of the liquid oxygen tanks.

They must still hold many liters of the fearfully cold, violently reactive element. When the mounting heat ruptured those tanks, there would be both a physical and a chemical explosion. A small one, it was true — perhaps equivalent to a hundred kilograms of T. N. T. But that would be quite enough to smash Selene to pieces.

Pat saw no point in mentioning this to Hansteen, who was already planning his barricade. Seats were being unscrewed from the rows near the front of the cabin, and jammed between the rear row and the toilet door. It looked as if the Commodore was preparing for an invasion rather than a fire — as indeed he was. The fire itself, because of its nature, might not spread beyond the power-cell compartment, but as soon as that cracked and blistered wall finally gave way, the dust would come flooding through.

“Commodore”, said Pat, “while you're doing this, I'll start organizing the passengers. We can't have twenty people trying to get out at once.”

That was a nightmare prospect that had to be avoided at all costs. Yet it would be hard to avoid panic — even in this welldisciplined community — if a single narrow tunnel was the only means of escape from a rapidly approaching death.

Pat walked to the front of the cabin; on Earth that would have been a steep uphill climb, but here a thirty-degree slope was barely noticeable. He looked at the anxious faces ranged in front of him and said: “We're going to be out of here very soon. When the ceiling opens, a rope ladder will be dropped down. The ladies will go first, then the men — all in alphabetical order. Don't bother to use your feet. Remember how little you weigh here, and go up hand over hand, as quickly as you can. But don't crowd the person in front; you should have plenty of time, and it will take you only a few seconds to reach the top.

“Sue, please sort everyone out in the right order. Harding, Bryan, Johanson, Barrett — I'd like you to stand by as you did before. We may need your help —”

He did not finish the sentence. There was a kind of soft, muffled explosion from the rear of the cabin — nothing spectacular; the popping of a paper bag would have made more noise. But it meant that the wall was down — while the ceiling, unfortunately, was still intact.

On the other side of the roof, Lawrence laid his hoop flat against the Fiberglas and started to fix it in position with quick-drying cement. The ring was almost as wide as the little well in which he was crouching; it came to within a few centimeters of the corrugated walls. Though it was perfectly safe to handle, he treated it with exaggerated care. He had never acquired that easy familiarity with explosives that characterizes those who have to live with them.

The ring charge he was tamping in place was a perfectly conventional specimen of the art, involving no technical problems. It would make a neat clean out of exactly the desired width and thickness, doing in a thousandth of a second a job that would have taken a quarter of an hour with a power saw. That was what Lawrence had first intended to use; now he was very glad that he had changed his mind. It seemed most unlikely that he would have a quarter of an hour.

How true that was, he learned while he was still waiting for the foam to set. “The fire's through into the cabin!” yelled a voice from overhead.

Lawrence looked at his watch. For a moment it seemed as if the second hand was motionless, but that was an illusion he had experienced all his life. The watch had not stopped; it was merely that time, as usual, was not going at the speed he wished. Until this moment it had been passing too swiftly; now, of course, it was crawling on leaden feet.

The foam should be rock-hard in another thirty seconds. Far better to leave it a little longer than to risk shooting too soon, while it was still plastic.

He started to climb the rope ladder, without haste, trailing the thin detonating wires behind him. His timing was perfect. When he had emerged from the shaft, uncrimped the short circuit he had put for the sake of safety at the end of the wires, and connected them to the exploder, there were just ten seconds to go.

“Tell them we're starting to count down from ten”, he said.

As Pat raced downhill to help the Commodore — though just what he could do now, he had very little idea — he heard Sue calling in an unhurried voice: “Miss Morley, Mrs. Schuster, Mrs. Williams…” How ironic it was that Miss Morley would once again be the first, this time by virtue of alphabetical accident. She could hardly grumble about the treatment she was getting now.

And then a second and much grimmer thought flashed through Pat's mind. Suppose Mrs. Schuster got stuck in the tunnel and blocked the exit. Well, they could hardly leave her until last. No, she'd go up all right; she had been a deciding factor in the tube's design, and since then she had lost several kilos.

At first glance, the outer door of the toilet still seemed to be holding. Indeed, the only sign that anything had happened was a slight wisp of smoke curling past the hinges. For a moment Pat felt a surge of relief; why, it might take the fire half an hour to burn through the double thickness of Fiberglas, and long before that…

Something was tickling his bare feet. He had moved automatically aside before his conscious mind said, “What's that?”

He looked down. Though his eyes were now accustomed to the dim emergency lighting, it was some time before he realized that a ghostly gray tide was pouring beneath that barricaded door — and that the panels were already bulging inward under the pressure of tons of dust. It could be only a matter of minutes before they collapsed; even if they held, it might make little difference. That silent, sinister tide had risen above his ankles even while he was standing here.

Pat did not attempt to move, or to speak to the Commodore, who was standing equally motionless a few centimeters away. For the first time in his life — and now, it might well be, for the last — he felt an emotion of sheer, overwhelming hate. In that moment, as its million dry and delicate feelers brushed against his bare legs, it seemed to Pat that the Sea of Thirst was a conscious, malignant entity that had been playing with them like a cat with a mouse. Every time, he told himself, we thought we were getting the situation under control, it was preparing a new surprise. We were always one move behind, and now it is tired of its little game; we no longer amuse it. Perhaps Radley was right, after all.

The loud-speaker dangling from the air pipe roused him from his fatalistic reverie.

“We're ready!” it shouted. “Crowd at the end of the bus and cover your faces. I'll count down from ten.

“TEN.”

We're already at the end of the bus, thought Pat. We don't need all that time. We may not even have it.

“NINE.”

I'll bet it doesn't work, anyway. The Sea won't let it, if It thinks we have a chance of getting out.

“EIGHT.”

A pity, though, after all this effort. A lot of people have half killed themselves trying to help us. They deserved better luck.

“SEVEN.”

That's supposed to be a lucky number, isn't it? Perhaps we may make it, after all. Some of us.

“SIX.”

Let's pretend. It won't do much harm now. Suppose it takes — oh, fifteen seconds to get through…

“FIVE.”

And, of course, to let down the ladder again; they probably rolled that up for safety…

“FOUR.”

And assuming that someone goes out every three seconds-no, let's make it five to be on the safe side…

“THREE.”

That will be twenty-two times five, which is one thousand and — no, that's ridiculous; I've forgotten how to do simple arithmetic…

“TWO.”

Say one hundred and something seconds, which must be the best part of two minutes, and that's still plenty of time for those lox tanks to blow us all to kingdom come…

“ONE.”

ONE! And I haven't even covered my face; maybe I should lie down even if I have to swallow this filthy stinking dust…

There was a sudden, sharp crack and a brief puff of air; that was all. It was disappointingly anticlimactic, but the explosives experts had known their job, as is highly desirable that explosives experts should. The energy of the charge had been precisely calculated and focused; there was barely enough left over to ripple the dust that now covered almost half the floor space of the cabin.

Time seemed to be frozen; for an age, nothing happened. Then there was a slow and beautiful miracle, breath-taking because it was so unexpected, yet so obvious if one had stopped to think about it.

A ring of brilliant white light appeared among the crimson shadows of the ceiling. It grew steadily thicker and brighter — then, quite suddenly, expanded into a complete and perfect circle as the section of the roof fell away. The light pouring down was only that of a single glow tube twenty meters above, but to eyes that had seen nothing but dim redness for hours, it was more glorious than any sunrise.

The ladder came through almost as soon as the circle of roofing hit the floor. Miss Morley, poised like a sprinter, was gone in a flash. When Mrs. Schuster followed — a little more slowly, but still at a speed of which no one could complain — it was like an eclipse. Only a few stray beams of light now filtered down that radiant road to safety. It was dark again, as if, after that brief glimpse of dawn, the night had returned with redoubled gloom.

Now the men were starting to go — Baldur first, probably blessing his position in the alphabet. There were only a dozen left in the cabin when the barricaded door finally ripped from its hinges, and the pent-up avalanche burst forth.

The first wave of dust caught Pat while he was halfway up the slope of the cabin. Light and impalpable though it was, it slowed his movements until it seemed that he was struggling to wade through glue. It was fortunate that the moist and heavy air had robbed it of some of its power, for otherwise it would have filled the cabin with choking clouds. Pat sneezed and coughed and was partly blinded, but he could still breathe.

In the foggy gloom he could hear Sue counting — “Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen —” as she marshaled the passengers to safety. He had intended her to go with the other women, but she was still down here, shepherding her charges. Even as he struggled against the cloying quicksand that had now risen almost to his waist, he felt for Sue a love so great that it seemed to burst his heart. Now he had no possible doubt. Real love was a perfect balance of desire and tenderness. The first had been there for a long time, and now the second had come in full measure.

“Twenty — that's you, Commodore — quickly!”

“Like hell it is, Sue”, said the Commodore. “Up you go.”

Pat could not see what happened — he was still partly blinded by the dust and the darkness — but he guessed that Hansteen must have literally thrown Sue through the roof. Neither his age nor his years in space had yet robbed him of his Earthborn strength.

“Are you there, Pat?” he called. “I'm on the ladder.”

“Don't wait for me — I'm coming.”

That was easier said than done. It felt as if a million soft yet determined fingers were clutching at him, pulling him back into the rising flood. He gripped one of the seat-backs — now almost hidden beneath the dust — and pulled himself toward the beckoning light.

Something whipped against his face; instinctively, he reached out to push it aside, then realized that it was the end of the rope ladder. He hauled upon it with all his might, and slowly, reluctantly, the Sea of Thirst relaxed its grip upon him.

Before he entered the shaft, he had one last glimpse of the cabin. The whole of the rear was now submerged by that crawling tide of gray; it seemed unnatural, and doubly sinister, that it rose in such a geometrically perfect plane, without a single ripple to furrow its surface. A meter away — this was something Pat knew he would remember all his life, though he could not imagine why — a solitary paper cup was floating sedately on the rising tide, like a toy boat upon a peaceful lake. In a few minutes it would reach the ceiling and be overwhelmed, but for the moment it was still bravely defying the dust.

And so were the emergency lights; they would continue to burn for days, even when each one was encapsulated in utter darkness.

Now the dim-lit shaft was around him. He was climbing as quickly as his muscles would permit, but he could not overtake the Commodore. There was a sudden flood of light from above as Hansteen cleared the mouth of the shaft, and involuntarily Pat looked downward to protect his eyes from the glare. The dust was already rising swiftly behind him, still unrippled, still smooth and placid — and inexorable.

Then he was straddling the low mouth of the caisson, in the center of a fantastically overcrowded igloo. All around him, in various stages of exhaustion and dishevelment, were his fellow passengers; helping them were four space-suited figures and one man without a suit, whom he assumed was Chief Engineer Lawrence. How strange it was to see a new face, after all these days.

“Is everyone out?” Lawrence asked anxiously.

“Yes”, said Pat. “I'm the last man.” Then he added, “I hope”, for he realized that in the darkness and confusion someone might have been left behind. Suppose Radley had decided not to face the music back in New Zealand…

No — he was here with the rest of them. Pat was just starting to do a count of heads when the plastic floor gave a sudden jump — and out of the open well shot a perfect smoke ring of dust. It hit the ceiling, rebounded, and disintegrated before anyone could move.

“What the devil was that?” said Lawrence.

“Our lox tank”, answered Pat. “Good old bus — she lasted just long enough.”

And then, to his helpless horror, the skipper of Selene burst into tears.