A Fall of Moondust

CHAPTER 5

“And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the position”, concluded Commodore Hansteen. “We're in no immediate danger, and I haven't the slightest doubt that we'll be located quite soon. Until then, we have to make the best of it.”

He paused, and swiftly scanned the upturned, anxious faces. Already he had noted the possible trouble spots — that little man with the nervous tic, the acidulous, prune-faced lady who kept twisting her handkerchief in knots. Maybe they'd neutralize each other, if he could get them to sit together.

“Captain Harris and I — he's the boss; I'm only acting as his adviser — have worked out a plan of action. Food will be simple and rationed, but will be adequate, especially since you won't be engaged in any physical activity. We would like to ask some of the ladies to help Miss Wilkins; she'll have a lot of extra work, and could do with some assistance. Our biggest problem, frankly, is going to be boredom. By the way, did anyone bring any books?”

There was much scrabbling in handbags and baskets. The total haul consisted of assorted lunar guides, including six copies of the official handbook; a current best seller, The Orange and the Apple, whose unlikely theme was a romance between Nell Gwyn and Sir Isaac Newton; a Harvard Press edition of Shane, with scholarly annotations by a professor of English; an introduction to the logical positivism of Auguste Comte; and a week-old copy of the New York Times, Earth edition. It was not much of a library, but with careful rationing it would help to pass the hours that lay ahead.

“I think we'll form an Entertainment Committee to decide how we'll use this material, though I don't know how it will deal with Monsieur Comte. Meanwhile, now that you know what our situation is, are there any questions, any points you'd like Captain Harris or myself to explain in more detail?”

“There's one thing I'd like to ask, sir”, said the English voice that had made the complimentary remarks about the tea. “Is there the slightest chance that we'll float up? I mean, if this stuff is like water, won't we bob up sooner or later, like a cork?”

That floored the Commodore completely. He looked at Pat and said wryly: “That's one for you, Mr. Harris. Any comment?”

Pat shook his head.

“I'm afraid it won't work. True, the air inside the hull must make us very buoyant, but the resistance of this dust is enormous. We may float up eventually — in a few thousand years.”

The Englishman, it seemed, was not easily discouraged.

“I noticed that there was a space suit in the air lock. Could anyone get out and swim up? Then the search party will know where we are.”

Pat stirred uneasily. He was the only one qualified to wear that suit, which was purely for emergency use.

“I'm almost sure it's impossible”, he answered. “I doubt if a man could move against the resistance — and of course he'd be absolutely blind. How would he know which way was up? And how would you close the outer door after him? Once the dust had flooded in, there would be no way of clearing it. You certainly couldn't pump it out again.”

He could have said more, but decided to leave it at that. They might yet be reduced to such desperate expedients, if there was no sign of rescue by the end of the week. But that was a nightmare that must be kept firmly at the back of his mind, for to dwell too long upon it could only sap his courage.

“If there are no more questions”, said Hansteen, “I suggest we introduce ourselves. Whether we like it or not, we have to get used to each other's company, so let's find out who we are. I'll go round the room, and perhaps each of you in turn will give your name, occupation, and home town. You first, sir.”

“Robert Bryan, civil engineer, retired, Kingston, Jamaica.”

“Irving Schuster, attorney at law, Chicago — and my wife, Myra.”

“Nihal Jayawardene, Professor of Zoology, University of Ceylon, Peradeniya.”

As the roll call continued, Pat once again found himself grateful for the one piece of luck in this desperate situation. By character, training, and experience, Commodore Hansteen was a born leader of men: already he was beginning to weld this random collection of individuals into a unit, to build up that indefinable esprit de corps that transforms a mob into a team. These things he had learned while his little fleet — the first ever to venture beyond the orbit of Neptune, almost three billion miles from the sun — had hung poised week upon week in the emptiness between the planets. Pat, who was thirty years younger and had never been away from the Earth-Moon system, felt no resentment at the change of command that had tacitly taken place. It was nice of the Commodore to say that he was still the boss, but he knew better.

“Duncan McKenzie, physicist, Mount Stromlo Observatory, Canberra.”

“Pierre Blanchard, cost accountant, Clavius City, Earthside.”

“Phyllis Morley, journalist, London.”

“Karl Johanson, nucleonics engineer, Tsiolkovski Base, Farside.”

That was the lot; quite a collection of talent, though not an unusual one, for the people who came to the Moon always had something out of the ordinary — even if it was only money. But all the skill and experience now locked up in Selene could not, so it seemed to Pat, do anything to help them in their present situation.

That was not quite true, as Commodore Hansteen was now about to prove. He knew, as well as any man alive, that they would be fighting boredom as well as fear. They had been thrown upon their own resources; in an age of universal entertainment and communications, they had suddenly been cut off from the rest of the human race. Radio, TV, telefax newssheets, movies, telephone — all these things now meant no more to them than to the people of the Stone Age. They were like some ancient tribe gathered round the campfire, in a wilderness that held no other men. Even on the Pluto run, thought Commodore Hansteen, they had never been as lonely as this. They had had a fine library and had been well stocked with every possible form of canned entertainment, and they could talk by tight beam to the inner planets whenever they wished. But on Selene, there was not even a pack of cards.

That was an idea. “Miss Morley! As a journalist, I imagine you have a notebook?”

“Why, yes, Commodore.”

“Fifty-two blank sheets in it still?”

“I think so.”

“Then I must ask you to sacrifice them. Please cut them out and mark a pack of cards on them. No need to be artistic — as long as they're legible, and the lettering doesn't show through the back.”

“How are you going to shuffle paper cards?” asked somebody.

“A good problem for our Entertainment Committee to solve. Anyone who thinks they have talent in this direction?”

“I used to be on the stage”, said Myra Schuster, rather hesitantly. Her husband did not look at all pleased by this revelation, but it delighted the Commodore.

“Excellent! Though we're a little cramped for space, I was hoping we might be able to put on a play.”

Now Mrs. Schuster looked as unhappy as her husband.

“It was rather a long time ago”, she said, “and I — I never did much talking.”

There were several chuckles, and even the Commodore had difficulty in keeping a straight face. Looking at Mrs. Schuster, on the wrong side of both fifty years and a hundred kilos, it was a little hard to imagine her as, he suspected, a chorus girl.

“Never mind”, he said, “it's the spirit that counts. Who will help Mrs. Schuster?”

“I've done some amateur theatricals”, said Professor Jayawardene. “Mostly Brecht and Ibsen, though.”

That final “though” indicated recognition of the fact that something a little lighter would be appreciated here — say, one of the decadent but amusing comedies of the 1980's, which had invaded the airways in such numbers with the collapse of TV censorship.

There were no more volunteers for this job, so the Commodore moved Mrs. Schuster and Professor Jayawardene into adjacent seats and told them to start program-planning. It seemed unlikely that such an ill-assorted pair would produce anything useful, but one never knew. The main thing was to keep everyone busy, either on tasks of their own or co-operating with others.

“We'll leave it at that for the moment”, concluded Hansteen. “If you have any bright ideas, please give them to the committee. Meanwhile, I suggest you stretch your legs and get to know each other. Everyone's announced his job and home town; many of you must have common interests or know the same friends. You'll have plenty of things to talk about.” And plenty of time, too, he added silently.

He was conferring with Pat in the pilot's cubicle when they were joined by Dr. McKenzie, the Australian physicist. He looked very worried — even more so than the situation merited.

“There's something I want to tell you, Commodore”, he said urgently. “If I'm right, that seven-day oxygen reserve doesn't mean a thing. There's a much more serious danger.”

“What's that?”

“Heat.” The Australian indicated the outside world with a wave of his hand. “We're blanketed by this stuff, and it's about the best insulator you can have. On the surface, the heat our machines and bodies generated could escape into space, but down here it's trapped. That means we'll get hotter and hotter — until we cook.”

“My God”, said the Commodore. “I never thought of that. How long do you think it will take?”

“Give me half an hour, and I can make a fair estimate. My guess is — not much more than a day.”

The Commodore felt a wave of utter helplessness sweep over him. There was a horrible sickness at the pit of his stomach, like the second time he had been in free fall. (Not the first — he had been ready for it then. But on the second trip, he had been overconfident.) If this estimate was right, all their hopes were blasted. They were slim enough in all conscience, but given a week there was a slight chance that something might be done. With only a day, it was out of the question. Even if they were found in that time, they could never be rescued.

“You might check the cabin temperature”, continued McKenzie. “That will give us some indication.”

Hansteen walked to the control panel and glanced at the maze of dials and indicators.

“I'm afraid you're right”, he said. “It's gone up two degrees already.”

“Over a degree an hour. That's about what I figured.”

The Commodore turned to Harris, who had been listening to the discussion with growing alarm.

“Is there anything we can do to increase the cooling? How much reserve power has our air-conditioning gear got?”

Before Pat could answer, the physicist intervened.

“That won't help us”, he said a little impatiently. “All that our refrigeration does is to pump heat out of the cabin and radiate it away. But that's exactly what it can't do now, because of the dust around us. If we try to run the cooling plant faster, it will actually make matters worse.”

There was a gloomy silence that lasted until the Commodore said: “Please check those calculations, and let me have your best estimate as soon as you can. And for heaven's sake don't let this go beyond the three of us.”

He felt suddenly very old. He had been almost enjoying his unexpected last command; and now it seemed that he would have it only for a day.

At that very moment, though neither party knew the fact, one of the searching dust-skis was passing overhead. Built for speed, efficiency, and cheapness, not for the comfort of tourists, it bore little resemblance to the sunken Selene. It was, in fact, no more than an open sledge with seats for pilot and one passenger — each wearing a space suit — and with a canopy overhead to give protection from the sun. A simple control panel, motor, and twin fans at the rear, storage racks for tools and equipment — that completed the inventory. A ski going about its normal work usually towed at least one carrier sledge behind it, sometimes two or three, but this one was traveling light. It had zigzagged back and forth across several hundred square kilometers of the Sea, and had found absolutely nothing.

Over the suit intercom, the driver was talking to his companion.

“What do you think happened to them, George? I don't believe they're here.”

“Where else can they be? Kidnaped by Outsiders?”

“I'm almost ready to buy that” was the half-serious answer. Sooner or later, all astronauts believed, the human race would meet intelligences from elsewhere. That meeting might still be far in the future but meanwhile, the hypothetical “Outsiders” were part of the mythology of space, and got the blame for everything that could not be explained in any other way.

It was easy to believe in them when you were with a mere handful of companions on some strange, hostile world where the very rocks and air (if there was air) were completely alien. Then, nothing could be taken for granted, and the experience of a thousand Earth-bound generations might be useless. As ancient man had peopled the unknown around him with gods and spirits, so Homo astronauticus looked over his shoulder when he landed upon each new world, wondering who or what was there already. For a few brief centuries, Man had imagined himself the lord of the Universe, and those primeval hopes and fears had been buried in his subconscious. But now they were stronger than ever, and with good reason, as he looked into the shining face of the heavens and thought of the power and knowledge that must be lurking there.

“Better report to Base”, said George. “We've covered our area, and there's no point in going over it again. Not until sunrise, anyway. We'll have a much better chance of finding something then. This damned earthlight gives me the creeps.”

He switched on the radio, and gave the ski's call sign.

“Duster Two calling Traffic Control. Over.”

“Port Roris Traffic Control here. Found anything?”

“Not a trace. What's new from your end?”

“We don't think she's out in the Sea. The Chief Engineer wants to speak to you.”

“Right; put him on.”

“Hello, Duster Two. Lawrence here. Plato Observatory's just reported a quake near the Mountains of Inaccessibility. It took place at nineteen thirty-five, which is near enough the time when Selene should have been in Crater Lake. They suggest she's been caught in an avalanche somewhere in that area. So head for the mountains and see if you can spot any recent slides or rockfalls.”

“What's the chance, sir”, asked the dust-ski pilot anxiously, “that there may be more quakes?”

“Very small, according to the Observatory. They say it will be thousands of years before anything like this happens again, now that the stresses have been relieved.”

“I hope they're right. I'll radio when I get to Crater Lake; that should be in about twenty minutes.”

But it was only fifteen minutes before Duster Two destroyed the last hopes of the waiting listeners.

“Duster Two calling. This is it, I'm afraid. I've not reached Crater Lake yet; I'm still heading up the gorge. But the Observatory was right about the quake. There have been several slides, and we had difficulty in getting past some of them. There must be ten thousand tons of rock in the one I'm looking at now. If Selene's under that lot, we'll never find her. And it won't be worth the trouble of looking.”

The silence in Traffic Control lasted so long that the ski called back: “Hello, Traffic Control — did you receive me?”

“Receiving you”, said the Chief Engineer in a tired voice. “See if you can find some trace of them. I'll send Duster One in to help. Are you sure there's no chance of digging them out?”

“It might take weeks, even if we could locate them. I saw one slide three hundred meters long. If you tried to dig, the rock would probably start moving again.”

“Be very careful. Report every fifteen minutes, whether you find anything or not.”

Lawrence turned away from the microphone, physically and mentally exhausted. There was nothing more that he could do — or, he suspected, that anyone could do. Trying to compose his thoughts, he walked over to the southward-facing observation window, and stared into the face of the crescent Earth.

It was hard to believe that she was fixed there in the southern sky, that though she hung so close to the horizon, she would neither rise nor set in a million years. However long one lived here, one never really accepted this fact, which violated all the racial wisdom of mankind.

On the other side of that gulf (already so small to a generation that had never known the time when it could not be crossed), ripples of shock and grief would soon be spreading. Thousands of men and women were involved, directly or indirectly, because the Moon had stirred briefly in her sleep.

Lost in his thoughts, it was some time before Lawrence realized that the Port signals officer was trying to attract his attention.

“Excuse me, sir — you've not called Duster One. Shall I do it now?”

“What? Oh yes — go ahead. Send him to help Two in Crater Lake. Tell him we've called off the search in the Sea of Thirst.”