A Fall of Moondust (15 page)

“We could all go the rear; our weight might bring the nose up.”

“It’s the strain on the hull I’m worried about,” said Pat.

“Suppose I did start the motors—it would be like butting into a brick wall. Heaven
knows what damage it might do.”

“But there’s a chance it might work; isn’t that worth the risk?”

Pat glanced at the Commodore, feeling a little annoyed that he had not come to his
support. Hansteen stared straight back at him, as if to say, “I’ve handled this so
far—now it’s your turn.” Well, that was fair enough—especially after what Sue had
just said. It was time he stood on his own feet, or at least proved that he could
do so.

“The danger’s too great,” he said flatly. “We’re perfectly safe here for at least
another four days. Long before then, we’ll be found. So why risk everything on a million
to one chance? If it was our last resort, I’d say yes—but not now.”

He looked round the cabin, challenging anyone to disagree with him. As he did so,
he could not help meeting Miss Morley’s eye, nor did he attempt to avoid it. Nevertheless,
it was with as much surprise as embarrassment that he heard her say: “Perhaps the
Captain is in no great hurry to leave. I notice that we haven’t seen much of him lately—
or
of Miss Wilkins.”

Why, you prune-faced bitch, thought Pat. Just because no man in his right senses—

“Hold it, Harris!” said the Commodore, in the nick of time.

“
I’ll
deal with this.”

It was the first time that Hansteen had really asserted himself; until now he had
run things easily and quietly, or stood in the background and let Pat get on with
the job. But now they were hearing the authentic voice of authority, like a trumpet
call across a battlefield. This was no retired astronaut speaking; it was a Commodore
of Space.

“Miss Morley,” he said, “that was a very foolish and uncalled-for remark. Only the
fact that we are all under considerable strain can possibly excuse it. I think you
should apologise to the Captain.”

“It’s true,” she said stubbornly. “Ask him to deny it.”

Commodore Hansteen had not lost his temper in thirty years, and had no intention of
losing it now. But he knew when to pretend to lose it, and in this case little stimulation
was necessary. He was not only angry with Miss Morley; he was annoyed with Pat, and
felt that he had let him down. Of course, there might be nothing at all in Miss Morley’s
accusation, but Pat and Sue had certainly spent a devil of a long time over a simple
job. There were occasions when the appearance of innocence was almost as important
as the thing itself; he remembered an old Chinese proverb: “Do not stoop to tie your
laces in your neighbour’s melon-patch.”

“I don’t give a damn,” he said in his most blistering voice, “about the relations,
if any, between Miss Wilkins and the Captain. That’s their own affair, and as long
as they do their jobs efficiently we’ve no right to interfere. Are you suggesting
that Captain Harris is
not
doing his job?”

“Well—I wouldn’t say that.”

“Then please don’t say anything. We have enough problems on our hands already, without
manufacturing any more.”
The other passengers had sat listening with that mixture of embarrassment and enjoyment
which most men feel when they overhear a quarrel in which they have no part. Though,
in a very real sense, this did concern everyone aboard
Selene
, for it was the first challenge to authority, the first sign that discipline was
cracking. Until now, this group had been welded into a harmonious whole, but now a
voice had been raised against the Elders of the Tribe.

Miss Morley might be a neurotic old maid, but she was also a tough and determined
one. The Commodore saw, with understandable qualms, that she was getting ready to
answer him.

No one would ever know just what she intended to say; for at that moment, Mrs. Schuster
let loose a shriek altogether in keeping with her dimensions.

When a man falls on the Moon, he usually has time to do something about it, for his
nerves and muscles are designed to deal with a sixfold greater gravity. Yet when Chief
Engineer Lawrence toppled off the ski, the distance was so short that he had no time
to react. Almost at once, he hit the dust—and was engulfed in darkness.

He could see absolutely nothing, except for a very faint fluorescence from the illuminated
instrument panel inside his suit. With extreme caution, he began to feel around in
the softly-resisting, half-fluid substance in which he was floundering, seeking some
solid object for support. There was nothing; he could not even guess which direction
was up.

A mind-sapping despair, which seemed to drain his body of all its strength, almost
overwhelmed him. His heart was thumping with that erratic beat that heralds the approach
of panic, and the final overthrow of reason. He had seen other men become screaming
struggling animals, and knew that he was moving swiftly to join them.

There was just enough left of his rational mind to remember that only a few minutes
ago he had saved Lawson from this same fate, but he was not in a position to appreciate
the irony. He had to concentrate all his remaining strength of will on regaining control
of himself, and checking the thumping in his chest that seemed about to tear him to
pieces.

And then, loud and clear in his helmet speaker, came a sound so utterly unexpected
that the waves of panic ceased to batter against the island of his soul. It was Tom
Lawson—laughing.

The laughter was brief, and it was followed by an apology.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Lawrence—I couldn’t help it. You look so funny there, waving your
legs in the sky.”

The Chief Engineer froze in his suit. His fear vanished instantly, to be replaced
by anger. He was furious with Lawson—but much more furious with himself.

Of course he had been in no danger; in his inflated suit, he was like a balloon floating
upon water, and equally incapable of sinking. Now that he knew what had happened,
he could sort matters out by himself. He kicked purposefully with his legs, paddled
with his hands, and rolled round his centre of gravity—and vision returned as the
dust streamed off his helmet. He had sunk, at the most, ten centimetres, and the ski
had been within reach all the time. It was a remarkable achievement to have missed
it completely while he was flailing around like a stranded octopus.

With as much dignity as he could muster, he grabbed the ski and pulled himself aboard.
He did not trust himself to speak, for he was still breathless from his unnecessary
exertions, and his voice might betray his recent panic. And he was still angry; he
would not have made such a fool of himself in the days when he was working constantly
out on the lunar surface. Now he was out of touch; why, the last time he had worn
a suit had been for his annual proficiency check, and then he had never even stepped
outside the air-lock.

Back on the ski, as he continued with his probing, his mixture of fright and anger
slowly evaporated. It was replaced by a mood of thoughtfulness, as he realised how
closely—whether he liked it or not—the events of the last half hour had linked him
with Lawson. True, the astronomer had laughed when he was floundering in the dust—but
he must have been an irresistibly funny sight. And Lawson had actually apologised
for his mirth. A short time ago, both laughter and apology would have been equally
unthinkable.

Then Lawrence forgot everything else; for his probe hit an obstacle, fifteen metres
down.

When Mrs. Schuster screamed, Commodore Hansteen’s first reaction was: “My God—the
woman’s going to have hysterics.” Half a second later, he needed all his will-power
not to join her.

From outside the hull, where there had been no sound for three days except the whispering
of the dust, there was a noise at last. It was unmistakable, and so was its meaning.
Something metallic was scraping along the hull.

Instantly, the cabin was filled with shouts, cheers and cries of relief. With considerable
difficulty, Hansteen managed to make himself heard.

“They’ve found us,” he said, “but they may not know it. If we work together, they’ll
have a better chance of spotting us. Pat—you try the radio. The rest of us will rap
on the hull—the old Morse V-sign—
DIT DIT DIT DAH
. Come on—all together!”

Selene
reverberated with a ragged volley of dots and dashes, which slowly became synchronised
into one resounding tattoo.

“Hold it!” said Hansteen a minute later. “Everyone listen carefully!”

After the noise, the silence was uncanny—even unnerving. Pat had switched off the
air-pumps and fans, so that the only sound aboard the cruiser was the beating of twenty-two
hearts.

The silence dragged on and on. Could that noise, after all, have been nothing but
some contraction or expansion of
Selene
’s own hull? Or had the rescue party—if it
was
a rescue party—missed them and passed on across the empty face of the Sea?

Abruptly, the scratching came again. Hansteen checked the renewed enthusiasm with
a wave of his hand.

“
Listen
, for God’s sake,” he entreated. “Let’s see if we can make anything of it.”

The scratching lasted only for a few seconds before being followed once again by that
agonising silence. Presently someone said quietly, more to break the suspense than
to make any useful contribution, “That sounded like a wire being dragged past. Maybe
they’re trawling for us.”

“Impossible,” answered Pat. “The resistance would be too great, especially at this
depth. It’s more likely to be a rod probing up and down.”

“Anyway,” said the Commodore, “there’s a search party within a few metres of us. Give
them another tattoo. Once again—altogether—”

DIT DIT DIT DAH
….

DIT DIT DIT DAH
….

Through
Selene
’s double hull and out into the dust throbbed the fateful opening rhythm of the Fifth
Symphony, as a century earlier it had pulsed across Occupied Europe. In the pilot’s
seat, Pat Harris was saying again and again, with desperate urgency, “
Selene
calling—are you receiving? Over,” and then listening out for an eternal fifteen seconds
before he repeated the transmission. But the ether remained as silent as it had been
ever since the dust had swallowed them up.

Aboard
Auriga
, Maurice Spenser looked anxiously at the clock.

“Dammit,” he said, “the skis should have been there long ago. When was their last
message?”

“Twenty-five minutes ago,” said the ship’s communications officer. “The half-hourly
report should be coming in soon, whether they’ve found anything or not.”

“Sure you’re still on the right frequency?”

“You stick to your business and I’ll stick to mine,” retorted the indignant radioman.

“Sorry,” replied Spenser, who had learned long ago when to apologise quickly. “I’m
afraid my nerves are jumping.”

He rose from his seat, and started to make a circuit of
Auriga
’s little control room. After he had bumped himself painfully against an instrument
panel—he had not yet grown accustomed to lunar gravity, and was beginning to wonder
if he ever would—he got himself under control once more.

This was the worst part of his job, the waiting until he knew whether or not he had
a story. Already, he had incurred a small fortune in expenses. They would be nothing
compared with the bills that would soon be accumulating, if he gave Captain Anson
the order to go ahead. But in that event his worries would be over, for he would have
his scoop.

“Here they are,” said the communications officer suddenly. “Two minutes ahead of time.
Something’s happened.”

“I’ve hit something,” said Lawrence tersely, “but I can’t tell what it is.”

“How far down?” asked Lawson and both pilots simultaneously.

“About fifteen metres. Take me two metres to the right—I’ll try again.”

He withdrew the probe, then drove it in again when the ski had moved to the new position.

“Still there,” he reported, “and at the same depth. Take me on another two metres.”

Now the obstacle was gone—or was too deep for the probe to reach.

“Nothing there—take me back in the other direction.”

It would be a slow and tiring job, charting the outlines of whatever lay buried down
there. By such tedious methods, two centuries ago, men began to sound the oceans of
Earth, lowering weighted lines to the sea-bed and then hauling them up again. It was
a pity, thought Lawrence, that he had no echo-sounder that would operate here, but
he doubted if either acoustic or radio waves could penetrate through more than a few
metres of the dust.

What a fool—he should have thought of that before!
That
was what had happened to
Selene
’s radio signals. If she had been swallowed by the dust, it would have blanketed and
absorbed her transmission. But at this range, if he really was sitting on top of the
cruiser…

Lawrence switched his receiver to the
MOONCRASH
band—and there she was, yelling at the top of her robot voice. The signal was piercingly
strong—quite good enough, he would have thought, to have been picked up by Lagrange
or Port Roris. Then he remembered that his metal probe was still resting on the submerged
hull; it would give radio waves an easy path to the surface.

He sat listening to that train of pulses for a good fifteen seconds before he plucked
up enough courage for the next move. He had never really expected to find anything,
and even now his search might be in vain. That automatic beacon would call for weeks,
like a voice from the tomb, long after
Selene
’s occupants were dead.

Then, with an abrupt, angry gesture that defied the fetes to do their worst, Lawrence
switched to the cruiser’s own frequency—and was almost deafened by Pat Harris shouting:
“
Selene
calling—
Selene
calling. Do you receive me? Over.”