A Fall of Moondust (23 page)

He breathed a sigh of relief; he had overlooked the thin shaft against the blazing
background of the mountains. His pilot had already spotted their goal and had changed
course slightly to head towards it.

The skis coasted to a halt on either side of the marker, and at once erupted into
activity. Eight spacesuited figures started unshipping roped bundles and large cylindrical
drums at a great speed, according to the prearranged plan. Swiftly, the raft began
to take shape as its slotted metal framework was bolted into position round the drums,
and the light fibreglass flooring was laid across it.

No construction job in the whole history of the Moon had ever been carried out in
such a blaze of publicity, thanks to the watchful eye in the mountains. But once they
had started work, the eight men on the skis were totally unconscious of the millions
looking over their shoulders. All that mattered to them now was getting that raft
in position, and fixing the jigs which would guide the hollow, life-bearing drills
down to their target.

Every five minutes, or less, Lawrence spoke to
Selene
, keeping Pat and McKenzie informed of progress. The fact that he was also informing
the anxiously waiting world scarcely crossed his mind.

At last, in an incredible twenty minutes, the drill was ready, its first five-metre
section poked like a harpoon ready to plunge into the Sea. But this harpoon was designed
to bring life, not death.

“We’re coming down,” said Lawrence. “The first section’s going in now.”

“You’d better hurry,” whispered Pat. “I can’t hold out much longer.”

He seemed to be moving in a fog; he could not remember a time when it was not there.
Apart from the dull ache in his lungs, he was not really uncomfortable—merely incredibly,
unbelievably tired. He was now no more than a robot, going about a task whose meaning
he had long ago forgotten, if indeed he had ever known it. There was a wrench in his
hand; he had taken it out of the tool kit hours ago, knowing that it would be needed.
Perhaps it would remind him of what he had to do, when the time came.

From a great distance, it seemed, he heard a snatch of conversation that was obviously
not intended for him; someone had forgotten to switch channels.

“We should have fixed it so that the drill could be unscrewed from this end. Suppose
he’s too weak to do it?”

“We had to take the risk; the extra fittings would have delayed us at least an hour.
Give me that—”

Then the circuit went dead; but Pat had heard enough to make him angry—or as angry
as a man could be, in his half-stupefied condition. He’d show them—he and his good
pal Doctor Mac—. Mac what? He could no longer remember the name.

He turned slowly round in his swivelling seat and looked back along the Golgotha-like
shambles of the cabin. For a moment he could not find the physicist among the other
tumbled bodies; then he saw that he was kneeling beside Mrs. Williams, whose dates
of birth and death now looked like being very close together. McKenzie was holding
the oxygen mask over her face, quite unaware of the fact that the tell-tale hiss of
gas from the cylinder had ceased, and the gauge had long ago reached zero.

“We’re almost there,” said the radio. “You should hear us hit at any minute.”

So soon? thought Pat. But, of course, a heavy tube would slice down through the dust
almost as quickly as it could be lowered. He thought it was very clever of him to
deduce this.

Bang! Something had hit the roof. But where?

“I can hear you,” he whispered. “You’ve reached us.”

“We know,” answered the voice. “We can feel the contact. But you have to do the rest.
Can you tell where the drill’s touching? Is it in a clear section of the roof, or
is it over the wiring? We’ll raise and lower it several times, to help you locate
it.”

Pat felt rather aggrieved at this; it seemed terribly unfair that he should have to
decide such a complicated matter.

Knock, knock went the drill against the roof. He couldn’t for the life of him (why
did that phrase seem so appropriate?) locate the exact position of the sound. Well,
they had nothing to lose….

“God ahead,” he murmured. “You’re in the clear.” He had to repeat it twice before
they understood his words.

Instantly—they were quick off the pad up there—the drill started whirring against
the outer hull. He could hear the sound very distinctly, more beautiful than any music.

The bit was through the first obstacle in less than a minute. He heard it race, then
stop as the motor was cut. Then the operator lowered it the few centimetres to the
inner hull, and started it spinning again.

The sound was much louder now, and could be pin-pointed exactly. It came, Pat was
mildly disconcerted to note, from very close to the main cable conduit, along the
centre of the roof. If it went through
that
…

Slowly and unsteadily he got to his feet and walked over to the source of the sound.
He had just reached it when there was a shower of dust from the ceiling, a sudden
spitting of electricity—and the main lights went out.

Luckily, the emergency lighting remained on. It took Pat’s eyes several seconds to
adapt to the dim red glow; then he saw that a metal tube was protruding through the
roof. It moved slowly downwards until it had travelled half a metre into the cabin;
and there it stopped.

The radio was talking in the background, saying something that he knew was very important.
He tried to make sense of it as he fitted the wrench around the bit-head, and tightened
the screw-adjustment.

“
Don’t
undo the bit until we tell you,” said that remote voice. “We had no time to fit a
non-return valve—the pipe’s open to vacuum at this end. We’ll tell you as soon as
we’re ready. I repeat—
don’t remove the bit until we say so
.”

Pat wished the man would stop bothering him; he knew exactly what to do. If he leaned
with all his might on the handle of the wrench—so—the drill-head would come off and
he’d be able to breathe again.

Why wasn’t it moving? He tried once more.

“My God,” said the radio. “Stop that! We’re not ready! You’ll lose all your air!”

Just a minute, thought Pat, ignoring the distraction. There’s something wrong here.
A screw can turn
this
way—or
that
way. Suppose I’m tightening it up, when I should be doing the opposite?

This was horribly complicated. He looked at his right hand, then his left; neither
seemed to help. (Nor did that silly man shouting on the radio.) Well, he could try
the other way and see if that was better.

With great dignity, he performed a complete circuit of the tube, keeping one arm wrapped
around it. As he fell on the wrench from the other side, he grabbed it with both hands
to keep himself from collapsing. For a moment he rested against it, head bowed.

“Up periscope,” he mumbled. Now what on Earth did that mean? He had no idea, but he
had heard it somewhere and it seemed appropriate.

He was still puzzling over the matter when the drill-head started to unscrew beneath
his weight, very easily and smoothly.

Fifteen metres above, Chief Engineer Lawrence and his assistants stood for a moment
almost paralysed with horror. This was something that no one could ever have imagined;
they had thought of a hundred other accidents, but not
this
.

“Coleman—Matsui!” snapped Lawrence. “Connect up that oxygen line, for God’s sake!”

Even as he shouted at them, he knew that it would be too late. There were two connexions
still to be made, before the oxygen circuit was closed. And, of course, they were
screw-threads, not quick-release couplings. Just one of those little points that normally
wouldn’t matter in a thousand years, but now made all the difference between life
and death.

Like Samson at the mill, Pat trudged round and round the pipe, pushing the handle
of the wrench before him. It offered no opposition, even in his present feeble state;
by now the bit had unscrewed more than two centimetres—surely it would fall off in
a few more seconds….

Ah—almost there. He could hear a faint hissing, that grew steadily as the bit unwound.
That would be oxygen rushing into the cabin, of course. In a few seconds, he would
be able to breathe again, and all his troubles would be over.

The hiss had deepened to an ominous whistling, and for the first time Pat began to
wonder if he was doing precisely the right thing. He stopped, looked thoughtfully
at the wrench, and scratched his head. His slow mental processes could find no fault
with his actions; if the radio had given him orders then, he might have obeyed, but
it had abandoned the attempt.

Well, back to work (it was years since he’d had a hangover like this). He started
to push on the wrench once more—and fell flat on his face as the drill came loose.

In the same instant, the cabin reverberated with a screaming roar, and a gale started
all the loose papers fluttering like autumn leaves. A mist of condensation formed
as the air, chilled by its sudden expansion, dumped its moisture in a thick fog. When
Pat turned over on his back, conscious at last of what had happened, he was almost
blinded by the mist around him.

That screen meant only one thing to a trained spaceman, and his automatic reactions
had taken over now. He must find some flat object that could be slide over the hole—anything
would do, if it was fairly strong.

He looked wildly around him in the crimson fog, which was already thinning as it was
sucked into space. The noise was deafening; it seemed incredible that so small a pipe
could make such a scream.

Staggering over his unconscious companions, clawing his way from seat to seat, he
had almost abandoned hope when he saw the answer to his prayer. There lay a thick
volume, open face downwards on the floor where it had been dropped. Not the right
way to treat books, he thought, but he was glad that someone had been careless. He
might never have seen it otherwise.

When he reached the shrieking orifice that was sucking the life out of the cruiser,
the book was literally torn from his hands and flattened against the end of the pipe.
The sound died instantly, as did the gale. For a moment Pat stood swaying like a drunken
man; then he quietly folded at the knees and pitched on to the floor.

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 towards 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 terrorised 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 there ‘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.

“Connexions 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 mat 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 vapour.

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 like 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?”