A Fall of Moondust (29 page)

As soon as they heard that heavy thump against the roof, they knew at once that this
was no sounding-rod, delicately probing the sea. When, a minute later, there came
the unmistakable whirr of a drill chewing its way through fibreglass, they felt like
condemned men who had been granted a last-minute reprieve.

This time, the drill missed the cable conduit—not that it mattered now. The passengers
watched, almost hypnotised, as the grinding sound grew louder and the first flakes
planed down from the ceiling. When the head of the drill appeared and descended twenty
centimetres into the cabin, there was a brief but heart-felt burst of cheering.

Now what? said Pat to himself. We can’t talk to them; how will I know when to unscrew
the drill? I’m not going to make
that
mistake a second time….

Startlingly loud in this tense, expectant silence, the metal tube resonated with the
DIT DIT DIT DAH
which, surely, not one of
Selene
’s company would forget, however long he lived. Pat replied at once, banging out an
answering ‘V’ with a pair of pliers. Now they know we’re alive, he thought. He had
never really believed that Lawrence would assume that they were dead and abandon them,
yet at the same time there was that always haunting doubt.

The tube signalled again, this time much more slowly. It was a nuisance having to
learn Morse—in this age, it seemed such an anachronism, and many were the bitter protests
among pilots and space-engineers at the waste of effort. In your whole lifetime, you
might need it only once.

But that was the point. You would
really
need it then.

DIT DIT DAH
, rapped the tube,
DAH DIT… DIT DIT DIT… DAH DIT DAH DIT… DIT DAH DIT… DIT… DIT DAH DAH
.

Then, so that there would be no mistake, it started to repeat the word—but both Pat
and the Commodore, rusty though they were, had got the message.

“They’re telling us to unscrew the drill,” said Pat. “Well, here we go.”

The brief rush of air gave everyone a moment of unnecessary panic as the pressure
equalised. Then the pipe was open to the upper world, and twenty-two anxious men and
women waited for the first breath of oxygen to come gushing down it.

Instead, the tube spoke. Out of the open orifice came a voice, hollow and sepulchral,
but perfectly clear. It was so loud, and so utterly unexpected, that a gasp of surprise
came from the company. Probably not more than half a dozen of these men and women
had ever heard a speaking tube; they had grown up in the belief that only through
electronics could the voice be sent across space. This antique revival was as much
a novelty to them as a telephone would have been to an ancient Greek.

“This is Chief Engineer Lawrence speaking. Can you hear me?”

Pat cupped his hands over the opening, and answered slowly: “Hearing you loud and
clear. How do you receive us?”

“Very clear—are you all right?”

“Yes—what’s happened?”

“You’ve dropped a couple of metres—no more than that. We hardly noticed anything up
here, until the pipes came adrift. How’s your air?”

“Still good—but the sooner you start supplying us, the better.”

“Don’t worry—we’ll be pumping again as soon as we get the dust out of the filters,
and can rush out another drill-head from Port Roris. The one you’ve just unscrewed
was the only spare—it was lucky we had that.”

So it will be at least an hour, Pat told himself, before their air supply could be
secured again. That, however, was not the problem that now worried him. He knew how
Lawrence had hoped to reach them—and he realised that the plan would not work, now
that
Selene
was no longer on an even keel.

“How are you going to get at us?” he asked bluntly.

There was only the briefest of hesitations before Lawrence answered.

“I’ve not worked out the details, but we’ll add another section to the caisson and
continue it down until it reaches you. Then we’ll start scooping out the dust until
we get to the bottom. That will take us to within a few centimetres of you; we’ll
cross that gap somehow. But there’s one thing I want you to do first.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m ninety per cent sure that you won’t settle again—but if you’re going to, I’d
rather you did it now. I want you all to jump up and down together for a couple of
minutes.”

“Will that be safe?” asked Pat doubtfully. “Suppose this pipe tears out again?”

“Then you can plug it again. Another small hole won’t matter—but another subsidence
will, if it happens when we’re trying to make a man-sized opening in the roof.”

Selene
had seen some strange sights, but this was undoubtedly the strangest. Twenty-two
men and women were solemnly jumping up and down in unison, rising to the ceiling and
then pushing themselves back as vigorously as possible to the floor. All the while
Pat kept a careful watch on that pipe leading to the upper world; after a minute’s
strenuous exertions on the part of her passengers,
Selene
had moved downwards by less than two centimetres.

He reported this to Lawrence, who received the news with thankfulness. Now that he
was reasonably sure that
Selene
would not shift again, he was confident that he could get these people out. Exactly
how, he was not yet certain, but the plan was beginning to form in his mind.

It took shape over the next twelve hours, in conferences with his Brains Trust and
experiments on the Sea of Thirst. The Engineering Division had learned more about
the dust in the last week than during the whole of its previous existence; it was
no longer fighting in the dark against a largely unknown opponent. It understood which
liberties could be taken—and which could not.

Despite the speed with which the changed plans were drawn up, and the necessary hardware
constructed, there was no undue haste and certainly no carelessness. For this was
another operation that had to work first time; if it failed, then at the very least
the caisson would have to be abandoned and a new one sunk. And at the worst—those
aboard
Selene
would be drowned in dust.

“It’s a pretty problem,” said Tom Lawson, who liked pretty problems—and not much else.
“The lower end of the caisson’s wide open to the dust, because it’s resting against
Selene
at only one point, and the tilt of the roof prevents it from sealing. Before we can
pump out the dust, we have to close that gap.

“Did I say ‘pump’? That was a mistake. You can’t pump the stuff; it has to be lifted.
And if we tried that as things are now, it would flow in just as fast at the bottom
of the tube as we took it out of the top.”

Tom paused and grinned sardonically at his multi-million audience, as if challenging
it to solve the problem he had outlined. He let his viewers stew in their own thoughts
for a while, then picked up the model lying on the studio table. Though it was an
extremely simple one, he was rather proud of it, for he had made it himself. No one
could have guessed, from the other side of the camera, that it was only cardboard
sprayed with aluminium paint.

“This tube,” he said, “represents a short section of the caisson that’s now leading
down to
Selene
—and which, as I said, is full of dust. Now
this
”—with his other hand, he picked up a stubby cylinder, closed at one end—“fits snugly
inside the caisson, like a piston. It’s very heavy, and will try to sink under its
own weight. But it can’t do so, of course, while the dust is trapped underneath it.”

Tom turned the piston until its flat end was towards the camera. He pressed his forefinger
against the centre of the circular face, and a small trapdoor opened.

“This acts as a valve; when it’s open, dust can flow through and the piston can sink
down the shaft. As soon as it reaches the bottom, the valve will be closed by a signal
from above. That will seal off the caisson, and we can start scooping out the dust.

“It sounds very simple, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. There are about fifty problems
I haven’t mentioned. For example, as the caisson is emptied, it will try to float
up to the surface with a lift of a good many tons. Chief Engineer Lawrence has worked
out an ingenious system of anchors to hold it down.

“You’ll realise, of course, that even when this tube has been emptied of dust, there
will still be that wedge-shaped gap between its lower end and
Selene
’s roof. How Mr. Lawrence proposes to deal with that, I don’t know. And please don’t
send
me
any more suggestions; we’ve already had enough half-baked ideas on this programme
to last a life-time.

“This—piston gadget—isn’t just theory. The engineers here have built and tested it
during the last twelve hours, and it’s now in action. If I can make any sense of the
signals the man’s waving at me, I think we’re now going over to the Sea of Thirst,
to find what’s happening on the raft.”

The temporary studio in the Hotel Roris faded from a million screens; in its place
was the picture that, by this time, must have been familiar to most of the human race.

There were now three igloos of assorted sizes on or around the raft; as the sunlight
glinted from their reflecting outer surfaces, they looked like giant drops of mercury.
One of the dust-skis was parked beside the largest dome; the other two were in transit.
still shuttling supplies from Port Roris.

Like the mouth of a well, the caisson projected from the sea. Its rim was only twenty
centimetres above the dust, and the opening seemed much too narrow for a man to enter.
It would, indeed, have been a very tight fit for anyone wearing a spacesuit—but the
crucial part of this operation would be done without suits.

At regular intervals, a cylindrical grab was disappearing into the well, to be hauled
back to the surface a few seconds later by a small but powerful crane. On each withdrawal,
the grab would be swung clear of the opening, and would disgorge its contents back
into the sea. For an instant a grey dunce’s cap of dust would stand in momentary balance
on the level plain; then it would collapse in slow motion, vanishing completely before
the next load had emerged from the shaft. It was a conjuring trick being carried out
in broad daylight, and it was fascinating to watch. More effectively than a thousand
words of description, it told the viewers all that they needed to know about the Sea
of Thirst.

The grab was taking longer on its journeys now, as it plunged deeper into the dust.
And at last there came the moment when it emerged only half-full, and the way to
Selene
was open—except for that road-block at the end.

“We’re still in very good spirits,” said Pat, into the microphone that had now been
lowered down the air-shaft. “Of course, we had a bad shock after that second cave-in,
when we lost contact with you—but now we’re sure you’ll soon have us out. We can hear
the grab at work, as it scoops up the dust, and it’s wonderful to know that help is
so close. We’ll never forget,” he added, a little awkwardly, “the efforts that so
many people have made to help us, and whatever happens we’d like to thank them. All
of us are quite sure that everything possible has been done.’”

“And now I’ll hand over the mike, as several of us have messages we want to send.
With any luck at all, this will be the last broadcast from
Selene
.”

As he gave the microphone to Mrs. Williams, he realised that he might have phrased
that last remark a little better; it could be interpreted in two ways. But now that
rescue was so close at hand, he refused to admit the possibility of further set-backs.
They had been through so much that, surely, nothing more would happen to them now.

Yet he knew that the final stage of the operation would be the most difficult, and
the most critical, of all. They had discussed it endlessly during the last few hours,
ever since Chief Engineer Lawrence had explained his plans to them. There was little
else to talk about now that—by common consent—the subject of Flying Saucers was vetoed.

They could have continued with the book readings, but somehow both
Shane
and
The Orange and the Apple
had lost their appeal. No one could concentrate on anything now except the prospects
of rescue, and the renewal of life that lay before them when they had rejoined the
human race.

From overhead, there was a sudden, heavy thump. That could mean only one thing; the
grab had reached the bottom of the shaft, and the caisson was clear of dust. Now it
could be coupled to one of the igloos and pumped full of air.

It took more than an hour to complete the connexion and make all the necessary tests.
The specially-modified Mark Nineteen igloo, with a hole in its floor just large enough
to accommodate the protruding end of the caisson, had to be positioned and inflated
with the utmost care. The lives of
Selene
’s passengers, and also those of the men attempting to rescue them, might depend upon
this air-seal.

Not until Chief Engineer Lawrence was thoroughly satisfied did he strip off his spacesuit
and approach that yawning hole. He held a floodlight above the opening and looked
down into the shaft, which seemed to dwindle away to infinity. Yet it was just seventeen
metres to the bottom; even in this low gravity, an object would take only five seconds
to fall that distance.

Lawrence turned to his assistants; each was wearing a spacesuit, but with the face-plate
open. If anything went wrong, those plates could be snapped shut in a fraction of
a second, and the men inside would probably be safe. But for Lawrence there would
be no hope at all—nor for the twenty-two aboard
Selene
.

“You know exactly what to do,” he said. “If I want to come up in a hurry, all of you
pull on the rope ladder together. Any questions?”

There was none; everything had been thoroughly rehearsed. With a nod to his men and
a chorus of “Good lucks” in return, Lawrence lowered himself into the shaft.