“I suppose you think I’m an unscrupulous wolf,” he said, “trying to take advantage of you like this.”
“Not particularly,” Sue answered. She gave a rather tired laugh. “It makes me glad to know that I’m not slipping. No girl ever minds a man starting to make approaches. It’s when he won’t stop that she gets annoyed.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
“We’re not in love, Pat. To me, that’s rather important. Even now.”
“Would it still be important if you knew we won’t get out of this?”
Her forehead wrinkled in concentration.
“I’m not sure—but you said yourself we’ve got to assume that they’ll find us. If we don’t, then we might as well give up right away.”
“Sorry,” said Pat. “I don’t want you under those terms. I like you too much, for one thing.”
“I’m glad to hear that. You know I’ve always enjoyed working with you—there were plenty of other jobs I could have transferred to.”
“Bad luck for you,” Pat answered, “that you didn’t.” His brief gust of desire, triggered by proximity, solitude, scanty clothing, and sheer emotional strain, had already evaporated.
“Now you’re being pessimistic again,” said Sue. “You know, that’s your big trouble. You let things get you down. And you won’t assert yourself; anyone can push you around.”
Pat looked at her with more surprise than annoyance.
“I’d no idea,” he said, “that you’d been busy psyching me.”
“I haven’t. But if you’re interested in someone, and work with him, how can you help learning about him?”
“Well, I don’t believe that people push me around.”
“No? Who’s running this ship now?”
“If you mean the Commodore, that’s different. He’s a thousand times better qualified to take charge than I am. And he’s been absolutely correct about it—he’s asked my permission all along the line.”
“He doesn’t bother now. Anyway, that’s not the whole point. Aren’t you glad he’s taken over?”
Pat thought about this for several seconds. Then he looked at Sue with grudging respect.
“Maybe you’re right. I’ve never cared to throw my weight about, or assert my authority—if I have any. I guess that’s why I’m driver of a Moon bus, not skipper of a space liner. It’s a little late to do anything about it now.”
“You’re not thirty yet.”
“Thank you for those kind words. I’m thirty-two. We Harrises retain our youthful good looks well into old age. It’s usually all we have left by then.”
“Thirty-two—and no steady girl friend?”
Ha! thought Pat, there are several things you don’t know about me. But there was no point in mentioning Clarissa and her little apartment in Copernicus City, which now seemed so far away. (And how upset is Clarissa right now? he wondered. Which of the boys is busy consoling her? Perhaps Sue is right, after all. I don’t have a steady girl friend. I haven’t had one since Yvonne, and that was five years ago. No, my God—seven years ago.)
“I believe there’s safety in numbers,” he said. “One of these days I’ll settle down.”
“Perhaps you’ll still be saying that when you’re forty—or fifty. There are so many spacemen like that. They haven’t settled down when it’s time to retire, and then it’s too late. Look at the Commodore, for example.”
“What about him? I’m beginning to get a little tired of the subject.”
“He’s spent all his life in space. He has no family, no children. Earth can’t mean much to him—he’s spent so little rime there. He must have felt quite lost when he reached the age limit. This accident has been a godsend to him; he’s really enjoying himself now.”
“Good for him; he deserves it. I’ll be happy if I’ve done a tenth as much as he has when I’ve reached his age—which doesn’t seem very likely at the moment.”
Pat became aware that he was still holding the inventory sheets; he had forgotten all about them. They were a reminder of their dwindling resources, and he looked at them with distaste.
“Back to work,” he said. “We have to think of the passengers.”
“If we stay here much longer,” replied Sue, “the passengers will start thinking of us.”
She spoke more truthfully than she had guessed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Dr. Lawson’s silence, the Chief Engineer decided, had gone on long enough. It was high time to resume communication.
“Everything all right, Doctor?” he asked in his friendliest voice.
There was a short, angry bark, but the anger was directed at the Universe, not at him.
“It won’t work,” Lawson answered bitterly. “The heat image is too confused. There are dozens of hot spots, not just the one I was expecting.”
“Stop your ski. I’ll come over and have a look.”
Duster Two slid to a halt; Duster One eased up beside it until the two vehicles were almost touching. Moving with surprising ease despite the encumbrance of his space suit, Lawrence swung himself from one to the other and stood, gripping the supports of the overhead canopy, behind Lawson. He peered over the astronomer’s shoulder at the image on the infrared converter.
“I see what you mean; it’s a mess. But why was it uniform when you took your photos?”
“It must be a sunrise effect. The Sea’s warming up, and for some reason it’s not heating at the same rate everywhere.”
“Perhaps we can still make sense out of the pattern. I notice that there are some fairly clear areas—there must be an explanation for them. If we understood what’s happening, it might help.”
Tom Lawson stirred himself with a great effort. The brittle shell of his self-confidence had been shattered by this unexpected setback, and he was very tired. He had had little sleep in the last two days, he had been hurried from satellite to spaceship to Moon to dust-ski, and after all that, his science had failed him.
“There could be a dozen explanations,” he said dully. “This dust looks uniform, but there may be patches with different conductivities. And it must be deeper in some places than in others; that would alter the heat flow.”
Lawrence was still staring at the pattern on the screen, trying to relate it to the visual scene around him.
“Just a minute,” he said. “I think you’ve got something.” He called to the pilot. “How deep is the dust around here?”
“Nobody knows; the Sea’s never been sounded properly. But it’s very shallow in these parts—we’re near the northern edge. Sometimes we take out a fan blade on a reef.”
“As shallow as that? Well, there’s your answer. If there’s rock only a few centimeters below us, anything could happen to the heat pattern. Ten to one you’ll find the picture getting simpler again when we’re clear of these shoals. This is only a local effect, caused by irregularities just underneath us.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Tom, reviving slightly. “If Selene has sunk, she must be in an area where the dust’s fairly deep. You’re sure it’s shallow here?”
“Let’s find out; there’s a twenty-meter probe on my ski.”
A single section of the telescoping rod was enough to prove the point. When Lawrence drove it into the dust, it penetrated less than two meters before hitting an obstruction.
“How many spare fans have we got?” he asked thoughtfully.
“Four—two complete sets,” answered the pilot. “But when we hit a rock, the cotter pin shears through and the fans aren’t damaged. Anyway, they’re made of rubber; usually they just bend back. I’ve only lost three in the last year. Selene took out one the other day, and Pat Harris had to go outside and replace it. Gave the passengers some excitement.”
“Right—let’s start moving again. Head for the gorge; I’ve a theory that it continues out underneath the Sea, so the dust will be much deeper there. If it is, your picture should start getting simpler, almost at once.”
Without much hope, To
m watched the patterns of light and shade flow across the screen. The skis were moving quite slowly now, giving him time to analyze the picture. They had traveled about two kilometers when he saw that Lawrence had been perfectly right.
The mottlings and dapplings had begun to disappear; the confused jumble of warmth and coolness was merging into uniformity. The screen was becoming a flat gray as the temperature variations smoothed themselves out. Beyond question, the dust was swiftly deepening beneath them.
The knowledge that his equipment was effective once more should have gratified Tom, but it had almost the opposite result. He could think only of the hidden depths above which he was floating, supported on the most treacherous and unstable of mediums. Beneath him now there might be gulfs reaching far down into the Moon’s mysterious heart; at any moment they might swallow the dust-ski, as already they had swallowed Selene.
He felt as if he were tightrope walking across an abyss, or feeling his way along a narrow path through a quaking quicksand. All his life he had been uncertain of himself, and had known security and confidence only through his technical skills—never at the level of personal relations. Now the hazards of his present position were reacting upon those inner fears. He felt a desperate need for solidity, for something firm and stable to which he could cling.
Over there were the mountains, only three kilometers away—massive, eternal, their roots anchored in the Moon. He looked at the sunlit sanctuary of those high peaks as longingly as some Pacific castaway, helpless upon a drifting raft, might have stared at an island passing just beyond his reach.
With all his heart, he wished that Lawrence would leave this treacherous, insubstantial ocean of dust for the safety of the land. “Head for the mountains!” he found himself whispering. “Head for the mountains!”
There is no privacy in a space suit—when the radio is switched on. Fifty meters away, Lawrence heard that whisper and knew exactly what it meant.
One does not become Chief Engineer for half a world without learning as much about men as about machines. I took a calculated risk, thought Lawrence, and it looks as if it hasn’t come off. But I won’t give in without a fight; perhaps I can still defuse this psychological time bomb before it goes off.
Tom never noticed the approach of the second ski; he was already too lost in his own nightmare. But suddenly he was being violently shaken, so violently that his forehead banged against the lower rim of his helmet. For a moment his vision was blinded by tears of pain; then, with anger—yet at the same time with an inexplicable feeling of relief—he found himself looking straight into the determined eyes of Chief Engineer Lawrence, and listening to his voice reverberate from the suit speakers.
“That’s enough of this nonsense,” said the C.E.E. “And I’ll trouble you not to be sick in one of our space suits. Every time that happens it costs us five hundred stollars to put it back into commission—and even then it’s never quite the same again.”
“I wasn’t going to be sick—“ Tom managed to mutter. Then he realized that the truth was much worse, and felt grateful to Lawrence for his tact. Before he could add anything more, the other continued, speaking firmly but more gently: “No one else can hear us, Tom—we’re on the suit circuit now. So listen to me, and don’t get mad. I know a lot about you, and I know you’ve had a hell of a rough deal from life. But you’ve got a brain—a damn good brain—so don’t waste it by behaving like a scared kid. Sure, we’re all scared kids at some time or other, but this isn’t the time for it. There are twenty-two lives depending on you. In five minutes, we’ll settle this business one way or the other. So keep your eye on that screen, and forget about everything else. I’ll get you out of here all right—don’t you worry about that.”
Lawrence slapped the suit—gently, this time—without taking his eyes off the young scientist’s stricken face. Then, with a vast feeling of relief, he saw Lawson slowly relax.
For a moment the astronomer sat quite motionless, obviously in full control of himself but apparently listening to some inner voice. What was it telling him? wondered Lawrence. Perhaps that he was part of mankind, even though it had condemned him to that unspeakable orphans’ home when he was a child. Perhaps that, somewhere in the world, there might be a person who could care for him, and who would break through the ice that had encrusted his heart.
It was a strange little tableau, here on this mirror-smooth plain between the Mountains of Inaccessibility and the rising sun. Like ships becalmed on a dead and stagnant sea, Duster One and Duster Two floated side by side, their pilots playing no part in the conflict of wills that had just taken place, though they were dimly aware of it. No one watching from a distance could have guessed the issues that had been at stake, the lives and destinies that had trembled in the balance; and the two men involved would never talk of it again.
Indeed, they were already concerned with something else. For in the same instant, they had both become aware of a highly ironic situation.
All the time they had been standing there, so intent upon their own affairs that they had never looked at the screen of the infrared scanner, it had been patiently holding the picture they sought.
When Pat and Sue had completed their inventory and emerged from the air-lock galley, the passengers were still far back in Restoration England. Sir Isaac’s brief physics lecture had been followed, as might easily have been predicted, by a considerably longer anatomy lesson from Nell Gwyn. The audience was thoroughly enjoying itself, especially as Barrett’s English accent was now going full blast.
“’”Forsooth, Sir Isaac, you are indeed a man of great knowledge. Yet, methinks there is much that a woman might teach you.”
“’”And what is that, my pretty maid?”
“’Mistress Nell blushed shyly.
“’”I fear,” she sighed, “that you have given your life to the things of the mind. You have forgotten, Sir Isaac, that the body, also, has much strange wisdom.”
“’”Call me ‘Ike,’” said the sage huskily, as his clumsy fingers tugged at the fastenings of her blouse.
“’”Not here—in the palace!” Nell protested, making no effort to hold him at bay. “The King will be back soon!”
“’”Do not alarm yourself, my pretty one. Charles is roistering with that scribbler Pepys. We’ll see naught of him tonight—“’”
If we ever get out of here, thought Pat, we must send a letter of thanks to the seventeen-year-old schoolgirl on Mars who is supposed to have written this nonsense. She’s keeping everyone amused, and that’s all that matters now.
No; there was someone who was definitely not amused. He became uncomfortably aware that Miss Morley was trying to catch his eye. Recalling his duties as skipper, he turned toward her and gave her a reassuring but rather strained smile.
She did not return it; if anything, her expression became even more forbidding. Slowly and quite deliberately, she looked at Sue Wilkins and then back at him.
There was no need for words. She had said, as clearly as if she had shouted it at the top of her voice: “I know what you’ve been doing, back there in the air lock.”
Pat felt his face flame with indignation, the righteous indignation of a man who had been unjustly accused. For a moment he sat frozen in his seat, while the blood pounded in his cheeks. Then he muttered to himself: “I’ll show the old bitch.”
He rose to his feet, gave Miss Morley a smile of poisonous sweetness, and said just loudly enough for her to hear: “Miss Wilkins! I think we’ve forgotten something. Will you come back to the air lock?”
As the door closed behind them once more, interrupting the narration of an incident that threw the gravest possible doubts upon the paternity of the Duke of St. Albans, Sue Wilkins looked at him in puzzled surprise.
“Did you see that?” he said, still boiling.
“See what?”
“Miss Morley—“
“Oh,” interrupted Sue, “don’t worry about her, poor thing. She’s been eying you ever since we left t
he Base. You know what her trouble is.”
“What?” asked Pat, already uncomfortably sure of the answer.
“I suppose you could call it ingrowing virginity. It’s a common complaint, and the symptoms are always the same. There’s only one cure for it.”
The ways of love are strange and tortuous. Only ten minutes ago, Pat and Sue had left the air lock together, mutually agreed to remain in a state of chaste affection. But now the improbable combination of Miss Morley and Nell Gwyn, and the feeling that one might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb—as well as, perhaps, the instinctive knowledge of their bodies that, in the long run, love was the only defense against death—had combined to overwhelm them. For a moment they stood motionless in the tiny, cluttered space of the galley; then, neither knowing who moved first, they were in each other’s arms.
Sue had time to whisper only one phrase before Pat’s lips silenced her.
“Not here,” she whispered, “in the palace!”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Chief Engineer Lawrence stared into the faintly glowing screen, trying to read its message. Like all engineers and scientists, he had spent an appreciable fraction of his life looking at the images painted by speeding electrons, recording events too large or too small, too bright or too faint, for human eyes to see. It was more than a hundred years since the cathode-ray tube had placed the invisible world firmly in Man’s grasp; already he had forgotten that it had ever been beyond his reach.
Two hundred meters away, according to the infrared scanner, a patch of slightly greater warmth was lying on the face of this dusty desert. It was almost perfectly circular, and quite isolated; there were no other sources of heat in the entire field of view. Though it was much smaller than the spot that Lawson had photographed from Lagrange, it was in the right area. There could be little doubt that it was the same thing.
A Fall of Moondust Page 10
