For a few seconds, Miss Morley sat speechless with fury, while her cheeks turned a bright crimson.
“I’ve never been so insulted in my—“ she began.
“Nor have I, madam,” interjected Pat, completing her demoralization. She looked round the circle of faces—most of them solemn, but several grinning, even at a time like this—and realized that there was only one way out.
As she slumped in her seat, Pat breathed a vast sigh of relief. After that little episode, the rest should be easy.
Then he saw that Mrs. Williams, whose birthday had been celebrated in such Spartan style only a few hours before, was staring in a kind of frozen trance at the cylinder in her hand. The poor woman was obviously terrified, and no one could blame her. In the next seat, her husband had already collapsed; it was a little ungallant, Pat thought, to have gone first and left his wife to fend for herself.
Before he could take any action, Sue had moved forward.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Williams, I made a mistake. I gave you an empty one. Perhaps you’ll let me have it back. . . .”
The whole thing was done so neatly that it looked like a conjuring trick. Sue took-or seemed to take-the tube from the unresisting fingers, but as she did so she must have jolted it against Mrs. Williams. The lady never knew what had happened; she quietly folded up and joined her husband.
Half the company was unconscious now. On the whole, thought Pat, there had been remarkably little fuss. Commodore Hansteen had been too much of a pessimist; the riot squad had not been necessary, after all.
Then, with a slight sinking feeling, he noticed something that made him change his mind. It looked as if, as usual, the Commodore had known exactly what he was doing. Miss Morley was not going to be the only difficult customer.
It was at least two years since Lawrence had been inside an igloo. There was a time, when he had been a junior engineer out on construction projects, when he had lived in one for weeks on end, and had forgotten what it was like to be surrounded by rigid walls. Since those days, of course, there had been many improvements in design; it was now no particular hardship to live in a home that would fold up into a small trunk.
This was one of the latest models—a Goodyear Mark XX—and it could sustain six men for an indefinite period, as long as they were supplied with power, water, food, and oxygen. The igloo could provide everything else-even entertainment, for it had a built-in microlibrary of books, music, and video. This was no extravagant luxury, though the auditors queried it with great regularity. In space, boredom could be a killer. It might take longer than, say, a leak in an air line, but it could be just as effective, and was sometimes much messier.
Lawrence stooped slightly to enter the air lock. In some of the old models, he remembered, you practically had to go down on hands and knees. He waited for the “pressure equalized” signal, then stepped into the hemispherical main chamber.
It was like being inside a balloon; indeed, that was exactly where he was. He could see only part of the interior, for it had been divided into several compartments by movable screens. (Another modern refinement; in his day, the only privacy was that given by the curtain across the toilet.) Overhead, three meters above the floor, were the lights and the air-conditioning grille, suspended from the ceiling by elastic webbing. Against the curved wall stood collapsible metal racks, only partly erected. From the other side of the nearest screen came the sound of a voice reading from an inventory, while every few seconds another interjected, “Check.”
Lawrence stepped around the screen and found himself in the dormitory section of the igloo. Like the wall racks, the double bunks had not been fully erected; it was merely necessary to see that all the bits and pieces were in their place, for as soon as the inventory was completed everything would be packed and rushed to the site.
Lawrence did not interrupt the two storemen as they continued their careful stock-taking. This was one of those unexciting but vital jobs—of which there were so many on the Moon—upon which lives could depend. A mistake here could be a sentence of death for someone, sometime in the future.
When the checkers had come to the end of a sheet, Lawrence said, “Is this the largest model you have in stock?”
“The largest that’s serviceable” was the answer. “We have a twelve-man Mark Nineteen, but there’s a slow leak in the outer envelope that has to be fixed.”
“How long will that take?”
“Only a few minutes. But then there’s a twelve-hour inflation test before we’re allowed to check it out.”
This was one of those times when the man who made the rules had to break them.
“We can’t wait to make the full test. Put on a double patch and take a leak reading; if it’s inside the standard tolerance, get the igloo checked out right away. I’ll authorize the clearance.”
The risk was trivial, and he might need that big dome in a hurry. Somehow, he had to provide air and shelter for twentytwo men and women out there on the Sea of Thirst. They couldn’t all wear space suits from the time they left Selene until they were ferried back to Port Roris.
There was a “beep beep” from the communicator behind his left ear. He flicked the switch at his belt and acknowledged the call.
“C.E.E. speaking.”
“Message from Selene, sir,” said a clear, tiny voice. “Very urgent—they’re in trouble.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Until now, Pat had scarcely noticed the man who was sitting with folded arms in window seat 3D, and had to think twice to remember his name. It was something like Builder—that was it, Baldur, Hans Baldur. He had looked like the typical quiet tourist who never gave any trouble.
He was still quiet, but no longer typical—for he was remaining stubbornly conscious. At first sight he appeared to be ignoring everything around him, but the twitching of a cheek muscle betrayed his tenseness.
“What are you waiting for, Mister Baldur?” asked Pat, in the most neutral tone that he could manage. He felt very glad of the moral and physical support ranged behind him; Baldur did not look exceptionally strong, but he was certainly more than Pat’s Moon-born muscles could have coped with—if it came to that.
Baldur shook his head, and remained staring out of the window for all the world as if he could see something there besides his own reflection.
“You can’t make me take that stuff, and I’m not going to,” he said, in heavily accented English.
“I don’t want to force you to do anything,” answered Pat. “But can’t you see it’s for your own good—and for the good of everyone else? What possible objection do you have?”
Baldur hesitated and seemed to be struggling for words.
“It’s—it’s against my principles,” he said. “Yes, that’s it. My religion won’t allow me to take injections.”
Pat knew vaguely that there were people with such scruples. Yet he did not for a moment believe that Baldur was one of them. The man was lying. But why?
“Can I make a point?” said a voice behind Pat’s back.
“Of course, Mister Harding,” he answered, welcoming anything that might break this impasse.
“You say you won’t permit any injections, Mister Baldur,” continued Harding, in tones that reminded Pat of his crossexamination of Mrs. Schuster. (How long ago that seemed!) “But I can tell that you weren’t born on the Moon. No one can miss going through Quarantine—so, how did you get here without taking the usual shots?”
The question obviously left Baldur extremely agitated.
“That’s no business of yours,” he snapped.
“Quite true,” said Harding pleasantly. “I’m only trying to be helpful.” He stepped forward and reached out his left hand. “I don’t suppose you’d let me see your Interplanetary Vaccination Certificate?”
That was a damn silly thing to ask, thought Pat. No human eye could read the magnetically inscribed information on an IVC. He wondered if this would occur to Baldur, and if so, what he would do about it.
/> He had no time to do anything. He was still staring, obviously taken by surprise, at Harding’s open palm when Baldur’s interrogator moved his other hand so swiftly that Pat never saw exactly what happened. It was like Sue’s conjuring trick with Mrs. Williams-but far more spectacular, and also much deadlier. As far as Pat could judge, it involved the side of the hand and the base of the neck—and it was not, he was quite sure, the kind of skill he ever wished to acquire.
“That will hold him for fifteen minutes,” said Harding in a matter-of-fact voice, as Baldur crumpled up in his seat. “Can you give me one of those tubes? Thanks.” He pressed the cylinder against the unconscious man’s arm; there was no sign that it had any additional effect.
The situation, thought Pat, had got somewhat out of his control. He was grateful that Harding had exercised his singular skills, but was not entirely happy about them.
“Now what was all that?” he asked, a little plaintively.
Harding rolled up Baldur’s left sleeve, and turned the arm over to reveal the fleshy underside. The skin was covered with literally hundreds of almost invisible pinpricks.
“Know what that is?” he said quietly.
Pat nodded. Some had taken longer to make the trip than others, but by now all the vices of weary old Earth had reached the Moon.
“You can’t blame the poor devil for not giving his reasons. He’s been conditioned against using the needle. Judging from the state of those scars, he started his cure only a few weeks ago. Now it’s psychologically impossible for him to accept an injection. I hope I’ve not given him a relapse, but that’s the least of his worries.”
“How did he ever get through Quarantine?”
“Oh, there’s a special section for people like this. The doctors don’t talk about it, but the customers get temporary deconditioning under hypnosis. There are more of them than you might think; a trip to the Moon’s highly recommended as part of the cure. It gets you away from your original environment.”
There were quite a few other questions that Pat would have liked to ask Harding, but they had already wasted several minutes. Thank heavens all the remaining passengers had gone under. That last demonstration of judo, or whatever it was, must have encouraged any stragglers.
“You won’t need me any more,” said Sue, with a small, brave smile. “Good-by, Pat—wake me when it’s over.”
“I will,” he promised, lowering her gently into the space between the seat rows. “Or not at all,” he added, when he saw that her eyes were closed.
He remained bending ovet her for several seconds before he regained enough control to face the others. There were so many things he wanted to tell her, but now the opportunity was gone, perhaps forever.
Swallowing to overcome the dryness in his throat, he turned to the five survivors. There was still one more problem to deal with, and David Barrett summed it up for him.
“Well, Captain,” he said. “Don’t leave us in suspense. Which of us do you want to keep you company?”
One by one, Pat handed over five of the sleep tubes.
“Thank you for your help,” he said. “I know this is a little melodramatic, but it’s the neatest way. Only four of those will work.”
“I hope mine will,” said Barrett, wasting no time. It did. A few seconds later, Harding, Bryan, and Johanson followed the Englishman into oblivion.
“Well,” said Dr. McKenzie, “I seem to be odd man out. I’m flattered by your choice—or did you leave it to luck?”
“Before I answer that question,” replied Pat, “I’d better let Port Roris know what’s happened.”
He walked to the radio and gave a brief survey of the situation. There was a shocked silence from the other end. A few minutes later, Chief Engineer Lawrence was on the line.
“You did the best thing, of course,” he said, when Pat had repeated his story in more detail. “Even if we hit no snags, we can’t possibly reach you in under five hours. Will you be able to hold out until then?”
“The two of us, yes,” answered Pat. “We can take turns using the space-suit breathing circuit. It’s the passengers I’m worried about.”
“The only thing you can do is to check their respiration, and give them a blast of oxygen if they seem distressed. We’ll do our damnedest from this end. Anything more you want to say?”
Pat thought for a few seconds.
“No,” he said, a little wearily. “I’ll call you again on each quarter-hour. Selene out.”
He got to his feet—slowly, for the strain and the carbon-dioxide poisoning were now beginning to tell heavily upon him—and said to McKenzie: “Right, Doc—give me a hand with that space suit.”
“I’m ashamed of myself. I’d forgotten all about that.”
“And I was worried because some of the other passengers might have remembered. They must all have seen it, when they came in through the air lock. It just goes to prove how you can overlook the obvious.”
It took them only five minutes to detach the absorbent canisters and the twenty-four-hour oxygen supply from the suit; the whole breathing circuit had been designed for quick release, in case it was ever needed for artificial respiration. Not for the first time, Pat blessed the skill, ingenuity, and foresight that had been lavished on Selene. There were some things that had been overlooked, or that might have been done a little better—but not many.
Their lungs aching, the only two men still conscious aboard the cruiser stood staring at each other across the gray metal cylinder that held another day of life. Then, simultaneously, each said: “You go first.”
They laughed without much humor at the hackneyed situation, then Pat answered, “I won’t argue” and placed the mask over his face.
Like a cool sea breeze after a dusty summer day, like a wind from the mountain pine forests stirring the stagnant air in some deep lowlands valley—so the flow of oxygen seemed to Pat. He took four slow, deep breaths, and exhaled to the fullest extent, to sweep the carbon dioxide out of his lungs. Then, like a pipe of peace, he handed the breathing kit over to McKenzie.
Those four breaths had been enough to invigorate him, and to sweep away the cobwebs that had been gathering in his brain. Perhaps it was partly psychological—could a few cubic centimeters of oxygen have had so profound an effect?--but whatever the explanation, he felt like a new man. Now he could face the five-or more—hours of waiting that lay ahead.
Ten minutes later, he felt another surge of confidence. All the passengers seemed to be breathing as normally as could be expected—very slowly, but steadily. He gave each one a few seconds of oxygen, then called Base again.
“_Selene_ here,” he said. “Captain Harris reporting. Doctor McKenzie and I both feel quite fit now, and none of the passengers seem distressed. I’ll remain listening out, and will call you again on the half-hour.”
“Message received. But hold on a minute, several of the news agencies want to speak to you.”
“Sony,” Pat answered. “I’ve given all the information there is, and I’ve twenty unconscious men and women to look after. Selene out.”
That was only an excuse, of course, and a feeble one at that; he was not even sure why he had made it. He felt, in a sudden and uncharacteristic burst of rancor: Why, a man can’t even die in peace nowadays! Had he known about that waiting camera, only five kilometers away, his reaction might have been even stronger.
“You still haven’t answered my question, Captain,” said Dr. McKenzie patiently.
“What question? Oh—that. No, it wasn’t luck. The Commodore and I both thought you’d be the most useful man to have awake. You’re a scientist, you spotted the overheating danger before anyone else did, and you kept quiet about it when we asked you to.”
“Well, I’ll try to live up to your expectations. I certainly feel more alert than I’ve done for hours. It must be the oxygen we’re sniffing. The big question is: How long will it last?”
“Between the two of us, twelve hours. Plenty of time for the skis to get her
e. But we may have to give most of it to the others, if they show signs of distress. I’m afraid it’s going to be a very close thing.”
They were both sitting cross-legged on the floor, just beside the pilot’s position, with the oxygen bottle between them. Every few minutes they would take turns with the inhaler—but only two breaths at a time. I never imagined, Pat told himself, that I should ever get involved in the number-one cliche of the TV space operas. But it had occurred in real life too often to be funny any more—especially when it was happening to you.
Both Pat and McKenzie—or almost certainly one of them—could survive if they abandoned the other passengers to their fate. Trying to keep these twenty men and women alive, they might also doom themselves.
The situation was one in which logic warred against conscience. But it was nothing new; certainly it was not peculiar to the age of space. It was as old as Mankind, for countless times in the past, lost or isolated groups had faced death through lack of water, food, or warmth. Now it was oxygen that was in short supply, but the principle was just the same.
Some of those groups had left no survivors; others, a handful who would spend the rest of their lives in self-justification. What must George Pollard, late captain of the whaler Essex, have thought as he walked the streets of Nantucket, with the taint of cannibalism upon his soul? That was a two-hundredyear-old story of which Pat had never heard; he lived on a world too busy making its own legends to import those of Earth. As far as he was concerned, he had already made his choice, and he knew, without asking, that McKenzie would agree with him. Neither was the sort of man who would fight over the last bubble of oxygen in the tank. But if it did come to a fight—
“What are you smiling at?” asked McKenzie.
Pat relaxed. There was something about this burly Australian scientist that he found very reassuring. Hansteen gave him the same impression, but McKenzie was a much younger man. There were some people you knew -that you could trust, whom you were certain would never let you down. He had that feeling about McKenzie.
A Fall of Moondust Page 15
