by Hal Clement
Peter took to staying out on the mountain longer and longer, dashing back to the Ion occasionally for a bite to eat, but not getting any rest to speak of. Even Dart suggested that he might search better if he took more care of himself, and offered to take his place while Peter remained in his ship and served as relay man; but the usually sober and thoughtful Ashburn scarcely thanked him. He was almost mad with worry; he took to using the earth as a timepiece. It had been well away from the sun when they had first found the Tumblesauce; much closer when Peter found the trail to the Mountains of Light; now it was only a few degrees away, showing as a thin crescent cut by the horizon in the same way as the sun. All the boys knew that the station would go below the horizon before the earth actually became "new"—that is, before it passed as close as it would to the sun—so Peter's keeping an eye on it was not entirely senseless.
It grew ever thinner and closer, and Peter grew more and more frantic. He wanted to travel faster—to cover more territory—but he didn't dare skimp on his examination of the ground he did cover. This mountain must be the one, if he knew Tumble at all.
Over hillocks—through crevasses—up and down slopes—peering into each blowhole which could possibly hold a space suit—checking each shadow to find whether or not it concealed a hole or a body: the boy became virtually a machine; he would sometimes have to be called two or three times by the relay man before he roused himself enough to answer. Peter was searching automatically; almost the only thought in his mind was, "Will I find him first?"
He didn't—quite. Dart was back on relay duty—he had traded with his brother, for a while—by the time the station approached the horizon, and it was his voice which Peter heard. The words hardly meant anything to him; he didn't hear, "I'm afraid we'll have to cut off for a while, fellows; Uncle Jim says it's time to get back to the station," but rather, "You lost. You didn't look hard enough; you didn't think fast enough; Tumble's gone." It didn't occur to him to disobey Uncle Jim's order; he turned dully downhill, and almost fell into another blowhole.
As a matter of habit he speared the beam of his flashlight into it, and froze where he stood. Space suits are not made of metal, but the plastic is still very different from the dark-colored rock which covers most of the moon, and there was no mistaking the object which could be seen far down the narrow, slanting shaft. It lay about thirty feet below him, motionless, and without a single thought about the advisability of the act, Peter stepped over the edge.
He was several feet down before it occurred to him that, while a drop of thirty feet on the moon is about equal to one of five feet on the earth and can be taken without much trouble, the man who can do a standing high jump of five feet—that is, one which will raise his center of gravity five feet—is a rather unusual specimen.
The person who can do it in a space suit is rare indeed. But it was a little too late for the realization to help him.
23
SIGN IN THE DUST
HOWEVER, the sight of the space-suited figure was acting like a stimulant on Peter. In the slightly over three seconds it took him to reach the bottom, he had recovered enough of his usual calmness to be able to push the problem of getting out of the hole to the back of his mind, and concentrate on the more immediate matter of Tumble. The figure at the bottom had not moved since he saw it; it did not move when he struck the lava beside it with a jar. Peter heard the blow, but he realized that no one else could on the airless satellite; perhaps it was that Tumble didn't know he was here.
The flashlight revealed a pale, thin face inside the helmet. The eyes were closed, and since the normal actions of breathing could not be seen through a space suit, Peter was afraid for a moment that he had come too late after all. Then the figure shifted, twisted, and the eyes opened. Tumble had simply been asleep.
"What's that?" His voice came clearly enough through the radio. Peter swung the beam of the light on his own face, and Tumble's voice rose to a yell of delight.
"Pete! You found me! How long have you been looking? How long have I been here? Where are the others?"
"Take it easy. Bart's about five miles away, scouring a mountainside for you; Dart is being radioman up in his ship. It's about five days, as nearly as we can guess, since you left your ship; you know better than I do how long after that it was when you got yourself in here. Did you fall, jump, or what?"
"I jumped. I'd jumped off places nearly as high several times before, and knew it wouldn't hurt me; but I couldn't jump out. I—I've been scared, Pete. I'm hungry, too."
"That I can believe. We'll have you into a ship and eating before too long—I hope."
"What do you mean, you hope? Can't we get out now?"
"I don't suppose I can jump any higher than you can.
"Then call on the radio."
"They won't hear us; the rock cuts off the waves. That's why you haven't heard us talking the last few days. Still, with two of us it should be possible to do things that neither of us could do alone. Let's do some thinking."
"You don't have a rope?"
"I'm afraid not. There wasn't a suitable one at the station."
"And anyway, I suppose when you left the station you didn't know you'd be mountain climbing."
"Yes, we knew that; that's why we looked for you. They may look harder now; I suppose Dart and Bart will have to go back without me and report. At least, they'll know about where to look when the station comes back."
"Comes back? Where is it?"
Peter told him the whole story, from the time the Tumblesauce had disappeared toward the moon; Tumble listened in silence, forgetting his hunger for the moment.
"Pete," he asked at length, "how is Dr. Bowen now?"
"In his wheel chair—they put several of them together from odds and ends at the station."
"You mean maneuvering that station put every man in it under wrong weight? They're all sick, the way Dr. Bowen was when I first was spying on you back on Earth?"
"Not all in quite the same way, but most of them are sick, yes."
"And they knew it would happen. Why did they do it?"
"I think you know the answer to that." There was another long silence.
"I guess I do," Tumble said at last, slowly. For several minutes they both thought; Tumble about the things which had happened since he had met these boys, and Peter about the matter of getting out of the trap they were in. It was Peter who spoke first.
"How much strength do you have left?" he asked.
"I don't know. I can stand up, but who couldn't here? I haven't tried to jump for I don't know how long."
"Could you still chin yourself, or pull yourself over the edge of the hole with your hands if you were to get hold of it?"
"I don't know. Hold out your arm and I'll try." Tumble got to his feet without much difficulty, and found that he had little trouble supporting himself with one hand from Peter's outstretched arm. "I can do it, all right. What good will it do us? You don't have a rope, and standing on your shoulders won't help by a long shot."
"Obviously; but suit and all, you weigh only about thirty pounds on the moon. The distance to the mouth of this hole is about thirty feet, which would be something like five against Earth's gravity, and if I can't throw a thirty-pound weight five feet straight up, something's wrong."
"Well—O.K., I guess. The sides of this hole are pretty smooth."
"That's right—but don't bash your face plate against it, just the same. All set?"
Peter had been perfectly right—he could throw a thirty-pound weight more than five feet vertically. However, there was something wrong—with Peter's mathematics, of all things. He should have figured on throwing the thirty pounds thirty feet, or else one hundred eighty pounds for five feet. He shouldn't have tried to count in the moon's gravity twice. The best result of four tries brought Tumble's outstretched gloves scraping dust from the wall within about ten feet of the lip of the pit; closer than that, Peter could not get him. When succeeding throws began to grow steadily worse, they s
topped to seek some new solution to their problem.
Peter did not want to admit it, but he was getting badly frightened and was finding it harder to think sensibly. Bart and Dart knew which mountain he was on, but they might easily be longer finding him than he had been finding Tumble; it would be pure luck— good or bad, as might happen. He could reach them by radio only if one of the ships happened to get directly in line with the narrow mouth of the blowhole; the chances of that were ridiculously small. He himself might hold out for days, but Tumble couldn't; the younger boy would have to eat soon, and his batteries must be nearly discharged after several days of doing the job that sunlight was supposed to do in his air renewers. When they were drained, there were the four emergency oxygen cylinders; when those were done, so was Tumble.
"How about your light, Pete?" the redhead asked suddenly. "It seemed pretty strong when you were shining it in my eyes a white ago. Can't you use it for signaling?"
"Not unless they're looking into the hole already. If they're in position to do that, we could get them on the radio."
"But won't they see the beam if you shoot it out the mouth of this hole?"
" 'Fraid not. To see a beam like that, either you have to be in its direct path or it has to be shining on something to reflect light into your eyes."
"I've seen searchlights on Earth that weren't pointing at me.
"I know. That's because of dust and fog and such things in the air. Here there isn't even any air—at least, none worth mentioning. We could see the jet streams of the rockets when we got within fifty or sixty miles of the moon's surface, but they pack a lot more energy than this flashlight. Besides, the rock outside the hole is in sunlight; even with air, you'd never see the beam against a bright background."
"I see." Tumble lapsed into silence. It hurt him to talk now, anyway; he had to move his stomach muscles, and his stomach was hurting steadily. He wanted to eat, but was afraid that if he did his stomach wouldn't stand it. He was even less in condition to think than was Peter.
Why Peter didn't find the answer sooner he could never explain afterward. Probably it was because he had thought of two difficulties at once—the lack of air to scatter the flashlight beam, and the bright background to hide it if it were scattered. A solution to one would mean nothing unless he could also solve the other, and the only solution to the second problem seemed to be to wait until the sun got to the other side of the mountain, ten days or a fortnight from now. That was little help.
Of course, it is possible that was not the real reason why he lay beside Tumble for several hours without having a single useful idea cross his mind, but it is at least certain that when the change in the sunlight reflected down from the lip of the hole finally caught his attention, he had a working idea ready to use in less than two minutes.
The light must have altered a good deal before he did notice it. There wasn't much to start with, of course; just the reflection from a few square feet of darkish rock. It was enough to let a person see small objects at the bottom of the hole, once his eyes were used to it, but not enough to keep him from seeing the stars which were shining in. Peter noticed the change when he finally summoned up the ambition to see how long they had been trapped, and tried to read his watch.
He could barely make out the dial mounted in the wrist of his suit, though he had had no trouble with it earlier, and that brought his attention to the mouth of the hole.
"Tumble! Look up!"
"Why?" The question was a mumble.
"The light's going! Something's going on!" "Do us any good?"
"I don't know—look at it, will you?" Tumble was moved sufficiently to open his eyes; this was enough, since he was lying on his back.
"Getting redder—someone light a fire?"
"Don't be silly—you don't light fires without air. Anyway it's not like fire, it's more sunset color, and that's just as silly, because—no! Wait a minute! It's not silly either; it is sunset color! I see it—I know what's going on!"
"Any good for us, or just something to know?"
"Plenty of good for us. Remember a month ago there was a regular full moon—no eclipse?"
"That's right."
"And two weeks ago there was an eclipse of the sun —we watched the moon's shadow crossing part of the earth."
"I remember."
"Then there's got to be an eclipse of the moon this time around, and that means an eclipse of the sun, for us! The sun will be covered by the earth; that's what's making it get dark!"
"Why the red?"
"Same as a sunset on Earth; the light that's getting to us is going through a lot of the earth's air. If we could see it now, it should be really pretty; a big black ball with a red-hot ring around its rim. I just hope those Rangers aren't too busy watching it, and are still outside, because this is our time to signal. There won't be any bright background now—or at least, in half an hour or so when the eclipse is really on."
"There's still nothing to scatter your light beam around."
"There's plenty to scatter it. We're ankle deep in dust; we have dust still sticking to our suits; there's dust lining the walls of this pit. I may not be able to throw you out of here, but if I can't get a handful of dust above the edge of this hole, something's wrong."
"That's what you said before."
"Never mind that. Start scraping dust together. We'll wait a while, until it's really dark; then I'll prop the flashlight—no, there's nothing to prop it with; one of us will have to hold it—and we'll start throwing dust up along the beam."
"Try it now, just to see if it works. I'd like to know the worst without having to work up a worry."
"All right. Hold the light." Peter handed over the flash, and picked up a handful of dust as well as he could in the gauntlets of his space suit. Tumble held the light pointed toward the mouth of the hole, while Peter wound up and threw.
On Earth, of course, the handful of bone-dry dust would have gone perhaps five feet, forming a cloud which would gradually settle to the ground. Peter knew that it would not be slowed in any such fashion, but he had not thought at all clearly about the other effects produced by a lack of air. He was rather startled when the lump of dust simply broke into two or three pieces as it left his hand, and sailed off without showing the least disposition to spread out and form a cloud which could be illuminated by the flashlight. Tumble was startled; Peter, after a second's surprise, realized what the trouble was.
"No air to slow down any of it, so all the dust grains kept going at the same speed," he explained briefly to Tumble. "That's a nuisance. How do you throw a handful of dust so you can let go of the different grains at different speeds, but all in about the same direction?"
"Blow it off your hand," replied Tumble promptly, thereby startling Peter more than the behavior of the dust had done.
"Can't do it through a helmet—but wait a minute; you're right. We can use the emergency oxygen tanks. A half second squirt from one of those would set things going; they have over a ton to the square inch inside pressure."
"That's right. Take off a couple of mine; you know the connections better than I do."
"Don't be silly; I have days left in my battery and yours must be nearly done. You'll need the oxygen. Take off one of mine, and we'll see if it works."
Tumble obeyed, handed Peter the little tank, and resumed his position with the torch. Peter tried to manipulate the tank valve and hold the dust at the same time, but lacked sufficient hands; so he finally got Tumble to hold a palmful of dust as well. This time the procedure worked like a charm; a silent jet of gas —silent to Tumble, that is; Peter heard the hiss transmitted through the plastic of the tank and suit— struck the pile of dust and sent it upward in a spreading shower. The oxygen passed on, its speed hardly decreased, and peeled another supply of particles from the wall of the blowhole. To the delight of the two experimenters, the tiny specks of material flashed brilliantly in the light beam, and the best part of ten seconds was required for the last of them to fall o
ut of its path.
"That will do it," said Peter. "Now we'd better wait until it's really dark; then we'll keep this up until we run out of dust or I run out of oxygen. If nobody sees it—well, we'll just have to think of something else, but we won't worry about that now."
"Not if we can help it," returned Tumble, "and I guess I've run out of worry ammunition for right now, anyway."
He must have been right, for he fell asleep while he was waiting for Peter to decide that the moment had come to start signaling.
24
RED DARKNESS
BART was, as Peter had said, some five miles from the mountain where Peter was searching when the recall came in. Both searchers were able to hear the relay, but at that time they could not hear each other; a spur of Bart's mountain cut off the radio waves. As a result, some time passed before anyone realized that something must have happened. It took Bart fully half an hour to get back to his ship, and only then, when he called his brother to come down into view so that the Outbound could take off safely, did the situation become apparent. Dart obeyed the call, and while he was easing down to where Bart could see him he called Peter to ask whether he was nearly at his ship. Naturally, there was no answer; and when several more calls brought no response, Dart landed beside the Ion to investigate.
The ship was empty, and no sign of a moving figure could be seen on or near the mountain beside which it stood, though the boy went over it thoroughly from his control cabin with a large pair of binoculars. Bart was calling by this time—had been for some minutes, in fact—wanting to know what the trouble was, so Dart put down the glasses and explained.
