A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  “Oh, my,” said Capt. Wilkins. “I suppose it’s a steel drum. Those things must weigh . . .”

  “Actually, I think you guys have got the general wrong,” Capt. Lawler said. “He was out, himself, to greet us. I think he was really quite upset by the quake. Probably because his people had misfigured so bad.”

  “He’s too damned suspicious,” Major Winship said. “You know and I know why they set that blast off. I tried to tell him. Hell. He looks at me like an emasculated owl and wants to know our ulterior motive in trying to prevent a purely scientific experiment, the results of which will be published in the technical press for the good of everybody. I’ll bet!”

  “About this drum,” Capt. Wilkins said.

  “Well, like I said, it’s this way,” Lt. Chandler resumed. “I told him we needed about a pint. Maybe a quart. But! this stuff you have to mix up. He only had these drums. There’s two parts to it, and you have to combine them in just the right proportion. He told me to take a little scale—”

  “A little scale?” asked Capt. Wilkins, rolling his eyes at the dome.

  “That’s what I told him. We don’t have any little scale.”

  “Yeah,” said Captain Lawler, “and he looked at us with that mute, surprised look, like everybody, everywhere has dozens of little scales.”

  “Well, anyway,” Lt. Chandler continued, “he told us just to mix up the whole fifty-five gallon drum. There’s a little bucket of stuff that goes in, and it’s measured just right. We can throw away what we don’t need.”

  “Somehow, that sounds like him,” Major Winship said.

  “He had five or six of them.”

  “Jesus!” said Capt. Wilkins. “That must be three thousand pounds of calking compound. Those people are insane.”

  “The question is,” Capt. Lawler said, “ ‘How are we going to mix it?’ It’s supposed to be mixed thoroughly.”

  They thought over the problem for a while.

  “That will be a man-sized job,” Major Winship said.

  “Let’s see, Charlie. Maybe not too bad,” said Capt. Wilkins. “If I took the compressor motor, we could make up a shaft and . . . let’s see . . . if we could . . .”

  IT took the better part of an hour to rig up the electric mixer.

  Capt. Wilkins was profusely congratulated.

  “Now,” Major Winship said, “we can either bring the drum inside or take the mixer out there.”

  “We’re going to have to bring the drum in,” Capt. Wilkins said.

  “Well,” said Capt. Lawler, “that will make it nice and cozy.”

  It took the four of them to roll the drum inside, rocking it back and forth through the airlock. At that time, it was apparent the table was interposing itself.

  Lt. Chandler tried to dismantle the table. “Damn these suits,” he said.

  “You’ve got it stuck between the bunk post.”

  “I know that.”

  “I don’t think this is the way to do it,” Major Winship said. “Let’s back the drum out.”

  Reluctantly, they backed the drum out and deposited it. With the aid of Capt. Lawler, Lt. Chandler got the table unstuck. They passed it over to Major Winship, who handed it out to Capt. Wilkins. Captain Wilkins carried it around the drum of calking compound and set it down. It rested uneasily on the uneven surface.

  “Now, let’s go,” said Major Winship.

  Eventually, they accomplished the moving. They wedged the drum between the main air-supply tank and the transmitter. They were all perspiring. “It’s not the weight, it’s the mass,” said Capt. Wilkins brightly.

  “The hell it isn’t the weight,” said Lt. Chandler. “That’s heavy.”

  “With my reefer out,” said Major Winship, “I’m the one it’s rough on.” He shook perspiration out of his eyes. “They should figure a way to get a mop in here, or a towel, or a sponge, or something. I’ll bet you’ve forgotten how much sweat stings in the eyes.”

  “It’s the salt.”

  “Speaking of salt. I wish I had some salt tablets,” Major Winship said. “I’ve never sweat so much since basic.”

  “Want to bet Finogenov hasn’t got a bushel of them?”

  “No!” Major Winship snapped.

  WITH the drum of calking compound inside, both Capt. Lawler and Lt. Chandler retreated to the bunks. Capt. Wilkins maneuvered the mixing attachment. “I feel crowded,” he said.

  “Cozy’s the word.”

  “Watch it! Watch it! You almost hit me in the face plate with that!”

  “Sorry.”

  At length the mixer was in operation in the drum.

  “Works perfectly,” said Capt. Wilkins proudly.

  “Now what, Skip? The instructions aren’t in English.”

  “You’re supposed to dump the bucket of stuff in. Then clean the area thoroughly around the leak.”

  “With what?” asked Major Winship.

  “Sandpaper, I guess.”

  “With sandpaper?” Major Winship said, emptying the bucket of fluid into the drum.

  “We don’t have any sandpaper.”

  “It’s been a long day,” Capt. Wilkins said.

  “Mix it thoroughly,” Lt. Chandler mused. “I guess that means let it mix for about ten minutes or so. Then you apply it. It sets for service in just a little bit, Finogenov said. An hour or so, maybe.”

  “I hope this doesn’t set on exposure to air.”

  “No,” Capt. Lawler said. “It sets by some kind of chemical action. General Finogenov wasn’t sure of the English name for it. Some kind of plastic.”

  “Let’s come back to how we’re going to clean around the leak,” Major Winship said.

  “Say, I—” interrupted Capt. Wilkins. There was a trace of concern in his voice. “This is a hell of a time for this to occur to me. I just wasn’t thinking, before. You don’t suppose it’s a room-temperature-curing epoxy resin, do you?”

  “Larry,” said Major Winship, “I wouldn’t know a room-temperature-curing epoxy resin from—”

  “Hey!” exclaimed Capt. Wilkins. “The mixer’s stopped.” He bent forward and touched the drum. He jerked back. “Ye Gods! that’s hot! And it’s harder than a rock! It is an epoxy! Let’s get out of here.”

  “Huh?”

  “Out! Out!”

  Major Winship, Lt. Chandler, and Capt. Lawler, recognizing the sense of urgency, simultaneously glanced at the drum. It was glowing cherry red.

  “Let’s go!” Capt. Wilkins said.

  He and the Major reached the airlock at the same time and became temporarily engaged with each other. Movement was somewhat ungainly in the space suits under the best of conditions, and now, with the necessity for speed, was doubly so. The other two crashed into them from behind, and they spewed forth from the dome in a tangle of arms and legs.

  At the table, they separated, two going to the left, two to the right. The table remained untouched.

  When they halted, Capt. Wilkins said, “Get to one side, it may go off like shrapnel.” They obeyed.

  “What—what—what?” Capt. Lawler stuttered.

  They were still separated, two on one side of the airlock, two on the other.

  “I’m going to try to look,” Capt. Wilkins said. “Let me go.” He lumbered directly away from the dome for a distance of about fifteen feet, then turned and positioned himself, some five feet behind the table, on a line of sight with the airlock.

  “I can see it,” he said. “It’s getting redder. It’s . . . it’s . . . melting, yes. Melting down at the bottom a little. Now it’s falling over to one side and laying on the air tank. The air tank is getting red, too. I’m afraid . . .it’s weakening it . . . Redder. Oh, oh.”

  “What?” said Capt. Lawler.

  “Watch out! There. There!” Capt. Wilkins leaped from his position. He was still floating toward the ground when there was an incredibly bright flare from inside the dome, and a great, silent tongue of flame lashed through the airlock and rolled across the lunar surfa
ce. The table was sent tumbling. The flame was gone almost instantly.

  “There went the air,” Capt. Lawler commented.

  “We got T-Trouble,” said Lt. Chandler.

  IV

  DURING the fifteen-minute wait before they dared venture back, Capt. Wilkins, interrupted once by what appeared to be a moderately mild after-shock from the previous moonquake, explained the phenomena they had just observed.

  “A room-temperature-curing epoxy liberates heat during its curing reaction. And the hotter it is when you mix it, the faster it reacts. The drum had been absorbing heat out here for several hours much faster than it could radiate it away. It may have been forty or fifty degrees C when we stirred in the curing agent.

  At that temperature, a pound mass will normally kick over in five or ten minutes. But here, the only way it can lose the reaction heat is by the slow process of radiation. And that means as the heat builds up, the epoxy goes faster and faster, building up even more heat. And furthermore, we’re not talking about a pound, which can maybe get up to 250 C. in air. We’re talking about 500 pounds, liberating five hundred times as much heat as one pound, and getting God knows how hot—”

  “I sure wish you’d have told me this a little bit earlier,” Major Winship said. “I certainly wish you’d told me.”

  Capt. Wilkins said, “Honest, it never occurred to me Finogenov would be dumb enough to tell us to mix a whole drum of epoxy.”

  Major Winship began to curse mechanically.

  “I don’t think he did it deliberately, Charlie. I really don’t,” Captain Lawler said. “I don’t think he knew any better. Maybe he was showing off by giving us a whole drum. Hell, I know he was showing off. But something like that could kill somebody, and I don’t think he’d go that far.”

  “Think it’s safe, yet?” Major Winship asked. He was perspiring freely again. “I need some thermal protection. What’ll we do? You know damned well. We’ll have to go live with them.

  Arid that sticks in my craw, gentlemen. That—sticks—in my—craw.”

  “There’s nothing for it,” Capt. Wilkins said helpfully.

  “Let me go in and survey the damage,” Lt. Chandler said.

  “That’s my job,” Major Winship said. “I’ve got to go in anyway.” He lumbered through the airlock and stepped into the total darkness through the razor-edge curtain.

  “I see it glowing, still,” he said. “It’s almost as bad in here as out there, now. I guess it’s okay. Come on. Let’s bumble around finding the air bottles for the suits and get over there before I’m a boiled lobster. Not only is my reefer out, so’s my light.”

  “Coming.”

  An air of urgency began to accumulate.

  “What are we going to do with him? It’s a half-hour run over there.”

  “Think you can make it, Charlie?”

  “I’m damned well hot.”

  “Charlie, come out here. In the car. Skip, you get the bottles. You drive.”

  Major Winship came out. “Lay down in back,” Capt. Wilkins said. “Les, you lay down beside him. I’ll lay on top of him. I think we can shield him pretty good that way.”

  “That’s good thinking,” Capt. Lawler said from inside.

  The operation was not easily executed. Lt. Chandler got in first, and then Major Winship squeezed beside him. “Careful, there,” he said as Capt. Wilkins came aboard.

  Capt. Wilkins’s foot rolled off one of Major Winship’s thighs.

  “Watch it!”

  “I am.”

  “Oops!”

  “Ufff! I felt that. Ugh. Thank God for the way these are built.”

  “How’s that?” Capt. Wilkins asked.

  “I guess . . . It’s okay, I guess.”

  “Cooler?”

  “It’s too soon to tell. Man, I’ll bet we look silly.”

  Capt. Lawler came out with the bottles and studied his companions for a moment.

  “See if we can get up and over a little more, Les.”

  “This okay?”

  “Better. How’s it feel, Charlie?”

  “Okay.”-

  Cant. Lawler deposited the air bottles. “Everyone got enough air?”

  “I guess we’re all okay,” Capt. Wilkins said;

  “Don’t we look silly?” Major Winship asked plaintively. “I can’t possibly describe my emotions at this minute.”

  “You look all right,” Capt. Lawler said. “Still hot?” Major Winship grunted. He said nothing.

  “I’ll get there as fast as I can.”

  AFTER about ten minutes jarring across the lunar surface, Major Winship said, “I’m not appreciably cooler; but then I’m not appreciably hotter, either.”

  “Shut up, Charlie. You’re a thirty-year man,” Lt. Chandler said.

  “Old soldiers never die, they just become desiccated.”

  “I’d like a beer,” Major W in ship said. “A cold, frosty, foamy beer. Big collar. Gimme a beer, a little shaker of salt—”

  “Finogenov’s probably got eight or ten cases.”

  “For once, I hope you’re right. Try to bounce a little easier, Larry.”

  “Russians don’t drink beer,” Lt. Chandler said.

  “You sure?”

  “Vodka,” Capt. Lawler grunted.

  “They drink champagne, you idiots,” Capt. Wilkins said.

  “Beggars can’t be choosers,” Major Winship said. “Champagne is okay by me. if it’s just cold.”

  “Finogenov will have a few hundred pounds of ice.”

  “Cut it out,” Major Winship said.

  “Boy, you wait till we get you back to Earth. When it comes time to reup, I’m going to be there. I’m going to remind you of this one.”

  “You’re a thirty-year man, too, Les,” Major Winship said.

  “Not me,” Lt. Chandler said. “I’ve had it, dad. I’m going to sell my life story to the movies and spend the rest of my life eating popcorn and watching what an idiot I was. A man can get hurt up here.”

  “So you want to be a civilian?”

  “You’re damned right I do,” Lt. Chandler said.

  “We’re about there,” Capt. Lawler cut in. “You still okay, Charlie?”

  “Fine.”

  “Here’s the little ridge, then. Hold on, we’re taking the angle up. You riding okay, Charlie?”

  “Fine, Skip.”

  After a moment, Capt. Lawler said, “I see the base now. The top. Hey!” He slammed on the brakes. “Oh, no! Those . . . those fools! Those idiots.”

  “What’s wrong?” Major Winship demanded. “Skip—what’s wrong?”

  “The second little dome is down. It wasn’t that way a couple of hours ago. And they’ve block-and-tackled a drum of calking compound up on the main dome.”

  “We’ve got to stop them!” Major Winship cried. “Skip! Skip!”

  “Charlie, there’s nothing we can do. The drum’s just starting to turn red.”

  There was silence for a while.

  “It’s melting through, now. There it goes. Down through the dome. Out of sight.” After a moment, Capt. Lawler continued. “Funny how things fall so slowly under this low gravity. It floated through their dome just like a feather. You should have seen it.”

  Eventually, Lt. Chandler said, “Boys, this is my last hitch.”

  There was more silence.

  Capt. Wilkins mused, “I guess they didn’t have a little scale either.”

  Someone was breathing loudly. At length, Major Winship said reflectively, “Why do you suppose they would try to calk it from the outside?”

  Again silence. Major Winship asked the question. “Okay. Let’s have it. How’s the other little dome?”

  “Other one? Oh, sorry,” Capt. Lawler said. “It looks all right.”

  “It better be all right,” Lt. Chandler said.

  IN the end, the eleven of them were crowded into the one remaining operational structure of the four available on the moon at sunrise.

  For perhaps the
tenth time, General Finogenov offered his apologies. He and Major Winship were huddled side by side in a corner. They were drinking vodka.

  “Plenty of everything,” General Finogenov said. “Don’t concern yourself, Major. Air, food, water, we have more than enough for a prolonged siege.”

  “Accidents will happen.”

  “Exactly,” said General Finogenov, pouring more vodka for himself. “Glad you understand.” He put the empty bottle down. “We will have another one next week. In the meantime—I very much regret the inconvenience. Plenty of food, water, air, though. Pinov! Pinov! Vodka!”

  Pinov answered in Russian. General Finogenov frowned. “Dear, dear,” he said. “I’m afraid this must be our last one, Major. You see, while we have plenty of everything else, we are, you see . . . The truth of the matter is, we didn’t foresee visitors. Unfortunately, we have no more vodka.”

  “No more vodka,” said General Finogenov. He stared morosely into the inky distance. “Major Winship, I have a confession. Oh, that second one was a beauty. You didn’t feel it?”

  “Our leak sprang on the first one. The second was quite mild, we thought.”

  “We were right on the fault line,” General Finogenov said. “As you Americans say, it was a beauty. I have a confession. One must admit one’s mistakes.”

  “Yes?”

  “We used much too large a bomb,” he said.

  “I’m with you,” Lt. Chandler chimed in from somewhere out of the darkness. “But when do you think you’re going to get the lights fixed?”

  THE STREETS OF ASHKALON

  Harry Harrison

  Somewhere above, hidden by the eternal clouds of Wesker’s World, a muffled thunder rumbled and grew. Trader Gath stopped suddenly when he heard it, his boots sinking slowly into the muck, and cupped his good ear to catch the sound. It swelled and waned in the thick atmosphere, growing louder.

  “That noise is the same as the noise of your sky-ship,” Itin said, with stolid Wesker logicality, slowly pulverizing the idea in his mind and turning over the bits one by one for closer examination. “But your ship is still sitting where you landed it. It must be, even though we cannot see it, because you are the only one who can operate it. And even if anyone else could operate it we would have heard it rising into the sky. Since we did not, and if this sound is a sky-ship sound, then it must mean . . .”