Webb was at the window, watching for the first sign of the helicopter. He shook his head, unconvinced. “We’re missing something. Somewhere there’s an element that’s missing. And, consciously or unconsciously, these men know what it is.”
Scott took the pipe from his mouth and said softly, “I doubt it. We’ve pumped them full of half a dozen truth drugs. We’ve doped them and subjected them to hypnosis. Maybe they’re concealing something but I doubt it very much.”
Webb shook his head again, and turned from the window. “I don’t know. There’s something missing here. I certainly mean to put these subjects through exhaustive tests.”
The anger in Scott brought a flush to his face. He crossed the room toward Webb and touched him on the lapel of the coat with the stem of his pipe as he said, “Look here, young fella, these ‘subjects’ as you call them are like no subjects you ever had or conceived of. These men can twist you and me up into knots if they want to. They understand more about people than the entire profession of psychiatrics will learn in the next hundred years.”
He put the pipe in his mouth and said, more gently, “You are in for a shock, Dr. Webb. These two particular men are fresh from the Moon, and do not yet fully realize the impact they have on other . . .” The murmur of approaching motors stopped him. “You’d best get yourself ready for an experience, Dr. Webb,” he said. The murmur grew to a roar as the helicopters landed outside the building. In a moment footsteps sounded outside in the hall and the door opened.
Two men walked into the room. The taller of the two looked at Webb and Webb felt as if struck by a hot blast of wind. The level eyes were brilliant blue and seemed to reach into Webb and gently strum on the fibers of his nervous system. A sense of elation swept through him. He felt as he had once felt standing alone at dusk in a wind-tossed forest. He could not speak. His breath stopped. His muscles held rigid. And then the blue-eyed glance passed him and left him confused and restless and disappointed.
He dimly saw Scott cross the room and shake hands with the shorter man. Scott said, “How do you do. We are very glad for your safe return. Was everything in order when you left the Moon?”
The shorter man smiled as he shook Scott’s hand. “Thank you, doctor. Yes, everything was in order. Our two replacements are off to a good start.” He glanced at the taller man. They looked at each other, and smiled.
“Yes,” said the taller man, “Fowler and Mcintosh will do all right.”
* * * *
Don Fowler and Al Mcintosh still had the shakes. After six days they still had the shakes whenever they remembered the first few moments of their landing on the Moon.
The ship had let down roughly. Fowler awkwardly climbed out through the lock first. He turned to make sure Mcintosh was following him and then started to move around the ship to look for the two men they were to replace.
The ship lay near a crevice. A series of ripples in the rock marred the black shiny basalt surface that surrounded the crevice. The surface was washed clean of dust by the jets of the descending ship. As Fowler walked around the base of the ship his foot stepped into the trough of one of the ripples in the rock. It threw him off balance, tilted him toward the crevice. He struggled to right himself. Under Earth gravity he would simply have fallen. Under Lunar gravity he managed to retain his feet, but he staggered toward the crevice, stumbling in the ripples, unable to recover himself.
Mcintosh grabbed for him. But with arms flailing, body twisting, feet groping, Fowler disappeared down the crevice. Mcintosh staggered behind him; his feet skidded on the ripples in the hard, slick basalt. He, too, bobbled to the lip of the crevice and toppled in.
Thirty feet down the crevice narrowed to a point where the men could fall no farther. Fowler was head down and four feet to Mcintosh’s left. They were unhurt but they began to worry when a few struggles showed them how firmly the slick rock gripped their spacesuits. The pilot of the spaceship, sealed in his compartment, could not help them. The two men they were to replace might be miles away. The radios were useless for anything but line-of-sight work. So they hung there, waiting for something—or nothing—to happen.
Fowler spoke first. “Say, Mac, did you get a chance to see what the Moon looks like before you joined me down here?”
“No. I had sort of hoped you’d noticed. Now we don’t have a thing to talk about.”
Silence, then: “This is one for the books,” said Fowler. “Can you see anything? All I can see is the bottom of this thing and all I can tell you is it’s black down there.”
“No. I can’t see out. I have a nice view of the wall, though. Dense, igneous, probably of basic plagioclose. Make a note of that, will you?”
“Can you reach me?”
“No. I can’t even see you. Can you—”
“What are you fellows doing down there?” A new voice broke into the conversation. Neither Fowler nor Mcintosh could think of an answer. “Stay right there,” the voice continued, with something suspiciously like a chuckle in it. “We’ll be down to get you out.”
The pinned men could hear a rock-scraping sound through their suits. Two pairs of hands rocked each man free of the walls. Mcintosh was the first to be freed and he watched with close interest the easy freedom of movement of the two spacesuited figures as they released Fowler, turned him right side up, and lifted him up to where he could support himself in the crevice. All four then worked their way up the slick walls by sliding their backs up one wall while bracing their feet against the opposite wall.
The two men led Fowler and Mcintosh around to the other side of the spaceship and pointed westward across Mare Imbrium. One of them said, “About half a mile over there behind that rise you’ll find the dome. About eight miles south of here you’ll find the latest cargo rocket—came in two days ago. The terrain is pretty rough so you’d better wait a few days to get used to the gravity before you go after it. We left some hot tea for you at the dome. Watch yourselves now.”
They all solemnly shook hands. The clunk of the metallic-faced palms of the spacesuit and the gritty sound of the finger, wrist, and elbow joints made hand-shaking a noisy business in a spacesuit.
Both Fowler and Mcintosh tried to see the faces of the two men they were replacing, but they could not. It was daytime on the Moon and the faceplate filters were all in place. Their radio voices sounded the same as they had on Earth.
Fowler and Mcintosh turned and carefully and awkwardly moved westward away from the ship. A quarter of a mile away they turned to watch it and for the first time the men had the chance to see the actual moonscape.
* * * *
Pictures are wonderful things and they are of great aid in conveying information. Words and pictures are often adequate to impart a complete understanding of a place or event. Yet where human emotions are intertwined with an experience mere words and pictures are inadequate.
It might well be that on Earth there existed similar wild wastelands, but they were limited, and human beings lived on the fringes, and human beings had crossed them, and human beings could stand out on them unprotected and feel the familiar heat of day and the cold of night. Here there was only death for the unarmored man, swift death like nothing on Earth. And nowhere were there human beings, nor any possibility of human beings. Only the darker and lighter places, no color, black sky, white spots for stars, and the moonscape itself nothing but brilliant gray shades of tones between the white stars and the black sky.
So Fowler and Mcintosh, knowing in advance what it would be like, still had to struggle to fight down an urge to scream at finding themselves in a place where men did not exist. They stared out through the smoked filters, wide-eyed, panting, fine drops of perspiration beading their foreheads. Each could hear the harsh breath of the other in the earphones, and it helped a little to know they both felt the same.
A spot of fire caught their attention and they turned slightly to see. The spaceship stood ungainly and awkward with a network of pipes surrounding the base. The spot of fire t
urned into a column, and the ship trembled. The column produced a flat bed of fire, and the ship rose slowly. There was no dust. A small stream of fire reached out sideways as a balancing rocket sprang to life. The ship rose farther, faster now, and Fowler and Mcintosh leaned back to watch it. Once it cleared the Moon’s horizon it lost apparent motion. They watched it grow smaller until the fire was indistinguishable with the stars, then they looked around again.
It was a little better this time, since they were prepared for an emotional response. But now they were truly alone. Without knowing what they were doing, they drew closer together until their spacesuits touched. The gentle thud registered in each consciousness and they pressed together for a moment while they fought to organize their thoughts.
And then Mcintosh drew a long deep breath and shook his head violently. Fowler could feel the relief it brought. They moved apart and looked around.
Mcintosh said, “Let’s go get that tea they mentioned.”
“Right,” said Fowler. “I could use some. That’s the dome there.” And he pointed west.
They headed for it. They could see the dome in every detail; and as they approached, the details grew larger. It was almost impossible to judge distances on the Moon. Everything stood out with brilliant clarity no matter how far away. The only effect of distance was to cause a shrinking in size.
The dome was startling in its familiarity. It was the precise duplicate to the last bolt of the dome they had lived in and operated for months in the hi-vac chambers on Earth.
The air lock was built to accommodate two men in a pinch. They folded back the antennas that projected up from their packs and they crawled into the lock together; neither suggested going in one at a time. They waited while the pump filled the lock with air from the inside; then they pushed into the dome itself and stood up and looked around.
Automatically their eyes flickered from one gauge to another, checking to make sure everything was right with the dome. They removed their helmets and checked more closely. Air pressure was a little high, eight pounds. Fowler reached out to throw the switch to bring it down when he remembered that a decision had been made just before they left Earth to carry the pressure a little higher than had been the practice in the past. A matter of sleeping comfort.
“How’s the pottet?” asked Mcintosh. His voice sounded different from the way it had on Earth.
Fowler noted the difference—a matter of the difference in air density—as he crossed the twenty-foot dome and squatted to look into a bin with a transparent side. The bin bore the label in raised letters, Potassium Tetraoxide.
* * * *
On Earth, water is the first worry of those who travel to out-of-the-way places. Food is next, with comfort close behind depending on the climate. On the Moon, oxygen was first. The main source of oxygen was potassium tetraoxide, a wonderful compound that gave up oxygen when exposed to moisture and then combined with carbon dioxide and removed it from the atmosphere. And each man needed some one thousand pounds of the chemical to survive on the Moon for twenty-eight days. A cylinder, bulky and heavy, of liquid air mounted under the sled supplied the air make-up in the dome. And a tank of water, well insulated by means of a hollow shiny shell open to the Moon’s atmosphere, gave them water and served in part as the agent to release oxygen from the pottet when needed.
The dome checked out and by common consent both men swung to the radio, hungry for the reassuring sound of another human voice. Mcintosh tuned it and said into the mike, “Moon Station to Earth. Fowler and Mcintosh checking in. Everything in order. Over.”
About four seconds later the transmitter emitted what the two men waited to hear. “Pole Number One to Moon. Welcome to the network. How are you, boys? Everything shipshape? Over.”
Mcintosh glanced at Fowler and a vision of the crevice swam between them. Mcintosh said, “Everything fine, Pole Number One. Dome in order. Men in good shape. All’s well on the Moon. Over.”
About three seconds’ wait, then: “Good. We will now take up Schedule Charlie. Time, 0641. Next check-in, 0900. Out.” Mcintosh hung up the mike quickly and hit the switches to save power.
The two men removed their spacesuits and sat down on a low bench and poured tea from the thermos.
Mcintosh was a stocky man with blue eyes and sandy hair cut short. He was built like a rectangular block of granite, thick chest, thick waist, thick legs; even his fingers seemed square in cross section. His movements were deliberate and conveyed an air of relentlessness.
Fowler was slightly taller than Mcintosh. His hair and eyes were black, his skin dark. He was lean and walked with a slight stoop. His waist seemed too small and his shoulders too wide. He moved in a flowing sinuous manner like a cat perpetually stalking its prey.
They sipped the hot liquid gratefully, inhaling the wet fragrance of it. They carried their cups to the edge of the dome and looked out the double layer of transparent resin that served as one of the windows. The filter was in place and they pushed against it and looked out.
“Dreary looking place, isn’t it?” said Fowler.
Mcintosh nodded.
They sipped their tea, holding it close under their noses when they weren’t drinking, looking out at the moonscape, trying to grasp it, adjusting their minds to it, thinking of the days ahead.
They finished, and Fowler said, “Well, time to get to work. You all set?”
Mcintosh nodded. They climbed into their spacesuits and passed through the lock, one at a time. They checked over the exterior of the dome and every piece of mechanism mounted on the sled. Fowler mounted an outside seat, cleared with Mcintosh, and started the drive motor. The great sled, complete with dome, parabolic mirror, spherical boilers, batteries, antennas, and a complex of other equipment rolled slowly forward on great, sponge-filled tires. Mcintosh walked beside it. Fowler watched his odometer and when the sled had moved five hundred yards he brought it to a halt. He dismounted and the two of them continued the survey started months back by their predecessors.
They took samples, they read radiation levels, they ran the survey, they ate and slept, they took more samples. They kept to a rigid routine, for that was the way to make time pass, that was the way to preserve sanity.
* * * *
The days passed. The two men grew accustomed to the low gravitation, so they recovered the cargo rocket. Yet they moved about with more than the usual caution for Moon men. They had learned earlier than the others that an insignificant and trivial bit of negligence can cost a man his life. And as time went by they became aware of another phenomenon of life on the Moon. On Earth, in an uncomfortable and dangerous situation, you become accustomed to the surroundings and can achieve a measure of relaxation. Not on the Moon. The dismal bright and less-bright grays, the oppressive barrenness of the gray moonscape, the utter aloneness of two men in a gray wilderness, slowly took on the tone of a gray malevolence seeking an unguarded moment. And the longer they stayed the worse it became. So the men kept themselves busier than ever, driving themselves to exhaustion, sinking into restless sleep, and up to work again. They made more frequent five-hundred-yard jumps; they expanded the survey; they sought frozen water or frozen air deep in crevices, but found only frozen carbon dioxide. They kept a careful eye on the pottet, for hard-working men consume more oxygen, and the supply was limited. And every time they checked the remaining supply they remembered what had happened to Booker and Whitman.
A pipeline had frozen. Booker took a bucket of water and began to skirt the pottet bin. The bail of the bucket caught on the corner of the lid of the bin. Booker carelessly hoisted the bucket to free it. The lid pulled open and the canvas bucket struck a corner and emptied into the bin. Instantly the dome filled with oxygen and steam. The safety valves opened and bled off the steam and oxygen to the outside, where it froze and fell like snow and slowly evaporated. The bin ruptured from the heat and broke a line carrying hydraulic fluid. Twenty gallons of hydraulic fluid flooded the pottet, reacting with it, forming potassium
salts with the silicone liquid, releasing some oxygen, irretrievably locking up the rest.
Booker’s backward leap caromed him off the ceiling and out of harm’s way. After a horrified moment, the two men assessed the damage and calmly radioed Earth that they had a seven-Earth-day supply of oxygen left. Whereupon they stocked one spacesuit with a full supply of the salvaged pottet and lay down on their bunks. For six Earth days they lay motionless; activity consumes oxygen. They lay calm; panic makes the heart beat faster and a racing blood stream consumes oxygen.
For four days slightly more than two thousand men on Earth struggled to get an off-schedule rocket to the Moon. The already fantastic requirements of fuel and equipment needed to put two men and supplies on the Moon every month had to be increased. The tempo of round-the-clock schedules stepped up to inhuman heights; there were two men lying motionless on the Moon.
Spectrum 5 - [Anthology] Page 22
