From space—or through a telescope on Earth—the walls of Plato seem a formidable barrier when the slanting sunlight shows them to best advantage. But in reality they are less than a kilometre high, and if one chooses the correct route through the numerous passes, the journey out of the crater and into the Mare Imbrium presents no great difficulty. Jamieson got through the mountains in less than an hour, though Wheeler wished that he had taken a little longer.
They came to a halt on a high escarpment overlooking the plain. Directly ahead, notching the horizon, was the pyramidal summit of Pico. Toward the right, sinking down into the northeast, were the more rugged peaks of the Teneriffe Mountains. Very few of those peaks had ever been climbed, largely because no one had so far bothered to attempt it. The brilliant Earth-light made them appear an uncanny blue-green, contrasting strangely with their appearance by day, when they would be bleached into raw whites and blacks by the merciless sun.
While Jamieson relaxed to enjoy the view, Wheeler began a careful search of the landscape with a pair of powerful binoculars. Ten minutes later he gave it up, having discovered nothing in the least unusual. He was not surprised by this, for the area where the unscheduled rockets had been landing was well below the horizon.
"Let's drive on," he said. "We can get to Pico in a couple of hours, and we'll have dinner there."
"And then what?" asked Jamieson in resigned tones.
"If we can't see anything, we'll come back like good little boys."
"O.K.—but you'll find it rough going from now on. I don't suppose more than a dozen tractors have ever been down there before. To cheer you up, I might tell you that our Ferdinand is one of them."
He eased the vehicle forward, gingerly skirting a vast talus slope where splintered rock had been accumulating for millennia. Such slopes were extremely dangerous, for the slightest disturbance could often set them moving in slow, irresistible avalanches that would overwhelm everything before them. For all his apparent recklessness, Jamieson took no real risks, and always gave such traps a very wide berth. A less experienced driver would have gaily galloped along the foot of the slide without a moment's thought—and ninety-nine times out of a hundred would have got away with it. Jamieson had seen what happened on the hundredth time. Once the wave of dusty rubble had engulfed a tractor, there was no escape, since any attempt at rescue would only start fresh slides.
Wheeler began to feel distinctly unhappy on the way down the outer ramparts of Plato. This was odd, for they were much less steep than the inner walls, and he had expected a smoother journey. He had not allowed for the fact that Jamieson would take advantage of the easier conditions to crowd on speed, with the result that Ferdinand was indulging in a peculiar rocking motion. Presently Wheeler disappeared to the rear of the well-appointed tractor, and was not seen by his pilot for some time. When he returned he remarked rather crossly, "No one ever told me you could actually be seasick on the Moon."
The view was now rather disappointing, as it usually is when one descends to the lunar lowlands. The horizon is so near—only two or three kilometres away—that it gives a sense of confinement and restraint. It is almost as if the small circle of rock surrounding one is all that exists. The illusion can be so strong that men have been known to drive more slowly than necessary, as if subconsciously afraid they might fall off the edge of that uncannily near horizon.
For two hours Jamieson drove steadily onward, until at last the triple tower of Pico dominated the sky ahead. Once this magnificent mountain had been part of a vast crater wall that must have been a twin to Plato. But ages ago the encroaching lava of the Mare Imbrium had washed away all the rest of the hundred-and-fifty-kilometre-diameter ring, leaving Pico in lonely and solitary state.
The travellers paused here to open a few food packs and make some coffee in the pressure kettle. One of the minor discomforts of life on the Moon is that really hot drinks are an impossibility —water boils at about seventy degrees centigrade in the oxygen-rich, low-pressure atmosphere universally employed. After a while, however, one grows used to lukewarm beverages.
When they had cleared up the debris of the meal, Jamieson remarked to his colleague, "Sure you still want to go through with it?"
"As long as you say it's safe. Those walls look awfully steep from here."
"It's safe, if you do what I tell you. I was just wondering how you felt now. There's nothing worse than being sick in a space-suit."
"I'm all right," Wheeler replied with dignity. Then another thought struck him. "How long will we be outside, anyway?"
"Oh, say a couple of hours. Four at the most. Better do all the scratching you want to now."
"I wasn't worrying about that" retorted Wheeler, and retired to the back of the cabin again.
In the six months he had been on the Moon, Wheeler had worn a suit no more than a dozen times, and most of those occasions were on emergency drill. There were very few times when the observing staff had to go into vacuum—most of their equipment was remotely controlled. But he was not a complete novice, though he was still in the cautious stage which is so much safer than light-hearted overconfidence.
They called Base, via Earth, to report their position and intentions, then adjusted each other's equipment. First Jamieson, then Wheeler, chanted the alphabetical mnemonic—"A is for airlines, B is for batteries, C is for couplings, D is for DF loop…" which sounds so childish the first time one hears it, but which so quickly becomes part of the routine of lunar life—and is something nobody ever jokes about. When they were sure that all their equipment was in perfect condition, they cracked the doors of the airlock and stepped out onto the dusty plain.
Like most lunar mountains, Pico was not so formidable when seen close at hand as when glimpsed from a distance. There were a few vertical cliffs, but they could always be avoided, and it was seldom necessary to climb slopes of more than forty-five degrees. Under a sixth of a gravity, this is no great hardship, even when one is wearing a space-suit.
Nevertheless, the unaccustomed exertion made Wheeler sweat and pant somewhat after they had been climbing for half an hour, and his face plate was misting badly so that he had to peer out of the corners to see properly. Though he was too stubborn to request a slower pace, he was very glad when Jamieson called a halt.
They were now almost a kilometre above the plain, and could see for at least fifty kilometres to the north. They shielded their eyes from the glare of the Earth and began to search.
It took only a moment to find their objective. Halfway to the horizon, two extremely large freight rockets were standing like ungainly spiders on their extended undercarriages. Large though they were, they were dwarfed by the curious dome-shaped structure rising out of the level plain. This was no ordinary pressure dome—its proportions were all wrong. It looked almost as if a complete sphere had been partly buried, so that the upper three-quarters emerged from the surface. Through his binoculars, whose special eye pieces allowed him to use them despite his face plate, Wheeler could see men and machines moving round the base of the dome. From time to time clouds of dust shot into the sky and fell back again as if blasting was in progress. That was another odd thing about the Moon, he thought. Most objects fell too slowly here in this low gravity, for anyone accustomed to conditions on Earth. But dust fell much too quickly—at the same rate as anything else, in fact—for there was no air to check its descent.
"Well," said Jamieson after he too had carried out a long scrutiny through the glasses, "someone's spending an awful lot of money."
"What do you think it is? A mine?"
"It could be," replied the other, cautious as ever. "Perhaps they've decided to process the ores on the spot, and all their extraction plant is in that dome. But that's only a guess—I've certainly never seen anything like it before."
"We can reach it in an hour, whatever it is. Shall we go over and have a closer look?"
"I was afraid you were going to say that. I'm not sure it would be a very wise thing. They might insis
t on us staying."
"You've been reading too many scare articles. Anyone would think there was a war on and we were a couple of spies. They couldn't detain us—the Observatory knows where we are and the director would raise hell if we didn't get back."
"I suspect he will when we do, so we might as well get hung for sheep as lambs. Come along—it's easier on the way down."
"I never said it was hard on the way up," protested Wheeler, not very convincingly. A few minutes later, as he followed Jamieson down the slope, an alarming thought struck him.
"Do you think they're listening to us? Suppose someone's got a watch on this frequency—they'll have heard every word we've said. After all, we're in direct line of sight."
"Who's being melodramatic now? No one except the Observatory would be listening on this frequency, and the folks at home can't hear us as there's rather a lot of mountain in the way. Sounds as if you've got a guilty conscience—anyone would think that you'd been using naughty words again."
This was a reference to an unfortunate episode soon after Wheeler's arrival. Since then he had been very conscious of the fact that privacy of speech, which is taken for granted on Earth, is not always available to the wearers of space-suits, whose every whisper can be heard by anyone within radio range.
The horizon contracted about them as they descended to ground level, but they had taken careful bearings and knew which way to steer when they were back in Ferdinand. Jamieson was driving with extra caution now, for this was terrain over which he had never previously travelled. It was nearly two hours before the enigmatic dome began to bulge above the skyline, followed a little later by the squat cylinders of the freighters.
Once again, Wheeler aimed their roof antenna on Earth, and called the Observatory to explain what they had discovered and what they intended to do. He rang off before anyone Could tell them not to do it, reflecting how crazy it was to send a message 800,000 kilometres in order to talk to someone a hundred kilometres away. But there was no other way of getting long-distance communication from ground level; everything below the horizon was blocked off by the shielding effect of the Moon. It was true that by using long waves it was sometimes possible to send signals over great distances by reflection from the Moon's very tenuous ionosphere, but this method was too unreliable to be of serious use. For all practical purposes, lunar radio contact had to be on a "line of sight" basis.
It was very amusing to watch the commotion that their arrival had caused. Wheeler thought it resembled nothing so much as an ant heap that had been well stirred with a stick. In a very short time they found themselves surrounded by tractors, moon-dozers, hauling machines, and excited men in space-suits. They were forced by sheer congestion to bring Ferdinand to a halt.
"At any moment," said Wheeler, "they'll call out the guards."
Jamieson failed to be amused.
"You shouldn't make jokes like that," he chided. "They're apt to be too near the truth."
"Well, here comes the reception committee. Can you read the lettering on his helmet? SEC. 2, isn't it? 'Section Two,' I suppose that means."
"Perhaps. But SEC. could just as easily stand for Security. Well—it was all your idea. I'm merely the driver."
At that moment there was a series of peremptory knocks on the outer door of the airlock. Jamieson pressed the button that opened the seal and a moment later the "reception committee" was removing his helmet in the cabin. He was a grizzled, sharp-featured man with a worried expression that looked as though it was permanently built in. It did not appear that he was pleased to see them.
He regarded Wheeler and Jamieson thoughtfully, while the two astronomers put on their friendliest smiles. "We don't usually get visitors in these parts," he said. "How did you happen to get here?"
The first sentence, Wheeler thought, was as good an understatement as he had heard for some time.
"It's our day off—we're from the Observatory. This is Dr. Jamieson—I'm Wheeler. Astrophysicists, both of us. We knew you were around here, so decided to come and have a look."
"How did you know?" the other asked sharply. He still had not introduced himself, which would have been bad manners even on Earth and was quite shocking here.
"As you may have heard," said Wheeler mildly, "we possess one or two rather large telescopes over at the Observatory. And you've been causing us a lot of trouble. I, personally, have had two spectrograms ruined by rocket glare. So can you blame us for being a trifle inquisitive?"
A slight smile played around their interrogator's lips, and was instantly banished. Nevertheless, the atmosphere seemed to thaw a little.
"Well, I think it would be best if you come along to the office while we make a few checks. It won't take very long."
"I beg your pardon? Since when has any part of the Moon been private property?"
"Sorry, but that's the way it is. Come along, please."
The two astronomers climbed into their suits and followed through the airlock. Despite his aggressive innocence, Wheeler was beginning to feel a trifle worried. Already he was visualizing all sorts of unpleasant possibilities; and recollections of what he had read about spies, solitary confinement and brick walls at dawn rose up to comfort him.
They were led to a smoothly fitting door in the curve of the great dome, and found themselves inside the space formed by the outer wall and an inner, concentric hemisphere. The two shells, as far as could be seen, were spaced apart by an intricate webbing of some transparent plastic. Even the floor underfoot was made of the same substance. This, Wheeler decided, was all very odd, but he had no time to examine it closely.
Their uncommunicative guide hurried them along almost at a trot, as if he did not wish them to see more than necessary. They entered the inner dome through a second airlock, where they removed their suits. Wheeler wondered glumly when they would be allowed to retrieve them again.
The length of the airlock indicated that the inner dome must be of tremendous thickness, and when the door ahead of them opened, both astronomers immediately noticed a familiar smell. It was ozone. Somewhere, not very far away, was high-voltage electrical equipment. There was nothing unduly remarkable about that, but it was another fact to be filed away for future reference.
The airlock had opened into a small corridor flanked by doors bearing painted numbers and such labels as PRIVATE, TECHNICAL STAFF ONLY, INFORMATION, STANDBY AIR, EMERGENCY POWER and CENTRAL CONTROL. Neither Wheeler nor Jamieson could deduce much from these notices, but they looked at each other thoughtfully when they were finally halted at a door marked SECURITY. Jamieson's expression told Wheeler, as clearly as any words could do "I told you so!"
After a short pause a "Come In" panel glowed and the door swung automatically open. Ahead lay a perfectly ordinary office dominated by a determined-looking man at a very large desk. The size of the desk was itself a proclamation to the world that money was no object here, and the astronomers contrasted it ruefully with the office equipment to which they were accustomed. A teleprinter of unusually complicated design stood on a table in one comer, and the remaining walls were entirely covered by file cabinets.
"Well," said the security officer, "who are these people?"
"Two astronomers from the Observatory over in Plato. They've just dropped in by tractor, and I thought you should see them."
"Most certainly. Your names, please?"
There followed a tedious quarter of an hour while particulars were carefully noted down and the Observatory was called. That meant, Wheeler thought glumly, that the fat would now be in the fire. Their friends in Signals, who had been logging their progress in case of any accident, would now have to report their absence officially.
At last their identities were established, and the man at the imposing desk regarded them with some perplexity. Presently his brows cleared and he began to address them.
"You realize, of course, that you are something of a nuisance. This is the last place we ever expected visitors, otherwise we'd have put up notices tell
ing them to keep off. Needless to say, we have means of detecting any who may turn up, even if they're not sensible enough to drive up openly, as you did.
"However, here you are and I suppose there's no harm done. You have probably guessed that this is a government project, and one we don't want talked about. I'll have to send you back, but I want you to do two things."
"What are they?" asked Jamieson suspiciously.
"I want you to promise not to talk about this visit more than you have to. Your friends will know where you've gone, so you can't keep it a complete secret. Just don't discuss it with them, that's all."
"Very well," agreed Jamieson. "And the second point?"
"If anyone persists in questioning you, and shows particular interest in this little adventure of yours—report it at once. That's all. I hope you have a good ride home."
Back in the tractor, five minutes later, Wheeler was still fuming.
"Of all the high-handed so-and-sos! He never even offered us a smoke."
"I rather think," said Jamieson mildly, "that we were lucky to get off so. easily. They meant business."
"I'd like to know what sort of business. Does that look like a mine to you? And why should anything be going on in a slag-heap like the Mare?"
"I think it must be a mine. When we drove up, I noticed something that looked very much like drilling machinery on the other side of the dome. But it's hard to account for all the cloak-and-dagger nonsense."
"Unless they've discovered something that they don't want the Federation to know about."
"In that case we're not likely to find out, either, and might as well stop racking our brains. But to get on to more practical matters—where do we go from here?"
"Let's stick to our original plan. It may be some time before we have a chance of using Ferdy again, and we might as well make the most of it. Besides, it's always been one of my ambitions to see the Sinus Iridum from ground level, as it were."
The Space Trilogy Page 45
