Hell Stuff For Planet X

by Raymond Z. Gallun

  Oxygen helmets have air-purifiers but airtight tents still have to be inflated when men want to eat and sleep. Nitrogen—the principal and inert component of Earthly air—we might have been able to supply too from sealed bubble cavities in certain kinds of Lunar lava. But it isn’t necessary to sustain human life. You just use pure oxygen under lesser density and pressure.

  In about twelve hours of business we had acquired a very impressive roll of greenbacks. I looked at Jody and then we both looked at Sonny Boy, who was sitting on the ground, sulking and dejected. Jody nodded. So I put the whole roll in Sonny’s gloved palm.

  His helmet radio still worked as far as the receiver went. “The earnings of a fifteen-thousand-dollar investment—in twelve hours,” I said. “All yours, Mr. Hamlin. We’ll take a fair share later, Jody and I. Maybe you know one reason now why we stopped here first. That money you brought to the Moon is your family’s and your friends’ and other people’s. It’s your responsibility. And they deserve some dividends.”

  I felt silly as I made that speech. I felt as if Jody and I had turned into a couple of battered saints—redeeming ourselves for all our old and recent wrong-doing. There were fifteen hundred bucks in cash—and more to come.

  “We like your idea, Hamlin,” Jody said. “We’ve got reasons. After a certain length of time—maybe a few more Earth-days—we’ll go to the site of the future freight station with you.”

  Sonny stared at the dough. He looked sheepish and guilty and apologetic. He stared at the dough as if it wasn’t real. He liked it all right. But all of a sudden he just threw it at us.

  “Now how do you figure such manners?” I asked Jody as I gathered the stuff up again.

  Jody shrugged. “You know, Shorty.”

  Sure—Lonnie Hamlin wanted his dough to be earned by his brain child. Any other kind was filthy lucre to him—beneath his dignity. Besides, he was way out in the Moon-desert with a couple of blokes who weren’t like him and who had played tricks on him, injuring his ego. Besides, I guess he was getting homesick and was suffering from a touch of Moon madness.

  We continued producing and selling oxygen and water for several hours more. Of course I realized that a greenhorn in Lonnie Hamlin’s condition, can be far more dangerous than a million snakes. The trouble with Jody and me, I guess, was that we didn’t take Sonny seriously enough as a possible enemy to be really careful.

  He didn’t recover his own blaster from where I’d hidden it in a locker aboard the tractor. Instead he nabbed mine from behind. Then he had its wicked muzzle covering us. He got the parts I’d removed from his helmet radio out of my chest-pouch and clicked them back into place.

  “Fix the tractor, you skunks,” he ordered softly. “You know that its breakdown is a fake, arranged by yourselves.”

  Yeah—right away we were down on our knees, obeying him while he lectured us. “You two are phonies from start to finish,” he said, his voice hard.

  “You, my worthy Jody, are not my mother’s cousin, Irvin Klosky. No relative of mine, even a remote one, could be as cheap and stupid and evil as you and your renegade friend. I will turn you both over to the authorities in Luna City if you remain sufficiently docile.

  “Otherwise I may have to kill you. But first we are going where we intended to go—since we are so near the place. Even though we have not enough wire for the experiment—even though you never had any intention of bringing wire or of helping me...”

  POINTING right at my own person was that terrible blaster, trigger held by a nervous finger at best sketchily controlled by Sonny’s half-hysterical mind. I knew then that Jody and I could die out there in the Lunar wilderness—and if it happened who’d ever give a darn? Irv Klosky had died out here. It happened all the time.

  But in spite of the scare in him and the jumpiness of his nerves and his inexperience, I still couldn’t help admiring Lonnie Hamlin somehow. He had guts and determination. He was a raw frightened kid, who was still managing to do what he had to do according to his own lights. Of course I was seeing him, maybe a little sadly, in the glow of my own younger past. And it kind of got me.

  I started driving the tractor. Jody sat beside me. But Sonny was in the rear seat of the cab with his blaster. Twenty miles we had to go—a little over an hour’s journey. I began thinking of the laws of physics and of the way the human mind—as represented by different people—runs in parallels. Proving this again, Jody’s head seemed to be on the same track as mine—judging by what he began to say to Lonnie Hamlin.

  “You really got yourself a great idea, kid. The power is there, pretty much like you explained. And the mechanical design is good.”

  He didn’t say any more and neither did I just then, principally because Lonnie snapped, “Shut up, you crooked old windbag!”

  Our destination was in level ground with nothing to mark its position except a small crater nearby. I remembered the latter’s slight individual characteristics. I stopped the tractor. “Well, here we are, boss,” I growled. “Shall we dismount?”

  We got out of the cab. For awhile nobody talked and Jody and I looked around to refresh fond memories as Sonny stared avidly at what was here to see. First he looked almost eager. Then something like panic showed in his face. The silence of the Lunar wilderness seemed like some negative explosion.

  Finally I figured that it was safe to talk, even though Lonnie still kept Jody and me covered with his blaster.

  “Your idea is so simple, Mr. Hamlin,” I said. “Even allowing for certain limitations of the human brain, don’t you think somebody must have thought of it before you did? Especially physicists, always busy with that kind of thinking?

  “Just a cable going around a pulley—with one side of the cable heavily loaded and outweighing the other side. As simple as an old-time perpetual-motion machine. But a thing that ought to work....”

  Near us was a tent-like airtight shelter, deflated now. For nine years it had been deserted. Nearby were six gigantic spools of fine-gauge wire—just the kind that Sonny had wanted for his tests. It looked brand-new. The years on the airless moon hadn’t damaged it a bit. And it was discarded—free for the taking.

  Great lengths of the same wire, snapped off, were bunched into angry snarls on the lava rock. There were some small rockets, not much different from the newer one that Lon had brought out from Earth. And there were little dart-shaped weights of metal, fitted with clamps, by which they could be attached at intervals to the wire.

  That wasn’t all. Lon Hamlin was treated to the sad crystallization of his magnificent idea in the presence of the small pulley—model-size—mounted in a massive frame that was set in a concrete block imbedded in the Moon’s crust. Near it was a power-driven high-speed reel. Spaceboot tracks that looked harassed were everywhere in the faint dust on the lava. No wind had passed here to rub them out.

  “Who—did—all—this?” Hamlin croaked at Jody and me by helmet radio.

  “A whole bunch of guys, long ago,” I answered. “Jody and I were in on it. Every once in awhile somebody thinks up this Great Idea to make Moon-to-Earth traffic simpler, safer, cheaper. It has got to be an old joke—a trap for the unwary.

  “But because it really ought to work it’s more than that. It’s a kind of legendary will-o’-the-wisp, here on the Moon. Because it’s a physicist’s paradox. The energy, the principle, the design, are all in it and are only cancelled out by technical difficulties that defy solution.

  “Probably the toughest of these is that no metal or other substance is known to exist from which to make a cable or wire that won’t snap under the tension of its own weight when extended even just a small fraction of the two hundred and thirty-nine thousand miles between Moon and Earth. Put a load on such a cable and the situation becomes worse.

  “Then there’s the problem of the angular momentum of anything coming from the Moon while trying to retain the same Lunar orbital speed in a smaller circle. This would tend to wind the cable around the Earth. There’s a lot of mathematics to
the whole thing. Don’t ask me to remember them now. I was never much good at mathematics.”

  LONNIE HAMLIN’S face was turning grey and tired. Yeah—I could remember how it was. The triumphant trumpets in one’s mind, turning to the rubber burp-devices of derision. The awful blow to young pride and egotism.

  Hamlin was almost weeping. “Dammit!” he snarled. “You pair of apes tricked me in this too. You should have told me!”

  I let him have the answer, full force. “What are you looking for, a goat to blame for your own foolishness?” I demanded. “If we’d tried to tell you you would not have listened. You, the smart-guy, would have called us dumb. So we did the best we could.”

  You could see the genius fairly melting out of him. He was in black exaggerated despair. After a moment his pride attempted wildly to save itself. “If rocket jets were placed at intervals along the cable to reduce the strain on it with their thrust—” he began thickly.

  “Unh-unh!” I denied. “You jumped to conclusions before. Now you’re trying to patch the Great Idea up. You’re using fuel. You’re making it complicated and dangerous and expensive, to the point where a spaceship is just as good to haul freight and passengers.”

  Jody chuckled sorrowfully. “Well,” he said, “do we get back to our water and oxygen business or does Mr. Lon Hamlin still want to put us in jail?”

  Hamlin’s eyes flashed us one pain-wracked glance of reproach.

  For better than a month the three of us worked together, practically coining money. There’d never been a strike like the Holridge strike. Lots of the claim-stakers got rich. Part of this wealth naturally found its way into the construction of better and safer spaceships for the Earth-Moon circuit. That was one improvement.

  Sonny Boy stopped groaning quite soon. Yeah, he had the guts to do it. There was soon a shrug and a grin in him. The stockholders of his company got paid, so why should they kick? He became Ham to Jody and me, which is to say he was now an old-timer. Back in Luna City he continued his acquaintance with pretty Rosa Minton—with the usual happy result.

  And Jody and I didn’t go back to Earth, like we have often meant to on various occasions, as soon as we had the price. It’s a longer way home than it ever seems to be. Maybe the Moon gets under your skin and holds you.

  The airless plains and craters—the mines—the new industrial cities springing up. When you’re doing all right on Luna there’s always some proposition or rainbow’s end to hold you there.

  Maybe it’s partly Ham’s fault. He’s a funny guy. He didn’t give up the Great Idea as easily as guys like Jody and I did long ago—only remembering it wistfully and sheepishly for ten years. He’s a more determined sort.

  But on the other hand, maybe this is really his wife’s fault. Because now Rosa affects Jody and me—along these lines—just as she does her husband. She’s stubborn and gentle and whimsical.

  I remember what she said the other night, at Ham’s and her apartment. “The Great Idea is still around, boys. One pound on the Moon still weighs six on Earth. There ought to be a way to harness the energy represented by the difference, to power Lunar-Terrestrial traffic, save lives and make the price of Earth-made house-furnishings cheaper on the moon.”

  So we’re all sort of interested in investigating the matter further. Has anybody got any practical suggestions?

  The End

  ***********************************

  The Guthrie Method,

  by Raymond Z. Gallun

  Science Fiction Quarterly May 1954

  Novelette - 9972 words

  Lesser gravity ought to imply less strain on the heart

  and other organs, and a man doomed on Earth might

  live out his years in space, or on some other planet.

  The whole question was: could Guthrie’s heart take

  the initial strain of escape-velocity?

  1

  To Jay Guthrie, the knowledge was as old as the doc's words in High School: "No football, fella. Walk. Swim a little. But stop before you get tired..."

  Later, there was similar talk from other medics: "No space-adventuring for you, Guthrie. Remember a languid, achy time—maybe, some winter or spring when you were a kid? Rheumatic infection. It put a lot of scar tissue in your ticker; can’t see why you didn’t receive care...”

  So that was the damper on early dreams—the tether around his leg. It was hard for a kid to take, especially when he looked as husky and alive as a young bear, and had his father’s wild, lonely blood. Once they’d wintered far up in Canada. He’d loved that interlude; but that was when he’d been sick, far away from pill-pushers.

  Yes, you tried to take them seriously, but the eagerness to live was too deep; and most of the time you felt too good. Besides, your work made its demands. Jay Guthrie went in for instrument-designing—the nearest he could get to what he wanted. There was no muscular strain, of course; but there was plenty of mental and nervous tension, and long hours, and hurry, and the constant personal excitement which is always a part of creation. Guthrie wasn’t the kind to take things easy. Besides, perhaps city life was too hectic for him; there were parties, and girls he knew, and rich moods which made him sure that he was immortal.

  What had lurked near him all the time, struck when he was just turned twenty-eight. One second, just arriving at his apartment from a late shin-dig, he was a little high and in the finest of spirits. The next second, the walls around him, his table, his bed, his books, his whole universe, seemed to flicker like a candle flame. Bands seemed to tighten around his chest. The pain was endurable, but there was a panic with it, such as no other sickness could bring. For it hit suddenly, when the will to live was highest. There was the question: How can I get through this End of the World as far as I am concerned? There was the feeling: I can’t sit, stand, or lie down. I’m strangling. I want to run away... But that’s no good. What’ll I ever do?...

  By then, Guthrie was on hands and knees on the floor. Mustering his strength and his courage, he crawled toward the service-bell button. Though he hated to be dependent on others, he reached up and managed to press it. Then he crumpled down on the carpet.

  Perhaps drowning was like this—you felt helpless, terrified, then resigned. Blackness blanketed Guthrie’s vision; still, the vitality of his young flesh and outlook fought back. Rocket-tubes, which he had once thought would be part of his life, seemed to blaze around him. And his last thoughts went farther back than that: to the smell of a haymow of his childhood in Colorado. To the times he’d looked up, past woodland leaves—straight up along the face of a crag, gleaming like graphite in the sunshine—past wisps of cloud clinging to the cold stone, to a few tattered pines, rooted at the far top. That place, too, was a thing of longing, a height unclimbed, a dream never attained...

  They found him in time; that is, he was not yet dead. Not many years ago, it would have been the end, anyway. But in the hospital they opened his chest; a pump, that for a little while could serve as a heart, was attached to blood-vessels. Anti-coagulant drugs worked. Blood was cleaned and re-oxygenated mechanically. And a surgeon sutured the scarred flesh, lesioned again by constant flexion and strain. But there were limits to what could be done; the prognosis still was not very good.

  FOR JAY GUTHRIE, the fogs of a dazed awareness cleared slowly. After a while his friend and university-classmate, Charlie Bonner, was with him. Charlie, who was a physician, grinned.

  Guthrie grinned back with his wide mouth. “You know me, Charlie,” he said. “Of course I want the dope—straight.”

  The young doctor’s face sobered. “You’ll feel pretty good again in a month, Jay,” he said. “Trouble is, what we did is a jury-rigged proposition; it won’t last, and we won’t be able to fix it a second time. I say four months—six at the top, Jay...”

  Guthrie took it well enough, as his friend must have known he would. He still kept grinning; but inside his mind, it was a little different. There was regret and fury at himself for not having taken more car
e. All the things that a young man hopes to do had been poised in the question that had just been answered: glowing future events, treasures, loves, beauties, or just oblivion—a hillside, a grassy plot, a stone with an inscription. Now, of course, his mind rebelled; it sought, with all the mechanical ingenuity of an instrument-designer, for some way around the sentence he had just heard.

  “A small, power-driven pump, Charlie,” he said, “worn over the chest like an old-fashioned hearing-aid. Tubes leading inward through a permanent opening made between the ribs. Isn’t that—couldn’t that be—the answer? How much talk has there been, for many years, about things like that?...”

  Doctor Bonner shook his head. “It sounds good, Jay,” he replied, “but that’s the trouble. Belief in such things is just too glib. For a few hours, they can keep a body alive. But the human mechanism is finely balanced beyond your imagining; something always happens if a mechanical heart is used too long. Blood-clotting, bubbles, irritation and allergy where flesh meets inert material—wrong balance between body-need and blood-flow, at a given moment... Damn—if there was only some way to really reduce the labor of a damaged heart for a month or a year!...”

  Jay Guthrie scowled up at his friend. He was trying to adjust his thoughts and his outlook to a curtailed future. He was trying to put the plans and hopes aside. Here his reasoning was a beaten path: Don’t be self-centered, Jay Guthrie. In one way or another, millions of people, no older than yourself, have faced the same deal. So shelve the silly notions; live from minute to minute and from day-to-day...