News From Elsewhere (12 page)

And who knows? It may be that the men who could put satellites into orbit, explore the dark side of the moon, and dream of the conquest of space were truly great. But there is also a dark side to progress. And the greatness of our science provided such engines of destruction that we came near to racial suicide.

Light and darkness, courage and fear, greatness and madness—a perpetual conflict of elementals in the enigma of man. . „ .

Perhaps this Dark Age in which we now live is only transient. Perhaps our racial spirit is such that humanity will inevitably rise again.

But I am now the last of my generation in this valley—the last to remember the Great Ones as they were. I have become, myself, their living epitaph.

It was as if the universe had suddenly made up its mind to turn around. Slowly, impressively, shoals of pinpoint diamonds, floating through a sea of total darkness, began to swim in orderly rhythm around the moonship. Presently the earth swung like a Halloween lantern across the starboard bow, and the moon itself came dead astern.

Six hours ago the moonship had crossed the neutral frontier in its long free fall through a quarter of a million miles of silence. Now, after five days of zero gravity, the time for action had arrived.

The stars stopped turning, and the green earth-lantern hung itself on some invisible hook. The universe was still once more; the moonship had swung into position for its stem-first landing.

Five hundred miles away, pitted lunar craters yawned menacingly at the falling ship. They expanded, displaying hidden contours, desolate rocky fangs, and all the nightmarish immobility of a petrified world.

Six anxious pairs of eyes gazed at the external visulators on the navigation deck. They saw the crater Tycho, surrounded by cracked and wrinkled lava plains, rushing up as if eager to snatch the moonship clean out of existence.

In less than ten minutes six men would have fulfilled a centuries-old dream of conquest, having reached the moon alive—or else there would be another smaller crater fifty miles from Tycho, a tiny cup of steam and heat and vaporized metal in the vastness of the lunar silence.

Captain Harper gazed hypnotically at the screen in front of his contour berth add wondered if it would do any good to pray. Professor Jantz, mathematician and astronomer, attempted to stave off an elemental fear by working out the cube of 789. Doctors Jackson and Holt, geologist and chemist, exchanged whispered instructions in the impossible possibility that either would survive the other. Pegram, the navigator, stroked a rabbit’s paw; and Davis, the engineer, silently recited “The Golden Journey to Samarkand,” while clutching a battered photograph of the girl he might have married.

“Sixty seconds to firing point,” boomed the autoannouncer. “Forty-five seconds . . . thirty seconds . . . fifteen seconds . . . ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—zero! ”

A sudden surge of power slammed the men deep into the mattresses of their contour berths. The port and starboard visulators showed a jet of yellow-green fire reaching down toward the moon from the stem of the ship.

After days of zero gravity, the sudden G-force developed a merciless pressure until it seemed as if human veins were filled with mercury, as if bone and tissue had been abruptly transmuted to lead.

On the visulator screen a long row of mountain fangs swept by, seeming to miss the ship’s now extended spider-legs by inches. A smooth area of lava bed flashed into view, growing with terrifying speed until every detail, every fragment of rock, was sharply outlined.

Now the rocket motors were delivering maximum energy. There was no sound aboard the moonship, but it seemed as if that tremendous liberation of chemical power had created a silent banshee moan that racked every girder, every metal plate, every human fiber with its high, penetrating message.

Professor Jantz was no longer working out the cube of 789: he was unconscious. His companions, with varying degrees of discomfort, stared through mists of semiconsciousness at the bright pattern of images flashing on the bulkhead visulators.

The entire cosmos seemed to be pictured on the starboard, port, and stem screens. The seconds ticked by, recorded by the thin red needle of the electrochron, hammering out their message like distant gunfire.

“Sixty seconds to zero altitude,” boomed the autoannouncer.

Instinctively the men strained to look at each other, to exchange smiles of farewell or anticipatory grins of triumph.

“Forty-five seconds . . . thirty seconds . . . fifteen seconds . . . ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—zero!”

There was silence—the loudest silence ever known. And stillness. Then relief.

As the three spider-legs contacted the lunar surface, the moonship’s automatic pilot synchronized the fading of rocket motors with the vessel’s fast diminishing momentum. The spindly legs bit cautiously through an inch or two of liquid rock to the hard layer below. There was no bump, no sudden lurch, no sickening wobble. Only the end of something. The end of movement, of accelerating G-forces, of flashing images on the visulator screens, of fear and discomfort. . . . The end of a brief but colossal climax of stress.

Captain Harper was the first to find his voice. “Zero altitude,” he said quietly. “Only the good die young!”

Professor Jantz opened his eyes, Pegram, the navigator, surreptitiously put away his rabbit’s paw, and Davis stopped reciting “The Golden Journey” to himself. They began to undo their contour-berth straps, and presently, feeling the steady, lazy tug of one-sixth gravity, everyone crowded up into the observation dome.

Twenty-four hours later the moonship stood like a three-legged skeleton with only the personnel sphere set perkily on top of its tubular backbone. At the base of this hundred-foot-high derelict that had completed its first and last journey through space, there lay a lunar tractor and trailer, a neat stack of curved metal plates, and a large 
number of crates of varying shapes and sizes.

The early sunlight cast long shadows in fantastic patterns behind all the goods and chattels of the advance expedition. Large and low in a jet-black sky, the green ball of earth dominated its background of stars.

Meanwhile, on the navigation deck in the personnel sphere, Captain Harper was holding a final conference prior to abandoning ship.

“In four weeks, gentlemen,” he was saying, “Number Two ship will arrive. Its cargo, as you know, will be mainly food and two more lunar tractors. If we can have the base well established by then, and if we manage to complete the preliminary survey, a great deal of time will be saved and the equatorial expedition will be able to get straight off the mark. ... As there are only six of us, it’s pretty obvious that we’ve got our work cut out. First thing, of course, is to get a living unit fixed up. Until that’s done, there’ll be no time for anything else. . . . Dr. Jackson, you’re the geologist. Have you come across any likely niches where we can erect the unit safely?”

“I’ve found a perfect site,” answered Jackson. “It’s about a mile away, practically in a direct line with Tycho and the ship. There’s a thirty-foot fissure with an overhanging shelf. It’ll give perfect protection against meteorites. But we shall have to fix up a permanent staircase because the walls are damn near vertical all around.”

“How many living units will it contain?” asked Harper.

“At least three. I see no reason why it shouldn’t house three units and the laboratory. And if, eventually, they decide to increase the expedition, there are several nearby crevices where one or two extra units could be placed.”

“Dr. Holt, you explored the place with Jackson. What’s your verdict?” The Captain looked inquiringly at the chemist, who, being only thirty, was the youngest member of the party.

“There are plenty of ratholes around,” said Holt, “but none of ’em quite so convenient. I agree with Jackson. We could do a lot worse.”

“We’d better load up, then,” said Captain Harper, reaching for the headpiece of his pressure suit. “The sooner we get the first unit erected, the better.” He gazed through a plastiglass porthole. “Something tells me we’re going to get thoroughly fed up with this dead landscape 
before we’re through. . . . Any questions?”

“It’s time to make a radio check with Earth,” said Pegram. “Do you want to send a message, sir?”

Captain Harper lifted the headpiece and smoothed back his thick gray hair. “Tell them,” he said humorlessly, “that this place is so dead, if we saw a blade of grass we’d probably scream.”

It took three more terrestrial days to set up the living unit in the fissure that Dr. Jackson had selected—by which time the sun had risen clear of the distant mountain ranges and hung like a blinding fireball in the black, star-pricked sky.

The lunar day, in length a terrestrial fortnight, had now reached the high flush of midmoming.

While they were erecting the first living unit, Captain Harper and his companions ate and slept in the pressurized tractor, which was large enough to accommodate the six of them comfortably. Later, when it was used for long-distance-reconnaissance work, they would have to live in it for over a week at a time. This first experience of life in its compact quarters was valuable training.

Now and again, between the endless tasks of hauling and erecting, one or another of the men would take a few minutes off just to stand and gaze and marvel at the hard, lifeless landscape under its roof of darkness.

They would become thunderstruck at their own smallness, at their colossal achievement, and at the notion that they themselves were probably the first organic life form ever to be established bn the moon.

Fifty miles away, toward the lunar south pole, the crater Tycho displayed its sharp mountain ring with perfect clarity—like teeth over the faintly curved horizon. There were no atmospheric mists to soften its contours or take the edge of fire from its sunlit peaks.

Stretching away into the distance on every side of the fissure where Base One had been erected, the lava plains were covered with a two-inch layer of meteoric dust that fell as rapidly as it was disturbed and retained footprints like new snow. When the lunar tractor swayed by in eerie silence, the dust was ploughed back to leave a caterpillar-indented road. There was not much danger of wandering 
away from base and getting lost on the moon when footprints left a trail that, unless it was disturbed, would remain clear for thousands of years.

By the fourth terrestrial day the expedition was established in its subterranean living unit. Most of the routine fetch-and-carry work was over. Now the real business of experiment and exploration could begin.

It was decided that Doctors Jackson and Holt, with Davis, the engineer, should take the tractor and make a survey of ten miles’ radius, keeping radio contact. They were to return in six hours.

Captain Harper would have joined them, but conscience kept
him
tied down to a pile of routine work at base. And Professor Jantz, having sampled the lunar dust, was completely absorbed in calculations relating to meteoric bombardment. Pegram, the remaining member of the expedition, had his own work to do. Apart from maintaining radio contact with Earth, he would also keep in touch with the tractor.

After a restless three-hour duty sleep, Jackson, Holt, and Davis went into the dining room at Base One and ate a hearty breakfast.

Professor Jantz, with a finger calculator on one side of his plate and a reference book on the other, peered at them through blue-tinted glasses.

“I want small crystals,” he said abruptly, “and anything metallic. Look out for me, Jackson, there’s a good fellow.”

Jackson swallowed a mouthful of coffee and laughed. “What do you think
1
want, Professor? If there’s anything worth having, we’ll bring it back.”

The professor nodded, then demanded with seeming irrelevance, “Why is there no oxygen on the moon?”

Dr. Holt put down his fork, and gazed at the mathematician curiously. “You are aware of the conventional reasons, Professor?”

“Naturally—-but they are not good enough.”

“What makes you think that?”

Professor Jantz treated the younger man to a secretive smile. “My calculations,” he said happily. “We are all going to be surprised.”

“Bet you a double ration of brandy,” said Dr. Jackson, “that there is definitely no trace of oxygen in any form.”

Professor Jantz was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I am not only prepared to take your bet, Dr. Jackson; I am prepared to make an additional wager. I prophesy that we shall discover signs of organic life.”

“A week’s tobacco says we won’t.”

“Good. I am a heavy smoker.” The professor’s confidence was such that he gave the impression of already having actual confirmation.

“Since you are so dogmatic,” said Dr. Holt thoughtfully, “you might help us to prove your point by suggesting the type we must look for.”

“It will have been sleeping for millions of years,” said the professor. “We shall find it in caves or chasms, but not, I think, near the main craters.”

“Stop being enigmatic,” said Jackson. “What the devil are you getting at?”

“Coal,” said the professor impressively. “Beautiful carboniferous coal.”