A Fall of Moondust

“You might check the cabin temperature,” continued McKenzie. “That will give us some indication.”

Hansteen walked to the control panel and glanced at the maze of dials and indicators.

“I'm afraid you're right,” he said. “It's gone up two degrees already.”

“Over a degree an hour. That's about what I figured.”

The Commodore turned to I-iarris, who had been listening to the discussion with growing alarm.

“Is there anything we can do to increase the cooling? How much reserve power has our air-conditioning gear got?”

Before Pat could answer, the physicist intervened.

“That won't help us,” he said a little impatiently. “All that our refrigeration does is to pump heat out of the cabin and radiate it away. But that's exactly what it can't do now, because of the dust around us. If we try to run the cooling plant faster, it will actually make matters worse.”

There was a gloomy silence that lasted until the Commodore said: “Please check those calculations, and let me have your best estimate as soon as you can. And for heaven's sake don't let this go beyond the three of us.”

He felt suddenly very old. He had been almost enjoying his unexpected last command; and now it seemed that he would have it only for a day.

At that very moment, though neither party knew the fact, one of the searching dust-skis was passing overhead. Built for speed, efficiency, and cheapness, not for the comfort of tourists, it bore little resemblance to the sunken Selene. It was, in fact, no more than an open sledge with seats for pilot and one passenger—each wearing a space suit—and with a canopy overhead to give protection from the sun. A simple control panel, motor, and twin fans at the rear, storage racks for tools and equipment—that completed the inventory. A ski going about its normal work usually towed at least one carrier sledge behind it, sometimes two or three, but this one was traveling light. It had zigzagged back and forth across several hundred square kilometers of the Sea, and had found absolutely nothing.

Over the suit intercom, the driver was talking to his companion.

“What do you think happened to them, George? I don't believe they're here.”

“Where else can they be? Kidnaped by Outsiders?”

“I'm almost ready to buy that” was the half-serious answer. Sooner or later, all astronauts believed, the human race would meet intelligences from elsewhere. That meeting might still be far in the future but meanwhile, the hypothetical “Outsiders” were part of the mythology of space, and got the blame for everything that could not be explained in any other way.

It was easy to believe in them when you were with a mere handful of companions on some strange, hostile world where the very rocks and air (if there was air) were completely alien. Then, nothing could be taken for granted, and the experience of a thousand Earth-bound generations might be useless. As ancient man had peopled the unknown around him with gods and spirits, so Homo astronauticus looked over his shoulder when he landed upon each new world, wondering who or what was there already. For a few brief centuries, Man had imagined himself the lord of the Universe, and those primeval hopes and fears had been buried in his subconscious. But now they were stronger than ever, and with good reason, as he looked into the shining face of the heavens and thought of the power and knowledge that must be lurking there.

“Better report to Base,” said George. “We've covered our area, and there's no point in going over it again. Not until sunrise, anyway. We'll have a much better chance of finding something then. This damned earthlight gives me the creeps.”

He switched on the radio, and gave the ski's call sign.

“Duster Two calling Traffic Control. Over.”

“Port Roris Traffic Control here. Found anything?”

“Not a trace. What's new from your end?”

“We don't think she's out in the Sea. The Chief Engineer wants to speak to you.”

“Right; put him on.”

“Hello, Duster Two. Lawrence here. Plato Observatory's just reported a quake near the Mountains of Inaccessibility. It took place at nineteen thirty-five, which is near enough the time when Selene should have been in Crater Lake . They suggest she's been caught in an avalanche somewhere in that area. So head for the mountains and see if you can spot any recent slides or rockfalls.”

“What's the chance, sir,” asked the dust-ski pilot anxiously, “that there may be more quakes?”

“Very small, according to the Observatory. They say it will be thousands of years before anything like this happens again, now that the stresses have been relieved.”

“I hope they're right. I'll radio when I get to Crater Lake ; that should be in about twenty minutes.”

But it was only fifteen minutes before Duster Two destroyed the last hopes of the waiting listeners.