A Fall of Moondust

The key man, of course, was Captain Harris. The Commodore knew his type well; he had met it so often in space—and more often still at such training establishments as Astrotech. (Whenever he made a speech there, it was to a front row of freshly scrubbed and barbered Pat Harrises.) Pat was a competent but unambitious youngster with mechanical interests who had been lucky enough to find a job that suited him perfectly, and which made no greater demands upon him than care and courtesy. (Attractive lady passengers, Hansteen was quite certain, would have no complaints on the hatter score.) He would be loyal, conscientious, and unimaginative, would do his duty as he saw it, and in the end would die gamely without making a fuss. That was a virtue not possessed by many far abler men, and it was one they would need badly aboard the cruiser if they were still here five days from now.

Miss Wilkins, the stewardess, was almost as important as the captain in the scheme of things; she was certainly not the stereotyped space-hostess image, all vapid charm and frozen smile. She was, Hansteen had already decided, a young lady of character and considerable education—but so, for that matter, were many space hostesses he had known.

Yes, he was lucky with the crew. And what about the passengers? They were considerably above average, of course; otherwise they would not have been on the Moon in the first place. There was an impressive reservoir of brains and talent here inside Selene, but the irony of the situation was that neither brains nor talent could help them now. What was needed was character, fortitude—or, in a blunter word, bravery.

Few men in this age ever knew the need for physical bravery. From birth to death, they never came face to face with danger. The men and women aboard Selene had no training for what lay ahead, and he could not keep them occupied much longer with games and amusements.

Some time in the next twelve hours, he calculated, the first cracks would appear. By then it would be obvious that something was holding up the search parties, and that if they found the cruiser at all, the discovery might be too hate.

Commodore Hansteen glanced swiftly round the cabin. Apart from their scanty clothing and slightly unkempt appearance, all these twenty-one men and women were still rational, self-controlled members of society.

Which, he wondered, would be the first to go?

CHAPTER 10

Dr. Tom Lawson, so Chief Engineer Lawrence had decided, was an exception to the old saying “To know all is to forgive all.” The knowledge that the astronomer had passed a loveless, institutionalized childhood and had escaped from his origins by prodigies of pure intellect, at the cost of all other human qualities, helped one to understand him—but not to like him. It was singular bad luck, thought Lawrence , that he was the only scientist within three hundred thousand kilometers who happened to have an infrared detector, and knew how to use it.

He was now sitting in the observer's seat of Duster Two, making the final adjustments to the crude but effective lash-up he had contrived. A camera tripod had been fixed on the canopy of the ski, and the detector had been mounted on this, in such a way that it could pan in any direction.

It seemed to be working, but that was hard to tell in this small, pressurized hangar, with a confused jumble of heat sources all around it. The real test could come only out in the Sea of Thirst .

“It's ready,” said Lawson presently to the Chief Engineer. me have a word with the man who's going to run it.”

The C. E. E. looked at him thoughtfully, still trying to make up his mind. There were strong arguments for and against what he was considering now, but whatever he did, he must not let his personal feelings intrude. The matter was far too important for that.

“You can wear a space suit, can't you?” he asked Lawson.

“I've never worn one in my life. They're only needed for going outside—and we leave that to the engineers.”

“Well, now you have a chance of learning,” said the C. E. E., ignoring the jibe. (If it was a jibe; much of Lawson's rudeness, he decided, was indifference to the social graces rather than defiance of them.) “There's not much to it, when you're riding a ski. You'll be sitting still in the observer's seat and the autoregulator takes care of oxygen, temperature, and the rest. There's only one problem—”

“What's that?”

“How are you for claustrophobia?”

Tom hesitated, not liking to admit any weakness. He had passed the usual space tests, of course, and suspected—quite rightlythat he had had a very close call on some of the psych ratings. Obviously he was not an acute claustrophobe, or he could never have gone aboard a ship. But a spaceship and a space suit were two very different things.

“I can take it,” he said at last.