A Fall of Moondust

Lawrence stared at the gray dust upon which his vehicle was floating. At first sight, it seemed as featureless as any other portion of the Sea; then, as he looked more closely, he saw something that raised the goose-pimples on his skin.

When examined very carefully, as he was examining it now, the dust showed an extremely fine pepper-and-salt pattern. That pattern was moving; the surface of the Sea was creeping very slowly toward him, as if blown by an invisible wind.

Lawrence did not like it at all. On the Moon, one learned to be wary of the abnormal and unexplained; it usually meant that something was wrong—or soon would be. This slowly crawling dust was both uncanny and disturbing. If a boat had sunk here once already, anything as small as a ski might be in even greater danger.

“Better keep away,” he advised Duster Two. “There's something odd here—I don't understand it.” Carefully, he described the phenomenon to Lawson, who thought it over and answered almost at once: “You say it looks like a fountain in the dust? That's exactly what it is. We already know there's a source of heat here. It's powerful enough to stir up a convection current.”

“What could do that? It can't be Selene.”

He felt a wave of disappointment sweep over him. It was all a wild-goose chase, as he had feared from the beginning. Some pocket of radioactivity, or an outburst of hot gases released by the quake, had fooled their instruments and dragged them to this desolate spot. And the sooner they left it the better; it might still be dangerous.

“Just a minute,” said Tom. “A vehicle with a fair amount of machinery and twenty-two passengers—that must produce a good deal of heat. Three or four kilowatts, at least. If this dust is in equilibrium, that might be enough to start a fountain.”

Lawrence thought this was very unlikely, but he was now willing to grasp at the slimmest straw. He picked up the thin metal probe, and thrust it vertically into the dust. At first it penetrated with almost no resistance, but as the telescopic extensions added to its length, it became harder and harder to move. By the time he had the full twenty meters out, it needed all his strength to push it downward.

The upper end of the probe disappeared into the dust; he had hit nothing—but he had scarcely expected to succeed on this first attempt. He would have to do the job scientifically and lay out a search pattern.

After a few minutes of cruising back and forth, he had crisscrossed the area with parallel bands of white tape, five meters apart. Like an old-time farmer planting potatoes, he started to move along the first of the tapes, driving his probe into the dust. It was a slow job, for it had to be done conscientiously. He was like a blind man, feeling in the dark with a thin, flexible wand. If what he sought was beyond the reach of his wand, he would have to think of something else. But he would deal with that problem when he came to it.

He had been searching for about ten minutes when he became careless. It required both hands to operate the probe, especially when it neared the limit of its extension. He was pushing with all his strength, leaning over the edge of the ski, when he slipped and fell headlong into the dust.

Pat was conscious of the changed atmosphere as soon as he emerged from the air lock. The reading from The Orange and the Apple had finished some time ago, and a heated argument was now in progress. It stopped when he walked into the cabin, and there was an embarrassing silence while he surveyed the scene. Some of the passengers looked at him out of the corners of their eyes, while the others pretended he wasn't there.

“Well, Commodore,” he said, “what's the trouble?”

“There's a feeling,” Hansteen answered, “that we're not doing all we could to get out. I've explained that we have no alternative but to wait until someone finds us—but not everybody agrees.”

It was bound to come sooner or later, thought Pat. As time ran out, and there was no sign of rescue, nerves would begin to snap, tempers get frayed. There would be calls for action-any action. It was against human nature to sit still and do nothing in the face of death.

“We've been through this over and over again,” he said wearily. “We're at least ten meters down, and even if we opened the air lock, no one could get up to the surface against the resistance of the dust.”

“Can you be sure of that?” someone asked.

“Quite sure,” Pat answered. “Have you ever tried to swim through sand? You won't get very far.”

“What about trying the motors?”

“I doubt if they'd budge us a centimeter. And even if they did, we'd move forward—not up.”

“We could all go to the rear; our weight might bring the nose up.

“It's the strain on the hull I'm worried about,” said Pat. “Suppose I did start the motors—it would be like butting into a brick wall. Heaven knows what damage it might do.”

“But there's a chance it might work. Isn't that worth the risk?”