A Fall of Moondust

As soon as they heard that heavy thump against the roof, they knew at once that this was no sounding rod, delicately probing the Sea. When, a minute later, there came the unmistakable whirr of a drill chewing its way through Fiberglas, they felt like condemned men who had been granted a last-minute reprieve.

This time, the drill missed the cable conduit—not that it mattered now. The passengers watched, almost hypnotized, as the grinding sound grew louder and the first flakes planed down from the ceiling. When the head of the drill appeared and descended twenty centimeters into the cabin, there was a brief but heartfelt burst of cheering.

Now what? said Pat to himself. We can't talk to them; how will I know when to unscrew the drill? I'm not going to make that mistake a second time.

Startlingly loud in this tense, expectant silence, the metal tube resonated with the DIT DIT DIT DAH which, surely, not one of Selene's company would forget, however long he lived. Pat replied at once, banging out an answering V with a pair of pliers. Now they know we're alive, he thought. He had never really believed that Lawrence would assume that they were dead and abandon them, yet at the same time there was always that haunting doubt.

The tube signaled again, this time much more slowly. It was a nuisance having to learn Morse; in this age, it seemed such an anachronism, and many were the bitter protests among pilots and space engineers at the waste of effort. In your whole lifetime, you might need it only once.

But that was the point. You would really need it then.

DIT DIT DAH, rapped the tube. DAH DIT .. . DIT DIT DIT .. . DAH DIT DAH DIT .. . DIT DAH DIT .. . DIT .. . DIT DAH DAH.

Then, so that there would be no mistake, it started to repeat the word, but both Pat and the Commodore, rusty though they were, had got the message.

“They're telling us to unscrew the drill,” said Pat. “Well, here we go.”

The brief rush of air gave everyone a moment of unnecessary panic as the pressure equalized. Then the pipe was open to the upper world, and twenty-two anxious men and women waited for the first breath of oxygen to come gushing down it.

Instead, the tube spoke. Out of the open orifice came a voice, hollow and sepulchral, but perfectly clear. It was so loud, and so utterly unexpected, that a gasp of surprise came from the company. Probably not more than half a dozen of these men and women had ever heard a speaking tube; they had grown up in the belief that only through electronics could the voice be sent across space. This antique revival was as much a novelty to them as a telephone would have been to an ancient Greek.

“This is Chief Engineer Lawrence speaking. Can you hear me?”

Pat cupped his hands over the opening, and answered slowly: “Hearing you loud and clear. How do you receive us?”

“Very clear. Are you all right?”

“Yes—what's happened?”

“You've dropped a couple of meters—no more than that. We hardly noticed anything up here, until the pipes came adrift. How's your air?”

“Still good—but the sooner you start supplying us, the better.”

“Don't worry, we'll be pumping again as soon as we get the dust out of the filters, and can rush out another drill head from Port Roris. The one you've just unscrewed was the only spare; it was lucky we had that.”

So it will be at least an hour, Pat told himself, before their air supply could be secured again. That, however, was not the problem that now worried him. He knew how Lawrence had hoped to reach them, and he realized that the plan would not work now that Selene was no longer on an even keel.

“How are you going to get at us?” he asked bluntly.

There was only the briefest of hesitations before Lawrence answered.

“I've not worked out the details, but we'll add another sec tion to the caisson and continue it down until it reaches you. Then we'll start scooping out the dust until we get to the bottom. That will take us to within a few centimeters of you; we'll cross that gap somehow. But there's one thing I want you to do first.”

“What's that?”

“I'm ninety per cent sure that you won't settle again—but if you're going to, I'd rather you did it now. I want you all to jump up and down together for a couple of minutes.”

“Will that be safe?” asked Pat doubtfully. “Suppose this pipe tears out again?”

“Then you can plug it again. Another small hole won't matter—but another subsidence will, if it happens when we're trying to make a man-sized opening in the roof.”

Selene had seen some strange sights, but this was undoubtedly the strangest. Twenty-two men and women were solemnly jumping up and down in unison, rising to the ceiling and then pushing themselves back as vigorously as possible to the floor. All the while Pat kept a careful watch on that pipe leading to the upper world; after a minute's strenuous exertion on the part of her passengers, Selene had moved downward by less than two centimeters.