City on the Moon

CHAPTER X. ABANDON THE LABORATORY

Joe Kenmore woke in the jeep that had picked him up with his companions. He found himself lying on its metal floor, being twitched this way and that as the jeep rolled at cruising speed over the gentle undulations of the Mare Imbrium. He smelled oil, and ozone, and hot metal. But also he smelled coffee.

He got to his feet, groggily. Arlene Gray lay on an improvised bunk in the rear of the cabin, still sleeping. The jeep, he knew, was headed for Civilian City. A very considerable number of hours had passed, but the lunar night still held. Earthshine bathed all that could be seen, but that was not very much in terms of scenery. Earth, overhead, now began to show the suspicion of a shadow at its western edge. It was now past full—corresponding to lunar midnight. It moved toward third-quarter, which was predawn on the moon.

"Food's a great invention," said Kenmore, as he moved past clutters of machinery in the jeep's cabin. "Give me some!"

Haney handed him a mug of coffee—one of those very special drinking mugs which had a great vogue on Earth, once, because they wouldn't spill liquid but could still be drunk from. Kenmore settled down on one of the folding seats for extra passengers. The same lean Haney began to build a sandwich, competently slapping down the slices of bread when the jeep's motion sent them floating in the air.

"Mike," said the dark-skinned chief amiably, "has been telling us about the doings over at the City."

Kenmore grunted assent. The chief, driving, said over his shoulder, "Plenty of trouble; How're you going to get that code stuff to the Laboratory—if it's as important as Mike says?"

"The Earthship," said Kenmore dourly, "has a crumpled landing fin and some cracked ports and the like. It's toppled over. It's got to be gotten aloft with that message-according to what I think Earth will say. That is probably impossible, but I'm working on it in my mind. If it has to be done—"

The chief was a Mohawk Indian. He said in mild derision, "If Big Chief Man-in-the-Moon says so, us braves will take a whack at it. Is it a bad smash?"

"Arlene walked away from it, which may mean anything."

The chief speculated amiably. "Is that order so important because they've got it figured out back on Earth that the gang in the Laboratory has gone nuts, or because it hasn't? Could be either."

Remote as it was, the Space Laboratory was as much in the minds of all of them as their own immediate situation. They were on the moon because of it, and Civilian City had been built and maintained to serve it. There was no civilian activity off the Earth which had not ultimately been devised for the purpose of making the Laboratory possible.

The moon-jeep rumbled on, over the dust-covered sea which once had been molten rock. Presently Mike Scandia awoke, and Kenmore pounced on him for exact and detailed information about the situation. Mike gulped coffee and told what he knew. It wasn't much more than he'd already indicated to Joe, but in the context of the Laboratory's purpose, it was appalling. A long, long distance away on the other side of the moon— a fifth as far away as Earth—was a minute, man-made object floating out in emptiness; it could not be seen from nearside on the moon. In this small, compartmented metal case, eight men lived in the greatest danger men had ever volunteered to face. The Space Laboratory was an atomic-energy workshop. It contained fissionable materials which could blast it and its occupants to radioactive gas at the temperature of the sun's very heart. No more than a moment's carelessness would be required to bring that about.

There was an energy-field which, in theory, should affect even neutrons; the mathematics of it were still largely speculative. There were facts yet to be discovered. If thus-and-so was the fact—why, power could be had for all the imaginable needs of Earth for all time to come; and nothing but power could be released. But if the fact was such-and-such—why, it was possible for any type of matter, though as thin as the gases in the vacuum of an electric-light bulb, to form a sun. In that case, the Laboratory's labors were futile or worse.

In any case, the experiments were dangerous, so the Laboratory hung in space, where the gravity of the moon was almost perfectly balanced by the orbital speed of the Laboratory around the Earth itself. It was a dead spot, some forty thousand miles out. Had there been only local attraction to consider, the Laboratory would have stayed there for all time. But solar gravitation entered into the picture, and once in two weeks—or four, or six—a-small rocket had to be fired to put the Laboratory back at the center of the dead space from which it had wandered.

And the eight men there tried nerve-rackingly to find out whether the facts of subatomic physics were thus-and-so, or such-and-such. They were that far out in space to guard against the possibility that the facts might be such-and-such. In such a case, the proof would be announced by the sudden appearance of a blue-white ball of vaporized metal and human flesh and technical supplies where the Laboratory had been. Obviously, it would not be a good idea for such a discovery to be made on the moon; the moon itself could explode. And that would be very inconvenient, because everybody on moon and Earth would die. When the jeep from the spotter station neared the City, Kenmore took his place by the chief at the controls. He itched to take over and drive himself, but forbore. A long time had passed; the soft-edged shadow at the eastern border of Earth was a hairbreadth wider. There were no other changes anywhere. And Kenmore watched across the twilit moondust until there came an irregularity in the sharp line of the horizon ahead. Then the sky was not blotted out with geometric precision at the horizon. Mountain peaks occluded stars. Kenmore watched until the peaks looked right.

He told the chief, who stopped, turned off the outside lights, and squinted at the outline of the mountains. "The City'll be off to the right," he said wisely, "so it's likely the Earthship will be that way, too. You wanna watch from the observation-blister, Joe? Mike, you watch out this way, and Haney, you watch out that."

Arlene was awake now; she had been for hours. She said urgently, "Isn't there something I can do?"

"You did plenty in the Shuttle," Mike told her. "Sit still."

The moon-jeep swung off to the right and traveled all of twenty miles; it went a mile closer to the mountains and came back to the line of its original course, then went a mile closer . . .

In time, they found the wreck of the Earthship. It lay on its side in the dust that looked like snow. The jeep moved up close; Kenmore, Haney, and the chief went out to look it over. The ship had been down and empty for hours before Kenmore first found it; a long time had passed since then. And the temperature of the night-side of the moon is lower than that of liquid air. So the three of them burned vacuum flares around the wreck and waited patiently. The crimson-red torches looked strange against a field of moondust, under ten thousand myriads of stars. But the brittle-point of the steel used for space hulls is very low; just a few degrees of surface temperature makes a lot of difference.

Presently they went inside, and the Earthship's ports poured streaks of crimson light out into the night. They were burning other vacuum flares inside. Nothing could catch fire, of course, because there was no air; but wood and cloth, and many metals, would be as brittle as ice or glass at the temperature to which they'd fallen.

After another long time, the trio came out. Kenmore was carrying a lady's suitcase, and Haney and the chief bore other things. They came one by one into the jeep and Kenmore said dryly, "Your luggage, Arlene. Now you can dress up when you feel like it. Some of Cecile Ducros' stuff is here too."

The jeep stirred and went on; it swung toward the mountains. Presently a very small light shone above the plain and the jeep trundled toward it.

They saw no change in the look of things when they arrived. There was the one light above the central dome. There were the same innumerable jeep tracks around and about the three dust-heaps which were part of the hope of humanity for contentment on Earth, and high adventure in the stars. But there didn't seem to be much to hope for now.

When they entered, there was light inside the main dome, and Pitkin was puttering among the growing plants. He beamed at Kenmore and Arlene and Mike as —vacuum-suited—they emerged from the airlock. Then he blinked at sight of the two spotter-post men following them.

"Ho!" he said. "Scientists from the Laboratory, hey? To tell us how to mend the City? We do all right!"

"We didn't do all right," said Kenmore. "And they're not from the Laboratory. Any news?"

"No news," said Pitkin, beaming. "None!"

Kenmore went into the air dome and found Cecile Ducros in the foulest of tempers. Osgood, the pilot of the Earthship, looked as if he definitely had the wind up. For a man from Earth, that was reasonable enough. Osgood could not imagine ever getting back to Earth with his ship toppled on its side and airless on a lunar sea. But Lezd, the electronics technician, looked up impassively from where he worked on a photograph to be used in some future broadcast to Earth.

"Are we still able to talk to Earth?" demanded Kenmore.

Lezd nodded. Joe Kenmore flung away to the communicator. Grimly, he reported to Earth exactly what had happened to the Shuttle-rocket. He had not been able to deliver the high-priority message to the Laboratory. The Shuttle-ship was wrecked; sabotage.

There came a sharp command for him to wait. He waited, fuming. In five minutes a very high authority indeed came face to face with him on the screen. The High Authority's face was lined, and his teeth chattered as he spoke.

There was nothing on Earth or moon more important than the immediate delivery of that message to the Space Laboratory. It must be gotten there somehow. The fate of all humanity depended on it!

Kenmore growled, "There are service ships that supply the missile bases! Why not send one of them?"

There was no possibility of a service ship's arrival on time; the moon could not be reached from Earth in less than six days of travel. This message must reach the Space Laboratory immediately! The destruction of the Shuttle and the delay it involved—nearly thirty hours altogether—might already have doomed humanity I Six days more were unthinkable!

"There are such things as physical possibilities," said Kenmore indignantly. "How about the people of Civilian City? Are they safe?"

The High Authority gibbered. They had not yet been found; they were being searched for by jeeps from the missile bases. They were somewhere—lost—ambushed— murdered, perhaps. But the Laboratory must be reached and ordered to stop all experiment—especially all experiment along the line mentioned in the last technical report! It must be stopped, stopped, stopped; the Laboratory must be abandoned; it must be destroyed! The orders must be delivered immediately! And—The High Authority wrung his hands.

"In that case," said Joe Kenmore bitterly, "I'll attend to it."

But he regarded the communicator savagely after he had flicked it off. The abandonment of the Space Laboratory meant the abandonment of anything resembling an attempt to reach other planets, let alone the stars! It meant that Civilian City would be abandoned, too, and all the work and struggle, and the lives lost, for a high hope of splendor were so much waste. The entire accomplishment was to be written off as so much futility. Mankind would return to Earth and stay there forever.

But there was urgency in the commands he'd received; if the lives of the missing citizens of the City did not count more than the need of stopping work at the Laboratory—why, the work at the Lab must be stopped.