City on the Moon

CHAPTER V. CECILE DUCROS

THE manners of human beings are peculiar; the customs of human beings are strange—but the reactions of human beings in situations of emergency and danger approach insanity. The conduct of the few remaining human beings in Civilian City was a perfect example of the fact.

Pitkin had the air pressure up to eight pounds in the air-dome. He'd added a soupçon of extra oxygen and zestfully started the dome's separate generator, kept ready for emergency and now definitely required. Cecile Ducros removed her vacuum-suit helmet and exposed the most icily-furious face that Joe Kenmore had ever seen. She gave orders; she was a very beautiful woman, but her voice crackled. As she instructed Lezd, her private electronics technician, she slipped into her native language and it sounded as if she were uttering whipcracks instead of words. But she did not waste energy in tears.

Lezd buttoned his faceplate and, with Pitkin to guide him, went into the power dome. There they labored.

Presently the lights all over the City came on dimly and brightened; then the three artificial caverns were as brilliantly illuminated as ever. Everything looked very cozy, but in two of the three domes there was still not enough air to keep a human being alive.

Lezd looked over the complex Earth-beam apparatus in the main dome. Kenmore worked over a matter he considered important. Moreau, beaming, sat beside Cecile Ducros, with Arlene listening imperturbably, and answered questions the television star shot at him.

Cecile Ducros was not using the charm at just this moment; she hadn't turned it on. She was using an excellent brain for a highly specific purpose, which under the circumstances was as unlikely as could be imagined. With Civilian City abandoned and leaking; with a story of sabotage to curl the hair; with a tale of personal danger to make all her television audience gasp for breath, and an expose of indifference to her safety that would rouse a storm of protest among her fans—with all this, Cecile Ducros was getting the material for a broadcast on the charming aspects of lunar civilization.

One hour before broadcast time, her technician had the beam in operation back to Earth. He plugged in a connection to her in the air dome, and she talked in infuriated French, with a cold-blooded fury that was daunting—even if one did not understand a word she said.

Kenmore came back into the air dome to make sure that Arlene was all right. She smiled at him, indicating Cecile and Moreau.

"She'll make the broadcast," Arlene said in a low tone. "She's told Earth what happened. She swore she'd broadcast the whole story—unless! And if they keep her off the air for this broadcast, she'll tell it next time, or next, or next. They've got to pay her for all her suffering, or she tells the world about it! But they will pay her, so she's going to broadcast on the charm of lunar living."

"But why," demanded Kenmore, "why didn't Earth notify the missile base, and arrange a guide-beam for the rocket? Or at least have a jeep come over to talk it down? What did happen?"

Arlene said in the same low tone, "The Earth transmitter was out. Sabotage, too. Timed together for maximum effect. You see the point?"

"I can guess it. Each transmitter thought the other was taking care of the rocket. So the rocket came on out —it could hardly stop, anyhow—and it should have crashed on landing. Everybody should have been killed, and right on top of it the world should learn that the armed forces of the missile bases had evacuated all civilian personnel from Civilian City and were shipping them back to Earth. All Europe would believe that we scoundrelly Americans had faked the disaster and let the rocket crash for an excuse to get everybody but Americans off the moon!" Then he said coldly, "You'd have been killed too."

She nodded. "I would."

Kenmore ground his teeth. "Eventually, I'm going to kill somebody for this! But I've worked. I've located some of the leaks in the main dome. I've been stopping them. Would you like to help?"

They went into the main dome. Kenmore had a small air cylinder, with a hose which ran into a bucket filled with foaming material much more enduring than soapsuds. In the dome's low pressure, a very little air made a lot of foam. Joe swept the white stuff against the side walls. Visible areas of plastic could be disregarded; no saboteur would cut slashes in the plastic where it could be seen. But if one painted the foam around the edges of an object against the wall—why, any leak behind it made the foam disappear. It was the automobilist's old trick of dipping a leaky tube in water and watching for bubbles to appear. Only Kenmore, of course, was working the trick in exact reverse.

The two figures in vacuum suits looked very small as they labored in the huge and brightly lighted dome. They looked absurd. The building was out of all proportion to their size. But on the moon, a building has to be larger than one on Earth, to shelter a corresponding number of people. Moon buildings have not only to contain the people, but all the out-of-doors that on Earth serves to grow food and purify the air they breathe.

Very shortly, a pattern began to appear in the manner of the sabotage. Each leak Kenmore found was a neat slash in the plastic, cutting through to the dust outside. The dust was so finely divided that it would flow like a liquid. Air could go out, but no dust appeared inside. There was still some air pressure within, and it became apparent that the sabotage had been done with such deliberation that it had become routine. Where a partition of one of the privacy cubicles touched the side wall of the dome, a razor blade had been thrust behind the corner and a slash made. There was one slash at the bottom, a few inches from the floor; there was another at the top, just a couple of inches higher than it was quite convenient for Kenmore to reach.

Presently he stopped using the foam; he knew where to look. He said evenly, "One man did all this. He got systematic about it."

Arlene watched, after that. Kenmore worked on, until he had gone completely around the vast enclosure. He said angrily, "It ought to be tight now! I don't like the idea of a man doing a job like this, as if he had all the time there was!"

His earphones almost bellowed at him.

"We go on the air," snarled the voice of Cecile Ducros, "in just five minutes! Where are you, Kenmore! Come at once!"

Arlene heard the summons, too. She grimaced and went with Kenmore through the lock into the dome of the hydroponic gardens. There was a camera set up, and a beautifully lighted set—lurid with flowers from the troughs—and Cecile Ducros was pacing up and down, deliberately getting the feel of the light gravity, with a cold intentness and absorption.

She looked up and snapped, "You remain in your vacuum suit. Arlene, you also! You come on after seven minutes. You will be on for four." She looked balefully at Moreau. "The specimens! The ingots! Get them!" She snapped at Pitkin: "One sound from you during the broadcast and I'll strangle you personally!"

It was remarkable, and it was insane to be preparing the equivalent of a normal studio broadcast in the evacuated, leaking buildings of Civilian City, with a history of past cold-blooded sabotage, with recriminations and controversy to come. But Cecile Ducros did it.

Lezd, the electronics man, worked the television camera himself. He performed the feat with nonchalance and matter-of-fact skill. The lights were perfect. A sweep-second hand went around and around. Cecile Ducros watched it, with the camera trained on her. And suddenly she was smiling a sleepy, heavy-lidded, mysterious sort of smile at the camera lens and speaking with a very delicate intensification of accent.

"How do you do? Thees is your leetle Cecile Ducros, and I speak to you tonight from the moon. We grounded her-re—or should I say we mooned?—some hours ago, and I have been charmed, I have been fasceenated, I have been ravished by what I see! Look! These blossoms!

They gr-row here, and they purify the air. Look-look- look-look!"

She swept her arms to guide her audience's eyes. Then she smiled upon Moreau, and at the cue he ambled fatuously into the camera's range. "Here is someone who leeves here—a man een the moon! Eet would be charming to walk in the earthlight with heem!" She sighed. "Ah, I am so susceptible!"

Kenmore and Arlene, standing just off the set, could see the whole of it—the beautifully calculated tricks by which Cecile appeared so charming, the perfect timing with which she shifted moods, the seeming spontaneity with which she appeared to think of calling onstage Captain Osgood, who had skippered the Earthship up to the moon, and the deftness with which she admired the wonderful navigation—or was eet astrogation, Capitaine? What was the word for steering a sheep in space? —the wonderful skeel with wheech the sheep had been brought to rest so perfectly . . .

She dismissed him, then called on Kenmore and Arlene, and explained that they had been out-of-doors, walking in the earthlight. Then she shifted position—with the camera following her—and there were specimens of lunar rock-formations, and a great boulder of quartz rock with wire-gold in it. Her eyes grew wide as she told of the mines where such things were found. And these, she explained excitedly, were ingots of gold! So many! They were worth thousands of thousands of dollars back on Earth!

But the charmeeng thing was also the lightness with wheech one walked on the moon!

Then there was another background, and Cecile Ducros showed how anyone—anyone at all—could toe-dance upon the moon, and she lifted her skirts to show the justly famous gams and did no less than twenty-two entrechats in one graceful leap. She reminded them that Nijinsky himself had done no more than ten on Earth, but weeth science to come to the aid of woman, she had visibly surpassed him. . . .

It was an amazing performance. It seemed that she called at random upon members of a well-populated city to grace her production, yet there were exactly eight people in the whole settlement besides herself and Arlene. She beautifully canceled out all rumors and made ridiculous any that might be started in the future, about an operation to force the abandonment of the City, as a ruthless act of Americans to force non-Americans off the moon. It was a strictly professional job.

When she smiled that same sleepy smile at her audience back on Earth, and looked wistful because she was leaving them, and then called Moreau back into camera range and looked up at him and sighed, "Ah, I am so susceptible!" and then signed off—why, up to that moment she had been convincing enough to carry even Kenmore and the others along with her.

But when the camera clicked off, she said vieiously,

"Now, who was it that tried to kill me? What villains..."

And having completed her broadcast, she allowed herself the luxury of a full-scale tantrum.

Kenmore grimly took over the communicator in the main dome. He heard only part of the very fine example of artistic temperament which a thoroughly scared woman allowed herself, when she could afford it—and not before. He got Earth. Then he got Major Gray at Bootstrap, which was the Earth terminal for all space activities—the space platform and the moon. Major Gray happened to be Arlene's father, and the fact had probably determined Arlene's choice as a companion for the television star. She would have been indoctrinated on matters of security; she would see that Cecile Ducros was discreet.

There was a scrambler on the audio beam, of course. Even the sound portion of the visicast had been scrambled on the moon and unscrambled back on Earth before being passed on to the television networks. It was possible to talk confidentially. Kenmore savagely told Gray just what had happened.

Major Gray uttered one explosive word and then said coldly, "She's safe now?" He meant Arlene.

"Now, yes," said Kenmore shortly. "But she should come back to Earth right away!"

There was an interval of something over three seconds between the end of a comment to Earth, and the beginning of Gray's reply. It took half that time for the radio waves to reach Earth, and half again for the beginning of the reply to get to the moon.

"This place is a madhouse!" snapped Kenmore. "It needn't have been abandoned! Apparently nobody thought of trying to do anything without orders! It should be a pioneer town, but it's filled up with government clerks from a dozen different nations! Good men in their way, but they think that what isn't ordered is forbidden!"

A three-second pause. Major Gray's voice; "Do you want me to pass that comment on?"

"I wish you would. This City's been run according to ironclad instructions from Earth. That should mean efficiency, but it works out to lunacy! Nobody can do anything without authority for it, so anybody who has the capacity to get something done has to use all his brains getting orders issued! It's bound to end up in somebody cracking up from pure futility!"

Again a long pause. Gray: "Go on."

"I'm sounding off," said Kenmore coldly, "because I'll undoubtedly be in great disfavor here for what I've done. When I got here, the only man in the City was Pitkin. He was sleeping happily. I've taken command because I'm the only one who seems to have any idea that anything can be done! I assume that help will be coming from the nearest missile base; meanwhile, I've patched the main dome so it holds air, and I'm setting Moreau to repair the power dome. Then I'm going out to see if the Earthship can be repaired to get Arlene and Cecile Ducros back to Earth."

A long pause. Major Gray: "Then what?"

"Then," said Kenmore, "I'm going to kill somebody." He clicked off. When he turned, Lezd—the electronics technician who had accompanied Cecile Ducros to handle the technical end of the broadcasts—was regarding him.

Lezd said with detachment, "This is the way one talks to his superiors?"

"When necessary," Kenmore told him. "What about it?"

"I like it," said Lezd. He nodded and turned away. Kenmore growled. He had been a minor figure, here on the moon. He had been among the first to land, and his experience was outstanding. But authority could not be distributed—not in an international, co-operative enterprise—on the basis of experience or ability.

When there was relative safety for everybody, political considerations dictated highly unrealistic divisions of position and command. But now there was disaster and a man who knew what to do had to take command, because nobody else could.

Kenmore got Moreau back into a vacuum suit and took him into the power dome. He walked purposefully to a place where the fuel tanks that held 80% hydrogen peroxide—which must not be frozen—stood against the wall.

"There'll be a slash in the plastic here," he said, pointing, "and another one there. Somebody went comfortably about to make the City uninhabitable. Look!" Moreau looked, and stared. "How did you know?" "Pattern of action," said Kenmore. "Find and fix them."