Chapter 10 Claiming the Moon

They crawled down the side of the ship, hand over hand, reaching for the rungs with heavily gloved hands and thickly soled boots. They moved slowly, four men in a thin line that hung from the open air lock like a human thread. The ship poked into the sky behind them, tilting at a crazy angle, its blasting tubes a twisted jumble of metal.

The Moon sat like a stiff old man with a jagged, crooked mouth.

It was silent.

Dead silent.

There was no sound, no movement.

The stars glowed steadily behind it, a million eyes that watched Forbes drop to the ground like a dancer caught in a slow-motion shot. The pumice at his feet rose in a noiseless swirl and settled silently again. Dr. Phelps dropped down beside him. None of the men spoke, as if they had agreed beforehand to be as solemnly silent as the Moon itself. Dr. Gehardt clung to the bottom rung for a moment and then released it, dropping slowly to the ground. Ted dropped down beside him.

The night sky covered them like a black hood pinpointed with endless miles of bright white holes. The sky started abruptly where the land ended, with stars dancing on the horizon, almost close enough to touch, it seemed. Like a sprawling wisp of smoke above, the Milky Way trailed across the blackness of the sky.

There was a brittle feeling of crispness everywhere. Ted knew it was intensely cold outside, even though his battery-powered suit heater kept him comfortable. There was no dust, no cloud, no mist, no fog — no sound.

There was only a clear stillness, a stillness as deep and as cold as the void of space.

They stood together in a tight knot, the first men to land on the Moon. They said nothing, and Ted felt a sudden bond with the other men, a bond bred of the eerie silence.

“It’s... it’s awfully quiet,” Forbes said, his voice faintly distorted in the suit radio.

“Yes,” Dr. Gehardt replied.

“George would have liked this,” Forbes said, a tired remorse replacing the bitterness in his voice. Ted felt the same hopeless desire to know the man better, to share the inner workings of his mind.

There were no emotions visible through the darkened face plates of the men’s helmets. They stood about stiffly, as if they were uncomfortable in these strange surroundings. Ted had no way of knowing what the other men were feeling. He could only guess.

Forbes: the dream realized. Elation and disappointment. Elation because the dream was realized. And disappointment because the unconscious Merola was not here to share it.

Dr. Gehardt: the scientific puzzle. Craters to he investigated, rocks to be weighed and tested, minerals to be discovered. A new world of new experiences.

Dr. Phelps: the challenge. A careful analysis of physical stamina as pitted against this land of violently opposite temperatures and unfriendly terrain. The human machine against nature. And he was the mechanic who kept the machine running.

And Ted?

There was no guesswork there. No, he knew exactly what he was feeling. It was a mixture of awe and pride, of humbleness and pulsing excitement, of joy and sadness. It was all those things mixed into a crazy ball that throbbed in his throat.

“Let’s look around,” Forbes said.

They started out across the floor of Mare Crisium, the mare that meant “sea” in Latin, named long ago when scientists thought the darker areas on the Moon were actually seas. All of the maria had been given fanciful Latin names, and Ted thought of them briefly as they picked their way over the jagged, razor-sharp rocks underfoot.

Mare Nectaris: the Sea of Nectar.

Mare Serenitatis: the Sea of Tranquillity.

Mare Nubium: the Sea of Clouds.

Mare Imbrium: the Sea of Showers — and incidentally the sea that held their supplies at the moment.

He had learned the names of the thirty-odd gray areas during astronomy classes as the Academy, and he marveled at his memory of them now.

Mare Crisium. That’s where they were now. The Sea of Crises. It had been aptly named, Ted thought. A thousand miles from their supplies, they were indeed facing a crisis. The Moon had chosen a fitting background.

He turned his head within his helmet as he walked, breathing in the oxygen that flowed from the tank strapped to his back.

He wondered exactly how cold it was outside. Probably somewhere down around 200 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Despite the chemical sprayed on the inside of his face plate, despite the heat circulating throughout the suit, the plate was beginning to frost up around the edges.

He was suddenly thankful for the protection of the suit. He shivered involuntarily, picturing himself out on the surface of the Moon without a space suit. He almost stumbled over a sharp rock, righted himself quickly, and kept his eyes on the ground as he walked.

The floor of the mare was covered with a dark gray pumice that stirred lazily as he pushed his heavy boots through it. It did not linger long above the ground. It was not lifted on gusts of wind because there was no wind. It was not held aloft in the air because there was no air. It drifted back as soon as they passed through it, silently, effortlessly.

A huge, barren, desolate wasteland seemed to spread around them endlessly.

That, and the silence. Almost a physical force, almost a part of the Moon, as much a part of the Moon as the pumice underfoot, the jagged, pointed rocks, the craters.

They walked on in silence, and then they seemed to stop as if a signal had been given. They stared around them, overwhelmed by the frigid silence. It was as if they had stumbled into a crypt, a dust-covered crypt as old as the universe, a crypt that defied invasion. There was a sense of timelessness here, an attitude of quiet resolution, as if the Moon had taken a solid stand and would not be budged from it.

And there was a feeling of changelessness, something that stirred in the silence to whisper, “I am now what I have ever been.”

The stillness was unnatural and eerie, and it sent a shiver of apprehension up Ted’s spine. He stared off to the distant jagged peaks that rose like splintered crowns beyond the horizon, crowns set with the brilliant stars as jewels.

To the people back on Earth, the Moon was a slice of lemon in the sky, a warm, pleasant-looking oval, a boy-and-girl moon, a moon for an autumn night with falling leaves.

The people on Earth were not confronted with the deathly silence, Ted thought, or the knowledge that a tear in a space suit could lead to almost immediate freezing. They didn’t know how heavy a helmet could become when it pressed down on your shoulders, nor did they know the queer feeling of watching tiny slivers of frost spearing the edges of your face plate.

To the people back on Earth, night was a comparatively short thing. You went to sleep with it, and it was gone in the morning, replaced by the cheering rays of the sun. If Ted had guessed correctly, night was just falling on the Moon. But “night” here was no rapidly passing thing. It took the Moon fourteen Earth days to pass from New Moon to Full Moon, and another fourteen days to complete the cycle. The “night” in other words, was a period of utter darkness and freezing temperatures approximately 336 hours long. When “day” came, it was sudden and sharp, like the unexpected sting of a bumblebee. The temperature shot up immediately, zooming from something like -250° Fahrenheit to a temperature near the boiling point of water! There was no such thing as dawn or twilight on the Moon. There was “night” and “day” and the line between them was a clean, swift one.

Ted almost smiled as he realized the only changeable thing on the Moon was the temperature.

Forbes suddenly stopped and faced the other men. “I think we ought to claim the old girl,” he said.

“Go on,” Dr. Phelps prompted.

“I’ve never claimed a moon before,” Forbes said. “What does one say?”

“Just say it,” Dr. Phelps put in.

Forbes seemed to concentrate for a moment while the satellite’s silence closed in around them. When he began speaking, his voice was strangely solemn.

“In the name of the United States of America on the planet Earth, we do hereby claim the Moon and everything on the Moon with God as our witness in this year of our Lord one thousand, nine hundred and eighty-three.”

They stood in silence for several moments, and then Forbes turned and began leading the way back to the ship. He suddenly stopped dead in his tracks and said, “There’s something George would want to try if he were out here with us.”

Without further preamble, he leaped into the air, rising high above the heads of the other men and coming down in a cloud of pumice some twenty feet away.

“Be careful,” Dr. Phelps warned. “This gravity can be tricky.”

“And the rocks are sharp,” Dr. Gehardt added.

“I’m all right,” Forbes assured them.

Ted thought back to the Academy classes again, remembering the many times Colonel York had gone over the gravity of Earth’s satellite.

He would stand in the front of the room, his beady eyes blinking.

“I can see by your blank expression,” he would say to the assembled class, “that you have no idea what this means. I will explain further, but only because I am a patient man. Gravity on the Moon’s surface is one-sixth that of Earth’s.” He would pause then and tap his riding crop as he studied his class. “Still no impression, eh?” Shouting, then: “That means that a man weighing 175 pounds on Earth would weigh 29 1/6 pounds on the Moon. That means that he could lift his center of gravity six times as high. That means he’d be able to jump long distances, lift heavy weights six times as easily. Does that penetrate, gentlemen?” A sigh, and a long pause. “Heaven protect us if any of you are the first men to land on the Moon!”

What would Colonel York say if he knew that Ted Baker was one of the first men on the Moon? Ted wondered about this, and he remembered what the colonel had said in one of his rare introspective moments.

“If we ever reach the Moon, gentlemen, during my lifetime, I shall kneel down and kiss Mother Earth — and then I’ll drink a glass of port and smoke a fifty-cent cigar in tribute to the ingenious scientists with whom we are blessed.”

Was the colonel enjoying his cigar now? Or was he wondering about the men who’d brought the ship to the Moon? Ted smiled, fondly recalling the irascible, lovable old man.

Forbes was standing again, brushing the pumice from his knees, as if he were flicking a speck of dirt from a tuxedo. Ted longed to test the gravity, too, trying to visualize himself floating through the air. It’s a bird, he thought wryly. No, it’s a plane! No, it’s Ted Baker! Faster than a flashing meteor, able to leap tall rocket ships: Ted Baker, who is in reality...

He cut his commercial short when he heard Forbes’s voice sound in his helmet receiver. “Snap it up, Baker. We haven’t got all day.”

No, Forbes wouldn’t like it at all if he were to try a leap. Not at all. Ted shrugged his shoulders within the suit and shuffled after the other men. They climbed up the side of the ship, and Ted found himself peering over his shoulder, looking down at the cold, lifeless waste of the Moon.

They climbed into the air lock, sealing the door behind them. Forbes set the pressurizing machinery in action, and they waited while the pressure in the lock equalized itself to that inside the rest of the ship. The light finally began blinking over the inner door of the lock.

Forbes opened the door and stepped into the compartment below the control deck. Quickly the men took off their helmets.

“My face plate is all frosted over,” Forbes said.

“I am not usually a man of extreme statements,” Dr. Gehardt said, wagging his bald head. “But I should say it is colder out there than we have ever known it to be cold — and I have known it to be exceedingly cold at times.”

Forbes nodded. “No wonder. Figure it this way. The highest and lowest temperatures ever recorded on Earth are 136° and -94° Fahrenheit. We can expect it to go higher than the temperature of boiling water here — 212 degrees — and as low as 250° below zero. That’s hot and cold for you!”

“I’m anxious to see how George is getting along,” Dr. Phelps said. He had removed his suit and was starting toward the ladder that led to the control deck.

Forbes remembered Merola suddenly, and the smile dropped from his face. He shot a quick glance at Ted and then turned away to follow Dr. Phelps up the ladder.

Ted and Dr. Gehardt were left alone in the compartment, and Ted sensed that the geologist was uncomfortable in his presence. The doctor struggled with the back of his suit, trying to unfasten his oxygen tank. He wrestled with it for several moments and then turned to Ted.

He hesitated, unsure whether or not he should speak. “I... would you be so kind...”

“Sure,” Ted said. He walked behind the doctor and unclipped the tank, gingerly unscrewing the air hose. “There.”

The doctor nodded politely. “Thank you.” He took off his suit then, carefully folding it and putting it in one of the lockers. He started for the ladder, and stopped, turning to face Ted. “Baker,” he said, “I’m not sure you are as black as you’re being...”

“Dr. Gehardt,” Forbes called down from above, his voice excited. “Come on up here! George is with us again. He’s come around!”