Stephen Baxter - Anti-Ice

Pocket said, “That wouldn’t be Sir Josiah’s way, sir. He’s not one to admit weakness.”

Holden snorted. “Well, in a situation like this that’s a damned irresponsible attitude.”

“Unless,” I breathed, “he’s been disabled completely. Perhaps he is lying up there unconscious—or even dead! In which case the Phaeton is without a pilot—”

Only Bourne, slumped within himself, appeared unmoved by this lurid speculation.

“Now, Ned, we shouldn’t get carried away,” Holden said, his voice tight with tension.

“I think one of us should go up there,” I said.

Pocket said, “I wouldn’t advise it, sir. Sir Josiah wouldn’t like—”

“Damn his likes and dislikes. I’m talking about saving all our lives, man!”

“Ned, think on,” Holden said nervously. “What if Traveller ignites the motors while you are between decks? You could be dashed against the bulkhead, hurt or killed. No, I think we should sit and wait.”

I shook my head. If Holden had lost his nerve—well, he had my sympathy, and I did not remark on the fact. Instead I opened up my restraints and pushed my way out of the chair. I said, “Gentlemen, I propose to ascend. If all is well with Traveller, then the worst that will happen is that I will be the target of a few ripe insults. And if something amiss has occurred—well, perhaps I will be able to offer assistance.

“I think you should stay strapped into your seats.” And with those words, and feeling their helpless eyes on my back, I launched myself into the air and pulled through the hatch to the Bridge.

The Moon hung over the Phaeton like the battered underside of the sky. The rotation of the ship had been stilled now, and the Sun lay somewhere to our left-hand side, so that the shadows of the lunar features were long and sharp, like splashes of ink over a glowing white surface. The ragged peaks and crater rims slid from right to left past the Bridge windows, showing that we were already traveling close around the curve of this world, toward its night side.

I stared in fascination. I knew that no man, even armed with the mightiest telescope on Earth, had before seen the sister world in such dazzling detail.

I observed with interest how the larger craters, which looked from this angle more like circular walled encampments, appeared to contain a central peak, while the smaller craters were smooth within; and I saw too how craters overlaid craters, so that it was as if the Moon had been bombarded by a hail of meteors or other objects not once, in some wild remote past of the Solar System, but many times, again and again. And the sharpness of the smaller craters’ rims attested to their newness, implying that this bombardment continued even in the present day.

Now a new feature hove into view, a mountainous ridge very like a crater wall—except that, in this world of circles, this wall was virtually straight, traveling from top to bottom of our window. The area beyond the wall appeared oddly free of craters, although the ground was very broken up. I pushed myself away from the deck and floated up to the nose of the Bridge dome. As I looked across the surface of the Moon and deeper into the dark side, I could make out no limit to this strange craterless region. The delimiting wall was now receding behind the ship, and I was startled to see that the wall was not straight after all: it curved inwards around the shattered region in a mighty sweep, and I realized of a sudden that we were flying over the interior of an immense crater; so immense indeed that the curve of its walls almost dwarfed the curve of the satellite itself!

Now I knew that we must have reached the side of the Moon hidden from Earth, for this monstrous crater must cover most of a hemisphere, overshadowing by far the great walled plains of the Earth- facing side such as Copernicus and Ptolemaeus.

Soon the boundary wall of the giant crater had receded from view behind the curve of the planet, but the far wall was still nowhere to be seen, and I peered up in wonder at hundreds of square miles of desolation—desolation, that is, even by lunar standards.

There was a soft groan behind me. I turned in the air, suddenly mindful of my mission. Poor Traveller lay strapped to his throne-couch with his face buried in his huge hands; his stovepipe hat floated in the air beside him, and wisps of white hair orbited his cranium. A fat notebook was strapped, open, to his right thigh; into this, I knew, he had over the last few days been entering painstaking details of the schedule—the maneuvers, the rocket bursts—which would deliver us safely to the surface.

I did a graceful somersault, kicked against the windows, and settled gently to the deck at Traveller’s side. I took his arm and shook it urgently. “Sir Josiah, what is troubling you?”

He lifted his face from his hands. His expression was a mixture of anger and despair, and his eyes were pinpoints of blue in Moon shadows. “Ned, we are done for. Done for! To have come so far, to have endured so much, only to be betrayed by the folly of that pompous Danish idiot!”

“…To which Dane do you refer?” I asked cautiously.

“Hansen, of course, and his absurd breakfast-egg theory of the lunar shape. Look at it!” He shook a fist at the shattered landscape which loomed over us. “It’s as clear as day that the Moon is a perfect sphere after all, that the mass must be uniformly distributed, that the backside of the wretched world must be as devoid of air as the face!”

I stared up at the lunar desolation. There were sparkles and glints deep in the shadow of the fragments of the shattered land, showing the possibility of granite, perhaps, or quartz. Traveller’s sudden loss of spirit, I decided, stemmed not from despair or fear, but from a feeling of betrayal—by the Moon itself, by the Creator for having the temerity to design a world so unsuited to Traveller’s purposes, and even by this poor chap Hansen, who, of the three, was surely the most blameless!

Traveller lay back in his couch and stared up at the Moon, muttering.

I was bewildered. Even if the lunar landing was a fruitless exercise, I reflected, we had no choice but to continue with it; and only Traveller could bring our journey to a successful conclusion. But it was clear that Traveller had retreated into himself, and was, at this moment, quite incapable of piloting the craft.

I had to do something, or we should all be killed after all.

With some hesitation I reached out and touched his arm. “Sir Josiah, not long ago you accused me of lacking imagination. Now I feel obliged to identify the same fault in yourself. Was it not you who explained that, come success or failure, life or death, we should be in for some terrific fun?”

His face was heavily scored by Moon shadows, and for the first time since I had met him he looked his true age. He said quietly, “I had banked on Hansen’s crackpot theories, Ned. With the banishment of my hopes of finding water, I find little fun in the prospect of a certain death.”

He sounded old, frail, frightened and surprisingly vulnerable; I felt privileged to see behind the bluff mask to the true man. But at this moment I needed the old Traveller, the wild, the supremely confident, the arrogant!

I pointed above my head. “Then, sir, at least you have surely not lost your wonder! Look at that crater floor above us. We have discovered the mightiest feature on the Moon—a fitting monument to your achievements—and, if our story is ever told by future generations, they shall surely name it after the great Josiah Traveller!”

He looked vaguely interested at that, and he raised his beak of a platinum nose to the silver landscape. “Traveller Crater. Perhaps. No doubt some bastardized Latin version will be used.”