Джек Макдевитт - A Voice in the Night

“It’s a little scary,” she admitted. “But, if I had to go through a quake, I’m glad you were along.”

“Thanks,” he said. He used his remote to silence the klaxon.

“I wanted to come to the Moon,” she told him, “because this is where you get your ticket punched. You run the Schramm, you get to meet everybody. They all have to deal with NASA/Smithsonian’s director. They’ll want to keep me happy. I expect to put in my two years, and go back to a choice assignment.” He could sense that she was smiling. “Like you.”

“What makes you think it works like that?”

“Hard to see why it wouldn’t.”

“You’re going to find that people are more apt to remember the things you’ve denied them. I wouldn’t want to discourage you, but I fully expect to spend the rest of my career staying ahead of a lynch party.”

The jolts lessened and became infrequent. And stopped.

The darkness was not quite stygian: he could see his hand in the glow of the status lamp.

“Edgar, do we have a flashlight?”

“No,” he said. “Not up here. We have a few in the annex.”

She laughed.

“What?”

“I think we’ve had a demonstration of why we shouldn’t be out here.”

Maybe this is why we should be out here.

He heard her moving around. “I think the coffee maker’s still working. And the telescope. We’ve got the important stuff.”

“Good.” He sighed. It was a poor way to end his long association with the observatory. “No point putting it off,” he said. “Let’s start down.”

“Wait a minute, Edgar. I haven’t seen the quasar yet.”

“You still want to bother with that?”

“After all this? Of course I do.”

When the red lamp went green, Amy was already in the observer’s chair. Ward heard the clean metallic sound of the eyepiece moving, and then the sharp intake of her breath. “It’s beautiful.”

When she had finished, he took his turn.

The quasars, seen through the Schramm, were always spectacular. On this night, as Ward finished up what he considered the meaningful portion of his career, none had ever been more so.

4C-1651 was a brilliant blood-red star.

More than a star: a fire in the night. A blaze. A conflagration, frozen in time and space. It was a dazzling beacon on the far edge of creation, removed from him by unthinkable immensities. The photons entering the telescope’s system of lenses and mirrors had begun their journey billions of years before the sun was born. Before the lights in the Milky Way had come on.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. “You’re right,” said Amy. “This is the place to see the show.”

The descent was not difficult. Halfway down, Amy called his attention to a cool breeze. “This place is drafty,” she said. Ward had never used the ladder before, and he ascribed it to their exposed position. But when they got to the bottom, he detected no change.

They started through the dark, across the floor, toward the passageway.

“Edgar, you don’t think we’ve sprung a leak, do you?”

“No.” Punch a hole in the air seal, and you got a catastrophic event. Right?

Ward remembered the area as being generally open, but they encountered consoles and shelf units and work tables everywhere. After he got poked in the eye by something that fell over on top of him, he walked with a hand extended in front of his face.

They found a wall, and a few minutes later they arrived at the airlock. He located the control and tried the GO button. “Power’s off here, too,” he said. “We’ll have to crank it.”

Her voice came out of the dark. “Can I help?”

“Just stand clear.” The emergency panel provided access to a wheel. He turned it and counterweights moved in the walls. He heard the metal door lift.

Amy moved past him to check progress. “Keep going,” she said. “The passageway’s dark, too.”

Starlight spilled through. When the door was about halfway up, they slipped underneath.

“Everything down except the telescope and the coffee maker,” said Amy. “How do you figure it?”

“Damned if I know. That’s the kind of stuff I leave to the technicians.”

“I’m anxious to be out of here,” she said.

“I think maybe we are losing air. If so, the dome’s going to get cold. And that means the equipment will take a beating.” He stared out across the lunar terrain. “Damn. First thing we do when we get to the flyer is let Moonbase know.” He held up his hands, trying to gauge which way the air was moving.

Back the way they’d come.

It was probably being drawn into the dome. There were ducts on both sides of the lock. He pulled over a chair and stood on it to reach one. “It’s going in here.”

“Maybe it’s just circulating.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then what?”

He tried the other one. And shook his head. “Same here. Maybe there’s a hairline break somewhere in the system. We’ve got a couple dozen of these things scattered around. I hope they’re not all sucking air.”

They walked quickly through the passageway, grateful that they were able to see again. At the annex lock, Ward pressed the control, not really expecting it to work. It didn’t.

Amy already had the emergency panel open. She pulled on the wheel, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Let me,” he said. He twisted it. Put his weight to it.

Ward shifted his position. It was made of rippled plastic with handgrips. But he strained without result. “Uh-uh,” he said, at last.

She looked at the closed door. Looked at him. Fear dawned in her eyes. “Edgar—”

He tried again. And gave up.

“There might be a vacuum behind it,” she said.

Panic hovered out on the edge of awareness. They could see the flyer, resplendent in starlight, on the plain.

“How about the commlink?” she said. “Maybe we can get help.”

“Everything’s dead.”

“We know the coffee maker’s getting power. How about we try tying into that?”

“I’m not a technician, Amy. Would you know how to do it?” She shook her head. “What else do we have?”

He tried the wheel again, shouted at it, gave a final fruitless yank.

“Edgar, is there another way out?”

“There’s an airlock in the rear of the dome. But we don’t have suits.”

“There are no suits in the dome?” Her amazement at the stupidity of the arrangement was apparent.

“We’ve never had a reason to keep any out here.” Ward tried to think. “We need to get a commlink working. Which means we’ll have to string cable down from the cage.”

“That sounds like a lot of cable. Where do you keep it?”

His heart sank. “In the annex.”

“Behind the door.”

“I’m afraid so.” My God.

“This place is certainly well laid out for an emergency.” Her voice was getting an edge. “Look,” she said. “Moonbase monitors seismic events, right? They must know we’ve had a quake.”

“I hope so. They might suspect we’re in trouble. If they do, they’re trying to raise us right now. When we don’t respond, they’ll come looking.”

“But—?”

“It’s late at Moonbase. Almost two in the morning. I doubt anyone will even notice there’s activity until they come in tomorrow and read the printouts.”

“Wonderful.”

“I’m sorry. I guess we’ve become complacent.”

“I guess so.” Overhead, a comsat was moving. Twinkle, twinkle.

“Maybe they’ll get worried,” he said, “when the Schramm doesn’t come back up on the circuit.”

“They might. But that won’t be until tomorrow morning either. Remember we told them we could be down for six hours.”