Arthur Clarke - A Fall of Moondust

Especially to Maurice Spenser, who began to feel a great longing for the soft green hills of Earth as those desolate peaks clawed up at him. Why had he talked himself into this? Surely there were cheaper ways of committing suicide.

The worst part was the free fall between the successive braking periods. Suppose the rockets failed to fire on command, and the ship continued to plunge Moonward, slowly but inexorably accelerating until it crashed? It was no use pretending that this was a stupid or childish fear, because it had happened more than once.

It was not, however, going to happen to Auriga. The unbearable fury of the braking jets was already splashing over the rocks, blasting skyward the dust and cosmic debris that had not been disturbed in thrice a billion years. For a moment the ship hovered in delicate balance only centimeters off the ground; then, almost reluctantly, the spears of flame that supported her retracted into their scabbards. The widely spaced legs of the undercarriage made contact, their pads tilted according to the contours of the ground, and the whole ship rocked slightly for a second as the shock absorbers neutralized the residual energy of impact.

For the second time inside twenty-four hours, Maurice Spenser had landed on the Moon. That was a claim that very few men could make.

“Well”, said Captain Anson, as he got up from the control board, “I hope you're satisfied with the view. It's cost you plenty — and there's still that little matter of overtime. According to the Space-Workers' Union —”

“Have you no soul, Captain? Why bother me with such trivia at a time like this? But if I may say so without being charged any extra, that was a very fine landing.”

“Oh, it's all part of the day's work”, replied the skipper, though he could not conceal slight signs of pleasure. “By the way, would you mind initialing the log here, against the time of landing.”

“What's that for?” asked Spenser suspiciously.

“Proof of delivery. The log's our prime legal document.”

“It seems a little old-fashioned, having a written one”, said Spenser. “I thought everything was done by nucleonics these days.”

“Traditions of the service”, replied Anson. “Of course, the ship's flight recorders are running all the time we're under power, and the trip can always be reconstructed from them. But only the skipper's log gives the little details that make one voyage different from another — like 'Twins born to one of the steerage passengers this morning' or 'At six bells, sighted the White Whale off the starboard bow.'”

“I take it back, Captain”, said Spenser. “You do have a soul, after all.” He added his signature to the log, then moved over to the observation window to examine the view.

The control cabin, a hundred and fifty meters above the ground, had the only direct-vision windows in the ship, and the view through them was superb. Behind them, to the north, were the upper ramparts of the Mountains of Inaccessibility, ranging across half the sky. That name was no longer appropriate, thought Spenser; he had reached them, and while the ship was here it might even be possible to do some useful scientific research, such as collecting rock samples. Quite apart from the news value of being in such an outlandish place, he was genuinely interested in what might be discovered here. No man could ever become so blase that the promise of the unknown and the unexplored completely failed to move him.

In the other direction, he could look across at least forty kilometers of the Sea of Thirst, which spanned more than half his field of view in a great arc of immaculate flatness. But what he was concerned with was less than five kilometers away, and two below.

Clearly visible through a low-powered pair of binoculars was the metal rod that Lawrence had left as a marker, and through which Selene was now linked with the world. The sight was not impressive — just a solitary spike jutting from an endless plain — yet it had a stark simplicity that appealed to Spenser. It would make a good opening; it symbolized the loneliness of man in this huge and hostile Universe that he was attempting to conquer. In a few hours, this plain would be far from lonely, but until then that rod would serve to set the scene, while the commentators discussed the rescue plans and filled in the time with appropriate interviews. That was not his problem; the unit at Clavius and the studios back on Earth could handle it in their stride. He had just one job now — to sit here in his eagle's nest and to see that the pictures kept coming in. With the big zoom lens, thanks to the perfect clarity of this airless world, he could almost get close-ups even from here, when the action started.

He glanced into the southwest, where the sun was lifting itself so sluggishly up the sky. Almost two weeks of daylight, as Earth counted time, still lay ahead. No need, then, to worry about the lighting. The stage was set.

Chief Administrator Olsen seldom made public gestures. He preferred to run the Moon quietly and efficiently behind the scenes, leaving amiable extroverts like the Tourist Commissioner to face the newsmen. His rare appearances were, therefore, all the more impressive — as he intended them to be.

Though millions were watching him, the twenty-two men and women he was really addressing could not see him at all, for it had not been thought necessary to fit Selene with vision circuits. But his voice was sufficiently reassuring; it told them everything that they wanted to know.

“Hello, Selene”, he began. “I want to tell you that all the resources of the Moon are now being mobilized for your aid. The engineering and technical staffs of my administration are working round the clock to help you.

“Mister Lawrence, Chief Engineer, Earthside, is in charge, and I have complete confidence in him. He's now at Port Roris, where the special equipment needed for the operation is being assembled. It's been decided — and I'm sure you'll agree with this — that the most urgent task is to make certain that your oxygen supply can be maintained. For this reason, we plan to sink pipes to you; that can be done fairly quickly, and then we can pump down oxygen — as well as food and water, if necessary. So as soon as the pipes are installed, you'll have nothing more to worry about. It may still take a little time to reach you and get you out, but you'll be quite safe. You only have to sit and wait for us.

“Now I'll get off the air, and let you have this channel back so that you can talk to your friends. I'm sorry about the inconvenience and strain you've undergone, but that's all over now. We'll have you out in a day or two. Good luck!”

A burst of cheerful conversation broke out aboard Selene as soon as Chief Administrator Olsen's broadcast finished. It had had precisely the effect he had intended; the passengers were already thinking of this whole episode as an adventure which would give them something to talk about for the rest of their lives. Only Pat Harris seemed a little unhappy.

“I wish”, he told Commodore Hansteen, “the C. A. hadn't been quite so confident. On the Moon, remarks like that always seem to be tempting fate.”

“I know exactly how you feel”, the Commodore answered. “But you can hardly blame him — he's thinking of our morale.”

“Which is fine, I'd say, especially now that we can talk to our friends and relatives.”

“That reminds me; there's one passenger who hasn't received or sent any messages. What's more, he doesn't show the slightest interest in doing so.”

“Who's that?”

Hansteen dropped his voice still further. “The New Zealander, Radley. He just sits quietly in the corner over there. I'm not sure why, but he worries me.”