Arthur Clarke - A Fall of Moondust

“For an amateur, Wilfred George Radley, I'd like to congratulate you. It's been a fine chase — from Christchurch to Astrograd to Clavius to Tycho to Ptolemy to Plato to Port Roris — and to here, which I guess is the end of the trail, in more ways than one.”

Radley did not seem in the least perturbed. He merely inclined his head in an almost regal gesture of acknowledgment, as if he recognized Harding's existence, but did not wish to pursue his acquaintance.

“As you may have guessed”, continued Harding, “I'm a detective. Most of the time I specialize in fraud. Quite interesting work, though I seldom have a chance of talking about it. I'm quite grateful for this opportunity.

“I've no interest — well, no professional interest — in Mister Radley's peculiar beliefs. Whether they're true or not doesn't affect the fact that he's a very smart accountant, earning a good salary back in N. Z. Though not one good enough to pay for a month on the Moon.

“But that was no problem — because, you see, Mister Radley was senior accountant at the Christchurch branch of Universal Travel Cards, Incorporated. The system is supposed to be foolproof and double checked, but somehow he managed to issue himself a card — Q Category — good for unlimited travel anywhere in the solar system, for hotel and restaurant billings, for cashing checks up to five hundred stoilars on demand. There aren't many Q cards around, and they're handled as if they're made of plutonium.

“Of course, people have tried to get away with this sort of thing before; clients are always losing their cards, and enterprising characters have a fine time with them for a few days before they're caught. But only a few days. The UTC central billing system is very efficient — it has to be. There are several safeguards against unauthorized use, and until now, the longest run anyone's had was a week.”

“Nine days”, Radley unexpectedly interjected.

“Sorry — you should know. Nine days, then. But Radley had been on the move for almost three weeks before we spotted him. He'd taken his annual leave, and told the office he'd be vacationing quietly on the North Island. Instead, he went to Astrograd and then on to the Moon, making history in the process. For he's the first man — and we hope the last one — to leave Earth entirely on credit.

“We still want to know exactly how he did it. How did he bypass the automatic checking circuits? Did lie have an accomplice in the computer programing section? And similar questions of absorbing interest to UTC, Inc. I hope, Radley, you'll let down your hair with me, just to satisfy my curiosity. I think it's the least you can do in the circumstances.

“Still, we know why you did it — why you threw up a good job to go on a spree that was bound to land you in jail. We guessed the reason, of course, as soon as we found you were on the Moon. UTC knew all about your hobby, but it didn't affect your efficiency. They took a gamble, and it's been an expensive one.”

“I'm very sorry”, Radley replied, not without dignity. “The firm's always treated me well, and it did seem a shame. But it was in a good cause, and if I could have found my evidence —”

But at that point everyone, except Detective Inspector Harding, lost interest in Radley and his saucers. The sound that they had all been anxiously waiting for had come at last.

Lawrence 's probe was scratching against the roof.

I seem to have been here for half a lifetime, thought Maurice Spenser, yet the sun is still low in the west, where it rises on this weird world, and it's still three days to noon. How much longer am I going to be stuck on this mountaintop, listening to Captain Anson's tall stories of the spaceways, and watching that distant raft, with its twin igloos?

It was a question that no one could answer. When the caisson had started to descend, it had looked as if another twenty-four hours would see the job finished. But now they were back where they had started — and, to make matters worse, all the visual excitement of the story was over. Everything that would happen from now on would be hidden deep in the Sea, or would take place behind the walls of an igloo. Lawrence still stubbornly refused to allow a camera out on the raft, and Spenser could hardly blame him. The Chief Engineer had been unlucky once, when his commentary had blown up in his face, and was not going to risk it happening again.

Yet there was no question of Auriga abandoning the site which she had reached at such expense. If all went well, there was one dramatic scene still to come. And if all went badly, there would be a tragic one. Sooner or later, those dust-skis would be heading back to Port Roris — with or without the men and women they had come to save. Spenser was not going to miss the departure of that caravan, whether it took place under the rising or the setting sun, or beneath the fainter light of the unmoving Earth.

As soon as he had relocated Selene, Lawrence had started drilling again. On the monitor screen, Spenser could see the thin shaft of the oxygen-supply tube making its second descent into the dust. Why was Lawrence bothering to do this, he wondered, if he was not even sure whether anyone was still alive aboard Selene? And how was he going to check this, now that the radio had failed?

That was a question that millions of people were asking themselves as they watched the pipe sink down into the dust, and perhaps many of them thought of the right answer. Yet, oddly enough, it never occurred to anyone aboard Selene — not even to the Commodore.

As soon as they heard that heavy thump against the roof, they knew at once that this was no sounding rod, delicately probing the Sea. When, a minute later, there came the unmistakable whirr of a drill chewing its way through Fiberglas, they felt like condemned men who had been granted a last-minute reprieve.

This time, the drill missed the cable conduit — not that it mattered now. The passengers watched, almost hypnotized, as the grinding sound grew louder and the first flakes planed down from the ceiling. When the head of the drill appeared and descended twenty centimeters into the cabin, there was a brief but heartfelt burst of cheering.

Now what? said Pat to himself. We can't talk to them; how will I know when to unscrew the drill? I'm not going to make that mistake a second time.

Startlingly loud in this tense, expectant silence, the metal tube resonated with the DIT DIT DIT DAH which, surely, not one of Selene's company would forget, however long he lived. Pat replied at once, banging out an answering V with a pair of pliers. Now they know we're alive, he thought. He had never really believed that Lawrence would assume that they were dead and abandon them, yet at the same time there was always that haunting doubt.

The tube signaled again, this time much more slowly. It was a nuisance having to learn Morse; in this age, it seemed such an anachronism, and many were the bitter protests among pilots and space engineers at the waste of effort. In your whole lifetime, you might need it only once.

But that was the point. You would really need it then.

DIT DIT DAH, rapped the tube. DAH DIT.. DIT DIT DIT.. DAH DIT DAH DIT.. DIT DAH DIT.. DIT.. DIT DAH DAH.

Then, so that there would be no mistake, it started to repeat the word, but both Pat and the Commodore, rusty though they were, had got the message.

“They're telling us to unscrew the drill”, said Pat. “Well, here we go.”

The brief rush of air gave everyone a moment of unnecessary panic as the pressure equalized. Then the pipe was open to the upper world, and twenty-two anxious men and women waited for the first breath of oxygen to come gushing down it.

Instead, the tube spoke. Out of the open orifice came a voice, hollow and sepulchral, but perfectly clear. It was so loud, and so utterly unexpected, that a gasp of surprise came from the company. Probably not more than half a dozen of these men and women had ever heard a speaking tube; they had grown up in the belief that only through electronics could the voice be sent across space. This antique revival was as much a novelty to them as a telephone would have been to an ancient Greek.