Arthur Clarke - A Fall of Moondust

How true that was, he learned while he was still waiting for the foam to set. “The fire's through into the cabin!” yelled a voice from overhead.

Lawrence looked at his watch. For a moment it seemed as if the second hand was motionless, but that was an illusion he had experienced all his life. The watch had not stopped; it was merely that time, as usual, was not going at the speed he wished. Until this moment it had been passing too swiftly; now, of course, it was crawling on leaden feet.

The foam should be rock-hard in another thirty seconds. Far better to leave it a little longer than to risk shooting too soon, while it was still plastic.

He started to climb the rope ladder, without haste, trailing the thin detonating wires behind him. His timing was perfect. When he had emerged from the shaft, uncrimped the short circuit he had put for the sake of safety at the end of the wires, and connected them to the exploder, there were just ten seconds to go.

“Tell them we're starting to count down from ten”, he said.

As Pat raced downhill to help the Commodore — though just what he could do now, he had very little idea — he heard Sue calling in an unhurried voice: “Miss Morley, Mrs. Schuster, Mrs. Williams…” How ironic it was that Miss Morley would once again be the first, this time by virtue of alphabetical accident. She could hardly grumble about the treatment she was getting now.

And then a second and much grimmer thought flashed through Pat's mind. Suppose Mrs. Schuster got stuck in the tunnel and blocked the exit. Well, they could hardly leave her until last. No, she'd go up all right; she had been a deciding factor in the tube's design, and since then she had lost several kilos.

At first glance, the outer door of the toilet still seemed to be holding. Indeed, the only sign that anything had happened was a slight wisp of smoke curling past the hinges. For a moment Pat felt a surge of relief; why, it might take the fire half an hour to burn through the double thickness of Fiberglas, and long before that…

Something was tickling his bare feet. He had moved automatically aside before his conscious mind said, “What's that?”

He looked down. Though his eyes were now accustomed to the dim emergency lighting, it was some time before he realized that a ghostly gray tide was pouring beneath that barricaded door — and that the panels were already bulging inward under the pressure of tons of dust. It could be only a matter of minutes before they collapsed; even if they held, it might make little difference. That silent, sinister tide had risen above his ankles even while he was standing here.

Pat did not attempt to move, or to speak to the Commodore, who was standing equally motionless a few centimeters away. For the first time in his life — and now, it might well be, for the last — he felt an emotion of sheer, overwhelming hate. In that moment, as its million dry and delicate feelers brushed against his bare legs, it seemed to Pat that the Sea of Thirst was a conscious, malignant entity that had been playing with them like a cat with a mouse. Every time, he told himself, we thought we were getting the situation under control, it was preparing a new surprise. We were always one move behind, and now it is tired of its little game; we no longer amuse it. Perhaps Radley was right, after all.

The loud-speaker dangling from the air pipe roused him from his fatalistic reverie.

“We're ready!” it shouted. “Crowd at the end of the bus and cover your faces. I'll count down from ten.

“TEN.”

We're already at the end of the bus, thought Pat. We don't need all that time. We may not even have it.

“NINE.”

I'll bet it doesn't work, anyway. The Sea won't let it, if It thinks we have a chance of getting out.

“EIGHT.”

A pity, though, after all this effort. A lot of people have half killed themselves trying to help us. They deserved better luck.

“SEVEN.”

That's supposed to be a lucky number, isn't it? Perhaps we may make it, after all. Some of us.

“SIX.”

Let's pretend. It won't do much harm now. Suppose it takes — oh, fifteen seconds to get through…

“FIVE.”

And, of course, to let down the ladder again; they probably rolled that up for safety…

“FOUR.”

And assuming that someone goes out every three seconds-no, let's make it five to be on the safe side…

“THREE.”

That will be twenty-two times five, which is one thousand and — no, that's ridiculous; I've forgotten how to do simple arithmetic…

“TWO.”

Say one hundred and something seconds, which must be the best part of two minutes, and that's still plenty of time for those lox tanks to blow us all to kingdom come…

“ONE.”

ONE! And I haven't even covered my face; maybe I should lie down even if I have to swallow this filthy stinking dust…

There was a sudden, sharp crack and a brief puff of air; that was all. It was disappointingly anticlimactic, but the explosives experts had known their job, as is highly desirable that explosives experts should. The energy of the charge had been precisely calculated and focused; there was barely enough left over to ripple the dust that now covered almost half the floor space of the cabin.

Time seemed to be frozen; for an age, nothing happened. Then there was a slow and beautiful miracle, breath-taking because it was so unexpected, yet so obvious if one had stopped to think about it.

A ring of brilliant white light appeared among the crimson shadows of the ceiling. It grew steadily thicker and brighter — then, quite suddenly, expanded into a complete and perfect circle as the section of the roof fell away. The light pouring down was only that of a single glow tube twenty meters above, but to eyes that had seen nothing but dim redness for hours, it was more glorious than any sunrise.

The ladder came through almost as soon as the circle of roofing hit the floor. Miss Morley, poised like a sprinter, was gone in a flash. When Mrs. Schuster followed — a little more slowly, but still at a speed of which no one could complain — it was like an eclipse. Only a few stray beams of light now filtered down that radiant road to safety. It was dark again, as if, after that brief glimpse of dawn, the night had returned with redoubled gloom.

Now the men were starting to go — Baldur first, probably blessing his position in the alphabet. There were only a dozen left in the cabin when the barricaded door finally ripped from its hinges, and the pent-up avalanche burst forth.

The first wave of dust caught Pat while he was halfway up the slope of the cabin. Light and impalpable though it was, it slowed his movements until it seemed that he was struggling to wade through glue. It was fortunate that the moist and heavy air had robbed it of some of its power, for otherwise it would have filled the cabin with choking clouds. Pat sneezed and coughed and was partly blinded, but he could still breathe.

In the foggy gloom he could hear Sue counting — “Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen —” as she marshaled the passengers to safety. He had intended her to go with the other women, but she was still down here, shepherding her charges. Even as he struggled against the cloying quicksand that had now risen almost to his waist, he felt for Sue a love so great that it seemed to burst his heart. Now he had no possible doubt. Real love was a perfect balance of desire and tenderness. The first had been there for a long time, and now the second had come in full measure.

“Twenty — that's you, Commodore — quickly!”

“Like hell it is, Sue”, said the Commodore. “Up you go.”

Pat could not see what happened — he was still partly blinded by the dust and the darkness — but he guessed that Hansteen must have literally thrown Sue through the roof. Neither his age nor his years in space had yet robbed him of his Earthborn strength.