Arthur Clarke - A Fall of Moondust

“We've kept it quiet. We thought it was a good idea to have him on the Tourist Commission, now that he's retired. He wanted to have a look around, incognito, before he made up his mind.”

There was a shocked silence as the two men considered the irony of the situation. Here was one of the greatest heroes of space — lost as an ordinary tourist in some stupid accident in Earth's backyard, the Moon.

“That may be very bad luck for the Commodore”, said the traffic controller at last. “But it's good luck for the passengers — if they're still alive.”

“They'll need all the luck they can get, now the Observatory can't help us”, said the Commissioner.

He was right on the first point, but wrong on the second.

Dr. Tom Lawson still had a few tricks up his sleeve.

And so did The Reverend Vincent Ferraro, S. J., a scientist of a very different kind. It was a pity that he and Tom Lawson were never to meet; the resulting fireworks would have been quite interesting. Father Ferraro believed in God and Man; Dr. Lawson believed in neither.

The priest had started his scientific career as a geophysicist, then switched worlds and became a selenophysicist — though that was a name he used only in his more pedantic moments. No man alive had a greater knowledge of the Moon's interior, gleaned from batteries of instruments strategically placed over the entire surface of the satellite.

Those instruments had just produced some rather interesting results. At 19 hours 35 minutes 47 seconds GMT, there had been a major quake in the general area of Rainbow Bay. That was a little surprising, for the area was an unusually stable one, even for the tranquil Moon. Father Ferraro set his computers to work pinpointing the focus of the disturbance, and also instructed them to search for any other anomalous instrument readings. He left them at this task while he went to lunch, and it was here that his colleagues told him about the missing Selene.

No electronic computer can match the human brain at associating apparently irrelevant facts. Father Ferraro only had time for one spoonful of soup before he had put two and two together and had arrived at a perfectly reasonable but disastrously misleading answer.

“And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the position”, concluded Commodore Hansteen. “We're in no immediate danger, and I haven't the slightest doubt that we'll be located quite soon. Until then, we have to make the best of it.”

He paused, and swiftly scanned the upturned, anxious faces. Already he had noted the possible trouble spots — that little man with the nervous tic, the acidulous, prune-faced lady who kept twisting her handkerchief in knots. Maybe they'd neutralize each other, if he could get them to sit together.

“Captain Harris and I — he's the boss; I'm only acting as his adviser — have worked out a plan of action. Food will be simple and rationed, but will be adequate, especially since you won't be engaged in any physical activity. We would like to ask some of the ladies to help Miss Wilkins; she'll have a lot of extra work, and could do with some assistance. Our biggest problem, frankly, is going to be boredom. By the way, did anyone bring any books?”

There was much scrabbling in handbags and baskets. The total haul consisted of assorted lunar guides, including six copies of the official handbook; a current best seller, The Orange and the Apple , whose unlikely theme was a romance between Nell Gwyn and Sir Isaac Newton; a Harvard Press edition of Shane, with scholarly annotations by a professor of English; an introduction to the logical positivism of Auguste Comte; and a week-old copy of the New York Times, Earth edition. It was not much of a library, but with careful rationing it would help to pass the hours that lay ahead.

“I think we'll form an Entertainment Committee to decide how we'll use this material, though I don't know how it will deal with Monsieur Comte. Meanwhile, now that you know what our situation is, are there any questions, any points you'd like Captain Harris or myself to explain in more detail?”

“There's one thing I'd like to ask, sir”, said the English voice that had made the complimentary remarks about the tea. “Is there the slightest chance that we'll float up? I mean, if this stuff is like water, won't we bob up sooner or later, like a cork?”

That floored the Commodore completely. He looked at Pat and said wryly: “That's one for you, Mr. Harris. Any comment?”

Pat shook his head.

“I'm afraid it won't work. True, the air inside the hull must make us very buoyant, but the resistance of this dust is enormous. We may float up eventually — in a few thousand years.”

The Englishman, it seemed, was not easily discouraged.

“I noticed that there was a space suit in the air lock. Could anyone get out and swim up? Then the search party will know where we are.”

Pat stirred uneasily. He was the only one qualified to wear that suit, which was purely for emergency use.

“I'm almost sure it's impossible”, he answered. “I doubt if a man could move against the resistance — and of course he'd be absolutely blind. How would he know which way was up? And how would you close the outer door after him? Once the dust had flooded in, there would be no way of clearing it. You certainly couldn't pump it out again.”

He could have said more, but decided to leave it at that. They might yet be reduced to such desperate expedients, if there was no sign of rescue by the end of the week. But that was a nightmare that must be kept firmly at the back of his mind, for to dwell too long upon it could only sap his courage.

“If there are no more questions”, said Hansteen, “I suggest we introduce ourselves. Whether we like it or not, we have to get used to each other's company, so let's find out who we are. I'll go round the room, and perhaps each of you in turn will give your name, occupation, and home town. You first, sir.”

“Robert Bryan, civil engineer, retired, Kingston, Jamaica.”

“Irving Schuster, attorney at law, Chicago — and my wife, Myra.”

“Nihal Jayawardene, Professor of Zoology, University of Ceylon, Peradeniya.”

As the roll call continued, Pat once again found himself grateful for the one piece of luck in this desperate situation. By character, training, and experience, Commodore Hansteen was a born leader of men: already he was beginning to weld this random collection of individuals into a unit, to build up that indefinable esprit de corps that transforms a mob into a team. These things he had learned while his little fleet — the first ever to venture beyond the orbit of Neptune, almost three billion miles from the sun — had hung poised week upon week in the emptiness between the planets. Pat, who was thirty years younger and had never been away from the Earth-Moon system, felt no resentment at the change of command that had tacitly taken place. It was nice of the Commodore to say that he was still the boss, but he knew better.

“Duncan McKenzie, physicist, Mount Stromlo Observatory, Canberra.”

“Pierre Blanchard, cost accountant, Clavius City, Earthside.”

“Phyllis Morley, journalist, London.”

“Karl Johanson, nucleonics engineer, Tsiolkovski Base, Farside.”

That was the lot; quite a collection of talent, though not an unusual one, for the people who came to the Moon always had something out of the ordinary — even if it was only money. But all the skill and experience now locked up in Selene could not, so it seemed to Pat, do anything to help them in their present situation.

That was not quite true, as Commodore Hansteen was now about to prove. He knew, as well as any man alive, that they would be fighting boredom as well as fear. They had been thrown upon their own resources; in an age of universal entertainment and communications, they had suddenly been cut off from the rest of the human race. Radio, TV, telefax newssheets, movies, telephone — all these things now meant no more to them than to the people of the Stone Age. They were like some ancient tribe gathered round the campfire, in a wilderness that held no other men. Even on the Pluto run, thought Commodore Hansteen, they had never been as lonely as this. They had had a fine library and had been well stocked with every possible form of canned entertainment, and they could talk by tight beam to the inner planets whenever they wished. But on Selene, there was not even a pack of cards.