City on the Moon

by Murray Leinster

  He led the way into the air dome, and found a part of the hydroponic garden shifted to make room for a surprisingly convincing stage-set representing the Space Laboratory. It had been put together out of partitions from the main dome and bits of technical apparatus from here and there. At first, it looked like a meaningless assembly of propped-up shifted walls; but as he moved, it abruptly turned into a set for use with a television camera.

  Lezd contemplated it with an air of satisfaction. "I have made ready for the Space Laboratory broadcast," he said placidly. "Cecile sleeps—I hope. She is wearing when she is frightened. Now she is frightened."

  "Now," Kenmore told him, "she will be disappointed, too. The Laboratory is blown to atoms. Literally!"

  Lezd blinked at him. Arlene said breathlessly at his elbow, "I'll tell her."

  She vanished. Lezd listened with an increasingly wry expression as Kenmore told him of the destruction of the Space Laboratory—without, however, any mention of the reason for it. There was no point in disseminating causes for despair. If the reason was revealed on Earth, that would be bad enough. It shouldn't be public knowledge on the moon; certainly not yet. He'd pledged the chief and Moreau and Arlene to absolute silence— though Arlene had a clear and accurate picture of what security meant.

  "But," said Lezd mournfully, with a specialist's strict absorption in his own purposes, "but this is such a good set! It is a pity to waste it!"

  The chief said brightly, "Turn it into a radar-spotter post. Haney and I, we belong in one of them. We can give you all kinds of atmosphere!"

  Lezd brightened. "That is a good idea! And Miss Gray was almost in one, actually, when the little ship was destroyed and you two picked her up. If anything would please Cecile, that might be it!"

  Kenmore went back into the main dome, to the communicator.

  He called Earth and reported the blasting of the Space Laboratory. The Very High Authority, who had given such vehement orders to carry a message to it, was called. Joe Kenmore repeated his report, and the Very High Authority seemed about to faint with relief. He went sick and weak, like somebody condemned to death who had received a last-minute reprieve.

  Somebody else had to take over. It happened to be Major Gray, Arlene's father.

  "Arlene's all right?" he asked sharply.

  "Quite all right," said Kenmore. He added, "I understand the missing jeeps were found. Anybody alive in them?"

  He waited three seconds for his voice to reach Earth and the answer to begin.

  "Everybody's alive," said Gray evenly. "Jeeps from the missile bases reached them. Their air was giving out, but nobody was dead. The jeeps were sabotaged."

  Kenmore felt no emotion; he'd expected that. There was consistent evidence that everything which had damaged the City had been done from within—except for the blasting of a cliff to overwhelm Moreau and himself. But it didn't seem to matter particularly, if the whole moon-project was to be abandoned.

  "Well?" he asked tiredly. "What else?"

  Major Gray said reservedly, "Missile-base jeeps are supplying the refugee's jeeps with air, and repairing the sabotage. They'll be returned to the City. The civilians in them aren't wanted at the bases."

  "I can understand that," said Kenmore.

  "They'll be brought back to Earth," said Major Gray, in measured fashion. "Naturally! They're pretty badly shocked."

  "Oh, surely!" said Kenmore bitterly. "That'll be the excuse for abandoning the whole business of space-travel. Men can't stand it! That'll be the story! And if all goes well—if all goes well!—there will be a gradual rationing of atomic power; then coal and oil will be rationed, because it has to last forever. People will putter with energy from the tides and wind, and there'll be no more thought of the stars and the worlds about them waiting for men to come and live on them! And presently . . ."

  Major Gray grimaced. "I advise that you don't think too much in that train. As of the moment, I have orders for you. You will not reveal anything you learned at the Space Laboratory. You will do nothing to increase the discouragement in the City when its people trickle back in their jeeps. You will take extra precautions against further sabotage—if possible. And meanwhile, a Navy ship leaves for the missile base. Wait for orders from someone it will bring."

  His image faded. Kenmore turned away.

  In seconds, he was faced by a furious Cecile Ducros. "What have you done? Arlene has just told me! And what shall I do? Meellions of people weel be waiting for my broadcast from the Space Laboratory! To promeese them reeches and happiness for. all their cheeldren through some great discovery! And you let those eediots destroy themselves and the Laboratory!"

  "Those idiots," said Kenmore, "were trying to destroy Arlene and the rest of us."

  "But what can I do?" demanded Cecile. "I have no broadcast! What deed I come here for? To broadcast! What can I do? Notheeng!"

  Arlene shook her head at Kenmore from behind Cecile's back. Kenmore said coldly, "The chief suggested a spotter - station. Lezd is changing the set. Make up a pretty story about those interpid men who brave all the dangers of solitary life on the moon, to search the star-filled skies for little freight-rockets coming up from Earth."

  She stamped her foot angrily, then her expression changed to one of surprise. She beamed. "Vairy good! I weel go talk to thees chief. But steel—eet was stupid to let those men destroy the Laboratory!"

  She went away. Kenmore shrugged; he was numbed by the abrupt ending of all the things he'd planned to spend his life developing. Arlene shook her head.

  "Poor Joel" she said sympathetically' "You feel that you've lost your job and there isn't anything else to work at! But there are tomorrows, even if not the ones you've been planning for! It might help if you got mad, Joe. Couldn't you work up a good, healthy wrath against the people who tried to blast a cliff down on you and Moreau?"

  He shook his head. "Except that Moreau and I were of some use to you, I—almost would rather that they'd succeeded."

  Arlene said angrily, "They tried to kill me, too! Doesn't that mean anything?"

  She turned on her heel and left him. And he might have been stirred, except that he saw through her attempt to seem indignant. He knew that she was trying to arouse him to an interest in something besides the appalling fact that all his work and hopes were futile.

  CHAPTER XV. A DUCROS PRODUCTION

  He WENT heavily to the privacy-cubicle that was his own. He sat down on his cot—it took a perceptible interval between the moment when he willed to sit and the contact of his body with the object sat on—and tried to think out the matter of the sabotage, to pick out those who were guilty of it. They had, very probably, started off in a jeep with the rest of the fugitives, after sabotaging the City. Most likely they'd lost themselves from the jeep caravan and made the attack on Kenmore and Moreau. Quite possibly they'd also attacked spotter stations and casually murdered their occupants. They might have other plans, even now. Ultimately they'd turn up with a story which couldn't be disproved, and be returned to Earth as fortunate survivors of the disasters to the moon colony. But Joe Kenmore could not think clearly. He'd worked a highly improbable number of hours without any pause; when he relaxed, exhaustion took charge. He didn't realize that he had slept until suddenly there was the chief shaking him, a steaming cup of coffee in his hand.

  "Broadcast coming up," said the chief, grinning. "I'm going to act. Haney, too. Arlene says you ought to watch."

  It was painful to sit up, even in moon-gravity, but Kenmore did it. The chief handed him the coffee cup. "Arlene said to let you sleep, but we need some kind of studio audience."

  Kenmore gulped the coffee. "Any of the jeeps back yet?"

  "Some. Coming in one by one. Man! Are those guys scared! They saw themselves strangling or roasting. They want out. They crave to go back home!"

  "Including the ones who did it all," said Kenmore. "Pretty, isn't it? But they have no more reason for sabotage. The Lab is smashed and the City will be abandoned. No need for any
more murders."

  "Except," said the chief, "that those guys might just love their work."

  Kenmore stood up and followed the chief across the main dome and into the air-plant part of the City, where hydroponic tanks nourished vegetation to purify the air and at least partly feed the colonists. Cecile prepared her broadcast magnificently. There would be no script; there was no director. Lezd merely carried out her orders. From time to time, he offered suggestions. She accepted none; she appropriated them. Kenmore heard him make a mild suggestion about the orders of events in the coming production. She ignored him—five minutes later she repeated his suggestion in the form of a command.

  From seeming chaos, presently order appeared. Lezd hung a curtain of plastic, dome-balloon material and tinted its surface blue. He set up a slide projector behind it and critically surveyed the projected image from the front. He had made a slide from pictures available in the City. The result was not convincing to the naked eye, but he nodded to Kenmore.

  "It will look right to the camera," he said. "Cecile will appear in a vacuum suit and show the people of Earth what moon flowers are like. She will discover them. Fortunately, there is a photograph."

  Kenmore said coldly, "Arlene is the only human being besides Mike ever to hold one in her hands!"

  But what have facts to do with art?" asked Lezd. "Cecile is an artist!"

  Cecile Ducros appeared in a vacuum suit with a special helmet Lezd had contrived for her. It would not be practical outside the domes—it was not airtight—but it was very becoming. She examined her own image in a monitor television screen Lezd had set up. She gave crisp, authoritative commands.

  Broadcast time came; the monitor lighted, then went blank. And then Cecile Ducros' face appeared, wearing its heavy-lidded, mysterious smile.

  She said sweetly, "How do you do? Thees ees your leetle Cecile Ducros, speaking from the moon. And now I speak in a special manner, because I am een a place remote from the Ceety—from a lonely station many, many miles away—a spotter station where two intrepeed men brave all the dangers of solitary life upon the moon, to search the star-filled skies for leetle freight-sheeps coming up from Earth."

  She wore the phony vacuum helmet, with its phony faceplate lifted back. The camera view widened, and the set which had been built to represent the Space Laboratory appeared quite convincing as something else. Cecile explained the function and the loneliness of these isolated posts, where two men and a moon-jeep stayed for fourteen days in the appalling airless cold of a lunar night.

  She showed a view from a spotter-station port. It was close to dawn on this part of the moon, she observed excitedly, and there—look! look! look!—were the faraway specks of sunshine on the very tallest mountains.

  It was actually a projection, but even those present found it was difficult to believe that the camera lens did not point out at a desolate landscape, with mysterious mountains against the stars. Of course there was no movement anywhere.

  Back to Cecile. She had Haney before a convincing operations board—a spare—and he mumbled awkwardly in answer to her questions. The chief swaggered into the scene and displayed remarkable histrionic ability. There were four spotter stations, he said splendidly, occupied only during the more-than-three-hundred-hours-long night of the moon. One man was supposedly always on duty, watching for the tiny radar pips which should be freight-ships coming to the moon with food and air. Cecile deftly extracted an anecdote or two about journeys through mountain passes with avalanches waiting to plunge down in slow motion. There was a story of the spotter station where the reserve air leaked out, and was lost. The chief told how they patched the leak, electrolyzed water into oxygen and hydrogen, and breathed that highly explosive mixture for six Earth-days, knowing that a single spark of static electricity would blow them and their station to atoms.

  That was a moon-story akin to that ancient tale of the rider on the obedient mule who trotted over a precipice with a man on its back—the man's life was saved when he called "Whoa!" and the mule obediently halted in its descent. The chief finished with the bland statement that the really tough part of the ordeal was that they couldn't smoke except out-of-doors.

  Cecile smiled sweetly at him and closed her faceplate, explaining that, "Ef theese should break, now that I go outside, I would look vairy ugly to you!" She seemed to enter an airlock. The camera shifted, and she appeared to come into outer airlessness through the lock. There was a moon-jeep in the projected background; she pointed to its picture and explained with seeming excitement about those vehicles of burden. She explained about vacuum suits—information she'd gotten from Arlene. She lifted a handful of moondust, brought in for the purpose, and let it sift from her mittened hands, showing how slowly it fell. She talked of landslides and dust-lakes with a contagious shudder, which was just right to give her audience shivers without frightening it in the least.

  Then she seemed to clamber a little, the camera following her, and there was a view of a moon crater, with Cecile looking across it and telling in an awed voice of the wonder of its creation. A monstrous planetoid of stone and iron had come plunging out of the sky at many miles per second, and had literally exploded from the violence of its impact. This ring mountain, miles in diameter, was the consequence; it was the splash of that ancient catastrophe.

  There was more; by the end, Kenmore was angry, because there was every appearance of Cecile Ducros leaping lightly down in the gentle gravity of the moon, to stand at last before blackness and then to say excitedly that here was something she had discovered herself. Here were flowers—the blossoms of the moon I And she was vairy proud that though other growing tufts of such moon flowers had been reported, she, Cecile Ducros, had found this leetle garden wheech the charming people of Civilian City had decided to name after her. And here eet was!

  She pointed dramatically, and it seemed that lights from a moon-jeep shone upon and past her; and there was an infinitely delicate garden of slender, silver stalks and drooping leaves.

  The camera seemed to approach it; the detail and the delicacy of the flowers was quite incredible, but Kenmore recognized it as a photograph. He'd taken it himself under a cliff, when he and Mike and Arlene were trying to find a spotter station after the Shuttle-ship had crashed—an hour before Haney and the chief found them.

  But it was excellent television. There was not one word to hint at sabotage, murder, sudden death. Still less was there any reference to the destruction of the Space Laboratory.

  The show ended when Moreau, also in a vacuum suit, appeared and gestured imperiously for Cecile to come with him. His helmet was a normal one, and his face could not be seen in it. But Cecile's helmet allowed her to be seen very clearly; she smiled at him eagerly and turned half-regretfully to the camera.

  "Now I am told that eet ees dangerous for me to stay any longer in thees wonderful, beautiful place. So I go back to the Ceety, and there I weel talk to you again." And she looked at the rather statuesque figure of Moreau in his vacuum armor—with much of its equipment removed to make it look better—and sighed audibly.-"I have to do as I am told," she confided flutteringly to her audience.

  "He ees vairy handsome!" And then she said, "Ah! I am so susceptible!" and moved toward Moreau.

  The monitor screen went blank on an excellent public-relations job for a project which was a failure.

  CHAPTER XVI. THE LAST STROKE

  AMONG the more than two billion living human beings, perhaps fifty still lived who knew what the Space Laboratory had reported—that further progress in atomic science meant the suicide of humanity. Most of those fifty faced the conclusion with violent emotion. There were three suicides. Several collapsed into quasi-schizophrenic withdrawal from reality.

  A few—a very few—reacted to the report by the decision that it could not be true. The cosmos, they asserted, made sense; it would not make sense if it could be destroyed by one of its own parts—man. Therefore, the report must be wrong.

  And while Joe Kenmore watched Cec
ile Ducros' phony broadcast, there were possibly half a dozen men at work checking and rechecking the implications of the report from the Space Platform.

  The data, itself, was past question. There was a field of force in which neutrons could be guided and accelerated, like electrons in a television tube. That field could be formed into lenses, which would focus a stream of neutrons to a mathematical point, while raising their speed to any imaginable value. If such a focused stream of neutrons hit matter—why, no molecule, no atom, no subatomic particle at all could possibly escape collision. If those neutrons were hit hard enough, it seemed that they must crack; and if even one neutron cracked . . .

  The cracking of a subatomic particle should mean its instant conversion into pure raw energy, equal in mass to the object destroyed. This would not be the energy of fission or fusion, but the true energy of matter—the energy of the composition of substance itself.

  One cracked particle of any nature should crack other nearby particles. They should crack others. The true explosion of one single atom should set off every other atom within a horrifying range, and a chain reaction should begin in which all matter was explosive and exploded. Had this begun in the Space Laboratory, the detonation should have set off the moon, though forty thousand miles away. The moon should explode the Earth; and Earth the sun; and the sun all the planets, and the nearer stars, and they . . .

  Such an explosion should be propagated even by the infinitely diluted matter in interstellar space—one atom per cubic centimeter. It should leap the gap between galaxies and turn the cosmos into flame.

  This line of thought had destroyed the men in the Space Laboratory; they could not live with it. But a bare dozen men, back on Earth—scientists—refused to accept the Laboratory conclusion, and set out to find the flaw in the thinking which led to it.