Moon of Mutiny

by Lester Del Rey

  Part of Europe, the Mediterranean Sea, and much of Africa were visible, and the clouds seemed to have vanished from most of the atmosphere above them. It was one of the times when the surface could be seen clearly. Fred took the telescope and began studying his home world. He'd seen it often enough from the Station, where it seemed to fill most of the sky, but this view was somehow entirely different.

  Abruptly he gasped. Uncertain and hard to see at first, there were hints of lines that made a network across the land masses. The lines seemed to run for hundreds of miles in straight sweeps that might have been made by a ruler. Some were double, and one appeared to be triple. Where the lines met, there were spots of larger size, like nodes from which the crisscrossing lines spread out.

  "Canals!" he said.

  Boland laughed. "That's what the astronomers called them when they saw those things on Mars. People used to argue whether they were really there or just optical illusions, but we've photographed them now. They're there—both on Mars and on Earth."

  "What are they, Mike?"

  "We just don't know." Boland's voice was hushed, yet oddly excited. "Fred, we have no idea. Down on Earth, where those lines are, there is literally nothing we can see. And we can't spot anything from the Station, either. They must have something to do with planetary formation. They're real. But they aren't canals or even cracks, in the ground. Today, nobody has a good theory. It's a mysterious universe—and a wonderful one."

  "But the Moon doesn't have anything like that," Fred said.

  "No? Some astronomers think the great rays are similar phenomena. I don't know. There's another theory that those canali are related to the magnetic field of a planet —and the Moon has no magnetic field. There's also some indication that plants grow best on Earth where the lines and nodes lie. But so far, the more we learn, the less we know. Come on, let's get back to camp."

  Fred's tractor was limping badly when they reached Emmett Base. The last hundred miles had been traveled at reduced speed. It had been a much shorter trip than the one out, and it was only the seventeenth day from their original departure.

  It was a relief to turn the tractor over to the repair group and the colonists. After the steady driving and the strain of expecting a breakdown at any moment, Fred was tired. He didn't realize how tired until he could afford at last to let down and relax. He slept for twelve straight hours and woke up ravenously hungry. He was rested, but with the let-down feeling that follows a long stretch of tension.

  Jonas found him a few minutes later. "Hi, Fred. I'm going out to the mine, and Sessions thought you might like to come along. Want to try the hike?"

  "Hike?" Fred asked. He knew that the mine lay some thirty miles away from Base. Then he laughed at his own habits of thought. That wasn't too bad a trip on the Moon. A man could keep up a trot that carried him along at more than ten miles an hour; in this gravity, man and suit together weighed only sixty or seventy pounds.

  He fell in beside the older man, and they headed out along a well-worn trail. "We used to haul people back and forth by one of our three tractors," Jonas said. "But now we're forced to use them full time at the mines. Even three are barely enough to do the work we have to finish. I'll be glad when your expedition goes back and leaves us those improved models you've been driving."

  The steady trot was no more fatiguing than walking would have been on Earth, and Jonas kept up a stream of conversation. He knew most of what had happened on the expedition, and there was little new in the colony. However, the regular news from Earth was filled with speculations that might be important to the Moon.

  Most of the news centered around something Fred's father was planning, though nobody knew for sure what it might be. Apparently Congress was worried about hints that it involved the Moon and probably Dr. Rama-chundra. Space was supposed to be international, but most of the people at Emmett Base were from the United States, and Congress sometimes acted as if the Base were a part of America. There had always been a small element in the Government—just as there was among the people—that objected to any new idea about space. These people would protest violently against letting the World Congress send Ramachundra to investigate the colony. A few Representatives were demanding that Colonel Halpern be replaced.

  "Must have something to do with the new spaceship," Jonas said. "At least there's editorial pressure to bring it back to Earth and complete the tests there. But Wick-man's still at the Station, and so is Ramachundra. Maybe your father has figured how to get him here. Wish I knew how much good that would do."

  r

  Fred found very little in the rumors that was convincing. The colonists grasped at every hope, however vague, which probably explained the speculations. The one part that seemed to have any truth to it was that his father was about to go through an annoying investigation of his running of the Station. Fred felt sure Colonel Hal-pern could stand that; nobody had ever found anything in his work that couldn't stand up to criticism.

  When they reached the mines, Fred was beginning to feel the strain of the steady pace, but interest and curiosity soon overcame his fatigue.

  The mine was actually nothing but a deep pit. It had been found in an area where a small crater had been created by a meteoric collision; the miners had dug in even deeper along one wall. This was the only source of copper that had been located on the Moon. Copper was valuable because it could be worked easily and made the best available electrical conductor.

  There were about thirty men working the mine, using crude equipment. Two small smelters handled the ore, heating it by electrical current from an arrangement of solar mirrors. These were not working now, since the sun was down. The whole area was bathed in artificial light, and Fred could see that the men were digging out more ore and getting ready for the time when the smelters could be used again.

  A figure in a spacesuit waved and came over at a fast trot, sticking out a hand. "Freddy. It's good to see you."

  It took some seconds to recognize the man as Jim Stanley, who had first taught Fred how to handle himself in space. Stanley had developed and matured remarkably in four years. Now, Fred gathered, he was in

  charge of the entire mine. They had a few minutes together before some signal from below drew Stanley away. Jonas started after him, but turned back for a moment.

  "You'll get a better view from up here, so maybe you'd better look the place over before coming down," he suggested. "I'll be free in half an hour. We can look into things then."

  Jonas and Stanley went down a crude elevator. It was suspended from a frail arrangement of metal struts that stuck out over the small cliff. A platform was suspended on a pulley, counterbalanced by a heavy weight, and worked by manpower. It didn't look any too substantial, and Fred saw that the operator at the top of the cliff was busy repairing one of the struts.

  Most of what went on was difficult to understand, though he could follow the basic idea of digging out the ore. The tractors were serving as bulldozers, heavy movers, and general power sources. He saw two of them busy moving rubble out of the way to open up a new vein, but the third was not visible.

  Then he saw it, at the top of the cliff, further along the ledge on which he stood. The tractor was stopped, but it must have been making a wider break in the sloping walls above it, probably to form a new road for carrying material back to Base. As he looked, he saw the operator and another man moving back from it, making gestures as if they were in some kind of argument. Since they were using direct contact instead of radio, the gestures meant nothing. After a minute more of argument, they both headed toward a group of diggers further away.

  Fred joined the elevator operator. "Anything I can do?"

  "Not much." The voice was a woman's. In the suits, it was often hard to tell men and women apart. "I don't like the way this shackle is wiggling, but it seems strong enough. I'll have a welder look at it after this shift."

  Fred could see nothing wrong, but it was outside his experience. He stared out at the pit again. "What abo
ut your source of iron?"

  She laughed. "You're looking at it!" Then her voice sobered. "This is one of the few pieces of good luck we've had. The meteor that hit here was a nickel-iron one. We dug in originally to get it, and found the copper ore by lucky accident. By the way, I'm Helva Peterson."

  By following the signs Helva pointed out, Fred could just see the shaft down to the meteorite. The presence of such a supply of metal explained how they were able to smelt iron without more power than they seemed to possess. With the pure metal from space, no such smelting would be needed. Still, it must involve a tremendous amount of work. The stuff was a high-grade steel in its natural form—in fact, the first steel men discovered probably came from small meteorites that fell on Earth. This steel would be incredibly hard to cut into sizes that could be forged into usable parts.

  Fred felt sure, however, that someone had told him all the iron on the Moon came from low-grade ore.

  Helva nodded at his question. "At first, we did have to smelt a little. The mine is further out. But when this was located, we gave that up."

  She turned at a signal from below which Fred hadn't noticed. Someone wanted to come up. Fred moved forward to help her operate the crank that raised the little platform, but she motioned him away.

  "It isn't so hard," she assured him. "Besides, I'm used to it, and with that shackle, I don't want any strain added. It takes time to get the feel of running this smoothly."

  It made sense, and Fred got back out of the way. From up here, he could see nothing of the rising platform, but the supporting structure bent outward slightly as weight was added to it. Helva bent to the winch. The elevator seemed geared to rise about one foot for each full turn of the crank.

  It couldn't have been more than the first foot above the bottom when the accident happened. The shackle must have come loose. The strut it held whipped wildly backward.

  Helva felt the action and stepped back to avoid it, but not quite fast enough. The ragged edge of broken metal caught against the side of her suit, ripping a gash a foot long. Air rushed out, the moisture in it freezing as it expanded. She grabbed at the cut, her face horrified as the pressure in her suit sank to nothing.

  Fred leaped forward and caught her. The rip was too large to patch there; his hand secured the open edges, twisting them together to cut down the leakage, while he yanked the oxygen valve on her helmet all the way open. It would give her two or three minutes more air. After that, unless she were inside an air chamber, she'd suffocate.

  He caught sight of the tractor. It was the only possible place to carry her. Fred's hands swung her over his shoulder, still holding the torn edge, and he ran. He

  could cover the distance in a minute and get her through the lock in no more time. It was the only chance.

  Fortunately, the outer lock was open. He leaped inside, carrying the girl, and snapped it shut, without waiting for the lock to fill with air; it was faster to force through the inner lock. He unfastened it, hitting it with his shoulder. Pressure inside resisted, until some air had run into the lock. Then the inner seal gave suddenly, and they slammed through. The force of his thrust sent him reeling forward, to be brought up with a crash against the control panel at the front of the cabin.

  Abruptly, the little tractor seemed to sag under him. The nose dipped, the treads squeaked through the floor, and the machine began to slip.

  He scarcely had time to realize that the tractor was tilting over the edge of the cliff before they went hurtling to the pit floor, sixty feet below.

  Chapter 10 Pariah

  sixty feet on the Moon was no worse than ten on Earth. The fall lasted for nearly five seconds in the low gravity, giving Fred time to remember this. He pulled Helva down onto the operator's seat and braced himself against it to take the shock of impact when they landed.

  They hit bottom with a sickening crash. With a shrieking and ripping of metal, the tractor struck undercarriage down. Fred felt his knees buckle and pitched to the floor. His stomach felt as if he had been kicked. Then the tractor settled onto the floor of the pit.

  He got to his feet, shaken, but with no broken bones. The seat had cushioned Helva on deep springs; she was unconscious, but that was probably from the minutes during which she'd had insufficient oxygen. He drew off her helmet, then turned to inspect the damage.

  Surprisingly, the tractor body hadn't been much hurt. One corner was dented inward badly, but there was no tear in the metal, and no sound of air rushing out. That had been the greatest danger; Fred began to breathe more easily.

  In another minute, there was the sound of the air lock,

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  which still worked. Apparently the back end of the tractor cabin hadn't been damaged by the landing. A space-suited man came through, carrying a suit and oxygen bottle.

  Helva was already sitting up, beginning to gasp as her lungs sucked in air. The man tossed her the sparesuit, slipping back his helmet.

  "I saw the whole thing," he said. "You were lucky, I guess." He filled in the rough details for Helva, who had been unconscious during the entire crash—mercifully, for it had left her fully relaxed and better able to take the rough landing.

  "The tractor?" she asked.

  The man shook his head in grim silence. He waited until she changed suits, making sure the strut hadn't injured her—it had merely touched the suit—and motioned them out.

  Fred followed, just beginning to realize what this accident must mean to them. "The driver of this . . ." he began.

  "Yeah," the other man said. "He felt the tractor slipping and came back here to get help in pulling it back to safety. That's why it was abandoned. I guess you couldn't know that or help what you did."

  They found everyone from the pit grouped around as they came out. No examination of the tractor was necessary. It had landed on a hummock, striking first where the motor was located. That had absorbed most of the shock. Now the motor was a hopeless wreck, flattened and crumpled beyond repair. The drive and tread structure was smashed so badly that it could never be put back in working order. The tractor was ruined permanently. With it went one-third of the most important equipment of the colony.

  Nobody seemed to blame Fred. The miners went out of their way to admit that he couldn't have known about the tractor, and that he would have had to save Helva in any event. But they couldn't be cheerful about the tragedy.

  Helva touched helmets briefly. "Thank you for saving my life, Mr. Halpern," she said. Her voice showed that she'd rather have been killed than to be saved at such a high cost to her friends and the future of the Moon.

  Fred stayed out of sight as much as he could until Jonas was ready to return. There was nothing he could do to help them. Nobody blamed him, yet things went wrong too often when he was around.

  Jonas tried to cheer him up on the return trip, hours later, but even he seemed depressed.

  There, Fred thought, went his last chance to find a future in space. He'd held on to the idea that when the expedition was over he might be able to stay here, rather than go back to the Station—and from there to Earth forever. He'd done everything he could to prove himself a man they could use here on the Moon. Now there would be no further chance to convince everybody he wasn't more of a menace than they had feared.

  In the Administration hut, Gantry listened to the account with a flat, unemotional expression. When it was finished, he sighed and turned to Fred.

  "You did the right thing," he said quietly. "Don't blame yourself, because I'm not going to blame you for it. You used the best judgment you could—better than many of us could have used in the time you had—and that's all I ask of any man. So forget it."

  "Thanks, Governor Gantry. But will anyone else really forget it?"

  "No." Gantry sighed again. "No, you're right, Fred. You'll be a pariah here, unfortunately. That's the way people are, I'm sorry to say. They know it's nothing you could help, but down inside their emotions, they'll avoid contact with you like the plague. I'm afraid we haven't changed
much since the sailors threw Jonah overboard because they thought he brought bad luck."

  It was the same conclusion Fred had reached. He couldn't even resent the fact that he'd become a pariah, a symbol of bad luck; with the troubles the colonists were having, it was a wonder any of them could remain sane and normal at all.

  He felt bitter about the reaction of the men of the expedition, though. They had no real reason for their attitude, but news of the accident increased their hostility. He had seen Mona Williams talking to a couple of the others and looking his way when he wasn't supposed to notice. That kind of petty viciousness hurt worse than the honest reaction of the colonists. He noticed that she was careful whenever Dr. Sessions was around, however.

  The next day there was work for him to do repairing the expedition's tractors. He made sure he would be able to work without having to go into the colony, then joined Boland and a few others. It was a hard, worrisome job, and it took some of his thoughts away from his own problems. There was also satisfaction in doing something he knew was useful.

  There were too few spare parts, and the tools carried on the ships for their own repair and maintenance were inadequate. Some of the work had to be done in the tool-shop of the colony, using precious supplies from their meager surplus. But under the drive of necessity, things were being managed.

  To Fred's surprise, even Poorhouse came out and pitched in. The pilot was as good a mechanic as Boland, and better than Fred. It occurred to Fred that the rule against pilots doing other work might make sense; they depended on a hairline balance of coordination to operate the ships. That couldn't be maintained if they were annoyed by outside requirements. Most of them felt just as strongly about the need to explore space as any man on the expedition, so perhaps they even resented the regulation against other work they had been forced to insist on.