There was no way of finding it from a quick check, though he crawled under the carriage while Boland ran the motor through its speeds with the clutches disengaged.
Sessions chuckled bitterly. "You're obviously a jinx, Fred," he said. There was no animosity in the remark, and Fred realized that the leader wouldn't have made it if anyone would take it seriously. That resentment of him had mysteriously vanished since he'd been right about where Whitley had landed. Except for Mona Williams, he now had the feeling that the whole expedition was friendly.
"I stick pins in little models of the tractor," he retorted. "It's pure black magic. But I think we can go on until night. I've got sort of a plan to find the leak then, if I can find the right spot."
"Okay, Fred. If you see what you want, signal us to stop and we'll make a full night's delay of it. I've been thinking of going back to single shift, anyhow, to let us reach the main site rested and ready to work."
It was an hour after the usual time for dinner when Fred located a dust pit that looked promising. He prodded the edges with a welding rod and decided it would be deep enough. Then he outlined his idea to Boland.
After dinner, they unhitched the tractor and backed it toward the dust trap.
"Did you really need one that big?" the geologist asked.
The flat surface stretched out for nearly two miles, indicating that the depression must be a huge one. Fred shook his head. It was the first he had found that seemed large enough.
They arranged signals. One man had to be inside the tractor, and one outside. That meant using a system of banging on the tractor to signal what the driver was to do. Finally, satisfied, Fred went out. He was smaller and lighter, better equipped to trace the motor, and generally the obvious man for the outside work.
At his signal, Boiand backed the tractor slowly into the dust. There was a smooth slope leading into the depth of the pit, and the tractor sank slowly as it backed. When it reached a level where the motor just touched the dust, Fred signaled for a halt, and began crawling under it.
The idea was simple. Any leak would stir the dust, then he could trace it to the source. It wouldn't have to be a large opening; a hole too small to be seen easily could account for all the waste. It was like sticking an inner tube into water to find where the hole was by tracing the bubbles.
Slowly, a step at a time, the tractor was backed further and further out, until the motor was nearly covered. Fred's job was getting harder. He had to push his way through the dust and then get his head up to study the action of the surface under his headlight. Soon there would be no room for him to see. Even a little way below the surface, there was no visibility at all, for the light couldn't penetrate the dust.
Then he grunted in satisfaction. The dust was swirling faintly around one section of the pipe that led from the throttle to the injector. He piled up enough dust in his hands to pinpoint the trouble and marked it off with a soft red crayon. The wax of the crayon melted against the warm pipe, and a tiny bubble arose on the surface. It would have taken hours of work to locate the place any other way; now the little pit in the wax could be found at any time. The pipe would not get hot enough to melt it all off.
He crawled out painfully and stood up to bang on the tractor as a signal that it was completed. Boland was ready. The treads spun, working hard against the dust. Great clouds were thrown up from the spinning belts of silicone rubber, and the tractor began moving out.
Fred stepped back to avoid the dust, brushing it off his helmet. He took another step, and another . . .
The bottom dropped out from under him, and he went down slowly until his helmet was completely covered. The dust yielded beneath him another few feet until he touched bottom.
Grumbling, he twisted around to feel the edges of the hole into which he'd dropped. He'd been foolish to move where he hadn't tested. Once he found the upward slope again, it wouldn't matter.
Fifteen minutes later, he was completely lost in the lightless, almost liquid stuff that surrounded him.
Chapter 13 SOS from Space
fred stopped, realizing he'd made the worst possible mistake; he'd been acting, not thinking. Now he had no clear idea of how deep he was in the dust or in what direction an exit lay. He couldn't even be sure that he wasn't going in a circle. Backtracking was as impossible as moving forward.
Since he couldn't be sure of finding his way out, the only solution was to stay put and let others find him. It was harder to stand still while his oxygen bubbled away slowly, but a lot more intelligent. All he could do was to help them locate him.
That presented a problem. He was sure he was too deep to create any motion on the surface, unless he opened his oxygen supply to full delivery and hoped someone could see the dust bubbles from that. However it was only a desperation measure. There had to be some better way. He assumed someone must be watching the surface for any sign, if he could give it.
Then he relaxed. He had the rod he had first used to estimate the depth of the dust for the tractor. It was large enough to be seen, and it could be tossed fairly
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accurately toward the surface, even through the slight resistance of the dust.
He balanced it on his glove, estimating the throw. The dust couldn't be more than twenty feet above his head —there'd been no noticeable feeling that he was heading downward. The rod had to clear the surface, but not rise too high, or it would travel too great a distance and be hard to locate again. It also had to go at a slight angle, since he had no desire to have it strike him on the return at the risk of puncturing a hole in his helmet or stunning him. He plotted the trajectory in his head until it felt right, then tossed the rod upward.
A few seconds later, there was a faint but sharp metallic sound transmitted from the ground through his boots. He moved cautiously forward, feeling about with his feet. In five steps, he felt the rod. This time he turned about face before throwing it. Again there was the sound of the rod striking.
This time it was followed by another sound. There was a double tap.
He located the rod and banged it sharply against the ground below him, twice this time. There was an answering tapping. The third time, the tapping seemed nearer, and the fourth time there was no question; someone was heading toward the sound he had made.
Suddenly something brushed against his chest, and his fingers identified it as a rope. He pulled it to him sharply. Now he could hear footsteps coming from the ground through his suit. There was almost no time lapse before a hand groped against him and caught his shoulder. A helmet was pressed against his, and Ted Whitley's voice said, "Turnabout's fair play, Fred. Grab the rope and come onl"
The rope twitched several times, apparently in a signal. Then it grew taut as it was pulled forward. Fred let it guide him.
In less than five minutes, his helmet broke through the dust surface, and he could see his rescuers. The rope seemed to have been pieced together out of everything available, and most of the expedition were somewhere along it in the dust. One end reached a spot beside the tractor where Dr. Sessions held it to guide them all back. He held a hand to his antenna as Fred looked and then pointed. Fred turned to see Whitley, who still walked with a slight limp. He was carrying a pole of some sort on which an antenna had been strapped, high enough to stay above the dust.
"Thought you'd know we'd come after you," the man said. "Good thing, or we might have had to spend another fifteen minutes before we could be sure of surrounding you and circling in. How do you feel?"
Fred took a deeper breath as his feet finally came free of the dust. "Grateful," he said. "Foolish. And dusty."
He knew there'd be cracks and jokes at his expense for the next day or so, but he also knew he wouldn't mind. He was feeling better than he had any right to. He let them lead him into the dining dormitory and dutifully drank the coffee they insisted on forcing on him while he tried to explain why he'd gotten into the trouble and how it had felt. He half expected a dressing down from Dr. Sessions, but the leader
only grinned.
"We'll all do something foolish before this is over," Sessions said. "Let's hope we can keep our heads when it happens and avoid any serious consequences. How about that motor?"
It gave Fred the opening he'd been seeking, and in another few minutes he went out with Boland and tackled the job. Now that they knew where to make the weld, the work was routine. It didn't look pretty when he finished, but it should hold; he'd been careful to make sure there were no impurities in the weld which would trigger a peroxide breakdown before the fuel reached the motor. Everything tested out afterward; the next day the tractor was operating at full efficiency.
On the twenty-seventh day and without further trouble, they reached the site Sessions had chosen and began making a permanent camp. The trailers would still serve as their living quarters, but there was a lot of work getting everything in order and redistributing supplies. The tractors would be used mostly for scouting and detail work; each had to carry a portable plastic tent, extra supplies of oxygen and food, and all the fuel it could store. There would be times when a driver might have numerous trips from place to place without time to return to the main camp.
The camp itself was against a tiny cliff that rose from a small outcropping of rock. It was slightly higher than most of the surrounding territory, serving as a lookout post for Sessions to keep track of much of the movement that would go on throughout the area.
Fred was never very clear about much of the work. He understood a little. Teams were assigned to make borings through the crust, then the cores raised by the boring bits—hollow bits holding whatever they cut out until it was removed—were classified and studied. There was a system for the location of these borings, but the theory behind it was far beyond his grasp.
Other teams were sent out on a rigid schedule to plant small explosive charges in holes in the ground. These had to be set off at the exact second called for. There were other teams with delicate instruments which measured the shock transmitted through the ground. Finally, at the top of the cliff and as far from the camp as possible, the main seismograph was installed carefully, and connected directly to a complicated computer in the laboratory.
He picked up a little from the talk. Even the speed of sound through the crust was important, it seemed, as well as the shape of the shock wave. Here many of the minerals were quite different from those on Earth. The elements were the same, of course, but the way they formed compounds differed greatly. On Earth, the rocks were formed in an oxygen atmosphere, or at least under conditions where oxygen and even hydrogen were common, and where water was the great solvent. That accounted for many of the oxides, hydrates and hydroxides, as well as for part of the carbonates and other general minerals. Here, there was no sure way of knowing what might be found. Preliminary tests indicated that there was less difference than had been expected. There were carbonates—compounds of elements with carbon and oxygen together; the carbides, or compounds of elements with only carbon, were much more rare than had been expected. More precision was needed to make the findings meaningful.
After the very first day one thing seemed certain. The idea that all the heavy elements should be at the core of
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the Moon was wrong; if anything, there was a larger percentage of the total amount of heavy elements on the surface here than there was on Earth.
"The tides produced by Earth on this world must have stirred things up more than we expected," Boland told Fred. "That means we may find more stuff near the surface of Earth than we expected, too. But one thing is sure—there is going to be more than enough mineral resources here for a colony. It may take us time to locate it, but we've already decided that there must be uranium. We're sending out a pair with radiation detectors to investigate."
And now, for the first time, Fred and the others saw the real Mona Williams. She was no more pleasant than before, but she was an absolute genius at getting meaningful results from what seemed like insignificant data out of the computing machines. She was responsible for at least half of the programs on which they began to work, some of which had never been dreamed of before the expedition left Earth.
Fred began to suspect that her resentment of him went back further than he had thought. It must have dated from their first meeting when she heard his claim that he could plot a course in his head. To her, obviously, the highest order of merit in the universe was the computer. She could never believe that any human being could do what a machine was designed for. She might even have been jealous of him, as a computer would have felt jealousy if it had feelings.
Although he couldn't like her, he found riimself respecting her. She might love machines more than men, but her work would help the colonists as much as that of anyone else.
The teams were just beginning to loosen up and find directions for their work on the thirtieth day when a brief announcement reached them on high-powered radio beam from the Station. It was a rebroadcast of the regular Earth news, and it hit them all when played back from the tape.
The Cosmic Egg had been launched from the Station on a supposed test flight to the Moon. On board were Major Wickman as pilot and Dr. Ramachundra as observer. The Committee on Space was investigating the flight, which had apparently been authorized by Colonel Halpern aboard the Station only two hours before an official order canceling all tests pending further investigation.
"Your father's in hot water now," Sessions told Fred. "Boiling hot! But he beat them. Now let's hope it was worth it."
Fred had no words to describe his feelings. He was torn between worry and admiration, doubt and fear for his father. Colonel Halpern must have had a means of leaking information out of the committee, just as they had leaks from the Station. Whatever the reason, he'd obviously decided that the trip was worth any risk to himself. Now with the ship beyond all national limits in space, nobody could issue any meaningful orders to Wickman until he reached the Moon—then the orders would come from Gantry.
He remembered Gantry's doubts about the helpfulness of Ramachundra, and again began to worry. He knew his father would never regret the action, no matter what happened to him, if it furthered mans career in space. But if there had been some mistake about the representative from the World Congress, it would be a pretty horrible thing.
There wasn't anything anyone could do, however. The Cosmic Egg would attain a higher speed than the ships of the expedition and would land in three days. They would have to wait until then.
A later news broadcast took off some of the pressure. When the chips were down, Colonel Halpern had at least as many friends in Congress and in the Administration as he had enemies, and as important ones. The committee wasn't going to get him removed from his position without a long and complicated fight. By the time that was finished, the whole issue might be decided by what happened on the Moon.
There wasn't too much time for worry, though. Fred was kept on a steady round of trips. Sessions was using his tractor as a means of keeping all efforts coordinated. The machine was on constant duty to carry the leader from project to project or to rush some suddenly needed equipment from point to point.
The first crude picture of the crust was beginning to take shape. Fred saw some of the graphs, and there were parts that could be understood by a layman. There seemed to be great pockets of emptiness under the surface, and other bubbles which might hold liquids— probably water, since oil seemed impossible without the presence of highly active life. There were other sections that indicated the possibility of valuable deposits of heavy metals. So far, they had not found out very much about uranium deposits. The radiation detectors reported a fairly large field in one place, but its richness and depth were still subject to doubt.
The one area of research where no progress had been made was in the hunt for life. Dr. Villiers made elaborate tests of the cores brought up by the boring bits, looking for compounds which might prove that there had ever been life here. The evidence was doubtful. A few compounds were technically organic,
but there was reason to believe such material might be created without the presence of life on this airless world.
He spent most of his free time riding about with Fred, looking for some hint of a living thing. He'd done an elaborate job of analyzing the conditions around the rock where Fred saw the plantlike growth and even investigated the rumors of life reported by the colonists. But none of his work was paying off.
"Maybe there is no life in this whole section," he mourned. "Maybe this is the dead part of the Moon. And over there, a hundred miles beyond our explorations, there may be living things any man could find at once. How can I know?"
"What about the crater where they thought they saw evidence of life in the telescopes years ago?" Fred asked him.
The scientist shrugged. "Telescopes! The first expedition looked into that. That crater was covered with a few bits of unstable compound. When it got hot, it took one form and showed color; when it cooled off, it went back to being colorless. Just chemical, and not much chemical at that."
There was no further news from the Station that could be picked up by the receiver in the laboratory. But everyone knew the approximate landing time for the ship. Sessions listened to the mounting excitement from the men and finally decided to call a halt to the work when the landing should be due. He was as interested as anyone else. Except for a few people who had to stay at their posts for some experiment, the whole group was in the laboratory when the thirty-third day came. The news had become more important than anything else to them.
Nothing was being broadcast by the Station on the news frequencies. Mona Williams switched over to the channel reserved for the ships. There was still nothing. Probably by the time the ship began landing checks it would be far below their horizon, where no signals could reach them.
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