by John Rankine
Bergman passed a hand over his wide forehead, ‘Minimal information, I’m afraid. Weight at nineteen point two six kilogrammes: diameter one point two metres; temperature ambient; radiation zero. Composition still unknown.’
‘Inert?’
‘Totally.’
As if on cue, there was a percussive crack followed by a thin, high pitched whistle and six slender antennae extruded smartly from the bland surface of the globe. It was an object lesson in not talking about any dumb creature before its face.
Koenig thought bitterly he should get himself analysed. He should never have had it brought inside. Helena was rooted to the spot and he took her by the shoulders pulling her away as the whistle notched itself up an octave into a scream. White vapour under immense pressure began to jet from a scatter of tiny opening valves.
Koenig yelled ‘Gas’ and signalled for out, fairly throwing Helena through the hatch. He saw Bergman and Carter out and backed out himself aiming his commlock to seal it off.
The hatch sliced shut, but immense pressure from inside was forcing thin jets of vapour from around the seals. Koenig said urgently, ‘Helena. Medicentre. Prepare to receive casualties. Victor, get a sample. I want a run down on that gas sooner than possible.’
Before they were out of sight he was calling Morrow from the corridor communications post. ‘Paul, Red Alert. Evacuate Technical Section at the double and seal off. Then open all its air locks to the surface.’
Klaxons sounded out, red lights flashed at all points in Moonbase Alpha in a man made frenzy. But as an alarm generator the sphere had the edge. Its frenetic scream was notched to a mind bending crescendo. Technicians scrambling out of their section in a state of shock, hardly knew whether they were moving from it or towards it. Gale winds tearing through the connecting corridors buffeted them and spun them about. Small trash lifted in cyclone eddies and slammed round in a confusing storm.
Watching from Main Mission, Koenig saw the last man out and Morrow, working with quick economical gestures flip through the sequences. Morrow’s terse report ‘Technical Area sealed off and ventilated,’ came a split second after the monitors had already begun to show the effect.
Vapour and litter had made an instant course change, reacting to the vacuum suck of the moon surface. Roaring like a train, the gas was venting out through the air locks. A whirlwind billowed up the elevation shaft to launch pad one, spewing up a fountain of debris like a ticker tape welcome in reverse.
It looked like a spectacular death wound; as though Moonbase Alpha was emptying itself onto the moon’s surface. Koenig asked, ‘Does Computer have any assessment of the total capacity of that object?’
Kano had already asked it and had the answer pat, ‘At present rate of expansion, Commander, no prediction. Which is to say, infinite.’
Paul Morrow put in, ‘Pressure in the Technical Area was up by eighty before we could open the locks. It couldn’t get out fast enough.’
It made no kind of sense, Koenig, thinking aloud, said, ‘Diameter one point two, weight nineteen point two six. It just doesn’t gell.’
Outside the escaping vapour had settled to a steady plume that ran like a column for half a kilometer and then billowed away in a spreading mist cloud. Through it there was a glint as though it had been shot with sequins, and Tanya’s urgent call brought Koenig round to a direct vision port. ‘Commander, we’re being invaded.’
Drifting down through the mist came an uncountable number of small spheres, identical with the one which had wrecked the interior of the Technical section. As they touched down, they began to stream with vapour. The moonscape had turned to geyser country.
Information was crowding Koenig. Bergman was calling urgently from the intercom, ‘John! You’ll never believe this. It’s air. That thing has brought air.’
Tanya called him again, ‘Commander. Only look at this!’
What she had to show was making its own impact in a flush of colour on every direct vision port and the desks emptied as all personnel in Main Mission crowded to the windows to look out.
Above the barren lunar surface the sky was flushing with a rose madder down. They had a bright sun like a warm penny standing on the horizon. They had sunlight breaking the harsh silhouettes of the ancient rocks. Moonbase Alpha was bathed in sunlight, spilling through the ports and lighting up every incredulous face.
Koenig looked higher. Above the rim of the horizon the sky was a clear wash of blue. Helena Russell and Victor Bergman came up beside him. He said, ‘Red sunrise. Blue sky. There’s an atmosphere. We have an atmosphere!’
They could only stare. Helena put a hand on his arm and they watched the sun jacking itself up above the horizon, bringing a day they had never expected to see.
Main Mission was in holiday mood and Koenig recognised what a difference it could make when the scene outside the windows was changed. Maybe he should have had them pasted over with travel posters from the beginning?
Sandra Benes hardly able to keep her voice steady reported to Morrow, ‘Gravity’s building, Paul. By the time we establish an orbit, it’ll be near enough Earth equivalent to make no matter.’
It was all good news, bringing smiles all round. Their miracle was holding up.
Helena Russell came in, slim and tall, moving like a dancer, asking Kano, ‘Has Computer processed my data?’
Before Kano could reply, it was in on the act, winking a green light and presenting a read-out for Kano to hand over, It needed only a glance. She said, ‘Computer’s telling us nice stories today.’ Then she went on, knowing what he was going to say and making a nicely timed duet of it, ‘Computer never tells stories.’
She took the slip to Koenig, ‘I can only test for elements we know and can identify. There may be other ingredients that our instruments don’t register.’
It was a pleasure to look at her at any time but when she was happy, there was a radiance about her which he would not have traded for any Mediterranean Sun. He had to make himself put the hard question, ‘What about ultra-violet? That was your main concern.’
‘Above twenty thousand, the atmosphere begins to thin off rapidly. On Earth that would be hardly thick enough to act as a filter. But here? Well, I can only say I think we’re going to be all right.’
‘But the final test is to breathe it.’
‘And live in it.’
Koenig considered it. First reaction was to take her by the hand and lead her out into the sunlight, but there was procedure and he went by the book, standing up and walking out to the steps above Main Mission.
He spoke to them all. ‘Doctor Russell is satisfied that, as far as she can judge from processed data, this atmosphere is breathable and safe. All we need now is two volunteers to make sure.’
It was a sell out as he had expected. All personnel in Main Mission were voting with their feet—here I am, send me. Paul Morrow and Sandra had the edge. They had already been standing, deep in a personal conversation and caught Koenig’s eye. He said, ‘Very well. It’s Paul and Sandra. But let’s be clear. This is the pay off in a scientific investigation not a joy ride. Mind you, I think, Kano, along with the other checks you should monitor joy level for the album.’
It was a popular choice. In the shifting pattern of relationships on Alpha, Morrow and Sandra were circling each other for a hold. Whether they knew themselves it was so or not, the onlookers, ahead of the game, had sensed it and there was a clap from all hands when they left to dress for the outing as though they were to be the first pair for a new Garden of Eden.
Tanya monitored them into the lock and threw the picture on the main scanner as a production number. Sealed up, with helmets closed, they could be seen waiting for the green light.
Paul Morrow’s voice trying to keep factual, asked for clearance, ‘Confirm air lock pressure equalised with atmosphere?’
Helena said steadily, ‘Confirmed, Paul. You’re clear to move out now.’
A green tell tale glowed over the hatch and Morrow directed
his commlock at the panel. They stepped out hand in hand, bulky incongruous figures to be bathed in brilliant sunshine. Ten paces from the lock, they stopped. Morrow lifted a bulky thumb and then patted Sandra’s dome. Standing apart each made gradual adjustments to external valves.
Still monitoring, Helena Russell said, ‘You’re breathing more air than oxygen now. Pressures inside and outside your suits are equal. How does it feel?’
Morrow said, ‘I feel fine,’ and looked at Sandra.
Trying to be objective, she said, ‘My pulse rate’s increasing.’
It got a laugh from all hands in Main Mission. Helena had. already noticed it, ‘I’m monitoring that. Put it down to simple excitement. Outside temperature, rock steady at twenty-four Celsius.’
Morrow had his gloves off and was wiggling his fingers giving them a treat in natural sunshine. Sandra unsealed her gauntlets, drew them off and dropped them at her feet. She stood still watching Morrow with eyes enormous, as he joined her and flipped her helmet release catches. Before lifting off her visor, he unsealed his own, drew it off and sniffed the air cautiously like an animal waking after hibernation. Reassured, he said, ‘Smells good!’
Helena who had reckoned air was air and should be neutral said quickly, ‘Like what?’
‘Like fresh country air. Just what the doctor ordered!’
Sandra could wait no longer. Opening her visor, she inhaled for a long count, held it and breathed out, looking pink and radiant. They had forgotten Main Mission and moved instinctively together, tangling bulky harness and only managing a light brushing kiss. But it was a first in Eden and drew a spontaneous cheer.
The Alphan days were not long enough. They were turning Moonbase Alpha into a Lido and everybody was ready to work round the clock. Koenig and Helena and Victor Bergman watched two technicians put the finishing touches on a regular glazed window for the Technical Section. Simple things still gave pleasure and as the men picked up their gear, Helena opened it and looked out with a warm breeze ruffling her hair.
Groups of Alphans were lying about on cushions, under improvised gay awnings. Alan Carter and Tanya had a badminton game under way. There was a festive air about.
She said, ‘Now we have to worry about not sitting in a draught.’
Koenig said, ‘So we’ve traded one set of problems for another.’
A tannoy blared out and the lotus eaters turned lazily to listen to the next ration of good news, ‘Today’s sun session has been extended by ten minutes due to generally increased levels of tolerance to radiation throughout the spectrum. Individuals, with lower than average tolerance ratings will be reminded via their medical monitors when their time has expired.’
Koenig leaned both hands on the low table where the first satellite still remained. In spite of the normality outside, the bursts of laughter and Alan Carter calling the score to Tanya, he could not be at ease. He said, ‘I get the feeling it’s here to watch us. The rest of them pulled out as soon as they’d built up the atmosphere. Why not this one? What’s it doing here?’
Victor Bergman tapped it with a stylus. ‘I’ve tried Spectro-X. I’ve tried radio analysis. I’ve even tried cutting into it with a laser. No dice. Nothing gives.’
Defending it, Helena said, ‘In our ignorance we’ve suspected it of all kinds of malice, but so far, it’s been the biggest benefactor we’ve had in space.’
Koenig said quietly, ‘I know Victor is worried that things are not as rosy as they seem.’
‘In what way?’
Bergman looked at her, choosing his words carefully, ‘We’re not in orbit yet around this sun and I’m not sure we’re going to be.’
The implications needed no spelling out. Helena returned to the new window and looked at the sun lovers, ‘I don’t like to think what would happen if they realised it was only an interlude.’
Koenig joined her, spoke close to her ear, moved by the smell of sun on her hair, ‘We’d have to accept it. Just as we had to accept that we’d never see Earth again.’
In the distance, Paul Morrow and Sandra were walking hand in hand towards the low range of moonrock that marked the perimeter. Somebody wolf whistled. A few short days had brought a normality that looked fixed for all time.
Bergman said, ‘I’m having a little trouble calculating seasonal predictions. But instinct seems to say this is Spring.’
He would have been more sure on the count, if he could have monitored Paul and Sandra round the convoluted twist which screened them from the hoi polloi.
Stretched on a smooth slab, they looked across the familiar moon desert. Sandra said, ‘No sensors, no monitors, no computers. We must have done the longest duty tour on record. We deserve a break.’
‘We have one. But it isn’t exactly a home from home.’
‘Anything to be out of Alpha.’
‘It puts things in a new light.’
‘Sunlight!’
‘Seriously though. It’s more than that. If this is the end of one life, we have to start to build a new one. One where we can live like human beings again.’ He picked out a loose rock and pitched it at a dusty tump. It was still a novelty to hear sounds on the moon surface.
Sandra said, ‘Do you know what sounds I’ve come to miss most?’
‘Birdsong?’
‘Children playing. All the nonsense things they get up to.’ She was watching him, head turned in the crook of her arm, eyes questioning. There was a sense that they had all the time in the world in front of them and he was very still, feeling the electric tension between them like a charge of static.
Hardly more than breathing it, he said, ‘Cooped up in Alpha, there are thoughts we can’t allow ourselves to have. Here we are free to speak what we feel. Sandra?’
Her eyes were wide, almost all pupil and gently affirmative. Skin was sun warmed, smooth as alabaster, mouth an open O, soft and dissolving.
It was a homecoming that the moon’s ancient rocks had never expected to see.
In practical terms, homecoming was Bergman’s theme in the command office as he spread a large scale lunar map on the conference table. He said, ‘Here, right here. This old Moon could become new Earth. We could settle and build outside Alpha. Fertilise the lunar dust. Raise crops.’
Koenig said, ‘All we need is rainfall.’
‘We can make that, the air’s rotten with humidity. All we do is start the cycle, sow the clouds with crystals.’
‘Not so fast, Victor. It took twenty-five years to reclaim the Sahara.’ He pointed out through the window, ‘But out there is a planet that already supports some kind of civilisation. Our priority must be to find out if it can or will support us.’
In Main Mission, monitor equipment keeping tabs on Bergman’s mystery sphere was reporting activity to an empty desk. The frill of antennae was creeping out. There was a pause at full extension and then eye-searing light streaked out from the shining tips, flaring away in a zig zag to the heavily clouded sky.
Paul Morrow and Sandra heard it on their rock as a thunder crack and could not tell whether it was a phenomenon from the external world or a mental event. It took a repeat to have them sitting up staring towards Alpha.
Koenig and Bergman raced for a window to see forked lightning run along the underside of the clouds. There was a patter of large drops of rain, warm as blood and a scatter of sun bathers to get inside. Then the rain flurry was a deluge and they were out again, capering like crazy children in the first rain they had seen for too long.
Paul Morrow was holding Sandra in the rain, her hair flattened in a sheath, water running over her shoulders, falling from the points of her breasts like a nymph in a fountain. They ran hand in hand through the rain to join the crowd on the forecourt.
Alan Carter shouted to them, ‘Tomorrow we’ll build a pool.’
It was good thinking, but Paul Morrow was a committed man. He said, ‘Tomorrow we build the New Alpha.’
In the command office, Bergman could not keep still. Vindicated on his main p
oint, he was letting imagination take over, ‘You see, the cycle has already begun. The Sea of Tranquillity will become a genuine sea. Craters will fill and become beautiful circular lakes. John, we have a beautiful new world!’
‘How long will it take?’
‘How hard will it rain?’
‘Your circular lakes will look wonderful. But at the bottom of one of your craters, Victor, will be Moonbase Alpha like a surrealist folly.’
There was no doubt that the mood on Moonbase Alpha was to start building and Koenig bowed to it. Planet Ariel could wait for investigation. They would have their own small world and go calling on neighbours when their own city was rising from the ancient moon dust.
He had Carter set up an Eagle as a research module, stacked with equipment, seismographs, food, medical supplies, gas cylinders. He chose a small team. Carter himself as the most experienced pilot, Paul and Sandra, to give them something else to think about and Helena as a cool head.
Briefing them in Main Mission, he made it formal for all to hear. ‘The expedition will be under the overall command of Doctor Russell. It’s a straightforward brief. We have searched the Universe for another Earth and now, thanks to the mysterious people of Planet Ariel, we have found it right in our own back yard. Your job is to find the best site for us to begin our new future. Good luck to you all.’
The morning shift of sun bathers waved them off as Carter with Morrow beside him in the co-pilot slot gunned the loaded Eagle and lifted it from the pad. He circled once; treated all hands to a victory roll and arrowed off.
Inside Main Mission, Kano had Morrow’s executive desk and controlled the flight. Meticulously on schedule, Carter called in, ‘Eagle Two Eight reporting from the Crater Sea.’
‘Check. We’re watching you, Alan.’
Bergman was still drooling over his map, ‘Two great rivers could flow together at this point. Great civilisations have always started in river valleys. The ideal site for a great commercial city would be . . .’
He had lost Koenig’s attention and stopped. Koenig said, ‘Sorry, Victor. I hope we’re not wasting our time. Suppose we don’t make the orbit? We lose this sun. This atmosphere will be a liability, it will freeze. We shall be living in an ice field.’