“Thank you, um, Mister Lang. And thank you in particular for our rescue. We owe you a great debt of—”
“Yes, yes,” he said, “the captain will go over all that soon enough.” He turned to one of the men standing behind him. “Perkins, see that these men get to Mister Kent without delay.”
The man named Perkins glanced at us and said, “Aye, Mister Lang.”
Then Lang turned to the other men and said, “And you. Think you’d never seen a man pulled out of the dust before. Find yourselves some work to do in a hurry, else I’ll find it for you,” and the men scurried away into a selection of tunnels like their backsides were on fire.
The man Perkins turned abruptly and led us away down a tunnel. This passage through the rock was as straight as a corkscrew, as roomy as a prairie dog’s hole—if he hasn’t eaten lately—and rose and fell like the stock exchange at the Apocalypse, and yet it proved to be one of the better tunnels they had in the Deirdre, because it was decorated with the occasional—the very occasional—incandescent bulb, and was full of that most necessary of substances: air.
As it turned out, many of the tunnels thereabouts were not so fortunate and, although fully as dark, snug, and convoluted, lacked this all-important feature, and thus had to be navigated in a pressure suit. I will have more to say on these later. Much more.
We kept pace with Perkins, and were soon decanted into another chamber furnished with, if you can credit it, two electric lights, and both of them operating at the same time. I decided that its owner must be a considerable potentate in these parts. The chamber also had a smell about it that sent a thrill of anticipation through my vitals, and a corresponding torrent of saliva into my mouth. There was food here, said my nose, real food. Not greasy sludge squeezed out of a package or meat destroyed by vacuum, not even otherwise respectable produce imprisoned in a metal can, but real food. Hot food. Food treated like a Christian and cooked in a pot.
“Mister Kent,” said Perkins, “here’re the men we fished out of the soup. They’re likely not worth the air they breathe, but they aren’t dead as yet, and came with a decent haul of goods to add to stores.” It came to me as Perkins was speaking that his was a voice I recognized, and suddenly I understood that this man Perkins, whom I had mistaken for a mere mortal, was in fact our chief savior, the pilot of the dust boat.
I turned, and before he could refuse my ministrations, grasped his hand in mine and said, “I believe I have been remiss, sir, for I realize now that it is you who I need to thank in particular for our deliverance.”
“Thank you, Mister Perkins,” said the man Kent, ignoring my attempt at idolatry.
Perkins said, without much english on it, “You’re welcome, mate. I’ve seen worse fools, I expect.” This amounted to high praise from Perkins, but I didn’t understand this at the time, and accepted the remark at its face value. He was unimpressed by idolatry, however, or at least my efforts in that line, and left us to Mister Kent without another word.
Once we had lost Perkins, Kent took charge, and right away he began to peer at us with a prejudiced eye and poke his fingers into our tender parts like we were two carcasses of mutton, and questionable mutton at that. He even insisted that we open our mouths to him and extend our tongues. If he had been introduced by Perkins as the mine’s resident physician I would have been mollified, if not entirely reassured, but this information had been missing from our savior’s brief catechism, and the powerful smell of roasting flesh on the air caused my thoughts to turn in darker directions. Mind you, I did not think for a minute that these men tucked into long pig at their suppers, but I thought it for a part of that time, and that was long enough.
As it turned out, Mister Kent was both resident physician and chef de cuisine, all wrapped up in one small, round, strikingly hirsute package. I say he was strikingly hirsute, even in that kingdom of the hirsute sex that is the Moon, because he came attached to a voluminous and fiery red beard, which was a great novelty there, and advertised in its luxuriance that its owner did not venture out of doors much, at least as it is done on the Moon. This is because nothing in the world is more troublesome in a pressure suit’s helmet than a bumper crop of facial hair. There is nothing wrong, in most cases, with a mustache, or even a moderate, restrained spread of beard, but a massive growth like Mister Kent’s can accomplish an astonishing variety of mischief within the confines of a pressure helmet—astonishingly lethal, more often than not. Try catching a selection of your whiskers in the seal between helmet and neck ring, and it will likely be the last thing you do. The pain you experience when you work to pull them free, without the use of your hands mind you, is enough to make you wish you were dead. Fortunately, because of the faulty seal, you will die of asphyxiation or decompression before the pain gets that severe. However, I feel it necessary to point out that this in no way exonerates the hat. It is still public enemy number one as regards articles of apparel on the Moon. There is not a hair’s breadth of competition in it, and I assert that a man who goes about in the Moon sporting an extensive batch of facial hair and wearing a hat is a man who either never goes onto the surface at all, or is destined to do so only once.
Despite the cooking food, it was cold in that cavern, as it generally was everywhere in the Deirdre (and everywhere on the Moon, except where it is blazing hot), and I found I missed my shirt and overalls. My under-drawers, though comprehensive, were inadequate to the conditions, and were drafty in any case, due to the many worn patches and downright holes they had collected in our travels together. So when Kent, whether in his capacity as physician or as chef I could not say, required us to abandon even this last shred of clothing, I was not pleased. But all was forgiven once he handed us a sponge, a sliver of soap, and a pail full of water—and not just any water, but hot water, or at least water tolerably warm to the touch. This, although not quite the copiously liquid affair one is likely to get back home, was the bath Bemis had longed for (and that I had longed to see him receive), and despite the short measure of water involved, it was glorious, because the water was not only delightfully wet, but deliciously warm as well.
Mister Kent went away under one of the electric lights, presumably to attend to food, and left us to our ablutions. Then when we were about finished, and the water in the pail had turned a deep mahogany in appreciation, a new man appeared and offered us each a set of under-drawers, stylish red ones, followed by a shirt and overalls. None of these garments were new, or even particularly youthful, and they had the scars to prove it, but they were clean, and in that moment that was everything.
As I got inside those clothes and Bemis did the same, I said, “Hot water, clean clothes, and if I am not mistaken, real proper cooked food to come. Perhaps we have died and gone to heaven after all.”
Calvin smiled. “Well, a second-hand heaven at any rate.”
“Second-hand?” I scoffed. “Some parishioners are never satisfied. Next you’ll be telling me you want a shave.”
In fact we got a shave (or two of them, one apiece, as is customary), but not right then. We were offered the opportunity prior to our meeting with the captain, and we accepted eagerly. But it was a waste of the lather in my opinion, because by the time he was finished with us, the captain had sheared us so close he nearly drew blood.
After dressing, we were let loose into the general population for mess call. I’m sure the hall was enchanting, and the company of quality no doubt, and entertaining, but all Bemis and I could notice for a good while was the food, which was suitably magnificent. There were three courses, if you can believe it. At the feast’s heart was a noble stew of pork—at least I think it was pork—but whichever of God’s creatures it was made from, it wasn’t rotten, or vacuum desiccated, and in addition contained part of an onion, and what I suspect was a carrot, or something that could pass for a carrot if the light wasn’t good, which it wasn’t. And to accompany the stew there was bread. The loaf it sprung from was as old as Methuselah and as impenetrable as the Mormon bible, but
it was bread nonetheless. The astute reader will object that this is only two courses, and even then considerable leeway must be granted to the bread. But the third course was perhaps the best of all. Each man, not just we who had been left for dead in Farley’s Crater, but all eight men present, whether deserving or not, was given a measure of whiskey, and not just any old whiskey, but bourbon whiskey, if memory serves.
In addition to the three course meal, a quart of water was provided to each man: water fresh from the resonance engine, and thus as pure and untainted by sin or the presence of bacteria as the heart of a saint—not that that increased its appeal to me, who had grown up drinking, if that is the right term, the rich red-brown soup ladled out of the Mississippi river. As I have discussed elsewhere, a quart of Mississippi water has so much of the Earth in it that it eats like a meal, and can best be enjoyed with a spoon.
After supper we were offered the aforementioned shave, or the means for accomplishing it, and after the operation was finished, taken to see the captain. We were not told the purpose of the audience, and assumed it to be social in nature. This turned out not to be the case.
The captain of the Deirdre (for this was how he styled himself and no one appeared to question it) had a berth to himself, as his station deserved. That is to say, he occupied a small cavern, or large depression in the rock, that was entirely his own, with the luxury of a door, fashioned from a sheet of aluminum of course, and an electric light. He only had one such, however, while the estimable Mister Kent had possessed a matched pair. Then again, Kent was lord of a vast domain comprising both kitchen and sickbay, to say nothing of the chicken coop, while the captain’s cabin held little more than a desk and a bunk, plus a sizable collection of rocks.
Captain Eustace Merriwether did not rise from his chair to greet us when we were shown inside. At first he didn’t even look up from the nest of books and papers on his desk. It was a real desk by the way, not a sheet of aluminum—by which I mean that it was made of wood, presumably by someone on Earth who had made intimate acquaintance with a tree. This was a thing rarer to see than fresh air on the Moon, but the captain of the Deirdre had obtained it somehow. There were two chairs in the little cabin, which were in reality spent aluminum hogsheads. Calvin and I planted our backsides in them without permission and waited with a patience only available to the well-fed until Captain Merriwether deigned to look up, which eventually he did.
“Welcome aboard the Deirdre, gentlemen. I assume you are well, or well enough, and that Mister Kent has seen to your immediate needs.”
“Yes, thank you,” I said. “Everyone has been most kind.”
“And generous,” put in Bemis, as unaware of the true nature of the thing as a dog at Sunday school, or myself for that matter. But our enlightenment was in the offing, and gaining on us like a lee shore.
Captain Merriwether picked up a thin ledger, glanced briefly at it, then returned his gaze to us, saying, “Very well. Now, can you men read, and do sums to any degree?”
“Certainly,” I said. “Some people are even persuaded that I can write as well,” I added. “They are credulous people, for the most part, but—”
“Good,” the captain interrupted. “This is an account of your debits and credits as of this moment.” He held up the opened ledger, then passed it to me. “Please be so good as to satisfy yourselves that it is accurate and complete.”
I took the book and began to look it over. Calvin leaned out of his hogshead to peer at it too. In it, each moment of our long day of deliverance was chronicled, and a price tag attached.
“Do you mean to say,” I said, looking up from the carnage, “that we are expected to pay for our rescue?”
Merriwether said, “The Deirdre is not a charity, Mister Clemens.”
“Judging by these figures, that is abundantly clear,” I said. I took a moment to recover from the initial shock of it, then interrogated the ledger more closely. “I remember the air cylinders and the carboy of water, but what is this about six articles from the ‘slops chest’?”
“You’re wearing them, sir, or half of them. Mister Bemis wears the other half.” Any normal man, even a lawyer, would have smiled upon saying this, but Merriwether just sat there impassively, stroking the gray-brown stubble on his face that would any day now declare itself a beard.
I looked down at the worn and tattered overalls I was dressed in. “Why, I could have bought a new suit of clothes in St. Louis for this price, good clothes too, or a full set of boot laces in New York.”
“You’re a long way from St. Louis,” said Merriwether. There was no denying that.
“Sam,” said Calvin, pointing at the far page, “they’ve charged us for the bath, thin as it was, and for the shave, which we did for ourselves.”
“With the Deirdre’s razor, soap, and water,” said the captain.
“And then there’s the price of the rescuing itself.” Bemis pointed again.
“I could buy a horse for that,” I insisted. “Maybe even a genuine Mexican plug.”
The captain shook his head. “You couldn’t buy a horse for a thousand dollars on the Moon, as I’m sure you’re aware. My men are highly skilled at what they do. Surely you don’t expect them to save your lives for nothing.”
“But our supplies,” Bemis said. “Surely they are worth something. They cost us enough.”
“You have been duly credited for those. What we have use for anyhow.” The Deirdre’s captain favored us with a sharp gaze. “By what Mister Perkins tells me, the two of you would have been asphyxiated in another few hours. Are your lives not worth the price of, what did you call it, Clemens, a Mexican plug?”
Calvin looked at me and said, “I hate to admit it, but he’s right, Sam.”
“Yes,” I admitted, “I suppose he is, but I could have done without a shave if I’d known it was going to cost me two dollars.” I sighed, then said, “Very well, sir. I can see which side the bread is buttered on now that it’s fallen in my lap, and, I am grateful for our deliverance, and the meal, and for Calvin’s bath too, despite the price. So, if you will be good enough to pass me your pen and a scrap of paper, I’ll write out a marker for the full amount.”
“And how long will I be holding that marker, sir? Until you and your partner strike it rich, I suppose.”
“Exactly,” I said.
Captain Merriwether would no doubt have laughed at this point, if he were at all disposed toward laughter, which he was not. Instead he said, “Come, gentlemen. Have you no money at all? I am not a difficult man. I will gladly accept gold, silver, air, ice, foodstuffs, even tradable goods. Have you nothing of value?” He knew perfectly well that we did not, but his offer to accept payment in anything from Fabergé eggs to chicken’s eggs was part of the play, and he didn’t want to short the second act.
“I believe we have a dollar,” I said, with as much pride as I could muster. This was not a hundredth, perhaps not a thousandth, part of what was needed, but with a dollar between us we were not vagrants, not entirely.
“Yes,” said Bemis. “It’s in the digger. Stuck into the instructions manual for safe keeping, I believe.”
Calvin looked at me then, and I immediately understood what his hopeful, forlorn stare presaged.
“Are you sure?” I ventured.
He said, “What choice do we have, Sam?”
“Well now,” I began, working up my best drummer’s pitch. “There is the digger. It’s worth quite a bit more than what we owe of course. Worth quite a lot in fact, if valued correctly. It’s an absolutely first rate machine.” I felt somewhat as if I were negotiating the sale of my mother, so naturally I was determined that she fetch a good price. “However, I expect we can work out something, perhaps a portfolio of shares, to compensate us for the overage.”
The captain was shaking his head, and no doubt would have smiled ruefully, if he were ever disposed to smile. “We have no use for a digger in the Deirdre, gentlemen.”
“Oh, yes,” I said, undaunted
, “I saw on the way in that you already have a digger in stock, but it can’t hold a candle to the Beast, and that’s a fact. Why, he can—”
“We have no use for a digger, Clemens. That thing you saw on the surface came with Garrett and Watkins and is only good for towing ore cars to the pulverizing mill.”
“But you can’t do a thing in the mining line without a digger,” Bemis insisted.
If Merriwether had been capable of laughter this surely would have been his moment, but instead he said, “Who told you that?”
Neither Bemis nor I had much to say about this, because our authority on the subject was none other than the man who’d sold it to us, and even we could see the hole in that argument. If you cared to, you could throw a cow through it, in the dark. “Why, it’s common knowledge,” I said desperately.
“It’s bunk,” Merriwether said. This turned out to be a good description for most everything we knew, but we didn’t know even that much at the time. “Take a look around you,” he continued. I successfully resisted the urge to inspect my surroundings. “That digger of yours is well over a dozen feet tall and more than half of that across the beam. You might as well dig out a gopher’s hole with an elephant. No, a big machine like that is useless once you’ve dug out quarters, and perhaps the initial shaft.” He frowned. “No. I’m mighty sorry, boys, but we’ve got no use for it. No use at all.”
We sat in silence for a while, then at last Calvin said, “So what are we to do then?” In fact he should have seen the answer coming a mile away, but alas it was over his horizon.
“You’ll work it off, like Garrett and Watkins, and some others in the crew. You’re hardly the first men we’ve pulled out of the dust.” As it happened, the rescue of miners from Farley’s Crater was a going concern in the Deirdre. If we’d been paying attention, the presence of the dust boat and the efficiency of its operation might have told us that.
The Deirdre Page 3