“Anyways, we was down a fair piece into D2 and lookin’ into the side spurs if they seemed like they mighta been tread in, but not goin’ too far along any particular one, if ya get my meanin’, when we hears a commotion over the radio, which we has kept on for just such a purpose, an’ we knows we must be near ta them lost sheep, since everywhere else around us was solid rock ‘cept straight on ahead. Well, we follows the tunnel ‘til a light comes in view. We has our lamps shut down a course, so’s we c’n see if anyone’s there. It’s dyin’ out fast, that lamp, ya can practically see it goin’, but it shows us Murphy and the jonah, and while their light is fadin’ an’ the last a their air wastin’ away, they’re a fightin’ each other, arguin’ over which way they oughta go. Natur’ly Jones wants to take ‘em the wrong way. They sees us a comin’ about then, an’ they stops their bickerin’ and starts running up-tunnel in our direction, when of a sudden Mister Lang and the boys in D3 let loose with a blast, the very one they been told to hold up on but never got the word, thanks to there bein’ a jonah no doubt.
“Well, that blast was a good’un, boys, an’ it threw all four of us arse over teakettle. Or leastways three of us, cuz when the dust settled, as they says, Murphy’s there but Jones weren’t nowhere ta be seen. And there, where he’d last been spied runnin’ up the tunnel, was nothin’ but a great heap a rock, filling up that tunnel like it was never dug out at all.
“Now as you might guess, me an’ Murphy and the other man hightailed it right outta there, not waitin’ around fer the rock ta bury us alongside John Jones, an’ we figgered that was the end of it, and for once the jonah had got the bitter end. Only before much of an hour had gone, men was sent back down the D line to shore it up, since the Ds was still profitable in the eyes a the cap’n, and the men gone down there swears they hears noises over their radios. Cryin’ and wailin’ noises, sad ‘n’ terrible noises they were, or so they says. The rest of us thought they’d gone buggy, what with losin’ a man so near ta hand an’ all, even if he were a jonah. But then Perkins got to hearin’ it when he come to inspect the shorin’ up work, and right away he set the men ta dig out that cave-in, as he figgered Jones must still be alive, else who was doin’ all that awful wailin’?
“So we digs out the spur—took most of another hour with four men at it, myself bein’ one a them, an’ we all figgered Jones fer dead in any case, for while we was about diggin’, the wailin’ had ceased. We dug and pitched over rocks an’ when we’d cleared it all away, much to our surprise there weren’t no body under there. I was right there, an’ I c’n swear ta it if ya like. An’ da ya know what was on t’other side a that rockfall, shipmates?” No one said a word. “Nothin’, that’s what. Not a single God fersaken thing, an’ the spur a dead end.” There was a respectful silence then, as the miners pondered Jones’s fate. Chalk finished with the canonical conclusion for all ghost stories, be they terrestrial, maritime, or interplanetary in origin. “And ya know, shipmates, if’n ya goes down into ol’ D2 an’ turns up the receiver on yer gear, I ‘spect you’ll hear the wailin’ a John Jones even now.”
This was an interesting tale, with a satisfactorily ambiguous termination, as well as an edifying message for the hearer. The moral, as I interpreted it, was to steer clear of a jonah, if you could, and if you couldn’t, make certain at least that you were not him.
Chapter Four
Much of our time, when we were not busy lugging a hod through a succession of tunnels, was spent in the communal cavern known, thanks to the former whalers, as “belowdecks,” or simply “below,” despite the fact that it was actually above the rest of the mine. Only the depot where the ore carts were loaded was at a higher elevation. I called this homey space a cavern, but that word, humble as it is, still lends the belowdecks a grandeur it cannot live up to. It was a hole blasted out of the rock, like every other place men have contrived to live in the Moon, only smaller.
Nine men, including Bemis and myself, occupied this entrenchment, usually all nine of us at the same time. If occupancy had been organized as it was aboard a whaling ship or a man o’ war, half the Deirdre’s complement would have slept in the canopy of hammocks attached to the ceiling, while the other half worked, and then exchanged places—but there weren’t enough experienced men to direct two shifts, let alone the three that were maintained by the Company in their strip mining operations, so the belowdecks seemed always to be either devoid of life, excepting the mine’s cat and the occasional cockroach, or else full to bursting with humanity. Perhaps the cockroaches, those most tenacious of camp followers for the human race, swarmed over the belowdecks in our absence, but if so they were shy, and only a handful were generally available for our entertainment when we returned. And when we did return, we were a humanity fresh, if that is the word, from four hours of arduous toil, each man encased in his own canvas haggis and accumulating within it his own foul juices and noxious effluvia, and all of it was released into the same small space at more or less the same time. But since everyone but Mister Kent and Mister Lovelace, who ruled their own separate domains, had been out in the tunnels and sealed into their pressure suits, there was no one to complain of the sudden onslaught of stench and perspiration and too-long-sequestered human waste, because belowdecks was a paradise when compared to inhabiting your pressure suit.
This was due in no small part to the fact that the belowdecks was warm, when it wasn’t stiflingly hot, and enjoyed a humidity that would make the jungles of Borneo green with envy. Mister Lovelace and his precious resonance engine, with all its accompanying devices that kept us alive, were located only a dozen yards beneath us, and the surplus steam from its boilers was enough to poach us like a school of catfish in a hot spring. It was glorious, and even cleansing after a fashion. The red Indian’s sweat lodge had nothing on the belowdecks, except perhaps more elbow room.
It goes without saying perhaps, but I shall say it anyway, that a man’s pressure suit, with its many parts—exterior skin, interior lining laced with heat producing wires, helmet, hoses, air cylinders, air regulator, batteries, water reservoir, gloves, boots, and various other parts either too gruesome or demoralizing to mention—was as important to a man’s survival as his own skin, only more so. A lot of fuss was made in the Deirdre about maintaining one’s pressure gear in prime, or at least adequate, working order, and much of the time spent belowdecks (after eating, sleeping, sweating, swearing, and the disposal of bodily wastes) was spent in the maintenance of it.
The attitude of the management with respect to suit maintenance was markedly different in the Deirdre than what we had known at Lunar Consolidated Mines. In the Deirdre, a man was expected to check each item of his gear, in a specific order and with well-delineated procedures, and effect any needed repairs himself, or if the job was beyond him, with the help of a mate. The Company had not been nearly so finicky. If a picker didn’t maintain his gear, and the gear then went to its destruction, the picker got a new pressure suit for his trouble, at the full market price, assuming he was lucky enough to survive to pay for it. More often, a new picker was required along with the new set of gear. A while back I discussed how they disliked freelance terpsichore in the Company on account of the cost in pressure suits, and a taste for consistency might lead one to think that the maintenance of one’s equipment would be encouraged for the same reason. And it was, but not if it cut into the time a man could spend working—which it would unless the niceties, such as eating and sleeping, were curtailed—and so, like temperance, Christian charity, and the brotherhood of man, proper suit maintenance was praised whenever it was mentioned, and otherwise ignored. But new, that is to say still living, men were harder to come by in the remote neighborhood of Farley’s Crater, so all in the Deirdre were encouraged, not to say pressed, into performing regular maintenance on their gear.
The former whalers among us called the time set aside for this work “make ‘n’ mend,” and it was as sacred, regular, and full of pomp and circumstance as high mass in the Vatican
. For example, some things had to be done after every foray into the tunnels. Batteries must be reinvigorated, air cylinders and water reservoir refilled, liquid waste decanted, and dust removed from all of the more delicate, and vital, parts of one’s suit, such as heat radiators, air valves, the helmet, glove, and boot seals, and the faceplate.
This pernicious dust was our constant companion in the Moon, a houseguest that, once allowed through the front door and installed in the spare bedroom, decides never to leave, and worse, never to leave you alone. He takes full possession of the sofa, gets familiar with every article of your food, backs up the plumbing, makes unreasonable demands on the servants, relentlessly monopolizes your leisure time, and works himself into the most recondite corners of your personal affairs. He never offers to take out the garbage, for he is the garbage, and never takes a day off to visit the circus or the undertaker to give you some relief from his constant presence. He is your faithful companion and, in his eyes at least, your dearest friend, and he would rather die the slow and painful death he deserves than leave you in peace. The only solution to a houseguest like this is to insist he seek a promotion and become a congressman, where he can stick his nose into everyone’s business and eat them out of house and home wholesale, and for a living. The only solution for the dust is to root it out from wherever it is hiding and toss it into the street, with prejudice. Any luggage can be sent on later.
Along with everything else, the entire exterior skin of one’s suit needed to be carefully inspected, as even the smallest tear, puncture, frayed seam, or deep abrasion could result in a loss of pressure. This was not a fatal calamity if the leak was a slow one and you were close to home, that is the belowdecks, but it could be a death sentence if you were, say, deep in the catacombs of D3 carrying out a hod full of ore. Unfortunately, I learned this lesson the hard way.
“Sam,” said Bemis, “Don’t look now, but I think you’re pruning.” We were heading up-tunnel, taking the last of the ore from a played-out spur. Bemis was at the aft end of the hod, as usual, and thus he had a fine view of the rear of my haggis over the top of the ore. This arrangement was not the result of bullying, trickery, or even heartfelt pleading on my part, although I was prepared to deploy all of these and more, had the need arisen. But as it happened Calvin actually preferred the aft position, or claimed he did, because he disliked maintaining the contortions necessary to grip the sticks low down behind him, as was often required on an up-tunnel run, quite as much as I disliked dodging whatever rocks might decide to abandon the hod. So, like Jack Sprat and his wife, we had discovered a comfortable division of labor that suited us both.
I began my response with an expletive, then said, “Are you sure?”
“Your, well, your arse is starting to pucker. It’s hard to miss.” The backside of one’s pressure suit below the air cylinders was often the canary in the coal mine when it came to detecting a slow decompression. The area is broad regardless of one’s physique, uncluttered, and unlike other more delicate parts of your haggis, has little to do except hold in air.
I said, “How bad is it, do you think?”
“If I can see it, I expect it’s bad enough.”
The stretch of tunnel we were in was, as usual, about as roomy as a corset on a sow. It would have been no trouble at all for an ambitious piece of rock to reach out and snag my suit. The only difficulty would be in deciding which of a thousand such rocks had got the contract for the work.
“Hell and damnation,” I said. “So much for the slush.” Some of the men smeared handfuls of fat, which they called “slush,” provided by Mister Kent from the galley free of charge, onto the outsides of their pressure suits, in a fair imitation of a greased pig at a county fair. This would demonstrate an admirable level of ingenuity for a pig, in my opinion, but is less impressive in a miner, and I had only recently and reluctantly applied my first coat. The idea was to slip along through the tunnels like an oyster slides down one’s gullet, but the practice stuck in my craw. Haggises are meant to be greasy, I suppose, but the effectiveness of the technique was questionable, as this incident proves, and once applied, the rancid fat became part of your suit for life.
“There’s a junction up ahead, I think,” said I, peering into the dark. This was indeed the case—it was the estimable D3-4, so at least we knew where we were—and we set the hod down in its mouth. Then we, and particularly Bemis, who had a better view of my more recondite parts than I, began to inspect the surface of my suit for signs of a leak. These deadly wellsprings of life-sustaining air were not easy to find in the dark, or under any conditions really, and none showed themselves in a cursory inspection. That was good news for me. The air inside of one’s haggis was invariably thick with perspiration and other vapors that would spew out and crystalize in the vacuum, creating a small geyser. If such a geyser was easy to see, its owner was in serious peril—but to my great relief, Calvin reported no geysers.
Still, the leak must be found. The accepted technique for this added insult to injury, but was otherwise reasonably effective. It consisted in throwing handfuls of our friend the dust at each portion of one’s suit in turn, and watching, in the criss-crossed beams of your partner’s and your helmet lamps, for the dust to jump away from the surface of the suit as it was disturbed by the air escaping from a (hopefully minuscule) hole in the fabric. The technique still worked even if you had been foolish enough to slather your haggis with slush, but if you had, then the majority of the dust stuck to the fat, and this was yet another strike against its application. The combination of dust and animal fat was a union made in Hades, and putting the two together was like having a lifelong houseguest who brings with him a large, hungry, and bumptious goat. While dust by itself can, with much effort and tenacity, be removed from the cracks, crevices, and cul de sacs of one’s suit, any grease in the vicinity will come to its aid and seal it in place. The viscidity of the villainous compound thus created is remarkable. Only precious soap and water freely and wantonly applied will touch it, and even with that formidable posse on its trail it is nearly impossible to dislodge.
So by the time the leak was discovered, I was thoroughly tarred and feathered, and by my own hand. Given my keen ability to find, if not court, trouble wherever it sought to roam, I had expected to be the guest of honor at a good tar-and-feathering, even one with torches and a rail, before I’d got too old and set in my ways to enjoy it, but I had never expected to have to perform the necessary ablutions for myself. It would take ages to scrape the muck from the skin of my suit, but as it turned out I would have ample time for the job.
At last, a plume of dust rose from my right knee joint. “Got it!” I said, then sprinkled more dust over the accordion folds to refine the search.
Calvin stopped throwing dust at me then and crouched over the knee. “Seam’s torn on the third fold,” he said. This was a popular spot at which to damage one’s suit, as hod carrying often found one on gloves and knees in those narrow, sloping tunnels. Bemis paused for a distressing few moments, then said, “We can’t patch that out here, Sam. It’ll have to be sewn up and tarred.”
“Ah, there ya be,” came a voice, torn apart with static but still recognizable.
“Who’s that?” Bemis said. “Is that Chalk?”
“Aye, ‘tis Chalk, shipmates.” A wandering beam of light flashed from somewhere down the throat of D3-4. “I was comin’ up the D3 when I hear the two a ya talking ‘bout a hole in yer suit. When I hears that sorta talk, boys, I come a runnin’. Where’s she spoutin’?”
“The right knee,” Bemis said. “Top of the fold.”
Chalk bent to peer at the tiny gash, then clucked his tongue. “Bad place fer a tear, that is. No way to close that short a the belowdecks. An’ walkin’ on it ‘ll jus’ tear it worse.” Gottschalk was a font of good news, I thought, like the obituary page.
“So what can I do?” I croaked.
“Nothin’” he said.
“Nothing?” I repeated. I could hear the fear in
my voice.
“Jus’ you set still, now. Calvin an’ me ‘ll bring ya in.” He drew a short length of rope from somewhere. “I seen men with worse that lived ta tell the tale.” He wrapped the rope around the top fold of the knee joint, then pulled it tight, painfully tight, and secured it with a mysterious seaman’s knot.
“Uh,” I said through a growing pain in my knee, “are you sure that’s a good idea, Chalk?”
“Only thing for it, mate. Ya gotta stop the air from gettin’ out, now don’cha?”
“But it didn’t hurt ‘til you tied it off,” I insisted.
“Hurtin’s a good sign, way I sees it. Means yer gam there is still alive. When ya cain’t feel ‘er no more, that’s when there’s cause ta worry, ya see.” He flicked a gloved finger against my thigh. A hollow thud echoed up from within my suit. “Fine. That’s holdin’, ain’t it.”
“What about my leg?” I said.
“Ah, don’t you worry, Samuel. Like I said, I seen worse. Had a deuce of a time with Peterson at first, as I recall, but he come out well enough.” I wondered how well was well enough, but said nothing. “That were most of a year ago now, I reckon. He was fine, by an’ large. Leastways he were after the surgery.”
“Surgery?” I squeaked.
“Now, Calvin, you help him ta stand up, and mind the leg. I’ll not be responsible for what happens if that line was to come loose.” He pointed at the rope. Then he addressed me. “I tol’ ya, Samuel, you rest easy.” Apparently I was supposed to rest easy while I got to my feet and, presumably, climbed the tunnel. “There ain’t a thing ta worry about. Mister Kent, he’s a wizard with the saw.”
“Saw?” I whimpered.
“Sure’s yer born, ol’ son. As I recollects, Peterson was his old self again inside a month.” Chalk chuckled as he led the way up-tunnel. “Not quite all his old self, a course,” he added ominously. “He weren’t up ta totin’ hod no more, it’s true, but—”
The Deirdre Page 5