“Will he live?” asked Captain Merriwether, gazing down with obvious affection at his first mate.
“That remains to be seen,” said Kent, who was still busy bandaging the wound in Lang’s thigh. Merriwether looked sharply at the Deirdre’s physician, and Kent modified his assessment accordingly. “The bullet did not penetrate the femoral artery, or he would have been dead long before now. Still, he has lost a great deal of blood.” He finished dressing the wound by wrapping a wide cloth bandage around the upper portion of Lang’s thigh. “There is a good chance that he will recover, now that the bullet is out and the bleeding is stopped, but he’ll not be able to walk for some considerable time, lest the wound open itself again. By all that’s right, he should not even be moved for some days, but from what you’ve told me of our situation, we may have no choice.”
“If they penetrate to the galley then we will have been defeated in any case,” said Merriwether.
We had managed the rest of the trip back to the belowdecks and into the sickbay without further incident, but there was little doubt that an attack on the Deirdre, and perhaps even a full-scale invasion, was underway: an assault led by an apparent madman who, as I knew all too well, would not hesitate to shoot on sight anyone even remotely associated with the Deirdre.
To their credit, once they were apprised of the situation, the former whalers and other idlers camped in the belowdecks threw down their dilapidated aces, donned their pressure suits, and took up arms, of a sort, charging down into the D line wielding picks, shovels, and short lengths of aluminum and copper pipe. There were only six defenders that I could count, and that number included Perkins and Calvin Bemis—in fact everyone except Mister Kent, Mister Lovelace, Mister Lang (for obvious reasons), the captain (at least for the moment), and myself. I had been granted a temporary deferment from this duty, ostensibly to act as a runner, communicating the captain’s commands to Perkins and the others—assuming I could find them in the rabbit warren that was the Deirdre, and especially the D line. I tried to tell myself that I had been chosen for this task because of my demonstrably superior rhetorical skills, but I suspected that the real reason was that I was considered the least useful man in a pipe and shovel fight.
As he secured Lang’s bandage, Mister Kent said, “I don’t understand, Eustace—why are they doing this?”
Captain Merriwether replied, “They think we’re trying to poach on their territory—the Hammer ‘n’ Tongs’s territory, that is. In the parlance of the prospecting trade, they believe we have jumped their claim. Then again, that doesn’t account for the presence, let alone the behavior, of Mister Jones,” he added.
“Well, that’s nonsense, surely,” Kent said. “We haven’t trespassed on their mine.”
The captain of the Deirdre was silent for an unnaturally long time. “Not necessarily,” he said at last. “I’ll admit we were sailing pretty close to the wind, reopening D2. It is hard by the Hammer ‘n’ Tongs, as far as it’s possible to determine such things inside the Moon. It’s possible we may have crossed the line.” He paused again, then said, “Hell, Kent, I’ll confess it, given what Perkins told me of the excavations there, it seems likely that we did blast a hole or two into their claim.” He sighed. “What can I say, gentlemen? I plead desperation. And yes, before you say anything, I know full well that that is a poor excuse.” He took a moment to look at Mister Lang, lying unconscious beside him, then shifted himself on the small barrel he was using as a stool. “It’s a tolerably severe breach of etiquette, jumping a man’s claim, even if done inadvertently, and I can understand why they might be upset over it. But that’s no reason to board the Deirdre with guns blazing.” He abruptly stopped speaking and leapt to his feet. “Oh my lord,” he cried, “I’ve forgotten the pistols!” and he bolted from the sickbay-cum-galley without another word.
“Mister Lang did say the captain had a brace of pistols in his cabin,” I explained.
Kent nodded, then said, “So we have jumped their claim, have we, and now they are after jumping ours.” He shook his head. “Turnabout is fair play, I suppose, if it comes to that. But then who is this madman in the blackened pressure suit, this Jones, I believe you called him? Is he the owner of the Hammer and Tongs?”
I looked at Kent in astonishment. “You mean to say you don’t know him?” I said.
He said, “Why no, Clemens. Should I?”
“Well yes,” I said. “He was here. That is to say, he was a Deirdre once upon a time, if Chalk and the rest can be believed.”
Mister Kent chuckled. “They’re good men, Clemens, by and large, but I’d not rely much on anything they might say.” Kent thought a moment, idly twisting the locks of his voluptuous beard. “Jones, is it? I believe there was a man by that name—could hardly fail to be so, sooner or later, considering it’s so commonplace.” He frowned, then said, “Why, he’s not the man who was killed, is he?” Then he laughed. “I suppose that can hardly be the one, can it.”
“As a matter of fact it is,” I said, briefly enjoying the miracle of knowing something, anything, that someone else in my general vicinity did not. “It seems that the news of his death was greatly exaggerated,” I concluded.
“Excuse me?”
“I mean to say that he was not killed after all, although I’m sure I don’t know why not. It would have saved everyone involved a great deal of trouble, including him.” This was harsh sentencing, I’ll confess, but the man had shot at me with a pistol—done it more than once in fact, and without our even being properly introduced.
Kent said, “I knew him hardly at all, I’m afraid. He was never sick or injured that I can remember. That’s how I get to know the men, you understand. Unless of course they make a habit of complaining about the grub.”
“That was his great mistake,” I said.
Kent looked at me quizzically.
“He remained healthy and uninjured while, at least to hear Chalk tell it, everyone else fell into rack and ruin around him. That made him a jonah, you see.”
“Yes, I remember now. The men used to complain of him to me on occasion, but I paid it no mind. Nor did the captain, as I recall.” He went back to twisting at his great beard. “And if I’m thinking of the right man, Mister Lang didn’t care for him much and rode him hard. Or perhaps he did so to placate the other men, which is surely a bad business. I should have been more attentive to the men’s conversation, I suppose, but then they’re always going on about something, especially that Gottschalk.” He took a moment to inspect Mister Lang, then said, “But still, he was trapped in a cave-in and never recovered, yes? I don’t see how the man i’n’t dead.”
I heard a commotion and we both turned to see Captain Merriwether fly into the sickbay, looking like a desperado now with a six-gun clutched in each hand.
“Clemens,” he barked, “you come with me. A pair of pistols should help even the fight.”
I reached vaguely for one of the six-guns.
He saw my gesture and said, “Can you hit anything, man?”
I said, “I believe I could hit a rabbit with a rifle—if I was allowed to swing the butt at its head.”
Merriwether did not laugh of course, but he didn’t shoot me over the jest either, so I figured it had gone down reasonably well.
Then to my astonishment, as we left the sickbay for the belowdecks he pressed one of the pistols into my hand.
“Honestly,” I began, “I’m not much of a—”
He said, “I want you to go back to the D line and find Perkins. He’ll know what to do with this.”
“All right,” I said. I took the pistol carefully. It wasn’t the baby Jesus, but it was holy enough.
“Mister Lang is the best shot among us, unfortunately,” Merriwether added, glancing back toward the sickbay. “He having been in the army for a spell before he went to sea. But Perkins’ll do.”
Once we were in our pressure suits and into the tunnels, Captain Merriwether promptly disappeared, and I made my way to the start of t
he D line, which was an antechamber equipped with stray tailings, broken pieces of hod, and a two-foot-tall D scratched into the wall next to the entrance into the main passage. The D line was the largest and most extensive of the four excavations that made up the Deirdre, and was the most productive of the four as well, or had been at one time anyway. It was considerably less productive at present, if the results of our recent foray into D2 meant anything.
Two men were standing outside the D line when I arrived, pistol in hand. (By the way, there are no pockets to speak of in your typical pressure suit. I gather they tend to become impassable once the suit has ballooned up with air.)
“Who’s that?” called one of the anonymous haggises, once I’d negotiated the inevitable dogleg and come into their view. (There are no identification marks on your typical pressure suit either.)
“Clemens,” I said matter-of-factly.
“Ah, Samuel,” said an unmistakable voice. “And ya brought me a pistol into the bargain.”
I said, “I’m sorry, Chalk, but the captain says I’m to give this to Mister Perkins. Do you know where he is?”
It turned out that the other man was Winters. Like Chalk, he was a former whaler, and seeing the two of them there, staying scrupulously outside of the Ds, I wondered if somehow they still harbored a superstitious fear of the ghost of D2, despite the fact that the shade in question had proven itself to be mere flesh and blood.
Chalk said, “He’s gone down to the D3,” which I knew was actually above D2, although it was a later dig. “Leastways that’s where he said he were goin’.”
“He deputized us to guard the sally port,” said Winters, raising a pickaxe to show that he was on the job.
I entered said sally port and started into the dreaded Ds. Officially, there were three excavations beyond the entrance to this line, called (with the sort of wild imagination common in the mining trade) D1, D2, and D3, but once you were inside, you soon discovered there were far more than three tunnels in it. This was so, I found out eventually, because whenever evidence of a fresh ice deposit was detected, whether that evidence was real or only hypothetical, blasting inevitably occurred and, human nature being what it is, more blasting soon followed, until a pocket of ice or other valuables was uncovered, or until (far more often, alas) it was given up as a “dry hole.” Either way, a new spur was created, and every one of these once-promising boondoggles looked alike. Most of the spurs were dead ends, but now and then, just to make navigation more interesting, they would take it upon themselves to collide with others of their kind, appearing without warning anywhere above, below, or to either side of the tunnel you were currently in. The choice this provided gave some solace to a lost miner, because there was always a chance that the new tunnel might be a way out. Then again, it was at least as likely to lead you in circles, or to be another dead end, and at such a juncture it was useful to invoke the devil-may-care go-for-broke spirit of a busted-out riverboat gambler if you were not to go mad.
I had learned a fair portion of the D line by then, largely by the accumulation of mistakes. Thus I was able to find my way to D3 without much trouble. And once I’d got there, it was not necessary to guess which spur Perkins might be inhabiting, because he nearly ran me down by coming out of one in a hurry.
“Who’s that?” he shouted. (I suppose name plaques are out of the question, but honestly, something should be done.)
“It’s Clemens,” I said.
A moment later, two more men came running out of the tunnel, one of whom I recognized as Calvin Bemis. (Pressure suits are not entirely anonymous after all, and considering our close acquaintance, I’d seen more of Bemis’s mottled haggis than I’d seen of my own.)
There was a flash deep in the spur they’d just run out of, and a telltale geyser of dust and rock fragments sprang up from the floor of the tunnel’s mouth. All four of us moved up the main passage to get out of the line of fire. Now I knew why they were so anxious to leave that spur.
“They’ve broken out of D2 and into D3 somehow,” said Perkins, breathing hard into his radio’s speaking cone. “And they have another pistol. Either that, or the one gets around quite a lot.”
“I don’t know if it’ll help, but I’ve brought you this,” I said, raising the captain’s pistol into the beam of his headlamp.
“About damned time,” said the other man, the one who wasn’t Bemis.
“Booger all,” Perkins said. “Will you look at that. Now we have a fighting chance at least.” Perkins’s faceplate pointed at me, and he said, “I don’t suppose you’re a crack shot then, are you, Clemens?”
I’d been around this track once already and didn’t feel the need to run it again. “I’m afraid not,” I said.
Perkins wasted no time in taking the six-gun from my glove. “Very well,” he said. “Gather up your weapons, turn out your helmet lamps, and let’s see if we can run them out of here.” In addition to the pistol, our arsenal contained a shovel, a four-foot length of pipe, and all the rocks I could carry.
We put out our headlamps, and a moment later, in total darkness, Perkins leapt into the tunnel’s mouth, firing the pistol once, then again a second later. A very satisfying series of exclamations came over the radio in response. I was about to tell him to go easy with the pistol, as Captain Merriwether had neglected to give me any ammunition beyond what was in the gun to begin with, but hearing that distant cursing reminded me that our adversaries were almost certainly able to hear us, and under no circumstances should they be informed about our short supply of bullets.
Then Perkins, knowing full well that we could see nothing at all, grabbed each of us in turn and drew us into the spur behind him until we reached the first dogleg. This feature was discovered the hard way, by running into the wall. The invaders were not there, thank goodness, but they were not far away. Distorted bits of chatter came over the radio, most of it commenting unfavorably on the presence of the new pistol.
The radios we use on the Moon are not designed for privacy, let alone the secrecy necessary to waging war. Quite the opposite in fact: all the radios operate on a common frequency, like steam buggies all traveling on the same turnpike. And so there was no way for us to talk amongst ourselves without the men of the Hammer ‘n’ Tongs on the far side of the dogleg hearing much, if not all, of what we said. Our only recourse was to shut off our radios entirely and communicate by touching our helmets together, thereby conducting the vibrations of our words through a combination of metal and air.
In my experience, an American finding himself in a foreign land communicates with the locals either through pantomime and wild emphatic gestures, like an Italian ordering his breakfast, or else by speaking his English slowly, distinctly, and as loudly as possible—hoping, one can only suppose, to penetrate the thick skull of the foreigner through brute force, like a cannon ball crashing through the hull of a man-o’-war. Neither of these techniques work any better in the tunnels of the Moon than they do in, say, Moldavia, but for even better reasons: hand gestures are unintelligible in total darkness, and no volume of sound, no matter how painfully enunciated, will ever penetrate the vacuum.
Perkins said, “Radios off. Then touch helmets.”
So we switched off, and the four of us got straight to work banging our heads together. After he’d had enough of this, Perkins took charge and put Bemis on one side of him, up-tunnel, and me on his down-tunnel side, with the other man, who it turned out was Garrett, squeezed into the wall in front of him. Then each of us placed his helmet against that of Perkins.
“Can you men hear me?” Perkins said, but the problem was not so much hearing him as understanding him. The sound of his voice was thin and hollow, distant yet booming at the same time, as if he were speaking with his head thrust inside a large spittoon—which was within spitting distance of the truth. Still, noises of assent were delivered by the rest of us, and Perkins continued, “I think they’re waiting for us just past the bend, figuring to jump us as we come through. So here’s
what we’ll do—”
“Unless they’ve gone off down-tunnel,” said Garrett. I think that is what he said. His voice was even more hollow and indistinct than Perkins’s, as his spittoon was once removed from mine.
“If that’s so, then we’ll go after them, but I think they’re waiting for us to come through one at a time so they can bushwhack us.” As usual, the tunnel ahead was only wide enough for one fully-loaded haggis at a time to pass.
I said, “Mister Perkins, I think you should know that the captain did not give me any more ammunition for that six-gun.”
“Booger,” said Perkins, “and I just wasted two of them. And they’ve got smart and shut their lamps off.”
“How do you know that?” I interrupted.
Bemis said, “Let’s hear the plan, Sam.”
Perkins answered my question anyway. “If they had a lamp on, we’d see some light spilling down the tunnel, despite the bend. So,” he continued, “instead of charging in, I say we sneak up on them.”
“We do what on them?” said Garrett.
“Sneak up on them,” repeated Perkins, speaking more distinctly. “We can’t go through except one-by-one, which is what they’re counting on. So instead we go around, or two of us do, while the other two stay here, lamps off but radios on.”
“What do you mean, go around?” said Bemis.
Perkins said, “You’ve got to know your D line, you see, and those men from the Hammer ‘n’ Tongs’ll know booger-all on that score. This passage we’re in is D3 minus two, or second spur on the right from the start of D3, but D3 minus four, which starts about forty yards further on, crosses underneath it, and minus two fell in on minus four where they cross paths, so now there’s a hole between them.”
“Are you sure?” said Garrett.
“Course I’m sure, ya silly booger,” insisted Perkins. “I blasted out the minus four myself, didn’t I. Bemis, you and Clemens go back out to the main line, find D3 minus four—you can use your helmet lamps—then go up the minus four spur ‘til you get to the connecting passage, then go on through with your lamps off. Take the shovel, just in case the hole’s stove in.”
The Deirdre Page 11