Anti-Ice

by Stephen Baxter

  I traced the line of position flags as it swept depressingly far from Earth’s surface; soon, I saw, we would leave the boundary of the navigation table altogether. I mentioned this to Traveller. “I admit I had not envisaged traveling quite so far in this untried craft,” he said. “But the table will not be without its uses.” So saying he popped his head below the table and rummaged through a cupboard set into the deck; he emerged holding rolls of paper some four feet wide, which he proceeded to unroll and lay flat against the table. He revealed a map designed in four sheets and marked with the imprint of Beer and Moedler. “From this rather fine Mappa Selenographica,” Traveller said, “which I carry to facilitate telescopic observations from above the atmosphere, I intend to improvise an analogue of the table’s polar-view Earth maps. A little adjustment of the gearings and the table should serve us in as good stead as we arrive at our destination…”

  Traveller beamed at this further exhibition of his own inventiveness, his eyes fixed on the chart; but Holden and I exchanged despairing glances, and then looked down at the chart in silence. At that moment the cares and struggles of Earth did indeed seem distant and remote; for this “Mappa” showed the dead seas and airless mountains of the world to which we were, it seemed, irrevocably headed: it was a map of the Moon.

  9

  IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON

  Traveling at several hundred miles each hour, it took the Phaeton twenty days to journey from the Earth to the environs of the Moon.

  On the eighteenth day I joined Traveller on his Bridge. The Moon lay dead ahead of the craft, so that it was poised directly above the glass dome of the Bridge. We were already so close to the sister world that it was barely possible to make out the edges of her glowing round face, and the closer we approached the more it seemed that the Moon was flattening into a landscape above us. But it was a strange, inverted landscape. Razor-edged lunar mountains hung above me like stalactites, or unlikely chandeliers which poured ghostly reflected sunlight into our Bridge. My Earth-trained perspective refused to allow me to perceive myself as hanging upside-down above the Moon; it was as if those mountains, those bowls of dust which were the lunar seas, those plains pocked by craters and laced by white rays, were about to tumble down about my defenseless ears.

  I looked down at the navigation table, reconfigured now by Traveller to show the Moon. The path of the hapless Phaeton, delineated by little flags, had been heading past the limb of the satellite; now it curved gracefully toward the Moon, so that, if undisturbed, the ship would pass around the lunar perimeter. At first I had imagined that these changes in our path had been due to the firing of our rocket engines, but Traveller explained that the rockets had done little but tweak our path in the required direction; far from the influence of Earth, we were now being pulled across the sky by the gravity of the lunar rocks themselves.

  “So, Ned,” Traveller called, and I turned to see him in his throne-chair, bathed in harsh, sharp radiance. “What an adventure awaits us.”

  “Sir Josiah, I understand that gravity is pulling us into this orbit toward the Moon. But will gravity pull us all the way down to the surface?”

  “No, Ned; if we do not fire the rockets again we will follow a hyperbolic path around the hidden hemisphere of the Moon and be flung away from her.”

  “Then let us be flung away, if it is anywhere in the direction of our homeworld! Sir, the Moon is indeed magnificent, but it was surely never designed to sustain human life. Is it truly necessary for us to descend to its surface?”

  Traveller sighed and, to my discomfiture, he reached up and removed the platinum nose from his face; with one thumb he rubbed the rim of the dark cavity so revealed, and then replaced the nose into his skull. “Ned, every time I discern some glimmering of intelligence in that bullet-shaped cranium of yours I am disappointed by a crass remark. I have explained this to you at least twice.”

  “Then I apologize, sir, for the point is still unclear to me.”

  “Is specific impulse such a difficult concept? Dear God… Very well, Ned. To enable the Phaeton to come so far our Monsieur Bourne has severely depleted our supply of reaction mass—of water. Even if we could somehow bend our trajectory to return to Earth, we should surely burn like toast as we hurtled uncontrolled through the atmosphere, with our remnants smashing into oblivion in the ground. So we need more water.”

  “A cheerful prospect. But if it is so impossible to land on Earth, how can we hope to land safely on the Moon?”

  Traveller’s face was turned up to the Moon, and I imagined him struggling for patience. “Because the pull of gravity is only one-sixth that at Earth’s surface. And so our enfeebled rockets can bring us safely out of orbit and to a soft landing on the lunar plains long before we run out of water.”

  I turned my face up to the Moon; I let its pale light fill my eyes, and I voiced my darkest fear. “Sir Josiah, let us face the truth. The Moon is a desolate, airless planet; we are no more likely to find water down there, frozen or otherwise, than we are to find a Cockney urchin selling hot chestnuts.”

  Traveller snorted laughter, his nose giving the sound a disconcerting metallic ring. “Forgive me, Professor Lord Ned; I did not realize you were such an expert on lunar and planetary theories.”

  “I am not, sir,” I said with some dignity, “but nor am I a fool; and I am capable of following the newspapers.”

  “Very well. There are three counters to your objections to my plan. First, that we have no alternative! There is nowhere else accessible to us which offers even the prospect of water, or any other suitable liquid. So it is the Moon or nothing, Ned.

  “Second, the opinion of the savants on the composition of the lunar surface is not as united as you appear to believe.”

  “But surely the accepted wisdom is that the Moon is barren, inert, lifeless, and without atmosphere.”

  “Pah!” Traveller snorted. “And what observations are such theories based on? For every sighting of a sharp occultation of a star by the limb of the Moon—’demonstrating’ by the absence of dimming or refraction, you see, that there is no air—I can quote another in direct contradiction. Only twenty years ago the Frenchman Laussedat noted a refraction of the solar disc during an eclipse.” Traveller, lying prone in his couch, held out his arms as if to embrace the lunar goddess above him. “I accept that our own eyes show us now that the Moon cannot have a blanket of atmosphere as thick as that of Earth; for surely if she did, her mountains and valleys would be hidden by a swirling layer of clouds and haze. And the lighter gravity, so advantageous to us in other ways, does not lend itself to the retention of a heavy atmosphere. But it is surely not beyond the bounds of possibility that we may find pockets of air in the deeper valleys, or even that a rarefied air might linger over the entire surface?

  “And besides, recall that we have only observed one side of the Moon. The satellite dances about the Earth, keeping one face modestly turned away. Even from this vantage point we have not yet seen the hidden face, Ned! Who knows what we may find?”

  “Craters, and mountains, and seas of dust.”

  “Mr. Wickers, your mind is like a shriveled prune, dry and incapable of surprise. What if the theories of Hansen are verified? Eh?” Hansen, it emerged, was a Danish astronomer who had suggested that the Moon had been pulled, by Earth’s gravity, into an egg-shape, and circled the Earth with the fatter end averted; and that a layer of thick atmosphere had accumulated over this heavier hemisphere, conveniently hidden from the view of inquisitive astronomers.

  “Well, Sir Josiah,” I said, “we must wait and see.”

  He snorted again. “Spoken like a feeble scientist, lad. You must learn to think like an engineer! To a scientist nothing is proven until it is demonstrated, every way up, before the eyes of a dozen of his sober-suited peers. But an engineer seeks what is possible. I don’t care if this theory is right or wrong; I ask instead what I can do with it.”

  “Sir Josiah, you listed three counters to my objection. What is
the third?”

  Now he twisted in his chair and craned his neck; his deformed face, half-silhouetted by the moonlight, was alive with excitement. “Ah, Ned, the third counter is simply this: whether we live or die, what fun it will be to walk among the mountains of the Moon!”

  I peered up at the forbidding world rotating slowly above me and wished I could find it in my young heart to share Traveller’s enthusiasm for the exotic and the spectacular; but, at that moment, I would have given all my astonishing experiences to be safely back in the snug bar of a Manchester club.

  * * *

  After the excitement of the reclaiming of the Bridge we had returned to our settled routine—with the exception that poor Bourne sat in his chair in the Cabin now, a silent, resentful specter—and the remaining hours of our voyage wore away rapidly.

  But at last I awoke, as usual with the homely smell of Pocket’s toast and tea in my nostrils, knowing instantly that this was the twentieth day of our flight—the day on which Sir Josiah Traveller would land us on the surface of the Moon itself, or else take us to our deaths!

  Traveller had assured us that we would land at around eight in the morning; and so Pocket awoke us a little earlier than usual, at five. We washed quickly and ate a healthy breakfast. Traveller insisted on this, even though I for one could scarcely swallow a mouthful. I fed Bourne and allowed him to wash sketchily. Pocket climbed through the hatch to bring Traveller this last breakfast at his station on the Bridge.

  With the meal completed and the debris hastily stowed away, we prepared for our descent. Traveller had explained to us that at ten minutes past seven his engines would fire one almighty burst, designed to knock us into a path which must inevitably meet the lunar surface.

  I ensured that Bourne was correctly restrained by his safety straps. The Frenchman’s feet and hands were also knotted together by leather belts; pale, obviously frightened, he averted his eyes with a trace of defiance. I pushed away from him, reached my own seat, and began to haul the straps around me—and then, with an oath, pulled myself across the Cabin once more and, with fingers stiffened by anger, loosened the bindings around Bourne’s wrists. Bourne neither aided nor abetted me.

  Holden, already in his place, shouted angrily, “Ned! What in God’s name are you doing? Will you loose that animal amongst us, at such a moment?”

  I turned on him, feeling my face flush with fury. “He is not an animal, George. He is a human being, a brother to any of us here. We may be going to our deaths today. Whatever his crimes, Bourne deserves to meet his fate with dignity.”

  Holden made to protest further, but Pocket, strapped tightly in his own chair, called out, “Please postpone your debate, sirs, for I fear that the engines are about to ignite, and the young gentleman will be injured if he does not resume his seat forthwith.”

  A glance at Traveller’s Great Eastern clock, still sitting proudly in its case at the center of the Cabin after all our adventures, showed me that it was already eight minutes past the hour. So with haste I returned to my chair and strapped myself in. We sat for long seconds; I avoided the others’ eyes for fear of finding only the reflections of my own terror…

  Then the great engines spoke once more.

  I was pressed deep into my seat, and I envisaged our precious water being thrust as freezing steam into space. The rockets fired for perhaps two minutes—and then, as suddenly as they had awoken, they fell silent. An ominous quiet descended on the Cabin, and we stared at each other wildly.

  From the Bridge there was no sound.

  “Holden, what has happened?” I hissed. “Do you think it worked? Are we heading to the Moon?”

  Holden bit his lip, his round face red and moist with fear. “The engines fired on cue, at any rate,” he said. “But as to the rest, I am scarcely qualified to judge. As with so much of this horrible adventure, we are reduced to waiting and seeing.”

  The minutes stretched out without event, and my fear became supplemented by boredom and irritation. “I say, Holden, I know Traveller is a great man—and that one must expect such chaps to display the odd eccentricity—but all the same, it seems inhuman to keep us sitting down here in suspense like this.”

  Holden turned to the servant. “Pocket? Do you think we should check if Sir Josiah is well?”

  Pocket shook his thin head, and I saw how sweat beaded over the bristles of hair at his neck. The manservant, restrained by circumstance from his customary round of chores, seemed the most nervous of all of us. “Sir Josiah doesn’t like to be disturbed at his work, sir.”

  I ground my fist into the palm of my hand. “But this is scarcely a normal time, damn it.”

  Holden said, “I think we had best let Traveller get on with his work, Ned, and try to be patient.”

  “Perhaps you’re right.” I cast about the Cabin, seeking diversion from my own thoughts, and lit on the unhappy figure of Bourne; the Frenchman sat with his head lolling against his chest, a prisoner even within this prison. I said, “I have to say again, Holden, it’s damn heartless of you to have wanted to keep this poor chap restrained still. What further damage can the fellow do?”

  Holden glared at Bourne. “He is an Anarchist, Ned; and as such cannot be trusted.”

  Now Bourne looked up with some defiance; in his heavily accented English he said, “I am no Anarchist. I am a Frenchman.”

  I studied his thin, proud features. “You told me you took the Phaeton because of the tricolore. What did you mean?”

  He fixed me with a condescending stare. “That you need to ask such a question, English, is sufficient answer.”

  I felt angry that my overtures, friendly enough in the circumstances, should be treated in this way. “What the devil is that supposed to mean? Look here—”

  “You won’t get any civility out of that one, Ned,” Holden said wearily. “The tricolore—the flag of their Revolution in which the rabble murdered their anointed rulers, and then turned on each other; the tricolore—which the upstart Corsican carried all over Europe; the tricolore—symbol of blood, chaos and murder—”

  “Yes, but what’s it got to do with the Phaeton?”

  “Think about it, Ned; try to see the last few decades from your Frenchie’s point of view. His famous Emperor is thrashed by Wellington and carted off to exile. The Congress of Vienna, which has settled the Balance of Power in Europe for all time, and which seems such a noble achievement to us, is invidious to him; for no more can he count on the division of his foes in order to spread his creed of lawlessness and riot across Europe—”

  Bourne laughed softly. “I point out that we are now ruled by an Emperor, not by a Robespierre.”

  “Yes,” said Holden with disdain, “by Louis Napoleon, who calls himself the bastard son of Bonaparte—”

  “The nephew,” interjected Bourne. “But—despite the legitimacy of Louis’ original election to power—your King would have the Emperor replaced, would he not, by a restoration of the old monarchy?” He laughed again.

  Holden ignored this. “Ned, your Frenchman has, this century, been thwarted in his ambitions of greed and lawlessness. He has been forced to witness the influence of Britain extend still further across the Continent—and the world—buttressed by the robust nature of our constitutional settlement, and the power of our industrial economy. And his resentment has grown.”

  Bourne continued to laugh quietly.

  Holden snapped, “Do you deny this?”

  Bourne became still. “I do not deny your hegemony in Europe,” he said. “But it is based on one thing, and one thing alone: anti-ice, and your monopoly on the substance. Thus you lay your anti-ice Rails across our fields, and build your stations with English names into which English goods are brought for sale.

  “And worse—worse than all this—is your hidden threat to use anti-ice as a final weapon of war. Where is your Balance of Power now, Mr. Holden?”

  “There is no such intention,” Holden said stiffly.

  “But you have deployed such weap
ons of terror already,” Bourne said, “against the Russians in the Crimea. We know what you are capable of. You British talk, and act, as if anti-ice was some supernatural outcropping of your racial superiority. It is not; your possession of it is no more than a historical accident, and yet you use this transient superiority to impose your ways, your policies, your very thinking, on the rest of mankind.”

  Now it was Holden’s turn to laugh, but I sat quietly, thinking over Bourne’s words. I will admit that even a month earlier I would instinctively have sided with Holden in this debate, but now, hearing the cold, precise words of this Frenchie—no, of this man, a man about my own age—I found my old certitudes more fragile than I had supposed. “But,” I asked Bourne, “what if this is true? Is the British way so bad? Holden has described the Congress of Vienna; Britain’s diplomats have striven for a just peace—”

  “I am French, not British,” he said. “We want to find our own destiny, not follow you to yours. The Prussians, and the rest of the Germans, too; if history says that fragmented nation is to unify, who is Britain to stand in the way? And even—even if our nations wish to go to war, then it is not for you to say ‘no’.” His face was pale, but his eyes were clear and steady.

  “Then your taking of the Phaeton—perhaps ultimately at the expense of your own life—”

  “—was an act designed to waste a few more pounds of the wretched anti-ice. To remove the reckless genius-criminal Traveller. It is known already that your stock of the substance is running low. There is no nobler way for a Frenchman to spend his life than to speed this process.”

  Despite the starkness of this statement, I was irresistibly reminded of Traveller’s remarks to the effect that his purpose in building such great devices as the Albert was to distract the politicians and generals from the military exploitation of anti-ice! Was Bourne’s analysis of the situation really so different from that of the great Englishman?