The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 2 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  The lunar night wore on. Fowler and Mcintosh were out spreading their dirty laundry for the usual three-hour exposure to Moon conditions before shaking the clothes out and packing them away ‘til they were needed again.

  Fowler straightened up and looked at the Earth for a moment, then said, “Mac, did you ever eat in a diner on a train?”

  “Sure, many times.”

  “You remember how the headwaiter seated people?”

  Mcintosh thought for a moment then said, “I know what you mean. He keeps them apart. He seats individuals at empty tables until there are no more empty tables; then he begins to double them up.”

  “That’s it. He preserves the illusion of isolation. I guess people don’t know how much they need one another.”

  “I guess they don’t. People are funny that way.”

  They grinned at each other through the faceplates, although it was too dark to see inside the spacesuits. They finished spreading the laundry and went into the dome together. Both of them had recently come to realize a striking thing. If one of them died, the other could not survive. It was difficult enough to preserve sanity with two. One alone could not last an Earth-day. The men on the Moon lived in pairs or they died in pairs. And if Fowler and Mcintosh had thought to look at each other closely, they would have noticed a few incipient lines radiating from the eyes. Nothing striking, nothing abnormal, and certainly nothing as intense as the far look. Just the suggestion of a few lines around the eyes.

  * * * *

  The night had only two Earth-days to run. Fowler and Mcintosh for the first time began to turn their thoughts to the journey home, not with longing, not with anticipation, but as a possibility of something that might happen. The actuality of leaving the Moon seemed too unreal to be true. And the cold harsh fact was that the rocket might not come; it had happened before. So though they dimly realized that in a mere four Earth-days they might leave the grim grayness behind, they were not much concerned.

  A series of observations ended. Fowler and Mcintosh sipped hot tea, drawing the warmth into their chilled bodies. Fowler sat perched on one end of a bench. Mcintosh cupped the teacup in his hands and stood looking out at the lowering moonscape, wishing he could pull his eyes from it, too fascinated by its awfulness to do so. There was complete silence in the dome.

  “Don.” The word came as a gasp, as though Mcintosh had called the name before he had completely swallowed a mouthful of tea.

  Fowler looked up, mildly curious. He saw Mcintosh drop the teacup, saw it bounce off the floor. He saw Mcintosh straining forward, taut, neck muscles standing out, mouth open, one hand against the clear plastic.

  “Don. I saw something move out there.” The words were shrill, harsh, hysteria in every syllable.

  Fowler landed beside him in a single leap and looked, not out the window, but at his face. At the staring, terror-filled eyes, the drawn mouth. Fowler threw his arms around Mcintosh’s chest and squeezed hard and said, “Easy, Mac, easy. Don’t let the shadows get you. Things are all right.”

  “I tell you I saw something. A sudden movement. Near that hillock but at a greater range and to the right. Something moved, Don.” And he inhaled a great shuddering gasp.

  Fowler kept his arms around Mcintosh and looked out. He saw only the jagged dim surface of the Moon. For a long moment he looked out, listening to Mcintosh’s gasping breath, a chill fear slowly rising inside him. He turned his head to look at Mcintosh’s face again, and as he did he caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye. He dropped his arms and jerked his head back to look out as Mcintosh screamed, ‘There, there it is again, but it’s moved.”

  The two men, both panting, strained at the window. For a full minute they stood with every muscle pulled tight, gulping down air, perspiration prickling out of their scalps and running down over face and neck. Their eyes saw fantastic shapes in the sharp dim light but their minds told them it was imagination.

  Then they saw it clearly. About one hundred yards straight out in front of the window a tiny fountain of moondust sprayed upward and outward from a glowing base that winked out as swiftly as it appeared. Like the blossoming of a death-colored gray rose, the dust from a handspread of surface suddenly rose and spread outward in a circle and just as suddenly fell back to the surface.

  “What is it?” hissed Fowler.

  “I don’t know.”

  They watched, the tension so great that they shuddered. They saw another one, bigger, out farther and to the left. They watched. Another, small, in much closer, the brief white base instantly flashing through shades of deeper reds and disappearing.

  “Spacesuits,” gasped Fowler. “Get into the spacesuits.”

  And he turned and jumped to the rack, Mcintosh alongside him. They slipped into the cumbersome suits with the swift smoothness of long practice. They twisted the helmets on.

  “Radio O.K.?” said Mcintosh.

  “Check. Let’s look.”

  And the two jumped back to the window. The activity outside seemed to have stopped. They watched for six full minutes before they saw another of the dust fountains. After they saw it, they twisted their suits to look at each other. They were bringing themselves under control, trying to reason out a cause for what they saw.

  “Any ideas?” said Mcintosh.

  “No,” said Fowler. “Let’s try the other windows.”

  They took up separate places at the two remaining windows.

  “See anything?”

  “Nothing. Just that hideous-looking terrain. I guess it’s all on the other— Wait. There’s one. Way out. I could just—”

  “I’ve got one, too,” said Fowler. “It’s all around us. Let’s call Earth.”

  They moved over to the radio. Fowler turned the volume high and Mcintosh hit the On switch. Almost immediately they heard a voice, mounting swiftly in loudness. “Station Number One to Moon Station. Station Number One to Moon Station.” Over and over it repeated the words.

  Mcintosh touched a microphone to his helmet, flipped the Transmit switch and said, “Moon Station to Station Number One. We hear you. Over.”

  “Thank God,” came the voice. “Listen. The Leonid meteor swarm may hit you. Find cover. Find a cave or bridge and get out of the open. Repeat. Meteor swarm may hit you. Find cover. Over.”

  At the word “meteor” Mcintosh swung to face Fowler. The two moved closer together to see into the faceplates. Each face broke into a smile of relief at the knowledge of what was happening.

  Mcintosh touched the microphone to his helmet and said, “We’re already in it. There is no cave or other shelter within forty miles. How long do you expect the shower—”

  There was a thunderous explosion and a brilliant flash of light, that seared the eyeballs of both men. Something heavy dropped on them and gently clung to the spacesuits. They struggled futilely against the softness that enfolded them. Mcintosh dropped the microphone and flailed his arms. Fowler sought to lift off the cloying substance; he dropped to one knee and fought it, but it would not give. Both men fought blind; the caressing enfolding material brought complete blackness.

  Mcintosh felt something grip his ankle and he lashed out with his foot. He felt it crash against something hard, but something that rolled with his kick and then bore back against his legs and knocked him over. His arms were still entangled in the material but he tried to flail the thing that crawled on top of him. With a superhuman effort he encircled the upper portion of the thing with layers of the soft material and began to squeeze. Through the thickness of the material he felt the familiar outline of a helmet with a short flexible antenna reaching up from the back. And he realized he was fighting Fowler.

  “Mac, it’s me. The dome’s punctured and fallen in on us. You hear me?”

  “Yes,” said Mcintosh, gasping for air. “I didn’t know what happened. You all right?”

  “Yes. Let’s get out of here. Shoulder to shoulder ‘til we find the lock. Let’s go.”

  They crawled side by
side, lifting the heavy leaded plastic in front of them. They bumped into the drafting table and oriented themselves. They passed out through the useless lock and stood up outside and looked at the dome. It is a terrible thing when a man’s home is destroyed. But on Earth a man can go elsewhere; he has relatives, friends, to turn to. His heart may be heavy, but his life is not in peril.

  Fowler and Mcintosh looked at their collapsed dome and doom itself froze around their hearts. They stood alone on a frozen, shadow-ridden, human-hating world. They stood hand in hand with death.

  They looked at the collapsed dome and the way it lay over the equipment they knew so well, softening the sharp angles, filling in the hollow spaces in the interior. The equipment outside looked stark and awkward, standing high, silhouetted against the luminous grayness. The antenna caught Mcintosh’s eye.

  He swallowed heavily and said, “Let’s radio Earth and give them the news. We were talking to them when we got hit.”

  Fowler dumbly followed him to a small box on the far side of the sled and watched him remove the mike and receiver from a small box. Mcintosh faced out from the sled and held the receiver against one side of the helmet and the mike against the other. Fowler slipped behind him. They stood back to back, helmets touching, Mcintosh doing the talking, Fowler operating the switches and listening to all that was said. The receiver was silent when Fowler turned it on. Earth was listening, waiting. He switched to Transmit and nudged Mcintosh.

  “Moon Station to Space Station Number One. Over.”

  In five seconds a voice came back. “Pole Station to Moon Station. Space Station Number One is out of line of sight. What happened? You all right?”

  “Yes. Meteor punctured dome. We’re outside. Over.”

  It was considerably more than five seconds before the voice came back, quieter but more intense. “Can you fix it?”

  “We don’t know. We’ll go over the damage and talk to you soon. Out.”

  Mcintosh dropped his hands and Fowler turned the switch off. “Well,” said Mcintosh, “we’d better see how bad it is. They may want to call the whole thing off.”

  Fowler nodded. Getting the sled and dome and equipment to the Moon had called for prodigious effort and staggering cost. It could not be duplicated in a hurry. Their replacements were already on the way. The dome had to be operating if they were to stay. And the spaceship could only carry two men back.

  “Let’s look it over,” said Fowler. As they turned to climb up on the sled a fountain of dust sprang up ten feet to their right. They looked out over the sullen moonscape; the meteors were still falling. But they didn’t care. They climbed up on the sled and carefully picked their way on top of the collapsed material to where they had been standing when the meteor struck. They pulled out several folds and found the hole. They inspected it with growing excitement.

  The hole was a foot in diameter, neatly round. Around the perimeter was a thick ridge charred slightly on the inner edge where the thermoplastic material had fused and rolled back. The ridge had strengthened the material and prevented it from splitting and tearing when the air in the dome rushed out. The hole in the inner layer measured about eighteen inches in diameter and the encircling ridge was even thicker.

  Fowler held the hand-powered flashlight on the material surrounding the holes while he examined it carefully. “Mac,” he said, “we can fix it. We’ve got enough scrap dome plastic to seal these holes. Let’s see if the meteor went out the bottom.”

  They moved the holes around on the floor of the dome and found a four-inch hole through the plastic floor. Looking down it, they could see a small crater in the Moon’s surface half-filled with a white solid.

  Mcintosh said, “It went through one of the batteries, but we won’t miss it. We’ve got some scrap flooring plastic and some insulation around. We can fix this, too. Our make-up air is in good supply. Don,” he stood up, “we’re gonna make it.”

  “Yes,” said Fowler, letting the light go out. “Let’s radio Earth.”

  They went back to the set and Fowler reported their findings. They could hear the joy come back in the man’s voice as he wished them luck and told them an extra rocket with make-up air would be on the way soon. “What about the meteor shower?”

  Fowler and Mcintosh looked around; they had forgotten the meteors again. They could see the spurts of moondust clearly against the gray and black shadows.

  “They’re still falling,” said Fowler. “Nothing to do but sweat them out. Call you later. Out.” And he and Mcintosh sat down. A nation sweated it out with them. An entire people felt fear strike at their hearts at the thought of two men sitting beside a collapsed dome amidst a shower of invisible cosmic motes traveling at unthinkable speeds. But there was no way for anyone to be of the slightest aid to the two men on the Moon.

  Quiet they sat and dumb. The meteors, forgotten for a moment, were now a challenge to the very presence of men in such a place. A mere light touch from a cosmic pebble, and a human life would snuff out. A touch on the hand, the foot, is enough; it would take so little. They were something apart from the human race, men, yet not men. For no man could be so alone, such a speck, a trifle, a nothing, so alone were they. Quiet they sat and dumb. But each man’s heart beat thick and quick like a madman on a drum. And the meteors fell.

  “Mac.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do we sit here? Why don’t we fix it?”

  “Suppose it gets hit again?”

  “Suppose it does. It’ll be hit whether it’s collapsed or full. At least we’ll have these holes patched. Maybe it’ll be easier for the next team—”

  Mcintosh stood up. “Of course,” he said. “We can get that much done no matter what happens.”

  Fowler stood up and began to turn to the sled to climb up. A tiny spot of brightness suddenly appeared on Mcintosh’s left shoulder. With a feeling of blackness closing in on his body, Fowler flung himself at Mcintosh and clamped a hand over the spot where the glow had been. The weight of his body knocked Mcintosh down but Fowler clung to him, kept his hand pressed firmly against the spot where the meteor had hit.

  “Mac,” said Fowler with the taste of copper in his mouth. “Mac. Can you hear me?”

  “I hear you fine. What’s the matter with you? You like to scared me to death.”

  “You got hit. On the left shoulder. Your suit must be punctured. I’ve got my hand over it.”

  “Don, I didn’t even feel it. There can’t possibly be a hole there or I’d have felt the air go, or at least some of it. Take a look.”

  They got to their feet. Fowler kept his hand in place while he retrieved the flashlight. He got it going and quickly removed his hand and showed the light over the spot to look. At first he saw nothing, so he held his helmet closer. Then he saw it. A tiny crater so small as to amount to nothing beyond a slight disturbance of the shiny surface of the suit. Smaller than the head of a pin it was and not as deep as it was broad.

  He let the light go out and said in a choked voice, “Must have been a small one, smaller than a grain of sand. No damage at all.”

  “Good. Let’s get to work.”

  * * * *

  They cut out two four-foot squares of dome material and several chunks of flooring plastic. They filled the bottom of the hole in the floor with five inches of insulation. They plugged in a wedge-shaped soldering iron and melted the plastic and worked it in to the top three inches of flooring, making an under-cut to seal the hole solidly. And the floor was fixed.

  Fowler pulled over the squares of dome material while Mcintosh adjusted the temperature of the iron to that just below the melting point of the material. Fowler placed the first square inside the hole in the inner layer. He ran the hot blade around the ridge of fused plastic. It sealed well; the thick, leaded, shiny, dome material stiffly flowed together and solidified. Fowler sealed the patches in place with a series of five fused circles concentric to the hole and spaced about three inches apart. The inner hole was hard to work with, for he ha
d to reach through the outer hole, but he managed it. The outer hole went fast. And when they finished they were certain that the dome was as good as ever.

  They stood up from their work and looked around. Out onto the moonscape they looked long and carefully. And nowhere could they see one of the dread dust fountains. Slowly and carefully they walked to the edge of the sled and dropped off. They sat down and looked some more, carefully preventing their imaginations from picturing things more fantastic than what was already there. After ten minutes there was no doubt about it, the meteor shower was over.

  “Let’s blow her up,” said Fowler.