Complete Short Fiction, page 105
While this work was going on, Elder was sent back to the control room to keep an eye on the pirate vessel. Dressier was still in the power room; he had been put to work checking the phoenix converter for damage that the first inspection might have failed to disclose.
The entire job took little time; heavy as it would have been on a major planet, the Fleming cable was easy enough to manipulate in free fall, and there certainly was no great complexity to the circuit being set up. Twenty minutes from the time the outer air lock door had closed behind the pirates, everything was ready. By this time even the two inventors had caught the fire of enthusiasm and were watching eagerly for the circuit to be closed—if it could be. It was Calloway who had to restrain the general enthusiasm—probably because he had never considered the attempt anything but a forlorn hope. He warned them of the small chance of success as they all glided from the corridor where the welding had just been finished to the control room, where he at once sought the pilot board from which he could handle all the power developed in the room below. Elder returned to the screen—his watch had been interrupted as he heard them approach—and at once gave an exclamation of alarm.
“They’ve cast off!” he called. “The grapple is being drawn back, and their air lock is closed.” Calloway promptly craned his heck to view the plate for himself, and Snell moved over beside Elder. The astronomer nodded at what he saw.
“The grapple is about half way between the ships now, Calloway,” he said quietly. “I’d advise letting go as soon as you can; I doubt if they’ll hang around long after the cable is reeled in.” Calloway’s reply was equally quiet.
“The switch is closed.”
Four pairs of ears strained for a nonexistent sound, and four pairs of eyes sought the screen, which still showed the enemy sphere hanging unharmed beside them. Neither eyes nor ears caught any sign of the terrific load that was being slammed into space from the silver disc beside their air lock.
“We’re in an atmosphere,” said Calloway suddenly. “Wouldn’t that ground our charge?”
“You could stuff radio tubes with this atmosphere and find them working nicely,” said the astronomer briefly. “The only difference between this atmosphere and empty space is the factor I used to tell you when we were in it—Holy Smoke, why didn’t I think of that!”
His companions had no time to ask for an elucidation of this remark. On the heels of the astrophysicist’s words, the eyes fixed on the viewplate were abruptly dazzled by a flare of yellow-green light that suddenly erupted in front of the image of the other ship. Calloway, whose eyes were by far the fastest, was sure it had jetted originally from the end of the grapple cable, of which a few yards had been still projecting; but now there was no way to be sure. The flare was not just a spark; it continued, the automatic safety controls on the screen cutting down the brilliancy of the image so that nothing else could be seen. Calloway made a movement to open the switch, and was stopped at once by Snell.
“Leave it on!” exclaimed the astronomer. “Leave it on until we touch! We have no drive, remember!” The pilot obeyed, only half understanding what went on. He let the power run for nearly five minutes, and finally cut it off when Snell signaled him to do so. The plate instantly cleared.
The other sphere was a scant fifty yards away, and visibly drawing closer. An area eight or ten yards across, centered at the spot where the magnetic grapple had been projected, was glowing a fierce white; and a wave of heat from the corridor where the cathode was mounted caused the men to realize that their own hull could be in little better condition. Investigation showed, however, that only the anode of the mass spectrograph had suffered seriously—the insulating block in which the device was mounted had held up very well. Snell’s instrument, however, was a hopeless ruin.
There was no sign of activity on the other ship. Calloway and Snell donned space suits and went across, gaining access through the lock on the further side. They found three charred bodies in the air lock toward the Wraith, four rigid forms in the control room, and a single living pirate in one of the bunks who was just recovering the use of his limbs after a heavy electric shock. He was quickly disarmed and locked in his cabin; and Calloway. immediately attached grapples to the Wraith and began accelerating as hard as he dared away from the core of VV Cephei.
Three hours later, when they had attained open space and made a short second-order leap to safety, the others joined them in the Suzeraintist ship. Elder and Dressier had a question to ask.
“Snell, just what closed that circuit? Cal’s idea of knocking them out before the hull loaded up was nonsense from the first; and you said that there was practically no matter outside our hull to conduct electricity. Anyway, gases and dust particles are rotten conductors. You seemed to expect something just before things let go; what was it?” The astronomer smiled.
“I should have thought of it sooner. Of course, a complete circuit was what we needed. That length of cable projecting toward our hull helped a lot—don’t jump on me, I know it wasn’t enough by itself, but it helped, as I say. The real deciding factor was that.” He pointed through a port in the control room wall. The others stared, and said nothing. Beyond the transparent window was the dazzling blue-white glare of a sun, a sun near enough to show a perceptible disc. It hung close beside the foggy red bubble that was the red giant they had just left, Snell saw the uncomprehending expressions on the three faces, and smiled again.
“Gentlemen, meet VV Cephei—the primary of the system we have just left. It is the one you see from Earth with a telescope. It’s fainter and less massive, but far more voluminous, companion occupies a large fraction of the space between, so that one surface is comparatively close to the primary—a primary far brighter than Sol, and a class B sun, which means lots and lots of ultra-violet radiation”—he smiled faintly once more as Elder’s whistle of comprehension reached his ears—“which in turn means a heavily ionized layer in the region of the companion’s atmosphere nearest the primary. There are other such systems—Epsilon and Zeta Aurigae, to name two. I will admit that the actual ion density is very small, but coupled with the local field intensity caused by the projecting cable it was enough to start things, and the vapor produced when the cable boiled away undoubtedly helped. Is it clear enough?”
“No,” said Calloway. “That current was running through both ships. Why didn’t it get us? We weren’t protected any more than they.”
“Not through both ships. Through their ship, and through our Fleming cable, which is a superconductor. Their entire hull had a far higher resistance than our cable, so in their ship the current went through men where it could—the fellow in the bed, luckily for him, was probably touching metal at only one spot. The others were up and around, and even if they didn’t close a circuit with their bodies in the first instant, I am sure none of them would have had self-control enough to stand still when he found himself alive.
“And that, I think, is that. I want to go back to Earth and get a new spectrograph. I’ll have to do all my work over again, blast it; I forgot to remove my plates from the machine before we closed the circuit.”
1956
Dust Rag
It has been said before that the little things in life are what count. The big things about living on another world are easy to predict; it’s the petty nuisances . . . that are deadly!
“Checking out.”
“Checked, Ridge. See you soon.”
Ridging glanced over his shoulder at Beacon Peak, as the point where the relay station had been mounted was known. The gleaming dome of its leaden meteor shield was visible as a spark; most of the lower peaks of Harpalus were already below the horizon, and with them the last territory with which Ridging or Shandara could claim familiarity. The humming turbine tractor that carried them was the only sign of humanity except each others’ faces—the thin crescent of their home world was too close to the sun to be seen easily, and Earth doesn’t look very “human” from outside in any case.
The prospect ahead was not exactly strange, of course. Shandara had remarked several times in the last four weeks that a man who had seen any of the moon had seen all of it. A good many others had agreed with him. Even Ridging, whose temperament kept him normally expecting something new to happen, was beginning to get a trifle bored with the place. It wasn’t even dangerous; he knew perfectly well what exposure to vacuum would mean, but checking spacesuit and air-lock valves had become a matter of habit long before.
Cosmic rays went through plastic suits and living bodies like glass, for the most part ineffective because unabsorbed; meteors blew microscopic holes through thin metal, but scarcely marked spacesuits or hulls, as far as current experiences went; the “dust-hidden crevasses” which they had expected to catch unwary men or vehicles simply didn’t exist—the dust was too dry to cover any sort of hole, except by filling it completely. The closest approach to a casualty suffered so far had occurred when a man had missed his footing on the ladder outside the Albireo‘s air lock and narrowly avoided a hundred and fifty foot fall.
Still, Shandara was being cautious. His eyes swept the ground ahead of their tracks, and his gauntleted hands rested lightly on brake and steering controls as the tractor glided ahead.
Harpalus and the relay station were out of sight now. Another glance behind assured Ridging of that. For the first time in weeks he was out of touch with the rest of the group, and for the first time he wondered whether it was such a good idea. Orders had been strict; the radius of exploration settled on long before was not to be exceeded. Ridging had been completely in favor of this; but it was his own instruments which had triggered the change of schedule.
One question about the moon to which no one could more than guess an answer in advance was that of its magnetic field. Once the group was on the surface it had immediately become evident that there was one, and comparative readings had indicated that the south magnetic pole—or a south magnetic pole—lay a few hundred miles away. It had been decided to modify the program to check the region, since the last forlorn chance of finding any trace of a gaseous envelope around the moon seemed to lie in auroral investigation. Ridging found himself, to his intense astonishment, wondering why he had volunteered for the trip and then wondering how such thoughts could cross his mind. He had never considered himself a coward, and certainly had no one but himself to blame for being in the tractor. No one had made him volunteer, and any technician could have set up and operated the equipment.
“Come out of it, Ridge. Anyone would think you were worried.” Shandara’s careless tones cut into his thoughts. “How about running this buggy for a while? I’ve had her for a hundred kilos.”
“Right.” Ridging slipped into the driver’s seat as his companion left it without slowing the tractor. He did not need to find their location on the photographic map clipped beside the panel; he had been keeping a running check almost unconsciously between the features it showed and the landmarks appearing over the horizon. A course had been marked on it, and navigation was not expected to be a problem even without a magnetic compass.
The course was far from straight, though it led over what passed for fairly smooth territory on the moon. Even back on Sinus Rods the tractor had had to weave its way around numerous obstacles; now well onto the Mare Frigoris the situation was no better, and according to the map it was nearly time to turn south through the mountains, which would be infinitely worse. According to the photos taken during the original landing approach the journey would be possible, however, and would lead through the range at its narrowest part out onto Mare Imbrium. From that point to the vicinity of Plato, where the region to be investigated lay, there should be no trouble at all.
Oddly enough, there wasn’t. Ridging was moderately surprised; Shandara seemed to take it as a matter of course. The cartographer had eaten, slept, and taken his turn at driving with only an occasional remark. Ridging was beginning to believe by the time they reached their goal that his companion was actually as bored with the moon as he claimed to be. The thought, however, was fleeting; there was work to be done.
About six hundred pounds of assorted instruments were attached to the trailer which had been improvised from discarded fuel tanks. The tractor itself could not carry them; its entire cargo space was occupied by another improvisation—an auxiliary fuel tank which had been needed to make the present journey possible. The instruments had to be removed, set up in various spots, and permitted to make their records for the next thirty hours. This would have been a minor task, and possibly even justified a little boredom, had it not been for the fact that some of the “spots” were supposed to be as high as possible. Both men had climbed Lunar mountains in the last four weeks, and neither was worried about the task; but there was some question as to which mountain would best suit their needs.
They had stopped on fairly level ground south and somewhat west of Plato—“sunset” west, that is, not astronomical. There was a number of fairly prominent elevations in sight. None seemed more than a thousand meters or so in height, however, and the men knew that Plato in one direction and the Teneriffe Mountains in the other had peaks fully twice as high. The problem was which to choose.
“We can’t take the tractor either way,” pointed out Shandara. “We’re cutting things pretty fine on the fuel question as it is. We are going to have to pack the instruments ourselves, and it’s fifty or sixty kilometers to Teneriffe before we even start climbing. Plato’s a lot closer.”
“The near side of Plato’s a lot closer,” admitted Ridging, “but the measured peaks in its rim must be on the east and west sides, where they can cast shadows across the crater floor. We might have to go as far for a really good peak as we would if we headed south.”
“That’s not quite right. Look at the map. The near rim of the crater is fairly straight, and doesn’t run straight east and west; it must cast shadows that they could measure from Earth. Why can’t it contain some of those two thousand meter humps mentioned in the atlas?”
“No reason why it can’t; but we don’t know that it does. This map doesn’t show.”
“It doesn’t show for Teneriffe, either.”
“That’s true, but there isn’t much choice there, and we know that there’s at least one high peak in a fairly small area. Plato is well over three hundred kilometers around.”
“It’s still a closer walk, and I don’t see why, if there are high peaks at any part of the rim, they shouldn’t be fairly common all around the circumference.”
“I don’t see why either,” retorted Ridging, “but I’ve seen several craters for which that wasn’t true. So have you.” Shandara had no immediate answer to this, but he had no intention of exposing himself to an unnecessarily long walk if he could help it. The instruments to be carried were admittedly light, at least on the moon; but there would be no chance of opening spacesuits until the men got back to the tractor, and spacesuits got quite uncomfortable after a while.
It was the magnetometer that won Shandara’s point for him. This pleased him greatly at the time, though he was heard to express a different opinion later. The meter itself did not attract attention until the men were about ready to start, and he had resigned himself to the long walk after a good deal more argument; but a final check of the recorders already operating made Ridging stop and think.
“Say, Shan, have you noticed any sun spots lately?”
“Haven’t looked at the sun, and don’t plan to.”
“I know. I mean, have any of the astronomers mentioned anything of the sort?”
“I didn’t hear them, and we’ll never be able to ask until we get back. Why?”
“I’d say there was a magnetic storm of some sort going on. The intensity, dip, and azimuth readings have all changed quite a bit in the last hour.”
“I thought dip was near vertical anyway.”
“It is, but that doesn’t keep it from changing. You know, Shan, maybe it would be better if we went to Plato, instead.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying all along. What’s changed your mind?”
“This magnetic business. On Earth, such storms are caused by charged particles from the sun, deflected by the planet’s magnetic field and forming what amounts to tremendous electric currents which naturally produce fields of their own. If that’s what is happening here, it would be nice to get even closer to the local magnetic vertical, if we can; and that seems to be in, or at least near, Plato.”
“That suits me. I’ve been arguing that way all along. I’m with you.”
“There’s one other thing—”
“What?”
“This magnetometer ought to go along with us, as well as the stuff we were taking anyway. Do you mind helping with the extra weight?” Shandara had not considered this aspect of the matter, but since his arguments had been founded on the question of time rather than effort he agreed readily, to the additional labor.
“All right. Just a few minutes while I dismount and repack this gadget, and we’ll be on our way.” Ridging set to work, and was ready in the specified time, since the apparatus had been designed to be handled by spacesuited men. The carrying racks that took the place of regular packs made the travelers look top-heavy, but they had long since learned to keep their balance under such loads. They turned until the nearly motionless sun was behind them and to their right, and set out for the hills ahead.
These elevations were not the peaks they expected to use; the moon’s near horizon made those still invisible. They did, however, represent the outer reaches of the area which had been disturbed by whatever monstrous explosion had blown the ring of Plato in the moon’s crust. As far as the men were concerned, these hills simply meant that very little of their journey would be across level ground, which pleased them just as well. Level ground was sometimes an inch or two deep in dust; and while dust could not hide deep cracks it could and sometimes did fill broader hollows and cover irregularities where one could trip. For a top-heavy man, this could be a serious nuisance. Relatively little dust had been encountered by any of the expedition up to this point, since most of their work had involved slopes or peaks; but a few annoying lessons had been learned.
