Anti-Ice

lightness of the lunar gravity I imagined bounding across this landscape, leaping from summit to summit with the grace of a goat. But, of course, I was restrained by my air-carrying tether, and I was nervous in any event of the integrity of my suit.

I turned now to study the lie of the Phaeton. I was only some ten yards from the ship and the vessel loomed over me; overall she had survived surprisingly well, and the dull sheen of her aluminum skin glowed through a thin coating of lunar dust. The glass of the Bridge dome, though showing evidence of scorching, sparkled in the remaining sunlight and cast highlights across the shattered lunar plain. Traveller had brought us down, I saw, on the brow of one of the low hills—its summit being perhaps ten feet from the common level—and I silently applauded his skill, for we were surely safer and more stable there than in one of the narrow “valleys” which wound between the hills. But the ship was far from level, for one of its three landing legs had rested on a larger boulder and had crumpled slightly; the leg still supported the craft, but at an angle of perhaps twenty degrees to the vertical.

As he had intended, Traveller had brought us down with the upper portions of the craft in sunlight. From the Cabin ports in the shadowed lower portion of the hull a warm gaslight shone out over the lifeless rocks; and in the windows I could make out the faces of Bourne and Holden. I longed to be readmitted to the cosiness of that interior, with its scents of Pocket’s cooking and of Traveller’s Turkish cigarettes; but also I experienced a surge of pride that we had brought this roomful of England to this terrible place. Even now I could see that Holden still wore his tie, neatly knotted around his wing collar!

As I stared at the ship standing proud in that hostile place I became aware that my helmet and the upper part of my air suit were becoming uncomfortably hot. I reminded myself that I had very little time to accomplish my mission before my position out on the surface became untenable. So, without further hesitation, I raised the Great Eastern above my head with both hands—I saw Holden applauding this gesture— and then made to place it behind a rock, sheltered from the blast of Phaeton’s rockets. I paused in this act, watching the ship expectantly, and was rewarded with the sight of Holden raising a camera to the port. So my final request before leaving the ship was fulfilled; by this lapse into immodesty I had ensured that my jaunt on the Moon should be recorded for all posterity.

As I held my position like an awkward statue, waiting the single second until the plate should be exposed, I felt an odd tremble from the ground below me, like a minor earthquake. But I held my pose, and the tremor passed away.

With the Eastern fixed in place I hurried into the shadow of the Phaeton, my breath laboring, determined to get on with my mission.

I lit my Ruhmkorff coil and held it high. Pale electrical light extended far across the shattered lunar land: it could not, of course, compete with the direct light of the Sun, but it did reveal the nature of what lay hidden in the shadows of the hills and the larger boulders. I sought the reflective glint which Traveller and I had espied from space—and, perhaps five feet beyond the boundary of Phaeton’s hillock, I made out a stretch of soil ten feet wide which lay as flat as a millpond and returned highlights from my coil.

I moved as quickly as I could down the shallow slope of the hill, and, with my hose nearly fully extended, I crouched to reach the gleaming pool.

I was cruelly disappointed. My mitten, probing at the reflective surface, broke through it and reached crumbled soil; I raised up fragments of the surface I had shattered and held them before my face. This was no ice; rather, I held a fragment of some glass-like substance—brownish and all but opaque, but recognizably glass nevertheless. I had heard that great heat, or great pressure, can reduce ordinary sand to glass without the intervention of man, and no doubt this was the explanation of this phenomenon. Perhaps this natural pane had been formed in the very impact which had thrown up Traveller Crater itself. I was sure this substance would have formed a fascinating conundrum for the men of science—not least, I suspected, because it demonstrated the commonality of minerals on Earth and on the Moon—but it was little help to me! Had the glinting glaciers Traveller and I had discerned from orbit all been chimerae formed by this glassy debris?

In a moment of rage and disappointment I cried out and hurled the pane of glass far from me; it traveled many hundreds of yards, its spin unhindered by any atmosphere, glinting in its treacherous fashion in the low sunlight. And the ground shook once more beneath my feet, as if in sympathy; the tremor was powerful this time, and boulders rolled across the ground, like sand grains on the skin of a drum.

I dropped to a crouch while the landscape rattled; I waited fearfully lest some boulder should roll close enough to crush me, or block my air hose…

And at length the trembling ceased, but it was matched almost at once by the rattling of my heart, for in the depression vacated by one large boulder I saw the unmistakable spark of frost.

I hurried to the shining patch, but as sunlight struck it the ice hissed to vapour which escaped through my fingers.

I remained elated, however, for now my path was clear. Whatever water remained on the Moon must surely lie within the deepest caves, or beneath boulders—at any event removed from the sunlight. Several large boulders lay within reach of my air hose. I hurried to one of the largest—a cube- shaped affair some four feet on a side—and spent some moments pondering how I, one man alone, should lift such a monster. I considered returning to the Phaeton in the hope of improvising some sort of lever; then I remembered that I was, after all, on the surface of the Moon, whose one-sixth gravity had loaned me the strength of a team of navigators. So I crouched down and slid my fingers underneath a lip of the rock. I heaved at it, expecting it to flip aside like an empty carton; but although the boulder did indeed shift, it did so slowly and ponderously—and after a great deal of plate-steaming effort from me—so that I was left in no doubt as to its substantial mass.

Thus I learned by practical demonstration the difference between weight, which is governed by the gravity of a planet, and inertia, which is not.

Imagine my disappointment, though, when the rock at last tumbled aside to reveal not even the slightest stain of frost. I stood there, lungs laboring at the thin substance provided by the hoses, and staring in disbelief at the ground.

There was nothing for it but to proceed to the next rock and try again; and when I did so, to my intense joy, I was rewarded with the sight of a thick pool of frost some five feet wide and several inches thick. Sheltering the precious stuff with my own shadow I bundled the frost into my insulated bag, using my mitten as a scoop, and came away with some pounds of lunar water.

I soon lost track of time as I worked through that changeless lunar afternoon. Boulder after boulder I tore aside, finding substantial caches of water under perhaps half of them. I filled the bag over and over, and returned several times to the Phaeton, soon amassing a small hill of crumbled ice in the shadow of the ship. Every few minutes the ground would tremble ominously; but I learned to ignore these small earthquakes. When the bag was more than half-full, though it did not weigh me down, its inertia, as it swung against my back, became a distracting nuisance.

Then came a massive tremor.

It was as if some giant had struck the surface of the Moon. I was thrown to the ground. I had the presence of mind to cover my faceplate with my mittens; otherwise the glass should surely have smashed. I lay there for long seconds, hardly daring to look up, expecting at any moment to be hurled into some lunar chasm or smashed beneath a fall of rock. And the Moonquake continued in an utter and eerie silence!

When only echoes still rolled massively through the rock beneath me, I climbed cautiously to my feet. My air hose, my bag of ice, were safe; but my faceplate was severely misted up—so much so that I could barely see— and my Ruhmkorff coil was smashed and useless. I abandoned it for some future explorer to puzzle over. I was uncertain of the time—not having had the presence of mind to wear a watch on the outside of my air suit!—and I stood a few feet beyond the lip of Phaeton’s low hill and looked about.

The landscape appeared to have changed: the look of the range of hillocks and the way their shadows lay was not as I remembered it. No doubt, I told myself, this was simply an illusion of the sunset; for even on Earth the aspect of natural features can appear to evolve as the light dies.

I hesitated for some more moments, disoriented, trying to weigh in my mind the benefits of a few more pounds of ice in my half-full satchel against the unknown dangers of this strange place—when the decision was taken out of my hands.

Another tremor erupted over the landscape. I dropped the ice axe and staggered away from