left for a civilization. In the long run, it was a good thing that the white settlers arrived, despite their charming habit of selling us poisoned flour when they wanted our land.”
“They did that?”
“They certainly did. But why are you surprised? That was a good hundred years before Belsen .”
Pat thought this over for a few minutes. Then he looked at his watch and said, with a distinct expression of relief: “Time I reported to Base again. Let's have a quick look at the passengers first.”
CHAPTER 20
There was no time now, Lawrence realized, to worry about inflatable igloos and the other refinements of gracious living in the Sea of Thirst . All that mattered was getting those air pipes down into the cruiser. The engineers and technicians would just have to sweat it out in the suits until the job was finished. Their ordeal would not last for long. If they could not manage inside five or six hours, they could turn round and go home again, and leave Selene to the world after which she was named.
In the workshops of Port Roris, unsung and unrecorded miracles of improvisation were now being achieved. A complete air-conditioning plant, with its liquid-oxygen tanks, humidity and carbon-dioxide absorbers, temperature and pressure regulators, had to be dismantled and loaded on to a sledge. So did a small drilling rig, hurled by shuttle rocket from the Geophysics Division at Clavius. So did the specially designed plumbs ing, which now had to work at the first attempt, for there would be no opportunity for modifications.
Lawrence did not attempt to drive his men; he knew it was unnecessary. He kept in the background, checking the flow of equipment from stores and workshop out to the skis, and trying to think of every snag that could possibly arise. What tools would be needed? Were there enough spares? Was the raft being loaded on to the skis last, so that it could be off-loaded first? Would it be safe to pump oxygen into Selene before connecting up the exhaust line? These, and a hundred other details—some trivial, some vital—passed through his mind. Several times he called Pat to ask for technical information, such as the internal pressure and temperature, whether the cabin relief valve had blown off yet (it hadn't; probably it was jammed with dust), and advice on the best spots to drill through the roof. And each time Pat answered with increasing slowness and difficulty.
Despite all attempts to make contact with him, Lawrence resolutely refused to speak to the newsmen now swarming round Port Roris and jamming half the sound and vision circuits between Earth and Moon. He had issued one brief statement explaining the position and what he intended doing about it; the rest was up to the administrative people. It was their job to protect him so that he could get on with his work undisturbed; he had made that quite clear to the Tourist Commissioner, and had hung up before Davis could argue with him.
He had no time, of course, even to glance at the TV coverage himself, though he had heard that Doctor Lawson was rapidly establishing a reputation as a somewhat prickly personality. That, he presumed, was the work of the Interplanet News man into whose hands he had dumped the astronomer; the fellow should be feeling quite happy about it.
The fellow was feeling nothing of the sort. High on the ramparts of the Mountains of Inaccessibility, whose title he had so convincingly refuted, Maurice Spenser was heading swiftly toward that ulcer he had avoided all his working life. He had spent a hundred thousand stollars to get Auriga here—and now it looked as if there would be no story after all.
It would all be over before the skis could arrive; the suspense-packed, breath-taking rescue operation that would keep billions glued to their screens was never going to materialize. Few people could have resisted watching twenty-two men and women snatched from death; but no one would want to see an exhumation.
That was Spenser's cold-blooded analysis of the situation from the newscaster's viewpoint, but as a human being he was equally unhappy. It was a terrible thing to sit here on the mountain, only five kilometers away from impending tragedy, yet able to do absolutely nothing to avert it. He felt almost ashamed of every breath he took, knowing that those people down there were suffocating. Time and again he had wondered if there was anything that Auriga could do to help (the news value of this did not, of course, escape him), but now he was sure that she could only be a spectator. That implacable Sea ruled out all possibility of aid.
He had covered disasters before, but this time he felt uncommonly like a ghoul.
It was very peaceful now, aboard Selene—so peaceful that one had to fight against sleep. How pleasant it would be, thought Pat, if he could join the others, dreaming happily all around him. He envied them, and sometimes felt jealous of them. Then he would take a few draughts from the dwindling store of oxygen, and reality would close in upon him as he recognized his peril.
A single man could never have remained awake, or kept an eye on twenty unconscious men and women, feeding them oxygen whenever they showed signs of respiratory distress. He and McKenzie had acted as mutual watchdogs; several times each had dragged the other back from the verge of sleep. There would have been no difficulty had there been plenty of oxygen, but that one bottle was becoming rapidly exhausted. It was maddening to know that there were still many kilograms of liquid oxygen in the cruiser's main tanks, but there was no way in which they could use it. The automatic system was metering it through the evaporators and into the cabin, where it was at once contaminated by the now almost unbreathable atmosphere.
Pat had never known time to move so slowly. It seemed quite incredible that only four hours had passed since he and McKenzie had been left to guard their sleeping companions. He could have sworn that they had been here for days, talking quietly together, calling Port Roris every fifteen minutes, checking pulses and respiration, and doling out oxygen with a miserly hand.
But nothing lasts forever. Over the radio, from the world which neither man really believed he would ever see again, came the news they had been waiting for.
“We're on the way,” said the weary but determined voice of Chief Engineer Lawrence. “You only have to hang on for another hour—we'll be on top of you by then. How are you feeling?”
“Very tired,” said Pat slowly. “But we can make it.”
“And the passengers?”
“Just the same.”
“Right—I'll call you every ten minutes. Leave your receiver on, volume high. This is Med Division's idea—they don't want to risk your falling asleep.”
The blare of brass thundered across the face of the Moon, then echoed on past the Earth and out into the far reaches of the solar system. Hector Berlioz could never have dreamed that, two centuries after he had composed it, the soul-stirring rhythm of his “Rakoczy March” would bring hope and strength to men fighting for their lives on another world.
As the music reverberated round the cabin, Pat looked at Dr. McKenzie with a wan smile.
“It may be old-fashioned,” he said, “but it's working.”
The blood was pounding in his veins, his foot was tapping with the beat of the music. Out of the lunar sky, flashing down from space, had come the tramp of marching armies, the thunder of cavalry across a thousand battlefields, the call of bugles that had once summoned nations to meet their destiny. All gone, long ago, and that was well for the world. But they had left behind them much that was fine and noble—examples of heroism and self-sacrifice, proofs that men could still hold on when their bodies should have passed the limits of physical endurance.
As his lungs labored in the stagnant air, Pat Harris knew that he had need of such inspiration from the past, if he was to survive the endless hour that lay ahead.
Aboard the tiny, cluttered deck of Duster One, Chief Engineer Lawrence heard the same music, and reacted in the same fashion. His little fleet was indeed going into battle, against the enemy that Man would face to the end of time. As he spread across the Universe from planet to planet and sun to sun, the forces of Nature would be arrayed against him in ever new and unexpected ways. Even Earth, after all these aeons, still had many traps for
