On the other side of that gulf (already so small to a generation that had never known the time when it could not be crossed), ripples of shock and grief would soon be spreading. Thousands of men and women were involved, directly or indirectly, because the Moon had stirred briefly in her sleep.
Lost in his thoughts, it was some time before Lawrence realized that the Port signals officer was trying to attract his attention.
Excuse me, sir you've not called Duster One. Shall I do it now?
What? Oh yes go ahead. Send him to help Two in Crater Lake. Tell him we've called off the search in the Sea of Thirst.
CHAPTER 6
The news that the search had been called off reached Lagrange II when Tom Lawson, red-eyed from lack of sleep, had almost completed the modifications to the hundred-centimeter telescope. He had been racing against time, and now it seemed that all his efforts had been wasted. Selene was not in the Sea of Thirst at all, but in a place where he could never have found her hidden from him by the ramparts of Crater Lake, and, for good measure, buried by a few thousand tons of rock.
Tom's first reaction was not one of sympathy for the victims, but of anger at his wasted time and effort. Those YOUNG ASTRONOMER FINDS MISSING TOURISTS headlines would never flash across the news-screens of the inhabited worlds. As his private dreams of glory collapsed, he cursed for a good thirty seconds, with a fluency that would have astonished his colleagues. Then, still furious, he started to dismantle the equipment he had begged, borrowed, and stolen from the other projects on the satellite.
It would have worked; he was sure of that. The theory had been quite sound indeed, it was based on almost a hundred years of practice. Infrared reconnaissance dated back to at least as early as World War II, when it was used to locate camouflaged factories by their telltale heat.
Though Selene had left no visible track across the Sea, she must, surely, have left an infrared one. Her fans had stirred up the relatively warm dust a foot or so down, scattering it across the far colder surface layers. An eye that could see by the rays of heat could track her path for hours after she had passed. There would have been just time, Tom calculated, to make such an infrared survey before the sun rose and obliterated all traces of the faint heat trail through the cold lunar night.
But, obviously, there was no point in trying now.
It was well that no one aboard Selene could have guessed that the search in the Sea of Thirst had been abandoned, and that the dust-skis were concentrating their efforts inside Crater Lake. And it was well, also, that none of the passengers knew of Dr. McKenzie's predictions.
The physicist had drawn, on a piece of homemade graph paper, the expected rise of temperature. Every hour he noted the reading of the cabin thermometer and pinpointed it on the curve. The agreement with theory was depressingly good; in twenty hours, one hundred ten degrees Fahrenheit would be passed, and the first deaths from heatstroke would be occurring. Whatever way he looked at it, they had barely a day to live. In these circumstances, Commodore Hansteen's efforts to maintain morale seemed no more than an ironic jest. Whether he failed or succeeded, it would be all the same by the day after tomorrow.
Yet was that true? Though their only choice might lie between dying like men and dying like animals, surely the first was better. It made no difference even if Selene remained undiscovered until the end of time, so that no one ever knew how her occupants passed their final hours. This was beyond logic or reason; but so, for that matter, was almost everything that was really important in the shaping of men's lives and deaths.
Commodore Hansteen was well aware of that, as he planned the program for the dwindling hours that lay ahead. Some men are born to be leaders, and he was one of them. The emptiness of his retirement had been suddenly filled; for the first time since he had left the bridge of his flagship Centaurus, he felt whole again.
As long as his little crew was busy, he need not worry about morale. It did not matter what they were doing, provided they thought it interesting or important. That poker game, for instance, took care of the Space Administration accountant, the retired civil engineer, and the two executives on vacation from New York. One could tell at a glance that they were all poker fanatics; the problem would be to stop them playing, not to keep them occupied.
Most of the other passengers had split up into little discussion groups, talking quite cheerfully among themselves. The Entertainment Committee was still in session, with Professor Jayawardene making occasional notes while Mrs. Schuster reminisced about her days in burlesque, despite the attempts of her husband to shut her up. The only person who seemed a little apart from it all was Miss Morley, who was writing slowly and carefully, using a very minute hand, in what was left of her notebook. Presumably, like a good journalist, she was keeping a diary of their adventure. Commodore Hansteen was afraid that it would be briefer than she suspected, and that not even those few pages would be filled. And if they were, he doubted that anyone would ever read them.
He glanced at his watch, and was surprised to see how late it was. By now, he should have been on the other side of the Moon, back in Clavius City. He had a lunch engagement at the Lunar Hilton, and after that a trip to but there was no point in thinking about a future that could never exist. The brief present was all that would ever concern him now.
It would be as well to get some sleep, before the temperature became unbearable. Selene had never been designed as a dormitory or a tomb, for that matter but it would have to be turned into one now. This involved some research and planning, and a certain amount of damage to Tourist Commission property. It took him twenty minutes to ascertain all the facts; then, after a brief conference with Captain Harris, he called for attention.
Ladies and gentlemen, he said, we've all had a busy day, and I think most of us will be glad to get some sleep. This presents a few problems, but I've been doing some experimenting and have discovered that with a little encouragement the center annrests between the seats come out. They're not supposed to, but I doubt if the Commission will sue us. That means that ten of us can stretch out across the seats; the rest will have to use the floor.
Another point. As you will have noticed, it's become rather warm, and will continue to do so for some time. Therefore I advise you to take off all unnecessary clothing; comfort is much more important than modesty. (And survival, he added silently, is much more important than comfort but it would be some hours yet before it came to that.)
We'll turn off the main cabin lights, but since we don't want to be in complete darkness, we'll leave on the emergency lighting at low power. One of us will remain on watch at all times in the skipper's seat. Mr. Harris is working out a roster of two-hour shifts. Any questions or comments?
There were none, and the Commodore breathed a sigh of relief. He was afraid that someone would be inquisitive about the rising temperature, and was not quite sure how he would have answered. His many accomplishments did not include the gift of lying, and he was anxious that the passengers should have as untroubled asleep as was possible in the circumstances. Barring a miracle, it would be their last.
Miss Wilkins, who was beginning to lose a little of her professional smartness, took round final drinks for those who needed them. Most of the passengers had already begun to remove their outer clothing; the more modest ones waited until the main lights went off. In the dim red glow, the interior of Selene now had a fantastic appearance, One that would have been utterly inconceivable when she left Port Roris a few hours before. Twenty-two men and women, most of them stripped down to their underclothing, lay sprawled across the seats or along the floor. A few lucky ones were already snoring, but for most, sleep would not come as easily as that.