The two of us, yes, answered Pat. We can take turns using the space-suit breathing circuit. It's the passengers I'm worried about.
The only thing you can do is to check their respiration, and give them a blast of oxygen if they seem distressed. We'll do our damnedest from this end. Anything more you want to say?
Pat thought for a few seconds.
No, he said, a little wearily. I'll call you again on each quarter-hour. Selene out.
He got to his feet slowly, for the strain and the carbon-dioxide poisoning were now beginning to tell heavily upon him and said to McKenzie: Right, Doc give me a hand with that space suit.
I'm ashamed of myself. I'd forgotten all about that.
And I was worried because some of the other passengers might have remembered. They must all have seen it, when they came in through the air lock. It just goes to prove how you can overlook the obvious.
It took them only five minutes to detach the absorbent canisters and the twenty-four-hour oxygen supply from the suit; the whole breathing circuit had been designed for quick release, in case it was ever needed for artificial respiration. Not for the first time, Pat blessed the skill, ingenuity, and foresight that had been lavished on Selene. There were some things that had been overlooked, or that might have been done a little better but not many.
Their lungs aching, the only two men still conscious aboard the cruiser stood staring at each other across the gray metal cylinder that held another day of life. Then, simultaneously, each said: You go first.
They laughed without much humor at the hackneyed situation, then Pat answered, I won't argue and placed the mask over his face.
Like a cool sea breeze after a dusty summer day, like a wind from the mountain pine forests stirring the stagnant air in some deep lowlands valley so the flow of oxygen seemed to Pat. He took four slow, deep breaths, and exhaled to the fullest extent, to sweep the carbon dioxide out of his lungs. Then, like a pipe of peace, he handed the breathing kit over to McKenzie.
Those four breaths had been enough to invigorate him, and to sweep away the cobwebs that had been gathering in his brain. Perhaps it was partly psychological could a few cubic centimeters of oxygen have had so profound an effect? but whatever the explanation, he felt like a new man. Now he could face the five or more hours of waiting that lay ahead.
Ten minutes later, he felt another surge of confidence. All the passengers seemed to be breathing as normally as could be expected very slowly, but steadily. He gave each one a few seconds of oxygen, then called Base again.
Selene here, he said. Captain Harris reporting. Doctor McKenzie and I both feel quite fit now, and none of the passengers seem distressed. I'll remain listening out, and will call you again on the half-hour.
Message received. But hold on a minute, several of the news agencies want to speak to you.
Sorry, Pat answered. I've given all the information there is, and I've twenty unconscious men and women to look after. Selene out.
That was only an excuse, of course, and a feeble one at that; he was not even sure why he had made it. He felt, in a sudden and uncharacteristic burst of rancor: Why, a man can't even die in peace nowadays! Had he known about that waiting camera, only five kilometers away, his reaction might have been even stronger.
You still haven't answered my question, Captain, said Dr. McKenzie patiently.
What question? Oh that. No, it wasn't luck. The Commodore and I both thought you'd be the most useful man to have awake. You're a scientist, you spotted the overheating danger before anyone else did, and you kept quiet about it when we asked you to.
Well, I'll try to live up to your expectations. I certainly feel more alert than I've done for hours. It must be the oxygen we're sniffing. The big question is: How long will it last?
Between the two of us, twelve hours. Plenty of time for the skis to get here. But we may have to give most of it to the others, if they show signs of distress. I'm afraid it's going to be a very close thing.
They were both sitting cross-legged on the floor, just beside the pilot's position, with the oxygen bottle between them. Every few minutes they would take turns with the inhaler but only two breaths at a time. I never imagined, Pat told himself, that I should ever get involved in the number-one clich of the TV space operas. But it had occurred in real life too often to be funny any more especially when it was happening to you.
Both Pat and McKenzie or almost certainly one of them could survive if they abandoned the other passengers to their fate. Trying to keep these twenty men and women alive, they might also doom themselves.
The situation was one in which logic warred against conscience. But it was nothing new; certainly it was not peculiar to the age of space. It was as old as Mankind, for countless times in the past, lost or isolated groups had faced death through lack of water, food, or warmth. Now it was oxygen that was in short supply, but the principle was just the same.
Some of those groups had left no survivors; others, a handful who would spend the rest of their lives in self-justification. What must George Pollard, late captain of the whaler Essex, have thought as he walked the streets of Nantucket, with the taint of cannibalism upon his soul? That was a two-hundred-year-old story of which Pat had never heard; he lived on a world too busy making its own legends to import those of Earth. As far as he was concerned, he had already made his choice, and he knew, without asking, that McKenzie would agree with him. Neither was the sort of man who would fight over the last bubble of oxygen in the tank. But if it did come to a fight
What are you smiling at? asked McKenzie.
Pat relaxed. There was something about this burly Australian scientist that he found very reassuring. Hansteen gave him the same impression, but McKenzie was a much younger man. There were some people you knew that you could trust, whom you were certain would never let you down. He had that feeling about McKenzie.
If you want to know, he said, putting down the oxygen mask, I was thinking that I wouldn't have much of a chance if you decided to keep the bottle for yourself.
McKenzie looked a little surprised; then he too grinned.
I thought all you Moon-born were sensitive about that, he said.
I've never felt that way, Pat answered. After all, brains are more important than muscles. I can't help it that I was bred in a gravity field a sixth of yours. Anyway, how could you tell I was Moon-born?
Well, it's partly your build. You all have that same tall, slender physique. And there's your skin color the U. V. lamps never seem to give you the same tan as natural sunlight.
It's certainly tanned you, retorted Pat with a grin. At night, you must be a menace to navigation. Incidentally, how did you get a name like McKenzie?
Having had little contact with the racial tensions that were not yet wholly extinct on Earth, Pat could make such remarks without embarrassment indeed, without even realizing that they might cause embarrassment.
My grandfather had it bestowed on him by a missionary when he was baptized. I'm very doubtful if it has any ah genetic significance. To the best of my knowledge, I'm a fullblooded abo.
Abo?
Aboriginal. We were the people occupying Australia before the whites came along. The subsequent events were somewhat depressing.
Pat's knowledge of terrestrial history was vague; like most residents of the Moon, he tended to assume that nothing of great importance had ever happened before 8 November 1967, when the fiftieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution had been so spectacularly celebrated.
I suppose there was war?
You could hardly call it that. We had spears and boomerangs; they had guns. Not to mention T. B. and V. D., which were much more effective. It took us about a hundred and fifty years to get over the impact. It's only in the last century since about nineteen forty that our numbers started going up again. Now there are about a hundred thousand of us almost as many as when your ancestors came.