Chapter 9
The skipper of the cargo liner _Auriga_ was furious, and so was his crew–but there was nothing they could do about it. Ten hours out from Earth and five hours from the Moon they were ordered to stop at Lagrange, with all the waste of speed and extra computing that implied. And to make matters worse, they were being diverted from Chavius City to that miserable dump Port Roris, practically on the other side of the Moon. The ether crackled with messages canceling dinners and assignations all over the southern hemisphere.
Not far from full, the mottled silver disc of the Moon, its eastern limb wrinkled with easily visible mountains, formed a dazzling background to Lagrange II as _Auriga_ came to rest a hundred kilometers earthward of the station. She was allowed no closer; the interference produced by her equipment, and the glare of her jets, had already affected the sensitive recording instruments on the satellite. Only old-fashioned chemical rockets were permitted to operate in the immediate neighborhood of Lagrange; plasma drives and fusion plants were strictly taboo.
Carrying one small case full of clothing, and one large case full of equipment, Tom Lawson entered the liner twenty minutes after his departure from Lagrange. The shuttle pilot had refused to hurry, despite urgings from _Auriga_. The new passenger was greeted without warmth as he came aboard; he would have been received quite differently had anyone known his mission. The Chief Administrator, however, had ruled that it should be kept secret for the present; he did not wish to raise false hopes among the relatives of the lost passengers. The Tourist Commissioner had wanted an immediate release, maintaining that it would prove that they were doing their best, but Olsen had said firmly: “Wait until he produces results. _Then_ you can give something to your friends in the news agencies.”
The order was already too late. Aboard _Auriga_, Maurice Spenser, Bureau Chief of Interphanet News, was on his way to take up his duties in Clavius City. He was not sure if this was a promotion or demotion from Peking, but it would certainly be a change.
Unlike all the other passengers, he was not in the least annoyed by the change of course. The delay was on the firm’s time, and, as an old newsman, he always welcomed the unusual, the break in the established routine. It was certainly odd for a Moon-bound liner to waste several hours and an unimaginable amount of energy to stop at Lagrange, just to pick up a dour-faced young man with a couple of pieces of baggage. And why the diversion from Clavius to Port Roris? “Top-level instructions from Earth,” said the skipper, and seemed to be telling the truth when he disowned all further knowledge. It was a mystery, and mysteries were Spenser’s business. He made one shrewd guess at the reason, and was right–or almost right–the first time.
It must have something to do with that lost dust-cruiser there had been such a fuss about just before he left Earth. This scientist from Lagrange must have some information about her, or must be able to assist in the search. But why the secrecy? Perhaps there was some scandal or mistake that the Lunar Administration was trying to hush up. The simple and wholly creditable reason never occurred to Spenser.
He avoided speaking to Lawson during the remainder of the brief trip, and was amused to note that the few passengers who tried to strike up a conversation were quickly rebuffed. Spenser bided his time, and that time came thirty minutes before landing.
It was hardly an accident that he was sitting next to Lawson when the order came to fasten seat belts for deceleration. With the fifteen Other passengers, they sat in the tiny, blackedout lounge, hooking at the swiftly approaching Moon. Projected on a viewing screen from a lens in the outer hull, the image seemed sharper and more brilliant even than in real life. It was as if they were inside an old-fashioned camera obscura; the arrangement was much safer than having an actual observation window–a structural hazard that spaceship designers fought against tooth and nail.
That dramatically expanding landscape was a glorious and unforgettable sight, yet Spenser could give it only half his attention. He was watching the man beside him, his intense aquiline features barely visible in the reflected light from the screen.
“Isn’t it somewhere down there,” he said, in his most casual tone of voice, “that the boatload of tourists has just been lost?”
“Yes,” said Tom, after a considerable delay.
“I don’t know my way about the Moon. Any idea where they’re supposed to be?”
Even the most uncooperative of men, Spenser had long ago discovered, could seldom resist giving information if you made it seem that they were doing you a favor, and gave them a chance of airing their superior knowledge. The trick worked in nine cases out of ten: it worked now with Tom Lawson.
“They’re down there,” he said, pointing to the center of the screen. “Those are the Mountains of Inaccessibility; that’s the Sea of Thirst all around them.”
Spenser stared, in entirely unsimulated awe, at the sharply etched blacks and whites of the mountains toward which they were falling. He hoped the pilot–human or electronic–knew his job; the ship seemed to be coming in very fast. Then he realized that they were drifting toward the flatter territory on the left of the picture; the mountains and the curious gray area surrounding them were sliding away from the center of the screen.
“Port Roris,” Tom volunteered unexpectedly, pointing to a barely visible black mark on the far left. “That’s where we’re landing.”
“Well! I’d hate to come down in those mountains,” said Spenser, determined to keep the conversation on target. “They’ll never find the poor devils if they’re lost in that wilderness. Anyway, aren’t they supposed to be buried under an avalanche?”
Tom gave a superior laugh.
“They’re _supposed_ to be,” he said.
“Why–isn’t that true?”
A little belatedly, Tom remembered his instructions.
“Can’t tell you anything more,” he replied in that same smug, cocksure voice.
Spenser dropped the subject; he had already learned enough to convince him of one thing. Chavius City would have to wait; he had better hang on at Port Roris for a while.
He was even more certain of this when his envious eyes saw Dr. Tom Lawson cleared through Quarantine, Customs, Immigration, and Exchange Control in three minutes flat.
Had any eavesdropper been listening to the sounds inside _Selene_, he would have been very puzzled. The cabin was reverberating unmelodioushy to the sound of twenty-one voices, in almost as many keys, singing “Happy Birthday to You.”
When the din had subsided, Commodore Hansteen called out: “Anyone else besides Mrs. Williams who just remembered that it’s his or her birthday? We know, of course, that some ladies like to keep it quiet when they reach a certain age–”
There were no volunteers, but Duncan McKenzie raised his voice above the general laughter.
“There’s a funny thing about birthdays–I used to win bets at parties with it. Knowing that there are three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, how large a group of people would you think was needed before you had a fifty-fifty chance that two of them shared the same birthday?”
After a brief pause, while the audience considered the question, someone answered: “Why, half of three hundred and sixty-five, I suppose. Say a hundred and eighty.”
“That’s the obvious answer–and it’s completely wrong. If you have a group of more than twenty-four people, the odds are better than even that two of them have the same birthday.”
“That’s ridiculous! Twenty-four days out of three sixty-five _can’t_ give those odds.”
“Sorry–it does. And if there are more than forty people, nine times out of ten two of them will have the same birthday. There’s a sporting chance that it might work with the twentytwo of us. What about trying it, Commodore?”
“Very well. I’ll go round the room, and ask each one of you for his date of birth.”
“Oh no,” protested McKenzie. “People cheat if you do it that way. The dates must be written down, so that nobody knows anyone else’s birthday.”
An almost blank page from one of the tourist guides was sacrificed for this purpose, and torn up into twenty-two slips. When they were collected and read, to everyone’s astonishment–and McKenzie’s gratification–it turned out that both Pat Harris and Robert Bryan had been born on May 23.
“Pure luck!” said a skeptic, thus igniting a brisk mathematical argument among half a dozen of the male passengers. The ladies were quite uninterested; either because they did not care for mathematics or because they preferred to ignore birthdays.
When the Commodore decided that this had gone on long enough, he rapped for attention.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” he called. “Let’s get on with the next item on our program. I’m pleased to say that the Entertainment Committee, consisting of Mrs. Schuster and Professor Jaya–er, Professor J.–has come up with an idea that should give us some amusement. They suggest that we set up a court and cross-examine everybody here in turn. The object of the court is to find an answer to this question: Why did we come to the Moon in the first place? Of course, some people may not want to be examined–for all I know, half of you may be on the run from the police, or your wives. You’re at liberty to refuse to give evidence, but don’t blame us if we draw the worst possible conclusions if you do. Well, what do you think of the idea?”