The calm logic of this helped to lower the emotional temperature; so did the Professor’s smooth, obviously comfortable slide into unconsciousness. Two down and eighteen to go, murmured Pat under his breath.
“Let’s waste no more time,” he said aloud. “As you can see, these shots are entirely painless. There’s a microjet hypodermic inside each cylinder, and you won’t even feel a pinprick.”
Sue was already handing out the innocent-looking little tubes, and several of the passengers had used them immediately. There went the Schusters (Irving, with a reluctant and touching tenderness, had pressed the tube against the arm of his sleeping wife) and the enigmatic Mr. Radley. That left fifteen. Who would be next?
Now Sue had come to Miss Morley. This is it, thought Pat. If she was _still_ determined to make a fuss . . .
He might have guessed it.
“I thought I made it _quite_ clear that I don’t want one of these things. Please take it away.”
Robert Bryan began to inch forward, but it was the sardonic, English voice of David Barrett that did the trick.
“What _really_ worries the good lady, Captain,” he said, obviously placing his barb with relish, “is that you may take advantage of her in her helpless condition.”
For a few seconds, Miss Morley sat speechless with fury, while her cheeks turned a bright crimson.
“I’ve never been so insulted in my–” she began.
“Nor have _I_, madam,” interjected Pat, completing her demoralization. She looked round the circle of faces–most of them solemn, but several grinning, even at a time like this– and realized that there was only one way out.
As she slumped in her seat, Pat breathed a vast sigh of relief. After that little episode, the rest should be easy.
Then he saw that Mrs. Williams, whose birthday had been celebrated in such Spartan style only a few hours before, was staring in a kind of frozen trance at the cylinder in her hand. The poor woman was obviously terrified, and no one could blame her. In the next seat, her husband had already collapsed; it was a little ungallant, Pat thought, to have gone first and left his wife to fend for herself.
Before he could take any action, Sue had moved forward.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Williams, I made a mistake. I gave you an empty one. Perhaps you’ll let me have it back. . . .”
The whole thing was done so neatly that it looked like a conjuring trick. Sue took-or seemed to take-the tube from the unresisting fingers, but as she did so she must have jolted it against Mrs. Williams. The lady never knew what had happened; she quietly folded up and joined her husband.
Half the company was unconscious now. On the whole, thought Pat, there had been remarkably little fuss. Commodore Hansteen had been too much of a pessimist; the riot squad had not been necessary, after all.
Then, with a slight sinking feeling, he noticed something that made him change his mind. It looked as if, as usual, the Commodore had known exactly what he was doing. Miss Morley was not going to be the only difficult customer.
It was at least two years since Lawrence had been inside an igloo. There was a time, when he had been a junior engineer out on construction projects, when he had lived in one for weeks on end, and had forgotten what it was like to be surrounded by rigid walls. Since those days, of course, there had been many improvements in design; it was now no particular hardship to live in a home that would fold up into a small trunk.
This was one of the latest models–a Goodyear Mark XX–and it could sustain six men for an indefinite period, as long as they were supplied with power, water, food, and oxygen. The igloo could provide everything else-even entertainment, for it had a built-in microlibrary of books, music, and video. This was no extravagant luxury, though the auditors queried it with great regularity. In space, boredom could be a killer. It might take longer than, say, a leak in an air line, but it could be just as effective, and was sometimes much messier.
Lawrence stooped slightly to enter the air lock. In some of the old models, he remembered, you practically had to go down on hands and knees. He waited for the “pressure equalized” signal, then stepped into the hemispherical main chamber.
It was like being inside a balloon; indeed, that was exactly where he was. He could see only part of the interior, for it had been divided into several compartments by movable screens. (Another modern refinement; in _his_ day, the only privacy was that given by the curtain across the toilet.) Overhead, three meters above the floor, were the lights and the air-conditioning grille, suspended from the ceiling by elastic webbing. Against the curved wall stood collapsible metal racks, only partly erected. From the other side of the nearest screen came the sound of a voice reading from an inventory, while every few seconds another interjected, “Check.”
Lawrence stepped around the screen and found himself in the dormitory section of the igloo. Like the wall racks, the double bunks had not been fully erected; it was merely necessary to see that all the bits and pieces were in their place, for as soon as the inventory was completed everything would be packed and rushed to the site.
Lawrence did not interrupt the two storemen as they continued their careful stock-taking. This was one of those unexciting but vital jobs–of which there were so many on the Moon–upon which lives could depend. A mistake here could be a sentence of death for someone, sometime in the future.
When the checkers had come to the end of a sheet, Lawrence said, “Is this the largest model you have in stock?”
“The largest that’s serviceable” was the answer. “We have a twelve-man Mark Nineteen, but there’s a slow leak in the outer envelope that has to be fixed.”
“How long will that take?”
“Only a few minutes. But then there’s a twelve-hour inflation test before we’re allowed to check it out.”
This was one of those times when the man who made the rules had to break them.
“We can’t wait to make the full test. Put on a double patch and take a leak reading; if it’s inside the standard tolerance, get the igloo checked out right away. I’ll authorize the clearance.”
The risk was trivial, and he might need that big dome in a hurry. Somehow, he had to provide air and shelter for twentytwo men and women out there on the Sea of Thirst. They couldn’t all wear space suits from the time they left _Selene_ until they were ferried back to Port Roris.
There was a “beep beep” from the communicator behind his left ear. He flicked the switch at his belt and acknowledged the call.
“C.E.E. speaking.”
“Message from _Selene_, sir,” said a clear, tiny voice. “Very urgent–they’re in trouble.”
Chapter 19
Until now, Pat had scarcely noticed the man who was sitting with folded arms in window seat 3D, and had to think twice to remember his name. It was something like Builder–that was it, _Baldur_, Hans Baldur. He had looked like the typical quiet tourist who never gave any trouble.
He was still quiet, but no longer typical–for he was remaining stubbornly conscious. At first sight he appeared to be ignoring everything around him, but the twitching of a cheek muscle betrayed his tenseness.
“What are you waiting for, Mister Baldur?” asked Pat, in the most neutral tone that he could manage. He felt very glad of the moral and physical support ranged behind him; Baldur did not look exceptionally strong, but he was certainly more than Pat’s Moon-born muscles could have coped with–if it came to that.
Baldur shook his head, and remained staring out of the window for all the world as if he could see something there besides his own reflection.
“You can’t make me take that stuff, and I’m not going to,” he said, in heavily accented English.
“I don’t want to force you to do anything,” answered Pat. “But can’t you see it’s for your own good–and for the good of everyone else? What possible objection do you have?”
Baldur hesitated and seemed to be struggling for words.
“It’s–it’s against my principles,” he said. “Yes, that’s it. My religion won’t allow me to take injections.”
Pat knew vaguely that there were people with such scruples. Yet he did not for a moment believe that Baldur was one of them. The man was lying. But why?
“Can I make a point?” said a voice behind Pat’s back.
“Of course, Mister Harding,” he answered, welcoming anything that might break this impasse.
“You say you won’t permit any injections, Mister Baldur,” continued Harding, in tones that reminded Pat of his crossexamination of Mrs. Schuster. (How long ago that seemed!) “But I can tell that you weren’t born on the Moon. No one can miss going through Quarantine–so, how did you get here without taking the usual shots?”