When that second pipe came through the roof, they would be doubly safeguarded. The men on the raft could keep them supplied with air indefinitely, and they would also have several hours–perhaps a day’s–reserve of their own. They might still have a long wait here beneath the dust, but the suspense was over.
Unless, of course, the Moon arranged some fresh surprises.
“Well, Mr. Spenser,” said Captain Anson, “looks as if you’ve got your story.”
Spenser felt almost as exhausted, after the strain of the last hour, as any of the men out on the raft, two kilometers below him. He could see them there on the monitor, on medium close-up. They were obviously relaxing–as well as men could relax when they were wearing space suits.
Five of them, indeed, appeared to be trying to get some sleep, and were tackling the problem in a startling but sensible manner. They were lying beside the raft, half submerged in the dust, rather like floating rubber dolls. It had not occurred to Spenser that a space suit was much too buoyant to sink in this stuff. By getting off the raft, the five technicians were not only providing themselves with an incomparably luxurious couch; they were leaving a greatly enlarged working space for their companions.
The three remaining members of the team were moving slowly around, adjusting and checking equipment–especially the rectangular bulk of the air purifier and the big lox spheres coupled to it. At maximum optical and electronic zoom, the camera could get within ten meters of all this gear–almost close enough to read the gauges. Even at medium magnification, it was easy to spot the two pipes going over the side and leading down to the invisible _Selene_.
This relaxed and peaceful scene made a startling contrast with that of an hour ago. But there was nothing more to be done here until the next batch of equipment arrived. Both of the skis had gone back to Port Roris; that was where all the activity would now be taking place, as the engineering staff tested and assembled the gear which, they hoped, would enable them to reach _Selene_. It would be another day at least before that was ready. Meanwhile, barring accidents, the Sea of Thirst would continue to bask undisturbed in the morning sun, and the camera would have no new scenes to throw across space.
From one and a half light-seconds away, the voice of the program director back on Earth spoke inside _Auriga’s_ control cabin.
“Nice work, Maurice, Jules. We’ll keep taping the picture in case anything breaks at your end, but we don’t expect to carry it live until the oh six hundred news spot.”
“How’s it holding up?”
“Supernova rating. And there’s a new angle-every crackpot inventor who ever tried to patent a new paper clip is crawling out of the woodwork with ideas. We’re rounding up a batch of them at six fifteen. It should be good fun.”
“Who knows–perhaps one of them may have something.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it. The sensible ones won’t come near our program when they see the treatment the others are getting.”
“Why–what are you doing to them?”
“Their ideas are being analyzed by your scientist friend Doctor Lawson. We’ve had a dummy run with him; he skins them alive.”
“Not _my_ friend,” protested Spenser. “I’ve only met him twice. The first time I got ten words out of him; the second time, he fell asleep on me.”
“Well, he’s developed since then, believe it or not. You’ll see him in–oh, forty-five minutes.”
“I can wait. Anyway, I’m only interested in what Lawrence plans to do. Has he made a statement? You should be able to get at him, now the pressure’s off.”
“He’s still furiously busy and won’t talk. We don’t think the Engineering Department has made up its mind yet, anyhow. They’re testing all sorts of gadgets at Port Roris, and ferrying in equipment from all over the Moon. We’ll keep you in touch if we learn anything new.”
It was a paradoxical fact, which Spenser took completely for granted, that when you were covering a story like this you often had no idea of the big picture. Even when you were in the center of things, as he was now. He had started the ball rolling, but now he was no longer in control. It was true that he and Jules were providing the most important video coverage– or would be, when the action shifted back here–but the pattern was being shaped at the news centers on Earth and in Clavius City. He almost wished he could leave Jules and hurry back to headquarters.
That was impossible, of course, and even if he did so, he would soon regret it. For this was not only the biggest scoop of his career; it was, he suspected, the last time he would ever be able to cover a story out in the field. By his own success, he would have doomed himself irrevocably to an office chair–or, at best, a comfortable little viewing booth behind the banked monitor screens at Clavius Central.
Chapter 23
It was still very quiet aboard _Selene_, but the quietness was now that of sleep, not of death. Before long, all these people would be waking, to greet a day few of them could really have expected to see.
Pat Harris was standing somewhat precariously on the back of a seat, mending the break in the overhead lighting circuit. It was fortunate that the drill had not been five millimeters to the left; then it would have taken out the radio as well, and the job would have been much worse.
“Throw in number-three circuit breaker, Doc,” he called, winding up his insulating tape. “We should be in business now.”
The main lights came on, blindingly brilliant after the crimson gloom. At the same time, there was a sudden, explosive sound, so unexpected and alarming that it shocked Pat off his unstable perch.
Before he reached the floor, he identified it. It was a sneeze.
The passengers were starting to waken, and he had, perhaps, slightly overdone the refrigeration, for the cabin was now extremely cold.
He wondered who would be the first to return to consciousness. Sue, he hoped, because then they would be able to talk together without interruption, at least for a little while. After what they had been through together, he did not regard Duncan McKenzie’s presence as any interference–though perhaps Sue could hardly be expected to see it that way.
Beneath the covering of blankets, the first figure was stirring. Pat hurried forward to give assistance; then he paused, and said under his breath: “Oh, _no!_”
Well, you couldn’t win all the time, and a captain had to do his duty, come what may. He bent over the scrawny figure that was struggling to rise, and said solicitously: “How do you feel, Miss Morley?”
To have become a TV property was at once the best and the worst thing that could have happened to Dr. Lawson. It had built up his self-confidence, by convincing him that the world which he had always affected to despise was really interested in his special knowledge and abilities. (He did not realize how quickly he might be dropped again, as soon as the _Selene_ incident was finished.) It had given him an outlet for expressing his genuine devotion to astronomy, somewhat stultified by living too long in the exclusive society of astronomers. And it was also earning him satisfactory quantities of money.
But the program with which he was now involved might almost have been designed to confirm his old view that the men who weren’t brutes were mostly fools. This, however, was hardly the fault of Interplanet News, which could not resist a feature that was a perfect fill-in for the long periods when nothing would be happening out at the raft.
The fact that Lawson was on the Moon and his victims were on Earth presented only a minor technical problem, which the TV technicians had solved long ago. The program could not go out live; it had to be taped beforehand, and those annoying two-and-a-half-second pauses while the radio waves flashed from planet to satellite and back again had to be sliced out. They would upset the performers–nothing could be done about that–but by the time a skilled editor had anachionized the tape, the listener would be unable to tell that he was hearing a discussion that spanned almost four hundred thousand kilometers.
Chief Engineer Lawrence heard the program as he lay flat on his back in the Sea of Thirst, staring up into the empty sky. It was the first chance of resting he had had for more hours than he could remember, but his mind was too active to let him sleep. In any event, he had never acquired the knack of sleeping in a suit, and saw no need to learn it now, for the first of the igloos was already on the way from Port Roris. When that arrived, he would be able to live in well-earned, and muchneeded, comfort.