Gentlemen, Be Seated
Gentlemen, Be Seated
IT TAKES both agoraphobes and claustrophobes to colonize the Moon. Or make it agoraphiles and claustrophiles, for the men who go out into space had better not have phobias. If anything on a planet, in a planet, or in the empty reaches around the planets can frighten a man, he should stick to Mother Earth. A man who would make his living away from terra firma must be willing to be shut up in a cramped spaceship, knowing that it may become his coffin, and yet he must be undismayed by the wide-open spaces of space itself. Spacemen-men who work in space, pilots and jetmen and astrogators and such-are men who like a few million miles of elbow room.
On the other hand the Moon colonists need to be the sort who feel cozy burrowing around underground like so many pesky moles.
On my second trip to Luna City I went over to Richardson Observatory both to see the Big Eye and to pick up a story to pay for my vacation. I flashed my Journalists’ Guild card, sweet-talked a bit, and ended with the paymaster showing me around. We went out the north tunnel, which was then being bored to the site of the projected coronascope.
It was a dull trip-climb on a scooter, ride down a completely featureless tunnel, climb off and go through an airlock, get on another scooter and do it all over again. Mr. Knowles filled in with sales talk. “This is temporary,” he explained. “When we get the second tunnel dug, we’ll cross-connect, take out the airlocks, put a northbound slidewalk in this one, a southbound slidewalk in the other one, and you’ll make the trip in less than three minutes. Just like Luna City-or Manhattan.”
“Why not take out the airlocks now?” I asked, as we entered another airlock-about the seventh. “So far, the pressure is the same on each side of each lock.”
Knowles looked at me quizzically. “You wouldn’t take advantage of a peculiarity of this planet just to work up a sensational feature story?”
I was irked. “Look here,” I told him. “I’m as reliable as the next word-mechanic, but if something is not kosher about this project let’s go back right now and forget it. I won’t hold still for censorship.”
“Take it easy, Jack,” he said mildly-it was the first time he had used my first name; I noted it and discounted it. “Nobody’s going to censor you. We’re glad to cooperate with you fellows, but the Moon’s had too much bad publicity now-publicity it didn’t deserve.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Every engineering job has its own hazards,” he insisted, “and its advantages, too. Our men don’t get malaria and they don’t have to watch out for rattlesnakes. I can show you figures that prove it’s safer to be a sandhog in the Moon than it is to be a file clerk in Des Moines-all things considered. For example, we rarely have any broken bones in the Moon; the gravity is so low-while that Des Moines file clerk takes his life in his hands every time he steps in or out of his bathtub.”
“Okay, okay,” I interrupted, “so the place is safe. What’s the catch?”
“It is safe. Not company figures, mind you, nor Luna City Chamber of Commerce, but Lloyd’s of London.”
“So you keep unnecessary airlocks. Why?”
He hesitated before he answered, “Quakes.”
Quakes. Earthquakes-moonquakes, I mean. I glanced at the curving walls sliding past and I wished I were in Des Moines. Nobody wants to be buried alive, but to have it happen in the Moon-why, you wouldn’t stand a chance. No matter how quick they got to you, your lungs would be ruptured. No air.
“They don’t happen very often,” Knowles went on, “but we have to be prepared. Remember, the Earth is eighty times the mass of the Moon, so the tidal stresses here are eighty times as great as the Moon’s effect on Earth tides.”
“Come again,” I said. “There isn’t any water on the Moon. How can there be tides?”
“You don’t have to have water to have tidal stresses. Don’t worry about it; just accept it. What you get is unbalanced stresses. They can cause quakes.”