My main wish is that we lived in the southern hemisphere, where you can see Alpha Centauri.
Dad, what are you doing tonight in Murphy’s Hall?
A joke, I know. Murphy’s Law: “Anything that can go wrong, will.” Only I think it’s a true joke. I mean, I’ve read every book and watched every tape I could lay hands on, the history, how the discoverers went out, further and further, lifetime after lifetime. I used to tell myself stories about the parts that nobody lived to put into a book.
The crater wall had fangs. They stood sharp and grayish white in the cruel sunlight, against the shadow which brimmed the bowl. And they grew and grew. Tumbling while it fell, the spacecraft had none of the restfulness of zero weight. Forces caught nauseatingly at gullet and gut. An unidentified loose object clattered behind
166
The Unicom Trade
the pilot chairs. The ventilators had stopped their whickering and the two men breathed stench. No matter. This wasn’t an Apollo 13 mishap. They wouldn’t have time to smother in their own exhalations.
Jack Bredon croaked into the transmitter: “Hello, Mission Control … Lunar Relay Satellite . .. anybody. Do you read us? Is the radio out too? Or just our receiver? God damn it, can’t we even say goodbye to our wives?”
“Tell ‘em quick,” Sam Washburn ordered. “Maybe they’ll hear.”
Jack dabbed futilely at the sweat that broke from his face and danced in glittering droplets before him. “Listen,” he said. “This is Moseley Expedition One. Our motors stopped functioning simultaneously, about two minutes after we commenced deceleration. The trouble must be in the fuel integrator. I suspect a magnetic surge, possibly due a short circuit in the power supply. The meters registered a surge before we lost thrust. Get that system redesigned! Tell our wives and kids we love them.”
He stopped. The teeth of the crater filled the entire forward window. Sam’s teeth filled his countenance, a stretched-out grin. “How do you like that?” he said. “And me the first black astronaut.”
They struck.
When they opened themselves again, in the hall, and knew where they were, he said, “Wonder if he’ll let us go out exploring.”
MURPHY’S HALL
167
Murphy’s Halt? Is that the real name?
Dad used to shout, “Murphy take it!” when he blew his temper. The rest is in a few of the old tapes, fiction plays about spacemen, back when people liked to watch that kind of story. They’d say when a man had died, “He’s drinking in Murphy’s Hall.” Or he’s dancing or sleeping or frying or freezing or whatever it was. But did they really say “Hall”? The tapes are old. Nobody’s been interested to copy them off on fresh plastic, not for a hundred years. I guess, maybe two hundred. The holographs are blurred and streaky, the sounds are mushed and full of random buzzes. Murphy’s Law has sure been working on those tapes.
I wish I’d asked Dad what the astronauts said and believed, way back when they were conquering the planets. Or pretended to believe, I should say. Of course they never thought there was a Murphy who kept a place where the spacefolk went that he’d called to him. But they might have kidded around about it. Only was the idea, for sure, about a hall? Or was that only the way I heard? I wish I’d asked Dad. But he wasn’t home often, these last years, what with helping build and test his ship. And when he did come, I could see how he mainly wanted to be with Mother. And when he and I were together, well, that was always too exciting for me to remember those yarns I’d tell myself before I slept, after he was gone again.
Murphy’s Haul?
168
The Unicorn Trade
By the time Moshe Silverman had finished writing his report, the temperature in the dome was about seventy, and rising fast enough that it should reach a hundred inside another Earth day. Of course, water wouldn’t then boil at once; extra energy is needed for vaporization. But the staff would no longer be able to cool some down to drinking temperature by the crude evaporation apparatus they had rigged. They’d dehydrate fast. Moshe sat naked in a running river of sweat.