City on the Moon

"Don't open your helmet," he warned Moreau by helmet phone. "The air hasn't gone, but it's going." Then he added, "See if anybody's dead."

But a glance at the rack for vacuum suits answered him. There had been a suit for everyone in the City, plus spares for normal outside activities. The usefulness of a vacuum suit which contained enough air for only two hours, could be doubted in a case like this. If there was a complete loss of air from the City, death would be inevitable. But such suits were handy for lesser emergencies, and they had been used. Everybody in the City had donned them and gone out.

Kenmore went quickly to the communications office, to the regular beam communicator to Earth. It was turned on, but no tubes glowed; no dial registered any output. It was dead.

"We'll try the other buildings," he said. "We want to know about the Earthship, too! It was coming in. What happened to it?"

Arlene Gray was on that ship. She shouldn't have been, Joe thought; no girl should come to the moon with the City's present state of technical equipment, or in the state of affairs among its inhabitants.

The lessened weight was nerve-racking; the constant confinement was frightening. But to go out into the outside emptiness was terror-inspiring. Neuroses would flourish on the moon in any case, but currently things were worse than merely neurotic. Rumors of the turmoil had gotten back to Earth, undoubtedly. So—the intent was perfectly obvious—Cecile Ducros had come on the lavishly publicized Earthship. She was the most popular television personality on at least three continents. Her coming was a public-relations stunt to glamorize the entire project of a colony on the moon. Yet . . .

What had happened to the Earthship? At least two hours ago, it had expected to surface immediately. The rocket must be down by now—but where? It couldn't have stayed aloft; it didn't have enough fuel. It couldn't have gone back to Earth; it depended on extra rockets brought up by freight missiles. But the ship would have had no help in getting down anywhere. It didn't have a radar beam to guide it to a small, nearby area from which Civilian City could be reached on foot in vacuum suits.

And if it hadn't landed properly, then the ship had crashed in the Apennines. That mountain range is said to have the most spectacular scenery of any place on Earth or moon. But to try to find a crashed spacecraft among its thousands of peaks and multiple thousands of square miles . . .

Kenmore trembled, but he went hurriedly through the locks that led to the power dome, which was a second mound of moondust with a similar balloon inside. Here was the power equipment, the machine shops, and the primary generators. There were growing plants here, too, to help condition the air. But he found no light. This was as large as the main dome, and its machines glittered eerily in the inadequate light from the chest lamps of the two vacuum suits.

The air pressure here was three point two pounds, the temperature was thirty-eight. This dome had lost air faster than the main dome. The generator switches were off; somebody had carefully shut down everything before the City was abandoned. The huge tanks of reserve fuel were intact. Normally, of course, the City's power came from mercury boilers outside. During the day, sunlight provided power without limit.

Moreau said mildly, "If someone does not run the generators, the boilers will pop off and the mercury will be lost when the sun rises."

But sunrise was an Earth-week off. Kenmore did not even think about it; he made incoherent noises of rage and anguish. He led the way frantically to the locks to the air-plant dome. Any part of the City could be shut off from any other. Naturally!

There was seven pounds pressure in the air dome, the temperature sixty degrees. The jungle-like masses of vegetation in the hydroponic tanks glittered in the lights from the two men's suits. There were towering racks of tanks, from which leaves extruded themselves extravagantly. The faceplates of their helmets tended to mist from the humidity here, thin as the air was. But one could survive in this dome without a vacuum suit. It would be like a very high mountain, but the low gravity would help. The demand of one's body for oxygen would be less; one could even be comfortable.

"I shall open my helmet," said Moreau's voice in the helmet phones. "Watch me, Joe."

He opened his faceplate; then his expression became one of pure astonishment. "One lives here! I hear snoring!"

He went scurrying through the passages between the low-level hydroponic troughs. Kenmore followed quickly.

There was a single, hot-bright light. Against the side wall, an emergency lamp glowed in the vast darkness of the air dome. A huge, whiskered man snored loudly on a bunk by the lamp. Kenmore snapped open his own faceplate as Moreau kicked the bunk. "Wake up!" he snapped. "What's happened? Where are the people?"

Kenmore panted, "The Earthship! It was coming in! What happened to it?"

The whiskered man's eyes opened in the middle of a snore. He regarded them blankly; then he beamed. "You come, eh? Kahk vasha zdarovya! I waited for you. Pitkin fears nothing—not even Americans!" He stood up. "All the rest were frightened when the air began to go. The Director went gray with terror. He opened the secret instructions and left in the first jeep. But I knew the Americans would come before the City was destroyed. So I waited. Pitkin fears nothing!"

"What happened to the City?" demanded Moreau. "The Earthship! The rocket!" panted Kenmore. Pitkin waved a large hand. "The City leaked. That is all. Pressure began to drop two days ago. In all three domes at once. The Director was frightened. He tried to call Earth for orders, but there was no radio. He cried that there was sabotage—he was clever, eh?" Pitkin winked elaborately. "He knew the Americans were driving everybody out, so he led them all, in jeeps, to a missile base for safety. He had written instructions, and he was terrified, but he went. And all the others followed. All but Pitkin!"

"But the rocket!" cried Kenmore. "The rocket from Earth! Where did it land?"

Pitkin shrugged until his shoulders almost touched his ears. He looked at a clock and said placidly, "I have slept twelve hours. I know nothing of the rocket. But I know the Americans, eh? I knew you would come!"

Kenmore said fiercely to Moreau, "I'm going to hunt for it! It was coming down, and surely it had distance radar. Surely the skipper wouldn't be an idiot who couldn't tell the difference between the Apennines and the Mare Imbrium! I'll circle . . ."

He made for the airlock. Moreau said thoughtfully, "You found the leaks in this dome, Pitkin? You must have, to risk sleeping. What sort of leaks?"

"Razor slashes," said Pitkin blandly, "in the plastic wall behind a water tank, and elsewhere. The air went out. There were those who said that cosmic rays had rotted the plastic. But I—I am Pitkin! I guessed!" He winked again, wisely. "Americans do not wish any but Americans on the moon, eh? They drive them out of the City, eh? But I—I, Pitkin, become an American!"

Moreau said shortly, " Pitkin, you are a fool! We go to hunt for the rocket. If you can bring up the air pressure in this dome, it would be well to do it. We—ah—we will probably be back."

He ran after Kenmore—not Earth-fashion, but in the only way that one can travel fast in low gravity. He seemed to glide across the floor, almost as if he were on skates.

He went through the lock, into the main dome, and caught up with Kenmore in time to share the main lock with him.

In the lock, Moreau said wryly into his helmet phone, "Truly, Joe, the inhabitants of Luna are lunatics! Somebody sabotaged the City! It is madness!"

Kenmore did not answer; he acted as if he did not hear. He moved across the powdery-coated sea to the jeep, and swung up the ladder.

He opened the outer lock-door and paused. "I remember something," he said with an air of great calm and reasonableness. "As we came down the pass I saw a light out on the mare. It was winking. It could have been a jeep coming to the City, but a jeep should have gotten here by now. I'm going to see if it could possibly be the rocket."