"Most of it," Arlene admitted.
They were close together in the moon-jeep, but they wore the clumsy vacuum suits needed for movement outside. Arlene loosened the neck-clamps of her helmet and slipped it off. She shook her head as if in relief at the free movement of her hair. She smiled at Joe.
"It should have been rather good to work up here," said Kenmore, tiredly. "But it hasn't been. There was trouble on Earth with spies and saboteurs. It seemed they'd be left behind. But if we didn't bring some with us, we developed some after we got here. It's international co-operation—which means throat-cutting, here. There's suspicion. There are factions. Nobody can accomplish anything, because everybody wants a monopoly on accomplishment. Everybody fights to keep everybody else from getting ahead of him, with the result that everybody goes backwards."
Arlene smiled again at him in the jeep cabin on the Mare Imbrium on the moon, with the earthshine like silvery twilight outside.
"I could give you details, only they don't make sense," said Kenmore. "But the third-raters and the crackpots play ball with each other to prevent anybody else from doing anything the third-raters can't do. There's been every form of insane behavior that humans ever contrived, plus a few we made up for ourselves."
"Including," said Arlene cheerfully, "hauling a television personality and me up here to do broadcasts, pretending everything is peaches and whipped cream."
Kenmore laughed without being amused. "Which she won't do. I've heard this Cecile person speak just twice, up here. Both times she said, 'Somebody is going to pay for this!' "
Arlene laughed softly. "Somebody will! The woman likes money, Joe. She adores it. She will even risk her remarkably well-formed neck for it. She has! And she will collect! She has a broadcast due in something like two and a half hours."
"The communicator to Earth is sabotaged," said Kenmore.
"She has her own electronics man with her. He can make electrons jump through hoops. If he gets her just fifteen minutes' conversation with Earth before her broadcast . . ."
"What?"
"She'll make Civilian City sound like an unearthly paradise," Arlene assured him. "We'll almost believe it ourselves, listening to her and watching her! Want to bet?"
Kenmore grunted and flicked off the inside lights. "We'll go into the City and see what's turned up. The air dome seems to be holding pressure, though the others are going empty. The others must be sieves! Come along. But . . ."
They were very close together. There was silence for a moment. Vacuum suits are clumsy things to wear, but Arlene had taken off her helmet and Kenmore was not wearing his. After an interval, Arlene sighed contentedly. "You do have nice ideas, Joe!"
"Put on your helmet," he commanded. "Don't get any of your hair between the gaskets. It'll make a leak."
Arlene obeyed. Then she said, "Considering that I'm one of the first two girls ever to get to the moon, and all . . . don't you think it likely I'm the first girl ever to be kissed here?" Then she added hopefully, "Anyhow in a moon-jeep?"
"It's very likely," agreed Kenmore drily. "And if you are very good indeed, maybe you'll be the first girl ever to be kissed in Civilian City, too! But I'd give a lot if you were safely back on Earth!"
He went first out of the airlock. He was waiting for her as she came down the swaying rope ladder. They moved toward the triple dust-heap which was the abandoned habitation of human beings on the moon.
CHAPTER V. CECILE DUCROS
THE manners of human beings are peculiar; the customs of human beings are strange—but the reactions of human beings in situations of emergency and danger approach insanity. The conduct of the few remaining human beings in Civilian City was a perfect example of the fact.
Pitkin had the air pressure up to eight pounds in the air-dome. He'd added a soupçon of extra oxygen and zestfully started the dome's separate generator, kept ready for emergency and now definitely required. Cecile Ducros removed her vacuum-suit helmet and exposed the most icily-furious face that Joe Kenmore had ever seen. She gave orders; she was a very beautiful woman, but her voice crackled. As she instructed Lezd, her private electronics technician, she slipped into her native language and it sounded as if she were uttering whipcracks instead of words. But she did not waste energy in tears.
Lezd buttoned his faceplate and, with Pitkin to guide him, went into the power dome. There they labored.
Presently the lights all over the City came on dimly and brightened; then the three artificial caverns were as brilliantly illuminated as ever. Everything looked very cozy, but in two of the three domes there was still not enough air to keep a human being alive.
Lezd looked over the complex Earth-beam apparatus in the main dome. Kenmore worked over a matter he considered important. Moreau, beaming, sat beside Cecile Ducros, with Arlene listening imperturbably, and answered questions the television star shot at him.
Cecile Ducros was not using the charm at just this moment; she hadn't turned it on. She was using an excellent brain for a highly specific purpose, which under the circumstances was as unlikely as could be imagined. With Civilian City abandoned and leaking; with a story of sabotage to curl the hair; with a tale of personal danger to make all her television audience gasp for breath, and an expose of indifference to her safety that would rouse a storm of protest among her fans—with all this, Cecile Ducros was getting the material for a broadcast on the charming aspects of lunar civilization.
One hour before broadcast time, her technician had the beam in operation back to Earth. He plugged in a connection to her in the air dome, and she talked in infuriated French, with a cold-blooded fury that was daunting—even if one did not understand a word she said.
Kenmore came back into the air dome to make sure that Arlene was all right. She smiled at him, indicating Cecile and Moreau.
"She'll make the broadcast," Arlene said in a low tone. "She's told Earth what happened. She swore she'd broadcast the whole story—unless! And if they keep her off the air for this broadcast, she'll tell it next time, or next, or next. They've got to pay her for all her suffering, or she tells the world about it! But they will pay her, so she's going to broadcast on the charm of lunar living."
"But why," demanded Kenmore, "why didn't Earth notify the missile base, and arrange a guide-beam for the rocket? Or at least have a jeep come over to talk it down? What did happen?"
Arlene said in the same low tone, "The Earth transmitter was out. Sabotage, too. Timed together for maximum effect. You see the point?"
"I can guess it. Each transmitter thought the other was taking care of the rocket. So the rocket came on out —it could hardly stop, anyhow—and it should have crashed on landing. Everybody should have been killed, and right on top of it the world should learn that the armed forces of the missile bases had evacuated all civilian personnel from Civilian City and were shipping them back to Earth. All Europe would believe that we scoundrelly Americans had faked the disaster and let the rocket crash for an excuse to get everybody but Americans off the moon!" Then he said coldly, "You'd have been killed too."
She nodded. "I would."
Kenmore ground his teeth. "Eventually, I'm going to kill somebody for this! But I've worked. I've located some of the leaks in the main dome. I've been stopping them. Would you like to help?"
They went into the main dome. Kenmore had a small air cylinder, with a hose which ran into a bucket filled with foaming material much more enduring than soapsuds. In the dome's low pressure, a very little air made a lot of foam. Joe swept the white stuff against the side walls. Visible areas of plastic could be disregarded; no saboteur would cut slashes in the plastic where it could be seen. But if one painted the foam around the edges of an object against the wall—why, any leak behind it made the foam disappear. It was the automobilist's old trick of dipping a leaky tube in water and watching for bubbles to appear. Only Kenmore, of course, was working the trick in exact reverse.