The dome checked out and by common consent both men swung to the radio, hungry for the reassuring sound of another human voice. Mcintosh tuned it and said into the mike, “Moon Station to Earth. Fowler and Mcintosh checking in. Everything in order. Over.”
About four seconds later the transmitter emitted what the two men waited to hear. “Pole Number One to Moon. Welcome to the network. How are you, boys? Everything shipshape? Over.”
Mcintosh glanced at Fowler and a vision of the crevice swam between them. Mcintosh said, “Everything fine, Pole Number One. Dome in order. Men in good shape. All’s well on the Moon. Over.”
About three seconds’ wait, then: “Good. We will now take up Schedule Charlie. Time, 0641. Next check-in, 0900. Out.” Mcintosh hung up the mike quickly and hit the switches to save power.
The two men removed their spacesuits and sat down on a low bench and poured tea from the thermos.
Mcintosh was a stocky man with blue eyes and sandy hair cut short. He was built like a rectangular block of granite, thick chest, thick waist, thick legs; even his fingers seemed square in cross section. His movements were deliberate and conveyed an air of relentlessness.
Fowler was slightly taller than Mcintosh. His hair and eyes were black, his skin dark. He was lean and walked with a slight stoop. His waist seemed too small and his shoulders too wide. He moved in a flowing sinuous manner like a cat perpetually stalking its prey.
They sipped the hot liquid gratefully, inhaling the wet fragrance of it. They carried their cups to the edge of the dome and looked out the double layer of transparent resin that served as one of the windows. The filter was in place and they pushed against it and looked out.
“Dreary looking place, isn’t it?” said Fowler.
Mcintosh nodded.
They sipped their tea, holding it close under their noses when they weren’t drinking, looking out at the moonscape, trying to grasp it, adjusting their minds to it, thinking of the days ahead.
They finished, and Fowler said, “Well, time to get to work. You all set?”
Mcintosh nodded. They climbed into their spacesuits and passed through the lock, one at a time. They checked over the exterior of the dome and every piece of mechanism mounted on the sled. Fowler mounted an outside seat, cleared with Mcintosh, and started the drive motor. The great sled, complete with dome, parabolic mirror, spherical boilers, batteries, antennas, and a complex of other equipment rolled slowly forward on great, sponge-filled tires. Mcintosh walked beside it. Fowler watched his odometer and when the sled had moved five hundred yards he brought it to a halt. He dismounted and the two of them continued the survey started months back by their predecessors.
They took samples, they read radiation levels, they ran the survey, they ate and slept, they took more samples. They kept to a rigid routine, for that was the way to make time pass, that was the way to preserve sanity.
The days passed. The two men grew accustomed to the low gravitation, so they recovered the cargo rocket. Yet they moved about with more than the usual caution for Moon men. They had learned earlier than the others that an insignificant and trivial bit of negligence can cost a man his life. And as time went by they became aware of another phenomenon of life on the Moon. On Earth, in an uncomfortable and dangerous situation, you become accustomed to the surroundings and can achieve a measure of relaxation. Not on the Moon. The dismal bright and less-bright grays, the oppressive barrenness of the gray moonscape, the utter aloneness of two men in a gray wilderness, slowly took on the tone of a gray malevolence seeking an unguarded moment. And the longer they stayed the worse it became. So the men kept themselves busier than ever, driving themselves to exhaustion, sinking into restless sleep, and up to work again. They made more frequent five-hundred-yard jumps; they expanded the survey; they sought frozen water or frozen air deep in crevices, but found only frozen carbon dioxide. They kept a careful eye on the pottet, for hard-working men consume more oxygen, and the supply was limited. And every time they checked the remaining supply they remembered what had happened to Booker and Whitman.
A pipeline had frozen. Booker took a bucket of water and began to skirt the pottet bin. The bail of the bucket caught on the corner of the lid of the bin. Booker carelessly hoisted the bucket to free it. The lid pulled open and the canvas bucket struck a corner and emptied into the bin. Instantly the dome filled with oxygen and steam. The safety valves opened and bled off the steam and oxygen to the outside, where it froze and fell like snow and slowly evaporated. The bin ruptured from the heat and broke a line carrying hydraulic fluid. Twenty gallons of hydraulic fluid flooded the pottet, reacting with it, forming potassium salts with the silicone liquid, releasing some oxygen, irretrievably locking up the rest.
Booker’s backward leap caromed him off the ceiling and out of harm’s way. After a horrified moment, the two men assessed the damage and calmly radioed Earth that they had a seven-Earth-day supply of oxygen left. Whereupon they stocked one spacesuit with a full supply of the salvaged pottet and lay down on their bunks. For six Earth days they lay motionless; activity consumes oxygen. They lay calm; panic makes the heart beat faster and a racing blood stream consumes oxygen.
For four days slightly more than two thousand men on Earth struggled to get an off-schedule rocket to the Moon. The already fantastic requirements of fuel and equipment needed to put two men and supplies on the Moon every month had to be increased. The tempo of round-the-clock schedules stepped up to inhuman heights; there were two men lying motionless on the Moon.
It lacked but a few hours of the seven days when Booker and Whitman felt the shudder that told them a rocket had crash-landed near by. They sat up and looked at each other, and it was apparent that Whitman had the most strength left. So Booker climbed into the spacesuit while Whitman lay down again. And Booker went out to the crashed rocket feeling strong from the fresh oxygen in the spacesuit. He scraped up pottet along with the silica dust and carried it in a broken container back into the dome. Whitman was almost unconscious by the time Booker got back and put water into the pottet. The two men lived. And by the time their replacements arrived the dome was again in as perfect condition as it had been. Except there was a different type of cover on the pottet bin.
So Fowler and Mcintosh worked endlessly, ranging far out from the dome on their survey. The tension built up in them, for the worst was yet to come. The long Lunar day was fast drawing to a close, and night was about to fall, a black night fourteen Earth-days long.
“Well, here it comes,” said Mcintosh on the twelfth Earth-day. He pointed west. Fowler climbed up on the hummock beside him and looked. He saw the bottom half of the sun mashed by a distant mountain range and a broad band of shadow reaching out toward them. The shadow stretched as far north and south as he could see.
“Yes,” said Fowler. “It won’t be long now. We’d better get back.”
They jumped down from the hummock and started for the dome, samples forgotten. At first they walked, throwing glances back over their shoulders. The pace grew faster until they were traveling in the peculiar ground-consuming lope of men in a hurry under light gravity.
They reached the dome and went in together. Inside they removed their helmets and Mcintosh headed for the radio. Fowler dropped a hand on his shoulder and said, “Wait, Mac. We have half an hour before we’re due to check in.”