“Yeah. It’s either your receiver or my transmitter. Let’s go in and check them out.”
They entered the dome together and removed their suits. They wiped the sweat from their faces and automatically started to make tea, but they stopped. Power was in short supply during the night and hot water had to be held to a minimum. So they checked the radios instead.
They went over Mcintosh’s transmitter first, since he had had the fall. They soon found the trouble. A tiny grain of silica had shorted a condenser in the printed circuit. It was easily fixed and then the transmitter worked again. They put on the suits and went outside. But the shock they suffered was not so easily remedied. And thereafter when they were outside they were never out of sight of each other.
Time went by. The looming loneliness of the brooding moonscape closed ever more tightly around them. Their surroundings took on the stature of a living thing, menacing, waiting, lurking. Even the radio contacts with Earth lost much of their meaning; the voices were just voices, not really belonging to people.
On Earth a man can be deep in a trackless and impenetrable jungle, yet there is a chance a fellow human being will happen by. A man can be isolated on the remotest of desert islands and still maintain a reasonable hope that a ship, or canoe, or plane will carry another human being to him. A man sentenced to a life of solitary confinement knows for certain that there are people on the other side of the wall.
But on the Moon there is complete aloneness. There are no human beings and—what is worse—no possibility of any human beings. And never before had men, two men, found themselves in such a position. The human mind, adaptable entity that it is, nevertheless had to reach beyond its boundaries to absorb the reality of perfect isolation.
The lunar night wore on. Fowler and Mcintosh were out spreading their dirty laundry for the usual three-hour exposure to Moon conditions before shaking the clothes out and packing them away ‘til they were needed again.
Fowler straightened up and looked at the Earth for a moment, then said, “Mac, did you ever eat in a diner on a train?”
“Sure, many times.”
“You remember how the headwaiter seated people?”
Mcintosh thought for a moment then said, “I know what you mean. He keeps them apart. He seats individuals at empty tables until there are no more empty tables; then he begins to double them up.”
“That’s it. He preserves the illusion of isolation. I guess people don’t know how much they need one another.”
“I guess they don’t. People are funny that way.”
They grinned at each other through the faceplates, although it was too dark to see inside the spacesuits. They finished spreading the laundry and went into the dome together. Both of them had recently come to realize a striking thing. If one of them died, the other could not survive. It was difficult enough to preserve sanity with two. One alone could not last an Earth-day. The men on the Moon lived in pairs or they died in pairs. And if Fowler and Mcintosh had thought to look at each other closely, they would have noticed a few incipient lines radiating from the eyes. Nothing striking, nothing abnormal, and certainly nothing as intense as the far look. Just the suggestion of a few lines around the eyes.
The night had only two Earth-days to run. Fowler and Mcintosh for the first time began to turn their thoughts to the journey home, not with longing, not with anticipation, but as a possibility of something that might happen. The actuality of leaving the Moon seemed too unreal to be true. And the cold harsh fact was that the rocket might not come; it had happened before. So though they dimly realized that in a mere four Earth-days they might leave the grim grayness behind, they were not much concerned.
A series of observations ended. Fowler and Mcintosh sipped hot tea, drawing the warmth into their chilled bodies. Fowler sat perched on one end of a bench. Mcintosh cupped the teacup in his hands and stood looking out at the lowering moonscape, wishing he could pull his eyes from it, too fascinated by its awfulness to do so. There was complete silence in the dome.
“Don.” The word came as a gasp, as though Mcintosh had called the name before he had completely swallowed a mouthful of tea.
Fowler looked up, mildly curious. He saw Mcintosh drop the teacup, saw it bounce off the floor. He saw Mcintosh straining forward, taut, neck muscles standing out, mouth open, one hand against the clear plastic.
“Don. I saw something move out there.” The words were shrill, harsh, hysteria in every syllable.
Fowler landed beside him in a single leap and looked, not out the window, but at his face. At the staring, terror-filled eyes, the drawn mouth. Fowler threw his arms around Mcintosh’s chest and squeezed hard and said, “Easy, Mac, easy. Don’t let the shadows get you. Things are all right.”
“I tell you I saw something. A sudden movement. Near that hillock but at a greater range and to the right. Something moved, Don.” And he inhaled a great shuddering gasp.
Fowler kept his arms around Mcintosh and looked out. He saw only the jagged dim surface of the Moon. For a long moment he looked out, listening to Mcintosh’s gasping breath, a chill fear slowly rising inside him. He turned his head to look at Mcintosh’s face again, and as he did he caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye. He dropped his arms and jerked his head back to look out as Mcintosh screamed, ‘There, there it is again, but it’s moved.”
The two men, both panting, strained at the window. For a full minute they stood with every muscle pulled tight, gulping down air, perspiration prickling out of their scalps and running down over face and neck. Their eyes saw fantastic shapes in the sharp dim light but their minds told them it was imagination.
Then they saw it clearly. About one hundred yards straight out in front of the window a tiny fountain of moondust sprayed upward and outward from a glowing base that winked out as swiftly as it appeared. Like the blossoming of a death-colored gray rose, the dust from a handspread of surface suddenly rose and spread outward in a circle and just as suddenly fell back to the surface.
“What is it?” hissed Fowler.
“I don’t know.”
They watched, the tension so great that they shuddered. They saw another one, bigger, out farther and to the left. They watched. Another, small, in much closer, the brief white base instantly flashing through shades of deeper reds and disappearing.
“Spacesuits,” gasped Fowler. “Get into the spacesuits.”
And he turned and jumped to the rack, Mcintosh alongside him. They slipped into the cumbersome suits with the swift smoothness of long practice. They twisted the helmets on.
“Radio O.K.?” said Mcintosh.
“Check. Let’s look.”
And the two jumped back to the window. The activity outside seemed to have stopped. They watched for six full minutes before they saw another of the dust fountains. After they saw it, they twisted their suits to look at each other. They were bringing themselves under control, trying to reason out a cause for what they saw.
“Any ideas?” said Mcintosh.
“No,” said Fowler. “Let’s try the other windows.”
They took up separate places at the two remaining windows.
“See anything?”
“Nothing. Just that hideous-looking terrain. I guess it’s all on the other— Wait. There’s one. Way out. I could just—”
“I’ve got one, too,” said Fowler. “It’s all around us. Let’s call Earth.”
They moved over to the radio. Fowler turned the volume high and Mcintosh hit the On switch. Almost immediately they heard a voice, mounting swiftly in loudness. “Station Number One to Moon Station. Station Number One to Moon Station.” Over and over it repeated the words.
Mcintosh touched a microphone to his helmet, flipped the Transmit switch and said, “Moon Station to Station Number One. We hear you. Over.”