“Thank God,” came the voice. “Listen. The Leonid meteor swarm may hit you. Find cover. Find a cave or bridge and get out of the open. Repeat. Meteor swarm may hit you. Find cover. Over.”
At the word “meteor” Mcintosh swung to face Fowler. The two moved closer together to see into the faceplates. Each face broke into a smile of relief at the knowledge of what was happening.
Mcintosh touched the microphone to his helmet and said, “We’re already in it. There is no cave or other shelter within forty miles. How long do you expect the shower—”
There was a thunderous explosion and a brilliant flash of light, that seared the eyeballs of both men. Something heavy dropped on them and gently clung to the spacesuits. They struggled futilely against the softness that enfolded them. Mcintosh dropped the microphone and flailed his arms. Fowler sought to lift off the cloying substance; he dropped to one knee and fought it, but it would not give. Both men fought blind; the caressing enfolding material brought complete blackness.
Mcintosh felt something grip his ankle and he lashed out with his foot. He felt it crash against something hard, but something that rolled with his kick and then bore back against his legs and knocked him over. His arms were still entangled in the material but he tried to flail the thing that crawled on top of him. With a superhuman effort he encircled the upper portion of the thing with layers of the soft material and began to squeeze. Through the thickness of the material he felt the familiar outline of a helmet with a short flexible antenna reaching up from the back. And he realized he was fighting Fowler.
“Mac, it’s me. The dome’s punctured and fallen in on us. You hear me?”
“Yes,” said Mcintosh, gasping for air. “I didn’t know what happened. You all right?”
“Yes. Let’s get out of here. Shoulder to shoulder ‘til we find the lock. Let’s go.”
They crawled side by side, lifting the heavy leaded plastic in front of them. They bumped into the drafting table and oriented themselves. They passed out through the useless lock and stood up outside and looked at the dome. It is a terrible thing when a man’s home is destroyed. But on Earth a man can go elsewhere; he has relatives, friends, to turn to. His heart may be heavy, but his life is not in peril.
Fowler and Mcintosh looked at their collapsed dome and doom itself froze around their hearts. They stood alone on a frozen, shadow-ridden, human-hating world. They stood hand in hand with death.
They looked at the collapsed dome and the way it lay over the equipment they knew so well, softening the sharp angles, filling in the hollow spaces in the interior. The equipment outside looked stark and awkward, standing high, silhouetted against the luminous grayness. The antenna caught Mcintosh’s eye.
He swallowed heavily and said, “Let’s radio Earth and give them the news. We were talking to them when we got hit.”
Fowler dumbly followed him to a small box on the far side of the sled and watched him remove the mike and receiver from a small box. Mcintosh faced out from the sled and held the receiver against one side of the helmet and the mike against the other. Fowler slipped behind him. They stood back to back, helmets touching, Mcintosh doing the talking, Fowler operating the switches and listening to all that was said. The receiver was silent when Fowler turned it on. Earth was listening, waiting. He switched to Transmit and nudged Mcintosh.
“Moon Station to Space Station Number One. Over.”
In five seconds a voice came back. “Pole Station to Moon Station. Space Station Number One is out of line of sight. What happened? You all right?”
“Yes. Meteor punctured dome. We’re outside. Over.”
It was considerably more than five seconds before the voice came back, quieter but more intense. “Can you fix it?”
“We don’t know. We’ll go over the damage and talk to you soon. Out.”
Mcintosh dropped his hands and Fowler turned the switch off. “Well,” said Mcintosh, “we’d better see how bad it is. They may want to call the whole thing off.”
Fowler nodded. Getting the sled and dome and equipment to the Moon had called for prodigious effort and staggering cost. It could not be duplicated in a hurry. Their replacements were already on the way. The dome had to be operating if they were to stay. And the spaceship could only carry two men back.
“Let’s look it over,” said Fowler. As they turned to climb up on the sled a fountain of dust sprang up ten feet to their right. They looked out over the sullen moonscape; the meteors were still falling. But they didn’t care. They climbed up on the sled and carefully picked their way on top of the collapsed material to where they had been standing when the meteor struck. They pulled out several folds and found the hole. They inspected it with growing excitement.
The hole was a foot in diameter, neatly round. Around the perimeter was a thick ridge charred slightly on the inner edge where the thermoplastic material had fused and rolled back. The ridge had strengthened the material and prevented it from splitting and tearing when the air in the dome rushed out. The hole in the inner layer measured about eighteen inches in diameter and the encircling ridge was even thicker.
Fowler held the hand-powered flashlight on the material surrounding the holes while he examined it carefully. “Mac,” he said, “we can fix it. We’ve got enough scrap dome plastic to seal these holes. Let’s see if the meteor went out the bottom.”
They moved the holes around on the floor of the dome and found a four-inch hole through the plastic floor. Looking down it, they could see a small crater in the Moon’s surface half-filled with a white solid.
Mcintosh said, “It went through one of the batteries, but we won’t miss it. We’ve got some scrap flooring plastic and some insulation around. We can fix this, too. Our make-up air is in good supply. Don,” he stood up, “we’re gonna make it.”
“Yes,” said Fowler, letting the light go out. “Let’s radio Earth.”
They went back to the set and Fowler reported their findings. They could hear the joy come back in the man’s voice as he wished them luck and told them an extra rocket with make-up air would be on the way soon. “What about the meteor shower?”
Fowler and Mcintosh looked around; they had forgotten the meteors again. They could see the spurts of moondust clearly against the gray and black shadows.
“They’re still falling,” said Fowler. “Nothing to do but sweat them out. Call you later. Out.” And he and Mcintosh sat down. A nation sweated it out with them. An entire people felt fear strike at their hearts at the thought of two men sitting beside a collapsed dome amidst a shower of invisible cosmic motes traveling at unthinkable speeds. But there was no way for anyone to be of the slightest aid to the two men on the Moon.
Quiet they sat and dumb. The meteors, forgotten for a moment, were now a challenge to the very presence of men in such a place. A mere light touch from a cosmic pebble, and a human life would snuff out. A touch on the hand, the foot, is enough; it would take so little. They were something apart from the human race, men, yet not men. For no man could be so alone, such a speck, a trifle, a nothing, so alone were they. Quiet they sat and dumb. But each man’s heart beat thick and quick like a madman on a drum. And the meteors fell.
“Mac.”
“Yes.”
“Why do we sit here? Why don’t we fix it?”
“Suppose it gets hit again?”
“Suppose it does. It’ll be hit whether it’s collapsed or full. At least we’ll have these holes patched. Maybe it’ll be easier for the next team—”
Mcintosh stood up. “Of course,” he said. “We can get that much done no matter what happens.”