Fowler stood up and began to turn to the sled to climb up. A tiny spot of brightness suddenly appeared on Mcintosh’s left shoulder. With a feeling of blackness closing in on his body, Fowler flung himself at Mcintosh and clamped a hand over the spot where the glow had been. The weight of his body knocked Mcintosh down but Fowler clung to him, kept his hand pressed firmly against the spot where the meteor had hit.
“Mac,” said Fowler with the taste of copper in his mouth. “Mac. Can you hear me?”
“I hear you fine. What’s the matter with you? You like to scared me to death.”
“You got hit. On the left shoulder. Your suit must be punctured. I’ve got my hand over it.”
“Don, I didn’t even feel it. There can’t possibly be a hole there or I’d have felt the air go, or at least some of it. Take a look.”
They got to their feet. Fowler kept his hand in place while he retrieved the flashlight. He got it going and quickly removed his hand and showed the light over the spot to look. At first he saw nothing, so he held his helmet closer. Then he saw it. A tiny crater so small as to amount to nothing beyond a slight disturbance of the shiny surface of the suit. Smaller than the head of a pin it was and not as deep as it was broad.
He let the light go out and said in a choked voice, “Must have been a small one, smaller than a grain of sand. No damage at all.”
“Good. Let’s get to work.”
They cut out two four-foot squares of dome material and several chunks of flooring plastic. They filled the bottom of the hole in the floor with five inches of insulation. They plugged in a wedge-shaped soldering iron and melted the plastic and worked it in to the top three inches of flooring, making an under-cut to seal the hole solidly. And the floor was fixed.
Fowler pulled over the squares of dome material while Mcintosh adjusted the temperature of the iron to that just below the melting point of the material. Fowler placed the first square inside the hole in the inner layer. He ran the hot blade around the ridge of fused plastic. It sealed well; the thick, leaded, shiny, dome material stiffly flowed together and solidified. Fowler sealed the patches in place with a series of five fused circles concentric to the hole and spaced about three inches apart. The inner hole was hard to work with, for he had to reach through the outer hole, but he managed it. The outer hole went fast. And when they finished they were certain that the dome was as good as ever.
They stood up from their work and looked around. Out onto the moonscape they looked long and carefully. And nowhere could they see one of the dread dust fountains. Slowly and carefully they walked to the edge of the sled and dropped off. They sat down and looked some more, carefully preventing their imaginations from picturing things more fantastic than what was already there. After ten minutes there was no doubt about it, the meteor shower was over.
“Let’s blow her up,” said Fowler.
Mcintosh checked the heated outlet from the air cylinder and then passed current through the coils that heated the cylinder itself. At his O.K., Fowler cracked the valve and air began to flow into the dome. They watched it carefully as it rose, looking for the tell-tale white streams that told of a leak. There were none detectable in either layer. And in half an hour the dome stood full and taut with a good five pounds pressure inside. They went in through the lock together.
Mcintosh started the light tube while Fowler began a check of the gauges. In ten minutes it was apparent that things were in order. The dome was warming up too, so they took off their helmets, keeping a wary eye on the gauges. Soon they took off their suits.
The radio was still on, so Fowler called in to Earth that everything was in order. The voice was warm and friendly, congratulating them on their work and passing on the reassurances of men everywhere. They learned that their replacements were on schedule, so far.
The two men looked up at the patch on the ceiling, with its corners dangling downward. They looked at each other and Fowler started to make tea. Mcintosh walked to a window and as he got there his feet started to slip out from under him. He caught himself and bent to see what he had slipped on. He found a thin sheet of ice on the floor.
“Where’d this come from?”
Fowler looked over and smiled. “That’s, from the cup of tea you dropped when you saw the first meteor. Remember?”
“Oooh, yes.” And Mcintosh chipped it up and put it in the waste pot to be purified and used on the pottet.
They had their tea, and they slept long and restlessly. They picked up their work schedule, and very soon they could see the brightness on the mountain tops to the west. The sun was coming back.
But it brought no joy. They were beyond any emotional response to night or day. Bright gray or dark gray, it did not matter. It was still the Moon.
On the second Earth-day of sunlight they spoke to the approaching spaceship and made preparations to leave. The laundry was all done and ready for use. The dome was tidy. Their last job was to brew tea and put it in the thermos to keep hot for their replacements.
They donned their spacesuits for the last time on the Moon and went out the lock together to watch the little flame in the black sky grow larger.
The ship landed and the dust settled immediately. Fowler and Mcintosh walked slowly toward the ship; they did not hurry. The door in the side opened, a ladder dropped out, and two suited figures climbed awkwardly to the Moon’s surface.
Before they had a chance to look around, Mcintosh called, “Over here. The dome is over here.”
The four men came together and shook hands noisily. Fowler said, “You can see the dome.” He pointed to it a half mile away. “We’ve left some hot tea for you there. The terrain is pretty rough so watch yourself moving around for a few days. Good luck.” They shook hands. The replacements headed for the dome while Fowler and Mcintosh went to the ship and climbed in without looking back. They dogged home the lock, removed their suits, stretched out on the acceleration bunks, and called “O.K.,” into the intercom.
“Right,” said the pilot from his compartment. “Welcome aboard and stand by.”
In a moment they felt the acceleration, steadily mounting. But it soon eased off, and they slept. For most of the five-day journey they slept. And if they had thought to look at each other during their few waking hours, they would have seen nothing unusual—a few incipient, almost invisible lines around the eyes, nothing more. Neither Fowler nor Mcintosh had the far look.
The ship reached the space station and tied to it. Fowler and Mcintosh transferred to the shuttle and swiftly dropped toward Earth. They heard the air whistle as it thickened.
The television cameras first picked up the ship as a small dot. People the world over craned forward to watch as the bellyskids touched the sand—people who did not know that the ship carried two Moon men who did not have the far look. The people watched the ship skid to a halt amid a slowly settling cloud of dust.
And as they watched, the door amidships swung in. The sun slanted in through the door and showed two figures standing there. The figures moved to a point just inside the door and stopped. They stood there motionless, looking out for what seemed an interminable period.
As Fowler and Mcintosh looked out the door, they saw the shimmering sands of the New Mexican desert. But they saw more than that. They saw more than home. They saw the spawning-place of the human race. In a roaring rush of recognition, they knew they had done more than simply return to Earth. They had rejoined the human race. They had been apart and were now one again with that brawling, pesky, restless race in which all were brothers, all were one. This was not a return to Earth. This was a return to the womb, to the womb that had nourished them and made them men. A flood of sympathy and heart-felt understanding poured through them as they stared out at the shimmering sands. The kinks and twists of personality fell away and left men of untrammeled mind.