City on the Moon

Joe Kenmore woke in the jeep that had picked him up with his companions. He found himself lying on its metal floor, being twitched this way and that as the jeep rolled at cruising speed over the gentle undulations of the Mare Imbrium. He smelled oil, and ozone, and hot metal. But also he smelled coffee.

He got to his feet, groggily. Arlene Gray lay on an improvised bunk in the rear of the cabin, still sleeping. The jeep, he knew, was headed for Civilian City. A very considerable number of hours had passed, but the lunar night still held. Earthshine bathed all that could be seen, but that was not very much in terms of scenery. Earth, overhead, now began to show the suspicion of a shadow at its western edge. It was now past full—corresponding to lunar midnight. It moved toward third-quarter, which was predawn on the moon.

"Food's a great invention," said Kenmore, as he moved past clutters of machinery in the jeep's cabin. "Give me some!"

Haney handed him a mug of coffee—one of those very special drinking mugs which had a great vogue on Earth, once, because they wouldn't spill liquid but could still be drunk from. Kenmore settled down on one of the folding seats for extra passengers. The same lean Haney began to build a sandwich, competently slapping down the slices of bread when the jeep's motion sent them floating in the air.

"Mike," said the dark-skinned chief amiably, "has been telling us about the doings over at the City."

Kenmore grunted assent. The chief, driving, said over his shoulder, "Plenty of trouble; How're you going to get that code stuff to the Laboratory—if it's as important as Mike says?"

"The Earthship," said Kenmore dourly, "has a crumpled landing fin and some cracked ports and the like. It's toppled over. It's got to be gotten aloft with that message-according to what I think Earth will say. That is probably impossible, but I'm working on it in my mind. If it has to be done—"

The chief was a Mohawk Indian. He said in mild derision, "If Big Chief Man-in-the-Moon says so, us braves will take a whack at it. Is it a bad smash?"

"Arlene walked away from it, which may mean anything."

The chief speculated amiably. "Is that order so important because they've got it figured out back on Earth that the gang in the Laboratory has gone nuts, or because it hasn't? Could be either."

Remote as it was, the Space Laboratory was as much in the minds of all of them as their own immediate situation. They were on the moon because of it, and Civilian City had been built and maintained to serve it. There was no civilian activity off the Earth which had not ultimately been devised for the purpose of making the Laboratory possible.

The moon-jeep rumbled on, over the dust-covered sea which once had been molten rock. Presently Mike Scandia awoke, and Kenmore pounced on him for exact and detailed information about the situation. Mike gulped coffee and told what he knew. It wasn't much more than he'd already indicated to Joe, but in the context of the Laboratory's purpose, it was appalling. A long, long distance away on the other side of the moon— a fifth as far away as Earth—was a minute, man-made object floating out in emptiness; it could not be seen from nearside on the moon. In this small, compartmented metal case, eight men lived in the greatest danger men had ever volunteered to face. The Space Laboratory was an atomic-energy workshop. It contained fissionable materials which could blast it and its occupants to radioactive gas at the temperature of the sun's very heart. No more than a moment's carelessness would be required to bring that about.

There was an energy-field which, in theory, should affect even neutrons; the mathematics of it were still largely speculative. There were facts yet to be discovered. If thus-and-so was the fact—why, power could be had for all the imaginable needs of Earth for all time to come; and nothing but power could be released. But if the fact was such-and-such—why, it was possible for any type of matter, though as thin as the gases in the vacuum of an electric-light bulb, to form a sun. In that case, the Laboratory's labors were futile or worse.

In any case, the experiments were dangerous, so the Laboratory hung in space, where the gravity of the moon was almost perfectly balanced by the orbital speed of the Laboratory around the Earth itself. It was a dead spot, some forty thousand miles out. Had there been only local attraction to consider, the Laboratory would have stayed there for all time. But solar gravitation entered into the picture, and once in two weeks—or four, or six—a-small rocket had to be fired to put the Laboratory back at the center of the dead space from which it had wandered.