The Past Through Tomorrow Page 33

  “Let me see your hand,” Knowles demanded.

  “It’s nothing much.” But Knowles examined it anyway. I looked at it and got a little sick. He had a mark like a stigma on the palm, a bloody, oozing wound. Knowles made a compress of his handkerchief and then used mine to tie it in place.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” Konski told us, then added, “we’ve got time to kill. How about a little pinochle?”

  “With your cards?” asked Knowles.

  “Why, Mr. Knowles! Well—never mind. It isn’t right for paymasters to gamble anyhow. Speaking of paymasters, you realize this is pressure work now, Mr. Knowles?”

  “For a pound and four tenths differential?”

  “I’m sure the union would take that view—in the circumstances.”

  “Suppose I sit on the leak?”

  “But the rate applies to helpers, too.”

  “Okay, miser—triple-time it is.”

  “That’s more like your own sweet nature, Mr. Knowles. I hope it’s a nice long wait.”

  “How long a wait do you think it will be, Fatso?”

  “Well, it shouldn’t take them more than an hour, even if they have to come all the way from Richardson.”

  “Hmm… what makes you think they will be looking for us?”

  “Huh? Doesn’t your office know where you are?”

  “I’m afraid not. I told them I wouldn’t be back today.”

  Konski thought about it. “I didn’t drop my time card. They’ll know I’m still inside.”

  “Sure they will—tomorrow, when your card doesn’t show up at my office.”

  “There’s that lunkhead on the gate. He’ll know he’s got three extra inside.”

  “Provided he remembers to tell his relief. And provided he wasn’t caught in it, too.”

  “Yes, I guess so,” Konski said thoughtfully. “Jack—better quit pumping that light. You just use up more oxygen.”

  We sat there in the darkness for quite a long time, speculating about what had happened. Konski was sure it was an explosion; Knowles said that it put him in mind of a time when he had seen a freight rocket crash on take off. When the talk started to die out, Konski told some stories. I tried to tell one, but I was so nervous—so afraid, I should say—that I couldn’t remember the snapper. I wanted to scream.

  After a long silence Konski said, “Jack, give us the light again. I got something figured out.”

  “What is it?” Knowles asked.

  “If we had a patch, you could put on my suit and go for help.”

  “There’s no oxygen for the suit.”

  “That’s why I mentioned you. You’re the smallest—there’ll be enough air in the suit itself to take you through the next section.”

  “Well—okay. What are you going to use for a patch?”

  “I’m sitting on it.”

  “Huh?”

  “This big broad, round thing I’m sitting on. I’ll take my pants off. If I push one of my hams against that hole, I’ll guarantee you it’ll be sealed tight.”

  “But—No, Fats, it won’t do. Look what happened to your hand. You’d hemorrhage through your skin and bleed to death before I could get back.”

  “I’ll give you two to one I wouldn’t—for fifty, say.”

  “If I win, how do I collect?”

  “You’re a cute one, Mr. Knowles. But look—I’ve got two or three inches of fat padding me. I won’t bleed much—a strawberry mark, no more.”

  Knowles shook his head. “It’s not necessary. If we keep quiet, there’s air enough here for several days.”

  “It’s not the air, Mr. Knowles. Noticed it’s getting chilly?”

  I had noticed, but hadn’t thought about it. In my misery and funk being cold didn’t seem anything more than appropriate. Now I thought about it. When we lost the power line, we lost the heaters, too. It would keep getting colder and colder… and colder.

  Mr. Knowles saw it, too. “Okay, Fats. Let’s get on with it.”

  I sat on the suit while Konski got ready. After he got his pants off he snagged one of the tag-alongs, burst it, and smeared the sticky insides on his right buttock. Then he turned to me. “Okay, kid—up off the nest.” We made the swap-over fast, without losing much air, though the leak hissed angrily. “Comfortable as an easy chair, folks.” He grinned.

  Knowles hurried into the suit and left, taking the light with him. We were in darkness again.

  After a while, I heard Konski’s voice. “There a game we can play in the dark, Jack. You play chess?”

  “Why, yes—play at it, that is.”

  “A good game. Used to play it in the decompression chamber when I was working under the Hudson. What do you say to twenty on a side, just to make it fun?”

  “Uh? Well, all right.” He could have made it a thousand; I didn’t care.

  “Fine. King’s pawn to king three.”

  “Uh—king’s pawn to king’s four.”

  “Conventional, aren’t you? Puts me in mind of a girl I knew in Hoboken—” What he told about her had nothing to do with chess, although it did prove she was conventional, in a manner of speaking. “King’s bishop to queen’s bishop four. Remind me to tell you about her sister, too. Seems she hadn’t always been a redhead, but she wanted people to think so. So she—sorry. Go ahead with your move.”

  I tried to think but my head was spinning. “Queen’s pawn to queen three.”

  “Queen to king’s bishop three. Anyhow, she—” He went on in great detail. It wasn’t new and I doubt if it ever happened to him, but it cheered me up. I actually smiled, there in the dark. “It’s your move,” he added.

  “Oh.” I couldn’t remember the board. I decided to get ready to castle, always fairly safe in the early game. “Queen’s knight to queen’s bishop three.”

  “Queen advances to capture your king’s bishop’s pawn—checkmate. You owe me twenty, Jack.”

  “Huh? Why that can’t be!”

  “Want to run over the moves?” He checked them off.

  I managed to visualize them, then said, “Why, I’ll be a dirty name! You hooked me with a fool’s mate!”

  He chuckled. “You should have kept your eye on my queen instead of on the redhead.”

  I laughed out loud. “Know any more stories?”

  “Sure.” He told another. But when I urged him to go on, he said, “I think I’ll just rest a little while, Jack.”

  I got up. “You all right, Fats?” He didn’t answer; I felt my way over to him in the dark. His face was cold and he didn’t speak when I touched him. I could hear his heart faintly when I pressed an ear to his chest, but his hands and feet were like ice.

  I had to pull him loose; he was frozen to the spot. I could feel the ice, though I knew it must be blood. I started to try to revive him by rubbing him, but the hissing of the leak brought me up short. I tore off my own trousers, had a panicky time before I found the exact spot in the dark, and sat down on it, with my right buttock pressed firmly against the opening.

  It grabbed me like a suction cup, icy cold. Then it was fire spreading through my flesh. After a time I couldn’t feel anything at all, except a dull ache and coldness.

  There was a light someplace. It flickered on, then went out again. I heard a door clang. I started to shout.

  “Knowles!” I screamed. “Mr. Knowles!”

  The light flickered on again. “Coming, Jack—”

  I started to blubber. “Oh, you made it! You made it.”

  “I didn’t make it, Jack. I couldn’t reach the next section. When I got back to the lock I passed out.” He stopped to wheeze. “There’s a crater—” The light flickered off and fell clanging to the floor. “Help me, Jack,” he said querulously. “Can’t you see I need help? I tried to—”

  I heard him stumble and fall. I called to him, but he didn’t answer.

  I tried to get up, but I was stuck fast, a cork in a bottle…

  I came to, lying face down—with a clean sheet under me. “Feeling b
etter?” someone asked. It was Knowles/standing by my bed, dressed in a bathrobe.

  “You’re dead,” I told him.

  “Not a bit.” He grinned. “They got to us in time.”

  “What happened?” I stared at him, still not believing my eyes.

  “Just like we thought—a crashed rocket. An unmanned mail rocket got out of control and hit the tunnel.”

  “Where’s Fats?”

  “Hi!”

  I twisted my head around; it was Konski, face down like myself. “You owe me twenty,” he said cheerfully.

  “I owe you—” I found I was dripping tears for no good reason. “Okay, I owe you twenty. But you’ll have to come to Des Moines to collect it.”

  The Black Pits of Luna

  THE MORNING after we got to the Moon we went over to Rutherford. Dad and Mr. Latham—Mr. Latham is the man from the Harriman Trust that Dad came to Luna City to see—Dad and Mr. Latham had to go anyhow, on business. I got Dad to promise I could go along because it looked like just about my only chance to get out on the surface of the Moon. Luna City is all right, I guess, but I defy you to tell a corridor in Luna City from the sublevels in New York—except that you’re light on your feet, of course.

  When Dad came into our hotel suite to say we were ready to leave, I was down on the floor, playing mumblety-peg with my kid brother. Mother was lying down and had asked me to keep the runt quiet. She had been dropsick all the way out from Earth and I guess she didn’t feel very good. The runt had been fiddling with the lights, switching them from “dusk” to “desert suntan” and back again. I collared him and sat him down on the floor.

  Of course, I don’t play mumblety-peg any more, but, on the Moon, it’s a right good game. The knife practically floats and you can do all kinds of things with it. We made up a lot of new rules.

  Dad said, “Switch in plans, my dear. We’re leaving for Rutherford right away. Let’s pull ourselves together.”

  Mother said, “Oh, mercy me—I don’t think I’m up to it. You and Dickie run along. Baby Darling and I will just spend a quiet day right here.”

  Baby Darling is the runt.

  I could have told her it was the wrong approach. He nearly put my eye out with the knife and said, “Who? What? I’m going too. Let’s go!”

  Mother said, “Oh, now, Baby Darling—don’t cause Mother Dear any trouble. We’ll go to the movies, just you and I.”

  The runt is seven years younger than I am, but don’t call him “Baby Darling” if you want to get anything out of him. He started to bawl. “You said I could go!” he yelled.

  “No, Baby Darling. I haven’t mentioned it to you. I—”

  “Daddy said I could go!”

  “Richard, did you tell Baby he could go?”

  “Why, no, my dear, not that I recall. Perhaps I—”

  The kid cut in fast. “You said I could go anywhere Dickie went. You promised me you promised me you promised me.” Sometimes you have to hand it to the runt; he had them jawing about who told him what in nothing flat. Anyhow, that is how, twenty minutes later, the four of us were up at the rocket port with Mr. Latham and climbing into the shuttle for Rutherford.

  The trip only takes about ten minutes and you don’t see much, just a glimpse of the Earth while the rocket is still near Luna City and then not even that, since the atom plants where we were going are all on the back side of the Moon, of course. There were maybe a dozen tourists along and most of them were dropsick as soon as we went into free flight. So was Mother. Some people never will get used to rockets.

  But Mother was all right as soon as we grounded and were inside again. Rutherford isn’t like Luna City; instead of extending a tube out to the ship, they send a pressurized car out to latch on to the airlock of the rocket, then you jeep back about a mile to the entrance to underground. I liked that and so did the runt. Dad had to go off on business with Mr. Latham, leaving Mother and me and the runt to join up with the party of tourists for the trip through the laboratories.

  It was all right but nothing to get excited about. So far as I can see, one atomics plant looks about like another; Rutherford could just as well have been the main plant outside Chicago. I mean to say everything that is anything is out of sight, covered up, shielded. All you get to see are some dials and instrument boards and people watching them. Remote control stuff, like Oak Ridge. The guide tells you about the experiments going on and they show you some movies—that’s all.

  I liked our guide. He looked like Tom Jeremy in The Space Troopers. I asked him if he was a spaceman and he looked at me kind of funny and said, no, that he was just a Colonial Services ranger. Then he asked me where I went to school and if I belonged to the Scouts. He said he was scoutmaster of Troop One, Rutherford City, Moonbat Patrol.

  I found out there was just the one patrol—not many scouts on the Moon, I suppose.

  Dad and Mr. Latham joined us just as we finished the tour while Mr. Perrin—that’s our guide—was announcing the trip outside. “The conducted tour of Rutherford,” he said, talking as if it were a transcription, “includes a trip by spacesuit out on the surface of the Moon, without extra charge, to see the Devil’s Graveyard and the site of the Great Disaster of 1984. The trip is optional. There is nothing particularly dangerous about it and we’ve never had any one hurt, but the Commission requires that you sign a separate release for your own safety if you choose to make this trip. The trip takes about one hour. Those preferring to remain behind will find movies and refreshments in the coffee shop.”

  Dad was rubbing his hands together. “This is for me,” he announced. “Mr. Latham, I’m glad we got back in time.I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”

  “You’ll enjoy it,” Mr. Latham agreed, “and so will you, Mrs. Logan. I’m tempted to come along myself.”

  “Why don’t you?” Dad asked.

  “No, I want to have the papers ready for you and the Director to sign when you get back and before you leave for Luna City.”

  “Why knock yourself out?” Dad urged him. “If a man’s word is no good, his signed contract is no better. You can mail the stuff to me at New York.”

  Mr. Latham shook his head. “No, really—I’ve been out on the surface dozens of times. But I’ll come along and help you into your spacesuits.”

  Mother said, “Oh dear,” she didn’t think she’d better go; she wasn’t sure she could stand the thought of being shut up in a spacesuit and besides glaring sunlight always gave her a headache.

  Dad said, “Don’t be silly, my dear; it’s the chance of a lifetime,” and Mr. Latham told her that the filters on the helmets kept the light from being glaring. Mother always objects and then gives in. I suppose women just don’t have any force of character. Like the night before—earth-night, I mean, Luna City time—she had bought a fancy moonsuit to wear to dinner in the Earth-View room at the hotel, then she got cold feet. She complained to Dad that she was too plump to dare to dress like that.

  Well, she did show an awful lot of skin. Dad said, “Nonsense, my dear. You look ravishing.” So she wore it and had a swell time, especially when a pilot tried to pick her up.

  It was like that this time. She came along. We went into the outfitting room and I looked around while Mr. Perrin was getting them all herded in and having the releases signed. There was the door to the airlock to the surface at the far end, with a bull’s-eye window in it and another one like it in the door beyond. You could peek through and see the surface of the Moon beyond, looking hot and bright and sort of improbable, in spite of the amber glass in the windows. And there was a double row of spacesuits hanging up, looking like empty men. I snooped around until Mr. Perrin got around to our party.

  “We can arrange to leave the youngster in the care of the hostess in the coffee shop,” he was telling Mother. He reached down and tousled the runt’s hair. The runt tried to bite him and he snatched his hand away in a hurry.

  “Thank you, Mr. Perkins,” Mother said, “I suppose that’s best—though p
erhaps I had better stay behind with him.”

  “‘Perrin’ is the name,” Mr. Perrin said mildly. “It won’t be necessary. The hostess will take good care of him.”

  Why do adults talk in front of kids as if they couldn’t understand English? They should have just shoved him into the coffee shop. By now the runt knew he was being railroaded. He looked around belligerently. “I go, too,” he said loudly. “You promised me.”

  “Now Baby Darling,” Mother tried to stop him. “Mother Dear didn’t tell you—” But she was just whistling to herself; the runt turned on the sound effects.

  “You said I could go where Dickie went; you promised me when I was sick. You promised me you promised me—” and on and on, his voice getting higher and louder all the time.

  Mr. Perrin looked embarrassed. Mother said, “Richard, you’ll just have to deal with your child. After all, you were the one who promised him.”

  “Me, dear?” Dad looked surprised. “Anyway, I don’t see anything so complicated about it. Suppose we did promise him that he could do what Dickie does—we’ll simply take him along; that’s all.”

  Mr. Perrin cleared his throat. “I’m afraid not. I can outfit your older son with a woman’s suit; he’s tall for his age. But we just don’t make any provision for small children.”

  Well, we were all tangled up in a mess in no time at all. The runt can always get Mother to running in circles. Mother has the same effect on Dad. He gets red in the face and starts laying down the law to me. It’s sort of a chain reaction, with me on the end and nobody to pass it along to. They came out with a very simple solution—I was to stay behind and take care of Baby Darling brat!

  “But, Dad, you said—” I started in.

  “Never mind!” he cut in. “I won’t have this family disrupted in a public squabble. You heard what your mother said.”

  I was desperate. “Look, Dad,” I said, keeping my voice low, “if I go back to Earth without once having put on a spacesuit and set foot on the surface, you’ll just have to find another school to send me to. I won’t go back to Lawrenceville; I’d be the joke of the whole place.”