The Long Night

JOHN CHRISTOPHER

They were five days out from the Base when the caterpillar stripped a track. Dugmore was driving. They had entered a wide ravine spectacularly divided between sunlight and shadow, cold black and blind­ing white. Although the line of demarcation ran roughly along the center, Dugmore kept within the sunlit area to avoid putting extra strain on the relays.

Ahead he noticed a dip in the ravine floor—a medium-sized crater that took up the entire width of the ravine. He studied the obstacle as they approached. Both the dip and the ascent on the far side were well inside the caterpillar's potential—and since there was no way around and going back would involve a long detour, he drove on.

The caterpillar reached the lip of the crater, nosed down. Suddenly there was a screech of tracks trying to grip and failing, a sensation of sliding. Corfield was thrown against him. They wound up in a heap on the floor, knocked about but undamaged.

They donned suits and went out to examine the damage. It was easily found. The left-hand track was broken and stripped, a limp tail that trailed behind the caterpillar. They touched helmets to speak, a gro­tesquely romantic gesture, Dugmore always thought. Corfield said: "Think you can manage it?"

His voice was small and tinny; even normally it was high-pitched for a man so massive. Dugmore said:

"Nothing to it. Go and amuse yourself."

Of course, Corfield could have done the work, just as Dugmore could carry out the necessary mineralogi-cal surveys; but this was basically Dugmore's field, just as the other was Corfield's. It was simple enough—a straightforward job of welding and reassembly. Before getting the tools, he straightened his back and had a look at the surrounding scene. The caterpillar had slid to the bottom of the crater, which was filled with loose rock and gravel and dotted with boulders. All very dead, bleakly devoid of life.

Inside, he had a shot at raising Cape Canaveral before picking up the welder. No good. Direct commu­nication with Base had, of course, been out since they dropped below the horizon. After that, signals had to be bounced through the link stations back on Earth. The sunspot interference had come in first on the morning of the third day, and on the next contact, when they should have had Tokyo, there was nothing but howls, whistles, and bangs. The regulations ruled that you turned back on losing touch, but this particu­lar edict was honored mainly in the breach—had been broken, in fact, by the last probe as well. The point was that the caterpillar was pretty much an independent entity: air and water, with recycling, would last a couple of months; food concentrate half as long again.

There were other considerations as well. One was that they had been waiting a long time for the chance to get out of the underground tunnel that was Base. Another was that their's was the fourth probe, head­ing south as the previous ones had gone west, north, and east and there was a certain amount of rivalry as to distance covered. Probe 2 had done best, but they were ahead of them now. They had little difficulty in making up their minds to carry on. The following day they got through to Shannon, though only in Morse: radio transmission was still impossible.

"Day" was a misleading word. The probes set out from Base at the lunar daybreak, traveled away with the rising sun, and then, as it began to slip from the zenith, made their way back. Seven Earth days each way. But they continued to live on a twenty-four-hour clock, taking turns to have the six hours' sleep that was as much as anyone needed on the moon.

If anything went wrong, they could easily survive the fourteen-day lunar night. They would stay warm and snug in their caterpillar, and could listen again to the music tapes or re-read the flimsy rice-paper books. It would be a bit boring but that was something they were used to. There were no hazards: no storms, no monsters. A dead world, in which nothing changed, nor had changed for hundreds of thousands of years. The most interesting thing any previous probe had turned up had been a high-temperature streak in the tufa that covered the greater part of the ground area, the high temperature being ten degrees above calcu­lation.

They, of course, had discovered Corfield's invisible worms. Dugmore smiled at the thought.

They stopped at specified intervals to take speci­mens. Usually Corfield brought back two or three cores, but the last time he had taken the cutter and sliced out ^a much larger section, a piece of rock about two feet square and a couple of inches thick. On Earth, it would have been quite a weight, but he hefted it easily. Too easily even for the moon. When he carried it through the lock, Dugmore said:

"A hefty chunk of real estate, that. You planning to take it back to Joan for that rock garden of hers?"

"What would you say it was?"

Dugmore looked at it. A section of typical ore-bear­ing basalt, except that instead of ore veins it had . . . well, holes. In parts it looked as though worms had crawled through the rock, an unlikely notion to say the least.

"Metalliferous," he said, "without the metal."

Corfield nodded. He looked excited.

"Typical iron-bearing rock. I'd swear to that. But without iron. Almost as though it had been leached out."

"Doesn't iron oxidize?" "Where there's oxygen, it can." "Then maybe the moon had an atmosphere at one time."

Corfield considered the point. "A rather selective one. We've come across plenty of exposed iron ore elsewhere."

"Then there's life on the moon after all. The rock-eating lunar worm. Vermis lunaris corfieldis. OK to move on, or do you want more from here?"

Corfield was studying the rock. He said abstractedly:

"Sure, move on."

For an hour Dugmore bent over the welder with Corfield checking occasionally to see how things were going. He thought it was time then to have a break for food. He went in and opened a self-heating can of high-protein, low-residue mush, chicken and ham flavor. He was not sure whether the texture or the flavor inspired more nausea. But it was nourishing. They had been well assured of that.

Corfield followed him in. "How long now?" he asked.

"Another hour, I should think."

"Fair enough. You picked an interesting spot to bust

a track." "More worms?"

"By the dozen, from the looks of it. A good place for an iron mine, except that it's been surface-mined al­ready. And with high efficiency. I've found a couple of pockets where the iron content assays staggeringly high. The rest is holes where the iron ought to be."

Dugmore plugged in a tape of the musical Royal Scot.

"You can have yourself a ball with it. A short one, anyway. We need to get on, since it's turnaround tomorrow."

Corfield, whose taste was for string quartets, grim­aced as the overture belted out.

"I think I'll get out there right away."

The job in fact took another two and a half hours to finish. In that time, the line dividing sunlight from shadow had shifted fractionally away from them. At the top of the rise there was a boulder—about three feet in diameter—one edge gleamed now in the sun's marginally more vertical ray. They went inside, Corfield taking the tiller. It was his turn for driving, and Dugmore was tired, anyway. His sleep period was al­most due, and he was in favor of that.

The caterpillar jerked forward and stopped. There was a higher whine from the engine. The wheels were turning, but the tracks were not gripping—you could hear the stones spinning under them. Corfield gave her more power, and the tracks bit. The caterpillar moved up, skidding and sliding sideways. They were climbing the slope. Then she stopped again, with a more decisive feel to it.

Dugmore took over—there was nothing to worry about but she might need coaxing. He revved high before he let in the clutch. She bounded and covered about half of the remaining distance to the top. She stuck there, however. The pitch was a little too steep with this kind of loose scree. Only a little, but that was enough.

Corfield said: "Now what?"

"I suppose we could wait to get through, and then wait for a rescue party."

"Three weeks. Any brighter suggestions?"

"Yes," Dugmore said. "We'll get the block and tackle staked in up above, and hook the spare motor to it. Run a hawser around the caterpillar. Pull and push at the same time. Dead easy."

Corfield nodded. "You're the boss."

Working in their suits, it took over an hour. At least, Dugmore reflected, there was no need to worry about getting caught by the dark. The sun would not start setting for another twenty-four hours. When it was ready, Corfield went up to handle the winching part, while Dugmore stayed in the caterpillar. He was near the edge of exhaustion.

He had told Corfield to start the spare motor first and to gun the caterpillar as soon as he felt the hawser taking the strain. Corfield did so. The caterpillar moved serenely up the slope, poised on the lip, and came onto level ground.

Corfield was visible a few yards ahead. Dugmore signaled to him to stop the engine, cutting his own at the same time. He heard the hawser grate against the side of the caterpillar, shifting position. There was a harsh tearing spang of metal. It sounded expensive.

Corfield came in through the lock. He said:

"Bad luck. It's the . . ."

"I know," Dugmore said. "The track's snapped again." Corfield nodded. "At the weld." Dugmore took a grip on himself and breathed out heavily.

"Ah well—back to the workbench."