Anti-Ice Page 19

  As we lifted out of the chaos of the Moon I saw how the greater beast had moved to cover ours completely—and then, with brutal suddenness, it dropped down its tube of pillars. The pillars of the lens on which we had rested were smashed to rubble, and fragments went wheeling across the landscape; both lenses were dashed to a thousand pieces against the ground. But this was not the end of it, for the fragmented lenses seemed to dissolve in a ferment of activity—I caught glimpses of tendrils of stone weaving through the debris and knitting it, it seemed, into a new whole; and I wondered if this were some astonishing form of lunar mating. And then the rising dust obscured my view.

  As we rose and the lunar landscape opened out, I realized that this extraordinary merger was just one incident among thousands, for the entire plain was covered, I saw now, with similar maneuverings, couplings, and obscene devourings!

  At last I dragged myself away from the lip of the port and allowed the hatch to close, shutting out my view of the receding Moon. I lay against the thrumming metal, sucking at thin air.

  11

  A SCIENTIFIC DISCUSSION

  I do not remember the stilling of the engines; I must have floated in my iron coffin for several minutes. Then willing hands drew me gently out of my box and pulled away my helmet. I came to my senses still in the suit and with the copper ring chafing at my neck, but with my head free, and with the comparatively fresh air of the Cabin sweet in my nostrils.

  Holden’s round face hovered before me, wearing an expression of genuine concern, and I grabbed his arm. “Holden! And have we survived? Are we free of the Moon?”

  “Yes, my friend—”

  “Of course we are!” Traveller barked from behind Holden. “If we aren’t off the Moon what are we doing floating around the Cabin? Perhaps we have been stuffing opium into our pipes, eh? What a pity your jaunt hasn’t un-addled your brains, my boy—” Sir Josiah’s eyes were fixed on me, and—though he seemed to be endeavoring to conceal it—I flattered myself that there was some pleasure in his stern countenance at the evidence of my recovery.

  But Holden turned to him and said, “By God, Traveller, can you not desist? For all our sakes the boy has just been through a veritable nightmare, and all you can do is—”

  “Holden.” I laid a restraining hand on the journalist’s arm. “Do not trouble yourself; Sir Josiah means no harm. It is just his way.”

  Holden caught my meaning and said no more; though his face registered a reluctance to let the matter drop—and in the subsequent days I was to observe how his manner to Traveller had become noticeably frostier, a change which was evidenced in a thousand trivial exchanges.

  Holden, it seemed, would have no truck with those whom he suspected of unsound views, whatever their achievements.

  I was fed a clear, warming broth. Then I was allowed, for the first time in several days, a bath; and thus I became the first human to bathe in lunar water! I entertained some qualms as I entered the concealed bath, for what if the water contained some unknown agent inimical to human life?—but, now that it had been run through the Phaeton’s filter system, the Moon water looked, smelled and even tasted like any common-or-garden rainwater; and Traveller assured me that he had run a series of chemical tests on it before confirming its suitability for human contact and consumption.

  At length I was safely lodged in my familiar seat. I was warm, bathed and dressed in my combinations and a towelling robe of Traveller’s, and I held a large globe of Traveller’s oldest brandy in one hand and a fine-scented cigar in the other. I began to feel rather proud of my exploits—now that they were safely in the past. Holden and Traveller sat with me, as did Bourne, who maintained his usual resentful silence. The stoical Pocket, unflappable, was working his way through several days’ backlog of begrimed dishes. “So, gentlemen,” I said, “in the end, quite a remarkable adventure.”

  Holden raised his globe and peered into the glimmering depths of the brandy within. “Quite so. And not at all as we expected. We did not find anything resembling Earthly conditions, as we had anticipated—but nor did we find the Moon to be the inert and lifeless arena favored by some theorists.”

  “Instead,” boomed Traveller, “we found something quite unexpected—as, paradoxically, we might have expected all along. The Phoebean life forms—for such I propose we call them; after Phoebe, Moon goddess of old Greece, sister to Apollo and daughter to Leto and Zeus—the Phoebeans are quite unlike anything encountered on Earth, both in their morphology and in their astounding vigor.”

  I asked, “Sir Josiah, if the shattered side of the Moon were turned to Earth, would the Phoebeans’ frantic activities be visible to our astronomers?”

  “Surely so; if only by changes of surface hue, and the raising of dust clouds—although we should remember that, without an atmosphere, dust has no medium of suspension, and once raised will settle rapidly to the ground. But even so I think we must conclude that the Phoebeans are at present confined to Traveller Crater on the far side of the Moon.

  “And,” he went on, lifting his platinum nose, “this evidence of confinement supports an hypothesis I have been constructing as to the origin and nature of these lunar beasts.”

  He inspected the ceiling with every evidence of interest. At last the tension had grown too great to bear—even the phlegmatic Pocket, polishing his dishes, looked around expectantly; and I demanded: “And your hypothesis is, sir?”

  “Let us review the facts,” he said slowly, steepling his long fingers around his brandy globe. “We find these creatures at the heart of an immense crater—a crater which, we have speculated, is the result of an anti-ice explosion.

  “Second. The Phoebeans muster enormous masses, and throw them about the Moon with immense vigor. From this we conclude that whatever unknown organic motors power the beasts—their equivalent of our hearts, digestive systems, muscles—must be able to call on large stores of highly concentrated energy—”

  “So,” Holden broke in excitedly, “are you suggesting that the Phoebeans are creatures of anti-ice, which shares the characteristic of high energy density?”

  “Not at all,” Traveller snapped irritably, “and I will thank you not to interrupt my series of postulates. For even a fool—” Holden winced “—could see that an anti-ice theory is rendered to nonsense by my final observation, which is that the creatures lay dormant before our arrival! If they were powered by anti-ice energy release, Mr. Holden, what in Heaven would stop them from rampaging around the Moon constantly?”

  I leaned forward. “So was it our arrival that triggered such an explosion of growth, Sir Josiah?”

  “Oh, good God, of course not,” Traveller said sharply, with scarcely less irritation despite my heroic status. “I hardly think our blundering arrival was an event of sufficient moment to warrant the awakening of a thousand living mountains! To the Phoebeans we are rather less than a toothless flea would be to a dog. No; the eruption of the Phoebeans closely followed our arrival from a coincidence: which was that I chose to land close to the terminator.”

  “Ah.” Holden nodded. “You mean you set us down into a lunar sunset. And, you suggest, it is only at sunset that the Phoebeans emerge from dormancy?”

  “I do more than suggest,” Traveller said stiffly. “I took the time to observe the surface as we departed it through my telescopes; in the day hemisphere there is no evidence of movement on the scale we observed. But the darkened side is a writhing bowl of motion, as Phoebeans swirl their complex dances around each other.”

  “A fascinating observation,” I said drily, and wondered whether to remark on my relief that at such a time as our launch Traveller had not become so overcome with anxiety for my well-being that he had been unable to complete a few scientific observations. “But what is so special about the night, Sir Josiah?”

  “In the long lunar day,” Traveller said, “temperatures from the unshaded sun must reach hundreds of degrees by the Celsius measure, while during the fortnight-long night there is no air to retain t
he warmth of the land and heat leaks steadily into space, bringing temperatures little above the absolute zero.

  “Next, I would remind you that anti-ice contains not one but two novel properties. There is the propensity of some element of it to combine explosively with ordinary matter. But there is also the phenomenon of Enhanced Conductance, as observed by Lord Maxwell and others. But this Enhanced Conductance is temperature-dependent; try to melt a block of anti-ice and the Conductance disappears, as do the magnetic walls containing the anti-substance… and—Boom!” He illustrated the last syllable by knocking his metal nose against the brandy globe, producing a piercing chime; we all jumped—even the uninterested Bourne. “And this, of course,” Traveller went on, “is the principle on which the construction of all our anti-ice machines is based.”

  “I think I understand,” Holden said slowly, his eyes narrowed in thought. “You are suggesting that the Phoebeans are creatures whose blood flows along veins of Enhanced Conductance. But this property is only available when the temperature is low; too high and the Conductance property fails.”

  “Precisely,” Traveller said. “The Phoebeans must slumber through the lunar day. Then, as the first touch of night stirs their unresistive blood, they become invigorated and pursue their violent affairs. But all too soon the dawn approaches and their veins clog once more; they grow dormant in the sunshine, waiting for the night to restore their vigor a fortnight later.

  “And recall that the magnetic fields associated with Enhanced Conductance circuits are quite spectacularly large—much larger than anything produced by human scientists by any other means. It is these fields, I hazard, which supply the basis for the immense strength and speed of growth of the Phoebeans which we observed.”

  Holden nodded. “This has the ring of truth, Sir Josiah. Just think of it, Ned! What if you spent every day unconscious, and were only able to function in the gloom of night?”

  I thought that over, and replied, “Actually I have some friends who live a bit like that. Perhaps they have Phoebean ancestry.”

  Holden said to Traveller, “You mentioned that this speculation tied in to the earlier observation that the Phoebeans appear confined to Traveller Crater.”

  “Yes. For, as you will know, the phenomenon of Enhanced Conductance has been observed only in the substance we call anti-ice. Therefore I would suggest that the life-forms we saw were brought to the Moon by the comet, or meteor, of anti-ice which we have speculated fell to the lunar surface and detonated to cause such an immense formation.”

  I sipped some more brandy and said, “It is an intriguing theory; but could such large and complex creatures survive such an explosion?”

  “A comparatively intelligent question,” Traveller said, utterly without irony. “Probably they could not. But we may speculate that the Phoebeans have emerged from some simpler animalcule, a spore perhaps, which was hardy enough to survive the impact. And we may imagine that with the vigor of their growth and activities it will surely not be many centuries before they spread around to the Earth- facing face of the Moon.”

  I frowned at that. “God is to be thanked that there is no possibility of these animals spreading further—to our Earth, for example.” I shivered, imagining those great crystalline limbs erupting from the green hills of England.

  “Perhaps,” Traveller said. “But what an opportunity for scientific study such an invasion would afford us!”

  “If anyone survived to carry out such a study,” said Holden.

  “It is to be regretted,” said Traveller, “that the remaining stocks of anti-ice are so low—and mostly committed to other projects—that after our return to Earth another voyage to the Moon, by some future expedition, is most unlikely; and it may be many centuries before the theories I have expounded can be confirmed. We may never know, for instance, whether the water ice Ned collected was indigenous to the Moon, was brought there by an anti-ice comet, or has been generated since as some waste product of the activities of the Phoebeans.”

  Bourne grinned. “How sad for you English that you are cut off from your newest colony. You could have taught these Phoebeans how to salute your flag; or how to institute a Parliament, as you did the hapless Indians.”

  I laughed at this, but Holden bristled and said: “Or you Frenchies could instruct them in the techniques of revolution. They are surely mindless and destructive enough for that.”

  I said, “Gentlemen, please; this is hardly a moment for such squabbling.” I looked at Traveller expectantly. “Sir Josiah, you mentioned our return to Earth. And so we are saved, are we not?”

  Traveller smiled at me, not unkindly, and pointed to the hatch set in the ceiling. “See for yourself.”

  I loosened my restraint, handed Pocket the remains of my cigar for neat disposal, and left my brandy globe to hover in the air; and then, still in my towelling robe, I jumped up to the hatch and passed through into the Bridge.

  The Bridge was a place of spectral beauty; the various dials and panels shone in the faint yellow glow of their Ruhmkorff lights like the candlelit faces of carol-singers; and the whole was awash in a soft blue light: this was the light of Earth, which hung directly above the glass dome of the roof.

  I stared up at that lovely island of water and cloud, and at the fizzing spark of the Little Moon which soared over the oceans; and, though I knew that we had many days of travel through space still to endure, every moment that passed would bring me closer to my home, and to the world of human affairs from which I had been plucked: to the world of war—and of love.

  I stared at the planet until it seemed to me that the glimmering ocean was overlaid with the soft eyes of Françoise, my beacon of hope.

  12

  THE AIR OF ENGLAND

  Josiah Traveller brought the Phaeton back to England on 20 September 1870.

  The engineer jockeyed his battered craft through the fires of air friction, the globe-circling winds of the upper atmosphere, and finally a quite devastating thunderstorm: still a mile from the ground we cowered in our seats, peering fearfully through the ports at swords of lightning which leapt from cloud to cloud; and we imagined that we had passed through Earth all the way to Hell.

  And at last the Phaeton, having all but exhausted its precious lunar water, settled with a bump into the soft, stubble-covered soil of a Kent farm. The rockets died for the last time, and silence settled over the Smoking Cabin which had become our prison. Pocket, Holden and I stared at each other with wild anticipation. Then we heard the soft sigh of the air of England against the outer skin of the craft; and we let out yells as we realized that we were at last home.

  The Frenchman, Bourne, wept softly into the palm of his hand. I noticed this and, drawn by an odd sympathy I had acquired for the fellow, might have said some words to give him comfort. But my blood was racing at the thought that I had returned to my home country; a return that had seemed inconceivable through most of our astounding flight beyond the atmosphere. And so I pushed aside my restraints, still yelling like a coot, and stood up—

  —and was floored, as fast as by any brawler’s haymaker, by my own astonishing weight!

  My legs had crumpled like paper, and I found my face pressed uncomfortably against the deck. With arms which trembled from the strain I pushed myself upright and rested my back against the padded wall. “My word, fellows, this gravity has given us all a pack to wear.”

  Holden nodded. “Traveller did warn us of the debilitating consequences of a lack of weight.”

  “Yes; and so much for all his wretched exercise regimes. To the Moon with a set of Indian clubs! Well, I’d like to see how the great man himself is bearing up under this once-familiar strain…” But Holden shamed me with his reminder that Traveller was an old man who should not be encouraged to strain his heart. And so it was I who crawled like a weakened child to the large hatchway set in the wall of the Cabin.

  After much effort I succeeded in turning the locking wheel, and I kicked open the heavy hatch.

&n
bsp; A draft of cool air, the essence of a fresh English autumn afternoon, gushed into the craft. I heard Holden and Pocket sigh over the crisp oxygen, and even Bourne looked up from his introverted weeping. I lay on my back and sucked in that wonderful atmosphere, and felt the blood course through my cheeks at the nip of cold. “How stale the air was in this ship!” I said.

  Holden breathed deeply, coughing. “Traveller’s chemical system is a scientific marvel. But I have to agree, Ned; the piped air in this box has become steadily more foul.”

  Now I pushed myself upright and slithered forward until my legs were dangling over the ten-foot drop to the dark loam of Kent; I gazed out over fields, hedgerow, threads of smoke from farmhouse fires and copses.

  I looked down, wondering how I might reach the ground—and found myself staring into the wide, ruddy face of a farmer. He wore a battered but respectable tweed suit, muddied Wellington boots and a straw hat; and he carried a large pitchfork, held before him as if for defense. As he gazed at our unlikely craft his mouth hung open, showing poor teeth.

  I surreptitiously made sure my tie was straight and waved to him. “Good afternoon, sir.”

  He stumbled back three paces, held up the pitchfork at me and his jaw dropped further.

  I raised my hands and essayed my most diplomatic smile. “Sir, we are Englishmen; you need fear nothing, despite the extraordinary manner of our arrival.” It was time to be modest. “You have no doubt heard of us. I am of the party of Sir Josiah Traveller, and this is the Phaeton.”

  I paused, expecting instant recognition—surely we had been the subject of press speculation since our disappearance—but the worthy rustic merely scowled and uttered a syllable I interpreted as: “Who?”

  I began to explain, but my words sounded fantastic even to my own ears, and the farmer merely frowned with ever greater suspicion. So at last I gave it up. “Sir, let me emphasize the pertinent fact: which is that we are four Englishmen, and a French, in desperate need of your assistance. Despite my youth and health I cannot even support my own weight, thanks to the astounding experiences to which I have been subject. I therefore ask you, as one Christian to another, if you will forward the help we need.”