A Fall of Moondust (28 page)

The other passengers had no such bitter experience to warn them, and Radley was evading
their points with effortless ease. Even Schuster, for all his legal training, was
unable to pin him into a corner; his efforts were as futile as trying to convince
a paranoic that he was not really being persecuted.

“Does it seem
reasonable
,” Schuster argued, “that if thousands of scientists know this, not one of them will
let the cat out of the bag? You can’t keep a secret that big! It would be like trying
to hide the Washington Monument!”

“Oh, there have been attempts to reveal the truth,” Radley answered. “But the evidence
has a way of being mysteriously destroyed—as well as the men who wanted to reveal
it. They can be utterly ruthless when it’s necessary.”

“But you said that—
they
—have been in contact with human beings. Isn’t that a contradiction?”

“Not at all. You see, the forces of good and evil are at work in the Universe, just
as they are on Earth. Some of the Saucer people want to help us—others to exploit
us. The two groups have been struggling together for thousands of years. Sometimes
the conflict involves Earth; that is how Atlantis was destroyed.”

Hansteen was unable to resist a smile. Atlantis always got into the act sooner or
later—or if not Atlantis, then Lemuria or Mu. They all appealed to the same type of
unbalanced, mystery-mongering mentality.

The whole subject had been thoroughly investigated by a group of psychologists during—if
Hansteen remembered correctly—the 1970s. They had concluded that around the mid-twentieth
century a substantial percentage of the population was convinced that the world was
about to be destroyed, and that the only hope lay in intervention from space. Having
lost faith in themselves, men had sought salvation in the sky.

The Flying Saucer religion flourished among the lunatic fringe of mankind for almost
exactly ten years; then it had abruptly died out, like an epidemic that had run its
course. Two factors, the psychologists had decided, were responsible for this: the
first was sheer boredom—the second was the International Geophysical Year, that had
heralded Man’s own entry into space.

In the eighteen months of the IGY, the sky was watched and probed by more instruments,
and more trained observers, than in the whole of previous history. If there had been
celestial visitors poised above the atmosphere, this concentrated scientific effort
would have revealed them. It did nothing of the sort; and when the first manned vehicles
started leaving Earth, the Flying Saucers were still more conspicuous by their absence.

For most men, that settled the matter. The thousands of unidentified flying objects
that had been seen over the centuries had some natural cause, and with better understanding
of meteorology and astronomy there was no lack of reasonable explanations. As the
Age of Space dawned, restoring Man’s confidence in his own destiny, the world lost
interest in Flying Saucers.

It is seldom, however, that a religion dies out completely, and a small body of the
faithful kept the cult alive with fantastic ‘revelations’, accounts of meetings with
extra-terrestrials, and claims of telepathic contacts. Even when, as frequently happened,
the current prophets were proved to have faked the evidence, the devotees never wavered.
They needed their gods in the sky, and would not be deprived of them.

“You still haven’t explained to us,” Mr. Schuster was now saying, “why the Saucer
people should be after
you
. What have you done to annoy them?”

“I was getting too close to some of their secrets, so they have used this opportunity
to eliminate me.”

“I should have thought they could have found less elaborate ways.”

“It is foolish to imagine that our limited minds can understand their mode of thinking.
But this would seem like an accident; no one would suspect that it was deliberate.”

“A good point. Since it makes no difference now, could you tell us what secret you
were after? I’m sure we’d all like to know.”

Hansteen shot a quick glance at Irving Schuster. The lawyer had struck him as a rather
solemn, humorless little man; irony seemed somewhat out of character.

“I’d be glad to tell you,” answered Radley. “It really starts back in 1953, when an
American astronomer named O’Neill observed something very remarkable here on the Moon.
He discovered a small bridge on the eastern border of the Mare Crisium.

“Other astronomers, of course, laughed at him—but less prejudiced ones confirmed the
existence of the bridge. Within a few years, however, it had vanished. Obviously,
our interest had alarmed the saucer people, and they had dismantled it.”

That ‘obvious’, Hansteen told himself, was a perfect example of Saucerite logic—the
daring
non sequitur
that left the normal mind helplessly floundering several jumps behind. He had never
heard of O’Neill’s Bridge, but there had been score of examples of mistaken observations
in the astronomical records. The Martian canals were the classic case; honest observers
had reported them for years, but they simply did not exist—at least as the fine spider-web
that Lowell and others had drawn. Did Radley think that someone had filled in the
canals, between the time of Lowell and the securing of the first clear photographs
of Mars? He was quite capable of it, Hansteen was sure.

Presumably, O’Neill’s Bridge had been a trick of the lighting, or of the Moon’s perpetually
shifting shadows—but such a simple explanation was not, of course, good enough for
Radley. And in any event, what was the man doing here, a couple of thousand kilometres
from the Mare Crisium?

Someone else had thought of that, and had put the same question. As usual, Radley
had a convincing answer at the tip of his tongue.

“I’d hoped,” he said, “to divert their suspicions by behaving like an ordinary tourist.
Because the evidence I was looking for lay on the western hemisphere, I went east.
I planned to get to the Mare Crisium by going across Farside; there were several places
there that I wanted to look at, too. But they were too clever for me. I should have
guessed that I’d be spotted by one of their agents—they can take human form, you know.
Probably they’ve been following me ever since I landed on the Moon.”

“I’d like to know,” said Mrs. Schuster, who seemed to be taking Radley with ever-increasing
seriousness, “what they’re going to do to us now.”

“I wish I could tell you, m’am,” answered Radley. “We know that they have caves deep
down inside the Moon, and almost certainly that’s where we’re being taken. As soon
as they saw that the rescuers were getting close, they stepped in again. I’m afraid
we’re too deep for anyone to reach us now.”

That’s quite enough of this nonsense, said Pat to himself. We’ve had our comic relief,
and now this madman is starting to depress people. But how can we shut him up?

Insanity was rare on the Moon, as in all frontier societies. Pat did not know how
to deal with it—especially this confident, curiously persuasive variety. There were
moments when he almost wondered if there might be something in Radley’s delusion;
in other circumstances, his natural healthy scepticism would have protected him, but
now, after these days of strain and suspense, his critical faculties were dimmed.
He wished there was some neat way of breaking the spell that this glib-tongued maniac
was undoubtedly casting.

Half-ashamed of the thought, he remembered the quick
coup de grâce
that had put Hans Baldur so neatly to sleep. Without intending to do so—at least,
to his conscious knowledge—he caught Harding’s eye. To his alarm there was an immediate
response; Harding nodded slightly, and rose slowly to his feet. No! said Pat—but only
to himself. I don’t mean
that
—leave the poor lunatic alone—
what sort of man are you, anyway
?

Then he relaxed, very slightly. Harding was not attempting to move from his seat,
four places from Radley. He was merely standing there, looking at the New Zealander
with an unfathomable expression. It might even have been pity, but in this dim lighting
Pat could not be sure.

“I think it’s time to make my contribution,” he said. “At least
one
of the things our friend was telling you is perfectly true. He has been followed—but
not by Saucerites. By me.

“For an amateur, Wilfred George Radley, I’d like to congratulate you. It’s been a
fine chase—from Christchurch to Astrograd to Clavius to Tycho to Ptolemy to Plato
to Port Roris—and to here, which I guess is the end of the trail, in more ways than
one.”

Radley did not seem in the least perturbed. He merely inclined his head in an almost
regal gesture of acknowledgement, as if he recognised Harding’s existence, but did
not wish to pursue his acquaintance.

“As you may have guessed,” continued Harding. “I’m a detective. Most of the time I
specialise in fraud. Quite interesting work, though I seldom have a chance of talking
about it. I’m quite grateful for this opportunity.

“I’ve no interest—well, no professional interest—in Mr. Radley’s peculiar beliefs.
Whether they’re true or not doesn’t affect the fact that he’s a very smart accountant,
earning a good salary back in N.Z. Though not one good enough to pay for a month on
the Moon.

“But that was no problem—because, you see, Mr. Radley was senior accountant at the
Christchurch branch of Universal Travel Cards, Incorporated. The system is supposed
to be foolproof and double-checked, but somehow he managed to issue himself a card—Q,
Category, good for unlimited travel anywhere in the Solar System, for hotel and restaurant
billings, for cashing cheques up to five hundred dollars on demand. There aren’t many
Q, Cards around, and they’re handled as if they’re made of plutonium.

“Of course, people have tried to get away with this sort of thing before; clients
are always losing their cards, and enterprising characters have a fine time with them
for a few days before they’re caught. But only a few days; the UTC central billing
system is very efficient—it has to be. There are several safeguards against unauthorised
use, and until now the longest run anyone’s had was a week.”

“Nine days,” Radley unexpectedly interjected.

“Sorry—
you
should know. Nine days, then. But Radley had been on the move for almost three weeks
before we spotted him. He’d taken his annual leave, and told the office he’d be vacationing
quietly on the North Island. Instead, he went to Astrograd and then on to the Moon,
making history in the process. For he’s the first man—and we hope the last one—to
leave Earth entirely on credit.

“We still want to know exactly how he did it. How did he bypass the automatic checking
circuits? Did he have an accomplice in the computer programming section? And similar
questions of absorbing interest to UTC, Inc. I hope, Radley, you’ll let down your
hair with me, just to satisfy my curiosity. I think it’s the least you can do in the
circumstances.

“Still, we know
why
you did it—why you threw up a good job to go on a spree that was bound to land you
in jail. We guessed the reason, of course, as soon as we found you were on the Moon.
UTC knew all about your hobby, but it didn’t affect your efficiency. They took a gamble,
and it’s been an expensive one.”

“I’m very sorry,” Radley replied, not without dignity. “The firm’s always treated
me well, and it did seem a shame. But it was in a good cause, and if I could have
found my evidence—”

But at that point everyone, except Detective Inspector Harding, lost interest in Radley
and his saucers. The sound that they had all been anxiously waiting for had come at
last.

Lawrence’s probe was scratching against the roof.

I seem to have been here for half a lifetime, thought Maurice Spenser—yet the sun
is still low in the west, where it rises on this weird world, and it’s still three
days to noon. How much longer am I going to be stuck on this mountain-top, listening
to Captain Anson’s tall stories of the spaceways, and watching that distant raft with
its twin igloos?

It was a question that no one could answer. When the caisson had started to descend,
it had looked as if another twenty-four hours would see the job finished. But now
they were back where they had started—and to make matters worse, all the visual excitement
of the story was over. Everything that would happen from now on would be hidden deep
in the Sea, or would take place behind the walls of an igloo. Lawrence still stubbornly
refused to allow a camera out on the raft, and Spenser could hardly blame him. The
Chief Engineer had been unlucky once, when his commentary had blown up in his face,
and was not going to risk it happening again.

Yet there was no question of
Auriga
abandoning the site which she had reached at such expense. If all went well, there
was one dramatic scene still to come. And if all went badly, there would be a tragic
one. Sooner or later, those dust-skis would be heading back to Port Roris—with or
without the men and women they had come to save. Spenser was not going to miss the
departure of that caravan, whether it took place under the rising or the setting sun,
or beneath the fainter light of the unmoving Earth.

As soon as he had re-located
Selene
, Lawrence had started drilling again. On the monitor screen, Spenser could see the
thin shaft of the oxygen supply-tube making its second descent into the dust. Why
was Lawrence bothering to do this, he wondered, if he was not even sure whether anyone
was still alive aboard
Selene
? And how was he going to check this, now that the radio had failed?

That was a question that millions of people were asking themselves, as they watched
the pipe sink down into the dust, and perhaps many of them thought of the right answer.
Yet oddly enough, it never occurred to anyone aboard
Selene
—not even to the Commodore.