One Against the Moon (9 page)

Robin would move his possessions into this cave, simply to have them located and safe. Besides, there might be some larger form of life, some carnivores around—he could not tell. Better to be safe than sorry, he said to himself.

He acted at once, carrying the rocket nose and its stuff to the cave, transferring his rabbits and their pen to a spot just outside the cave door. He would need a bowl for water and, using his screwdriver blade, he finally managed to detach the curved rocket nose and found himself in possession of a deep bowl. He took this down to the water, filled it and carried it back to his cave.

Already he began to feel cheerier. Nothing like work, he thought, to take your mind off your other problems. Suddenly he realized he was tired.

How long had he been at this? He did not know. Now he realized that with no sunrise or sunset visible in his underground world, he could not tell time. He looked at his wrist watch, but it had stopped running, of course. He decided to take a nap; he lay down and fell asleep.

When he woke up, he set his watch at eight o'clock, decided to consider this the beginning of a day. He found the notebook he'd carried in his back pocket, opened it, and set up his new calendar. Using the date of the rocket's take-off, he allowed five days as a probable estimate of the time passed since. He had no means of knowing how long he had been ill, he suspected it had been longer, but decided to let it stand. After arriving at the date, he made the time eight in the morning, laid out the times he expected to eat, to work, to sleep. He would try to live according to a full Terrestrial day, checking the passage of time by his watch.

He then listed all the things he expected would have to be done, and decided to check them off as he completed them. Next he ate breakfast from the fruit of the ball-tree. He spent the rest of that morning trying to find a means of making fire. He had some bits of steel from the rocket, and he tried to strike sparks on everything that resembled rock. After a search, he found some fragments of rock near the water that gave off a spark. Whether these were flints or not, he did not care, so long as they worked for him.

With this discovery he knew he would be free from worry about the problem of matches. His next problem was to secure a weapon. This solved itself rather fast with a bow and arrow. A long, flexible metal tube from the rear connections of the rocket, bent to make a bow when tied with a string of nylon cord, made a satisfactory
twang
when pulled. He made arrows out of the fibers of the Moontree stalks, and practiced shooting.

The next few days followed the same pattern. Robin enlarged his area of exploration, finding several other kinds of Lunar vegetation and a number of other insect-worms. He found several that were quite large, one as large as a squirrel. It was an odd thing, humping itself along in little bounds—a creature of a dozen ball-like segments, two of which had toothed mouths, although only the ball in front had an eye, a lidless orb set in the center of this ball. But the creature was fringed with the light-rod organs as the tiny worm-ants had been.

Robin tried to cook part of this creature but the monkey refused to touch it and he found it entirely unpalatable. On the other hand, he found that when he removed the little yellow balls from the top of the light stalks on the creature, they remained glowing—even as do the abdomens of fireflies. He therefore diligently set about catching a number of these Moonrats, as he named them, and making a lantern for himself by filling a glass tube with the glow organs. This worked out quite nicely when he experimented in his dark cave-home, emitting a clear, though pale, yellow light.

His rabbit had a nice litter at last, and Robin carefully saw that they were kept well supplied with food and drink. He would eat no more meat until there were several dozen adults, all breeding. But he felt that now he was assured of a source of clothing when his own would give out. He knew that eventually he would have to dress himself entirely in the products of his own ingenuity. His Earth clothes could last no more than a few years. He had already devised for himself an experimental pair of sandals from the rinds of the ball-tree fruit and the stalks of the Moontrees. They would do, and he carefully removed his shoes and put them away. When he had heavy exploring to do, or if and when he might try to reach the surface, he would need his good heavy leather shoes. Until then, the makeshift sandals would do.

For he knew that someday he would have to reach the surface. If and when the first astronauts arrived, they would not go below. They would probably never suspect the presence of these unseen areas beneath the crust, possibly not for many dozens of years. It would be on the surface that Robin would have to go to find rescue. That was the greatest problem he would have to solve. Against that terrible trip, he would have to conserve and plan.

Meanwhile, he had a toehold on life here, if conditions within his sublunar cavern did not change. But they were changing ... and not for the better.

When he woke up one morning Robin was vaguely aware of something different. He opened his eyes to the dark interior of his cave-home and lay there on his bed of padding from the cargo chamber. For a while he rested quietly in that pleasant half-sleep of awakening after a good rest. Unconsciously his hand moved down searching for a blanket, but of course there was none. He'd never needed one before.

He unconsciously groped again for the blanket, then opened his eyes wide and sat up. There was a slight chill in the air at that! Now he noticed the monkey, asleep, curled up tightly against his leg. That was odd because previously the little fellow had slept outside. What had brought him in?

Robin got up and Cheeky, as Robin had named his friend, woke up instantly and leaped to his shoulder. "What's the trouble, fellow?" asked Robin, patting him on the head. Then the young man left the cave and looked around. At first nothing seemed greatly changed. The temperature had dropped a few degrees, no doubt about it. Yet there was no special draft, no break in the bubble walls to account for it.

He looked at the plants and then realized that some of them were beginning to change color. A grayness was creeping in subtly. The balls of Moontree fruit, which had been his chief sustenance, were showing signs of wrinkling and had either already shriveled or were beginning to.

Robin glanced around sharply, looked into his notebook calendar. He calculated the days that had passed. When his rocket had crashed the Moon had been full. This meant it was high noon of a Lunar day on the surface above. But a Lunar day lasted about a Terrestrial month—twenty-eight days to be exact. When the sun was at its height, the temperature of the surface crust was to be measured as high as 240 degrees Fahrenheit. By sunset it might be down to 160 degrees, but immediately after sunset it would drop with great speed and shortly begin to go as low as a hundred below zero and continue to drop for yet another hundred degrees.

And Robin had perhaps been in his sublunar cavern for ten or maybe twelve days. The sun had set above, the Lunar night was there. Though the cavern was insulated by the best sort of insulation in the universe—a honeycomb of several miles between the surface and itself—a honeycomb in many cases consisting of sealed bubbles, some near vacuums—there was bound to be a gradual loss of the stored-up heat from the long Lunar day. It might take a while for this to become noticeable, especially in view of the obviously warm volcanic action from the unseen areas near the core of the Moon below, yet there it was.

So now Robin knew that the Lunar day did have a counterpart here, that there would be monthly seasons in his cavern and that he was facing a winter that might last ten days more.

He looked around, pondering this. Could he survive? He had probably only a short time to work this out. Obviously he had to work fast and make good.

"Come, Cheeky," he said, "no time for foolishness. No daily swim in the river this morning. Harvest time is here."

He glanced at his rabbits, but they did not seem to mind the temperature drop. He went into the clumps of Moontrees and began to gather their fruit—the big balls—as fast as possible. They were still plump enough to hold food-pulp. He realized that if he waited, they would probably dry up on their trees, shrivel to seed as the increasing cold drew the moisture from them. He spent that day in gathering a harvest, in piling great masses of the fruit in a small cavern-wall bubble near his sleeping chamber. When he had amassed enough to see him through at least two weeks, he gathered the fallen trunks and dried-up old stalks and piled them in the narrow entrance to this storage cave. He built a fire there, paced it out, and spread it out to burn slowly. He would have to keep this fire going and another like it in front of his own sleeping cavern.

He transferred the rabbits to his bubble-home also, rebuilding their pen.

As he had expected, the temperature in his hidden world continued its fall. A few days later it was quite chilly and the Moontrees had acted as he surmised. Their fruits had withered quite rapidly, finally dropping off as small hard seeds. The tree stalks dried out, turned hard, and fell. Robin gathered them as fuel for his fires, found that they were quite excellent, and also that the fresh-fallen ones could be woven into basketry.

The river continued to flow, but was more sluggish, and its waters began to grow cold. On the other hand, the Moonworms and other little creatures seemed to be having their heyday. They were out in quantities greater than he had ever seen and were busily gathering the fallen seeds, carrying them away, evidently preferring them to the fruit.

Robin made himself a jacket from an extra part of the padding, stitching it together with cord and thongs made from shell fibers. With a fire going at the door of his cave, he found he still wouldn't need blankets.

During the balance of the Lunar night Robin was forced to remain close to his caves, tending his fires, conserving all his energies. Outside, the temperature never actually reached freezing, or at least not that Robin could estimate. But at its worst, it was definitely chilly and the river fairly cold.

The view within the cavern cleared somewhat of its usual mugginess and he could see much more. He could now make out the walls on all sides, and discovered that the farthest distance, in the direction in which the river ran, was perhaps several miles off. The vegetation had mainly flattened, was drying up, and he could see everywhere the little ball-segmented insects humping and squirming about.

He saw a number of varieties he had not noticed before. One day venturing out with his bow and arrow, he disturbed something working amid a pile of broken stalks. The thing rushed out, directly at him. It was large, as large as a dog, and it ran straight for him silently, its wide mouth gaping.

He shot it, saw it fall over as it was about to leap at him. When he dug his arrow out, he saw that it was no wormlike insect, no segmented creature. It was a recognizable animal, a creature with two short stubby feet, two small extensions that were like hands on each side of an oval body. A definite head surmounted this, with one eerie eye set in the middle over its wide mouth. Two little breathing holes in the side attested to its possession of lungs. A long, curving rod grew out of the top of its skull and held a large yellow light-ball over it.

There was yet another peculiarity about this Moonhound, as Robin called it. It had no definite color. Its skin was faintly transparent, and he could see its inner organs shadowy within.

All this reminded Robin that there must be vast cavern worlds totally without light, yet having flora and fauna.

When there is no light, there is no need for pigmentation. Hence, this creature had none.

Robin also surmised that it was probably the cold that drove this beast into the lighted cavern in search of food, for he had never seen evidence of anything that large during the warm period.

Robin brought the carcass back to his cave and went to work to skin and cook it. At first he was not going to, for the hairless, colorless nature of it was rather repellent. But one thing Robin had learned long ago was not to let his emotions dictate to his needs. Like it or not, he was going to make use of everything here he could. He had a task, and that was to survive.

As a matter of fact, the meat cooked very nicely, turned brown in the fire, and tasted good. Further, it had a bone structure, which the Moonworms hadn't, and Robin saved these bones, knowing that there were many things that they could be used for. He remembered museum exhibits of bone needles, bone knives, and bone implements, including arrowheads and buttons that the Indians had made use of.

After that, Robin deliberately hunted for these Moonhounds and caught several others before the winter was over.

The warmth returned about when Robin had figured, starting a day or so after the surface sunrise. It rose rapidly, faster than it had fallen, and just as fast, new Moontrees were shooting up, new Moonmushrooms were growing, and the river was becoming warmer.

As time went on and month followed month, Robin found himself working into a comfortable, if primitive, routine. He charted exactly what to do on what days. He could tell in advance what he would be eating, what he would be harvesting. His rabbits had become sufficient in number to permit slaughtering, and he began to acquire a pile of rabbit furs. He found it no longer possible to keep all his rabbits in one pen, and finally liberated the majority of them and left them to shift for themselves. This worked out fine, and he never lacked the sight of at least one or two bunnies anywhere he looked. During the two weeks of winter each month they simply holed up as they might have done on Earth. It was an odd sight seeing the rabbits run wild, for their powerful leg muscles were many times stronger than was required by the weak gravity and, when they ran in a hurry, they would bounce many feet high in fantastic leaps.

Robin was now wearing a rabbit-fur outfit of coat, pants, and hat during the winter periods, equipped with bone buttons he'd carved from the Moonhound skeletons. He was, if anything, beginning to gain weight, but he was also aware of the paleness of his skin. He wondered whether staying in this sunless world a sufficient number of years would not make him as palely transparent as the Moonhounds.