and pushed open the door. It held tight for a moment, then popped open.
There was a sudden drop in the pressure, Robin's ears popped, and he
gasped for breath.
The air outside was lower in pressure than that inside the cargo nose
of the rocket, which had been sealed at Earth level. But it was air and
it was breathable. Robin drew in several deep lungfuls, savoring it.
It was oddly exhilarating, as if highly charged with oxygen. At the
same time there was a smell of mold and dampness and a definite taste
of sulfur and phosphorus like that just after a kitchen match has been
lighted. Even so, the air was breathable.
Robin worked his head and shoulders through the narrow opening, slid
forward and landed on hands and knees on the rocky surface. He got to
his feet, looked around.
He was standing on the bank of a rushing stream of water, which was
pouring out of a large gap in the side of a cliff. The cliff ran
straight up, gently curving to form part of the ceiling several
hundred feet overhead. The extent of this ceiling was impossible to
determine--it was dark and obscure--but it seemed to Robin almost at
once that he was in some sort of gigantic enclosed space--a vast cavern
beneath the surface of the Moon, probably several miles beneath it.
The water coming from the underground falls rushed out to form a wide,
shallow river which flowed along one side of the cavern and widened out
to a few hundred feet clear across to the farther wall. On Robin's side
the floor of the cavern rose in a slow slope until it reached its wall
perhaps three hundred feet away. Robin could not estimate the length
of the cavern. Looking along the river bank, the cave seemed to become
veiled in a general mistiness and gathering darkness.
The light itself came from no definite source, but seemed to emanate
from the rocky walls and ceiling, from the clayey ground, and from
the general atmosphere. Robin supposed that the source was a natural
phosphorescence which he knew was not too uncommon even in Terrestrial
caverns.
All around on the soil bordering the flowing water was a forest, a
forest with the weirdest vegetation Robin had ever seen. Plants growing
in clumps and clusters, plants whose large treelike stalks resembled
a whitish-blue bamboo, and which burst into globular blue bulbs which
seemed to serve as leaves. Among these tree-sized growths was a rich
undergrowth of tight balls of varying yellow and green and purple,
growing like thick, squat mushrooms. And everywhere else a thick, lush
carpet of green, not grasslike but rather like some oversize moss.
In this forest there were no sounds of birds or animals, but only that
of plants swaying in the river breeze, the rushing of the waters, and
from somewhere distant in the unseen end of the cavern a strange,
steady hissing sound.
The rocket, or what was left of it, lay wedged against a section of the
bank, its nose up and its tail swaying in the current. Robin looked at
it, amazed to find it so small. All that was left of the rocket was
the cargo nose, which was the only part sent off after the last of the
rocket sections had discharged their forces and been dropped off. The
whole affair was not more than about ten feet long, from the battered,
blunted red nose, from which several long, straggling orange cords
hung--all that was left of the parachute and its attachments--down
to the scraped and battered white cylinder that was the cargo
compartment. The compartment ended in a flat plate which bore only a
few wires that had once connected it with the break-away mechanism
of the last of the atomic blasting chambers. This alone was the load
of the eight-story tower of energy which had been the Red Sands
experimental rocket.
Robin, without further delay, bent down to the cylinder and began
to haul and push it entirely out of the water to the dry ground. He
knew he could not afford to risk its loss. To his surprise, moving
the rocket head was an easy task. It was extremely light and he found
himself possessed of tremendous strength, tired and bruised and sore as
he was.
It was, he thought, as he pulled the rocket along, the Moon and its
weak gravity. He would only weigh a sixth of his Earth weight here, so
would the cargo head, yet he would have the muscles necessary for much
more than that weight. He would literally be a superman here--if he
could survive.
Survival, he knew, would be the question. He didn't know whether even
now he might be inhaling poison from the strange, thin sublunar air. He
didn't know what mysterious radioactive rays might be bathing him with
their baleful influence. He didn't know whether any of the vegetation
in this cavern world would be edible.
Having brought the cargo cylinder to a safe spot many feet from
the water, Robin looked for the door that would open the animal
compartment. He found it, forced it open. Inside were the two cages.
Gently he reached in, unscrewed them from their holdings, and lifted
them out.
One of the monkeys was dead, probably killed by some of the jouncing
the rocket had taken. The other, looking miserable, was clinging to the
bars chattering. Robin looked at it, and the monkey looked back. The
young man unlatched the cage, reached in, and took the little brown
animal by the back of the neck. But the monkey made no effort to bite.
Instead, it twisted around, grabbed Robin's arm, and hung tight.
When his grip was released, the monkey scurried up Robin's arm and
clung to his shoulder, recognizing the need for companionship after its
frightening experiences.
The rabbits had fared slightly better. One of them was dead, but the
other three, while somewhat beaten around, were alive and sniffling
their pink noses. Robin saw that there was very little food or water
left for the animals.
Here then was the means to test the Moon's capacity to produce food
and drink. First, however, Robin decided he would build a pen for the
rabbits. If he were lucky, he could breed them and have at least one
source of food suited to his system.
He went over to the nearest clump of ball-trees, looked them over,
tested his strength on them. They broke easily and quickly when
he grasped one by the trunk and pulled. He found that it could be
splintered into shreds fairly rapidly and that inside the shell of the
stalk was a mass of cottony matter.
He shredded a number of the stalks, and then staked them out in the
ground to make a small fenced pen, tying the whole together with one
of the long cords hanging from the parachute nose. Into this makeshift
pen, he released the three rabbits. He filled the cup from their cage
with water from the river, placed it in the pen. The rabbits hopped
over, sniffed, and drank. They seemed to suffer no ill effects.
Robin broke open one of the ball-like growths from the tree, found it
contained a substance resembling a combination of melon and potato. He
offered some of this to the rabbits and after an interval they ate it
and seemed to like it.
The monkey was chattering away as Robin did this and suddenly scampered
down and snatched a piece of the ball-food, stuffing it into its mouth.
Robin had not wanted to use the little creature for a test but the
damage was done. However, the monkey seemed to enjoy it.
Robin sat down on the ground and watched. He felt tired, now realized
just how tired he was, how sorely he ached from his experience. He
felt warm and headachy now that the strain was over. He knew he still
had things to do. He wanted to try to make a fire and cook the rabbit
that had been killed. He was thirsty as well. He wanted to tie a cord
to the monkey so that the animal would not run away into the unknown
and possibly dangerous regions of the cavern. He wanted to find a safe
place to sleep and hide should there be some sort of animal life around.
But he was growing terribly sleepy and feeling quite sick. He curled
up, and before he could stop himself, he was asleep.
The rabbits nibbled on. The monkey sat on a ball in one of the strange
trees and watched in silence. Far off, somewhere in the cavern, the
mysterious hissing continued.
_8. Robinson Crusoe Carew_
When Robin Carew opened his eyes, he knew he was a very sick man.
He felt warm, sticky, and he hurt all over. He tried to sit up, but
everything spun dizzily around him. His arms, legs, and body were
burning intolerably and there was an itch throughout him that he could
do nothing about. He lay back, trying to gain strength.
A little later he managed to crawl to the water's edge, fill the
container he had used in the trip from Earth, drag himself back. For a
period whose length he could not determine he lay helpless in fever
and pain, arousing himself only long enough to drink to soothe his
tortured body.
Finally, the fever broke. He sat up, feeling weak but with his mind
clear at long last. He dragged himself to his feet, blessing the light
gravity, aware that if he were back home his body would not have
responded. He felt that he was gaunt, he knew he had been through a
terrible siege, and he could only guess at the time he had lain there,
tossing about on the strange Lunar ground, unprotected in the queer
climate of this unknown cavern. It must, he felt, have been days--Earth
days, of course--that his attack had lasted.
Later on he decided that he had suffered from a severe case of space
burn. Having traveled through the emptiness of the void between the
planets, the vessel had been nearly unprotected from the cosmic rays
and the more penetrating of the sun's invisible rays. He considered
himself lucky to have survived at all.
He desperately needed food now to rebuild his body. He looked at the
rabbit pen. The little animals were there and evidently prospering on
the ball-food he had prepared for them before his sickness. It was
almost all gone and he broke open and pared more at once. He wondered
how long it would be before the animals bred--he knew that rabbits bred
fast and abundantly, and hoped it would hold true on the Moon.
There was a sudden chattering in one of the strange trees and he looked
up to see a little brown face peering at him. In a moment, the monkey
leaped to the ground, then leaped in one tremendous jump to Robin's
shoulder and perched there happy at finding companionship again. The
monkey looked none the worse for its experience and evidently was
getting along nicely on the Lunar vegetation. Thus encouraged, Robin
fed himself, first carefully testing everything on the monkey, who
objected to nothing.
But somehow the food was not entirely satisfying to the man, who felt
that he needed more than that to recover his full energy. He looked
again at the rabbits, looked also for the carcass of the dead one.
But he found that part of it had rotted and part had been consumed.
He looked closely and saw his first glimpse of a Lunar counterpart to
animal life.
There were many tiny creatures, a half inch to an inch in length,
looking at first like ants but on closer inspection appearing more like
three-segmented worms, for they lacked legs and moved in an inchworm's
fashion. Instead of antennae, each little worm-ant had on its front
segment a single upstanding stalk ending in a little yellow ball. Robin
touched one of these and it glowed momentarily. An organ of light, he
thought, something like the ones carried by deep-sea fishes. The tiny
things were eating the dead rabbit.
Robbin went back and examined the three remaining rabbits. Two were
males and the female was evidently heavy with young. Well, he could
afford to dispense with one of the males, then, for he knew his body
needed meat.
He put the rabbit back though, realizing that first he must make a
fire and determine how to cook his meal. He searched his pockets. He
was wearing the GI jacket he'd taken from the soldier in Las Cruces. As
he had hoped, he dug up a pack of matches in one pocket. He turned it
over in thought. When this pack was used up, how could he make fire?
He piled some trunks of dead tree stalks in a cleared spot; he lit
them with one of his matches. They caught fire rapidly and soon he had
a nice blaze going. He watched the smoke rise and saw that it drifted
rapidly away in the same direction the current was flowing--evidence of
more caverns somewhere beyond.
He opened his scout knife, hesitated. He'd never cooked a rabbit
before. In fact, he'd never had occasion to cook anything for himself.
It was meat, he thought, and even if it were eaten raw--well, savages
did, so he, too, could manage. He thought about boiling it in water,
then realized that the light air pressure might allow water to boil
without getting the necessary cooking effects. The best method
therefore was to fry it where he could observe the progress.
Steeling himself, he seized the rabbit, killed and skinned it, the
latter a process which he found thoroughly unpleasant. Cleaning it of
its entrails, another unpleasant task, he cut the meat up into sizable
chunks, skewered a couple of pieces on a metal rod which had been part
of one of the cages from the rocket, and sat down to cook it over the
open fire.
It turned out to be a longer job than he'd thought, and he burned the
meat quite thoroughly in the process, but finally he made it edible
and chewed it slowly. He needed salt, he realized, and wondered if he
could find any. This would have priority when he began his explorations.
He hung the balance of the meat on a ball-tree with a piece of cord. He
had seen no evidence of flying insects or creatures, and hoped thereby
to be able to preserve the rest of the meat.
Thus fed, he sat down and began to map out his course. I must do things
systematically, he told himself. I must keep track of time, set up a
regular pattern of living, find a permanent base of operations. I shall
have to explore this cavern and those beyond it, find all possible
enemies and invent ways and means of defending myself. I shall have to
breed my rabbits in quantity, find a way of using their pelts and fur.
I shall have to determine a use for everything left from the rocket's
material--metals and the like.
For, he continued telling himself, my one aim shall be to stay alive
long enough to be found some day by exploring rockets from Earth. I
am a Robinson Crusoe of a new world. Crusoe waited twenty-eight years
for rescue, I must be as courageous. In his case, he had no evidence
that any ship would ever bother to call on him. In my case I know that
rockets are being made that will eventually lead to further Moon trips.
I know that men are planning to come here. I must wait it out, even for
twenty-eight years.
But it was not that simple and he knew it. But first things first, and
the first task was to survive.
With the monkey scampering on ahead, he set out to walk to the
cavern wall. He found it to be dark and glistening, a lavalike sheet
resembling the bubble it was. Leaning against it and looking upward,
he saw that it curved gradually up, and that indeed he was in a flaw
within a very porous world. Like the inside of a Clark candy bar, he
thought, with a wry smile.
Astronomers on Earth had always been puzzled by the lightness of the
Moon. They had speculated on it as being mainly pumice. Lately there
had been much speculation and opinion holding forth the theory that the
Moon was porous, had these bubbles and air pockets all through it, that
the Moon's water and atmosphere had all gone underground to be sealed
off in these hollow spaces. He now knew they were right.
Most of these Moon bubbles, large enough to hold cities, must be
entirely sealed off. But others were linked, sometimes broken into by
quakes or the volcanic action which was still going on in the depths of
what had once been considered a dead world. This particular cavern was
such a bubble.
Robin walked along the outer wall and saw a dark black spot in it, and
then others. He came to them, found they were breaks in the surface,
pocks caused by smaller bubbles. He looked into one that opened at the
base. Using his flashlight, he could see that it was a small, almost
entirely spherical cave. He found others pocking the walls of the
cavern bubble.
This then was the ideal spot for a permanent home. Not that he needed
shielding from the elements, for obviously there were no elements
here--no rain, snow, clouds, or weather oddities. Neither was there
night or day.
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.
_9. From Stone Age to Iron Age_
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.