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.
But all this time Robin had not forgotten his ultimate mission--to
reach the surface and signal for help. He had worked out the problem in
his own mind. He had to make some sort of space suit, something that
would permit him to venture out on the nearly airless surface long
enough to set up a signal that astronomers might see.
He knew he had the materials for part of this suit in the metal
salvaged from the rocket nose. He could polish a section sufficiently
to make a heliograph with which he could flash a code message to any
high-powered telescope that might be pointed his way. But he had also
to fashion the metal into an airtight space helmet, and that he did not
know how to do. The suit itself he could probably fashion from cloth
and tanned skins, sew and seal it tight enough with animal fats and
bone glue to be airtight for a short period, but he needed the helmet.
He had the glass for it too, the little peepholes for the camera
outlets and a large circular plate that had been set in the very base
of the cargo nose and evidently intended for a wide-vision camera shot
of the Earth. This plate would be his face plate.
Robin was aware of the hissing noise that he had first noticed on his
arrival, but he had never investigated it. It was far off, somewhere
along the wall of the cavern. One work period, when he found himself
ahead of schedule, he set out to find the source of the noise.
Following the wall, with Cheeky running ahead chattering, the hiss
gradually grew in volume. Robin made his way over a sharp cleft,
skirted a large bubble-cave in the wall, and after about two miles of
walking, came upon the source.
Issuing from a break in the outer cavern wall was a stream of blue
flame. For several hundred feet around it no vegetation grew, the
ground being covered with thin gray ash. Robin looked at the loudly
hissing lance of blue fire.
It probably was a breakthrough from some adjoining bubble, one filled
with a gas of some inflammable sort. Somehow in the course of the
breakthrough, this leakage had been set aflame. And there it was now, a
burning gas jet, sharp and hot.
At that moment, Robin knew he had the answer to his metalworking
problem. He'd tried to melt the metal of the rocket over his fires but
he had been totally unsuccessful. But this jet, this hot blue flame,
this surely would do the trick!
For him the space helmet was now a certainty. It might take time, but
now it could be done. That and more was possible, for he had enough
metal to make a few necessities like a decent frying pan and a pot
to use for boiling and perhaps a water container for a really long
exploration trip.
That was the end of Robin's first "Stone Age" period and the beginning
of his "Iron Age."
_10. The Incredible Footprints_
Using the gas jet proved to be considerably more difficult than might
have been supposed. It was hard to approach too closely to the thing
without running the danger of getting scorched. Also, to hold metal in
it long enough to allow it to melt or become pliable it was necessary
to find a way of holding the object without getting burned.
Robin did get several blisters before he finally worked out a system.
Making himself a pair of thick rabbit-skin gloves lined with a thin
coating of the ash from the area around the flame proved to be part of
the solution. A pair of bone pliers proved to be another part, though
the necessity of replacing these was continuous.
Working patiently then, Robin managed to cut and work some of the
sheets of metal from the rocket nose. He made himself a hammer of hard
stone with which to pound some shape into his pieces and finally had
fashioned for himself a serviceable, though crude, frying pan and other
implements he needed.
His next project was to be the space helmet, the first essential part
of any space suit. He considered this a long time, planning just how to
make it. He had a good sheet of metal for the job, but he didn't want
to make any errors in working it, and he wanted to have as few seams
as possible. Welding had thus far proved a task he had not mastered.
He considered making the joints airtight by means of some sort of
vegetable- or animal-fat product.
Robin sat in his cave watching the rebirth of life in the bubble-world
after one of the winter half-months and thinking. He watched his
monkey, Cheeky, turning over rocks for Moonworms--although the little
brown pet had never been able to eat them, he seemed to enjoy the
hunting of these odd creatures. He watched the rabbits bounding around,
listened to those he kept penned up in the next cave.
"What am I waiting for?" he asked himself, half aloud. The monkey
stopped at the sound of his voice, looked at him. Robin had developed
the habit of talking to himself. He was aware of the danger that years
of this hermit's life might well cause him to forget how to talk, and
he did not want that. "I can't use a space suit until I can find a way
to the surface--a safe way. And I've never even really explored this
cavern itself. Maybe there's a simpler way of communication with the
surface."
He sat and thought. The monkey dashed over to him, jumped on his knee,
chattering. "I really ought to get about exploring this place," Robin
went on. "You know, Cheeky, there might be some more things we can
use. What do you say, shall we spend this next week playing Columbus,
looking for more bubble worlds to conquer?"
The monkey chattered happily, jumped off his knee, and ran around.
"Guess you like the idea," said Robin. "Let's get about it, then."
He got up and made his preparations. He filled a sack with enough
food for several days. He took his homemade canteen, made from a
hollowed-out Moontree fruit rind, filled it with water and hung it
around his neck. He took his flashlight and knife, his bow and arrow,
and his lantern of light organs. He had discovered that the little
light-giving bulbs the animals carried would glow for about two days
after their removal, and therefore he constantly kept this lantern
refilled with his latest catches.
He looked to see whether his special lot of penned rabbits had enough
food and water for the period and then, whistling to Cheeky, Robin set
out. He went down to the bank of the flowing stream on which he had
been originally carried and then set out to follow this rivulet its
length into the distances of the bubble-world.
He followed the flowing stream for about twelve miles. The bubble
widened out and the water, which had originally brushed the other side
of the cavern where Robin had lived, had now narrowed as a bank of dry
ground formed on the opposite side. Robin found himself walking through
an ever deepening thicket of growing Moontrees which went on for many
miles.
The stream twisted and moved off at right angles finally rushing into a
deep pool. Robin went over and gazed into it. Plainly the pool had some
sort of underground opening, for the water was swirling around with no
visible surface outlet. So this was where the stream ran to! Doubtless
it emptied into another bubble somewhere below, probably to fall like
a waterfall into that space, there to become another stream and empty
still again farther down until it ended in some vast reservoir of
sublunar seas.
But Robin was not interested in going farther down, he sought a way
upward toward the surface, toward the sight of Earth. He turned away
from the whirlpool, walked boundingly on to the farther wall of his
home-bubble.
He reached it in time for his sleep period. It seemed as solid and
impregnable as the wall around his home region.
Robin and Cheeky slept next to the wall and after their sleep resumed
their search. Robin walked along the wall, looking again for some
break. He saw in the distance a jagged line of black against the
shining brown-gray of the cliff. When he reached it, it was a crack, a
break in the surface of the bubble, reaching up several hundred feet.
He came up to it.
It was wide, about ten feet wide, and dark. Robin shone his flashlight
in, but as far as its rays could reach it was a dark tunnel. "Maybe
this is what we're looking for," Robin said to Cheeky. "It seems to
slant slightly upward. Maybe it will take us to the next bubble."
Cheeky peered in, walked in slowly and out of sight. "Hey," called
Robin, "wait for me!" He followed the scampering monkey.
Now his lantern proved handy. The glow it shed could barely be noticed
in the light of the great bubble, but here in the darkness of the
cleft, the pale glow was distinct and definitely illuminated the ground
a few feet in front of him. On he walked, holding the lantern ahead of
him, watching Cheeky's long tail flick in and out of its circle of dim
light, as the monkey would dash ahead and dash back.
Soon Robin found himself walking in almost total darkness, save for
the limited glow of his lantern. The floor of the cleft occasionally
slanted sharply, sometimes breaking steeply downward, sometimes
necessitating jumps upward into the darkness. In the Moon's light
gravity, Robin was a fantastic jumper, but the darkness made the
problem very disconcerting. It was a strange thing to have to leap
upward into a black void in hopes that what seemed like a wall in front
of you would turn out to have a top and be but a giant step upward. He
soared in the darkness, not knowing how near or how far the roof of the
tunnel was, feeling strangely disembodied, the monkey clinging to his
neck in transit.
He missed several such jumps, managed to avoid being bruised severely
only by the feathery softness with which he fell afterward. When the
going was straight, Cheeky would leap down and go ahead.
Suddenly he heard a screeching from the monkey. He stopped, flashed
his flashlight. The monkey was clutching the edge of a deep break, a
pit cut sharply across the floor of the tunnel. Robin quickly reached
the spot, scooped up Cheeky. His flashlight revealed the other side of
the pit several yards away. Turning its rays downward, he could see no
bottom to this crack within the tunnel. He shuddered, thinking what
might have happened had he gone into it. Then, gathering Cheeky, Robin
leaped.
He soared lightly across the abyss and landed safely on the other side.
He went on, slowly, carefully.
A spot of light appeared before him. He stared at it and continued
moving forward. The light widened, became the end of the tunnel, became
the entrance to something new. He hastened on and burst at last into a
new cavern-world, the world of the next bubble.
It looked much like his old one, but it was definitely smaller. The
rounded ceiling could be made out quite clearly and he estimated its
diameter as not more than a half mile. The far side of the bubble could
be seen clearly and this one, he noticed, even from where he stood, had
many such clefts and cracks in the wall. It was, he supposed, either an
older bubble, more cracked in the course of eons of moonquakes and heat
changes, or else it was more tightly knitted in a close mass of such
bubbles.
A thick jungle of giant Moontrees was growing here, stalklike plants
resembling those he knew, but seemingly larger and more profuse. Robin
started to walk through it toward the farther wall of the bubble.
Cheeky had leaped into the stalks and was swinging through them ahead
of him, when suddenly the monkey uttered a terrified shriek and there
arose a strange high-pitched barking sound. Robin pushed through and
saw the monkey, high in the top of a Moontree and a strange sort of
Moonhound leaping for him. This kind of Moonhound was considerably
bigger than the ones he had seen in his original bubble. It was
uttering the eager bark of a hungry beast sighting its prey.
Robin unlimbered his bow and fitting an arrow into it, let fly. The
sharp missile skewered the Moonbeast and the animal twisted in mid-air
and fell thrashing to the ground. Robin dashed in and finished it off
with a blow from the stone club he carried.
Cheeky came down from the tree cautiously, advanced to the dead animal,
and prodded it. Then the monkey uttered a shriek, bared its teeth, and
began to pommel the dead body as if he had been the one to bring it
down.
Robin examined the animal. It was similar in many ways to the
Moonhounds, yet different, and Robin's private theory that the
Moonhound represented the equivalent of a mammal type seemed verified.
Whereas the Moonhound was a wolf or dog, this creature corresponded
more closely to a leopard or tiger.
The flesh of this creature seemed as if it might possibly make a
substitute for leather--although it, too, was eerily transparent and
it, too, possessed but one central eye and a large light organ.
Robin trekked on through this jungle until at last he reached the
opposite wall. He was aware as he walked that there was a good deal of
native life here, much more than had been evident in his own cavern.
Evidently the first bubble was pretty much cut off from the general
labyrinth of sublunar caverns. For as Robin walked, he caught glimpses
of other Moonbeasts, slipping in and out, sometimes surprised and
scurrying away. Moonworms, the equivalent of Earth's insect life,
were here in plenty too, and there were many giant growths which were
different from those in his own cave, and some fruits of considerable
promise were growing on them.
"We could do some farming now," said Robin to Cheeky. "I'll bring back
some of the seeds from these bigger trees and plant them back home.
It'll give us some variety."
The monkey merely chattered and pushed on ahead.
At the farther wall, the original observation of many cracks was
confirmed. The wall was broken like an eggshell and Robin could see
that dozens of tunnels went out, probably leading to several other
bubbles. He decided that the following day he would look for the ones
that seemed to lead upward. But it was the time for sleep again.
He found a little cave, similar to the ones in which he had made his
home, and there he and Cheeky ate their meal, cooking some of the meat
from the Moontiger over a small open fire. The meat looked strange in
its almost glassy appearance, yet it browned and tasted very good.
A thin stream of water meandered out of one of the cracks and from this
Robin drank and refilled his canteen. He and the monkey curled up, now
fed and contented, and went to sleep.
Robin awoke suddenly. He opened his eyes, puzzled. The monkey was
screeching somewhere. He sat up, called, "Cheeky!"
The little creature dashed back to him. It had been outside the cave
and it was excited. It was chattering and complaining as never before.
The monkey jumped up and down in a perfect ecstasy of fury. Robin
looked at it in wonder. He'd never seen Cheeky so excited. He sat up,
looked around.
At first he saw nothing unusual. Outside the cave all was quiet. Then
he noticed that his food pack had been moved. It had been dragged
outside the cave, and its contents pulled out.
Robin got to his feet, went to it. Something had come into the cave
silently, had taken the sack, and had examined its contents. He looked
about, amazed and wondering.
Now he saw that other things had been touched. His canteen had been
rolled over and the stopper unplugged. The water that had been inside
was a little puddle on the cave floor.
Alarmed, Robin strung his bow, notched an arrow, and looked carefully
around at the surrounding vegetation. Something was there, something
big and cunning.
His eyes searched the ground and then he saw an outline in water from
the canteen. Whatever it was had stepped into the puddle and then
walked out of the cave. Robin saw a series of footprints.
Something that walked on two legs, something that took steps with a
man-sized stride, something with three toes on each foot, that walked
upright, was able to open bottles, look into sacks, and spy on sleeping
strangers.
Something that might well be to the Moontiger and the Moonhound what
Earth man was to the Earth tiger and the Earth hound. Moonman!
_11. The Glass Man_
The situation was so astonishing that for a while Robin did not do
anything but sit down inside his cave and catch his breath. Somehow
he had assumed all along that he would not find anything on a human
scale on the Moon. His life had been mainly confined to the first
cavern-bubble he'd arrived at and this, as he now realized, had been a
rather isolated one.
Unconsciously, he had assumed that life in other protected airtight
sublunar areas would be on a similarly low and limited level. Now he
realized that he had had no right to make such an assumption. The Moon
might harbor thousands and tens of thousands of bubbles; some might be
hundreds of miles in scale; some, lower down, nearer the still-warm
volcanic heart of the satellite, might even approach tropical climates
and show little of the semi-monthly seasonal changes. In such places
life might grow in profusion, might compel the kind of battle for
existence as would bring out the evolution of a brain-carrying creature
living on its wits.
And, although he was probably a little farther away from the central
caverns at this moment, he was actually on the outskirts of the linked
bubbles. In such border regions he might indeed encounter rovers and
wanderers from the more prolific areas.
But the problem was now how to find this prowler. There was, he hoped,
only one of them. The creature was probably hanging around somewhere,
even now, keeping an eye on Robin's doings.
Robin got to his feet, looked through his provisions. He found a bit
of rabbit meat, took it out, and skewered it on a cooking stick. He
then knelt inside his cave-refuge and built a fire, using his flint and
steel. Over this fire he hung the bit of meat and set it to roasting.
He carefully began to fan the smoke out of the cave, knowing that
it would carry the new and tongue-tempting odor of cooked meat to
everything in the vicinity.