A Fall of Moondust Read Online Free Page A

capsizing. Yet even as he fought with the controls, feeding power first to one fan,
     then to the other in an effort to straighten
Selene
’s course, a strange, nagging memory was teasing his mind. Somewhere, somehow, he
     had seen this happen before….
    That was ridiculous, of course, but the memory would not leave him. Not until he reached
     the bottom of the funnel and saw the endless slope of dust rolling down from the crater’s
     star-fringed lip, did the veil of time lift for a moment.
    He was a boy again, playing in the hot sand of a forgotten summer. He had found a
     tiny pit, perfectly smooth and symmetrical, and there was something lurking in its
     depths—something completely buried except for its waiting jaws. The boy had watched,
     wondering, already conscious of the fact that this was the stage for some microscopic
     drama. He had seen an ant, mindlessly intent upon its mission, stumble at the edge
     of the crater and topple down the slope.
    It would have escaped easily enough—but when the first grain of sand had rolled to
     the bottom of the pit, the waiting ogre had reared out of its lair. With its forelegs
     it had hurled a fusillade of sand at the struggling insect, until the avalanche had
     overwhelmed it and brought it sliding down into the throat of the crater.
    As
Selene
was sliding now. No ant-lion had dug this pit on the surface of the Moon, but Pat
     felt as helpless now as that doomed insect he had watched so many years ago. Like
     it, he was struggling to reach the safety of the rim, while the moving ground swept
     him back into the depths where death was waiting. A swift death for the ant, a protracted
     one for him and his companions.
    The straining motors were making some headway, but not enough. The falling dust was
     gaining speed—and, what was worse, it was rising outside the walls of the cruiser.
     Now it had reached the lower edge of the windows; now it was creeping up the panes;
     and at last it had covered them completely. Harris cut the motors before they tore
     themselves to pieces, and as he did so the rising tide blotted out the last glimpse
     of the crescent Earth. In darkness and in silence, they were sinking into the Moon.

CHAPTER THREE
    In the banked communications racks of Traffic Control, Earthside North, an electronic
     memory stirred uneasily. The time was one second past twenty-hundred hours G.M.T.;
     a pattern of pulses that should arrive automatically on every hour had failed to make
     its appearance.
    With a swiftness beyond human thought, the handful of cells and microscopic relays
     looked for instructions, “ WAIT FIVE SECONDS ,” said the coded orders. “ IF NOTHING HAPPENS, CLOSE CIRCUIT 10011001 .”
    The minute portion of the traffic computer as yet concerned with the problem waited
     patiently for this enormous period of time—long enough to make a hundred million twenty-figure
     additions, or to print most of the Library of Congress. Then it closed circuit 10011001.
    High above the surface of the Moon, from an antenna which, curiously enough, was aimed
     directly at the face of the Earth, a radio pulse launched itself into space. In a
     sixth of a second it had flashed the fifty thousand kilometres to the relay satellite
     known as Lagrange II, directly in the line between Moon and Earth. Another sixth of
     a second and the pulse had returned, much amplified, flooding Earthside North from
     Pole to Equator.
    In terms of human speech, it carried a simple message, “ HELLO, SELENE ,” the pulse said, “ I AM NOT RECEIVING YOUR BEACON. PLEASE REPLY AT ONCE .”
    The computer waited for another five seconds. Then it sent out the pulse again, and
     yet again. Geological ages had passed in the world of electronics, but the machine
     was infinitely patient.
    Once more, it consulted its instructions. Now they said: “ CLOSE CIRCUIT 10101010 .” The computer obeyed. In Traffic Control, a green light flared suddenly to red,
     a buzzer started to saw the air