A Fall of Moondust Read Online Free Page B

with its alarm. For the first time, men as well as
     machines became aware that there was trouble, somewhere on the Moon.
    The news spread slowly at first, for the Chief Administrator took a very poor view
     of unnecessary panic. So, still more strongly, did the Tourist Commissioner; nothing
     was worse for business than alerts and emergencies—even when, as happened in nine
     cases out of ten, they proved to be due to blown fuses, tripped cutouts, or over-sensitive
     alarms. But on a world like the Moon, it was necessary to be on one’s toes. Better
     be scared by imaginary crises than fail to react to real ones.
    It was several minutes before Commissioner Davis reluctantly admitted that this looked
     like a real one.
Selene
’s automatic beacon had failed to respond on one earlier occasion, but Pat Harris
     had answered as soon as he had been called on the cruiser’s assigned frequency. This
     time, there was silence.
Selene
had not even replied to a signal sent out on the carefully-guarded MOONCRASH band, reserved solely for emergencies. It was this news that brought the Commissioner
     hurrying from the Tourist Tower along the buried glideway into Clavius City.
    At the entrance to the Traffic Control centre, he met the Chief Engineer, Earthside.
     That was a bad sign; it meant that someone thought that rescue operations would be
     necessary. The two men looked at each other gravely, each obsessed by the same thought.
    “I hope you don’t need me,” said Chief Engineer Lawrence. “Where’s the trouble? All
     I know is that a MOONCRASH signal’s gone out. What ship is it?”
    “It’s not a ship. It’s
Selene
; she’s not answering, from the Sea of Thirst.”
    “My God—if anything’s happened to her out there, we can only reach her with the dust-skis.
     I always said we should have two cruisers operating, before we started taking out
     tourists.”
    “That’s what I argued—but Finance vetoed the idea. They said we couldn’t have another
     until
Selene
proved she could make a profit.”
    “I hope she doesn’t make headlines instead,” said Lawrence grimly. “You know what
I
think about bringing tourists to the Moon.”
    The Commissioner did, very well; it had long been a bone of contention between them.
     For the first time, he wondered if the Chief Engineer might have a point.
    It was, as always, very quiet in Traffic Control. On the great wall-maps the green
     and amber lights flashed continuously, their routine messages unimportant against
     the clamour of that single, flaring red. At the Air, Power and Radiation Consoles
     the duty officers sat like guardian angels, watching over the safety of one-quarter
     of a world.
    “Nothing new,” reported the Ground Traffic officer. “We’re still completely in the
     dark. All we know is that they’re
somewhere
out in the Sea.”
    He traced a circle on the large-scale map.
    “Unless they’re fantastically off-course, they must be in that general area. On the
     19.00 hours check they were within a kilometre of their planned route. At 20.00, their
     signal had vanished, so whatever happened took place in that sixty minutes.”
    “How far can
Selene
travel in an hour?” someone asked.
    “Flat out, a hundred and twenty kilometres,” replied the Commissioner. “But she normally
     cruises at well under a hundred. You don’t hurry on a sight-seeing tour.”
    He stared at the map, as if trying to extract information from it by the sheer intensity
     of his gaze.
    “If they’re out in the Sea, it won’t take long to find them. Have you sent out the
     dust-skis?”
    “No, sir; I was waiting for authorisation.”
    Davis looked at the Chief Engineer, who outranked anyone on this side of the Moon
     except Chief Administrator Olsen himself. Lawrence nodded slowly.
    “Send them out,” he said. “But don’t expect results in a hurry. It will take a while
     to search several thousand square kilometres—especially at night. Tell them to work
     over the