All Day September, Page 2

said.

  "How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.

  "Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing theMerchants' Bank Association."

  "Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."

  "That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been goingover the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."

  "I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hopethey're in good order."

  "There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.

  "That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we'reamateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'msure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."

  "I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"

  "Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."

  "Mrs. Garth," he
called, "what day is this?"

  "Why, September, I think," she answered.

  "I mean what _day_."

  "I don't know, I'll call the observatory."

  There was a pause.

  "They say what day where?" she asked.

  "Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich MeanTime."

  There was another pause.

  "They say it's September fourth, one thirty A.M."

  "Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't meananything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."

  Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at anyrate," he said.

  * * * * *

  The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of thenine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, andone bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and itthreatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.

  "What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical techniciansasked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I'vegot about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder theydon't work."

  "Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walkersays he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman onbank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing washit."

  "When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.

  "Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'emtoo small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get arumble."

  "Sounds pretty bad."

  "Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.

  "How's that?"

  "Wasn't anybody out in it."

  "Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe gethurt that way."

  "I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, andthey wouldn't go through a suit."

  "It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cadecommented.

  "That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."

  "You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"

  Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Smallcraters overlapped and touched each other. There was--except in theplaces that men had obscured them with footprints--not a square footthat didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not asquare inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had beenmade millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a cratercovered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.

  After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had beenexploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, andfound that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into thecave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some whitecrystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them intoa collector's bag.

  "A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can'tbe, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."

  He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One ofthem he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.

  One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bagsand analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which wouldwaste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, allright, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that hethought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that hewas sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.

  "Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal ofpotassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inchacross."

  All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moonpuzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained theunusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There wasnothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be atype of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed bythe sun.

  * * * * *

  The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. Thestars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. OnlyEarth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line creptaround until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appearedon the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began tomove around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and intothe crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the sametime that the sun rose.

  * * * * *

  Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from andto the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and oresout. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.

  "I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm goingback to mining."

  "I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured twodrinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.

  "Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn'thave to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."

  McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.

  "You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on histirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. Theunion it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasanttaste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.

  "The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."

  McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filledit again.

  "And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commissionit is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge onlyfifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that theCommission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's noprofit I could make by cutting rates the other way."

  "Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen tothe slightly Welsh voice of Jones.

  "Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there incharging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh ofthe fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there tohere?"

  "What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.

  "The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as itisn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the waterwe haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, andset up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.

  "Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much topay for water."

  Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:

  "Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has goneup, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at aprofit."

  "He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until