The Moon is Hell

Book 40: Gateway Essentials

by John W. Campbell

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

John W. Campbell was the man who made modern science fiction what it is today. As editor of Astounding Stories (later Analog), Campbell brought into the field such all-time greats as Asimov, Heinlein, Sturgeon and many others, while his own writing blazed new trails in science fiction reading pleasure. The Moon is Hell is this great writer-editor's vision of the first men on the moon - written 18 years before Neil Armstrong made history. This is the story of the American space programme - not as it happened, but as it might have been.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 125

Sample

FIFTEEN men in shining, bulky air-tight suits stood beside the great hull that had brought them across a quarter of a million miles
of space, and landed them at last on this airless satellite world. Warm golden light still shone from the windows of the giant
machine, the greatest rocket ship Earth had ever produced. Harsh, electric-blue sunlight glinted on the jet-shadowed spires
of the crater wall beyond. In the near foreground was the cracked, pitted surface of a crater-bottom, scarred and broken by
ages-old moon-quakes, fading into a horizon strangely near, made jagged by incredibly rugged crater walls. And above, in a
star studded sky hung a blue-white ball of fire, the unshielded sun. There was no air here; warmth was only where the sun
was. Night was everywhere, hidden from the blue light of the sun in every shadow.


The fifteen men were grouped about a metal structure they were rapidly raising from a barren, level mass of rock. When it
was completed, a bedraggled American flag hung limp in the airless space. In forty-eight hours it would be a piece of white
bunting, bleached colourless by the violent light of this place. Later they were to replace the limp-hanging cloth with a
sheet of painted metal.


But now they had other work. Dr. James Harwood Garner was the leader of this party of carefully chosen men, and in the name
of the United States of America, he claimed the so-called dark half of the moon. Half a world! Millions, tens of millions
of square miles of utterly barren surface, surface never seen by Terrestrian eyes, save when, five years before, Capt. Roger
Wilson had circumnavigated the moon twice, landing for two brief days on the Earthward side, and had claimed that.


But unlike the earlier party, these men were here for continuous exploration, and not for two days, but for two full years!
Their orders read: “On June 10, the ship will leave from Inyokern, California, Earth, arriving at Luna June 15. One circuit of the satellite
will be made, and a landing made as near the centre of the ‘dark side’ as possible. Explorations will be conducted and data
collected for one year and eleven months. On May 10, 1981, a relief ship will take off from Mojave, California, Earth, proceeding
directly to the camp on Luna, landing as near to the dome as practicable. For one month both parties will remain on the satellite,
then the return shall be made, starting June 15, and arriving at Lake Michigan, Earth, on June 20.”

This first ship came out, loaded with the tons of supplies and instruments that must last the men two full years. So great
was the load of oxygen and food, that no fuel for the return could be carried. Hence the need for the relief ship, carrying
oxygen and food for but fifteen days for the total crew of both ships, seventeen men in all. The men were to weigh “an average of 153.5 pounds. Two thousand pounds of instruments, samples, photographs, and materials may be returned. Under
any circumstances the comparative-reading instruments (instruments whose value was lost if experiments conducted with them on Luna were not repeated with the same instruments
on Earth) shall be brought back.”

From the squat, pointed cylinder, heavy leads were run, while other men set up powerful electric winches. Electric wrenches
and tools were brought out. Inside the ship motors were pumping the atmosphere back into the tanks from which it came. Presently
the trained crew fell to work, and rapidly the entire machine was unbolted, the gaskets between the plates laid to one side,
and the numbered pieces piled in order. Only the low, round battery-house remained untouched; this was the base of the original
ship, housing the batteries that would supply heat and light during the two-week long lunar nights. Now the winches began
work again, and rapidly the pieces from the hull were transformed into a new shape, assembled till they made a huge, polished
dome, with five small windows set in it. Within it were the bunks, stove, supplies, tanks of oxygen and water, air purifiers – all the equipment and supplies of the
original ship, converted into this more spacious dome.


Beyond the battery house and the Dome, a series of racks were set up, and on them huge photo-cells that soon began pouring
energy from the sun, converted into electricity, into the batteries. Camp was made. Ten hours had elapsed, and now the men
retired to the dome, and turned the air from the tanks into it. In another hour the pressure and heat within were normal,
and a meal was under way, their first on the Moon.


Sleep now – then the two years’ work was begun. It was during the lunar night that most of the exploration was done. “During the days,” wrote Dr. Thomas Ridgely Duncan, “we are constantly oppressed by the monotony. It is a time of rest, and repairing things that need no repairing. The heat
from the sun is absolutely unbearable, the rocks are hot enough to melt tin, even lead. The entire world is bathed in burning
heat. The suits cannot radiate enough to cool, and perspiration does no good. We are continually subject to sunstroke, and
have to remain in the dome.


“At night the work begins. The sun sinks, and the great barren surface cools. Starlight, far brighter than starlight of earth,
gives a slight general illumination while our suit lamps supply more. But little battery heat is needed, and wide exploration
is possible. The greatest handicap is the necessity for eating. One cannot eat in a space suit, and one cannot take it off.
Oxygen supplies for several days could be carried, but food and particularly water, is the problem.”

But explorations were carried on. During the day the two mineralogists, the two chemists and the photographer were busy. The
little astro-physicist, Melville, was busy day and night. The magnification possible on the airless moon threw him into a
terrible despondency, because he had only two three inch telescopes, the greatest weight he had been allowed, and their light
gathering power did not permit him the magnification he wanted. So Duncan and Bender and Whisler working together, made a
twenty-inch reflector of fused quartz, and with this Melville succeeded in getting photographic maps of the famous “canali” of Mars for the first time, maps that proved them not canals, but tidal swamps, caused by the cross drag
and pull of the two satellites of the planet and the Sun.


The others had little to do during the day. Birthdays were celebrated; and the Fourth of July, Christmas, Thanksgiving, New
Years Day, all were feast days.


Two light tractor-treaded trucks were included in the equipment. The chassis and treads of the trucks had originally been
landing gear for the great rocket, and their engines had served as air pumps and fuel pumps. Every piece of equipment had
served dually on the rocket. Assembled on Luna, they carried the men further afield, and did heavy work.


But “There is little to do. We know all the motion pictures now, every move of every film. Only our own new films are of interest.
There is no radio here, since the airless moon has no Heavy side layer to bring the waves about the curve that hides Earth
from us. We can neither send nor receive from Earth. It is nearly 1500 miles to the nearest point where earth is visible,
and therefore reachable. We are thrown back half a century in time to the period when explorers were cut off from other men.


“Our little helmet radios work fairly well up to a distance of about five miles, further if we are atop a ridge. The powerful
tractruck sets can reach some twenty miles broadcast from a ridge top. But the curve of the Moon’s surface makes real ranges
impossible – it brings the messages too far underground.”

Cut off from humanity by distance and solid rock as they were, it is no wonder they welcomed the night’s work. Most of the
exploration was done by foot, rather than tractruck, since men afoot could “make better time over the incredibly jagged rock, and the frequent chasms. We can leap fifty to seventy-five feet easily,
and the tractrucks can’t. Future expeditions should develop a mechanical grasshopper, perhaps on the order of an inverted
catapult with powerful steel springs, cocked and released by an engine. Nothing else can move far here. Airplanes cannot be
used, of course, where there is no air. Small rocket ships can’t be supplied with fuel.”

Still the tractrucks could carry the men further, as the hard working explorers needed greater oxygen supplies.

There is little of interest that has not been made public already. Perhaps a few of Duncan’s weather reports are most interesting,
best give a picture of that cruel, dead world. “The mercury thermometer was left outside accidentally, and has been broken. We were alarmed at breakfast by an inexplicable boom from the Dome walls. We rushed out to see what had caused it, and found that the rising sun had struck the mercury bulb, blackened
to register in this airless place, and had quickly raised it to the boiling point. The explosion had caused the sound.”

Again he reports of a lunar pre-dawn. “Winter here now. We hadn’t believed it would make any difference, but apparently it does. We cannot notice it; it is always
cold or hot. Nothing is moderate. The chasms are terrifically deep, and terrifically abrupt. The craters are gigantic, and
their walls miles in height. It is either utterly cold or utterly hot.”

The sensation of constant fall, which Duncan mentions at first, left them as they became accustomed to the lesser gravity.
Their muscles did not weaken as had been feared. Instead they grew stronger from the heavy work. Yet the weight charts that
Dr. Hughey, the expedition’s surgeon, prepared read like kindergarten records. Duncan, in prime condition the beginning of
the second year, was recorded as weighting 31 pounds! Dr. Hughey reports he was weighed on a spring balance hooked through
his belt, and supported at arms length by one of the men. Yet that means a normal Earth-weight of very nearly 186 pounds.


Then late in the second year came the first fatality. Duncan writes, “Today we had our first tragedy. In but two months we will be leaving; and Morrison and Wilcott would have gone with us. They
were exploring near North Chasm in tractruck No. 2, and the edge broke away under the weight of the machine. The chasm is
over half a mile deep, and they were precipitated to the floor below.


“The slow fall under lunar gravity was a mockery. Wilcott called the Dome, and told them they were falling! They sent us word
where they were, called good-bye – and there was a crash.


“Efforts to recover the bodies were in vain, though Rice, with the aid of the other tractruck and a long cable, succeeded
in reaching, and recovering the machine. He says he will be able to repair it. The two men were hurled free, apparently, and
buried under a mass of rubble.


“North Chasm has been renamed Morcott Chasm.”

As the months passed, the time for their release from voluntary exile came nearer and nearer. As each lunar night passed they
watched more anxiously the dark heavens for a moving dot of light. Tremendous work had been done; and now they wanted only
to return to the Earth with its soft, natural air, winds and rains. But their release was not to be so soon. Nor for some
of them, was it ever to be.


The remainder of this account is from Dr. Duncan’s diary, kept faithfully throughout the two years, and later through the
terrible period of waiting for a second relief ship. It was,. . .