Hal Clement - Dust Rag

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Dust Rag

"CHECKING OUT."

"Checked, Ridge. See you soon."

Ridging glanced over his shoulder at Beacon Peak, as the point where the relay station had been

mounted was known. The gleaming dome of its leaden meteor shield was visible as a spark; most of the

lower peaks of Har-palus were already below the horizon, and with them the last territory with which

Ridging or Shandara could claim familiarity. The humming turbine tractor that car-ried them was the only

sign of humanity except each others' faces—the thin crescent of their home world was too close to the

sun to be seen easily, and Earth doesn't look very "human" from outside in any case.

The prospect ahead was not exactly strange, of course. Shandara had remarked several times in the

last four weeks that a man who had seen any of the Moon had seen all of it. A good many others had

agreed with him. Even Ridging, whose temperament kept him nor-mally expecting something new to

happen, was begin-ning to get a trifle bored with the place. It wasn't even dangerous; he knew perfectly

well what exposure to vac-uum would mean, but checking spacesuit and airlock valves had become a

matter of habit long before.

Cosmic rays went through plastic suits and living bodies like glass, for the most part ineffective

because unabsorbed; meteors blew microscopic holes through thin metal, but scarcely marked spacesuits

or hulls, as far as current experiences went; the "dust-hidden cre-vasses" which they had expected to

catch unwary men or vehicles simply didn't exist—the dust was too dry to cover any sort of hole, except

by filling it completely. The closest approach to a casualty suffered so far had occurred when a man had

missed his footing on the lad-der outside the Albireo's airlock and narrowly avoided a

hundred-and-fifty-foot fall.

Still, Shandara was being cautious. His eyes swept the ground ahead of their tracks, and his

gauntleted hands rested lightly on brake and steering controls as the trac-tor glided ahead.

Harpalus and the relay station were out of sight now. Another glance behind assured Ridging of that.

For the first time in weeks he was out of touch with the rest of the group, and for the first time he

wondered whether it was such a good idea. Orders had been strict, the radius of exploration settled on

long before was not to be ex-ceeded. Ridging had been completely in favor of this; but it was his own

instruments which had triggered the change of schedule.

One question about the Moon to which no one could more than guess an answer in advance was that

of its magnetic field. Once the group was on the surface it had immediately become evident that there was

one, and comparative readings had indicated that the south magnetic pole—or a south magnetic

pole—lay a few hundred miles away. It had been decided to modify the program to check the region,

since the last forlorn chance of finding any trace of a gaseous envelope around the Moon seemed to lie in

auroral investigation. Ridging found himself, to his intense astonishment, wondering why he had

volunteered for the trip and then wondering how such thoughts could cross his mind. He had never

considered himself a coward, and certainly had no one but himself to blame for being in the trac-tor. No

one had made him volunteer, and any techni-cian could have set up and operated the equipment.

"Come out of it, Ridge. Anyone would think you were worried." Shandara's careless tones cut into

his thoughts. "How about running this buggy for a while? I've had her for a hundred kilos."

"Right." Ridging slipped into the driver's seat as his companion left it without slowing the tractor. He

did not need to find their location on the photographic map clipped beside the panel; he had been keeping

a running check almost unconsciously between the features it showed and the landmarks appearing over

the horizon. A course had been marked on it, and navigation was not expected to be a problem even

without a magnetic com-pass.

The course was far from straight, though it led over what passed for fairly smooth territory on the

Moon. Even back on Sinus Roris the tractor had had to weave its way around numerous obstacles; now

well onto the Mare Frigoris, the situation was no better, and accord-ing to the map it was nearly time to

turn south through the mountains, which would be infinitely worse. Ac-cording to the photos taken during

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Hal Clement - Dust Rag

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