A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C. Clarke Page B

hasn’t done anything, except nearly make me lose my temper. He’s
     been looking for our missing dust-cruiser, and he thinks he’s found her. What I’d
     like to know is—how competent is he?”
    In the next five minutes, the Chief Engineer learned a good deal about young Dr. Lawson;
     rather more, in fact, than he had any right to know, even over a confidential circuit.
     When Professor Kotelnikov had paused for breath he interjected sympathetically: “I
     can understand why you put up with him; poor kid—I thought orphanages like that went
     out with Dickens and the twentieth century. A good thing it
did
burn down; do you suppose he set fire to it? No, don’t answer that—you’ve told me
     he’s a first-class observer, and that’s all I want to know. Thanks a lot—see you down
     here someday?”
    In the next half-hour, Lawrence made a dozen calls to points all over the Moon. At
     the end of that time, he had accumulated a large amount of information; now he had
     to act on it.
    At Plato Observatory, Father Ferraro thought the idea was perfectly plausible. In
     fact, he had already suspected that the focus of the quake was under the Sea of Thirst
     rather than the Mountains of Inaccessibility, but couldn’t prove it because the Sea
     had such a damping effect on all vibrations. No—a complete set of soundings had never
     been made; it would be very tedious and time-consuming. He’d probed it himself in
     a few places with telescopic rods, and had always hit bottom at less than forty metres.
     His guess for the average depth was under ten metres, and it was much more shallow
     round the edges. No, he didn’t have an infra-red detector, but the astronomers on
     Farside might be able to help.
    Sorry—no i.r. detector at Dostoievsky. Our work is all in the ultra-violet. Try Verne.
    Oh yes, we used to do some work in the infra-red, a couple of years back—taking spectograms
     of giant red stars. But do you know what—there were enough traces of lunar atmosphere
     to interfere with the readings so the whole programme was shifted out into space.
     Try Lagrange….
    It was at this point that Lawrence called Traffic Control for the shipping schedules
     from Earth, and found that he was in luck. But the next move would cost a lot of money,
     and only the Chief Administrator could authorise it.
    That was one good thing about Olsen; he never argued with his technical staff over
     matters that were in their province. He listened carefully to Lawrence’s story, and
     went straight to the main point.
    “If this theory is true,” he said, “there’s a chance that they may still be alive,
     after all.”
    “More than a chance; I’d say it’s quite likely. We know the Sea is shallow, so they
     can’t be very deep. The pressure on the hull would be fairly low; it may still be
     intact.”
    “So you want this fellow Lawson to help with the search.”
    The Chief Engineer gave a gesture of resignation.
    “He’s about the last person I
want
,” he answered. “But I’m afraid we’ve got to have him.”

CHAPTER NINE
    The skipper of the cargo-liner
Auriga
was furious, and so was his crew—but there was nothing they could do about it. Ten
     hours out from Earth and five hours from the Moon they were ordered to stop at Lagrange,
     with all the waste of speed and extra computing that that implied. And to make matters
     worse, they were being diverted from Clavius City to that miserable dump Port Roris,
     practically on the other side of the Moon. The ether crackled with messages cancelling
     dinners and assignations all over the southern hemisphere.
    Not far from full, the mottled silver disc of the Moon, its eastern limb wrinkled
     with easily visible mountains, formed a dazzling background to Lagrange II as
Auriga
came to rest a hundred kilometres Earthwards of the station. She was allowed no closer;
     the interference produced by her equipment, and the glare of her jets, had already
     affected the sensitive