“Sorry, sir,” Forbes said into the microphone, “the doctor won’t allow him up.”
“Very well,” General Pepper said. “Give him my best.” He paused awkwardly. “You’ll need your batteries, Forbes. We’d better sign off for now. And Forbes…”
“Yes, sir?”
“Good luck, Forbes.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I… we’re all behind you, Forbes. You and the crew. Tell them we’re all behind you.”
“Thank you, sir. We’d better…”
“Dan, you’re forgetting the Moon’s age!” Merola shouted.
“Sir? General Pepper?”
“Yes, Forbes?”
“Are you getting that information we wanted?”
“Yes, yes, just one moment, Forbes.”
There was a long static-filled pause. Forbes sat at the transmitter, the microphone clutched in his fist.
“Hello, Forbes?” Yes, sir.
“The Moon is now eighteen days old. About nine and one-third days to New Moon.”
“I’ve got that, sir.”
“Good luck again, Forbes. And…” He paused and then murmured, “Out.”
Forbes pulled at the knife switch, killing the transmitter. He folded his arms on the small table before the gear and dropped his head into them. “Six months.”
Ted digested the information. Six months. That was a long time. It would be a long time anywhere. It could be forever on the Moon. A wash of guilt flooded his body. If he hadn’t brought the ship down in the wrong spot, there’d be no trouble now. The men would be concentrating on building a Lunar base instead of…
“We’ll go after the supplies,” Merola said suddenly.
Forbes lifted his head from his arms and stared at the captain. “A thousand miles,” he said.
“We can travel close to 300 miles a day up here,” Merola said. “It shouldn’t take us more than a little over three days.”
“I wouldn’t advise it,” Dr. Phelps said.
“Why not?”
“The heat. The Moon is now eighteen days old. That means that the area to the East of us is still in sunlight, and will be for another nine days.”
“We’ll wait a week, then,” Merola said. “In seven days, Mare Imbrium should be in darkness. We’ll be able to travel by night and come back by night.”
“How do you figure that?” Forbes asked.
“No, I’m wrong,” Merola said, shaking his head. “If we wait a week and then start, it would take us three days to reach the supplies, and by that time the sun already would be rising on the Western rim. We’d be caught in sunlight before we got back to the ship.” He scratched at his chin and thought silently for a few moments. “Get me a piece of paper, will you, Dan?”
Forbes opened one of the drawers and pulled out a sheet of paper and a pencil. He crossed the cabin and handed it to Merola.
“Now, let’s see.” Merola said. “It takes the sun approximately fourteen days to cross the face of the Moon. The Moon’s diameter is 2,160 miles… so if we divide that by fourteen… let’s see…” He scribbled a few figures on the paper, his brow wrinkled. “That’s approximately 154 miles every day. Right?”
“Approximately,” Forbes said.
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to do.” Dr. Phelps said.
“I’m just trying to figure out when we’d have to start from here in order to reach Mare Imbrium in darkness and make the trip back in darkness. You see, the Sun is now retreating across the face of the Moon at the rate of approximately 154 miles a day. Now, if we can work up some sort of a chart here.”
Quickly, Merola began writing on the sheet of paper, scribbling in figures and words:
“All right,” Forbes said, “now explain it.”
“Simple,” Merola answered, grinning. “The top line is simply a listing of the days. The second line shows how many miles the retreating Sun will have traveled at the end of each day. And the bottom line shows how many miles the supply party will have traveled at the end of each day.”
Forbes studied Merola’s figures for a moment. “In other words, if we leave here four days from now, the area of sunlight will always be ahead of us. We’ll be traveling by ‘night’ all the time.”
“Right. By the end of the seventh day, darkness will have spread approximately 1,078 miles from our present position. We should reach Mare Imbrium just as ‘night’ is falling there-or maybe a little after ‘night’ has fallen.”
“And what about getting back?” Forbes asked.
“The Moon is now eighteen days old. Add the three-day wait and the four days to get us to the supplies, and that makes 25 days. Another two and one-third days for the Moon to be in complete darkness. And another four days for the rising Sun to reach our present position. That gives us six and two-thirds days to get back here while it’s still dark. That’s plenty of time, even if we’re carrying a full load.”
“It might work,” Forbes said.
“What about oxygen?” Dr. Phelps asked.
“We’ll only need enough to get us to the supply dump. We can load up there for the return trip.”
“That’s still a lot of oxygen,” Forbes put in. “Each cylinder carries only enough for about twelve hours.”
“I figure two men will go,” Merola said. “They’ll be a little more than three days getting to the supplies… two cylinders of oxygen for each day… that means each man will need six cylinders of oxygen. We’ll give each eight, just to make sure.”