Murray Leinster (Duke Classic SiFi) Read Online Free PDF Page B

mile, and they alighted inside a
lock, and another door and another opened and closed, and they emerged
into a scene which no amount of television film-tape could really
portray.
    The main dome was a thousand feet across and half as high. There were
green plants growing in tubs and pots. And the air was fresh! It smelled
strange. There could be no vegetation on the rocket and it seemed new
and blissful to breathe really freshened air after days of the canned
variety. But this freshness made Cochrane realize that he'd feel better
for a bath.
    He took a shower in his hotel room. The room was very much like one on
Earth, except that it had no windows. But the shower was strange. The
sprays were tiny. Cochrane felt as if he were being sprayed by atomizers
rather than shower-nozzles until he noticed that water ran off him very
slowly and realized that a normal shower would have been overwhelming.
He scooped up a handful of water and let it drop. It took a full second
to fall two and a half feet.
    It was unsettling, but fresh clothing from his waiting baggage made him
feel better. He went to the lounge of the hotel, and it was not a
lounge, and the hotel was not a hotel. Everything in the dome was
indoors in the sense that it was under a globular ceiling fifty stories
high. But everything was also out-doors in the sense of bright light and
growing trees and bushes and shrubs.
    He found Babs freshly garmented and waiting for him. She said in
businesslike tones:
    "Mr. Cochrane, I asked at the desk. Doctor Holden has gone to consult
Mr. Dabney. He asked that we stay within call. I've sent word to Mr.
West and Mr. Jamison and Mr. Bell."
    Cochrane approved of her secretarial efficiency.
    "Then we'll sit somewhere and wait. Since this isn't an office, we'll
find some refreshment."
    They asked for a table and got one near the swimming pool. And Babs wore
her office manner, all crispness and business, until they were seated.
But this swimming pool was not like a pool on Earth. The water was
deeply sunk beneath the pool's rim, and great waves surged back and
forth. The swimmers—.
    Babs gasped. A man stood on a board quite thirty feet above the water.
He prepared to dive.
    "That's Johnny Simms!" she said, awed.
    "Who's he?"
    "The playboy," said Babs, staring. "He's a psychopathic personality and
his family has millions. They keep him up here out of trouble. He's
married."
    "Too bad—if he has millions," said Cochrane.
    "I wouldn't marry a man with a psychopathic personality!" protested
Babs.
    "Keep away from people in the advertising business, then," Cochrane told
her.
    Johnny Simms did not jounce up and down on the diving board to start. He
simply leaped upward, and went ceilingward for easily fifteen feet, and
hung stationary for a full breath, and then began to descend in literal
slow motion. He fell only two and a half feet the first second, and five
feet more the one after, and twelve and a half after that.... It took
him over four seconds to drop forty-five feet into the water, and the
splash that arose when he struck the surface rose four yards and
subsided with a lunatic deliberation.
    Watching, Babs could not keep her businesslike demeanor. She was
bursting with the joyous knowledge that she was on the moon, seeing the
impossible and looking at fame.
    They sipped at drinks—but the liquid rose much too swiftly in the
straws—and Cochrane reflected that the drink in Babs' glass would cost
Dabney's father-in-law as much as Babs earned in a week back home, and
his own was costing no less.
    Presently a written note came from Holden:
    "
Jed: send West and Jamison right away to Dabney's lunar laboratory to
get details of discovery from man named Jones. Get moon-jeep and driver
from hotel. I will want you in an hour.—Bill.
"
    "I'll be back," said Cochrane. "Wait."
    He left the table and found West and Jamison in Bell's room, all three
in conference over a bottle. West and Jamison were Cochrane's scientific
team for the yet