"Campbell, John W. - The Moon is Hell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Campbell John W Jr)

"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 tJie 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 it's 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, like all their records and accounts, written in chemical pencil, since ink was either frozen or boiling much of the time. During all the months the expedition spent on the alternately frozen and baked moon, Duncan missed but one entry, the last, when his hands could no longer hold the pencil.

Throughout the diary he mentions the men by their last names. A list of the men living at the end of the second year is given here.

PERSONNEL OF THE GARNER LUNAR EXPEDITION Dr. James Harwood Garner, leader, rocket-ship engineer, astro-physicist, chemical engineer.

Dr. Thomas Ridgely Duncan, physicist, second in command.

Dr. Eustace M. Hughey, surgeon of expedition.

Dr. Robert Kenneth Moore, chemist.

Dr. Warren P. Tolman, chemist Mr. Arthur W. Kendall, photographer.

Mr. David H. King, mineralogist.

Mr. Hampden S. Reed, mineralogist.

Mr. Anthony T. Melville, astro-physicist.

Mr. Carl Jewell Long, astronomer, navigator. (Who did much of the work in determining latitude and longitude on the moon, and in navigating the ship, across space. Fort Washington was taken as the zero meridian.) Mr. George W. Rice, expert electrician and mechanic. Mr. Joseph T. Whisler, cook, mechanic, lens-grinder.

Mr. Frederick L. Bender, mountain-climber, adventurer, mechanic, amateur astronomer.

THE FIGHT FOR AIR The Diary of Thomas R. Duncan, Ph.D.

May 16.

King and Reed returned from a last expedition to the south-west. They report a remarkable find, a bed of silver selenide so enormously rich that they declare it could be profitably worked and the silver carried back to Earth. It is an enormous bed of "jewelry ore."

The morning is half over now, and tomorrow the relief ship is due. We are awaiting this release with the most intense eagerness. The moon, for all its terrible harshness and cold and heat has become beautiful to us--a frozen hell, but awesome and magnificent for all that. Most of the men spent the day looking for the relief, and little work was done. We know that it is due tomorrow, and a day more or less means that some accident has happened.

Whisler promises a feast tomorrow. We are all eager for news from home. As we have not even seen Earth in two years, it may have been wiped out for all we know. An all-out atomic war might be in progress, and we would not know.

May 17.

The relief has not arrived this evening. It was to be here not later than the seventeenth. We have air supplies for two months, food for three, and we are worried. Interplanetary schedules are exact, of necessity. The ship should have started at syzygy.

May 18.

Outside, the relief ship lies, a crushed, red-hot mass of broken, glowing metal. It arrived this afternoon, twenty-one hours late.