GENTLEMEN BE SEATED...
 

By Robert Anson Heinlein (1948)
Read by Leonard Nimoy
 

Astronauts should not be terrified by closed, narrow rooms.
A cramped space ship might turn into a coffin...

On his second trip to Lunar City Jack, the reporter went over to Richardson. A second tunnel is planned to make the trip more convenient and less boring. He's about to write about the working progress of the second tunnel.

Richardson first explains about the safety on the moon: No broken bones because of the low gravity, no sicknesses. "Where's the catch?" Jack wonders. Hesitating, Richardson answers: "Quakes caused by tides."

Jack feels fooled: "There's no water on the moon."

"You don't have to have water to get tidal, unbalanced stresses," Jack is told. It does not need any water to provoke stresses on the surface.

"If one is in a room which is ruptured by quakes, your lunges will give in before they can get to you." Jack learns and: "On the moon it will take longer to get help than on earth." When they arrived they met more than a dozen men coming out of the next air log. "Hey, Consky!" Jack is now introduced to Fatsaw Consky. Consky seems to be amazed that there are only four others for a certain job. Though his shift was already over, he still worked on tightening the air logs.

"This piece of tunnel was pressurized today," Consky explains to the reporter. A flexed joint was put in every hundred feet. "It will hold five years." Consky compares the fees with those he got at Venus. Obviously he was happier with his work here. Trying to get a story, Jack wanted to begin a conversation.

Suddenly a noise interrupted them. Pitch darkness surrounded them. "Was it a quake?" Jack shouted, he was not sure whether he had screamed. "No," Consky responded calmly. "It sounded like an explosion." Still Jack felt the ringing in his ears.
Around them it was the darkest dark he ever saw.

Consky's beamer focused on a part of a flexible joint near by, at the floor. Some men approach, one of them collapses near the sticky mass that marked the leak. It took a long time for the mass to be absorbed.

They checked the leak. "The air pressure is down by a pound," someone said. Trying to reach the next section, measurements indicate that there is no pressure at all.

Noel suggested putting his shirt into the leak. "It needs a suit," Consky realizes. Even that would not be enough. The leaks on the ground seem to open slowly. The men stay calm and quickly see the only solution: To sit on the leak.

Time becomes long and the temperature drops. The men begin to tell each other stories until one gets the idea. It's Consky who suggests reaching the next section using one of the pressure suits. Noels offers to go. Jack and Consky are left in the dark. Both try to play an imaginative chess game putting in an imagined sum of Pounds 20. Though trying to concentrate hard Jack is not used to play it in his mind only.

When Consky passes out Jack tries to reach him. His hands and feet were like ice and Jack is sure: Consky is frozen dead. Noels comes back. He had not made it; he could not reach the next section. Noels brakes down.
In vain Jack attempts to reach Noels, - sitting on the leak Jack feels like a cork on the bottle... and drops out, too.

Waking up in a warm bed Jack hears a voice: "Feeling better?" It's Noel. "You're dead," Jack told him.

"Not a bit," he grinned, "they got to us in time."

"What happened?"

"A rocket out off course hit the tunnel."

"Where's Fats?"

"Hi! You owe me twenty!" It was Fatsaw’s voice and Jack turned around.

"I owe you ... (Jack felt some tears dripping down his face) ... I owe you ... twenty.”