The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 2

THE FAR LOOK by Theodore L. Thomas

The true science-fiction story is a highly specialized form which very few writers can handle adequately. Most of what appears under the label is either space opera (essentially a transplanted Western or jungle or fight yarn) or—at the other extreme—just dramatized essay, minus action or credible characterization.

To be good science-fiction, a story must contain a rare blend of intellection and emotion; puzzle and plot must be integrally related in such a way that the human problem arises out of the idea-extrapolation, and the resolution of the one is impossible without the solution to the other.

Two further requirements for the good science-fiction writer: to be a good writer; and to have at least enough scientific background to avoid contradicting currently accepted “facts.”

Perhaps in part due to the training provided by his profession (the author is a patent attorney, who also writes highly entertaining articles about his own field under the pseudonym of Leonard Lockhard), Mr. Thomas’s story achieves the same intense quality of realism that may be found in a Bonestell moonscape: the product of painstaking detail-work plus a thorough awareness of underlying structural realities, and an imagination that can visualize in technicolor.

The ship appeared first as a dot low on the horizon. The television cameras immediately picked it up. At first the ship did not give the impression of motion; it seemed to hover motionless and swell in size. Then in a few seconds it passed the first television station, the screaming roar of its passage rocking the camera slightly.

Thirty miles beyond, its belly skids touched the packed New Mexican sand. An immense dust cloud stirred into life at the rear of the ship and spread slowly across the desert.

As soon as the ship touched, the three helicopters took off to meet it. The helicopters were ten miles away when the ship halted and lay motionless. The dust began to dissipate rearward. The late afternoon sun distorted the flowing lines of the ship and made it look like some outlandish beast of prey crouched on the desert.

As the lead helicopter drew within a mile of the ship, its television camera caught the ship clearly for the first time. Telephoto lenses brought it in close, and viewers once again watched closely. They looked admiringly at the stubby swept-back wings and at the gaping opening at the rear from which poured the fires of hell itself. But most of all they looked to the area amidship where the door was.

And as they watched, the door swung open. The sun slanted in and showed two figures standing there. The figures moved to a point just inside the door and stopped. They stood there looking out, motionless, for what seemed an interminable period. Then the two figures looked at each other, nodded, and jumped out the door.

Though the sand was only four feet below the sill of the door, both men fell to their knees. They quickly arose, knocked the dust from their clothes, and started walking to where the helicopters were waiting. And all over the country people watched that now-familiar moon walk—the rocking of the body from side to side to get too-heavy feet off the ground, the relaxed muscles on the down step where the foot just seemed to plop against the ground.

But the cameras did not focus on the general appearance or action of the men. The zoom lenses went to work and a close-up of the faces of the two men side by side flashed across the country.

The faces even at first glance seemed different. And as the cameras lingered, it became apparent that the difference was in the eyes: a level-eyed expression, undeviating, penetrating, probing, yet laden with compassion. There was a look of things seen from deep inside, and of things seen beyond the range of normal vision. It was a far look, a compelling look, a powerful look set in the eyes of normal men. And even when those eyes were closed, there was something different. A network of tiny creases laced out from both corners of each eye. The crinkled appearance of the eyes made each man appear older than he was, older and strangely wizened.

The cameras stayed on the men’s faces as they awkwardly walked toward the helicopters. Even though several dignitaries hurried forward to greet the men, the camera remained on the faces, transmitting that strange look for all to see. A nation crammed forward to watch.

In Macon, Georgia, Mary Sinderman touched a wetted finger to the bottom of the iron. She heard it pop as she stared across her ironing board at the television screen with the faces of two men on it.

“Charlie. Oh, Charlie,” she called. “Here they are.”

A dark, squat man in an undershirt came into the room and looked at the picture. “Yeah,” he grunted. “They got it all right. Both of ‘em.”

“Aren’t they handsome?” she said.

He threw a black look at her and said, “No, they ain’t.” And he went out the door he had come in.

In Stamford, Connecticut, Walter Dwyer lowered his newspaper and peered over the top of it at the faces of two men on the television screen. “Look at that, honey,” he said.

His wife looked up from her section of the paper and nodded silently. He said, “Two more, dear. If this keeps up, we’ll all be able to retire and let them run things.” She chuckled, and nodded and continued to watch the screen.

In Boise, Idaho, the Tankard Saloon was doing a moderate business. The television set was on up over one end of the bar. The faces of two men flashed on the screen. Slowly a silence fell over the saloon as one person after another stopped what he was doing to watch. One man sitting in close under the screen raised his drink high in tribute to the two faces.

In a long, low building on the New Mexican flats, the wall TV set was on. A thin young man wearing heavy glasses sat stiffly erect on a folding chair, watching the two faces. “Dr. Scott,” he said, “they both have the look.”

The older man nodded wordlessly.

“Do you think you’ll be able to find out anything this time, Dr. Scott?” young Webb asked.

A slight urge to tell this young man to keep his big fat mouth shut rose up in Dr. Scott. He noted the urge and filed it away with other urges toward bright young men who believe everything they learned at college, and no more.

“I don’t know, Dr. Webb,” he said. “We’ve examined sixteen of these fellows without finding out anything so far.”

The two men boarded a helicopter. The screen faded to a blare of martial music, and then came to life on a toothy announcer praising the virtues of a hair shampoo. Webb snapped the set off, turned to Scott, and said, “Of course, you’ve isolated all the factors resulting from your system of selection?”

Scott clamped his teeth down on the bit of his cold pipe. He took time to strike a match and puff it back to life, and then he was able to answer calmly, “Yes, of course. The first ten men we chose were not selected by the same standards we use now. Two of them died on the Moon, but the same ratio of those who returned developed the far look. The change in the selection system seems to effect survival— but not the ‘far look.’ “

“Then it must be something that happens to them. Don’t all these men go through some experience in common?”

“All the men go through a great many experiences in common,” Scott answered. “They go through two years of intensive training. They make a flight through space and land on the Moon. They spend twenty-eight days of hell reading instruments, making surveys, and collecting samples. They suffer loneliness such as no human being has ever known before. Their lives are in constant peril. Each pair has had at least one disaster during their stay. Then they get their replacements and come back to Earth. Yes, they have something in common all right. But a few come back without the far look. They’ve improved; they’re better than most men here on Earth. But they are not on a par with the rest.”

Webb was at the window, watching for the first sign of the helicopter. He shook his head, unconvinced. “We’re missing something. Somewhere there’s an element that’s missing. And, consciously or unconsciously, these men know what it is.”

Scott took the pipe from his mouth and said softly, “I doubt it. We’ve pumped them full of half a dozen truth drugs. We’ve doped them and subjected them to hypnosis. Maybe they’re concealing something but I doubt it very much.”

Webb shook his head again, and turned from the window. “I don’t know. There’s something missing here. I certainly mean to put these subjects through exhaustive tests.”

The anger in Scott brought a flush to his face. He crossed the room toward Webb and touched him on the lapel of the coat with the stem of his pipe as he said, “Look here, young fella, these ‘subjects’ as you call them are like no subjects you ever had or conceived of. These men can twist you and me up into knots if they want to. They understand more about people than the entire profession of psychiatrics will learn in the next hundred years.”

He put the pipe in his mouth and said, more gently, “You are in for a shock, Dr. Webb. These two particular men are fresh from the Moon, and do not yet fully realize the impact they have on other . . .” The murmur of approaching motors stopped him. “You’d best get yourself ready for an experience, Dr. Webb,” he said. The murmur grew to a roar as the helicopters landed outside the building. In a moment footsteps sounded outside in the hall and the door opened.

Two men walked into the room. The taller of the two looked at Webb and Webb felt as if struck by a hot blast of wind. The level eyes were brilliant blue and seemed to reach into Webb and gently strum on the fibers of his nervous system. A sense of elation swept through him. He felt as he had once felt standing alone at dusk in a wind-tossed forest. He could not speak. His breath stopped. His muscles held rigid. And then the blue-eyed glance passed him and left him confused and restless and disappointed.

He dimly saw Scott cross the room and shake hands with the shorter man. Scott said, “How do you do. We are very glad for your safe return. Was everything in order when you left the Moon?”

The shorter man smiled as he shook Scott’s hand. “Thank you, doctor. Yes, everything was in order. Our two replacements are off to a good start.” He glanced at the taller man. They looked at each other, and smiled.

“Yes,” said the taller man, “Fowler and Mcintosh will do all right.”

Don Fowler and Al Mcintosh still had the shakes. After six days they still had the shakes whenever they remembered the first few moments of their landing on the Moon.

The ship had let down roughly. Fowler awkwardly climbed out through the lock first. He turned to make sure Mcintosh was following him and then started to move around the ship to look for the two men they were to replace.

The ship lay near a crevice. A series of ripples in the rock marred the black shiny basalt surface that surrounded the crevice. The surface was washed clean of dust by the jets of the descending ship. As Fowler walked around the base of the ship his foot stepped into the trough of one of the ripples in the rock. It threw him off balance, tilted him toward the crevice. He struggled to right himself. Under Earth gravity he would simply have fallen. Under Lunar gravity he managed to retain his feet, but he staggered toward the crevice, stumbling in the ripples, unable to recover himself.

Mcintosh grabbed for him. But with arms flailing, body twisting, feet groping, Fowler disappeared down the crevice. Mcintosh staggered behind him; his feet skidded on the ripples in the hard, slick basalt. He, too, bobbled to the lip of the crevice and toppled in.

Thirty feet down the crevice narrowed to a point where the men could fall no farther. Fowler was head down and four feet to Mcintosh’s left. They were unhurt but they began to worry when a few struggles showed them how firmly the slick rock gripped their spacesuits. The pilot of the spaceship, sealed in his compartment, could not help them. The two men they were to replace might be miles away. The radios were useless for anything but line-of-sight work. So they hung there, waiting for something—or nothing—to happen.

Fowler spoke first. “Say, Mac, did you get a chance to see what the Moon looks like before you joined me down here?”

“No. I had sort of hoped you’d noticed. Now we don’t have a thing to talk about.”

Silence, then: “This is one for the books,” said Fowler. “Can you see anything? All I can see is the bottom of this thing and all I can tell you is it’s black down there.”

“No. I can’t see out. I have a nice view of the wall, though. Dense, igneous, probably of basic plagioclose. Make a note of that, will you?”

“Can you reach me?”

“No. I can’t even see you. Can you—”

“What are you fellows doing down there?” A new voice broke into the conversation. Neither Fowler nor Mcintosh could think of an answer. “Stay right there,” the voice continued, with something suspiciously like a chuckle in it. “We’ll be down to get you out.”

The pinned men could hear a rock-scraping sound through their suits. Two pairs of hands rocked each man free of the walls. Mcintosh was the first to be freed and he watched with close interest the easy freedom of movement of the two spacesuited figures as they released Fowler, turned him right side up, and lifted him up to where he could support himself in the crevice. All four then worked their way up the slick walls by sliding their backs up one wall while bracing their feet against the opposite wall.

The two men led Fowler and Mcintosh around to the other side of the spaceship and pointed westward across Mare Imbrium. One of them said, “About half a mile over there behind that rise you’ll find the dome. About eight miles south of here you’ll find the latest cargo rocket—came in two days ago. The terrain is pretty rough so you’d better wait a few days to get used to the gravity before you go after it. We left some hot tea for you at the dome. Watch yourselves now.”

They all solemnly shook hands. The clunk of the metallic-faced palms of the spacesuit and the gritty sound of the finger, wrist, and elbow joints made hand-shaking a noisy business in a spacesuit.

Both Fowler and Mcintosh tried to see the faces of the two men they were replacing, but they could not. It was daytime on the Moon and the faceplate filters were all in place. Their radio voices sounded the same as they had on Earth.

Fowler and Mcintosh turned and carefully and awkwardly moved westward away from the ship. A quarter of a mile away they turned to watch it and for the first time the men had the chance to see the actual moonscape.

Pictures are wonderful things and they are of great aid in conveying information. Words and pictures are often adequate to impart a complete understanding of a place or event. Yet where human emotions are intertwined with an experience mere words and pictures are inadequate.

It might well be that on Earth there existed similar wild wastelands, but they were limited, and human beings lived on the fringes, and human beings had crossed them, and human beings could stand out on them unprotected and feel the familiar heat of day and the cold of night. Here there was only death for the unarmored man, swift death like nothing on Earth. And nowhere were there human beings, nor any possibility of human beings. Only the darker and lighter places, no color, black sky, white spots for stars, and the moonscape itself nothing but brilliant gray shades of tones between the white stars and the black sky.

So Fowler and Mcintosh, knowing in advance what it would be like, still had to struggle to fight down an urge to scream at finding themselves in a place where men did not exist. They stared out through the smoked filters, wide-eyed, panting, fine drops of perspiration beading their foreheads. Each could hear the harsh breath of the other in the earphones, and it helped a little to know they both felt the same.

A spot of fire caught their attention and they turned slightly to see. The spaceship stood ungainly and awkward with a network of pipes surrounding the base. The spot of fire turned into a column, and the ship trembled. The column produced a flat bed of fire, and the ship rose slowly. There was no dust. A small stream of fire reached out sideways as a balancing rocket sprang to life. The ship rose farther, faster now, and Fowler and Mcintosh leaned back to watch it. Once it cleared the Moon’s horizon it lost apparent motion. They watched it grow smaller until the fire was indistinguishable with the stars, then they looked around again.

It was a little better this time, since they were prepared for an emotional response. But now they were truly alone. Without knowing what they were doing, they drew closer together until their spacesuits touched. The gentle thud registered in each consciousness and they pressed together for a moment while they fought to organize their thoughts.

And then Mcintosh drew a long deep breath and shook his head violently. Fowler could feel the relief it brought. They moved apart and looked around.

Mcintosh said, “Let’s go get that tea they mentioned.”

“Right,” said Fowler. “I could use some. That’s the dome there.” And he pointed west.

They headed for it. They could see the dome in every detail; and as they approached, the details grew larger. It was almost impossible to judge distances on the Moon. Everything stood out with brilliant clarity no matter how far away. The only effect of distance was to cause a shrinking in size.

The dome was startling in its familiarity. It was the precise duplicate to the last bolt of the dome they had lived in and operated for months in the hi-vac chambers on Earth.

The air lock was built to accommodate two men in a pinch. They folded back the antennas that projected up from their packs and they crawled into the lock together; neither suggested going in one at a time. They waited while the pump filled the lock with air from the inside; then they pushed into the dome itself and stood up and looked around.

Automatically their eyes flickered from one gauge to another, checking to make sure everything was right with the dome. They removed their helmets and checked more closely. Air pressure was a little high, eight pounds. Fowler reached out to throw the switch to bring it down when he remembered that a decision had been made just before they left Earth to carry the pressure a little higher than had been the practice in the past. A matter of sleeping comfort.

“How’s the pottet?” asked Mcintosh. His voice sounded different from the way it had on Earth.

Fowler noted the difference—a matter of the difference in air density—as he crossed the twenty-foot dome and squatted to look into a bin with a transparent side. The bin bore the label in raised letters, Potassium Tetraoxide.

On Earth, water is the first worry of those who travel to out-of-the-way places. Food is next, with comfort close behind depending on the climate. On the Moon, oxygen was first. The main source of oxygen was potassium tetraoxide, a wonderful compound that gave up oxygen when exposed to moisture and then combined with carbon dioxide and removed it from the atmosphere. And each man needed some one thousand pounds of the chemical to survive on the Moon for twenty-eight days. A cylinder, bulky and heavy, of liquid air mounted under the sled supplied the air make-up in the dome. And a tank of water, well insulated by means of a hollow shiny shell open to the Moon’s atmosphere, gave them water and served in part as the agent to release oxygen from the pottet when needed.

The dome checked out and by common consent both men swung to the radio, hungry for the reassuring sound of another human voice. Mcintosh tuned it and said into the mike, “Moon Station to Earth. Fowler and Mcintosh checking in. Everything in order. Over.”

About four seconds later the transmitter emitted what the two men waited to hear. “Pole Number One to Moon. Welcome to the network. How are you, boys? Everything shipshape? Over.”

Mcintosh glanced at Fowler and a vision of the crevice swam between them. Mcintosh said, “Everything fine, Pole Number One. Dome in order. Men in good shape. All’s well on the Moon. Over.”

About three seconds’ wait, then: “Good. We will now take up Schedule Charlie. Time, 0641. Next check-in, 0900. Out.” Mcintosh hung up the mike quickly and hit the switches to save power.

The two men removed their spacesuits and sat down on a low bench and poured tea from the thermos.

Mcintosh was a stocky man with blue eyes and sandy hair cut short. He was built like a rectangular block of granite, thick chest, thick waist, thick legs; even his fingers seemed square in cross section. His movements were deliberate and conveyed an air of relentlessness.

Fowler was slightly taller than Mcintosh. His hair and eyes were black, his skin dark. He was lean and walked with a slight stoop. His waist seemed too small and his shoulders too wide. He moved in a flowing sinuous manner like a cat perpetually stalking its prey.

They sipped the hot liquid gratefully, inhaling the wet fragrance of it. They carried their cups to the edge of the dome and looked out the double layer of transparent resin that served as one of the windows. The filter was in place and they pushed against it and looked out.

“Dreary looking place, isn’t it?” said Fowler.

Mcintosh nodded.

They sipped their tea, holding it close under their noses when they weren’t drinking, looking out at the moonscape, trying to grasp it, adjusting their minds to it, thinking of the days ahead.

They finished, and Fowler said, “Well, time to get to work. You all set?”

Mcintosh nodded. They climbed into their spacesuits and passed through the lock, one at a time. They checked over the exterior of the dome and every piece of mechanism mounted on the sled. Fowler mounted an outside seat, cleared with Mcintosh, and started the drive motor. The great sled, complete with dome, parabolic mirror, spherical boilers, batteries, antennas, and a complex of other equipment rolled slowly forward on great, sponge-filled tires. Mcintosh walked beside it. Fowler watched his odometer and when the sled had moved five hundred yards he brought it to a halt. He dismounted and the two of them continued the survey started months back by their predecessors.

They took samples, they read radiation levels, they ran the survey, they ate and slept, they took more samples. They kept to a rigid routine, for that was the way to make time pass, that was the way to preserve sanity.

The days passed. The two men grew accustomed to the low gravitation, so they recovered the cargo rocket. Yet they moved about with more than the usual caution for Moon men. They had learned earlier than the others that an insignificant and trivial bit of negligence can cost a man his life. And as time went by they became aware of another phenomenon of life on the Moon. On Earth, in an uncomfortable and dangerous situation, you become accustomed to the surroundings and can achieve a measure of relaxation. Not on the Moon. The dismal bright and less-bright grays, the oppressive barrenness of the gray moonscape, the utter aloneness of two men in a gray wilderness, slowly took on the tone of a gray malevolence seeking an unguarded moment. And the longer they stayed the worse it became. So the men kept themselves busier than ever, driving themselves to exhaustion, sinking into restless sleep, and up to work again. They made more frequent five-hundred-yard jumps; they expanded the survey; they sought frozen water or frozen air deep in crevices, but found only frozen carbon dioxide. They kept a careful eye on the pottet, for hard-working men consume more oxygen, and the supply was limited. And every time they checked the remaining supply they remembered what had happened to Booker and Whitman.

A pipeline had frozen. Booker took a bucket of water and began to skirt the pottet bin. The bail of the bucket caught on the corner of the lid of the bin. Booker carelessly hoisted the bucket to free it. The lid pulled open and the canvas bucket struck a corner and emptied into the bin. Instantly the dome filled with oxygen and steam. The safety valves opened and bled off the steam and oxygen to the outside, where it froze and fell like snow and slowly evaporated. The bin ruptured from the heat and broke a line carrying hydraulic fluid. Twenty gallons of hydraulic fluid flooded the pottet, reacting with it, forming potassium salts with the silicone liquid, releasing some oxygen, irretrievably locking up the rest.

Booker’s backward leap caromed him off the ceiling and out of harm’s way. After a horrified moment, the two men assessed the damage and calmly radioed Earth that they had a seven-Earth-day supply of oxygen left. Whereupon they stocked one spacesuit with a full supply of the salvaged pottet and lay down on their bunks. For six Earth days they lay motionless; activity consumes oxygen. They lay calm; panic makes the heart beat faster and a racing blood stream consumes oxygen.

For four days slightly more than two thousand men on Earth struggled to get an off-schedule rocket to the Moon. The already fantastic requirements of fuel and equipment needed to put two men and supplies on the Moon every month had to be increased. The tempo of round-the-clock schedules stepped up to inhuman heights; there were two men lying motionless on the Moon.

It lacked but a few hours of the seven days when Booker and Whitman felt the shudder that told them a rocket had crash-landed near by. They sat up and looked at each other, and it was apparent that Whitman had the most strength left. So Booker climbed into the spacesuit while Whitman lay down again. And Booker went out to the crashed rocket feeling strong from the fresh oxygen in the spacesuit. He scraped up pottet along with the silica dust and carried it in a broken container back into the dome. Whitman was almost unconscious by the time Booker got back and put water into the pottet. The two men lived. And by the time their replacements arrived the dome was again in as perfect condition as it had been. Except there was a different type of cover on the pottet bin.

So Fowler and Mcintosh worked endlessly, ranging far out from the dome on their survey. The tension built up in them, for the worst was yet to come. The long Lunar day was fast drawing to a close, and night was about to fall, a black night fourteen Earth-days long.

“Well, here it comes,” said Mcintosh on the twelfth Earth-day. He pointed west. Fowler climbed up on the hummock beside him and looked. He saw the bottom half of the sun mashed by a distant mountain range and a broad band of shadow reaching out toward them. The shadow stretched as far north and south as he could see.

“Yes,” said Fowler. “It won’t be long now. We’d better get back.”

They jumped down from the hummock and started for the dome, samples forgotten. At first they walked, throwing glances back over their shoulders. The pace grew faster until they were traveling in the peculiar ground-consuming lope of men in a hurry under light gravity.

They reached the dome and went in together. Inside they removed their helmets and Mcintosh headed for the radio. Fowler dropped a hand on his shoulder and said, “Wait, Mac. We have half an hour before we’re due to check in.”

Mcintosh picked up a cloth and wiped his wet forehead, running the cloth through his sandy hair. “Yes,” he said. “You’re right. If we check in too soon they’ll worry. Let’s make some tea.”

They removed their suits and brewed two steaming cups. They sat down and sipped the scalding fluid and slowly relaxed a little.

“You know,” said Fowler, “it’s right about now that I’m glad we have an independent water supply. Repurified stuff would begin to taste bad about now.”

Mcintosh nodded. “I noticed it a day or two ago. I think I’d have trouble if the water weren’t fresh.” And the two men fell silent thinking of Tilton and Beck.

Tilton and Beck had been the second pair of men on the Moon. Very little water was sent up in those days, only enough for make-up. Tiny stills and ion-exchange resins purified all body waste products and produced a pure clear water. Tilton and Beck had lived on that water for weeks on Earth and they, along with dozens of others, had pronounced it as fit to drink as spring water.

Then they went to the Moon. Two Earth-days after night fell Beck thought the water tasted bad. Tilton did, too. They knew the water was sweet and clean, they knew it was imagination that gave the water its taste, but they could not help it. They reached a point where the water wrenched at their insides; it tasted so foul they could not drink it. Then they radioed Earth for help, and began living off the make-up water. But Earth was not as experienced in emergency rocket send-offs in those days. The pleas for decent water for the men on the Moon grew weaker. The first rocket might have saved them, except its controls were erratic and it crash-landed five hundred miles from the dome. The second rocket carried the replacements, and when they entered the dome they found Tilton and Beck dead, cheeks sunken, skin parched, lips cracked and broken, dehydrated, dead of thirst. And within easy reach of the two dried-out bodies was twenty-five gallons of clear, pure—almost chemically pure —tasteless, odorless water, sparkling bright with dissolved oxygen.

Fowler and Mcintosh finished their tea and radioed in at check time. They announced that night had overtaken them. A new schedule was set up, one with far more frequent radio contacts. And immediately they set about their new tasks. No more trips far from the dome, no surveying. They broke the telescope from its cover and set up the spectrometer. Inside the dome they converted part of the drafting table to a small but astonishingly complete analytical chemical laboratory.

The planners of the Moon survey from the very beginning recognized that night on the Moon presented a difficult problem. So they scheduled replacements to arrive when the Moon day was about forty-eight hours old. Thus the men had twelve Earth-days of sunlight to get ready for the emotional ordeal of the long night. Such a system insured that the spaceship landed on the Moon in daylight and also allowed optimum psychological adjustment. Shorter periods of residence on the Moon were not feasible, since the full twenty-eight days were needed to prepare for the shuttle flight from Earth to the space station, from the space station to the Moon, and return. Then, too, at least one supply rocket a month had to be crash-landed within easy walking distance of the dome. The effort and money expended by the United States to do these things were prodigious. But future property rights on the Moon might well go to the nation that continuously occupied it.

Fowler looked up from adjusting the telescope and said, “Look at that, Al.” His arm pointed to the Earth brightly swimming in a sea of star-pointed blackness.

They saw the Western Hemisphere, white-dotted with clouds, and a brilliant blinding spot of white in the South Pacific off the coast of Peru where the ocean reflected the sun’s light to them.

Mcintosh said, “Beautiful, isn’t it? I can just about see Florida. Good old Orlando. I’ll bet the lemon blossoms smell good these days. You know, it looks even better at night than it does in day.”

Fowler nodded inside his helmet. “You know, we’ve certainly gone and loused up a good old tradition.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, picture it. A guy and his girl go out walking in the moonlight down there. They’d sigh and feel all choked up and gaze at the Moon. Now when they look up they know there’s a couple of slobs sprinting around up here. It must take something away.”

“I’ll bet,” chuckled Mcintosh.

Fowler dropped his gaze to the moonscape and looked around and said, “It sure looks different here at night.”

They studied the eerie scene. As always, it showed nothing but varying shades of gray, but now the tones were dark and foreboding. The sharp, dim starlight and soft earth-shine threw no shadows but spread a ghostly luminescence over ridge and draw alike. It was impossible to tell just where the actual seeing left off and the imagination began.

Fowler muttered, almost under his breath, “The night is full of forms of fear.”

“What?”

“The night is full of forms of fear. It’s a line I read some place.”

They looked around in silence, turning the ungainly space-suits. Mcintosh said, “It sure describes this place.”

Several Earth-days passed. The two men kept busy making astronomical observation and checking out some of the minerals collected during the long day. They made short trips out into the region around the dome but they took no samples; they let the scintillation counters built into their suits do the probing for hot spots as they simply walked around. And often while they were outside striding through the moondust on their separate paths, one of them would say, “How’re things?” And the other would say, “O.K., how’re things there?” The urge to hear a human voice rose powerful and often.

It was on one of these outside trips that their first real panic occurred. The two men were each about a hundred yards away from the dome and on opposite sides. Mcintosh did not notice a telltale slight dip in the dust where a shallow crack lay almost filled with light flourlike particles. His foot went in. He twisted and fell on his back so that his caught leg would bend at the knee and not wrench the knee-joint of the suit. He hit with a jolt; his forward speed added to the normal speed of fall. The impact was not great but it clanged loudly inside the suit. Mcintosh grunted, and said “damn,” and sat up to free his foot. Fowler’s voice sounded in his headphones. “You O.K., Mac?”

“Yeah,” said Mcintosh. “I fell down but I’m not hurt a bit. Things are fine.”

“Mac,” Fowler’s voice was shrill. “You O.K.?”

“Yes. Not a thing wrong. Just took a—”

“For God’s sake, Mac, answer me.” Fowler’s voice was a near scream, panic bubbling through it.

The fear was contagious. Mcintosh yanked his foot out of the crevice, leaped to his feet, and ran for the dome shouting, “What is it, Walt. What’s the matter. I’m coming. What is it?” And as he ran he could hear Fowler screaming now for him to answer.

Mcintosh rounded the dome and almost collided with Fowler coming in the opposite direction. The two slipped and skidded to a halt, clouds of dust kicking up around their feet and settling as fast as they rose. Once stopped, the two men jumped toward each other and touched helmets.

“What is it, Walt?” shouted Mcintosh.

“What happened to you?” came Fowler’s voice, choked, gasping. Mcintosh could hear it both through the helmet and through his headphones. It sounded hollow.

Mcintosh shouted again. “I took a little spill, that’s all. I told you I was all right over the set. Didn’t you hear me?”

“No.” Fowler was getting himself under control. “I kept calling you and getting no answer. Something must be wrong with the sets.”

“Yeah. It’s either your receiver or my transmitter. Let’s go in and check them out.”

They entered the dome together and removed their suits. They wiped the sweat from their faces and automatically started to make tea, but they stopped. Power was in short supply during the night and hot water had to be held to a minimum. So they checked the radios instead.

They went over Mcintosh’s transmitter first, since he had had the fall. They soon found the trouble. A tiny grain of silica had shorted a condenser in the printed circuit. It was easily fixed and then the transmitter worked again. They put on the suits and went outside. But the shock they suffered was not so easily remedied. And thereafter when they were outside they were never out of sight of each other.

Time went by. The looming loneliness of the brooding moonscape closed ever more tightly around them. Their surroundings took on the stature of a living thing, menacing, waiting, lurking. Even the radio contacts with Earth lost much of their meaning; the voices were just voices, not really belonging to people.

On Earth a man can be deep in a trackless and impenetrable jungle, yet there is a chance a fellow human being will happen by. A man can be isolated on the remotest of desert islands and still maintain a reasonable hope that a ship, or canoe, or plane will carry another human being to him. A man sentenced to a life of solitary confinement knows for certain that there are people on the other side of the wall.

But on the Moon there is complete aloneness. There are no human beings and—what is worse—no possibility of any human beings. And never before had men, two men, found themselves in such a position. The human mind, adaptable entity that it is, nevertheless had to reach beyond its boundaries to absorb the reality of perfect isolation.

The lunar night wore on. Fowler and Mcintosh were out spreading their dirty laundry for the usual three-hour exposure to Moon conditions before shaking the clothes out and packing them away ‘til they were needed again.

Fowler straightened up and looked at the Earth for a moment, then said, “Mac, did you ever eat in a diner on a train?”

“Sure, many times.”

“You remember how the headwaiter seated people?”

Mcintosh thought for a moment then said, “I know what you mean. He keeps them apart. He seats individuals at empty tables until there are no more empty tables; then he begins to double them up.”

“That’s it. He preserves the illusion of isolation. I guess people don’t know how much they need one another.”

“I guess they don’t. People are funny that way.”

They grinned at each other through the faceplates, although it was too dark to see inside the spacesuits. They finished spreading the laundry and went into the dome together. Both of them had recently come to realize a striking thing. If one of them died, the other could not survive. It was difficult enough to preserve sanity with two. One alone could not last an Earth-day. The men on the Moon lived in pairs or they died in pairs. And if Fowler and Mcintosh had thought to look at each other closely, they would have noticed a few incipient lines radiating from the eyes. Nothing striking, nothing abnormal, and certainly nothing as intense as the far look. Just the suggestion of a few lines around the eyes.

The night had only two Earth-days to run. Fowler and Mcintosh for the first time began to turn their thoughts to the journey home, not with longing, not with anticipation, but as a possibility of something that might happen. The actuality of leaving the Moon seemed too unreal to be true. And the cold harsh fact was that the rocket might not come; it had happened before. So though they dimly realized that in a mere four Earth-days they might leave the grim grayness behind, they were not much concerned.

A series of observations ended. Fowler and Mcintosh sipped hot tea, drawing the warmth into their chilled bodies. Fowler sat perched on one end of a bench. Mcintosh cupped the teacup in his hands and stood looking out at the lowering moonscape, wishing he could pull his eyes from it, too fascinated by its awfulness to do so. There was complete silence in the dome.

“Don.” The word came as a gasp, as though Mcintosh had called the name before he had completely swallowed a mouthful of tea.

Fowler looked up, mildly curious. He saw Mcintosh drop the teacup, saw it bounce off the floor. He saw Mcintosh straining forward, taut, neck muscles standing out, mouth open, one hand against the clear plastic.

“Don. I saw something move out there.” The words were shrill, harsh, hysteria in every syllable.

Fowler landed beside him in a single leap and looked, not out the window, but at his face. At the staring, terror-filled eyes, the drawn mouth. Fowler threw his arms around Mcintosh’s chest and squeezed hard and said, “Easy, Mac, easy. Don’t let the shadows get you. Things are all right.”

“I tell you I saw something. A sudden movement. Near that hillock but at a greater range and to the right. Something moved, Don.” And he inhaled a great shuddering gasp.

Fowler kept his arms around Mcintosh and looked out. He saw only the jagged dim surface of the Moon. For a long moment he looked out, listening to Mcintosh’s gasping breath, a chill fear slowly rising inside him. He turned his head to look at Mcintosh’s face again, and as he did he caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye. He dropped his arms and jerked his head back to look out as Mcintosh screamed, ‘There, there it is again, but it’s moved.”

The two men, both panting, strained at the window. For a full minute they stood with every muscle pulled tight, gulping down air, perspiration prickling out of their scalps and running down over face and neck. Their eyes saw fantastic shapes in the sharp dim light but their minds told them it was imagination.

Then they saw it clearly. About one hundred yards straight out in front of the window a tiny fountain of moondust sprayed upward and outward from a glowing base that winked out as swiftly as it appeared. Like the blossoming of a death-colored gray rose, the dust from a handspread of surface suddenly rose and spread outward in a circle and just as suddenly fell back to the surface.

“What is it?” hissed Fowler.

“I don’t know.”

They watched, the tension so great that they shuddered. They saw another one, bigger, out farther and to the left. They watched. Another, small, in much closer, the brief white base instantly flashing through shades of deeper reds and disappearing.

“Spacesuits,” gasped Fowler. “Get into the spacesuits.”

And he turned and jumped to the rack, Mcintosh alongside him. They slipped into the cumbersome suits with the swift smoothness of long practice. They twisted the helmets on.

“Radio O.K.?” said Mcintosh.

“Check. Let’s look.”

And the two jumped back to the window. The activity outside seemed to have stopped. They watched for six full minutes before they saw another of the dust fountains. After they saw it, they twisted their suits to look at each other. They were bringing themselves under control, trying to reason out a cause for what they saw.

“Any ideas?” said Mcintosh.

“No,” said Fowler. “Let’s try the other windows.”

They took up separate places at the two remaining windows.

“See anything?”

“Nothing. Just that hideous-looking terrain. I guess it’s all on the other— Wait. There’s one. Way out. I could just—”

“I’ve got one, too,” said Fowler. “It’s all around us. Let’s call Earth.”

They moved over to the radio. Fowler turned the volume high and Mcintosh hit the On switch. Almost immediately they heard a voice, mounting swiftly in loudness. “Station Number One to Moon Station. Station Number One to Moon Station.” Over and over it repeated the words.

Mcintosh touched a microphone to his helmet, flipped the Transmit switch and said, “Moon Station to Station Number One. We hear you. Over.”

“Thank God,” came the voice. “Listen. The Leonid meteor swarm may hit you. Find cover. Find a cave or bridge and get out of the open. Repeat. Meteor swarm may hit you. Find cover. Over.”

At the word “meteor” Mcintosh swung to face Fowler. The two moved closer together to see into the faceplates. Each face broke into a smile of relief at the knowledge of what was happening.

Mcintosh touched the microphone to his helmet and said, “We’re already in it. There is no cave or other shelter within forty miles. How long do you expect the shower—”

There was a thunderous explosion and a brilliant flash of light, that seared the eyeballs of both men. Something heavy dropped on them and gently clung to the spacesuits. They struggled futilely against the softness that enfolded them. Mcintosh dropped the microphone and flailed his arms. Fowler sought to lift off the cloying substance; he dropped to one knee and fought it, but it would not give. Both men fought blind; the caressing enfolding material brought complete blackness.

Mcintosh felt something grip his ankle and he lashed out with his foot. He felt it crash against something hard, but something that rolled with his kick and then bore back against his legs and knocked him over. His arms were still entangled in the material but he tried to flail the thing that crawled on top of him. With a superhuman effort he encircled the upper portion of the thing with layers of the soft material and began to squeeze. Through the thickness of the material he felt the familiar outline of a helmet with a short flexible antenna reaching up from the back. And he realized he was fighting Fowler.

“Mac, it’s me. The dome’s punctured and fallen in on us. You hear me?”

“Yes,” said Mcintosh, gasping for air. “I didn’t know what happened. You all right?”

“Yes. Let’s get out of here. Shoulder to shoulder ‘til we find the lock. Let’s go.”

They crawled side by side, lifting the heavy leaded plastic in front of them. They bumped into the drafting table and oriented themselves. They passed out through the useless lock and stood up outside and looked at the dome. It is a terrible thing when a man’s home is destroyed. But on Earth a man can go elsewhere; he has relatives, friends, to turn to. His heart may be heavy, but his life is not in peril.

Fowler and Mcintosh looked at their collapsed dome and doom itself froze around their hearts. They stood alone on a frozen, shadow-ridden, human-hating world. They stood hand in hand with death.

They looked at the collapsed dome and the way it lay over the equipment they knew so well, softening the sharp angles, filling in the hollow spaces in the interior. The equipment outside looked stark and awkward, standing high, silhouetted against the luminous grayness. The antenna caught Mcintosh’s eye.

He swallowed heavily and said, “Let’s radio Earth and give them the news. We were talking to them when we got hit.”

Fowler dumbly followed him to a small box on the far side of the sled and watched him remove the mike and receiver from a small box. Mcintosh faced out from the sled and held the receiver against one side of the helmet and the mike against the other. Fowler slipped behind him. They stood back to back, helmets touching, Mcintosh doing the talking, Fowler operating the switches and listening to all that was said. The receiver was silent when Fowler turned it on. Earth was listening, waiting. He switched to Transmit and nudged Mcintosh.

“Moon Station to Space Station Number One. Over.”

In five seconds a voice came back. “Pole Station to Moon Station. Space Station Number One is out of line of sight. What happened? You all right?”

“Yes. Meteor punctured dome. We’re outside. Over.”

It was considerably more than five seconds before the voice came back, quieter but more intense. “Can you fix it?”

“We don’t know. We’ll go over the damage and talk to you soon. Out.”

Mcintosh dropped his hands and Fowler turned the switch off. “Well,” said Mcintosh, “we’d better see how bad it is. They may want to call the whole thing off.”

Fowler nodded. Getting the sled and dome and equipment to the Moon had called for prodigious effort and staggering cost. It could not be duplicated in a hurry. Their replacements were already on the way. The dome had to be operating if they were to stay. And the spaceship could only carry two men back.

“Let’s look it over,” said Fowler. As they turned to climb up on the sled a fountain of dust sprang up ten feet to their right. They looked out over the sullen moonscape; the meteors were still falling. But they didn’t care. They climbed up on the sled and carefully picked their way on top of the collapsed material to where they had been standing when the meteor struck. They pulled out several folds and found the hole. They inspected it with growing excitement.

The hole was a foot in diameter, neatly round. Around the perimeter was a thick ridge charred slightly on the inner edge where the thermoplastic material had fused and rolled back. The ridge had strengthened the material and prevented it from splitting and tearing when the air in the dome rushed out. The hole in the inner layer measured about eighteen inches in diameter and the encircling ridge was even thicker.

Fowler held the hand-powered flashlight on the material surrounding the holes while he examined it carefully. “Mac,” he said, “we can fix it. We’ve got enough scrap dome plastic to seal these holes. Let’s see if the meteor went out the bottom.”

They moved the holes around on the floor of the dome and found a four-inch hole through the plastic floor. Looking down it, they could see a small crater in the Moon’s surface half-filled with a white solid.

Mcintosh said, “It went through one of the batteries, but we won’t miss it. We’ve got some scrap flooring plastic and some insulation around. We can fix this, too. Our make-up air is in good supply. Don,” he stood up, “we’re gonna make it.”

“Yes,” said Fowler, letting the light go out. “Let’s radio Earth.”

They went back to the set and Fowler reported their findings. They could hear the joy come back in the man’s voice as he wished them luck and told them an extra rocket with make-up air would be on the way soon. “What about the meteor shower?”

Fowler and Mcintosh looked around; they had forgotten the meteors again. They could see the spurts of moondust clearly against the gray and black shadows.

“They’re still falling,” said Fowler. “Nothing to do but sweat them out. Call you later. Out.” And he and Mcintosh sat down. A nation sweated it out with them. An entire people felt fear strike at their hearts at the thought of two men sitting beside a collapsed dome amidst a shower of invisible cosmic motes traveling at unthinkable speeds. But there was no way for anyone to be of the slightest aid to the two men on the Moon.

Quiet they sat and dumb. The meteors, forgotten for a moment, were now a challenge to the very presence of men in such a place. A mere light touch from a cosmic pebble, and a human life would snuff out. A touch on the hand, the foot, is enough; it would take so little. They were something apart from the human race, men, yet not men. For no man could be so alone, such a speck, a trifle, a nothing, so alone were they. Quiet they sat and dumb. But each man’s heart beat thick and quick like a madman on a drum. And the meteors fell.

“Mac.”

“Yes.”

“Why do we sit here? Why don’t we fix it?”

“Suppose it gets hit again?”

“Suppose it does. It’ll be hit whether it’s collapsed or full. At least we’ll have these holes patched. Maybe it’ll be easier for the next team—”

Mcintosh stood up. “Of course,” he said. “We can get that much done no matter what happens.”

Fowler stood up and began to turn to the sled to climb up. A tiny spot of brightness suddenly appeared on Mcintosh’s left shoulder. With a feeling of blackness closing in on his body, Fowler flung himself at Mcintosh and clamped a hand over the spot where the glow had been. The weight of his body knocked Mcintosh down but Fowler clung to him, kept his hand pressed firmly against the spot where the meteor had hit.

“Mac,” said Fowler with the taste of copper in his mouth. “Mac. Can you hear me?”

“I hear you fine. What’s the matter with you? You like to scared me to death.”

“You got hit. On the left shoulder. Your suit must be punctured. I’ve got my hand over it.”

“Don, I didn’t even feel it. There can’t possibly be a hole there or I’d have felt the air go, or at least some of it. Take a look.”

They got to their feet. Fowler kept his hand in place while he retrieved the flashlight. He got it going and quickly removed his hand and showed the light over the spot to look. At first he saw nothing, so he held his helmet closer. Then he saw it. A tiny crater so small as to amount to nothing beyond a slight disturbance of the shiny surface of the suit. Smaller than the head of a pin it was and not as deep as it was broad.

He let the light go out and said in a choked voice, “Must have been a small one, smaller than a grain of sand. No damage at all.”

“Good. Let’s get to work.”

They cut out two four-foot squares of dome material and several chunks of flooring plastic. They filled the bottom of the hole in the floor with five inches of insulation. They plugged in a wedge-shaped soldering iron and melted the plastic and worked it in to the top three inches of flooring, making an under-cut to seal the hole solidly. And the floor was fixed.

Fowler pulled over the squares of dome material while Mcintosh adjusted the temperature of the iron to that just below the melting point of the material. Fowler placed the first square inside the hole in the inner layer. He ran the hot blade around the ridge of fused plastic. It sealed well; the thick, leaded, shiny, dome material stiffly flowed together and solidified. Fowler sealed the patches in place with a series of five fused circles concentric to the hole and spaced about three inches apart. The inner hole was hard to work with, for he had to reach through the outer hole, but he managed it. The outer hole went fast. And when they finished they were certain that the dome was as good as ever.

They stood up from their work and looked around. Out onto the moonscape they looked long and carefully. And nowhere could they see one of the dread dust fountains. Slowly and carefully they walked to the edge of the sled and dropped off. They sat down and looked some more, carefully preventing their imaginations from picturing things more fantastic than what was already there. After ten minutes there was no doubt about it, the meteor shower was over.

“Let’s blow her up,” said Fowler.

Mcintosh checked the heated outlet from the air cylinder and then passed current through the coils that heated the cylinder itself. At his O.K., Fowler cracked the valve and air began to flow into the dome. They watched it carefully as it rose, looking for the tell-tale white streams that told of a leak. There were none detectable in either layer. And in half an hour the dome stood full and taut with a good five pounds pressure inside. They went in through the lock together.

Mcintosh started the light tube while Fowler began a check of the gauges. In ten minutes it was apparent that things were in order. The dome was warming up too, so they took off their helmets, keeping a wary eye on the gauges. Soon they took off their suits.

The radio was still on, so Fowler called in to Earth that everything was in order. The voice was warm and friendly, congratulating them on their work and passing on the reassurances of men everywhere. They learned that their replacements were on schedule, so far.

The two men looked up at the patch on the ceiling, with its corners dangling downward. They looked at each other and Fowler started to make tea. Mcintosh walked to a window and as he got there his feet started to slip out from under him. He caught himself and bent to see what he had slipped on. He found a thin sheet of ice on the floor.

“Where’d this come from?”

Fowler looked over and smiled. “That’s, from the cup of tea you dropped when you saw the first meteor. Remember?”

“Oooh, yes.” And Mcintosh chipped it up and put it in the waste pot to be purified and used on the pottet.

They had their tea, and they slept long and restlessly. They picked up their work schedule, and very soon they could see the brightness on the mountain tops to the west. The sun was coming back.

But it brought no joy. They were beyond any emotional response to night or day. Bright gray or dark gray, it did not matter. It was still the Moon.

On the second Earth-day of sunlight they spoke to the approaching spaceship and made preparations to leave. The laundry was all done and ready for use. The dome was tidy. Their last job was to brew tea and put it in the thermos to keep hot for their replacements.

They donned their spacesuits for the last time on the Moon and went out the lock together to watch the little flame in the black sky grow larger.

The ship landed and the dust settled immediately. Fowler and Mcintosh walked slowly toward the ship; they did not hurry. The door in the side opened, a ladder dropped out, and two suited figures climbed awkwardly to the Moon’s surface.

Before they had a chance to look around, Mcintosh called, “Over here. The dome is over here.”

The four men came together and shook hands noisily. Fowler said, “You can see the dome.” He pointed to it a half mile away. “We’ve left some hot tea for you there. The terrain is pretty rough so watch yourself moving around for a few days. Good luck.” They shook hands. The replacements headed for the dome while Fowler and Mcintosh went to the ship and climbed in without looking back. They dogged home the lock, removed their suits, stretched out on the acceleration bunks, and called “O.K.,” into the intercom.

“Right,” said the pilot from his compartment. “Welcome aboard and stand by.”

In a moment they felt the acceleration, steadily mounting. But it soon eased off, and they slept. For most of the five-day journey they slept. And if they had thought to look at each other during their few waking hours, they would have seen nothing unusual—a few incipient, almost invisible lines around the eyes, nothing more. Neither Fowler nor Mcintosh had the far look.

The ship reached the space station and tied to it. Fowler and Mcintosh transferred to the shuttle and swiftly dropped toward Earth. They heard the air whistle as it thickened.

The television cameras first picked up the ship as a small dot. People the world over craned forward to watch as the bellyskids touched the sand—people who did not know that the ship carried two Moon men who did not have the far look. The people watched the ship skid to a halt amid a slowly settling cloud of dust.

And as they watched, the door amidships swung in. The sun slanted in through the door and showed two figures standing there. The figures moved to a point just inside the door and stopped. They stood there motionless, looking out for what seemed an interminable period.

As Fowler and Mcintosh looked out the door, they saw the shimmering sands of the New Mexican desert. But they saw more than that. They saw more than home. They saw the spawning-place of the human race. In a roaring rush of recognition, they knew they had done more than simply return to Earth. They had rejoined the human race. They had been apart and were now one again with that brawling, pesky, restless race in which all were brothers, all were one. This was not a return to Earth. This was a return to the womb, to the womb that had nourished them and made them men. A flood of sympathy and heart-felt understanding poured through them as they stared out at the shimmering sands. The kinks and twists of personality fell away and left men of untrammeled mind.

Fowler and Mcintosh looked at each other, nodded, and jumped out the door. They fell to their knees in the unaccustomed gravity. They quickly arose, knocked the dust from their clothes, and started walking to where the helicopters were waiting.

The zoom lenses on the television cameras went to work and the faces of Fowler and Mcintosh side by side flashed across the country.

And the eyes were different. A network of deep tiny creases laced out from both corners of each eye. The crinkled appearance of the eyes made each man appear older than he actually was. And there was a look in those eyes of things seen from deep inside. It was a far look, a compelling look, a powerful look set in the eyes of normal men.