The Mammoth Book of 20th Century SF II (52 page)

“I am afraid that you are wrong,” said Jonathon.

“We live here, don’t we? Wouldn’t we know? You asked for me because I know our sun, and I do. But there are other men on our homeworld who know far more than I do. But no one
has ever discovered the least shred of evidence to support your theory.”

“A theory is a guess,” Jonathon said. “We do not guess; we know.”

“Then,” Reynolds said, “explain it to me. Because I don’t know.” He watched the alien’s eyes carefully, waiting for the first indication of a blinking
fit.

But Jonathon’s gaze remained steady and certain. “Would you like to hear of our journey?” it asked.

“Yes.”

“We left our homeworld a great many of your years ago. I cannot tell you exactly when, for reasons I’m certain you can understand, but I will reveal that it was more than a century
ago. In that time we have visited nine stars. The ones we would visit were chosen for us beforehand. Our priests – our leaders – determined the stars that were within our reach and also
able to help in our quest. You see, we have journeyed here in order to ask certain questions.”

“Questions of the stars?”

“Yes, of course. The questions we have are questions only a star may answer.”

“And what are they?” Reynolds asked.

“We have discovered the existence of other universes parallel with our own. Certain creatures – devils and demons – have come from these universes in order to attack and
capture our stars. We feel we must – ”

“Oh, yes,” Reynolds said. “I understand. We’ve run across several of these creatures recently.” And he blinked, matching the twitching of Jonathon’s eye.
“They are awfully fearsome, aren’t they?” When Jonathon stopped, he stopped too. He said, “You don’t have to tell me everything. But can you tell me this: these other
stars you have visited, have they been able to answer any of your questions?”

“Oh, yes. We have learned much from them. These stars were very great – very different from our own.”

“But they weren’t able to answer all your questions?”

“If they had, we would not be here now.”

“And you believe our star may be able to help you?”

“All may help, but the one we seek is the one that can save us.”

“When do you plan to go to the sun?”

“At once,” Jonathon said. “As soon as you leave. I am afraid there is little else you can tell us.”

“I’d like to ask you to stay,” Reynolds said. And he forced himself to go ahead. He knew he could not convince Jonathon without revealing everything, yet, by doing so, he might
also be putting an end to all his hopes. Still, he told the alien about Kelly and, more generally, he told it what the attitude of man was toward their visit. He told it what man wished to know
from them, and why.

Jonathon seemed amazed. It moved about the floor as Reynolds spoke, its feet clanking dully. Then it stopped and stood, its feet only a few inches apart, a position that impressed Reynolds as
one of incredulous amazement. “Your people wish to travel farther into space? You want to visit the stars? But why, Reynolds? Your people do not believe. Why?”

Reynolds smiled. Each time Jonathon said something to him, he felt he knew these people – and how they thought and reacted – a little better than he had before. There was another
question he would very much have liked to ask Jonathon. How long have your people possessed the means of visiting the stars? A very long time, he imagined. Perhaps a longer time than the whole
life-span of the human race. And why hadn’t they gone before now? Reynolds thought he knew: because, until now, they had had no reason for going.

Now Reynolds tried to answer Jonathon’s question. If anyone could, it should be he. “We wish to go to the stars because we are a dissatisfied people. Because we do not live a very
long time as individuals, we feel we must place an important part of our lives into the human race as a whole. In a sense,we surrender a portion of our individual person in return for a sense of
greater immortality. What is an accomplishment for man as a race is also an accomplishment for each individual man. And what are these accomplishments? Basically this: anything a man does that no
other man has done before – whether it is good or evil or neither one or both – is considered by us to be a great accomplishment.”

And – to add emphasis to the point – he blinked once.

Then, holding his eyes steady, he said, “I want you to teach me to talk to the stars. I want you to stay here around the moon long enough to do that.”

Instantly Jonathon said, “No.”

There was an added force to the way it said it, an emphasis its voice had not previously possessed. Then Reynolds realized what that was: at the same moment Jonathon had spoken, Richard too had
said, “No.”

“Then you may be doomed to fail,” Reynolds said. “Didn’t I tell you? I know our star better than any man available to you. Teach me to talk to the stars and I may be able
to help you with this one. Or would you prefer to continue wandering the galaxy forever, failing to find what you seek wherever you go?”

“You are a sensible man, Reynolds. You may be correct. We will ask our home star and see.”

“Do that. And if it says yes and I promise to do what you wish, then I must ask you to promise me something in return. I want you to allow a team of our scientists and technicians to enter
and inspect your ship. You will answer their questions to the best of your ability. And that means truthfully.”

“We always tell the truth,” Jonathon said, blinking savagely.

The moon had made one full circuit of the Earth since Reynolds’ initial meeting with the aliens, and he was quite satisfied with the progress he had made up to now,
especially during the past ten days after Kelly had stopped accompanying him in his daily shuttles to and from the orbiting starship. As a matter of fact, in all that time, he had not had a single
face-to-face meeting with her and they had talked on the phone only once. And she wasn’t here now either, which was strange, since it was noon and she always ate here with the others.

Reynolds had a table to himself in the cafeteria. The food was poor, but it always was, and he was used to that by now. What did bother him, now that he was thinking about it, was Kelly’s
absence. Most days he skipped lunch himself. He tried to remember the last time he had come here. It was more than a week ago, he remembered – more than ten days ago. He didn’t like the
sound of that answer.

Leaning over, he attracted the attention of a girl at an adjoining table. He knew her vaguely. Her father had been an important wheel in NASA when Reynolds was still a star astronaut. He
couldn’t remember the man’s name. His daughter had a tiny cute face and a billowing body about two sizes too big for the head. Also, she had a brain that was much too limited for much
of anything. She worked in the administrative section, which meant she slept with most of the men on the base at one time or another.

“Have you seen Kelly?” he asked her.

“Must be in her office.”

“No, I mean when was the last time you saw her here?”

“In here? Oh – ” The girl thought for a moment. “Doesn’t she eat with the other chiefs?”

Kelly never ate with the other chiefs. She always ate in the cafeteria – for morale purposes – and the fact that the girl did not remember having seen her meant that it had been
several days at least since Kelly had last put in an appearance. Leaving his lunch where it lay, Reynolds got up, nodded politely at the girl, who stared at him as if he were a freak, and hurried
away.

It wasn’t a long walk, but he ran. He had no intention of going to see Kelly. He knew that would prove useless. Instead, he was going to see John Sims. At fifty-two, Sims was the second
oldest man in the base. Like Reynolds, he was a former astronaut. In 1987, when Reynolds, then a famous man, was living in São Paulo, Sims had commanded the first (and only) truly successful
Mars expedition. During those few months, the world had heard his name, but people forgot quickly, and Sims was one of the things they forgot. He had never done more than what he was expected to
do; the threat of death had never come near Sims’ expedition. Reynolds, on the other hand, had failed. On Mars with him, three men had died. Yet it was he – Reynolds, the failure
– who had been the hero, not Sims.

And maybe I’m a hero again, he thought, as he knocked evenly on the door to Sims’ office. Maybe down there the world is once more reading about me daily. He hadn’t listened to
a news broadcast since the night before his first trip to the ship. Had the story been released to the public yet? He couldn’t see any reason why it should be suppressed, but that seldom was
important. He would ask Sims. Sims would know.

The door opened and Reynolds went inside. Sims was a huge man who wore his black hair in a crewcut. The style had been out of fashion for thirty or forty years; Reynolds doubted there was
another crewcut man in the universe. But he could not imagine Sims any other way.

“What’s wrong?” Sims asked, guessing accurately the first time. He led Reynolds to a chair and sat him down. The office was big but empty. A local phone sat upon the desk along
with a couple of daily status reports. Sims was assistant administrative chief, whatever that meant. Reynolds had never understood the functions of the position, if any. But there was one thing
that was clear: Sims knew more about the inner workings of the moon base than any other man. And that included the director as well.

“I want to know about Vonda,” Reynolds said. With Sims, everything stood on a first-name basis. Vonda was Vonda Kelly. The name tasted strangely upon Reynolds’ lips. “Why
isn’t she eating at the cafeteria?”

Sims answered unhesitantly. “Because she’s afraid to leave her desk.”

“It has something to do with the aliens?”

“It does, but I shouldn’t tell you what. She doesn’t want you to know.”

“Tell me. Please.” His desperation cleared the smile from Sims’ lips. And he had almost added: for old times’ sake. He was glad he had controlled himself.

“The main reason is the war,” Sims said. “If it starts, she wants to know at once.”

“Will it?”

Sims shook his head. “I’m smart but I’m not God. As usual, I imagine everything will work out as long as no one makes a stupid mistake. The worst will be a small local war
lasting maybe a month. But how long can you depend upon politicians to act intelligently? It goes against the grain with them.”

“But what about the aliens?”

“Well, as I said, that’s part of it too.” Sims stuck his pipe in his mouth. Reynolds had never seen it lit, never seen him smoking it, but the pipe was invariably there between
his teeth. “A group of men are coming here from Washington, arriving tomorrow. They want to talk with your pets. It seems nobody – least of all Vonda – is very happy with your
progress.”

“I am.”

Sims shrugged, as if to say: that is of no significance.

“The aliens will never agree to see them,” Reynolds said.

“How are they going to stop them? Withdraw the welcome mat? Turn out the lights? That won’t work.”

“But that will ruin everything. All my work up until now.”

“What work?” Sims got up and walked around his desk until he stood hovering above Reynolds. “As far as anybody can see, you haven’t accomplished a damn thing since you
went up there. People want results, Bradley, not a lot of noise. All you’ve given anyone is the noise. This isn’t a private game of yours. This is one of the most significant events in
the history of the human race. If anyone ought to know that, it’s you. Christ.” And he wandered back to his chair again, jiggling his pipe.

“What is it they want from me?” Reynolds said. “Look – I got them what they asked for. The aliens have agreed to let a team of scientists study their ship.”

“We want more than that now. Among other things, we want an alien to come down and visit Washington. Think of the propaganda value of that, and right now is a time when we damn well need
something like that. Here we are, the only country with sense enough to stay on the moon. And being here has finally paid off in a way the politicians can understand. They’ve given you a
month in which to play around – after all, you’re a hero and the publicity is good – but how much longer do you expect them to wait? No, they want action and I’m afraid they
want it now.”

Reynolds was ready to go. He had found out as much as he was apt to find here. And he already knew what he was going to have to do. He would go and find Kelly and tell her she had to keep the
men from Earth away from the aliens. If she wouldn’t agree, then he would go up and tell the aliens and they would leave for the sun. But what if Kelly wouldn’t let him go? He had to
consider that. He knew; he would tell her this: If you don’t let me see them, if you try to keep me away, they’ll know something is wrong and they’ll leave without a backward
glance. Maybe he could tell her the aliens were telepaths; he doubted she would know any better.

He had the plan all worked out so that it could not fail.

He had his hand on the doorknob when Sims called him back. “There’s another thing I better tell you, Bradley.”

“All right. What’s that?”

“Vonda. She’s on your side. She told them to stay away, but it wasn’t enough. She’s been relieved of duty. A replacement is coming with the others.”

“Oh,” said Reynolds.

Properly suited, Reynolds sat in the cockpit of the shuttle tug, watching the pilot beside him going through the ritual of a final inspection prior to takeoff. The dead
desolate surface of the moon stretched briefly away from where the tug sat, the horizon so near that it almost looked touchable. Reynolds liked the moon. If he had not, he would never have elected
to return here to stay. It was the Earth he hated. Better than the moon was space itself, the dark endless void beyond the reach of man’s ugly grasping hands. That was where Reynolds was
going now. Up. Out. Into the void. He was impatient to leave.

The pilot’s voice came to him softly through the suit radio, a low murmur, not loud enough for him to understand what the man was saying. The pilot was talking to himself as he worked,
using the rumble of his own voice as a way of patterning his mind so that it would not lose concentration. The pilot was a young man in his middle twenties, probably on loan from the Air Force, a
lieutenant or, at most, a junior Air Force captain. He was barely old enough to remember when space had really been a frontier. Mankind had decided to go out, and Reynolds had been one of the men
chosen to take the giant steps, but now it was late – the giant steps of twenty years ago were mere tentative contusions in the dust of the centuries – and man was coming back. From
where he sat, looking out, Reynolds could see exactly 50 percent of the present American space program: the protruding bubble of the moon base. The other half was the orbiting space lab that
circled the Earth itself, a battered relic of the expansive seventies. Well beyond the nearby horizon – maybe a hundred miles away – there had once been another bubble, but it was gone
now. The brave men who had lived and worked and struggled and died and survived there – they were all gone too. Where? The Russians still maintained an orbiting space station, so some of
their former moon colonists were undoubtedly there, but where were the rest? In Siberia? Working there? Hadn’t the Russians decided that Siberia – the old barless prison state of the
czars and early Communists – was a more practical frontier than the moon?