Allyn Donnelson

“ Yogi told me what you said about the taxpayers' right to know where their money is going, and it ties in with what a lot of us up here have been discussing.
"Most of our fellows are like Yogi—technicians who chose their line of work because they thought they could help make the world a better place to live in. Now that they have the chance to make the biggest contribution of their whole lives, they're all hemmed in by military rigamarole and red tape. It goes against the grain for scientists." ”

“ I don't get it at all.
"Yogi will explain the science part," the Captain said. "I'm just a publicity man myself, not a teacher. But as a publicity man, Peters, I think we can use you. Would you be game to try a job that could be very important?"
I nodded, still confused but willing.
Yogi started by explaining that Lunette came into existence about a hundred million years ago, a figure the geologists came up with by measuring the radioactivity of the uranium here and comparing it with that of uranium on Earth. ”

“ The Captain turned out to be a right guy, but he sure was upset about the security angle. He couldn't help grinning, though, when Yogi said,
"I still think it's damned funny that a civilian could stumble into a top secret army base 100,000 miles from home!" ”

“ This is a fine adventure, but after all, I got obligations back on Earth."
"It may not be that easy, Tuck. The Captain doesn't know what to do. HQ is going to bust a gasket when they find out about you. After all, the Captain is the only one who has made any trips back since we got here, and the project is so secret that not more than 20 people on Earth have any inkling of it."
I began to flip my lid. "Yogi," I said, "how much does this project cost?"
"Plenty, Tuck, more than you'd imagine. The equipment the guys use for their surveys is pretty high-powered stuff. Why?" ”

“ Yogi explains, "we call a Matter BARS, short for Matter Broadcasting and Receiving Station. It works on HHF—hyper high frequency—and instead of sending out the ordinary type of radio wave lengths it broadcasts matter. It won't work between two points on Earth; it has to have a distance of at least 200,000 miles to bounce from. We bounce stuff off the moon, and broadcast people, equipment—anything of less than 250 pounds—between Earth and Lunette." ”

“ And me and a lot of my buddies who are paying the freight on these deals are getting sick of hearing that only two or three or twenty people in the whole USA knows about this or that secret project. Security is okay, but don't you think we ought to know something about what our money's going for?"
Boy, am I a genius at putting my foot in it! The lighter gravity on Lunette must of gone to my head. Yogi gave me a real funny look, got up from the mess table, and walked off. ”

“ In fact, we're not even sure it is the radioactivity alone. There may be some added effect from the Lunette climate or water. But we have proved, to the satisfaction of everyone here, that almost all Earth diseases and most injuries can be cured on Lunette.
"The mess sergeant had a trick knee when he came here. The trouble disappeared completely when we arrived. One of the geologists had an ulcer. Hasn't felt a pain since the second day. Another guy had some bad powder burns from a lab experiment that disappeared over night, just like your burn did. ”

“ I'm a spot welder and one job I had to do about every six weeks was make six welds on a geedunk we called a "manhole cover." We didn't know what they were, except that they were something special for the Signal Corps, and they looked about as much like manhole covers as anything else.
Well, the way the work is supposed to be scheduled, my welding job is the first thing after it comes off the presses, just before the little coils are put in. So the foreman comes over to me one night—it was October 10, the last day of the World Series—and shows me one of the covers after it's been wired up. ”

“ The people will find out about it eventually, and I don't think they'll like it. Suppose your mother were to die of cancer a few months from now, and you were to find out later that her death was unnecessary, and that your own government could have stopped it. ”

“ I says, "I don't know what happened, but I know I didn't volunteer for no army job, and I'm too old to be drafted again. I must have had amnesia. I wanna lawyer. Lemmee out of here—you're not giving me that army routine again—no siree."
(Mr. President, please don't misunderstand me. I'm as patriotic as the next guy, and I assure you I won't shirk no duty if I'm needed, but I don't have to like it, do I?) ”