Raymond F. Jones

“ Imagine stepping out onto a world so old, from so far away!"
"You haven't heard it all," said Mary tensely.
"There's more?"
"They think perhaps the slightest touch of moon substance may be lethal."
"We don't know," said Jim hastily. "It's a thought that Sam advanced. But I think it's quite possible. We won't know until we can run animal tests. But special precautions will have to be taken to decontaminate the Apollo after you re-enter with your space-suits." ”

“ Then I've got to show the authorities that the moon project has got to stop. We can't go ahead with our moon landings now. If we do, that thing will be stirred out of dormancy into life—and, somehow, it will make its way to earth. I wouldn't be surprised if it could navigate space alone, its own naked being."
Tom turned back to his equipment. "All right, let's go. I want to get a sampling of that before we're through, too."
With a control that he could operate himself, Jim found it endurable. ”

“ He was a chemist, and he had drawn up the specifications for the chemical analyzers of the Prospector, but it had been the electronic boys who dreamed up the remote mechanization and the telemetry equipment that would allow him to sit before a complex panel at the Center and direct his chemical laboratory on the moon to learn what the moon was made of. Some of the light-headed technicians who worked on the project had dubbed it Operation Green Cheese, but Cochran had more respect for the complexity of the effort. ”

“ The quest of the ages would be answered with a few simple statements that could be obtained in any high-school chemistry lab—if the lab were on the moon.
Jim Cochran felt there had to be more to it than that.
Why do dogs howl at the moon on winter nights?
Why do men say that madness of the mind is lunacy?
Why must planting be done in the right phase of the moon? ”

“ Allan, you've got to listen to me! You won't get off the moon alive—"
The phone went dead. Jim hung up slowly and went back to the living room where Mary sat in tense, white fear. She had heard Jim's side of the conversation. She guessed what Allan had said.
"It's no use," said Jim. "Don't try to reach him. He'll hate you forever."
It was no use to run, but they ran anyway. This was what Sam meant when he said he knew what Jim was going to do. Jim Cochran was completely blackballed in his own profession. As he said, he couldn't have gotten a job stirring with a wooden paddle in a soap factory. ”

“ There was no malfunction of equipment. The atoms of the moon's elements were not the same as those of the rest of the galaxy.
When Allan next came to visit on leave from his own station, Jim told him what had been found. Allan's face paled a little as he listened in awe to the story. He stood up and paced across the room as Jim finished.
"I always knew there would be something—something extra in this," he said. "You look up at night and you know the moon can't be just another piece of earth. ”

“ There was no other person Jim felt closer to except Mary and their two children. Allan had dreamed of space when they were kids, and when he was fifteen, he said, "I'm going out there. I don't know how. But, somehow, I'm going out there."
Now, he had been selected to captain the first Apollo voyage. He had been born for that purpose, he said. ”

“ Cochran's crew had finished the chemical checkout, but in the assembly hangar technicians still swarmed about the Prospector, giving final-check to the power and telemetry components.
Jim Cochran signed off the last of the check reports and dropped them in the slot for delivery to the Project Director. He turned off the lights over his own desk and went out to the hangar. Under the blaze of fluorescent lights the device looked like some monstrous insect. The differential housings over the worm-screw drives gleamed like a red, segmented carapace. ”

“ If it is not, this thing may relapse into the dormancy from which it has been shaken. We can only hope.
"But if we persist in our explorations and our probings of the moon we are certain to loose upon ourselves a living force that our entire world of science will be helpless to overcome. ”

“ We should have gone on dreaming about the moon and let it be a dream that never came true. I'm afraid of it now. No man should set foot on something so alien and so different."
Allan put an arm around her shoulders and shook her gently. "Sis! What kind of talk is that? You're talking to the guy who's going to be the first one to put his foot on the moon."
From the mountain of data accumulated in his experiments, Jim wrote his paper. Hennesey could control the publication of any material based on space experiments to the extent that they affected national security. ”

“ Tom met them and was introduced to Sam as he ushered them into his own modest laboratory. "This isn't the plush sort of surroundings you've become used to," he said as he showed them around. "The Government isn't spending billions these days trying to find out how the human mind works."
Jim could well understand Tom's bitterness. Doing research on the frontiers of the mind, he was forced to spend his own money for much of his laboratory equipment. ”

“ Seeds must be planted just so, in relation to the moon, or the crop will fail.
Men had always felt strange things about the moon. Would a Saturn missile and a mechanical monster in its nose be able to destroy all that?
Jim started the car. "Let's get back. I've got to know how the flight's going!"
They were still in the blockhouse, but the tension was relaxed. They were talking and watching the meters and cathode ray tubes without the strain and fear of failure. Jim knew the answer even before Sam and Allan walked up to him and slapped him on the back. ”

“ If the atomic weights are different, and the energy levels are different, they have to be different elements. It doesn't make sense."
"Well, why don't we push on," said Sam, "that is, if you've completed the surface sampling in this spot. Some samples at lower depths may give other indications."
Jim agreed. He drove the drill deeper into the face of the moon. At ten-foot intervals he removed samples and ran them through the analyzer. The results were the same down to the hundred-foot level. All results showed common chemical elements with slightly variant atomic characteristics. ”

“ What's the matter?" said Mary as she and Jim danced together.
"Feel like a zombie. Why don't we give it up and go home? I want to get down to the lab by five in the morning."
"That's the trouble. You've done nothing but live in the lab since the Prospector landed. So we're not going home. ”

“ It was driven out of that time and space by intelligent beings who could not destroy it, but who could at least exile it in a state of dormancy. Or perhaps they thought they had destroyed it and wanted not even the remains in their own domain. Perhaps the craters of the moon were caused by bombardment intended to destroy the thing.
"But it is not dead. It was dormant. Now, our laser probings have stirred it to feeble life. It made a deliberate effort to capture or destroy the Prospector by opening a fissure beneath it. My TV film recording proves that the fissure was not there previously. ”

“ Clear off our rockers to believe there could be something alive five hundred feet inside the moon!"
"Sure—and if it were alive, it wouldn't be sitting still while the laser beams drilled a hole into it. Besides, we just couldn't be lucky enough to lower the drill right smack into some cave where a moon bear was hibernating. All the circuits must have busted down at the same time. We'll fix it tomorrow. Let's get the girls and have a night on the town."
It was a very unsuccessful night on the town. Jim and Mary, and Sam and his wife went to a show and a nightclub. ”

“ By this time, the Prospector had traveled more than ninety miles from the last probe. It was far enough, Jim decided. They'd put down one more probe, then—he didn't know where he'd go from there.
Sam saw the bleakness and bitterness on his face when he came into the tracking station. "No luck?" said Sam.
"What do you think? Have you ever realized that there is no way whatever for the ordinary citizen to get through with a message that requires action at the top? Channels, supervisors' approvals, okays by supervisors' supervisors—the only communication the top level has is with itself ”

“ But while he was still in the general pool of astronauts he had opened his campaign to get Jim into the space program. "They need the best brains they can get," Allan said. "You haven't got any right to sit in a musty old plastics lab while guys with half your ability try to get us into space. ”

“ Which made them different chemical elements!
After six hours, Jim stood up from the console and shook his head wearily. "It's no good, Sam. There's something wrong that I can't put my finger on. If it isn't in the circuits, I don't know where it is. But these readings just aren't right. There's no use going deeper until we find out where the error is."
Sam's face was somber. "There just isn't any error. There can't be. Unless it was made by whoever put the moon together—"
"Please make a complete check of every analyzer and telemetry circuit tonight, and we'll try again tomorrow. ”

“ Consider that the science of the intelligences in the domain that spawned this thing could not destroy it. What chance has our feeble science and powers against such a force? Hydrogen bombs would probably serve only to feed it the energy for which it is starved. ”

“ You've had some success in taking the EEG waves of one person and applying them to the brain of another person so that the latter understood some of the thoughts of the first person while being stimulated by his brain waves. ”

“ The Project Director scanned the panels and the meters that showed the distance traveled by the Prospector.
"Why have you moved the machine so far?" Hennesey demanded. "You've used up valuable machine time that could have been used in additional probes. We may be approaching the end of the useful life of the Prospector very rapidly."
"I am aware of that," said Jim icily. "The stock of reagents aboard is nearly exhausted. I wanted to make at least one comparison probe at a considerable distance from our original site." ”

“ He stopped it a hundred feet from the previous hole and began the long, tedious job of drilling again to the limits of the Prospector's equipment.
Sam spelled him off during the day. By evening, they had hit the four-hundred-and-fifty-foot level. Jim took his first analysis in this hole. The chemicals were there. In greater concentration than at the same level in the previous hole.
Jim turned to Sam. "We have circuits for measuring potential differences on the lunar landscape. Could we make a reading at the bottom of this hole?" ”

“ That doesn't make sense unless your circuits are out of calibration."
"Let's run another standard sample," said Sam.
Within a few minutes the calibration check had been repeated. Jim held up the tape. Sam peered over his shoulder. "Just like the first one," said Sam. "Nothing's wrong with the circuits. Maybe you've got some new stuff there, that's never been identified before."
"That's hardly possible," said Jim. "There aren't any new elements in the places where sodium and calcium and silica are supposed to be. ”