"But where does this life form exist? Surely it can be identified!"
"If I told you, you'd throw me out or call the paddy wagon. Look at
these, first."
Jim and Sam spread out the long folds of chart they had accumulated
through days of recording. "Does it look like anything to you?" asked
Jim.
Tom Banning frowned. "Well, it certainly _could_ be an EEG record of
some kind. The apparatus--"
"The apparatus was nothing but a single electrical probe, and the
signal was transmitted under very unsatisfactory conditions."
"Signal transmitted, you say? Just where did this come from, Jim? You
didn't come all this way just to pull my leg."
"No," said Jim wearily. "If anybody's leg is being pulled, it's mine.
I wanted to see if you could recognize it as having any similarity to
an EEG. Then I wanted to ask about your work you reported in your last
paper. The one on 'EEG as a Brain Stimulus and Communication Medium'."
"Yes? What did you want to know about that?"
"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."
"Yes."
"Would it be possible to do that with this record?"
Tom studied the record silently. "Any cyclic electric impulse can
be applied as a stimulus to the brain. Certainly, this one can. My
question still remains, however, what kind of a creature generated
these pulses? If it is so alien you can't even identify it, we can't
really be sure that these are brain waves. I can only say they may be."
"That's good enough for me," said Jim. "How about setting it up so that
we can see if these tell us anything."
"I think I ought to make you tell me where you got these, first."
"Afterwards, please, Tom."
* * * * *
It took the rest of the day to transcribe the record to the format
required by Tom's light-intensity reader. They set the following day
for the experiment.
Both Sam and Jim were to participate. Tom applied eight electrodes to
the skull of each man. They reclined in deep sleep-back chairs, and Tom
suggested they close their eyes.
Jim began to feel a sense of apprehension as he heard the first faint
whine of the equipment. He knew the transcribed tape was unreeling
slowly beneath the photo-electric scanner. The resulting fluctuating
current was being amplified, filtered, gated to the proper level, and
applied to the electrodes on his skull. He felt nothing.
"Just like a ride on the merry-go-round," he said in disappointment.
Then it struck.
Like a fearful, billowing blackness rising out of the depths of Hell
itself, it washed over him. It sucked at his very soul, corroding,
destroying, a wind of darkness where the very concept of light was
unknown.
He was not conscious of his screaming until he heard his own dying
voice and grew slowly aware of the sudden rawness of his throat. He
heard another screaming and it sounded like Sam. Dimly, he wondered
what had happened to Sam.
Tom was bending over him, patting his face with a cold towel and
murmuring, "Wake up, Jim! You're all right now. You're all right."
He opened his eyes and saw Tom, white-faced. He turned and looked at
Sam, whose head lolled sluggishly while a low whimpering came from his
lips.
"I'm all right," said Jim weakly. "Take care of Sam."
Exhausted, he leaned back and closed his eyes another moment. Sweat
oozed from every pore of his skin, cold, fear-inspired sweat.
* * * * *
An hour later, he felt completely recovered from the experience, except
that his knees were still a little wobbly when he tried his legs.
"We've got to try it again," Jim said. "Can you cut down the intensity
a little? Better still, how about rigging up an intensity control that
we can operate for ourselves?"
"Nobody is trying that thing again in my lab," said Tom Banning. "Do
you think I want a couple of corpses on my hands? Not to mention the
droves of police that your screaming will bring down."
"We've got to _know_," Jim said. "Listen, Tom, I'll tell you where we
got this record. Then you can judge for yourself."
Rapidly, he told Tom all that had happened since their first experience
with the Prospector. The brain specialist listened impassively until
the end of the story.
"So you conclude there's something monstrous on the moon, and this
experience you've just had would indicate that it's highly inimical to
human life," said Tom.
"That's about it," said Jim.
"What do you expect to do about it?"
"I want to finish what we started here. 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.
With the control at minimum intensity, he tensed for that first
terrible impact of the alien impulses pouring into his own mind.
They were weaker, but still he felt as if the shroud of death had
settled over him. He heard a moan from Sam and knew his companion was
experiencing the same sensations.
The impulses of evil poured on through the electrodes into his mind. He
sensed the immensity and purpose of the thing that had generated them.
He sensed that out of some far reach of space, where time and dimension
were not the same, the thing had acquired an eternal nature of a kind
that knew no birth and could experience no death in the dimensions of
man.
He sensed that its nature and its purpose were pure destruction.
Destruction of life in any form. It was a thing of death, and life and
it could not exist in the same universe.
He sensed how it had come and why it had come, and the partial defeat
that had sent it into dormancy because there was no life of the kind it
knew in the universe through which it hurtled.
Now--it was once again aware of life.
* * * * *
The three of them went back to the tracking station laboratory
together. Jim managed to obtain a clearance for Tom to see what they
were doing. "I want to move the Prospector a long distance and try one
more hole," he told Sam.
"What do you mean by a long distance?"
"A hundred miles."
"A hun--! You think you'll still find this thing that far away?"
"We'll find out. Can the Prospector travel that far?"
"Sure. If you wait long enough. Its maximum speed is two miles an
hour."
"A little better than two days. Let's pick the direction of the
flattest and lowest terrain. I don't want to get it up into the
mountains."
During the following two days, Jim considered what his next move should
be. He had to present his data and evidence to a conference of men who
mattered, who could make the necessary decisions. It had to be brought
to the attention of the top levels of NASA. The Department of Defense
and the Presidential advisors should be in on it, too.
His thoughts came to a stop and he felt more than a little hysterical.
Who was he? A third-string chemical researcher on one of dozens of
current NASA projects. Who was going to let him call a conference of
the nation's brass and instruct them to close down the moon program?
Nobody.
In the Civil Service hierarchy to which he belonged there was
absolutely no way on earth by which he could bring his story to the
attention of the people who could act on it.
No way at all. But he had to try.
He tried to reach the Director of NASA. The Director's secretary told
Jim the Director was out of town and could not be reached except for
emergency or other top-priority communications. Jim said that was
exactly the nature of his message. The Secretary told him to get his
Project Director to approve the message and an effort could be made to
get it through.
That meant Hennesey.
Hennesey laughed in his face, and told him that one more fantasy like
that would get him fired.
Jim had known that's the way it would be, but he had to try.
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; generals talk to other generals, Bureau Directors talk
to generals and other Bureau Directors, the President talks to his
advisors who talk only to each other. The communication barrier is
complete and absolute."
"I could have told you that," said Sam. "I've been here longer than you
have. But some of them may still read a newspaper now and then."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Call a news conference of the science editors and reporters of the
major press services and big-city newspapers. Your reputation is big
enough that they'll listen to you."
"You saw what they did to me last time!"