The captain noticed the pronoun. "Well, that's one of the reasons why
I wanted to talk to you, Chapman. The Commission talked it over and
they'd like to see you stay. They feel if they're going to enlarge it,
add more bunkers and have more men up here, that a man of practical
experience should be running things. They figure that you're the only
man who's capable and who's had the experience."
The captain vaguely felt the approach was all wrong.
"Is that all?"
Eberlein was ill at ease. "Naturally you'd be paid well. I don't
imagine any man would like being here all the time. They're prepared to
double your salary--maybe even a bonus in addition--and let you have
full charge. You'd be Director of the Luna Laboratories."
All this and a title too, Chapman thought.
"That's it?" Chapman asked.
Eberlein frowned. "Well, the Commission said they'd be willing to
consider anything else you had in mind, if it was more money or...."
"The answer is no," Chapman said. "I'm not interested in more money
for staying because I'm not interested in staying. Money can't buy it,
captain. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that you'd have to stay up here to
appreciate that.
"Bob Dahl is staying for stopover. If there's something important about
the project or impending changes, perhaps you'd better tell him before
you go."
He walked away.
* * * * *
Chapman held the letter in both hands, but the paper still shook. The
others had left the bunker, the men of the Second taking those of
the Third in hand to show them the machinery and apparatus that was
outside, point out the deadly blisters underneath the pumice covering,
and show them how to keep out of the Sun and how to watch their air
supply.
He was glad he was alone. He felt something trickle down his face and
tasted salt on his lips.
The mail had been distributed and he had saved his latest letter until
the others had left so he could read it in privacy. It was a short
letter, very short.
It started: "Dear Joel: This isn't going to be a nice letter, but I
thought it best that you should know before you came home."
There was more to it, but he hadn't even needed to read it to know what
it said. It wasn't original, of course. Women who change their minds
weren't exactly an innovation, either.
He crumpled the paper and held a match to it and watched it burn on the
steel floor.
Three years had been a long time. It was too long a time to keep loving
a man who was a quarter of a million miles away. She could look up in
the night sky when she was out with somebody else now and tell him how
she had once been engaged to the Man in the Moon.
It would make good conversation. It would be funny. A joke.
He got up and walked over to his phonograph and put the record on. The
somewhat scratchy voice sang as if nothing had happened
Way Back Home by Al Lewis.
The record caught and started repeating the last line.
He hadn't actually wanted to play it. It had been an automatic
response. He had played it lots of times before when he had thought of
Earth. Of going home.
He crossed over and threw the record across the bunker and watched it
shatter on the steel wall and the pieces fall to the floor.
The others came back in the bunker and the men of the Second started
grabbing their bags and few belongings and getting ready to leave.
Dahl sat in a corner, a peculiar expression on his face. He looked as
if he wanted to cry and yet still felt that the occasion was one for
rejoicing.
Chapman walked over to him. "Get your stuff and leave with the others,
Dahl." His voice was quiet and hard.
Dahl looked up, opened his mouth to say something, and then shut
up. Donley and Bening and Dowden were already in the airlock, ready
to leave. Klein caught the conversation and came over. He gripped
Chapman's arm.
"What the hell's going on, Chap? Get your bag and let's go. I know just
the bistro to throw a whing-ding when we get--"
"I'm not going back," Chapman said.
Klein looked annoyed, not believing him. "Come on, what's the matter
with you? You suddenly decide you don't like the blue sky and trees and
stuff? Let's go!"
The men in the lock were looking at them questioningly. Some members
of the Third looked embarrassed, like outsiders caught in a family
argument.
"Look, Julius, I'm not going back," Chapman repeated dully. "I haven't
anything to go back for."
"You're doing a much braver thing than you may think," a voice cut in.
It belonged to Eberlein.
Chapman looked at him. Eberlein flushed, then turned and walked-stiffly
to the lock to join the others.
Just before the inner door of the lock shut, they could hear Chapman,
his hands on his hips, breaking in the Third on how to be happy and
stay healthy on the Moon. His voice was ragged and strained and sounded
like a top-sergeant's.
* * * * *
Dahl and Eberlein stood in the outer port of the relief ship, staring
back at the research bunker. It was half hidden in the shadows of a
rocky overhang that protected it from meteorites.
"They kidded him a lot this morning," Dahl said. "They said he had
found a home on the Moon."
"If we had stayed an hour or so more, he might have changed his mind
and left, after all," Eberlein mused, his face a thoughtful mask behind
his air helmet.
"I offered him money," Dahl said painfully. "I was a coward and I
offered him money to stay in my place." His face was bitter and full
of disgust for himself.
Eberlein turned to him quickly and automatically told him the right
thing.
"We're all cowards once in a while," he said earnestly. "But your offer
of money had nothing to do with his staying. He stayed because he had
to stay, because we made him stay."
"I don't understand," Dahl said.
"Chapman had a lot to go home for. He was engaged to be married." Dahl
winced. "We got her to write him a letter breaking it off. We knew it
meant that he lost one of his main reasons for wanting to go back. I
think, perhaps, that he still would have left if we had stayed and
argued him into going. But we left before he could change his mind."
"That--was a lousy thing to do!"
"We had no choice. We didn't use it except as a last resort."
"I don't know of any girl who would have done such a thing, no matter
what your reasons, if she was in love with a guy like Chapman," Dahl
said.
"There was only one who would have," Eberlein agreed. "Ginny Dixon. She
understood what we were trying to tell her. She had to; her brother had
died up here."
"Why was Chapman so important?" Dahl burst out. "What could he have
done that I couldn't have done--would have done if I had had any guts?"
"Perhaps you could have," Eberlein said. "But I doubt it. I don't think
there were many men who could have. And we couldn't take the chance.
Chapman knows how to live on the Moon. He's like a trapper who's spent
all his time in the forests and knows it like the palm of his hand.
He never makes mistakes, he never fails to check things. And he isn't
a scientist. He would never become so preoccupied with research that
he'd fail to make checks. And he can watch out for those who do make
mistakes. Ginny understood that all too well."
"How did you know all this about Chapman?" Dahl asked.
"The men in the First told us some of it. And we had our own observer
with you here. Bening kept us pretty well informed."
* * * * *
Eberlein stared at the bunker thoughtfully.
"It costs a lot of money to send ships up here and establish a colony.
It will cost a lot to expand it. And with that kind of investment, you
don't take chances. You have to have the best men for the job. You get
them even if they don't want to do it."
He gestured at the small, blotchy globe of blue and green that was the
Earth, riding high in the black sky.
"You remember what it was like five years ago, Dahl? Nations at each
other's throats, re-arming to the teeth? It isn't that way now. We've
got the one lead that nobody can duplicate or catch up on. Nobody has
our technical background. I know, this isn't a military base. But it
could become one."
He paused.
"But these aren't even the most important reasons, Dahl. We're at the
beginnings of space travel, the first bare, feeble start. If this base
on the Moon succeeds, the whole human race will be Outward Bound." He
waved at the stars. "You have your choice--a frontier that lies in the
stars, or a psychotic little world that tries and fails and spends its
time and talents trying to find better methods of suicide.
"With a choice like that, Dahl, you can't let it fail. And personal
lives and viewpoints are expendable. But it's got to be that way.
There's too much at stake."
Eberlein hesitated a moment and when he started again, it was on a
different track. "You're an odd bunch of guys, you and the others in
the groups, Dahl. Damn few of you come up for the glamor, I know.
None of you like it and none of you are really enthusiastic about it.
You were all reluctant to come in the first place, for the most part.
You're a bunch of pretty reluctant heroes, Dahl."
The captain nodded soberly at the bunker. "I, personally, don't feel
happy about that. I don't like having to mess up other people's lives.
I hope I won't have to again. Maybe somehow, someway, this one can be
patched up. We'll try to."
He started the mechanism that closed the port of the rocket. His face
was a study of regret and helplessness. He was thinking of a future
that, despite what he had told Dahl, wasn't quite real to him.
"I feel like a cheap son of a bitch," Eberlein said.
* * * * *
_The very young man said, "Do they actually care where they send us? Do
they actually care what we think?"_
_The older man got up and walked to the window. The bunkers and towers
and squat buildings of the research colony glinted in the sunlight. The
colony had come a long way; it housed several thousands now._
_The Sun was just rising for the long morning and farther down shadows
stabbed across the crater floor. Tycho was by far the most beautiful of
the craters, he thought._
_It was nice to know that the very young man was going to miss it. It
had taken the older man quite a long time to get to like it. But that
was to be expected--he hadn't been on the Moon._
_"I would say so," he said. "They were cruel, that way, at the start.
But then they had to be. The goal was too important. And they made up
for it as soon as they could. It didn't take them too long to remember
the men who had traded their future for the stars."_
_The very young man said, "Did you actually think of it that way when
you first came up here?"_
_The older man thought for a minute. "No," he admitted. "No, we didn't.
Most of us were strictly play-for-pay men. The Commission wanted
men who wouldn't fall apart when the glamor wore off and there was
nothing left but privation and hard work and loneliness. The men who
fell for the glamor were all right for quick trips, but not for an
eighteen-month stay in a research bunker. So the Commission offered
high salaries and we reluctantly took the jobs. Oh, there was the
idea behind the project, the vision the Commission had in mind. But it
took a while for that to grow."_
_A woman came in the room just then, bearing a tray with glasses on
it. The older man took one and said, "Your mother and I were notified
yesterday that you had been chosen to go. We would like to see you go,
but of course the final decision is up to you."_
_He sipped his drink and turned to his wife: "It has its privations,
but in the long run we've never regretted it, have we, Ginny?"_