"Stanley, this is Cross, at Cal-Tech."
"Cross! Good Lord, it's good to hear you!"
"I just heard the new-flash," said Cross. He had the same clipped,
exact voice he'd had years ago, Stanley realized. "You're really on
the spot this time, aren't you, Will? That's why I called. I like your
ideas on machinery. I've always thought of machines, myself, as nothing
but extensions of man's frustrations and emotions, his losses and
compensations in life. We agree. But you're wrong this time, Will. You
made a mistake today."
"Now, don't _you_ start on me! You're my last friend," retorted Stanley
tiredly. "What else could I do--destroy the rocket?"
"That would be negative. No good. Give them something positive. Tell
them to go ahead," advised Cross, pleasantly enough. "Warn them, like
a kindly father, of the consequences. Then, when their fingers are
burnt--"
"Humanity might go down the drain," finished Stanley abruptly.
"Not if you play your cards right, control the variables. There must
be some way around them without getting yourself mangled. I'm ready to
help when you have a plan. Think it over."
"I still think blowing the damn thing up would be--"
"They'd build a bigger one. And they'd persecute you and your family
the rest of your life," explained Cross logically. "You and I may know
that science hasn't contributed one whit to man's _mental_ progress,
but Mr. Everyman likes his babies diapered in disposable tissues and
likes to travel from Siberia to Johnstown like an infuriated bullet.
You can't stop them, you can only divert them a bit."
Stanley grasped the hand-audio, tightly. He listened.
* * * * *
A great roar of 'copters sounded out in the afternoon sky, directly
overhead. The house shook. Althea sprang up lithely and ran to look
out. "I can't talk any more, Cross. I'll call you back. _They're_
outside, waiting for me, now...."
Cross' voice faded like a dream. "Remember what I tell you. Let them go
ahead."
Stanley walked to the door, opened it, stepped half through.
A radio voice boomed out of the bright blue sky.
"STANLEY!" it shouted. It was Simpson's voice. "STANLEY! COME OUT AND
TALK! COME OUT AND TELL US, STANLEY! STANLEY!"
Althea would not stay in. She walked with him out onto the moist green
lawn, in the open.
The heavens were flooded with 'copters whirling. The sun shook in its
place. 'Copters hung everywhere, like huge hummingbirds, swiveling,
whirring. Five hundred of them, at least, shadowing the lawns and
shaking the house-tops.
"OH, _THERE_ YOU ARE, STANLEY!"
Stanley shaded his eyes. His lips drew away from his teeth in a
grimace, as he stared upward, tense and afraid.
"IT'S AFTER THREE O'CLOCK, STANLEY!" came the dull boom of words.
In this moment, with the spiraling 'copters suspended over his lawn,
over his wife and children and house, over himself and his beliefs,
Stanley swallowed, stepped back, put his hands down and let the idea
grow within him. Yes, he would give them their rocket. He would give
it to them. You cannot fight the children, he thought. They must have
their green apples. If you refuse them, they will find a way around
you. Go along with their illogical tide and make logic of it. Let the
children eat their full of green apples, many, many green apples to
swell their vast stomach into sickness. Yes. A slow smile touched the
corners of his mouth, vanished. The plan was complete.
The voice from the sky fell on him like an iron fist! "STANLEY! WHAT
IS YOUR WORD NOW? HOW WILL YOU SPEAK NOW? WITH A THOUSAND POUNDS OF
NITROGLYCERINE OVER YOUR HOME, HOW WILL YOU TALK?"
The 'copters sank, malignantly. Thunder swept the lawn. Althea's
brilliant amber skirt flared in the wash of it.
"WILL THE ROCKET FLY, STANLEY?"
From the corners of his aching, straining eyes, Stanley saw his son
poised in the window, watching him.
"RAISE YOUR RIGHT HAND AND WAVE IT," thundered the sky-voice. "IF THE
ANSWER IS YES!"
Stanley made them wait for it. He wetted his lips with a slow tongue,
then, gradually, very casually, he raised his right hand, palm up, and
waved it to the thundering sky.
A torrent of exultation poured in a Niagara from the heavens. Five
hundred audios blasted, cheered, exulted! The trees ripped and tore in
the cyclone of energy and explosion! The noise continued as Stanley
turned, took Althea's elbow, and steered her blindly back to the door.
* * * * *
The little black-jet-plane dropped out of the midnight stars. Moments
later, Cross was getting out of it, crossing the dark lawn, grasping
Stanley's hand warmly. "Made good time, eh?"
Inside, they downed their glasses of brandy first, then got to
business. Stanley outlined his plan, his contacts, his psychology. He
was pleased and excited to see an extraordinary smile of approval come
to Cross's pink, round face. "Excellent! Now you're talking!" cried
Cross.
"I like your plan, Stanley. It places the blame right back on the
people. They won't be able to persecute you."
Stanley refilled the glasses. "I'll see to it you're on the Rocket
tomorrow. Greenwald--he's the captain--will co-operate, I'm certain,
when the trip is over. It's up to you and Greenwald then."
They raised their glasses. "And when it's all over," observed Cross
slowly. "We'll have the long, hard struggle to revise our educational
system. To begin to apply the scientific method to man's thinking,
instead of just to his machines. And when we've built a logical
subjective world, then it'll be safe to make machines of all and any
kinds. Here's to our plan, may it be completed." They drank.
The next day two million people spread over the rolling hills, through
the tiny Jersey towns, sitting atop bugs and plastic beetles. An
excitement pervaded the day. The sky was a blue vacuum, the 'copters
grounded by law. The Rocket lay gleaming and monstrous and silent.
At noon, the crew ambled across the tarmac, Captain Greenwald leading.
Cross walked among them. The huge metal doors slammed, and with a blast
of Gargantuan flame, the Rocket heaved upward and vanished.
People cheered and laughed and cried.
Stanley watched his son and daughter and mother-in-law do likewise. He
was deeply pleased to see that Althea did not join them. Hand in hand
they watched the sky dazzlement fade. The first Rocket to the moon was
gone. The world was drunkenly happy in its delirium.
Two weeks passed slowly. Astronomers were unable to keep an eye on the
Rocket. It was so small and unaccountable in the void between earth and
lunar surface.
Stanley slept little in the passing of the fourteen days. He was
constantly attacked by fears and confusions of thought. He dreamed of
the Rocket going up. He had seen men month on month walking in the
metal shadow of their wonderful Rocket, patting it with their greasy,
calloused hands, loving it with their quick, appreciative eyes.
If for one moment you let yourself think of it, you loved it, too, for
even though it symbolized wars and destruction, you had to admire its
balance and slenderness of structure. With it, you could rub away the
fog cosmetic of Venus, re-delineate its prehistorically shy face. And
there was Mars, too. Man had been imprisoned a million years. Why not
freedom now, at last?
Then he labeled all these fantasies by their correct name, ESCAPE, and
settled back, to wait the return of the Rocket.
* * * * *
"The moon Rocket is returning! It will land this morning at nine
o'clock!" Everybody's audio was blatting.
Like a yellow seed, the Rocket dropped down the sky, to sprout roots of
flame on which to cushion itself. It fried the tarmac and a vast deluge
of warm air rushed across the country for miles. People sweltered
amidst a sudden rocket summer.
In his tower room, William Stanley watched, solemn and wordless.
The Rocket shimmered. Across the cooling tarmac, the crowd rioted,
bursting through the barrier, sweeping the police aside in elation.
The tide halted and boiled and changed form, layer upon layer. A vast
hush came upon it.
Now the round air-lock door of the Rocket jetted out air in a
compressed sigh.
The thick door, sandwiched into the ship-hull, took two minutes to
come outward and pull aside on its oiled hingework. The crowd pressed
closer, flesh to flesh, eyes widened. The door was now open completely.
A great cheer went up. The crew of the Moon Rocket stood in the
air-lock. The cheer faded, almost instantly.
[Illustration: _The crew of the Moon Rocket stood in the air-lock._]
The crew of the Rocket were not exactly standing. They were hunched
over.
The captain stepped forward. Well, he didn't exactly _step_. He sort of
dragged his feet and shambled. He made a speech.
But all it sounded like, coming from his twisted, swollen lips, was,
"Uns--rrrr--oh--god--disss--ease--unh--rrr--nnn--"
He held out his grey-green fingers, raw, bleeding, for all to see.
He lifted his face. Those red things, were they actually eyes? That
depression, that fallen socket, had it been a nose? And where were the
teeth in that gagging, hissing mouth? His hair was thin and grey and
infected. He stank.
The hypnotic silence was shattered. The first line of people turned and
clawed at the second line. The second turned instinctively to claw the
third, and so on. The television cameras caught it all.
Screams, yelling, shouting. Many fell and were trampled, crushed
under. The captain and his crew came out, gesturing, calling them to
come back. But who would heed their rotting movements? The ridiculous
souvenir seekers trampled each other, ripping the clothes from one
another's backs!
_A souvenir? A scab of crawling flesh, a drop of yellow fluid from
their gaping wounds? Souvenirs for earth, buy them right here, get them
while they last! We mail anywhere in the United States!_
_The characters in order of appearance: The Captain, the astrogator,
held sagging between two astronomers, who were followed by sixteen
mathematicians, technicians, chemists, biologists, radio men,
geographers and machinists. Shamble forth, gentlemen, and bring the
brave new future with you!_
The balloon vendor, in flight, jettisoned his entire stock. Rubber
rockets floated wildly, crazily bobbling, bouncing the river of rioting
heads until they were devoured, exploded and crumpled underfoot.
Sirens sounded. Police beetles rushed to the field exits. Ten minutes
later the tarmac was empty. No sign of captain or crew. A few shreds
of their fetid clothing were found, partially disintegrated. An
audio-report five minutes later stated simply, "The captain and crew
were destroyed on orders of the health bureau! An epidemic was feared--"
The sounds of riot faded. The door to Stanley's office opened, someone
entered and stood behind him, and closed the door.
* * * * *
Stanley did not turn from the window for a moment. "Fifty people
injured, five of them critically. I'm sorry for that. But it was a
small price for the world's security." He turned, slowly.
A horrible creature stood, diseased and swollen, before him. A
captain's uniform, filthy and torn, hung tattered from the disgusting
flesh. The creature opened its bleeding mouth.
"How was it?" asked the creature, muffledly.
"Fine," said Stanley. "Did you reach the moon?"
"Yes," replied the creature. "Captain Greenwald sends his regards to
you. He says he knows we can do it again and again, any time we want,
now, and that's all he wanted to know. He wishes you luck and tells you
to go ahead. We landed the rocket on the way back from the moon, first
of all, up at Fairbanks, Alaska, outside the settlement, naturally,
during the night. Things worked as you planned them. We changed
crews there. There was a minor fight. Simpson and the original crew,
including Captain Greenwald, are still up there, under psycho-hypnosis.
They'll live out their lives happily, unaware, with new names. They
won't remember anything. We took off from Fairbanks again this morning
with the new crew and our act all rehearsed, I think we did all right."
"Where's the substitute crew now?" inquired Stanley.
"Downstairs," said the creature. "Getting psychoed themselves. Getting
mental blocs inserted, so they'll forget they ever fooled the world
today. Then we'll send them back to their regular jobs. Can I use your
shower?"