_The Moon is green cheese and the stars are eyes
and we're all fleas on a big space animal!
But don't let it worry you--unless you take
the first trip out into space--all alone!_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It did not terrify Cantrell to know he was up so high and going so
fast, going higher and faster than any human before him. He would be up
even higher the next day, he remembered, going so high and so fast he
would not come down again.
It would be a shame to leave Earth, he knew. There was security in her
firmness, with no great space underfoot through which to drop down,
down, down. Up here there was emptiness all around. Emptiness and,
except for the dull throb of the rocket engines, silence. Out there--he
looked up--there would be a greater emptiness, a greater silence, an
infinity of nothingness in all directions.
He felt suddenly cold at the thought, and then shame swept over him,
forcing the paralysis aside. Fear of the unknown again, he thought
distastefully. No matter how much the psychologists tried, they
could not erase that icy prickling sensation that came with its
contemplation. They were all children when it came to space, kids
frightened by the dark alleys of the universe, fearing the bogey man
that waited lurking in the velvet depths through which no one had
passed before. Probably they would find nothing out there to fear,
nothing at all, and yet the feeling would go on and on, whenever
men had to face the unknown, whenever they had to force themselves
whistling past silent graveyards that contained only the fear of fear.
With swift precision he pressed studs on the control panel before him,
and a bank of jets on the side of his rocket flared into sudden life,
pushing, turning, pulsing flame into the thin air of the outside. His
gyro-chair made an effortless compensation for the altered direction.
The ship banked, leveled, then leaped forward on a new course. Cantrell
smiled. He could handle the ship now as though it were a part of him.
On the big leap he expected no trouble.
Not so the planners, who refused to leave the minutest stone unturned
in their search for flaws in man or rocket. Physical checkups were made
as often as twice a day. Psychiatrists had analyzed him constantly
during the past six months, probing for any hidden factors that might
make a space flight futile, fearing perhaps a mental return to the womb
for a security that could not be found in untraveled space. We're all
children when it comes to space, he reminded himself, and he laughed
and wondered half-seriously if he were really as psychologically free
as he thought he was--excepting his animal allergy of course, which was
insignificant. There were many facets of the human mind the clinical
instruments of psychology could never hope to touch; the mind was like
an iceberg, and the submerged nine-tenths could hold a great many
unfathomables hidden in the vast depths, subtle monstrosities waiting
to spring out and claw at his sanity.
He smiled grimly, as he realized where his thoughts were leading him.
To fear of the unknown again. Of course, it was only the intellectual
contemplation of it, but the mere thought disturbed him, and he began
to feel angry at himself for allowing the thoughts to exist at all.
Irritably he jabbed at the controls and felt the reassuring thrusts
that drove him gently into the heavy-padded cushions of the seat. With
a smile, this time of satisfaction, he watched the speedometer needle
rise to a new height. Below him, Earth was an unfamiliar blur, and he
touched off the braking rockets to look at it.
The landscape took on more familiar features, with its surface
pockmarked by the ravages of wind and rain, its broad fields stretching
out in all directions like the fur on some great animal. He failed to
suppress a shudder of disgust at that last thought. He'd be glad to get
off Earth, onto the moon where he would be alone for awhile and away
from the unpleasantnesses of ordinary life. These past months, with
Jarvis and his dogs, the psychiatrist's incessant questioning--
The radio said into his ears: "Okay, Cantrell, that's enough of a
workout. Bring her in and report to HQ. Colonel Enders wants a word
with you."
"Right," Cantrell said into a microphone. He switched off the radio and
muttered: "Damn Colonel Enders. What's he want this time, to check the
nipples on my beer bottles?"
Angrily, he flipped the rocket into a soundless dive that reached
screaming proportions as he entered heavier atmosphere. The outer metal
glowed, and the temperature rose in the controlroom. He twisted the
rocket onto a tail of flame and settled.
"And that's that--until tomorrow," he told himself.
He threw switches to inactivate the motors and looked out an
observation window. A fast-moving jeep curved across the stretch of
sand towards him. Behind the jeep a dog came running; at the sight of
the animal, Cantrell felt nausea tug at him. He reached for the radio.