_January 1976--June 23, 1977_
_Rockland, N. Y.--Thursday, June 23, 1:30_ A.M. (_E.D.S.T._)
He woke up screaming again.
Or else he dreamed the scream?
But when his eyes started to open, they closed reactively against the
light. So Lee was up. And so it was no dream.
Sweat tickled his neck, but he lay still, breathing evenly, eyes shut.
He would talk to her in the morning. Not now. In the morning it would
be better, but not _now_....
He opened his eyes a slit to make sure. It was her light, all right.
She was sitting up, watching him.
“Sorry, darling,” she said. “I couldn’t get to sleep, I didn’t think
the light would bother you....”
“Huh?” He blinked his eyes open wider. She was sitting, but with a
pillow propped behind her back, book on her lap. “No, ‘sarigh’,” he
mumbled. “Go ’head. Light don’ bother....”
She’d been reading.... _She had been up first!_ He shook his head,
clearing it, got her in focus. The flicker of frown on her forehead was
apology, not worry....
So it _had_ been a dream?
“Hey,” he said, “Was I...?” He twisted his neck cautiously, felt for
the knot in back with an exploring hand. “I feel like.... Was I keeping
you up, babe? Thrashing around, or ... anything?”
“No. It was just this damn book. I got started reading it and I kept
thinking and I couldn’t sleep--I’m sorry, darling,” she said again.
She closed the book with a snap and reached for the light switch.
_No!_
“Don’t quit on account of me,” he said quickly. “Light doesn’t bother
me.” _Jesus, what a dream!_ “Anyhow, I’m up now.” He rubbed at his
neck, groped under the pillow and found his handkerchief. “I guess I
was dreaming.” He wiped sweat from his forehead and neck and face. Then
he swung his legs out of the bed and stood up. “Coffee?”
Lisa hesitated, shook her head: No.
Johnny found his shorts on the floor, pulled them on. There was sweat
on his thighs, too. Sticky and drying. _A shower_, he thought ...
_too damn hot in here_. He peered at the thermostat; it said 68, but
the room was hot. He turned it down. _Check it out in the morning_, he
thought. Couldn’t be working right. A drink and a shower would do it,
all right. Then he could get back to sleep. Just one drink....
“Maybe a brandy...?”
It took a moment to register--she meant for _her_. He looked down at
her, grinning. “Hey!” he said, “Don’t you think one lush around here is
enough?” She smiled and he leaned over, meaning to drop a quick kiss on
her hair. Then it hit him again: the incredible fact of her presence,
right there, in his house, in his bed ... the look and shape of her,
the curve of shoulder, the _aliveness_ just below her skin, the way
her cheek curved with her smile ... smiling light in her eyes, and all
for him ... _for him_ ... even while the faint line of frowning ...
for him, too ... lingered above. The cloudy feel and fragrance of her
hair, and the strange blend of scents on her skin; soap, grass, sex,
something else, something sweet and delicious and way-back in memory.
“Oh, _baby_!” he said and sat down to do an all-out job of kissing
her. “Maybe I _don’t_ want that coffee--Nope!” He stood up, abruptly
aware of dried sweat on his face, in his hair. “The lady wants a drink,
that’s what she gets!”
In the kitchen, he got the bottle and two glasses and went straight
back, not giving himself time for the quick one he would have had while
he mixed his coffee. He gave Lisa the bottle.
“Pour me. I’ll be right back.”
_And what the Hell do you think you’re proving?_ he jeered at himself
as he turned on the shower. All the answers he could think of sounded
more like Phil Kutler’s brand of idiocy than like any of his own. He
stepped impatiently out of the air blast and wrapped a towel around his
still-damp waist. _Well_, he thought, _any way you look at it, it’s
your own damn fault!_
He went out, took the glass Lee held out, and belted it fast. He filled
it again, leaving the jug carefully on her table, not his own. Then he
walked around the bed and sat down, leaning against the headboard.
_Sip it_, he told himself. Lisa leaned back beside him. He watched her
breasts move under the fullness of the thin nightgown: rising, as she
settled into place, and again as she raised her glass to her lips;
falling when she lowered it; shifting again when she turned to smile at
him. Her hair was freshly brushed, he saw, and her lips newly, lightly,
rouged. There was a trace of perfume, too, that had not been there
before--and the other smell, the special one he couldn’t quite place,
was lost under it. That was when he remembered something she’d said
before.
“What’s with the morning bus?” he asked.
“I have to be at the studio at ten. They’re taping the Bartok. Didn’t I
tell you Hal called...?”
“Yeah.” She _had_ told him. So okay. One more thing he didn’t remember.
He looked at her again. _What the Hell is that smell, anyway...?_
“Lee....” He could sense her tension, her shrinking from what he was
going to say. “I could go down too ... while we’re there ... we could
see about that license, you know?”
“Oh, _Johnny_....” She paused, and because he did love her, he didn’t
wait to make her say the rest.
“Okay, doll. Listen....” _No good._ “Oh, Hell! Just don’t forget old
Johnny did his best to make an honest woman out of you!” What the Hell
should _he_ care? If that’s how she wanted it....
She’d do anything for him, he knew. Anything--except marry him.
_Okay!_ “Better get some sleep,” he said stiffly.
“Mmmmm?” She emptied her glass, squashed out her cigarette, and slid
down on her pillow. Her hand hovered over the light switch while her
eyes questioned his.
“Hand me the jug first,” he said. _Jesus! What a dream!_ He filled his
glass again, setting the bottle down on his own table. The Hell with
it. This time he needed it.
“Jesus!” he said. “What a dream!” He laughed but it didn’t sound right.
“You know how words can get all mixed up? _Choke_ and _artichoke_.
First somebody’s pushing my head in, then they’re pulling me apart.
Just like an artichoke--Christ! You know, you take off one leaf at a
time and dip it in butter and suck all the good part off and throw it
away and pull off another one. Then you get down to the heart--just
sitting there naked with all the leaves off, and you can’t even yell
for help, who the Hell’d ever hear an _artichoke_...?”
The goddam glass was empty. In the dark, the gurgling sound of pouring
was too loud.
_The Hell with it!_
Lisa didn’t say anything.
Well, what _could_ she say?
What the Hell did he _want_ her to say?
“There’s a moon tonight.” That’s what she said.
“_Is_ there?”
The Hell with that too!
She shouldn’t have put on that perfume, he thought. Then, startled,
he found that his hand had gone out to the switch, and the wall that
had been milky glass before turned transparent. A near-full moon,
heavy and low on the hilltops silhouetted the silvery birches and tall
pines: brought them so close he could feel the night breeze outside. He
shivered, suddenly and uncontrollably, then remembered he’d turned the
conditioner down before.
He reached for the panel light. Lee stirred in the bed, turned her back
to him. _Fooled you!_ he thought with childish malice as he found the
light ... but no more childish than her back when she thought he was
going for the bottle again, he decided. She moved again, and he saw she
was propped on an elbow, staring out. A current of air, from her back
maybe, carried that scent again--what in Hell was it?--An old smell, a
happy one, something from back when the Moon was a moon, and the man in
the moon was a joke, and not Chris, and Mars was an orangey spot in the
sky, with no man in it anywhere....
His hand on the thermostat wavered. He stood up, dropped the towel, and
shivered again.
“Mind if I light the fire?” His voice sounded harsh in his ears. Hell
with that _too_....
“Mmmmm....” That could have meant anything. He crossed the room, set
a match to the kindling and crouched at the fireplace, hugging the
warmth, while he watched flames leap up. Smell of pine burning, the
crackle of pitch, and then he remembered....
_Vanilla!_
A year ... more than a year now ... fourteen, fifteen months, that
flavor, the scent of it on Lisa’s skin had been haunting him. _The
smell of vanilla!_ He laughed. She made an inquiring noise and he
looked around.
The moon was gone. The milky wall was black. His panel light glowed
for a moment, then she moved toward his side of the bed and stretched
out her arm and the small glow died. Firelight leaped up, warming him
through.
“Hey, babe!” he said. “Oh, baby, I love _you_....”
_The Moon--January, 1976_
Across the broad pock-marked face of the Moon, like blue-tinged boils
on chin, cheek, and forehead, three air-filled pressure domes gleamed
in the hard rays of the naked sun.
Largest and best-advertised of these was the joint military and
astronomical observatory base of the United Nations World Peace
Control and International Scientific Congress, nestled appropriately,
or at least hopefully, inside a hilltop between the great dry “seas,”
_Tranquilitatis_ and _Serenitatis_.
Flanking it, at distances of about 800 miles each, were the
Low-atmosphere and Low-temperature Laboratory of the Soviet Union of
Asian Republics, and the All America Laboratory for the Investigation
of Extra-Terrestrial Phenomena.
In both cases, the official designations of the smaller domes stated
something less than the whole truth. Certainly, valuable scientific
researches into the properties and effects of near-zero and near-vacuum
were being pursued, eagerly, in the Red Dome. Just as surely,
extra-terrestrial phenomena were being studied with active interest
inside Dollars Dome. But the primary purposes of the two national labs
were somewhat less academic than the “pure” scientific research which,
for the most part, motivated the mixed crews of physicists, chemists,
and astronomers in the big World Dome.
There was just one objective that could have induced either the USAA
or the SUAR to finance and maintain experimental scientific bases more
than a quarter of a million miles out from under the quivering noses
of, respectively, the Congressional Committees and the Politburo.
In his stronghold far out of sight beyond the Lunar Appenines, some
1500 miles from the United States of All Americas Dome in Playfair
Crater, Dr. Chen Lian-Tsu was occupied just as busily as was Dr.
Peter Andrew Christensen in Dollars Dome with the application of
known physical, chemical, and astronomical data to the specific
political-economic-imperial requirements of practical space-flight
(tomorrow ... for _our_ side).
In the surface matters of dress and taste, preference in food, sport,
and language, as well as national allegiance, the two men were worlds
apart. In the basics of personality both of them were so well suited to
the similar jobs they held that they were almost absurdly alike--even
to the fact that neither (though both were in their mid-forties) had
ever married. They were the kind of men who “marry their work”; but,
unlike others _almost_ of their own type, both had avoided entanglement
in arid marriages to which they could bring no real emotions. Their
passions were already committed, wholly and without reserve, to the
great dream of Space: of _man_ in Space.
For these two, the immediate physical world, the Earth, was already
abandoned; and from the perspective of an inward life based in the
universe-at-large, either one could see with tragic clarity the narrow
limits and uses of the old, little, world. They understood well enough
the need of _other_ men for competitive glories. They understood
profit-and-loss and its importance to other _other_-men. And they knew
perfectly well that for the non-imperial realities of the UN or the ISC
there was _no_ economic, political, or social need for space flight.
So they had cause to be loyal nationals, each to his own. And each
took care, as he had all his life, that no breath of suspicion sully
his name or place in doubt (by a wary government) his suitability for
the work he had to do. And if on rare and most private occasions,
either one of them thought briefly, wistfully, of the advantages of a
united approach to the Dream--he knew well enough that for _other_ men,
Space was no dream at all, but a prize enhanced--if not created--by
competition. The isolation, security measures, and endless duplication
of research and planning were, _realistically_, necessary.
This attitude was of course easier to maintain on the Moon than
on Earth. Fifteen hundred miles of rugged lunar terrain, and the
exigencies of rocket fuel economy, kept physical contact between the
domes down to a minimum. Two hundred fifty thousand miles of empty
space, and the economics of human existence on the Moon, kept political
contact with the home governments down to a minimum too: on the Moon,
a really rigid security could be sustained with almost no worry about
infiltration, no possible worry about associations, and no pettyfogging
annoyances from suspicious, ambitious policemen or politicians.
The prevailing state of by-mutual-consent _laissez-faire_ isolation
was such an inherent fabric that Dr. Chen and Dr. Christensen had
never even met personally. There had simply been no occasion. For that
matter, up till the day of Johnny Wendt’s return, the men on either
staff who had even _seen_ the other dome could be counted on two hands;
none had ever been further inside the other than the landing lock--and
that only on the occasions of the inevitable minor emergencies that
called for humane sharing of survival (_not_ scientific) equipment.
With the exception of these instances, USAA ships made it a point not
even to fly inside a line-of-sight of Plato Crater, and Red pilots
stayed equally clear of Playfair.
The only modification of this “natural security” status that had
occurred between the times that the two domes went up, in ’69, and
the orbiting of the _Moon Messenger_ in ’74, was when an outraged AA
Congress learned that the Reds had succeeded in sending a ship to Mars
without any previous knowledge at Dollars Dome.
But even then, no real attempt was made at an Intelligence network
operating directly between the domes; it just wasn’t worth the
waste of oxygen on a Dome resident doing less than a full-time job
of research or development. The money authorized as a result of
the indignant Congressional Investigation went into tightening and
improving existing infiltrations on Relay Station, the 400-mile Earth
satellite, and at World Dome.
Undoubtedly, counter-espionage was strengthened correspondingly--and
with just as little effect on the Red Dome itself as the USAA move had
on life at Playfair. Not till the orbiting of the _Messenger_, the
giant wheel of space that rode the great ellipse from a 12,000-mile
orbit around Earth out to the convenient dropping-distance of the
Moon, carrying shuttle-ships of all three domes, was there the kind of
intergrouping that breeds espionage. In eighteen months of operation,
the _Messenger_ had already started to acquire an aura of the sort of
glamour that once permeated Istanbul, Paris, Lisbon, and Rome, complete
with agents, counter-agents, and double agents.
Congressional apprehension had increased sharply when it was finally
admitted, less than a year after the _Messenger_ went up, that the
whole spectrum of psychogenic and psychosomatic ailments plaguing
the dwellers on the Moon could be relieved by nothing less than a
month-long quarterly rest leave on Earth. For a time, there was even
talk of “rest camps” and “recreation centers” where top-secret Moon
Dome scientists could take their rehabilitation leaves on Earth. But
public distaste for the idea prevailed--and the original Congressional
fears dissolved almost out of shape when, 32 months after its
unheralded departure, the _Lenin_ failed to make its scheduled return.
By that time--Christmas, 1973--the _Colombo_ was six months out, en
route to Mars. And when a strenuous Intelligence effort confirmed that
the Soviet ship was really lost (and not just secretly arrived), Dr.
Christensen did not hesitate to remind the genial Congressmen that he
_had_ Told Them So, three years earlier, when he explained his failure
to alert anyone to the possibility of a Red Mars-trip in the spring of
’71.
The fact was he had assumed his opposite number would wait, as he
was doing, for the next A-orbit date, in June ’73, so as to gain the
advantages that might accrue from the results of the ISC Observatory’s
studies during the close Mars opposition of ’71. _After_ the fact, he
remembered that Chen had been faced with an extra intangible that had
not troubled him: the history of Soviet “firsts.” From Sputnik I on up
through the first Moon-landing, SUAR (or USSR) rocket men had been
first. The Party Chairman desired to keep it that way--so the _Lenin_
left first.
But the _Colombo_ came back.
It came back with no news of the Red ship.
And it came back with one man instead of two.
_Dollars Dome--January 12, 1976_
Johnny Wendt was the one who came back.
They met him with cheers and rejoicing, welcomed him home with
music and medals and speeches on worldwide video beamed from the
bunting-draped central square of the United States Moon Dome.
They sent relays of shuttles up to the big ship, with fuel and
ship-to-base radio and an ace pilot, encased in the newest and safest
of protective gear, to guide her down. The first shuttle took Johnny
off, while official cameras recorded for all time the opening of the
historic lock and the return of mankind’s first space-traveler to
Terra’s Moon.
The cameras kept grinding inside the shuttle while Major Wendt was
bathed under batteries of ultraviolet, and a medic in Geiger-suit
looked down his throat, checked his heartbeat and pulse and lungs,
looked at his insides under a fluoroscope, took smears and samples
and ran off fast lab checks--then smiled and handed him a brand-new
uniform, one they could trust to harbor no alien virus or unknown seed.
The camera followed him out of the shuttle, into the dome lock. Another
camera, and the live video scanners, picked him up inside the dome. But
in the lock, for the sixty-nine seconds it took to bleed air, no record
was made. And Chris was there, alone, to meet him first.
He pumped Johnny’s hand, grinning with triumph. “_Man!_” he said. “We
made it, man!”
Then his grin faded. “_You_ did,” he corrected. “Johnny--what happened
to Doug?”
“I don’t know,” Wendt said.
The inner door opened. Cameras swung into action. General Harbridge
stepped forward and shook Johnny’s hand.
“Congratulations--Colonel!” he said, and pinned the new eagles onto the
new uniform. But when they were under way, out of range for a moment of
audio pickups, he asked anxiously, “Wendt--what happened to Laughlin?”
“I don’t know,” Johnny said, “sir.” Then, wearily: “Everything I know
is in the Log, sir. I brought it down with me. I figured you’d want it.
The doctor’s got it.”
Harbridge nodded and said nothing more. But his smile when he led
Johnny up to the platform on the Mall was a shade forced. And as soon
as he decently could, he whispered a word to an aide and ducked out,
leaving the assembled Dignitaries to welcome the space hero home.
Nobody missed him. The Ambassadors and Senators pinned a whole chestful
of medals on the new uniform, and found a few for Dr. Christensen and
his staff too. Then the VIPs and the cameras followed the new colonel
to his first meal. The staff conference room had been turned into a
banquet hall. Johnny was toasted and feted and fed.
They asked him to speak.
He stood up and looked at them all and his face was grim. Chris,
sitting next to him, knowing him almost too well from five years of
training and planning before the trip, stood up quickly beside him and
grabbed the mike.
“Boy’s all choked up,” he said.
While the room laughed he managed to cover the mike for a moment. “Just
tell ’em thanks, Johnny.”
When it was quiet again, Wendt looked around, indecisive, looked down
at Chris and grinned painfully. “I’m not much of a speaker,” he said.
“I ... Hell, I’m glad to be home!”
“Thanks,” Chris said.
When it all broke up, Chris took him up to his room.
“Thanks?”
“For keeping your mouth shut. Whatever’s bugging you....”
“You seen Harbridge yet?”
“No. He took off during the speeches.”
“I know.” Johnny smiled the new one-sided smile again. “He went to read
the Log.”
Pete Christensen looked at the stranger who had been a friend. “All
right,” he said. “What the hell happened?”
“It’s in the Log, Chris--all _I_ know about it. Ask Harbridge.” He
paused. “Hey,” he said, “You got something up here to drink?”
* * * * *
Everything on the _Colombo_ was tested and touched (and in some cases
tasted too) by teams of two: a scientist and an Intelligence officer.
Johnny had done his job all right, and Doug apparently had completed
his before he disappeared. The boxes and bottles, tubes and jars,
notebooks and tape recorders and camera films were all filled and
filed, packed with the answers to centuries of human questioning.
Yes, there had once been intelligent life on Mars.
No, it was there no more.
There were pictures of crumbling ruins, a very few carefully packed
fossil remains, atmosphere samples, terrain maps and photographs, wind
charts, rock samples, analyses, assays, and boxes of “Mars-Earth,”
from seven different “canals,” alive with one-celled life-forms that
made planet-life possible in the dry air above ground. The record
of Laughlin’s work on the symbiosis between the moisture-retaining
“Mars-bugs” and the sparse photo-sensitive lichen of the “canals” were
there too, neat and in order, properly filed away and labeled in Doug
Laughlin’s hand. And Johnny had finished the job; he’d brought back
all the pictures and records and readings, the answers they sent him
to get. Nothing was missing, not a thing out of place--nothing but
Laughlin himself, one specially designed sand-caterpillar-tractor, two
oxygen cylinders, and the four pages torn out of the Log.
* * * * *
Daily, sometimes hourly, press releases were beamed down to Earth,
telling it all to a waiting world--all but the last bit, about the Log.
The teams of two went through the ship of space.
The semanticists, psychers, and medics went to work on the Hero, and on
the Log he brought back.
* * * * *
The last entry before the torn-out sheets was in Laughlin’s hand,
dated April 26, 1975, roughly a month before scheduled takeoff for
the return trip to Earth: a routine report on routine existence,
noting temperature, wind, and moisture readings; cataloguing the men’s
whereabouts and accomplishments during the twenty-four-and-a-half hours
that made one Martian day; listing lab findings of the past several
days. Nothing remarkable in any way--except that it broke off in
mid-sentence at the end of the page.
No clues or hints, no intimations, no cryptic allusions to Doug’s
impending act--not in that entry or any previous one. Presumably,
the missing pages _did_ hold some such references; but they were
gone--presumably wherever Laughlin himself had gone.
Handwriting experts, called in by the Psych staff, agreed that
Laughlin’s last entry showed signs of emotional upset. But both men’s
handwriting showed a slow increase of tension throughout the Log,
mounting sharply after the landing on Mars, and more swiftly again
during the month since the sampling and mapping were finished, until
the day of Laughlin’s departure.
The next entry, after the missing four pages, was Wendt’s, on April
29, at 1816 hours: “Laughlin gone out alone without notice. No signals
from sand cat. I do not believe he plans to return. Tire tracks visible
from cargo lock point N39W. Going out in heli now, no flight plan, will
follow tracks. Carrying four hours fuel, standard 24-hr oxy-water etc.
Figure two hours tot. flight time, unless I find him in trouble. Tape
237, a-6.”
The next notation, at 2129 hours, said briefly: “No luck. Lost tracks
in hills. Saw what looked like sand cat dust trail at N32W on other
side. Going out again now, with six hours fuel. Oxy-water, 12 hrs. Tape
237, a-9.”
Then: “4/30/75, 0110--Dust storm, 50 mi. past previous flight limit.
N32W dust cloud could have been storm approaching. Any tracks will be
covered now. Will commence standard search pattern, 3-hr. flights, when
storm passes.”
Half an hour later, at 0048: “Thought I’d catch a nap till storm let
up, but might as well get the story down, as much as I know, before I
forget anything. Doug left the ship sometime between 2315 (approx) last
night and 0650 this morning (Mars-time. eq: 1108 and 1754, 4/29/75).
Most likely he left just before I woke up, say between--”
Here, the Mars time had been written in and scratched out, and Earth
time (which was Standard Log procedure), written in instead.
“--1745, say, and 1754. This is hunch mostly, I think the sound of the
airlock might have been what woke me, since I did not actually go to
sleep till an hour or more after 1108, when I went to my bunk, and I
was surprised to see the time when I woke. Usually sleep longer. Was
not aware of what woke me (if anything) at first, and did not take
special notice of Doug’s absence. Assumed he was sleeping. Got dressed,
started making breakfast, then noticed panel signal that a sand cat
was out--but no beeps coming in. Checked Doug’s bunk, which was empty.
Checked Log, for his trip plan. Found missing pages. Checked time; then
1812. Found dust cloud that _could_ have been cat trail on scope at
N37W. Proceeded on first search, as noted, at 1816.
“Throughout first search, I kept helmet radio tuned for automatic
signals from cat, except for a five minute waveband search every half
hour after trying helmet-radio calls. No signals received.
“Storm seems to be mostly past now. Will now commence search pattern.”
Fuel and oxy-water data and signal tape reference numbers followed.
Laughlin had then been gone at least seven hours. Longer trips than
that had been made before--but not by either man alone. Nor were
_any_ trips--prior to this one--made singly by either partner without
advance arrangements. If one of them went out alone, the other was
required, by operating procedures established beforehand, to stand by
and maintain continuous radio contact. When they left ship together,
the same continuous radio contact was maintained, one-way, and
automatically taped on board the ship. Both sand cats, the helicopter,
and the small plane were equipped with radio transmitters that operated
automatically, sending signal directions, as long as the vehicle was
in operation. There was no switchoff on the devices, and there was a
secondary system designed to cut in if the primary were damaged in any
way.
No direction signals had been recorded from Laughlin’s cat at any time.
Wendt’s immediate reaction, written before his first search, “I do not
believe he plans to return,” had appeared filled with sinister import
when the log was first examined. On consideration, the quick conclusion
seemed a natural one, in view of Doug’s failure to inform Johnny of his
trip plans, or to file a route plan, plus the absence of any direction
signals from the cat (which pointed toward deliberate dismantling of
the automatic equipment), and, finally, Johnny’s discovery of the
missing pages in the log book.
The next entry, made several hours later, debated the advisability
of further search. The first effort had turned up no trail of any
kind. The rule against simultaneous departures from line-of-sight had
to be considered. Everything pointed to one extreme likelihood that
Laughlin’s departure had been planned and purposeful, and that no
amount of searching would be rewarded. Nevertheless, Johnny continued
to search for five more days, two or three flights a day, until the
search pattern was finished, the flight coordinates adding up to a
circle whose radius represented a narrow margin of safety above the
flight limits imposed for one-man trips.
The final entry on the search was brief:
“I do not believe there is a possibility that Laughlin is still alive.
He did not take any extra oxygen cylinders with him. At minimum usage,
the two standard tanks in the cat, if full when he started, would
have been stretched to 95 hours. He has now been gone from the ship
for at least 127 hours. I have seen no sign of him, or of any ship’s
equipment, or of any trail he might have left, on any flight since the
second one.”
There were no further entries except for routine daily temperature
and atmosphere reading, until the one that gave the calculations for
takeoff and homeward orbit. Doug Laughlin’s name was not mentioned
again, nor was any reference to him made. No opinion was volunteered as
to why he should have left the ship.
* * * * *
They went back to Johnny again.
“I don’t know,” he kept saying.
“Why did you tear those pages out of the Log?”
“I didn’t.”
“Who did?”
“I don’t know.”
“You think Laughlin did it?”
“I know _I_ didn’t.”
“Why would he do a thing like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“What made you think he wasn’t coming back?”
“I don’t know. I just thought so.”
“How did it happen that you weren’t aware of his going?”
“It’s all in the Log.”
“Now look, Colonel Wendt ...” (or “Johnny” or “son,” depending on
who did the questioning) “... you must have had _some_ idea _why_ he
went....”
Silence, usually. If the interrogator was friendly, a quiet curse.
“_What happened to Laughlin?_”
“Search me,” he said.
So they did. They searched him with “truth” drugs which only confirmed
what he’d told them. He did not know what had happened to Doug
Laughlin. He did not know what had happened to the missing pages of the
book. And he had no knowledge of having had anything to do with the
loss of the man or of the material from the Log.
Meantime, reporters and commentators, interviewers and feature-writers
from every corner of Earth fraternized restlessly in a well-appointed
suite at Mexcity’s best hotel where a Public Relations man in Space
Academy brass buttons smilingly poured drinks, dealt out freshly-inked
mimeographed sheets from a cardboard box, and made sure the free-lunch
was kept replenished.
Security would be lifted, and Colonel Wendt would be personally
available, as soon as the ship was completely unloaded, he told the
reporters.
How long would that be?
Well, it was hard to say....
Soon....
_Mexcity, U.S.A.A.--February, 1976_
They brought him back to Earth, on the next downswing the Messenger
made. Security would have preferred to keep him on the Moon till they
had something--anything--on Laughlin, or on the missing Log pages at
least. But the M. I. squad had to have expert consultants and some
psych equipment which Dr. Christensen irritably, arbitrarily, would
not grant shuttle space. And the Psych man attached to the team was
insisting they’d never get anything out of John Wendt till they let him
go home, back to Earth.
So, twenty days after the feasting and medals, Colonel Wendt and an
escort of nine guards and questioners left Dollars Dome. Five days
later, they landed on a snow-swept concrete prairie in the Andes. The
landing and clearance routine seemed to take an absurdly long time;
it was after dark when a plain helicopter finally left the spaceport,
carrying Johnny and two “bodyguards” from Security. By the time the
reporters got wind of the hero’s arrival, he was already installed in
his prison-of-honor--a whole floor of luxury in the tower penthouse
of the same hotel where, nineteen floors down, in the pressroom, free
lunch and free drinks were still passing around.
They showed Johnny through the place and explained politely, very
pleasantly, that it would be best if he stayed in his rooms for a
while. Adjustment period. Psych tests. All that sort of thing. Then
they posted a very polite, pleasant, guard at each door to keep
unauthorized visitors out--and Johnny in. Just as politely, and very
firmly, they told the clamoring press:
“Not yet....”
When the records of the trip had been fully examined, when all the
films and test-tubes and tapes and sample-boxes had been classified and
examined, Security could be lifted completely....
How long would that be?
Well, it was hard to say....
Soon. Very soon....
* * * * *
One after another, different men of eminence in different schools
of psychiatric practice came up to the hotel penthouse. Johnny met
them politely and listened--at first with interest, and then with
indifference--and agreed, passively, to the succession of exhumative
techniques they proposed.
They explained to him how a man’s memory worked, how the brain stores
and holds memories, how a memory block occurs, how the subconscious
mind can dominate a person’s consciousness. Johnny nodded patiently,
and remembered nothing more than before.
“You can remember if you want to,” one man said.
“Yeah.” Johnny grinned, and looked embarrassed. “But what about if I
_don’t_ want to?”
They told him that the information he withheld--from them as well as
from himself--would probably make a difference of years in sending out
another ship.
“Okay,” he said, with the same one-sided grin, “Do yourselves a favor.
_Don’t_ find out.”
He made it very clear that he himself fully intended to spend the
remainder of his days on Earth; and that he was quite convinced any man
in his right mind would do likewise.
* * * * *
Pete Christensen came down to see him. Chris was a friend, twice: not
just Johnny’s friend, but Doug’s too. It had been his job to choose the
men for that trip. The training and planning that had prepared them had
been by his orders, and much of the time at his hands. And they had all
shared the dream....
He said, “Listen, Johnny, _we’ve got to know_!” He talked about
Congress and the new appropriations bill, about the dream that was
dying in a morass of reaction and funk; and added, “There’s nothing in
your Log about the _Lenin_ either.”
“We never saw it.”
“All right, you never saw it. So now you come back, without Doug, and
something happened, but you won’t talk....”
“Chris, if I _knew_ anything....”
“Okay, but you know these Mexcity characters, four pages missing from
that damn Log, Doug missing, the _Lenin_ missing. And now you not only
_won’t_ talk, but what they’re saying is, you _can’t_. You see what I
mean? Christ, you read enough science fiction and horror stuff to see
the picture. And you can believe me, they’ve got lobbies working nights
painting the pic. Not just in Mexcity, either. You should see the
Sunday supplement trash on tri-di!”
“I’ve seen it. What do you mean--lobbies?”
“The Undersea Dome crowd, Arctic reclamation. Half a dozen of ’em.
Mostly the Undersea bunch, though.”
“Undersea? I thought that bunch was so rich they didn’t _bother_ with
Congress?”
Chris laughed. “You think that means they don’t want public money to
work with?”
Wendt shook his head and grinned: a nice young boyish grin, rueful,
amused.
“Okay, look,” Chris said. “They’ve got a bill going in now to cut _all_
Space money outside of routine Lab funds, only for maintenance, see?,
and some work on the stuff you brought back. But no new ship. Not even
a refit for the old bird. No Venus job. You know what that means?”
Johnny nodded. He still smiled; but now it had twisted to the new
one-sided kind.
“Damn it, they’re _scared_,” Chris said. “And damn it, you scared ’em!
Johnny, you know even pressure from a group like Undersea wouldn’t work
if those guys didn’t know all the folks back home were scared right out
of their pants too?”
“That’s right.”
Chris looked at him, shook his head. “What the _hell_ is out there?” he
asked. “_What made you feel this way?_”
Wendt stood up and paced the length of the big room and back again.
“Okay!” he said. “You want to know what’s out there? I’ll tell you.
All right, I’ll tell you, and you can have a good laugh and forget all
about it. Forget it until you manage to wheedle some more dough out of
Congress, and send some other poor goof out there. Then if he gets back
alive and tells you the same thing, you might even start to believe it.
“I’ll tell you what’s out there: _God_, that’s what. Mars is heaven,
see--just like it said in the story--only different--and God lives
there. So if you know some guy holy enough to meet up with the Hot Shot
in person, send him on out. Otherwise, you better forget the whole
thing.”
Chris stood up stiffly. “Okay,” he said. “I know when I’m licked.”
“What’s the matter?” Johnny said bitterly. “You’re not laughing. Don’t
you think it’s funny?”
“No. Maybe I haven’t got any sense of humor. You know how us dedicated
souls are. Anyhow, the joke is on me.”
It was only after Chris left that Johnny realized the older man hadn’t
believed that he meant it. _Score one for the psychers_, he thought; at
least they could tell when he was not kidding. _They’d_ believe that
one all right: believe that he meant it; what would bug _them_ was
trying to figure out what he meant _by_ it.
Which was a good question too, when you thought of it....
It was some hours later that he realized he couldn’t answer that one
for himself--because it wasn’t really his idea to start with. It was
something Doug had said, in that bad month, the last month, before he
went....
Okay, he thought grimly, _let’s see how long it takes for them to dig_
that _out_....
By that time, it was a game with him, a bitter game, to see how much he
could throw the psychers off without actually telling a lie they could
spot.
_Mexcity--March, 1976_
Phil Kutler would never have gotten a crack at the Wendt case, except
that none of the big men in the field had gotten anywhere, and that
Johnny and Phil happened to have gone to school together. And when
they examined the tapes that carried a record of every word Johnny
Wendt had spoken in his luxury-prison, they realized that the most
revealing thing anybody had gotten out of him--if only they knew what
it revealed--was his bitter little speech to Pete Christensen. So they
asked Kutler to come from New York, and sent him up, not quite sure
himself whether he was there as friend or doctor.
Johnny greeted him suspiciously. They ordered some beer, and yakked for
a while about things they’d done and places they’d been since they saw
each other five-six years before. Mostly Phil’s places and people and
things; Johnny found he could damn near enjoy himself when someone else
did the talking.
Finally Phil said, “Look, I’m a doctor. You know why I’m here. I got a
big pep talk downstairs about all the stuff I’m supposed to find out
for the sake of Progress and the Human Race, and a pile of high-minded
stuff like that....
“Don’t get me wrong, man. I’ve got nothing against noble abstractions.
I’m all for the human race, and I guess progress is real peachy too.
But like I said, I’m a doctor. We all get our kicks different ways,
and I get mine curing sick people. And man, you’re sick. Maybe I’m not
supposed to come out and tell you like that, but it’s sticking out all
over....”
“Sure, sure,” Johnny said quickly. “How do you want to do it? Sometimes
they want me to lie down. Sometimes I’m supposed to shut my eyes. One
guy brought up a little tank of CO₂, and there was one with some
vitamin guk, and they tried scop, or something like it, a couple of
times and--”
“Okay, chum.” Phil stood up and stuck out his hand. “I’ll tell ’em it
looks promising and maybe they’ll let me come and see you again some
time.”
“Not on your life,” Johnny said. “They’ve got every word of this down
on their magic spy rays.”
“Oh?” Kutler looked around the room curiously, then with visible
irritation, and finally with explosive fury: “The stupid brassbound
idiots! What in God’s name are they trying to do to you? Take a guy
with the most obvious case of exposure fears any half-assed medic ever
diagnosed, and sit him in a great big glass house with the whole world
looking in....” He broke off abruptly. “Well, they got _me_ on record
now, too,” he said quietly.
“You mean they sent you up here without telling you that?” Johnny asked.
“How come they told _you_?”
Johnny shook his head. “They didn’t. I just figured it. Things the
wrong people know about. Stuff like that. Yeah, sure, I know, it could
all be--what do you call it?--‘projection?’ Eyes and ears in the wall?
Stuff like that?”
Kutler looked at him thoughtfully. “Have you asked anyone about it?”
“Hell, no!”
“Why not?”
“What difference would it make? Like you said, I’m in a glass box
anyhow. Maybe I felt good knowing something they didn’t know I knew....
Well I shot _that_ wad, now, didn’t I?”
“Yeah.” Kutler sat back in the soft chair, picked up his beer,
stretched his legs, and watched Johnny pacing from piano to windows
and back. “Yeah, you sure did. If you’re right, then they already have
it....”
“What did you mean, ‘exposure fears’?” Johnny broke in. He stood
tensely, half way from the wall to the piano. “Don’t you think I _want_
to get out of here?”
“Huh? Oh, no. I meant--just what you said. ‘Eyes and ears in the wall.’
Only now I’m not sure which came first, the chicken or the egg--Listen,
John, do you want to find out? Right now?” He got up and went to the
phone, but he did not pick it up, waiting for Johnny’s answer.
“I don’t give a damn one way or the other!”
“Oh?” He took his hand off the phone, half-turned away. “Of course if
you don’t think you’d feel better knowing you’re right, then maybe
you’d just rather not take a risk of being wrong. Oh, hell! Who’s
kidding whom anyway?” He turned angrily back and picked up the phone.
“_I_ want to know.”
“Okay, okay. Go ahead. I told you I don’t care....”
_New York City--March-May, 1976_
That was the beginning. Kutler came up every day for a while, just
to talk. He was the only personal visitor Johnny would admit; and he
himself refused to consider the visits professional in the bugged
apartment. By the end of the week, a compromise agreement had been
reached all around. Kutler had him for a patient, and his patient would
come, like any other, to the doctor’s office for treatment. Johnny was
moved to a new hotel penthouse in New York.
Three months of probing, plus Wendt’s agreement, finally, to the use
of hypnotic recall technique, told them what they didn’t want to know:
which was, essentially, that they already knew just as much as he did.
Oh, they gained a few details, but none of any importance. The fact
remained simply that Doug Laughlin had walked out of the ship one day
while Johnny was asleep. He hadn’t come back. He had taken nothing
with him except what he wore on his back, and the food and equipment
normally kept in the sand cat, plus, presumably, four pages out of the
Log. Nowhere in the detailed memories of the days before Laughlin’s
disappearance, or the months after, was there slightest evidence that
Wendt had torn those sheets out, nor that he had even read them at any
time. Nowhere was there anything to relate Laughlin’s disappearance,
or the mutilation of the Log, to the Soviet ship, _Lenin_. Nowhere was
there any shred of cause to believe that either of the two who went out
in _Colombo_ had seen or heard anything at all of the other ship.
The objective facts of the case, as far as Johnny Wendt knew them,
or ever had known them, were exactly as stated before. But, adding
Kutler’s findings to those of the men who had preceded him, and to the
evidence of conversations on tape, they could at least form an opinion
on which it was just barely possible to rest a theory.
As far as Johnny himself was concerned, the final official verdict was
that he was guilty of nothing but guilt itself. The two ideas to which
the guilt was most frequently attached were--
a) the obvious possibility that he had in some way been personally,
directly, responsible for Laughlin’s death: and
b) the completely suppressed (except under hypnotic recall) fear of
remembering that for a time, before Laughlin’s disappearance, a strong
homosexual attraction had apparently been developing between the two
men.
In neither case was there any reason to believe that Johnny’s
self-accusations were based on anything other than fearful fantasies.
As to what had actually happened to Doug--it was still anyone’s
guess. The best guess seemed to be that he was suffering from the
same developing fear of inversion that had afflicted Wendt; that he
had been even more horrified at the idea than Johnny was, and had
chosen deliberate suicide in preference to involuntary surrender to
“degeneracy”; and that, perhaps, he had written something into those
four pages that he thought might be revealing, and so removed them
before he left.
It hung together. As a theory, it made sense. The only trouble was,
if the theory was correct, then the wrong man had come back. The same
psychiatrists who formulated the theories swore up and down that
psych-tests on both men before the trip made it absurd to think that
Laughlin would have reacted in this way. If _any_one did, it should
have been Wendt; and that would not have made much _more_ sense.
But the theory was all they had. The only way they would ever know more
was to go back and find out--and the very fact that they _didn’t_ know
more was enough to whittle down the chances of going back, any time
soon, almost to the vanishing point.
The great All American public was scared.
_Earth--May, 1976-May, 1977_
When they were satisfied that Johnny had told all he knew, they let
him go home--which was no place in particular. He didn’t like having a
lot of people around, so he skipped the big whirl he could have had in
New York or Washington or Buenos Aires. He bummed around as quietly as
possible for a while; found that liquor helped, and women, mostly, did
not; set himself up as a kind of roving consultant in engineering and
design, and found that work could help, too, for short spells. If it
happened to catch his interest.
Getting jobs was easy; the name of Johnny Wendt was enough, even though
his qualifications could be equalled by any number of other bright
young cybernetics engineers. But _wanting_ to get jobs was tougher.
He had all the money he’d ever need; and if he needed more, after
the life-time pension and bonus pay, there were always advertisers
clamoring for his endorsements, and manufacturers for the use of his
name.
He could get money, jobs, liquor, women. But what he wanted, he
couldn’t get, and didn’t even know a name for.
The therapy had helped. But not enough. He knew for a fact that he
hadn’t killed Doug; but between fact and belief there is a world of
difference. He knew, too, that he hadn’t--done any of the things he’d
been afraid even to think about, before the therapy. Now he could
think about them; and did. Now he knew what he’d wanted to do. Now he
couldn’t forget.
After a while he met Lisa, or rather, met her again. He didn’t really
remember her from before, but she remembered him. When he first went up
to the Moon, one of the beglamoured selectees from the Space Academy,
to train for the Mars flight, she was one of a crowd of worshipful
and willing girls--young actresses, models, dance students--the whole
gang dated. In the intervening years, she had made a name for herself
on world-wide tri-di--which would have disqualified her from Johnny’s
cynical viewpoint (“The higher they get, the easier they fall,” he was
fond of saying just then), except that he met her quite unsuspiciously
during her twice-a-week stints as dance-therapist for a group therapy
clinic of Kutler’s.
Oddly, she had remained just as worshipful, and just as willing. And
Johnny found, after a bit, that he was reassured by some special warmth
in her willingness; later he was fascinated by the calm pleasure she
took in knowing that a million people were watching her when she danced
on tri-di. Later still, when fascination and reassurance progressed far
enough, he found at least a partial answer, with her, to some of the
questions he was still asking himself about Johnny Wendt.
_Rockland, N. Y.--Thursday, June 23, 1977, 2_ A.M. (_E.D.S.T._)
She watched him straighten up and come back to the bed. There were two
women in her. One woman was glad because it would be all right now: he
wouldn’t drink any more tonight. The other woman, watching as he came
to her, was just glad....
He sat on the bed and pulled her against him with both hands. “Oh,
baby,” he said, and lowered his head to her breast. His hands moved up
her back to her shoulders, pulled down the straps of her gown. “Oh,
Lisa, Lisa,” he murmured against her skin. His lips moved down and
encountered the crumpled gown again. “What’s _that_ doing there?”
His head came up again, with the good smile, and he was still smiling
as his lips met hers, while his hands pulled the gown down and off her
hips.
When he was asleep again, she knew it really was going to be all right
this time. He lay on his side, a faint smile on his face still, his
breathing even, untroubled, one hand cupping her breast. He looked _so
young_....
Now, the lines smoothed from his face, he could almost have been the
same man she had first met five years, and a world, ago.
She lay quiet under his hand. _Oh, Johnny! If you could just._...
But she stopped the thought. _No pushing_, she reminded herself. _No
pulling. He’ll come through his own way._
But this time she didn’t believe it. It was taking too long. And the
truth _was_, it didn’t get better. It only got worse.
_Would it help if I left?_
That was the hardest part, to know if she herself did more good or more
harm....
She tried to lie still and the effort defeated itself. One by one,
the muscles in her leg, her arm, her back and neck, stiffened to
unsustainable tensions. She moved warily and he mumbled, his fingers
tightening. Then he came up a little out of sleep, muttered “Sorry,”
and rolled over, freeing her to move.
But now she was afraid that if she moved at all, the tears would spill
out, so she lay still again. Not till his breathing was quiet once
more did she start edging over, an inch at a time, to her side of the
bed. Then, holding herself balanced, as one might handle a bowl of hot
soup, she shifted her weight till her feet touched the floor and her
body was erect. She crossed the room, one silent padding footstep at a
time, nudged the door noiselessly closed behind her, went through the
shadowed living room to the kitchen, and closed another door.
_Coffee_, she thought. She put the percolator on, remembering he’d
offered her coffee to start with. But she’d thought that if she drank
with him, he wouldn’t drink more than she did. Not much more, anyhow....
_Well, it worked_, she thought, and added: _this time_.
The pot bubbled on the stove; Lisa sat on a stool and cried. No one
heard either sound.
After a while she got up and rinsed her face at the sink. She poured
her coffee, took it into the living room, and sat restlessly. Got up
and went to the bedroom, tiptoed in and got the book from her table.
It was a good thing he hadn’t looked to see what she was reading. She
had grabbed the first thing at hand when she woke up. She laughed
softly, remembering his righteous engineer’s horror the first time the
subject of ESP came up. Now he could joke about it, mostly.... _You
better watch out--my girl can read minds. She studies up on it_....
But in the ugly aftermath of the dream, if he had noticed, he would
have seized on it furiously.
Well, it had all worked out.
This time.
She opened the book and read, sipping at coffee, till she felt ready to
sleep again. Then she went back to bed.