Possible Worlds of Science Fiction

by Groff Conklin

  Reception gave only a thin crackle after that. Robbins was alone, as nobody had ever been before—a quarter of a million miles from all of his kind.

  Jagged crater walls were very near—only a couple of thousand miles distant—and in full light of the Sun. Mel peered at them from the floor window. MR-1 still kept its heavier base Moonward, though now there seemed no sense of weight at all—the centrifugal force of the ship’s curving path counterbalanced gravitation.

  Some of the craters were like Tycho, on the familiar hemisphere— white, with streaks of white, powdered rock radiating in starred pattern around them. Maybe these craters were not volcanoes, but the bruises of gigantic meteors, made when the Moon was already old, in a crust that had partially cooled.

  The cameras and instruments were mainly automatic; still, for a while, Robbins was very busy, making sure that everything functioned as it should. But his mind worked separately. He was at his goal, the farthest point of his journey, meeting the unknown. He had completed a step in science, proven a radically new human power. There was a thrill in the accomplishment—a subdued, icy one. Everything in his life seemed to focus itself toward this time. In this solitude he could not have kept his thoughts from rambling. Perhaps no one could.

  He pictured what the Moon must have been like, a billion and a half years ago, with hot, volcanic gases trailing off into space. Lunar gravity had never been strong enough to retain an extensive atmosphere.

  Mechanisms whirred. Radar beams were probing down, reflecting a record, perhaps, of mineral deposits—radioactive elements were hoped for. Maybe the Moon had them; maybe not.

  ~ * ~

  Long ago Robbins had imagined lunar colonization—men in strange armor building airtight shelters, observatories where telescopes would never be murked by an atmosphere, ramps from which spaceships could leap toward distant planets, with an attraction of only one-sixth that of Earth to retard them.

  He knew his eyes must have glowed with that vision, then. Now it was not as wonderful as it had been, though much of it could still turn out the same. It would be parallel to other advancement—in medicine, in living, and, one still hoped, in social science. You couldn’t stop the tide—you wouldn’t want to—but if war came in this era of untried power, a whole planet might be torn to pieces.

  Mel Robbins could see most of the mysterious hemisphere now, and his attention was drawn inevitably back to a minor memory. In the sunshine the lunar scene was as stark as dry bone.

  “There’s no valley with air and trees and cities in it, Art Pelsudski,” he said aloud.

  Somehow this fact hit Robbins—dropped his spirits a notch farther. It seemed like a defeat for the kid, for himself of years ago, and for all the naive souls who dreamed idealistically.

  He knew that the quiet of humming mechanisms, and of space, and of absolute solitude, with the skeletal Moonscape so near, had depressed him. But he knew, too, that his pessimism was no deeper in quality now than it had been for a long time, in the back of his mind. It was reasonable; you couldn’t wish away the facts that built it. It had an overpoweringly real basis. How could you ever fight the mistrust of millions of people for millions of other people of another nation? The answer was simply: “Sooner or later.” Robbins’s sniff and shrug and one-sided smile had the humor of fatalism in them.

  For a minute, because this thinking seemed to have reached a conclusion, he considered other things. There were four days of his journey yet to pass. He’d probably make it all right, now. Soon he’d be talking again by radio with Norma, from the other flank of the Moon. Then the long fall Earthward, speed mounting. Near the Earth, dry-powder fuels, blasting from the jets, would check MR-1’s velocity a little. Two hundred miles above the Atlantic an immense metal-fabric parachute would open in the thinnest fringes of the atmosphere, checking it more. MR-1 was light enough to float. He’d be back with Norma, Carnot, and their friends. History for what it was still worth, would call him the “Columbus of Space.”

  It was a nice, melodramatic title. It made him chuckle. The final effort to gain it had been easy. He’d simply ridden an automatic machine. If there had ever been any hero in him, it was long ago, when nobody knew him. Dream and fulfillment were mistimed, like a lot of things in the world.

  Again his ruminations followed an inevitable route. He remembered a kid, burned by the sun, in dirty clothes, sprawled in the desert, with a ridiculous look of rapture on his face. Scared and inexperienced, he’d begged rides across almost three thousand miles. That was guts to admire. Grabbed by the cops, he still was happy in being near MR-1. He didn’t realize the troubles that hung over him.

  Maybe it was protective instinct for the young; maybe it was maudlin sentimentality connected with being out here beyond the Moon, maybe it was just pity—Robbins didn’t care, then. That kid was somehow important to him, seeming to make him feel that way by just being what he was. Robbins knew that he had to do something for this Art Pelsudski—build him up, blind him a little to what was coming, let him feel that the universe was still okay.

  It wouldn’t be hard to do. Mel looked down at a lunar “sea”—a huge patch of desolation. “Mare Pelsudski?” No, that was too much to give, and too academic.

  ~ * ~

  But another idea came easily. From a camera he removed a print— the first picture of the mysterious hemisphere. With a pen that didn’t feed too well out here, he began to write across it. . .

  The surprising thing for Robbins then was that right away he began to feel better. There was a warmth in him now for the kid and for what he was doing for the kid. It occurred to him that Pelsudski, being young, was a symbol of the future—a rather splendid one. The idea was enough to turn Robbins’s mind around, making it argue in another direction.

  The word “feelings” became a kind of pivot for his arguments. What you could do about the future was related to what you felt about it. Feelings were the critical factor in this age of danger and triumphs, when the weakness was the human element. Some feelings were constructive; others were bitter and deadly. All of them could spread from one person to another—across a country, or even many countries —just as something good had spread to him from Pelsudski.

  There had been, and certainly still were, many spreaders of feelings —self-interested dictators, honest statesmen, moralists. The well-intentioned ones had been trying to sell fairness, freedom from prejudice, equality, good sense, for a long time, while they attempted to steer the world through trouble. Plenty of them had made fools of themselves; but they had at least tried. Others had turned insincere. You might sometimes feel cynical about the whole repetitious business. But the important fact was that no final calamity had yet come; so maybe the good men had helped, and would go on helping until a solution was found.

  Mel Robbins’s hopes lifted. He might help, too. Suddenly his eyes twinkled. He was the guy who had crossed space, wasn’t he? He wa« now the natural reigning hero, for all kids, everywhere.

  Maybe he could make his voice reach even into the darker lands. In the world there must be millions of idealistic youngsters like Pelsudski, with the same and other interests. They were the core of the future. What the youngsters as a whole, everywhere, came to feel about the future ought to be the truth about it. Help them along, when they deserved it. Let them know that their universe was all right.

  Robbins read what he had written across the photograph of the spaceward side of the Moon:

  “To Art Pelsudski: When you are first to land an atomic ship on, —say—Ganymede, largest satellite of the planet Jupiter, remember me, and keep thinking straight and fair. Regards from Mel Robbins. Written in space while rounding the Moon in MR-1. 1959.”

  Robbins grinned. His prediction could even be true. Pelsudski had the guts and the fury. Robbins felt fine. At least he had a philosophy and a beginning. The shadows in the years to come had receded a little. Pelsudski had given him something. Now he would give something back.

  He knew that getting the pictur
e with that message on it would change a troubled Earth to humble heaven for the boy.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  Robert A. Heinlein

  THE BLACK PITS OF LUNA

  Eventually the Moon will be conquered—and conquered, perhaps, to a point where it will become nothing more than a busy manufacturing and power center. The story which follows tells of a Moon culture which, though still possessed of an occasional thrill and an occasional unknown danger, is still pretty humdrum . . . except when seen through the romantic eyes of a teen-age boy just arrived for the first time from Earth. And since in this story we get a view of the Moon in just this fashion, it still retains all the excitement that in older days the story of a camping trip on a cattle ranch, told by just such a youngster, would have had.

  And this is one of the really astonishing merits of this tale—that the author can make you yourself feel blasé about the Moon. It is only with a start, after you have finished reading it, that you pull yourself together and say, “But this isn’t possible—yet!”

  ~ * ~

  The morning after we got to the Moon we went over to Rutherford. Dad and Mr. Latham—Mr. Latham is the man from the Harriman Trust that Dad came to Luna City to see—Dad and Mr. Latham had to go anyhow, on business. I got Dad to promise I could go along because it looked like just about my only chance to get out on the surface of the Moon. Luna City is all right, I guess, but I defy you to tell a corridor in Luna City from the sublevels in New York—except that you're light on your feet, of course.

  When Dad came into our hotel suite to say we were ready to leave, I was down on the floor, playing mumblety-peg with my kid brother. Mother was lying down and had asked me to keep the runt quiet. She had been dropsick all the way out from Earth and I guess she didn't feel very good. The runt had been fiddling with the lights, switching them from "dusk" to "desert suntan" and back again. I collared him and sat him down on the floor.

  Of course, I don't play mumblety-peg any more, but, on the Moon, it's a right good game. The knife practically floats and you can do all kinds of things with it. We made up a lot of new rules.

  Dad said, "Switch in plans, my dear. We're leaving for Rutherford right away. Let's pull ourselves together."

  Mother said, "Oh, mercy me—I don't think I'm up to it. You and Dickie run along. Baby Darling and I will just spend a quiet day right here."

  Baby Darling is the runt.

  I could have told her it was the wrong approach. He nearly put my eye out with the knife and said, "Who? What? I'm going too. Let's go!"

  Mother said, "Oh, now, Baby Darling—don't cause Mother Dear any trouble. We'll go to the movies, just you and I."

  The runt is seven years younger than I am, but don't call him "Baby Darling" if you want to get anything out of him. He started to bawl. "You said I could go!" he yelled.

  "No, Baby Darling. I haven't mentioned it to you. I—"

  "Daddy said I could go!"

  "Richard, did you tell Baby he could go?"

  "Why, no, my dear, not that I recall. Perhaps I—"

  The kid cut in fast. "You said I could go anywhere Dickie went. You promised me you promised me you promised me." Sometimes you have to hand it to the runt; he had them jawing about who told him what in nothing flat. Anyhow, that is how, twenty minutes later, the four of us were up at the rocket port with Mr. Latham and climbing into the shuttle for Rutherford.

  ~ * ~

  The trip only takes about ten minutes and you don't see much, just a glimpse of the Earth while the rocket is still near Luna City and then not even that, since the atom plants where we were going are all on the back side of the Moon, of course. There were maybe a dozen tourists along and most of them were dropsick as soon as we went into free flight. So was Mother. Some people never will get used to rockets.

  But Mother was all right as soon as we grounded and were inside again. Rutherford isn't like Luna City; instead of extending a tube out to the ship, they send a pressurized car out to latch on to the airlock of the rocket, then you jeep back about a mile to the entrance to underground. I liked that and so did the runt. Dad had to go off on business with Mr. Latham, leaving Mother and me and the runt to join up with the party of tourists for the trip through the laboratories.

  It was all right but nothing to get excited about. So far as I can see, one atomics plant looks about like another; Rutherford could just as well have been the main plant outside Chicago. I mean to say everything that is anything is out of sight, covered up, shielded. All you get to see are some dials and instrument boards and people watching them. Remote control stuff, like Oak Ridge. The guide tells you about the experiments going on and they show you some movies—that's all.

  I liked our guide. He looked like Tom Jeremy in The Space Troopers. I asked him if he was a spaceman and he looked at me kind of funny and said, no, that he was just a Colonial Services ranger. Then he asked me where I went to school and if I belonged to the Scouts. He said he was scoutmaster of Troop One, Rutherford City, Moonbat Patrol.

  I found out there was just the one patrol—not many scouts on the Moon, I suppose.

  Dad and Mr. Latham joined us just as we finished the tour while Mr. Perrin—that's our guide—was announcing the trip outside. "The conducted tour of Rutherford," he said, talking as if it were a transcription, "includes a trip by spacesuit out on the surface of the Moon, without extra charge, to see the Devil's Graveyard and the site of the Great Disaster of 1984. The trip is optional. There is nothing particularly dangerous about it and we've never had any one hurt, but the Commission requires that you sign a separate release for your own safety if you choose to make this trip. The trip takes about one hour. Those preferring to remain behind will find movies and refreshments in the coffee shop."

  Dad was rubbing his hands together. "This is for me," he announced. "Mr. Latham, I'm glad we got back in time. I wouldn't have missed this for the world."

  "You'll enjoy it," Mr. Latham agreed, "and so will you, Mrs. Logan. I'm tempted to come along myself."

  "Why don't you?" Dad asked.

  "No, I want to have the papers ready for you and the Director to sign when you get back and before you leave for Luna City."

  "Why knock yourself out?" Dad urged him. "If a man's word is no good, his signed contract is no better. You can mail the stuff to me at New York."

  Mr. Latham shook his head. "No, really—I've been out on the surface dozens of times. But I'll come along and help you into your spacesuits."

  Mother said, "Oh dear," she didn't think she'd better go; she wasn't sure she could stand the thought of being shut up in a spacesuit and besides glaring sunlight always gave her a headache.

  Dad said, "Don't be silly, my dear; it's the chance of a lifetime," and Mr. Latham told her that the filters on the helmets kept the light from being glaring. Mother always objects and then gives in. I suppose women just don't have any force of character. Like the night before—earth-night, I mean, Luna City time—she had bought a fancy moonsuit to wear to dinner in the Earth-View room at the hotel, then she got cold feet. She complained to Dad that she was too plump to dare to dress like that.

  Well, she did show an awful lot of skin. Dad said, "Nonsense, my dear. You look ravishing." So she wore it and had a swell time, especially when a pilot tried to pick her up.

  It was like that this time. She came along. We went into the outfitting room and I looked around while Mr. Perrin was getting them all herded in and having the releases signed. There was the door to the airlock to the surface at the far end, with a bull's-eye window in it and another one like it in the door beyond. You could peek through and see the surface of the Moon beyond, looking hot and bright and sort of improbable, in spite of the amber glass in the windows. And there was a double row of spacesuits hanging up, looking like empty men. I snooped around until Mr. Perrin got around to our party.

  "We can arrange to leave the youngster in the care of the hostess in the coffee shop," he was telling Mother. He reache
d down and tousled the runt's hair. The runt tried to bite him and he snatched his hand away in a hurry.

  "Thank you, Mr. Perkins," Mother said, "I suppose that's best—though perhaps I had better stay behind with him."

  "'Perrin' is the name," Mr. Perrin said mildly. "It won't be necessary. The hostess will take good care of him."

  Why do adults talk in front of kids as if they couldn't understand English? They should have just shoved him into the coffee shop. By now the runt knew he was being railroaded. He looked around belligerently. "I go, too," he said loudly. "You promised me."

  "Now Baby Darling," Mother tried to stop him. "Mother Dear didn't tell you—" But she was just whistling to herself; the runt turned on the sound effects.

  "You said I could go where Dickie went; you promised me when I was sick. You promised me you promised me—" and on and on, his voice getting higher and louder all the time.