by Fritz Leiber
The professor hesitated, then went out in the hall and called, "Mrs. Pulaski!"
The girl stopped struggling but the doctor didn't release her. "Janet," he whispered sharply, "what do you believe causes your dreams?"
"You'll think I'm crazy," she whispered back.
His arms hugged her a little more tightly. "Everyone's crazy," he assured her with great conviction.
"I think my dreams are warnings," she whispered. "1 think they're somehow broadcast to my mind from a station on the moon."
"Thank you, Janet," the doctor said, releasing her.
Prof. McNellis returned with a stout motherly women. Janet went to her. " 'Scuse me, everybody, I was goofy," she said. "G'night, Dad, doctor."
When the two women were gone the two men looked at each other. The doctor lifted his empty coffee cup. As the professor poured for both of them, he said ruefully, "I guess I was the goofy one, shocking Janet that way."
"It's almost impossible to tell in advance how something like that will work out," the doctor consoled him. "Though I'll admit I was startled by those tektites myself. I'd never heard of the things."
The professor frowned. "There are a lot of things about the moon that most people don't know. But what do you think about Janet?"
"It's too soon to say. Except that she seems remarkably stable, both mentally and emotionally, for whatever it is she's going through."
"I'm glad to hear you say that."
"You mustn't worry about her cracking up, professor, but I also advise you not to put her in any more test situations."
"I won't!—I think I've learned my lesson." The professor's tone grew confidential. "Dr. Snowden, I've often wondered if some childhood trauma mayn't have been the cause of Janet's moon-dread. Perhaps she believed that my interest in astronomy—to a child, the moon—was somehow responsible for her mother's death."
"Could be," the doctor nodded thoughtfully. "But I have a hunch that the real cause of Janet's dreams has nothing to do with psychoanalysis or Welt-Eis-Lehre or her anxiety about Tom Kimbro."
The professor looked up. "What else then?" he asked sharply.
The doctor shrugged. "Again it's too early to say."
The professor studied him. "Tell me," he said, "why are you called the Moon Doctor? The Moon Project recommended you—I didn't investigate any further."
"I had luck treating a couple of Project executives who had nervous breakdowns—but that isn't the main reason." The doctor held out his cup for more coffee. After taking a swallow, he settled back. "About two years ago," he began, "I had a run of private patients who had a horror of the moon mixed up with their other troubles. It seemed too much of a coincidence, so I sent out feelers and inquiries to "other psychiatrists, lay analysts, mental hospitals, psycho wards, and so on. The answers came in fasti—evidendy there were dozens of doctors as puzzled as I. It turned out that there were literally thousands of cases of mental aberration characterized by moon-dread, hundreds of them involving dreams very similar to Janet's about the moon breaking up—exploding, suffering giant volcanic eruptions, colliding with a comet or with earth itself, cracking under tidal strain, and so on."
The professor shook his head wonderingly. "I knew Project Moon had touched off a bit of a panic reaction, but I never dreamed it went that deep."
The doctor said, "In hundreds of cases—again like Janet's —there was a history of mild moon-fears going back to childhood."
"Hmm—sounds like the onset of the mass neurosis, or whatever you'd call it, coincided with the beginnings of high rocketry and space travel."
"Apparently. But then Tiow do you explain this? For about four thousand dreams of moon break-up I got dates—day, hour, approximate minute. In ninety seven percent of those instances the moon was above the horizon when the dream occurred. I've become convinced that some straight-line influence traveling from the moon to the dreamer is at work-something that, like short radio waves, can be blocked off by the curve and mass of the earth."
"Moonlight?" the professor suggested quickly. "No. These dreams occur just as often when the local sky is heavily clouded as when it's clear. I don't think light or any other part of the electromagnetic spectrum is responsible. I think it's an entirely different order of waves."
The professor frowned. "Surely you're not suggesting something like thought-waves? You know, doctor, even if there is such a thing as telepathy or extrasensory perception, the chances are it takes place instantaneously, altogether outside the world of space and time. The notion of thought-waves similar to those of light and sound is primitive."
"I don't know," the doctor said. "Galileo thought that light moved instantaneously too, but it turned out that it was just too fast for him to measure. The same might be true of thought-waves—that they go so much faster than light that they seem to move instantaneously. But only seem—another century mayTefine techniques for measuring their speed."
"But Einstein—" The professor shrugged. "In any case the notion of telepathy is completely hypothetical."
"I don't know," the doctor repeated. "While you were calling the nurse, Janet quieted and I took the opportunity to ask her what she thought was causing her dreams. She said, 'I think my dreams are broadcast to my mind from a station on the moon.' Prof. McNellis, that is by no means the first time a patient with moon-horror has made that suggestion to me."
The professor bowed his head, massaging his brow as if it were beginning to ache. "I guess I don't know either," he muttered.
The doctor's eyes brightened. "But perhaps you do," he said softly. He leaned forward. "Professor McNellis," he continued, "what is it that's really happening on the moon? What is it that you Project people have been observing on the moon's surface that you won't reveal to outsiders, not even to me? What is it that Tom Kimbro may be glimpsing now?"
The professor didn't look up, but his hand stopped massaging his forehead.
"Professor McNellis, I know you've been observing something strange on the moon. I got unmistakable hints of it from one of my Project patients, but even in his condition he let himself be gagged by security regulations. What is it? You don't suppose I came way out here only to treat Janet, do you?"
For several seconds neither man moved or spoke. It was a contest of wills. Then the professor looked up shiftily.
"For centuries some astronomers, usually the less dependable ones, have been observing all sorts of 'strange' things on the moon," he began evasively. "One hundred and fifty years ago Gruithuisen reported seeing a fortress near the crater Schroeter. One hundred years ago Zentmayer saw mountain-size objects marching or moving across the moon during an eclipse. Bright spots have been seen, black spots, spots like giant bats—Charles Fort's books of newspaper-science are crammed with examples! Really, Dr. Snowden, strange things seen on the moon are an old, many-times-exploded story.5' His voice had grown loud and assertive, but he did not meet the doctor's eyes.
"Professor McNellis, I'm not interested in past observations of strange appearances on the moon," the doctor pressed on insistently. "What I want to know is what's being observed on the moon right now. It's my guess that it has nothing to do with Russian activities—I've heard through European colleagues that there's been a sizable outbreak of some kind of moon-psychosis, plus moon-dreams, in the Soviet Union too —so you don't have that reason for making security regulations sacrosanct. Please tell me, Professor McNellis—I need the information if I'm to treat Janet successfully."
The professor twisted in his chair, finally said miserably, "It's been made top secret. They're mortally afraid of setting off a major panic, or having the whole Project canceled."
"Professor McNellis, a panic is being set off and maybe the Project should be canceled, but that's nothing to me. My interest is solely professional—my own profession."
"Even when you were recommended to me as a psychiatrist, I was warned against telling you about the observations. And if Janet ever heard a word of them, she would go mad."
"Professor McNellis, I'm a grown man. I'm reasonably responsible. I may need that information to save your daughter's sanity."
The professor looked up hollow-eyed, at last meeting the doctor's gaze. "Ill chance it," he said. "Two months ago our moon telescope in the 24-hour-satellite, where the seeing isn't blurred by atmosphere, began to observe activity of an unknown nature in four separate areas of the moon: near Mare Nectaris, in Mare Foecunditatis, north of Mare Crisium, and in the moon's very center by Sinus Medii. It was impossible to determine the nature of the activity. At first we thought it -was the Russians secretly got there ahead of us, but Space Intelligence disposed of that possibility. The observations themselves mounted simply to a limited and variable darkening in the four areas—shadows, you might say, though one viewer described what he saw as 'towers, some moving.'
"Then two days ago the survey ship went into orbit—purposely an orbit that would take it over Nectaris and Foecunditatis. On his first pass Tom Kimbro reported glimpsing at both sites—here I quote him verbatim—spiderlike or skeletal machines, towering thin creatures not men, and evidence of deep shafts being dug."
The professor jerked to his feet. "That's all," he said with a rapid shrug. "Since that first report, the Project's cut me off from information too. Whatever else Tom's seen—either confirming or negating those first glimpses—and whatever's happened to him, I haven't been told."
The hall door opened. "Professor McNellis," Mrs. Pulaski said, "isn't Janet here? She said she wanted to speak to you, but the outside door's open."
The professor looked guilt-struck at the doctor. "Do you suppose she was listening from the hall? That she heard me?" The doctor was already moving past Mrs. Pulaski.
He spotted Janet at once. Her quilted silk dressing gown stood out like white paint. She was standing in the center of the lawn, looking up over the roof.
Motioning Mrs. Pulaski back and gripping the professor's arm for silence, he moved out beside the girl.
She did not seem to notice their approach. Her lips were working a little. Her thumbs kept lightly rubbing her fingertips. Her gaze, wide-eyed, staring, was fixed on the moon.
The doctor knew that his first concern should be for his patient, but now he realized that, even before that, he too must look at the moon.
Half black and merged with space, half faintly mottled white, Luna hung starkly, her glow blanking out all but the most brilliant nearby stars. She looked smaller to the doctor than he'd been thinking of her. He realized, with irrelevant guilt, that although he'd been thinking a lot about the moon in the past two years, he hadn't bothered to look at her often and certainly hadn't studied her.
"The four sites?" he heard himself ask softly.
"Three of them are near the curving outer edge of the illuminated half," the professor answered as quietly. "The fourth is right in the middle of the shadow line."
Janet did not appear to hear them. Then, with no more warning than a gasp of indrawn breath, she screamed.
The doctor shot his arm around her shoulders, but he did not take his gaze off the moon.
Two seconds passed. Perhaps three. The moon did not change.
Then, by the curving edge, he thought he saw three tiny smudges. He asked himself what they could be at a quarter of a million miles. Giant cracks many miles across? Huge sections lifting? He blinked his eyes to clear them.
Then he was looking at the violet stars. There were four of them, brighter than Venus, although three were in the illuminated half disk at the same spots where he'd seen the smudges. The fourth, brightest of all, was dead denter, bisecting the straight boundary between the bright and dark halves of the disk.
He kept looking—it would have been completely beyond his power not to—but the psychiatrist-section of his mind, operating independently, made him say loudly, "I'm seeing it too, Janetl We're all seeing it. It's real!" He said that more than once, gripping her shoulders tightly each time he spoke.
He heard Professor McNellis croak, "Ten seconds," and realized he must mean the time since the smudges appeared.
The violet stars were growing less glitteringly bright and at the same time they were expanding. They became violet balls or round spots, still brighter than the moon, but paling, as big at the moment as pingpong balls if you thought of the moon as a basketball, but they were growing.
"Explosion fronts," the professor whispered, continuing at intervals to croak the time.
Two of the spots, near the edge, overlapped without losing their perfect circularity. The central spot was still brightest, especially where it expanded into the dark half. The spots were big as tennis balls now, big as baseballs.
"Atomic charges. Have to be. Huge beyond imagining. Set hundreds of miles deep." The professor was still speaking in a whisper.
The doctor found he was hunching his shoulders in expectation of a shattering blast, then remembered there was no air to carry sound from the moon. Some day he must ask the professor how long it would take sound to get from the moon to the earth if there were air to carry it. He glanced at Janet and at the same moment she looked around at him question-ingly. He simply nodded once, then they both looked up again.
The four spots all overlapped now, each grown to half the moon's diameter, and they were getting hard to see against the bright half—just a thin violet wash edged with deeper violet. Soon they were indistinguishable except for the one spreading from the moon's center across the dark side. For an eerie moment it outlined the dark edge of the moon with a violet semi-circle, then vanished too.
"One minute," croaked the professor. "Blast-front speed 17 miles a second."
Where the first smudges and violet stars had been were now four dark marks, almost black. The central one was hardest to see—a jag in the shadow line. They were just large enough to show irregular edges to keen eyes.
"Blast holes. One hundred, two hundred miles across. As deep, probably deeper." The professor maintained his commentary.
Then they saw the chunks.
The ones blasted from the Crisium and Foecunditatis holes were already clear of the side of the moon and gleaming with reflected sunlight themselves. Three were large enough to show their jagged shape.
"The biggest. One twentieth moon diameter by eye. One hundred miles across. Big as the asteroid Juno. New Hampshire cubed."
It almost seemed possible to see the movement of the chunks. The doctor finally decided he couldn't quite. It was like trying to see the movement of thé minute hand of a watch. Yet every time he blinked and looked back, they seemed to have fanned out a little farther.
"Four minutes."
It became clear that the chunks were moving at different apparent speeds. The doctor decided it might be because they had been thrown up at different angles. He wondered why he so wanted to keep watching them—perhaps so as not to have to think about them? He glanced at Janet. She seemed to be watching them with an almost relaxed interest. He probably need worry no more about her mind. Now that her fears had become something real and shared, she would hardly aberrate. No neuroses in wartime. One thing seemed likely about Janet, though—that she'd sensed the explosions telepathically. She'd screamed two or three seconds before he'd seen anything, and it takes light a second and a half to make the moon-earth trip.
There were some lights gleaming now on the dark side of the moon, near its center, one of them large enough to have an irregular appearance. Those must be chunks from Sinus Medii, the doctor told himself. He shivered.
The fastest moving Crisium chunks were now the moon's own width beyond the side of the moon.
"Eight minutes."
The professor's voice was almost normal again, though still hushed, as he calculated aloud, "One moon diameter in eight minutes. Round off to two thousand miles in five hundred seconds. Gives a chunk velocity of four miles a second. Needn't worry about the stuff from Crisium, Foecunditatis, even Nectaris. Won't come anywhere near us—miss earth by hundreds of thousands of miles. But the chunks from Medii are heade
d here, or near here. Starting near moon escape speed of a mile and a half a second it would take the chunks four days for the trip. But starting at around four 'miles a second, figure about one day. Yes, those Medii chunks should near-miss or hit us in about 24 hours—or at least close enough to that time so that we'll be on the impact side of earth."
When he finished he was no longer talking to himself and for the first time since the catastrophe began he had taken his eyes off the moon and was looking at his daughter and the doctor.
That he should be doing so was nothing exceptional. All over earth's evening side people who had been looking up in the sky were now looking around at each other.
The British Isles and West Africa missed the sight. There the moon, setting around midnight, had been down for a good hour.
In Asia and most of the Soviet Union it was day. But all the Western Hemisphere—all the Americas—had a clear view of it.
The first conspicuous consequence was the rumor, traveling like a prairie fire, that the communist Russians were testing planet-killer bombs on the moon, or that World War Three had already started there. This rumor persisted long after Conelrad was on the air and the National Disaster Plan in effect. In the Eastern Hemisphere it metamorphosed into the rumor that the capitalist Americans, ever careless of the safety of the human race and invariably wasteful of natural resources, were ravishing Luna, ruining earth's only moon to satisfy the lusts of mad stockbrokers and insane artillery generals.
Less conspicuously, but quite as swiftly, the telescopes of the west began to sort out the Sinus Medii chunks and make preliminary estimates of their individual trajectories. Organized amateur meteor watchers rendered significant aid, particularly in keeping up to date, minute by minute, the map of the expanding chunk-jumble.
