Brand smiled again, faintly. “Sure, Joe,” he said, sounding almost boyish for once. “That was the impression their snooper got too—the one we allowed, convincingly, to make his escape with a photograph of what’s in that case. I guess his bosses got the same idea.
“What else could they think—without their young Copeland around to tip them off? How could they ever guess that an imaginary fleet sprouted out of a chunk of blue Venusian soil, brought back to Earth on a tire of one of their own spacecraft?”
A strange dawning glow began to come over me—a thing wonderful to feel. They hadn’t attacked us because their fear of our terrible reprisals had been restored. Somewhere underneath an involved net of bluff and secrecy, as yet beyond the deepest penetration of their agents, they had been forced to conclude that we must have a fleet—just as our President had said. Probably now they’d never dare to attack.
“Was the President really in on this wild deal?” I blurted.
“He sure was,” Brand answered, grinning. “But I had some preliminary trouble contacting him by phone and flying East to see him secretly."
“Then it was all your idea,” I growled.
“Not entirely, Joe,” he answered, “Rhoda, here, did her share.” They exchanged glances. You know what kind. Yeah—fond.
I guess I was still stupid. It was too much for me to figure out all at once. “But she hit me with a hammer,” I snapped. “She knocked me and a guard cold!”
“I had to, Joe,” she replied for herself. “To let the snooper escape you and take that photograph of his home. And to make his getaway seem more convincing to him—thinking that he had sympathizers here. I'm sorry, Joe—but look what I had to do for the sake of verisimilitude. Sit in the klink for fourteen days!” She chuckled.
I laughed aloud in sheer pleasure. It was good to feel safe and strong again—and the friend of some clever folks. It was good to think about a wedding. It was good, even, to think that people are unpredictable. It was good to see old Nils Narvaard's gentle smirk.
I didn’t need the rumors that started an hour later—that on the other side of the Pole a nation long burdened with the burden of armament and cheated of a promise had begun a revolt.
The best part was seeing our ships roar up into the blue on their first test-run. Some of them would be free for Nils Narvaard's kind of interests now. They’d be going out to the Moon and Mars and Venus—out to high romance.
Probably I'd be able to go along.
The End
*************************************
The Great Idea,
by Raymond Z. Gallun
Startling Stories Jan. 1952
Novelette - 7740 words
IN adapting itself to life on the alien planets it seems probable that mankind will undergo some drastic changes. The late Olaf Stapledon hinted at some of them in his famous Interplanetary Man lecture. To exist in alien atmospheres Stapledon insisted that humanity was going to have to indulge in highly selective breeding, perhaps even in controlled mutation.
This may well prove true prophecy—for who can tell just what will happen to the so-called form divine in the process of adjusting to methane atmospheres or radioactive front lawns? However, there is one human quality which we feel safe in prophesying will remain unchanged. This is the same quality so rejoiced in by every scoundrel who ever trimmed a sucker since the first cave man was euchred out of his cliffside residence.
For the power to dream while waking that will ultimately carry men to the distant planets is no more than the obverse of the wishful thinking that makes them cheerful dupes in every confidence game ever known. Mr. Gallun, in this story, points out the immutability of human suckerdom. —THE EDITOR.
**********************************
Lon Hamlin Was the Ideal Sucker with that
Plan for Making Earth-Moon Freighting Safe!
JODY and I are idealistic-romantics. Call us professional chance-takers—but never crooks. Jody was even a minister’s son. Yet the Moon is a harsh place. Sometimes the pressure of survival becomes very great. Putting a sucker wise can be a kindness. But there is temptation to seek wicked personal benefit.
We’d been cadging handouts in Luna City for quite a while—the ancient routine on any frontier after another wrong guess. It’s bad for a man’s pride and character. And they can bill you ten bucks a day just for the manufactured air you breathe under the municipal atmosphere dome.
We were in the Dead Rocket Bar again, looking over the mob for prospects. And Jody was still reminding me, “Gotta get us a deal awful soon, Shorty, or they’ll make dishwashers of us to pay our debts.”
I was having the recurrent vision of any old Lunar roustabout at a low point. Home—the hills and woods of Missouri. Funny—when I feel like that I’ve never got the thousand bucks that the short hop of a quarter-million miles costs. Considering the price of atomic fuel and the risks, maybe space travel will always be expensive.
The Spaceshipmen’s Union forbids workaway passage as stealing bread from the mouths of its members. And Jody and I had tried to stow away so often that every cop on the blasting-off platforms was ready to jug us on sight.
“We got us a deal, Jody,” I said wistfully. “Oxygen-and-water plant, mobile type, to make money off of the optimists going out to the new Holridge uranium strike. We’d be able to sell oxygen-and-water to claim-stakers right and left.”
What passes for a face with Jody showed me his disgust. “Oh, sure, Shorty,” he rumbled. “Grand idea—with a sure young fortune buried in it. Except that where would you ’n’ me find a backer—even offering a sixty-percent-profits-cut to him—who would provide the ten thousand bucks necessary to buy us a Lunar traveler-tractor?
“Not to mention the plant itself and all the tanks and cylinders needed to hold the recovered air and water. Pal, if we could beg, borrow or steal just a little of that kind of dough I’d be back in the Bronx so damn fast!”
“There’s plenty dough in Luna City,” I grumbled. “It’s the local gossips that are our trouble. Talking about us and the tantalum ore deal. Sure we made errors in judgment. But you know how gossip is—exaggerating and misrepresenting trifles until we got a bad reputation and nobody to give us a hand.”
I stopped griping very suddenly.
“Shorty—do you see what I see?” Jody whispered like a happy gremlin with a guilty conscience.
“I ain’t blind,” I answered.
WE were a little like a pair of poor Moon-born colonial kids just then—staring, mouths adrool, at a big bowl-full of gorgeous, shiny apples straight from Earth. Yeah—tempted.
A guy had just come into the Dead Rocket. Young—a sweet boy, the old ladies might say. His Lunar dungarees were so new that he might well have thrown away the rah-rah hat of a college freshman an hour before. There was self-consciousness and wonder in his face—the wonder of a greenhorn youngster’s first trip off the Earth.
Under one arm he had the Luna City Argus. Part of the headline was hidden but I knew what it was:
ANOTHER METALS FREIGHTER EXPLODES IN SPACE. BLAME COST-CUT ATTEMPT.
Yeah, a monotonous old story.
The kid lacked the sourdough’s mask of casualness completely. What his truculent defensive manner tried to say was— Keep off me, chiselers! I’m smart! I’m nobody’s fool!
What it really said to us and everybody else in the Dead Rocket was— Here’s dough in a baby’s pocket. All he knows is that some disgusting characters want it. And maybe he can shoot that blaster in his belt. Such facts might defeat some folks. But not intelligent guys.
“A youth of this charming calibre would never be off the Earth unless he had at least several thousand greenbacks of security-money on him!” Jody said.
“Now why do you waste expensive wind saying the obvious, Jody?” I asked. “Or have you got evil thoughts?”
“Shucks, no, Shorty,” my pal denied with great earnestness. “Fact is, I feel only paternal protectiveness toward little Gr
eenie. Because you and me must have looked something like him when we first came to the Moon. Have you got wicked designs on his roll?”
“Sure—not!” I retorted. “My intentions are as pure as yours. I want only to shield him from these greedy characters who have their profane gaze fixed on him from all parts of this dive. Jody, while we work together it might be best if we don’t seem to know each other very well. Go hide in the washroom.”
Jody obeyed without argument—proving that, in spite of past errors, he still respected my wisdom.
Now the tenderfoot, having waited his turn at the bar behind those who wanted drinks, had his chance to ask Rosa Minton whichever of the many things that greenhorns are always wanting to know was troubling him.
Rosa’s twenty, dark, tiny—the prettiest girl on the Moon. And straight and sweet with the right individuals. I can’t always say the same for her mom and dad, who own the Dead Rocket. She works around the joint and sometimes sings for the crowd. She puts Jody and me quite a ways above some people. We’ve known her since she was so big.
I sat concentrating my eager stare on her, trying to catch her eye and let her know that I wanted to be helpful. Presently she smiled at me and beckoned. Under envious glares I arose and approached Sonny Boy.
“Shorty,” Rosa said. “This gentleman says he must find an Irvin Klosky. An old timer like you. Ever hear of him?”
Very dimly in the murk of my memory I saw another big lug—one who would be lost in the crowd of optimists who had swarmed over the Moon to make their fortunes. Drilled through the guts by a fast meteor out on the Lunar plains, so I’d heard. Maybe three years ago. Drilled and smothered in a punctured spacesuit. “K-l-o-s-k-y,” I spelled. “Yeah, I know him.”
The greenhorn looked me over. His face was sullen with regrettable worry, suspicion and distaste, all directed at me. Yeah, you have to use subterfuge to get some ninnies to accept your protection from the covetous. “Maybe six feet tall, Klosky is,” I said. “No dude. Seldom shaves. Chews tobacco. Lantern jaw. Nose like a bulb. Muscular.”
These points were safe to mention. They fitted my dim recollection of Irv Klosky. But Moon-bums conform rather well to a pattern. For instance, what can you do but chew tobacco in a spacesuit when you can’t afford to burn up your precious oxygen with cigarettes or a pipe? The description might even almost have fitted my own superior physique, physiognomy and habits. And as for outlining my pal, Jody Nichols, it was perfect. Sonny Boy fell in line—became eager. “That’s Klosky all right!” he exclaimed. “My mother informed me what he was like!”
Umhm-m—like that the kid let me know that he had never seen Klosky, in the flesh or by photograph.
“He a relative of yours?” I asked casually, just to start the information rolling my way.
“Distant cousin,” Greenie said, sounding glad to spill what was bottled up inside him to anybody who knew somebody he had heard about. “Mother was always praising him as the great adventurer of her family though she hasn’t had a letter from him for years.
“But he’s rough, ready, capable—the only man on the Moon that I knew about and could trust. I need him—to help me with the greatest idea of all time!"
“Gosh!” I commented somewhat skeptically. But it was the right encouragement for Sonny Boy’s youthful ego.
“That’s right, Mister,” he said softly. “The idea that will make transportation between Moon and the Earth safe, sure and fuel-less! Inexpensive and self-perpetuating! The idea that will get all the countless tons of Moon-mined metal across to Earth, not by rocket power but by its own simple potential energy—like a stone rolling down hill! The idea that will put an end to all of these horrible space-freighter disasters!”
AFTER Greenie had said this much, he looked around him with worry and savagery as if, in his enthusiasm—ah, yes, in the vanity of young genius—he had said more than he should.
Right then I was extremely curious. From way in the back of my mind something dovetailed with what he had just told me about this invention of his. And though I knew that, in common with other young and overconfident people, he was imagining a vast fortune for himself and eternal historic fame, still—honest to gosh—I felt fatherly toward him, as if he was a page torn from my own past.
“Um,” I grunted. “Pal—if you can do all that you sure will be the toast of everybody in the Earth-Moon business. My name’s Jake Short. Shorty for short. What’s yours?”
That old corny reply of mine—to everybody who asks who I am when it’s safe to be truthful—didn’t even make him smile. “I’m Lon Hamlin,” he stated with sour and cocky impatience. “And can you find me Irvin Klosky?”
“Maybe within the hour, Mr. Hamlin,” I replied. “If Irv’s in Luna City. Just lemme retire to yonder phone booth.”
Of course I didn’t call Klosky, who is dead, but a little wizened guy I should be ashamed to know. His quiet specialty is documents—forged.
I came back to Greenie, grinning. “All okay, Mr. Hamlin,” I said. “We’ve just gotta wait around a little for Irv. Hey, Rosa! Give this gentleman a drink. Be right back, mister,” I added under my breath and went into the washroom.
It took just a minute to explain things to Jody. He favored me with an evil smile. “My friend,” he said, “it is not nice to yield to temptation.”
“Yes, Jody, I am tempted—some,” I replied. “Because of our present circumstances and because this fair youth is so superior. Still I am yielding only to the extent of hoping for a ticket back to Earth. A fair exchange for service rendered. To shield such a one as Mr. Hamlin from the results of the naivete of his genius it is necessary to go far out of our way to fool him. So get going—fast.”
I boosted Jody out the washroom window.
He was soon back, equipped with an identity card which declared him to be Irvin Klosky. His photograph was attached. And the whole thing was rubbed and crinkled to look old and used.
Well, this Lon Hamlin was not the kind to argue with the obvious. “Mother’s long-lost second cousin—I’m very glad to meet you, Mr. Klosky,” he said, shaking Jody’s big paw. “And now, if we can hire a private room where we can talk.... You too, Shorty, being Mr. Klosky’s friend.”
I was afraid Jody might get stuck if the conversation turned to family history. But I needn’t have worried. Little Lonnie was altogether too anxious to speak of his Great Idea to bother with idle reminiscences. In the back room Rosa led us so we all sat down around a table—with drinks, of course. Lon Hamlin started to talk at once.
“Because of the difference in their respective gravities, boys,” he said patronizingly, “anything that weighs one pound on the Moon weighs six pounds on Earth. Right?”
“Sure,” I agreed.
Lonnie looked pleased with himself. “Okay,” he continued. “That difference of five pounds, between one pound of weight on the Moon to its weight of six pounds on Terra, represents tremendous potential energy! Energy that works in the direction of Earth!
“Far more than enough energy to carry anything on the Moon—mined metal, people, plain lava rock, anything at all—across space to Earth by means of the power inherent in itself! Right again?”
Well for my part, in spite of some tipoffs to the contrary in what Lon Hamlin had said to me before, I still had sort of suspected that his idea, like a lot of those of the garden variety that attack a great problem, might be strictly in the screwball class.
But no, more and more this Great Inspiration of Greenie’s began to look as though it was founded on very sound physical principle. Jody started to show an awed and very interested expression. What difference does it make that this wasn’t for quite the reasons you might think? His eyes widened.
“You’re absolutely correct, Mr. Hamlin,” he pronounced firmly.
Greenie’s face shone with triumph.
“Then it is only necessary to find a way to harness this simple power,” he intoned. “Obviously, an object can’t just fall off the Moon to Earth. Because, for a small
fraction of the distance between the two bodies, the Lunar gravity, though fundamentally so much less than that of the terrestrial, is dominant.
“Let us picture the situation by means of an elementary analogy—a boulder at the bottom of a small depression on top of a hill. By virtue of its superior elevation, that boulder possesses the potential energy to roll to the bottom of the hill with great force. It is only necessary to roll it upward a few feet first to clear the lip of the depression.
“This might be done by attaching it to another boulder by means of a cable—another boulder already rolling down the hill! A little of the latter boulder’s kinetic energy would thus be employed to drag the former out of the depression at the hilltop and get it started downward under the force of gravity!
“Then a third boulder, also in the depression at the start, might be attached to the second—with the same result! And so on in a chain or by a kind of siphon-principle as long as there were boulders left in the hollow at the hill’s crest.”
Jody’s eyes had begun fairly to glitter with excitement and I guess the same was true of mine. “Continue, Mr. Hamlin,” I said. “How does all this fit the Moon-to-Earth transportation problem now?”
SONNY BOY’S voice quivered with pride and eagerness as he went on. “Don’t you see?” he said. “The relatively few thousand miles of the total Moon-to-Earth distance, where the lesser Lunar gravity is dominant, represent the part of the boulders’ path where energy must be expended to lift them the little way to the lip of the hilltop depression.
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