by John D. Clark
Now that it’s all over, and we have escaped the more serious of the possible consequences, we wonder why we were so slow to see what was happening. For it might have been foreseen. We knew that the position of man in the universe was precarious enough, and that the very existence of matter itself wasn’t much more stable. That is—we knew it, but we didn’t realize it. There is a difference, and that difference was almost enough to eliminate not only man but the Earth itself from celestial history.
The warnings were plain enough. They lasted for years. Biologists had noticed that the evolution of animal and plant life in the northern hemisphere was steadily accelerating, due, probably, to the gradual and completely inexplicable increase in the intensity of the cosmic rays from the direction of Polaris.
These rays increased the number of mutations in the germ plasm of all living matter exposed to them. New varieties of plants, freak animals, queer monsters born to normal men and women, were coming into the world at a steadily increasing rate. There were advantages, of course. Many of the new varieties of plants and animals were extremely useful, and there were genuises as well as monsters born to commonplace human beings. But, on the whole, the inhabitants of the planet didn’t like the situation. The scientists liked it even less than did anybody else. You see, they couldn’t explain it—and when a scientist can’t explain something, he is likely to be annoyed. It makes him look so foolish.
* * * *
It was on January 15, 2156, that the astrophysicist, Dr. James Carter, had the first glimmer of light—literally. He was working on the new five-hundred-inch reflector of the Mt. McKinley observatory at the time, and noticed a darkening of his photographic plate from the spectrometer focused on Polaris in the northern sky. He repeated his observation, and got the same result; a uniform darkening over the whole spectral range.
“As though,” he said to his assistant, “the whole damned spectrum were light struck! And I never knew any source of light that would give a continuous spectrum from infra-red to cosmic rays, with the cosmics the strongest. There doesn’t seem to be any line structure at all—just as though there were a hot body out there heated to a few billion degrees centigrade!”
The assistant, Dr. Michael Poggenpohl, usually known as Doc Mike, wrinkled his diminutive nose, and scratched his flaming head. “That,” he remarked, “doesn’t make sense! A body that hot on the outside wouldn’t stay that way. And where did it come from, anyway, Jimmy?”
Jimmy uncoiled his six foot three of giraffelike build from his usual thinking position (in which he rested comfortably on the back of his neck), lighted a cigarette, and grunted. The noise was not gracious, but neither was his mood nor the expression on his somewhat battered face.
“Right now, I want some information on where this alleged source of light is. Will you make arrangements for the observatories on Mars and Venus to take simultaneous observations with us on the northern sky? No, I don’t want a spectrum. I have a spectrum, and it has me baffled. I merely want a simple photographic observation. Everything this object, whatever it is, is sending out, seems to affect the plate. And I want to know where it is. The question of what it is, can wait. Move on now, little one, and pretend that you’re earning the money the commissariat of science is paying you!”
Mike held his nose insultingly, and moved to obey. “And how about the jack,” he asked sweetly, “that they’re foolish enough to waste on you?”
“It’s not waste, old fruit. Geniuses have to be supported. I’m the genius!”
“I’ve been wondering what it was. I thought you must be somebody’s uncle. O. K., I’ll get the messages off right away. The light-beam operator ought to be able to get in touch with Mars directly, but Venus is on the other side of the Sun right now, and he’ll have to relay to him.”
“Don’t bother me with trifles! Go away and let me think in peace!”
“You mean loaf,” said Mike, and departed.
* * * *
But Jimmy didn’t loaf when the other man had gone. He reached for a dozen reference books, a slide rule, and a wad of paper, and immediately became oblivious to all about him. He remained in that state for some hours, and only returned to the world when Mike reappeared with the televised plates from the other observatories. They all showed the same thing: a small, brilliant point against the background of the northern constellations.
It had evidently been overlooked previously, since it was almost invisible to the eye, even through the largest telescope, and appeared only on the photographic plate, which was sensitive to the invisible ultra-violet, gamma, and cosmic radiation which accounted for the major part of its energy. The plates were sent via pneumatic tube to the calculating room, with a request that the distance of the unknown body be determined, if possible, from the observations of the three planets. The two scientists sat down to think it over.
“Mike, what do you know about matter, anyway? What’s it composed of?”
“What’s the matter? I thought you were the genius. And why ask a kindergarten question at this time of day, anyway?”
“Go on, go on. I’m asking the questions. What’s matter made of?”
“Well, if you must know, it seems to be made of assorted particles of electricity. An atom consists of a heavy, positive nucleus, with a lot of light, negative electrons floating around it. To be precise, the nucleus consists of, say, ‘z’ protons and ‘n’ neutrons. They weigh almost the same, and the protons have unit positive charges, while the neutrons are neutral. The whole nucleus has a positive charge, then, of plus ‘z’. (Ordinary hydrogen hasn’t any neutrons—just a single lone proton for a nucleus.) Then, of course, there are ‘z’ negative electrons floating around outside to neutralize the whole affair. You ought to know, though! You developed the method of splitting the nucleus on a commercial scale to get the energy out of it!”
“Yes, yes, I know. But what is a proton made of?”
“That? Oh, it seems to be a neutron closely tied up with a positron— a positive electron that doesn’t weigh much of anything.”
“Then, candidate, what are the fundamental units of matter?”
“What is this, anyhow? Another damned Ph.D. exam? The fundamental particles would be the neutron, with most of the mass and no charge, and the positron and electron, with positive and negative charge respectively, and no mass to speak of. And so what?”
“Very good, Rollo. And now, what is light?”
“T’hell with light! I can think of lots better things to discuss.” He flicked the communicator switch, and the round face of the commissary clerk looked out at him from the view plate. “Send up two—no—four liters of beer! And make sure it’s cold!”
Carter grinned like a ghoul, and slid farther down in his neck. “Make that six liters, will you? But this is serious. What happens when a positron meets an electron?”
“All right,” Doc Mike said wearily. “You get a photon of light coming out of where the two met. Can be most any frequency—usually very high, cosmic or gamma. I wish he’d hurry with that beer! And what’s this all about, anyway?”
“Wait and see—and get ready for a trip. I need the information on those plates, though, and several sets of observations some days apart. Here’s the beer!”
* * * *
II.
Two weeks later two frightened scientists looked at each other over the final results from the calculating room. The figures were before them. The unknown, which continued to radiate faintly but continuously in its peculiar fashion, was some ten thousand million miles from the Earth, and was coming closer. And unless the gods of mathematics had completely forsaken them, within two years it would hit the Earth, or come so close to it that the latter would be as thoroughly wrecked as though it had sustained a direct hit.
The body was not large—no larger than the Moon—but its manner of radiation was unique. High-frequency light comes from a hot body. And a body that small couldn’t be that hot; it would have cooled off long ago. And if it were that hot, the intensity of the radiation received by the Earth would have been much greater—greater, in fact, than that received from the Sun, in spite of the small size of the unknown and its great distance from the Earth. It just didn’t make sense. And it didn’t make sense to the other astronomers of the solar system. Nothing had appeared in the popular press, nor was it likely to. An iron-clad censorship had been clamped down. The danger was serious enough, and panic would make it worse.
Carter spoke. “We’re going out to take a look, Mike. Or I am, anyway. Would you like to come along?”
“Uh-huh. You need somebody to take care of you. When do we leave?”
“In half an hour. My ship is ready to go. It has a lot of new gadgets on it, too. This should be a good chance to try them out. Let’s go.”
Just half an hour later the rocket blasted free from the snow-covered space port near the observatory. It was an improved experimental model of those used at the time, all of which depended upon the principle discovered and developed by Carter himself, which had made space travel something more than an insane gamble.
Hydrogen gas was fed into the converter, where terrific static and magnetic fields converted it into helium. Immense energy, developed from the loss of mass, appeared in the process, which energy imparted a tremendous velocity to the flaming helium gas which escaped through the rocket jets at the stern of the ship. An acceleration up to ten times that of gravity could be maintained, but five gravities was the usual limit for any length of time. More than that, and the passengers lost consciousness. Five was uncomfortable enough, but men in good training could stand it, if they didn’t attempt to move from their padded and pivoted chairs.
The trip was uneventful. A week later the rocket was circling cautiously around the unknown body. It was about the size of the Moon, but little could be seen of its surface, which appeared to be under a continuous bombardment with some immensely high explosive. The flashes from the explosions, consisting mainly of cosmic, gammas, and UV’s, were evidently the source of the light which had puzzled the observers. Carter and Poggenpohl crouched behind their lead-glass screens and watched.
“Looks like a fluorescent screen being bombarded by electrons, Jimmy. Somewhat larger scale, though. More bombardment on the forward side, too.”
“Yes, there is. It looks as though it were sweeping a path through space as it approaches the Earth. Man that gun, will you, please, and fire a solid shot at it when we go around the rear of it again?”
“O. K. Don’t see what you’re driving at, though. Do you expect a bell to ring, like in a shooting gallery? I’ll signal when I fire, and aim directly at the center when we’re exactly behind it.”
The minute went by, then, “Ready—fired! Watch for it!”
There was no need to watch. Twenty minutes later, when the hundred-pound piece of steel hit the surface of the wandering planet, there was a tremendous flash, dwarfing those which had been observed.
Carter appeared to be pleased, or at least satisfied, and called to the other. “All right, Mike. I’m going to cut the rockets and let the ship take up an orbit around this peculiar object. You take the measurements of distance to the surface and time the orbit, and I’ll measure its diameter. Considering the fate of that piece of steel you sent out of the gun, I don’t think we’ll land this time. It might be unhealthy.”
* * * *
There followed a period of several hours, during which the only sound was the click of the calculating machine, and Mike’s gasp as he saw the final result. “Good Lord, Jimmy! This cockeyed animal isn’t any bigger than the Moon, and she weighs as much as Jupiter! Are we nuts—or is it?”
Jimmy laughed as he cut in the rockets and swung the ship around for home. “The latter, Mike! It’s demented—completely. We’re no crazier than usual. Gather around and I’ll explain.”
“It’s about time! Now, what have you got up your sleeve, anyway?”
“You remember, when we first saw this thing, I put you through a quiz on matter? I had a hunch then, and I’ve proved it. You described the sort of matter with which we are familiar. Look here. You said that matter was made up of neutrons and positrons, in the last analysis, in the nuclei, and of electrons on the outside. Well, there is another sort of matter possible. What is to prevent an electron from combining closely with a neutron, and forming a negative proton? The possibility was mentioned way back in 1934, and I think the old boy even gave his hypothetical particle a name—an ‘antron,’ I think he called it. Now take some of these antrons, and some extra neutrons, and make a nucleus out of them, and then release enough positrons on the outside to balance the antrons. And one has an atom with a negative atomic number, since the atomic number of an atom, of course, is the number of positive charges on the nucleus.
“And now one makes a whole universe with these minus elements. And one makes oneself out of them, too, and lives in the place, and can’t tell the difference between it and a regular universe. All the physical laws will be the same—but just wait until part of your new universe hits part of a regular universe! Then there’ll be the devil to pay and no pitch hot! Figure it out. What do you think will happen?”
“Uh—let’s see. First the outer electrons in our matter will neutralize the outer positrons in the reverse matter—and there’ll be a hell of a lot of light or other radiation—UV, gamma, cosmic and what not. Then the nuclei will get together. Nothing will happen to either set of neutrons. But the positrons on the protons will neutralize the electrons on the antrons, and there’ll be another burst of radiation and a lot of neutrons left over. So the net result will be a mob of neutrons and a flock of radiation. What do you think? Is that thing out there”—he gestured toward the anomalous planet they were leaving behind—”out of a reverse universe?”
“I think so. It has all the symptoms. Long, long ago, how long ago, Heaven only knows, it escaped from some nebula in outer space—some nebula that’s built in reverse—and headed this way. And here it is. The glowing and flashing surface is the result of its contact with cosmic dust— the little particles of matter that drift around through all space. And every time it picks some up there’s a flash; all the charged particles are neutralized and head away from it as light. And it has added a few more neutrons to its collection. They probably sift down to the center of gravity of the thing. That’s why it’s so infernally heavy.”
“Then, teacher”—Mike was having an idea—”it was probably a rather ordinary planet when it started out on its travels. Barring being built backward, that is! I’d make a guess that it was about half the mass of Jupiter when it started, and, I suppose, had about half the volume. But every time it picked up some normal matter it both shrunk and got heavier. The mass of the positrons and electrons lost would be too small to lose sleep over, and, on the average, it would pick up one neutron for every one of its own freed from a nucleus.
“So it’s ‘most used up now—an awful flock of neutrons left, and just a little bit of normal reverse matter. The neutrons will have most of the mass, and the reverse matter will take up almost all of the space. Neutrons don’t take up any volume to speak of.”
“Right. So now it has twice the mass it started with, approximately, and a minute fraction of its original volume. When the rest of the reverse matter is finally neutralized it will be a little heavier, and so small that it’ll be completely invisible. Maybe there’ll be a few cubic centimeters of neutrons, or some absurd amount like that, with all that mass. But we’d better hurry! It won’t be very amusing if that neutralizing is done with some of the Earth’s surface! Hold tight—here comes some acceleration!”
* * * *
III.
Ten days later Carter and Poggenpohl presented their report to the commissariat of science of the United States of America, and two days later they attended an emergency meeting of the heads of the departments of science of the governments of the world. Carter was speaking.
“So you see, gentlemen, what the situation is. You all understand the theory of the phenomenon, and you know that the observatories of the world and of the other two inhabited planets have checked our own telescopic observations. In addition, there is the phenomenon we observed when the six-inch projectile hit this—this--”
“Call it ‘Gus,’” whispered Mike disrespectfully.
Jimmy glared at him, and continued, “—this—minus planet. I am aware of no alternative theory to explain the behavior of this anomalous body, and most of you appear to be inclined to adhere to the one Dr. Poggenpohl and I have presented.” He looked around the table and saw nothing but a succession of reluctant nods.
“Then, the question is, what to do about it? If it were normal matter it would be bad enough. But then, it might be possible to install huge rocket tubes on the intruder and drive it out of its course sufficiently to miss the Earth by a safe margin. But what can we do with this thing, when, if we touch it, we shall be annihilated? And if we don’t touch it, we shall be annihilated anyhow. At least the Earth, and those who can’t escape to the other planets will be annihilated, and that means ninety-nine per cent of the population. For you know that our combined rocket fleets aren’t enough to move one per cent of the Earth’s population in the time we have available. And even if we could move them—the other planets are only barely inhabitable by man, and certainly could not support all of us.”
“There’s one thing we must do,” remarked the science commissary of the Russians, “and that is to keep this situation a secret, for the present at least. For if we don’t, there will be such a rush for the few rockets we have that half the world’s population will be killed in a few days in the panic. And the rockets themselves will be smashed. We won’t be able to do anything at all with them.”
“There’s no doubt at all on that point,” said the delegate from the Federated States of Europe. “I take it that the meeting is unanimous on that point?” There was another chorus of nods, but this time more enthusiastic. “But has anybody any idea of how to move this—minus planet—out of the course it’s following?”
There was a sodden silence, and then Mike rose slowly to his feet, his red hair bristling with what looked like an idea. “Gentlemen, there’s one other way to move our little country cousin out of his course. Hit him with something heavy that’s moving fast enough to do the job.”
“But what will happen to that thing, whatever it is? Won’t it be annihilated?”
“Not so you could notice it, when it comes to the effect. All the electrons and positrons will be gone, and it won’t be normal matter any more, but the neutrons will be left, and they will have the momentum they started with.”
“Very well, Herr Poggenpohl, but what can we hit it with that will be big enough to make any difference? All the space ships in the solar system, firing all their biggest guns for a year, wouldn’t be enough to do anything to its course! After all, it weighs as much as Jupiter!”
“There’s one projectile available that would be big enough to make quite a perceptible dent in its path: the Moon! We can spare it. All it does is produce the tides. Mount rocket tubes on the Moon, pry it up out of the solar system, and sock the intruder so that its course will be changed and it will fall into the Sun! We can do that if we hit it while it’s still far enough away from the system.”
* * * *
The council gasped at the suggestion, and there was a chorus of excited protests, which slowly died, as the sheer magnitude of the plan gripped the imaginations of the assembled scientists. Nobody thought of putting the question to a formal vote, and in twenty minutes the meeting had been changed, automatically, into an executive council, which was in an excited argument about ways and means, in which calculating machines, reference books, celestial mechanics, the quantum theory, and polylingual profanity played a prominent part.
Carter pounded on the table and shouted until he managed to attract the attention of the disputants. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I suggest that we present our plans to the various governments, in order to obtain their cooperation in the execution of our project. And I also suggest that publicity can do no harm now, since we have an apparently practicable remedy for the difficulty. The amateur astronomers will let the cat out of the bag very soon, anyway, if we don’t make some statement. And finally, may I suggest that we request the President of the United States to make a television broadcast, explaining the situation to the public, asking their cooperation, and assuring them that the said situation is, as it were, well in hand?”
The assembled scientists stared blankly at him, nodded absent-mindedly, and returned to their discussion, more violently than before. Carter grinned at Mike, lighted a cigarette, and wandered out of the room, in search of a communicator in some place that was quiet enough so that he could make his message to the President heard above the din.
The President revealed the danger to the world in one of his famous fireside broadcasts, concluding with a request that every one remain quietly at his normal duties, unless called upon to cooperate in some way with the scientists who were working at what appeared to be a practicable method of saving the planet.
The heads of the other governments of the world made similar broadcasts.
As might be expected, most of the population of the Earth paid no attention at all to the broadcasts, being quite unable to realize the situation. The Earth had never been destroyed, therefore it could not be destroyed, and the scientists were crazy as usual. That attitude was typical of the major part of the inhabitants of the globe—the great, average masses.
But there were two other attitudes apparent. On the one side there were those intelligent enough to understand the danger and the measures that were being taken against it. They were the scientists, engineers, and technicians of the world, and the well-educated part of the other classes of the population.
On the other side were the unbalanced, the fanatics, and the extremely ignorant, who were the tools of the first two. They rioted, for no apparent reason, but merely because they were frightened, they tried to make up in two years for the dullness of their lives, not realizing that the dullness of those lives was largely due to the dullness of their intellects. Some of them—and they were less trouble than the others—merely got drunk and remained that way. A few of them actively obstructed the work that had to be done.
One of them, one Obidiah Miller, who had been, it was rumored, a circuit rider in the Tennessee Mountains, was the most virulent. He was an ignorant man, but he possessed a native shrewdness which, combined with his surprising oratorical powers and his religious fanaticism, had a tremendous effect on the more ignorant and weak-minded portions of the population.
Fanatics are always followed by fools, of which there is an inexhaustible supply. When the danger appeared, the intelligent parts of the populace decided that the reasonable thing to do was to cooperate with the scientists who were trying to cope with it. The fanatics proclaimed, and the fools believed, that the approaching calamity was the judgment of God on an impious world. Especially did they protest that the Moon should not be moved. First, because it couldn’t be moved; second, because the Lord hadn’t intended it to move; and third, because, since God had evidently intended that the minus planet should destroy the Earth for its wickedness, it would be an act of impiety even to attempt to avert the collision.
“Would ye seek, brethren, to attempt to stave off the Day of Judgment, as foretold in the Holy Scriptures? Would ye seek”—his hill-billy accent rolled out over the sheep-faced crowd—”to avert the day when the righteous shall be raised to the right hand of God, and the wicked shall be cast down to Hell? Will ye let the wicked meddlers into matters that are best left alone attempt to stave off the almighty hand of God? Wreck the space ports! Smash the rockets! Kill the idolaters!”
There was an answering rumble from the crowd, as Mike and Jimmy slipped away from its outskirts. “The ‘idolaters,’” Mike remarked, as they sidled into a building, “sounds like us. I would recommend, with all due respect to the gentleman’s religious convictions, that steps be taken. With an ax, for choice, before he starts gumming the works.”
“There appears to be something in what you say. Personally, I have no desire to become a martyr to science before it’s absolutely necessary. Let’s get the chief of the Federal police on the wire, and have him gather our friend in and send his congregations home. And some guards with machine guns and things around the space ports might not be amiss. We haven’t any time to be bothered by fools!”
* * * *
In the next few days there was an epidemic of raids on the pseudo-religious protest meetings, and there was a great gathering-in of the more rabid of the fanatics, including Obidiah Miller, who was planted, gently but firmly, in a lunatic asylum. Guards were placed around the space ports, and assigned to the more important of the scientists who were employed on the gigantic task. There were a few attempts at sabotage and assassination, but all of them failed.
The work was pressed. The astronomical observatory on the Moon was dismantled and carried to the Earth piecemeal, as were many of the valuable fittings of the space port there. Since the development of atomic power, this port was not as necessary as it had been in the old days of combustion rockets. Then, the huge atomic drills, operated by men in space suits, started the excavation of the deep shafts that were to act as rocket tubes. Some fifty of them were drilled, most of them parallel, but a few at divergent angles, to act as the steering mechanism of the huge space ship into which Luna was being converted. At the bases of these shafts the reaction chambers were excavated, and lined with refractory material. The automatic fuel-supply system was installed, whereby millions of tons of the very material of the satellite itself were carried to the reaction chambers.
There, the lighter elements, oxygen, silicon, aluminum, etc., were to be converted into iron vapor, which was to be driven out of the rocket tubes by the atomic energy released in the process. Iron itself, though common on the Moon, was not suitable as a fuel, since, in respect to atomic changes, it is the most stable of all the elements. The whole fuel system was automatically controlled, with all controls in duplicate.
The controlling mechanism, which consisted, in effect, of fifty throttles—one for each rocket tube—was arranged to be controlled by remote radio control from a space ship, which would convoy the huge projectile to its destination. All the rocket tubes, of course, were on one hemisphere of the Moon, since there would be no need of stopping it in its course, once it had been started.
Thousands of men were needed for the construction work—of all types from manual laborers to astrophysicists. And all of them were working at high pressure. Work never stopped for months at a time. Accidents were many—an atomic drill is not the safest instrument in the universe, and working in a space suit is always dangerous.
As a result, the work took a steady toll of lives, and there was a steady inflow of new labor onto the job. But the work went on in spite of accidents. It had to. When a man was killed, if there was anything at all left of him, the body was tossed to one side and another man took his place. The record of the construction would be an epic in itself—one which there is no space to record here.
The plan of operation was simple—in theory. The Moon was to be gradually dragged away from the Earth—gradually, to avoid inducing huge tides and devastating Earthquakes, then driven north “above” the solar system, out of the plane of the ecliptic. It was to be driven into the minus planet at such an angle and at such a velocity that the latter would be deflected away from the Earth, and the residual mass of neutrons would fall directly into the Sun, where they would do no harm. It was calculated that the normal matter of the Moon would a little more than neutralize the negative matter of the minus planet, so that the residue that finally reached the Sun would consist of a small planetoid of normal matter surrounding an extremely massive core of neutrons.
* * * *
IV.
It was July 6, 2157. Carter and Poggenpohl were rechecking the calculations of the course the Moon would have to take on its last voyage. Finally, they finished with the last decimal and leaned back. “And that, my boy, is how it shall be done!” Jimmy threw his pencil at the calculating machine and inserted his face into a liter of beer.
“All you have to do is push the button and save the world. We’ll have to do some reckoning, though, on the initial escape from the Earth. Otherwise, if we’re a little brusque about it, the tides will put New York under fifty feet of water, and the mayor might possibly be annoyed with us. How far behind schedule are those Primates of engineers, who are supposed to be building the rocket tubes on that soon-to-be excompanion of our more romantic moments?”
“They ain’t. Bill Douglas was here last night, and he said that they would be ready to go in two weeks. And we have three to spare. He’s a week ahead of schedule. There’s just a little more wiring to do. And we don’t have to do any calculating on tidal effects, either. I did it myself a month ago. It won’t be as tough as it looks—a gradual acceleration of the Moon’s velocity in its orbit, and a gradual, simultaneous acceleration away from the Earth. I planned those rocket tubes, too, so that they won’t shower the Earth with vaporized iron. They won’t point this way until they’re a long way from here. You stick to my firing chart, and you’ll get away with it. And I figured what the tides would be, too, so you don’t have to worry about that. I done it with my little calculator!”
“I say—I thought I was the genius around here! I’ll have to have the brass hats increase your salary fifteen, or possibly twenty, cents a week!”
“You don’t have to worry about that, either!” Mike grinned like a gargoyle. “I’ve already attended to it. I caught the commissary of science in a good mood the other day and hit him for five hundred dollars more per week. Got it, too. In fact, it’s already spent. You’re invited to come and help drink some of it to-night.”
“Accepted without qualification. How about those tides, though? How bad will they be?”
“Not so bad. About three meters maximum above mean high water along the coast. They’ve almost finished building concrete sea walls around the cities and the important communications along the coast, and they’re evacuating the other coastal lowlands. But you wouldn’t know about that. You’ve been too busy with that trick integraph of yours to know whether you’re alive or—”
* * * *
A buzz of the communicator interrupted Mike. He flicked the switch, and the agitated face of the chief of the Federal police appeared on the screen. “Dr. Poggenpohl! That nut, Obidiah Miller, escaped from the loony bin last night! We haven’t been able to track him down. Probably get him in a couple of days, but watch yourself in the meantime, and warn Dr. Carter. I’ll send over a couple more guards. No sense in taking any chances now.”
“Thanks, chief. I’ll warn Dr. Carter. But there isn’t much our little friend can do right now. The job’s almost done. Thanks for the warning, though.” He flicked off the switch. “Oh, hell, nothing we can do about it! I only hope he stays away from here. I don’t like nuts. They get in my hair. And by the way, there’s another guy who is cursing us up one side and down the other. The power commissary is quite wrathy.
“We’re taking the Moon away from him, and he can’t produce any tidal power any more. He’ll have to rip up all his plants and convert them into atomic-power outfits. He doesn’t love us. He wants to write off the original investment on the old plants, so that his department can make a good showing. And they didn’t have any upkeep to speak of, and the power was free and required no brains whatever to produce. So, as I remarked, he does not love us. In fact, I think that he’d like to boil us in oil or do something else equally lingering and humorous to us.”
“Oh, well. Invite him to the party. Perhaps, if we get him tight enough he won’t mind it so much.”
* * * *
V.
It was August 1, 2157. The last of the construction crews had been removed from the Moon; all the movable equipment had been returned to the Earth, and everything was ready for the start. The control space ship was waiting for Carter and Poggenpohl, who were to guide the Moon on its last journey. In twenty hours, at exactly 16:27, GMT, August 2, 2157, the first rocket was to be fired.
Mike had strolled out to the ship, where he was intent on inspecting his quarters, when there was a frantic ringing of alarm bells, and a white-faced field attendant raced across the field. “Dr. Poggenpohl! Stop! There’s trouble on the Moon! Just got word. A-” He stopped suddenly as Jimmy ran up alongside of him.
“There’s going to be hell, Mike! That damned nut Miller’s gummed things. When he got loose he got himself included in one of the last construction crews on the Moon, and when they left for Earth he hid and stayed there. And he’s wrecked the remote-control apparatus completely!”
“How do you know?”
“He had to brag about it. He called me up on the communicator three minutes ago and told me what he’d done. Just wanted to rub it in. He’s a martyr, of course. Perfectly willing to die with the Earth if he can keep everybody else from living. And there isn’t any time to fix the control; we have to start in twenty hours, come hell or high water. And they’ll both come if we don’t. Wait until I catch that messiah! I’ll roast his liver over a slow fire!”
“What are you going to do about it, Jimmy? That damned minus planet will rip us out by the roots if we don’t do something fast!”
“I’m going to the Moon and run the thing by hand. Tell them to get the experimental rocket ready.”
“The hell you say! You’ll get yourself annihilated! And how are you going to do it, anyway?”
“Oh, there’s an auxiliary control for the tubes on the Moon itself, off to one side of the rocket area. Rather on the edge, between the rocket hemisphere and the forward or blank hemisphere. I can control it from there—if I can get there before our friend Obidiah thinks of smashing it, too.”
“Maybe so, but you’ll get yourself killed just the same. How are you going to get out from under when the two hit?”
“I’ll have the rocket parked alongside,” said Jimmy, “and dive into it when I have Luna lined up for a direct hit. I’ve a pretty good chance—maybe one in ten, or so. I’ll go alone, of course. There’s no sense in anybody else’s taking the chance.”
“That’s what you think!” Mike’s red hair bristled even more belligerently than usual, and he glared up at the other’s face. “I’m going along. You can’t handle that brute alone for a week—you’re just nuts! And if you can draw to an inside straight, so can I!
“Hey!” he shouted across the field. “Provision the experimental rocket for two men for four weeks! And make it fast! I’ll tear your liver out if I have to wait twenty minutes! Jimmy, get your gun! We’ll have to settle with Obidiah.”
Nobody’s liver was torn out. Fifteen minutes later the little rocket roared clear of the field with the two men inside. Ten hours later they were in their space suits, bounding in long, ungainly leaps across the Lunar landing field toward the control room. In the helmet radio, Jimmy could hear Mike cursing fluently in three languages. “Lord,” he thought, “if that ape has smashed things already—then we shall be in a jam!”
* * * *
They reached the control cubicle, and peered in the ports. The control board was invisible from there. They crept into the air lock. As the inner door swung silently open they saw a gaunt figure in a space suit raising a huge spanner over the main controls.
Jimmy’s gun roared. The figure pitched forward between the levers, and the spanner clanged to the floor. “This is no time for chivalry, Mike. Throw that thing out the air lock, will you, while I see if the controls are all right? The fool must have just remembered the direct controls. It’s lucky that we arrived when we did!”
It was August 2, 2157, 16:24 GMT. The rocket had been moored by huge steel cables, with a quick-release arrangement, against the door of the control room. Three minutes to go.
Both men were in the padded and pivoted chairs before the control board. “We, who are about to die,” Jimmy said casually, “salute you. Is everything ready?” He swung the safety-release lever over, activating the control buttons. “Will you tell them that I died in the odor of sanctity?”
“No,” said Mike, “I will not. Your odor is not of sanctity. It reminds me more of beer. You may fire when you are ready, Gridley!”
Jimmy glued his eyes to the firing chart, and his fingers to the first bank of buttons. Twenty seconds to go. Mike shivered a little, and tried to disguise the shiver with a yawn. He started counting seconds.
“Ten—nine—eight—seven—six—five—four—three—two—one—fire!”
There was a shattering, ground-transmitted roar. The Moon under their feet trembled, and through the ports, silhouetted against a hellish glare, they saw the construction scaffolding fall to the ground. The roaring increased. It was like a continuous explosion. Mike tore his handkerchief into bits, stuffed pieces into his ears, and did the same for Jimmy, who was too busy with the controls to do anything for himself.
The roar increased and the flares waxed to an absolutely unendurable brightness, and there was a feeling of acceleration, as though the floor beneath their feet were tilting. Mike covered the ports against the glare, and sat down again. He lighted two cigarettes, one of which he placed in Jimmy’s mouth.
The wall against which the rocket was moored had become the floor. The Moon was traveling faster than it had for millions of years, and was gradually drawing away from the Earth. They had no instruments with which to observe the latter, but Mike could imagine the growing tides, the tremblers, and the spectacle in the sky. “I hope they make movies from the Earth,” he remarked to nobody in particular. “I’d like to see them if we ever get out of this.”
He broke open some food and water, ate, and took the controls while Carter ate, and then, plugging his ears more thoroughly, lay down on an air mattress and went placidly to sleep, after setting an alarm to wake him, with an electric shock, after six hours. Any alarm depending on sound for its effect would be completely useless.
When he awoke and took the controls, the Earth was far behind, and the minus planet was a brilliant spot on the view plate, a little left of dead center. It was coming closer all the time. The roaring of the jets continued unabated. The whole hemisphere of the Moon “below” them, when he ventured to look, was one white glare, with the incandescent iron vapor shooting hundreds of miles into space.
* * * *
August 12th, 3:28: The last watch was in progress. Jimmy was at the controls. Both of them were in their space suits, and the doors of the control-room air lock, which now appeared, because of the acceleration, to be below them, were wide open directly over the open, outer door of the air lock of the rocket, into which a rope dangled from a stanchion beside the control board.
The minus planet was visible through the port in the opposite wall—now the roof—filling most of the sky, and rapidly growing larger. The acceleration was still at maximum, as the greatest possible velocity at the time of the collision was not only desirable but necessary. The seconds sped, and yet dragged, as the minus planet grew.
3:30: Jimmy held up two fingers. Two minutes more! He waved Mike toward the air lock. The latter looked around the room to see if he had forgotten anything, and then slid “down” into the rocket’s air lock and grabbed the control that would free the moorings.
3:31: The minus planet was bigger—much bigger. It filled most of the sky. Mike gazed anxiously up at Jimmy.
3:32: Jimmy leaped from the controls and slid down into the air lock. He tossed out the rope as Mike released the moorings and slammed the outer door of the lock. There was the sudden baffling sensation of weightlessness, as all acceleration left the ship, which was now falling freely after the Moon, toward the intruder. There was a whoosh as they opened the inner door, not waiting for the pressure to equalize, and pulled themselves by the guide rails toward the control cabin. The gyroscopes were already turning over at full speed, and the rocket tubes had been warmed up.
3:34: Mike slammed himself into the control seat, swung the stick which controlled the motors turning the ship around the stabilizing gyroscopes, and, heading her out to one side of the impending collision, jammed on the maximum safe acceleration of five gravities. Jimmy had managed to reach a chair, and was attempting to pull off his space suit, but the acceleration forced his arms down by his sides, and almost pulled him through the seat of the chair. Mike shoved the acceleration up another notch, and switched on all the view plates.
4:45: The acceleration was still on at six gravities, but neither of the men were interested in it. Their eyes were glued to the view plate, which bore on the impending collision. It was a matter of seconds. Already the Moon was breaking up, and most of the rocket tubes had gone out. Then—
There was a blinding flash on the view plate, and it went black, burned out by the tremendous impact of the radiation. Mike cut the acceleration to zero, and fainted. But Jimmy didn’t know it. He was unconscious.
* * * *
About an hour later they came to—bruised, battered, and burned by the radiation which had filtered through the supposedly ray-proof walls of the ship. They switched on an acceleration of half a gravity, so that they could navigate comfortably in the rocket, and swung her ninety degrees around the gyros, so that they could see the remains of the intruder through the side ports. The view plates were useless. There was a small, incandescent planetoid falling toward the Sun. Mike turned a spectrometer on it, gazed a minute, and then grinned all over his blistered face. “It looks like we’ve done it! There isn’t a damned bit of minus matter left on the thing. It glows like a normal hot body—like a young Sun about the size of Ceres.”
Jimmy tried to grin back, and couldn’t. His face hurt too much. “Right-oh! The Moon neutralized the last of it, with some left over. There’s nothing there now except neutrons and some white hot iron, silicon, and whatever else the Moon was made of. It’s terrifically heavy, and it’s hotter than the seven hinges of hell, but it’s nothing to fear. It will fall into the Sun in a month or so. But you look like the way I feel, and that’s like the latter end of a misspent life. You’d better strip. I’ll get the antiburn goo from the medicine chest, and we can butter ourselves up. Then, we can let the ship coast a while while we get some sleep. And finally, if there’s enough of her left to navigate, we can wend our way homeward. But sleep is what I want most right now--”
Two weeks later, two tanned and filthy astrophysicists stepped out of the air lock of a burned and blistered rocket onto the tarmac of the space port at Washington, stopped short, and gazed with horror at the galaxy of gold braid and blazing stuffed shirts that approached them. They glanced from side to side with the expression of hunted animals, and then, with the mien of early Christian martyrs, stepped forward to undergo the horrors of an official reception by the combined governments of the solar system.