moltensteel in the eyes. The rocket watched him and listened. This was atarget rocket. 240,000 miles away in the New Mexico blockhouse, theywere watching through the rocket's eyes, feeling through the rocket'smechanical nervous system. The rocket carried instruments to test outflight calculations, controls, conditions on the moon. It carriedself-operating information about the range of temperatures, radiation,gravitational influences and other conditions to be encountered on thejourney and here on the moon's surface. It wouldn't return; only theresults of its sensory apparatus were returning now and would keep onreturning until the rocket's power ran out.
The rocket was equipped with every kind of instrument--trackers,telemeters, and it was sending back sound and sight like a human eyeand ear. Radar stations, television stations, G.E. wagons down therereceiving information from the rocket....
The instructions told Barlow exactly where to stand so thetelevision-eyes could pick up his image. He found himself leaning inusing the kit, getting the radio apparatus out of his suit connectedproperly.
He was starting, making gestures, while the terrible fear ofloneliness and isolation, his Achilles Heel, made the aliensurroundings reel and slip and tremble as though at any moment he wasgoing to crumble, fail, surrender.
The bleeding from his nose and ears had stopped. No pain; that wasn'tthe trouble. It was being alone, the idea of dying alone....
The bulbous suit carried him over the terrain. Clouds of pumice-dustdrifted. He felt like an infant walking, his feet threatening to foldunder him. The rocket seemed to be drawing him back toward it. Itseemed warm and friendly as he walked the required distance away fromit. On Earth they were seeing him now--a man on the moon where thereshould be no men. He would explain it to them; that was his job. Togive them an explanation that would frighten them, freeze theinevitable war-drift for six months more. So the Brotherhood couldact--the Brotherhood only needed time.
But what about Barlow? Sure, everybody had to die, but no one shouldhave to die the way Barlow is being asked to. He couldn't do it!
But he stood there, and the rocket transmitted his image and his wordsback to the blockhouse at White Sands, New Mexico. He said what theinstructions told him to.
"We've been observing you; we saw the rocket coming in. You thinkyou're the first to send a rocket here, but you're not. We've beenhere quite a while. Long enough to have set up a small colony. We'vebuilt a city near a uranium mine. There are large processing works,rocket installations and living quarters. There are atomic warheadrockets too...."
He stopped. His legs were weak, so much pressure for such lightgravity....
... rockets on the moon's dark side, out of your reach. But we canreach you. The world is just a target rotating beneath us. We haveunlimited deposits of uranium and other radioactive metals; you arecompletely helpless. Any further attempts to come to the moon willmeet with destruction. We will enforce peace if we can. Any indicationdown there of any power planning to start a war, and we'll send ourown atomic warhead rockets down.
"We are primarily scientists and technicians. The annihilation ofcivilization would have been inevitable anyway, so we've nothing tolose by this last attempt to maintain peace by the only means left--byforce. We'll bomb any power that attempts to launch atom bombs, orbegins any form of military aggression. And remember--no more rocketsto the moon!
"And who are we? WE are not America, Russia, France, Britain,Yugoslavia, China, Japan, Italy, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark,Spain, Portugal, Canada, Texas, or any South American country. We areno country at all. We are of ALL countries. We are here to protect allcountries from every other country, and we will try to do this byforce if necessary. Remember--no more rockets to the moon. We willatom-bomb any nation attempting any form of military aggression."
* * * * *
The Brotherhood was very old, the outgrowth of an ancient Easternphilosophical cult of non-resistance and peace. With six months more,the Brotherhood could win the peace, maybe forever. If the speech justmade frightened the Americans enough, they wouldn't try anything. Theonly other powers that might start a war within six months wereRussia, China, Yugoslavia. And they were too uncertain as to whetheror not America had already reached the moon. Who controlled the Mooncontrolled Earth. They had been afraid for some time that perhapsAmerica had already gotten to the moon. Mutual fear of retaliation hadpostponed the last war this long.
The Brotherhood knew social-psychology. They figured this would work.
Barlow felt himself backing away from the rocket. They were watchinghim, the rocket's eyes and ears. Taking his voice and image back toearth, back to voices and laughter and music and sound and warmth andwomen ... with a sob, he twisted away from the rocket, turned, fellto his thighs in thick pumice-dust, kept on struggling through lazystreaming dust ribbons and he didn't look back. He was watched; hemustn't look back at the rocket again.
Meteors exploded soundlessly on the beds of lava and seas of dust,shooting up thick motionless sprays that seemed almost solid. Abovehim, like splintered steel, stretched the thousands of feet of craterwall. He reached the sharp wall of rock, managed to get around it andout of sight of the rocket. He fell. He lay there, his suit blendingwith the cold and airless landscape.
He screamed. He clawed his way up, started back again, back toward therocket. Hell with the Brotherhood. He was for Hal Barlow. Just for HalBarlow. He'd tell the truth. It wouldn't be long then. They'd sendother rockets up then. This was for Hal Barlow. The isolation pressedin, pressed him faster, throwing him crazily over the dust toward therocket. Then they'd know the truth, send up other rockets, ... notthis way, with no more sounds, voices, any moving thing. No way for aman to die....
It wasn't death; it was the way of dying. No one should die thisway--so alone. Especially Barlow, who feared loneliness more thananything else.
He fell. One foot slid into a crack filled with pumice dust fine aspowder. He hooked the big steel hooks on the ends of his arms at therock, and clung there, his helmet barely pushing up through the dust.He struggled for a while, desperately with his mind filling withvisions of the rocket. He wanted to live now, make up for all theliving he'd missed for so long.
He looked around, still struggling. Light gravity, little weight, buthe was so weak now, and still the rocket wasn't in sight. He crawledon his stomach, dragging the bulbous suit over the rock. He could getaround the rock. He had to. Out of sight, but so near, was the warmhuman rocket.
He ran into the rock and collapsed with a long wet sigh. He gasped.Pain throbbed damply over his chest. He moved ... just enough to turnover on his back. He slid up a little so that he was sitting therestaring at the frigid, barren, naked emptiness of utter silence anddesolation. What had the man said? "_No man is alone who has learnedthe secret of oneness with the world...?_"
He thought about the Brotherhood, seriously now, for the first time.Many men before him had died for it. An entirely new approach tosociety and the individual. Working from the inside out, there wouldbe more than a mere deflection of evil. There would be suppression atthe source, in the individual will.
An end of national idolatry that threatened the existence ofcivilization. Man was superhuman in power and glory, subhuman inmorality. After the spiritual revolution, never again the monstrousevils arising when remote abstractions like "nation" and "state" areregarded as realities more concrete and significant than human beings.
And no man is an island unto himself....
Unity....
He looked up. He saw the Earth then.
It shone down upon him through the Lunar night, twenty times brighterthan moonlight. He felt warmth. There were faces in the shadows,hopeful women's faces and the eager innocent faces of children who hadnot yet learned hopelessness and hate. They might never learn it now.
He grinned. It was funny, you had to get so far away to look back andsee all the people on earth as one, one face, one heart--one world--itlooked like one world from here.
It wasn't cold as
Barlow lay there and looked up at the bright shiningdisk. He closed his eyes. The Earthlight seemed to warm him, as thesunlight had once warmed him, long ago in childhood, on a lazy summerafternoon.
* * * * *
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