indescribable sensation: like being blown to bits and seeing, with the dimming eyes of the severed head, intestines flying from my ruptured belly. The fact that they were made of porcelain and silicon did provide some comfort. I went through several dozen deaths like this and so had some idea what awaited me on the moon. I went to the chief teletronicist, Seltzer, and put my doubts on the table. I might return from the moon in one piece leaving behind the remains of broken LEMs, but what good would that do? What can one learn about an unknown weapon system in a few fractions of a second? What was the point of sending a man there if he couldn’t land anyway?
“Surely you know the reason, Mr. Tichy,” he said, offering me a glass of sherry. He was small, thin, and hairless as a knee. “We can’t do it from Earth. A quarter of a million miles means a three-second round-trip delay in transmission. You’ll descend as much as possible, to a thousand miles, the lower ceiling of the zone of Silence.”
“That’s not what I mean. If we know in advance that the remote won’t last a minute, we could send it from here with micropes to record its end.”
“We’ve done that.”
“And?”
“And nothing.”
“And the micropes?”
“They showed a little dust.”
“Can’t we send, instead of a remote, something with real armor?”
“What do you consider real armor?”
“I don’t know, perhaps a sphere like the kind once used in deep-sea exploration. With windows, sensors, and so on.”
“That was also done. Not exactly as you’ve described but near enough.”
“And?”
“Nothing.”
“What happened to it?”
“It’s still there. We lost communication with it.”
“Why?”
“That’s the big question, isn’t it? If we knew the answer, we wouldn’t have to put you to all this trouble.”
There were other conversations along the same lines. After completion of the second phase of my training, I was given a little leave. I’d been living three months now on the carefully guarded base and wanted to get away for one evening at least. So I went to the security director for a pass. He was a pallid, melancholy civilian in a short- sleeved shirt who listened sympathetically and said:
“I’m awfully sorry, but I can’t let you go.”
“What? Why not?”
“Those are my orders. Officially that’s all I know.”
“And unofficially?”
“Unofficially also. I imagine they’re afraid for you.”
“On the moon, I understand, but
“Here even more.”
“Does that mean I can’t leave here until the launch?”
“Unfortunately.”
“In that case,” I said very quietly, very politely, which I do when I’m furious, “I’m not flying anywhere. There was no talk of this. I agreed to risk my neck but not to sit in prison. This is a volunteer flight. Well, I hereby unvolunteer. Or do you intend to put me in the rocket kicking and screaming?”
“What are you saying?”
I stuck to my guns and finally got the pass. I wanted to feel like an ordinary person, walk in a city crowd, perhaps go to the movies, but most of all eat in a decent restaurant instead of a canteen with people discussing second by second Ijon Tichy’s last moments in a remote that bursts like fireworks. Dr. Lopez gave me his car and I left the base at dusk. As I turned onto the highway I saw in my headlights someone standing, hand raised, by a small car with its blinkers on. I stopped. It was a young woman in white slacks and white sweater, a blonde, with grease on her face. She said her motor was dead, it wouldn’t turn over, so I offered to take her to town. As she got her coat out of the car, I noticed a large man in the front seat. He was motionless, as if made of wood. I looked at him more closely.
“That’s my remote,” she explained. “He’s broken. Everything breaks on me. I was taking him to be fixed.”
She had a husky voice and spoke almost like a child. I had heard that voice before somewhere. I opened the door to let her in, and before the car light went out I saw her face. She was incredibly like Marilyn Monroe, a movie star of the last century. The same face, the same innocence in the eyes and mouth. She asked if we could stop at some restaurant so she could wash. I moved to the slow lane, and we passed bright signs.
“There’s a small Italian restaurant up ahead, really quite good,” she said.
And indeed, neon flashed: RISTORANTE. I parked, and we entered a dark room. On a few small tables there were candles. The young woman went to the ladies’ room. I stood for a moment undecided, then finally sat down in a corner booth. The place was nearly empty. Against the usual background of colored bottles a red-headed bartender wiped glasses, and near him brass-covered swinging doors led to the kitchen. In the next booth a man was bent over a notebook beside his plate, writing something. The woman came back.
“I’m starved,” she said. “I stood outside for over an hour. No one would stop. Can we eat something? My treat.”
“All right,” I replied.
A fat man sitting at the bar with his back to us stared at his glass. He held a big black umbrella between his knees. The waiter appeared, took our order while balancing a tray of dirty dishes, and, kicking open the swinging doors, went into the kitchen. The blonde said nothing; she took a crumpled pack of cigarettes from her pocket, lit one from the candle, and held the pack out to me. I shook my head no. I tried not to stare at her. She did not differ from Marilyn Monroe in any way. Strange, since so many women have tried and failed. Monroe was inimitable though hers was neither a great nor an exotic beauty. Many books were written about her but none ever captured that mixture of child and woman which made her different from the rest. Looking at pictures of her once when I was still in Europe, I thought that this was more than a girlish woman, with her constant surprise and joy of a capricious child and the hidden despair or fear, like someone who has no one to confess her sins to. My companion inhaled from her cigarette deeply and blew the smoke slowly at the candle flickering between us. No, it was not a similarity, it was an exact replica. All kinds of suspicions came to me because I wasn’t born yesterday, for example why did she keep her cigarettes in her pocket: women never do that. She had a purse after all, and a big one, bulging, which she had hung on the arm of her chair. The waiter brought the pizza but forgot the Chianti, he apologized and rushed away. Another waiter brought it. Although the restaurant was run tavern-style and the waiters wore large napkins to their knees like aprons, this waiter held his napkin in the crook of his arm. He didn’t leave after he filled our glasses but only stepped back and stood just behind the partition. I could see him there because the brass doors acted like a mirror. The blonde couldn’t see him from where she sat. The pizza was all right but the crust was hard. We ate in silence. Pushing aside her plate, she reached for another Camel.
“What is your name?” I asked. I wanted to hear another name, to weaken the impression that this was
“Let’s drink first,” she said in her hoarse voice. And took both our glasses and switched them.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“A superstition I have.”
She didn’t smile.
“To our health!”
With these words she raised the glass to her lips. I also. The pizza had been peppery and I would have emptied the glass in one draught, but with a crack and a whirl something knocked it out of my hand. The wine spilled on the woman, staining her white sweater like blood. It was the waiter who did this. I wanted to jump up but couldn’t, my legs were too far under the table, and by the time I got free, a lot was happening. The waiter without the apron seized the blonde by the arm. She pulled away and took her purse in both hands as if to shield
