have created a new technology which can be used in telematics. For the building of dispersants. Remotes capable of reversible dispersion. I didn’t want the Agency to have it, but what’s done is done.” He put up both hands in resignation.
“One of my assistants showed it to them. I’m not sure which one, and it doesn’t really matter. When the pressure is great, there’s invariably a leak. Any loyalty has its limits.” He ran a hand over his shiny pate. The tape recorder was still talking. “I can do one thing: I can show that dispersion telematics isn’t ready yet. That I can do. For a year, let’s say. Eventually they’ll find out that I tricked them. Would you like me to do this?”
“I have to decide? Why me?”
“If you return with nothing, no one will be interested in you.”
“True.”
“But if you return with information, the consequences will be incalculable.”
“For me personally? You want to save me? Out of kindness?”
“No. To play for time.”
“To put off learning about the moon? Then you don’t believe the moon will ever invade Earth? You think that’s just mass hysteria?”
“Mass hysteria, or rumors intentionally spread by certain nations.”
“To what purpose?”
“To break the doctrine of ignorance and return to the old Clausewitz-style politics.”
I was silent, not knowing what to say — or even what to think.
“But that is only one man’s assumption,” I said finally.
“Yes. The letter Einstein wrote to Roosevelt also was based on an assumption, that an atom bomb could be built. He regretted it to the end of his life.”
“I understand — you don’t want to have such regrets?”
“The atom bomb would have been developed with or without Einstein. My technology too. But the later, the better.”
“No, something else. This fear of the moon was created intentionally. Of that I’m certain. Returning from a successful mission, you’ll only be exchanging one fear for another. That other could be worse: more realistic.”
“I see now. You want me to fail?”
“Yes. But only if you agree to it.”
“Why?”
The nastiness suddenly left his little squirrel eyes. He was laughing, open-mouthed, soundlessly.
“I told you why. I’m a man of old-world principles, and that means Fair Play. Please answer now, because my legs are starting to hurt.”
“You could have put in a couple of cushions,” I said. “And as for that… dispersion technology, please give it to me.”
“You don’t believe what I’ve said?”
“I believe you, and that’s why I want it.”
“To be a Herostrates?”
“I’ll try not to burn the temple. Could we get out of this cage now?”
THE MISSION
Take-off was aborted eight times. Something went wrong at every countdown. It was the air conditioning, or a backup computer reporting a short circuit that wasn’t real, or a short circuit that was real but not reported by the main computer, and on the ninth countdown, when it looked like I’d be on my way at last, the Number 7 LEM balked. There I lay, swaddled and wrapped in tape that held a thousand sensors, like a mummy in a sarcophagus, my helmet shut, the laryngophone at my throat, and the tube of the orange juice container in my mouth. With one hand on the emergency ejector switch and the other on the steering wheel, I was trying to think of things pleasant and far away, so my heart wouldn’t pound, because it was being watched on screens by eight people along with my blood pressure, muscle tension, sweat level, eye movements, and galvanic skin response, all revealing the fear felt by the intrepid astronaut as he waits for the ritual
This last problem, called LEM’s Mutiny by the technicians, was really quite peculiar: from the diagnostic signals intended only to check out its systems the unit began moving, and when it was turned off, instead of stopping it shuddered and tried to get up. Like a mindless idol it struggled against its straps and nearly tore apart the harness, though they disconnected all the lines to it one by one and couldn’t figure out where the power was coming from. It must have been a leak of some sort in the current. Impedance, capacitance, resistance, susceptibility. When engineers don’t know what’s happening, their vocabulary takes on the richness of physicians discussing a hopeless case. As is well known, whatever can go wrong eventually will and in a unit of 298,000 circuits and chips no amount of redundancy can provide a hundred-percent certainty. A hundred-percent certainty, says Halevala, the oldest repairman, is provided only by a dead body, in that it won’t rise up. Halevala liked to say that God, creating the world, didn’t take statistics into account, and when problems started in Paradise He resorted to miracles but by then it was too late. Wivitch said that Halevala brought bad luck and asked the director to dismiss him. The director believed in bad luck but the Council didn’t, so the Finn, appealing the dismissal, kept his job. Such was the atmosphere in which I prepared myself for the Mission.
I had no doubt that in lunar orbit too something would go wrong, though the simulations and inspections had been repeated ad nauseam. But of course I didn’t know when that would happen or into what sort of mess it would put me. At the next countdown everything went fine, but this time
The more care they take for your comfort, the more likely it is that some tangled bit of wire will dig under your arm or a buckle pinch in the worst possible place, driving you up the wall. When I once suggested they put remote scratchers inside the suit, they all thought it was a joke and laughed, except the seasoned astronauts who knew what I was talking about. It was I who discovered Tichy’s Law which says that the first itch occurs in a place on the body you can’t possibly reach. The itching stops only when something serious happens, because then your hair stands on end, your flesh crawls, and breaking into a cold sweat does the rest. True as this is, the authorities don’t want to hear it because it doesn’t rhyme well with One Giant Leap for Mankind. Can you imagine Armstrong climbing down the rungs of that first LEM and saying instead that his underwear was riding up? I’ve always thought that the people at Central Control who sit back in their chairs with a can of beer and give advice to the astronaut- turned-mummy, with their words of encouragement and support, should first put themselves in his shoes.
The last two weeks I spent at the base were not pleasant. There were new attempts to remove Ijon Tichy. Even after the incident with the false Marilyn Monroe they didn’t tell me that my mail was being scanned by a special machine. The technology of epistolary terrorism is so developed that a charge able to blow the addressee to pieces can be placed inside a Christmas or birthday card wishing him health and happiness. It was only after a deadly letter from Professor Tarantoga almost put me out of the picture and I raised holy hell that they showed me the machine, an armored container with slanted steel slabs to absorb explosions. Each letter is opened by pincers and examined by x ray and ultrasound to trigger the detonator if there is one. The letter in question didn’t explode
