plunged into thought. The moon, listening to the radio, had to know about the growing anxiety on Earth. The fear stirred by the press had infected not only the people but the governments. Though everyone realized that a nuclear strike against the moon would spell the end of peace on Earth. Therefore either a preemptive attack against the human race was imminent, or something very strange was taking place on the moon. Wivitch called me again to tell me that
I walked, looking carefully in all directions, until I came to a gently rolling plain pitted with small craters filled with sand. In the sand of one crater was something that looked like a thick dead branch. I grabbed it and tugged, as if pulling a deep root from the ground. Then I used a small folding shovel that I carried strapped to my side. From the sand and dust emerged a piece of iron, burnt, perhaps a fragment of one of the countless primitive rockets that crashed here in the early days of lunar exploration. I didn’t call Control, who through the micropes could see my discovery for themselves. I pulled at the strangely bent bars until a thicker part appeared, and under that was a shinier metal. It didn’t look particularly promising, but having begun this scavenging, I pulled harder, not afraid that one of the sharp pieces might puncture my suit, because I had no need of air. But something changed. At first I didn’t understand why it was hard for me to keep my balance, then realized that my left boot was caught, gripped by flattened, curved prongs. I tried to free it, thinking I’d walked right into this one, but the foot was held fast and even the blade of my shovel didn’t help, unable to pry the prongs apart.
“Is Wivitch there?” I asked, and waited three seconds for him to respond.
“They have me in some kind of bear trap,” I said.
How incredibly stupid, getting taken by something like this! I couldn’t get loose. The micropes surrounded me like excited flies as I struggled with the clamps that had closed on my boot like a vise.
“Return to the ship,” Wivitch suggested. Or it might have been one of his assistants, because the voice sounded different.
“I don’t want to lose the remote,” I said. “I need to cut this!”
“You have a Carborundum saw.”
I unhooked the flat holster at my thigh, and in fact it contained a nice little saw. I plugged its cord into the generator in my suit and bent over. Sparks flew from the spinning edge. The pincers holding my boot at the ankle began to give, practically cut all the way through, when I felt a growing heat in the boot. With all my strength I wrenched my leg away, then saw that the metal bulb from which the bars protruded like roots from a great potato was glowing red-hot. The white plastic of the boot had blackened and was cracking from the heat. I made one last effort and, suddenly released, fell backward. Blinded by forked lightning, I felt a violent blow in my chest, heard the sound of the suit torn open, and was plunged into impenetrable darkness. I didn’t lose consciousness, I was simply in darkness. After a moment I heard Wivitch:
“Tichy, you’re on the ship. Say something! The first remote was taken out.”
I blinked. I was sitting in the chair, my head on the headrest, my legs curiously bent, and holding my chest where a moment ago I had taken the blow. A painful blow, I realized only now.
“Was it a mine… ?” I asked. “A mine connected to a bear trap? Was that the best they could think up?”
I heard voices, but they weren’t talking to me. Someone asked about the micropes.
“There’s no video,” said someone else.
“What? They were all destroyed by that one explosion?”
“Impossible.”
“Impossible or not, we have no video.”
I was still breathing as if after a long run, regarding the face of the moon. With the tip of my finger I could cover the entire crater of Flamsteed and the plain on which I had so stupidly lost the remote.
“What’s wrong with the micropes?” I asked at last.
“We don’t know.”
I looked at my watch and was surprised: I had spent almost four hours on the moon. It was after midnight, by ship time.
“I don’t know about you,” I said with a yawn, “but I’ve had enough for today. I’m going to sleep.”
ROUND TWO
I awoke rested and immediately went over the events of the day before. You always think better after a good shower, which is why I had insisted on a bathroom with running water instead of those wet towels which are no substitute for a tub. Of course there couldn’t be a tub, with the wash area no bigger than a barrel. Water rushed in on one side and was sucked out by a strong current of air on the other. In order not to drown, because water in zero gravity covers the body and face in a growing layer, I had to put on an oxygen mask before showering, which was a nuisance but better that than no shower. As we all know, even after the engineers could build rockets in their sleep, astronauts were still plagued by toilet accidents, and technology wrestled with that problem for a long time. Human anatomy is horribly unsuited for outer space. The astroengineers lost sleep over this but not the science fiction writers, who being artists simply didn’t mention it. Urinating (for men, that is) wasn’t too bad, but defecating was solved only with the offices of a special computer, which was fine, but when that broke down you found yourself in extremity and had to improvise. In my lunar module, this computer — about the only one — worked throughout like a Swiss timepiece, thank God. Washed and refreshed, I drank my coffee from a plastic bulb and ate a raisin cake under a funnel with its suction set on high so the crumbs wouldn’t stick to my fingers or choke me. I don’t like to give up my habits. Having breakfasted properly, I took a seat at the selenograph and, gazing at the globe of the simulated moon, smiled, since they wouldn’t be inflicting advice on me for a while. I hadn’t informed Control that I was awake; they thought I was still sleeping.
The mirror phenomenon and the naked blonde had clearly been two tests to determine who or what had landed, and apparently I had passed those tests, being allowed to wander through Flamsteed unenticed and unattacked. But the trap that turned out to be a mine didn’t fit this picture. On one hand they go to great trouble to produce a mirage in the no man’s land, all done at a distance because it is a no man’s land, and on the other they plant mines — as if I was facing an army equipped with both early-warning radar and clubs. But the mine could have been there from earlier days, though neither I nor anyone else had any idea what had taken place on the moon during all those years of hermetic isolation. Not solving this mystery, I began preparing for the next reconnaissance.
LEM 2, in perfect working order, was the product of General Teletronics and a different model from the one I had lost so unexpectedly, poor thing. I crawled into the bay to have a look at it before I became it. It was exceptionally strong judging from the girth of its legs and arms, its broad back, the triple plates of armor that made a dull boom when I tapped with my finger. Apart from the apertures in the helmet it had six additional eyes, on its shoulders, hips, and knees. To outdo their competitor who designed the first LEM, General Teletronics had given their model two personal rocket systems: besides the retros ejected after landing this athlete of steel had jets fastened to its heels, shins, and even one in its behind, which was for balance — as I read in the self-congratulatory instructions — and for the execution of fifty-foot leaps. Its armor moreover gleamed like pure mercury, so that the ray of any laser would be deflected. This LEM may have been marvelous but I can’t say I was thrilled as I inspected it, because the more eyes and dials and jets and auxiliary devices there are, the more the attention they take, and being a standard-model person myself I have no more limbs and senses than anyone else. Returning to the cabin, I
