by these irradiated broken stones which had cut off my radio communication, and that at any moment resonant absorption could cut my contact with my ship. A stab of fear that I would be stranded here forever, which was stupid because if I lost contact with my ship, only the remote would remain in this rubble and ruins while I found myself back on board. But so far I felt no lessening whatever of control over the remote. My ship must have been hovering right over the house, maintaining the orbit that kept it near the zenith above me. No one of course had foreseen such a discovery or such a situation, but the zenith position is optimal for maneuvering a remote, since the distance between it and its operator is smallest and thus so is the response time. Without an atmosphere the concentration of ionized gas (perhaps from vaporization after the explosion) could not be great. Was it also interfering with communication between the base and the micropes? I didn’t know and wasn’t concerned about that at the moment; what intrigued me was what had happened here and why.
I dragged the biggest corpse, the one with the head, backward through the crack in the wall. Outside, the radio still didn’t work, but I was more interested in this poor thing that had never lived, true, but for all its ghastliness made a most pathetic impression. He must have been nine feet tall, or maybe a little less, was thin, and the head was elongated, it had three eyes, no nose or mouth, a narrow neck, and the hands were prehensile, but I couldn’t count the fingers because the material from which he was made had melted the most there. He was covered with tarry cinders. It must have been hot, I thought, and only then did it occur to me that this could have been a group of buildings like those they once set up on Earth to study the effects of nuclear explosions, it was in Nevada and someplace else too, with houses, courtyards, stores, and streets, but animals were used for people, sheep and goats I think, and especially pigs because like us they don’t have fur and therefore suffer the same kind of burns we do. Had this been such a test site? If I knew the force of the blast that turned these buildings into rubble, I could determine from the present level of radioactivity how long ago that happened, but the physicists could also probably calculate it from the mix of isotopes here, so I put a little gravel into the thigh pocket of my suit, then remembered angrily, again, that I wouldn’t be returning to the ship. But it was necessary to date the explosion, even if only approximately. I decided to leave the contaminated area, reestablish contact with Control, and tell them about this, letting the physicists solve the problem of how to analyze the specimen I’d taken.
I don’t know exactly why, but I picked up the corpse and threw it over my shoulder, it didn’t weigh more than ten or fifteen pounds here, and beat a rather awkward tactical retreat, its long legs dragging on the ground and catching on stones. I had to go very slowly to keep from falling. The slope was not that steep but I wasn’t sure whether it would be better to walk on the slippery glass-rock or over the rubble which rolled and shifted at every step. Because of this difficulty I went in the wrong direction and found myself not on the dune again but about a quarter of a mile to the west of it, between large round rocks that looked like monoliths. I put the corpse down on a flat place and sat to catch my breath before I tried raising Wivitch. I looked for the micropes but the glittering cloud of them was nowhere to be seen. And still I heard no voices though I should have by now. The clatter of the Geiger counter in my helmet slowed until it was like individual grains of sand falling on a drum. Then I heard a muffled voice and went numb, because it wasn’t the base. Incoherent and hoarse, yet I caught two words: “My brother… my brother…” A moment of silence, and again: “My brother…”
“Who is that?” I wanted to shout but didn’t dare. I sat hunched, feeling the sweat break out on my forehead, and the voice again was in my helmet. “Come, my brother. Come to me. Without fear. I do not wish you harm, my brother. Come. We will not fight. Do not fear. I do not wish to fight. Come. Let us be brothers. Let us help each other, my brother.” A snapping sound, and the same voice but in a completely different tone, sharp, barking: “Put down your weapon! Put down your weapon! Or I’ll fire! Don’t try to run! Turn around! Hands up! Both hands! And don’t move! Don’t move!”
Something snapped again and the first voice returned, weak and hesitant: “My brother, come. Let us be brothers. Help me. We will not fight.” It was the corpse talking, that was clear. It lay where I had dropped it, and looked like a stepped-on spider with its abdomen split and its legs tangled and its empty eyesockets staring at the sun. It didn’t move but something inside it was addressing me in a loop. A song in two keys, first come my brother and then the barking. That’s its program, I thought. Whether manikin or robot, it was designed first to lure a man, a soldier, then take him prisoner or kill him. It couldn’t do anything now, all that was left in it was an unburned scrap of the program playing in a loop. But why by radio? If it was built to fight on Earth, surely it would speak in a regular voice. I didn’t understand the radio. There were no live soldiers on the moon, and a robot wouldn’t be taken in by this. Or would it? It just didn’t make sense. I looked at the blackened skull, the twisted hands and melted fingers, the torso ripped open, but now without the instinctive pity of a moment ago. With disgust, rather, with ill will, even though the thing was not to blame, it had been programmed this way. How can one be indignant with a bunch of circuits?
When it began its my-brother routine again, I spoke to it, but it didn’t hear me. Or gave no sign of hearing me. I stood, my shadow fell on its head, and it stopped in the middle of a word. I stepped back, and it continued. So it was activated by the sun. I wondered what to do next. This manikin-trap was of little interest, too primitive to be much of a “war machine.” And even the lunar armorers must consider these long-legged figures obsolete and worthless, seeing as they used them to test the effects of a nuclear hit. Because its lifeless refrain made it hard for me to concentrate, but to tell the truth it may have been for another reason, I picked up some larger pieces of rubble and threw them at the thing’s head and then its torso, as if to bury it. It fell silent, and all I heard was a thin squeaking. At first I thought the squeaking was from the corpse, and looked around for more rocks, but then I realized it was Morse code. — t-i-c-h-y — 1-i-s-t-e-n — t-h-i-s — i-s — c-o-n-t-r-o-l — s-a-t-e-1-l-i-t-e — m-a-l-f-u- n-c-t-i-o-n — s-o-u-n-d — w-i-1-1 — r-e-t-u-r-n — s-o-o-n — w-a-i-t — t-i-c-h-y.
So one of the Trojan satellites between us had gone on the fritz. They would fix it soon, sure, I thought sarcastically. I couldn’t reply, there was no way. For the last time I looked at the charred remains, and at the ruins white in the sun on the other side of the dune, and I ran my eyes over the black sky trying in vain to find the micropes. I walked toward a large convex wall of rock that rose from the sand like the gray hulk of a whale. I made for a break in the rock, which was black as tar in shadow, like the mouth of a cave. I blinked. Someone was standing there. A human figure, almost. Short, broad-shouldered, in a gray-green spacesuit. I raised an arm, thinking it was again my reflection and that the color of the suit was only from a shadow, but the figure did not move an inch. I hesitated, perhaps from fear or some premonition. But I hadn’t come here to run, besides where would I run to? I stepped forward. He looked just like a squat man.
“Hello,” came his voice. “Hello… Can you hear me?”
“I hear you,” I said without much enthusiasm.
“Come over here… I have a radio too!” That sounded pretty idiotic, but I went to him. There was something military in the style of his suit. Shining metal bands across his chest. His hands held nothing. Well, that was something, I thought, approaching but more slowly. He came toward me and lifted his arms in a simple gesture of greeting an old friend.
“Welcome! Welcome! How good of you to come at last! We can talk… you and I together… about bringing peace to the world…”
He spoke in an effusive, vibrant, strangely penetrating voice as he came toward me through the deep sand, arms held out, and his whole bearing expressed such cordiality that I didn’t know what to think. He was now only a few steps from me, the dark glass of his helmet blazing with the sun. He embraced me, hugged me, and we stood that way on the gray slope. I tried to see his face but saw nothing, even as close as a hand’s breadth, because the glass was opaque. It wasn’t even glass, more a mask covered with glass. How could he see me then?
“You’ll feel at home here with us, old friend…” He bumped my helmet with his as if trying to kiss me on both cheeks. “At home… we don’t want war, we are peace-loving, meek, you’ll see…” And with that he kicked me so hard that I fell on my back, and jumped on me, both knees in my stomach. I saw stars, literally, the stars of the black lunar sky, while my “friend” held my head down with his left hand and with his right pulled off his metal bands which themselves twisted into horseshoe hoops. I said nothing, dazed, as he fastened my arms to the ground one at a time with the hoops, driving them in with powerful, unhurried blows of his fist, and continued:
“At home, old friend… We’re simple folk, kind, I like you and you like me, old friend…”
“And not ‘my brother’?” I asked, now unable to move either arms or legs.
“Brother?” he said thoughtfully, as if trying out the word. “So be it, brother! I’m good, you’re good, brother for brother!”
He stood, quickly and expertly tapped my sides, legs, found my pockets, took out everything I had, the flat box of tools, the Geiger counter, the folding shovel, and frisked me again, harder this time, especially under the arms, and tried to work his fingers into the top of my boots, and during this careful search of my person not for a
