The man with the pince-nez consulted gravely with his confreres when they noticed that Arlene was actually present. A bulky man said heavily, "I say again, send her home and let's try the thing."
The man with the pince-nez and the shaking hands said very carefully, "We have not the right to try it without unanimous consent. But certainly it would be improper to let her stay more than ten minutes!"
Somebody else said in a metallic voice, "You infernal fools! You . . ."
He began to curse, his voice rising in pitch. Joe Kenmore stirred, but four members of the Laboratory staff were ahead of him; they plunged upon their fellow. The struggle in weightlessness was nightmarish. They tried to strike each other, and flung themselves backward in the attempt; they clung to each other, swarming and toppling in a swirling crazy mass in midair.
Then the bearded man said gravely, from the middle of it, "I have him. I'll strangle him if he affronts our guest again."
The others floated away. There remained two men, one with his elbow crooked about the other's throat. If he tightened his grip, his victim must choke.
"But," said the heavy-set man cynically, "in this pressure he can hold his breath ten minutes!"
"Yet," said the bearded man, "while his throat is shut off he can't swear."
"True," agreed the heavy-set man. He turned again to look at Arlene.
It was eerie; it seemed insane. But they were all extremely matter-of-fact in their eccentricity. "Let us leave it to our visitors," said someone brightly. "They have no emotions about the matter!"
Nobody paid any attention to him. The other seven looked at Arlene. Raptly. Sadly. The man with the pince-nez looked at her with a peculiarly childlike wistfulness. The bearded man, with his arm shutting off another man's breath, smiled at her benevolently. There was a man who looked at her with absolutely expressionless eyes. There was a man whose eyes were filled with tears.
Kenmore bristled; Arlene was in his care. And these eight men of the Laboratory did not look at him, or Moreau, or the chief. They gazed at Arlene, and each of them regarded her with absolute absorption and each in a different manner.
"Look here!" said Kenmore. He raised his voice by instinct, and the thickness of the air amplified it, so that he almost winced at the sound. He went on: "I came up here with orders for you to stop all experimenting. It's been found down on Earth that a new method of computation proves that you'll only get undesirable results." The man with the pince-nez averted his eyes from Arlene long enough to regard Kenmore with high amusement. "My dear Mr. Kenmore! As if we did not know!" He looked back at Arlene.
Kenmore snapped, "What's happening here? What's the matter with all of you?"
Nobody bothered to answer. Arlene swallowed and said hesitantly, shocked by the loudness of her words, "Something must have happened! What is it that someone wants to leave to us?"
Voices spoke together: "Whether to die now, or . . ." "Shall we prove the chain-reaction . . ." "Nobody has the right to . . ." "Let me tell her . . ."
Kenmore felt cold chills running up and down his spine. These were eight of the best brains of Earth, and they were acting like children. Intolerable tension and unending acrimony and dispute could be read into even the peculiar rapture with which they looked at Arlene. It was as if they felt the exact reverse of her homesickness when she found that Earth could no longer be seen. These men looked at her as if she represented to them all the things in life of which the Laboratory had been empty. As if she meant gentleness and home, and what was normal and natural and right, in an atmosphere where madness was the norm.
Kenmore pointed his finger at the man in the pince-nez glasses. Ordinarily he would have felt abashed to speak to him, because of his eminence. Now he said, "You! You tell us!"
That very great man took off his glasses and polished them, peering at Kenmore with near-sighted eyes as he did so. He smiled at Arlene.
"It is really very simple," he said apologetically. "We were sent here to make the crucial experiments with a field of force . . ."
There were warning cries of "Careful!"
"I will be careful," the appointed spokesman said severely. "It was known that the field affected neutrons; nothing else would. We hoped to use it as a lens, like the fields in electron microscopes, to concentrate a neutron beam instead of electrons to a focus—to a point."
A clamor rose. "You want them to go back . . ."
"Don't say any more . . ." The man with the pince-nez shook his head. "I shall tell them nothing critical." He went on, to Arlene. "But we have found that there is a critical point of concentration of a neutron beam . . . Then he said to the others, "You see?"
The man in the chair on the wall nodded happily. "Yes! We know what you mean, but nobody else ever will!"
"A critical concentration," repeated the man with the pince-nez, "which sets up a chain reaction. Bombardment with a cyclotron means that few transformations take place. The atomic nuclei which are targets are so small, and relatively so far apart, that millions of particles have to be fired for every nucleus hit. But we can concentrate a beam of neutrons so that no nucleus—no nucleus!—escapes destruction in its path. You see?"
Arlene said hesitantly, "I'm not sure. But I'm sure Joe does."
The eight laughed delightedly.
"Charming!" said the man with the pince-nez. Then he added. "But not only nuclei are split. With practical speeds, neutrons are split! They must be! And the bursting of a neutron must release absolutely unchained power and unlimited destruction! Neutrons and positrons— every subatomic particle must then be bathed in pure power. Everyone must break—and in breaking, break others . . . We have a chain reaction, in which every substance—even hydrogen—is an atomic explosive! If one single neutron bursts, destruction spreads by contagion. If this Laboratory were destroyed, the moon and Earth-all the cosmos—would follow it!"
Arlene smiled, with an effort. "Then I take it you do not intend to use it on Earth."
"We do not intend," said the man with the pince-nez, apologetically, "to use it at all. But we know how to do it—therefore, we do not go back to Earth; Sooner or later some fool, some madman, some maniac, would threaten to destroy the Earth unless it yielded to him. And" some other madman would confront him with a similar demand. Two madmen, or ten, or a hundred, each demanding all power on penalty of destruction for all-humanity would be destroyed!"
Then he beamed at her. The man with the metallic voice cried out savagely, half-choked, "You fools! You—"
His voice cut off as the arm about his throat grew tighter. The man with the pince-nez said generously, "You see, my dear young lady, that we cannot go back to Earth because of what we know. Each of us has the power to destroy mankind. Power corrupts. It is an axiom. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
"Look at us! We have the power to destroy each other, and we have done so. But some of us have taken measures so that nobody else may be destroyed. We have loosened our air supply into the ship. We breathe air six times denser than normal. We have breathed it for seventy-two hours. We cannot leave this ship. We would die of explosive decompression—of the bends. We cannot seize your ship, which has the means to return to the moon, because we would die the instant we entered it." Arlene said desperately, "But—we came up here to tell you about new orders."
"You tell us," said the man, beaming, "what we should do!"
"Let me report this," said Kenmore, "and have Earth figure out what's to be done. That's what you should do!" "Yes!" agreed Arlene. "That's what you should do!" The man with the expressionless eyes said abruptly, "No! We won't do it! We'll—"
A clamor arose. Arlene cringed from the sheer volume of their shouting voices. They saw it; they quieted.
"We are sorry," said the man with the pince-nez. "You can leave us now, and if you are careful, you can return to your ship. We could not go. We are grateful to you for coming to us. You are—everything we have not. But we beg you to go immediately."
A voice said indignant
ly, "You have told them too much! It is not safe for them to report so much!"
Moreau pushed the lock-door open. The chief thrust Arlene into it, and then backed into it, with Kenmore. Other voices took up the cry. "You told them too much!
They have learned more than it is safe for people to know."
Kenmore slammed the door for in-lock operation of the pumps. They throbbed; in time the suits became bouncy. Kenmore spoke into his talkie. "Watch my face, Chief!"
He cracked his faceplate, and gasped; then he nodded. The others opened their faceplates, one by one. The throbbing of the pumps went on. The pressure in the lock was lowering, and they were decompressing with it. Kenmore watched the airlock pressure gauge. Presently its needle stirred from its pin.
"Seal up!" he commanded harshly. "They're arguing back in there whether or not they told us too much! We've got to hurry! They've cracked up! They're not thinking straight!"
The outer lock-door could be opened; Kenmore opened it. The spaceship's lock was six feet away, across an abyss of stars. Moreau plunged across the gap and grabbed a handhold, and pulled on his space-rope, still linked to the others. But Kenmore and the chief, together, threw Arlene across the emptiness. They swarmed at the ropes holding the ships together. They dived for the opposite opening. Kenmore slapped the outer lock-door shut and pulled the emergency lever to open the inner door to the Earthship's cabin.
"How long have we, Joe?" asked Moreau shakily.
"Don't know," panted Kenmore, "—but they'll decide it! They're crackpots! They'll do the violent and dramatic thing!"
The inner door yielded. He swarmed out of the lock, calling behind him: "Get Arlene to a chair! I'm blasting off!"
The chief heaved her in the general direction of a chair. She caught it as Kenmore strapped himself feverishly into the control seat. He hadn't even opened his faceplate. He panted, "Get set! Five—four—three—two-one . . ."
There was intolerable weight. Arlene collapsed into the contour chair. She gasped for breath, with her chest and the bulky vacuum suit pressing fiercely down toward the mat behind her body. She saw the chief sink to his knees under the acceleration; she saw Kenmore straining to fire other and yet other rockets . . .
The Earthship turned about in mid-sky and plunged toward the moon. Its rockets poured out incredible masses of vapor as it strained to reach the highest possible speed at the earliest possible moment. Kenmore was firing the heaviest rockets the ship mounted, one after another, as fast as they burned out.
Then Kenmore slumped back to the control seat. The rockets burned on and burned on . . .
The last of them burned out; the ship went hurtling onward. Arlene felt ill from the release of pressure upon her, but the chief straightened out his body in weightlessness.
"Think we'll make it, Joe?" he asked heavily.
"I don't know," said Kenmore. "I daren't burn more rockets. We have to land."
Arlene gasped, "But what—what's the matter?"
"They're crazy," said the chief, in a vast calm. "They don't want their discovery to get back home to Earth. They've killed themselves to stop it. But they were scrapping over whether we'd been told too much before the airlock closed on us. Being crazy, they'll decide they did, and they'll try to kill us. And they've only got one way to do it."
Arlene ached all over, but she sat up. The Earthship floated in emptiness. It seemed motionless, but she knew better. After all that acceleration, it would be moving at a terrific rate. She saw the half-disk of the moon's farside ahead. This was the part of the moon that mankind had never seen before the Laboratory was set out in space. There was the dark blotch in its center about which scientists still dispute acrimoniously. It was cut in two by the shadow which was sunset.
But then, quite suddenly, it was not a half-disk any longer. It was a round, white, glaring platter of incandescence. Something behind the fleeing Earthship had blazed up with a violence which lighted the moon more brightly than the sun had ever done. The Laboratory had exploded; its staff, deciding that their visitors knew too much, had blasted their own ship. The monstrous flame could reach out and engulf the Earthship, if it flared out in time.
The four in the fleeing vessel waited to learn if they were about to die. More, they waited to learn if the moon itself might receive some morsel of disintegration that would make it detonate with the same monstrous violence.
Of course, if that happened, it didn't matter what happened to them . . .
CHAPTER XIV. ". . . WHAT FORGIVENESS?"
On THE WAY back toward the moon, there were things that could be done, but there was very little that Joe Kenmore found tolerable to think about. To him, the destruction of the Space Lab meant that hopes of a glorious future for humanity were abandoned. The surrender of hope meant an end to progress—utter stagnation—people dwelling in a state of apathy because there was nothing to strive for. He envisioned a slow descent back into an abyss of world-wide barbarism, because he was sure that only a dynamic society can be healthy.
There was the discovery made in the Lab, too; according to the strictest of scientific reasoning it was possible for the cosmos to be destroyed to the last least atom of its farthest star. This was still less tolerable for Kenmore to contemplate, because it followed that there was no meaning in meaning, no law in the laws of nature, no significance in the pattern of existence. Was not all of mankind's striving worse than futile, if someday some madman could destroy all reality? The human race has never lacked madmen. If such a thing could be done, he thought, someday assuredly it would. If a man could undo the act of creation by which the cosmos came to be . . .
So the journey back from the Laboratory was not a happy one. Kenmore piloted the ship with his brows knitted and total bitterness in his expression. Moreau made computations—totally unneeded—from the observations the chief made—no less unnecessarily. Only Arlene did not pretend to be absorbed in trivialities. She looked at Kenmore almost remorsefuly, because the effort at least to begin the conquest of space had filled all his mind and had been the substance of all his ambition. She was very sorry for Joe Kenmore.
The farside of the moon drew near; the Earthship floated around it, and Earth came into view beyond a jagged rim of crater walls. And nearer there were the mountain ranges, named for the national heroes of various jealous countries, and the seas assigned for naming to the United Nations commission for lunar nomenclature. Which seemed rather unimportant, just now.
Then came the boundary of farside; Earth floated free in the sky and its continents had changed places again. It was distinctly gibbous now, and the lunar day was nearer to Civilian City, but would be all of a hundred hours yet in reaching it. Moreau and the chief kept feverishly busy with their observing and computing, and informed Kenmore very elaborately of their results. He humored them to the extent of a very minor change in the course and velocity of the rocket-ship, which should bring it into the very optimum landing course for Civilian City.
Later they left the dawn behind, and plunged into the moon's vast cold shadow. Kenmore opened the port-shutters, and they strained their eyes to make out mountain. formations in the earthlight that shone upon them. Presently, they succeeded; Moreau and the chief brightly assured Kenmore that the ship was perfectly on course. Presently, again, the Mare Imbrium came up over the curved horizon and the bay in which the City lay, next to the spiky Apennines. Kenmore turned the ship end-for-end and began the finicky process of deceleration and landing, with only disaster to report.
It was not a happy landing. The journey had been without a single satisfaction. Kenmore felt relieved that there was no landing beam—which might be mere neglect—because it required a higher degree of concentration on something other than bitterness.
So the Earthship drifted down and down. There were creakings and groanings as the gyros turned it in emptiness. And they were low enough to see the lonely small light atop the City's main dome before Kenmore fired his last deceleration shots.
They came cr
eaking to the surface, on a space of lava blown clean of dust by the rocket-blast. For the rest— nothing: The City's three artificial mounds were huge for constructions by men; but they were infinitesimal by comparison with the mountains a bare three miles away. While the ship descended, the blue-white flame of its rockets lighted those dust-heaps which were the high spot of human achievement. Then the rockets, released, flew skyward and were gone, and there was no movement anywhere. There was silence. Stillness. Desolation. Heavily, the voyagers went into the airlock to go outside.
Kenmore was last to the ground. Wordlessly, he followed the others toward the City's lock. The physical look of things was drabness. The City's mounds colorless in the earthlight. The high, groping mountains were pallid, save where black shadows lay. Only the stars shone in innumerable colors. Kenmore thought they seemed detachedly to contemplate the defeat of men. And Earth, near the center of the sky, looked mottled and bilious and discouraged.
They went into the main dome. Pitkin again puttered happily among the plants there. Kenmore opened his faceplate and asked dourly, "Any news?"
"But yes," said Pitkin, beaming. "Rogers and Schmidt came in their jeep. There was an accident to their spotter station and they could not stay. They came in for safety. On the way they found the jeeps which had fled the City. They told, here, and Lezd informed the Earth. They went back to try to help."
Kenmore growled. It was infernally plausible. It might even be true that a spotter-station crew had left its post because of an actual accident there, making their full tour of duty impossible. He filed the information in his mind; he neither believed nor disbelieved it.
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