New Writings in SF 19 - [Anthology]

by Edited By John Carnell

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  We moved along the main corridor to my office. At Jenson’s request, several of the others had joined us. I noticed Thorensen was among them, but not Querrel. We walked with the habitual slow grace of the observatory ... light, bounding steps to get the most out of the lunar gravity.

  But the distracting thought persisted: if no one else but I could detect the effects of the low gravity, how did their bodies’ metabolism compensate ? It was a new development to me and one that should have occurred before. I knew that they had been conditioned to ignore the low gravity, to react to it as if it were normal, but I had not seen before that if one’s mind and one’s body are oriented around differing physical phenomena, then at the very lowest level of reaction there would be inefficient synchronisation of movement and at the highest level there would be ultimate mental breakdown.

  We arrived at the office about six minutes before the transor-conjunction was due to commence.

  The conjunction begins as the edge of the Earth rises slowly over the south-western horizon. It takes a few minutes for a direct line-of-sight tight-beam to be locked on. As soon as this has been accomplished, the stored data in our computers is fed back to Earth. This takes around twenty seconds. Immediately after, the controllers on Earth send up the various messages and information direct into our computer. This can take anything between five minutes and three hours.

  I said nothing about the files in my cabinets and showed the staff the equipment for the transor, and how it may be monitored. Very few of them showed interest.

  At 23.32 hours, the conjunction began. A series of red pilot-lights along the console showed that we had locked on to the automatic tracking equipment on Earth. Exactly where the equipment was situated I never knew, as it depended on the configuration of the Earth and the moon at the time of the conjunction. There were twelve stations situated at various parts of the globe.

  I switched in the data transmitter and we waited while this was sent to Earth. There was an uncomfortable silence in the office; neither from concentration nor anticipation, but more a kind of patient waiting.

  When the console showed that our transmission was concluded, I switched in the acquisition circuit. And we waited.

  Ten minutes later, we were still waiting. The circuit was dead.

  Jenson said: ‘I think that confirms it.’

  ‘It didn’t need to be confirmed,’ said one of the others.

  I looked at Thorensen, then Clare. Their faces showed no surprise, still that expression of patience.

  ‘The experiment’s over,’ Jenson said. ‘We can go home.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  ‘You know about the war on Earth ? It’s been threatening for months. Now it has started.’

  ‘Ten days ago,’ Thorensen said. ‘Or at least, that was what we heard.’

  I said: ‘But there’s been no news of it.’

  Jenson shrugged. ‘You won’t be getting any more from that,’ he said, nodding towards the console. ‘You might as well turn the bloody thing off.’

  ‘How did you know about the war?’ I said.

  ‘We’ve known for some time. In fact, we anticipated it by several days.’

  ‘Why didn’t anyone say anything?’

  Thorensen said bluntly: ‘They did ... but not to you.’

  Clare came over and stood by my side. ‘We had to be careful, Dan. We knew you were holding back information from us, and we didn’t know what would happen if we told you we knew.’

  I said: ‘Thanks, Clare.’

  On one of the sides of the observatory is a tunnel large enough to accommodate at one time the entire staff. It is the abort mode. It has been designed to stay provisioned and airtight long enough to keep everyone alive in the event of an emergency until help can be sent from Earth.

  It is also the only access point to the inside of the observatory, and had the experiment ended at the originally-designated time, we would have passed down the tunnel on our way to the relief modules.

  We periodically pressurised and checked out the abort tunnel and everyone on the observatory knew how to operate it.

  Jenson said: ‘We’re getting out.’

  ‘You can’t.’

  The others looked round at each other. Two of the men moved towards the door.

  ‘We have a choice,’ Jenson said. ‘We can die in here, or we can get outside. What the conditions are like out there, we don’t know. Probably there is a high level of radio-activity. But we do know that the observatory is somewhere on Earth. Last night we took a vote on it and it was unanimously agreed that we’re not staying here.’

  ‘What about you, Clare?’

  She said: ‘I’m going too.’

  * * * *

  I sat at my desk, staring at the 84 file. Everything was in here. All the pieces that made up a picture of the world committing suicide. I had had those pieces, but the staff hadn’t. And yet the absence of that information had somehow generated an awareness of its existence and they had known what was happening. But I hadn’t.

  I thought again of my chart which, had it finished, would have returned to the line of reality about now. I could see what had gone wrong with the chart—that the staff had deliberately excluded me from the more important of their rumours. That as their stories drew nearer and nearer to what was real, they had said nothing to me.

  So they had built reality from speculation in exactly the way I had theorised, yet had hardly dared to believe.

  Jenson came back to my office about an hour later.

  ‘Are you going to come, Winter?’ he said.

  I shook my head. ‘You don’t know what you are doing. You’re going to step out of that tunnel into the moon’s vacuum. You’ll die instantly.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ he said. ‘About this and other things. You say we’ve been conditioned—well we’ll accept that. But what about you? How can you tell that everything you think about the observatory is accurate?’

  ‘But I know,’ I said.

  ‘And a madman knows he is the only one sane.’

  ‘If you like.’

  Jenson extended his hand to shake mine. ‘Well, see you outside, then.’

  ‘I’m not going to go.’

  ‘Perhaps not now, but later maybe.’

  I shook my head again, emphatically. ‘Is Clare going with you ?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you ask her to come in here for a moment?’

  He said: ‘She’s already in the tunnel. She said it would not be a good thing to see you at the moment.’

  I shook his hand, and he left the office.

  * * * *

  A few minutes ago I went down to the abort tunnel.

  The outer door was open and the tunnel was empty. I closed the door with the remote-control wheel and repressurised the tunnel.

  I have been right through the observatory and I have confirmed that I am alone. It is very quiet in here. I sit at my desk, holding a part of my 84 file. Every now and again I hold it out from the desk and watch it fall slowly to the floor. Its movement is gentle and very graceful. I could watch it for hours.

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