Rogue Moon

by Algis Budrys

  4

  The Navy crew pushed Barker into the transmitter. The lateral magnets lifted him off the table, and it was pulled out from beneath him. The door was dogged shut, and the fore-and-aft magnets came on to hold him locked immobile for the scanner. Hawks nodded to Gersten, and Gersten punched the Standby button on his console.

  Up on the roof, there was a radar dish focused in parallel with the transmitter antenna. Down in the laboratory, Will Martin pointed a finger at the Signal Corps technician. A radar beep travelled to the Moon and returned. The elapsed time and doppler progression were fed as data into a computer which set the precise holding time in the delay deck. The matter transmitter antenna fired a UHF pulse through the Moon relay tower into the receiver there, tripping its safety lock so that it would accept the M signal.

  Gersten looked at his console, turned to Hawks and said, "Green board."

  Hawks said, "Shoot."

  The red light went on over the transmitter portal, and the new file tape began roaring into the takeup pulleys of the delay deck. One and a quarter seconds later, the leader of the tape began to pass through the playback head feeding the L signal to the laboratory receiver. The first hard beat of the M signal simultaneously reached the Moon.

  The end of the tape clattered into the takeup reel. The green light lit over the laboratory receiver's portal. Barker L's excited breathing came through the P.A. speaker, and he said, "I'm here, Doctor."

  Hawks stood in the middle of the floor with his hands in his pockets, his head cocked to one side, his eyes vacant.

  After a time, Barker L said peevishly in a voice distorted by his numb lips, "All right, all right, you Navy bastards, I'm goin' in!" He muttered, "Won't even talk to me, but they're sure great at moving a man along."

  "Shut up, Barker," Hawks said urgently under his breath.

  "Going in now, Doctor," Barker said clearly. His breathing cycle changed. Once or twice after that, he grunted, and once he made an unconscious, high, keening noise of strain in his throat.

  Gersten touched Hawks' arm and nodded toward the stopwatch in his hand. It showed two hundred forty seconds' of elapsed time since Barker had gone into the formation. Hawks nodded a nearly imperceptible reply. Gersten saw he was not moving his eyes away, and continued to hold the watch up.

  Barker screamed. Hawks' body jumped in reflex, and his flailing arm sent the watch cartwheeling out of Gersten's hand.

  Holiday, at the medical console, brought his palm down flat against a switch stud. Adrenalin fired into Barker L's heart as the anesthesia cut off.

  "Get him out!" Weston was shouting. "Get him out!"

  "There's no hurry any longer," Hawks said softly, as if the psychologist were standing where he could hear him. "Whatever was going to happen to him has happened."

  Gersten looked toward the shattered watch and back M Hawks. "That's what I was thinking," he said.

  Hawks frowned and began to walk toward the receiver chamber as the dressing crew pushed the armor table through the portal.

  Barker sat hunched on the edge of the table, the opened armor lying dismembered beside him, and wiped his gray face. Holiday was listening to his heartbeat with a stethoscope, looking aside periodically to take a new blood-pressure reading as he squeezed the manometer bulb he kept in his hand. Barker sighed. "If there's any doubt, just ask me if I'm alive. If you hear an answer, you'll know." He looked wearily over Holiday's shoulder as the physician ignored him, and he said to Hawks, "Well?"

  Hawks glanced at Weston, who nodded imperturbably. "He's made it, Dr. Hawks," Weston said. "After all, many neurotic personality constellations have often proved useful on a functional level."

  "Barker," Hawks said, "I'm —"

  "Yes, I know. You're happy everything worked out all right." He looked around. His eyes were darting in jerks from side to side. "So am I. Has somebody here got a cigarette?"

  "Not yet," Holiday said sharply. "If you don't mind, chum, we'll leave your capillaries at normal dilation for a while, yet."

  "Everyone's so tough," Barker mused. "Everyone knows what's best." He looked around again at the laboratory people crowding around the table. "Could some of you stare at me a little later, please?" They retreated indecisively, then moved back to work.

  "Barker," Hawks said gently, "do you feel all right?"

  Barker looked at him expressionlessly. "I got up there, and out of the receiver, and started looking around the outpost. A bunch of zombies in light Navy suits handled me like you'd handle an ugly ghost. They wouldn't say two words to me without sounding as if they were paying for them. They showed me that camouflaged walkway they've built from the outpost bubble, and half-pushed me onto it. One of them walked along with me until I got to the formation, and never looked me in the face."

  "They have problems of their own," Hawks said.

  "I'm sure they do. Anyway, I got into the thing all right, and I moved along O.K… It's —" His face forgot its annoyance, and his expression now was one of closely remembered bafflement. "It's — a little like a dream, you know? Not a nightmare, now — it's not all full of screams and faces, or anything like that — but it's … well, rules, and the crazy logic: Alice in Wonderland with teeth." He gestured as though quickly wiping his clumsy words from a blackboard. "I'll have to find ways of getting it into English, I guess. Shouldn't be too much trouble. Just give me time to settle down."

  Hawks nodded. "Don't worry. We have a good deal of time, now."

  Barker grinned up at him with a sudden flash of boyishness. "I got quite a distance beyond Rogan M's body, you know. What finally got me was — was — was the — was —"

  Barker's face began to flush crimson, and his eyes bulged whitely. His lips fluttered. "The — the —" He stared at Hawks. "I can't!" he cried out. "I can't — Hawks —" He struggled against Holiday and Weston, who were trying to hold his shoulders, and curled his hands rigidly on the edge of the table, his arms locked taut, quivering in spasms. "Hawks!" he shouted as though from behind a thick glass wall. "Hawks, it didn't care! I was nothing to it! I was — I was —" His mouth locked partly open and the tip of his tongue fluttered against the backs of his upper teeth. "N-n-n No — N-nothing!" He searched Hawk's face, desperate. He breathed as though there could never be enough air for him.

  Weston was grunting with the effort to force Barker over backward and make him lie down. Holiday was swearing as he precisely and steadily pushed the needle of a hypodermic through the diaphragm of an ampule he had plucked out of his bag.

  Hawks clenched his fists at his sides. "Barker! What color was your first schoolbook?"

  Barker's arms loosened slightly. His head lost its rigid forward thrust. He shook his head and scowled down at the floor, concentrating fiercely.

  "I — I don't remember, Hawks," he stammered. "Green — no, no, it was orange, with blue printing, and it had a story in it about three goldfish who climbed out of their bowl onto a bookcase and then dived back into it. I — I can see the page with the illustration: three fish in the air, falling in a slanted tier, with the bowl waiting for them. The text was set with three one-word paragraphs: 'Splash!', and then a paragraph indentation, and then 'Splash!' and then once more. Three Splashes in a tier, just like the fish."

  "Well, now, you see, Barker," Hawks said softly. "You have been alive for as long as you can remember. You are something. You've seen, and remembered."

  Weston looked over his shoulder. "For Heaven's sake, Hawks! Stay out of this!" Holiday studied Barker with a slight blinking of his eyes, the hypodermic withheld.

  Hawks let out his breath slowly and said to Weston, "At least he knows he's alive."

  Barker was slumped, now. Nearly doubled over, he swayed on the edge of the table, the color of his face gradually returning to normal. He whispered intently, "Thanks. Thanks, Hawks." Bitterly, he whispered, "Thanks for everything." He mumbled suddenly, his torso rigid, "Somebody get me a wastebasket, or something."

  Gersten and Hawks stood beside the trans
mitter, watching Barker come unsteadily back from the washroom, dressed in his slacks and shirt.

  "What do you think, Ed?" Gersten asked. "What's he going to do now? Is he going to pull out on us?"

  "I don't know," Hawks answered absently, watching Barker. "I thought he'd work out," he said under his breath. "But has he?" He said to Gersten, "We'll simply have to wait and see. We'll have to think of a way to handle it."

  "Get another man?"

  Hawks shook his head. "We can't. We don't even know enough about this one." He said as though attacked by flies, "I have to have time to think. Why does time run on while a man thinks?"

  Barker came up to them.

  Barker's eyes were sunken in their sockets. 'He looked piercingly at Hawks. His voice was jagged and nasal.

  "Holiday says I'm generally all right, now, everything considered. But someone must drive me home." His mouth curled. "D'you want the job, Hawks?"

  "Yes, I do." Hawks took off his smock and laid it folded atop the cabinet. "You might as well set up for another shot tomorrow, Ted," he said to Gersten.

  "Don't count on me for it!" Barker sawed.

  "We can always cancel, you know." He said to Gersten, "I'll call early tomorrow and let you know."

  Barker stumbled forward as Hawks fell into step beside him. They slowly crossed the laboratory floor and went out though the stairwell doors, side by side.

  Connington was waiting for them in the upstairs hail, lounging in one of the bright orange plastic-upholstered armchairs that lined the foyer wall. His legs were stretched out in front of him, and one hand held a cigar in front of his face as he lit it and blew smoke out of his pursed lips in a translucent cone. His eyes flicked once over Barker, and once over Hawks. "Have some trouble?" he asked as they came abreast of him. "I hear you had some trouble down in the lab," he repeated, his eyes glinting. "Rough time, Al?"

  Hawks said, "If I find the man who's piping you information from the laboratory, I'll fire him."

  Connington reached toward the standing ash tray beside him. A ring on one finger clinked softly against the metal of the carrying handle. "You're losing your edge, Hawks," he said. "A couple of days ago, you wouldn't have bothered threatening." He pushed himself up to his feet, grunting softly as he said, "My doings would've been beneath you." He rocked up on his toes and back down on his heels, his hands in his pockets. "What's it matter, how many details I learn or don't? You think I need to? I know you two. That's enough."

  "God damn you, Connington —" Barker began with the high, tearing note in his voice.

  Connington's glance uppercut him lightly. "So I was right." He grinned consciously. "Goin' back to Claire, now?" He blew out smoke. "The two of you?"

  "Something like that," Hawks said.

  Connington scratched the lapel of his jacket. "Think I'll come along and watch." He smiled fondly at Barker, his head to one side. "Why not, Al? You might as well have the company of all the people who're trying to kill you."

  Hawks looked at Barker. The man's hands fumbled as though dealing with something invisible in the air just in front of his stomach. He was staring right through Connington, and the personnel man squinted momentarily.

  Then Barker said lamely, "There isn't room in the car."

  Connington chuckled warmly and mellifluously. "I'll drive, and you can sit on Hawks' lap. Just like Charlie McCarthy."

  Hawks pulled his glance away from Barker's face and said sharply, "I'll drive."

  Connington chuckled again. "Sam Latourette didn't get the job with Hughes Aircraft. Waxted's wanting him didn't make any difference. He showed up helpless drunk for his hiring interview this morning. I'll drive." He turned toward the double plate-glass doors and began walking out. He looked back over his shoulder. "Come along, friends," he said.

  2

  Claire Pack stood watching them from the head of the steps up to the lawn. She was wearing a one-piece skirtless cotton swimsuit cut high at the tops of her thighs, and was resting her hands lightly on her hips. As Connington shut off the engine and the three of them got out of the car, she, raised her eyebrows'. The narrow strings that served as straps for the swimsuit were dangling in loops around her upper arms.

  "Well, Doctor!" She said with low-voiced gravity and a pucker of her lips, "I'd been wondering when you'd drop by again."

  Connington, coming around the other side of the car, smiled watchfully at her and said, "He had to bring Al home. Seems there was a little hitch in the proceedings today."

  She glanced aside at Barker, who was raising the garage doors with abrupt, crashing movements of his arms and body, all his attention obviously on what he was doing. She ran her tongue over the edges of her teeth. "What kind?"

  "Now, I wouldn't know as to that. Why don't you ask Hawks?" Connington took a fresh cigar out of his case. "I like that suit, Claire," he said. He trotted quickly up the steps, brushing by her. "It's a hot day. Think I'll go find a pair of trunks and take a dip myself. You and the boys have a nice chat meanwhile." He walked quickly up the path to the house, stopped, lit the cigar, glanced sideward over his cupped hands, and stepped out of sight inside.

  Barker got into his car, started it, and clashed the gears as he moved it into the garage nose-first. The trapped thunder of the exhaust rumbled loudly and sputtered down into silence.

  "I think he'll be all right," Hawks said.

  Claire looked down at him. She focused her expression into an open-faced innocence. "Oh? You mean, he'll be back to normal?"

  Barker brought the garage doors down and passed Hawks with his head bent, striding intently as he thrust the ignition keys into his pocket. His face jerked up toward Claire as he climbed the steps. "I'm going upstairs. I may sack out. Don't wake me." He half-turned and looked at Hawks. "I guess you're stuck here, unless you want to take another hike. Did you think of that, Doctor?"

  "Did you? I'll stay until you're up. I'll want to talk to you."

  "I wish you joy of it, Doctor," Barker said, and walked away, with Claire watching him. Then she looked back down at Hawks. Through all this, she had not moved her feet or hands.

  Hawks said, "Something happened. I don't know how much it means."

  "You worry about it, Ed," she said, her lower lip glistening. "In the meantime, you're the only one left standing down there."

  Hawks sighed. "I'll come up."

  Claire Pack grinned.

  "Come over and sit by the pool with me," she said when he reached the top of the steps. She turned away before he could answer, and walked slowly in front of him, her right arm hanging at her side. Her hand trailed back, and reached up to touch his own. She slackened her pace so that they were walking side by side, and looked up at him. "You don't mind, do you?" she said gently.

  Hawks looked down at their hands for a moment, and as he did, she put the backs of her fingers inside his palm. He said slowly, "No — no, I don't think I mind," and closed his hand around hers.

  She smiled and said, "There, now," in an almost childishly soft voice.

  They walked to the edge of the pool and stood looking down into the water.

  "Did Connington take a long time getting over his drunk the other day?" Hawks asked.

  She laughed brightly. "Come on, now — what you mean is, why do I still let him hang around after his ferocious threats? Answer: why not? What can he do, really?" Her sidelong glance came up from a graceful turn of her head and shoulders, so that her hair flashed in the sun and her eyes were half veiled behind the glimmer of her lashes. "Or do you think I'm under his Svengali spell?" she asked with mock-horror that left her wide-eyed and with her lips in a scarlet, open pout.

  Hawks kept his eyes steadily on hers. "No, hardly that."

  Her eyebrows blinked up and down pleasurably, and her mouth parted in a low, whispered laugh. She swayed her upper body toward him, and put her other hand on his arm. "Should I take that as a tribute? Al tells me you're a hard man to get small talk out of."

  Hawks put his right hand aroun
d his own left wrist and held it, his arm crossed awkwardly in front of his body. "What else has Al told you about his work?" he asked.

  She looked down at his arm. She said gravely and confidentially, "You know, if I get too close to you, you can always dive into the pool." Then she grinned to herself again, keeping her face toward him to let him see it, and, taking her hands away, sank down to lie on one hip in the grass, her head bent so she could watch the surface of the water. "I'm sorry," she said without looking up. "I said that just to see if you'd jump. Connie's right about me, you know."

  Hawks squatted angularly down next to her, watching the side of her turned-away face. "In what way?"

  She put one hand down into the blue water and stirred it back and forth, silver bubbles trailing out between her spread fingers. "I can't know a man more than a few minutes without trying to get under his skin," she said in a pondering voice. "I have to do it. Measuring, I suppose you could call it." Her face flashed toward him. "And you can call that a Freudian pun if you want to." Then she had turned away again. A trail of splotched droplets on the pool's satiny concrete coaming began to shrink in the sun. Her voice was reflective and hidden again. "That's the way I am."

  "Is it really? Or is saying so just another part of the process? You say everything for effect, don't you?"

  Her face turned slowly, this time, and she looked at him with a faintly cynical undertone to her smile. "You're very quick, aren't you?" She pouted. "Are you sure I deserve all this concentration? After all, what good is it going to do you?" Her eyebrow arched, and she held that expression, her smile very slowly widening her lips.

  "I don't decide what should interest me," Hawks said. "First something intrigues me. Then I study it."

  "You must have curious instincts, mustn't you, then?" She waited for an answer. Hawks gave her none. She added, "In several senses of the word, I suppose." Hawks continued to look at her gravely, and she slowly lost the vivacity behind her expression. She rolled over suddenly on her back, her ankles crossed stiffly, and put her hands down flat on her thigh muscles. "I'm Al's woman," she said up at the sky.