The Collection

by Fredric Brown

  He started toward it, running with the gliding motion, almost like skating, that had been found to be easier than walking in the light gravitational pull of the Moon. Spacesuit, oxygen tank and all, his total weight was about forty-five pounds. Running a mile was less exertion than a 100-yard dash on Earth.

  He was more than glad to see the door of the Russian rocket open when he was about three-quarters of the way to it. He'd have had a tough decision to make if it had still been closed when he got there. Not knowing whether Anna was sealed in her spacesuit or not inside the rocket, he wouldn't have dared open the door himself. And, in case she was seriously injured, he wouldn't have dared not to.

  She was out of the rocket, though, by the time he reached her. Her face, through the transpariplast helmet, looked pale, but she managed to smile at him.

  He turned on the short-range radio of his set and asked, "Are you all right?"

  "A bit weak. The landing knocked me out, but I guess there are no bones broken. Where shall we-set up housekeeping?"

  "Near my rocket, I think. It's closer to the middle of where the supply rockets landed, so we won't have to move things so far. I'll get started right away. You stay here and rest until you're feeling better. Know how to navigate in this gravity?"

  "I was told how. I haven't had a chance to try yet. I'll probably fall flat on my face a few times."

  "It won't hurt you. When you start, take your time till you get the knack of it. I'll begin with this nearest supply rocket; you can watch how I navigate."

  It was about a hundred yards back the way he'd come.

  The supply rockets were at least a yard in outside diameter, and were so constructed that the nose and the tail, which contained the rocket mechanism, were easily detachable, leaving the middle section containing the payload, about the size of an oil drum and easily rolled. Each weighed fifty pounds, Moon weight.

  He saw Anna starting to work by the time he was dismantling the second supply rocket. She was awkward at first, and did lose her balance several times, but mastered the knack quickly. Once she had it, she moved more gracefully and easily than Carmody. Within an hour they had payload sections of a dozen rockets lined up near Carmody's rocket.

  Eight of them were American rockets and from the numbers on them, Carmody knew he had all sections needed to assemble the shelter.

  "We'd better set it up," he told her. "After that's done, we can take things easier. We can rest before we gather in the other loot. Even have a drink to celebrate."

  The Sun was well up over the ringwall of Hell Crater by then and it was getting hot enough to be uncomfortable, even in an insulated spacesuit. Within hours, Carmody knew, it would he so hot that neither of them would be able to stay out of the shelter for much longer than one-hour intervals, but that would be time enough for them to gather in the still uncollected supply rockets.

  Back in the supply depot on Earth, Carmody had assembled a duplicate of the prefab shelter in not much more than an hour. It was tougher going here, because of the awkwardness of working in the thickly insulated gloves that were part of the spacesuits. With Anna helping, it took almost two hours.

  He gave her the sealing preparation and a special tool for applying it. While she calked the seams to make the shelter airtight, he began to carry supplies, including oxygen tanks, into the shelter. A little of everything; there was no point in crowding themselves by taking inside more of anything than they'd need for a day or so at a time.

  He got and set up the cooling unit that would keep the inside of the shelter at a comfortable temperature, despite the broiling Sun. He set up the air-conditioner unit that would release oxygen at a specified rate and would absorb carbon dioxide, ready to start as soon as the calking was done and the airlock closed. It would build up an atmosphere rapidly once he could turn it on. Then they could get out of the uncomfortable spacesuits.

  He went outside to see how Anna was coming with her task and found her working on the last seam.

  "Atta baby," he told her.

  He grinned to himself at the thought that he really should carry his bride over the threshold-but that would be rather difficult when the threshold was an airlock that you had to crawl through on your hands and knees. The shelter itself was dome-shaped and looked exactly like a metal igloo, even to the projecting airlock, which was a low, semi-circular entrance.

  He remembered that he'd forgotten the whisky and walked over to one of the supply rocket sections to get a bottle of it. He came back with it, shielding the bottle with his body from the direct rays of the Sun, so it wouldn't boil.

  He happened to look up.

  It was a mistake.

  CHAPTER FOUR:

  REPORT TO EARTH

  "It's incredible," Granham snapped.

  Carmody glared at him. "Of course it is. But it happened. It's true. Get a lie detector if you don't believe rue."

  "I'll do that little thing," Granham said grimly. "One's on its way here now; I'll have it in a few minutes. I want to try you with it before the President-and others who are going to talk to you-get a chance to do it. I'm supposed to fly you to Washington right away, but I'm waiting till I can use that lie detector first."

  "Good," Carmody said. "Use it and be damned. I'm telling you the truth."

  Granham ran a hand through his already rumpled hair. He said, "I guess I believe you at that, Carmody. It's just -too big, too important a thing to take any one person's word about, even any two people's words, assuming that Anna Borisovna-Anna Carmody, I mean-tells the same story. We've got word that she's landed safely, too, and is reporting."

  "She'll tell the same story. It's what happened to us."

  "Are you sure, Carmody that they were extra-terrestrials? That they weren't-well, Russians? Couldn't they have been?"

  "Sure, they could have been Russians. That is, if there are Russians seven feet all and so thin they'd weigh about fifty pounds on Earth, and with yellow skins. I don't mean yellow like Orientals; I mean bright yellow. And with four arms apiece and eyes with no pupils and no lids. Also if Russians have a spaceship that doesn't use jets-and don't ask me what its source of power was; I don't know."

  "And they held you captive, both of you, for a full thirteen days, in separate cells? You didn't even-"

  "I didn't even," Carmody said grimly and bitterly. "And if we hadn't been able to escape when we did, it would have been too late. The Sun was low on the horizon-it was almost Moon night-when we got to our rockets. We had to rush like the devil to get them fueled and up on their tail fins in time for us to take off."

  There was a knock on Granham's door that turned out to be a technician with the lie detector-one of the very portable and very dependable Nally jobs that had become the standard army machine in 1958.

  The technician rigged it quickly and watched the dials while Granham asked a few questions, very guarded ones so the technician wouldn't get the picture. Then Granham looked at the technician inquiringly.

  "On the beam," the technician told him. "Not a flicker."

  "He couldn't fool the machine?"

  "This detector?" the technician asked, patting it. "It'd take neurosurgery or post-hypnotic suggestion like there never was to beat this baby. We even catch psycopathic liars with it."

  "Come on," Graham said to Carmody. "We're on our way to Washington and the plane's ready. Sorry for doubting you, Carmody, but to had to be sure-and report to the President that I am sure."

  "I don't blame you," Carmody told him. "It's hard for me to believe, and I was there.'''

  The plane that had brought Carmody from Washington to Suffolk Field had been a hot ship. The one that took him back-with Granham jockeying it-was almost incandescent. It cracked the sonic barrier and went on from there.

  They landed twenty minutes after they took off. A helicopter was waiting for them at the airport and got them to the White House in another ten minutes.

  And in two minutes more they were in the main conference room, with President Saunderson a
nd half a dozen others gathered there. The Eastern Alliance ambassador was there, too.

  President Saunderson shook hands tensely and made short work of the introductions.

  "We want the whole story, Captain," he said. "But I'm going to relieve your mind on two things first. Did you know that Anna landed safely near Moscow?"

  "Yes. Granham told me."

  "And she tells the same story you do-or that Major Granham told me over the phone that you tell."

  "I suppose," Carmody said, "that they used a lie detector on her, too."

  "Scopolamine," said the Eastern Alliance ambassador. "We have more faith in truth serum than lie detectors. Yes, her story was the same under scopolamine."

  "The other point," the President told Carrnody, "is even more important. Exactly when, Earth time, did you leave the Moon?"

  Carmody figured quickly and told him approximately when that had been.

  Saunderson nodded gravely. "And it was a few hours after that that biologists, who've still been working twenty-four hours a day on this, noticed the turning point. The molecular change in the zygote no longer occurs. Births, nine months from now, will have the usual percentage of male and female children.

  "Do you see what that means, Captain? Whatever ray was doing it must have been beamed at Earth from the Moon-from the ship that captured you. And for whatever reason, when they found that you'd escaped, they left. Possibly they thought your return to Earth would lead to an attack in force from here."

  "And thought rightly," said the ambassador. "We're not equipped for space fighting yet, but we'd have sent what we had. And do you see what this means, Mr. President? We've got to pool everything and get ready for space warfare, and quickly. They went away, it appears, but there is no assurance that they will not return."

  Again Saunderson nodded. He said, "And now, Captain-"

  "We both landed safely," Carmody said. "We gathered enough of the supply rockets to get us started and then assembled the prefab shelter. We'd just finished it and were about to enter it when I saw the spaceship coming over the crater's ringwall. It was-"

  "You were still in spacesuit?" someone asked.

  "Yes," Carmody growled. “Wewere still in spacesuits, if that matters now. I saw the ship and pointed to it and Anna saw it, too. We didn't try to duck or anything because obviously it had seen us; it was coming right toward us and descending. We'd have had time to get inside the shelter, but there didn't seem any point to it. It wouldn't have been any protection. Besides, we didn't know that they weren't friendly. 'We'd have got weapons ready, in case, if we'd had any weapons, but we didn't. They landed light as a bubble only thirty yards or so away and a door lowered in the side of the ship-"

  "Describe the ship, please."

  "About fifty feet long, about twenty in diameter, rounded ends. No portholes-they must see right through the walls some way-and no rocket tubes. Outside of the door and one other thing, there just weren't any features you could see from outside. When the ship rested on the ground, the door opened down from the top and formed a sort of curved ramp that led to the doorway. The other-"

  "No airlock?"

  Carmody shook his head. "They didn't breathe air, apparently. They came right out of the ship and toward us, without spacesuits. Neither the temperature nor the lack of air bothered them. But I was going to tell you one more thing about the outside of the ship. On top of it was a short mast, and on top of the mast was a kind of grid of wires something like a radar transmitter. If they were beaming anything at Earth, it came from that grid. Any-way, I'm pretty sure of it. Earth was in the sky, of course, and I noticed that the grid moved-as the ship moved-so the flat side of the grid was always directly toward Earth.

  "Well, the door opened and two of them came down the ramp toward us. They had things in their hands that looked unpleasantly like weapons, and pretty advanced weapons at that. They pointed them at us and motioned for us to walk up the ramp and into the ship. We did."

  "They made no attempt to communicate?"

  "None whatsoever, then or at any time. Of course, while we were still in spacesuits, we couldn't have heard them, anyway-unless they had communicated on the radio band our helmet sets were tuned to. But even after, they never tried to talk to us. They communicated among themselves with whistling noises. We went into the ship and there were two more of them inside. Four altogether-"

  "All the same sex?"

  Carmody shrugged. "They all looked alike to me, but maybe that's how Anna and I looked to them. They ordered us, by pointing, to enter two separate small rooms about the size of jail cells, small ones-toward the front of the ship. We did, and the doors locked after us.

  "I sat there and suddenly got plenty worried, because neither of us had more than another hour's oxygen left in our suits. If they didn't know that, and didn't give us any chance to communicate with them and tell them, we were gone goslings in another hour. So I started to hammer on the door. Anna was hammering, too. I couldn't hear through my helmet, of course, but I could feel the vibration of it any time I stopped hammering on my door.

  "Then, after maybe half an hour, my door opened and I almost fell out through it. One of the extra-terrestrials motioned me back with a weapon. Another made motions that looked as though he meant I should take off my helmet. I didn't get it at first, and then I looked at something he pointed at and saw one of our oxygen tanks with the handle turned. Also a big pile of our other supplies, food and water and stuff. Anyway, they had known that we needed oxygen-and although they didn't need it themselves, they apparently knew how to fix things for us. So they just used our supplies to build an atmosphere in their ship.

  "I took off my helmet and tried to talk to them, but one of them took a long pointed rod and poked me back into my cell. I couldn't risk grabbing at the rod, because another one still had that dangerous-looking weapon pointed at me. So the door slammed on me again. I took off the rest of my spacesuit because it was plenty hot in there, and then I thought about Anna because she started hammering again.

  "I wanted to let her know it would be all right for her to get out of her spacesuit, that we had an atmosphere again. So I started hammering on the wall between our cells in Morse. She got it after a while. She signaled back a query, so, when I knew she was getting me, I told her what the score was and she took off her helmet. After that we could talk. If we talked fairly loudly, our voices carried through the wall from one cell to the other."

  "They didn't mind your talking to one another?"

  "They didn't pay any attention to us all the time they held us prisoners, except to feed us from our own supplies. Didn't ask us a question; apparently they figured we didn't know anything they wanted to know and didn't know already about human beings. They didn't even study us. I have a hunch they intended to take us back as specimens; there's no other explanation I can think of.

  "We couldn't keep accurate track of time, but by the number of times we ate and slept, we had some idea. The first few days-" Carmody laughed shortly-"had their funny side. These creatures obviously knew we needed liquid, but they couldn't distinguish between water and whisky for the purpose. We had nothing but whisky to drink for the first two or maybe three days. We got higher than kites. We got to singing in our cells and I learned a lot of Russian songs. Been more fun, though, if we could have got some close harmony, if you know what I mean."

  The ambassador permitted himself a smile. "I can guess what you mean, Captain. Please continue."

  "Then we started getting water instead of whisky and sobered up. And started wondering how we could escape. I began to study the mechanism of the lock on my door. It wasn't like our locks, but I began to figure some things about it and finally-I thought then that we'd been there about ten days-1 got hold of a tool to use on it. They'd taken our spacesuits and left us nothing but our clothes, and they'd checked those over for metal we could make into tools."

  "But we got our food out of cans, although they took the empty cans afterward. This particular
time, though, there was a little sliver of metal along the opening of the can, and I worried it off and saved it. I'd been, meanwhile, watching and listening and studying their habits. They slept, all at the same time, at regular intervals. It seemed to me like about five hours at a time, with about. fifteen-hour intervals in between. If I'm right on that estimate, they probably come from a planet somewhere with about a twenty-hour period of rotation.

  "Anyway, I waited till their next sleep period and started working on the lock with that sliver of metal. It took me at least two or three hours, hut I got it open. And once outside my cell, in the main room of the ship, I found that Anna's door opened easily from the outside and I let her out.

  "We considered trying to turn the tables by finding a weapon to use on them, but none was in sight. They looked so skinny and light, despite being seven feet tall, that I decided to go after them with my bare hands. I would have, except that I couldn't get the door to the front part of the ship open. It was a different type of lock entirely and I couldn't even guess how to work it. And it was in the front part of the ship that they slept. The control room must have been up there, too.

  "Luckily our spacesuits were in the big room. And by then we knew it might be getting dangerously near the end of their sleeping period, so we got into our spacesuits quick and I found it was easy to open the outer door. It made some noise-and so did the whoosh of air going out -but it didn't waken them, apparently.

  "As soon as the door opened, we saw we had a lot less time than we'd thought. The Sun was going down over the crater's far ringwall-we were still in Hell Crater-and it was going to be dark in an hour or so. We worked like beavers getting our rockets refueled and jacked up on their tail fins for the takeoff. Anna got off first and then I did. And that's all. Maybe we should have stayed and tried to take them after they came out from their sleeping period, but we figured it was more important to get the news back to Earth."