by Various
Still, no one but me could reach a decision. About what to do, I mean.
"Look," I said at last, "here are the possibilities. They know we are here--either from watching us land a couple of hours ago or from observing Tom's scout-ship--or they do not know we are here. They are either humans from Earth--in which case they are in all probability enemy nationals--or they are alien creatures from another planet--in which case they may be friends, enemies or what-have-you. I think common sense and standard military procedure demand that we consider them hostile until we have evidence to the contrary. Meanwhile, we proceed with extreme caution, so as not to precipitate an interplanetary war with potentially friendly Martians, or whatever they are.
"All right. It's vitally important that Army Headquarters be informed of this immediately. But since Moon-to-Earth radio is still on the drawing boards, the only way we can get through is to send Monroe back with the ship. If we do, we run the risk of having our garrison force, Tom and me, captured while he's making the return trip. In that case, their side winds up in possession of important information concerning our personnel and equipment, while our side has only the bare knowledge that somebody or something else has a base on the Moon. So our primary need is more information.
"Therefore, I suggest that I sit in the dome on one end of a telephone hookup with Tom, who will sit in the ship, his hand over the firing button, ready to blast off for Earth the moment he gets the order from me. Monroe will take the single-seater down to the Riphaen Mountains, landing as close to the other dome as he thinks safe. He will then proceed the rest of the way on foot, doing the best scouting job he can in a spacesuit.
"He will not use his radio, except for agreed-upon nonsense syllables to designate landing the single-seater, coming upon the dome by foot, and warning me to tell Tom to take off. If he's captured, remembering that the first purpose of a scout is acquiring and transmitting knowledge of the enemy, he will snap his suit radio on full volume and pass on as much data as time and the enemy's reflexes permit. How does that sound to you?"
They both nodded. As far as they were concerned, the command decision had been made. But I was sitting under two inches of sweat.
"One question," Tom said. "Why did you pick Monroe for the scout?"
"I was afraid you'd ask that," I told him. "We're three extremely unathletic Ph.D.s who have been in the Army since we finished our schooling. There isn't too much choice. But I remembered that Monroe is half Indian--Arapahoe, isn't it, Monroe?--and I'm hoping blood will tell."
"Only trouble, Colonel," Monroe said slowly as he rose, "is that I'm one-fourth Indian and even that.... Didn't I ever tell you that my great-grandfather was the only Arapahoe scout who was with Custer at the Little Big Horn? He'd been positive Sitting Bull was miles away. However, I'll do my best. And if I heroically don't come back, would you please persuade the Security Officer of our section to clear my name for use in the history books? Under the circumstances, I think it's the least he could do."
I promised to do my best, of course.
* * * * *
After he took off, I sat in the dome over the telephone connection to Tom and hated myself for picking Monroe to do the job. But I'd have hated myself just as much for picking Tom. And if anything happened and I had to tell Tom to blast off, I'd probably be sitting here in the dome all by myself after that, waiting....
"Broz neggle!" came over the radio in Monroe's resonant voice. He had landed the single-seater.
I didn't dare use the telephone to chat with Tom in the ship, for fear I might miss an important word or phrase from our scout. So I sat and sat and strained my ears. After a while, I heard "Mishgashu!" which told me that Monroe was in the neighborhood of the other dome and was creeping toward it under cover of whatever boulders were around.
[Illustration]
And then, abruptly, I heard Monroe yell my name and there was a terrific clattering in my headphones. Radio interference! He'd been caught, and whoever had caught him had simultaneously jammed his suit transmitter with a larger transmitter from the alien dome.
Then there was silence.
After a while, I told Tom what had happened. He just said, "Poor Monroe." I had a good idea of what his expression was like.
"Look, Tom," I said, "if you take off now, you still won't have anything important to tell. After capturing Monroe, whatever's in that other dome will come looking for us, I think. I'll let them get close enough for us to learn something of their appearance--at least if they're human or non-human. Any bit of information about them is important. I'll shout it up to you and you'll still be able to take off in plenty of time. All right?"
"You're the boss, Colonel," he said in a mournful voice. "Lots of luck."
And then there was nothing to do but wait. There was no oxygen system in the dome yet, so I had to squeeze up a sandwich from the food compartment in my suit. I sat there, thinking about the expedition. Nine years, and all that careful secrecy, all that expenditure of money and mind-cracking research--and it had come to this. Waiting to be wiped out, in a blast from some unimaginable weapon. I understood Monroe's last request. We often felt we were so secret that our immediate superiors didn't even want us to know what we we were working on. Scientists are people--they wish for recognition, too. I was hoping the whole expedition would be written up in the history books, but it looked unpromising.
* * * * *
Two hours later, the scout ship landed near the dome. The lock opened and, from where I stood in the open door of our dome, I saw Monroe come out and walk toward me.
I alerted Tom and told him to listen carefully. "It may be a trick--he might be drugged...."
He didn't act drugged, though--not exactly. He pushed his way past me and sat down on a box to one side of the dome. He put his booted feet up on another, smaller box.
"How are you, Ben?" he asked. "How's every little thing?"
I grunted. "Well?" I know my voice skittered a bit.
He pretended puzzlement. "Well what? Oh, I see what you mean. The other dome--you want to know who's in it. You have a right to be curious, Ben. Certainly. The leader of a top-secret expedition like this--Project Hush they call us, huh, Ben--finds another dome on the Moon. He thinks he's been the first to land on it, so naturally he wants to--"
"Major Monroe Gridley!" I rapped out. "You will come to attention and deliver your report. Now!" Honestly, I felt my neck swelling up inside my helmet.
Monroe just leaned back against the side of the dome. "That's the Army way of doing things," he commented admiringly. "Like the recruits say, there's a right way, a wrong way and an Army way. Only there are other ways, too." He chuckled. "Lots of other ways."
"He's off," I heard Tom whisper over the telephone. "Ben, Monroe has gone and blown his stack."
"They aren't extraterrestrials in the other dome, Ben," Monroe volunteered in a sudden burst of sanity. "No, they're human, all right, and from Earth. Guess where."
"I'll kill you," I warned him. "I swear I'll kill you, Monroe. Where are they from--Russia, China, Argentina?"
He grimaced. "What's so secret about those places? Go on!--guess again."
I stared at him long and hard. "The only place else--"
"Sure," he said. "You got it, Colonel. The other dome is owned and operated by the Navy. The goddam United States Navy!"
* * *
Contents
TAPE JOCKEY
By Tom Leahy
Pettigill was, you might say, in tune with the world. It wouldn't even have been an exaggeration to say the world was in tune with Pettigill. Then somebody struck a sour note....
The little man said, "Why, Mr. Bartle, come in. This is indeed a pleasure." His pinched face was lighted with an enthusiastic smile.
"You know my name, so I suppose you know the Bulletin sent me for a personality interview," the tall man who stood in the doorway said in a monotone as if it were a statement he had made a thousand times--which he had.
"Oh, certainly, Mr. B
artle. I was informed by Section Secretary Andrews this morning. I must say, I am greatly honored by this visit, too. Oh heavens, here I am letting you stand in the doorway. Excuse my discourtesy, sir--come in, come in," the little man said, and bustled the bored Bartle into a great room.
The walls of the room were lined by gray metal boxes that had spools of reproduction tape mounted on their vertical fronts--tape recorders, hundreds of them.
"I have a rather lonely occupation, Mr. Bartle, and sometimes the common courtesies slip my mind. It is a rather grievous fault and I beg you to overlook it. It would be rather distressing to me if Section Secretary Andrews were to hear of it; he has a rather intolerant attitude toward such faux pas. Do you understand what I mean? Not that I'm dissatisfied with my superior--perish the thought, it's just that--"
"Don't worry, I won't breathe a word," the tall man interrupted without looking at the babbling fellow shuffling along at his side. "Mr. Pettigill, I don't want to keep you from your work for too long, so I'll just get a few notes and make up the bulk of the story back at the paper." Bartle searched the room with his eyes. "Don't you have a chair in this place?"
"Oh, my gracious, yes. There goes that old discourtesy again, eh?" the little man, Pettigill, said with a dry laugh. He scurried about the room like a confused squirrel until he spotted a chair behind his desk. "My chair. My chair for you, Mr. Bartle!" Again the dry laugh.
"Thanks, Mr. Pettigill."
"Arthur. Call me Arthur. Formality really isn't necessary among Mid Echelon, do you think? Section Secretary Andrews has often requested I call him Morton, but I just can't seem to bring myself to such informality. After all, he is Sub-Prime Echelon. It makes one uncomfortable, shall we say, to step out of one's class?" He stopped talking and the corners of his mouth dropped quickly as if he had just been given one minute to live. "You--you are only Mid Echelon, aren't you? I mean, if you are Sub-Prime, I shouldn't be--"
"Relax, Mr. Pettigill--'Arthur'--I am Mid Echelon. And I'm only that because my father was a man of far more industry than I; I inherited my classification."
"So? Well, now. Interesting--very. He must have been a great man, a great man, Mr. Bartle."
"So I am told, Arthur. But let's get on with it," Bartle said, taking some scrap paper and a pencil stub from his tunic pocket. "Now, tell me about yourself and the Melopsych Center."
"Well," the little man began with a sigh and blinked his eyes peculiarly as though he were mentally shuffling events and facts like a deck of cards. "Well, I--my life would be of little interest, but the Center is of the utmost importance. That's it--I am no more than a physical extremity that functions in accord with the vital life that courses through the great physique of the Center! No more--I ask no more than to serve the Center and in turn, my fellow citizens, whether they be Prime, Sub-Prime, Mid, or even Sub-Lower!"
He stopped speaking, affecting a martyr-like pose. Bartle covered a smile with his hand.
"Well, Bartle, as you know, the Center--the Melopsych Center, a thoroughly inadequate name for the installation I might say--is the point of broadcast for these many taped musical selections contrived by Mass Psych as a therapeutic treatment for the various Echelon levels. It is the Great Psychiatrist--the Father Confessor. For where can one bare one's soul, or soothe one's nerves and disposition frayed by a day's endeavor, better than in the tender yet firm embrace of music?"
* * * * *
Bartle was straining to follow the train of thought that was lost in the camouflage of Pettigill's flowery phraseology.
"You see all about you these many recorders, Mr. Bartle?"
Bartle nodded.
"On those machines, sir, are spools of tape. Music tapes, all music. My heavens, every kind: classical music, jazz, western, all kinds of music. Some tapes are no more than a single melodious note, sustained for whatever length of time necessary to relax and please the Echelon level home it is being beamed to. Oh, I tell you, Mr. Bartle, when the last tape has expended itself for the day, as our service code suggests, I leave this great edifice with a feeling of profound pride in the fact that I have so served my fellow man. You share that feeling too, don't you Mr. Bartle?"
Bartle shrugged. Pettigill paused and looked at the watch he carried on a long chain attached to a clasp on his tunic.
"A Benz chronometer, given to me by Section Secretary Andrews on the completion of my twenty-five years of service. It's radio-synchronized with the master timepiece in Greenland. It gives me a feeling of close communion with my superiors, if you understand what I mean."
Bartle did not. He said, "Am I keeping you from your work? If I am, I believe I can fill in on most of this back at the paper; we have files on the Center's operation."
The little man hurriedly put out a hand to restrain Bartle who was easing out of the chair.
"Not yet, Mr. Bartle," he said, suddenly much more sober. Then his incongruous pomposity appeared again. "My gracious, no, you aren't keeping me from my work. I just must start the Mid-Lower Echelon tape. It won't take a moment. Tonight, they receive 'Concerto For Ass's Jawbone.' Sounds rather ridiculous, doesn't it? Be that as it may, there is a certain stimulation in its rhythmic cacophony. Aboriginality--yes, I would say it arouses a primitive exaltation."
He flicked a switch above the recorder, turned a knob, and pressed the starter button on the machine. The tape began winding slowly from one spool to another.
"Is it 'casting'?" Bartle asked. "I don't hear a thing."
Pettigill laughed. "My stars, no; you can't hear it. See--" He pointed at a needle doing a staccato dance on the meter face of the machine. "That tells me everything is operating properly. Mass Psych advises us never to listen to 'casts. The selections were designed by them for specific social and intellectual levels. It could cause us to experience a rather severe emotional disturbance."
A peculiar look came over Bartle's face. "Is there ever a time when all the machines run at once? That is, when every Echelon home is tuned to the melopsych tapecasts?"
Pettigill registered surprise. "Why, certainly, Mr. Bartle. Don't you know Amendment 34206-B specifically states that all Echelon homes must receive music therapy at 2300 hours every night? Of course, different tapes to different homes."
"That's what I mean."
"Haven't you been abiding by the directive, Mr. Bartle?"
"I told you I owed my classification to my father's industry. I am definitely lax in my duties."
Pettigill laughed--almost wickedly, Bartle thought.
"What I'm getting at, is," Bartle continued, "what if the wrong 'casts were channeled into the various homes?"
"I remind you, sir, I am in charge of the Center and have been for thirty years. Not even the slightest mistake of that nature has ever occurred during that time!"
"That, I can believe, Pettigill," Bartle said, his voice edged with sarcasm. "But, hypothetically, if it were to happen, what would the reaction be?"
The little man fidgeted with his watch chain. Then he leaned close to Bartle and said in a barely audible whisper, "This isn't for publication in your article, is it?"
"You don't think the Government would allow that, do you? No, this is to satisfy my own curiosity."
"Well, since we're both Mid Echelon--brothers, so to speak--I suppose we can share a secret. It will be disastrous! I firmly believe it will be disastrous, Mr. Bartle!" He moved closer to the tall man. "I recall a secret administrative directive we received here twenty years ago concerning just that. In essence, it stated that, though music therapy has its great advantages, if the pattern of performance were broken or altered, a definite erratic emotional reaction would develop on the part of the citizens! That was twenty years ago, and I shudder to think what might be the response now; especially if the 'cast were completely foreign to the recipient." He gave a little shudder to emphasize the horror of the occurrence. "It would make psychotics of the entire citizenry! That's what would happen--a nation of psychotics!"
"The fellow who didn'
t hear the 'miscast' would be top dog, eh, Pettigill? He could call his shots."
* * * * *
Pettigill twirled the watch chain faster between a forefinger and thumb. "No, he'd gain nothing," he said, staring as though hypnotized by the whirling, gold chain. "It would take more than one sane person to control the derelict population. Perhaps--perhaps two," he mumbled. "Yes, I think perhaps two could."
"You and who else, Pettigill?"
Pettigill stepped back and drew himself erect. "What? You actually entertain the idea th--" He laughed dryly. "Oh, you're pulling my leg, eh, Mr. Bartle."
"I suppose I am."
"Well, such a remark gives one a jolt, if you know what I mean. Even though we are speaking of a hypothetical occurrence, we must be cautious about such talk, Mr. Bartle. Although our government is a benevolent organization, it is ill-disposed toward such ideas." He cleared his throat. "Now, is there anything else I can tell you about the Center?"
Bartle arose from the chair, stuffing the scrap paper and unused pencil back in his pocket. "Thanks, no," he said, "I think this'll cover it. Oh yes, the article will appear in this Sunday's edition. Thanks, Pettigill, for giving me your time."
"Oh, I wish to thank you, Mr. Bartle. Being featured in a Bulletin article is the ultimate to a man such as I--a man whose only wishes are to serve his country and his brothers."
"I'm sure you're doing both with great efficiency," Bartle said as he apathetically shook Pettigill's hand and started toward the door.
"A moment, Mr. Bartle--" the little man called.
Bartle stopped and turned.
"I perceive, Mr. Bartle, you are a man of exceptional ability," Pettigill said and cleared his throat. "It seems a shame to waste such talent; it should be directed toward some definite goal. Do you understand what I mean? After all, we're all brothers, you know. It would be for my benefit as well as yours."
"Sure, sure, 'brother'," Bartle snorted and left.