Rogue Moon

“There was nothing Edison could do about it. He had no way of knowing what part of a scratch was song, and what was noise. He had no technique for taking a stylus in his hand and simply scratching a cylinder so that it could be played as ‘Mary had a little lamb.’ He could only check his reproducer for mechanical failure and begin, again, with his voice, and the horn, and the diaphragm. There was simply no other way for him to do it. And, of course, he needed none. There is no particularly great expenditure in saying ‘Mary had a little lamb’ over and over again as many times as it may take to get a perfect playback.

“And if Daguerre, experimenting with the begi

“But we ca

“Understand me: the Al Barker we resolve will almost certainly be you. The statistical chances are all on your side. But the sca

Barker said lightly, “Ever had any trouble, Doctor?”

“If we have, we don’t know it. As far as we could tell, our preliminary scans have all been perfect. At least, the objects and living organisms we’ve dealt with were able to go on functioning exactly as they always had. But a man is such a complex thing, Barker. A man is so much more than his gross physical structure. He has spent his life in thought — in filling his brain with the stored minutiae he remembers and reco

“If we happen to change him on some gross level that can be checked against whatever is recorded of his life, we can detect that change. But we’re not likely to be that far off. Far more serious is the possibility of there being enough errOr to cause subtle changes which no one could find — least of all you, because you’d have no data to check against. Was your first schoolbook covered in blue or red? If you remember it as red, who could find it now to see what color it was?”

“Does it matter?” Barker shrugged, and the suit groaned on the table. “I’d rather worry about the duplicate being so screwed up that it’s dead, or turned into a monster that needs to die.”

“Well,” Hawks said, wiping his hand over his face, “that’s not at all likely to happen. But you can worry about that if you want to. What you worry about depends entirely on where you draw the line on what parts of you are important to you. You have to decide how much of yourself can be changed before you consider yourself dead.”

Barker smiled coldly up at him. He looked around at the encircling rim of the faceplate opening. “I’m in this thing now, Doctor. You know damned well I won’t chicken out. I never would have. But you know you didn’t do anything to help me.”

“That’s right, Barker,” Hawks said. “And this is only a way in which I might kill you. There are other ways that are sure. I have to do this to you now because I need a man like you for what’s going to be done to him later.”

“Lots of luck, Doctor,” Barker said.

The dressers had closed Barker’s faceplate, and looped the air hoses back into co

“We’re going to wheel you in now, Barker,” Hawks said into his microphone.

“Roger, Doctor.”

“When you’re in, we’ll switch on the chamber electromagnets. You’ll be held in mid-air, and we’ll pull the table out. You won’t be able to move, and don’t try — you’ll burn out the suit motors. You’ll feel yourself jump a few inches into the air, and your suit will spread-eagle rigidly. That’s the lateral magnetic field. You’ll feel another jolt when we close the chamber door and the fore-and-aft magnets take hold.”

“I read you loud and clear.”

“We’re simulating conditions for a Moon shot. I want you to be familiar with them. So we’ll turn out the chamber lights. And there will be a trace component of formalin in your air to deaden your olfactory receptors.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Next, we’ll throw the sca

“I dig.”

“A general anesthetic will be introduced into your air circulation. It will dull your nervous system without quite making you lose consciousness. It will numb your skin temperature-and-pressure receptors entirely. It will cycle out after you resolve in the receiver. All traces of anesthesia will be gone five minutes after you resolve.”

“Got you.”

“All right. Finally, I’m going to switch off my microphone. Unless there’s an emergency, I won’t switch it on again. And from this point on, my microphone switch controls the two servoactivated ear plugs. in your helmet. You’ll feel the plugs nudging your ears; I want you to move your head as much as necessary to allow them to seat firmly. They won’t injure you, and they’ll retract the instant I have emergency instructions to give you, if any. Your microphone will remain on, and we’ll be able to hear you if you need any help, but you won’t be able to hear yourself. All this is necessary on the Moon shots.

“You’ll find that with your senses deadened or shut off, you’ll soon begin to doubt you’re alive. You’ll have no way of proving to yourself that you’re exposed to any external stimuli. You’ll begin to wonder if you have a mind at all, any more. If this condition were to persist long enough, you would go into an uncontrollable panic. The required length of time varies from person to person. If yours exceeds the few minutes you’ll be in the suit today, that’ll be long enough. If it proves to be less than that, we’ll hear you shouting, and I’ll begin talking to you.”

“That’ll be a great comfort.”

“It will.”

“Anything else, Doctor?”

“No.” He motioned to the Navy crew, and they began to roll the table into the chamber.

“I’ve got a word for the ensign,” Barker said.

“All right.”

The officer moved up into Barker’s line of vision through the faceplate. He pantomimed “What?” with his mouth.

“The name is Barker, son. Al Barker. I’m not just another guinea pig for you to stuff into a tin can. You got a name, son?”

The ensign, his cheeks flushed, nodded.