Rogue Moon

4

Gersten knelt down and bent over the opened faceplate. “Are you all right, Hawks?” he asked.

Hawks L looked muzzily up at him. There was a trickle of blood ru

“They’re getting him out of the receiver now. He seems to be in good shape. Did you make it, all right?”

Hawks L nodded. “Oh, yes, that went well. The last I felt of M, he was giving the observation team a verbal report.” He blinked to clear his eyes. “That’s quite a place, up there. Listen — Gersten—” He looked up, his face wrinkled into an expression of distaste as he looked at the man. When he was a boy, and suffering from a series of heavy colds, his father had tried to cure them by giving him scalding baths and then wrapping him in wet sheets, drawing each layer tight as he wound it around Eddie Hawks’ body and over his arms, leaving the boy, in this ma

Gersten, who had at first been watching Hawks with interest and concern, had by now become completely frigid and offended. “Of course,” he said and stalked away, leaving Hawks L alone on the floor, like a child in the night. He lay that way for several moments before one of the technicians who stood in a ring around him realized he might want company and knelt down beside him, in range of the restricted field of vision through the faceplate opening.

5

Hawks M watched the chief observer close his notebook. “I think that does it, then,” he said to the man. Barker, who was sitting beside him at the steel table, nodded hesitantly.

“I didn’t see any lake of fire,” he said to Hawks.

Hawks shrugged. “I didn’t see any jagged green glass archway in its place.” He stood up and said to the observer team, “If you gentlemen would please refasten our faceplates for us, we’ll be on our way.”

The observers nodded and stepped forward. When they were done they turned and left the room through the airtight hatch to the bunker’s interior, so that Hawks and Barker were left alone to use the exterior airlock. Hawks motioned impatiently as the demand valve in his helmet began to draw air from his tanks again, its sigh filling his helmet. “Come along, Al,” he said. “We don’t have much time.”

Barker said bitterly as they cycled through the lock, “It sure is good to have people make a fuss over you and slap you on the back when you’ve done something.”

Hawks shook his head. “These people, here, have no concern with us as individuals. Perhaps they should have had, today, but the habit would have been a bad one to break. Don’t forget, Al — to them, you’ve never been anything but a shadow in the night. Only the latest of many shadows. And other men will come up here to die. There’ll be times when the technicians slip up. There may be some reason why even you or perhaps even I, will have to return here. These men in this bunker will watch, will record what they see, will do their best to help pry information out of this thing—” He gestured toward the obsidian hulk, toppling perpetually, perpetually re-erecting itself, shifting in place, looming over the bunker, now reflecting the light of the stars, now dead black and lusterless. “This enormous puzzle. But you and I, Al, are only a species of tool, to them. It has to be that way. They have to live here until one day when the last technician takes the last piece of this thing apart. And then, when that happens, these people in this bunker will have to face something they’ve been trying not to think about all this time.”

Hawks and Barker moved along the footpath.

“You know, Hawks,” Barker said uncomfortably, “I almost didn’t want to come out.”

“I know.”

Barker gestured indecisively. “It was the damnedest thing. I almost led us into the trap that caught me last time. And then I almost just stayed put and waited for it to get us. Hawks, I just — I don’t know. I didn’t want to come out. I had the feeling I was going to lose something. What, I don’t know. But I stood there, and suddenly I knew there was something precious that was going to be lost if I came back out onto the Moon.”

Hawks, walking steadily beside Barker, turned his head to look at him for the first time since they had left the bunker. “And did’ you lose it?”

“I — I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it for a long time, I think. I feel different. I can tell that much.” Barker’s voice grew animated. “I do.”

“Is this the first time you’ve ever done somettung no other man has done before? Done it successfully, I mean?”

“I — well, no, I’ve broken records of one kind or another, and—”

“Other men had broken records at the same things, Al.”

Barker stopped, and looked at Hawks. “I think that’s it,” he frowned. “I think you’re right. I’ve done something no other man has ever done before. And I didn’t get killed for it.”

“No precedent and no tradition, Al, but you did it anyway.” Hawks, too, had stopped. “Perhaps you’ve become a man in your own right?” His voice was quiet, and sad.

“I may have, Hawks!” Barker said excitedly. “Look — you can’t — That is, it’s not possible to take in something like this all at once — but—” He stopped again, his face looking out eagerly through his faceplate.

They had come almost to the point where the footpath from the bunker joined the system of paths that webbed the terrain between the formation, the receiver, the Navy installation, and the motor pool where the exploration halftracks stood. Hawks waited, motionless, patiently watching Barker, his helmet bowed as he peered.

“You were right, Hawks!” Barker said in a rush of words. “Passing initiations doesn’t mean a thing, if you, go right back to what you were doing before; if you don’t know you’ve changed! A man — a man makes himself. He — Oh, God damn it, Hawks, I tried to be what they wanted, and I tried to be what I thought I should be, but what am I? That’s what I’ve got to find out — that’s what I’ve got to make something of! I’ve got to go back to Earth and straighten out all those years! I — Hawks, I’m probably going to be damned grateful to you.”

“Will you?” Hawks began walking again. “Come with me, Al.”

Barker trotted after him. “Where are you going?”

Hawks continued to walk until he was on the track that led toward the motor pool, and that continued past it for a short distance before the camouflaging stopped and the naked terrain lay nearly impassable to an armored man on foot. He waved shortly with one arm. “Out that way.”

“Aren’t you taking a chance? How much air is there in these suits?”

“Not much. A few minutes’ more.”

“Well, let’s get back to the receiver, then.”

Hawks shook his head. “No. That’s not for us, Al.”

“What do you mean? The return transmitter’s working, isn’t it?”

“It’s working. But we can’t use it.”

“Hawks—”

“If you want to go to the transmitter and have the Navy crew go through the same procedure that sends samples and reports back to Earth, you can. But first I want you to understand what you’d be doing.”

Barker looked at him in bewilderment through the thick glass. Hawks reached out and awkwardly touched his right sleeve to the man’s armored shoJder. “Long ago, I told you I’d kill you in many ways, Al. When each Barker L came back to consciousness on Earth after each Barker M died, I was letting you trick yourself. You thought then you’d already felt the surest death of all. You hadn’t. I have to do it once more.