Long Ago, Far Away

CHAPTER 4

Captain Moggs landed and went directly to the main building of the base. The children were playing with Rex.

"Children," she said with authority, "go inside and pack up. We are going back to the United States."

The girl Mal seemed to understand and went to tell the others.

Captain Moggs came upon Soames, feverishly making up bundles of objects the children had brought out of their ship before Fran—in the brown tunic—had burned it. Captain Moggs said approvingly:

"You must have anticipated my orders! But I thought it unwise to tell you by radio on the inter-base wave-length."

Soames said curtly:

"I don't know anything about your orders. They're refuelling your ship now. We need to get it aloft with Gail and the kids inside of fifteen minutes.

"We were clearing away a snow-weasel to take to the woods," he growled. "Not the woods, but the wilds. We've got company coming."

"Impossible!" said Captain Moggs. "I have top-level orders for this whole affair to be hushed up. The existence of the children is to be denied. Everybody is to deny everything. Visitors cannot be permitted! It's absolutely unthinkable!"

Soames grinned mirthlessly.

"It's six hours since the French asked if they might come over for a social call. We stalled them. The English suggested a conference about the extrawd'n'ry burst of static the other night. They were stalled off too. But just about an hour ago the Russians pulled their stunt. Emergency S.O.S. One of their planes with engine trouble. Can't get home. It's heading this way for an emergency landing, convoyed by another plane. Can you imagine us refusing permission for a ship in trouble to land?"

"I don't believe it's in trouble!" said Captain Moggs angrily.

"Neither do I," said Soames.

He passed a wrapped parcel to one side.

"They must be acting on orders," he said coldly. "And we don't know what their orders are. Until we realized you'd get here first, we were making ready to take the kids off in a snow-weasel. If we kept to soft snow, no plane could land near them. It's just possible somebody could claim the kids asked protection from us decadent, warmongering Americans, and they might be equipped to shoot it out. We aren't."

Some of the base specialists appeared to help Soames carry the parcels to the transport.

Gail appeared, muffled up for travel. Fran and Zani were with her, similarly clothed. They carried garments for the others.

Captain Moggs fled to the communications room to demand radio contact to Washington. But the radio was busy. The French, having been stalled off when they suggested a visit, were now urged to call immediately. The English, similarly put off, were now invited to drop in for tea. As Captain Moggs sputtered, the radio went on to organize a full-scale conference on common observational problems, plus a seminar on Antarctic scientific research in general. It would be a beautiful example of whole-hearted co-operation among scientific groups of different nationalities. It should set a charming example for the rest of the world. But members of the staff, arranging this swift block of possible trouble-making by unwelcome visitors, wore the unpleasant expression of people who are preparing to be very polite to people attempting to put something over on them. It was notable that the few sporting weapons at the base were passed out to those who could use them most effectively if the need arose.

The transport's fuel-tanks were topped. The remaining two children struggled into flying garments. The boy Hod took down the small tripod with its spinning thing on top. Instantly the area about the base main building became bitter cold. The children climbed into the transport after Gail.

Soames, swearing, climbed in after a still expostulating Captain Moggs. He did not like the idea of leaving while any chance of trouble stayed behind. But as a matter of fact, his leaving with the others removed nearly the last chance of it.

It was, though, the rational thing to do.

Representatives of the other nations would land at the American base, and assure themselves that there were no extraterrestrials in hiding nor any signs of a spaceship anywhere about. And there would result a scientific conference that would do some good. The extraordinary burst of static would be discussed, with no conclusion whatever. But the Americans would be able to make an agreement on methods of observation with the other bases so that observations in the future would yield a little more information than had been secured before.

Gail kept a quasi-maternal eye on the children until they dozed off. But she watched Soames' expression, too. She and Soames and Captain Moggs rode in the passenger section of the transport a few seats behind the children.

"I wish I could understand," said Gail, in a low tone to Soames. "The other children know everything I've taught Zani, and there's been no way for them to know! They know things they weren't in the room to learn, and Zani didn't have time to tell them! Yet it doesn't seem like telepathy. If they were telepaths they could exchange thoughts without speaking. But they chatter all the time!"

"If they'd been telepaths," said Soames, "they'd have known I was going to burn their signalling apparatus. They could have stopped me, or tried to, anyhow."

Captain Moggs had paid no attention. Now she asked, "Why does the public insist on details of matters the military think should be kept secret?"

"Because," said Gail briefly, "it's the public that gets drowned by a tidal wave or killed by a cyclone. If strangers from space discover Earth, it's the public that will suffer."

"But," said Captain Moggs querulously, "it is necessary for this to be kept secret!"

"Unfortunately," said Soames. "The story broke before that decision was made."

He thought how inevitable it was that everybody should see the situation from their own viewpoint only. Captain Moggs from the military; Gail had a newspaper-woman's angle tempered with feminine compassion. And he was fascinated by the innumerable possibilities the technology of the children's race suggested. He yearned for a few days alone with some low-temperature apparatus. The hand-tool of Fran's bothered him.

He told Gail.

"What has low temperature to do?" she asked.

"They've got some wire that's a superconductor at room temperature. We can't have superconductors above 18° Kelvin, which is colder than liquid hydrogen. But a superconductor acts like a magnetic shield, no, not exactly. But you can't touch a magnet to one. Induced currents in the superconductor fight its approach. I'd like to know what happens to the magnetic field. Does it cancel, or bounce, or what? Could it, for instance, be focussed?"

"I don't see ..."

"Neither do I," said Soames. "But I've got a hunch that the little pocket gadget Fran carries has some superconductor in it. I think I could make something that wouldn't be his instrument, at all—it would do different things—but that gadget does suggest some possibilities I fairly ache to try out."

"And I," said Gail, with a faint smile, "I want to try to write something that nobody would print. I'd like to write the real story as I see it, the children from a viewpoint nobody will want to see."

He looked at her, puzzled.

"My syndicate wants a story about the children that nobody will have to think about. No recognition of a problem in plain decency with the children considered as human as they are, but just a story that everybody could read without thinking anything but what they wanted to. They're nice children. Somebody raised them very well. But with most people nowadays thinking that if children aren't ill-bred they're frustrated...."

She made a helpless gesture as the plane bellowed onward.

Presently the moon shone on Fran's face. He moved in his sleep. After a little he opened his eyes and gasped a little. He looked startledly around, an instinct of anyone waking in a strange place. Then he turned back. He saw the moon.

He uttered a little cry. His face worked. He stared at the misshapen, incompletely round companion of Earth as if its appearance had some extraordinary, horrifying meaning for him. His hands clenched.

Behind him, Gail whispered:

"Brad! He's—horrified! Does that mean that he and the other children need to signal to someone ..."

"I doubt it very much," said Soames. "If his parents and companions had landed on the moon, and I stopped him from signalling to them, he might look hopefully at it, or longingly, but not the way he does."

Fran touched the other boy, Hod. Hod waked, and Fran spoke to him in an urgent whisper. Hod jerked his head about and stared at the moon as Fran had done. He made a little whimpering noise. Then Mal made a bubbling sound, as from a bad dream. She waked. Then Zani roused and began to ask what was obviously a question, and stopped short. They spoke to each other in hushed voices in that unintelligible language of theirs.

"I've got an idea," said Soames in a flat, unbelieving tone. "Let's see."

Soames went forward and into the pilot's compartment. He came back with binoculars. He touched Fran on the shoulder and offered them. Fran stared up at him with dazed eyes, not really attending to Soames at all. He looked back at the moon.

He focussed the binoculars. They were excellent glasses. The ring-mountains at the edge of sunshine on the moon were very, very distinct. He could see those tiny speckles of light on the dark side of the terminator which were mountain-tops rising out of darkness into the sunshine. There was Aristarchus and Copernicus and Tycho. There were the vast, featureless "mares,"—those plains of once-liquid lava which had welled out when monstrous missiles the size of counties buried themselves deep in the moon's substance. The moon could be seen as battered; shattered, devastated; destroyed.

Soames touched Fran's shoulder again and showed him how one looked through the binoculars. Fran's hand shook as he took them. He put them to his eyes.

Zani put her hands over her eyes with a little cry. It was as if she tried to shut out the sight that Fran saw. Mal began to cry quietly. Hod made little gasping noises.

Fran lowered the binoculars. He looked at Soames with a terrible hatred in his eyes.

Soames went back to Gail, leaving the binoculars with the children. He found himself sweating.

"When," asked Soames harshly, "were the mountains on the moon made? It's an interesting question. I just got an answer. They were made when there were three-toed horses and many ganoid fishes on the earth."

"The children knew the moon when it—wasn't the way it is now," he said with some difficulty. "You know what that is! Ring-mountains sometimes hundreds of miles across, splashings of stone from the impact of asteroids and moonlets and islands of rock and metal falling from the sky. The mares are where the moon's crust was punctured and lava poured out. The streaks are where up-flung stuff was thrown hundreds of miles!

"It was a guess," said Soames. "But it's not a guess any longer. There was a Fifth Planet, and it either exploded or was blown to bits, heaven knows how! But the moon was bombarded by the wreckage, and so was Earth! Mountain-ranges fell from the sky right here on this world, too. There was destruction on Earth to match that on the moon. Perhaps here and there some place remained undestroyed, an acre here, perhaps a square mile a thousand miles away. Some life survived, and now it's all forgotten. There are rains and winds and frost. Earth's scars wore away through millions of years. We don't even know where the wounds were! But there were people in those days!

"And they were civilized," continued Soames. "They had superconductors and one-way conductors of heat. They had reached the point where they didn't need fire any more, and they built ships of magnesium alloy. They saw the Fifth Planet when it flew apart. They knew what must happen to Earth with the whole solar system filled with a planet's debris. Earth would be smashed; wrecked; depopulated, made like the moon is now! Maybe they had ships that went to other planets, but not enough to carry all the race. And the only other planets they could use were the inner ones, and they'd be smashed like the Earth and moon? What could they do? There might be one or two survivors here and there, bound to lapse into savagery because they were so few. But where could the civilized race go?"

Gail made an inarticulate sound.

"They might," said Soames in a flat voice, "they might try to go into the future; into the time beyond the catastrophe, when Earth would have healed its wounds. They might send someone ahead to see if it were possible. Yet if they sent one ship first—with everyone left behind doomed to die—if they sent one ship first, it's reasonable that they'd give children the chance of survival. It's even reasonable that they'd send two boys and two girls...."

"They—had a transmitter," Gail said, as if breathing hurt her. "You destroyed it. They meant to signal, not for help as we thought, but for their people to join them. M-maybe now they're hoping to get the material and the power to build another transmitter. Since everything they use is so simple, the boys might have been taught how. They were taught to repair the one they had! They did repair it! Maybe they can make one, and hope we'll help them! They'd have been especially trained...."

"Nice, isn't it?" asked Soames. "They were sent here in some fashion to make a beachhead for the landing of their people. A civilization that's starkly, simply doomed unless it can migrate. No mere conquest, with tribute to be paid to it. It has to take over a whole planet! It has to take over Earth, or die!" He winced. "And the kids, now, think of their parents as waiting for mountains to fall upon them from the sky, and I've doomed them to keep on waiting. Now the kids must be hoping desperately that they can get us to give them the means to save everything and everybody they care about, even though we're destroyed in the process! Isn't it pretty?

"If anybody else finds out what we know, the children will be hated as nobody was ever hated before. They'll be known for the deadly danger they are. We're primitives, beside their civilization! We'll have to fight, because there's no room for the population of another whole world, here! There's no food for more people! We can't let them come, and they must die if they don't come, and the children must be here to open the way for them to come in hordes.

"The children mustn't be allowed to build anything we don't understand or that might let them open communication with their people. If they try, they'll be trying to serve their own race by destroying this. And they'd have to destroy us and—" his voice was fierce—"I'm not going to let anything happen to you!"

Gail's cheeks were white, but a trace of color came into them then. Yet she looked remorseful as she glanced forward to where the children murmured hopelessly together.