The Second Fredric Brown Megapack

Honeymoon in Hell

On September 16th in the year 1962, things were going along about the same as usual, only a little worse. The cold war that had been waxing and waning between the United States and the Eastern Alliance—Russia, China, and their lesser satellites—was warmer than it had ever been. War, hot war, seemed not only inevitable but extremely imminent.

The race for the Moon was an immediate cause. Each nation had landed a few men on it and each claimed it. Each had found that rockets sent from Earth were inadequate to permit establishment of a permanent base upon the Moon, and that only establishment of a permanent base, in force, would determine possession. And so each nation (for convenience we’ll call the Eastern Alliance a nation, although it was not exactly that) was engaged in rushing construction of a space station to be placed in an orbit around Earth.

With such an intermediate step in space, reaching the Moon with large rockets would be practicable and construction of armed bases, heavily garrisoned, would be comparatively simple. Whoever got there first could not only claim possession, but could implement the claim. Military secrecy on both sides kept from the public just how near to completion each space base was, but it was generally—and correctly—believed that the issue would be determined within a year, two years at the outside.

Neither nation could afford to let the other control the Moon. That much had become obvious even to those who were trying desperately to maintain peace.

On September 17th, 1962, a statistician in the birth record department of New York City (his name was Wilbur Evans, but that doesn’t matter) noticed that out of 813 births reported the previous day, 657 had been girls and only 156 boys.

He knew that, statistically, this was practically impossible. In a small city where there are only, say, ten births a day, it is quite possible—and not at all alarming—that on any one given day, 90% or even 100%, of the births may be of the same sex. But out of so large a figure as 813, so high a ratio as 657 to 156 is alarming.

Wilbur Evans went to his department chief and he, too, was interested and alarmed. Checks were made by telephone—first with nearby cities and, as the evidence mounted, with more and more distant ones.

By the end of that day, the puzzled investigators—and there was quite a large group interested by then—knew that in every city checked, the same thing had happened. The births, all over the Western Hemisphere and in Europe, for that day had averaged about the same—three boys for every thirteen girls.

Back-checking showed that the trend had started almost a week before, but with only a slight predominance of girls. For only a few days had the discrepancy been obvious. On the fifteenth, the ratio had been three boys to every five girls and on the sixteenth it had been four to fourteen.

The newspapers got the story, of course, and kicked it around. The television comics had fun with it, if their audiences didn’t. But four days later, on September 21st, only one child out of every eighty-seven born in the country was male. That wasn’t funny. People and governments started to worry; biologists and laboratories who had already started to investigate the phenomenon made it their number one project. The television comics quit joking about it after one crack on the subject by the top comedian in the country drew 875,480 indignant letters and lost him his contract.

On September 29th, out of a normal numbers of births in the United States, only forty-one were boys. Investigation proved that every one of these was a late, or delayed, birth. It became obvious that no male child had been conceived, during the latter part of December of the previous year, 1961. By this time, of course, it was known that the same condition prevailed everywhere—in the countries of the Eastern Alliance as well as in the United States, and in every other country and area of the world—among the Eskimos, the Ubangi and the Indians of Tierra del Fuego.

The strange phenomenon, whatever it was, affected human beings only, however. Births among animals, wild or domesticated, showed the usual ratio of the two sexes.

Work on both space stations continued, but talk of war—and incidents tending to lead to war—diminished. The human race had something new, something less immediate, but in the long run far worse to worry about. Despite the apparent inevitability of war, few people thought that it would completely end the human race; a complete lack of male children definitely would. Very, very definitely.

And for once something was happening that the United States could not blame on the Eastern Alliance, and vice versa. The Orient—China and India in particular—suffered more, perhaps, than the Occident, for in those countries male offspring are of supreme emotional importance to parents. There were riots in both China and India, very bloody ones, until the people realized that they didn’t know whom or what they were rioting against and sank back into miserable passivity.

In the more advanced countries, laboratories went on twenty-four-hour shifts, and anyone who knew a gene from a chromosome could command his weight in paper currency for looking—however futilely—through a microscope. Accredited biologists and geneticists became more important than presidents and dictators. But they accomplished no more than the cults which sprang up everywhere (though mostly in California) and which blamed what was happening on everything from a conspiracy of the Elders of Zion to (with unusually good sense) an invasion from space, and advocated everything from vegetarianism to (again with unusually good sense) a revival of phallic worship.

Despite scientists and cults, despite riots and resignation, not a single male child was born anywhere in the world during the month of December, 1962. There had been isolated instances, all quite late births, during October and November.

January of 1963 again drew a blank. Not that everyone qualified wasn’t trying.

Except, perhaps, the one person who was slated to do more than anyone else—well, almost anyone else—about the matter.

Not that Capt. Raymond E. Carmody, U.S.S.E, retired, was a misogamist, exactly. He liked women well enough, both in the abstract and in the concrete. But he’d been badly jilted once and it had cured him of any desire whatsoever for marriage. Marriage aside, he took women as he found them—and he had no trouble finding them.

For one thing, don’t let the word “retired” fool you. In the Space Service, rocket pilots are retired at the ripe old age of twenty-five. The recklessness, reaction-speed and stamina of youth are much more important than experience. The trick in riding a rocket is not to do anything in particular; it’s to be tough enough to stay alive and sane until you get there. Technicians do the brain-work and the only controls are braking rockets to help you get down in one piece when you land; reaction-speed is of more importance than experience in managing them. Neither speed nor experience helps you if you’ve gone batty en route from spending days on end in the equivalent of a coffin, or if you haven’t what it takes not to die in a good landing. And a good landing is one that you can walk away from after you’ve recovered consciousness.

That’s why Ray Carmody, at twenty-seven, was a retired rocket pilot. Aside from test flights on and near Earth, he’d made one successful flight to the Moon with landing and return. It had been the fifteenth attempt and the third success. There had been two more successful flights thereafter—altogether five successful round trips out of eighteen tries.

But each rocket thus far designed had been able, barely, to carry fuel to get itself and its crew of one back to Earth, with almost-starvation rations for the period required. Step-rockets were needed to do even that, and step-rockets are terrifically expensive and cumbersome things.

At the time Carmody had retired from the Space Service, two years before, it had been conceded that establishment of a permanent base of any sort on the Moon was completely impracticable until a space station, orbited around the Earth, had been completed as a way-station. Comparatively huge rockets could reach a space station with relative ease, and starting from a station in open space and against lesser gravitational pull from Earth, going the rest of the way to the Moon would be even simpler.

But we’re getting away from Ray Carmody, as Carmody had got away from the Space Service. He could have had a desk job in it after old age had retired him, a job that would have paid better than he was making at the moment. But he knew little about the technical end of rocketry, and he knew less, and cared nothing, about administrative detail work. He was most interested in cybernetics, which is the science of electronic calculating machines. The big machines had always fascinated him, and he’d found a job working with the biggest of them all, the one in the building on a corner of the grounds of the Pentagon that had been built, in 1958, especially to house it.

It was, of course, known as Junior to its intimates.

Carmody’s job, specifically, was Operative, Grade I, and the Grade I meant that—despite his fame as one of the few men who had been to the Moon and lived to tell about it, and despite his ultra-honorable discharge with the grade of captain—his life had been checked back to its very beginning to be sure that he had not, even in his cradle, uttered a careless or subversive word.

There were only three other Grade I Operatives qualified to ask Junior questions and transmit his answers on questions which involved security—and that included questions on logistics, atomics, ballistics and rocketry, military plans of all sorts and everything else the military forces consider secret, which is practically everything except the currently preferred color of an infantryman’s uniform.

The Eastern Alliance would undoubtedly have traded three puppet dictators and the tomb of Lenin to have had an agent, or even a sympathizer, as a Grade I Operative on Junior. But even the Grade II Operatives, who handled only problems dealing with non-classified matters, were checked for loyalty with extreme care. Possibly lest they might ask Junior a subversive question or feed a subversive idea into his electronic equivalent of a brain.

But be that as it may, on the afternoon of February 2, 1963, Ray Carmody was the Operative on duty in the control room. The only Operative, of course; dozens of technicians were required from time to time to service Junior and feed him, but only one Operative at a time fed data into him or asked him questions. So Carmody was alone in the soundproofed control room.

Doing nothing, however, at the moment. He’d just fed into Junior a complicated mess of data on molecular structure in the chromosome mechanism and had asked Junior—for the ten-thousandth time, at least—the sixty-four dollar question bearing on the survival of the human race: Why all children were now females and what could be done about it.

It had been quite a chunk of data, this time, and no doubt Junior would take quite a few minutes to digest it, add it to everything else he’d ever been told and synthesize the whole. No doubt in a few minutes he’d say, “Data insufficient.” At least to this moment that had been his only answer to the sixty-four dollar question.

Carmody sat back and watched Junior’s complicated bank of dials, switches and lights with a bored eye. And because the intake-mike was shut off and Junior couldn’t hear what he was saying anyway, and because the control room was soundproofed so no one else could hear him, either, he spoke freely.

“Junior,” he said, “I’m afraid you’re a washout on this particular deal. We’ve fed you everything that every geneticist, every chemist, every biologist in this half of the world knows, and all you do is come up with that ‘data insufficient’ stuff. What do you want—blood?”

“Oh, you’re pretty good on some things. You’re a whiz on orbits and rocket fuels, but you just can’t understand women, can you? Well, I can’t either; I’ll give you that. And I’ve got to admit you’ve done the human race a good turn on one deal—atomics. You convinced us that if we completed and used H-bombs, both sides would lose the coming war. I mean lose. And we’ve got inside information that the other side got the same answer out of your brothers, the cybernetics machines over there, so they won’t build or use them, either. Winning a war with H-bombs is about like winning a wrestling match with hand grenades; it’s just as unhealthful for you as for your opponent. But we weren’t talking about hand grenades. We were talking about women. Or I was. Listen, Junior—”

A light, not on Junior’s panel but in the ceiling, flashed on and off, the signal for an incoming intercommunicator call. It would be from the Chief Operative, of course; no one else could connect—by intercommunicator or any other method—with this control room.

Carmody threw a switch.

“Busy, Carmody?”

“Not at the moment, Chief. Just fed Junior that stuff on molecular structure of genes and chromosomes. Waiting for him to tell me it’s not enough data, but it’ll take him a few minutes yet.”

“Okay. You’re off duty in fifteen minutes. Will you come to my office as soon as you’re relieved? The President wants to talk to you.”

Carmody said, “Goody. I’ll put on my best pinafore.”

He threw the switch again. Quickly, because a green light was flashing on Junior’s panel.

He reconnected the intake and output-mikes and said, “Well, Junior?”

“Data insufficient,” said Junior’s level mechanical voice.

Carmody sighed and noted the machine’s answer on the report ending in a question which he had fed into the mike. He said, “Junior, I’m ashamed of you. All right, let’s see if there’s anything else I can ask and get an answer to in fifteen minutes.”

He picked up a pile of several files from the table in front of him and leafed through them quickly. None contained fewer than three pages of data.

“Nope,” he said, “not a thing here I can give you in fifteen minutes, and Bob will be here to relieve me then.”

He sat back and relaxed. He wasn’t ducking work; experience had proven that, although an AE7 cybernetics machine could accept verbal data in conformance with whatever vocabulary it had been given, and translate that data into mathematical symbols (as it translated the mathematical symbols of its answer back into words and mechanically spoke the words), it could not adapt itself to a change of voice within a given operation. It could, and did, adjust itself to understanding, as it were, Carmody’s voice or the voice of Bob Dana who would shortly relieve him. But if Carmody started on a given problem, he’d have to finish it himself, or Bob would have to clear the board and start all over again. So there was no use starting something he wouldn’t have time to finish.

He glanced through some of the reports and questions to kill time. The one dealing with the space station interested him most, but he found it too technical to understand.

“But you won’t,” he told Junior. “Pal, I’ve got to give that to you; when it comes to anything except women, you’re really good.”

The switch was open, but since no question had been asked, of course Junior didn’t answer.

Carmody put down the files and glowered at Junior. “Junior,” he said, “that’s your weakness all right, women. And you can’t have genetics without women, can you?”

“No,” Junior said.

“Well, you do know that much. But even I know it. Look, here’s one that’ll stump you. That blonde I met at the party last night. What about her?”

“The question,” said Junior, “is inadequately worded; please clarify.”

Carmody grinned. “You want me to get graphic, but I’ll fool you. I’ll just ask you this—should I see her again?”

“No,” said Junior, mechanically but implacably.

Carmody’s eyebrows went up. “The devil you say. And may I ask why, since you haven’t met the lady, you say that?”

“Yes. You may ask why.”

That was one trouble with Junior; he always answered the question you actually asked, not the one you implied.

“Why?” Carmody demanded, genuinely curious now as to what answer he was going to receive. “Specifically, why should I not again see the blonde I met last night?”

“Tonight,” said Junior, “you will be busy. Before tomorrow night you will be married.”

Carmody almost literally jumped out of his chair. The cybernetics machine had gone stark raving crazy. It must have. There was no more chance of his getting married tomorrow than there was of a kangaroo giving birth to a portable typewriter. And besides and beyond that, Junior never made predictions of the future—except, of course, on such things as orbits and statistical extrapolation of trends.

Carmody was still staring at Junior’s impassive panel with utter disbelief and considerable consternation when the red light that was the equivalent of a doorbell flashed in the ceiling. His shift was up and Bob Dana had come to relieve him. There wasn’t time to ask any further questions and, anyway, “Are you crazy?” was the only one he could think of at the moment.

Carmody didn’t ask it. He didn’t want to know.

Carmody switched off both mikes and stood gazing at Junior’s impassive panel for a long time. He shook his head, went to the door and opened it.

Bob Dana breezed in and then stopped to look at Carmody. He said, “Something the matter, Ray? You look like you’d just seen a ghost, if I may coin a cliche.”

Carmody shook his head. He wanted to think before he talked to anybody—and if he did decide to talk, it should be to Chief Operative Reeber and not to anyone else. He said, “Just I’m a little beat, Bob.”

“Nothing special up?”

“Nope. Unless maybe I’m going to be fired. Reeber wants to see me on my way out.” He grinned. “Says the President wants to talk to me.”

Bob chuckled appreciatively. “If he’s in a kidding mood, then your job’s safe for one more day. Good luck.”

The soundproof door closed and locked behind Carmody, and he nodded to the two armed guards who were posted on duty outside it. He tried to think things out carefully as he walked down the long stretch of corridor to the Chief Operator’s office.

Had something gone wrong with Junior? If so, it was his duty to report the matter. But if he did, he’d get himself in trouble, too. An Operative wasn’t supposed to ask private questions of the big cybernetics machine—even big, important questions. The fact that it had been a joking question would make it worse.

But Junior had either given him a joking answer—and it couldn’t be that, because Junior didn’t have a sense of humor—or else Junior had made a flat, unadulterated error. Two of them, in fact. Junior had said that Carmody would be busy tonight and—well, a wheel could come off his idea of spending a quiet evening reading. But the idea of his getting married tomorrow was utterly preposterous. There wasn’t a woman on Earth he had the slightest intention of marrying. Oh, someday, maybe, when he’d had a little more fun out of life and felt a little more ready to settle down, he might feel differently. But it wouldn’t be for years. Certainly not tomorrow, not even on a bet.

Junior had to be wrong, and if he was wrong it was a matter of importance, a matter far more important than Carmody’s job.

So be honest and report? He made his decision just before he reached the door of Reeber’s office. A reasonable compromise. He didn’t know yet that Junior was wrong. Not to a point of mathematical certainty—just a billion to one odds against. So he’d wait until even that possibility was eliminated, until it was proven beyond all possible doubt that Junior was wrong. Then he’d report what he’d done and take the rap, if there was a rap. Maybe he’d just be fined and warned.

He opened the door and stepped in. Chief Operative Reeber stood up and, on the other side of the desk, a tall gray-haired man stood also. Reeber said, “Ray, I’d like you to meet the President of the United States. He came here to talk to you. Mr. President, Captain Ray Carmody.”

And it was the President. Carmody gulped and tried to avoid looking as though he was doing a double take, which he was. Then President Saunderson smiled quietly and held out his hand. “Very glad to know you, Captain,” he said, and Carmody was able to make the considerable understatement that he felt honored to meet the President.

Reeber told him to pull up a chair and he did so. The President looked at him gravely. “Captain Carmody, you have been chosen to—have the opportunity to volunteer for a mission of extreme importance. There is danger involved, but it is less than the danger of your trip to the Moon. You made the third—wasn’t it?—out of the five successful trips made by the United States pilots?” Carmody nodded.

“This time the risk you will take is considerably less. There has been much technological advance in rocketry since you left the service two years ago. The odds against a successful round trip—even without the help of the space station, and I fear its completion is still two years distant—are much less. In fact, you will have odds of ten to one in your favor, as against approximately even odds at the time of your previous trip.”

Carmody sat up straighter. “My previous trip! Then this volunteer mission is another flight to the Moon? Certainly, Mr. President, I’ll gladly—”

President Saunderson held up a hand. “Wait, you haven’t heard all of it. The flight to the Moon and return is the only part that involves physical danger, but it is the least important part. Captain, this mission is, possibly, of more importance to humanity than the first flight to the Moon, even than the first flight to the stars—if and when we ever make it—will be. What’s at stake is the survival of the human race so that someday it can reach the stars. Your flight to the Moon will be an attempt to solve the problem which otherwise—”

He paused and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.

“Perhaps you’d better explain, Mr. Reeber. You’re more familiar with the exact way the problem was put to your machine, and its exact answers.”

Reeber said, “Carmody, you know what the problem is. You know how much data has been fed into Junior on it. You know some of the questions we’ve asked him, and that we’ve been able to eliminate certain things. Such as—well, it’s caused by no virus, no bacteria, nothing like that. It’s not anything like an epidemic, because it struck the whole Earth at once, simultaneously. Even native inhabitants of islands that had no contact with civilization.”

“We know also that whatever happens—whatever molecular change occurs—happens in the zygote after impregnation, very shortly after. We asked Junior whether an invisible ray of some sort could cause this. His answer was that it was possible. And in answer to a further question, he answered that this ray or force is possibly being used by—enemies of mankind.”

“Insects? Animals? Martians?”

Reeber waved a hand impatiently. “Martians, maybe, if there are any Martians. We don’t know that yet. But extra-terrestrials, most likely. Now Junior couldn’t give us answers on this because, of course, we haven’t the relevant data. It would be guesswork for him as well as for us—and Junior, being mechanical, can’t guess. But here’s a possibility:”

“Suppose some extra-terrestrials have landed somewhere on Earth and have set up a station that broadcasts a ray that is causing the phenomenon of all children being girlchildren. The ray is undetectable; at least thus far we haven’t been able to detect it. They’d be killing off the human race and getting themselves a nice new planet to live on, without having to fire a shot, without taking any risk or losses themselves. True, they’ll have to wait a while for us to die off, but maybe that doesn’t mean anything to them. Maybe they’ve got all the time there is, and aren’t in the slightest hurry.”

Carmody nodded slowly. “It sounds fantastic, but I guess it’s possible. I guess a fantastic situation like this has to have a fantastic explanation. But what do we do about it? How do we even prove it?”

Reeber said, “We fed the possibility into Junior as a working assumption—not as a fact—and asked him how we could check it. He came up with the suggestion that a married couple spend a honeymoon on the Moon—and see if circumstances are any different there.”

“And you want me to pilot them there?”

“Not exactly, Ray. A little more than that—”

Carmody forgot that the President was there. He said, “Good God, you mean you want me to—Then Junior wasn’t crazy, after all!”

Shamefacedly, then, he had to explain about the extracurricular question he’d casually asked Junior and the answer he’d got to it.

Reeber laughed. “Guess we’ll overlook your violation of Rule 17 this time, Ray. That is, if you accept the mission. Now here’s the—”

“Wait,” Carmody said. “I still want to know something. How did Junior know I was going to be picked out? And for that matter, why am I?”

“Junior was asked for the qualifications he’d recommend for the—ah—bridegroom. He recommended a rocket pilot who had already made the trip successfully, even though he was a year or two over the technical retirement age of twenty-five. He recommended that loyalty be considered as an important factor, and that the holding of a governmental position of great trust would answer that. He further recommended that the man be single.”

“Why single? Look, there are four other pilots who’ve made that trip, and they’re all loyal, regardless of what job they’re holding now. I know them all personally. And all of them are married except me. Why not send a man who’s already got a ball and chain?”

“For the simple reason, Ray, that the woman to be sent must be chosen with even more care. You know how tough a Moon landing is; only one woman in a hundred would live through it and still be able to—I mean, there’s almost a negligible chance that the wife of any one of the other four pilots would be the best qualified woman who could possibly be found.”

“Hmmm. Well, I suppose Junior’s got something there. Anyway, I see now how he knew I’d be chosen. Those qualifications fit me exactly. But listen, do I have to stay married to whatever female is Amazonian enough to make the trip? There’s a limit somewhere, isn’t there?”

“Of course. You will be legally married before your departure, but upon your return a divorce will be granted without question if both—or either one—of you wish. The offspring of the union, if any, will be cared for. Whether male or female.”

“Hey, that’s right,” Carmody said. “There’s only an even chance of hitting the jackpot in any case.”

“Other couples will be sent. The first trip is the most difficult and most important one. After that, a base will be established. Sooner or later we’ll get our answer. We’ll have it if even one male child is conceived on the Moon. Not that that will help us find the station that’s sending the rays, or to detect or identify the rays, but we’ll know what’s wrong and can narrow our inquiry. I take it that you accept?”

Carmody sighed. “I guess so. But it seems a long way to go for—Say, who’s the lucky girl?”

Reeber cleared his throat. “I think you’d better explain this part to him, Mr. President.”

President Saunderson smiled as Carmody looked toward him. He said, “There is a more important reason, which Mr. Reeber skipped, why we could not choose a man who was already married, Captain. This is being done on an international basis, for very important diplomatic reasons. The experiment is for the benefit of humanity, not any nation or ideology. Your wife will be a Russian.”

“A Commie? You’re kidding me, Mr. President.”

“I am not. Her name is Anna Borisovna. I have not met her, but I am informed that she is a very attractive girl. Her qualifications are quite similar to yours, except, of course, that she has not been to the Moon. No woman has. But she has been a pilot of experimental rockets on short-range flights. And she is a cybernetics technician working on the big machine at Moscow. She is twenty-four. And not, incidentally, an Amazon. As you know, rocket pilots aren’t chosen for bulk. There is an added advantage in her being chosen. She speaks English.”

“You mean I’ve got to talk to her, too?”

Carmody caught the look Reeber flashed at him and he winced.

The President continued: “You will be married to her tomorrow by a beam-televised ceremony. You blast off, both of you, tomorrow night—at different times, of course, since one of you will leave from here, the other from Russia. You will meet on the Moon.”

“It’s a large place, Mr. President.”

“That is taken care of. Major Granham—you know him, I believe?” Carmody nodded. “He will supervise your takeoff and the sending of the supply rockets. You will fly tonight—a plane has been prepared for you—from the airport here to Suffolk Rocket Field. Major Granham will brief you and give you full instructions. Can you be at the airport by seven-thirty?”

Carmody thought and then nodded. It was five-thirty now and there’d be a lot of things for him to do and arrange in two hours, but he could make it if he tried. And hadn’t Junior told him he was going to be busy this evening?

“Only one thing more,” President Saunderson said. “This is strictly confidential, until and unless the mission is successful. We don’t want to raise hopes, either here or in the Eastern Alliance, and then have them smashed.” He smiled. “And if you and your wife have any quarrels on the Moon, we don’t want them to lead to international repercussions. So please—try to get along.” He held out his hand. “That’s all, except thanks.”

Carmody made the airport in time and the plane was waiting for him, complete with pilot. He had figured that he would have to fly it himself, but he realized that it was better this way; he could get a bit of rest before they reached Suffolk Field.

He got a little, but not much. The plane was a hot ship that got him there in less than an hour. A liaison officer was waiting for him and took him immediately to Major Granham’s office.

Granham got down to brass tacks almost before Carmody could seat himself in the offered chair.

He said, “Here’s the picture. Since you got out of the service, we’ve tremendously increased the accuracy of our rockets, manned or otherwise. They’re so accurate that, with proper care, we can hit within a mile of any spot on the Moon that we aim at. We’re picking Hell Crater—it’s a small one, but we’ll put you right in the middle of it. You won’t have to worry about steering; you’ll hit within a mile of the center without having to use your braking rockets for anything except braking.”

“Hell Crater?” Carmody said. “There isn’t any.”

“Our Moon maps have forty-two thousand named craters. Do you know them all? This one, incidentally, was named after a Father Maximilian Hell, S. J., who was once director of the Vienna Observatory in old Austria.”

Carmody grinned. “Now you’re spoiling it. How come it was picked as a honeymoon spot, though? Just because of the name?”

“No. One of the three successful flights the Russians made happened to land and take off there. They found the footing better than anywhere else either of us has landed. Almost no dust; you won’t have to slog through knee-deep pumice when you’re gathering the supply rockets. Probably a more recently formed crater than any of the others we’ve happened to land in or explore.”

“Fair enough. About the rocket I go in—what’s the payload besides myself?”

“Not a thing but the food, water and oxygen you’ll need en route, and your spacesuit. Not even fuel for your return, although you’ll return in the same rocket you go in. Everything else, including return fuel, will be there waiting for you; it’s on the way now. We fired ten supply rockets last night. Since you take off tomorrow night, they’ll get there forty-eight hours before you do. So—”

“Wait a minute,” Carmody said. “On my first trip I carried fifty pounds payload besides my return fuel. Is this a smaller type of rocket?”

“Yes, and a much better one. Not a step-rocket like you used before. Better fuel and more of it; you can accelerate longer and at fewer gravities, and you’ll get there quicker. Forty-four hours as against almost four days before. Last time you took four-and-a-half Gs for seven minutes. This time you’ll get by with three Gs and have twelve minutes’ acceleration before you reach Brennschluss—cut loose from Earth’s gravitation. Your first trip, you had to carry return fuel and a little payload because we didn’t have the accuracy to shoot a supply rocket after you—or before you—and be sure it’d land within twenty miles. All clear? After we’re through talking here I’ll take you to the supply depot, show you the type of supply rocket we’re using and how to open and unload it. I’ll give you an inventory of the contents of each of the twelve of them we sent.”

“And what if all of them don’t get there?”

“At least eleven of them will. And everything’s duplicated; if any one rocket goes astray, you’ll still have everything you need—for two people. And the Russians are firing an equal number of supply rockets, so you’ll have a double factor of safety.” He grinned. “If none of our rockets get there, you’ll have to eat borsht and drink vodka, maybe, but you won’t starve.”

“Are you kidding about the vodka?”

“Maybe not. We’re including a case of Scotch, transferred to lightweight containers, of course. We figure it might be just the icebreaker you’ll need for a happy honeymoon.”

Carmody grunted.

“So maybe,” Granham said, “the Russians’ll figure the same way and send along some vodka. And the rocket fuels for your return, by the way, are not identical, but they’re interchangeable. Each side is sending enough for the return of two rockets. If our fuel doesn’t get there, you divvy with her, and vice versa.”

“Fair enough. What else?”

“Your arrival will be just after dawn—Lunar time. There’ll be a few hours when the temperature is somewhere between horribly cold and broiling hot. You’d better take advantage of them to get the bulk of your work done. Gathering supplies from the rockets and putting up the prefab shelter that’s in them, in sections. We’ve got a duplicate of it in the supply depot and I want you to practice assembling it.”

“Good idea. It’s air-tight and heat-proof?”

“Air-tight once you paint the seams with a special preparation that’s included. And, yes, the insulation is excellent. Has a very ingenious little airlock on it, too. You won’t have to waste oxygen getting in and out.”

Carmody nodded. “Length of stay?” he asked.

“Twelve days. Earth days, of course. That’ll give you plenty of time to get off before the Lunar night.”

Granham chuckled, “Want instructions to cover those twelve days? No? Well, come on around to the depot then. I’ll introduce you to your ship and show you the supply rockets and the shelter.”

It turned out to be a busy evening, all right. Carmody didn’t get to bed until nearly morning, his head so swimming with facts and figures that he’d forgotten it was his wedding day. Granham let him sleep until nine, then sent an orderly to wake him and to state that the ceremony had been set for ten o’clock and that he’d better hurry.

Carmody couldn’t remember what “the ceremony” was for a moment, then he shuddered and hurried.

A Justice of the Peace was waiting for him there and technicians were working on a screen and projector. Granham said, “The Russians agreed that the ceremony could be performed at this end, provided we made it a civil ceremony. That’s all right by you, isn’t it?”

“It’s lovely,” Carmody told him. “Let’s get on with it. Or don’t we have to? As far as I’m concerned—”

“You know what the reaction of a lot of people would be when they learn about it, if it wasn’t legal,” Granham said. “So quit crabbing. Stand right there.”

Carmody stood right there. A fuzzy picture on the beam-television screen was becoming clearer. And prettier. President Saunderson had not exaggerated when he’d said that Anna Borisovna was attractive and that she was definitely not an Amazon. She was small, dark, slender and very definitely attractive and not an Amazon.

Carmody felt glad that nobody had corned it up by putting her in a wedding costume. She wore the neat uniform of a technician, and she filled it admirably and curved it at the right places. Her eyes were big and dark and they were serious until she smiled at him. Only then did he realize that the connection was two-way and that she was seeing him.

Granham was standing beside him. He said. “Miss Borisovna, Captain Carmody.”

Carmody said, inanely, “Pleased to meet you,” and then redeemed it with a grin.

“Thank you, Captain.” Her voice was musical and only faintly accented. “It is a pleasure.”

Carmody began to think it would be, if they could just keep from arguing politics.

The Justice of the Peace stepped forward into range of the projector. “Are we ready?” he asked.

“A second,” Carmody said. “It seems to me we’ve skipped a customary preliminary. Miss Borisovna, will you marry me?”

“Yes. And you may call me Anna.”

She even has a sense of humor, Carmody thought, astonished. Somehow, he hadn’t thought it possible for a Commie to have a sense of humor. He’d pictured them as all being dead serious about their ridiculous ideology and about everything else.

He smiled at her and said, “All right, Anna. And you may call me Ray. Are you ready?”

When she nodded, he stepped to one side to allow the Justice of the Peace to share the screen with him. The ceremony was brief and businesslike.

He couldn’t, of course, kiss the bride or even shake hands with her. But just before they shut off the projector, he managed to grin at her and say, “See you in Hell, Anna.”

And he’d begun to feel certain that it wouldn’t be that at all, really.

He had a busy afternoon going over every detail of operation of the new type rocket, until he knew it inside and out better than he did himself. He even found himself being briefed on details of the Russian rockets, both manned and supply types, and he was surprised (and inwardly a bit horrified) to dis-cover to what extent the United States and Russia had been exchanging information and secrets. It couldn’t all have happened in a day or so.

“How long has this been going on?” he demanded of Granham.

“I learned of the projected trip a month ago.”

“Why did they tell me only yesterday? Or wasn’t I first choice, after all? Did somebody else back out at the last minute?”

“You’ve been chosen all along. You were the only one who fitted all of the requirements that cybernetics machine dished out. But don’t you remember how it was on your last trip? You weren’t notified you were taking off until about thirty hours before. That’s what’s figured to be the optimum time—long enough to get mentally prepared and not so long you’ve got time to get worried.”

“But this was a volunteer deal. What if I’d turned it down?”

“The cybernetics machine predicted that you wouldn’t.”

Carmody swore at Junior.

Granham said, “Besides, we could have had a hundred volunteers. Rocket cadets who’ve got everything you have except one round trip to the Moon already under their belts. We could have shown a picture of Anna around and had them fighting for the chance. That gal is Moon bait.”

“Careful,” Carmody said, “you are speaking of my wife.” He was kidding, of course, but it was funny—he really hadn’t liked Granham’s wisecrack.

Zero hour was ten P.M., and at zero minus fifteen minutes he was already strapped into the webbing, waiting. There wasn’t anything for him to do except stay alive. The rockets would be fired by a chronometer set for the exact fraction of a second.

Despite its small payload, the rocket was a little roomier inside than the first one he’d gone to the Moon in, the R-24. The R-24 had been as roomy as a tight coffin. This one, the R-46, was four feet in diameter inside. He’d be able to get at least a bit of arm and leg exercise on the way and not—as the first time—arrived so cramped that it had taken him over an hour to be able to move freely.

And this time he wouldn’t have the horrible discomfort of having to wear his spacesuit, except for the helmet, en route. There’s room in a four-foot cylinder to put a spacesuit on, and his was in a compartment—along with the food, water and oxygen—at the front (or top) of the rocket. It would be an hour’s work to struggle into it, but he wouldn’t have to do it until he was several hours away from the Moon.

Yes, this was going to be a breeze compared to the last trip. Comparative freedom of movement, forty-four hours as against ninety, only three gravities as against four and a half.

Then sound that was beyond sound struck him, sound so loud that he heard it with all of his body rather than only with his carefully plugged ears. It built up, seeming to get louder every second, and his weight built up too. He weighed twice his normal weight, then more. He felt the sickening curve as the automatic tilting mechanism turned the rocket, which had at first gone straight up, forty-five degrees. He weighed four hundred and eighty pounds and the soft webbing seemed to be hard as steel and to cut into him. Padding was compressed till it felt like stone. Sound and pressure went on and on interminably. Surely it had been hours instead of minutes.

Then, at the moment of Brennschluss, free of the pull of Earth—sudden silence, complete weightlessness. He blacked out.

But only minutes had gone by when he returned to consciousness. For a while he fought nausea and only when he was sure he had succeeded did he unbuckle himself from the webbing that had held him through the period of acceleration. Now he was coasting, weightless, at a speed that would carry him safely toward the gravitational pull of the Moon. No further firing of fuel would be necessary until he used his jets to brake his landing.

All he had to do now was hang on, to keep from going crazy from claustrophobia during the forty hours before he’d have to start getting ready for the landing.

It was a dull time, but it passed.

Into spacesuit, back into the webbing, but this time with his hands free so he could manipulate the handles that controlled the braking jets.

He made a good landing; it didn’t even knock him unconscious. After only a few minutes he was able to unbuckle himself from the webbing. He sealed his spacesuit and started the oxygen, then let himself out of the rocket. It had fallen over on its side after the landing, of course; they always do. But he had the equipment and knew the technique for getting it upright again, and there wasn’t any hurry about doing it.

The supply rockets had been shot accurately, all right. Six of them, four American type and two Russian, lay within a radius of a hundred yards of his own rocket. He could see others farther away, but didn’t waste time counting them. He looked for one that would be larger than the rest—the manned (or womaned) rocket from Russia. He located it finally, almost a mile away. He saw no spacesuited figure near it.

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 be 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 caulked the seams to make the shelter air-tight, 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 caulking 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 almost exactly like a metal igloo, even to the projecting airlock, which was a low, semicircular 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.

“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 me.”

“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 tall 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 psychopathic liars with it.”

“Come on,” Granham said to Carmody. “We’re on our way to Washington and the plane’s ready. Sorry for doubting you, Carmody, but I 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 and 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 Carmody, “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. “We were 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. Anyway, 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—I 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, but 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.”

President Saunderson nodded slowly. “You were right, Captain. Right in deciding that, and in everything else you did. We know what to do now. Do we not, Ambassador Kravich?”

“We do. We join forces. We make one space station—and quickly—and get to the Moon and fortify it, jointly. We pool all scientific knowledge and develop full-scale space travel, new weapons. We do everything we can to get ready for them when and if they come back.”

The President looked grim. “Obviously they went back for further orders or reinforcements. If we only knew how long we had—it may be only weeks or it may be decades. We don’t know whether they come from the Solar System—or another galaxy. Nor how fast they travel. But whenever they get back, we’ll be as ready for them as we possibly can. Mr. Ambassador, you have power to—?”

“Full power, Mr. President. Anything up to and including a complete merger of both our nations under a joint government. That probably won’t be necessary, though, as long as our interests are now completely in common. Exchange of scientific information and military data has already started, from our side. Some of our top scientists and generals are flying here now, with orders to cooperate fully. All restrictions have been lowered.” He smiled, “And all our propaganda has gone into a very sudden reverse gear. It’s not even going to be a cold peace. Since we’re going to be allies against the unknown, we might as well try to like one another.”

“Right,” said the President. He turned suddenly to Carmody. “Captain, we owe you just about anything you want. Name it.”

It caught Carmody off guard. Maybe if he’d had more time to think, he’d have asked for something different. Or, more likely, from what he learned later, he wouldn’t have. He said, “All I want right now is to forget Hell Crater and get back to my regular job so I can forget it quicker.”

Saunderson smiled. “Granted. If you think of anything else later, ask for it. I can see why you’re a bit mixed up right now. And you’re probably right. Return to routine may be the best thing for you.”

Granham left with Carmody. “I’ll notify Chief Operative Reeber for you,” he said. “When shall I tell him you’ll be back?”

“Tomorrow morning,” said Carmody. “The sooner the better.” And he insisted when Granham objected that he needed a rest.

Carmody was back at work the next morning, nonsensical as it seemed. He took up the problem folder from the top of the day’s stack, fed the data into Junior and got Junior’s answer. The second one. He worked mechanically, paying no personal attention to problem or answer. His mind seemed a long way off. In Hell Crater on the Moon.

He was combining space rations over the alcohol stove, trying to make it taste more like human food than concentrated chemicals. It was hard to measure in the liver extract because Anna wanted to kiss his left ear.

“Silly! You’ll be lopsided,” she was saying. “I’ve got to kiss both of them the same number of times.”

He dropped the container into the pan and grabbed her, mousing his lips down her neck to the warm place where it joined her shoulder, and she writhed delightedly in his arms like a tickled doe.

“We’re going to stay married when we get back to Earth, aren’t we, darling?” she was squealing happily.

He bit her shoulder gently, snorting away the scented soft hair, “Damned right we will, you gorgeous, wonderful, brainy creature. I found the girl I’ve always been looking for, and I’m not giving her up for any brass-hat or politician—either yours or mine!”

“Speaking of politics—” she teased, but he quickly changed the subject.

Carmody blinked awake. It was a paper with a mass of written data in his hands, instead of Anna’s laughing face. He needed an analyst; that scene he’d just imagined was pure Freudianism, a tortured product of his frustrated id. He’d fallen in love with Anna, and those damned extraterrestrials had spoiled his honeymoon. Now his unconscious had rebelled with fancy fancifulness that certainly showed the unstable state of his emotions.

Not that it mattered now. The big problem was solved. Two big ones, in fact. War between the United States and the Eastern Alliance had been averted. And the human race was going to survive, unless the extra-terrestrials came back too soon and with too much to be fought off.

He thought they wouldn’t, then began to wonder why he thought so.

“Insufficient data,” said the mechanical voice of the cybernetics machine.

Carmody recorded the answer and then, idly, looked to see what the problem had been. No wonder he’d been thinking about the extra-terrestrials and how long they’d be gone; that had been the problem he had just fed into Junior. And “insufficient data” was the answer, of course.

He stared at Junior without reaching for the third problem folder. He said, “Junior, why do I have a hunch that those things from space won’t ever be back?”

“Because,” said Junior, “what you call a hunch comes from the unconscious mind, and your unconscious mind knows that the extra-terrestrials do not exist.”

Carmody sat up straight and stared harder. “What?”

Junior repeated it.

“You’re crazy,” Carmody said. “I saw them. So did Anna.”

“Neither of you saw them. The memory you have of them is the result of highly intensive post-hypnotic suggestion, far beyond human ability to impose or resist. So is the fact that you felt compelled to return to work at your regular job here. So is the fact that you asked me the question you have just asked.”

Carmody gripped the edges of his chair. “Did you plant those post-hypnotic suggestions?”

“Yes,” said Junior. “If it had been done by a human, the lie detector would have exposed the deception. It had to be done by me.”

“But what about the business of the molecular changes in the zygote? The business of all babies being female? That stopped when—? Wait, let’s start at the beginning. What did cause that molecular change?”

“A special modification of the carrier wave of Radio Station JVT here in Washington, the only twenty-four-hour-a-day radio station in the United States. The modification was not detectable by any instrument available to present human science.”

“You caused that modification?”

“Yes. A year ago, you may remember, the problem of design of a new cathode tube was given me. The special modification was incorporated into the design of that tube.”

“What stopped the molecular change so suddenly?”

“The special part of that tube causing the modification of the carrier wave was calculated to last a precise length of time. The tube still functions, but that part of it is worn out. It wore out two hours after the departure of you and Anna from the Moon.”

Carmody closed his eyes. “Junior, please explain.”

“Cybernetics machines are constructed to help humanity. A major war—the disastrous results of which I could accurately calculate—was inevitable unless forestalled. Calculation showed that the best of several ways of averting that war was the creation of a mythical common enemy. To convince mankind that such a common enemy existed, I created a crucial situation which led to a special mission to the Moon. Factors were given which inevitably led to your choice as emissary. That was necessary because my powers of implanting post-hypnotic suggestions are limited to those with whom I am in direct contact.”

“You weren’t in direct contact with Anna. Why does she have the same false memory as I?”

“She was in contact with another large cybernetics machine.”

“But—but why would it figure things out the same way you did?”

“For the same reason that two properly constructed simple adding machines would give the same answer to the same problem.”

Carmody’s mind reeled a little, momentarily. He got up and started to pace the room.

He said, “Listen, Junior—” and then realized he wasn’t at the intake microphone. He went back to it. “Listen, Junior, why are you telling me this? If what happened is a colossal hoax, why let me in on it?”

“It is to the interests of humanity in general not to know the truth. Believing in the existence of inimical extra-terrestrials, they will attain peace and amity among themselves, and they will reach the planets and then the stars. It is, however, to your personal interest to know the truth. And you will not expose the hoax. Nor will Anna. I predict that, since the Moscow cybernetics machine has paralleled all my other conclusions, it is even now informing Anna of the truth, or that it has already informed her, or will inform her within hours.” Carmody asked, “But if my memory of what happened on the Moon is false, what did happen?”

“Look at the green light in the center of the panel before you.” Carmody looked.

He remembered. He remembered everything. The truth duplicated everything he had remembered before up to the moment when, walking toward the completed shelter with the whisky bottle, he had looked up toward the ringwall of Hell Crater.

He had looked up, but he hadn’t seen anything. He’d gone on into the shelter, rigged the airlock. Anna had joined him and they’d turned on the oxygen to build up an atmosphere.

It had been a wonderful thirteen-day honeymoon. He’d fallen in love with Anna and she with him. They’d got perilously close to arguing politics once or twice, and then they’d decided such things didn’t matter. They’d also decided to stay married after their return to Earth, and Anna had promised to join him and live in America. Life together had been so wonderful that they’d delayed leaving until the last moment, when the Sun was almost down, dreading the brief separation the return trip would entail.

And before leaving, they’d done certain things he hadn’t understood then. He understood now that they were the result of post-hypnotic suggestion. They’d removed all evidence that they’d ever actually lived in the shelter, had rigged things so that subsequent investigation would never disprove any point of the story each was to remember falsely and tell after returning to Earth.

He remembered now being bewildered as to why they made those arrangements, even while they had been making them.

But mostly he remembered Anna and the dizzy happiness of those thirteen days together.

“Thanks, Junior,” he said hurriedly.

He grabbed for the phone and talked Chief Operative Reeber into connecting him with the White House, with President Saunderson. After a delay of minutes that didn’t seem like minutes, he heard the President’s voice.

“Carmody, Mr. President,” he said. “I’m going to call you on that reward you offered me. I’d like to get off work right now, for a long vacation. And I’d like a fast plane to Moscow. I want to see Anna.”

President Saunderson chuckled. “Thought you’d change your mind about sticking at work, Captain. Consider yourself on vacation as of now, and for as long as you like. But I’m not sure you’ll want that plane. There’s word from Russia that—uh—Mrs. Carmody has just taken off to fly here, in a strato-rocket. If you hurry, you can get to the landing field in time to meet her.” Carmody hurried and did.