VENTURE TO THE MOON

The Starting Line

THE STORY OF the first lunar expedition has been written so many times

that some people will doubt if there is anything fresh to be said about

it. Yet all the official reports and eyewitness accounts, the

on-the-spot recordings and broadcasts never, in my opinion, gave the

full picture.

They said a great deal about the discoveries that were made but very

little about the men who made them.

As captain of the Endeavour and thus commander of the British party, I

was able to observe a good many things you will not find in the history

books, and some though not all of them can now be told. One day, I

hope, my opposite numbers on the Goddard and the Ziolkovslci will give

their points of view. But as Commander Vandenburg is still on Mars and

Commander Krasnin is somewhere inside the orbit of Venus, it looks as

if we will have to wait a few more years for their memoirs.

Confession, it is said, is good for the soul. I shall certainly feel

much happier when I have told the true story behind the timing of the

first lunar flight, about which there has always been a good deal of

mystery.

As everyone knows, the American, Russian, and British ships were

assembled in the orbit of Space Station Three, five hundred miles above

the Earth, from components flown up by relays of freight rockets.

Though all the parts had been prefabricated, the assembly and testing

of the ships took over two years, by which time a great many people who

did not realize the complexity of the task were beginning to get

slightly impatient. They had seen dozens of photos and telecasts of

the three ships floating there in space beside Station Three,

apparently quite complete and ready to pull away from Earth at a

moment's notice. What the pictures didn't show was the careful and

tedious work still in progress as thousands of pipes, wires, motors,

and instruments were fitted and subjected to every conceivable test.

There was no definite target date for departure;

since the moon is always at approximately the same distance, you can

leave for it at almost any time you like once you are ready. It makes

practically no difference, from the point of view of fuel consumption,

if you blast off at full moon or new moon or at any time in between. We

were very careful to make no predictions about blast-off, though

everyone was always trying to get us to fix the time. So many things

can go wrong in a spaceship, and we were not going to say good-by to

Earth until we were ready down to the last detail.

I shall always remember the last commanders' conference, aboard the

space station, when we all announced that we were ready. Since it was

a co-operative venture, each party special ising in some particular

task, it had been agreed that we should all make our landings within

the same twenty-four-hour period, on the preselected site in the Mare

Imbrium. The details of the journey, however, had been left to the

individual commanders, presumably in the hope that we would not copy

each other's mistakes.

"I'll be ready," said Commander Vandenburg, "to make my first dummy

take-off at 0900 tomorrow. What about you, gentlemen? Shall we ask

Earth Control to stand by for all three of us?"

"That's O.K. by me," said Krasnin, who could never be convinced that

his American slang was twenty years out of date.

I nodded my agreement. It was true that one bank of fuel gauges was

still misbehaving, but that didn't really matter; they would be fixed

by the time the tanks were filled.

The dummy run consisted of an exact replica of a real blast-off, with

everyone carrying out the job he would do when the time came for the

genuine thing. We had practiced, of course, in mock-ups down on Earth,

but this was a perfect imitation of what would happen to us when we

finally took off for the moon. All that was missing was the roar of

the motors that would tell us that the voyage had begun.

We did six complete imitations of blast-off, took the ships to pieces

to eliminate anything that hadn't behaved perfectly, then did six more.

The Endeavour, the Goddard, and the Ziolkovsk~ were all in the same

state of serviceability. There now only remained the job of fueling

up, and we would be ready to leave.

The suspense of those last few hours is not something I would care to

go through again. The eyes of the world were upon us; departure time

had now been set, with an uncertainty of only a few hours. All the

final tests had been made, and we were convinced that our ships were as

ready as humanly possible.

It was then that I had an urgent and secret personal radio call from a

very high official indeed, and a suggestion was made which had so much

authority behind it that there was little point in pretending that it

wasn't an order. The first flight to the moon, I was reminded, was a

co-operative venture but think of the prestige if we got there first.

It need only be by a couple of hours.... I was shocked at the

suggestion, and said so. By this time Vandenburg and Krasnin were good

friends of mine, and we were all in this together. I made every excuse

I could and said that since our flight paths had already been computed

there wasn't anything that could be done about it. Each ship was

making the journey by the most economical route, to conserve fuel. If

we started together, we should arrive together within seconds.

Unfortunately, someone had thought of the answer to that. Our three

ships, fueled up and with their crews standing by, would be circling

Earth in a state of complete readiness for several hours before they

actually pulled away from their satellite orbits and headed out to the

moon. At our five-hundred-mile altitude, we took ninety-five minutes

to make one circuit of the Earth, and only once every revolution would

the moment be ripe to begin the voyage. If we could jump the gun by

one revolution, the others would have to wait that ninety-five minutes

before they could follow. And so they would land on the moon

ninety-five minutes behind us.... I won't go into the arguments, and

I'm still a little ashamed that I yielded and agreed to deceive my two

colleagues. We were in the shadow of Earth, in momentary eclipse, when

the carefully calculated moment came. Vandenburg and Krasnin, honest

fellows, thought I was going to make one more round trip with them

before we all set off together. I have seldom felt a bigger heel in my

life than when I pressed the firing key and felt the sudden thrust of

the motors as they swept me away from my mother world.

For the next ten minutes we had no time for anything but our

instruments, as we checked to see that the Endeavour was forging ahead

along her precomputed orbit. Almost at the moment that we finally

escaped from Earth and could cut the motors, we burst out of shadow

into the full blaze of the sun. There would be no more night until we

reached the moon, after five days of effortless and silent coasting

through space.

Already Space Station Three and the two other ships must be a thousand

miles behind. In eighty-five more minutes Vandenburg and Krasnin would

be back at the correct starting point and could take off after me, as

we had all planned. But they could never overcome my lead, and I hoped

they wouldn't be too mad at me when we met again on the moon.

I switched on the rear camera and looked back at the distant gleam of

the space station, just emerging from the shadow of Earth. It was some

moments before I realized that the Goddard and the Ziolkovski weren't

still floating beside it where I'd left them.... No; they were just

half a mile away, neatly matching my velocity. I stared at them in

utter disbelief for a second, before I realized that every one of us

had had the same idea.

"Why, you pair of double-crossers!" I gasped. Then I began to laugh

so much that it was several minutes before I dared call up a very

worried Earth Control and tell them that everything had gone according

to plan though in no case was it the plan that had been originally

announced.... We were all very sheepish when we radioed each other to

exchange mutual congratulations. Yet at the same time, I think

everyone was secretly pleased that it had turned out this way. For the

rest of the trip, we were never more than a few miles apart, and the

actual landing maneuvers were so well synchronised that our three

braking jets hit the moon simultaneously.

Well, almost simultaneously. I might make something of the fact that

the recorder tape shows I touched down two fifths of a second ahead of

Krasnin. But I'd better not, for Vandenburg was precisely the same

amount ahead of me.

On a quarter-of-a-million-mile trip, I think you could call that a

photo finish.... Robin Hood, F R S

We had landed early in the dawn of the long lunar day, and the slanting

shadows lay all around us, extending for miles across the plain. They

would slowly shorten as the sun rose higher in the sky, until at noon

they would almost vanish but noon was still five days away, as we

measured time on Earth, and nightfall was seven days later still. We

had almost two weeks of daylight ahead of us before the sun set and the

bluely gleaming Earth became the mistress of the sky.

There was little time for exploration during those first hectic days.

We had to unload the ships, grow accustomed to the alien conditions

surrounding us, learn to handle our electrically powered tractors and

scooters, and erect the igloos that would serve as homes, offices, and

labs until the time came to leave. At a pinch, we could live in the

spaceships, but it would be excessively uncomfortable and cramped. The

igloos were not exactly commodious, but they were luxury after five

days in space. Made of tough, flexible plastic, they were blown up

like balloons, and their interiors were then partitioned into separate

rooms. Air locks allowed access to the outer world, and a good deal of

plumbing linked to the ships' air-purification plants kept the

atmosphere breathable. Needless to say, the American igloo was the

biggest one, and had come complete with everything, including the

kitchen sink not to mention a washing machine, which we and the

Russians were always borrowing.

It was late in the "afternoon" about ten days after we had landed

before we were properly organized and could think about serious

scientific work. The first parties made nervous little forays out into

the wilderness around the base, familia rising themselves with the

territory. Of course, we already possessed minutely detailed maps and

photographs of the region in which we had landed, but it was surprising

how misleading they could sometimes be. What had been marked as a

small hill on a chart often looked like a mountain to a man toiling

along in a space suit, and apparently smooth plains were often covered

knee-deep with dust, which made progress extremely slow and tedious.

These were minor difficulties, however, and the low gravity which gave

all objects only a sixth of their terrestrial weight compensated for

much.

As the scientists began to accumulate their results and specimens, the

radio and TV circuits with Earth became busier and busier, until they

were in continuous operation. We were taking no chances; even if we

didn't get home, the knowledge we were gathering would do so.

The first of the automatic supply rockets landed two days before

sunset, precisely according to plan. We saw its braking jets flame

briefly against the stars, then blast again a few seconds before

touchdown. The actual landing was hidden from us, since for safety

reasons the dropping ground was three miles from the base. And on the

moon, three miles is well over the curve of the horizon.

When we got to the robot, it was standing slightly askew on its tripod

shock absorbers, but in perfect condition. So was everything aboard

it, from instruments to food. We carried the stores back to base in

triumph, and had a celebration that was really rather overdue. The men

had been working too hard, and could do with some relaxation.

It was quite a party; the high light, I think, was Commander Krasnin

trying to do a Cossack dance in a space suit. Then we turned our minds

to competitive sports, but found that, for obvious reasons, outdoor

activities were somewhat restricted. Games like croquet or bowls would

have been practical had we had the equipment; but cricket and football

were definitely out. In that gravity, even a football would go half a

mile if it were given a good kick and a cricket ball would never be

seen again.

Professor Trevor Williams was the first person to think of a practical

lunar sport. He was our astronomer, and also one of the youngest men

ever to be made a Fellow of the Royal Society, being only thirty when

this ultimate accolade was conferred upon him. His work on methods of

interplanetary navigation had made him world famous; less well known,

however, was his skill as a toxophilite. For two years in succession

he had been archery champion for Wales. I was not surprised,

therefore, when I discovered him shooting at a target propped up on a

pile of lunar slag.

The bow was a curious one, strung with steel control wire and shaped

from a laminated plastic bar. I wondered where Trevor had got hold of

it, then remembered that the robot freight rocket had now been

cannibalised and bits of it were appearing in all sorts of unexpected

places. The arrows, however, were the really interesting feature. To

give them stability on the airless moon, where, of course, feathers

would be useless, Trevor had managed to rifle them. There was a little

gadget on the bow that set them spinning, like bullets, when they were

fired, so that they kept on course when they left the bow.

Even with this rather makeshift equipment, it was possible to shoot a

mile if one wished to.

However, Trevor didn't want to waste arrows, which were not easy to

make; he was more interested in seeing the sort of accuracy he could

get. It was uncanny to watch the almost flat trajectory of the arrows:

they seemed to be traveling parallel with the ground. If he wasn't

careful, someone warned Trevor, his arrows might become lunar

satellites and would hit him in the back when they completed their

orbit.

The second supply rocket arrived the next day, but this time things

didn't go according to plan. It made a perfect touchdown, but

unfortunately the radar-controlled automatic pilot made one of those

mistakes that such simpleminded machines delight in doing. It spotted

the only really unclimbable hill in the neighborhood, locked its beam

onto the summit of it, and settled down there like an eagle descending

upon its mountain eerie.

Our badly needed supplies were five hundred feet above our heads, and

in a few hours night would be falling. What was to be done?

About fifteen people made the same suggestion at once, and for the next

few minutes there was a great scurrying about as we rounded up all the

nylon line on the base. Soon there was more than a thousand yards of

it coiled in neat loops at Trevor's feet while we all waited

expectantly. He tied one end to his arrow, drew the bow, and aimed it

experimentally straight toward the stars.

The arrow rose a little more than half the height of the cliff; then

the weight of the line pulled it back.

"Sorry," said Trevor.

"I just can't make it. And don't forget we'd have to send up some kind

of grapnel as well, if we want the end to stay up there."

There was much gloom for the next few minutes, as we watched the coils

of line fall slowly back from the sky. The situation was really

somewhat absurd. In our ships we had enough energy to carry us a

quarter of a million miles from the moon yet we were baffled by a puny

little cliff If we had time, we could probably find a way up to the top

from the other side of the hill, but that would mean traveling several

miles.

It would be dangerous, and might well be impossible, during the few

hours of daylight that were left.

Scientists were never baffled for long, and too many ingenious

(sometimes over ingenious minds were working on the problem for it to

remain unresolved. But this time it was a little more difficult, and

only three people got the answer simultaneously. Trevor thought it

over, then said noncommittally, "Well, it's worth trying."

The preparations took a little while, and we were all watching

anxiously as the rays of the sinking sun crept higher and higher up the

sheer cliff looming above us. Even if Trevor could get a line and

grapnel up there, I thought to myself, it would not be easy making the

ascent while encumbered with a space suit. I have no head for heights,

and was glad that several mountaineering enthusiasts had already

volunteered for the job.

At last everything was ready. The line had been carefully arranged so

that it would lift from the ground with the mini mum of hindrance. A

light grapnel had been attached to the line a few feet behind the

arrow;

we hoped that it would catch in the rocks up there and wouldn't let us

down all too literally when we put our trust in it.

This time, however, Trevor was not using a single arrow. He attached

four to the line, at two-hundred-yard intervals. And I shall never

forget that incongruous spectacle of the space-suited figure, gleaming

in the last rays of the setting sun, as it drew its bow against the

sky.

The arrow sped toward the stars, and before it had lifted more than

fifty feet Trevor was already fitting the second one to his improvised

bow. It raced after its predecessor, carrying the other end of the

long loop that was now being hoisted into space. Almost at once the

third followed, lifting its section of line and I swear that the fourth

arrow, with its section, was on the way before the first had noticeably

slackened its momentum.

Now that there was no question of a single arrow lifting the entire

length of line, it was not hard to reach the required altitude. The

first two times the grapnel fell back; then it caught firmly somewhere

up on the hidden plateau and the first volunteer began to haul himself

up the line. It was true that he weighed only about thirty pounds in

this low gravity, but it was still a long way to fall.

He didn't. The stores in the freight rocket started coming down the

cliff within the next hour, and everything essential had been lowered

before nightfall. I must confess, however, that my satisfaction was

considerably abated when one of the engineers proudly showed me the

mouth organ he had sent from Earth. Even then I felt certain that we

would all be very tired of that instrument before the long lunar night

had ended.... But that, of course, was hardly Trevor's fault. As we

walked back to the ship together, through the great pools of shadow

that were flowing swiftly over the plain, he made a proposal that, I am

sure, has puzzled thousands of people ever since the detailed maps of

the first lunar expedition were published.

After all, it does seem a little odd that a flat and lifeless plain,

broken by a single small mountain, should now be labeled on all the

charts of the moon as Sherwood Forest.

Green Fingers

I am very sorry, now that it's too late, that I never got to know

Vladimir Surov. As I remember him, he was a quiet little man who could

understand English but couldn't speak it well enough to make

conversation. Even to his colleagues, I suspect he was a bit of an

enigma. Whenever I went aboard the Ziolko~ski he would be sitting in a

corner working on his notes or peering through a microscope, a man who

clung to his privacy even in the tight and tiny world of a spaceship.

The rest of the crew did not seem to mind his aloofness; when they

spoke to him, it was clear that they regarded him with tolerant

affection, as wed as with respect. That was hardly surprising; the

work he had done developing plants and trees that could flourish far

inside the Arctic Circle had already made~ him the most famous botanist

in Russia.

The fact that the Russian expedition had taken a botanist to the moon

had caused a good deal of amusement, though it was really no odder than

the fact that there were biologists on both the British and American

ships. During the years before the first lunar landing, a good deal of

evidence had accumulated hinting that some form of vegetation might

exist on the moon, despite its airlessness and lack of water. The

president of the USSR. Academy of Science was one of the leading

proponents of this theory, and being too old to make the trip himself

had done the next best thing by sending Surov.

The complete absence of any such vegetation, living or fossil, in the

thousand or so square miles explored by our various parties was the

first big disappointment the moon had reserved for us.

Even those skeptics who were quite certain that no form of life could

exist on the moon would have been very glad to have been proved wrong

as of course they were, five years later, when Richards and Shannon

made their astonishing discovery inside the great waned plain of

Eratosthenes. But that revelation slid lay in the future; at the time

of the first landing, it seemed that Surov had come to the moon in

vain.

He did not appear unduly depressed, but kept himself as busy as the

rest of the crew studying soil samples and looking after the little

hydroponic farm whose pressurised, transparent tubes formed a gleaming

network around the Ziolkovski Neither we nor the Americans had gone in

for this sort of thing, having calculated that it was better to ship

food from Earth than to grow it on the spot at least until the time

came to set up a permanent base.

We were right in terms of economics, but wrong in terms of morale. The

tiny airtight greenhouses inside which Surov grew his vegetables and

dwarf fruit trees were an oasis upon which we often feasted our eyes

when we had grown tired of the immense desolation surrounding us.

One of the many disadvantages of being commander was that I seldom had

much chance to do any active exploring; I was too busy preparing

reports for Earth, checking stores, arranging programs and duty

rosters, conferring with my opposite numbers in the American and

Russian ships, and trying not always successfully to guess what would

go wrong next. As a result, I sometimes did not go outside the base

for two or three days at a time, and it was a standing joke that my

space suit was a haven for moths.

Perhaps it is because of this that I can remember all my trips outside

so vividly; certainly I can recall my only encounter with Surov. It

was near noon, with the sun high above the southern mountains and the

new Earth a barely visible thread of silver a few degrees away from

it.

Henderson, our geophysicist, wanted to take some magnetic readings at a

series of check points a couple of miles to the east of the base.

Everyone else was busy, and I was momentarily on top of my work, so we

set off together on foot.

The journey was not long enough to merit taking one of the scooters,

especially because the charges in the batteries were getting low. In

any case, I always enjoyed walking out in the open on the moon. It was

not merely the scenery, which even at its most awe-inspiring one can

grow accustomed to after a while. No what I never tired of was the

effortless, slow-motion way in which every step took me bounding over

the landscape, giving me the freedom that before the coming of space

flight men only knew in dreams.

We had done the job and were halfway home when I noticed a figure

moving across the plain about a mile to the south of us not far, in

fact, from the Russian base. I snapped my field glasses down inside my

helmet and took a careful look at the other explorer. Even at close

range, of course, you can't identify a man in a space suit, but because

the suits are always coded by color and number that makes no practical

difference.

"Who is it?" asked Henderson over the short-range radio channel to

which we were both tuned.

"Blue suit, Number 3 that would be Surov.

But I don't understand. He's by himself"

It is one of the most fundamental rules of lunar exploration that no

one goes anywhere alone on the surface of the moon. So many accidents

can happen, which would be trivial if you were with a companion~ ut

fatal if you were by yourself. How would you manage, for example, if

your space suit developed a slow leak in the small of the back and you

couldn't put on a repair patch? That may sound funny; but it's

happened.

"Perhaps his buddy has had an accident and he's going to fetch help,"

suggested Henderson.

"Maybe we had better call him."

I shook my head. Surov was obviously in no hurry. He had been out on

a trip of his own, and was making his leisurely way back to the

Ziolkovski. It was no concern of mine if Commander Krasnin let his

people go out on solo trips, though it seemed a deplorable practice.

And if Surov was breaking regulations, it was equally no concern of

mine to report him.

During the next two months, my men often spotted Surov making his lone

way over the landscape, but he always avoided them if they got too

near. I made some discreet inquiries, and found that Commander Krasnin

had been forced, owing to shortage of men, to relax some of his safety

rules. But I couldn't find out what Surov was up to, though I never

dreamed that his commander was equally in the dark.

It was with an "I told you so" feeling that I got Krasnin's emergency

call. We had all had men in trouble before and had had to send out

help, but this was the first time anyone had been lost and had not

replied when his ship had sent out the recall signal. There was a

hasty radio conference, a line of action was drawn up, and search

parties fanned out from each of the three ships.

Once again I was with Henderson, and it was only common sense for us to

backtrack along the route that we had seen Surov following. It was in

what we regarded as "our" territory, quite some distance away from

Surov's own ship, and as we scrambled up the low foothills it occurred

to me for the first time that the Russian might have been doing

something he wanted to keep from his colleagues.

What it might be, I could not imagine.

Henderson found him, and yelled for help over his suit radio. But it

was much too late; Surov was lying, face down, his deflated suit

crumpled around him. He had been kneeling when something had smashed

the plastic globe of his helmet; you could see how he had pitched

forward and died instantaneously.

When Commander Krasnin reached us, we were still staring at the

unbelievable object that Surov had been examining when he died. It was

about three feet high, a leathery, greenish oval rooted to the rocks

with a widespread network of tendrils.

Yes rooted, for it was a plant. A few yards away were two others, much

smaller and apparently dead, since they were blackened and withered.

My first reaction was: "So there is life on the moon, after all!" It

was not until Krasnin's voice spoke in my ears that I realised how much

more marvelous was the truth.

"Poor VladimirI" he said.

"We knew he was a genius, yet we laughed at him when he told us of his

dream. So he kept his greatest work a secret.

He conquered the Arctic with his hybrid wheat, but that was only a

beginning. He has brought life to the moon and death as well."

As I stood there, in that first moment of astonished revelation, it

still seemed a miracle.

Today, all the world knows the history of "Surov's cactus," as it was

inevitably if quite inaccurately christened, and it has lost much of

its wonder. His notes have told the full story, and have described the

years of experimentation that finally led him to a plant whose leathery

skin would enable it to survive in vacuum, and whose far-ranging,

acid-secreting roots would enable it to grow upon rocks where even

lichens would be hard put to thrive. And we have seen the realisation

of the second stage of Surov's dream, for the cactus which will forever

bear his name has already broken up vast areas of the lunar rock and so

prepared a way for the more speciali sed plants that now feed every

human being upon the moon.

Krasnin bent down beside the body of his colleague and lifted it

effortlessly against the low gravity. He fingered the shattered

fragments of the plastic helmet, and shook his head in perplexity.

"What could have happened to him?" he said.

"It almost looks as if the plant did it, but that's ridiculous."

The green enigma stood there on the no-longer barren plain, tantalising

us with its promise and its mystery. Then Henderson said slowly, as if

thinking aloud:

"I believe I've got the answer; I've just remembered some of the botany

I did at school.

If Surov designed this plant for lunar conditions, how would he arrange

for it to propagate itself?

The seeds would have to be scattered over a very wide area in the hope

of finding a few suitable places to grow. There are no birds or

animals here to carry them, in the way that happens on Earth. I can

only think of one solution and some of our terrestrial plants have

already used it."

He was interrupted by my yell. Something had hit with a resounding

clang against the metal waistband of my suit. It did no damage, but it

was so sudden and unexpected that it took me utterly by surprise.

A seed lay at my feet, about the size and shape of a plum stone. A few

yards away, we found the one that had shattered Surov's helmet as he

bent down. He must have known that the plant was ripe, but in his

eagerness to examine it he had forgotten what that implied. I have

seen a cactus throw its seed a quarter of a mile under the low lunar

gravity. Surov had been shot at point-blank range by his own

creation.

All That Glitters

This is really Commander Vandenburg's story, but he is too many

millions of miles away to tell it. It concerns his geophysicist, Dr.

Paynter, who was generally believed to have gone to the moon to get

away from his wife.

At one time or other, we were all supposed (often by our wives) to have

done just that.

However, in Paynter's case, there was just enough truth to make it

stick.

It was not that he disliked his wife; one could almost say the

contrary. He would do anything for her, but unfortunately the things

that she wanted him to do cost rather too much. She was a lady of

extravagant tastes, and such ladies are advised not to marry scientists

even scientists who go to the moon.

Mrs. Paynter's weakness was for jewelry, particularly diamonds. As

might be expected, this was a weakness that caused her husband a good

deal of worry. Being a conscientious as well as an affectionate

husband, he did not merely worry about it he did something about it. He

became one of the world's leading experts on diamonds, from the

scientific rather than the commercial point of view, and probably knew

more about their composition, origin, and properties than any other man

alive. Unfortunately, you may know a lot about diamonds without ever

possessing any, and her husband's erudition was not something that Mrs.

Paynter could wear around her neck when she went to a party.

Geophysics, as I have mentioned, was Dr.

Paynter's real business; diamonds were merely a sideline. He had

developed many remarkable surveying instruments which could probe the

interior of the Earth by means of electric impulses and magnetic waves,

so giving a kind of X-ray picture of the hidden strata far below. It

was hardly surprising, therefore, that he was one of the men chosen to

pry into the mysterious interior of the moon.

He was quite eager to go, but it seemed to Commander Vandenburg that he

was reluctant to leave Earth at this particular moment. A number of

men had shown such symptoms; sometimes they were due to fears that

could not be eradicated, and an otherwise promising man had to be left

behind.

In Paynter's case, however, the reluctance was quite impersonal. He

was in the middle of a big experiment something he had been working on

all his life and he didn't want to leave Earth until it was finished.

However, the first lunar expedition could not wait for him, so he had

to leave his project in the hands of his assistants. He was

continually exchanging cryptic radio messages with them, to the great

annoyance of the signals section of Space Station Three.

In the wonder of a new world waiting to be explored, Paynter soon

forgot his earthly preoccupations. He would dash hither and yon over

the lunar landscape on one of the neat little electric scooters the

Americans had brought with them, carrying seismographs, magnetometers,

gravity meters, and all the other esoteric tools of the geophysicist's

trade. He was trying to learn, in a few weeks, what it had taken men

hundreds of years to discover about their own planet. It was true that

he had only a small sample of the moon's fourteen million square miles

of territory to explore, but he intended to make a thorough job of

it.

From time to time he continued to get messages from his colleagues back

on Earth, as well as brief but affectionate signals from Mrs. P.

Neither seemed to interest him very much; even when you are not so busy

that you hardly have time to sleep, a quarter of a million miles puts

most of your personal affairs in a different perspective. I think that

on the moon Dr. Paynter was really happy for the first time in his

life; if so, he was not the only one.

Not far from our base there was a rather fine crater pit, a great

blowhole in the lunar surface almost two miles from rim to rim. Though

it was fairly close at hand, it was outside the normal area of our

joint operations, and we had been on the moon for six weeks before

Paynter led a party of three men off in one of the baby tractors to

have a look at it. They disappeared from radio range over the edge of

the moon, but *e weren't worried about that because if they ran into

trouble they could always call Earth and get any message relayed back

to us.

Paynter and his men were gone forty-eight hours, which is about the

maximum for continuous working on the moon, even with booster drugs. At

first their little expedition was quite uneventful and therefore quite

unexciting;

everything went according to plan. They reached the crater, inflated

their pressurised igloo and unpacked their stores, took their

instrument readings, and then set up a portable drill to get core

samples. It was while he was waiting for the drill to bring him up a

nice section of the moon that Paynter made his second great discovery.

He had made his first about ten hours before, but he didn't know it

yet.

Around the lip of the crater, lying where they had been thrown up by

the great explosions that had convulsed the lunar landscape three

hundred million years before, were immense piles of rock which must

have come from many miles down in the moon's interior. Anything he

could do with his little drill, thought Paynter, could hardly compare

with this. Unfortunately, the mountain-sized geological specimens that

lay all around him were not neatly arranged in their correct order;

they had been scattered over the landscape, much farther than the eye

could see, according to the arbitrary violence of the eruptions that

had blasted them into space.

Paynter climbed over these immense slag heaps, taking a swing at likely

samples with his little hammer. Presently his colleagues heard him

yell, and saw him come running back to them carrying what appeared to

be a lump of rather poor quality glass. It was some time before he was

sufficiently coherent to explain what all the fuss was about and some

time later still before the expedition remembered its real job and got

back to work.

Vandenburg watched the returning party as it headed back to the ship.

The four men didn't seem as tired as one would have expected,

considering the fact that they had been on their feet for two days.

Indeed, there was a certain jauntiness about their movements which even

the space suits couldn't wholly conceal. You could see that the

expedition had been a success. In that case, Paynter would have two

causes for congratulation.

The priority message that had just come from Earth was very cryptic,

but it was clear that Paynter's work there whatever it was had finally

reached a triumphant conclusion.

Commander Vandenburg almost forgot the message when he saw what Paynter

was holding in his hand. He knew what a raw diamond looked like, and

this was the second largest that anyone had ever seen. Only the

Cullinan, tipping the scales at 3,026 carats, beat it by a slender

margin.

"We ought to have expected it," he heard Paynter babble happily.

"Diamonds are always found associated with volcanic vents. But somehow

I never thought the analogy would hold here."

Vandenburg suddenly remembered the signal, and handed it over to

Paynter. He read it quickly, and his jaw dropped. Never in his life,

Vandenburg told me, had he seen a man so instantly deflated by a

message of congratulation. The signal read:

WE'VE DONE IT. TEST 541 WITH MODIFIED

PRESSURE CONTAINER COMPLETE

SUCCESS. NO PRACTICAL LIMIT TO SIZE.

COSTS NEGLIGIBLE.

"What's the matter?" said Vandenburg, when he saw the stricken look on

Paynter's face. "it doesn't seem bad news to me, whatever it means."

Paynter gulped two or three times like a stranded fish, then stared

helplessly at the great crystal that almost filled the palm of his

hand. He tossed it into the air, and it Boated back in that

slow-motion way everything has under lunar gravity.

Finally he found his voice.

"My lab's been working for years," he said, "trying to synthesise

diamonds. Yesterday this thing was worth a million dollars. Today

it's worth a couple of hundred. I'm not sure I'll bother to carry it

back to Earth."

Well, he did carry it back; it seemed a pity not to. For about three

months, Mrs. P. had the finest diamond necklace in the world, worth

every bit of a thousand dollars mostly the cost of cutting and

polishing. Then the Paynter Process went into commercial production,

and a month later she got her divorce. The grounds were extreme mental

cruelty; and I suppose you could say it was justified.

Watch This Space

It was quite a surprise to discover, when I looked it up, that the most

famous experiment we carried out while we were on the moon had its

begimungs way back in 19SS. At that time, high-altitude rocket

research had been going for only about ten years, mostly at White

Sands, New Mexico. Nineteen fifty-five was the date of one of the most

spectacular of those early experiments, one that involved the ejection

of sodium into the upper atmosphere.

On Earth, even on the clearest night, the sky between the stars isn't

completely dark. There's a very faint background glow, and part of it

is caused by the fluorescence of sodium atoms a hundred miles up. Since

it would take the sodium in a good many cubic miles of the upper

atmosphere to fill a single matchbox, it seemed to the early

investigators that they could make quite a fireworks display if they

used a rocket to dump a few pounds of the stuff into the ionosphere.

They were right. The sodium squirted out of a rocket above White Sands

early in 195S produced a great yellow glow in the sky which was

visible, like a kind of artificial moonlight, for over an hour, before

the atoms dispersed. This experiment wasn't done for fun (though it

was fun) but for a serious scientific purpose. Instruments trained on

this glow were able to gather new knowledge about the upper air

knowledge that went into the stockpile of information without which

space flight would never have been possible.

When they got to the moon, the Americans decided that it would be a

good idea to repeat the experiment there, on a much larger scale. A

few hundred kilograms of sodium fired up from the surface would produce

a display that would be visible from Earth, with a good pair of field

glasses, as it fluoresced its way up through the lunar atmosphere.

(Some people, by the way, still don't realize that the moon has an

atmosphere. It's about a million times too thin to be breathable, but

if you have the right instruments you can detect it. As a meteor

shield, it's first-rate, for though it may be tenuous it's hundreds of

miles deep.)

Everyone had been talking about the experiment for days. The sodium

bomb had arrived from Earth in the last supply rocket, and a-very

impressive piece of equipment it looked. Its operation was extremely

simple; when ignited, an incendiary charge vaporised the sodium until a

high pressure was built up, then a diaphragm burst and the stuff was

squirted up into the sky through a specially shaped nozzle. It would

be shot off soon after nightfall, and when the cloud of sodium rose out

of the moon's shadow into direct sunlight it would start to glow with

tremendous brilliance.

Nightfall, on the moon, is one of the most awe-inspiring sights in the

whole of nature, made doubly so because as you watch the sun's flaming

disk creep so slowly below the mountains you know that it will be

fourteen days before you see it again. But it does not bring darkness

at least, not on this side of the moon. There is always the Earth,

hanging motionless in the sky, the one heavenly body that neither rises

nor sets. The light pouring back from her clouds and seas floods the

lunar landscape with a soft, blue-green radiance, so that it is often

easier to find your way around at night than under the fierce glare of

the sun.

Even those who were not supposed to be on duty had come out to watch

the experiment. The sodium bomb had been placed at the middle of the

big triangle formed by the three ships, and stood upright with its

nozzles pointing at the stars. Dr.

Anderson, the astronomer of the American team, was testing the firing

circuits, but everyone else was at a respectful distance. The bomb

looked perfectly capable of living up to its name, though it was really

about as dangerous as a soda-water siphon.

All the optical equipment of the three expeditions seemed to have been

gathered together to record the performance. Telescopes,

spectroscopes, motion-picture cameras, and everything else one could

think of were lined up ready for action. And this, I knew, was nothing

compared with the battery that must be zeroed on us from Earth. Every

amateur astronomer who could see the moon tonight would be standing by

in his back garden, listening to the radio commentary that told him of

the progress of the experiment. I glanced up at the gleaming planet

that dominated the sky above me; the land areas seemed to be fairly

free from cloud, so the folks at home should have a good view. That

seemed only fair; after all, they were footing the bill.

There were still fifteen minutes to go. Not for the first time, I

wished there was a reliable way of smoking a cigarette inside a space

suit without getting the helmet so badly fogged that you couldn't see.

Our scientists had solved so many much more difficult problems; it

seemed a pity that they couldn't do something about that one.

To pass the time for this was an experiment where I had nothing to do I

switched on my suit radio and listened to Dave Bolton, who was making a

very good job of the commentary. Dave was our chief navigator, and a

brilliant mathematician. He also had a glib tongue and a picturesque

turn of speech, and sometimes his recordings had to be censored by

the

BBC.

There was nothing they could do about this one, however, for it was

going out live from the relay stations on Earth.

Dave had finished a brief and lucid explanation of the purpose of the

experiment, describing how the cloud of glowing sodium would enable us

to analyze the lunar atmosphere as it rose through it at approximately

a thousand miles an hour.

"However," he went on to tell the waiting millions on Earth, "let's

make one point clear. Even when the bomb has gone off, you won't see a

darn thing for ten minutes and neither will we. The sodium cloud will

be completely invisible while it's rising up through the darkness of

the moon's shadow.

Then, quite suddenly, it will flash into brilliance as it enters the

sun's rays, which are streaming past over our heads right now as we

stare up into space. No one is guise sure how bright it will be, but

it's a pretty safe guess that you'll be able to see it in any telescope

bigger than a two-inch. So it should just be within the range of a

good pair of binoculars."

He had to keep this sort of thing up for another ten minutes, and it

was a marvel to me how he managed to do it. Then the great moment

came, and Anderson closed the firing circuit. The bomb started to

cook, building up pressure inside as the sodium volatilised. After

thirty seconds, there was a sudden puff of smoke from the long, slender

nozzle pointing up at the sky. And then we had to wait for another ten

minutes while the invisible cloud rose to the stars. After all this

build-up, I told myself, the result had better be good.

The seconds and minutes ebbed away. Then a sudden yellow glow began to

spread across the sky, like a vast and unwavering aurora that became

brighter even as we watched. It was as if an artist was sprawling

strokes across the stars with a flame-filled brush. And as I stared at

those strokes, I suddenly realised that someone had brought off the

greatest advertising coup in history. For the strokes formed letters,

and the letters formed two words the name of a certain soft drink too

well known to need any further publicity from me.

How had it been done? The first answer was obvious. Someone had

placed a suitably cut stencil in the nozzle of the sodium bomb, so that

the stream of escaping vapor had shaped itself to the words. Since

there was nothing to distort it, the pattern had kept its shape during

its invisible ascent to the stars. I had seen skywriting on Earth, but

this was something on a far larger scale.

Whatever I thought of them, I couldn't help admiring the ingenuity of

the men who had perpetrated the scheme. The O's and A's had given them

a bit of trouble, but the C's and L's were perfect.

After the initial shock, I am glad to say that the scientific program

proceeded as planned. I wish I could remember how Dave Bolton rose to

the occasion in his commentary; it must have been a strain even for his

quick wits. By this time, of course, half the Earth could see what he

was describing. The next morning, every newspaper on the planet

carried that famous photo of the crescent moon with the luminous slogan

painted across its darkened sector.

The letters were visible, before they finally dispersed into space, for

over an hour. By that time the words were almost a thousand miles

long, and were beginning to get blurred. But they were still readable

until they at last faded from sight in the ultimate vacuum between the

planets.

Then the real fireworks began. Commander Vandenburg was absolutely

furious, and promptly started to grill all his men. However, it was

soon clear that the saboteur if you could call him that had been back

on Earth. The bomb had been prepared there and shipped ready for

immediate use. It did not take long to find, and fire, the engineer

who had carried out the substitution. He couldn't have cared less,

since his financial needs had been taken care of for a good many years

to come.

As for the experiment itself, it was completely successful from the

scientific point of view; all the recording instruments worked

perfectly as they analyzed the light from the unexpectedly shaped

cloud. But we never let the Americans live it down, and I am afraid

poor Captain Vandenburg was the one who suffered most. Before he came

to the moon he was a confirmed teetotaler, and much of his refreshment

came from a certain wasp-wasted bottle. But now, as a matter of

principle, he can only drink beer and he hates the stuff.

A Question of Residence

I have already described the shall we say jockeying for position before

take-off on the first flight to the moon. As it turned out, the

American, Russian, and British ships landed just about simultaneously.

No one has ever explained, however, why the British ship came back

nearly two weeks after the others.

Oh, I know the official story; I ought to, for I helped to concoct it.

It is true as far as it goes, but it scarcely goes far enough.

On all counts, the joint expedition had been a triumphant success.

There had been only one casualty, and in the manner of his death

Vladimir Surov had made himself immortal. We had gathered knowledge

that would keep the scientists of Earth busy for generations, and that

would revolutionise almost all our ideas concerning the nature of the

universe around us. Yes, our Sve months on the moon had been well

spent, and we could go home to such welcomes as few heroes had ever had

before.

However, there was still a good deal of tidying up to be done. The

instruments that had been scattered all over the lunar landscape were

still busily recording, and much of the information they gathered could

not be automatically radioed back to Earth. There was no point in all

three of the expeditions staying on the moon to the last minute;

the personnel of one would be sufficient to finish the job. But who

would volunteer to be caretaker while the others went back to gain the

glory? It was a difficult problem, but one that would have to be

solved very soon.

As far as supplies were concerned, we had little to worry about. The

automatic freight rockets could keep us provided with air, food, and

water for as long as we wished to stay on the moon. We were all in

good health, though a little tired. None of the anticipated

psychological troubles had cropped up, perhaps because we had all been

so busy on tasks of absorbing interest that we had had no time to worry

about going crazy. But, of course, we all looked forward to getting

back to Earth and seeing our families again.

The first change of plans was forced upon us by the Ziolkovski being

put out of commission when the ground beneath one of her landing legs

suddenly gave way. The ship managed to stay upright, but the hull was

badly twisted and the pressure cabin sprang dozens of leaks. There was

much debate about on-the-spot repairs, but it was decided that it would

be far too risky for her to take off in this condition. The Russians

had no alternative but to thumb lifts back in the Goddard and the

Endeavour; by using the Ziolkeyski's unwanted fuel, our ships would be

able to manage the extra load. However, the return flight would be

extremely cramped and uncomfortable for all concerned because everyone

would have to eat and sleep in shifts.

Either the American or the British ship, therefore, would be the first

back to Earth.

During those final weeks, as the work of the expedition was brought to

its close, relations between Commander Vandenburg and myself were

somewhat strained. I even wondered if we ought to settle the matter by

tossing for it.... Another problem was also engaging my attention that

of crew discipline. Perhaps this is too strong a phrase; I would not

like it to be thought that a mutiny ever seemed probable. But all my

men were now a little abstracted and liable to be found, if off duty,

scribbling furiously in corners. I knew exactly what was going on, for

I was involved in it myself. There wasn't a human being on the moon

who had not sold exclusive rights to some newspaper or magazine, and we

were all haunted by approaching deadlines. The radio-teletype to Earth

was in continuous operation, sending tens of thousands of words being

dictated over the speech circuits.

It was Professor Williams, our very practical-minded astronomer, who

came to me one day with the answer to my main problem.

"Skipper," he said balancing himself precariously on the

all-too-collapsible table I used as my working desk inside the igloo,

"there's no technical reason, is there, why we should get back to Earth

first?"

"No," I said, "merely a matter of fame, fortune, and seeing our

families again. But I admit those aren't technical reasons. We could

stay here another year if Earth kept sending supplies. If you want to

suggest that, however, I shall take great pleasure in strangling

you."

"It's not as bad as that. Once the main body has gone back, whichever

party is left can follow in two or three weeks at the latest. They'll

get a lot of credit, in fact, for self sacrifice modesty, and similar

virtues."

"Which will be very poor compensation for being second home."

"Right we need something else to make it worthwhile. Some more

material reward."

"Agreed. What do you suggest?"

Williams pointed to the calendar hanging on the wall in front of me,

between the two pin-ups we had stolen from the Goddard The length of

our stay was indicated by the days that had been crossed off in red

ink; a big question mark in two weeks' time showed when the first ship

would be heading back to Earth.

"There's your answer," he said.

"If we go back then, do you realize what will happen? I'll tell

you."

He did, and I kicked myself for not having thought of it first.

The next day, I explained my decision to Vandenburg and Krasnin.

"We'll stay behind and do the mopping up," I said.

"It's a matter of common sense. The Goddard's a much bigger ship than

ours and can carry an extra four people, while we can manage only two

more, and even then it will be a squeeze.

If you go first, Van, it will save a lot of people from eating their

hearts out here for longer than necessary."

"That's very big of you," replied Vandenburg.

"I

won't hide the fact that we'll be happy to get home. And it's logical,

I admit, now that the Ziolkovski's out of action. Still, it means

quite a sacrifice on your part, and I don't really like to take

advantage of it."

I gave an expansive wave.

"Think nothing of it," I answered.

"As long as you boys don't grab all the credit, we'll take our turn.

After all, we'll have the show here to ourselves when you've gone back

to Earth."

Krasnin was looking at me with a rather calculating expression, and I

found it singularly difficult to return his gaze.

"I hate to sound cynical," he said, "but I've learned to be a little

suspicious when people start doing big favors without very good

reasons. And fragilely, I don't think the reason you've given is good

enough. You wouldn't have anything else up your sleeve, would you?"

"Oh, very well," I sighed.

"Y'd hoped to get a little credit, but I see it's no use trying to

convince anyone of the purity of my motives. I've got a reason, and

you might as well know it. But please don't spread it around, I'd hate

the folks back on Earth to be disillusioned. They still think of us as

noble and heroic seekers after knowledge; let's keep it that way, for

all our sakes."

Then I pulled out the calendar, and explained to Vandenburg and Krasnin

what Williams had already explained to me. They listened with

scepticism, then with growing sympathy.

"I had no idea it was that bad," said Vandenburg at last.

"Americans never have," I said sadly.

"Anyway, that's the way it's been for half a century, and it doesn't

seem to get any better. So you agree with my suggestion?"

"Of course. It suits us fine, anyhow. Until the next expedition's

ready, the moon's all yours."

I remembered that phrase, two weeks later, as I watched the Goddard

blast up into the sky toward the distant, beckoning Earth. It was

lonely, then, when the Americans and all but two of the Russians had

gone. We envied them the reception they got, and watched jealously on

the TV screens their triumphant processions through Moscow and New

York. Then we went back to work, and bided our time. Whenever we felt

depressed, we would do little sums on bits of paper and would be

instantly restored to cheerfulness.

The red crosses marched across the calendar as the short terrestrial

days went by days that seemed to have very little connection with the

slow cycle of lunar time. At last we were ready;

all the instrument readings were taken, all the specimens and samples

safely packed away aboard the ship. The motors roared into life,

giving us for a moment the weight we would feel again when we were back

in Earth's gravity. Below us the rugged lunar landscape, which we had

grown to know so well, fell swiftly away; within seconds we could see

no sign at all of the buildings and instruments we had so laboriously

erected and which future explorers would one day use.

The homeward voyage had begun. We returned to Earth in uneventful

discomfort, joined the already half-dismantled Goddard beside Space

Station Three, and were quickly ferried down to the world we had left

seven months before.

Seven months: that, as Williams had pointed out, was the all-important

figure. We had been on the moon for more than half a financial year

and for all of us, it had been the most profitable year of our lives.

Sooner or later, I suppose, this interplanetary loophole will be

plugged; the Department of Inland Revenue is still fighting a gallant

rear-guard action, but we seem neatly covered under Section 57,

paragraph 8 of the Capital Gains Act of 1972. We wrote our books and

articles on the moon and until there's a lunar government to impose

income tax, we're hanging on to every penny.

And if the ruling finally goes against us well, there's always Mars ....