Of course, they would miss the Moon and their speed would sweep them safely around. They would move across half the Moon’s surface, across three thousand miles of it in one hour; then back they would hurl to meet the Earth once more.

  But Oldbury sadly missed the familiar face in the Moon. There was no face this close, only ragged surface. He felt his eyes brimming as he watched morosely.

  And then, suddenly, the small cramped room within the ship was full of loud buzzing and half the dials on the panel before them clamored into the red of disorder.

  Oldbury cowered back, but Davis howled in what seemed almost triumph. “I told youl Everything’s going wrong!”

  He worked at the manuals uselessly. “No information will get back. Secrets! Secrets!”

  But Oldbury still looked at the Moon. It was terribly close and now the surface was moving quickly. They were starting the swing in earnest and Oldbury’s scream was high-pitched. “Look! Lookathat!” His pointing finger was stiff with terror.

  Davis looked up and said, “Oh, God! Oh, God—” over and over again, until finally the ’scope blanked out and the dials governing it showed red.

  Lars Nilsson could not really go paler than he was, but his hands trembled as they clenched into fists.

  “Again! It’s a damned jinx. For ten years, the automation hasn’t held out. Not on the unmanned flights. Not on this. Who’s responsible?”

  There was no use trying to fix responsibility. No one was responsible, as Nilsson admitted with a groan almost at once. It was just that at the crucial moment—once again—things had failed.

  “We’ve got to pull them through this somehow,” he said, knowing that the outcome was questionable now.

  Still, what could be done was being put into operation.

  Davis said, “You saw that, too, didn’t you?”

  “I’m scared,” whimpered Oldbury.

  “You saw it. You saw the hidden side of the Moon as we went past and you saw there wasn’t any! Good Lord, just sticks, just big beams holding up six million square miles of canvas. I swear it, canvas!”

  He laughed wildly till he choked into breathlessness.

  Then he said hoarsely, “For a million years mankind has been looking at the biggest false front ever dreamed of. Lovers spooned under a world-size stretch of canvas and called it Moon. The stars are painted; they must be. If we could only get out far enough, we could scrape some off and carry them home. Oh, it’s funny.” He was laughing again.

  Oldbury wanted to ask why the grownup was laughing. He could only manage a “Why—why—” because the other’s laughter was so wild that it froze the Words into thick fright in his throat.

  Davis said, "Why? How the devil should I know why? Why does Television City build false-front houses by the streetful for its shows? Maybe we’re a show, and the two of us have stumbled way out here where the gimcrack scenery is set up instead of being on stage-center where we’re supposed to be. Mankind isn’t supposed to know about the scenery, either. That’s why the information devices always go wrong past two hundred thousand miles. Of course, we saw it.”

  He looked crookedly at the big man beside him. “You know why it didn’t matter if we saw it?”

  Oldbury stared back out of his tear-stained face. “No. Why?”

  Davis said, “Because it doesn’t matter if we see it. If we get back to Earth and say that the Moon is canvas propped up by wood, they’d kill us. Or maybe lock us up in a madhouse for life if they felt kindhearted. That’s why we won’t say a word about this.”

  His voice suddenly deepened with menace. “You understand? Not a wordl”

  “I want my mother,” whined Oldbury plaintively.

  “Do you understand? We keep quiet. It’s our only chance to be treated as sane. Let someone else come out and find out the truth and be slaughtered for it. Swear you’ll keep quietl Cross your heart and hope to die if you tell them I”

  Davis was breathing harshly as he raised a threatening arm.

  Oldbury shrank back as far as his prison-seat would let him. “Don’t hit me. Don’t!”

  But Davis, past himself with fury, cried, “There’s only one safe way,” and struck at the cowering figure, and again, and again—

  Godfrey Mayer sat at Oldbury’s bedside and said, “Is it all clear to you?” Oldbury had been under observation for the better part of a month now.

  Lars Nilsson sat at the other end of the room, listening and watching. He remembered Oldbury as he had appeared before he had climbed into the ship. The face was still square, but the cheeks had fallen inward and the strength was gone from it.

  Oldbury’s voice was steady, but half a whisper. “It wasn’t a ship at all. We weren’t in space.”

  “Now we’re not just saying that. We showed you the ship and the controls that handled the images of the Earth and the Moon. You saw it.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  Mayer went on quietly, matter-of-facdy, “It was a dry run, a complete duplication of conditions to test how men would hold out. Naturally, you and Davis couldn’t be told this or the test would mean nothing. If things didn’t work out, we could stop it at any time. We could learn by experience and make changes, try again with a new pair.”

  He had explained this over and over again. Oldbury had to be made to understand if he was ever to leam to live a useful life again.

  “Has a new pair been tried yet?” asked Oldbury wistfully.

  “Not yet. They will be. There are some changes to be made.”

  “I failed.”

  “We learned a great deal, so the experiment was a success in its way. Now listen—the controls of the ship were designed to go wrong when they did in order to test your reaction to emergency conditions after several days of travel strain. The breakdown was timed for the simulated swing about the Moon, which we were going to switch about so that you could see it from a new angle on the return trip. You weren’t intended to see the other side and so we didn’t build the other side. Call it economy. This test alone cost fifty million dollars and it’s not easy to get appropriations.”

  Nilsson added bitterly, “Except that the shut-off switch on the ’scope didn’t shut off in time. A valve caught. You saw the unfinished back of the Moon and we had to stop the ship to prevent—”

  “That’s it,” interrupted Mayer. “Now repeat it, Oldbury. Repeat everything.”

  They walked down the corridor thoughtfully. Nilsson said, “He seemed almost himself today. Don’t you think so?”

  “There’s improvement,” Mayer acknowledged. “A great deal. But he’s not through with therapy by any means.” Nilsson asked, “Any hope with Davis?”

  Mayer shook his head slowly. “That’s a different case. He’s completely withdrawn. Won’t talk. And that deprives us of any handle with which to reach him. We’ve tried aldosterone, ergot therapy, counter-electroencephalography, and so on. No good. He thinks if he talks, we’ll put him in an institution or kill him. You couldn’t ask for a more developed paranoia.” “Have you told him we know?”

  “If we do, we’ll bring on a homicidal seizure again and we may not be as lucky as we were in saving Oldbury. I rather think he’s incurable. Sometimes, when the Moon is in the sky, the orderly tells me, Davis stares up at it and mutters, ‘Canvas,’ to himself.”

  Nilsson said soberly, “It reminds me of what Davis himself said in the early part of the trip. Ideas die hard. They do, don’t they?”

  "It’s the tragedy of the world. Only—” Mayer hesitated.

  “Only what?”

  “Our unmanned rockets, three of them—the information devices on each stopped transmitting just before the boomerang swing and not one returned. Sometimes I just wonder—” “Shut upr said Nilsson fiercely.

  Dead Ringer

  BY LESTER DEL BEY

  There was nothing, especially on Earth, which could set him free—the truth least of alll

  Dane Phillips slouched in the window seat, watching the morning crowds on their way to work and carefully avoiding any attempt to read Jordan’s old face as the editor skimmed through the notes. He had learned to make his tall, bony body seem all loose-jointed relaxation, no matter what he felt. But the oversized hands in his pockets were clenched so tightly that the nails were cutting into his palms.

  Every tick of the old-fashioned clock sent a throb racing through his brain. Every rusde of the pages seemed to release a fresh shot of adrenalin into his blood stream. This time, his mind was pleading. It has to be right this time. . . .

  Jordan finished his reading and shoved the folder back. He reached for his pipe, sighed, and then nodded slowly. “A nice job of researching, Phillips. And it might make a good feature for the Sunday section, at that.”

  It took a second to realize that the words meant acceptance, for Phillips had prepared himself too thoroughly against another failure. Now he felt the tautened muscles release, so quickly that he would have fallen if he hadn’t been braced against the seat.

  He groped in his mind, hunting for words, and finding none. There was only the hot, sudden flame of unbelieving hope. And then an almost blinding exultation.

  Jordan didn’t seem to notice his silence. The editor made a neat pile of the notes, nodding again. “Sure. I like it. We’ve been short of shock stuff lately and the readers go for it when

  we can get a fresh angle. But naturally you’d have to leave out all that nonsense on Blanding. Hell, the man’s just buried, and his relatives and friends—”

  “But that’s the proof!” Phillips stared at the editor, trying to penetrate through the haze of hope that had somehow grown chilled and unreal. His thoughts were abruptly disorganized and out of his control. Only the urgency remained. “It’s the key evidence. And we’ve got to move fast! I don’t know how long it takes, but even one more day may be too late!”

  Jordan nearly dropped the pipe from his lips as he jerked upright to peer sharply at the younger man. “Are you crazy? Do you seriously expect me to get an order to exhume him now? What would it get us, other than lawsuits? Even if we could get the order without cause—which we can’t!”

  Then the pipe did fall as he gaped open-mouthed. “My God, you believe all that stuff. You expected us to publish it straightl”

  “No,” Dane said thickly. The hope was gone now, as if it had never existed, leaving a numb emptiness where nothing mattered. “No, I guess I didn’t really expect anything. But I believe the facts. Why shouldn’t I?”

  He reached for the papers with hands he could hardly control and began stuffing them back into the folder. All the careful documentation, the fingerprints—smudged, perhaps, in some cases, but still evidence enough for anyone but a fool— “Phillips?” Jordan said questioningly to himself, and then his voice was taking on a new edge. “Phillips! Wait a minute, I’ve got it now! Dane Phillips, not Arthur! Two years on the Trib. Then you turned up on the Register in Seattle? Phillip Dean, or some such name there.”

  “Yeah,” Dane agreed. There was no use in denying anything now. “Yeah, Dane Arthur Phillips. So I suppose I’m through here?”

  Jordan nodded again and there was a faint look of fear in his expression. “You can pick up your pay on the way out.

  And make it quick, before I change my mind and call the boys in white!”

  It could have been worse. It had been worse before. And there was enough in the pay envelope to buy what he needed —a flash camera, a little folding shovel from one of the surplus houses, and a bottle of good Scotch. It would be dark enough for him to taxi out to Oakhaven Cemetery, where Blanding had been buried.

  It wouldn’t change the minds of the fools, of course. Even if he could drag back what he might find, without the change being completed, they wouldn’t accept the evidence. He’d been crazy to think anything could change their minds. And they called him a fanatic! If the facts he’d dug up in ten years of hunting wouldn’t convince them, nothing would. And yet he had to see for himself, before’it was too late!

  He picked a cheap hotel at random and checked in under an assumed name. He couldn’t go back to his room while there was a chance that Jordan still might try to turn him in. There wouldn’t be time for Sylvia’s detectives to bother him, probably, but there was the ever-present danger that one of the aliens might intercept the message.

  He shivered. He’d been risking that for ten years, yet the likelihood was still a horror to him. The uncertainty made it harder to take than any human-devised torture could be. There was no way of guessing what an alien might do to anyone who discovered that all men were not human—that some were . . . zombies.

  There was the classic syllogism: All men are mortal; I am a man; therefore, I am mortal. But not Blanding—or Corporal Harding.

  It was Harding’s “death” that had started it all during the fighting on Guadalcanal. A grenade had come flying into the foxhole where Dane and Harding had felt reasonably safe. The concussion had knocked Dane out, possibly saving his life when the enemy thought he was dead. He’d come to in the daylight to see Harding lying there, mangled and twisted, with his throat torn. There was blood on Dane’s uniform, obviously spattered from the dead man. It hadn’t been a mistake or delusion; Harding had been dead.

  It had taken Dane two days of crawling and hiding to get back to his group, too exhausted to report Harding’s death. He’d slept for twenty hours. And when he awoke, Harding had been standing beside him, with a whole throat and a fresh uniform, grinning and kidding him for running off and leaving a stunned friend behind.

  It was no ringer, but Harding himself, complete to the smallest personal memories and personality traits.

  The pressures of war probably saved Dane’s sanity while he learned to face the facts. All men are mortal; Harding is not mortal; therefore, Harding is not a manl Nor was Harding alone—Dane found enough evidence to know there were others.

  The Tribune morgue yielded even more data. A man had faced seven firing squads and walked away. Another survived over a dozen attacks by professional killers. Fingerprints turned up mysteriously “copied” from those of men long dead. Some of the aliens seemed to heal almost instantly; others took days. Some operated completely alone; some seemed to have joined with others. But they were legion.

  Lack of a clearer pattern of attack made him consider the possibility of human mutation, but such tissue was too wildly different, and the invasion had begun long before atomics or X-rays. He gave up trying to understand their alien motivations. It was enough that they existed in secret, slowly growing in numbers while mankind was unaware of them.

  When his proof was complete and irrefutable, he took it to his editor—to be fired, politely but coldly. Other editors were less polite. But he went on doggedly trying and failing. What else could he do? Somehow, he had to find the few people who could recognize facts and warn them. The aliens would get him, of course, when the story broke, but a warned humanity could cope with them. Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

  Then he met Sylvia by accident after losing his fifth job —a girl who had inherited a fortune big enough to spread his message in paid ads across the country. They were married before he found she was hardheaded about her money. She demanded a full explanation for every cent beyond his allowance. In the end, she got the explanation. And while he was trying to cash the check she gave him, she visited Dr. Buehl, to come back with a squad of quiet, refined strong-arm boys who made sure Dane reached Buehl’s “rest home” safely.

  Hydrotherapy . . . Buehl as the kindly firm father image . . . analysis . . . hypnosis that stripped every secret from him, including his worst childhood nightmare.

  His father had committed a violent, bloody suicide after one of the many quarrels with Dane’s mother. Dane had found the body. .

  Two nights after the funeral, he had dreamed of his father’s face, horror-filled, at the window. He knew now that it was a normal nightmare, caused by being forced to look at the face in the coffin, but the shock had lasted for years. It had bothered him again, after his discovery of the aliens, until a thorough check had proved without doubt that his father had been fully human, with a human, if tempestuous, childhood behind him.

  Dr. Buehl was delighted.

  “You see, Dane? You know it was a nightmare, but you don’t really believe it even now. Your father was an alien monster to you—no adult is quite human to a child. And that literal-minded self, your subconscious, saw him after he died. So there are alien monsters who return from death. Then you come to from a concussion. Harding is sprawled out unconscious, covered with blood—probably your blood, since you say he wasn’t wounded, later.

  “But after seeing your father, you can’t associate blood with yourself—you see it as a horrible wound on Harding. When he turns out to be alive, you’re still in partial shock, with your subconscious dominant. And that has the answer already. There are monsters who come back from the deadl

  An exaggerated reaction, but nothing really abnormal. Well have you out of here in no time.”

  No non-directive psychiatry for Buehl. The man beamed paternally, chuckling as he added what he must have considered the clincher. “Anyhow, even zombies can’t stand fire, Dane, so you can stop worrying about Harding. I checked

  up on him. He was burned to a crisp in a hotel fire two months »

  ago.

  It was logical enough to shake Dane’s faith, until he came across Milo Blanding’s picture in a magazine article on society in St. Louis. According to the item, Milo was a cousin of the Blandings, whose father had vanished in Chile as a young man, and who had just rejoined the family. The picture was of Hardingl

  An alien could have gotten away by simply committing suicide and being carried from the rest home, but Dane had to do it the hard way, watching his chance and using commando tactics on a guard who had come to accept him as a harmless nut.

  In St. Louis, he’d used the “Purloined Letter” technique to hide—going back to newspaper work and using almost his real name. It had seemed to work, too. But he’d been less lucky about Harding-Blanding. The man had been in Europe on some kind of tour until his return only this last week.

 

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