STRANGE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY OMNIBUS (7 page)

Feeling he was taking a dangerous risk, Hawthorne unscrewed his helmet, removed it, turned off the oxygen supply coming from the tube mounted in the back of his space suit, and took a breath of the air. It was surprisingly fresh.

“You see, “said the Moon Man triumphantly. “Now sit down and make yourself comfortable.

Hawthorne sat down on what looked like a chair. Apparently the Moon people did not always float in the air but availed themselves of furniture. “Would you care for some Moi?” The Moon Man asked, speaking more politely than before. Before Hawthorne could answer, he poured a thick, viscous red liquid from a flask into a metal goblet and handed it to Hawthorne. The visitor from Earth tasted it, found it surprisingly refreshing and downed the contents.

“What is this?” he asked. “I didn’t think you could grow anything on the Moon.”

“We can’t,” came back the reply. “Moi is an organic compound manufactured in the molten core of the Moon and forced up through cracks in the surface of depressions such as the one in which I am living. That’s the way we get our oxygen as well. Forced up from the core. I believe our Moi may be similar to the manna referred to in your Old Testament as being furnished by your God to help the Israelites survive in the desert.”

Hawthorne was amazed that the Moon Man knew so much about events on Earth and spoke such colloquial English. When he inquired, the Moon Man explained that the inhabitants of the Moon regularly listened to radio broadcasts emanating from the Earth. “We also receive your television signals,” added, “But they are usually too scrambled for us to make much sense of them. Additionally, we learned your language when we sent exploratory missions to Earth many centuries ago. We decided at that time you were too primitive a species for us to have any interaction with, always concentrating on murdering each other, and that in the future we should do all that we could to prevent you from learning of our existence.”

“If you actually visited the Earth,” Hawthorne asked, “Why is there no record of it in our history?”

“Actually, there is,” came back the answer, which left Hawthorne even more confused. “Many of your accounts of ghosts represent human sightings of us. If you think about it, you can see our appearance is rather similar to the descriptions of ghosts.”

Remembering the purpose of his mission to the Moon, Hawthorne said. “I am very glad to have made the trip here and to have met with you. I always suspected that all the reports of NASA expeditions reaching the Moon and exploring it were fabricated. If they had really done so, they would have encountered you or other Moon People and reported that to Earth.”

“You’re being foolish again,” the Moon Man said reproachfully, “they didn’t see us because we deliberately concealed our existence from them. It’s a simple matter to camouflage our depressions and our residences so they are indistinguishable from the Moon surface.”

Hawthorne realized that he had spent considerable time speaking with the Moon Man and that it was necessary for him to leave and return to the space capsule. “One last question,” he said. “Since you Moon people have taken such pains to avoid Earthmen learning of your existence, why have you revealed yourself to me?”

“That’s very simple,” came back the answer. “There are three reasons. In the first place, if you told the people on Earth what you have seen and heard, they would not believe you. You would be confined in a mental institution. The second reason is that if they did believe you and sent another mission here to look for us, we would simply conceal our existence, as we did during your previous Moon walks. Of course, the third reason is the most important.”

“And what is that?’” Hawthorne blurted out.

“It’s just this. You are never going back to Earth. You are here permanently.”

“What do you mean?”

“Go to the door and look out.” explained the Moon Man.

Hawthorne rushed to the door and opened it. High in the sky, disappearing from sight, he beheld the spacecraft returning to Earth. He cried out in horror and began cursing, then sobbing. In a few minutes, however, he regained his composure. Actually living permanently on the Moon with the Moon people would not be that bad. Their Moi was pretty tasty fare. If he stayed here, he would not have to undergo that awful feeling of weightlessness again. But best of all, if he stayed here, he would be dealing with a species much more rational, more intelligent and nicer than what he had observed on Earth.

The multi-million dollar super computer dubbed the “Enemies Machine” was constructed under the direction of the Advanced Research Project Agency under the overall supervision of senior Pentagon officials. Once built, the CIA and other members of the Intelligence Community played the major role in providing data to be inputted into it. It belonged to the first generation that can properly be said to think. Much like the human brain, its circuits were wired so that rather than just being limited to pulling up individual pieces of data, it was able on its own to recombine them in every possible combination and then provide the most logical answers to the questions asked of it.

The project was started on the orders of some of Washington’s top policy makers. The members of the President’s National Security Council believed they were handicapped in dealing with various word crises by the incorrect advice they were receiving from the intelligence community. Intelligence analysts, even those with the deepest knowledge of a foreign country, tended to base their predilections on what that nation’s response to U.S. moves might be to their own view of the universe. In other words, they were unable to view anything from the perspective of the foreign leaders. While this admittedly reflected a good deal of Monday morning quarterbacking, the President believed the “Enemies Machine” would provide a useful adjunct to the existing National Security Council apparatus and authorized expenditure of the required funds.

The “Enemies Machine” was seen as providing the solution. Into its data banks were imputed all of the many separate items of information bearing upon the geography, history, culture, society, economy, political structure and religion of the various countries. Because of the then limited capacity of the computer, not every nation in the world could be included. Therefore, the database was limited to only the ten nations considered most likely to be involved in a serious world crisis affecting the U.D. These included Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iran. In the light of later events, the most significant omissions were Syria and Venezuela. Another shortcoming was the failure to consider Ukraine as a nation separate from Russia.

To enhance the accuracy of its estimates, the machine was given a brilliantly designed internal map projection capability, so that its responses were based on the geo-strategic viewpoint that would be those of the host populations and their leaders. Since in virtually every country of the world maps prepared in that country show it as the center of the world, this was the underpinning for the machine’s analysis.

The first test of the computer was and after the fact re-examination of the probable Iranian reaction to the ouster of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in a coup involving the United States. It correctly predicted the popular furor caused by the overthrow of the democratically elected leader and the likely build up of a violently anti-American sentiment. This analysis so pleased the president that he ordered henceforth U.S. actions in any world crisis be based on the readout from the “Enemies Machine.”

The first test of the machine in real-time came when American policymakers considered re-orienting the thrust of U.S. policy away from Europe and the Middle East to give the situation in the Far East the highest priority. When the machine was asked to provide the probable response to the so-called “pivot” in policy, it responded with a prediction that the Chinese Communist Government would interpret the move as a deliberate American provocation revealing a hostile intent in Washington. No American offer of increased military cooperation with China or public expression of good will would convince Beijing otherwise.

Shortly thereafter, the pro-Russian President of Ukraine Viktor Yamukovych was forced from power by public demonstrations in Kiev by agitators favoring close association of the country with the European Community, the “Enemies Machine” was asked to provide analysis of the probable Russian reaction. The answer was that Russian President Putin would never accept this as fait accompli but would resort to whatever tactics required to keep Ukraine from slipping out of the Russian economic orbit. Neither Western promises of continued good will toward Russia nor threats of economic sanctions would induce the Russian President to abandon his goal.

These analyses were submitted to the National Security Council, which did not know what to do. If accepted as accurate predictions, they would require a significant change in the direction of American foreign policy. Could or should Washington abandon its traditional goal for every U.S. foreign policy initiative? How could the Washington political establishment countenance abandoning its firm belief that the establishment of popular democracy in every nation of the world, regardless of the level of education, standard of living, hostile attitude toward the U.S. or religious fanaticism deserved the highest priority for the long term, regardless of the scope of unfavorable results in the short and medium term?

The problem was deemed too important for the National Security Council to decide, and so it was taken directly to the president. The Chief Executive weighed the issue carefully, carefully considering all aspects. Then he made his decision. The traditional all-out drive for global world democracy could not be reversed nor even modified in the smallest degree. He ordered that all documents referring in any way to the recommendations of the “Enemies Machine” be shredded and burned. To prevent any future re-occurrence of such obviously unsound estimated, he decreed that the machine be destroyed along with all documents relating to its design or use.

Today, the citizens of the United States and indeed of the entire world can rest easier in their homes. They know that no considerations of national self-interest or of common sense will be permitted to intrude into American foreign policy.

For several decades astronomers on Ganymede, the largest satellite in the solar system one of the moons of Jupiter, had trained their most power telescopes on earth. The reduction in size of the earth’s polar icecaps led the astronomers to conclude an intelligent civilization on earth was diverting the water from the icecaps to supply massive hydroelectric projects. Some astronomers asserted that the occasional white flashes that they observed came from the launching of spacecraft; they were more widely believed to result from the impact of meteors hitting Earth’s surface. At length, the government decided to construct a spaceship that could travel to Earth and enable a scientific team to examine the earth's surface minutely and confirm if possible whether there was any intelligent life there.

The actual decision to fund the project, however, was not based on scientific interest. Rather it was due to substantial pressure for the program by leading defense firms on Ganymede, who saw in it an excellent opportunity to increase their profit margins At length the spacecraft was finished and the crew members chosen. It was launched from Ganymede with a cascade of publicity and lengthy speeches from leading politicians.

Because of the length of the journey from Ganymede to Earth, even with the high propulsion engines of the spacecraft, the crew members would not remain awake for the entire journey. After it was in orbit, and the course set, the automatic pilot was put in operation, and the crew members carefully arranged themselves in closed capsules, took the necessary drugs, and went into a condition similar to hibernation. Many decades later, the crew members were awakened. Climbing out of their capsules, the pilots turned off the automatic pilot and resumed control of the ship.

The spacecraft entered Earth’s atmosphere at very high speed. The arrival had been times to occur during the hours of darkness to lessen the likelihood of its being observed by any intelligent life on Earth. The ship’s velocity slowed and settled down softly at the designated landing spot. After examining their instruments, the crew determined that the atmosphere of Earth would not sustain them outside the ship and that they would be obliged to conduct their examination of the surface protected by spacesuits.

All of the crew wished to walk personally on the surface of the Earth. This was not possible due to the limited time available before they would be obliged to blast off on the return journey to Ganymede as well as to the limited number of spacesuits on the ship. They drew straws, and the three lucky winners donned their suits and stepped outside by means of the airlock.

What they found was sand, nothing but sand. It appeared to extend as far as they eye could see in all directions. Because the gravity of the earth was about seven times that on Ganymede, they found walking any length almost impossible. After covering a distance of a quarter of a mile and finding no signs of life, vegetable or animal, and nothing but sand, they decided they had to return to the ship. Back on board, they reported their disappointing findings to the others. There was no doubt. Earth contained no life. What had been mistakenly concluded to be such signs was obviously due to natural phenomena.

When the ship returned to Ganymede, the findings of the expedition were accepted. The most powerful telescopes were shifted away from observing Earth to Mars, where several scientists claimed they had detected canals. The defense firms, for their part, were extremely gratified with the results of the mission. Through clever lobbying, they obtained government funding for a program to construct a vehicle that a future expedition to Mars could use to explore the surface of the planet rather than having to do so on foot.

It is hard to know what fate would have had in store for either the inhabitants of Ganymede or the Earth of the mission had landed in another location. Fortunately or unfortunately, the spot where it set down was in the middle of the Sahara Desert.