“I am. I am,” said Montez. Where Gottstein’s face was intrinsically good-natured in appearance, the long thin lines of Montez’ face were almost comically tragic. “I am apologetic in both senses. I am embarrassed to be leaving the Moon, since it is an attractive world filled with excitement. And I am embarrassed about the embarrassment; ashamed that I should be reluctant to take up Earth’s burden—gravity and all.”
“Yes, I imagine taking back the other five-sixths will be hard,” said Gottstein. “I’ve been on the Moon only a few days and already I feel that one-sixth g is perfectly fine.”
“You won’t feel that when the constipation starts and you start living on mineral oil,” said Montez with a sigh, “but that will pass.... And don’t think you can imitate the light gazelle just because you feel light. There’s an art to it.”
“So I understand.”
“So you think you understand, Gottstein. You haven’t seen the kangaroo walk, have you?”
“On television.”
“That doesn’t really give you the feel of it. You have to try it. It’s the proper mode for crossing level lunar surface at high speed. The feet move together backward and launch you on what would be a simple broad jump on Earth. While you’re in mid-air, they come forward; begin moving back just before they hit the ground again; keep you launched; and so on. The motion seems slow by Earth standards with only a low gravity whipping you on, but each leap is in excess of twenty feet and the amount of muscular effort required to keep you in the air—if there were air—is minimal. The sensation is like flying—”
“Have you tried it? Can you do it?”
“I’ve tried it, but no Earthman can really do it. I’ve kept it up for as many as five leaps in a row, enough to get the sensation; just enough to want to do more, but then there is the inevitable miscalculation, a loss of synchronization, and you tumble and slide for a quarter of a mile. The Lunarites are polite and never laugh at you. Of course, it’s easy for them. They start as children and pick it up at once without trouble.”
“It’s their world,” said Gottstein, chuckling. “Think how they’d be on Earth.”
“They wouldn’t be on Earth. They can’t. I suppose that’s an advantage on our side. We can be either on Moon or on Earth, They can live only on the Moon. We tend to forget that because we confuse the Lunarites with Immies.”
“With what?”
“That’s what they call the Earth-immigrants; those who live on the Moon more or less permanently but were born and raised on the Earth. The immigrants can, of course, return to the Earth, but the real Lunarites have neither the bones nor the muscles to withstand the Earth’s gravity. There were some tragedies in that respect in the Moon’s early history.”
“Oh?”
“Oh, yes. People who returned with their Moon-born children. We tend to forget. We’ve had our own Crisis and a-few dying children don’t seem important in the light of the huge casualties of the late Twentieth and all that followed. Here on the Moon, though, every dead Lunarite who succumbed to the gravity of Earth is remembered.... It helps them feel a world apart, I think.”
Gottstein said, “I thought I had been thoroughly briefed on Earth, but it seems I will still have a lot to learn.”
“Impossible to learn everything about the Moon from a post on Earth, so I have left you a full report as my predecessor did for me. You’ll find the Moon fascinating and, in some ways, excruciating. I doubt that you’ve eaten Lunar rations on Earth and if you’re going by description only, you will not be prepared for the reality.... But you’ll have to learn to like it. It’s bad policy to ship Earth-items here. We’ve got to eat and drink the local products.”
“You’ve been doing it for two years. I guess I’ll survive.”
“I’ve not been doing it steadily. There are periodic furloughs to Earth. Those are obligatory, whether you want them or not. They’ve told you that, I’m sure.”
“Yes,” said Gottstein.
“Despite any exercises you do here, you will have to subject yourself to full gravity now and then just to remind your bones and muscles what it’s like. And when you’re on Earth, you’ll eat. And occasionally, some food is smuggled in.” Gottstein said, “My luggage was carefully inspected, of course, but it turned out there was a can of corned beef in my coat pocket. I had overlooked it. So did they.”
Montez smiled slowly and said, hesitantly, “I suspect you are now going to offer to share it.”
“No,” said Gottstein, judiciously, wrinkling his large button nose. “I was going to say with all the tragic nobility I could muster, ‘Here, Montez, have it all! Thy need is greater than mine.’ ” He stumbled a bit in trying to say this, since he rarely used second person singular in Planetary Standard.
Montez smiled more broadly, and then let it vanish. He shook his head. “No. In a week, I’ll have all the Earth-food I can eat. You won’t. Your mouthfuls will be few in the next few years and you will spend too much time regretting your present generosity. You keep it all. ... I insist. I would but be earning your hatred ex post facto.”
He seemed serious, his hand on the other’s shoulder, his eyes looking straight into Gottstein’s. “Besides,” he said, “there is something I want to talk to you about that I’ve been putting off because I don’t know how to approach it and this food would be an excuse for further sidetracking.”
Gottstein put away the Earth-can at once. There was no way in which his face could match the other’s seriousness, but his voice was grave and steady, “Is there something you could not put into your dispatches, Montez?”
“There was something I tried to put in, Gottstein, but between my not knowing how to phrase it and Earth’s reluctance to grasp my meaning, we ended up not communicating. You may do better. I hope you do. One of the reasons I have not asked to have my tour of duty extended is that I can no longer take the responsibility of my failure to communicate.”
“You make it sound serious.”
“I wish I could make it sound serious. Frankly, it sounds silly. There are only some ten thousand people in the Lunar colony. Rather less than half are native Lunarites. They’re hampered by an insufficiency of resources, an insufficiency of space, a harsh world, and yet—and yet—”
“And yet?” said Gottstein, encouragingly.
“There is something going on here—I don’t know exactly what—which may be dangerous.”
“How can it be dangerous? What can they do? Make war against the Earth?” Gottstein’s face trembled on the brink of a smile-crease.
“No, no. It’s more subtle than that.” Montez passed his hand over his face, rubbing his eyes petulantly. “Let me be frank with you. Earth has lost its nerve.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, what would you call it? Just about the time the Lunar colony was being established, Earth went through the Great Crisis. I don’t have to tell you about that.”
“No, you don’t,” said Gottstein, with distaste.
“The population is two billion now from its six billion peak.”
“Earth is much better for that, isn’t it?”
“Oh, undoubtedly, though I wish there had been a better way of achieving the drop.... But it’s left behind a permanent distrust of technology; a vast inertia; a lack of desire to risk change because of the possible side-effects. Great and possibly dangerous efforts have been abandoned because the danger was feared more than greatness was desired.”
“I take it you refer to the program on genetic engineering.”
“That’s the most spectacular case of course, but not the only one,” said Montez, bitterly.