Denison whistled. “How did you do that?”
“Lots of practice! And don’t you try it. You’ll break your elbow. I warn you though. If I get too cold, I’m going to have to crowd you on the lounge.”
“Safe enough,” he said, “with both of us in suits.”
“Ah, there speaks my brave lecher.... How do you feel?”
“All right, I guess. What an experience!”
“What an experience? You set a record for non-falls. Do you mind if I tell the folks back in town about this?”
“No. Always like to be appreciated.... You’re not going to expect me to do this again, are you?”
“Right now? Of course not I wouldn’t myself. Well just rest awhile, make sure your heart action is back to normal, and then we’ll go back. If you’ll reach your legs in my direction, I’ll take your gliders off. Next time, I’ll show you how to handle the gliders yourself.”
“I’m not sure that there will be a next time.”
“Of course there’ll be. Didn’t you enjoy it?”
“A little. In between terror.”
“You’ll have less terror next time, and still less the time after, and eventually you’ll just experience the enjoyment and I’ll make a racer out of you.”
“No, you won’t. I’m too old.”
“Not on the Moon. You just look old.”
Denison could feel the ultimate quiet of the Moon soaking into him as he lay there. He was facing the Earth this time. Its steady presence in the sky had, more than anything else, given him the sensation of stability during his recent glide and he felt grateful to it.
He said, “Do you often come out here, Selene? I mean, by yourself, or just one or two others? You know, when it isn’t fiesta time?”
“Practically never. Unless there are people around, this is too much for me. That I’m doing it now, actually, surprises me.”
“Uh-huh,” said Denison, noncommittally.
“You’re not surprised?”
“Should I be? My feeling is that each person does what he does either because he wants to or he must and in either case that’s his business, not mine.”
“Thanks, Ben. I mean it; it’s good to hear. One of the nice things about you, Ben, is that for an Immie, you’re willing to let us be ourselves. We’re underground people, we Lunarites, cave people, corridor people. And what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing.”
“Not to hear the Earthies talk. And I’m a tourist guide and have to listen to them. There isn’t anything they say that I haven’t heard a million times, but what I hear most of all”—and she dropped into the clipped accents of the typical Earthie speaking Planetary Standard—“But, dear, however can all you people live in caves all the time? Doesn’t it give you a terrible closed-in feeling? Don’t you ever want to see blue sky and trees and ocean and feel wind and smell flowers—”
“Oh, I could go on and on, Ben. Then they say, ‘But I suppose you don’t know what blue sky and sea and trees are like so you don’t miss them.’... As if we don’t receive Earth-television and as if we don’t have full access to Earth-literature, both optical and auditory—and olfactory sometimes, too.”
Denison was amused. He said, “What’s the official answer to remarks like that?”
“Nothing much. We just say, ‘We’re quite used to it, madam.’ Or ‘sir’ if it’s a man. Usually it’s a woman. The men are too interested in studying our blouses and wondering when we take them off, I suppose. You know what I’d like to tell the idiots?”
“Please tell me. As long as you have to keep the blouse on, it being inside the suit, at least get that off your chest.”
“Funny, funny word play! ... I’d like to tell them, ‘Look, madam, why the hell should we be interested in your damned world? We don’t want to be hanging on the outside of any planet and waiting to fall off or get blown off. We don’t want raw air puffing at us and dirty water falling on us. We don’t want your damned germs and your smelly grass and your dull blue sky and your dull white clouds. We can see Earth in our own sky when we want to, and we don’t often want to. The Moon is our home and it’s what we make it; exactly what we make it. We own it and we build our own ecology, and we don’t need you here being sorry for us going our own way. Go back to your own world and let your gravity pull your breasts down to your knees.’ That’s what I’d say.”
Denison said, “All right. Whenever you get too close to saying that to some Earthie, you come say it to me and you’ll feel better.”
“You know what? Every once in a while, some Immie suggests that we build an Earth-park on the Moon; some little spot with Earth-plants brought in as seeds or seedlings; maybe some animals. A touch of home—that’s the usual expression.”
“I take it you’re against that.”
“Of course, I’m against it. A touch of whose home? The Moon is our home. An Immie who wants a touch of home had better get back to his home. Immies can be worse than Earthies sometimes.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Denison.
“Not you—so far,” said Selene.
There was silence for a moment and Denison wondered if Selene were going to suggest a return to the caverns. On the one hand, it wouldn’t be long before he would feel a fairly strenuous craving to visit a rest-room. On the other, he had never felt so relaxed. He wondered how long the oxygen in his pack would hold out.
Then Selene said, “Ben, do you mind if I ask you a question?”
“Not at all. If it’s my private life that interests you, I am without secrets. I’m five-foot-nine, weigh twenty-eight pounds on the Moon, had one wife long ago, now divorced, one child, a daughter, grown-up and married, attended University of—”
“No, Ben. I’m serious. Can I ask about your work?”
“Of course you can, Selene. I don’t know how much I can explain to you, though.”
“Well— You know that Barron and L—”
“Yes, I know,” said Denison, brusquely.
“We talk together. He tells me things sometimes. He said you think the Electron Pump might make the Universe explode.”
“Our section of the Universe. It might convert a part of our Galactic arm into a quasar.”
“Really? Do you really think so?”
Denison said, “When I came to the Moon, I wasn’t sure. Now I am. I am personally convinced that this will happen.”
“When do you think it will happen?”
“That I can’t say exactly. Maybe a few years from now. Maybe a few decades.”
There was a short silence between them. Then Selene said, in a subdued voice, “Barron doesn’t think so.”
“I know he doesn’t. I’m not trying to convert him. You don’t beat refusal to believe in a frontal attack. That’s Lament’s mistake.”
“Who’s Lament?”
“I’m sorry, Selene. I’m talking to myself.”
“No, Ben. Please tell me. I’m interested. Please.”
Denison turned to one side, facing her. “All right,” he said. “I have no objection to telling you. Lamont, a physicist back on Earth, tried in his way to alert the world to the dangers of the Pump. He failed. Earthmen want the Pump; they want the free energy; they want it enough to refuse to believe they can’t have it.”
“But why should they want it, if it means death?”
“All they have to do is refuse to believe it means death. The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists. Your friend, Dr. Neville, does the same thing. He dislikes the surface, so he forces himself to believe that Solar batteries are no good—even though to any impartial observer they would seem the perfect energy source for the Moon. He wants the Pump so he can stay underground, so he refuses to believe that there can be any danger from it.”