The cameras stayed on the men’s faces as they awkwardly walked toward the helicopters. Even though several dignitaries hurried forward to greet the men, the camera remained on the faces, transmitting that strange look for all to see. A nation crammed forward to watch.
In Macon, Georgia, Mary Sinderman touched a wetted finger to the bottom of the iron. She heard it pop as she stared across her ironing board at the television screen with the faces of two men on it.
“Charlie. Oh, Charlie,” she called. “Here they are.”
A dark, squat man in an undershirt came into the room and looked at the picture. “Yeah,” he grunted. “They got it all right. Both of ‘em.”
“Aren’t they handsome?” she said.
He threw a black look at her and said, “No, they ain’t.” And he went out the door he had come in.
In Stamford, Connecticut, Walter Dwyer lowered his newspaper and peered over the top of it at the faces of two men on the television screen. “Look at that, honey,” he said.
His wife looked up from her section of the paper and nodded silently. He said, “Two more, dear. If this keeps up, we’ll all be able to retire and let them run things.” She chuckled, and nodded and continued to watch the screen.
In Boise, Idaho, the Tankard Saloon was doing a moderate business. The television set was on up over one end of the bar. The faces of two men flashed on the screen. Slowly a silence fell over the saloon as one person after another stopped what he was doing to watch. One man sitting in close under the screen raised his drink high in tribute to the two faces.
In a long, low building on the New Mexican flats, the wall TV set was on. A thin young man wearing heavy glasses sat stiffly erect on a folding chair, watching the two faces. “Dr. Scott,” he said, “they both have the look.”
The older man nodded wordlessly.
“Do you think you’ll be able to find out anything this time, Dr. Scott?” young Webb asked.
A slight urge to tell this young man to keep his big fat mouth shut rose up in Dr. Scott. He noted the urge and filed it away with other urges toward bright young men who believe everything they learned at college, and no more.
“I don’t know, Dr. Webb,” he said. “We’ve examined sixteen of these fellows without finding out anything so far.”
The two men boarded a helicopter. The screen faded to a blare of martial music, and then came to life on a toothy announcer praising the virtues of a hair shampoo. Webb snapped the set off, turned to Scott, and said, “Of course, you’ve isolated all the factors resulting from your system of selection?”
Scott clamped his teeth down on the bit of his cold pipe. He took time to strike a match and puff it back to life, and then he was able to answer calmly, “Yes, of course. The first ten men we chose were not selected by the same standards we use now. Two of them died on the Moon, but the same ratio of those who returned developed the far look. The change in the selection system seems to effect survival— but not the ‘far look.’ “
“Then it must be something that happens to them. Don’t all these men go through some experience in common?”
“All the men go through a great many experiences in common,” Scott answered. “They go through two years of intensive training. They make a flight through space and land on the Moon. They spend twenty-eight days of hell reading instruments, making surveys, and collecting samples. They suffer loneliness such as no human being has ever known before. Their lives are in constant peril. Each pair has had at least one disaster during their stay. Then they get their replacements and come back to Earth. Yes, they have something in common all right. But a few come back without the far look. They’ve improved; they’re better than most men here on Earth. But they are not on a par with the rest.”
Webb was at the window, watching for the first sign of the helicopter. He shook his head, unconvinced. “We’re missing something. Somewhere there’s an element that’s missing. And, consciously or unconsciously, these men know what it is.”
Scott took the pipe from his mouth and said softly, “I doubt it. We’ve pumped them full of half a dozen truth drugs. We’ve doped them and subjected them to hypnosis. Maybe they’re concealing something but I doubt it very much.”
Webb shook his head again, and turned from the window. “I don’t know. There’s something missing here. I certainly mean to put these subjects through exhaustive tests.”
The anger in Scott brought a flush to his face. He crossed the room toward Webb and touched him on the lapel of the coat with the stem of his pipe as he said, “Look here, young fella, these ‘subjects’ as you call them are like no subjects you ever had or conceived of. These men can twist you and me up into knots if they want to. They understand more about people than the entire profession of psychiatrics will learn in the next hundred years.”
He put the pipe in his mouth and said, more gently, “You are in for a shock, Dr. Webb. These two particular men are fresh from the Moon, and do not yet fully realize the impact they have on other . . .” The murmur of approaching motors stopped him. “You’d best get yourself ready for an experience, Dr. Webb,” he said. The murmur grew to a roar as the helicopters landed outside the building. In a moment footsteps sounded outside in the hall and the door opened.
Two men walked into the room. The taller of the two looked at Webb and Webb felt as if struck by a hot blast of wind. The level eyes were brilliant blue and seemed to reach into Webb and gently strum on the fibers of his nervous system. A sense of elation swept through him. He felt as he had once felt standing alone at dusk in a wind-tossed forest. He could not speak. His breath stopped. His muscles held rigid. And then the blue-eyed glance passed him and left him confused and restless and disappointed.
He dimly saw Scott cross the room and shake hands with the shorter man. Scott said, “How do you do. We are very glad for your safe return. Was everything in order when you left the Moon?”
The shorter man smiled as he shook Scott’s hand. “Thank you, doctor. Yes, everything was in order. Our two replacements are off to a good start.” He glanced at the taller man. They looked at each other, and smiled.
“Yes,” said the taller man, “Fowler and Mcintosh will do all right.”
Don Fowler and Al Mcintosh still had the shakes. After six days they still had the shakes whenever they remembered the first few moments of their landing on the Moon.
The ship had let down roughly. Fowler awkwardly climbed out through the lock first. He turned to make sure Mcintosh was following him and then started to move around the ship to look for the two men they were to replace.
The ship lay near a crevice. A series of ripples in the rock marred the black shiny basalt surface that surrounded the crevice. The surface was washed clean of dust by the jets of the descending ship. As Fowler walked around the base of the ship his foot stepped into the trough of one of the ripples in the rock. It threw him off balance, tilted him toward the crevice. He struggled to right himself. Under Earth gravity he would simply have fallen. Under Lunar gravity he managed to retain his feet, but he staggered toward the crevice, stumbling in the ripples, unable to recover himself.