screens came to life to show the title sheet of a file, marked
obliquely with the word RESTRICTED in red. This disappeared to be
replaced by a contour map of what looked like a rugged and broken
stretch of terrain. A slowly pulsing point of light appeared in the
center of the picture and began moving across the map as Caldwell
rotated a tracker ball set into the panel that held the keyboard.
The light halted at a point where the contours indicated the
junction of a steep-sided cleft valley with a wider gorge. The
cleft valley was narrow and seemed to branch off from the gorge in
a rising curve.
“This map shows the area in question,” the director resumed. “The
cursor shows where a minor cleft joins the main fault running down
toward the left. The survey boys left their vehicle at this point
and proceeded on up to the cleft on foot, looking for a way to the
top of that large rock mass-the one tagged ‘five sixty.” As
Caidwell spoke, the pulsing light moved slowly along between the
minor sets of contours, tracing out the path taken by the UN team.
They watched it negotiate the bend above the mouth of the cleft and
proceed some distance farther. The light approached the side of the
cleft and touched it at a place where the contours merged into a
single heavy line. There it stopped.
“Here the side was a sheer cliff about sixty feet high. That was
where they came across the first thing that was unusual-a hole in
the base of the rock wall. The sergeant leading the group described
it as being like a cave. That strike you as odd?”
Hunt raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “Caves don’t grow on moons,”
he said simply.
“Exactly.”
The screen now showed a photo view of the area, apparently taken
from the spot at which the survey vehicle had been parked. They
recognized the break in the wall of the gorge where the cleft
joined it. The cleft was higher up than had been obvious from the
map and was approached by a ramp of loose rubble. In the background
they could see a squat tower of rock flattened on top- presumably
the one marked “560” on the map. Caldwell allowed them some time to
reconcile the picture with the map before bringing up the second
frame. It showed a view taken high up, this time looking into the
mouth of the cleft. A series of shots then followed, progressing up
to and beyond the bend. “These are stills from a movie record,”
Caidwell commented. “I won’t bother with the whole set.” The final
frame in the sequence showed a hole in the rock about five feet
across.
“Holes like this aren’t unknown on the Moon,” CaIdwell remarked.
“But they are rare enough to prompt our men into taking a closer
look. The inside was a bit of a mess. There had been a
rockfall-maybe several falls; not much room-just a heap of rubble
and dust . . . at first sight, anyway.” A new picture on the screen
confirmed this statement. “But when they got to probing
around a bit more, they came across something that was really
unusual. Underneath they found a body-dead!”
The picture changed again to show another view of the interior,
taken from the same angie as the previous one. This time, however,
the subject was the top half of a human figure lying amid the
rubble and debris, apparently at the stage of being half uncovered.
It was clad in a spacesuit which, under the layer of gray-white
dust, appeared to be bright red. The helmet seemed intact, but it
was impossible to make out any details of the face behind the visor
because of the reflected camera light. Caldwell allowed them plenty
of time to study the picture and reflect on these facts before
speaking again.
“That is the body. I’ll answer some of the more obvious questions
before you ask. First-no, we don’t know who he is-or was- so we
call him Charlie. Second-no, we don’t know for sure what killed
him. Third-no, we don’t know where he came from.” The executive