There was a cheer that sounded artificial. Rick smiled grimly. He didn’t feel much like cheering himself.
“Level with us, sir,” Corporal Gengrich said. “How’d the CIA get a thing like this? And why the hell did they need us if they’ve got—” he waved expressively—“these?”
It was a good question, and Rick had no idea of how to answer.
“All in good time,” Lieutenant Parsons said. “All in good time. Count your blessings.”
“But—” Gengrich began.
“Shut up.” Sergeant Elliot was nervous and fell back on military tradition as something familiar and understood. An officer had spoken, and that was that.
It won’t last, Rick thought. Elliot had strong views about officers: he assumed they were competent, wanted them to be, demanded that they be. He knew that there were plenty of incompetents with bars and leaves, but he was proud enough of his Army that he’d kill himself trying to cover for them. But Rick suspected that Elliot would not hesitate to frag a bad officer for the honor of the corps.
There were more accelerations, this time not so violent. The ship was turning. Rick felt trapped, but he tried to keep his expression calm and unworried. He didn’t know how successful he was at that, but he thought it was important that the troops think he was confident.
We are, he thought, thirty-six armed men and some heavy weapons, in a ship controlled by aliens—aliens! I don’t have the faintest notion of where I am, where we’re going, or what those creatures want with us.
He was certain they were in space. That decided one thing: they certainly didn’t need any shooting. Not that there was anything to shoot at, but there were a lot of weapons available, and some might punch holes in the ship. The metal walls didn’t seem too thick, and Rick had no idea of how strong they might be. Even supposing they could blow open a door and found air beyond it, and that they could go through the ship and kill or capture every alien in it—what then? They couldn’t fly it; they couldn’t land it; they couldn’t even operate the food and water and air system.
And so far no one had threatened them.
Two hours later they were all certain they were in space. There was a brief warning tone, and a voice said, “There will be a period of no-weight. Please secure all equipment and secure yourselves.”
The only thing they could secure themselves to was a low bar a bit above waist height that ran around two sides of the compartment like the rails ballet dancers use for exercise. Rick managed to get most of the troops over to those walls. They tied lines to as much of the gear as they could. They were just finishing when there was another musical tone.
They had no weight at all. Loose objects drifted slowly. Several men looked sick, and one was. The vomit floated around in large pools. Other men turned green.
“Jesus, we got to get out of here!” one soldier yelled.
“Shut up!” Elliot didn’t look too good himself. “Captain—”
He didn’t finish the question. The ship went through more gyrations, none very severe. Then, slowly, everything drifting in the air began to settle toward the deck. They felt increasing weight, building up to what seemed almost—but not quite— normal again.
This time it was much harder to calm the troops. They hung onto their weapons and stared around the compartment looking for someone to fight, something they could do. Rick thought he could literally smell the fear in the compartment, and it was contagious. He felt like a caged animal.
“For God’s sake, where are we going?” Gengrich demanded.
“The journey will last two more hours,” the voice said. It spoke from nowhere at all.
“So they can listen to us,” Parsons said. He lowered his voice to an undertone. “Are you certain there is nothing else you wish to tell me?”
“Not just now.”
Parsons shrugged. “As you will. But I hope this does not last much more than a few hours. It will be difficult to control the men if it goes on much longer.” He made a wry face. “It will be difficult to control me.”
“Yeah,” Rick said. He knew exactly how André Parsons felt.
The voice’s time estimate was accurate. Rick’s watch said they had been aboard for four hours and five minutes when the warning tones sounded again and they were told to secure themselves.
This time they never had a period of no-weight, but the accelerations were short and sharp, in little spurts. There were periods of varying gravity between spurts. Finally they felt a slight impact, no more than they might have felt jumping from a chair to the floor. The accelerations ceased.
They didn’t weigh enough. Nowhere near enough, and this was steady. Rick looked around in surprise, a wild suspicion coming to his mind. Some of the troops were muttering. Corporal Gengrich thoughtfully took a cartridge from his pocket and dropped it, watched it fall slowly.
About one-sixth gravity, Rick thought. There was no hiding that, and no hiding what it meant.
Gengrich shouted it first. “God Almighty, we’re on the friggin’ Moon!”
3
The troopers had little time to-react to Gengrich. The compartment door opened, and Corporal Mason came in. His face looked like grey ashes, and he held his right arm against his chest. The compartment door remained open to the entry chamber, but all the other doors were closed.
“Mason—”
“Where the hell you been?”
“What’s wrong, Art? What in hell did they do to you?”
The men were all shouting at once. Sergeant McCleve went over with his medical kit.
“At ease!” Rick shouted. Sergeant Elliot repeated the order more loudly. There were mutters, but the shouting stopped.
Rick joined Mason and McCleve. “What happened?”
“Jesus, Captain, we’re on the Moon,” Mason said. “The bastards brought us to the Moon!”
“Yes,” Rick said.
“I saw it all,” Mason said. The troops crowded around to listen.
Rick nodded to himself. It was time the men found out what had happened. He thought he should have told them before.
“Those screen things,” Mason was saying. “It was like TV. We lifted off, straight up, it seemed like, and the world kept getting further and further away until I could see all of it, just like on TV during a space mission.”
“What happened to your arm?” McCleve asked. He slit Mason’s field-jacket sleeve and examined the wound. It looked like a neat round hole, thinner than a pencil, and it went through the jacket, the arm, and out the sleeve on the other side. There was no blood.
“They wouldn’t talk to me,” Mason said.
“Who?” “Who wouldn’t talk?” the troops demanded. Elliot glared at them, but he didn’t try to keep them quiet. He wanted to know too.
“Those critters,” Mason said. “The — Captain, you saw ‘em. I don’t know what they are. Not men. Look something like men, but they’re not.”
Now there was a lot of excited babble. “Shut up,” Rick said. “Let Mason tell his story.”
“They wouldn’t talk to me. We kept getting further and further away from the Earth, until I could see it—all of it—up to where I could see daylight and clouds over the ocean, just like on TV from Skylab. And they wouldn’t talk. So I took out my pistol and pointed it at one—the one in the grey suit—and told him if he didn’t tell me where we were going, I’d shoot him.”
“Stupid,” Lieutenant Parsons muttered.
“Yes, sir, it was stupid,” Mason said. “The critter didn’t do anything. Just waved his hand, kind of, and some kind of beam, like a laser beam, came out of the wall. Right out of the wall. I never saw any opening. Just this green light and it burned a hole right through. I dropped the gun and the critter came around and picked it up, and he said I should sit there and I should tell him if I needed medical attention—he talked that way, like a professor. Then he gave me a pill. I thought about it and then I took it, and after that it stopped hurting. And then we came on straight to the Moon. I saw us land. We’re on the back side, Captain. The back side of the Moon. There’s a big cave, and two other ships like this one.”
When Mason stopped talking, the men began again. “You didn’t tell us it was a goddamn flying saucer!” Gengrich shouted. His voice was hostile and accusing. “You said it was a CIA ship!”
“They were in a hurry,” Rick said. “Would you rather be back on the hill waiting for the Cubans? Would any of you?”
They didn’t know what to make of that. Nobody spoke of going back.
“We can always die,” Rick said. “At least we can find out what these—people—want with us.”