The Long Watch
The Long Watch
“Nine ships blasted off from Moon Base. Once in space, eight of them formed a globe around the smallest. They held this formation all the way to Earth.
“The small ship displayed the insignia of an admiral-yet there was no living thing of any sort in her. She was not even a passenger ship, but a drone, a robot ship intended for radioactive cargo. This trip she carried nothing but a lead coffin – and a Geiger counter that was never quiet.” -from the editorial After Ten Years, film 38, 17 June 2009, Archives of the N.Y. Times
JOHNNY DAHLQUIST blew smoke at the Geiger counter. He grinned wryly and tried it again. His whole body was radioactive by now. Even his breath, the smoke from his cigarette, could make the Geiger counter scream. How long had he been here? Time doesn’t mean much on the Moon. Two days? Three? A week? He let his mind run back: the last clearly marked time in his mind was when the Executive Officer had sent for him, right after breakfast – “Lieutenant Dahlquist, reporting to the Executive Officer.”
Colonel Towers looked up. “Ah, John Ezra. Sit down, Johnny. Cigarette?”
Johnny sat down, mystified but flattered. He admired Colonel Towers, for his brilliance, his ability to dominate, and for his battle record. Johnny had no battle record; he had been commissioned on completing his doctor’s degree in nuclear physics and was now junior bomb officer of Moon Base.
The Colonel wanted to talk politics; Johnny was puzzled. Finally Towers had come to the point; it was not safe (so he said) to leave control of the world in political hands; power must be held by a scientifically selected group. In short – The Patrol.
Johnny was startled rather than shocked. As an abstract idea, Towers’ notion sounded plausible. The League of Nations had folded up; what would keep the United Nations from breaking up, too, and thus lead to another World War. “And you know how bad such a war would be, Johnny.”
Johnny agreed. Towers said he was glad that Johnny got the point. The senior bomb officer could handle the work, but it was better to have both specialists.
Johnny sat up with a jerk. “You are going to do something about it?” He had thought the Exec was just talking.
Towers smiled. “We’re not politicians; we don’t just talk. We act.”
Johnny whistled. “When does this start?”
Towers flipped a switch. Johnny was startled to hear his own voice, then identified the recorded conversation as having taken place in the junior officers’ messroom. A political argument he remembered, which he had walked out on… a good thing, too! But being spied on annoyed him.
Towers switched it off. “We have acted,” he said. “We know who is safe and who isn’t. Take Kelly-” He waved at the loudspeaker. “Kelly is politically unreliable. You noticed he wasn’t at breakfast?”
“Huh? I thought he was on watch.”
“Kelly’s watch-standing days are over. Oh, relax; he isn’t hurt.”
Johnny thought this over. “Which list am I on?” he asked. “Safe or unsafe?”
“Your name has a question mark after it. But I have said all along that you could be depended on.” He grinned engagingly. “You won’t make a liar of me, Johnny?”
Dahlquist didn’t answer; Towers said sharply, “Come now – what do you think of it? Speak up.”
“Well, if you ask me, you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. While it’s true that Moon Base controls the Earth, Moon Base itself is a sitting duck for a ship. One bomb – blooie!”
Towers picked up a message form and handed it over; it read: I HAVE YOUR CLEAN LAUNDRY-ZACK. “That means every bomb in the Trygve Lie has been put out of commission. I have reports from every ship we need worry about.” He stood up. “Think it over and see me after lunch. Major Morgan needs your help right away to change control frequencies on the bombs.”
“The control frequencies?”
“Naturally. We don’t want the bombs jammed before they reach their targets.”
“What? You said the idea was to prevent war.”
Towers brushed it aside. “There won’t, be a war-just a psychological demonstration, an unimportant town or two. A little bloodletting to save an all-out war. Simple arithmetic.”