The SF Hall of Fame Volume Two B (20 page)

"A radio, for example, does not broadcast voices. It
takes the air vibrations from a voice striking its microphone diaphragm,
converts these into electronic motion, and transmits the result to a receiver.

Each sound vibration has its analogous burst of electrons,
and these bursts—these bits of information—are what the receiver is given to
work with. The receiver takes them, and converts them into the motion of a
speaker cone. The cone vibrates against the air, and produces sounds, which the
listening human ear interprets as human speech. And so a radio is a speech
transmitter—or a sound transmitter, rather. But the work is done by the
movements of subatomic particles, which neither you nor I can see at work, or
trace in their motions.

"A television transmitter does much the same with the
gradations of light and shadow that impinge on the lenses of its cameras. The
TV receiver takes its information and systematically excites the phosphors of
the picture tube. We see a moving picture, and so in a sense a television
transmitter is a picture transmitter. But, again, what is actually being
transmitted is information.

"There is no physical movement of a voice or an image
through an electronic device. In the same way, there is no movement of a man
through the apparatus down here.

"The scanners, vectoring on each particle of the atoms
that make up the man, detect the motion and arrangement of those particles.
This is expressed as data, in the form of electron bursts, which the machine
then transmits to a receiver. The receiver takes similar particles from a local
supply, and manipulates them into identical arrangements and motions. The
process proceeds at the speed of light, over a near-infinite bandwidth. No
activity within the human body takes place at that speed. Therefore, the
original man is torn down by the scanner and an identical man is built up in
the receiver so rapidly that no sensation of dissolution can possibly occur. A
man entering the transmitter can have a half-completed thought—that is, a
half-completed movement of electrons along a chain of brain cells —and the man
in the receiver will complete it. He will complete it without a jar, even
though there might have been a transmission lag of moments, or days, or even
years, if we transmit from a tape, because for him the process will have been
instantaneous. He will be the original man in all respects, with his memories,
his personality, his half-exhaled breath of air—except for one thing; not one
particle of his body will be the same as the particles in the body that was
scanned. That body is gone—torn down and converted into the energy that drives
the transmitter. It has to be that way. We can correct perfectly for the impact
of the scanning beams themselves on the particles of the original body, but the
impact must exist—there has to be resistance for the scanners to feel."

Barker leaned back. "And that's how I die? But it's not
real death, as long as I don't feel it and can step out of the receiver. What
do I care where my particles come from?"

"That's not how you die. You're quite right—if a man
can step out of the receiver and feel himself to be the same man who went into
the transmitter, you could say that for all practical purposes no one has died.

"No, that's not how you die. What I've described to you
is the experimental system Continental Electronics set up last year, and which
was scheduled to begin experimental line-of-sight wireless transmissions to a
receiver in the Sierras, some time right about now. Everything was going
smoothly, for an experimental project, and we were even beginning to think of
setting up a corollary staff to begin theoretical research into exactly what
electrons were being manipulated, and how, to reproduce what portion of the
scanned object. It was my hope that sometime within my lifetime wc would be
able to manipulate individual electrons without the use of billion-dollar
equipment covering several city blocks.

"All that is temporarily gone by the board. We're on a
crash footing, here, and the thing we're after is practical results, nothing
else. And that happened because of this."

He reached into a desk drawer, took out a map, unfolded it,
and laid it down on the desk, facing Barker. "This is a map of
approximately fifty square miles of the surface on the other side of the
Moon."

Barker whistled softly between his teeth. He leaned forward.
"Rough country," he said, looking at the painstakingly drawn hachure
marks. "How'd you get this?"

"Topographical survey." Hawks touched a
black-lined square on the map. "That's a Navy base. And this"—he
touched an irregularly-shaped black area near the square—"is where you're
going."

Barker frowned at it. "This what you showed me that
ground photo of?"

"But that came a good deal later. Very early this year,
the Air Force obtained one radioed photograph from a rocket it attempted to put
into a Lunar orbit. The attempt failed, and the rocket crashed, somewhere
beyond the edge of the visible disk. But that one photograph showed this."

He took a glossy enlargement out of its folder and passed it
to Barker. "You can see how bad its quality is: almost hopelessly washed
out and striated by errors in transmission from the rocket's radiophoto
transmitter. But this area, of which a part is visible in this corner, is
clearly not a natural formation."

Barker raised his eyebrows. "Whose?"

"No one's. No one's on Earth. We know that, and nothing
more about its origin." He looked across the desk. "I'm deadly
serious, Barker. So was the government. With rocketry in its present state,
there was no apparent hope of investigating that formation before the Russians
did. There was therefore every expectation that the Russians would be able to
make a first-class scientific discovery— almost certainly one that would tip
the balance decisively; possibly one which might involve the entire world in
traffic with extraterrestrial beings. It was vitally necessary that we somehow
get there first; find out what that thing was, who put it there, and why."

"So you went on a crash basis."

"Precisely. After repeated attempts, the Army managed
to drop a relay tower on the edge of the visible disk, and a rudimentary
receiver, fairly near the unknown formation. A man was sent through to set up
another receiver which would accommodate construction and exploration
equipment; the Moon project began."

"And what did it find out?"

"About the formation? It found out it kills
people."

"In unbelievable ways, Doctor? Over and over?"

"Characteristically and persistenyly, in ways beyond
the comprehension of human senses. I'm the one who kills them over and
over."

Barker and Hawks looked at each other. Finally, Barker
smiled. Hawks frowned, and said:

"The Lunar formation has been measured, it is roughly a
hundred meters in diameter and twenty meters high, with irregularities and
amorphous features we cannot accurately describe. We know almost nothing of its
nature. But the first man to investigate it—the man who first went up through
the small receiver—went into it against orders while waiting for the Navy crew
to come up. He wasn't found until several weeks ago. His was the second
photograph I showed you. His body was inside the thing, and looked to the
autopsy surgeons as though he had fallen from a height of several thousand
meters under terrestrial gravity."

"Could that have happened?"

"No."

"I see."

"I can't see, Barker, and neither can anyone else. We
don't even know what to call that place. The eye won't follow it, and
photographs convey only the most fragile impression. There is reason to suspect
it exists in more than three spatial dimensions. Nobody knows what it is, why
it's located there, what created it. We don't know whether it's animal,
vegetable, or mineral. We don't know whether it's somehow natural, or
artificial. We know, from the geology of several meteorite craters that have
heaped rubble against its sides, that it's been there for, at the very least,
half a million years.

"We need to determine, with no margin for error or
omission, exactly what the formation can do to men. We need to have a complete
guide to its limits and capabilities. When we have that, we can, at last risk
entering it with technicians trained to study and disassemble it. It will be
the technical teams which will actually learn from it as much as human beings
can, and convey this host of information into the general body of human
knowledge. But this is only what technicians always do. First we must have our
chart-maker.

"It's my direct responsibility that you are now that
man; it's my direct responsibility that the formation will, I hope, kill you
again and again."

"Well, that's fair warning even if it makes no sense. I
can't say you didn't give it to me."

"It wasn't a warning," Hawks said. "It was a
promise."

Barker shrugged. "Call it whatever you want to."

"I don't often choose my words on that basis,"
Hawks said. He picked up another folder and thrust it into Barker's hands.

"Look those over. There is only one entrance into the
thing. Somehow, our first technician found it, probably by fumbling around the
periphery until he stepped through it. It is not an opening in any describable
sense; it is a place where the nature of this formation permits entrance by a
human being, either by design or accident. It cannot be described in more
precise terms, and it cannot be encompassed by the eye or, we suspect, the
human brain. Three men died to make the chart which now permits other men, who
follow the chart by dead reckoning like navigators in an impenetrable fog, to
enter the formation. We know the following things about its interior:

"A man inside it can be seen, very dimly, if we know
where to look. He cannot see out as far as we know—no one knows what he sees;
no one has ever come back out of it. Non-living matter, such as a photograph or
a corpse, can be passed out from inside. But the act of doing so is invariably
fatal to the man doing it. That photo of the first volunteer's body cost
another man's life.

"Any attempt to retrace one's steps within the
formation is fatal. The formation also does not permit electrical signals from
its interior. You will not be able to maintain communication, either by
broadcast or along a cable, with the observers in the outpost. You will be able
to make very limited hand signals, and written notes on a tablet tied to a
cord, which the observer team will attempt to draw back after the formation has
killed you.

"We have a chart of safe postures and motions which
have been established in this manner, as well as of fatal ones. It is, for
example, fatal to kneel on one knee while facing Lunar north. It is fatal to
raise the left hand above shoulder height while in any position whatsoever. It
is fatal past a certain point to wear armor whose air-hoses loop over the
shoulders. It is fatal past another point to wear armor whose air tanks feed
directly into the suit without the use of hoses at all. It is crippling to wear
armor whose dimensions vary greatly from the ones we are using now. It is fatal
to use the arm motions required to write the English word 'yes,' either with
the left or right hand.

"We don't know why. We only know what a man can and
cannot do while within the formation. Thus far, we have charted a safe path and
safe motions to a distance of some twelve meters. The survival time for a man
within the formation is now three minutes, fifty-two seconds. And that is
almost all we know. We've been going at this thing for months—and it's too
slow. It's too wasteful. Our equipment is crude. Our experience is nil. And our
time is running out. The recent Russian circumlunar rocket couldn't possibly
have shown them anything. The base is camouflaged. In any case, their
photographs cover an area of over seven million square miles. The entire Navy
installation, and the formation, are contained within an area of about one
square mile. But their next show may be in a lower orbit.

Or they may put an expedition up there-they already have a
telemetering robot installation somewhere on the visible disk. There's no
telling what might happen if they found out we were there, and what we're
doing. It's got to be finished—and we have to hope we will find something that
will give us a decisive edge in a very short period of time.

"And so I'm hoping you'll work out better than the
other men we've sent into the formation."

Barker grinned coldly. "You mean, I might last a few
seconds longer than the average man? And that would be a significant
gain?"

"No, Barker," Hawks said tiredly. "No—we developed
a system. There is no reason why we cannot transmit your signal into two
receivers, one on the Moon and one here in the laboratory. That way, we have
two Barkers; call them Barker M and Barker L, for convenience. Barker M goes
into the formation, does what he can, and dies. Barker L remains in the
laboratory, and lives, and furnishes us with two new Barkers the next
day."

Barker whistled softly, again. "Foolproof."

"Foolproof, and too slow. We gain very little by
it—Barker M might prove a little tougher than the average volunteer. I doubt
it. They've been very good men. But in any case, all we'd get from him would be
the same driblets of information we've gotten before. That's not enough. No, we
modified that system some time ago.

"You see, we found out something. We found that the M
and L volunteers showed signs of confusion when they emerged from their
respective receivers. For a short time—a moment—the L volunteer behaved as
though he were on the Moon, and vice versa."

Barker's eyes widened. "You're kidding—"

"No. Apparently, since so many of the environmental
conditions were the same—the two men were both in their units, remember— and
since they had identical brains with identical thought chains— we had stumbled
on a limited, almost useless form of"—Hawks' mouth twitched
distastefully—"telepathy.