The Non-Statistical Man (15 page)

He lifted the notebook from beneath the finger bones and began reading. If anyone of the expedition had truly found the cause of tragedy, it would be here in these pages.

"I am alone,”
Harcourt had written. "
Davis and Galloway dead. I can’t make it any longer. 1 can’t get down to the engine room now. No one of this expedition will take the ship back to Earth, but someday someone will come and find a way to take the stones—and death—to Earth.”

Joe felt a swift coldness at the back of his neck. He glanced down at the heavy sack on the floor, and flipped die pages to an earlier entry.

"
I understand what it is now,
”
Harcourt wrote. “
They all think we are dying of some mysterious disease. Maxwell is trying to whip our biologists into a solution. As if they could find the antidote for a new illness that is fatal within hours!

“But we can’t blame Maxwell; we're all in a panic. What they won’t believe is that we’re dying of senility. Our own natural life-processes. I’ve tried to tell them, but they won’t believe me. I understand what is happening. I am an old man; I hav6 aged fifty years in the last twelve hours.

“It is the stones. I found it out by watching the men as they picked them up. I didn’t know at first, but it wouldn’t have done any good, anyway. Just being on the surface of the Moon is enough to be afflicted by them.

“The time-magnets, I call them. I cannot explain them, but I know what they do. They hold a time-field just as a block of steel will hold a magnetic field. When any life, or mechanical motion, comes within very close range of these concentrated time fields, the stones begin to discharge that field. It’s like a magnet discharging when thrust into a flame.

“They must have come out of space—and how fortunate that they did not strike Earth when they came! Through the ages they have partially discharged and made the Moon the ancient thing that it is. All of us have felt this incredible age here. The Moon can not grow any older! And the mass of this field remains undischarged. It has made us old men in a day, and we are dying of old age even as we try to move about our tasks.’’

There was more, but Joe put the notebook down. His face was sweaty, and he took off the helmet of the suit. There was no need to fear germs in the atmosphere now, he thought. He peeled off the outer shell of the spacesuit and sat in the inner lining, staring at the skull of his dead friend. Then he glanced at his image in the polished metal rim of the control panel. His cheeks
were
thinner and more hollow. There were leathery lines in his forehead, which hadn’t been there when he shaved that morning in his quarters aboard the station.

Old.

He had felt it out in space just looking down at the Moon. He had felt it crossing the dust plain to the base. He had felt it in these ancient corpses that littered the barracks and ships. Six months! These men had died ten thousand years ago.

The sweat kept rolling down the lines of his face. It was Harcourt’s last scrawled entry as he died that held Joe’s mind. Some day men would find a way to take the stones to Earth. Like slow cancer they would begin to discharge their eternal fields of time from wherever they were; only an ancient miracle had kept them from Earth in the first place as they crashed out of space.

Joe knew it would happen. No matter how careful they tried to be, men would find a way. They would shield the stones; they would experiment with them; they would take them to Earth. And death would creep over the planet.

He had to keep it from happening.

Harcourt must have had the same thought. That was why he had seized control of the space ship, which was evidently the only one ready for immediate flight. He had stood armed with the machine-gun and killed them—or held them off until they died in their own old age.

But there was something else.

Why had Harcourt lamented his failure to reach the engine room? What purpose could he have had there? And why had he brought the sack of stones aboard the ship himself?

Perhaps he hadn’t brought them, Joe thought. They might have been captured from some of the others who had taken them aboard. But Harcourt would not have bothered to bring them to the control-room.

There was something missing. A piece he didn’t see.

He thought of Mac, and knew what Mac would do. Mac was a geologist; he couldn’t let the stones alone. Even now he carried one in the pocket of his spacesuit. Mac would try to take them to Earth, Joe thought. He would scoff at Harcourt’s warning and surround himself with so-called precautions.

But the stones would get loose. They couldn’t be allowed to reach Earth
ever.

Joe glanced at the dial in the helmet. Fourteen minutes since they had reported to Ormsby; deadline for the next report was six minutes away. What could he do? What could anyone do, he thought in agony, to assure that the stones would never be taken to Earth?

There had been some plan in Harcourt’s mind; Joe was sure of it. He couldn’t get the missing piece to fit. The engine room. The sack of stones.

But Harcourt had died. The siege in the control room
had cost him too much time, and he couldn’t carry out whatever plan he had. Yet what plan could possibly exist for making sure the time-magnets would never menace earth?

Joe felt a desperate, choking sensation rise in his throat as he looked again upon the skeleton of Harcourt and heard the distant sound of Mac’s moving up through the ship. He guessed that, th,e geologist had tried to contact him by radio, which had been disconnected when he removed his own helmet. .

It didn’t matter. He and Mac had nothing to say to each other. Soon, they would have nothing to say to anyone, ever.

Motion.

Motion or life, Harcourt had said. These would discharge the time-magnets as a flame would destroy a steel magnet. Enough motion would draw out all the time field and disperse it—

Suddenly, Joe saw it; he knew what Harcourt’s desperate plan had been. He knew how it was possible to free the Earth from the menace that had circled it through the eons in its own satellite.

Mac’s steps were loud on the circular stairway now. Joe glanced at the time. Three minutes. There was no time to argue with Mac, to explain to him, to try to convince him. And in the end, he would probably never be convinced.

Joe picked up the sub-machine gun that Harcourt had used. He sat with it in his lap waiting as Mac’s footsteps sounded in the ship. The geologist reached the top of the stairway and lumbered impatiently toward the control room. Joe met
him
as he came in from the corridor.

The machine-gun made a ragged thunder within the metal room. And then it seemed infinitely quiet as Mac crumpled to the floor; blood streaming through his shattered helmet.

Wearily, Joe put the gun down and gathered the sack of stones that had lain at Harcourt’s feet. Stepping over Mack’s body, he dragged the sack down the corridor and began the descent of the spiral stairway. Ormsby would even now be giving orders for another rocket-jumper to leave the station. But it would take a full twelve minutes
lor
the ship to make a landing. He should be able to make it.

At last Joe reached his objective and permitted himself a moment’s rest. He stood on the engineers’ catwalk overlooking the massive reactor which provided power for the ship.

Motion, he thought again. There was motion in its ultimate state. Or would be—with the sudden influx of accelerated time-field. Not merely a fraction of a percent of the fissionable material would contribute to the blast; probably close to one hundred percent of the mass would explode at once. In that terrific blast, every time-magnet on the Moon should discharge its field. He wondered just what would happen to the Moon itself. If it contained a percentage of native radioactive materials—

Suddenly Joe felt himself trembling. A weakness was creeping through his limbs. He glanced at his own hands, shocked by what he saw. The skin was withered, and dry, and half-transparent—like the flesh of an old, old man.

He understood. The terrific field from the bag of stones was discharging through him. He laughed a little hysterically as he realized he was dying now of old age. He had never supposed that a spaceman would live so long!

And then he hurled the bag of time-magnets with all his feeble, waning strength. He watched it tumble straight down upon the ship’s reactor.

On earth the explosion was observed. It awoke the sleeping inhabitants of a hemisphere and sent hysterical masses screaming to their cathedrals.

The observatories were shaken with the fury of the inquiries, but they had no answer nor any explanation for die disaster which shattered the Moon and destroyed the space station circling near it.

And shortly they knew that they would never have an explanation; for that was the night when the Moon turned to blood and hung in the sky, a crimson glowing reminder now that man would never set foot upon the half-molten surface of his satellite.

Jimmy Correll hated the smell of schools. The papery smell of worn books, the smell of chalk dust and teachers’ perfumes and the oily sweeping compound Mr. Barton brushed over the wooden floors each night. The choking smell of too many sweaty jeans crowded together on these hot, spring days
.

This odor of learning flowed through the halls of Westwood High and pooled in the big auditorium wing that would soon be filling for the Friday Assembly. Mr. Barton was already opening the high windows against it. Jimmy put his head through the partly open doorway and watched the custodian’s angular form moving along the wall.

Mr. Barton knew the scores of all the games Westwood had played since he came there in ’31. He punched the boys on the biceps, and roared loudly when he won over them in arguments as to who beat whom in which year. Except that he never punched Jimmy’s arm. He spoke softly and tousled Jimmy’s hair. Sometimes Jimmy thought Mr. Barton was the only friend he had—besides Brick Malloy, of course.

He backed from the door and closed it quietly. He wished he could call out and tell Mr. Barton what he was doing, but no one must see him now.

A bell shrilled. The five-minute, between-class period was over. Jimmy raced to the end of the hall and slipped out to the bike rack. He unlocked his own bicycle quickly and sped away from the school yard.

He didn’t stop his frantic pumping until he reached the bridge across Willow Creek, nearly two miles from Westwood High. His breath coming in deep gasps, he got off and walked his bike down the steep slope to a hiding place under the bridge. Then he moved along the bank on which the spring grass was already high, half hiding the old trails. At last he stopped, a half mile from the bridge, under the great, shadowy arms of a willow tree. The grass was shorter here in the shade. Jimmy dropped face down to its green softness.

For a long time he didn’t move. He was safe. He knew it couldn’t last, but that didn’t matter. He was safe for today—Jimmy Correll Day at Westwood High. It would be
all over before they found him.

Inside, he felt like crying, but it wouldn’t come. Jimmy Correll Day! They called it his day and gave him an assembly to honor him. And the whole school despised
him
—all but Mr. Barton and Brick Malloy.

In panic, he thought of sitting up there on the stage while Mr. Mooremeister, the Principal, said fine, flowery things he didn’t mean. He thought, too, of what his disappearance would do to his mother and father, who were going to sit on the stage with him. But he couldn’t help it; they expected too much.

He moved over to the edge of the creek and watched the deep, clear water slide past the bank. This was the spot where Brick had taught him how to fish. Maybe he shouldn’t have come here. If they should ask Brick— But they wouldn’t get around to that until it was much too late. A couple of hours was all he needed.

He took off his shoes and socks and let his feet hang in the cool water. He wished he could make them understand that this was where he belonged, with the Earth and the water and the wild growth along the banks of the stream.

Maybe if they let him alone he could have found a place for himself at school, too, but they wouldn’t let him alone. He was in the first grade a week when they promoted him to third. He stayed there a month. After that, he wasn’t considered as belonging to any particular grade. He just moved from room to room, soaking up everything the books and teachers had to show him.

Now—next Fall—they wanted him to go to the University.

He had won a four-year scholarship from the Martin-dale Electric Company in their annual Junior Scientist Contest. He had submitted his astronomy project and written an essay on Space, the Next Frontier. The judges said it was the best
thin
g they had seen since the contest began.

He hadn’t dreamed it might mean that they wouldn’t even let
him
finish high school. But Mr. Dunlap, of the Martindale Company, wanted him in the University next Fall. Dr. Webber, President of the University, wanted him also. Dr. Webber had kept an eye on
him
since the first reports of his genius started coming out of Lincoln grade school.

And Mr. Mooremeister wanted it. Mr. Mooremeister,
most of all.
He’d be tickled to death to be rid of me,
Jimmy thought.

The memory of his first meeting with the Principal was like a hard lump inside Jimmy. It was on the day Mr. Gibbons, Principal of Lincoln, brought Jimmy to Westwood. He was left in the little anteroom while the two men talked. The partition was thick, but that made no difference. Jimmy didn’t need to hear their words to know everything that was in their minds.