He shook away the exhaustion and dutifully returned to his work, examining a small area on the far side of the moon that was volcanic in origin. Only two inches of the photo roll remained before it mysteriously ended. He had not been informed by his superiors of the reason for the sudden cutoff, but assumed it was a malfunction of the scanning gear.
The surface was pockmarked and wrinkled, like pimpled skin under a strong magnifying glass, and appeared more beechnut brown than gray in color. The steady bombardment of meteorites through the ages had left crater gouged on crater, scar crossing scar.
Rykov almost missed it. His eyes detected an unnatural oddity, but his tired mind nearly ignored the signal. Wearily he backed the image and magnified a grid on the edge of a steep ridge soaring from the floor of a small crater. Three tiny objects came into crisp focus.
What he saw was unbelievable. Rykov pulled back from the stereoscope and took a deep breath, clearing the creeping fog from his brain. Then he looked again.
They were still there, but one object was a rock. The other two were human figures.
Rykov was transfixed by what he saw. Then the shock set in and his hands began to tremble and his stomach felt as though it had been twisted in a knot. Shaken, he climbed off the pad, walked over to a desk, and opened a small booklet containing private phone numbers of the Soviet Military Space Command. He misdialed twice before he connected with the correct number.
A voice slurred from vodka answered. "What is it?"
"General Maxim Yasenin?"
"Yes, who's this?"
"We've never met. My name is Anastas Rykov. I'm a geophysicist on the Cosmos Lunar Project."
The commander of Soviet military space missions made no attempt to hide his irritation over Rykov's intrusion on his privacy. "Why in hell are you calling me this time of night?"
Rykov fully realized he was overstepping his bounds, but he didn't hesitate. "While analyzing pictures taken by Selenos 4, I've stumbled on something that defies belief. I thought you should be first to be informed."
"Are you drunk, Rykov?"
"No, General. Tired but Siberian sober."
"Unless you are a complete fool, you must know you are in deep trouble for going over the heads of your superiors."
"This is too important to share with anyone beneath your level of authority."
"Sleep on it and you won't be so brash in the morning," said Yasenin. "I'll do you a favor and forget the whole matter. Goodnight."
"Wait!" Rykov demanded, throwing caution aside. "If you dismiss my call, I will have no choice but to turn my discovery over to Vladimir Polevoi."
Rykov's statement was greeted by an icy silence. Finally Yasenin said, "What makes you think the chief of state security would listen to a crazy man?"
"When he checked my dossier, he would find I am a respected party member and a scientist who is far from lunacy."
"Oh?" Yasenin asked, his irritation turning to curiosity. He decided to pin Rykov down. "All right. I'll hear you out. What's so vital to the interest of Mother Russia that it can't go through prescribed channels?"
Rykov spoke very calmly. "I have proof that someone is on the moon."
Forty-five minutes later, General Yasenin strode into the photo analysis laboratory of the Geophysical Space Center. Big, beefy, and red of face, he wore a rumpled uniform that was ablaze with decorations. The hair was smoke-gray, the eyes steady and hard. He walked quietly, his head thrust out as if stalking a prey.
"You Rykov?" he asked without prelude.
"Yes," Rykov said simply but firmly.
They stared at each other a moment, neither making any attempt at shaking hands. Finally, Rykov cleared his throat and motioned toward the stereoscope.
"This way, General," he said. "Please lie prone on the leather cushion and look through the eyepiece."
As Yasenin positioned himself over the photo montage he asked, "What am I searching for?"
"Focus on the small area I've circled," replied Rykov.
The general adjusted the lenses to his vision and peered downward, his face impassive. After a full minute, he looked up strangely, then bent over the stereoscope again. At last he slowly rose and stared at Rykov, eyes stark in open astonishment.
"This is not a photographic trick?" he asked dumbly.
"No, General. What you see is real. Two human forms, wearing encapsulated suits, are aiming some sort of device at Selenos 4."
Yasenin's mind could not accept what his eyes saw to be true. "It's not impossible. Where do they come from?"
Rykov shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. If they're not United States astronauts, they can only be aliens."
"I do not believe in supernatural fairy tales."
"But how could the Americans launch men to the moon without the event leaking to the world news media or our intelligence people?"
"Suppose they left men behind and stockpiled material during the Apollo program. Such an effort might be possible."
"Their last known lunar landing was by Apollo 17 in 1972," Rykov recalled. "No human could survive the harsh lunar conditions for seventeen years without being resupplied."
"I can think of no one else," Yasenin insisted.
He returned to the stereoscope and intently studied the human forms standing in the crater. The sun's glare was coming from the right, throwing their shadows to the left. Their suits were white, and he could make out the dark green viewports on the helmets. They were of a design unfamiliar to him. Yasenin could clearly distinguish footprints leading into a pitch-black shadow cast by the crater's rim.
"I know what you're looking for, General," said Rykov, "but I've already examined the landscape on the floor of the crater and cannot find any sign of their spacecraft."
"Perhaps they climbed down from the top?"
"That's a sheer drop of over a thousand feet."
"I'm at a loss to explain any of this," Yasenin admitted quietly.
"Please look closely at the device they're both holding and pointing at Selenos 4. It seems to be a large camera with an extremely long telephoto lens."
"No," said Yasenin. "You're treading in my territory now. Not a camera but a weapon."
"A laser?"
"Nothing so advanced. Strikes me as a hand-held surface-to-air missile system of American manufacture. A Lariat type 40, I should say. Homes in with a guidance beam, ten-mile range on earth, probably much more in the moon's rarefied atmosphere. Became operational with NATO forces about six years ago. So much for your alien theory."
Rykov was awed. "Every ounce of weight is precious in space flight. Why carry something so heavy and useless as a rocket launcher?"
"The men in the crater found a purpose. They used it against Selenos 4."
Rykov thought a moment. "That would explain why the scanners stopped operating a minute later. They were damaged
"By a hit from a rocket," Yasenin finished.
"We were fortunate the scanners finally relayed the digitized data before it crashed."
"A pity the crew were not so lucky."
Rykov stared at the general, not sure he'd heard right. "Selenos 4 was unmanned."
Yasenin pulled a slim gold case from his coat, selected a cigarette, and lit it with a lighter embedded in the top. Then he slid the case back into a breast pocket.
"Yes, of course, Selenos 4 was unmanned."