Men had known for a long time that the moon controlled the tides—and possibly the fluids in men’s brains?—and it was interesting now to note that Luna II appeared to compound the offence. It seemed reasonable to suppose that we had finally discovered the reason for Man’s homicidal tendencies, his immemorial hostility to Man.
Two thousand fifteen and a joint mission—American, Russian, British—went to take a look; they circled Luna II at a “safe” distance for twelve hours, took pictures, made recordings, measured radiation levels. When they came back, within a month of their return, one of the two Americans (the most outspoken one) went mad, one of the two Russians (the introverted one) set fire to himself, and the two British members remained phlegmatic, naturally.
One year later in August 2016, an Anglo-French expedition set out to double-check the findings of the first mission: i.e., to see if there were indeed “peculiar radiations” being emitted by Luna II. It was a four-man team; they were all volunteers and wore lead baffles of various thicknesses in their helmets. And afterwards, the ones with the least lead were discovered to be more prone to mental fluctuations. But…the “radiations,” or whatever, couldn’t be measured by any of Man’s instruments. What was required was a special sort of volunteer, someone actually to land on Luna II and dig around a little, and do some work right there on top of—whatever it was.
Where to land wasn’t a problem: with a rotation period of one minute, Luna II’s equatorial tips were moving about as fast as a man could run, but at its “poles” the planetoid was turning in a very gentle circle. And that’s where Benjamin “Smiler” Williams set down. He had wanted to do the job and was the obvious choice. He was a Brit riding an American rocket paid for by the French and Russians. (Everybody had wanted to be in on it.) And of course he was a hero. And he was dying of cancer.
Smiler drilled holes in Luna II, set off small explosions in the holes, collected dust and debris and exhaust gasses from the explosions, slid his baffles aside and exposed his brain to whatever, walked around quite a bit and sat down and thought things, and sometimes just sat. And all in all he was there long enough to see the Earth turn one complete circle on her axis—following which he went home. First to Moonbase, finally to Earth. Went home to die—after they’d checked him out, of course.
But that was six years ago and he still hadn’t died (though God knows we’d tried the best we could to kill him) and now I was on my way to pay him a visit. On my way through him, traveling into him, journeying to his very heart. The heart and mind—the living, thinking organism, the control centre, as it were—deep within the body of what the world now called Big “C.” July 2024, and Smiler Williams had asked for a visitor. I was it, and as I drove in I went over everything that had led up to this moment. It was as good a way as any to keep from looking at the “landscape” outside the car. This was Florida and it was the middle of the month, but I wasn’t using the air-conditioning and in fact I’d even turned up the heater a little—because it was cool out there. As cool as driving down a country lane in Devon, with the trees arching their green canopy overhead. Except it wasn’t Devon and they weren’t green. And in fact they weren’t even trees….
Those were thoughts I should try to avoid, however, just as I avoided looking at anything except the road unwinding under the wheels of my car; and so I went back again to 2016, when Ben Williams came back from space.
The specialists in London checked Smiler out—his brain, mostly, for they weren’t really interested in his cancer. That was right through him, (with the possible exception of his gray matter), and there was no hope. Try to cut or laser that out of him and there’d be precious little of the man himself left! But after ten days of tests they’d found nothing, and Smiler was getting restless.
“Peter,” he said to me, “I’m short on time and these monkeys are wasting what little I’ve got left! Can’t you get me out of here? There are places I want to go, friends I want to say goodbye to.” But if I make that sound sad or melodramatic, forget it. Smiler wasn’t like that. He’d really earned his nickname, that good old boy, because right through everything he’d kept on smiling like it was painted on his face. Maybe it was his way to keep from crying. Twenty-seven years old just a month ago, and he’d never make twenty-eight. So we’d all reckoned.
Myself, I’d never made it through training, but Smiler had and we’d kept in touch. But just because I couldn’t go into space didn’t mean I couldn’t help others to do it, I’d worked at NASA, and on the European Space Program (ESP), even for a while for the Soviets at Baikonur, when détente had been peaking a periodic up-surge back in 2009 and 2010. So I knew my stuff. And I knew the men who were doing it, landing on Mars and what have you, and the heroes like Smiler Williams. So while Smiler was moderately cool toward the others on the space medicine team—the Frogs, Sovs and even the other Americans—to me he was the same as always. We’d been friends and Smiler had never let down a friend in his life.
And when he’d asked for my help in getting him out of that place, I’d had to go along with him. “Sure, why not?” I’d told him. “Maybe I can speed it up. Have you seen the new Space Center at the Lake? There are a lot of people you used to know there. NASA people. They’d love to see you again, Smiler.”
What I didn’t say was that the Space Center at Lake Okeechobee also housed the finest space medicine team in the world, and that they were longing to get their hands on him. But he was dying and a Brit, and so the British had first claim, so to speak. No one was going to argue the pros and cons about a man on his last legs. And if that makes me sound bad—like maybe I’d gone over to London to snatch him for the home team—I’d better add that there was something else I hadn’t mentioned to him: the Center Research Foundation at Lakeport, right next door. I wanted to wheel him in there so they could take a look at him. Oh, he was a no-hoper, like I’ve said, but….
And maybe he hadn’t quite given up hope himself, either, because when they were finally through with him a few days later he’d agreed to come back here with me. “What the hell,” he’d shrugged. “They have their rocks, dust, gasses, don’t they? Also, they have lots of time. Me, I have to use mine pretty sparingly.” It was starting to get to him.
In the States Smiler got a hero’s welcome, met everybody who was anybody from the President down. But that was time-consuming stuff, so after a few days we moved on down to Florida. First things first: I told him about the Foundation at Lakeport. “So what’s new?” he laughed. “Why’d you think I came with you, Yank?”
They checked him over, smiled and joked with him (which was the only way to play it with Smiler) but right up front shook their heads and told him no, there was nothing they could do. And time was narrowing down.
But it was running out for me, too; and that’s where I had to switch my memories off and come back to the present a while, for I’d reached the first checkpoint. I was driving up from Immokalee, Big “C” Control (“control,” that’s a laugh!) Point Seven, to see Smiler at Lakeport. The barrier was at the La Belle-Clewiston crossroads, and Smiler came up on the air just as I saw it up ahead and started to slow her down a little.
“You’re two minutes early, Peter,” his voice crackled out of the radio at me. “Try to get it right from here on in, OK? Big “C” said ten-thirty a.m. at the La Belle-Clewiston crossroads, and he didn’t mean ten-twenty-eight. You don’t gain anything by being early: he’ll only hold you up down there two minutes longer to put you back on schedule. Do you read me, old friend?”