They Also Serve

Excerpt

The launch carrying the mail, supplies and replacements eased slowly in toward the base, keeping the bulk of the Moon between itself and Earth. Captain Ebor, seated at the controls, guided the ship to the rocky uneven ground with the easy carelessness of long practice, then cut the drive, got to his walking tentacles, and stretched. Donning his spacesuit, he left the ship to go over to the dome and meet Darquelnoy, the base commander.

An open ground-car was waiting for him beside the ship. The driver, encased in his spacesuit, crossed tentacles in a sloppy salute, and Ebor returned the gesture quite as sloppily. Here on the periphery, cast formalities were all but dispensed with.

Ebor stood for a moment and watched the unloading. The cargo crew, used to working in spacesuits, had one truck already half full. The replacements, unused to spacesuits and, in addition, awed and a bit startled by the bleakness of this satellite, were moving awkwardly down the ramp.

Satisfied that the unloading was proceeding smoothly, Ebor climbed aboard the ground-car, awkward in his suit, and settled back heavily in the seat to try to get used to gravity again. The gravity of this Moon was slight, of course—barely one-sixth the gravity of the Home World or most of the colonies—but it still took getting used to, after a long trip in free-fall.

The driver sat at the controls, and the car jerked into motion. Ebor, looking up, noticed for the first time that the dome wasn’t there any more. The main dome, housing the staff and equipment of the base, just wasn’t there.

And the driver, he now saw, was aiming the car toward the nearby crater wall. Extending two of his eyes till they almost touched the face-plate of his helmet, he could see activity at the base of the crater wall, and what looked like an air-lock entrance. He wondered what had caused the change, which had obviously been done at top speed. The last time he’d been here, not very long ago, the dome had still been intact, and there had been no hint of any impending move underground.

The driver steered the car into the open air lock, and they waited until the first cargo truck had lumbered in after them. Then the outer door closed, the pumps were turned on, and in a minute the red light flashed over the inner door. Ebor removed the spacesuit gratefully, left it in the car, and walked clumsily through the inner door into the new base.

A good job had been done on it, for all the speed. Rooms and corridors has been melted out of the rock, the floors had been carpeted, the walls painted, and the ceiling lined with light panels. All of the furnishings had been transferred here from the original dome, and the result looked, on the whole, quite livable. As livable as the dome had been, at least.

But the base commander, Darquelnoy, waiting for his old friend Ebor near the inner door of the lock, looked anything but happy with the arrangement. At Ebor’s entrance he raised a limp tentacle in weary greeting and said, “Come in, my friend, come in. Tell me the new jokes from home. I could use some cheering up.”

“None worth telling,” said Ebor. He looked around. “What’s happened here?” he asked. “Why’ve you gone underground? Why do you need cheering up?”

Darquelnoy clicked his eyes in despair. “Those things!” he cried. “Those annoying little creatures on that blasted planet up there!”

Ebor repressed an amused ripple. He knew Darquelnoy well enough to know that the commander invariably overstated things. “What’ve they been up to, Dar?” he asked. “Come on, you can tell me over a hot cup of restno.”

“I’ve been practically living on the stuff for the last two dren,” said Darquelnoy hopelessly. “Well, I suppose another cup won’t kill me. Come on to my quarters.”

“I’ve worked up a fine thirst on the trip,” Ebor told him.

The two walked down the long corridor together and Ebor said, “Well? What happened?”

“They came here,” Darquelnoy told him simply. At Ebor’s shocked look, he rippled in wan amusement and said, “Oh, it wasn’t as bad as it might have been, I suppose. It was just that we had to rush around so frantically, unloading and dismantling the dome, getting this place ready—”

“What do you mean, they came here?” demanded Ebor.

“They are absolutely the worst creatures for secrecy in the entire galaxy!” exclaimed Darquelnoy in irritation. “Absolutely the worst.”

“Then you’ve picked up at least one of their habits,” Ebor told him. “Now stop talking in circles and tell me what happened.”

“They built a spaceship, is the long and the short of it,” Darquelnoy answered.

Ebor stopped in astonishment. “No!”

“Don’t tell me no!” cried Darquelnoy. “I saw it!” He was obviously at his wit’s end.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Ebor.

“I know,” said Darquelnoy. He led the way into his quarters, motioned Ebor to a perch, and rang for his orderly. “It was just a little remote-controlled apparatus, of course,” he said. “The fledgling attempt, you know. But it circled this Moon here, busily taking pictures, and went right back to the planet again, giving us all a terrible fright. There hadn’t been the slightest indication they were planning anything that spectacular.”

“None?” asked Ebor. “Not a hint?”

“Oh, they’ve been boasting about doing some such thing for ages,” Darquelnoy told him. “But there was never any indication that they were finally serious about it. They have all sorts of military secrecy, of course, and so you never know a thing is going to happen until it does.”

“Did they get a picture of the dome?”

“Thankfully, no. And before they had a chance to try again, I whipped everything underground.”

“It must have been hectic,” Ebor said sympathetically....