Stanislaw Lem - Peace on Earth

There was no reason to wait any longer. I examined carefully one more time the gray plateau I’d chosen for the landing, roughly estimating its distance from the northern edge of Flamsteed, then put the ship on automatic and pushed button number one. The leap of all my senses, though expected and indeed experienced so many times before, was violent. I was no longer sitting in a deep chair in front of the blinking lights of the computers and holding my binoculars, but lying on my back in a bunk as cramped as a coffin and open on only one side. I worked my way out, looked down and saw dull-gray armor, a trunk, thighs, and shins of steel, the retrojets strapped to them like holsters. I straightened slowly, feeling my magnetic shoes cling to the metal floor. Around me, in stacked bunks like the one in which I had been lying, lay the other remotes, all motionless. I could hear my own breathing but did not feel my chest moving. With difficulty I pulled first my left, then my right foot from the floor of the bay and walked to the handrail at the hatch, stood with my arms in so they wouldn’t hit an edge when I was pushed down by the ejector and went hurtling, and waited for the countdown. After a few seconds I heard the lifeless voice of the timer: “Twenty … nineteen ...” I counted with it, calm now because there was no turning back. But I couldn’t help tensing a little when we reached “zero” and something soft but powerful shoved me into the open well so that I went flying like a stone. Lifting my head, I was able to see for a moment the dark shape of the ship against the darker background of the sky with its myriad dots of dimly glowing stars. As the ship disappeared in the black horizon, I felt a strong push at my feet and was wrapped in pale flame. With the retros firing, I fell much slower, but the moon still increased in size, as if trying to pull me in and devour me. Feeling the heat of the flame in uneven waves through my thick steel, I kept my arms in and, craning my neck, watched the fields of rubble, now gray-green, and the sandy slopes of Flamsteed grow before my eyes. When no more than three hundred feet separated me from the crater, I reached for the control stick at my belt and applied thrust carefully to brake more and shift direction, avoiding a great jagged rock. I aimed in order to land in sand, with both feet, but something flashed above me. I saw it out of the corner of my eye, looked up, and was dumbfounded.

White against the black sky and no more than thirty feet above me, a man in a heavy spacesuit descended, wrapped from feet to waist in the pale flame of retrojets and with his hand on the control stick at his belt. He fell, slowing, his body straight, until he was even with me, and hit the ground at the exact moment I felt it under my own feet. We stood five or six steps apart, like two statues, as though he too was astounded not to be alone. He was exactly my height. Gray smoke from the nozzles by his knees curled around his large moon boots. I sensed he was staring at me, though I couldn’t see his face behind the shaded glass of his white helmet. My head was in a whirl. At first I thought this must be remote Number 2 which had been pushed from the ship after me by mistake, a malfunction, but then I saw the large black #1 on its chest. But that was my number, and I was pretty sure there were no other Number 1s on board. I stepped forward to see his face through the glass, and at the same time he stepped toward me. When we were quite close, I froze and my hair stood on end because I could see through the glass now and there was no one inside. In the helmet, two small black bars pointing at me, nothing more. I shrank back and lost my balance and almost fell, forgetting that one has to move slowly in low gravity, and he did exactly the same. I began to understand. I held my control stick in my right hand; he held his in his left. When I raised my hand slowly, so did he, and when I moved my leg, so did he, therefore it was clear (although nothing really was clear) that this was my mirror image. To make sure, I forced myself to approach him, and he approached me, until our suits practically met. Slowly, as if reaching to touch a hot iron, I put my hand on his chest and he did likewise to me, I with my right and he with his left. My large five-fingered glove went through him, disappearing, and his hand disappeared in me up to the wrist. I had no doubt now that I was alone and standing in front of a reflection, though there was no trace of a mirror to be seen. We stood there, and I began to look not at him but at his surroundings and noticed, behind him and to the side, a jagged rock jutting from the gray sand, the same rock I had avoided a minute ago while landing. But the rock was behind me, of that I was absolutely certain, thus I faced not only my own image but the image of everything around me. Now I looked for the place where the mirroring ended, because it had to end somewhere and merge with the shallow dunes, but I could not find the boundary, the seam. Not knowing what to do next, I retreated, and he too went backward like a crab, until we were so far apart that he seemed a little smaller. Then, I don’t know why, I turned and walked toward the low sun which blinded me in spite of my antiglare glass. Taking thirty or forty steps with that uncertain ducklike waddle one can’t avoid on the moon, I stopped and looked back at myself. He stood at the top of a small dune and, sure enough, had turned to face me.

Further experiments were unnecessary. I may have stood there like an idiot but my brain was working feverishly. It dawned on me, only now, that the reconnaissance probes sent by the Lunar Agency to the moon had been armed. No one ever said anything specific about that, and I stupidly didn’t inquire further. But of course: If the probes were armed with lasers, their sudden silence after landing might have a simple explanation. I had to find out what kind of lasers, but how? There was no direct communication between me and the base on Earth, only via the ship that hung high above me in stationary orbit. I was indeed on that ship in my physical person, but standing in the Flamsteed crater here as a remote. To talk to Control, I had to turn my transmitter back on, having deliberately switched it off just before leaving the ship so they wouldn’t ruin my concentration during the descent with their advice which no doubt would have come thick and fast had I remained in radio contact with them according to instructions. So I turned the volume knob on my chest and called Earth. The response would come with a three-second delay, I knew, and those seconds seemed like ages. At last I heard the voice of Wivitch. He had a million questions but I told him to be quiet, saying only that I had landed without mishap and was at the target 000 and nothing was attacking me. On the subject of the other remote I was silent.

“Please answer one question, it’s very important,” I said, trying to sound phlegmatic. “The remotes that were sent here before me carried lasers. What kind? Neo-dymium?”

“You found their remains? Are they burned? Where are they?”

“Please don’t answer a question with questions,” I said, interrupting. “Since it’s my first communication from the moon, this is obviously important. What kind of lasers did the two recon pilots have? Were they the same?”

A moment of silence. Standing stockstill, under the heavy black sky and beside the shallow crater filled with sand, I saw the line of my footprints across three sloping dunes to the fourth, where my reflection stood. I kept him in sight while listening to the indistinct voices in my helmet. Wivitch came back with the information.

“The automata had the same lasers as the pilots,” his voice suddenly rang in my ear, making me jump. “Model E-M-9. Nine percent emission in the x-ray and gamma range, the rest in blue.”