Isaac Asimov - Asimov's Mysteries

Jennings came drifting over from his own position half a mile away. He said, 'Odd! There is no free metal on the Moon.'

There shouldn't be. But you know well enough they haven't explored more than one per cent of the

Moon's surface. Who knows what can be found on it?'

Jennings grunted assent and reached out his gauntlet to take the object.

It was true enough that almost anything might be found on the Moon for all anyone really knew. Theirs was the first privately financed selenographic expedition ever to land on the Moon. 'I'll l then, there had been only government-conducted shotgun affairs, with half a dozen ends in view. It was a sign of the advancing space age that the Geological Society could afford to send two men to the Moon for selenological studies only.

Strauss said, 'It looks as though it once had a polished surface.'

'You're right,' said Jennings. 'Maybe there's more about.'

They found three more pieces, two of trifling size and one a jagged object that showed traces of a seam.

'Let's take them to the ship,' said Strauss.

They took the small skim boat back to the mother ship.

They shucked their suits once on board, something Jennings at least was always glad to do. He scratched vigorously at his ribs and rubbed his cheeks till his light skin reddened into welts.

Strauss eschewed such weakness and got to work. The laser beam pock-marked the metal and the vapor recorded itself on the spectrograph. Titanium-steel, essentially, with a hint of cobalt and molybdenum.

That's artificial, all right,' said Strauss. His broad-boned face was as dour and as hard as ever. He showed no elation, although Jennings could feel his own heart begin to race.

It may have been the excitement that trapped Jennings into beginning, 'This is a development against which we must steel ourselves-' with a faint stress on 'steel' to indicate the play on words.

Strauss, however, looked at Jennings with an icy distaste, and the attempted set of puns was choked off. Jennings sighed. He could never swing it, somehow. Never could! He remembered at the University-

Well, never mind. The discovery they had made was worth a far better-pun than any he could construct for all Strauss's calmness.

Jennings wondered if Strauss could possibly miss the significance.

He knew very little about Strauss, as a matter of fact, except by selenological reputation. That is, he had read Strauss's papers and he presumed Strauss had read his. Although their ships might well have passed by night in their University days, they had never happened to meet until after both had volunteered for this expedition and had been accepted.

In the week's voyage, Jennings had grown uncomfortably aware of the other's stocky figure, his sandy hair and china-blue eyes, and the way the muscles over his prominent jawbones worked when he ate. Jennings, himself, much slighter in build, also blue-eyed, but with darker hair, tended to withdraw automatically from the heavy exudation of the other's power and drive.

Jennings said, 'There's no record of any ship ever having landed on this part of the Moon. Certainly none has crashed.'

'If it were a part of a ship,' said Strauss, 'it should be smooth and polished. This is eroded and, without an atmosphere here, that means exposure to micrometeor bombardment over many years.'

Then he did see the significance. Jennings said, with an almost savage jubilation, 'It's a non-human artifact. Creatures not of Earth once visited the Moon. Who knows how long ago?'

'Who knows?' agreed Strauss dryly.

'In the report-'

'Wait,' said Strauss imperiously. Time enough to report when we have something to report. If it was a ship, there will be more to it than what we now have.'

But there was no point in looking further just then. They had been at it for hours, and the next meal and sleep were overdue. Better to tackle the whole job fresh and spend hours at it. They seemed to agree on that without speaking.

The Earth was low on the eastern horizon, almost full in phase, bright and blue-streaked. Jennings looked at it while they ate and experienced, as he always did, a sharp homesickness.

'It looks peaceful enough,' he said, 'but there are six billion people busy on it.'

Strauss looked up from some deep inner life of his own and said, 'Six billion people ruining it!' Jennings frowned. 'You're not an Ultra, are you?'

Strauss said, 'What the hell are you talking about?'

Jennings felt himself flush. A flush always showed against his fair skin, turning it pink at the slightest upset of the even tenor of his emotions. He found it intensely embarrassing. He turned back to his food, without saying anything.

For a whole generation now, the Earth's population had held steady. No further increase could be afforded. Everyone admitted that. There were those, in fact, who said that 'no higher' wasn't enough; the population had to drop. Jennings himself sympathized with that point of view. The globe of the Earth was being eaten alive by its heavy freight of humanity.

But how was the population to be made to drop? Randomly, by encouraging the people to lower the birth rate still further, as and how they wished? Lately there had been the slow rise of a distant rumble which wanted not only a population drop but a selected drop-the survival of the fittest, with the self-declared fit choosing the criteria of fitness.

Jennings thought: I've insulted him, I suppose.

Later, when he was almost asleep, it suddenly occurred to him that he knew virtually nothing of Strauss's character. What if it were his intention to go out now on a foraging expedition of his own so that he might getsole credit for-?

He raised himself on his elbow in alarm, but Strauss wasbreathing heavily, and even as Jennings listened, the breathing grew into the characteristic burr of a snore.

They spent the next three days in a single-minded search for additional pieces. They found some. They found more than that. They found an area glowing with the tiny phosphorescence of Lunar bacteria. Such bacteria were common enough, but nowhere previously had their occurrence been reported in concentration so great as to cause a visible glow.

Strauss said, 'An organic being, or his remains, may have been here once. He died, but the micro-organisms within him did not. In the end they consumed him.'

'And spread perhaps,' added Jennings. That may be the source of Lunar bacteria generally. They may not be native at all but may be the result of contamination instead-eons ago.'

'It works the other way, too,' said Strauss. 'Since the bacteria are completely different in very fundamental ways from any Earthly form of micro-organism, the creatures they parasitized-assuming this was their source-must have been fundamentally different too. Another indication of extraterrestrial origin.'

The trail ended in the wall of a small crater.

'It's a major digging job,' said Jennings, his heart sinking. 'We had better report this and get help.'

'No,' said Strauss somberly. There may be nothing to get help for. The crater might have formed a million years after the ship had crash-landed.'

'And vaporized most of it, you mean, and left only what we've found?' Strauss nodded.

Jennings said, 'Let's try anyway. We can dig a bit. If we draw a line through the finds we've made so far and just keep on…'

Strauss was reluctant and worked halfheartedly, so that it was Jennings who made the real find. Surely that counted! Even though Strauss had found the first piece of metal, Jennings had found the artifact itself.

It was an artifact-cradled three feet underground under the irregular shape of a boulder which had fallen in such a way that it left a hollow in its contact with the Moon's surface. In the hollow lay the artifact, protected from everything for a million years or more; protected from radiation, from micrometors, from temperature change, so that it remained fresh and new forever.