Stanislaw Lem: The Conditioned Reflex

The commandant’s office was a dream come true. For Pirx it was, at any rate. Walls totally obscured by celestial maps, constellations like golden-brown drops of honey against a navy-blue field. A small blank Moon globe on the desk; books and degrees galore on the walls; another globe against the wall—only this one bigger, more elaborate. The second one was a real marvel of technological splendor: press the right button and bingo! the orbital path of any artificial satellite was immediately simulated, from the latest to the oldest—those pioneering satellites dating from the fifties.

Practically any other day Pirx would have been enthralled by such a globe, but not today. The commandant was busy writing when he came in. “Please be seated; I’ll be right with you,” he heard him say. At last, taking off his glasses—until about a year ago he had got along without them—the commandant gave him a good long gander, as if laying eyes on him for the first time. That was his way—not only with Pirx but with everyone. It was a gaze designed to rattle even the saintliest of men. And Pirx was hardly a saint. He couldn’t keep still. Either he found himself sprawled out in the grossly casual manner of a millionaire aboard his own private yacht, or precariously balanced on the edge of his seat. Finally—mercifully—the commandant broke the silence.

“Well, Pirx, how are things?”

He’d addressed him informally—a good omen. Pirx said he couldn’t kick.

“Took a dip, did you?”

Pirx nodded. Hey, what gives? Pirx kept his guard up. Maybe it was for sassing Dr. Grotius…

“There’s a trainee’s berth up on Mendeleev. Know where that is?”

“That’s an astrophysics station on the Far Side,” replied Pirx. He felt a slight letdown. He had been nurturing a quiet hope—so quiet he had been reluctant to admit it to himself, for fear of blowing it—that it would be something else. Like a flight mission. With all the ships and planets in the cosmos, he would have to land a routine station assignment, and on the Far Side, no less. Once the “in” term for the lunar hemisphere not facing Earth, it was now in common parlance.

“Right. Do you know what it looks like?” asked the commandant, wearing a facial expression that said he had something up his sleeve. Pirx briefly toyed with the idea of bluffing.

“No,” he answered.

“If you sign on, I’ll supply you with all the specs.” The commandant patted a stack of papers.

“You mean it’s voluntary?” Pirx shot back with undisguised alacrity.

“Correct. The mission I have in mind is… could turn out to be… very—”

He deliberately broke off in mid-sentence to measure what effect his words would have on the wide-eyed, incredulous Pirx. Slowly the cadet drew a solemn breath, held it, and sat there as if oblivious of the need to exhale. Blushing like a maiden at the sight of her Prince, he waited for another dose of sweet-sounding phrases. The commandant cleared his throat.

“Well, well,” he said soberingly, “I may have been exaggerating. Anyway, you’re mistaken.”

“Beg your pardon?” stammered Pirx.

“I mean you’re not the world’s only salvation. Not yet, at least.”

Pirx, red as a beet, squirmed in his seat and fidgeted with his hands. The commandant, a man notorious for his methods, had just finished painting a paradisiacal vision of Pirx the Hero (Pirx already had dreams of returning from his Heroic Exploit and, while being paraded through a packed cosmodrome, hearing awed whispers of “That’s the one! That’s the one!”), and now, unknowingly it seemed, he was beginning to play down the Mission, to trim it down to the size of a routine training assignment.

“The station is manned by astronomers—they’re sent out there, do their month’s service, and that’s that. The work is routine, requiring no specialized skills. Candidates used to be screened on the basis of the standard first- and second-degree tests. But that was before the accident. Now we need people who have undergone more rigorous testing. Pilots would be ideal, but you can’t very well farm a pilot out to a routine observatory. You can understand that.”

Pirx could understand. The whole solar system was begging for pilots, astrogators, navigators—always in short supply, even in the best of times. But what “accident” was the commandant referring to? Pirx observed a prudent silence.

“It’s a small station, situated in the most cockeyed place imaginable—not on the crater floor, as you’d expect, but just below the northern summit. There was a big to-do about the choice of location, international prestige rather than sound selenophysics being the deciding factor—as you’ll see in a moment. Anyhow, last year a section of the wall collapsed and wiped out the only road, making access difficult, and possible only by day. Plans were under way for a cable railway, but work was halted when it was decided to transfer the station down below in a year’s time. At night the station is cut off from the outside world. All radio communication is suspended. Why is that?”

“Sir?”

“Why does all radio communication cease?”

That was the commandant for you. What had begun as a harmless briefing on his Mission had suddenly been turned into an exam! Pirx broke out into a sweat.

“Since the Moon has no atmosphere or ionosphere, radio communication is maintained by ultrashortwave frequency… A network of relay stations, similar to TV transmitters, was constructed to—”

The commandant, his elbows propped on the desktop, twiddled his ball-point in a display of forbearance as Pirx went on expounding on things any schoolchild would have known. He was venturing into territories where his limited knowledge left much to be desired.

“These transmission lines”—he hurtled on, coming upon more familiar waters—“have been installed on both the Far Side and the Near Side. Eight are located on the Far Side, linking up Luna Base with Sinus Medii, Palus Somnii, Mare Imbrium—”

“You can skip that,” the commandant suddenly interrupted in a fit of magnanimity. “Nor is it necessary to hypothesize on the origin of the Moon. Proceed.”

Pirx blinked.

“Radio interference occurs when the relay network enters the terminator… when one half of the network lies in darkness and the other half in light—”

“I know what a terminator is. There’s no need to explain it,” the commandant said benignly.

Pirx coughed and blew his nose. Still, he couldn’t go on coughing or blowing his nose forever.

“In the absence of any lunar atmosphere, the Sun’s corpuscular radiation bombards the Moon’s crust, causing—uh—interference of the radio waves. This interference is what causes inter—”

He was floundering.

“The interference interferes—absolutely right!” said the commandant, coming to his aid. “But what causes the interference?”

“A secondary radiation, known as the No—the No—”

“Nov—” The commandant prodded gently.

“The… Novinsky effect!” Pirx finally blurted out. But the interrogation didn’t end there.

“And what produces the Novinsky effect?”

This last question had him altogether stumped. There was a time when he’d known the answer, but he had since forgotten. He had gone into the exam with the facts down cold, like a juggler balancing a pyramid of wildly improbable things in his head. But the exam was over now. He was desperately going on about electrons, forced radiation, and resonances when he was cut short by a sympathetic head-shake from the commandant.

“Uh-uh,” said the stern and uncompromising man. “And Professor Merinus gave you a B for the course… Hm. Do you suppose he might have made a mistake?”