Illustrated by FINLAY
He was afraid—not of the present or the future,but of the past. He was afraid of the thingtagged Reed Kieran, that stiff blind voicelessthing wheeling its slow orbit around the Moon,companion to dead worlds and silent space.
Something tiny went wrong,but no one ever knew whetherit was in an electric relay or inthe brain of the pilot.
The pilot was LieutenantCharles Wandek, UNRC, homeaddress: 1677 Anstey Avenue, Detroit.He did not survive thecrash of his ferry into WheelFive. Neither did his three passengers,a young French astrophysicist,an East Indian experton magnetic fields, and a forty-year-oldman from Philadelphiawho was coming out to replace apump technician.
Someone else who did not survivewas Reed Kieran, the onlyman in Wheel Five itself to losehis life. Kieran, who was thirty-sixyears old, was an accreditedscientist-employee of UNRC.Home address: 815 Elm Street,Midland Springs, Ohio.
Kieran, despite the fact that hewas a confirmed bachelor, was inWheel Five because of a woman.But the woman who had sent himthere was no beautiful lost love.Her name was Gertrude Lemmiken;she was nineteen years oldand overweight, with a fat, stupidface. She suffered from head-colds,and sniffed constantly inthe Ohio college classroom whereKieran taught Physics Two.
One March morning, Kierancould bear it no longer. He toldhimself, "If she sniffs this morning,I'm through. I'll resign andjoin the UNRC."
Gertrude sniffed. Six monthslater, having finished his trainingfor the United Nations ReconnaissanceCorps, Kieranshipped out for a term of duty inUNRC Space Laboratory Number5, known more familiarly asWheel Five.
Wheel Five circled the Moon.There was an elaborate base onthe surface of the Moon in thisyear 1981. There were laboratoriesand observatories there, too.But it had been found that thealternating fortnights of boilingheat and near-absolute-zero coldon the lunar surface could playhavoc with the delicate instrumentsused in certain researches.Hence Wheel Five had been builtand was staffed by research menwho were rotated at regulareight-month intervals.
Kieran loved it, from thefirst. He thought that thatwas because of the sheer beautyof it, the gaunt, silver deaths-headof the Moon forever turningbeneath, the still and solemnglory of the undimmed stars, thefilamentaries stretched across thedistant star-clusters like shiningveils, the quietness, the peace.
But Kieran had a certain intellectualhonesty, and after a whilehe admitted to himself thatneither the beauty nor the romanceof it was what made thislife so attractive to him. It wasthe fact that he was far awayfrom Earth. He did not even haveto look at Earth, for nearly allgeophysical research was takencare of by Wheels Two and Threethat circled the mother planet.He was almost completely divorcedfrom all Earth's problemsand people.
Kieran liked people, but hadnever felt that he understoodthem. What seemed important tothem, all the drives of ordinaryday-to-day existence, had neverseemed very important to him.He had felt that there must besomething wrong with him,something lacking, for it seemedto him that people everywherecommitted the most outlandishfollies, believed in the most incrediblethings, were swayed bypure herd-instinct into the mostharmful courses of behavior.They could not all be wrong, hethought, so he must be wrong—andit had worried him. He hadtaken partial refuge in pure science,but the study an