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    Rogue Moon
    Rogue Moon
    Rogue Moon
    Ebook209 pages4 hours

    Rogue Moon

    By Algis Budrys

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A Hugo Award Finalist: Humanity struggles to understand a killing labyrinth discovered on the Moon in this science fiction adventure about death and rebirth

    Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author Robert Silverberg credits Rogue Moon with containing “the most terrifying pages in any SF novel I have ever read.”
     
    A monstrous apparatus has been found on the surface of the moon. It devours and destroys in ways so incomprehensible to humans that a new language has to be invented to describe it and a new kind of thinking to understand it. So far, the human guinea pigs sent there in hopes of unraveling the murderous maze have all died terrible deaths. The most recent volunteer survived but is now on suicide watch. The ideal candidate won’t go insane even as he feels the end approaching. Al Barker has already stared into the face of death; he can handle it again. But he won’t merely endure the trauma of dying. Barker will die over and over—even as his human qualities are preserved on Earth.
     
    With its cast of fascinating characters—like brilliant scientist Edward Hawks, who is obsessed with rebirth—Rogue Moon is a rare thriller that doesn’t just make you sweat. It makes you think.  

     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateFeb 2, 2016
    ISBN9781497653078
    Rogue Moon
    Author

    Algis Budrys

    Algis Budrys (1931–2008) was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, where his father served in the Lithuanian diplomatic corps. The family came to the United States when Budrys was five years old. A Renaissance man, he wrote stories and novels, and was an editor, critic, and reviewer, a teacher of aspiring writers, and a publisher. In the 1960s Budrys worked in public relations, advertising products such as pickles, tuna fish, and four-wheel-drive vehicles. His science fiction novels include Rogue Moon, Hard Landing, Falling Torch, and many others. His Cold War science fiction thriller Who? was adapted for the screen, and he received many award nominations for his work. Budrys was married to his wife, Edna, for almost fifty-four years.  

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    Reviews for Rogue Moon

    3.5/5

    180 ratings15 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Intense, often puzzling SF yarn about the Cold War and the human costs of matter transmitters. Not for the pure action fan, but rather an odd mixture of well-crafted hard science with wild psychodrama. Some pretty distrubed characters smashing themselves against each other and picking apart each other's Existential emptiness. If Asimov had collaborated with Edward Albee, it might look something like this.
    • 4/5
      Very well written though a bit dated. Psychological study of what drives men (use men intentionally) to achieve what is ultimately a pointless goal.
    • 3/5
      Interesting setup, but not my type of story. I had a hard time finishing it. Also I feel, that the German translation is not very good.
    • 2/5
      Dreadful book. Interesting idea but the dialogue reads like a bad film noir.
    • 5/5
      This is one of the rare "science fiction" titles I've kept around forever ... just because it's so good. If it has a flaw, it's that Budrys is a subtle writer, which means that this will leave some people shaking their heads saying "whatsa big deal?" because not enough stuff exploded. Never mind.I am unsure how the shorter version (in /The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, vol. IIB) became the somewhat longer novel. There are actually some things about the shorter version I like better. Do pick this up, though. It's an arresting study of character and human nature in the face of something distressingly alien.
    • 2/5
      I've long been aware of Budrys as a 'classic' author in the SF genre, and 'Rogue Moon' was a Hugo nominee, so this seemed like a good place to check out his work.

      A mysterious alien artifact has been discovered on the Moon. Under the supervision of a brilliant researcher, Dr. Hawks, it's being investigated, with the help of a new, Star Trek-style transporter technology which allows men to beam to the moon. Luckily, the body that ends up on the moon is only a duplicate. "Luckily," because the artifact on the moon is an enigmatic "American Ninja Warrior"-style obstacle course, and men keep dying. The horrible experience leaves even the duplicates back on Earth insane.

      Dr. Hawks' solution, presented to him by a slimy administrative type, is to recruit an adrenaline junkie with a deathwish, Al Barker, rather than the upstanding young astronaut types he's been going through. Will Barker have the "right stuff"?

      The story isn't really 'just' a science-fiction adventure. Budrys uses his premise to do a lot of implicit editorializing about "types of men," "relations between the sexes" and whatnot, by contrasting Hawks (and the program administrator) with Barker, and their girlfriends with each other. Unfortunately, I felt that this attempt to elevate the tale beyond its basic speculative premise weakened the piece rather than strengthening it. I wasn't fully on board with his whole 'essential differences between men, and what makes a 'real man'' digressions - but his ideas about the nature of women are just deeply peculiar (and flat-out wrong, IMO.) (Basically, he seems to be saying that a woman can either be supportive or non-supportive of her man, but the idea that a woman might have qualities independent of how she relates to a man seems to have never occurred to him.)

      I appreciate a good, deeply thoughtful spec-fic story, but I prefer simplistic adventure stories to half-baked social theory.

      Many thanks to NetGalley and Open Road Media for the opportunity to read. As always, my opinions are solely my own.
    • 4/5
      Very well written though a bit dated. Psychological study of what drives men (use men intentionally) to achieve what is ultimately a pointless goal.
    • 4/5
      While the name and cover make it look like a typical classic SF book, there is very little SF in this book. The premise is based around going to the moon and the ending is very much SF, but the bulk of the book looks at more individuals and our fears. Fear of being insignificant, fear of being a failure, fear of not being loved, etc. The ideas Algis Budrys is making the reader think through is craftily done and the book's storyline is also great. The SF aspects of the book are very creative and interesting. The writing is good, but descriptions and technical details can get very long winded. (The protagonist even gets called out for it once or twice by other characters in the book). This is a classic SF book that I believe really stands the test of time.
    • 3/5
      The best science fiction is about ideas, and Rogue Moon wrestles with at least a couple of big existential ones, e.g. what meaning can there be living in an impersonal universe? In its day (the late 1950s), the book was considered pretty ground-breaking, and perhaps it was. After all, Americans at that time were fairly confident they knew their place in the universe: few questioned America's dominance and with the churches full on Sunday mornings, everyone could easily ride the complacent wave that that's exactly the way God wanted it.

      In the half-century since, however, there have been enough crises of confidence that it is no longer considered heresy to entertain the belief that our universe is indeed impersonal and that surrendering to that "truth" and discovering personal meaning within it can be a real struggle. In short, while Budrys' ideas may have been challenging at the time of Rogue Moon's publication, a reader of today's generation will probably come to it already having considered them in other contexts.

      I'm a creature of the post-Rogue Moon generation. While I liked the book in its presentation of the question, it's nothing that knocked my socks off.
    • 3/5
      at its core, science fiction holds society and culture up to the light for inspection and criticism. this book does that well. it goes further into our fears by asking the question "what does it mean to die/be conscious?"

      i think the way this idea is presented by the characters in the book is interesting but the characters themselves and the interpersonal play among them are bland and not quite believable. at least, maybe i would believe it had the author been a better storyteller. or, perhaps, it's me who is missing the point- either way, the book did not gel with me on a socially realistic level.

      the concepts dealt with seem tangled throughout the book but finally resolve into clarity at the end. characters seemingly contradict themselves and make no sense- maybe Budrys attempted too much. he seemed to want to write some kind of commentary on certain personality types while remaining engaged with the central maguffin but the detail and realism were not there for me. explorations of machismo, femininity, and introversion play themselves out within and between the characters but falls flat when run up against the main theme.

      it held me purely by the merit of the scientific existentialism presented. the story and people did not hold me; it seemed like an unfinished book.
    • 2/5
      A short science fiction novel from 1960, but unfortunately not short enough. This would have made a terrific short story but instead in burdened by several secondary characters of no interest to the reader but with lengthy scenes with the main characters.
    • 4/5
      Another book from the SF masterwork series: Rogue Moon was published in 1960, but its characters seem to belong to the 1950's rather than the 1960's and this is important because Budrys works as hard to present his protagonists as he does to tell a science fiction story. It is the dawning of the age of space travel and a mysterious artefact has been discovered on the dark side of the moon. It defies description, but occupies a space probably as big as a football field and it kills anybody trying to enter it. Doctor Edward Hawks has built a matter transmitting machine in an effort to probe the artefact. His machine can make duplicate copies of volunteers from earth, which it can transmit to the moon, allowing them to explore the artefact. Unfortunately the duplicates have not been able to last more than a few seconds inside the artefact without being killed and their destruction leads to insanity for the original copy remaining on earth. Hawks is running out of time and monetary support and so when the chief of human resources: Connington (the clue might be in the name) presents him with a candidate who has no fear of death, Hawks grabs at this last chance and agrees to meet Al Barker (for that is his name).Hawks meets the thrill seeker and genuine all American hero at his home and walks into a tangled web of relationships. The girlfriend Clair Pack (where does he get these names from) is a wisecracking femme fatale who is weighing up her options with Barker and Connington, admitting to Hawks that she cannot help acting like a bitch (the dialogue is typical hard bitten detective novel fare). Hawks himself is not at ease with women, but after the stormy meeting at Barker's home, where the host and his girlfriend are as infuriating as each other, he meets and becomes attracted to a woman: Elizabeth Cummings (yes really) who picks him up on the long walk home.While all of this has been going on, the artefact on the moon is largely forgotten, but the reader might have guessed by now, that it may have some influence on life on earth. Of course Barker cannot resist the challenge and agrees to be duplicated so that he can explore the mystery on the moon: the second part of the novel details his attempts to conquer the space inside the artefact with the help of Hawks and his team.The main theme that emerges from the novel is death. Barker must conquer his own repeated deaths to explore the artefact. Hawks assistant Sam Latourette (another significant name) has terminal cancer and must soon accept his mortality. Hawks and his new girlfriend who genuinely fall in love, may have found a way to circumvent their fears with a more humanist approach. Clair Pack and Connington's attempt to ignore and run away from the human condition because of their own ego's is another approach. The puzzle for the reader is: what is the connection with the artefact on the moons surface? All well and good, but in my opinion Budrys's characters are so sharply conformist to 1950's cultural norms; for example the egotistical hero, the femme fatal, the inexperienced lover and the conniving cheat, that they lose some of their influence on the story. The actual exploration of the artefact is also a bit of an anticlimax. I could say that the novel is almost as crass as the names of its characters, but that would be unfair, as after all it is a 1960's science fiction novel that did hold my interest and so 3.5 stars.
    • 4/5
      Et selvmordprojekt bliver udført ved at bruge en sender på jorden og en modtager på månen til at sende en kopi til månen. Kopien bliver så ofret mens man tager notater, så den næste kopi kan komme lidt længere mod gådens løsning. Hverken chefen eller ham, der bliver kopieret, synes det er ret sjovt.Ok behandling af teleportation og de mulige problemer
    • 4/5
      This is definitely not your run of the mill 1960s science fiction adventure yarn. In fact, it’s the only books I can remember reading that I would put solidly in the scifi noir genre, if there is such a thing. The plot, which centers around scientists’ efforts to explore a mysterious and deadly artifact discovered on the moon, certainly offers some interesting elements, but is not really what drives the book. Rogue Moon is character driven science fiction, and features three unscrupulous manipulators in leading roles: our protagonist Ed Hawks, who willingly expends life after life in his quest to solve the riddle of the artifact; Vincent Connington, a personnel man whose instinctive understanding of the motivations of those around him allows him to direct them towards his own ends; and the deliciously manipulative Claire Pack, who uses sex like a blunt object, effortlessly driving the men around her to compete for her favors (Claire is a character who would fit in a Raymond Chandler yarn). Juxtaposed with these three are three innocents: the heroic thrill seeker (and yet somehow an everyman) Al Barker, who gradually unlocks the artifact’s secrets; Hawks’ cancer ridden protégé Sam Latourette; and the young artist Elizabeth Cummings, whose romantic relationship with Hawks develops at a glacial pace over the course of the book. I found the ending somewhat enigmatic and surprising: a poignant question mark as to the nature of identity. I am not aware that this has ever been made into a movie, but it would seem to offer great potential as a film (though with a different title, I would hope). Not really a book that I would call great--but jarringly different and certainly interesting enough to warrant your time.
    • 4/5
      My reaction to reading this novel in 1993. Spoilers follow.Budrys writes in a concise, clear style that makes it clear he’s considered the many implications of his idea of a matter duplicator and transmitter. Not only is there a clear working out of the details of scanning matter, recording its information, and the attendant problems of sending the signal from one duplicator to another, but Budrys goes into the political implications. The U.S. matter teleporter on the moon is kept a secret from the world in this novel. The shadow of the Cold War hangs over a lot of Budrys’ work – understandable given his history as a Lithuanian exile. The main focus of the novel is the psychological and social implications for those who are scanned and transmitted. Budrys does not go into the economic implications of his device. The uneasy relationships in this novel, the tensions in the dialogue reminded me of film noirs where characters spend a lot of time talking about and dissecting each others’ characters. Most of this novel consists of characters irritating each other, delibrately provoking each other, testing each other. Only two relationships in this novel – between Edward Hawks and his assistant Sam Latourette and that between Hawks and his platonic girlfriend Elizabeth Cummings – are not touched with this quality. Even the relationship with Latourette is not free of tension. He is replaced at Hawks’ request and, dying, he asks Hawks to duplicate him.This novel is about questions of human identity, how humans change the universe in their heads and how each individual conception of the universe can only endure in another person’s head, philosophies on how life is to be faced and the purpose of life, of the relationships between men and women, in short, it really is a novel that fits the cliché about being about the “human condition”. Hawks and alien maze explorer Al Barker (I found the maze thoroughly alien and surrealistic) annoy each other. Hawks is calm, motivated, in his one way ruthlessly dedicated to exploring the maze (though he warns Barker of the dangers and gives him plenty of chances to back out). To him, humans are elements in an equation. He views things as cause and effect and constantly angers people by seeing the motives (the causes) behind their behavior (effects). Hawks is dedicated to proving his superiority as a man, to beating death before an audience and is baffled by his girlfriend’s behavior. Barker’s lover, Claire Pack, a self-described bitch, constantly annoys men, flirts with them to get Barker to fight for her. Vincent Connington, personnel director for Hawks’ company, throws Barker and Hawks together in a successful, but unsatisfying bid to get Pack. Connington views people as elements to be used for a desired reaction. It’s a complex novel. In the end, Barker learns that a man must live by his own standards and goals and realizes the truth of Hawks’ statement to Cummings that a man has to work with what he is as a “lump of carbon can’t rearrange its own structure.” Hawks’ double on the moon chooses death on the moon over the chance he will returned altered (due to the inadequate transmission equipment on the moon) to Earth. The book is understandably concerned with the question of identity like when Hawks refuses to duplicate the dying Latourette. The novel is infused with the Campbellian notion of an impersonal, lethal, unfair universe and the pensive grandeur of the struggle to understand and conquer it. A puzzlement is the title of this novel. It seems to relate to nothing in the story.

    Book preview

    Rogue Moon - Algis Budrys

    CHAPTER ONE

    I

    Late on a day in 1959, three men sat in a room.

    Edward Hawks, Doctor of Science, cradled his long jaw in his outsize hands and hunched forward with his sharp elbows on the desk. He was a black-haired, pale-skinned, gangling man who rarely got out in the sun. Compared to his staff of tanned young assistants, he always reminded strangers of a scarecrow. Now he was watching a young man who sat in the straight chair facing him.

    The young man stared unblinkingly. His trim crew-cut was wet with perspiration and plastered by it to his scalp. His features were clean, clear-skinned and healthy, but his chin was wet. ‘An dark …’ he said querulously, ‘an dark and nowhere starlights …’ His voice trailed away suddenly into a mumble, but he still complained.

    Hawks looked to his right.

    Weston, the recently hired psychologist, was sitting there in an armchair he’d had brought down to Hawks’ office. Weston, like Hawks, was in his early forties. But he was chunky where Hawks was gaunt; he was self-possessed, urbane behind his black-rimmed glasses and, now, a little impatient. He frowned slightly back towards Hawks and arched one eyebrow.

    ‘He’s insane,’ Hawks said to him like a wondering child.

    Weston crossed his legs. ‘I told you that, Dr Hawks; I told you the moment we pulled him out of that apparatus of yours. What had happened to him was too much for him to stand.’

    ‘I know you told me,’ Hawks said mildly. ‘But I’m responsible for him. I have to make sure.’ He began to turn back to the young man, then looked again at Weston. ‘He was young. Healthy. Exceptionally stable and resilient, you told me. He looked it.’ Hawks added slowly, ‘He was brilliant.’

    ‘I said he was stable,’ Weston explained earnestly. ‘I didn’t say he was inhumanly stable. I told you he was an exceptional specimen of a human being. You’re the one who sent him to a place no human being should go.’

    Hawks nodded. ‘You’re right, of course. It’s my fault.’

    ‘Well, now,’ Weston said quickly, ‘he was a volunteer. He knew it was dangerous. He knew he could expect to die.’

    But Hawks was ignoring Weston. He was looking straight out over his desk again.

    ‘Rogan?’ he said softly. ‘Rogan?’

    He waited, watching Rogan’s lips move almost soundlessly. He sighed at last and asked Weston, ‘Can you do anything for him?’

    ‘Cure him,’ Weston said confidently. ‘Electroshock treatments. They’ll make him forget what happened to him in that place. He’ll be all right.’

    ‘I didn’t know electroshock amnesia was permanent.’

    Weston blinked at Hawks. ‘He may need repetitive treatment now and then, of course.’

    ‘At intervals for the remainder of his life.’

    ‘That’s not always true.’

    ‘But often.’

    ‘Well, yes …’

    ‘Rogan,’ Hawks was whispering. ‘Rogan, I’m sorry.’

    ‘An dark … an dark … It hurt me and it was so cold … so quiet I could hear myself …’ Edward Hawks, D.Sc., walked alone across the main laboratory’s concrete floor, his hands at his side. He chose a path among the generators and consoles without looking up, and came to a halt at the foot of the matter transmitter’s receiving stage.

    The main laboratory occupied tens of thousands of square feet in the basement of Continental Electronics’ Research Division building. A year ago, when Hawks had designed the transmitter, part of the first and second floors above it had been ripped out, and the transmitter now towered up nearly to the ceiling along the far wall. Catwalks interlaced the adjoining airspace, and galleries had been built for access to the instruments lining the walls. Dozens of men on Hawks’ staff were still moving about, taking final checks before closing them down for the day. Their shadows on the catwalks, now and then occluding some overhead light, mottled the floor in shifting patterns of darkness.

    Hawks stood looking up at the transmitter, his eyes puzzled. Someone abruptly said, ‘Ed!’ and he turned his head in response.

    ‘Hello, Sam.’ Sam Latourette, his chief assistant, had walked up quietly. He was a heavy-boned man with loose, papery flesh and dark-circled, sunken eyes. Hawks smiled at him wanly. ‘The transmitter crew just about finished with their postmortem, are they?’

    ‘You’ll find the reports on your desk in the morning. There was nothing wrong with the machinery. Nothing anywhere.’ Latourette waited for Hawks to show interest. But Hawks only nodded his head. He was leaning one hand against a vertical brace and peering into the receiving stage. Latourette growled, ‘Ed!’

    ‘Yes, Sam?’

    ‘Stop it. You’re doing too much to yourself.’ He again waited for some reaction, but Hawks only smiled into the machine, and Latourette burst out, ‘Who do you think you’re 3 kidding? How long have I been working with you now? Ten years? Who gave me my first job? Who trained me? You can keep up a front with anybody else, but not with me!’ Latourette clenched his fist and squeezed his fingers together emptily. ‘I know you! But – damn it, Ed, it’s not your fault that thing’s out there! What do you expect – that nobody’ll ever get hurt? What do you want – a perfect world?’

    Hawks smiled again in the same way. ‘We tear a gateway where no gate has ever been,’ he said, nodding at the mechanisms, ‘in a wall we didn’t build. That’s called scientific investigation. Then we send men through the gate. That’s the human adventure. And something on the other side – something that never bothered mankind; something that’s never done us any harm before or troubled us with the knowledge that it was there – kills them. In terrible ways we can’t understand, it kills them. So I keep sending in more men. What’s that called, Sam?’

    ‘Ed, we are making progress. This new approach is going to be the answer.’

    Hawks looked curiously at Latourette.

    Latourette said uncomfortably, ‘Once we get the bugs out of it. That’s all it needs. It’s the thing that’ll do the trick, Ed – I know it.’

    Hawks did not change his expression or turn his face away. He stood with his fingertips forced against the machine’s grey crackle finish. ‘You mean – we’re no longer killing them? We’re only driving them insane with it?’

    ‘All we have to do, Ed,’ Latourette pressed him, ‘all we have to do is find a better way of cushioning the shock when the man feels his death. More sedatives. Something like that.’

    Hawks said, ‘They still have to go into that place. How they do it makes no difference; it won’t tolerate them. It was never made for human beings to have anything to do with. It was never made for the human mind to measure in human terms. We have to make a new language for describing it, and a new way of thinking in order to be able to understand it. Only when we’ve finally got it apart, whatever it is, and seen, and felt, and touched and tasted all its pieces, will we ever be able to say what it might be. And that will only be after we’ve been through it, so what good will our new knowledge do these men who have to die, now? Whatever put it there, no matter why, no human being will ever be able to live in it until after human beings have lived through it. How are you going to describe that in plain English so a sane man can understand it? It’s a monstrous thing we’re dealing with. In a sense, we have to think like monsters, or stop dealing with it, and let it just sit there on the Moon, no one knows why.’

    Latourette reached out sharply and touched the sleeve of his smock. ‘Are you going to shut the programme down?’

    Hawks looked at him.

    Latourette was clutching his arm. ‘Cobey. Isn’t he ordering you to cancel it?’

    ‘Cobey can only make requests,’ Hawks said gently. ‘He can’t order me.’

    ‘He’s company president, Ed! He can make your life miserable. He’s dying to get Continental Electronics off this hook.’

    Hawks took Latourette’s hand away from his arm and moved it to the transmitter’s casing. He put the flats of his own palms into his back pockets, rucking up his white laboratory smock. ‘The Navy originally financed the transmitter’s development only because it was my idea. They wouldn’t have vouchered that kind of money for anyone else in the world. Not for a crazy idea like this.’ He stared into the machine. ‘Even now, even though that place we found is the way it is, they still won’t let Cobey back out on his own initiative. Not as long as they think I can keep going. I don’t have to worry about Cobey.’ He smiled softly and a little incredulously. ‘Cobey has to worry about me.’

    ‘Well, how about you? How much longer can you keep this up?’

    Hawks stepped back. He looked at Latourette thoughtfully. ‘Are we worrying about the project now, or are we worrying about me?’

    Latourette sighed. ‘All right, Ed, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But what’re you going to do?’

    Hawks looked up and down at the matter transmitter’s towering height. In the laboratory space behind them, the technicians were now shutting off the lights in the various subsections of the control array. Darkness fell in horizontal chunks along the galleries of instruments and formed black diagonals like jackstraws being laid upon the catwalks overhead. It advanced in a proliferating body towards the solitary green bulb shining over the ‘not Powered’ half of the ‘Powered/ not Powered’ red-and-green legend painted on the transmitter’s lintel.

    ‘We can’t do anything about the nature of the place to which they go,’ Hawks said. ‘And we’ve reached the limit of what we can do to improve the way we send them there. It seems to me there’s only one thing left to do. We must find a different kind of man to send. A man who won’t go insane when he feels himself die.’ He looked quizzically into the machine’s interior.

    ‘There are all sorts of people in the world,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we can find a man who doesn’t fear Death, but loves her.’

    Latourette said bitterly, ‘Some kind of psycho.’

    ‘Maybe that’s what he is. But I think we need him, nevertheless.’ All the other laboratory lights were out, now. ‘What it comes down to is that we need a man who’s attracted by what drives other men to madness. And the more so, the better. A man who’s impassioned by Death.’ His eyes lost focus, and his gaze extended itself to infinity.

    II

    Continental Electronics’ Director of Personnel was a broad-faced man named Vincent Connington. He came briskly into Hawks’ office and pumped his hand enthusiastically. He was wearing a light blue shantung suit and russet cowboy boots, and as he sat down in the visitors’ chair, puckering the corners of his eyes in the mid-afternoon sunshine streaming through the venetian blinds, he looked around and remarked, ‘Got the same office layout myself, upstairs. But it sure looks a lot different with some carpeting on the floor and some good paintin’s on the walls.’ He turned back to Hawks, smiling. ‘I’m glad to get down here and talk to you, Doctor. I’ve always had a lot of admiration for you. Here you are, running a department and still getting in there and working right with your crew. All I do all day is sit behind a desk and make sure my clerks handle the routine without foulin’ up.’

    ‘They seem to do rather well,’ Hawks said in a neutral voice. He was beginning to draw himself up unconsciously in his chair and to slip a mask of expressionlessness over his face. His glance touched Connington’s boots once and then stayed away. ‘At least, your department’s been sending me some excellent technicians.’

    Connington grinned. ‘Nobody’s got any better.’ He leaned forward. ‘But that’s routine stuff.’ He took Hawks’ interoffice memo out of his breast pocket. ‘This, now – This request, I’m going to fill personally.’

    Hawks said carefully, ‘I certainly hope you can. I expect it may take some time to find a man fitting the outlined specifications. I hope you understand that, unfortunately, we don’t have much time. I—’

    Connington waved a hand. ‘Oh, I’ve got him already. Had him in mind for a long time.’

    Hawks’ eyebrows rose. ‘Really?’

    Connington grinned shrewdly across the plain steel desk. ‘Hard to believe?’ He lounged back in his chair. ‘Doctor, suppose somebody came to you and asked you to do a particular job for him – design a circuit to do a particular job. Now, suppose you reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a piece of paper and said, Here it is. What about that? And then when he was all through shaking his head and saying how it was hard to believe you’d have it right there, you could explain to him about how electronics was what you did all the time. About how when you’re not thinking about some specific project, you’re still thinking about electronics in general. And how, being interested in electronics, you kept up on it, and you knew pretty much where the whole field was going. And how you thought about some of the problems they were likely to run into, and sometimes answers would just come into your head so easily it couldn’t even be called work. And how you filed these things away until it was time for them to be brought out. See? That way, there’s no magic. Just a man with a talent, doing his work.’

    Connington grinned again. ‘Now I’ve got a man who was made to work on this machine project of yours. I know him inside out. And I know a little bit about you. I’ve got a lot to learn about you, yet, but I don’t think any of it’s goin’ to surprise me. And I’ve got your man. He’s healthy, he’s available, and I’ve had security clearances run on him every six months for the last two years. He’s all yours, Doctor. No foolin’.

    ‘You see, Doctor—’ Connington folded his hands in his lap and bent them backward, cracking his knuckles, ‘you’re not the only mover in the world.’

    Hawks frowned slightly. ‘Mover?’ Now his face betrayed nothing.

    Connington chuckled softly to himself over some private joke that was burgeoning within him. ‘There’re all kinds of people in this world. But they break down into two main groups, one big and one smaller. There’s the people who get moved out of the way or into line, and then there’s the people who do the moving. It’s safer and a lot more comfortable to go where you’re pushed. You don’t take any of the responsibility, and if you do what you’re told, every once in a while you get thrown a fish.

    ‘Being a mover isn’t safe, because you may be heading for a hole, and it isn’t comfortable because you do a lot of jostling back and forth, and what’s more, it’s up to you to get your own fish. But it’s a hell of a lot of fun.’ He looked into Hawks’ eyes. ‘Isn’t it?’

    Hawks said, ‘Mr Connington—’ He looked directly back at the man. ‘I’m not convinced. This individual I requested would have to be a very rare type. Are you sure you can instantly give him to me? Do you mean to say your having him ready, as you say, isn’t a piece of conspicuous forethought? I think perhaps you may have had some other motive, and that you’re seizing on a lucky coincidence.’

    Connington lolled back, chuckled, and unwrapped a green-leaved cigar from the tooled leather case in his breast pocket. He snipped open the end with a pair of gold nippers attached to the case by a golden chain, and used a gold-cased lighter set with a ruby. He puffed, and let the smoke writhe out between his large, well-spaced teeth. His eyes glinted behind the drift of smoke that hung in the air in front of his face.

    ‘Let’s keep polite, Dr Hawks,’ he said. ‘Let’s look at it in the light of reason. Continental Electronics pays you to head up Research, and you’re the best there is.’ Connington leaned forward just a little, shifted the cigar just a little in his fingers, and changed the curve of his smile. ‘Continental Electronics pays me to run Personnel.’

    Hawks thought for a minute and then said, ‘Very well. How soon can I see this man?’

    Connington lolled back and took a satisfied puff on the cigar. ‘Right now. He lives right nearby, on the coast – up on the cliffs there?’

    ‘I know the general location.’

    ‘Good enough. If you’ve got an hour or so, what say we run on down there now?’

    ‘I have nothing else to do if he turns out not to be the right man.’

    Connington stretched and stood up.

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