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  Copyright 1951

  by John W. Campbell, Jr.

  No part of this book may be

  reproduced in any form with-

  out permission in writing from

  the publisher.

  FIRST EDITION

  “The Elder Gods” copyright 1939 by

  Street & Smith Publications, Inc.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  The Moon is Hell!

  John W. Campbell

  Introduction

  THE MOON IS HELL!

  Prologue

  The Fight for Air

  The Fight for Food

  Epilogue

  End Note

  THE ELDER GODS

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  WITHIN TEN YEARS—fifteen, perhaps—the events portrayed so skillfully in this novel may be prosaic fact. Even today the idea of flight to the Moon no longer seems beyond the bounds of possibility; and with further research with rocket propulsion it appears certain that a Lunar flight will be attempted. “The Moon Is Hell!” is the dramatic record of the first expedition to land on the moon—with no apparent hope of returning.

  Stranded—on a frozen, hostile world.

  This is the day-by-day record of thirteen men, scientists from Earth, in their conflict with the Moon —and with their own natures under pressure. It’s a grim story, amazingly real, so convincingly portrayed that in imagination you will join the thirteen in their explorations amid the jagged craters, the dust shrouded plains of our satellite. You will sympathize with them in their efforts to wrest food and water and air from the arid, airless world. You will live the life they live. In short, you will enjoy this story from beginning to end.

  Truly, in “The Moon Is Hell!” John W. Campbell, Jr., has written a masterpiece of mature science fiction. You will remember this fascinating novel for a long time to come. It appears here for the first time, never having been published before in any form.

  In marked contrast with “The Moon Is Hell!” the concluding novelette in this volume can be best described as a philosophical fantasy. Lest that mislead you, it is first of all a story, an exciting story of another world, a tale of gods and men—men who feared neither death nor life. But it’s more than that.

  In a world oppressed with so much of nerve tension, neurosis and stark madness, it would seem that some such study of the mind as is suggested in “The Elder Gods” might be of great help to mankind in general. We know a bit about material things; we know, so very little about our own minds. Campbell, in “The Elder Gods,” opens to your fascinated gaze some of the possibilities latent in pure mentality.

  A double portion—entertainment and a thought-stimulant in one volume.

  THE MOON IS HELL!

  PROLOGUE

  FIFTEEN MEN in shining, bulky air-tight suits stood beside the great hull that had brought them across a quarter of a million miles of space, and landed them at last on this airless satellite world. Warm golden light still shone from the windows of the giant machine, the greatest rocket ship Earth had ever produced. Harsh, electric-blue sunlight glinted on the jet-shadowed spires of the crater wall beyond. In the near foreground was the cracked, pitted surface of a crater-bottom, scarred and broken by ages-old moon-quakes, fading into a horizon strangely near, made jagged by incredibly rugged crater walls. And above, in a star studded sky hung a blue-white ball of fire, the unshielded sun. There was no air here; warmth was only where the sun was. Night was everywhere, hidden from the blue light of the sun in every shadow.

  The fifteen men were grouped about a metal structure they were rapidly raising from a barren, level mass of rock. When it was completed, a bedraggled American flag hung limp in the airless space. In forty-eight hours it would be a piece of white bunting, bleached colorless by the violent light of this place. Later they were to replace the limp-hanging cloth with a sheet of painted metal.

  But now they had other work. Dr. James Harwood Garner was the leader of this party of carefully chosen men, and in the name of the United States of America, he claimed the so-called dark half of the moon. Half a world! Millions, tens of millions of square miles of utterly barren surface, surface never seen by Terrestrian eyes, save when, five years before, Capt. Roger Wilson had circumnavigated the moon twice, landing for two brief days on the Earthward side, and had claimed that.

  But unlike the earlier party, these men were here for continuous exploration, and not for two days, but for two full years! Their orders read: “On June 10, the ship will leave from Inyokern, California, Earth, arriving at Lima, June 15. One circuit of the satellite will be made, and a landing made as near the center of the “dark side” as possible. Explorations will be conducted and data collected for one year and eleven months. On May 10,1981, a relief ship will take off from Mojave, California, Earth, proceeding directly to the camp on Luna, landing as near to the dome as practicable. For one month both parties will remain on the satellite, then the return shall be made, starting June 15, and arriving at Lake Michigan, Earth, on June 20.”

  This first ship came out, loaded with the tons of supplies and instruments that must last the men two full years. So great was the load of oxygen and food, that no fuel for the return could be carried. Hence the need for the relief ship, carrying oxygen and food for but fifteen days for the total crew of both ships, seventeen men in all. The men were to weigh “an average of 153.5 pounds. Two thousand pounds of instruments, samples, photographs, and materials may be returned. Under any circumstances the comparative-reading instruments (instruments whose value was lost if experiments conducted with them on Luna were not repeated with the same instruments on Earth) shall be brought back.”

  From the squat, pointed cylinder, heavy leads were run, while other men set up powerful electric winches. Electric wrenches and tools were brought out. Inside the ship motors were pumping the atmosphere back into the tanks from which it came. Presently the trained crew fell to work, and rapidly the entire machine was unbolted, the gaskets between the plates laid to one side, and the numbered pieces piled in order. Only the low, round battery-house remained untouched; this was the base of the original ship, housing the batteries that would supply heat and light during the two-week long lunar nights. Now the winches began work again, and rapidly the pieces from the hull were transformed into a new “shape, assembled till they made a huge, polished dome, with five small windows set in it. Within it were the bunks, stove, supplies, tanks of oxygen and water, air purifiers—all the equipment and supplies of the original ship, converted into this more spacious dome.

  Beyond the battery house and the Dome, a series of racks were set up, and on them huge photo-cells that soon began pouring energy from the sun, converted into electricity, into the batteries. Camp was made. Ten hours had elapsed, and now the men retired to the dome, and turned the air from the tanks into it. In another hour the pressure and heat within were normal, and a meal was under way, their first on the Moon.

  Sleep now—then the two years’ work was begun. It was during the lunar night that most of the exploration was done. “During the days,” wrote Dr. Thomas Ridgely Duncan, “we are constantly oppressed by the monotony. It is a time of rest, and repairing things that need no repairing. The heat from the sun is absolutely unbearable, the rocks are hot enough to melt tin, even lead. The entire world is bathed in burning hea
t. The suits cannot radiate enough to cool, and perspiration does no good. We are continually subject to sunstroke, and have to remain in the dome.

  “At night the work begins. The sun sinks, and the great barren surface cools. Starlight, far brighter than starlight of earth, gives a slight general illumination while our suit lamps supply more. But little battery heat is needed, and wide exploration is possible. The greatest handicap is the necessity for eating. One cannot eat in a space suit, and one cannot take it off. Oxygen supplies for several days could be carried, but food and particularly water, is the problem.”

  But explorations were carried on. During the day the two mineralogists, the two chemists and the photographer were busy. The little astro-physicist, Melville, was busy day and night. The magnification possible on the airless moon threw him into a terrible despondency, because he had only two three inch telescopes, the greatest weight he had been allowed, and their light gathering power did not permit him the magnification he wanted. So Duncan and Bender and Whisler working together, made a twenty-inch reflector of fused quartz, and with this Melville succeeded in getting photographic maps of the famous “canali” of Mars for the first time, maps that proved them not canals, but tidal swamps, caused by the cross drag and pull of the two satellites of the planet and the Sun.

  The others had little to do during the day. Birthdays were celebrated; and the Fourth of July, Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year’s Day, all were feast days.

  Two light tractor-treaded trucks were included in the equipment. The chassis and treads of the trucks had originally been landing gear for the great rocket, ‘and their engines had served as air pumps and fuel pumps. Every piece of equipment had served dually on the rocket. Assembled on Luna, they carried the men further afield, and did heavy work.

  But “There is little to do. We know all the motion pictures now, every move of every film. Only our own new films are of interest. There is no radio here, since the airless moon has no Heaviside layer to bring the waves about the curve that hides Earth from us. We can neither send nor receive from Earth. It is nearly 1500 miles to the nearest point where earth is visible, and therefore reachable. We are thrown back half a century in time to the period when explorers were cut off from other men.

  “Our little helmet radios work fairly well up to a distance of about five miles, further if we are atop a ridge. The powerful trac-truck sets can reach some twenty miles broadcast from a ridge top. But the curve of the Moon’s surface makes real ranges impossible—it brings the messages too far underground.”

  Cut off from humanity by distance and solid rock as they were, it is no wonder they welcomed the night’s work. Most of the exploration was done by foot, rather than trac-truck, since men afoot could “make better time over the incredibly jagged rock, and the frequent chasms. We can leap fifty to seventy-five feet easily, and the trac-trucks can’t. Future expeditions should develop a mechanical grasshopper, perhaps on the order of an inverted catapult with powerful steel springs, cocked and released by an engine. Nothing else can move far here. Airplanes cannot be used, of course, where there is no air. Small rocket ships can’t be supplied with fuel.”

  Still the trac-trucks could carry the men further, as the hard working explorers needed greater oxygen supplies.

  There is little of interest that has not been made public already. Perhaps a few of Duncan’s weather reports are most interesting, best give a picture of that cruel, dead world. “The mercury thermometer was left outside accidentally, and has been broken. We were alarmed at breakfast by an inexplicable boom from the Dome walls. We rushed out to see what had caused it, and found that the rising sun had struck the mercury bulb, blackened to register in this airless place, and had quickly raised it to the boiling point. The explosion had caused the sound.”

  Again he reports of a lunar pre-dawn. “Winter here now. We hadn’t believed it would make any difference, but apparently it does. We cannot notice it; it is always cold or hot. Nothing is moderate. The chasms are terrifically deep, and terrifically abrupt. The craters are gigantic, and their walls miles in height. It is either utterly cold or utterly hot.”

  The sensation of constant fall, which Duncan mentions at first, left them as they became accustomed to the lesser gravity. Their muscles did not weaken as had been feared. Instead they grew stronger from the heavy work. Yet the weight charts that Dr. Hughey, the expedition’s surgeon, prepared read like kindergarten records. Duncan, in prime condition the beginning of the second year, was recorded as weighing 31 pounds! Dr. Hughey reports he was weighed on a spring balance hooked through his belt, and supported at arm’s length by one of the men. Yet that means a normal Earth-weight of very nearly 186 pounds. Then late in the second year came the first fatality. Duncan writes, “Today we had our first tragedy. In but two months we will be leaving; and Morrison and Wilcott would have gone with us. They were exploring near North Chasm in trac-truck No. 2, and the edge broke away under the weight of the machine. The chasm is over half a mile deep, and they were precipitated to the floor below.

  “The slow fall under lunar gravity was a mockery. Wilcott called the Dome, and told them they were falling! They sent us word where they were, called good-bye—and there was a crash.

  “Efforts to recover the bodies were in vain, though Rice, with the aid of the other trac-truck and a long cable, succeeded in reaching, and recovering the machine. He says he will be able to repair it. The two men were hurled free, apparently, and buried under a mass of rubble.

  “North Chasm has been renamed Morcott Chasm.”

  As the months passed, the time for their release from voluntary exile came nearer and nearer. As each lunar night passed they watched more anxiously the dark heavens for a moving dot of light. Tremendous work had been done; and now they wanted only to return to the Earth with it’s soft, natural air, winds and rains. But their release was not to be so soon. Nor for some of them, was it ever to be.

  The remainder of this account is from Dr. Duncan’s diary, kept faithfully throughout the two years, and later through the terrible period of waiting for a second relief ship. It was, like all their records and accounts, written in chemical pencil, since ink was either frozen or boiling much of the time. During all the months the expedition spent on the alternately frozen and baked moon, Duncan missed but one entry, the last, when his hands could no longer hold the pencil.

  Throughout the diary he mentions the men by their last names. A list of the men living at the end of the second year is given here.

  PERSONNEL OF THE

  GARNER LUNAR EXPEDITION

  Dr. James Harwood Garner, leader, rocket-ship engineer, astro-physicist, chemical engineer.

  Dr. Thomas Ridgely Duncan, physicist, second in command.

  Dr. Eustace M. Hughey, surgeon of expedition.

  Dr. Robert Kenneth Moore, chemist.

  Dr. Warren P. Tolman, chemist

  Mr. Arthur W. Kendall, photographer.

  Mr. David H. King, mineralogist.

  Mr. Hampden S. Reed, mineralogist.

  Mr. Anthony T. Melville, astro-physicist.

  Mr. Carl Jewell Long, astronomer, navigator. (Who did much of the work in determining latitude and longitude on the moon, and in navigating the ship, across space. Fort Washington was taken as the zero meridian.)

  Mr. George W. Rice, expert electrician and mechanic. Mr. Joseph T. Whisler, cook, mechanic, lens-grinder.

  Mr. Frederick L. Bender, mountain-climber, adventurer, mechanic, amateur astronomer.

  THE FIGHT FOR AIR

  The Diary of

  Thomas R. Duncan, Ph.D.

  May 16.

  King and Reed returned from a last expedition to the south-west. They report a remarkable find, a bed of silver selenide so enormously rich that they declare it could be profitably worked and the silver carried back to Earth. It is an enormous bed of “jewelry ore.”

  The morning is half over now, and tomorrow the relief ship is due. We are awaiting this release with the most intense
eagerness. The moon, for all its terrible harshness and cold and heat has become beautiful to us—a frozen hell, but awesome and magnificent for all that. Most of the men spent the day looking for the relief, and little work was done. We know that it is due tomorrow, and a day more or less means that some accident has happened.

  Whisler promises a feast tomorrow. We are all eager for news from home. As we have not even seen Earth in two years, it may have been wiped out for all we know. An all-out atomic war might be in progress, and we would not know.

  May 17.

  The relief has not arrived this evening. It was to be here not later than the seventeenth. We have air supplies for two months, food for three, and we are worried. Interplanetary schedules are exact, of necessity. The ship should have started at syzygy.

  May 18.

  Outside, the relief ship lies, a crushed, red-hot mass of broken, glowing metal. It arrived this afternoon, twenty-one hours late.

  The meaning of this to us, is terrible. It will be at least one full month before Earth even knows that the relief expedition has failed. It will take at least another for action to be started. And not less than five months will be necessary to build a new relief ship. This means that not less than seven months must pass before we can hope for relief—and we have oxygen for two months morel Food we can cut down on, but oxygen we cannot reduce.

  This morning Rice caught a glimpse of it as it came above the horizon, sweeping rapidly up till it was ‘new’ and dark, a tiny satellite of a satellite. We all saw it disappear below the horizon. We were watching for it when it appeared over the horizon again, rising. It was much nearer and larger, and our spirits rose. It was less than 1000 miles away, and the rockets opened just after it crossed the horizon, with the result that it began to fall rapidly toward the surface. A cheer broke out from the men, and Rice, as radio operator, attempted to establish communication. At 10:55 he received a reply; the ship was less than 300 miles away, settling on intermittent rockets, and coming fast.