“Well, that’s a fair warning even if it makes no sense. I can’t say you didn’t give it to me.”

“It wasn’t a warning,” Hawks said. “It was a promise.”

Barker shrugged. “Call it whatever you want to.”

“I don’t often choose my words on that basis,” Hawks said.

Barker grinned at him. “You and Sam Latourette ought to do a brother act.”

Hawks looked carefully at Barker for a long time. “Thank you for giving me something else to worry about.” He picked up another folder and thrust it into Barker’s hands.

“Look those over.” He stood up. “There’s only one entrance into the thing. Somehow, our first technician found it, probably by fumbling around the periphery until he stepped through it. It is not an opening in any describable sense; it is a place where the nature of this formation permits entrance by a human being, either by design or accident. It cannot be explained in more precise terms, and it can’t be encompassed by the eye or, we suspect, the human brain. Three men died to make the chart which now permits other men, who follow the chart by dead reckoning like navigators in an impenetrable fog, to enter the formation. Other men have died to tell us the following things about its interior:

“A man inside it can be seen, very dimly, if we know where to look. No one knows, except in the most incoherent terms, what he sees. No one has ever come out; no one has ever been able to find an exit; the entrance cannot be used for that purpose. Non-living matter, such as a photograph or a corpse, can be passed out from inside. But the act of passing it out is invariably fatal to the man doing it. That photo of the first volunteer’s body cost another man’s life. The formation also does not permit electrical signals from its interior. That includes a man’s speaking intelligibly inside his helmet, loudly enough for his RT microphone to pick it up. Coughs, grunts, other non-informative mouth-noises, are permissible. An attempt to encode a message in this manner failed.

“You will not be able to maintain communication, either by broadcast or along a cable. You will be able to ,make very limited hand signals to observers from the outpost, and you will make written notes on a tablet tied to a cord, which the observer team will attempt to draw back after you die. If that fails, the man on the next try will have to go in and pass the tablet out by hand, if he can, and if it is decipherable. Otherwise, he will attempt to repeat whatever actions you took, making notes, until he finds the one that killed you. We have a chart of safe postures and motions which have been established in this manner, as well as of fatal ones. It is, for example, fatal to kneel on one knee while facing lunar north. It is fatal to raise the left hand above shoulder height while in any position whatsoever. It is fatal past a certain point to wear armor whose air hoses loop over the shoulders. It is fatal past another point to wear armor whose air tanks feed directly into the suit without the use of hoses at all. It is crippling to. wear armor whose dimensions vary greatly from the ones we are using now. It is fatal to use the hand motions required to write the English word ‘yes,’ with either the left or right hand.

“We don’t know why. We only know what a man can and cannot do while within that part of the formation which has been explored. Thus far, we have a charted safe path and safe motions to a distance of some twelve meters. The survival time for a man within the formation is now up to three minutes, fifty-two seconds.

“Study your charts, Barker. You’ll have them with you when you go, but we can’t know that having them won’t prove fatal past the point they measure now. You can sit here and memorize them. If you have any other questions, look through these report transcriptions, here, for the answers. I’ll tell you whatever else you need to know when you come down to the laboratory. I’ll expect you there in an hour. Sit at my desk,” Hawks finished, walking quickly toward the door. “There’s an excellent reading light.”

2

Hawks was looking at the astronomical data from Mount Wilson, talking it over with the antenna crew, when Barker finally came through the double doors from the stairwell, holding the formation-chart folder. He was walking quickly and precisely, his face tight.

“All right, Will,” Hawks said, turning away from the engineer in charge of the antenna. “You’d better start tracking the relay tower in twenty minutes. As soon as we’ve got him suited up, we’ll shoot.”

Will Martin nodded and took off his reading glasses to point casually toward Barker. “Think he’ll chicken out?”

Hawks shook his head. “Especially not if it’s put that way. And I’ve done that.”

Martin grinned softly. “Hell of a way for him to make a buck.”

“He can buy and sell the two of us a hundred times over, Will, and never miss an extra piece of pie out of his lunch money.”

Martin looked at Barker again. “Why’s he in this?”

“Because of the way he is.” He began to walk toward Barker. “And, I suppose, because of the way I am. And because of the way that woman is,” he murmured to himself. “I imagine we can mix Connington in, too. All of us are looking for something we must have if we’re to be happy. I wonder what we’ll get?”

“Now, look,” Barker said, slapping the folder. “According to this, if I make a wrong move, they’ll find me with all my blood in a puddle outside my armor, and not a mark on me. If I make another move, I’ll be paralyzed from the waist down, which means I have to crawl on my belly. But crawling on your belly somehow makes things happen so you get squashed up into your helmet. And it goes on in that cheerful vein all the way. If I don’t watch my step as carefully as a tightrope walker, and if I don’t move on time and in position, like a ballet dancer, I’ll never even get as far as this chart reads. I’d say I had no chance whatsoever of-‘ getting out alive.”

“Even if you stood and did nothing,” Hawks agreed, “the formation would kill you at the end of two hundred thirty-two seconds. It will permit no man to live in it longer than some man has forced it to. The limit will go up as you progress. Why its nature is such that it yields to human endeavor, we don’t know. It’s entirely likely that this is only a coincidental side-effect of its true purpose — if it has one.

“Perhaps it’s the alien equivalent of a discarded tomato can. Does a beetle know why it can enter the can only from one end as it lies across the trail to the beetle’s burrow? Does the beetle understand why it is harder to climb to the left or right, inside the can, than it is to follow a straight line? Would the beetle be a fool to assume the human race put the can there to torment it — or an egomaniac to believe the can was manufactured only to mystify it? It would be best for the beetle to study the can in terms of the can’s logic, to the limit of the beetle’s ability. In that way, at least, the beetle can proceed intelligently. It may even grasp some hint of the can’s maker. Any other approach is either folly or madness.”

Barker looked up at Hawks impatiently. “Horse manure. Is the beetle happier? Does it get anything? Does it escape anything? Do other beetles understand what it’s doing, and take up a collection to support it while it wastes time? A smart beetle walks around your tomato can, Doctor, and lives its life contented.”

“Certainly,” Hawks said. “Go ahead. Leave now.”

“I wasn’t talking about me! I was talking about you.” Barker looked around the laboratory. He stared up at the instrument galleries. “Lot of people here. All because of you. I guess that feels pretty satisfying.” He put the folder under one arm and stood with his hands’ in his pockets, his head to one side as he spoke flatly up into Hawks’ face. “Men, money, energy — all devoted to the eminent Dr. Hawks and his preoccupations. Sounds to me like other beetles have taken up a collection.”