And the stars and somewhere, the earth in the sky, sharp as molten steel in the eyes. The rocket watched him and listened. This was a target rocket. 240,000 miles away in the New Mexico blockhouse, they were watching through the rocket's eyes, feeling through the rocket's mechanical nervous system. The rocket carried instruments to test out flight calculations, controls, conditions on the moon. It carried self-operating information about the range of temperatures, radiation, gravitational influences and other conditions to be encountered on the journey and here on the moon's surface. It wouldn't return; only the results of its sensory apparatus were returning now and would keep on returning until the rocket's power ran out.
The rocket was equipped with every kind of instrument—trackers, telemeters, and it was sending back sound and sight like a human eye and ear. Radar stations, television stations, G.E. wagons down there receiving information from the rocket....
The instructions told Barlow exactly where to stand so the television-eyes could pick up his image. He found himself leaning in using the kit, getting the radio apparatus out of his suit connected properly.
He was starting, making gestures, while the terrible fear of loneliness and isolation, his Achilles Heel, made the alien surroundings reel and slip and tremble as though at any moment he was going to crumble, fail, surrender.
The bleeding from his nose and ears had stopped. No pain; that wasn't the trouble. It was being alone, the idea of dying alone....
The bulbous suit carried him over the terrain. Clouds of pumice-dust drifted. He felt like an infant walking, his feet threatening to fold under him. The rocket seemed to be drawing him back toward it. It seemed warm and friendly as he walked the required distance away from it. On Earth they were seeing him now—a man on the moon where there should be no men. He would explain it to them; that was his job. To give them an explanation that would frighten them, freeze the inevitable war-drift for six months more. So the Brotherhood could act—the Brotherhood only needed time.
But what about Barlow? Sure, everybody had to die, but no one should have to die the way Barlow is being asked to. He couldn't do it!
But he stood there, and the rocket transmitted his image and his words back to the blockhouse at White Sands, New Mexico. He said what the instructions told him to.
"We've been observing you; we saw the rocket coming in. You think you're the first to send a rocket here, but you're not. We've been here quite a while. Long enough to have set up a small colony. We've built a city near a uranium mine. There are large processing works, rocket installations and living quarters. There are atomic warhead rockets too...."
He stopped. His legs were weak, so much pressure for such light gravity....