It was a bright, phosphorescent green, mottled with flecks of gold and no larger than an apple. Its glow seemed to fill all the room. Jeffrey remembered the cave at the base of Luna's Mount Pico from where he'd chipped it. The cave's eerie glow had almost seemed alive, quivering and pulsing with alien energy. Jeffrey, in his space-suit and half blinded, had staggered when he left with his specimen.
Next, he touched the photograph.
It was a moment of eternity captured long ago and still imprisoned in a wrinkled, yellowed paper. On it was the rocket, the Marilyn, which had been his home for fifteen years. Behind it, on a rise in the pock-marked Lunar terrain, was one of the launching stations which had never been used. In the background loomed the nightmarish Tenerife Mountains. And hovering above all in a sky of black velvet was a shining, blue-green ball—the earth.
Carefully, Jeffrey placed the photograph in a large envelope and slid it, with the stone, into his coat's inner pocket.
"They'll believe now," he murmured. "They ignored the letters, the telegrams. Now, with proof, they'll believe. They'll learn what is a lie and what is the truth. They'll learn who was really first."
A moment later he was on the street, struggling to filter through the crowd. For a few seconds he knew terror, because those in the crowd had surrendered all individuality. They had become a single, automatic entity, hypnotized by the tapestry of color and sound and responding to it alone. The crowd closed in upon him like the tentacles of an octopus, imprisoning him and thrusting him forward and back.
At last, panting, he broke free. He found a side street—one that would not be invaded by the parade. He walked swiftly. Then, although breath came hard, he ran.
Carved above the entrance of the huge stone building were the words:
UNITED STATES BUREAU
OF INTERPLANETARY
RESEARCH