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....

... rockets on the moon's dark side, out of your reach. But we can
reach you. The world is just a target rotating beneath us. We have
unlimited deposits of uranium and other radioactive metals; you are
completely helpless. Any further attempts to come to the moon will
meet with destruction. We will enforce peace if we can. Any indication
down there of any power planning to start a war, and we'll send our
own atomic warhead rockets down.

"We are primarily scientists and technicians. The annihilation of
civilization would have been inevitable anyway, so we've nothing to
lose by this last attempt to maintain peace by the on