The Outward Urge by John Wyndham Read Free Book Online Page B

realization. But there’ - he pointed out of the window at the Earth - ‘down there they are seeing us as a hateful silver crescent which they fear - that is the obverse of this particular dream.
    ‘Nobody hated the moon until we reached it. For thousands of years it has been worshipped, honoured, and played to. Lovers sighed to it, children cried for it. It was Isis, and Diana, it was Selene, kissing her sleeping Endymion - and now we have identified it with Siva, the destroyer. So they are hating it now, because of us; and well they may. We have violated an ancient mystery, shattered an infinite serenity, trampled down antique myths, and smeared its face with blood.
    ‘ That is the obverse, ugly and ignoble. Yet it is better that it should have been done at this cost than that it should not have been done at all. Most births are painful, and none are pretty.”
    ‘You’re very eloquent,’ said the doctor, a little wondering.
    ‘Aren’t you, on your own subject?’
    ‘But would you be telling me, in an elaborate way, that the end justifies the means?’
    ‘I am not interested in justifying. I am simply saying that certain practices which may be unpleasant in themselves can produce results which are not. There is many a flower which would not be growing if the dung had not happened to fall where it did. The Romans built their empire with savage cruelty, but it did make European civilization possible; because America prospered on slave labour, she was able to achieve independence; and so on. And now, because the armed forces wanted a position of strategic advantage, they have enabled us to start out into space.’
    ‘To you, then, this station’ - she waved an encompassing hand - ‘this is simply a jumping-off place for the planets?’
    ‘Not simply,’ he told her. ‘At present it is a strategic outpost - but its potentialities are far more significant.’
    ‘Far more important, you mean?’
    ‘As I see it-yes.’
    The doctor lit a cigarette, and considered in silence for a few moments. Then she said:
    ‘There seems to me very little doubt that most people here have a pretty accurate idea of your scale of values, Michael. It would not be news to you, I suppose, that with the exception of three or four - and the Astronomical Section which is starry-eyed, anyway - almost nobody shares them?’
    ‘It would not,’ he said. ‘It has not been, for years; but it is only lately that it has become a matter of uncomfortable importance. Even so, millions of people can be wrong - and often have been.’
    She nodded, and went on, equably:
    ‘Well, suppose we take a look at it from their point of view. All the people here volunteered, and were posted here as a garrison. They did not, and they do not, consider it primarily as a jumping-off place - though I suppose some of them think it may become that one day - now, at this moment, they are seeing it as what it was established to be - a Bombardment Station: a strategic position from which a missile can be placed within a five-mile circle drawn anywhere on Earth. That, they say, and quite truly say, is the reason for the station’s existence; and the purpose for which it is equipped. It was built - just as the other Moon Stations were built - to be a threat. It was hoped that they would never be used, simply because the knowledge of their existence would be an incentive to keep the peace.
    ‘Well, that hope has been wiped out. God knows who, or what, really started this war, but it has come. And what happened? The Russian Station launched a salvo of missiles. The American Station began pumping out a systematic bombardment. The moon, in fact, went into action. But what part did the British Station play in this action? It sent off just three medium-weight missiles!
    ‘The American Station spotted that Russian freighter-rocket coming in, and got it, with a light missile. The Russian Station - and, by the look of it, one of the Russian Satellites - thereupon hammered the