It was hard to say just what attraction the moon had as a vacation land, and it was a matter of unfathomable taste. You either liked it, or you didn't. If you didn't, you couldn't understand what people who liked it saw in it. They couldn't quite explain. "It's so quiet. It's so vast. It's so beautiful," they'd say, but never anything clearer than that.

Augea itself was like twenty other resorts scattered throughout both the northern and southern latitudes of the moon. Except for the military posts and scientific research stations the moon had little value other than as a vacation land. People came there to rest, to look at the bizarre landscape through quartz, or occasionally to don spacesuits and go out on guided exploration trips.

Immediately after checking into their hotel Pell and Kronski got directions to the office of the Resident Surgeon and prepared to go there. Ciel looked on quietly as Pell tightened the straps of his shoulder holster and checked the setting on his freezer.

Ciel said, "I knew it."

"Knew what, honey?" Pell went to the mirror to brush his hair. He wasn't sure it would materially improve the beauty of his long, knobby, faintly melancholy face, but he did it any way.

"The minute we get here you have to go out on business."

He turned, kissed her, then held and patted her hand. "That's just because I want to get it over with. Then I'll have time for you. Then we'll have lots of time together."

She melted into him suddenly. She put her arms around his neck and held him tightly. "If I didn't love you, you big lug, it wouldn't be so bad. But, Dick, I can't go on like this much longer. I just can't."

"Now, baby," he started to say.

There was a knock on the door then and he knew Kronski was ready. He broke away from her, threw a kiss and said, "Later. Later, baby."

She nodded and held her under lip in with her upper teeth.

He sighed and left.

Pell and Kronski left the hotel and started walking along the winding tunnel with the side wall of quartz. On their right the huge valley, with its stark, unearthly landshapes, stretched away. It was near the end of the daylight period and the shadows from the distant peaks, across the valley, were long and deep. Some of them, with little reflected light, seemed to be patches of nothingness. Pell fancied he could step through them into another dimension.

All about them, even here in the side of the mountain, and behind the thick quartz, there was the odd, utterly dead silence of the moon.

Their footsteps echoed sparsely in the corridor.

Pell said to Kronski, "Got the story all straight?"

"Like as if it was true."

"Remember the signal?"

"Sure. Soon as you say we're out of cigarettes. What's the matter, you think I'm a moron, I can't remember?"

Pell laughed and clapped him on the shoulder blade.

Minutes later they turned in from the corridor, went through another, shorter passageway and then came to a door marked: Resident Surgeon. They knocked and a deep voice boomed: "Come in!"

It was a medium-sized room, clearly a dispensary. There was an operating table, a sterilizer, tall glass-fronted instrument cabinets and a refrigerator. At the far end of the room a hulking, bear-like man sat behind a magnalloy desk. The nameplate on the desk said: Hal H. Wilcox, M.D.

"Howdy, gents," said Dr. Hal H. Wilcox, shattering the moon-silence with a vengeance. "What can I do for you?" he was all smiles.

That smile, decided Pell, didn't quite match the shrewdness of his eyes. Have to watch this boy, maybe. There was a big quartz window behind the man so that for the moment Pell saw him almost in silhouette. "We're from Current magazine," said Pell. "I'm Dick Pell and this is Steve Kronski. You got our radio, I guess."

"Oh, yes. Yes, indeed." Wilcox creaked way back in his chair. "You're the fellas want to do a story on us moon surgeons."

"That's right." Pell fumbled a little self-consciously with the gravity weights clipped to his trousers. Took a while for moon visitors to get used to them, everybody said.

"Well, I don't know exactly as how there's much of a story in what we do. We're just a bunch of sawbones stationed here, that's all."

"We're interested in the diseases peculiar to the moon," said Pell. "For instance, why do the permanent residents up here have to have an inoculation every year?"

"That's for the Venusian rash. Thought everybody knew that."

"Venusian rash?"

"Nearest thing we ever had to it on Earth was Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. It's a rickettsia disease. Makes a fella pretty sick; sometimes kills him in two, three days. It started when they had those Venusian construction workers and tunnel men here, oh, long before the war. Under certain conditions the rickettsia stays dormant and then pops up again."

"And the inoculation's for that?"

"Standard. Once a year. You got the inoculation yourself, no doubt, before you jumped off for the moon."

"Where does the serum or whatever you call it come from?"

Pell thought he saw Wilcox's eyes flicker. The doctor said, "It's stored at the main landings. We draw it as we need it from there."

"Have any here now?"

Wilcox's eyes did move this time. He looked at the refrigerator—but only for the veriest moment. "Don't really reckon so," he said finally. He was staring blankly at Pell again.

Pell patted his pockets, turned to Kronski and said, "You know, I think we're out of cigarettes." Before Kronski could answer he moved to the big quartz window behind Wilcox's desk. He gazed at the moonscape. "Just can't get over how big and quiet it is," he said.

Wilcox turned and gazed with him.

Kronski drew his freezer. He pointed it, squeezed, and there was a soft, momentary buzzing and a twinkling of violet sparks at the muzzle of the weapon.

Wilcox sat where he was, frozen, knowing nothing.

Pell turned fast. "Come on, Steve. Let's get it." They both stepped to the refrigerator.

They had only seconds; Kronski's weapon had been set at a low reading. The time of paralysis varied with the individual and Doc Wilcox looked husky enough not to stay frozen very long. If Pell and Kronski returned to their original positions after he came out of it he would never know that anything had happened.

Far back on a lower shelf of the refrigerator were a dozen small bottles of the same type. Pell grabbed one, glanced at the label, nodded, and dropped it into his pocket. They took their places again.

A few moments later Wilcox moved slightly and said, "Yup. Moon's a funny place all right. You either like it or you don't."

The rest of the conversation was fairly uninspired. Pell didn't want to walk out too quickly, and had to keep up the pretense of interviewing Wilcox for a magazine story. It wasn't easy. They excused themselves finally, saying they'd be back for more information as soon as they made up some notes and got the overall picture—whatever that meant. Wilcox seemed satisfied with it.

They hurried back along the tunnel, descended to another level and found the Augea Post Office. They showed the postmaster their C.I.B. shields and identification cards and arranged for quick and special handling for the bottle of vaccine. Pell marked it Attention, Lab, and it was scheduled to take a quick rocket to the Endymion landing and the next unmanned mail rocket back to World City.

Pell stayed at the Post Office to make out a quick report on the incident so he wouldn't have to bore Ciel by doing it in the room, and Kronski sauntered on back to the hotel.

There was a fax receiver there and Pell, missing the hourly voice bulletins of World City Underground, checked it for news. The pages were coming out in a long tongue. He looked at the first headline:

VENUSIAN OBSERVERS ADMITTED TO WORLD CONGRESS

Well, that was a step in the right direction. Maybe one of these days they'd get around to a Solar Congress, as they ought to. The recent open war with Venus had taught both Earthmen and Venusians a lot about space travel, and it was probably possible to explore the solar system further right now. No one had yet gone beyond the asteroids. Recent observations from the telescope stations here on the moon had found what seemed to be geometrical markings on some of Jupiter's satellites. Life there? Could be. Candidates for a brotherhood of the zodiac—if both Terrans and Venusians could get the concept of brotherhood pounded through their still partially savage skulls.

Another headline:

'WE CAN LICK UNIVERSE'—WAR SEC

Not so good, that. Loose talk. Actually it was an Undersecretary of War who had said it. Pell ran over the rest of the article quickly and came to what seemed to him a significant excerpt. "Certain patriotic groups in the world today are ready and willing to make the necessary sacrifices to get it over with. There is a fundamental difference between Earthmen and other creatures of the system, and this difference can be resolved only by the dominance of one over the other."

Supremist stuff. Strictly. If this Undersecretary were not actually a member he was at least a supporter of the Supremist line. And that line had an appeal for the unthinking, Pell had to admit. It was pleasant to convince yourself that you were a superior specimen, that you were chosen....

VENUSIAN SPY SUSPECTS HELD ON MARS

Pell frowned deeply at that one and read the story. A couple of Venusian miners on Mars had wandered too close to one of the Earth military outposts, and had been nabbed. He doubted that they were spies; he doubted that the authorities holding them thought so. But it seemed to make a better story with a slight scare angle. He thought about how Mars was divided at an arbitrary meridian—half to Venus, half to Earth. The division solved nothing, pleased nobody. Joe Citizen, the man in the tunnels could see these things, why couldn't these so-called trained diplomats?

Pell finished his report, questioned the Postmaster a little on routine facts concerning the town, and went back to the hotel.

Ciel was waiting for him. She was in a smart, frontless frock of silvercloth. Her golden hair shone. Her large, dark eyes looked deep, moist, alive. She looked at him questioningly? and he read the silent question: Now can you spare a little time?

"Baby," he said softly, and kissed her.

"Mm," he said when he had finished kissing her.

The voice-phone rang.

He said, "Damn it."

It was Kronski, in his own room next door. "Did Wilcox leave yet?" he asked.

"Wilcox?"

"Yeah. The Doc. Is he still there?"

"I didn't know he was here at all."

Kronski said, "Huh?"

Pell said, "Maybe we better back up and start all over again."

"Wilcox, the Resident Surgeon Doc Wilcox," said Kronski, not too patiently. "He was in my room a little while ago. Said he'd drop by on his way out and see if you were in."

Pell glanced at Ciel. She was busy lighting a cigarette at the other end of the room. Or pretending to be busy. Pell said, "I just got here. Just this minute. I didn't see any Wilcox. What'd he want?"

"I don't know exactly. He was kind of vague about it. Wanted to know if he could answer any more questions for us, or anything like that."

"Sounds screwy."

"Yeah. It sure does, now that I think it over."

"Let me call you back," said Pell and hung up. He turned to Ciel. "Was Doc Wilcox here?"

"Why, yes. He stopped in." Nothing but blank innocence on her face.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Hm?" She raised her eyebrows. "He just stopped in to see if you were here, that was all. I told him you weren't and he went out again."

"But you didn't mention it."

"Well, why should I?"

"I don't know. I'd think you'd say something about it."

"Now, listen, Dick—I'm not some suspect you're grilling. What's the matter with you, anyway?"

"It just strikes me as funny that Wilcox should drop in here and you shouldn't say one word about it, that's all."

"Well, I like that." She folded her arms. "You're getting to be so much of a cop you're starting to be suspicious of your own wife."

"Now, you know it's not that at all."

"What else is it? Dick, I'm sick of it. I'm sick of this whole stupid business you're in. The first time we get a few minutes alone together you start giving me the third degree. I won't stand for it, that's all!"

"Now, baby," he said and took a step toward her.

The deeper tone of the viewer sounded.

"Agh, for Pete's sake," he said disgustedly and answered the call. The image of Chief Larkin's boyishly handsome face came into focus on the screen. Pell lifted a surprised eyebrow and said, "Oh, hello, Chief."

Larkin's eye was cold. Especially cold in the setting of that boyish face. "What in hell," he asked, "are you and Kronski doing on the moon?"

"Hm?" Now it was Pell's turn to look innocent. "Why, you know what we're doing, Chief. We're investigating that case. You know the one—I don't want to mention it over the viewer."

"Who the devil authorized you to go traipsing to the moon to do it?"

"Why, nobody authorized us. I thought—I mean, when you're working on a case and you have a lead, you're supposed to go after it, aren't you?"

"Yes, but not when it's a crazy wild goose chase." In the viewer Pell saw the Chief slam his desk with the palm of his hand. "I'd like to know what in blazes you think you can do on the moon that you can't do in a good healthy session at the computers?"

"Well, that's kind of hard to explain over the viewer. We have made some progress, though. I just sent you a report on it."

Larkin narrowed one eye. "Pell, who do you think you're fooling?"

"Fooling?"

"You heard me. I know damn well you wanted to take a vacation on the moon. But we have a little job for you that holds you up, and what do you do? The next best thing, eh? You see to it that the job takes you to the moon."

"Now, Chief, it wasn't that at all...."

"The devil it wasn't. Now, listen to me, Pell. You pack your bags and get right back to World City. The next rocket you can get. You understand?"

Before he answered the question he looked at Ciel. She was staring at him quietly. Again he could read something of what was in her mind. He knew well enough that she was trying to say to him: "Make a clean break now. Tell him No, you won't come back. Quit. Now's the time to do it—unless you want that stupid job of yours more than you want me...."

Pell sighed deeply, slowly looked into the viewer again and said, "Kronski and I'll be back on the next rocket, Chief."