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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30474 ***
+
+    This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction
+    September 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any
+    evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was
+    renewed.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+THEY ALSO SERVE
+
+By DONALD E. WESTLAKE
+
+Illustrated by Douglas
+
+    _Why should people hate vultures? After all, a vulture never
+    kills anyone..._
+
+
+The launch carrying the mail, supplies and replacements eased slowly
+in toward the base, keeping the bulk of the Moon between itself and
+Earth. Captain Ebor, seated at the controls, guided the ship to the
+rocky uneven ground with the easy carelessness of long practice, then
+cut the drive, got to his walking tentacles, and stretched. Donning
+his spacesuit, he left the ship to go over to the dome and meet
+Darquelnoy, the base commander.
+
+An open ground-car was waiting for him beside the ship. The driver,
+encased in his spacesuit, crossed tentacles in a sloppy salute, and
+Ebor returned the gesture quite as sloppily. Here on the periphery,
+cast formalities were all but dispensed with.
+
+Ebor stood for a moment and watched the unloading. The cargo crew,
+used to working in spacesuits, had one truck already half full. The
+replacements, unused to spacesuits and, in addition, awed and a bit
+startled by the bleakness of this satellite, were moving awkwardly
+down the ramp.
+
+Satisfied that the unloading was proceeding smoothly, Ebor climbed
+aboard the ground-car, awkward in his suit, and settled back heavily
+in the seat to try to get used to gravity again. The gravity of this
+Moon was slight, of course--barely one-sixth the gravity of the Home
+World or most of the colonies--but it still took getting used to,
+after a long trip in free-fall.
+
+The driver sat at the controls, and the car jerked into motion. Ebor,
+looking up, noticed for the first time that the dome wasn't there any
+more. The main dome, housing the staff and equipment of the base, just
+wasn't there.
+
+And the driver, he now saw, was aiming the car toward the nearby
+crater wall. Extending two of his eyes till they almost touched the
+face-plate of his helmet, he could see activity at the base of the
+crater wall, and what looked like an air-lock entrance. He wondered
+what had caused the change, which had obviously been done at top
+speed. The last time he'd been here, not very long ago, the dome had
+still been intact, and there had been no hint of any impending move
+underground.
+
+The driver steered the car into the open air lock, and they waited
+until the first cargo truck had lumbered in after them. Then the outer
+door closed, the pumps were turned on, and in a minute the red light
+flashed over the inner door. Ebor removed the spacesuit gratefully,
+left it in the car, and walked clumsily through the inner door into
+the new base.
+
+A good job had been done on it, for all the speed. Rooms and corridors
+has been melted out of the rock, the floors had been carpeted, the
+walls painted, and the ceiling lined with light panels. All of the
+furnishings had been transferred here from the original dome, and the
+result looked, on the whole, quite livable. As livable as the dome had
+been, at least.
+
+But the base commander, Darquelnoy, waiting for his old friend Ebor
+near the inner door of the lock, looked anything but happy with the
+arrangement. At Ebor's entrance he raised a limp tentacle in weary
+greeting and said, "Come in, my friend, come in. Tell me the new jokes
+from home. I could use some cheering up."
+
+"None worth telling," said Ebor. He looked around. "What's happened
+here?" he asked. "Why've you gone underground? Why do you need
+cheering up?"
+
+Darquelnoy clicked his eyes in despair. "Those _things_!" he cried.
+"Those annoying little creatures on that blasted planet up there!"
+
+Ebor repressed an amused ripple. He knew Darquelnoy well enough to
+know that the commander invariably overstated things. "What've they
+been up to, Dar?" he asked. "Come on, you can tell me over a hot cup
+of restno."
+
+"I've been practically living on the stuff for the last two dren,"
+said Darquelnoy hopelessly. "Well, I suppose another cup won't kill
+me. Come on to my quarters."
+
+"I've worked up a fine thirst on the trip," Ebor told him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The two walked down the long corridor together and Ebor said, "Well?
+What happened?"
+
+"They came here," Darquelnoy told him simply. At Ebor's shocked look,
+he rippled in wan amusement and said, "Oh, it wasn't as bad as it
+might have been, I suppose. It was just that we had to rush around so
+frantically, unloading and dismantling the dome, getting this place
+ready--"
+
+"What do you mean, they _came_ here?" demanded Ebor.
+
+"They are absolutely the worst creatures for secrecy in the entire
+galaxy!" exclaimed Darquelnoy in irritation. "Absolutely the worst."
+
+"Then you've picked up at least one of their habits," Ebor told him.
+"Now stop talking in circles and tell me what happened."
+
+"They built a spaceship, is the long and the short of it," Darquelnoy
+answered.
+
+Ebor stopped in astonishment. "No!"
+
+"Don't tell me no!" cried Darquelnoy. "I _saw_ it!" He was obviously
+at his wit's end.
+
+"It's unbelievable," said Ebor.
+
+"I know," said Darquelnoy. He led the way into his quarters, motioned
+Ebor to a perch, and rang for his orderly. "It was just a little
+remote-controlled apparatus, of course," he said. "The fledgling
+attempt, you know. But it circled this Moon here, busily taking
+pictures, and went right back to the planet again, giving us all a
+terrible fright. There hadn't been the slightest indication they were
+planning anything _that_ spectacular."
+
+"None?" asked Ebor. "Not a hint?"
+
+"Oh, they've been boasting about doing some such thing for ages,"
+Darquelnoy told him. "But there was never any indication that they
+were finally serious about it. They have all sorts of military
+secrecy, of course, and so you never know a thing is going to happen
+until it does."
+
+"Did they get a picture of the dome?"
+
+"Thankfully, no. And before they had a chance to try again, I whipped
+everything underground."
+
+"It must have been hectic," Ebor said sympathetically.
+
+"It was," said Darquelnoy simply.
+
+The orderly entered. Darquelnoy told him, "Two restno," and he left
+again.
+
+"I can't imagine them making a spaceship," said Ebor thoughtfully. "I
+would have thought they'd have blown themselves up long before
+reaching that stage."
+
+"I would have thought so, too," said Darquelnoy. "But there it is. At
+the moment, they've divided themselves into two camps--generally
+speaking, that is--and the two sides are trying like mad to outdo each
+other in everything. As a part of it, they're shooting all sorts of
+rubbish into space and crowing every time a piece of the other side's
+rubbish malfunctions."
+
+"They could go on that way indefinitely," said Ebor.
+
+"I know," said Darquelnoy gloomily. "And here we sit."
+
+Ebor nodded, studying his friend. "You don't suppose this is all a
+waste of time, do you?" he asked, after a minute.
+
+Darquelnoy shook a tentacle in negation. "Not at all, not at all.
+They'll get around to it, sooner or later. They're still boasting
+themselves into the proper frame of mind, that's all."
+
+Ebor rippled in sympathetic amusement. "I imagine you sometimes wish
+you could give them a little prodding in the right direction," he
+said.
+
+Darquelnoy fluttered his tentacles in horror, crying, "Don't even
+_think_ of such a thing!"
+
+"I know, I know," said Ebor hastily. "The laws--"
+
+"Never mind the laws," snapped Darquelnoy. "I'm not even thinking
+about the laws. Frankly, if it would do any good, I might even
+consider breaking one or two of the laws, and the devil with my
+conditioning."
+
+"You _are_ upset," said Ebor at that.
+
+"But if we were to interfere with those creatures up there," continued
+Darquelnoy, "interfere with them in any way at all, it would be
+absolutely disastrous."
+
+The orderly returned at that point, with two steaming cups of restno.
+Darquelnoy and Ebor accepted the cups and the orderly left, making a
+sloppy tentacle-cross salute, which the two ignored.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I wasn't talking necessarily about attacking them, you know," said
+Ebor, returning to the subject.
+
+"Neither was I," Darquelnoy told him. "We wouldn't have to attack
+them. All we would have to do is let them know we're here. Not even
+_why_ we're here, just the simple fact of our presence. That would be
+enough. _They_ would attack _us_."
+
+Ebor extended his eyes in surprise. "As vicious as all that?"
+
+"Chilling," Darquelnoy told him. "Absolutely chilling."
+
+"Then I'm surprised they haven't blown themselves to pieces long
+before this."
+
+"Oh, well," said Darquelnoy, "you see, they're cowards, too. They have
+to boast and brag and shout a while before they finally get to clawing
+and biting at one another."
+
+Ebor waved a tentacle. "Don't make it so vivid."
+
+"Sorry," apologized Darquelnoy. He drained his cup of restno. "Out
+here," he said, "living next door to the little beasts day after day,
+one begins to lose one's sensibilities."
+
+"It has been a long time," agreed Ebor.
+
+"Longer than we had originally anticipated," Darquelnoy said frankly.
+"We've been ready to move in for I don't know how long. And instead we
+just sit here and wait. Which isn't good for morale, either."
+
+"No, I don't imagine it is."
+
+"There's already a theory among some of the workmen that the blow-up
+just isn't going to happen, ever. And since that ship went circling
+by, of course, morale has hit a new low."
+
+"It would have been nasty if they'd spotted you," said Ebor.
+
+"Nasty?" echoed Darquelnoy. "Catastrophic, you mean. All that crowd up
+there needs is an enemy, and it doesn't much matter to them who that
+enemy is. If they were to suspect that we were here, they'd forget
+their own little squabbles at once and start killing us instead. And
+that, of course, would mean that they'd be united, for the first time
+in their history, and who knows how long it would take them before
+they'd get back to killing one another again."
+
+"Well," said Ebor, "you're underground now. And it can't possibly take
+them _too_ much longer."
+
+"One wouldn't think so," agreed Darquelnoy. "In a way," he added,
+"that spaceship was a hopeful sign. It means that they'll be sending a
+manned ship along pretty soon, and that should do the trick. As soon
+as one side has a base on the Moon, the other side is bound to get
+things started."
+
+"A relief for you, eh?" said Ebor.
+
+"You know," said Darquelnoy thoughtfully, "I can't help thinking I was
+born in the wrong age. All this scrabbling around, searching
+everywhere for suitable planets. Back when the Universe was younger,
+there were lots and lots of planets to colonize. Now the old problem
+of half-life is taking its toll, and we can't even hope to keep up
+with the birth rate any more. If it weren't for the occasional planets
+like that one up there, I don't know what we'd do."
+
+"Don't worry," Ebor told him. "They'll have their atomic war pretty
+soon, and leave us a nice high-radiation planet to colonize."
+
+"I certainly hope it's soon," said Darquelnoy. "This waiting gets on
+one's nerves." He rang for the orderly.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of They Also Serve, by Donald E. Westlake
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30474 ***