A man was visible in the round port above, wearing a peaked cap of some kind, pointing downward with his finger and nodding his head. What on Earth—or the Moon—could it mean?

When the colonel came closer he saw that a thick-lidded box had been hurriedly welded to the hull. It was labeled телефон in black Cyrillic characters. He loosened the large thumb screw that held the cover into place, then swung it open and took out the telephone handset that was on a bracket inside. When he pressed it hard against his helmet the vibrations of his voice carried through well enough, and he could understand the man on the other end.

“Can you hear me, Colonel?”

“Yes.” The cord was long enough so that when he stepped back he could see the man with another telephone through the port above.

“Good, I’m Captain Nils Hansen, Danish Air Force, Senior Danish Captain with SAS. I’ll introduce the others when you come aboard. Can you reach the deck above you?”

The colonel squinted upward against the glare. “Not now. But we can attach a rope, working together, or something. The gravity is very light.”

“// shouldn’t be hard. Once on deck you will find that there is a hatch on top of the conning tower, unsealed. The conning tower is just big enough to hold three men, with crowding, and you will all have to come in at once since it is not a proper airlock. Get in, seal the top hatch just as tightly as you can, then knock three times on the deck. We’ll let the air in then. Can you do this?”

“Of course.”

“Can you bring whatever oxygen you have left? We don’t want to run short on the return trip. We should have enough, but it doesn’t hurt to have some extra”

“We will do that. We have a last cylinder that we have just tapped.”

“One final thing before you go. We have some—secret equipment aboard, out of sight behind a screen. We would like to ask you to avoid going near it.”

“You have my word,” the colonel said, drawing himself up. “And my officers will give you their word as well.^,, He looked at the big-jawed, smiling man through the thick port and, for the first time, the reality of this last-minute reprieve struck home to him. “I would like to thank you, for all of us, for what you are doing. You have saved our lives.”

“We are glad to be here, and very happy that we could do it. Now…”

“We will be back. In very few minutes.”

When he returned to the capsule, the colonel could see the two faces watching him through the port, close together, pressed to the glass like children at the window of a candy store. He almost smiled, but stopped himself in time.

“Get your suits on,” he said when he had cycled through the lock. “We are going home. Those Danes are taking us.” He switched on the radio and picked up the microphone in order to silence their stammered questions. The distant band, now playing “Meadowland,” moaned and died as his call went out.

“Yes, Vostok TV, we hear you. Is there any difficulty? Your last message was interrupted. Over.”

The colonel frowned, then switched on.

“This is Colonel Nartov. This is a final message. I am switching off and closing communication now.”

“Colonel, please, we know how you feel All Russia is with you in spirit. But the General wishes —”

“Tell the General that I will contact him later. Not by radio.” He took a deep breath and kept his thumb on the switch. “I have his Kremlin telephone number. I will call him from Denmark.” He switched off quickly and killed the power. Should he have said more? What could he have said that would have made any sense? Other countries would be listening.

“Oh hell,” he snapped at his two wide-eyed companions. “Major, get the log books, film, records, samples, put them into a box. Lieutenant, close the oxygen cylinder and unship it so we can take it with us. We’ll go on suit oxygen now. Any questions?” There was only silence, so he snapped his faceplate closed.

“Here they come,” Nils called out a few minutes later. “The last one just climbed down, and they have closed the airlock. They are bundled down with a lot of junk, records and such I imagine, one of them even has a camera. Say—he’s taking pictures of us!”

“Let them,” Ove said. “They can’t learn a thing from the photographs. You know, we should have some specimens too. Before they climb aboard get the colonel on the phone again. Tell him we want some rocks and dirt, something to take home.”

“Specimens brought back by the First Danish Lunar Expedition. Good idea, since we can’t go outside ourselves. How is it going?”

“Fine,” Ove said, opening a bottle of akvavit and placing it beside the little glasses on the map table. “We should have thought to bring some vodka, but I bet we’ll hear no complaints about this snaps/’ He opened one of the smorrebrod containers that the cook had packed that morning, and slid out the open-faced sandwiches inside. “The herring is still fresh, they’ll like that, and there’s liver paste here as well.”

“I’ll eat it myself if they don’t get here pretty soon,” Nils said, eying the food hungrily. “Here they come.”

He waved cheerfully through the port at the three laden figures trudging across the lunar plain.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs shuffled through the notes he had made during the conference with the Prime Minister, finally finding the quote he wanted.

“Read back the last sentence, will you please?” he said.

“The Prime Minister does appreciate your exceedingly kind communication, and…” His secretary flipped the page in her steno book and waited, pencil poised.

“And has asked me to thank you for the good wishes you expressed. He feels that it was very gracious of you to offer access to all of your advanced technologies in space engineering and rocketry, in addition to the use of your extended network of tracking stations around the globe. However, since we have little or nothing that we could contribute to a rocketry program, we feel that it would be unfair of us to enter into any agreements at this time. That’s all. The usual salutations and close. Would you read the whole thing back to me?”

He swung his chair around and looked out of the window while she read. It was dark, the streets empty with the rush-hour crowds long gone. Seven o’clock. Too late for dinner. He would have to stop for something before he went home. He nodded his head as the pontifical weight of the words rolled out. All in order, just right. Thanks a lot but no thanks. The Soviets would happily turn over all their billions of rubles of useless rocket hardware in exchange for a peek at the Daleth drive. They weren’t getting it. Neither were the Americans, though they seemed to have a stronger case; ties of brotherhood, NATO partners, and the sharing of defense secrets among partners. It had been something to watch the American ambassador getting redder and redder as the Prime Minister ticked off on his fingers ten American major defense projects that the Danes knew nothing at all about. The whole world wanted a cut from the cake.

“That’s fine,” he said when the girl stopped.

“Should I type it up now, sir?”

“Not on your life. First thing in the morning, and have it on my desk when I get in. Now get home before your family forgets what you look like.”

“Thank you, sir. Good night.”

“Good night.”

She click-clicked out, her high heels sounding clearly across the outer office in the silence of the empty ministry building. The door slammed. He yawned and stretched, then began to stuff papers into his briefcase. He sealed it and, before he put his coat on, phoned down for his car. The very last thing, he checked the file cabinets to see that they were all locked, and gave the lock on his safe an extra spin. That was enough. He set his big black hat squarely on his head, picked up his briefcase and left. It had been a long day and he was tired; he walked with a heavy, measured pace.